this ebook was one of project gutenberg's early files produced at a time when proofing methods and tools were not well developed. there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed as ebook (#1539) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1539 ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* this ebook was one of project gutenberg's early files produced at a time when proofing methods and tools were not well developed. there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed as ebook (#1539) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1539 ******************************************************************* l'étourdi, ou les contre-temps. comedie. the blunderer: or, the counterplots. a comedy in five acts. (_the original in verse_.) 1653. (?) introductory notice. _the blunderer_ is generally believed to have been first acted at lyons in 1653, whilst molière and his troupe were in the provinces. in the month of november 1658 it was played for the first time in paris, where it obtained a great and well-deserved success. it is chiefly based on an italian comedy, written by nicolo barbieri, known as beltrame, and called _l'inavvertito_, from which the character of mascarille, the servant, is taken, but differs in the ending, which is superior in the italian play. an imitation of the classical boasting soldier, captain bellorofonte, martelione, and a great number of _concetti_, have also not been copied by molière. the fourth scene of the fourth act of _l'ètourdi_ contains some passages taken from the _angelica_, a comedy by fabritio de fornaris, a neapolitan, who calls himself on the title-page of his play "il capitano coccodrillo, comico confidente." a few remarks are borrowed from _la emilia_, a comedy by luigi grotto, whilst here and there we find a reminiscence from plautus, and one scene, possibly suggested by the sixteenth of the _contes et discours d'eutrapel_, written by nöel du fail, lord of la hérissaye. some of the scenes remind us of passages in several italian _commedia del' arte_ between _arlecchino_ and _pantaleone_ the personifications of impudence and ingenuity, as opposed to meekness and stupidity; they rouse the hilarity of the spectators, who laugh at the ready invention of the knave as well as at the gullibility of the old man, before this comedy appeared the french stage was chiefly filled with plays full of intrigue, but with scarcely any attempt to delineate character or manners. in this piece the plot is carried on, partly in imitation of the spanish taste, by a servant, mascarille, who is the first original personage molière has created; he is not a mere imitation of the valets of the italian or classical comedy; he has not the coarseness and base feelings of the servants of his contemporaries, but he is a lineal descendant of villon, a free and easy fellow, not over nice in the choice or execution of his plans, but inventing new ones after each failure, simply to keep in his hand; not too valiant, except perhaps when in his cups, rather jovial and chaffy, making fun of himself and everybody else besides, no respecter of persons or things, and doomed probably not to die in his bed. molière must have encountered many such a man whilst the wars of the fronde were raging, during his perigrinations in the provinces. even at the present time, a mascarille is no impossibility; for, "like master like man." there are also in _the blunderer_ too many incidents, which take place successively, without necessarily arising one from another. some of the characters are not distinctly brought out, the style has often been found fault with, by voltaire and other competent judges, [footnote: victor hugo appears to be of another opinion. m. paul stapfer, in his _les artistes juges et parties_ (2º causerie, the grammarian of hauteville house, p. 55), states:--"the opinion of victor hugo about molière is very peculiar. according to him, the best written of all the plays of our great comic author is his first work, _l'ètourdi_. it possesses a brilliancy and freshness of style which still shine in _le dépit amoureux_, but which gradually fade, because molière, yielding unfortunately to other inspirations than his own, enters more and more upon a new way."] but these defects are partly covered by a variety and vivacity which are only fully displayed when heard on the stage. in the third volume of the "select comedies of m. de molière, london, 1732." _the blunderer_ is dedicated to the right honorable philip, earl of chesterfield, in the following words:-"my lord,--the translation of _l'ètourdi_, which, in company with the original, throws itself at your lordship's feet, is a part of a design form'd by some gentlemen, of exhibiting to the public a _select collection of molière's plays_, in _french_ and _english_. this author, my lord, was truly a genius, caress'd by the greatest men of his own time, and honoured with the patronage of princes. when the translator, therefore, of this piece was to introduce him in an _english_ dress in justice he owed him an _english_ patron, and was readily determined to your lordship, whom all the world allows to be a genius of the first rank. but he is too sensible of the beauties of his author, and the refined taste your lordship is universally known to have in polite literature, to plead anything but your candour and goodness, for your acceptance of this performance. he persuades himself that your lordship, who best knows how difficult it is to speak like _molière_, even when we have his sentiments to inspire us, will be readiest to forgive the imperfections of this attempt. he is the rather encouraged, my lord, to hope for a candid reception from your lordship, on account of the usefulness of this design, which he flatters himself will have your approbation. 'tis to spirit greater numbers of our countrymen to read this author, who wou'd otherwise not have attempted it, or, being foil'd in their attempts, wou'd throw him by in despair. and however generally the _french_ language may be read, or spoke in england, there will be still very great numbers, even of those who are said to understand _french_, who, to master this comic writer, will want the help of a translation; and glad wou'd the publishers of this work be to guide the feebler steps of some such persons, not only till they should want no translation, but till some of them should be able to make a much better than the present. the great advantage of understanding _molière_ your lordship best knows. what is it, but almost to understand mankind? he has shown such a compass of knowledge in human nature, as scarce to leave it in the power of succeeding writers in comedy to be originals; whence it has, in fact, appear'd, that they who, since his time, have most excelled in the _comic_ way, have copied _molière_, and therein were sure of copying nature. in this author, my lord, our youth will find the strongest sense, the purest moral, and the keenest satyr, accompany'd with the utmost politeness; so that our countrymen may take a _french_ polish, without danger of commencing fops and apes, as they sometimes do by an affectation of the dress and manners of that people; for no man has better pourtray'd, or in a finer manner expos'd fopperies of all kinds, than this our author hath, in one or other of his pieces. and now,'tis not doubted, my lord, but your lordship is under some apprehensions, and the reader under some expectation, that the translator should attempt your character, in right of a dedicator, as a refin'd wit, and consummate statesman. but, my lord, speaking the truth to a person of your lordship's accomplishments, would have the appearance of flattery, especially to those who have not the honour of knowing you; and those who have, conceive greater ideas of you than the translator will pretend to express. permit him, then, my lord, to crave your lordship's acceptance of this piece, which appears to you with a fair and correct copy of the original; but with a translation which can be of no manner of consequence to your lordship, only as it may be of consequence to those who _would_ understand molière if they _could_. your lordship's countenance to recommend it to such will infinitely oblige, my lord, your lordship's most devoted, and most obedient, humble servant, the translator." to recommend to lord chesterfield an author on account of "the purest moral," or because "no man has ... in a finer manner exposed fopperies of all kinds," appears to us now a bitter piece of satire; it may however, be doubted if it seemed so to his contemporaries. [footnote: lord chesterfield appeared not so black to those who lived in his own time as he does to us, for bishop warburton dedicated to him his _necessity and equity of an established religion and a test-law demonstrated_, and says in his preface: "it is an uncommon happiness when an honest man can congratulate a patriot on his becoming minister," and expresses the hope, that "the temper of the times will suffer your lordship to be instrumental in saving your country by a reformation of the general manners."] dryden has imitated _the blunderer_ in _sir martin mar-all; or the feigned innocence_, first translated by william cavendish, duke of newcastle, and afterwards adapted for the stage by "glorious john." it must have been very successful, for it ran no less than thirty-three nights, and was four times acted at court. it was performed at lincoln's inn fields by the duke of york's servants, probably at the desire of the duke of newcastle, as dryden was engaged to write for the king's company. it seems to have been acted in 1667, and was published, without the author's name, in 1668. but it cannot be fairly called a translation, for dryden has made several alterations, generally not for the better, and changed _double entendres_ into single ones. the heroine in the english play, mrs. millisent, (celia), marries the roguish servant, warner (mascarille), who takes all his master's blunders upon himself, is bribed by nearly everybody, pockets insults and money with the same equanimity, and when married, is at last proved a gentleman, by the disgusting lord dartmouth, who "cannot refuse to own him for my (his) kinsman." with a fine stroke of irony millisent's father becomes reconciled to his daughter having married a serving-man as soon as he hears that the latter has an estate of eight hundred a year. sir martin mar-all is far more conceited and foolish than lelio; trufaldin becomes mr. moody, a swashbuckler; a compound of leander and andrès, sir john swallow, a kentish knight; whilst of the filthy characters of lord dartmouth, lady dupe, mrs. christian, and mrs. preparation, no counterparts are found in molière's play. but the scene in which warner plays the lute, whilst his master pretends to do so, and which is at last discovered by sir martin continuing to play after the servant has finished, is very clever. [footnote: according to geneste, _some accounts of the english stage_, 10 vols., 1832, vol. i., p. 76, bishop warburton, in his _alliance of church and state_ (the same work is mentioned in note 2), and porson in his _letters to travis_ alludes to this scene.] dryden is also said to have consulted _l'amant indiscret_ of quinault, in order to furbish forth the duke of newcastle's labours. sir walter scott states in his introduction: "in that part of the play, which occasions its second title of 'the feigned innocence,' the reader will hardly find wit enough to counterbalance the want of delicacy." murphy has borrowed from _the blunderer_ some incidents of the second act of his _school for guardians_, played for the first time in 1767. dramatis personae [footnote: molière, racine, and corneille always call the dramatis personae _acteurs_, and not _personnages_.] lelio, _son to_ pandolphus. leander, _a young gentleman of good birth_. anselmo, _an old man_. pandolphus, _an old man_. trufaldin, _an old man_. andrès, _a supposed gipsy_. mascarille, _servant to lelio_. [footnote: _mascarille_ is a name invented by molière, and a diminutive of the spanish _mascara_, a mask. some commentators of molière think that the author, who acted this part, may sometimes have played it in a mask, but this is now generally contradicted. he seems, however, to have performed it habitually, for after his death there was taken an inventory of all his dresses, and amongst these, according to m. eudore soulié, _recherches sur molière_, 1863, p. 278, was: "a ... dress for _l'étourdi_, consisting in doublet, knee-breeches, and cloak of satin." before his time the usual name of the intriguing man-servant was _philipin_.] ergaste, _a servant_. a messenger. _two troops of masqueraders_. celia, _slave to_ trufaldin. hippolyta, _daughter to_ anselmo. _scene_.--messina. the blunderer: or, the counterplots. (_l'étourdi, ou les contre-temps_.) act i. scene i.--lelio, _alone_. lel. very well! leander, very well! we must quarrel then,--we shall see which of us two will gain the day; and which, in our mutual pursuit after this young miracle of beauty, will thwart the most his rival's addresses. do whatever you can, defend yourself well, for depend upon it, on my side no pains shall be spared. scene ii.--lelio, mascarille. lel. ah! mascarille! masc. what's the matter? lel. a great deal is the matter. everything crosses my love. leander is enamoured of celia. the fates have willed it, that though i have changed the object of my passion, he still remains my rival. masc. leander enamoured of celia! lel. he adores her, i tell you. [footnote: in french, _tu, toi_, thee, thou, denote either social superiority or familiarity. the same phraseology was also employed in many english comedies of that time, but sounds so stiff at present, that the translator has everywhere used "you."] masc. so much the worse. lel. yes, so much the worse, and that's what annoys me. however, i should be wrong to despair, for since you aid me, i ought to take courage. i know that your mind can plan many intrigues, and never finds anything too difficult; that you should be called the prince of servants, and that throughout the whole world.... masc. a truce to these compliments; when people have need of us poor servants, we are darlings, and incomparable creatures; but at other times, at the least fit of anger, we are scoundrels, and ought to be soundly thrashed. lel. nay, upon my word, you wrong me by this remark. but let us talk a little about the captive. tell me, is there a heart so cruel, so unfeeling, as to be proof against such charming features? for my part, in her conversation as well as in her countenance, i see evidence of her noble birth. i believe that heaven has concealed a lofty origin beneath such a lowly station. masc. you are very romantic with all your fancies. but what will pandolphus do in this case? he is your father, at least he says so. you know very well that his bile is pretty often stirred up; that he can rage against you finely, when your behaviour offends him. he is now in treaty with anselmo about your marriage with his daughter, hippolyta; imagining that it is marriage alone that mayhap can steady you: now, should he discover that you reject his choice, and that you entertain a passion for a person nobody knows anything about; that the fatal power of this foolish love causes you to forget your duty and disobey him; heaven knows what a storm will then burst forth, and what fine lectures you will be treated to. lel. a truce, i pray, to your rhetoric. masc. rather a truce to your manner of loving, it is none of the best, and you ought to endeavour. lel. don't you know, that nothing is gained by making me angry, that remonstrances are badly rewarded by me, and that a servant who counsels me acts against his own interest? masc. (_aside_). he is in a passion now. (_aloud_). all that i said was but in jest, and to try you. do i look so very much like a censor, and is mascarille an enemy to pleasure? you know the contrary, and that it is only too certain people can tax me with nothing but being too good-natured. laugh at the preachings of an old grey-beard of a father; go on, i tell you, and mind them not. upon my word, i am of opinion that these old, effete and grumpy libertines come to stupify us with their silly stories, and being virtuous, out of necessity, hope through sheer envy to deprive young people of all the pleasures of life! you know my talents; i am at your service. lel. now, this is talking in a manner i like. moreover, when i first declared my passion, it was not ill received by the lovely object who inspired it; but, just now, leander has declared to me that he is preparing to deprive me of celia; therefore let us make haste; ransack your brain for the speediest means to secure me possession of her; plan any tricks, stratagems, rogueries, inventions, to frustrate my rival's pretensions. masc. let me think a little upon this matter. (_aside_). what can i invent upon this urgent occasion? lel. well, the stratagem? masc. what a hurry you are in! my brain must always move slowly. i have found what you want; you must... no, that's not it; but if you would go... lel. whither? masc. no, that's a flimsy trick. i thought that... lel. what is it? masc. that will not do either. but could you not...? lel. could i not what? masc. no, you could not do anything. speak to anselmo. lel. and what can i say to him? masc. that is true; that would be falling out of the frying-pan into the fire. something must be done however. go to trufaldin. lel. what to do? masc. i don't know. lel. zounds! this is too much. you drive me mad with this idle talk. masc. sir, if you could lay your hand on plenty of pistoles, [footnote: the pistole is a spanish gold coin worth about four dollars; formerly the french pistole was worth in france ten _livres_--about ten francs--they were struck in franche-comté.] we should have no need now to think of and try to find out what means we must employ in compassing our wishes; we might, by purchasing this slave quickly, prevent your rival from forestalling and thwarting you. trufaldin, who takes charge of her, is rather uneasy about these gipsies, who placed her with him. if he could get back his money, which they have made him wait for too long, i am quite sure he would be delighted to sell her; for he always lived like the veriest curmudgeon; he would allow himself to be whipped for the smallest coin of the realm. money is the god he worships above everything, but the worst of it is that... lel. what is the worst of it?... masc. that your father is just as covetous an old hunk, who does not allow you to handle his ducats, as you would like; that there is no way by which we could now open ever so small a purse, in order to help you. but let us endeavour to speak to celia for a moment, to know what she thinks about this affair; this is her window. lel. but trufaldin watches her closely night and day; take care. masc. let us keep quiet in this corner. what luck! here she is coming just in the nick of time. scene iii.--celia, lelio, mascarille. lel. ah! madam, what obligations do i owe to heaven for allowing me to behold those celestial charms you are blest with! whatever sufferings your eyes may have caused me, i cannot but take delight in gazing on them in this place. cel. my heart, which has good reason to be astonished at your speech, does not wish my eyes to injure any one; if they have offended you in anything, i can assure you i did not intend it. lel. oh! no, their glances are too pleasing to do me an injury. i count it my chief glory to cherish the wounds they give me; and... masc. you are soaring rather too high; this style is by no means what we want now; let us make better use of our time; let us know of her quickly what... truf. (_within_). celia! masc. (_to lelio_). well, what do you think now? lel. o cruel mischance! what business has this wretched old man to interrupt us! masc. go, withdraw, i'll find something to say to him. scene iv.--trufaldin, celia, mascarille, _and_ lelio _in a corner_. truf. (_to celia_). what are you doing out of doors? and what induces you to go out,--you, whom i have forbidden to speak to any one? cel. i was formerly acquainted with this respectable young man; you have no occasion to be suspicious of him. masc. is this signor trufaldin? cel. yes, it is himself. masc. sir, i am wholly yours; it gives me extreme pleasure to have this opportunity of paying my most humble respects to a gentleman who is everywhere so highly spoken of. truf. your most humble servant. masc. perhaps i am troublesome, but i have been acquainted with this young woman elsewhere; and as i heard about the great skill she has in predicting the future, i wished to consult her about a certain affair. truf. what! do you dabble in the black art? cel. no, sir, my skill lies entirely in the white. [footnote: the white art (_magie blanche_) only dealt with beneficent spirits, and wished to do good to mankind; the black art (_magie noire_) invoked evil spirits.] masc. the case is this. the master whom i serve languishes for a fair lady who has captivated him. he would gladly disclose the passion which burns within him to the beauteous object whom he adores, but a dragon that guards this rare treasure, in spite of all his attempts, has hitherto prevented him. and what torments him still more and makes him miserable, is that he has just discovered a formidable rival; so that i have come to consult you to know whether his love is likely to meet with any success, being well assured that from your mouth i may learn truly the secret which concerns us. cel. under what planet was your master born? masc. under that planet which never alters his love. cel. without asking you to name the object he sighs for, the science which i possess gives me sufficient information. this young woman is high-spirited, and knows how to preserve a noble pride in the midst of adversity; she is not inclined to declare too freely the secret sentiments of her heart. but i know them as well as herself, and am going with a more composed mind to unfold them all to you, in a few words. masc. o wonderful power of magic virtue! cel. if your master is really constant in his affections, and if virtue alone prompts him, let him be under no apprehension of sighing in vain: he has reason to hope, the fortress he wishes to take is not averse to capitulation, but rather inclined to surrender. masc. that's something, but then the fortress depends upon a governor whom it is hard to gain over. cel. there lies the difficulty. masc. (_aside, looking at lelio_). the deuce take this troublesome fellow, who is always watching us. cel. i am going to teach you what you ought to do. lel. (_joining them_). mr. trufaldin, give yourself no farther uneasiness; it was purely in obedience to my orders that this trusty servant came to visit you; i dispatched him to offer you my services, and to speak to you concerning this young lady, whose liberty i am willing to purchase before long, provided we two can agree about the terms. masc. (_aside_). plague take the ass! truf. ho! ho! which of the two am i to believe? this story contradicts the former very much. masc. sir, this gentleman is a little bit wrong in the upper story: did you not know it? truf. i know what i know, and begin to smell a rat. get you in (_to celia_), and never take such a liberty again. as for you two, arrant rogues, or i am much mistaken, if you wish to deceive me again, let your stories be a little more in harmony. scene v.--lelio, mascarille. masc. he is quite right. to speak plainly, i wish he had given us both a sound cudgelling. what was the good of showing yourself, and, like a blunderer, coming and giving the lie to all that i had been saying? lel. i thought i did right. masc. to be sure. but this action ought not to surprise me. you possess so many counterplots that your freaks no longer astonish anybody. lel. good heavens! how i am scolded for nothing! is the harm so great that it cannot be remedied? however, if you cannot place celia in my hands, you may at least contrive to frustrate all leander's schemes, so that he cannot purchase this fair one before me. but lest my presence should be further mischievous, i leave you. masc. (_alone_). very well. to say the truth, money would be a sure and staunch agent in our cause; but as this mainspring is lacking, we must employ some other means. scene vi.--anselmo, mascarille. ans. upon my word, this is a strange age we live in; i am ashamed of it; there was never such a fondness for money, and never so much difficulty in getting one's own. notwithstanding all the care a person may take, debts now-a-days are like children, begot with pleasure, but brought forth with pain. it is pleasant for money to come into our purse; but when the time comes that we have to give it back, then the pangs of labour seize us. enough of this, it is no trifle to receive at last two thousand francs which have been owing upwards of two years. what luck! masc. (_aside_). good heavens! what fine game to shoot flying! hist, let me see if i cannot wheedle him a little. i know with what speeches to soothe him. (_joining him_). anselmo i have just seen.... ans. who, prithee? masc. your nerina. ans. what does the cruel fair one say about me? masc. say? that she is passionately fond of you. ans. is she? masc. she loves you so that i very much pity her. ans. how happy you make me! masc. the poor thing is nearly dying with love. "oh, my dearest anselmo," she cries every minute, "when shall marriage unite our two hearts? when will you vouchsafe to extinguish my flames?" ans. but why has she hitherto concealed this from me? girls, in troth, are great dissemblers! mascarille, what do you say, really? though in years, yet i look still well enough to please the eye. masc. yes, truly, that face of yours is still very passable; if it is not of the handsomest in the world, it is very agreeable. [footnote: the original has a play on words which cannot be translated, as, _ce visage est encore fort mettable....,s'il n'est pas des plus beaux, il est des agreables_; which two last words, according to pronunciation, can also mean disagreeable. this has been often imitated in french. after the legion of honour was instituted in france in 1804, some of the wits of the time asked the imperialists: _etes-vous des honores?_] ans. so that... masc. (_endeavouring to take the purse_). so that she dotes on you; and regards you no longer... ans. what? masc. but as a husband: and fully intends... ans. and fully intends...? masc. and fully intends, whatever may happen, to steal your purse.... ans. to steal...? masc. (_taking the purse, and letting it fall to the ground_). to steal a kiss from your mouth. [footnote: there is here again, in the original, a play on the words _bourse_, purse, and _bouche_, mouth, which cannot be rendered in english.] ans. ah! i understand you. come hither! the next time you see her, be sure to say as many fine things of me as possible. masc. let me alone. ans. farewell. masc. may heaven guide you! ans. (_returning_). hold! i really should have committed a strange piece of folly; and you might justly have accused me of neglect. i engage you to assist me in serving my passion. you bring good tidings, and i do not give you the smallest present to reward your zeal. here, be sure to remember.... masc. o, pray, don't. [footnote: compare in shakspeare's _winter's tale_ autolyeus' answer to camillo (act iv., scene 3), who gives him money, "i am a poor fellow, sir, ... i cannot with conscience take it."] ans. permit me.... masc. i won't, indeed: i do not act thus for the sake of money. ans. i know you do not. but however... masc. no, anselmo, i will not. i am a man of honour; this offends me. ans. farewell then, mascarille. masc. (_aside_). how long-winded he is! ans. (_coming back_). i wish you to carry a present to the fair object of my desires. i will give you some money to buy her a ring, or any other trifle, as you may think will please her most. masc. no, there is no need of your money; without troubling yourself, i will make her a present; a fashionable ring has been left in my hands, which you may pay for afterwards, if it fits her. ans. be it so; give it her in my name; but above all, manage matters in such a manner that she may still desire to make me her own. scene vii.--lelio, anselmo, mascarille. lel. (_taking up the purse_). whose purse is this? [footnote: during the whole of the preceding scene mascarille has quietly kicked the purse away, so as to be out of sight of anselmo, intending to pick it up when the latter has gone.] ans. oh heavens! i dropt it, and might have afterwards believed somebody had picked my pocket. i am very much obliged to you for your kindness, which saves me a great deal of vexation, and restores me my money. i shall go home this minute and get rid of it. scene viii.--lelio, mascarille. masc. od's death! you have been very obliging, very much so. lel. upon my word! if it had not been for me he would have lost his money. masc. certainly, you do wonders, and show to-day a most exquisite judgment and supreme good fortune. we shall prosper greatly; go on as you have begun. lel. what is the matter now? what have i done? masc. to speak plainly as you wish me to do, and as i ought, you have acted like a fool. you know very well that your father leaves you without money; that a formidable rival follows us closely; yet for all this, when to oblige you i venture on a trick of which i take all the shame and danger upon myself... lel. what? was this...? masc. yes, ninny; it was to release the captive that i was getting the money, whereof your officiousness took care to deprive us. lel. if that is the case, i am in the wrong. but who could have imagined it? masc. it really required a great deal of discernment. lel. you should have made some signs to warn me of what was going on. masc. yes, indeed; i ought to have eyes in my back. by jove, be quiet, and let us hear no more of your nonsensical excuses. another, after all this, would perhaps abandon everything; but i have planned just now a master-stroke, which i will immediately put into execution, on condition that if... [footnote: the play is supposed to be in sicily; hence pagan oaths are not out of place. even at the present time italians say, _per jove! per bacco!_] lel. no, i promise you henceforth not to interfere either in word or deed. masc. go away, then, the very sight of you kindles my wrath. lel. above all, don't delay, for fear that in this business... masc. once more, i tell you, begone! i will set about it. (_exit lelio_). let us manage this well; it will be a most exquisite piece of roguery; if it succeeds, as i think it must. we'll try....but here comes the very man i want. scene ix.--pandolphus, mascarille. pand. mascarille! masc. sir? pand. to tell you the truth, i am very dissatisfied with my son. masc. with my master? you are not the only one who complains of him. his bad conduct which has grown unbearable in everything, puts me each moment out of patience. pand. i thought, however, you and he understood one another pretty well. masc. i? believe it not, sir. i am always trying to put him in mind of his duty: we are perpetually at daggers drawn. just now we had a quarrel again about his engagement with hippolyta, which, i find he is very averse to. by a most disgraceful refusal he violates all the respect due to a father. pand. a quarrel? masc. yes, a quarrel, and a desperate one too. pand. i was very much deceived then, for i thought you supported him in all he did. masc. i? see what this world is come to! how is innocence always oppressed! if you knew but my integrity, you would give me the additional salary of a tutor, whereas i am only paid as his servant. yes, you yourself could not say more to him than i do in order to make him behave better. "for goodness' sake, sir," i say to him very often, "cease to be driven hither and thither with every wind that blows,--reform; look what a worthy father heaven has given you, what a reputation he has. forbear to stab him thus to the heart, and live, as he does, as a man of honour." pand. that was well said; and what answer could he make to this? masc. answer? why only nonsense, with which he almost drives me mad. not but that at the bottom of his heart he retains those principles of honour which he derives from you; but reason, at present, does not sway him. if i might be allowed to speak freely, you should soon see him submissive without much trouble. pand. speak out. masc. it is a secret which would have serious consequences for me, should it be discovered; but i am quite sure i can confide it to your prudence. pand. you are right. masc. know then that your wishes are sacrificed to the love your son has for a certain slave. pand. i have been told so before; but to hear it from your mouth pleases me. masc. i leave you to judge whether i am his secret confidant... pand. i am truly glad of it. masc. however, do you wish to bring him back to his duty, without any public scandal? you must... (i am in perpetual fear lest anybody should surprise us. should he learn what i have told you, i should be a dead man.) you must, as i was saying, to break off this business, secretly purchase this slave, whom he so much idolizes, and send her into another country. anselmo is very intimate with trufaldin; let him go and buy her for you this very morning. then, if you put her into my hands, i know some merchants, and promise you to sell her for the money she costs you, and to send her out of the way in spite of your son. for, if you would have him disposed for matrimony, we must divert this growing passion. moreover, even if he were resolved to wear the yoke you design for him, yet this other girl might revive his foolish fancy, and prejudice him anew against matrimony. pand. very well argued. i like this advice much. here comes anselmo; go, i will do my utmost quickly to obtain possession of this troublesome slave, when i will put her into your hands to finish the rest. masc. (_alone_). bravo, i will go and tell my master of this. long live all knavery, and knaves also! scene x.--hippolyta, mascarille. hipp. ay, traitor, is it thus that you serve me? i overheard all, and have myself been a witness of your treachery. had i not, could i have suspected this? you are an arrant rogue, and you have deceived me. you promised me, you miscreant, and i expected, that you would assist me in my passion for leander, that your skill and your management should find means to break off my match with lelio; that you would free me from my father's project; and yet you are doing quite the contrary. but you will find yourself mistaken. i know a sure method of breaking off the purchase you have been urging pandolphus to make, and i will go immediately.... masc. how impetuous you are! you fly into a passion in a moment; without inquiring whether you are right or wrong, you fall foul of me. i am in the wrong, and i ought to make your words true, without finishing what i began, since you abuse me so outrageously. hipp. by what illusion do you think to dazzle my eyes, traitor? can you deny what i have just now heard? masc. no; but you must know that all this plotting was only contrived to serve you; that this cunning advice, which appeared so sincere, tends to make both old men fall into the snare; that all the pains i have taken for getting celia into my hands, through their means, was to secure her for lelio, and to arrange matters so that anselmo, in the very height of passion, and finding himself disappointed of his son-in-law, might make choice of leander. hipp. what! this admirable scheme, which has angered me so much, was all for my sake, mascarille? masc. yes, for your sake; but since i find my good offices meet with so bad a return,--since i have thus to bear your caprices, and as a reward for my services, you come here with a haughty air, and call me knave, cur, and cheat, i shall presently go, correct the mistake i have committed, and undo what i had undertaken to perform. hipp. (_holding him_.) nay, do not be so severe upon me, and forgive these outbursts of a sudden passion. masc. no, no; let me go. i have it yet in my power to set aside the scheme which offends you so much. henceforth you shall have no occasion to complain of my zeal. yes, you shall have my master, i promise you. hipp. my good mascarille, be not in such a passion. i judged you ill; i was wrong; i confess i was. (_pulls out her purse_). but i intend to atone for my fault with this. could you find it in your heart to abandon me thus? masc. no, i cannot, do what i will. but your impetuosity was very shocking. let me tell you that nothing offends a noble mind so much as the smallest imputation upon its honour. hipp. it is true; i treated you to some very harsh language, but here are two louis to heal your wounds. masc. oh! all this is nothing. i am very sensitive on this point; but my passion begins to cool a little already. we must bear with the failings of our friends. hipp. can you, then, bring about what i so earnestly wish for? do you believe your daring projects will be as favourable to my passion as you imagine? masc. do not make yourself uneasy on that account. i have several irons in the fire, and though this stratagem should fail us, what this cannot do, another shall. hipp. depend upon it, hippolyta will at least not be ungrateful. masc. it is not the hope of gain that makes me act. hipp. your master beckons and wishes to speak with you. i will leave you, but remember to do what you can for me. scene xi.--lelio, mascarille. lel. what the deuce are you doing there? you promised to perform wonders, but i am sure your dilatory ways are unparalleled. had not my good genius inspired me, my happiness had been already wholly overthrown. there was an end to my good fortune, my joy. i should have been a prey to eternal grief; in short, had i not gone to this place in the very nick of time, anselmo would have got possession of the captive, and i should have been deprived of her. he was carrying her home, but i parried the thrust, warded off the blow, and so worked upon trufaldin's fears as to make him keep the girl. masc. this is the third time! when we come to ten we will score. it was by my contrivance, incorrigible scatterbrains, that anselmo undertook this desirable purchase; she should have been placed into my own hands, but your cursed officiousness knocks everything on the head again. do you think i shall still labour to serve your love? i would sooner a hundred times become a fat old woman, a dolt, a cabbage, a lantern, a wehrwolf, and that satan should twist your neck! lel. (_alone_.) i must take him to some tavern and let him vent his passion on the bottles and glasses. act ii. scene i.--lelio, mascarille. masc. i have at length yielded to your desires. in spite of all my protestations i could hold out no longer; i am going to venture upon new dangers, to promote your interest, which i intended to abandon. so tender-hearted am i! if dame nature had made a girl of mascarille, i leave you to guess what would have happened. however, after this assurance, do not deal a back stroke to the project i am about to undertake; do not make a blunder and frustrate my expectations. then, as to anselmo, we shall anew present your excuses to him, in order to get what we desire. but should your imprudence burst forth again hereafter, then you may bid farewell to all the trouble i take for the object of your passion. lel. no, i shall be careful, i tell you; never fear; you shall see.... masc. well, mind that you keep your word. i have planned a bold stratagem for your sake. your father is very backward in satisfying all your wishes by his death. i have just killed him (in words, i mean); i have spread a report that the good man, being suddenly smitten by a fit of apoplexy, has departed this life. but first, so that i might the better pretend he was dead, i so managed that he went to his barn. i had a person ready to come and tell him that the workmen employed on his house accidentally discovered a treasure, in digging the foundations. he set out in an instant, and as all his people, except us two, have gone with him into the country, i shall kill him to-day in everybody's imagination and produce some image which i shall bury under his name. i have already told you what i wish you to do; play your part well; and as to the character i have to keep up, if you perceive that i miss one word of it, tell me plainly i am nothing but a fool. scene ii.--lelio, _alone_. it is true, he has found out a strange way to accomplish my wishes fully; but when we are very much in love with a fair lady, what would we not do to be made happy? if love is said to be an excuse for a crime, it may well serve for a slight piece of imposture, which love's ardour to-day compels me to comply with, in expectation of the happy consequences that may result from it. bless me! how expeditious they are. i see them already talking together about it; let us prepare to act our part. scene iii.--mascarille, anselmo. masc. the news may well surprise you. ans. to die in such a manner! masc. he was certainly much to blame. i can never forgive him for such a freak. ans. not even to take time to be ill. masc. no, never was a man in such a hurry to die. ans. and how does lelio behave? masc. he raves, and has lost all command over his temper; he has beaten himself till he is black and blue in several places, and wishes to follow his father into the grave. in short, to make an end of this, the excess of his grief has made me with the utmost speed wrap the corpse in a shroud, for fear the sight, which fed his melancholy, should tempt him to commit some rash act. ans. no matter, you ought to have waited until evening. besides, i should have liked to see pandolphus once more. he who puts a shroud on a man too hastily very often commits murder; for a man is frequently thought dead when he only seems to be so. masc. i warrant him as dead as dead can be. but now, to return to what we were talking about, lelio has, resolved (and it will do him good) to give his father a fine funeral, and to comfort the deceased a little for his hard fate, by the pleasure of seeing that we pay him such honours after his death. my master inherits a goodly estate, but as he is only a novice in business, and does not see his way clearly in his affairs, since the greater part of his property lies in another part of the country, or what he has here consists in paper, he would beg of you, after having entreated you to excuse the too great violence which he has shewn of late, to lend him for this last duty at least.... ans. you have told me so already, and i will go and see him. masc. (_alone_). hitherto, at least, everything goes on swimmingly; let us endeavour to make the rest answer as well; and lest we should be wrecked in the very harbour, let us steer the ship carefully and keep a sharp look out. scene iv.--anselmo, lelio, mascarille. ans. (_coming out of pandolphus' house_). let us leave the house. i cannot, without great sorrow, see him wrapped up in this strange manner. alas! in so short a time! he was alive this morning. masc. we go sometimes over a good deal of ground in a short time. lel. (_weeping_). oh! ans. dear lelio, he was but a man after all; even rome can grant no dispensation from death. lel. oh! ans. death smites men without giving warning, and always has bad designs against them. lel. oh! ans. that merciless foe would not loosen one grip of his murderous teeth, however we may entreat him. everybody must feel them. lel. oh! masc. your preaching will all be in vain; this sorrow is too deep-rooted to be plucked up. ans. if, notwithstanding all these arguments, you will not cast aside your grief, at least, my dear lelio, endeavour to moderate it. lel. oh! masc. he will not moderate it; i know his temper. ans. however, according to your servant's message, i have brought you the money you want, so that you might celebrate your father's funeral obsequies! lel. oh! oh! masc. how his grief increases at these words! it will kill him to think of his misfortune. ans. i know you will find by the good man's books that i owe him a much larger sum, but even if i should not owe anything, you could freely command my purse. here it is; i am entirely at your service, and will show it. lel. (_going away_). oh! masc. how full of grief is my master! ans. mascarille, i think it right he should give me some kind of receipt under his hand. masc. oh! ans. nothing in this world is certain. masc. oh! oh! ans. get him to sign me the receipt i require. masc. alas! how can he comply with your desire in the condition he now is? give him but time to get rid of his sorrow; and, when his troubles abate a little, i shall take care immediately to get you your security. your servant, sir, my heart is over full of grief, and i shall go to take my fill of weeping with him. hi! hi! ans. (_alone_). this world is full of crosses; we meet with them every day in different shapes, and never here below... scene v.--pandolphus, anselmo. ans. oh heavens! how i tremble! it is pandolphus who has returned to the earth! god grant nothing disturbed his repose! how wan his face is grown since his death! do not come any nearer. i beseech you; i very much detest to jostle a ghost. pand. what can be the reason of this whimsical terror? ans. keep your distance, and tell me what business brings you here. if you have taken all this trouble to bid me farewell, you do me too much honour; i could really have done very well without your compliment. if your soul is restless, and stands in need of prayers. i promise you you shall have them, but do not frighten me. upon the word of a terrified man, i will immediately set prayers agoing for you, to your very heart's content. "oh, dead worship, please to go! heaven, if now you disappear, will grant you joy down there below, and health as well, for many a year." [footnote: this seems to be an imitation of a spell, charm, or incantation to lay the supposed ghost, which anselmo says kneeling and hardly able to speak for terror.] pand. (_laughing_). in spite of my indignation, i cannot help laughing. ans. it is strange, but you are very merry for a dead man. pand. is this a joke, pray tell me, or is it downright madness to treat a living man as if he were dead? ans. alas! you must be dead; i myself just now saw you. pand. what? could i die without knowing it? ans. as soon as mascarille told me the news, i was ready to die of grief. pand. but, really, are you asleep or awake? don't you know me? ans. you are clothed in an aerial body which imitates your own, but which may take another shape at any moment. i am mightily afraid to see you swell up to the size of a giant, and your countenance become frightfully distorted. for the love of god, do not assume any hideous form; you have scared me sufficiently for the nonce. pand. at any other time, anselmo, i should have considered the simplicity which accompanies your credulity an excellent joke, and i should have carried on the pleasant conceit a little longer; but this story of my death, and the news of the supposed treasure, which i was told upon the road had not been found at all, raises in my mind a strong suspicion that mascarille is a rogue, and an arrant rogue, who is proof against fear or remorse, and who invents extraordinary stratagems to compass his ends. ans. what! am i tricked and made a fool of? really, this would be a compliment to my good sense! let me touch him and be satisfied. this is, indeed, the very man. what an ass i am! pray, do not spread this story about, for they will write a farce about it, and shame me for ever. but, pandolphus, help me to get the money back which i lent them to bury you. pand. money, do you say? oh! that is where the shoe pinches; that is the secret of the whole affair! so much the worse for you. for my part, i shall not trouble myself about it, but will go and lay an information against this mascarille, and if he can be caught he shall be hanged, whatever the cost may be. ans. (_alone_). and i, like a ninny, believe a scoundrel, and must in one day lose both my senses and my money. upon my word, it well becomes me to have these gray hairs and to commit an act of folly so readily, without examining into the truth of the first story i hear...! but i see.... scene vi.--lelio, anselmo. lel. now, with this master-key, i can easily pay trufaldin a visit. ans. as far as i can see, your grief has subsided. lel. what do you say? no; it can never leave a heart which shall ever cherish it dearly. ans. i came back to tell you frankly of a mistake i made in the money i gave you just now; amongst these louis-d'or, though they look very good, i carelessly put some which i think are bad. i have brought some money with me to change them. the intolerable audacity of our coiners is grown to such a height in this state, that no one can receive any money now without danger of his being imposed upon. it would be doing good service to hang them all! lel. i am very much obliged to you for being willing to take them back, but i saw none among them that were bad, as i thought. ans. let me see the money; let me see it; i shall know them again. is this all? lel. yes. ans. so much the better. are you back again? my dear money! get into my pocket. as for you, my gallant sharper, you have no longer got a penny of it. you kill people who are in good health, do ye? and what would you have done, then, with me, a poor infirm father-in-law? upon my word, i was going to get a nice addition to my family, a most discreet son-in-law. go, go, and hang yourself for shame and vexation. lel. (_alone_). i really must admit i have been bit this time. what a surprise this is! how can he have discovered our stratagem so soon? scene vii.--lelio, mascarille. masc. what, you were out? i have been hunting for you everywhere. well, have we succeeded at last? i will give the greatest rogue six trials to do the like. come, give me the money that i may go and buy the slave; your rival will be very much astonished at this. lel. ah! my dear boy, our luck has changed. can you imagine how ill fortune has served me? masc. what? what can it be? lel. anselmo having found out the trick, just now got back every sou he lent us, pretending some of the gold-pieces were bad, and that he was going to change them. masc. you do but joke, i suppose? lel. it is but too true. masc. in good earnest? lel. in good earnest; i am very much grieved about it. it will put you into a furious passion. masc. me, sir! a fool might, but not i! anger hurts, and i am going to take care of myself, come what will. after all, whether celia be captive or free, whether leander purchases her or whether she remains where she is, i do not care one stiver about it. lel. ah! do not show such indifference, but be a little more indulgent to my slight imprudence. had this last misfortune not happened, you would have confessed that i did wonders, and that in this pretended decease i deceived everybody, and counterfeited grief so admirably that the most sharp-sighted would have been taken in. masc. truly you have great reason to boast. lel. oh! i am to blame, and i am willing to acknowledge it; but if ever you cared for my happiness, repair this mishap, and help me. masc. i kiss your hands, i cannot spare the time. lel. mascarille, my dear boy! masc. no. lel. do me this favour. masc. no, i will not. lel. if you are inflexible, i shall kill myself. masc. do so--you may. lel. can i not soften your hard heart? masc. no. lel. do you see my sword ready drawn? masc. yes. lel. i am going to stab myself. masc. do just what you please. lel. would you not regret to be the cause of my death? masc. no. lel. farewell, mascarille. masc. good bye, master lelio. lel. what...? masc. kill yourself quick. you are a long while about it. lel. upon my word, you would like me to play the fool and kill myself, so that you might get hold of my clothes. masc. i knew all this was nothing but a sham; whatever people may swear they will do, they are not so hasty now-a-days in killing themselves. scene viii.--trufaldin, leander, lelio, mascarille. (_trufaldin taking leander aside and whispering to him_). lel. what do i see? my rival and trufaldin together! he is going to buy celia. oh! i tremble for fear. masc. there is no doubt that he will do all he can; and if he has money, he can do all he will. for my part i am delighted. this is a just reward for your blunders, your impatience. lel. what must i do? advise me. masc. i don't know. lel. stay, i will go and pick a quarrel with him. masc. what good will that do? lel. what would you have me do to ward off this blow? masc. well, i pardon you; i will yet cast an eye of pity on you. leave me to watch them; i believe i shall discover what he intends to do by fairer means. (_exit lelio_). truf. (_to leander_). when you send by and by, it shall be done. masc. (_aside and going out_). i must trap him and become his confidant, in order to baffle his designs the more easily. leand. (_alone_). thanks to heaven, my happiness is complete. i have found the way to secure it, and fear nothing more. whatever my rival may henceforth attempt, it is no longer in his power to do me any harm. scene ix.--leander, mascarille. masc. (_speaking these words within, and then coming on the stage_). oh! oh! help! murder! help! they are killing me! oh! oh! oh! oh! traitor! barbarian! leand. whence comes that noise? what is the matter? what are they doing to you? masc. he has just given me two hundred blows with a cudgel. leand. who? masc. lelio. leand. and for what reason? masc. for a mere trifle he has turned me away and beats me most unmercifully. leand. he is really much to blame. masc. but, i swear, if ever it lies in my power i will be revenged on him. i will let you know, mr. thrasher, with a vengeance, that people's bones are not to be broken for nothing! though i am but a servant, yet i am a man of honour. after having been in your service for four years you shall not pay me with a switch, nor affront me in so sensible a part as my shoulders! i tell you once more, i shall find a way to be revenged! you are in love with a certain slave, you would fain induce me to get her for you, but i will manage matters so that somebody else shall carry her off; the deuce take me if i don't! leand. hear me, mascarille, and moderate your passion. i always liked you, and often wished that a young fellow, faithful and clever like you, might one day or other take a fancy to enter my service. in a word, if you think my offer worthy of acceptance, and if you have a mind to serve me, from this moment i engage you. masc. with all my heart, sir, and so much the rather because good fortune in serving you offers me an opportunity of being revenged, and because in my endeavours to please you i shall at the same time punish that wretch. in a word, by my dexterity, i hope to get celia for... leand. my love has provided already for that. smitten by a faultless fair one, i have just now bought her for less than her value. masc. what! celia belongs to you, then? leand. you should see her this minute, if i were the master of my own actions. but alas! it is my father who is so; since he is resolved, as i understand by a letter brought me, to make me marry hippolyta. i would not have this affair come to his knowledge lest it should exasperate him. therefore in my arrangement with trufaldin (from whom i just now parted), i acted purposely in the name of another. when the affair was settled, my ring was chosen as the token, on the sight of which trufaldin is to deliver celia. but i must first arrange the ways and means to conceal from the eyes of others the girl who so much charms my own, and then find some retired place where this lovely captive may be secreted. masc. a little way out of town lives an old relative of mine, whose house i can take the freedom to offer you; there you may safely lodge her, and not a creature know anything of the matter. leand. indeed! so i can: you have delighted me with the very thing i wanted. here, take this, and go and get possession of the fair one. as soon as ever trufaldin sees my ring, my girl will be immediately delivered into your hands. you can then take her to that house, when... but hist! here comes hippolyta. scene x.--hippolyta, leander, mascarille. hipp. i have some news for you, leander, but will you be pleased or displeased with it? leand. to judge of that, and make answer off-hand, i should know it. hipp. give me your hand, then, as far as the church, and i will tell it you as we go. [footnote: generally it was thought preferable, during molière's lifetime, to use the word _temple_ for "church," instead of _église_.] leand. (_to mascarille_). go, make haste, and serve me in that business without delay. scene xi.--mascarille, _alone_. yes, i will serve you up a dish of my own dressing. was there ever in the world so lucky a fellow. how delighted lelio will be soon! his mistress to fall into our hands by these means! to derive his whole happiness from the man he would have expected to ruin him! to become happy by the hands of a rival! after this great exploit, i desire that due preparations be made to paint me as a hero crowned with laurel, and that underneath the portrait be inscribed in letters of gold: _vivat mascarillus, rogum imperator_. scene xii.--trufaldin, mascarille. masc. soho, there! truf. what do you want? masc. this ring, which you know, will inform you what business brings me hither. truf. yes, i recognise that ring perfectly; stay a little, i will fetch you the slave. scene xiii.--trufaldin, a messenger, mascarille. mess. (_to trufaldin_). do me the favor, sir, to tell me where lives a gentleman.... truf. what gentleman? mess. i think his name is trufaldin. truf. and what is your business with him, pray? i am he. mess. only to deliver this letter to him. truf. (_reads_). "_providence, whose goodness watches over my life, has just brought to my ears a most welcome report, that my daughter, who was stolen from me by some robbers when she was four years old, is now a slave at your house, under the name of celia. if ever you knew what it was to be a father, and if natural affection makes an impression on your heart, then keep in your house this child so dear to me, and treat her as if she were your own flesh and blood. i am preparing to set out myself in order to fetch her. you shall be so well rewarded for your trouble, that in everything that relates to your happiness (which i am determined to advance) you shall have reason to bless the day in which you caused mine_." don pedro de gusman, from madrid. marquess of montalcana though the gipsies can be seldom believed, yet they who sold her to me told me she would soon be fetched by somebody, and that i should have no reason to complain. yet here i was going, all through my impatience, to lose the fruits of a great expectation. (_to the messenger_). had you come but one moment later, your journey would have been in vain; i was going, this very instant, to give the girl up into this gentleman's hands; but it is well, i shall take great care of her. (_exit messenger_). (_to mascarille_). you yourself have heard what this letter says, so you may tell the person who sent you that i cannot keep my word, and that he had better come and receive his money back. masc. but the way you insult him... truf. go about your business, and no more words. masc. (_alone_). oh, what a curse that this letter came now! fate is indeed against me. what bad luck for this messenger to come from spain when he was not wanted! may thunder and hail go with him! never, certainly, had so happy a beginning such a sad ending in so short a time. scene xiv.--lelio _laughing_, mascarille. masc. what may be the cause of all this mirth? lel. let me have my laugh out before i tell you. masc. let us laugh then heartily, we have abundant cause so to do. lel. oh! i shall no longer be the object of your expostulations: you who always reproach me shall no longer say that i am marrying all your schemes, like a busy-body as i am. i myself have played one of the cleverest tricks in the world. it is true i am quick-tempered, and now and then rather too hasty; but yet, when i have a mind to it, i can plan as many tricks as any man alive; even you shall own that what i have done shows an amount of sharpness rarely to be met with. masc. let us hear what tricks you have invented. lel. just now, being terribly frightened on seeing trufaldin along with my rival, i was casting about to find a remedy for that mischief, when, calling all my invention to my aid, i conceived, digested, and perfected a stratagem, before which all yours, however vain you may be of them, ought undoubtedly to lower their colours. masc. but what may this be? lel. may it please you to have a little patience. without much delay i invented a letter, written by an imaginary nobleman to trufaldin, setting forth that, having fortunately heard that a certain slave, who lives in the latter's house, and is named celia, was this grandee's daughter formerly kidnapped by thieves, it was his intention to come and fetch her; and he entreats him at least to keep her and take great care of her; for, that on her account he was setting out from spain, and would acknowledge his civility by such handsome presents, that he should never regret being the means of making him happy. masc. mighty well. lel. hear me out; here is something much cleverer still. the letter i speak of was delivered to him, but can you imagine how? only just in time, for the messenger told me, had it not been for this droll device, a fellow, who looked very foolish, was waiting to carry her off that identical moment. masc. and you did all this without the help of the devil? lel. yes. would you have believed me capable of such a subtle piece of wit? at least praise my skill, and the dexterity with which i have utterly disconcerted the scheme of my rival. masc. to praise you as you deserve, i lack eloquence; and feel unequal to the task. yes, sufficiently to commend this lofty effort, this fine stratagem of war achieved before our eyes, this grand and rare effect of a mind which plans as many tricks as any man, which for smartness yields to none alive, my tongue wants words. i wish i had the abilities of the most refined scholars, so that i might tell you in the noblest verse, or else in learned prose, that you will always be, in spite of everything that may be done, the very same you have been all your life; that is to say, a scatter-brain, a man of distempered reason, always perplexed, wanting common sense, a man of left-handed judgment, a meddler, an ass, a blundering, hare-brained, giddy fellow,--what can i think of? a... a hundred times worse than anything i can say. this is only an abridgement of your panegyric. lel. tell me, what puts you in such a passion with me? have i done anything? clear up this matter. masc. no, you have done nothing at all; but do not come after me. lel. i will follow you all over the world to find out this mystery. masc. do so. come on, then; get your legs in order, i shall give you an opportunity to exercise them. lel. (_alone_). he has got away from me! o misfortune which cannot be allayed! what am i to understand by his discourse? and what harm can i possibly have done to myself? act iii. scene i.--mascarille, _alone_ [footnote: compare launcelot gobbo's speech about his conscience in shakspeare's _merchant of venice_ (ii. 2).] silence, my good nature, and plead no more; you are a fool, and i am determined not to do it. yes, my anger, you are right, i confess it! to be for ever doing what a meddler undoes, is showing too much patience, and i ought to give it up after the glorious attempts he has marred. but let us argue the matter a little without passion; if i should now give way to my just impatience the world will say i sank under difficulties, that my cunning was completely exhausted. what then becomes of that public esteem, which extols you everywhere as a first-rate rogue, and which you have acquired upon so many occasions, because you never yet were found wanting in inventions? honour, mascarille, is a fine thing; do not pause in your noble labours; and whatever a master may have done to incense you, complete your work, for your own glory, and not to oblige him. but what success can you expect, if you are thus continually crossed by your evil genius? you see he compels you every moment to change your tone; you may as well hold water in a sieve as try to stop that resistless torrent, which in a moment overturns the most beautiful structures raised by your art. well, once more, out of kindness, and whatever may happen, let us take some pains, even if they are in vain; yet, if he still persists in baffling my designs, then i shall withdraw all assistance. after all, our affairs are not going on badly, if we could but supplant our rival, and if leander, at last weary of his pursuit, would leave us one whole day for my intended operations. yes, i have a most ingenious plot in my head, from which i expect a glorious success, if i had no longer that obstacle in my way. well, let us see if he still persists in his love. scene ii.--leander, mascarille. masc. sir, i have lost my labour; trufaldin will not keep his word. leand. he himself has told me the whole affair; but, what is more, i have discovered that all this pretty rigmarole about celia being carried off by gypsies, and having a great nobleman for her father, who is setting out from spain to come hither, is nothing but a mere stratagem, a merry trick, a made-up story, a tale raised by lelio to prevent my buying celia. masc. here is roguery for you! leand. and yet this ridiculous story has produced such an impression on trufaldin, and he has swallowed the bait of this shallow device so greedily, that he will not allow himself to be undeceived. masc. so that henceforth he will watch her carefully. i do not see we can do anything more. leand. if at first i thought this girl amiable, i now find her absolutely adorable, and i am in doubt whether i ought not to employ extreme measures to make her my own, thwart her ill fortune by plighting her my troth, and turn her present chains into matrimonial ones. masc. would you marry her? leand. i am not yet determined, but if her origin is somewhat obscure, her charms and her virtue are gentle attractions, which have incredible force to allure every heart. masc. did you not mention her virtue? leand. ha! what is that you mutter? out with it; explain what you mean by repeating that word "virtue." masc. sir, your countenance changes all of a sudden; perhaps i had much better hold my tongue. leand. no, no, speak out. masc. well, then, out of charity i will cure you of your blindness. that girl.... leand. proceed. masc. so far from being merciless, makes no difficulty in obliging some people in private; you may believe me, after all she is not stony-hearted, to any one who knows how to take her in the right mood. she looks demure, and would fain pass for a prude; but i can speak of her on sure grounds. you know i understand something of the craft, and ought to know that kind of cattle. leand. what! celia?... masc. yes, her modesty is nothing but a mere sham, the semblance of a virtue which will never hold out, but vanishes, as any one may discover, before the shining rays emitted from a purse. [footnote: this is an allusion to the rays of the sun, placed above the crown, and stamped on all golden crown-pieces, struck in france from louis xi. (november 2, 1475) until the end of the reign of louis xiii. these crowns were called _écus au soleil_. louis xiv. took much later for his device the sun shining in full, with the motto, _nec pluribus impar_.] leand. heavens! what do you tell me? can i believe such words? masc. sir, there is no compulsion; what does it matter to me? no, pray do not believe me, follow your own inclination, take the sly girl and marry her; the whole city, in a body, will acknowledge this favour; you marry the public good in her. leand. what a strange surprise! masc. (_aside_). he has taken the bait. courage, my lad; if he does but swallow it in good earnest, we shall have got rid of a very awkward obstruction on our path. leand. this astonishing account nearly kills me. masc. what! can you... leand. go to the post-office, and see if there is a letter for me. (_alone, and for a while lost in thought_). who would not have been imposed upon? if what he says be true then there never was any countenance more deceiving. scene iii.--lelio, leander. lel. what may be the cause of your looking so sad? leand. who, i? lel. yes, yourself. leand. i have, however, no occasion to be so. lel. i see well enough what it is; celia is the cause of it. leand. my mind does not run upon such trifles. lel. and yet you had formed some grand scheme to get her into your hands; but you must speak thus, as your stratagem has miscarried. leand. were i fool enough to be enamoured of her, i should laugh at all your finesse. lel. what finesse, pray? leand. good heavens! sir, we know all. lel. all what? leand. all your actions, from beginning to end. lel. this is all greek to me; i do not understand one word of it. leand. pretend, if you please, not to understand me; but believe me, do not apprehend that i shall take a property which i should be sorry to dispute with you. i adore a beauty who has not been sullied, and do not wish to love a depraved woman. lel. gently, gently, leander. leand. oh! how credulous you are! i tell you once more, you may attend on her now without suspecting anybody. you may call yourself a lady-killer. it is true, her beauty is very uncommon, but, to make amends for that, the rest is common enough. lel. leander, no more of this provoking language. strive against me as much as you like in order to obtain her; but, above all things, do not traduce her so vilely. i should consider myself a great coward if i could tamely submit to hear my earthly deity slandered. i can much better bear your rivalry than listen to any speech that touches her character. leand. what i state here i have from very good authority. lel. whoever told you so is a scoundrel and a rascal. nobody can discover the least blemish in this young lady; i know her heart well. leand. but yet mascarille is a very competent judge in such a cause; he thinks her guilty. lel. he? leand. he himself. lel. does he pretend impudently to slander a most respectable young lady, thinking, perhaps, i should only laugh at it? i will lay you a wager he eats his words. leand. i will lay you a wager he does not. lel. 'sdeath! i would break every bone in his body should he dare to assert such lies to me, leand. and i will crop his ears, if he does not prove every syllable he has told me. scene iv.--lelio, leander, mascarille. lel. oh! that's lucky; there he is. come hither, cursed hangdog! masc. what is the matter? lel. you serpent's tongue! so full of lies! dare you fasten your stings on celia, and slander the most consummate virtue that ever added lustre to misfortune? masc. (_in a whisper to lelio_). gently; i told him so on purpose. lel. no, no; none of your winking, and none of your jokes. i am blind and deaf to all you do or say. if it were my own brother he should pay dear for it; for to dare defame her whom i adore is to wound me in the most tender part. you make all these signs in vain. what was it you said to him? masc. good heavens! do not quarrel, or i shall leave you. lel. you shall not stir a step. masc. oh! lel. speak then; confess. masc. (_whispering to lelio_). let me alone. i tell you it is a stratagem. lel. make haste; what was it you said? clear up this dispute between us. masc. (_in a whisper to lelio_). i said what i said. pray do not put yourself in a passion. lel. (_drawing his sword_). i shall make you talk in another strain. leand. (_stopping him_). stay your hand a little; moderate your ardour. masc. (_aside_). was there ever in the world a creature so dull of understanding? lel. allow me to wreak my just vengeance on him. leand. it is rather too much to wish to chastise him in my presence. lel. what! have i no right, then, to chastise my own servant? leand. what do you mean by saying "your servant?" masc. (_aside_). he is at it again! he will discover all. lel. suppose i had a mind to thrash him within an inch of his life, what then? he is my own servant. leand. at present he is mine. lel. that is an admirable joke. how comes he to be yours? surely... masc. (_in a whisper_). gently. lel. what are you whispering? masc. (_aside_). oh! the confounded blockhead. he is going to spoil everything, he understands not one of my signs. lel. you are dreaming, leander. you are telling me a pretty story! is he not my servant? leand. did you not discharge him from your service for some fault? lel. i do not know what this means. leand. and did you not, in the violence of your passion, make his back smart most unmercifully? lel. no such thing. i discharge him! cudgel him! either you make a jest of me, leander, or he has been making a jest of you. masc. (_aside_). go on, go on, numskull; you will do your own business effectually. leand. (_to mascarille_). then all this cudgelling is purely imaginary? masc. he does not know what he says; his memory... leand. no, no; all these signs do not look well for you. i suspect some prettily contrived trick here; but for the ingenuity of the invention, go your ways, i forgive you. it is quite enough that i am undeceived, and see now why you imposed upon me. i come off cheap, because i trusted myself to your hypocritical zeal. a word to the wise is enough. farewell, lelio, farewell; your most obedient servant. scene v.--lelio, mascarille. masc. take courage, my boy, may fortune ever attend us i let us draw and bravely take the field; let us act _olibrius, the slayer of the innocents_. [footnote: olibrius was, according to ancient legends, a roman governor of gaul, in the time of the emperor decius, very cruel, and a great boaster.] lel. he accused you of slandering... masc. and you could not let the artifice pass, nor let him remain in his error, which did you good service, and which pretty nearly extinguished his passion. no, honest soul, he cannot bear dissimulation. i cunningly get a footing at his rival's, who, like a dolt, was going to place his mistress in my hands, but he, lelio, prevents me getting hold of her by a fictitious letter; i try to abate the passion of his rival, my hero presently comes and undeceives him. in vain i make signs to him, and show him it was all a contrivance of mine; it signifies nothing; he continues to the end, and never rests satisfied till he has discovered all. grand and sublime effect of a mind which is not inferior to any man living! it is an exquisite piece, and worthy, in troth, to be made a present of to the king's private museum. lel. i am not surprised that i do not come up to your expectations; if i am not acquainted with the designs you are setting on foot, i shall be for ever making mistakes. masc. so much the worse. lel. at least, if you would be justly angry with me, give me a little insight into your plan; but if i am kept ignorant of every contrivance, i must always be caught napping. [footnote: the original is, _je suis pris sans vert_, "i am taken without green," because in the month of may, in some parts of france, there is a game which binds him or her who is taken without a green leaf about them to pay a forfeit.] masc. i believe you would make a very good fencing-master, because you are so skilful at making feints, and at parrying of a thrust. [footnote: in the original we find _prendre les contretemps_, and _rompre les mesures_. in a little and very curious book, "the scots fencing master, or compleat smal-sword man," printed in edinburgh 1687, and written by sir william hope of kirkliston, the _contre-temps_ is said to be: "when a man thrusts without having a good opportunity, or when he thrusts at the same time his adversarie thrusts, and that each of them at that time receive a thrust." _breaking of measure_ is, according to the same booklet, done thus: "when you perceive your adversary thrusting at you, and you are not very certain of the _parade_, then _break his measure_, or make his thrust short of you, by either stepping a foot or half a foot back, with the _single stepp_, for if you judge your adversary's _distance or measure_ well, half a foot will _break his measure_ as well as ten ells."] lel. since the thing is done, let us think no more about it. my rival, however, will not have it in his power to cross me, and provided you will but exert your skill, in which i trust... masc. let us drop this discourse, and talk of something else; i am not so easily pacified, not i; i am in too great a passion for that. in the first place, you must do me a service, and then we shall see whether i ought to undertake the management of your amours. lel. if it only depends on that, i will do it! tell me, have you need of my blood, of my sword? masc. how crack-brained he is! you are just like those swashbucklers who are always more ready to draw their sword than to produce a tester, if it were necessary to give it. lel. what can i do, then, for you? masc. you must, without delay, endeavour to appease your father's anger. lel. we have become reconciled already. masc. yes, but i am not; i killed him this morning for your sake; the very idea of it shocks him. those sorts of jokes are severely felt by such old fellows as he, which, much against their will, make them reflect sadly on the near approach of death. the good sire, notwithstanding his age, is very fond of life, and cannot bear jesting upon that subject; he is alarmed at the prognostication, and so very angry that i hear he has lodged a complaint against me. i am afraid that if i am once housed at the expense of the king, i may like it so well after the first quarter of an hour, that i shall find it very difficult afterwards to get away. there have been several warrants out against me this good while; for virtue is always envied and persecuted in this abominable age. therefore go and make my peace with your father. lel. yes, i shall soften his anger, but you must promise me then... masc. we shall see what there is to be done. (_exit lelio_). now, let us take a little breath after so many fatigues; let us stop for a while the current of our intrigues, and not move about hither and thither as if we were hobgoblins. leander cannot hurt us now, and celia cannot be removed, through the contrivance of... scene vi.--ergaste, mascarille. erg. i was looking for you everywhere to render you a service. i have a secret of importance to disclose. masc. what may that be? erg. can no one overhear us? masc. not a soul. erg. we are as intimate as two people can be; i am acquainted with all your projects, and the love of your master. mind what you are about by and by; leander has formed a plot to carry off celia; i have been told he has arranged everything, and designs to get into trufaldin's house in disguise, having heard that at this time of the year some ladies of the neighbourhood often visit him in the evening in masks. masc. ay, well! he has not yet reached the height of his happiness; i may perhaps be beforehand with him; and as to this thrust, i know how to give him a counter-thrust, by which he may run himself through. he is not aware with what gifts i am endowed. farewell, we shall take a cup together next time we meet. scene vii.--mascarille, alone. we must, we must reap all possible benefit from this amorous scheme, and by a dexterous and uncommon counterplot endeavour to make the success our own, without any danger. if i put on a mask and be beforehand with leander, he will certainly not laugh at us; if we take the prize ere he comes up, he will have paid for us the expenses of the expedition; for, as his project has already become known, suspicion will fall upon him; and we, being safe from all pursuit, need not fear the consequences of that dangerous enterprise. thus we shall not show ourselves, but use a cat's paw to take the chesnuts out of the fire. now, then, let us go and disguise ourselves with some good fellows; we must not delay if we wish to be beforehand with our gentry. i love to strike while the iron is hot, and can, without much difficulty, provide in one moment men and dresses. depend upon it, i do not let my skill lie dormant. if heaven has endowed me with the gift of knavery, i am not one of those degenerate minds who hide the talents they have received. scene viii.--lelio, ergaste. lel. he intends to carry her off during a masquerade! erg. there is nothing more certain; one of his band informed me of his design, upon which i instantly ran to mascarille and told him the whole affair; he said he would spoil their sport by some counter-scheme which he planned in an instant; so meeting with you by chance, i thought i ought to let you know the whole. lel. i am very much obliged to you for this piece of news; go, i shall not forget this faithful service. [_exit ergaste_.] scene ix.--lelio, alone. my rascal will certainly play them some trick or other; but i, too, have a mind to assist him in his project. it shall never be said that, in a business which so nearly concerns me, i stirred no more than a post; this is the time; they will be surprised at the sight of me. why did i not take my blunderbuss with me? but let anybody attack me who likes, i have two good pistols and a trusty sword. so ho! within there; a word with you. scene x.--trufaldin _at his window_, lelio. truf. what is the matter? who comes to pay me a visit? lel. keep your door carefully shut to-night. truf. why? lel. there are certain people coming masked to give you a sorry kind of serenade; they intend to carry off celia. truf. good heavens! lel. no doubt they will soon be here. keep where you are, you may see everything from your window. hey! did i not tell you so? do you not see them already? hist! i will affront them before your face. we shall see some fine fun, if they do not give way. [footnote: this is one of the passages of molière about which commentators do not agree; the original is, _nous allons voir beau jeu, si la corde ne rompt_. some maintain that _corde_ refers to the tight rope of a rope dancer; others that _corde_ means the string of a bow, as in the phrase _avoir deux cordes a son arc_, to have two strings (resources) to one's bow. mons. eugène despois, in his carefully edited edition of molière, (i., 187), defends the latter reading, and i agree with him.] scene xi.--lelio, trufaldin, mascarille, _and his company masked_. truf. oh, the funny blades, who think to surprise me. lel. maskers, whither so fast? will you let me into the secret? trufaldin, pray open the door to these gentry, that they may challenge us for a throw with the dice. [footnote: the original has _jouer un momon_. guy miege, in his dictionary of barbarous french. london, 1679 has "_mommon_, a mummer, also a company of mummers; also a visard, or mask; also a let by a mummer at dice."] (_to mascarille, disguised as a woman_). good heavens! what a pretty creature! what a darling she looks! how now! what are you mumbling? without offence, may i remove your mask and see your face. truf. hence! ye wicked rogues; begone, ye ragamuffins! and you, sir, good night, and many thanks. scene xii.--lelio, mascarille. lel. (_after having taken the mask from mascarille's face_). mascarille, is it you? masc. no, not at all; it is somebody else. lel. alas! how astonished i am! how adverse is our fate! could i possibly have guessed this, as you did not secretly inform me that you were going to disguise yourself? wretch that i am, thoughtlessly to play you such a trick, while you wore this mask. i am in an awful passion with myself, and have a good mind to give myself a sound beating. masc. farewell, most refined wit, unparalleled inventive genius. lel. alas! if your anger deprives me of your assistance, what saint shall i invoke? masc. beelzebub. lel. ah! if your heart is not made of stone or iron, do once more at least forgive my imprudence; if it is necessary to be pardoned that i should kneel before you, behold... masc. fiddlesticks! come, my boys, let us away; i hear some other people coming closely behind us. scene xiii.--leander _and his company masked;_ trufaldin _at the window_. leand. softly, let us do nothing but in the gentlest manner. truf. (_at the window_). how is this? what! mummers besieging my door all night. gentlemen, do not catch a cold gratuitously; every one who is catching it here must have plenty of time to lose. it is rather a little too late to take celia along with you; she begs you will excuse her to-night; the girl is in bed and cannot speak to you; i am very sorry; but to repay you for all the trouble you have taken for her sake, she begs you will be pleased to accept this pot of perfume. leand. faugh! that does not smell nicely. my clothes are all spoiled; we are discovered; let us be gone this way. act iv. scene i.--lelio, _disguised as an armenian;_ mascarille. masc. you are dressed in a most comical fashion. lel. i had abandoned all hope, but you have revived it again by this contrivance. masc. my anger is always too soon over; it is vain to swear and curse, i can never keep to my oaths. lel. be assured that if ever it lies in my power you shall be satisfied with the proofs of my gratitude, and though i had but one piece of bread... masc. enough: study well this new project; for if you commit now any blunder, you cannot lay the blame upon ignorance of the plot; you ought to know your part in the play perfectly by heart. lel. but how did trufaldin receive you? masc. i cozened the good fellow with a pretended zeal for his interests. i went with alacrity to tell him that, unless he took very great care, some people would come and surprise him; that from different quarters they had designs upon her of whose origin a letter had given a false account; that they would have liked to draw me in for a share in the business, but that i kept well out of it; and that, being full of zeal for what so nearly concerned him, i came to give him timely notice that he might take his precautions. then, moralizing, i discoursed solemnly about the many rogueries one sees every day here below; that, as for me, being tired with the world and its infamies, i wished to work out my soul's salvation, retire from all its noise, and live with some worthy honest man, with whom i could spend the rest of my days in peace; that, if he had no objection, i should desire nothing more than to pass the remainder of my life with him; that i had taken such a liking to him, that, without asking for any wages to serve him, i was ready to place in his hands, knowing it to be safe there, some property my father had left me, as well as my savings, which i was fully determined to leave to him alone, if it pleased heaven to take me hence. that was the right way to gain his affection. you and your beloved should decide what means to use to attain your wishes. i was anxious to arrange a secret interview between you two; he himself has contrived to show me a most excellent method, by which you may fairly and openly stay in her house. happening to talk to me about a son he had lost, and whom he dreamt last night had come to life again, he told me the following story, upon which, just now, i founded my stratagem. lel. enough; i know it all; you have told it me twice already. [footnote: though lelio says to mascarille, "enough, i know it all," he has not been listening to the speech of his servant, but, in the meanwhile, is arranging his dress, and smoothing his ruffles, and making it clear to the spectator that he knows nothing, and that he will be a bad performer of the part assigned to him. this explains the blunders he makes afterwards in the second and fifth scenes of the same act.] masc. yes, yes; but even if i should tell it thrice, it may happen still, that with all your conceit, you might break down in some minor detail. lel. i long to be at it already. masc. pray, not quite so fast, for fear we might stumble. your skull is rather thick, therefore you should be perfectly well instructed in your part. some time ago trufaldin left naples; his name was then zanobio ruberti. being suspected in his native town of having participated in a certain rebellion, raised by some political faction (though really he is not a man to disturb any state), he was obliged to quit it stealthily by night, leaving behind him his daughter, who was very young, and his wife. some time afterwards he received the news that they were both dead, and in this perplexity, wishing to take with him to some other town, not only his property, but also the only one who was left of all his family, his young son, a schoolboy, called horatio, he wrote to bologna, where a certain tutor, named alberto, had taken the boy when very young, to finish there his education; but though for two whole years he appointed several times to meet them, they never made their appearance. believing them to be dead, after so long a time, he came to this city, where he took the name he now bears, without for twelve years ever having discovered any traces of this alberto, or of his son horatio. this is the substance of the story, which i have repeated so that you may better remember the groundwork of the plot. now, you are to personate an armenian merchant, who has seen them both safe and sound in turkey. if i have invented this scheme, in preference to any other, of bringing them to life again according to his dream, it is because it is very common in adventures for people to be taken at sea by some turkish pirate, and afterwards restored to their families in the very nick of time, when thought lost for fifteen or twenty years. for my part, i have heard a hundred of that kind of stories. without giving ourselves the trouble of inventing something fresh, let us make use of this one; what does it matter? you must say you heard the story of their being made slaves from their own mouths, and also that you lent them money to pay their ransom; but that as urgent business obliged you to set out before them, horatio asked you to go and visit his father here, whose adventures he was acquainted with, and with whom you were to stay a few days till their arrival. i have given you a long lesson now. lel. these repetitions are superfluous. from the very beginning i understood it all. masc. i shall go in and prepare the way. lel. listen, mascarille, there is only one thing that troubles me; suppose he should ask me to describe his son's countenance? masc. there is no difficulty in answering that! you know he was very little when he saw him last. besides it is very likely that increase of years and slavery have completely changed him. lel. that is true. but pray, if he should remember my face, what must i do then? masc. have you no memory at all? i told you just now, that he has merely seen you for a minute, that therefore you could only have produced a very transient impression on his mind; besides, your beard and dress disguise you completely. lel. very well. but, now i think of it, what part of turkey...? masc. it is all the same, i tell you, turkey or barbary. lel. but what is the name of the town i saw them in? masc. tunis. i think he will keep me till night. he tells me it is useless to repeat that name so often, and i have already mentioned it a dozen times. lel. go, go in and prepare matters; i want nothing more. masc. be cautious at least, and act wisely. let us have none of your inventions here. lel. let me alone! trust to me, i say, once more. masc. observe, horatio, a schoolboy in bologna; trufaldin, his true name zanobio ruberti, a citizen of naples; the tutor was called alberto... lel. you make me blush by preaching so much to me; do you think i am a fool? masc. no, not completely, but something very like it. scene ii.--lelio, _alone_. when i do not stand in need of him he cringes, but now, because he very well knows of how much use he is to me, his familiarity indulges in such remarks as he just now made. i shall bask in the sunshine of those beautiful eyes, which hold me in so sweet a captivity, and, without hindrance, depict in the most glaring colours the tortures i feel. i shall then know my fate.... but here they are. scene iii.--trufaldin, lelio, mascarille. truf. thanks, righteous heaven, for this favourable turn of my fortune! masc. you are the man to see visions and dream dreams, since you prove how untrue is the saying that dreams are falsehoods. [footnote: in french there is a play on words between _songes_, dreams, and _mensonges_, falsehoods, which cannot be rendered into english.] truf. how can i thank you? what returns can i make you, sir? you, whom i ought to style the messenger sent from heaven to announce my happiness! lel. these compliments are superfluous; i can dispense with them. truf. (_to mascarille_). i have seen somebody like this armenian, but i do not know where. masc. that is what i was saying, but one sees surprising likenesses sometimes. truf. you have seen that son of mine, in whom all my hopes are centred? lel. yes, signor trufaldin, and he was as well as well can be. truf. he related to you his life and spoke much about me, did he not? lel. more than ten thousand times. masc. (_aside to lelio_). not quite so much, i should say. lel. he described you just as i see you, your face, your gait. truf. is that possible? he has not seen me since he was seven years old. and even his tutor, after so long a time, would scarcely know my face again. masc. one's own flesh and blood never forget the image of one's relations; this likeness is imprinted so deeply, that my father... truf. hold your tongue. where was it you left him? lel. in turkey, at turin. truf. turin! but i thought that town was in piedmont. masc. (_aside_). oh the dunce! (_to trufaldin_). you do not understand him; he means tunis; it was in reality there he left your son; but the armenians always have a certain vicious pronunciation, which seems very harsh to us; the reason of it is because in all their words they change _nis_ into _rin_; and so, instead of saying _tunis_, they pronounce _turin_. truf. i ought to know this in order to understand him. did he tell you in what way you could meet with his father? masc. (_aside_). what answer will he give? [footnote: trufaldin having found out that mascarille makes signs to his master, the servant pretends to fence.] (_to trufaldin, after pretending to fence_). i was just practising some passes; i have handled the foils in many a fencing school. truf. (_to mascarille_). that is not the thing i wish to know now. (_to lelio_). what other name did he say i went by? masc. ah, signor zanobio ruberti. how glad you ought to be for what heaven sends you! lel. that is your real name; the other is assumed. truf. but where did he tell you he first saw the light? masc. naples seems a very nice place, but you must feel a decided aversion to it. truf. can you not let us go on with our conversation, without interrupting us? lel. naples is the place where he first drew his breath. truf. whither did i send him in his infancy, and under whose care? masc. that poor albert behaved very well, for having accompanied your son from bologna, whom you committed to his care. truf. pshaw! masc. (_aside_). we are undone if this conversation lasts long. truf. i should very much like to know their adventures; aboard what ship did my adverse fate...? masc. i do not know what is the matter with me, i do nothing but yawn. but, signor trufaldin, perhaps this stranger may want some refreshment; besides, it grows late. lel. no refreshment for me. masc. oh sir, you are more hungry than you imagine. truf. please to walk in then. lel. after you, sir. [footnote: it shows that lelio knows not what he is about when he does the honours of the house to the master of the house himself, and forgets that as a stranger he ought to go in first.] masc. (_to trufaldin_). sir, in armenia, the masters of the house use no ceremony. (_to lelio, after trufaldin has gone in_). poor fellow, have you not a word to say for yourself? lel. he surprised me at first; but never fear, i have rallied my spirits, and am going to rattle away boldly.. masc. here comes our rival, who knows nothing of our plot. (_they go into trufaldin's house_). scene iv.--anselmo, leander. ans. stay, leander, and allow me to tell you something which concerns your peace and reputation. i do not speak to you as the father of hippolyta, as a man interested for my own family, but as your father, anxious for your welfare, without wishing to flatter you or to disguise anything; in short, openly and honestly, as i would wish a child of mine to be treated upon the like occasion. do you know how everybody regards this amour of yours, which in one night has burst forth? how your yesterday's undertaking is everywhere talked of and ridiculed? what people think of the whim which, they say, has made you select for a wife a gipsy outcast, a strolling wench, whose noble occupation was only begging? i really blushed for you, even more than i did for myself, who am also compromised by this public scandal. yes, i am compromised, i say, i whose daughter, being engaged to you, cannot bear to see her slighted, without taking offence at it. for shame, leander; arise from your humiliation; consider well your infatuation; if none of us are wise at all times, yet the shortest errors are always the best. when a man receives no dowry with his wife, but beauty only, repentance follows soon after wedlock; and the handsomest woman in the world can hardly defend herself against a lukewarmness caused by possession. i repeat it, those fervent raptures, those youthful ardours and ecstacies, may make us pass a few agreeable nights, but this bliss is not at all lasting, and as our passions grow cool, very unpleasant days follow those pleasant nights; hence proceed cares, anxieties, miseries, sons disinherited through their fathers' wrath. leand. all that i now hear from you is no more than what my own reason has already suggested to me. i know how much i am obliged to you for the great honour you are inclined to pay me, and of which i am unworthy. in spite of the passion which sways me, i have ever retained a just sense of your daughter's merit and virtue: therefore i will endeavour... ans. somebody is opening this door; let us retire to a distance, lest some contagion spreads from it, which may attack you suddenly. scene v.--lelio, mascarille. masc. we shall soon see our roguery miscarry if you persist in such palpable blunders. lel. must i always hear your reprimands? what can you complain of? have i not done admirably since...? masc. only middling; for example, you called the turks heretics, and you affirmed, on your corporal oath, that they worshipped the sun and moon as their gods. let that pass. what vexes me most is that, when you are with celia, you strangely forget yourself; your love is like porridge, which by too fierce a fire swells, mounts up to the brim, and runs over everywhere. lel. could any one be more reserved? as yet i have hardly spoken to her. masc. you are right! but it is not enough to be silent; you had not been a moment at table till your gestures roused more suspicion than other people would have excited in a whole twelvemonth. lel. how so? masc. how so? everybody might have seen it. at table, where trufaldin made her sit down, you never kept your eyes off her, blushed, looked quite silly, cast sheep's eyes at her, without ever minding what you were helped to; you were never thirsty but when she drank, and took the glass eagerly from her hands; and without rinsing it, or throwing a drop of it away, you drank what she left in it, and seemed to choose in preference that side of the glass which her lips had touched; upon every piece which her slender hand had touched, or which she had bit, you laid your paw as quickly as a cat does upon a mouse, and you swallowed it as glibly as if you were a regular glutton. then, besides all this, you made an intolerable noise, shuffling with your feet under the table, for which trufaldin, who received two lusty kicks, twice punished a couple of innocent dogs, who would have growled at you if they dared; and yet, in spite of all this, you say you behaved finely! for my part i sat upon thorns all the time; notwithstanding the cold, i feel even now in a perspiration. i hung over you just as a bowler does over his bowl after he has thrown it, and thought to restrain your actions by contorting my body ever so many times. lel. lack-a day! how easy it is for you to condemn things of which you do not feel the enchanting cause. in order to humour you for once i have, nevertheless, a good mind to put a restraint upon that love which sways me. henceforth... scene vi.--trufaldin, lelio, mascarille. masc. we were speaking about your son's adventures. truf. (_to lelio_). you did quite right. will you do me the favour of letting me have one word in private with him? lel. i should be very rude if i did not. (_lelio goes into trufaldin's house_). scene vii.--trufaldin, mascarille. truf. hark ye! do you know what i have just been doing? masc. no, but if you think it proper, i shall certainly not remain long in ignorance. truf. i have just now cut off from a large and sturdy oak, of about two hundred years old, an admirable branch, selected on purpose, of tolerable thickness, of which immediately, upon the spot, i made a cudgel, about ... yes, of this size (_showing his arm_); not so thick at one end as at the other, but fitter, i imagine, than thirty switches to belabour the shoulders withal; for it is well poised, green, knotty, and heavy. masc. but, pray, for whom is all this preparation? truf. for yourself, first of all; then, secondly, for that fellow, who wishes to palm one person upon me, and trick me out of another; for this armenian, this merchant in disguise, introduced by a lying and pretended story. masc. what! you do not believe...? truf. do not try to find an excuse; he himself, fortunately, discovered his own stratagem, by telling celia, whilst he squeezed her hand at the same time, that it was for her sake alone he came disguised in this manner. he did not perceive jeannette, my little god-daughter, who overheard every word he said. though your name was not mentioned, i do not doubt but you are a cursed accomplice in all this. masc. indeed, you wrong me. if you are really deceived, believe me i was the first imposed upon with his story. truf. would you convince me you speak the truth? assist me in giving him a sound drubbing, and in driving him away; let us give it the rascal well, and then i will acquit you of all participation in this piece of rascality. masc. ay, ay, with all my soul. i will dust his jacket for him so soundly, that you shall see i had no hand in this matter. (_aside_). ah! you shall have a good licking, mister armenian, who always spoil everything. scene viii.--lelio, trufaldin, mascarille. truf. (_knocks at his door, and then addresses lelio_). a word with you, if you please. so, mr. cheat, you have the assurance to fool a respectable man, and make game of him? masc. to pretend to have seen his son abroad, in order to get the more easily into his house! truf. (_beating lelio_). go away, go away immediately. lel. (_to mascarille, who beats him likewise_). oh! you scoundrel! masc. it is thus that rogues... lel. villain! masc. are served here. keep that for my sake! lel. what? is a gentleman...? masc. (_beating him and driving him off). march off, begone, i tell you, or i shall break all the bones in your body. truf. i am delighted with this; come in, i am satisfied. (_mascarille follows trufaldin into his house_). lel. (_returning_). this to me! to be thus affronted by a servant! could i have thought the wretch would have dared thus to ill-treat his master? masc. (_from trufaldin's window_). may i take the liberty to ask how your shoulders are? lel. what! have you the impudence still to address me? masc. now see what it is not to have perceived jeannette, and to have always a blabbing tongue in your head! however, this time i am not angry with you, i have done cursing and swearing at you; though you behaved very imprudently, yet my hand has made your shoulders pay for your fault. lel. ha! i shall be revenged on you for your treacherous behaviour. masc. you yourself were the cause of all this mischief. lel. i? masc. if you had had a grain of sense when you were talking to your idol you would have perceived jeannette at your heels, whose sharp ears overheard the whole affair. lel. could anybody possibly catch one word i spoke to celia? masc. and what else was the cause why you were suddenly turned out of doors? yes, you are shut out by your own tittle-tattle. i do not know whether you play often at piquet, but you at least throw your cards away in an admirable manner. lel. oh! i am the most unhappy of all men. but why did you drive me away also? masc. i never did better than in acting thus. by these means, at least, i prevent all suspicion of my being the inventor or an accomplice of this stratagem. lel. but you should have laid it on more gently. masc. i was no such fool! trufaldin watched me most narrowly; besides, i must tell you, under the pretence of being of use to you, i was not at all displeased to vent my spleen. however, the thing is done, and if you will give me your word of honour, never, directly or indirectly, to be revenged on me for the blows on the back i so heartily gave you, i promise you, by the help of my present station, to satisfy your wishes within these two nights. lel. though you have treated me very harshly, yet what would not such a promise prevail upon me to do? masc. you promise, then? lel. yes, i do. masc. but that is not all; promise never to meddle in anything i take in hand. lel. i do. masc. if you break your word may you get the cold shivers! lel. then keep it with me, and do not forget my uneasiness. masc. go and change your dress, and rub something on your back. lel. (_alone_). will ill-luck always follow me, and heap upon me one misfortune after another? masc. (_coming out of trufaldin's house_). what! not gone yet? hence immediately; but, above all, be sure you don't trouble your head about any thing. be satisfied, that i am on your side; do not make the least attempt to assist me; remain quiet. lel. (_going_). yes, to be sure, i will remain quiet. masc. (_alone_). now let me see what course i am to steer. scene ix.--ergaste, mascarille. erg. mascarille, i come to tell you a piece of news, which will give a cruel blow to your projects. at the very moment i am talking to you, a young gipsy, who nevertheless is no black, and looks like a gentleman, has arrived with a very wan-looking old woman, and is to call upon trufaldin to purchase the slave you wished to redeem. he seems to be very anxious to get possession of her. masc. doubtless it is the lover celia spoke about. were ever fortunes so tangled as ours? no sooner have we got rid of one trouble than we fall into another. in vain do we hear that leander intends to abandon his pursuit, and to give us no further trouble; that the unexpected arrival of his father has turned the scales in favour of hippolyta; that the old gentleman has employed his parental authority to make a thorough change, and that the marriage contract is going to be signed this very day; as soon as one rival withdraws, another and a more dangerous one starts up to destroy what little hope there was left. however, by a wonderful stratagem, i believe i shall be able to delay their departure and gain what time i want to put the finishing stroke to this famous affair. a great robbery has lately been committed, by whom, nobody knows. these gipsies have not generally the reputation of being very honest; upon this slight suspicion, i will cleverly get the fellow imprisoned for a few days. i know some officers of justice, open to a bribe, who will not hesitate on such an occasion; greedy and expecting some present, there is nothing they will not attempt with their eyes shut; be the accused ever so innocent, the purse is always criminal, and must pay for the offence. act v. scene i.--mascarille, ergaste. masc. ah blockhead! numskull! idiot! will you never leave off persecuting me? erg. the constable took great care everything was going on smoothly; the fellow would have been in jail, had not your master come up that very moment, and, like a madman spoiled your plot. "i cannot suffer," says he in a loud voice, "that a respectable man should be dragged to prison in this disgraceful manner; i will be responsible for him, from his very looks, and will be his bail." and as they refused to let him go, he immediately and so vigorously attacked the officers, who are a kind of people much afraid of their carcasses, that, even at this very moment, they are running, and every man thinks he has got a lelio at his heels. masc. the fool does not know that this gipsy is in the house already to carry off his treasure. erg. good-bye, business obliges me to leave you. scene ii.--mascarille, _alone_. yes, this last marvellous accident quite stuns me. one would think, and i have no doubt of it, that this bungling devil which possesses lelio takes delight in defying me, and leads him into every place where his presence can do mischief. yet i shall go on, and notwithstanding all these buffets of fortune, try who will carry the day. celia has no aversion to him, and looks upon her departure with great regret. i must endeavour to improve this opportunity. but here they come; let me consider how i shall execute my plan. yonder furnished house is at my disposal, and i can do what i like with it; if fortune but favours us, all will go well; nobody lives there but myself, and i keep the key. good heavens! what a great many adventures have befallen us in so short a time, and what numerous disguises a rogue is obliged to put on. scene iii.--celia, andrès. and. you know it, celia, i have left nothing undone to prove the depth of my passion. when i was but very young, my courage in the wars gained me some consideration among the venetians, and one time or other, and without having too great an opinion of myself, i might, had i continued in their service, have risen to some employment of distinction; but, for your sake, i abandoned everything; the sudden change you produced in my heart, was quickly followed by your lover joining the gipsies. neither a great many adventures nor your indifference have been able to make me abandon my pursuit. since that time, being by an accident separated from you much longer than i could have foreseen, i spared neither time nor pains to meet with you again. at last i discovered the old gipsy-woman, and heard from her that for a certain sum of money, which was then of great consequence to the gipsies, and prevented the dissolution of the whole band, you were left in pledge in this neighbourhood. full of impatience, i flew hither immediately to break these mercenary chains, and to receive from you whatever commands you might be pleased to give. but, when i thought to see joy sparkle in your eyes, i find you pensive and melancholy; if quietness has charms for you, i have sufficient means at venice, of the spoils taken in war, for us both to live there; but if i must still follow you as before, i will do so, and my heart shall have no other ambition than to serve you in whatever manner you please. cel. you openly display your affection for me. i should be ungrateful not to be sensible of it. besides, just now, my countenance does not bear the impress of the feelings of my heart; my looks show that i have a violent headache. if i have the least influence over you, you will delay our voyage for at least three or four days, until my indisposition has passed away. and. i shall stay as long as you like; i only wish to please you; let us look for a house where you may be comfortable. ho! here is a bill up just at the right time. scene iv.--celia, andrès, mascarille, _disguised as a swiss_. and. monsieur swiss, are you the master of the house? masc. i am at your service. [footnote: in the original, mascarille speaks a kind of gibberish, which is only amusing when the play is acted; but it can serve no purpose to translate "_moi, pour serfir a fous_," "_oui, moi pour d'estrancher chappon champre garni, mais che non point locher te gent te mechant vi_," etc., by "me be at your serfice," "yes. me have de very goot shambers, ready furnish for stranger, but me no loge de people scandaluse," etc. a provincial pronunciation, an irish brogue, or a scotch tongue, are no equivalent for this mock swiss german-french.] and. can we lodge here? masc. yes, i let furnished lodgings to strangers, but only to respectable people. and. i suppose your house has a very good reputation? masc. i see by your face you are a stranger in this town. and. i am. masc. are you the husband of this lady? and. sir? masc. is she your wife or your sister? and. neither. masc. upon my word, she is very pretty! do you come on business, or have you a lawsuit going on before the court? a lawsuit is a very bad thing, it costs so much money; a solicitor is a thief, and a barrister a rogue. and. i do not come for either of these. masc. you have brought this young lady then to walk about and to see the town? and. what is that to you? (_to celia_). i shall be with you again in one moment; i am going to fetch the old woman presently, and tell them not to send the travelling-carriage which was ready. masc. is the lady not quite well? and. she has a headache. masc. i have some good wine and cheese within; walk in, go into my small house. (_celia, andrès and mascarille go into the house_). scene v.--lelio, _alone_. however impatient and excited i may feel, yet i have pledged my word to do nothing but wait quietly, to let another work for me, and to see, without daring to stir, in what manner heaven will change my destiny. scene vi.--andrès, lelio. lel. (_addressing andrès, who is coming out of the house_). do you want to see anybody in this house? and. i have just taken some furnished apartments there. lel. the house belongs to my father, and my servant sleeps there every night to take care of it. and. i know nothing of that; the bill, at least, shows it is to be let; read it. lel. truly this surprises me, i confess. who the deuce can have put that bill up, and why...? ho, faith, i can guess, pretty near, what it means; this cannot possibly proceed but from the quarter i surmise. and. may i ask what affair this may be? lel. i would keep it carefully from anybody else, but it can be of no consequence to you, and you will not mention it to any one. without doubt, that bill can be nothing else but an invention of the servant i spoke of; nothing but some cunning plot he has hatched to place into my hands a certain gipsy girl, with whom i am smitten, and of whom i wish to obtain possession. i have already attempted this several times, but until now in vain. and. what is her name? lel. celia. and. what do you say? had you but mentioned this, no doubt i should have saved you all the trouble this project costs you. lel. how so? do you know her? and. it is i who just now bought her from her master. lel. you surprise me! and. as the state of her health did not allow her to leave this town, i just took these apartments for her; and i am very glad that on this occasion you have acquainted me with your intentions. lel. what! shall i obtain the happiness i hope for by your means? could you...? and. (_knocks at the door_). you shall be satisfied immediately. lel. what can i say to you? and what thanks...? and. no, give me none; i will have none. scene vii.--lelio, andrès, mascarille. masc. (_aside_). hallo! is this not my mad-cap master? he will make another blunder. lel. who would have known him in this grotesque dress? come hither, mascarille, you are welcome. masc. i am a man of honour; i am not mascarille, i never debauched any married or unmarried woman. [footnote: mascarille answers in his gibberish, "moi non point _masquerille_," an allusion to _maquerelle_ a female pander; hence his further remarks.] lel. what funny gibberish! it is really very good! masc. go about your business, and do not laugh at me. lel. you can take off your dress; recognise your master. masc. upon my word! by all the saints, i never knew you! lel. everything is settled, disguise yourself no longer. masc. if you do not go away i will give you a slap in the face. lel. your swiss jargon is needless, i tell you, for we are agreed, and his generosity lays me under an obligation. i have all i can wish for; you have no reason to be under any farther apprehension. masc. if you are agreed, by great good luck, i will no longer play the swiss, and become myself again. and. this valet of yours serves you with much zeal; stay a little; i will return presently. scene viii.--lelio, mascarille. lel. well, what do you say now? masc. that i am delighted to see our labours crowned with success. lel. you were hesitating to doff your disguise, and could hardly believe me. masc. as i know you i was rather afraid, and still find the adventure very astonishing. lel. but confess, however, that i have done great things--at least i have now made amends for all my blunders--mine will be the honour of having finished the work. masc. be it so; you have been much more lucky than wise. scene ix.--celia, andrès, lelio, mascarille. and. is not this the lady you were speaking of to me? lel. heavens! what happiness can be equal to mine! and. it is true; i am indebted to you for the kindness you have shown me; i should be much to blame if i did not acknowledge it; but this kindness would be too dearly bought were i to repay it at the expense of my heart. judge, by the rapture her beauty causes me, whether i ought to discharge my debt to you at such a price. you are generous, and would not have me act thus. farewell. let us return whence we came, and stay there for a few days. (_he leads celia away_). scene x.--lelio, mascarille. masc. i am laughing, and yet i have little inclination to it. you two are quite of the same mind; he gives celia to you. hem! ... you understand me, sir? lel. this is too much. i am determined no longer to ask you to assist me; it is useless; i am a puppy, a wretch, a detestable blockhead, not worthy of any one taking any trouble for me, incapable of doing anything. abandon all endeavours to aid an unfortunate wretch, who will not allow himself to be made happy; after so many misfortunes, after all my imprudent actions, death alone should aid me. scene xi.--mascarille, _alone_. that is the true way of putting the finishing stroke to his fate; he wants nothing now but to die, to crown all his follies. but in vain his indignation, for all the faults he has committed urges him to renounce my aid and my support. i intend, happen what will, to serve him in spite of himself, and vanquish the very devil that possesses him. the greater the obstacle, the greater the glory; and the difficulties which beset us are but a kind of tire-women who deck and adorn virtue. scene xii.--celia, mascarille. celia. (_to mascarille, who has been whispering to her_). whatever you may say, and whatever they intend doing, i have no great expectation from this delay. what we have seen hitherto may indeed convince us that they are not as yet likely to agree. i have already told you that a heart like mine will not for the sake of one do an injustice to another, and that i find myself strongly attached to both, though by different ties. if lelio has love and its power on his side, andrès has gratitude pleading for him, which will not permit even my most secret thoughts ever to harbour anything against his interests. yes; if he has no longer a place in my heart, if the gift of my hand must not crown his love, i ought at least to reward that which he has done for me, by not choosing another, in contempt of his flame, and suppress my own inclinations in the same manner as i do his. you have heard the difficulties which duty throws in my way, and you can judge now whether your expectations will be realized. masc. to speak the truth, they are very formidable obstacles in our way, and i have not the knack of working miracles; but i will do my utmost, move heaven and earth, leave no stone unturned to try and discover some happy expedient. i shall soon let you know what can be done. scene xiii.--hippolyta, celia. hipp. ever since you came among us, the ladies of this neighbourhood may well complain of the havoc caused by your eyes, since you deprive them of the greatest part of their conquests, and make all their lovers faithless. there is not a heart which can escape the darts with which you pierce them as soon as they see you; many thousands load themselves with your chains, and seem to enrich you daily at our expense. however, as regards myself, i should make no complaints of the irresistible sway of your exquisite charms, had they left me one of all my lovers to console me for the loss of the others; but it is inhuman in you that without mercy you deprive me of all; i cannot forbear complaining to you. cel. you rally in a charming manner, but i beseech you to spare me a little. those eyes, those very eyes of yours, know their own power too well ever to dread anything that i am able to do; they are too conscious of their own charms, and will never entertain similar feelings of fear. hipp. yet i advance nothing in what i have said which has not already entered the mind of every one, and without mentioning anything else, it is well known that celia has made a deep impression on leander and on lelio. cel. i believe you will easily console yourself about their loss, since they have become so infatuated; nor can you regret a lover who could make so ill a choice. hipp. on the contrary, i am of quite a different opinion, and discover such great merits in your beauty, and see in it so many reasons sufficient to excuse the inconstancy of those who allow themselves to be attracted by it, that i cannot blame leander for having changed his love and broken his plighted troth. in a short time, and without either hatred or anger, i shall see him again brought under my sway, when his father shall have exercised his authority. scene xiv.--celia, hippolyta, mascarille. masc. great news! great news! a wonderful event which i am now going to tell you! cel. what means this? masc. listen. this is, without any compliments... cel. what? masc. the last scene of a true and genuine comedy. the old gipsy-woman was, but this very moment... cel. well? masc. crossing the market-place, thinking about nothing at all, when another old woman, very haggard-looking, after having closely stared at her for some time, hoarsely broke out in a torrent of abusive language, and thus gave the signal for a furious combat, in which, instead of swords, muskets, daggers, or arrows, nothing was seen but four withered paws, brandished in the air, with which these two combatants endeavoured to tear off the little flesh old age had left on their bones. not a word was heard but drab, wretch, trull. their caps, to begin with, were flying about, and left a couple of bald pates exposed to view, which rendered the battle ridiculously horrible. at the noise and hubbub, andrès and trufaldin, as well as many others, ran to see what was the matter, and had much ado to part them, so excited were they by passion. meanwhile each of them, when the storm was abated, endeavoured to hide her head with shame. everybody wished to know the cause of this ridiculous fray. she who first began it having, notwithstanding the warmth of her passion, looked for some time at trufaldin, said in a loud voice,--"it is you, unless my sight misgives me, who, i was informed, lived privately in this town; most happy meeting! yes, signor zanobio ruberti, fortune made me find you out at the very moment i was giving myself so much trouble for your sake. when you left your family at naples, your daughter, as you know, remained under my care. i brought her up from her youth. when she was only four years old she showed already in a thousand different ways what charms and beauty she would have. that woman you see there--that infamous hag--who had become rather intimate with us, robbed me of that treasure. your good lady, alas! felt so much grief at this misfortune, that, as i have reason to believe it shortened her days; so that, fearing your severe reproaches because your daughter had been stolen from me, i sent you word that both were dead; but now, as i have found out the thief, she must tell us what has become of your child." at the name of zanobio ruberti, which she repeated several times throughout the story, andrès, after changing colour often, addressed to the surprised trufaldin these words: "what! has heaven most happily brought me to him whom i have hitherto sought in vain! can i possibly have beheld my father, the author of my being, without knowing him? yes, father, i am horatio, your son; my tutor, albert, having died, i felt anew certain uneasiness in my mind, left bologna, and abandoning my studies, wandered about for six years in different places, according as my curiosity led me. however, after the expiration of that time, a secret impulse drove me to revisit my kindred and my native country; but in naples, alas! i could no longer find you, and could only hear vague reports concerning you; so that having in vain tried to meet with you, i ceased to roam about idly, and stopped for a while in venice. from that time to this i have lived without receiving any other information about my family, except knowing its name." you may judge whether trufaldin was not more than ordinarily moved all this while; in one word (to tell you shortly that which you will have an opportunity of learning afterwards more at your leisure, from the confession of the old gipsy-woman), trufaldin owns you (_to celia_) now for his daughter; andrès is your brother; and as he can no longer think of marrying his sister, and as he acknowledges he is under some obligation to my master, lelio, he has obtained for him your hand. pandolphus being present at this discovery, gives his full consent to the marriage; and to complete the happiness of the family, proposes that the newly-found horatio should marry his daughter. see how many incidents are produced at one and the same time! cel. such tidings perfectly amaze me. masc. the whole company follow me, except the two female champions, who are adjusting their toilet after the fray. leander and your father are also coming. i shall go and inform my master of this, and let him know that when we thought obstacles were increasing, heaven almost wrought a miracle in his favour. (_exit mascarille_). hipp. this fortunate event fills me with as much as joy as if it were my own case. but here they come. scene xv.--trufaldin, anselmo, andrès, celia, hippolyta, leander. truf. my child! cel. father! truf. do you already know how heaven has blest us? cel. i have just now heard this wonderful event. hipp. (_to leander_). you need not find excuses for your past infidelity. the cause of it, which i have before my eyes, is a sufficient excuse. leand. i crave nothing but a generous pardon. i call heaven to witness that, though i return to my duty suddenly, my father's authority has influenced me less than my own inclination. and. (_to celia_). who could ever have supposed that so chaste a love would one day be condemned by nature? however, honour swayed it always so much, that with a little alteration it may still continue. cel. as for me, i blamed myself, and thought i was wrong, because i felt nothing but a very sincere esteem for you. i could not tell what powerful obstacle stopped me in a path so agreeable and so dangerous, and diverted my heart from acknowledging a love which my senses endeavoured to communicate to my soul. truf. (_to celia_). but what would you say of me if, as soon as i have found you, i should be thinking of parting with you? i promised your hand to this gentleman's son. cel. i know no will but yours. scene xvi.--trufaldin, anselmo, pandolphus, celia, hippolyta, lelio, leander, andrès, mascarille. masc. now, let us see whether this devil of yours will have the power to destroy so solid a foundation as this; and whether your inventive powers will again strive against this great good luck that befalls you. through a most unexpected favourable turn of fortune your desires are crowned with success, and celia is yours. lel. am i to believe that the omnipotence of heaven...? truf. yes, son-in-law, it is really so. pand. the matter is settled. and. (_to lelio_). by this i repay the obligation you lay me under. lel. (_to mascarille_). i must embrace you ever so many times in this great joy... masc. oh! oh! gently, i beseech you; he has almost choked me. i am very much afraid for celia if you embrace her so forcibly. one can do very well without such proofs of affection. truf. (_to lelio_). you know the happiness with which heaven has blessed me; but since the same day has caused us all to rejoice, let us not part until it is ended, and let leander's father also be sent for quickly. masc. you are all provided for. is there not some girl who might suit poor mascarille? as i see, every jack has his gill, i also want to be married. ans. i have a wife for you. masc. let us go, then; and may propitious heaven give us children, whose fathers we really are. transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. under the shadow of etna [illustration: "under the shadow of etna."] under the shadow of etna sicilian stories from the italian of giovanni verga by nathan haskell dole _illustrated_ boston joseph knight company 1896 copyright, 1895, by joseph knight company. printed by c. h. simonds & co. boston, u.s.a. contents. how peppa loved gramigna 1 jeli, the shepherd 23 rustic chivalry (_cavalleria rusticana_) 101 la lupa 117 the story of the st. joseph's ass 131 the bereaved 163 list of illustrations. page "under the shadow of etna" _frontispiece_ jeli, the shepherd 22 "lola used to go out on the balcony with her hands crossed" 104 the death of the st. joseph's ass 158 _introduction._ _giovanni verga was born at catania, in sicily, in 1840. his youth was spent in florence and milan. he afterwards lived in catania again, where he had an opportunity of studying those types of the sicilian peasantry which he introduces so effectively, and with such dramatic suggestion, into many of his stories and sketches. after experiencing grievous family losses he returned to milan, where he now resides._ _in "l'amante di gramigna" verga gives, in the form of a letter to his friend, the novelist, s. farina, a sort of brief exposition of his literary creed. much of the drama is left to the imagination of the reader, who sees through the lines the action hinted at in a word or a phrase. thus, in the story just mentioned, no definite time-limit is assigned. months elapse, but only a passing expression gives the clue to it. it is amazing how definite is the idea left in the mind. it gives all the vividness of reality._ _"cavalleria rusticana," or "rustic chivalry," has been known all over the world by its operatic setting by mascagni. "la lupa," which is scarcely less strong and vital, has been chosen by another italian composer, puccini, as the subject for a two-act opera. these two, as well as "l'amante di gramigna" and "jeli il pastore," illustrate the deeper passions of the sicilian peasantry. verga's sardonic humor is shown in "gli orfani." how the sordid poverty of the people stands out in the comparison between the sorrow over the dying ass, and the utterly materialistic grief at the loss of the painstaking second wife!_ _"la storia dell' asino di san giuseppe," well illustrates the average treatment of the long-suffering, long-eared mules and asses which make so picturesque a part of the scenery of italian and spanish countries. it is a document for the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and well deserves to be circulated together with "black beauty." what pathos in the sudden transfer of the poor little beast from comparative comfort, at least from the "dolce far niente" of its foalhood, to the grim realities of life, and its steady and fatal decline through all the gamut of wretchedness and degradation, to die at last under the weight of its burdens! and what side glances on the condition of those unfortunate sicilians who live in what ought to be the very garden and paradise of the world, and yet are so oppressed by unregulated nature and too well regulated taxes!_ _it is no land of the imagination into which we are brought by verga; there is no fascinating glamour of the virtuous triumphing after many vicissitudes, and seeing at last the wicked adequately punished. here it is grim reality. the poor and weak go relentlessly to the wall; innocence and humble ignorance are crushed by experienced vice, the butterfly is singed by the flame; there is little joy, little peace. the fleckless sky shines down brilliantly on wreck of home and fortune; the son must go to the army, and the daughter to her shame; the father's gray hairs must be crowned with dishonor, and despair must abide in the mother's breast. but yet the stories are not wholly pessimistic, nor do they give an utterly hopeless idea of the sicilian peasant. he shows his capabilities; the woman her fiery zeal and faithfulness, even when on the wrong track. you see that education and a little real sympathy might make a great people out of verga's "turiddus" and "alfios." there are dozens of others of verga's short sketches which would repay translation, but the little collection of sicilian pictures here presented is marked by quite wonderful variety and contrast. they well illustrate the author's genius at its best._ nathan haskell dole. _"hedgecote," glen road, jamaica plain, june 19, 1895_. note. some of the italian titles applied to the characters in these stories are retained. they are untranslatable; to omit them takes away from the sicilian flavor, which is their great charm. thus the words _compare_ (_con_ and _padre_) and _comare_ (_con_ and _madre_), literally godfather and godmother, are used in almost the same way as "uncle" and "aunt" in our country districts, only they are applied to young as well as old; _gnà_ is a contraction for _signora_, corresponding somewhat to our _mis'_ for "mrs." _babbo_ is like our "dad" or "daddie." _massaro_ is a farmer; _compagni d'armi_ are district policemen, not quite the same as _gens d'armes_; _bersegliere_ is the member of a special division of the italian army. how peppa loved gramigna. under the shadow of etna. how peppa loved gramigna. dear farina, this is not a story, but the outline of a story. it will at least have the merit of being short, and of having fact for its foundation; it is a human document, as the phrase goes nowadays:--interesting perhaps for you and for all those who study the mighty book of the heart. i will tell it just as i found it among the country paths, and in almost the same simple and picturesque words that characterize the tales of the people; and really you will prefer to find yourself facing the bare and unadulterated fact rather than being obliged to read between the lines of the book through the author's spectacles. the simple truth of human life will always make us thoughtful; will always have the effectiveness of reality, of genuine tears, of the fevers and sensations that have inflicted the flesh. the mysterious processes whereby conflicting passions mingle, develop and mature, will long constitute the chief fascination in the study of that psychological phenomenon called the plot of a story, and which modern analysis tries to follow with scientific care, through the hidden paths of oftentimes apparently contradictory complications. of the one that i am going to tell you to-day i shall only narrate the starting point and the ending, and that will suffice for you, as, perchance, some day it will suffice for all. we replace the artistic method to which we owe so many glorious masterpieces by a different method, more painstaking and more recondite; we willingly sacrifice the effect of the catastrophe, of the psychological result as it was seen through an almost divine intuition by the great artists of the past, and employ instead a logical development, inexorably necessary, less unexpected, less dramatic, but not less fatalistic; we are more modest, if not more humble; but the conquests that we make with our psychological verities will not be any less useful to the art of the future. supposing such perfection in the study of the passions should be ever attained that it would be useless to go further in the study of the interior man, will the science of the human heart, the fruit of the new art, so far and so universally develop all the resources of the imagination that in the future the only romances written will be "various facts?" i have a firm belief that the triumph of the novel, the completest and most human of all the works of art, will increase until the affinity and cohesion of all its parts will be so perfect, that the process of its creation will remain a mystery like the development of human passions; i have a firm belief that the harmony of its forms will be so absolute, the sincerity of its reality so evident, its method and justification so deeply rooted, that the artist's hand will remain absolutely invisible. then the romance will seem to portray a real event, and the work of art will apparently have come about by itself, spontaneously springing into being and maturing like a natural fact, without any point of contact with its author. it will not have preserved in its living form any stamp of the mind in which it originated, any shade of the eye that beheld it, any trace of the lips that murmured the first words thereof as the creative fiat; it will exist by its own reason, by the mere fact that it is as it should be and must be, palpitating with life and as immutable as a statue of bronze, the author of which has had the divine courage of eclipsing himself and disappearing in his immortal work. * * * * * a few years ago, down by the simeto, they were giving chase to a brigand, a certain gramigna,[1] if i am not mistaken, a name as cursed as the weed that bears it. the man had left behind him, from one end of the province to the other, the terror of his evil reputation. carabineers, _compagni d'armi_, and cavalry-men had been on his track for two months, without ever succeeding in putting their claws on him; he was alone, but was equal to ten, and the evil plant threatened to take firm root. [1] gramigna means dog's-tail-grass. moreover the harvest-time was approaching, the crops already covered the fields, the ears bent over and were calling to the reapers, who indeed had their reaping-hooks in their hands, and yet not a single proprietor dared show his nose over the hedge of his estate, for fear of meeting gramigna, who might be stretched out among the furrows with his carbine between his legs, ready to blow off the head of the first person who should venture to meddle with his affairs. thus the complaints were general. then the prefect summoned all those gentlemen of the district--carabineers and companies of armed men and told them two words of the kind that makes men prick up their ears. the next day an earthquake in every nook and corner:--patrols, squadrons, scouts for every ditch and behind every wall; they hunted him by day, by night, on foot, on horseback, by telegraph, as if he had been a wild beast! gramigna eluded them every time, and replied with shots if they came too close on his track. in the fields, in the villages, among the factories, under the signs of country taverns, wherever people met, gramigna was the only topic of conversation,--that wild chase, that desperate flight. the carabineers' horses returned dead-tired; the soldiers threw themselves down in utter weariness on the ground when they got back to the stables; the patrols slept wherever chance offered; gramigna alone was never tired, never slept, kept always on the wing, climbed down precipices, slipped through the harvest-fields, crept on all fours among the prickly pear-trees,[2] made his way out of danger like a wolf by means of the hidden channels of the torrents. [2] fichidindia, also called indian figs. the chief argument of every discourse at the cross roads, before the village entrances, was the devouring thirst from which the fugitive must suffer in the immense, barren plain, under the june sun. the lazy loungers opened wide their eyes. peppa, one of the prettiest girls of licodia, was expecting at that time soon to marry _compare_ finu, called "_candela di sego_" (the tallow-candle), who had landed property and a bay mule, and was a tall young man, handsome as the sun, who carried the standard of santa margherita without bending his back, as though he were a pillar. peppa's mother shed tears of delight over the good fortune that had befallen her daughter, and spent her time in looking over and over the bride's effects in the trunk, all white linen and of the nicest quality, like a queen's, and earrings that would hang down to the shoulders and gold rings for all the ten fingers of both hands; more money than santa margherita could have ever had--and so they were to have been married on santa margherita's day, which would fall in june, after the hay had been harvested. "candela di sego," on his way back from the field, used every evening to leave his mule at peppa's front door and go in to tell how the crops promised to be a veritable enchantment, unless gramigna set them on fire, and the lattice over against the bed would not be large enough to hold all the grain, and that it seemed to him a thousand years off before he should carry home his bride on the crupper of his bay mule. but peppa one fine day said to him,-"let your mule have a rest, for i do not wish to get married." the poor "candela di sego" was dumbfounded, and the old mother began to tear her hair when she heard that her daughter had refused the best match in the village. "i am in love with gramigna," said the girl, "and he is the only one whom i will marry." "ah!" screamed the mamma, and she stormed through the house, with her gray hair streaming so that she looked like a witch--"ah! that demon has been here to bewitch my daughter!" "no," replied peppa, with her eyes flashing like a sword--"no, he has not been here." "where did you ever see him?" "i never saw him. i have only heard him spoken of. but i feel something here, that burns me." the report spread through the region, though they tried to keep it a secret. the women and girls who had envied peppa the prosperous farming, the bay mule and the handsome youth who could bear the standard of santa margherita without bending his back, went around telling all sorts of unkind stories: how gramigna had been to visit her one night in the kitchen, and how he had been seen hiding under the bed. the poor mother burnt a lamp for the souls in purgatory and even the curato went to peppa's house to touch her heart with his stole, so as to drive out that devil of a gramigna, who had got possession of it. but she persisted in her statement that she did not know the fellow by sight; but that she had seen him one night in a dream, and the following morning she had got up with her lips dry as if she had herself suffered from all the thirst which they reported him to be enduring. then the old woman shut her up in the house, so that she might not hear another word about gramigna, and she stopped up all the cracks of the door with images of the saints. peppa heard all that was said in the street behind the sacred images, and she turned red and white, as if the devil had kindled all his fires in her face. finally she heard it said that gramigna had been located among the prickly pear-trees of palagonia. "they have been firing for two hours," they said. "he has killed one carabineer and wounded more than three _compagni d'armi_. but they sent back such a hailstorm of shots that he must have been hit; there was a pool of blood where he had been." then peppa made the sign of the cross before the old mother's pillow, and made her escape out of the window. gramigna was in the prickly pear-trees of palagonia, and they were not able to find him in that stronghold of rabbits. he was ragged and covered with blood, pale after two days of fasting, burning with fever, and he had his carbine levelled. when he saw her coming, resolute, among the prickly pear bushes, in the dim light of the gloaming, he hesitated a moment whether to shoot or not:-"what do you want?" he demanded. "what are you coming here for?" "i am coming to stay with you," said she, looking straight at him. "are you gramigna?" "yes, i am gramigna. if you expect to get those twenty _oncie_[3] of reward, you are mightily mistaken." [3] an onza is $2.55. "no, i have come to stay with you," she replied. "go away!" said he. "you can't stay with me, and i don't want anyone with me. if you are after money, i tell you you have made a mistake. i haven't any, mind you! for two days i haven't had even a morsel of bread." "i can't go back home now," said she; "the place is all full of soldiers." "go away! what is that to me? each for himself." as she was turning away like a kicked dog, gramigna called to her: "say, go and get me a jug of water, down yonder in the brook. if you want to stay with me, you must risk your skin." peppa went without saying a word, and when gramigna heard the gunshots he began to laugh immoderately, and said to himself: "that was meant for me!" but when he saw her coming back a few minutes later with the jug in her hand, pale and bleeding, he said, before he sprang forward to snatch the jug from her, and then when he had drunk till it seemed as if he had no more breath: "you escaped, did you? how did you do it?" "the soldiers were on the other side, and there was a thick bush on this." "but they put a bullet through your skin. there's blood on your dress." "yes." "where were you hit?" "in the shoulder." "that's nothing. you can walk." so he allowed her to stay with him. she followed him, all in rags, shoeless, suffering from the fever caused by the wound, and yet she went foraging to procure for him a jug of water or a piece of bread, and if she came back with empty hands, escaping through the gunshots, her lover, devoured by hunger and thirst, would beat her. at last one night when the moon was shining in the prickly pears, gramigna said to her,-"they are on us." and he obliged her to stand with her back to the rock far in the crevice; then he fled in another direction. among the bushes were heard the frequent reports of the musketry, and the shadows were cut here and there by quick bright flashes. suddenly peppa heard the sound of steps near her and saw gramigna coming back, dragging along a broken leg. he leaned against the prickly pear bushes to reload his carbine: "it's all over," he said to her. "now they'll take me." and what froze the blood in her veins more than anything else was the light that shone in his eyes, as if he were a madman. then when he fell on the dry branches like a log of wood, the soldiers were on him in an instant. the following day they dragged him through the village street on a cart, all in rags and covered with blood. the people who had crowded in to look at him began to laugh when they saw how small he was, how pale and ugly like a punchinello. and it was for him that peppa had deserted _compare_ finu, the "candela di sego!" the poor "candela di sego" went and hid from sight, as if it behoved him to be ashamed, and peppa was led off, handcuffed by soldiers, as if she also were a thief,--she who had as much gold as santa margherita! her poor mother was obliged to sell all the white linen stored in her trunk, and the gold earrings and the rings for the ten fingers, so as to pay the lawyers who defended her daughter and bring the girl home again,--poor, ill, in shame, ugly as gramigna, and with gramigna's child in her arms. but when at the end of the trial her daughter was restored to her, the poor old soul recited an "ave maria" in the bare and already dark jail among the soldiers of the guard; it seemed to her that they had given her back a treasure when she had nothing else in the world, and she wept like a fountain at this consolation. peppa on the other hand seemed to have no tears to shed any more, and said nothing, and disappeared from sight; yet the two women went out every day to get their living by their own hands. people declared that peppa had taken up "the trade" in the woods, and went on robbing expeditions at night. the truth of the matter was that she hid herself in the kitchen like a wild beast in its lair, and it was only when her old mother was dead of her privations, and the house had to be sold, that she left it. "see here!" said "candela di sego," who was as much in love with her as ever, "i could smash your head with two stones for the evil you have brought on yourself and others." "it's true," replied peppa, "i know it. it was god's will." after her house and those few wretched pieces of furniture that were left to her were sold, she went away from the town by night, just as she had done before, without turning round to look at the roof under which she had slept so long, and she went to do god's will in the city, with her baby boy, near the prison in which gramigna was incarcerated. she could see nothing else besides the black grated windows along the mighty silent façade, and the sentinels drove her away if she stopped to look where he might be. at last she was told that he had not been there for some time, that he had been taken away to the other side of the sea, manacled, and with a basket fastened over his shoulder. she said nothing. she did not go away; for she knew not where to go, and she had nothing more to expect. she made a shift to live, doing chores for the soldiers, for the prisoners, as if she herself made a part of that black and silent building; and she felt for the carabineers who had taken gramigna in the thicket of prickly pears, and who had broken his leg with their shots, a sort of respectful tenderness, as it were a brute admiration of force. on holidays, when she saw them with their plumes and their glittering epaulettes, stiff and erect in their gala uniforms, she devoured them with her eyes, and she was always at the barracks cleaning the big rooms and polishing the boots, so that they called her "the carabineers' dish-cloth." only when she saw them load their guns at nightfall and march out, two and two, with their trousers turned up, revolver in belt, and when they mounted horse under the light that made the muskets flash, and heard the clattering of the horses' feet dying away in the darkness and the jingling of sabres, she always grew pale, and while she was closing the door of the stable she shivered; and when her youngster played with the other urchins on the glacis before the prison, running among the legs of the soldiers, and the urchins called him "gramigna's son, gramigna's son," she flew into a rage and chased them away with stones. jeli, the shepherd. [illustration: jeli, the shepherd.] jeli, the shepherd. jeli, who had charge of the horses, was thirteen when he first became acquainted with the young gentleman, don alfonso. but he was so small that he did not come up to the belly of the old mare bianca, who carried the big bell for the drove. wherever his animals wandered for their pasturage, here and there, on the mountains and down in the plain, he was always to be found erect and motionless on some eminence or squatting on some big rock. his friend, don alfonso, while he was at his country seat, went to find him all the days that god sent to tebidi, and shared with him his piece of chocolate and shepherd's barley-bread and the fruit stolen in the neighborhood. at first jeli called the young nobleman _eccellenza_--your excellence--as is the custom in sicily, but after they had had one good quarrel their friendship was established on a solid basis. jeli taught his friend how to climb up to the magpies' nests on the tip-top of the walnut-trees, higher than the campanile of licodia, to knock down a sparrow on the wing with a stone, and to mount with one spring on the bare backs of his half-wild animals, seizing by the mane the first that came within reach, without being frightened by the wrathful whinnyings and the desperate leaps of the untrained colts. ah! the delightful gallops across the mown fields with their hair flying in the wind; the lovely april days when the wind billowed the green grass and the horses neighed in the pastures; the glorious summer noons when the whitening fields lay silent under the cloudy sky, and the crickets crackled among the clods as though the stubble were on fire; the bright wintry sky seen through the naked branches of the almond trees shivering under the north wind, and the narrow path sounding frozen under the horses' hoofs, and the larks singing on high in the warmth, in the azure; the delicious summer afternoons that passed slowly, slowly, like the clouds; the sweet odor of the hay in which they plunged their elbows, and the melancholy humming of the evening insects, and those two notes of jeli's zufolo or whistle, always the same--iuh iuh!--making one think of distant things, of the feast of saint john, of christmas eve, of the dawn of the _scampagnata_,[4] of all those great events of the past which seemed sad, so distant were they, and made you look up with moistened eyes as if all the stars that were kindling in heaven poured showers into your heart and made it overflow! [4] pic-nic day. jeli, himself, did not suffer from any such melancholy; he squatted on the side of the hill with puffed-out cheeks, quite intent on sounding his iuh! iuh! iuh! then he would bring together his drove by dint of shouts and stones, and drive them into the stable beyond the "poggio alla croce."[5] [5] hill with a cross on it. out of breath he would mount the hillside beyond the valley, and sometimes shout to his friend alfonso,-"call the dog! ohè! call the dog!" or "fling a good-sized stone at the bay who's got the better of me and is slowly wandering away, dallying among the bushes of the valley," or "to-morrow bring me a big needle--one of _gnà_ lia's." he could do all sorts of things with the needle, and he had a heap of odds and ends in his canvas bag, in case of need, to mend his trousers or the sleeves of his jacket; he also knew how to braid horsehairs, and with the clay in the valley he used to wash out his own handkerchief which he wore around his neck when it was cold. in fact, provided he had his bag with him, he needed nothing in the world, whether he were in the woods of resecone, or lost in the depths of the plain of caltagirone. _gnà_ lia used to say,-"do you see jeli, the shepherd? he is always alone in the fields, as if he himself had been born a colt, and that's why he knows how to make the cross with his two hands!"[6] [6] _i.e._, a _lusus naturæ_, abnormal! indeed, it is true that jeli needed nothing, but everybody connected with the estate would have gladly helped him in any way because he was a serviceable lad, and there was always a chance of getting something from him. _gnà_ lia baked bread for him out of neighborly love, and he showed his gratitude by making her osier baskets for her eggs, reels of reeds, and other little things. "let us do as his animals do," said _gnà_ lia, "they scratch each other's backs." at tebidi every one had known him since he was a baby; there was no time when he wasn't seen among the tails of the horses pasturing in the "field of the _lettighiere_" and he had grown up, so to speak, under their eyes, though really no one ever saw him very much, for he was forever here and there, roaming about with his drove. "he had rained down from heaven and the earth had taken him up," as the proverb has it; he was just one of those who have neither home nor relatives. his _mamma_ was out at service at vizzini, and he never saw her more than once a year when he went with his colts to the fair of san giovanni; and the day that she died they came to call him--it was one saturday evening--and on the following monday jeli was back with his drove, so that the _contadino_ who had taken his place in looking after the horses might not lose a day's work; but the poor lad came back so upset that he kept letting the colts get into the ploughed land. "ohè! jeli!" cried _massaro_ agrippino, from the threshing-floor. "you want to have a taste of the rope's end, do you, you son of a dog?" jeli started to run after his stray colts, and drove them mechanically toward the hill; but always before his eyes he saw his mamma with her head done up in the white handkerchief. she would never speak to him more! his father was a cow-herd at ragoleti, beyond licodia, "where the malaria could be harvested," as the peasants of that region say, meaning to signify its density; but in the malarious lands the pasturage is fat and cows do not catch the fever. jeli for that reason stayed in the fields all the year long, either at don ferrante's, or in the enclosure of la commenda, or in the valley of il jacitano, and the hunters or travellers who took cross-cut over the country saw him in this place or in that, like a dog without a master. he did not suffer from this state of things because he was accustomed to be with his horses, as they moved about leisurely nibbling the clover, and with the birds who flew around him in bevies, while the sun accomplished his daily journey, slowly, slowly, until the shadows grew long and then vanished; he had time to watch the clouds pile up on the horizon, one behind another, and imagine them mountains and valleys; he knew how the wind blew when it brought thunder-showers, and what color the clouds were when it was going to snow. everything had its aspect and significance, and his eyes and ears were kept on the alert all day long. in the same way when toward sunset the young herdsman began to play his alder-whistle, the brown mare would come up, lazily cropping the clover, and also stand looking with great, pensive eyes. the only place where he suffered a little from melancholy was in the desert lands of passanitello, where not a grass-blade or a shrub is to be seen, and during the hot months not a bird flies. the horses there would cluster together with drooping heads to shade one another, and during the long days of the threshing that mighty silent radiance rained down without mitigation for sixteen hours. wherever pasturage was abundant and the horses liked to loiter, the lad busied himself with something else--he would make reed-cages for the crickets, or carved pipes and little baskets of bulrushes; with four branches he could set up a shelter for himself when the north wind drove the long lines of crows through the valley, or, when the cicadæ fluttered their wings in the broiling sun over the parched stubble; he would roast acorns in the coals of his sumach fire and imagine they were chestnuts, or toast his thick slice of bread when it began to grow musty, because, when he was at passanitello in winter, the roads were so bad that sometimes a fortnight would elapse without a single soul passing. don alfonso, who had been kept in cotton by his parents, envied his friend jeli the canvas bag in which he stored his effects,--his bread, his onions, his bottle of wine, his neckerchief for cold weather, his little hoard of rags and thread and needles, his little tin food-box and his flint; he envied him especially that superb spotted mare, that animal with rough forelock and wicked eyes, swelling her indignant nostrils like a fierce mastiff when anyone tried to mount her. sometimes she would allow jeli to get on her back and scratch her ears; she was jealous of him, and would come smelling round to find out what he was saying. "let the _vajata_ be," jeli would say, "she isn't ugly, but she doesn't know you." after scordu from bucchiere took away the calabrian which he had bought at san giovanni's fair, under agreement to keep her in the drove until vintage time, _zaino_, the bay colt, orphaned, refused to be comforted and galloped over the mountain precipices with long, lamenting neighings, and its nose in the wind. jeli ran behind it, calling to it with loud shouts, and the colt paused to listen with its head in the air, and its ears pricking back and forth, and switching its flanks with its tail. "it's because they have carried off his mother, and he doesn't know what to make of it," observed the herdsman. "now we must keep him in sight, for he would be capable of jumping over the precipice. that was the way i felt when my mamma died; i couldn't see with my eyes." then, after the colt began to try the clover and to make believe bite:-"see! he is gradually beginning to forget.... but this one will be sold, too. horses are made to be sold, just as lambs are born to go to the butcher, and the clouds to bring the rain. only the birds have nothing else to do but sing and fly all day." these ideas did not come to him clear cut and in sequence one after the other, for it was rarely that he had anyone to talk with, and, therefore, he had no cause for haste in starting them up and disentangling them in the depths of his brain, where he was accustomed to let them sprout and grow gradually, as the twigs burgeon under the sun. "even the birds," he added, "have to hunt for food, and when the snow covers the ground they perish." then he pondered for a moment,--"you are like the birds; but when winter comes you can sit by the fire and do nothing." but don alfonso replied that he too went to school and had to study. jeli opened his eyes wide and was all ears, while the signorino began to read, and he looked at the book and at the young master himself with a suspicious air, listening with that slight winking of the eyelids which indicates intensity of attention in beasts little accustomed to mankind. he was delighted with the poetry that caressed his ears with the harmony of an incomprehensible song, and occasionally he frowned, drew up his chin, and made it evident that a great mental operation was taking place within him; then he nodded "yes, yes," with a crafty smile, and scratched his head. then when the signorino started to write so as to show how many things he knew how to do, jeli could have staid whole days watching him; and suddenly he would look round suspiciously. he could not be persuaded that the words that were said either by him or by don alfonso could possibly be repeated on paper, and still more--those things that had not proceeded from their mouths, and he ended with that shrewd smile. every new idea which knocked for entrance at his head made him suspicious; he seemed to try it with the wild diffidence of his _vajata_. but he expressed no wonder at anything in the world; he might have been told that in cities horses rode in carriages,--he would have kept on that mask of oriental indifference which is the dignity of a sicilian peasant. it would seem as if he intrenched himself instinctively in his ignorance, as if it were the force of poverty. every time that he remained short of arguments he would repeat,-"i do not know at all. i am poor," with that obstinate smile that was intended to be shrewd. he had asked his friend alfonso to write for him the name of mara on a piece of paper that he had found somewhere, because it was his habit to pick up whatever he saw lying about and put into his packet of odds and ends. one day, after being rather quiet and looking round anxiously, he said, very gravely,-"i'm in love with some one." alfonso, though he knew how to read, opened his eyes in astonishment. "yes," continued jeli, "_massaro_ agrippino's daughter mara, who used to be here; but now they're at marineo, in that great house in the plain that you can see from the 'plain of the _lettighiere_' yonder." "o you're going to get married, then?" "yes, when i'm grown up and have six _onze_ a year wages. mara knows nothing about it." "why, haven't you told her?" jeli shook his head and reflected. then he opened his hoard and unfolded the paper which bore the written name. "it must be that it says 'mara'; don gesualdo, the _campiere_,[7] has read it; and _fra_ cola, when he came down here begging for beans." [7] field guard. "he who knows how to write," he went on saying, "is like one who preserves words in his tinder-box and can carry them in his pocket, and even send them this way and that." "now what are you going to do with that piece of paper that you can't read?" asked alfonso. jeli shrugged his shoulders, but kept on carefully folding his written leaf to put away in his heap of odds and ends. he had known la mara ever since she was a little girl. their acquaintance had begun in a pitched battle once when they met down in the valley, both of them after blackberries. the little girl, knowing that she was "within her rights," had seized jeli by the neck as if he were a thief. for awhile they exchanged blows on the slope--"you one, i one,"--as the cooper does on the hoops of his barrels; but when they got tired of it they gradually calmed down, though they still had each other by the hair. "who are you?" demanded mara. and when jeli with less breeding refused to tell who he was,-"i am mara, the daughter of _massaro_ agrippino, who is the keeper of all these fields here." jeli then let his grasp relax, and the little girl set to work to pick up the blackberries that had fallen during their struggle, now and then glancing with curiosity at her antagonist. "just beyond the bridge, on the edge of the orchard, there are lots of big berries," suggested the little maid, "and the hens are eating them." jeli meantime was creeping off stealthily, and mara, after standing on tip-toe to watch him disappearing in the grove, turned her back and ran home as fast as her legs would carry her. but from that day forth they began to be friends. mara went with her hemp to spin on to the parapet of the little bridge, and jeli would slowly drive his cattle toward the slopes of the _poggio del bandito_. at first he kept at a distance, roving around and looking from afar, with suspicion in his face, but he kept gradually edging near, with the watchful gait of a dog used to stones. when at last he joined her, they remained long hours without speaking a word, jeli attentively watching the intricate work of the stockings which mara's mamma had hung round her neck, or she looking on while he carved his pretty zig-zags on the almond sticks. then they would separate, he going one way, she the other, without saying a word, and the little girl as soon as she was in sight of her house would start to run, kicking high her petticoat with her little red legs. when the prickly pears were ripe they would settle down in the thick of the bushes, peeling the figs all the live-long day. they would wander together under the immemorial walnuts, and jeli would beat so many of the walnuts that they would shower down thick as hail, and the girl would tire herself out picking them up with jubilant shouts--more than she could carry; and then she would scamper away nimbly, holding up the two corners of her apron, bobbing like a little old woman. during the winter time, mara dared not put her nose out of doors, it was so cold. sometimes toward evening could be seen the smoke of jeli's fires of sumach wood, which he built on the _piano del lettighiere_, or on the _poggio di macca_, so as not to perish of the cold, like the tomtits which he sometimes found in the morning behind some rock, or in the shelter of a clod. the horses also found pleasure in dangling their tails around the fire, and they would cuddle close together so as to be warmer. in march, the larks came back to the plain, the sparrows to the roofs, the leaves and the nests to the hedges. mara took up her habit of going about with jeli in the soft grass among the flowering bushes under the still bare trees which were just beginning to show tender points of green. jeli would make his way through the brambles like a bloodhound, so as to discover the nests of the blackbirds which would look up to him in astonishment with their little keen eyes; the two children would carry, cuddled in their hearts, little wee rabbits just born, almost without fur, but already quick to move their long ears. they would scour the fields in pursuit of the drove of horses, entering the plains behind the hay-gatherers, step for step with the herd, pausing every time that a mare stopped to pluck a mouthful of grass. at evening, when they got back to the bridge, they separated, he going in one direction, she in another, without saying good-by. thus they passed the whole summer. when the sun began to go down behind the _poggio alla croce_, the robin red-breasts also went toward the mountain, as it grew dark, following the light among the clumps of prickly pears. the crickets and cicadæ were no longer heard, and at that hour a great melancholy spread through the air. about that time, to jeli's tumble-down hovel came his father, the cowherd, who had caught the malaria at ragoleti, and could scarcely dismount from the ass which brought him. jeli started a fire quickly, and ran to "the hall" for some hen's eggs. "put a little straw down in front of the fire as soon as you can," said his father, "for i feel the fever returning." the chill of the fever was so severe that _compare_ menu buried under his thick cloak, the saddle-bags of the ass and jeli's sacks shook as the leaves do in november, in spite of the great blaze of branches which made his face white as a corpse. the contadini of the farm came to ask him,-"how do you think you feel, _compare_ menu?" the poor man could only answer with a whine like a sucking puppy. "it's a kind of malaria that kills more surely than a rifle bullet," said his friends, as they warmed their hands at the fire. the doctor was called, but it was money thrown away, because the disease is one of those clear and evident ones which even a boy would know how to cure; unless the fever happens to be so severe that it will kill at any rate, a little quinine cures it quickly. _compare_ menu spent the eyes of his head for quinine but it was as good as thrown down a well. "take a good dose of _ecalibbiso_ tea, which does not cost anything," suggested _massaro_ agrippino, "and if it doesn't work as well as quinine it doesn't ruin you by its cost." so he took the decoction of eucaliptus, but the fever returned all the same, and even more violently. jeli attended to his father the best he knew how. every morning before he went off with his colts, he left him his medicine all prepared in a drinking cup, his bundle of dry branches within reach, his eggs in the hot ashes, and he came back as early as he could in the afternoon with more wood for the night, and the bottle of wine and a little piece of mutton, which he had gone as far as licodia to buy for him. the poor lad did everything as handily as a clever maiden would have done, and his father, following him with weary eyes in his operations about the hovel, sometimes smiled to think that the boy would be able to do for himself in case he were left alone in the world. on days when the fever left him for a few hours, _compare_ menu would get up, all feeble as he was, and with his head wrapped in his handkerchief, would stagger out to the door to wait for jeli while the sun was still warm. when jeli dropped the bundle of wood at the door-steps, and placed the bottle and the eggs on the table, he would say to him,-"put the _ecalibbiso_ to boiling for to-night," or, "remember that your aunt agata has charge of your mother's money, when i shall be no more." jeli would nod "yes" with his head. "it is hopeless," said _massaro_ agrippino, every time he came to see _compare_ menu and his fever. "his blood is all diseased by this time." _compare_ menu listened without winking, with his face whiter than his night-cap. he now no longer got up. jeli began to weep when he found himself not strong enough to help him turn from one side to the other; shortly after _compare_ menu lay perfectly still. the last words that he spoke to his boy were,-"when i am dead, go to the owner of the cows at ragoleti and let him give you the three _onze_ and the twelve _tumoli_ of corn, which are my due from march till now." "no," replied jeli, "it's only two _onze_ and a half, because you left the cows more than a month ago, and one must be fair to one's _padrone_." "true!" agreed _compare_ menu, closing his eyes. "now i am quite alone in the world, like a lost colt which the wolves may eat!" said jeli to himself, when his father had been carried off to the cemetery of licodia. mara had been one of those who came to see the dead man's house with that morbid curiosity which is excited by horrible things. "do you see how i am left?" asked jeli, but the girl drew back so frightened that he could not induce her to step inside the house where the dead man had been. jeli went to receive the money due his father, and then he started off with his drove for passanitello, where the grass was already tall on the fallow-land, and the fodder was abundant; therefore, the colts remained there for some time in pasture. meantime jeli had been growing into a big lad, and mara also must be grown tall, he often thought to himself, while he played on his _zufalo_; and when he returned to tebidi after some little time, slowly driving forward the mares through the dangerous paths of "uncle cosimo's fountain," he scanned the little bridge down in the valley, and the hovel in the _valle del jacitano_, and the roof of "the hall" where the pigeons were always flying. but at that time the _padrone_ had dismissed _massaro_ agrippino, and all mara's family were just on the point of moving away. jeli found the girl, who had grown tall and very pretty, standing at the entrance of the yard watching the furniture and things, which they were loading on the cart. the empty room seemed to him more gloomy and smoky than ever before. the table, the commode and the images of the virgin and of saint john, and even the nails for hanging up the gourds for seed had left on the walls the marks where they had been for so many years. "we are going away," said mara, when she saw him looking around. "we are going down to marineo, where the great house stands in the plain." jeli took hold and helped _massaro_ agrippino and _la gnà lia_ load up the cart, and when there was nothing else to carry out of the room he went and sat down with mara on the edge of the watering-trough. "even houses," he remarked, when he saw the last hamper piled on, "even houses, when anything is taken away from them, do not any longer seem the same." "at marineo," replied mara, "we shall have much better rooms, mamma says, and large as the cheese house." "now that you are going away, i shall not want to come here any more; it seems to me as if winter had come back--to see that door closed." "at marineo we shall find other friends, pudda _la rossa_ and the _campiere's_ daughter; it will be jolly there; they have more than eighty harvesters in the season, and the bag-pipes, and they dance on the threshing-floor." _massaro_ agrippino and his wife had gone off with the cart. mara ran behind them, full of joyous excitement, carrying the baskets with the pigeons. jeli was going to accompany her as far as the little bridge; and when mara was just on the point of disappearing down the valley he called after her, "mara! oh! mara!" "what do you want?" demanded mara. he knew not what he wanted. "oh! what will you do here all alone?" asked the girl. "i shall stay with the colts." mara ran skipping away, and he stood there as if rooted to the spot so as to catch the last sounds of the cart rattling over the stones. the sun was just resting on the high rocks of the _poggio alla croce_, the gray crests of the olive trees were shading into the twilight and over the vast campagna far away, nothing was heard except the tinkling bell of "bianca" in the gathering stillness. mara, now that she was in the midst of new faces and amid all the bustle of the grape gathering, forgot about jeli; but he was always thinking about her, because he had nothing else to do in the long days that he spent looking at the horses' tails. there was now no special reason for him to go down into the valley beyond the bridge, and no one ever saw him any more at the farm. thus it was that he was for some time ignorant that mara had become betrothed--so much water had run and run under the bridge. the only time that he saw the girl was on the day of saint john's _festa_, when he went to the fair with his colts to sell; a festa which changed everything for him into poison, and caused the bread to fall out of his mouth by reason of an accident that befell one of the _padrone's_ colts--the lord deliver us! on the day of the fair, the factor waited for the colts ever since dawn, walking impatiently up and down in his well-polished boots behind the groups of horses and mules that came filing in along the highway from this direction and that. it was almost time for the fair to close, and still jeli with his animals was not in sight beyond the turn made by the highway. on the parched slopes of _calvario_ and the _mulino a vento_--the wind-mill mountain--there remained only a few droves of sheep gathered in a circle, with noses drooping and weary eyes, and a few yoke of oxen with long hair--of the kind that are sold to satisfy unpaid rent, waiting motionless under the boiling sun. yonder toward the valley, the bell of san giovanni's was ringing for high mass, accompanied by the long crackling of the fireworks. then the fair grounds seemed to spring up, and there ran a prolonged cry among the shops of the green grocers, clustered in the place called _salita dei galli_, spreading through the country roads and seeming to return from the valley where the church stood. "viva san giovanni!" "_santo diavolone!_" screamed the factor. "that assassin of a jeli will make me lose the fair!" the sheep lifted their heads in astonishment and began to bleat all at once, and the cattle also made a step or two, slowly looking around with their great, calm eyes. the factor was in a rage because he was expected that day to pay the rent due for the large enclosures--as the contract expressed it, "when saint john arrived under the elm;" and to make up the full sum, the profits on the sale of the colts was necessary. meantime the colts and horses and mules were coming in such numbers as the good lord had seen fit to make, all curried and shining and adorned with tassels and cockades and bells; and they were switching their tails to while away their tedium, and turning their heads toward every one who passed, and evidently waiting for some charitable soul willing to buy them. "he must have gone to sleep on the way, the assassin!" yelled the factor, "and so made me lose the sale of my colts." in reality, jeli had travelled all night so that the colts might reach the fair fresh, and get a good position on their arrival; and he had reached the _piano del corvo_, and the "three kings" had not yet set, but were shining over _monte arturo_. there was a continuous procession of carts passing along the road, and people mounted on horses or mules going to the _festa_. therefore, the young fellow kept his eyes open so that the colts, frightened by the unusual commotion, might not get away, but that he might keep them together along the ridge of the road behind _la bianca_, the white mare, who with the bell around her neck, always travelled straight ahead without minding anything. from time to time, when the road ran over the crest of the hills, the bell of saint john's could be heard in the distance, and in the darkness and silence of the plain the rumor of the _festa_ was distinguishable, and along the whole road far away, wherever there were people on foot or on horseback going to vizzini, were heard shouts of "_viva san giovanni!_" and the rockets rose up high in the air and brilliant behind the mountains of la canzaria, like the rain of meteors in august. "it is like christmas eve!" jeli kept saying to the boy, who was helping him drive the herd. "and in every place there is feasting and light, and throughout the whole campagna you can see fireworks." the boy was half asleep as he forced one leg after the other, and he made no response; but jeli, who felt his blood stir within him at the sound of that bell, could not keep quiet, as if each one of those rockets that left their silent shining trails on the darkness behind the mountains burst forth from his soul. "mara also must be going to the _festa_ of saint john," he said, "because she goes every year." and without caring because the boy made no reply,-"don't you know? mara is now so big that she must be taller than her mother, and when i saw her last i couldn't believe that it was the very same girl with whom i used to go after prickly pears and knock off the nuts." and he began to sing at the top of his voice all the songs that he knew. "oh alfio, why do you sleep?" he cried, when he was through with them. "look out that you keep _la bianca_ always behind you, look out!" "no, i am not asleep," replied alfio, with a hoarse voice. "do you see _la puddara_[8] which stands winking down at us yonder, as if they were firing up rockets also at santa domenica? it is almost sunrise; we shall reach the fair in time to secure a good position. ah! _morellino bello_! you pretty little brownie! you shall have a new halter, that you shall, with red cockades for the fair; and so shall you, _stellato_!"[9] [8] la puddara is the sicilian name for ursa major,--the big bear. [9] stellato, starred, said of a horse with a white spot in his forehead. * * * * * thus he went on, talking to one and another of his colts so that they might be encouraged hearing his voice in the darkness. but it grieved him to think that the _stellato_ and the _morellino_ were going to the fair to be sold. "when they are sold, they'll go off with a new master, and we shan't see them any more in the herd, just as it was with mara after she went to marineo. "her father is well-to-do down there at marineo, and when i was there, found myself, poor fellow that i was, sitting down to bread and wine and cheese, and everything good that god gives, and as if he were the factor himself, and he has the keys to everything, and i could eat up the whole place if i had wanted. mara scarcely knew me, it had been so long since we had seen each other, and she cried out,--'oh, look! there's jeli the guardian of the horses, from tebidi. he is like one who comes home from abroad, who only at the sight of the distant mountain-top is quick enough to recognize the country where he grew up.' _gnà_ lia didn't want me to speak to her daughter with the _thee_ and the _thou_, because mara had grown to be so big, and the people who don't know about things easily gossip. but mara only laughed, and looked as if she had only just that minute been baking the bread, so rosy her face was; she was getting the dinner ready, and she was unfolding the table-cloth, and she seemed different. 'oh, have you forgotten tebidi?' i asked her as soon as _gnà_ lia went out to broach a fresh cask of wine. 'no, no, i haven't forgotten' said she. 'at tebidi there was a bell with a campanile looking like the handle of a salt-cellar, and there used to be two stone cats which stood at the entrance of the garden.' i felt all through me those things that she was saying. mara looked at me from head to heels, with her eyes wide open, and then she said,--'how tall you've grown!' and then she began to laugh, and then she patted me on the head--here!" in this way jeli, the guardian of the horses, came to lose his place; for just at that instant there suddenly appeared a coach, which had given no sign of its approach, because it had been slowly climbing the steep ascent, but started off at full speed as soon as it reached the level ground at the top, with a great cracking of whips and jingling of bells, as if it were carried by the devil himself. the colts, in alarm, galloped off quicker than a flash, as if there had been an earthquake, and all the shouts and cries and _ohi! ohi! ohi's!_ of jeli and the boy scarcely sufficed to collect them again around _la bianca_, who in spite of her gravity had shied away desperately with the bell around her neck. when jeli had counted over his animals he discovered that _stellato_ was missing, and he buried his hands in his hair, because at that place the road ran along side a deep ravine, and it was down in that ravine that _stellato_ broke his back--a colt worth a dozen _onze_, like a dozen angels from paradise! weeping and shouting he went calling the colt _ahu! ahu!_ it was too dark to see it. at last _stellato_ replied from the bottom of the ravine with a melancholy neigh, as if it had human speech, poor creature! "oh, mamma mia!" cried jeli and the boy, as they went to it. "oh, what bad luck! mamma mia!" the travellers on their way to the _festa_, hearing such a lamentation in the darkness, asked what they had lost, and then when they learned what had happened, went on their way. the _stellato_ remained motionless where it had fallen, with its legs in the air, and while jeli was feeling it all over, weeping and talking to it as if he could make it understand, the poor creature stretched out its neck painfully and turned its head toward him, and then could be heard its breathing, cut short by its agony. "something must be broken!" mourned jeli in despair, because nothing could be seen in the darkness; and the colt, inert as a rock, let its head fall back. alfio, who remained on the road above in charge of the drove, had begun to view the matter more calmly, and had taken out his bread from his bag. the sky by this time was beginning to grow pale, and the mountains all around seemed to be blossoming out, one after another, dark and high. from the bend in the road the country round about began to stand out, with _monte del calvario_ and _monte del mulino a vento_--the windmill mountain--outlined against the dawn. they were still in shadow, but the flocks of sheep made white blurs, and as the herds of cattle grazing along the ridge of the mountains wandered hither and thither against the azure sky, it seemed as if the profile of the mountain itself were alive and full of motion. the bell from the depths of the valley was no longer heard; travellers were growing less numerous, and those who passed along were in haste to reach the fair. poor jeli knew not what saint to call on in that solitude. alfio himself could not help him in any way; so the boy continued breaking off the morsels of his loaf leisurely. at last the factor was seen coming along mounted, cursing and swearing as he came, at seeing his animals stopped on the road. when alfio saw him he ran off down the hill. but jeli did not stir from the side of the _stellato_. the factor left his mule by the roadside, and climbed down into the ravine. he tried to help the colt to rise; he pulled him by the tail. "let him be," said jeli, as white in the face as if it were himself whose back was broken. "let him be! don't you see that he can't move, poor creature." the _stellato_, in fact, at every movement and at every attempt made to help him, set up a screech that seemed human. the factor fell on jeli tooth and nail, and gave him as many kicks as there are angels and saints in paradise. by this time alfio had got his courage back, and had returned to the road, so that the animals might not be without a guardian, and he tried to excuse himself, saying, "'t wasn't my fault. i was on ahead with the _bianca_." "there's nothing more to be done," said the factor at last, having persuaded himself that it was all time lost. "nothing can be done with this colt but to take his pelt; that's good for something." jeli began to tremble like a leaf when he saw the factor go and fetch his gun from the mule's pack. "get off of him, good-for-nothing!" shouted the factor. "i don't know what keeps me from laying you out beside this colt, which is worth more than you, in spite of the swine's baptism which that thief of a priest gave you!" the _stellato_, unable to move, turned its head, with its big, steady eyes, as if it understood every word, and its skin crisped in waves along the back-bone as if a chill ran over it. in that way, the factor killed the _stellato_ on the spot, so as at least to save his pelt, and the dull noise which the gun held at short range made, as the charge pierced the living flesh, jeli thought he felt in his own heart. "now if you want a piece of advice from me," said the factor, as he left him there, "i'd not let the master lay eyes on you, in spite of that bit of wages due you, for you may be sure, he'd give it to you with a vengeance!" the factor went off together with alfio, taking along the other colts, which did not once turn round to see what had become of the _stellato_, but proceeded cropping the grass along the ridge. the poor _stellato_ was left alone in the ravine waiting for the knacker to flay him, its eyes were still wide open, and its four legs stretched into the air, for to stretch them up was the only thing it could do. jeli, now that he had seen how the factor had been able to aim at the colt, as it painfully lifted its head in fear, and had been courageous enough to fire off the gun at it, no longer wept, but remained sitting on a rock looking at the _stellato_ till the men came to take off the pelt. now he might go at his own pleasure and enjoy the _festa_, or stand in the square all day long and see the gentlemen in the _café_, as best pleased him, for now he no longer had bread or a shelter, and it behooved him to find a new _padrone_, if any one would take him after the misfortune of the _stellato_. thus go things in this world:--while jeli was seeking a new employer, walking about with his bag over his shoulder and his staff in his hand, the band was playing gayly in the square, with plumes in their caps, and surrounded by a merry throng of white hats thick as flies, and the gentlemen were enjoying themselves as they sat at their coffee. all the people were dressed in holiday attire like the animals of the fair, and in one corner of the square was a lady, with a short gown and flesh-colored stockings, making her appear bare-legged, and she was pounding on a great box before a great painted sheet on which appeared a slaughter of christians with blood flowing in torrents, and, there among the throng, gazing with open mouth, was _massaro_ cola, whom he used to know when he was at passanitello, and he told him that he would find him an employer, because _compare_ isidoro macca was in want of a herdsman for his hogs. "but i wouldn't say anything about _stellato_," recommended _massaro_ cola. "a misfortune like that might happen to any one in the world. but it is best not to talk about it." so they went in search of _compare_ macca, who was at the ball, and while _massaro_ cola went to plead his cause, jeli waited outside in the street in the midst of the throng, who were gazing in at the door of the hall. in the big room, there was a world of people jumping about enjoying themselves, all flushed and perspiring, and making a great trampling on the floor, while above all was heard the _ron ron_ of the double bass, and as soon as one piece of music, costing a _grano_,[10] was finished they would all lift their fingers to signify that they wanted another; and the man of the double bass would make a cross with a piece of charcoal on the wall, to keep account to the last, and then begin over again. [10] a fraction of a soldo, or cent. "those in there spend without thought," said jeli, to himself. "that means that they have their pockets full and are not in trouble as i am, for lack of an employer, and if they sweat and tire themselves out in dancing, it is for their own pleasure, as if they were paid by the day." _massaro_ cola came back saying that _compare_ macca needed no one. then jeli turned away, and walked off gloomily, gloomily. mara's home was toward sant'antonio, where the houses climb up the mountainside, facing the valley of la canziria, all green with prickly pears, and with the mill-wheels churning the water into foam in the lowlands by the stream. but jeli hadn't the courage to go in that direction, now that they needed no one to watch the swine; and, making his way amid the throng which jostled him and pushed him without any thought of him, he seemed more alone than ever he had been when he was with his colts in the plains of passanitello, and he felt like weeping. at last _massaro_ agrippino, wandering about with his arms swinging, and enjoying the _festa_, fell in with him in the square, and shouted to him,-"oh! jeli! oh!" and took him home. mara was in gala dress, with such long ear-rings that they hung down to her cheeks, and she was standing on the threshold with her hands folded, loaded with rings, waiting till it should grow dark, so as to go and see the fireworks. "oh!" said mara to him, "so you have come also for the _festa_ of saint john!" jeli did not want to go in because he was shabbily dressed, but _massaro_ agrippino forced him in saying that it was not the first time they had ever seen each other, and that he knew that he had come to the fair with his employer's colts. _gnà_ lia poured him out a good generous glass of wine, and wanted to take him with them to see the illuminations, together with the _comari_ and their other neighbors. when they reached the square jeli stood with open mouth, wondering at the spectacle; the whole square seemed a sea of fire as when the steppes are burning, and the reason was the great number of torches which the devout lighted under the eyes of the saint, who stood enjoying it all at the entrance of _il rosario_--all black under his silver baldachin. the acolytes were coming and going amid the flames like so many demons, and there was, moreover, a woman in loose attire and with dishevelled hair, and with her eyes staring out of her head, also engaged in lighting the candles, and a priest in a black soutane and without a hat, like one rendered crazy by religion. "there's the son of _massaro_ neri, the factor of saloni, and he is spending more than ten _lire_ for rockets," said _gnà_ lia, pointing to a young man who was going round through the square holding two rockets in each hand, just like candles, so that all the women devoured him with their eyes, and cried to him: "_viva san giovanni!_" "his father is rich and owns more than twenty head of cattle," added _massaro_ agrippino. mara also knew well that he had carried the great banner in the procession, and held it as straight as a pillar--such a strong and handsome youth was he. _massaro_ neri's son seemed to have heard them, and he set off his rockets for mara, making the wheel of fire before her, and after this part of the fireworks was over, he joined them, and took them to the ball and to the cosmorama, where the new world and the old world were to be seen depicted, and he paid for them all, even for jeli, who followed behind the others like a masterless cur, to see _massaro_ neri's son dancing with mara, who whirled round and crouched down like a dove on a roof, and held daintily up the corner of her apron, and _massaro_ neri's son gamboling like a colt, so that _gnà_ lia wept like a child at the consolation of the sight, and _massaro_ agrippino nodded with his head to signify that all was going to his mind. at last when they were all tired, they went out where the people were promenading, and they were carried away by the crowd as if they were in the midst of a torrent, and there they saw the transparencies lighted where the decapitation of saint john was represented with such faithfulness that it would have moved the heart of a turk, and the saint kicked out his legs like a goat under the hatchet. near by the band was playing under a great wooden umbrella, all lighted up, and in the square there was such a crowd that one would have said never before had so many christians come to the fair. mara went holding _massaro_ neri's son's arm, as if she were a fine lady, and she whispered into his ear and laughed, as if she were having a fine time. jeli was utterly tired out, and actually went to sleep sitting on the sidewalk till the first bombs of the fireworks were sent up. at that moment mara was still by the side of _massaro_ neri's son, leaning against him with her hands clasped on his shoulder, and in the different-colored lights from the fireworks she seemed now all white and now all rosy. when the last sparks died away in the darkness of the sky, _massaro_ neri's son turned toward her, with green light on his face, and gave her a kiss. jeli said nothing, but at that instant all that he had enjoyed till then changed into poison, and he began once more to think of his misfortunes, which he had for the moment forgotten--that he was without an employer--and knew not what to do, nor where to go, that he had no food or shelter; that the dogs might eat him as they were eating the poor _stellato_ left down in the bottom of the ravine, skinned to the hoofs! meantime, around him the people were still making merry in the darkness that had ensued; mara, with her companions, was dancing and singing through the rock-paved streets as they turned homeward. "good-night! good-night--_buona notte_!" shouted the people to one another, as they were left at their own doors. mara shouted "good-night--_buona notte_!" in her musical voice, and it expressed her happiness, and _massaro_ neri's son did not see fit to leave her while _massaro_ agrippino and _gnà_ lia were disputing about the opening of the house door. no one gave jeli a thought, till at last _massaro_ agrippino remembered him, and said,-"and where are you going?" "i don't know," said jeli. "come and see me to-morrow and i will help you find a place. for to-night, go back to the square where we have been hearing the band play. you'll find a spot on some bench, and sleep out doors; you must be used to that." jeli was used to that, but what pained him was that mara said nothing to him, but left him there at the door as if he were a beggar; and the next day when he came back to see _massaro_ agrippino, he was hardly alone with the girl before he said to her,-"oh, _gnà_ mara! how you forget old friends!" "oh, is that you, jeli?" replied mara. "no, i haven't forgotten you. but i was so tired after the fireworks!" "you're in love with him aren't you--_massaro_ neri's son?" demanded jeli, twirling his staff in his hands. "what are you saying?" abruptly interposed _gnà_ mara. "my mother is there and hears everything you say." _massaro_ agrippino found him a place as shepherd at la salonia, where _massaro_ neri was factor, but as jeli was not very much skilled in taking care of sheep, he had to be content with far smaller wages than he had been having. now he attended faithfully to his flocks, and strove to learn how cheese is made--the ricotta and the _caciocavallo_, and all the other products of the flocks; but in the gossip that went on at eventide in the yard, among the shepherds and _contadini_, while the women were preparing the beans for the soup, if ever _massaro_ neri's son was mentioned as soon to marry _massaro_ agrippino's mara, jeli said not a word, and never dared open his mouth. one time when the keeper insulted him, by saying, jestingly, that mara refused to have anything more to do with him, after every one had declared that they were to be husband and wife, jeli, as he went to the pot where the milk was boiling, replied, as he slowly shook in the rennet,-"now mara has grown to be so pretty, she seems like a lady." but as he was patient and laborious, and quickly got hold of the secrets of the business, even better than one who had been born to it, and as he was accustomed to be with animals, he came to love his sheep as if they were his own, and for this reason the distemper--_il male_--did not do so much damage at la salonia, and the flock prospered, so that it was a delight for _massaro_ neri every time that he came to the estate, and the next year it was no great trouble to induce the _padrone_ to increase jeli's wages, so that he came to have as much as he got in looking out for the horses. and it was money well spent, for jeli never thought of reckoning up the miles and miles that he travelled in search of the best pasturage for his flock, and if the sheep were with young or were sick, he would take them to his saddle-bags and carry the lambs in his arms, and they would lick his face, thrusting their noses out of his pocket, and they would even suck his ears. in the famous snow storm of santa lucia's night, the snow fell four handbreadths deep in the _lago morto_ at la salonia, and all around for miles and miles there was nothing else to be seen when day came, and nothing would have been left of the sheep but the ears, had not jeli got up three or four times in the course of the night to drive the sheep into the yard, so that the poor beasts shook the snow from their backs and did not remain, as it were buried, as was the case in so many of the neighboring flocks--at least so _massaro_ agrippino said when he came to give a look to a field of beans which he had at la salonia, and he also said that that story of _massaro_ neri's son marrying his daughter mara was a lie made up of whole cloth--that mara had some one else in mind. "it was said they were to be married at christmas," said jeli. "nothing of the sort; they aren't to marry at all; it's all the gossip of envious folks who meddle with others' business," replied _massaro_ agrippino. but the keeper, who had known about it for some time, having heard it talked about in town when he was there on sunday, told the story as it really was, after _massaro_ agrippino had gone away. "the engagement was broken because _massaro_ neri's son had learned that _massaro_ agrippino's mara was keeping company with don alfonso, the signorino, who had known mara from a little girl; and _massaro_ neri had declared that his son was to be a man respected as his father was, and the only horns he wanted in his house should be those of his oxen." jeli was present at this conversation, sitting with the others in the circle at breakfast, and at that instant was cutting his bread. he still said nothing, but his appetite left him for that day. while he was driving his sheep out to pasture he began to think of mara, as she had been when she was a little girl, when they were together all day long wandering through the _valle del jacitano_ and over the _poggio alla croce_, and how she stood looking at him, with her chin in the air, while he climbed up to the tree-tops after the birds' nests; and he thought also of don alfonso, who used to come and see him from the neighboring villa, and how they would stretch themselves out on their bellies, stirring up crickets' nests with straws. all these things he considered and reconsidered for hours and hours, as he sat on the edge of the brook, holding his knees between his arms, and thinking of the tall walnuts of tebidi, and the thick bushes in the valleys and the slopes of the hills, green with sumachs, and the gray olive trees spreading through the valley like a fog, and the red-tiled roof of the house, and the campanile that looked like "a handle of a salt cellar" among the oranges of the garden. here the campagna stretched away naked, desert, speckled with dried grass, blending silently with the distant horizon. in spring the bean pods had begun to fill out when mara came to la salonia with her father and mother and the boy and the ass, to pick the beans, and they all came together to sleep at the farm for two or three days during the picking. in this way jeli saw the girl morning and evening, and they would sit together on the wall of the sheep-fold and talk, while the boy looked after the sheep. "it seems as if i were at tebidi again," said mara, "when we were little things, and used to stand on the foot bridge." jeli also remembered everything, though he said little, being always a judicious youth, and of few words. when the harvest was over, and the eve of parting had come, mara went out to talk with the young man, just as he was making "ricotto cheese," and he was wholly intent in skimming the whey with his ladle. "now i'll say _addio_," said she, "for to-morrow we return to vizzini." "how have the beans gone?" "bad! _la lupa_[11] has eaten them all this year." [11] a parasitic disease. "it depends on the rain which has been scarce," said jeli. "we have had to kill even the lambs because there hasn't been enough feed for them. over all of la salonia there hasn't been three inches of grass." "but that doesn't affect you. you always have your wages, good year or bad." "yes, that's so," said he. "but it disgusts me to give those poor creatures to the butcher." "do you remember when you came for the _festa_ of saint john, and were left without a _padrone_?" "yes, i remember." "it was my father who got you a place here with _massaro_ neri." "and why didn't you marry _massaro_ neri's son?" "because it wasn't the will of god. my father has been unlucky," she continued, after a brief pause. "since we came to marineo, everything has gone ill with us. the beans, the corn, that piece of vineyard that we have yonder. then my brother went off to the army, and we lost a mule that was worth forty _onze_." "i know," said jeli, "the bay mule." "now, that we have lost all our property, who would want to marry me?" mara was breaking up a twig of briar while she said this, with her chin in her bosom, and, with her elbow, she gently nudged jeli's elbow without appearing to mean it. but jeli, with his eyes on the churn, also made no response, and she went on,-"at tebidi they used to say that you and i would be husband and wife, do you remember?" "yes," said jeli, and he laid his ladle on the top of the churn. "but i am a poor shepherd, and i can not pretend to a _massaro's_ daughter like you." la mara remained silent for a little while, and then she said, "if you want me, i will willingly be yours." "really?" "yes, really." "and what will _massaro_ agrippino say to it?" "my father says that now that you know your trade, and since you are not one of those who waste their wages, but make one _soldo_ into two, and do not eat to consume bread, in time you will come to have flocks of your own, and will be rich." "if that is so," said jeli, in conclusion, "i will gladly take you." "there," said mara, as soon as it had grown dark and the sheep were relapsing into silence, "if you want a kiss, i will give you one, because we are going to be husband and wife." jeli took one in "holy peace," and not knowing what to say, added, "i have always loved you, even when you were going to desert me for the son of _massaro_ neri." but he had not the heart to speak of the other one. "don't you see? we were meant for one another," said mara, in conclusion. _massaro_ agrippino, in fact, said "yes," and _gnà_ lia put on a new gown, and she had a pair of velvet trousers made for their son-in-law. mara was as lovely and fresh as a rose, with her white mantellina, reminding you of the paschal lamb, and that amber necklace which made her neck look so white; so, when jeli walked through the street at her side, he marched stiffly and erect, dressed in his new cloth and velvet suit, and he did not dare even blow his nose with his red silk handkerchief, lest he should make a fool of himself; and the neighbors and all who knew the story of don alfonso laughed in his face. when mara said "_sissignore_," and the priest made her jeli's wife with a grand sign of the cross, jeli took her home, and it seemed to him as if they had given him all the gold of the madonna, and all the lands that he had seen with his eyes. "now that we are husband and wife," said he, when they reached their house, as he was sitting in front of her, and trying to appear very humble, "now that we are husband and wife, i may tell you that it does not seem to me true as you pretended--you might have had ever so many better husbands than i--so beautiful and gracious you are." the poor fellow could not find anything else to say, and he could not contain his delight to see mara setting and arranging everything through the house, and playing _la padrona_. he found it impossible to tear himself away to return to la salonia; when he started monday, he was very slow in arranging in the pack of the ass, his saddle-bags, and his cloak, and his umbrella. "you ought to come to la salonia, yourself," he said to his wife, who was watching him from the door-step. "you ought to come with me." but the young woman began to laugh, and replied that she was not born to look after sheep, and had no reason to go to la salonia. truly, mara was not born for tending sheep, and she was not accustomed to the january tramontana wind, which stiffens the hand on the staff, and it seems as if your fingers would drop off, or to furious storms that come, when the water penetrates to your very bones, and again, when the dust drives choking through the streets, when the sheep travel under the boiling sun, or to the hard bed on the ground, and the mouldy bread, and the long, silent, solitary days, when through the arid fields nothing else is seen in the distance but occasionally some sun-burned peasant driving his ass silently along over the white, interminable road. jeli knew at least that mara was warm and comfortable under the quilts, or was spinning in front of the fire, talking with the women of the neighborhood, or was enjoying the sun on the balcony, while he was returning from the pasture tired and thirsty, or wet through with the rain, or when the wind drifted the snow back of his hut and put out his fire of branches. every month mara went to receive the wages from the _padrone_, and they lacked neither eggs nor fowls, nor oil in the lamp, nor wine in the jug. twice a month jeli came home to see her, and she would stand on the balcony looking for him with her spindle in her hand, and after he had left the ass in the stable and removed his pack and filled the rack with oats, and placed the wood under the shed in the yard, or whatever he brought into the kitchen, mara would help him hang his cloak on the nail and take off his leather leggings before the hearth, and pour him out a glass of wine, and set to work to boil the soup and get the table ready, quiet and thoughtful, like a good housewife, while talking of this thing and that,--of the brooding hen that was setting, of the cloth that was on the loom, of the calf which they were raising, never forgetting anything of what she had been doing. jeli, when he found himself at home, felt that he was more important than the pope. but on the eve of santa barbara he came home unexpectedly late, when all the lights were out in the street and the town clock was striking midnight. he came in because the mare which the _padrone_ had left out at pasture had been suddenly taken sick, and he saw that it was a case that required the services of the farrier quickly, and he had wanted to bring him to town in spite of the rain that was falling like a torrent, and the muddy roads into which he sunk half up to his knees. knock and call as loud as he might behind the door, he had to wait half an hour under the eaves, while the water ran out at his heels. at last his wife came to open for him, and began to scold worse than if it had been herself who had been obliged to wander across country in such a tempest. "oh, what's the matter?" she demanded. "how you frightened me coming at this time o' night! does it seem to you a proper christian time to come? to-morrow i shall be ill!" "go back to bed, i will start up a fire." "no, i'll have to go and get some wood." "i'll go." "no, i say." when mara returned with the wood in her arms jeli said to her, "why did you leave the door to the yard open? was there not enough wood in the kitchen?" "no, i went to get it under the shed." she let him kiss her, coldly, coldly, and turned her head in another direction. "his wife lets him wait at the door," said the neighbors, "when there is another bird in the nest." but jeli knew nothing about the fact that his wife was untrue to him, nor did any one care to tell him, because it could surely be of no consequence, for he had taken the woman with a damaged reputation after _massaro_ neri's son had jilted her, because he knew of the story of don alfonso. but jeli seemed to live happy and contented in the shame of it, and grew as fat as a pig; for the proverb has it "horns are lean but they make the house fat." at last, one time, the herdman's boy told it to him in his face, while they were scuffling about the pieces of cheese that had been stolen. "now that don alfonso has taken your wife you consider yourself his brother-in-law, and you are proud enough to be a crowned king with those horns on your head." the factor and the keeper expected to see blood flow for those insulting words, but on the contrary jeli stood stupefied, as if he had not heard, or as if it concerned him not, wearing the dull face of an ox whose horns really fitted him. now that easter was at hand the factor sent all the men of the estate to confession, with the hope that through the fear of god they would not do any more stealing. jeli also went, and at the church entrance sought for the boy with whom he had exchanged those hot words, and he threw his arms around his neck, saying,-"the confessor has bade me pardon you; but i am not angry with you for such gossip; and if you will not steal any more of the cheese from me, i will not take any further notice of what you said to me in passion." it was from that moment that they nicknamed him _corno d'ore_--"gold horns"--and the nickname stuck to him and all his, even after he had washed his horns in blood. la mara also went to confession and returned from the church all wrapped up in her mantellina, and with her eyes cast down, so that she seemed a genuine _santa maria maddelena_. jeli, who was silently waiting for her on the balcony, when he saw her coming in that way, seeming as if she had the holy presence in her heart, kept looking at her,--pale, pale from his foot to his head as if he saw her for the first time, or as if his mara had been changed for him, and he seemed hardly to dare to lift his eyes to her while she was shaking the cloth and setting the table, calm and neat as ever. then after long thinking he put the question to her: "is it true that you keep company with don alfonso?" mara looked him full in the face with those black eyes of hers and made the sign of the cross. "why do you want to make me commit a sin on this day?" she demanded. "i did not believe it, because don alfonso and i were always together when we were boys, and there never passed a day that he did not come to tebidi when he was in the country there; and then he is rich, and has bushels of money, and if he wanted women he might get married, nor would he lack anything, either clothes to wear, or bread to eat." but mara was really angry, and she began to scold so that the poor fellow did not dare lift his nose from his plate. at last, so that that gift of god which they were eating might not turn into poison, mara changed the conversation, and asked him if he had thought of weeding that little plot of flax which they had sowed in the bean field. "yes," replied jeli, "and the flax will do well." "if that is so," said mara, "this spring i will make you two new shirts which will keep you warm." in truth jeli did not realize what "cuckold" meant, and he did not know what jealousy was. every new thing found difficulty in getting into his head, and this became so great that, in making its way in, it played devilish work, especially when he saw his mara before him so beautiful and white and neat, and how she had herself chosen him, and how he had thought about her so many years, and so many years, ever since he was a young boy, so that the day when they told him that she was going to marry some one else, he had had no heart to eat anything or to drink all day long. then again he thought of don alfonso, who had been his companion so many times, and how he had always brought him strange feeling within his heart. don alfonso had grown so tall that he no longer seemed the same person, and now he had a full beard, curly like his hair, and a velvet coat and a gold chain across his waistcoat. but he recognized jeli, and patted him on the shoulder in salutation. he had come with the _padrone_ of the estate and a number of friends to have a jollification while the sheep-shearing was in progress, and mara also came unexpectedly, under the pretext that she was pregnant, and longed for some fresh ricotto. it was a beautiful warm day in the pale fields, with the grain in flower and the long green rows of the vines; the sheep were gamboling and bleating for delight, at feeling themselves freed from all that weight of wool, and in the kitchen, the women had made a great fire to cook all the provisions that the _padrone_ had brought for the dinner. the gentlemen, while they were waiting, had sat down in the shade under the carob-trees, and were playing tambourines and bag-pipes, and dancing with the girls of the estate, as if they were all of the same class. jeli, meantime, went on with his work shearing the sheep, and felt something within him, without knowing what, like a thorn, like a nail, like a pair of shears, working within him, slowly, slowly, like a poison. the _padrone_ had ordered that they should kill a couple of goats, and the yearling sheep, and some chickens, and a turkey cock. in fact, he was going to do things on a grand scale, and lavishly, so as to do honor to his friends; and while all those creatures were squealing under the death-agony, and the goats were screaming under the knife, jeli felt his knees tremble, and little by little, it seemed to him that the wool that he was shearing, and the grass in which the sheep were leaping, were stained with blood. "don't go," he said to mara, when don alfonso called her to come and dance with the rest. "don't go, mara." "why not?" "i don't want you to go. do not go." "i hear them calling me." he uttered not another intelligible word while he stayed with the sheep that he was shearing. mara shrugged her shoulders, and went to dance. she was blushing with delight, and her two black eyes shone like two stars, and she smiled so that there was a gleam of white teeth, and all the gold ornaments tossed and scintillated on her wrists and on her bosom, so that she seemed like the madonna herself. jeli had arisen to his full height, with the long shears in his hand, and white in face, as white as once he had seen his father, the cowherd, when he was trembling with fever in front of the fire in the hovel. suddenly, when he saw how don alfonso, with his curling beard and his velvet coat, and the gold chain at his waistcoat, took mara by the hand to dance--then--only at that moment that he touched her did he fling himself on him and cut his throat with one stroke, as if he had been a goat. later, while they were leading him off to the judge, bound, wholly unmanned, without daring to make the least resistance,-"how," said he, "should i not have killed him. he robbed me of my mara!" rustic chivalry. (_cavalleria rusticana._) [illustration: "lola used to go out on the balcony with her hands crossed."] rustic chivalry. (_cavalleria rusticana._) turiddu macca, _gnà_ nunzia's son, after returning from the army, used every sunday to strut like a peacock through the square in his bersegliere uniform and red cap, looking like the fortune-teller as he sets up his stand with his cage of canaries. the girls on their way to mass gave stolen glances at him from behind their mantellinas, and the urchins buzzed round him like flies. he had brought back with him, also, a pipe with the king on horseback carved so naturally that it seemed actually alive, and he scratched his matches on the seat of his trousers, lifting his leg as if he were going to give a kick. but in spite of all this, lola, the daughter of _massaro_ angelo, had not shown herself either at mass or on the balcony, for the reason that she was going to wed a man from licodia, a carter who had four sortino mules in his stable. at first, when turiddu heard about it, _santo diavolone!_ he threatened to disembowel him, threatened to kill him--that fellow from licodia! but he did nothing of the sort; he contented himself with going under the fair one's window, and singing all the spiteful songs he knew. "has _gnà_ nunzia's turiddu nothing else to do," asked the neighbors, "except spending his nights singing like a lone sparrow?" at length, he met lola on her way back from the pilgrimage to the madonna del pericolo, and when she saw him, she turned neither red nor white, just as if it were none of her affair at all. "oh, _compare_ turiddu, i was told that you returned the first of the month." "but i have been told of something quite different!" replied the other. "is it true that you are to marry _compare_ alfio, the carter?" "such is god's will," replied lola, drawing the two ends of her handkerchief under her chin. "god's will in your case is done with a snap and a spring; to suit yourself! and it was god's will, was it, that i should return from so far to find this fine state of things, _gnà_ lola!" the poor fellow still tried to bluster, but his voice grew hoarse, and he followed the girl, tossing his head so that the tassel of his cap swung from side to side on his shoulders. to tell the truth, she felt really sorry to see him wearing such a long face, but she had not the heart to deceive him with fine speeches. "listen, _compare_ turiddu," she said to him at last, "let me join my friends. what would be said in town if i were seen with you?" "you are right," replied turiddu, "now that you are going to marry _compare_ alfio, who has four mules in his stable, it is best not to let people's tongues wag about you. but my mother, poor soul, was obliged to sell our bay mule, and that little plot of vineyard on the highway while i was off in the army. the time 'when berta spun,' is over and gone, and you no longer think of the time when we used to talk together from the window looking into the yard, and you gave me that handkerchief before i went away, and god knows how many tears i shed into it at going so far that even the name of our place is lost! so good-by, _gnà_ lola,--let's pretend it's rained and cleared off, and our friendship is ended."[12] [12] _facemu cuntu ca chioppi e scampau e la nostra amicizia finiu._ _gnà_ lola married the carter, and on sundays used to go out on the balcony with her hands crossed on her stomach, to show off all the heavy gold rings that her husband gave to her. turiddu kept up his habit of going back and forth through the street with his pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and an air of unconcern, and ogling the girls; but it gnawed his heart that lola's husband had so much money, and that she pretended not to see him when he passed. "i'll get even with her, under her very eyes; the vile beast," he muttered. opposite _compare_ alfio lived _massaro_ cola, the vinedresser, who was as rich as a pig, and had one daughter at home. turiddu said and did all he could to become _massaro_ cola's workman, and he began to frequent the house, and make sweet speeches to the girl. "why don't you go and say sweet things to _gnà_ lola?" asked santa. "_gnà_ lola is a fine lady. _gnà_ lola has married a crowned king now!" "i don't deserve crowned kings!" "you are worth a hundred lolas, and i know some one who wouldn't look at _la gnà_ lola or her saint when you are by, for _gnà_ lola isn't worthy to wear your shoes, no, she isn't!" "the fox when he couldn't get at the grapes said, 'how beautiful you are, _racinedda mia_,' my little grape!" "ohè! hands off, _compare_ turiddu!" "are you afraid that i will eat you?" "i'm not afraid of you or of your god." "eh! your mother was from licodia, we all know that! you have quarrelsome blood. uh! how i could eat you with my eyes!" "eat me then with your eyes, for we should not have a crumb left, but meantime help me up with this bundle." "i would lift up the whole house for you, yes, i would!" she, so as not to blush, threw at him a stick of wood which was within reach, and by a miracle didn't hit him. "let's have done, for chattering never picked grapes." "if i were rich i should try to get a wife like you, _gnà_ santa." "i shall never marry a crowned king like _gnà_ lola, but i have my dowry as well as she, whenever the lord shall send me anyone." "we know you are rich, we know it." "if you know it, say no more, for father is coming, and i shouldn't like to have him find me in the court-yard." the old father began to turn up his nose, but the girl pretended not to notice it, because the tassel of the bersegliere's cap had set her heart to fluttering, and was constantly dancing before her eyes. when the _babbo_ put turiddu out of the house, his daughter opened the window for him, and stood chatting with him all the evening long, so that the whole neighborhood talked of nothing else. "i'm madly in love with you," said turiddu, "and i am losing my sleep and my appetite." "how absurd!" "i wish i were victor emmanuel's son, so as to marry you." "how absurd!" "by the madonna, i would eat you like bread!" "how absurd!" "ah! on my honor!" "ah! _mamma mia!_" lola, who was listening every evening, hidden behind the vase of basil, and turning red and white, one day called turiddu:-"and so, _compare_ turiddu, old friends don't speak to each other any more?" "_ma!_" sighed the young man, "blessed is he who can speak to you." "if you have any desire to speak to me, you know where i live," replied lola. turiddu went to see her so frequently that santa noticed it, and shut the window in his face. the neighbors looked at him with a smile or with a shake of the head when the bersegliere passed. lola's husband was making a round of the fairs with his mules. "sunday i am going to confession, for last night i dreamed of black grapes," said lola. "put it off, put it off" begged turiddu. "no, easter is coming, and my husband will want to know why i haven't been to confession." "ah," murmured _massaro_ cola's santa, as she was waiting on her knees before the confessional for her turn, while lola was making a clean breast of her sins. "on my soul, i will not send you to rome for your punishment!" _compare_ alfio came home with his mules; he was loaded with money, and he brought to his wife for a present, a handsome new dress for the holidays. "you are right to bring her gifts," said his neighbor santa, "because while you are away your wife adorns your house for you." _compare_ alfio was one of those carters who wear their hats over one ear, and when he heard his wife spoken of in such a way he changed color as if he had been knifed. "_santo diavolone!_" he exclaimed, "if you haven't seen aright, i will not leave you eyes to weep with, you or your whole family." "i am not used to weeping!" replied santa, "i did not weep even when i saw with these eyes _gnà_ nunzia's turiddu going into your wife's house at night!" "it is well," replied _compare_ alfio, "many thanks!" turiddu, now that the cat was at home, no longer went out on the street by day, and he whiled away the tedium at the inn with his friends; and on easter eve they had on the table a dish of sausages. when _compare_ alfio came in, turiddu realized, merely by the way in which he fixed his eyes on him, that he had come to settle that affair, and he laid his fork on the plate. "have you any commands for me, _compare_ alfio?" he asked. "no favors to ask, _compare_ turiddu; it's some time since i have seen you, and i wanted to speak concerning something you know about." turiddu at first had offered him a glass, but _compare_ alfio refused it with a wave of his hand. then turiddu got up and said to him,-"here i am, _compare_ alfio." the carter threw his arms around his neck. "if to-morrow morning you will come to the prickly pears of la canziria, we can talk that matter over, _compare_." "wait for me on the street at daybreak, and we will go together." with these words they exchanged the kiss of defiance. turiddu bit the carter's ear, and thus made the solemn oath not to fail him. the friends had silently left the sausages, and accompanied turiddu to his home. _gnà_ nunzia, poor creature, waited for him till late every evening. "mamma," said turiddu, "do you remember when i went as a soldier, that you thought i should never come back any more? give me a good kiss as you did then, for to-morrow morning i am going far away." before daybreak he got his spring-knife, which he had hidden under the hay, when he had gone to serve his time in the army, and started for the prickly-pear trees of la canziria. "oh, gesummaria! where are you going in such haste!" cried lola in great apprehension, while her husband was getting ready to go out. "i am not going far," replied _compare_ alfio. "but it would be better for you if i never came back." lola in her nightdress was praying at the foot of the bed, and pressing to her lips the rosary which fra bernardino had brought to her from the holy places, and reciting all the ave marias that she could say. "_compare_ alfio," began turiddu, after he had gone a little distance by the side of his companion, who walked in silence with his cap down over his eyes, "as god is true i know that i have done wrong, and i should let myself be killed. but before i came out, i saw my old mother, who got up to see me off, under the pretence of tending the hens. her heart had a presentiment, and as the lord is true, i will kill you like a dog, so that my poor old mother may not weep." "all right," replied _compare_ alfio, stripping off his waistcoat. "then we will both of us hit hard." both of them were skilful fencers. turiddu was first struck, and was quick enough to receive it in the arm. when he returned it, he returned it well, and wounded the other in the groin. "ah, _compare_ turiddu! so you really intend to kill me, do you?" "yes, i gave you fair warning; since i saw my old mother in the hen-yard, it seems to me i have her all the time before my eyes." "keep them well open, those eyes of yours," cried _compare_ alfio, "for i am going to give you back good measure." as he stood on guard, all doubled up, so as to keep his left hand on his wound, which pained him, and almost trailing his elbow on the ground, he swiftly picked up a handful of dust, and flung it into his adversary's eyes. "ah!" screamed turiddu, blinded, "i am dead." he tried to save himself, by making desperate leaps backwards, but _compare_ alfio overtook him with another thrust in the stomach, and a third in the throat. "and that makes three! that is for the house which you have adorned for me! now your mother will let the hens alone." turiddu staggered a short distance among the prickly pears, and then fell like a stone. the blood foaming, gurgled in his throat, and he could not even cry, "_ah! mamma mia!_" la lupa. she was tall and lean; but she had a firm, full bust, and yet she was no longer young; her complexion was brunette, but pallid as if she had always suffered from malaria, and this pallor set forth two big eyes and fresh rosy lips that seemed to eat you. in the village she was called _la lupa_--the she-wolf--because she was never satisfied. women made the sign of the cross when they saw her pass, always alone like a big ugly hound, with the vagabond and suspicious gait of a famished wolf; she would bewitch their sons and their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with her red lips and she made them fall in love with her merely by looking at them out of those big satanic eyes of hers, even if they were before santa agrippina's altar. fortunately _la lupa_ never came to church at easter or at christmas, nor to hear mass or to make confession. _padre_ angiolino of santa maria di gesù, a true servant of god, had lost his soul on her account. maricchia,--poor girl, pretty and clever she was,--secretly wept because she was _la lupa's_ daughter, and no one had offered to marry her though she had nice clothes in her bureau, and her own little piece of land in the sun, like every other girl of the village. one time _la lupa_ fell in love with a handsome youth who had just served out his time in the army, and had come home and was helping to reap the notary's harvest with her; for surely it means to be in love when she felt the flesh burn under the fustian shift, and on looking at him to experience the thirst that one has in hot june days down in the low-lands. but he went on with his work, undisturbed, with his nose on his sheaves, and he said to her, "oh, what's the matter, _gnà_ pina?" in the immense fields where the only sound was the rustle of the grasshoppers flying up, while the sun was pouring down his hottest beams perpendicularly, _la lupa_ was heaping up sheaf on sheaf, and pile on pile, without ever showing any signs of fatigue, without one moment straightening herself up, without once touching her lips to the water jug, so as to stick close to nanni's heels as he reaped and reaped; and now and again he would ask,-"what do you want, _gnà_ pina?" one evening she told him, it was while the men were sleeping in the threshing-floor, weary of the long day's work and the dogs were howling through the vast black campagna,-"i want you! you are as handsome as the sun and as sweet as honey; i want you!" "but i want your daughter--i want the young calf," said nanni, laughing at his own joke. _la lupa_ thrust her hands into the masses of her hair, scratching her temples, without saying a word, and went off and was not seen again in the harvest field. but the following october she saw nanni again at the time when they were pressing the oil, because he worked near her house, and the rattle of the press kept her awake all night. "take a bag of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me." nanni was shoveling the olives into the hopper and shouting "ohi" to the mule to keep it going. "do you want my daughter maricchia?" demanded _gnà_ pina. "what dowry will you give with your daughter maricchia?" replied nanni. "she has her father's things, and besides i will give her my house; it will be enough for me if you'll let me have a corner in the kitchen to spread out a mattress in." "if that is so, we can talk about it at christmas," said nanni. nanni was all grease and dirt from the olives put to fermenting, and maricchia would not have him on any account; but her mother grabbed her by the hair as they stood in front of the hearth and hissed through her set teeth,-"if you don't take him, i'll kill you." _la lupa_ looked ill, and the people remarked: "when the devil was old the devil a monk would be." she no longer went wandering about; she stood no more at her doorway looking out with those eyes as of one possessed. her son-in-law, when she fixed those eyes on his face, always began to laugh, and would pull out his cloth talisman, with its effigy of the madonna, to cross himself with. maricchia stayed at home to nurse her children, and her mother went out to work in the fields with the men, just like a man,--to weed, to dig, to guide the animals, to dress the vines, whether it were during the greek-levant winds[13] of january, or during the august sirocco, when mules let their heads droop, and men sleep prone on their bellies under the shadow of the north wall. [13] north-east. in that time between vespers and nones, when, according to the saying, no good woman is seen going about, _gnà_ pina was the only living creature to be seen wandering across the campagna, over the fiery hot stones of the narrow streets, among the parched stubble of the wide, wide fields that stretched away into the burning haze toward cloudy etna, where the sky hangs heavy on the horizon. "wake up!" said _la lupa_ to nanni, who was asleep in the ditch next the dusty harvest-field, with his head on his arms. "wake up, for i've brought you some wine to cool your throat." nanni opened his eyes, half awake, and saw her sitting up straight and pale before him, with her swelling breast, and her eyes as black as coal, and drew back waving his arms,-"no! a good woman does not go about between vespers and nones," groaned nanni, thrusting his face in amongst the dried weeds of the ditch as far as he could, and putting his fingers into his hair. "go away! get you gone! and don't you come to the threshing-floor any more." she turned and went away,--_la lupa_,--knotting up her splendid tresses again, looking down steadily as she made her way among the hot stubble, with her eyes black as coal. but she did go back to the threshing-floor, and nanni no longer reproached her; and when she failed to come, in that hour between vespers and nones, he went, and with perspiration on his brow, waited for her at the top of the white deserted footpath, but afterwards he would thrust his hands through his hair, and every time he would say, "go away! go away! don't come to the threshing-floor again." maricchia wept night and day, and she looked into her mother's face with eyes blazing with tears and jealousy, like a _lupachiotta_, a young wolf herself, every time that she saw her coming back from the fields, silent and pale. "vile! _scellerata!_" she would say, "vile mamma." "hold your tongue!" "thief! thief!" "hold your tongue!" "i'll go to the _brigadiere_!"[14] [14] brigadiere is the station or the commandant of the detachment of the carabaneers in a small town. and she actually went with her infants in her arms, without a sign of fear, and without shedding a tear, like a crazy woman, because now she passionately loved that husband whom she had been forced to marry, greasy and dirty as he was from the olives set to fermenting. the _brigadiere_ summoned nanni, and threatened him with the galleys and the gallows. nanni began to weep, and pull his hair; he denied nothing, did not try to justify himself. "the temptation was too much," said he, "'twas the temptation of hell." he flung himself at the _brigadiere's_ feet, begging him to send him to the galleys. "for mercy's sake, _signor brigadiere_, take me out of this hell! have me shot! send me to prison! don't let me see her ever again! never again!" "no," replied _la lupa_, to the _brigadiere's_ question. "i kept a corner of the kitchen to sleep in when i gave him my house as my daughter's dowry. the house is mine. i do not intend to go away." shortly after, nanni was kicked in the chest by a mule, and was like to die; but the priest refused to bring him the holy unction unless _la lupa_ was out of the house. _la lupa_ went away, and her son-in-law was then permitted to pass away like a good christian; he confessed and partook of the sacrament with such signs of penitence and contrition that all the neighbors and inquisitive visitors wept as they surrounded the dying man's bed. and it would have been better for him if he had died then and there, before the devil had a chance to return to tempt him, and take possession of him, mind and body, when he got well again. "let me be!" he said to _la lupa_; "for mercy's sake, leave me in peace! i have seen death with my own eyes! poor maricchia is in despair. now the whole region knows about it! if i don't see you, it's better for you and better for me." and he would rather have put his eyes out, than see _la lupa's_, for when hers were fastened on him, they made him lose soul and body. he did not know what to do to overcome the enchantment. he paid for masses to be sung for the souls in purgatory, and he went for aid to the priest and the _brigadiere_. at easter he went to confession, and as a penance, publicly stood on the flint stones of the holy ground in front of the church, putting out six handbreadths of tongue, and then, when _la lupa_ returned to tempt him,-"see here," said he, "don't you come on the threshing-floor again, because if you do come to seek me again, as sure as god exists, i'll kill you." "all right, kill me!" replied _la lupa_. "it makes no difference to me; but i can not live without you." when he saw her afar off coming through the green corn field, he left off pruning the vines, and went and got his axe from the elm. _la lupa_ saw him coming to meet her, with his face pale and his eyes rolling wildly, with the axe shining in the sun; but she did not hesitate an instant, did not look away. she went straight forward with her hands full of bunches of red poppies, and devouring him with those black eyes of hers. "ah! a curse on your soul!" stammered nanni. the story of the st. joseph's ass. [illustration: the death of the st. joseph's ass.] the story of the st. joseph's ass. they had bought it at the fair of buccheri when it was still a young colt, and if it caught sight of a she ass, it would run to it and try to nurse; for this reason, it had got blows and kicks on its rump, and it was all in vain for them to shout "_arricca_"--get up--to it. _compare_ neli, when he saw how lively and obstinate it was, and how it licked its nostrils when the blows fell, and how it kept wagging its ears, said,-"that's the one for me." and he went straight up to the proprietor, with his hand in his pocket on thirty-five _lire_. "the colt is handsome," said the proprietor, "and is worth more than thirty-five _lire_. no matter if it has a white and black skin like a magpie. there, i'll show you its mother; we keep her over yonder in that little grove, because the colt's all the time wanting to nurse. you shall see what a pretty dark hide it's got! why, she does more work for me than a mule would, and has given me more colts than she has hairs on her back. my conscience! i don't know where this colt got its magpie coat. but it is well built, i tell you. even men aren't judged by their moustaches. look, what a chest! and what thick, solid legs! see how it holds its ears. an ass that holds its ears up like that can be put in a cart or to a plow as you please, and it will carry four bushels of corn better than a mule, i swear it will--by all the saints. just feel that tail--strong enough to hold up you and all your kith and kin." _compare_ neli knew that as well as the other, but he wasn't dunce enough to say so, and he stood with his hand in his pocket, shrugging his shoulders and making grimaces while the proprietor of the colt made it turn round before them. "huh!" grunted _compare_ neli, "with a skin like that, it looks like saint joseph's ass. animals of that color are always _vigliacche_,[15] and when you ride them about, people laugh in your face. am i going to be made a laughing stock for a saint joseph's ass?" [15] cowardly, ridiculous, vile. it was the _padrone's_ turn to turn his back on him in a passion, screaming that some people didn't know a good animal when they saw one, and if they hadn't any money to buy with, they'd better not come to the fair, and waste good christian's time--on a saint's day, too. _compare_ neli let him fume away, and he went off with his brother, who pulled the sleeve of his jacket, and whispered in his ear, that if he was going to throw away his money on that good-for-nothing animal he would deserve to be kicked. while the _padrone_ pretended to be shelling some young beans, holding the halter between his legs, _compare_ neli, not really losing sight of the saint joseph's ass, went off on a tour of inspection among the mules and horses, now and again stopping to criticise or even haggle over the price of this one or of that among the better animals; but he did not open his hand, which still clasped safely in his pocket the thirty-five _lire_ as if it were going to buy half the fair. but his brother kept telling him in a whisper, pointing to the ass, which they called saint joseph's,-"that's the one for us." the ass's mistress, every once in a while, came over to her husband to see how business was progressing, and when she saw him sitting with the halter in his hand, she said,-"isn't the madonna going to send a purchaser for the foal, to-day?" and the husband would always reply in these terms,-"none yet! one's been here bargaining, and he liked it. but he objected to the price, and went off again with the money in his pocket. there he is, over yonder with the white cap, beyond that flock of sheep. he hasn't bought anything yet; that means, he'll be back again." the woman was about to squat down on a couple of stones near her foal, to see whether it would be sold or not. but her husband said to her,-"off with you. if they see you are waiting, they won't finish the bargain." meantime the foal was nosing about between the legs of several she-asses that were passing by. it wanted to nurse, for it was half starved. it was just opening its mouth to bray when the _padrone_ reduced it to silence by a shower of blows because they had not wanted it. "it's still there," said _compare_ neli in his brother's ear, pretending to turn round and look for something. "if we wait till the ave maria, we may be able to get it for five _lire_ cheaper than the price that we offered." the may sunshine was warm so that gradually amid all the noise and bustle of the fair a great silence followed throughout the whole field, as if no one were there: then it was that the mistress of the young ass came to her husband again and said: "i wouldn't hold out for five _lire_ more or less, for to-night we have not enough to buy our supper and you know well that the foal will eat his head off in a month if he remains on our hands." "if you don't go off," replied her husband, "i'll give you a kick that you'll remember." * * * * * thus passed the hours at the fair; but of all those who passed in front of the saint joseph's ass not one stopped to look at it, and that, too, though the _padrone_ had chosen the most humble place near the animals of small value, so that with its magpie skin it might not be compared with the beautiful bay mules and the sleek horses! some one like _compare_ neli was wanted to buy his saint joseph's ass, at the sight of which every one at the fair was laughing. the colt, after such a long waiting in the sun, let his head and ears hang down; his _padrone_ went and squatted on the stones, with his hands also hanging between his knees and the halter in his hands, gazing at the long shadows that began to be cast across the plain from the sun, which was preparing to set, and at the legs of all those animals that had not as yet found purchasers. just then _compare_ neli and his brother, and a friend of theirs whom they had picked up for the occasion, came sauntering by, with their noses in the air; but the owner of the young ass turned his head aside so as not to seem to be on the look out for them. and _compare_ neli's friend, squinting up his eyes, remarked as if the idea had just occurred to him: "o, see that saint joseph's ass! why don't you buy that one, _compare_ neli?" "i bargained it this morning; but he asks too much for it. besides, i should be the laughing stock of the town if i were seen with that black and white beast. you see no one has had a thought of buying it so far." "that's so, but the color makes no difference in the use that you make of one." and turning to the _padrone_ he asked,-"how much must we pay for that saint joseph's ass of yours?" the mistress of the saint joseph's ass, seeing that the business was on once more, had quietly approached, with her hands clasped under her apron. "don't speak to me of it," cried _compare_ neli making off across the field. "don't speak of it again, i don't want to hear a word." "if you don't want it, let it be," replied the _padrone_. "if he does not take it, some one else will. 'a sad wretch is he who has nothing left to sell after the fair.'" "and i will be heard, _santo diavolone_!" screamed the friend. "can't i be permitted to have my say?" and he ran and caught _compare_ neli by the jacket, then he came back and whispered something in the _padrone's_ ear as the man was about to return home with his young ass, and he flung his arm round his neck, murmuring,-"look here! five _lire_ more or less, and if you don't sell it to-day you won't find another blunderhead like my _compare_ to buy a beast, which between you and me, isn't worth a cigar!" he also embraced the young ass's mistress, whispered in her ear to win her to his way of thinking. but she shrugged her shoulders and replied with stern face,-"'tis my husband's business: i don't mix myself in it. but if he lets it go for less than forty _lire_ he is a dunce, and that's what i say. it cost us more than that." "this morning i was crazy when i offered him thirty-five _lire_," resumed _compare_ neli. "has he found any other purchaser even at that price? i reckon not. in the whole fair there aren't more than four scabby rams and the saint joseph's ass. i'll give thirty _lire_ if he'll take it." "take it," softly whispered the young ass's mistress to her husband, and the tears came into her eyes. "we haven't made enough this evening to buy our supper, and turiddu has the fever again; he'll have to have quinine." "_santo diavolone!_" screamed her husband, "if you don't get away from here i'll give you a taste of this halter." "thirty-two and a half, there now!" cried the friend at last, giving him a powerful shake to the collar. "neither you nor i! this time my advice ought to hold, by all the saints in paradise! and i don't even ask for a glass of wine. don't you see the sun is set? what is the use of you both holding out any longer?" and he snatched the halter from the _padrone's_ hand, while, at the same time, _compare_ neli with an oath took out of his pocket his closed fist clutching the thirty-five _lire_, and gave them to the man without looking at them as if they took his liver with them. the friend retired to one side with the mistress of the young ass to count over the money on a rock, while the _padrone_ went off to another part of the fair like a colt, cursing and beating himself with his fists. but when he was at last rejoined by his wife, who was carefully recounting the money in her handkerchief, he demanded,-"have you got it?" "yes, the whole of it; praised be san gaetano![16] now i'll go to the apothecary's." [16] the especial saint of the provident. "i got the best of them! i'd have let them have the beast for twenty _lire_; asses of that color are _vigliacchi_--vile." and _compare_ neli, as he got behind the ass to drive it off, said,-"as god exists i robbed him of the colt! the color makes no difference. see what solid legs, _compare_! that beast is worth forty _lire_ with one's eyes shut." "if it had not been for me," returned the friend, "you would not have struck the bargain. here are still two _lire_ and a half of your money. and if you don't object we will go and have a drink to the health of the ass!" now the colt needed to have its health in order to repay the thirty-two and a half _lire_ which had been paid for it, and the straw which it ate. meanwhile it was contented to frisk behind _compare_ neli, trying to bite his new _padrone's_ coat tails, and making no ado because it was leaving forever the stall where it had been sheltered by its mother's side, free to rub its nose on the edge of the manger, or to gambol and cut up capers, butting with the ram or going to rub the pig's back in its pen. and the _padrone_, who was still again counting over the money in her handkerchief before the apothecary's counter, had on her side no regrets, although she had assisted at the birth of the foal with its black and white skin, as shiny as silk, and which could not at first stand up on its legs, but lay in the warm sun in the court-yard while all the grass which had made it grow so big and strong had passed through her hands! the only person who missed the foal was its mother, who stretched out her neck toward the entrance of the stall and brayed. but when her udder was no longer painfully distended with the milk, she also forgot about the foal. "now you will see," said _compare_ neli, "that this ass will carry four bushels of corn better than a mule, for me." and at harvest time he was set to threshing. at the threshing, the colt, fastened by the neck, in a row with other animals--worn out mules, decrepit horses, paced over the sheaves, from morning till night, so that when it was brought back to the stable, he was so tired that he had no desire to bite at the heap of straw where they put him up in the shade when the wind blew, while the peasants did their winnowing with shouts of "_viva maria!_" then he let his nose hang down and drooped his pendent ears, like a full-fledged ass with eyes dulled, as if he were weary of gazing across over that vast plain, smoking here and there with the dust of the threshing-floors, and he seemed made for nothing else than to die of thirst and enforced treading on sheaves. at eventide, it was sent to the village with the saddle-bags filled full, and the _padrone's_ boy followed, to prick it in the withers, along the hedges lining the road, that seemed alive with the chattering of the tomtits, and the odor of the catnip and rosemary; and the ass would gladly have snatched a mouthful, if they had not always kept it on the go, until at last, the blood ran to its legs and they had to take it to the farrier; but this did not trouble the _padrone_, because the harvest was good, and the young ass had earned its cost,--his thirty-two _lire_ and a half. the _padrone_ said,-"now, the work has worn him out, but if i could sell him for twenty _lire_, i should still have made a good thing out of him." the only person who had a fondness for the young ass was the boy who made it trot over the road on the way from the threshing-floor. and he felt badly when the farrier burnt its legs with red-hot irons, so that the young ass squirmed and flung its tail into the air, and pricked up its ears, and when it ran across the field of the fair, and it tried to break loose from the twisted rope which they fastened to its lip, and it rolled its eyes with the agony, as if it were undergoing torture, when the farrier's apprentice came to change the hot irons, red as fire, and the skin smoked and sizzled, like fish in a frying-pan. but _compare_ neli cried to his boy,-"you beast! what are you weeping for? now that he is played out, and since the harvest has been a good one, we'll sell him and buy a mule, and that will be better." boys do not understand some things, and after the young ass was sold to _massaro_ cirino, of licodiana, _compare_ neli's son used to visit it in the stall, and to caress its face and neck, and the ass would turn round its head, and snuff as if it had become attached to him, while, as a general thing, asses are made to be tied wherever their _padrone_ may see fit to tie them, and change their lot as they change their stall. _massaro_ cirino, of licodiana, had paid a very small price for the saint joseph's ass, because it still bore the scars on its pastern, and _compare_ neli's wife, when she saw the poor beast go by with its new master, said,-"that beast was our mascot. that black and white skin brought joy to the threshing-floor, and now the profits are going from bad to worse, for we have had to sell the mule, too." * * * * * _massaro_ cirino had yoked the ass to the plow, together with an old mare which matched it like a stone in a ring, and drew her brave furrow all day long, for miles and miles, from the time the lark began to sing in the clear morning sky, till, with quick and hasty flights, and melancholy chirping, the robin red-breasts ran to hide behind the naked bushes, trembling with cold under the mist that rose like a sea. only, as the ass was smaller than the mare, a cushion of hay was put over the saddle under the yoke, and it had hard work to break up the frozen clods, by dint of chafed shoulders. "it'll help spare the mare, who's getting old," said _massaro_ cirino. "it's got a heart as broad and big as the plain of catania, that saint joseph's ass has! and you would not think it!" and he added, turning to his wife, who had followed him, wrapped in a mantellina, penuriously scattering the seed,-"if anything should happen to it--heaven forefend--we are ruined with the prospects before us." the woman looked forward to the prospects of crops in the rocky, desolate, little field, with its white and cracked soil, so long had it been since the rain fell, and all the water it got came in the form of mist and fog, of the kind that spoils the seed, and when it was time to dig up the ground, it was so yellow and hard, that you would call it the very beard of the devil, as if it had been burnt with sulphur matches! "in spite of the crop which i put in," mourned _massaro_ cirino, pulling off his doublet, "why, that ass has worked himself to death like a stupid mule. that ass is under a curse!" his wife had a lump in her throat at the sight of the parched field, and she replied with tears rolling from her eyes,-"the ass had nothing to do with the failure. it brought a good crop to _compare_ neli. but we are unfortunate." so the saint joseph's ass changed masters once more, when _massaro_ cirino returned from the field with the sickle over his shoulder, it being useless even to try to reap that year, although the images of the saints had been stuck into bamboo sticks all over the ground for protection, and two _tarì_[17] had been paid to the priest for his blessing. [17] a _tarì_ is one-thirtieth of an _onza_. "it's the devil that we want rather than the saints," said _massaro_ cirino, irreverently, when he saw all those stalks standing up like crests, which even the ass refused to touch, and he spat up towards that turquoise-colored sky, so relentlessly cloudless. it was then that _compare_ luciano, the carter, meeting _massaro_ cirino, as he was driving back the ass with empty saddlebags, asked,-"what'll you take for that saint joseph's ass?" "anything you'll give me! cursed be he and the saint who made him!" replied _massaro_ cirino. "now we haven't any more bread to eat, or fodder to give the beast." "i'll give you fifteen _lire_ for it, seeing that you are ruined, but the ass isn't worth so much, for it won't last out more than six months! see how thin it is!" "you might have got more than that," grumbled _massaro_ cirino's wife, after the bargain was settled. "_compare_ luciano's mule's dead, and he hadn't money enough to buy another. now if he hadn't bought our saint joseph's ass, he wouldn't have known what to do with his cart and harnesses; you'll see that ass'll be a fortune to him." the ass was set to work drawing the cart, but the shafts of it were much too high for it, and brought all the weight on its shoulders, so that it would not have survived even six months; for it went limping along over the hilly roads under _compare_ luciano's cruel cudgelling, who tried to put a little spirit into it; and when it went down hill, the case was even worse, for then the whole load rested on it, and pushed against it so hard that it had to make its back like an arch to hold the cart back, and push with those poor scarred legs, and people would laugh to see it, and when it fell it would have taken all the angels of paradise to get it to its feet again. but _compare_ luciano knew that he carried three quintals of merchandise more than a mule, and the load would bring him five _tarì_ a quintal. "every day that saint joseph's ass lives," said he, "i make fifteen _tarì_, and his keep costs me less than a mule's would." every time the people who happened to be sauntering along behind the cart saw the poor beast, which could hardly put one leg in front of the other, arching its spine and panting heavily, with discouragement clouding its eye, they would say,-"block the wheel with a rock, and let that poor creature have a chance to get its breath." but _compare_ luciano would reply,-"if i let him do as he pleases, i should not make my fifteen _tarì_ a day. his hide's got to pay for mine. when he can't do any more work i shall sell him to the lime dealer; for the beast is good enough for his work. i tell you there's no truth at all in the idea that st. joseph's asses are _vigliacchi_. besides, i got this one of _massaro_ cirino for a piece of bread, after he was 'poverished." * * * * * in this way the saint joseph's ass passed into the hands of the lime-dealer, who already possessed a score or more of asses all lean and moribund, which carried his sacks of plaster, and picked up a wretched living by means of the mouthfuls of weeds that they could snatch as they went along the road. the lime-dealer objected to the saint joseph's ass because it was covered with worse scars than his other beasts, with its legs seared by the hot iron, and the skin on its chest worn off by the poitrel, and the withers raw by the chafing of the plow, and the knees barked by constant falls, and then that pelt of black and white seemed to him so inharmonious among his other brown-skinned animals. "that makes no difference," replied _compare_ luciano. "besides, it will serve to distinguish your asses at a distance." but he deducted two _tarì_ from the seven _lire_ that he had asked, so as to bring the business to a settlement. now the saint joseph's ass would not have been recognized even by the _padrona_ who had been present when it was born, so greatly had it changed as it stumbled along with its nose to the ground and its ears curled over like an umbrella under the lime-dealer's heavy sacks, twitching its flanks under the blows of the youth who drove the caravan. but then the _padrona_ herself was changed at that time, what with the bad harvests they had gathered and the hunger from which she had suffered, and the fevers which they had all contracted in the low lands, she and her husband and her turiddu, while they had no money to buy any more quinine at the apothecary's and at the same time they had no more asses even of the saint joseph kind to sell for the small price of thirty-five _lire_! in winter, when there was little work and the wood for burning the lime was scarce, and to be had only at a distance, and the frozen paths hadn't a leaf on their hedges or a mouthful of stubble along by the icy gutters, life was still harder for those poor brutes, and the _padrone_ knew that in winter not half as much was eaten; so he used to buy a good stock of provisions in the spring. at night the drove remained in the open air near the lime-burners, and the brutes clustered together for protection against the cold. but those stars shining like swords through and through them in spite of their thick hides, and all those ulcer-eaten beasts shook and trembled in the cold as if they were human beings. but then there are many christians who are not better off, not having even such a ragged coat as that wrapt up in which the herd-boy slept before the furnace. near by there lived a poor widow in a dilapidated hut, more tumble-down by far than the lime-furnace, and through its roof the stars penetrated like swords, as if it were no roof at all, and the wind fluttered the wretched rags of her covering. at first she took in washing, but that was meagre pay, for the people thereabouts do their own washing, when they wash at all, and now that her little boy had grown she went about peddling wood in the village. no one had known her husband and no one knew where she got the wood that she sold; that was known only by her son, who went about picking it up here and there at the risk of getting shot by the _campieri_. "if you only had an ass!" the lime-dealer had said to her, hoping that he might dispose of that saint joseph's ass, which was good for nothing more, "then you could take down to the village much bigger fagots, now that your son is getting to be grown up." the poor woman had a few _lire_ in the knot of her handkerchief, and she let herself be persuaded into it by the lime-burner, because it is said that "old things go to destruction in the house of a fool." one thing at least was true: the poor saint joseph's ass had a more endurable existence at last, because the widow regarded it as a treasure by reason of the few _soldi_ that it had cost her, and she went out nights in search of straw and hay for it, and she kept it in her hut next her own bed because its vital heat was as good as a fire, and in this way one hand washed the other, as the proverb has it. the woman driving the ass loaded with a mountain of wood so that its ears could not be seen, built air-castles as she went, and her son ravaged the hedges, and risked his life in the borders of the woodlands to gather together his load, while both mother and son had an idea that they were going to become rich by that business, until, finally, the baron's _campiere_ caught the boy breaking off branches, and gave him a terrible beating. the doctor, for the price of curing the lad, devoured all the spare _soldi_ knotted in the handkerchief, the store of wood, and whatever else vendible she had,--and that was not much in all conscience,--so that the widow one night when her son was in a raging fever, with his face turned to the wall, and there was not a mouthful of bread in the house, went out, raging and talking to herself, as if she, too, had the fever, and she went to break off an almond-tree near by in such a way that it would not appear how it happened, and at dawn she loaded it on the ass to go and sell it. but the ass on the way up stumbled under the weight, and went down on its knees, just as saint joseph's ass knelt before the infant jesus, and would not get up again. "souls of the dead!" stammered the woman, "won't you carry this load of wood for me." and the passers-by pulled the ass's tail, and they bit its ears, so as to make it get up. "don't you see it's dying?" at last remarked a carter, and so at least the others let it alone, because the ass had the eye of a dead fish, a cold nose, and a shudder ran over its skin. the woman, meantime, thought of her son, who was delirious with fever, and a flushed face, and cried,-"now what shall we do,--what shall we do?" "if you will sell it, and all the wood on its back for five _tarì_, i'll give that much," said the carter who had an empty cart; and as the woman looked at it with squinting eyes, he added, "i'll only take the wood, for the ass isn't worth that--" and he gave a kick to the carcass, which sounded like a burst drum. the bereaved. the little girl appeared at the door, twisting the corner of her apron in her fingers, and said,-"here i am!" then, when no one paid any attention to her, she looked shyly first at one and then at another of the women who were kneading dough, and spoke again,-"they told me,--'go to _comare_ sidora.'" "come here, come here," cried _comare_ sidora, red as a tomato, as she stood in the back part of the bake-shop. "wait a moment, and i'll make you a nice cake." "it means they are bringing _comare_ nunzia the viaticum; they've sent the little girl away," observed the woman from lacodia. one of the women engaged in kneading the dough, turned her head, with her hands still at work in the trough, her arms bare to the elbow, and asked the little girl,-"how is your step-mother?" the child, not knowing the woman, looked at her with frightened eyes, and hanging her head, and nervously working at the ends of her apron, said, in a low voice, between her set teeth,-"she's in bed." "don't you see 'tis the sacrament," replied la licodiana. "now the neighbors have begun to scream at the door." "as soon as i finish kneading this dough," said _comare_ sidora, "i'll run over a moment to see if they have need of anything. _compare_ meno loses his right hand when this second wife of his dies." "some men have no luck with their wives, just as some are unfortunate with their mules. no sooner do they get 'em than they lose 'em. there's _comare_ angela." "yesterday evening," observed la licodiana, "i saw _compare_ meno at his door; he had come back from the vineyard before the ave marie, and was blowing his nose on his handkerchief." "but," suggested the woman who was kneading the dough, "he is a master hand at killing off his wives. in less than three years already two of _curátolo_[18] nino's daughters have been eaten up, one after the other! wait a little and you'll see the third go the same way, and all _curátolo_ nino's things wasted." [18] the manager of a farm, not a tenant. "is this little girl _comare_ nunzia's daughter, or his first wife's?" "she's his first wife's daughter. but this one has been just as kind to her as though she had been her own mamma, because the little orphan was her niece, you know." the child, hearing them speaking of herself, began to weep silently in a corner, thus relieving her bursting heart, which she had till then kept under control, by playing with her apron. "come here, come here," pursued _comare_ sidora. "the nice cake's all ready. there, there! don't cry; for your mamma's in paradise." the little girl then dried her eyes with her doubled fists, because she saw that _comare_ sidora was preparing to open the oven. "poor _comare_ nunzia!" said a neighbor, appearing at the door. "the gravediggers are on their way. they just passed by here." "heaven protect me! as i am under mary's grace!"[19] exclaimed the women, crossing themselves. [19] "_lontano sia! che son figlia di maria!_" _comare_ sidora took the cake out of the oven, brushed off the ashes, and handed it, smoking hot, to the little girl, who took it in her apron and walked away slowly, slowly, blowing on it as she went. "where are you going?" cried _comare_ sidora. "stay here! there's a black-faced _ba-bau_ at your house who carries folks off." the little orphan listened gravely, with wide-opened eyes. then she replied in the same obstinate drawl,-"i am going to carry it to my mamma." "your mamma is dead; stay here," said one of the neighbors. "eat your cake." then the little girl squatted down on the door-step, the image of sadness, holding her cake in her hand without offering to eat it. then suddenly seeing "_il babbo_" coming, she jumped up joyously and ran to meet him. _compare_ meno entered without saying a word, and sat down in a corner, with his hands dangling between his knees, with a long face, and his lips as white as paper; for since the day before, he had not put a morsel of food into his mouth because of his grief. he looked at the women as if to say,-"_poveretto me!_" seeing the black handkerchief around his neck, the women, with their hands still pasted with dough, made a circle round him and condoled with him in chorus. "don't speak of it to me, _comare_ sidora," he exclaimed, shaking his head, and heaving up his great shoulders. "this is a thorn that will never be pulled out of my heart. that woman was a real saint! i did not deserve her, saving your presence. only day before yesterday, when she was so sick, she got up to tend to the weaning colt, and she would not let me call in the doctor, or buy any medicine, either--so as to not waste any money. i sha'n't find another wife like her. no i sha'n't, i tell you. let me weep--i've good reason to." and he began to shake his head and to heave his shoulders as if his misfortune were a burden not to be borne. "as to getting another wife," said la licodiana, to encourage him, "all you've got to do is to look for one." "no! no!" asseverated _compare_ meno, with his head hung low, like a mule's. "such another wife is not to be had. this time i shall remain a widower. i tell you i shall." _comare_ sidora interrupted him,-"don't say foolish things like that. you must get another wife, if only for the sake of this little orphan girl; for otherwise, who will look out for her when you are out working? you wouldn't let her run in the streets, would you?" "then find me another wife like my last one! she would not wash herself, for fear of soiling the water; and at home, she served me better than a farm-hand--affectionate and faithful. why, she would not take even a handful of beans from the rack, or ever open her mouth to ask for anything. and beside, a fine dowry--things as good as gold. and i've got to give it all back because she had no children. at least, so the sacristan says, when he came with the holy water. and how kind she was to the little girl who reminded her of her poor sister. any other woman, except an aunt, would have cast an evil eye on her, the poor little orphan! "if you asked _curátolo_ nino for his third daughter, it would make things all right, both for the orphan and for the dowry," suggested la licodiana. "that's what i say. but don't speak of it to me, for now my mouth is bitter as gall." "i wouldn't talk about it now," said _comare_ sidora. "eat a bit of something, _compare_ meno. you are all tired out." "no! no!" returned _compare_ meno several times. "don't speak to me of eating, for i have a lump in my throat." _comare_ sidora placed before him on a stool fresh bread with ripe olives, a piece of sheep's-head cheese, and a jug of wine. and the poor clumsy fellow set to work nibbling at it, all the time grumbling, with a long face. "such bread as she made," he observed with a quaver in his voice, "no one else could ever make. just as if it were made of real meal. and with a handful of wild fennel, she would make a soup to lick your fingers over! now i shall have to buy bread at the shop of that thief, _mastro_ puddo; and as for hot soup, i sha'n't have any more, when i come home wet as a fresh-hatched chicken. and i shall have to go to bed with a cold stomach. only the other night, while i was watching with her, after i had been digging and grubbing all day on the hill, and caught myself snoring as i sat next the bed, so tired i was, the poor soul said to me: 'go and get a mouthful of something to eat. i left the soup to keep hot on the hearth.' and she was always thinking about my comfort, and about the house, and whatever was to be done, and this thing and that thing; and she could not come to an end of speaking or of giving her last directions, like one who is going off on a long journey, and i heard her constantly muttering between waking and sleeping. and how contentedly she went off to the other world! with the crucifix on her breast, and her hands folded over it. she has no need of masses and rosaries, saint that she was. money spent on the priest would be money thrown away." "world of tribulation!" exclaimed a neighbor. "_comare_ angela's ass is like to die of the colic." "but my misfortunes are heavier," ended _compare_ meno, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "no, don't make me eat any more, for the mouthfuls fall like lumps of lead into my stomach. you eat something, you poor innocent, for you don't understand what you've lost. now you have no one any longer to wash you and brush your hair. now you haven't a mamma any more to shelter you under her wings like a setting hen, and you are ruined, as i am. i found her for you, but a second stepmother like her you won't get, my daughter!" the child with bursting heart put up her lip again, and stuck her fists into her eyes. "no, you can't possibly get along alone," interposed _comare_ sidora. "you must find another wife for the sake of this poor little motherless girl, left in the midst of the street." "and how shall i get along? and my colt? and my house? and who'll look after the hens? let me weep, _comare_ sidora! it would have been better if i had died instead of that good soul." "hush, hush! you don't know what you are saying, and you don't know what a house without its head is!" "that is true," assented _compare_ meno, comforted. "just take example from poor _comare_ angela! first, her husband died; then her grown-up son, and now her ass is also dying." "the ass ought to be bled in the belly, if it has the colic," said _compare_ meno. "come, you know all about such things," suggested the neighbor. "do a work of charity for the sake of your wife's soul." _compare_ meno got up to go to _comare_ angela's, and the little orphan ran behind him like a chicken, now that she had no one else in the world. _comare_ sidora, good housewife that she was, called him back. "and the house? how have you left it, now that there is no one there to look after it?" "i locked the door, and besides cousin alfia lives opposite, and will keep an eye on it." neighbor angela's ass lay stretched out in the midst of the yard, with his muzzle cold and his ears hanging, every now and then kicking his four legs into the air whenever the colic made him draw in his sides like a pair of bellows. the widow crouching in front of him on the rocks, with her hands clenching her gray hair, and her eyes dry and despairing, was watching him, pale as a corpse. _compare_ meno manoeuvred round the animal, touching his ears, looking into his lifeless eyes, and when he saw that the blood was still oozing from the punctured vein under the belly, drop by drop, and coagulating in a black mass on his hairy skin, he remarked: "so you've had him bled, have you?" the widow fixed her dark eyes on his face without speaking, and nodded her "yes." "then there's nothing more to do," said _compare_ meno, and he continued to stare at the ass, which stretched itself out on the stones, stiffly, with its hair all rumpled, like a dead cat. "it is god's will, sister!" said he to comfort her. "we are ruined, both of us!" he had gone round by the widow's side and squatted down on the stones, with his little daughter between his knees, and both of them continued to gaze at the poor beast, which from time to time threshed the air with its legs as if it were in the agonies of death. _comare_ sidora, when she had got the bread safely out of the oven, also came into the yard with the cousin alfia, who had put on her new gown and wore her silk handkerchief on her head, all ready for a bit of gossip, and _comare_ sidora said to _compare_ meno, drawing him aside,-"_curátolo_ nino won't give you his third daughter, for at your house the women die off like flies, and he loses the dowry. and then la santa is too young, and there's the risk that she'd fill your house with children." "if only one could be sure of boys! but there's always the danger of girls coming. oh, i am so unfortunate!" "well, there's the cousin alfia. she is no longer young, and she has property,--the house and a bit of vineyard." _compare_ meno fixed his eyes on the cousin alfia, who with her arms a-kimbo was pretending to look at the ass, and then he said, "that's so! one might think of that. but i am so very unlucky!" _comare_ sidora interrupted him,-"think of those who are more unlucky than you are!" "no one is, i tell you. i shall never find another wife like her, i shall never be able to forget her, even if i married ten times. and this poor little orphan will never forget her, either." "calm yourself! you'll forget her fast enough. and the little girl will forget her, too. didn't she forget her own mother? but just look at poor neighbor angela, whose ass is dying, and she hasn't got anything else. she'll never be able to forget it." _comare_ alfia saw that it was a favorable moment for her to approach, and drawing a long face, she began to eulogize the dead woman. she had with her own hands helped to lay her out on the bier, and had put over her face a fine linen handkerchief, of which she had a goodly store, as may be imagined. then _compare_ meno, with his heart melting within him, turned to his neighbor angela, who was sitting motionless, as if she had been turned to stone. "i suppose you'll have the ass skinned won't you? at least get some money for his pelt." proofreaders philaster: or, love lies a bleeding. francis beaumont and john fletcher * * * * * _the scene being in_ cicilie. * * * * * persons represented in the play. _the_ king. philaster, _heir to the crown_. pharamond, _prince of_ spain. dion, _a lord_. cleremont } _noble gentlemen his_ thrasiline } _associates_. arethusa, _the king's daughter_. galatea, _a wise modest lady attending the princess_. megra, _a lascivious lady_. _an old wanton lady, or croan_. _another lady attending the princess_. eufrasia, _daughter of dion, but disguised like a page, and called bellario_. _an old captain_. _five citizens_. _a countrey fellow_. _two woodmen_. _the kings guard and train_. * * * * * actus primus. scena prima. _enter dion, cleremont, _and_ thrasiline. _cler_. here's not lords nor ladies. _dion_. credit me gentlemen, i wonder at it. they receiv'd strict charge from the king to attend here: besides it was boldly published, that no officer should forbid any gentlemen that desire to attend and hear. _cle_. can you guess the cause? _di_. sir, it is plain about the _spanish_ prince, that's come to marry our kingdoms heir, and be our soveraign. _thra_. many (that will seem to know much) say, she looks not on him like a maid in love. _di_. o sir, the multitude (that seldom know any thing but their own opinions) speak that they would have; but the prince, before his own approach, receiv'd so many confident messages from the state, that i think she's resolv'd to be rul'd. _cle_. sir, it is thought, with her he shall enjoy both these kingdoms of _cicilie_ and _calabria_. _di_. sir, it is (without controversie) so meant. but 'twill be a troublesome labour for him to enjoy both these kingdoms, with safetie, the right heir to one of them living, and living so vertuously, especially the people admiring the bravery of his mind, and lamenting his injuries. _cle_. who, philaster? _di_. yes, whose father we all know, was by our late king of _calabria_, unrighteously deposed from his fruitful _cicilie_. my self drew some blood in those wars, which i would give my hand to be washed from. _cle_. sir, my ignorance in state-policy, will not let me know why _philaster_ being heir to one of these kingdoms, the king should suffer him to walk abroad with such free liberty. _di_. sir, it seems your nature is more constant than to enquire after state news. but the king (of late) made a hazard of both the kingdoms, of _cicilie_ and his own, with offering but to imprison _philaster_. at which the city was in arms, not to be charm'd down by any state-order or proclamation, till they saw _philaster_ ride through the streets pleas'd, and without a guard; at which they threw their hats, and their arms from them; some to make bonefires, some to drink, all for his deliverance. which (wise men say) is the cause, the king labours to bring in the power of a foreign nation to aw his own with. [ _enter_ galatea, megra, _and a lady_. _thra_. see, the ladies, what's the first? _di_. a wise and modest gentlwoman that attends the princess. _cle_. the second? _di_. she is one that may stand still discreetly enough, and ill favour'dly dance her measure; simper when she is courted by her friend, and slight her husband. _cle_. the last? _di_. marry i think she is one whom the state keeps for the agents of our confederate princes: she'll cog and lie with a whole army before the league shall break: her name is common through the kingdom, and the trophies of her dishonour, advanced beyond _hercules_-pillars. she loves to try the several constitutions of mens bodies; and indeed has destroyed the worth of her own body, by making experiment upon it, for the good of the common-wealth. _cle_. she's a profitable member. _la_. peace, if you love me: you shall see these gentlemen stand their ground, and not court us. _gal_. what if they should? _meg_. what if they should? _la_. nay, let her alone; what if they should? why, if they should, i say, they were never abroad: what foreigner would do so? it writes them directly untravel'd. _gal_. why, what if they be? _meg_. what if they be? _la_. good madam let her go on; what if they be? why if they be i will justifie, they cannot maintain discourse with a judicious lady, nor make a leg, nor say excuse me. _gal_. ha, ha, ha. _la_. do you laugh madam? _di_. your desires upon you ladies. _la_. then you must sit beside us. _di_. i shall sit near you then lady. _la_. near me perhaps: but there's a lady indures no stranger; and to me you appear a very strange fellow. _meg_. me thinks he's not so strange, he would quickly be acquainted. _thra_. peace, the king. [ _enter_ king, pharamond, arethusa, _and train_. _king_. to give a stronger testimony of love than sickly promises (which commonly in princes find both birth and burial in one breath) we have drawn you worthy sir, to make your fair indearments to [our] daughter, and worthy services known to our subjects, now lov'd and wondered at. next, our intent, to plant you deeply, our immediate heir, both to our blood and kingdoms. for this lady, (the best part of your life, as you confirm me, and i believe) though her few years and sex yet teach her nothing but her fears and blushes, desires without desire, discourse and knowledge only of what her self is to her self, make her feel moderate health: and when she sleeps, in making no ill day, knows no ill dreams. think not (dear sir) these undivided parts, that must mould up a virgin, are put on to shew her so, as borrowed ornaments, to speak her perfect love to you, or add an artificial shadow to her nature: no sir; i boldly dare proclaim her, yet no woman. but woo her still, and think her modesty a sweeter mistress than the offer'd language of any dame, were she a queen whose eye speaks common loves and comforts to her servants. last, noble son, (for so i now must call you) what i have done thus publick, is not only to add a comfort in particular to you or me, but all; and to confirm the nobles, and the gentry of these kingdoms, by oath to your succession, which shall be within this month at most. _thra_. this will be hardly done. _cle_. it must be ill done, if it be done. _di_. when 'tis at best, 'twill be but half done, whilst so brave a gentleman's wrong'd and flung off. _thra_. i fear. _cle_. who does not? _di_. i fear not for my self, and yet i fear too: well, we shall see, we shall see: no more. _pha_. kissing your white hand (mistress) i take leave, to thank your royal father: and thus far, to be my own free trumpet. understand great king, and these your subjects, mine that must be, (for so deserving you have spoke me sir, and so deserving i dare speak my self) to what a person, of what eminence, ripe expectation of what faculties, manners and vertues you would wed your kingdoms? you in me have your wishes. oh this country, by more than all my hopes i hold it happy, in their dear memories that have been kings great and good, happy in yours, that is, and from you (as a chronicle to keep your noble name from eating age) do i opine myself most happy. gentlemen, believe me in a word, a princes word, there shall be nothing to make up a kingdom mighty, and flourishing, defenced, fear'd, equall to be commanded and obey'd, but through the travels of my life i'le find it, and tye it to this country. and i vow my reign shall be so easie to the subject, that every man shall be his prince himself, and his own law (yet i his prince and law.) and dearest lady, to your dearest self (dear, in the choice of him, whose name and lustre must make you more and mightier) let me say, you are the blessed'st living; for sweet princess, you shall enjoy a man of men, to be your servant; you shall make him yours, for whom great queens must die. _thra_. miraculous. _cle_. this speech calls him _spaniard_, being nothing but a large inventory of his own commendations. [_enter_ philaster. _di_. i wonder what's his price? for certainly he'll tell himself he has so prais'd his shape: but here comes one more worthy those large speeches, than the large speaker of them? let me be swallowed quick, if i can find, in all the anatomy of yon mans vertues, one sinew sound enough to promise for him, he shall be constable. by this sun, he'll ne're make king unless it be for trifles, in my poor judgment. _phi_. right noble sir, as low as my obedience, and with a heart as loyal as my knee, i beg your favour. _king_. rise, you have it sir. _di_. mark but the king how pale he looks with fear. oh! this same whorson conscience, how it jades us! _king_. speak your intents sir. _phi_. shall i speak 'um freely? be still my royal soveraign. _king_. as a subject we give you freedom. _di_. now it heats. _phi_. then thus i turn my language to you prince, you foreign man. ne're stare nor put on wonder, for you must indure me, and you shall. this earth you tread upon (a dowry as you hope with this fair princess, whose memory i bow to) was not left by my dead father (oh, i had a father) to your inheritance, and i up and living, having my self about me and my sword, the souls of all my name, and memories, these arms and some few friends, besides the gods, to part so calmly with it, and sit still, and say i might have been! i tell thee _pharamond_, when thou art king, look i be dead and rotten, and my name ashes; for, hear me _pharamond_, this very ground thou goest on, this fat earth, my fathers friends made fertile with their faiths, before that day of shame, shall gape and swallow thee and thy nation, like a hungry grave, into her hidden bowels: prince, it shall; by _nemesis_ it shall. _pha_. he's mad beyond cure, mad. _di_. here's a fellow has some fire in's veins: the outlandish prince looks like a tooth-drawer. _phi_. sir, prince of poppingjayes, i'le make it well appear to you i am not mad. _king_. you displease us. you are too bold. _phi_. no sir, i am too tame, too much a turtle, a thing born without passion, a faint shadow, that every drunken cloud sails over, and makes nothing. _king_. i do not fancy this, call our physicians: sure he is somewhat tainted. _thra_. i do not think 'twill prove so. _di_. h'as given him a general purge already, for all the right he has, and now he means to let him blood: be constant gentlemen; by these hilts i'le run his hazard, although i run my name out of the kingdom. _cle_. peace, we are one soul. _pha_. what you have seen in me, to stir offence, i cannot find, unless it be this lady offer'd into mine arms, with the succession, which i must keep though it hath pleas'd your fury to mutiny within you; without disputing your _genealogies_, or taking knowledge whose branch you are. the king will leave it me; and i dare make it mine; you have your answer. _phi_. if thou wert sole inheritor to him, that made the world his; and couldst see no sun shine upon any but thine: were _pharamond_ as truly valiant, as i feel him cold, and ring'd among the choicest of his friends, such as would blush to talk such serious follies, or back such bellied commendations, and from this present, spight of all these bugs, you should hear further from me. _king_. sir, you wrong the prince: i gave you not this freedom to brave our best friends, you deserve our frown: go to, be better temper'd. _phi_. it must be sir, when i am nobler us'd. _gal_. ladyes, this would have been a pattern of succession, had he ne're met this mischief. by my life, he is the worthiest the true name of man this day within my knowledge. _meg_. i cannot tell what you may call your knowledge, but the other is the man set in mine eye; oh! 'tis a prince of wax. _gal_. a dog it is. _king_. _philaster_, tell me, the injuries you aim at in your riddles. _phi_. if you had my eyes sir, and sufferance, my griefs upon you and my broken fortunes, my want's great, and now nought but hopes and fears, my wrongs would make ill riddles to be laught at. dare you be still my king and right me not? _king_. give me your wrongs in private. [_they whisper_. _phi_. take them, and ease me of a load would bow strong atlas. _di_. he dares not stand the shock. _di_. i cannot blame, him, there's danger in't. every man in this age, has not a soul of crystal for all men to read their actions through: mens hearts and faces are so far asunder, that they hold no intelligence. do but view yon stranger well, and you shall see a feaver through all his bravery, and feel him shake like a true tenant; if he give not back his crown again, upon the report of an elder gun, i have no augury. _king_. go to: be more your self, as you respect our favour: you'i stir us else: sir, i must have you know that y'are and shall be at our pleasure, what fashion we will put upon you: smooth your brow, or by the gods. _phi_. i am dead sir, y'are my fate: it was not i said i was not wrong'd: i carry all about me, my weak stars led me to all my weak fortunes. who dares in all this presence speak (that is but man of flesh and may be mortal) tell me i do not most intirely love this prince, and honour his full vertues! _king_. sure he's possest. _phi_. yes, with my fathers spirit; it's here o king! a dangerous spirit; now he tells me king, i was a kings heir, bids me be a king, and whispers to me, these be all my subjects. 'tis strange, he will not let me sleep, but dives into my fancy, and there gives me shapes that kneel, and do me service, cry me king: but i'le suppress him, he's a factious spirit, and will undo me: noble sir, [your] hand, i am your servant. _king_. away, i do not like this: i'le make you tamer, or i'le dispossess you both of life and spirit: for this time i pardon your wild speech, without so much as your imprisonment. [_ex_. king, pha. _and_ are. _di_. i thank you sir, you dare not for the people. _gal_. ladies, what think you now of this brave fellow? _meg_. a pretty talking fellow, hot at hand; but eye yon stranger, is not he a fine compleat gentleman? o these strangers, i do affect them strangely: they do the rarest home things, and please the fullest! as i live, could love all the nation over and over for his sake. _gal_. pride comfort your poor head-piece lady: 'tis a weak one, and had need of a night-cap. _di_. see how his fancy labours, has he not spoke home, and bravely? what a dangerous train did he give fire to! how he shook the king, made his soul melt within him, and his blood run into whay! it stood upon his brow, like a cold winter dew. _phi_. gentlemen, you have no suit to me? i am no minion: you stand (methinks) like men that would be courtiers, if you could well be fiatter'd at a price, not to undo your children: y'are all honest: go get you home again, and make your country a vertuous court, to which your great ones may, in their diseased age, retire, and live recluse. _cle_. how do you worthy sir? _phi_. well, very well; and so well, that if the king please, i find i may live many years. _di_. the king must please, whilst we know what you are, and who you are, your wrongs and [injuries]: shrink not, worthy sir, but add your father to you: in whose name, we'll waken all the gods, and conjure up the rods of vengeance, the abused people, who like to raging torrents shall swell high, and so begirt the dens of these male-dragons, that through the strongest safety, they shall beg for mercy at your swords point. _phi_. friends, no more, our years may he corrupted: 'tis an age we dare not trust our wills to: do you love me? _thra_. do we love heaven and honour? _phi_. my lord _dion_, you had a vertuous gentlewoman call'd you father; is she yet alive? _di_. most honour'd sir, she is: and for the penance but of an idle dream, has undertook a tedious pilgrimage. [ _enter a_ lady. _phi_. is it to me, or any of these gentlemen you come? _la_. to you, brave lord; the princess would intreat your present company. _phi_. the princess send for me! y'are mistaken. _la_. if you be call'd _philaster_, 'tis to you. _phi_. kiss her hand, and say i will attend her. _di_. do you know what you do? _phi_. yes, go to see a woman. _cle_. but do you weigh the danger you are in? _phi_. danger in a sweet face? by _jupiter_ i must not fear a woman. _thra_. but are you sure it was the princess sent? it may be some foul train to catch your life. _phi_. i do not think it gentlemen: she's noble, her eye may shoot me dead, or those true red and white friends in her face may steal my soul out: there's all the danger in't: but be what may, her single name hath arm'd me. [_ex_. phil. _di_. go on: and be as truly happy as thou art fearless: come gentlemen, let's make our friends acquainted, lest the king prove false. [_ex. gentlemen_. _enter_ arethusa _and a_ lady. _are_. comes he not? _la_. madam? _are_. will _philaster_ come? _la_. dear madam, you were wont to credit me at first. _are_. but didst thou tell me so? i am forgetful, and my womans strength is so o'recharg'd with danger like to grow about my marriage that these under-things dare not abide in such a troubled sea: how look't he, when he told thee he would come? _la_. why, well. _are_. and not a little fearful? _la_. fear madam? sure he knows not what it is. _are_. you are all of his faction; the whole court is bold in praise of him, whilst i may live neglected: and do noble things, as fools in strife throw gold into the sea, drown'd in the doing: but i know he fears. _la_. fear? madam (me thought) his looks hid more of love than fear. _are_. of love? to whom? to you? did you deliver those plain words i sent, with such a winning gesture, and quick look that you have caught him? _la_. madam, i mean to you. _are_. of love to me? alas! thy ignorance lets thee not see the crosses of our births: nature, that loves not to be questioned why she did this, or that, but has her ends, and knows she does well; never gave the world two things so opposite, so contrary, as he and i am: if a bowl of blood drawn from this arm of mine, would poyson thee, a draught of his would cure thee. of love to me? _la_. madam, i think i hear him. _are_. bring him in: you gods that would not have your dooms withstood, whose holy wisdoms at this time it is, to make the passion of a feeble maid the way unto your justice, i obey. [ _enter_ phil. _la_. here is my lord _philaster_. _are_. oh! 'tis well: withdraw your self. _phi_. madam, your messenger made me believe, you wisht to speak with me. _are_. 'tis true _philaster,_ but the words are such, i have to say, and do so ill beseem the mouth of woman, that i wish them said, and yet am loth to speak them. have you known that i have ought detracted from your worth? have i in person wrong'd you? or have set my baser instruments to throw disgrace upon your vertues? _phi_. never madam you. _are_. why then should you in such a publick place, injure a princess and a scandal lay upon my fortunes, fam'd to be so great: calling a great part of my dowry in question. _phi_. madam, this truth which i shall speak, will be foolish: but for your fair and vertuous self, i could afford my self to have no right to any thing you wish'd. _are. philaster,_ know i must enjoy these kingdoms. _phi_. madam, both? _are_. both or i die: by fate i die _philaster,_ if i not calmly may enjoy them both. _phi_. i would do much to save that noble life: yet would be loth to have posterity find in our stories, that _philaster_ gave his right unto a scepter, and a crown, to save a ladies longing. _are_. nay then hear: i must, and will have them, and more. _phi_. what more? _are_. or lose that little life the gods prepared, to trouble this poor piece of earth withall. _phi_. madam, what more? _are_. turn then away thy face. _phi_. no. _are_. do. _phi_. i cannot endure it: turn away my face? i never yet saw enemy that lookt so dreadful, but that i thought my self as great a basilisk as he; or spake so horribly, but that i thought my tongue bore thunder underneath, as much as his: nor beast that i could turn from: shall i then begin to fear sweet sounds? a ladies voice, whom i do love? say you would have my life, why, i will give it you; for it is of me a thing so loath'd, and unto you that ask of so poor use, that i shall make no price if you intreat, i will unmov'dly hear. _are_. yet for my sake a little bend thy looks. _phi_. i do. _are_. then know i must have them and thee. _phi_. and me? _are_. thy love: without which, all the land discovered yet, will serve me for no use, but to be buried in. _phi_. is't possible? _are_. with it, it were too little to bestow on thee: now, though thy breath doth strike me dead (which know it may) i have unript my breast. _phi_. madam, you are too full of noble thoughts, to lay a train for this contemned life, which you may have for asking: to suspect were base, where i deserve no ill: love you! by all my hopes i do, above my life: but how this passion should proceed from you so violently, would amaze a man, that would be jealous. _are_. another soul into my body shot, could not have fill'd me with more strength and spirit, than this thy breath: but spend not hasty time, in seeking how i came thus: 'tis the gods, the gods, that make me so; and sure our love will be the nobler, and the better blest, in that the secret justice of the gods is mingled with it. let us leave and kiss, lest some unwelcome guest should fall betwixt us, and we should part without it. _phi_. 'twill be ill i should abide here long. _are_. 'tis true, and worse you should come often: how shall we devise to hold intelligence? that our true lovers, on any new occasion may agree, what path is best to tread? _phi_. i have a boy sent by the gods, i hope to this intent, not yet seen in the court; hunting the buck, i found him sitting by a fountain side, of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst, and paid the nymph again as much in tears; a garland lay him by, made by himself, of many several flowers, bred in the bay, stuck in that mystick order, that the rareness delighted me: but ever when he turned his tender eyes upon 'um, he would weep, as if he meant to make 'um grow again. seeing such pretty helpless innocence dwell in his face, i ask'd him all his story; he told me that his parents gentle dyed, leaving him to the mercy of the fields, which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs, which did not stop their courses: and the sun, which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light, then took he up his garland and did shew, what every flower as country people hold, did signifie: and how all ordered thus, exprest his grief: and to my thoughts did read the prettiest lecture of his country art that could be wisht: so that, me thought, i could have studied it. i gladly entertain'd him, who was glad to follow; and have got the trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy, that ever master kept: him will i send to wait on you, and bear our hidden love. [ _enter_ lady. _are_. 'tis well, no more. _la_. madam, the prince is come to do his service. _are_. what will you do _philaster_ with your self? _phi_. why, that which all the gods have appointed out for me. _are_. dear, hide thy self. bring in the prince. _phi_. hide me from _pharamond!_ when thunder speaks, which is the voice of _jove,_ though i do reverence, yet i hide me not; and shall a stranger prince have leave to brag unto a forreign nation, that he made _philaster_ hide himself? _are_. he cannot know it. _phi_. though it should sleep for ever to the world, it is a simple sin to hide my self, which will for ever on my conscience lie. _are_. then good _philaster,_ give him scope and way in what he saies: for he is apt to speak what you are loth to hear: for my sake do. _phi_. i will. [ _enter_ pharamond. _pha_. my princely mistress, as true lovers ought, i come to kiss these fair hands; and to shew in outward ceremonies, the dear love writ in my heart. _phi_. if i shall have an answer no directlier, i am gone. _pha_. to what would he have an answer? _are_. to his claim unto the kingdom. _pha_. sirrah, i forbear you before the king. _phi_. good sir, do so still, i would not talk with you. _pha_. but now the time is fitter, do but offer to make mention of right to any kingdom, though it be scarce habitable. _phi_. good sir, let me go. _pha_. and by my sword. _phi_. peace _pharamond:_ if thou-_are_. leave us philaster. _phi_. i have done. _pha_. you are gone, by heaven i'le fetch you back. _phi_. you shall not need. _pha_. what now? _phi_. know pharamond, i loath to brawl with such a blast as thou, who art nought but a valiant voice: but if thou shalt provoke me further, men shall say thou wert, and not lament it. _pha_. do you slight my greatness so, and in the chamber of the princess! _phi_. it is a place to which i must confess i owe a reverence: but wer't the church, i, at the altar, there's no place so safe, where thou dar'st injure me, but i dare kill thee: and for your greatness; know sir, i can grasp you, and your greatness thus, thus into nothing: give not a word, not a word back: farewell. [_exit_ phi. _pha_. 'tis an odd fellow madam, we must stop his mouth with some office, when we are married. _are_. you were best make him your controuler. _pha_. i think he would discharge it well. but madam, i hope our hearts are knit; and yet so slow the ceremonies of state are, that 'twill be long before our hands be so: if then you please, being agreed in heart, let us not wait for dreaming for me, but take a little stoln delights, and so prevent our joyes to come. _are_. if you dare speak such thoughts, i must withdraw in honour. [_exit_ are. _pha_. the constitution of my body will never hold out till the wedding; i must seek elsewhere. [_exit_ pha. _actus secundus. scena prima_. _enter_ philaster _and_ bellario. _phi_. and thou shalt find her honourable boy, full of regard unto thy tender youth, for thine own modesty; and for my sake, apter to give, than thou wilt be to ask, i, or deserve. _bell_. sir, you did take me up when i was nothing; and only yet am something, by being yours; you trusted me unknown; and that which you are apt to conster a simple innocence in me, perhaps, might have been craft; the cunning of a boy hardened in lies and theft; yet ventur'd you, to part my miseries and me: for which, i never can expect to serve a lady that bears more honour in her breast than you. _phi_. but boy, it will prefer thee; thou art young, and bearest a childish overflowing love to them that clap thy cheeks, and speak thee fair yet: but when thy judgment comes to rule those passions, thou wilt remember best those careful friends that plac'd thee in the noblest way of life; she is a princess i prefer thee to. _bell_. in that small time that i have seen the world, i never knew a man hasty to part with a servant he thought trusty; i remember my father would prefer the boys he kept to greater men than he, but did it not, till they were grown too sawcy for himself. _phi_. why gentle boy, i find no fault at all in thy behaviour. _bell_. sir, if i have made a fault of ignorance, instruct my youth; i shall be willing, if not apt to learn; age and experience will adorn my mind with larger knowledge: and if i have done a wilful fault, think me not past all hope for once; what master holds so strict a hand over his boy, that he will part with him without one warning? let me be corrected to break my stubbornness if it be so, rather than turn me off, and i shall mend. _phi_. thy love doth plead so prettily to stay, that (trust me) i could weep to part with thee. alas! i do not turn thee off; thou knowest it is my business that doth call thee hence, and when thou art with her thou dwel'st with me: think so, and 'tis so; and when time is full, that thou hast well discharged this heavy trust, laid on so weak a one, i will again with joy receive thee; as i live, i will; nay weep not, gentle boy; 'tis more than time thou didst attend the princess. _bell_. i am gone; but since i am to part with you my lord, and none knows whether i shall live to do more service for you; take this little prayer; heaven bless your loves, your fights, all your designs. may sick men, if they have your wish, be well; and heavens hate those you curse, though i be one. [_exit_. _phi_. the love of boyes unto their lords is strange, i have read wonders of it; yet this boy for my sake, (if a man may judge by looks, and speech) would out-do story. i may see a day to pay him for his loyalty. [_exit_ phi. _enter_ pharamond. _pha_. why should these ladies stay so long? they must come this way; i know the queen imployes 'em not, for the reverend mother sent me word they would all be for the garden. if they should all prove honest now, i were in a fair taking; i was never so long without sport in my life, and in my conscience 'tis not my fault: oh, for our country ladies! here's one boulted, i'le hound at her. _enter_ galatea. _gal_. your grace! _pha_. shall i not be a trouble? _gal_. not to me sir. _pha_. nay, nay, you are too quick; by this sweet hand. _gal_. you'l be forsworn sir, 'tis but an old glove. if you will talk at distance, i am for you: but good prince, be not bawdy, nor do not brag; these two i bar, and then i think, i shall have sence enough to answer all the weighty _apothegmes_ your royal blood shall manage. _pha_. dear lady, can you love? _gal_. dear, prince, how dear! i ne're cost you a coach yet, nor put you to the dear repentance of a banquet; here's no scarlet sir, to blush the sin out it was given for: this wyer mine own hair covers: and this face has been so far from being dear to any, that it ne're cost penny painting: and for the rest of my poor wardrobe, such as you see, it leaves no hand behind it, to make the jealous mercers wife curse our good doings. _pha_. you mistake me lady. _gal_. lord, i do so; would you or i could help it. _pha_. do ladies of this country use to give no more respect to men of my full being? _gal_. full being! i understand you not, unless your grace means growing to fatness; and then your only remedy (upon my knowledge, prince) is in a morning a cup of neat white-wine brew'd with _carduus_, then fast till supper, about eight you may eat; use exercise, and keep a sparrow-hawk, you can shoot in a tiller; but of all, your grace must flie _phlebotomie_, fresh pork, conger, and clarified whay; they are all dullers of the vital spirits. _pha_. lady, you talk of nothing all this while. _gal_. 'tis very true sir, i talk of you. _pha_. this is a crafty wench, i like her wit well, 'twill be rare to stir up a leaden appetite, she's a _danae_, and must be courted in a showr of gold. madam, look here, all these and more, than-_gal_. what have you there, my lord? gold? now, as i live tis fair gold; you would have silver for it to play with the pages; you could not have taken me in a worse time; but if you have present use my lord, i'le send my man with silver and keep your gold for you. _pha_. lady, lady. _gal_. she's coming sir behind, will take white mony. yet for all this i'le match ye. [_exit_ gal. _behind the hangings_. _pha_. if there be two such more in this kingdom, and near the court, we may even hang up our harps: ten such _camphire_ constitutions as this, would call the golden age again in question, and teach the old way for every ill fac't husband to get his own children, and what a mischief that will breed, let all consider. [ _enter_ megra. here's another; if she be of the same last, the devil shall pluck her on. many fair mornings, lady. _meg_. as many mornings bring as many dayes, fair, sweet, and hopeful to your grace. _pha_. she gives good words yet; sure this wench is free. if your more serious business do not call you, let me hold quarter with you, we'll take an hour out quickly. _meg_. what would your grace talk of? _pha_. of some such pretty subject as your self. i'le go no further than your eye, or lip, there's theme enough for one man for an age. _meg_. sir, they stand right, and my lips are yet even, smooth, young enough, ripe enough, red enough, or my glass wrongs me. _pha_. o they are two twin'd cherries died in blushes, which those fair suns above, with their bright beams reflect upon, and ripen: sweetest beauty, bow down those branches, that the longing taste, of the faint looker on, may meet those blessings, and taste and live. _meg_. o delicate sweet prince; she that hath snow enough about her heart, to take the wanton spring of ten such lines off, may be a nun without probation. sir, you have in such neat poetry, gathered a kiss, that if i had but five lines of that number, such pretty begging blanks, i should commend your fore-head, or your cheeks, and kiss you too. _pha_. do it in prose; you cannot miss it madam. _meg_. i shall, i shall. _pha_. by my life you shall not. i'le prompt you first: can you do it now? _meg_. methinks 'tis easie, now i ha' don't before; but yet i should stick at it. _pha_. stick till to morrow. i'le ne'r part you sweetest. but we lose time, can you love me? _meg_. love you my lord? how would you have me love you? _pha_. i'le teach you in a short sentence, cause i will not load your memory, that is all; love me, and lie with me. _meg_. was it lie with you that you said? 'tis impossible. _pha_. not to a willing mind, that will endeavour; if i do not teach you to do it as easily in one night, as you'l go to bed, i'le lose my royal blood for't. _meg_. why prince, you have a lady of your own, that yet wants teaching. _pha_. i'le sooner teach a mare the old measures, than teach her any thing belonging to the function; she's afraid to lie with her self, if she have but any masculine imaginations about her; i know when we are married, i must ravish her. _meg_. by my honour, that's a foul fault indeed, but time and your good help will wear it out sir. _pha_. and for any other i see, excepting your dear self, dearest lady, i had rather be sir _tim _the schoolmaster, and leap a dairy-maid. _meg_. has your grace seen the court-star _galatea_? _pha_. out upon her; she's as cold of her favour as an apoplex: she sail'd by but now. _meg_. and how do you hold her wit sir? _pha_. i hold her wit? the strength of all the guard cannot hold it, if they were tied to it, she would blow 'em out of the kingdom, they talk of _jupiter_, he's but a squib cracker to her: look well about you, and you may find a tongue-bolt. but speak sweet lady, shall i be freely welcome? _meg_. whither? _pha_. to your bed; if you mistrust my faith, you do me the unnoblest wrong. _meg_. i dare not prince, i dare not. _pha_. make your own conditions, my purse shall seal 'em, and what you dare imagine you can want, i'le furnish you withal: give two hours to your thoughts every morning about it. come, i know you are bashful, speak in my ear, will you be mine? keep this, and with it me: soon i will visit you. _meg_. my lord, my chamber's most unsafe, but when 'tis night i'le find some means to slip into your lodging: till when-_pha_. till when, this, and my heart go with thee. [_ex. several ways_. _enter _galatea _from behind the hangings_. _gal_. oh thou pernicious petticoat prince, are these your vertues? well, if i do not lay a train to blow your sport up, i am no woman; and lady towsabel i'le fit you for't. [_exit_ gal. _enter _arethusa _and a_ lady. _are_. where's the boy? _la_. within madam. _are_. gave you him gold to buy him cloaths? _la_. i did. _are_. and has he don't? _la_. yes madam. _are_. 'tis a pretty sad talking lad, is it not? askt you his name? _la_. no madam. [ _enter _galatea. _are_. o you are welcome, what good news? _gal_. as good as any one can tell your grace, that saies she hath done that you would have wish'd. _are_. hast thou discovered? _gal_. i have strained a point of modesty for you. _are_. i prethee how? _gal_. in listning after bawdery; i see, let a lady live never so modestly, she shall be sure to find a lawful time, to harken after bawdery; your prince, brave _pharamond_, was so hot on't. _are_. with whom? _gal_. why, with the lady i suspect: i can tell the time and place. _are_. o when, and where? _gal_. to night, his lodging. _are_. run thy self into the presence, mingle there again with other ladies, leave the rest to me: if destiny (to whom we dare not say, why thou didst this) have not decreed it so in lasting leaves (whose smallest characters were never altered:) yet, this match shall break. where's the boy? _la_. here madam. [ _enter _bellario. _are_. sir, you are sad to change your service, is't not so? _bell_. madam, i have not chang'd; i wait on you, to do him service. _are_. thou disclaim'st in me; tell me thy name. _bell_. _bellario_. _are_. thou canst sing, and play? _bell_. if grief will give me leave, madam, i can. _are_. alas! what kind of grief can thy years know? hadst thou a curst master, when thou went'st to school? thou art not capable of other grief; thy brows and cheeks are smooth as waters be, when no [b]reath troubles them: believe me boy, care seeks out wrinkled brows, and hollow eyes, and builds himself caves to abide in them. come sir, tell me truly, does your lord love me? _bell_. love madam? i know not what it is. _are_. canst thou know grief, and never yet knew'st love? thou art deceiv'd boy; does he speak of me as if he wish'd me well? _bell_. if it be love, to forget all respect of his own friends, in thinking of your face; if it be love to sit cross arm'd and sigh away the day, mingled with starts, crying your name as loud and hastily, as men i'the streets do fire: if it be love to weep himself away, when he but hears of any lady dead, or kill'd, because it might have been your chance; if when he goes to rest (which will not be) 'twixt every prayer he saies, to name you once as others drop a bead, be to be in love; then madam, i dare swear he loves you. _are_. o y'are a cunning boy, and taught to lie, for your lords credit; but thou knowest, a lie, that bears this sound, is welcomer to me, than any truth that saies he loves me not. lead the way boy: do you attend me too; 'tis thy lords business hasts me thus; away. [_exeunt_. _enter _dion, cleremont, thrasilin, megra _and _galatea. _di_. come ladies, shall we talk a round? as men do walk a mile, women should take an hour after supper: 'tis their exercise. _gal_. tis late. _meg_. 'tis all my eyes will do to lead me to my bed. _gal_. i fear they are so heavy, you'l scarce find the way to your lodging with 'em to night. [ enter _pharamond_. _thra_. the prince. _pha_. not a bed ladies? y'are good sitters up; what think you of a pleasant dream to last till morning? _meg_. i should choose, my lord, a pleasing wake before it. [_enter _arethusa _and _bellario. _are_. 'tis well my lord y'are courting of ladies. is't not late gentlemen? _cle_. yes madam. _are_. wait you there. [_exit _arethusa. _meg_. she's jealous, as i live; look you my lord, the princess has a _hilas_, an _adonis_. _pha_. his form is angel-like. _meg_. why this is he, must, when you are wed, sit by your pillow, like young _apollo_, with his hand and voice, binding your thoughts in sleep; the princess does provide him for you, and for her self. _pha_. i find no musick in these boys. _meg_. nor i. they can do little, and that small they do, they have not wit to hide. _di_. serves he the princess? _thra_. yes. _di_. 'tis a sweet boy, how brave she keeps him! _pha_. ladies all good rest; i mean to kill a buck to morrow morning, ere y'ave done your dreams. _meg_. all happiness attend your grace, gentlemen good rest, come shall we to bed? _gal_. yes, all good night. [_ex_. gal. _and _meg. _di_. may your dreams be true to you; what shall we do gallants? 'tis late, the king is up still, see, he comes, a guard along with him. [_enter _king, arethusa _and _guard. _king_. look your intelligence be true. _are_. upon my life it is: and i do hope, your highness will not tye me to a man, that in the heat of wooing throws me off, and takes another. _di_. what should this mean? _king_. if it be true, that lady had been better have embrac'd cureless diseases; get you to your rest, [_ex_. are. _and _bel. you shall be righted: gentlemen draw near, we shall imploy you: is young _pharamond_ come to his lodging? _di_. i saw him enter there. _king_. haste some of you, and cunningly discover, if megra be in her lodging. _cle_. sir, she parted hence but now with other ladies. _king_. if she be there, we shall not need to make a vain discovery of our suspicion. you gods i see, that who unrighteously holds wealth or state from others, shall be curst, in that, which meaner men are blest withall: ages to come shall know no male of him left to inherit, and his name shall be blotted from earth; if he have any child, it shall be crossly matched: the gods themselves shall sow wild strife betwixt her lord and her, yet, if it be your wills, forgive the sin i have committed, let it not fall upon this understanding child of mine, she has not broke your laws; but how can i, look to be heard of gods, that must be just, praying upon the ground i hold by wrong? [ _enter _dion. _di_. sir, i have asked, and her women swear she is within, but they i think are bawds; i told 'em i must speak with her: they laught, and said their lady lay speechless. i said, my business was important; they said their lady was about it: i grew hot, and cryed my business was a matter that concern'd life and death; they answered, so was sleeping, at which their lady was; i urg'd again, she had scarce time to be so since last i saw her; they smil'd again, and seem'd to instruct me, that sleeping was nothing but lying down and winking: answers more direct i could not get: in short sir, i think she is not there. _king_. 'tis then no time to dally: you o'th' guard, wait at the back door of the princes lodging, and see that none pass thence upon your lives. knock gentlemen: knock loud: louder yet: what, has their pleasure taken off their hearing? i'le break your meditations: knock again: not yet? i do not think he sleeps, having this larum by him; once more, _pharamond_, prince. [pharamond _above_. _pha_. what sawcy groom knocks at this dead of night? where be our waiters? by my vexed soul, he meets his death, that meets me, for this boldness. _k_. prince, you wrong your thoughts, we are your friends, come down. _pha_. the king? _king_. the same sir, come down, we have cause of present counsel with you. _pha_. if your grace please to use me, i'le attend you to your chamber. [pha. _below_. _king_. no, 'tis too late prince, i'le make bold with yours. _pha_. i have some private reasons to my self, makes me unmannerly, and say you cannot; nay, press not forward gentlemen, he must come through my life, that comes here. _king_. sir be resolv'd, i must and will come. enter. _pha_. i will not be dishonour'd; he that enters, enters upon his death; sir, 'tis a sign you make no stranger of me, to bring these renegados to my chamber, at these unseason'd hours. _king_. why do you chafe your self so? you are not wrong'd, nor shall be; onely i'le search your lodging, for some cause to our self known: enter i say. _pha_. i say no. [_meg. above_. _meg_. let 'em enter prince, let 'em enter, i am up, and ready; i know their business, 'tis the poor breaking of a ladies honour, they hunt so hotly after; let 'em enjoy it. you have your business gentlemen, i lay here. o my lord the king, this is not noble in you to make publick the weakness of a woman. _king_. come down. _meg_. i dare my lord; your whootings and your clamors, your private whispers, and your broad fleerings, can no more vex my soul, than this base carriage; but i have vengeance yet in store for some, shall in the most contempt you can have of me, be joy and nourishment. _king_. will you come down? _meg_. yes, to laugh at your worst: but i shall wrong you, if my skill fail me not. _king_. sir, i must dearly chide you for this looseness, you have wrong'd a worthy lady; but no more, conduct him to my lodging, and to bed. _cle_. get him another wench, and you bring him to bed in deed. _di_. 'tis strange a man cannot ride a stagg or two, to breath himself, without a warrant: if this geer hold, that lodgings be search'd thus, pray heaven we may lie with our own wives in safety, that they be not by some trick of state mistaken. [ _enter with_ megra. _king_. now lady of honour, where's your honour now? no man can fit your palat, but the prince. thou most ill shrowded rottenness; thou piece made by a painter and a pothecary; thou troubled sea of lust; thou wilderness, inhabited by wild thoughts; thou swoln cloud of infection; them ripe mine of all diseases; thou all sin, all hell, and last, all devils, tell me, had you none to pull on with your courtesies, but he that must be mine, and wrong my daughter? by all the gods, all these, and all the pages, and all the court shall hoot thee through the court, fling rotten oranges, make ribald rimes, and sear thy name with candles upon walls: do you laugh lady _venus_? _meg_. faith sir, you must pardon me; i cannot chuse but laugh to see you merry. if you do this, o king; nay, if you dare do it; by all these gods you swore by, and as many more of my own; i will have fellows, and such fellows in it, as shall make noble mirth; the princess, your dear daughter, shall stand by me on walls, and sung in ballads, any thing: urge me no more, i know her, and her haunts, her layes, leaps, and outlayes, and will discover all; nay will dishonour her. i know the boy she keeps, a handsome boy; about eighteen: know what she does with him, where, and when. come sir, you put me to a womans madness, the glory of a fury; and if i do not do it to the height? _king_. what boy is this she raves at? _meg_. alas! good minded prince, you know not these things? i am loth to reveal 'em. keep this fault as you would keep your health from the hot air of the corrupted people, or by heaven, i will not fall alone: what i have known, shall be as publick as a print: all tongues shall speak it as they do the language they are born in, as free and commonly; i'le set it like a prodigious star for all to gaze at, and so high and glowing, that other kingdoms far and forreign shall read it there, nay travel with it, till they find no tongue to make it more, nor no more people; and then behold the fall of your fair princess. _king_. has she a boy? _cle_. so please your grace i have seen a boy wait on her, a fair boy. _king_. go get you to your quarter: for this time i'le study to forget you. _meg_. do you study to forget me, and i'le study to forget you. [_ex_. king, meg. _and_ guard. _cle_. why here's a male spirit for _hercules_, if ever there be nine worthies of women, this wench shall ride astride, and be their captain. _di_. sure she hath a garrison of devils in her tongue, she uttereth such balls of wild-fire. she has so netled the king, that all the doctors in the country will scarce cure him. that boy was a strange found out antidote to cure her infection: that boy, that princess boy: that brave, chast, vertuous ladies boy: and a fair boy, a well spoken boy: all these considered, can make nothing else--but there i leave you gentlemen. _thra_. nay we'l go wander with you. [_exeunt_. _actus tertius. scena prima_. _enter _cle. di. _and _thra. _cle_. nay doubtless 'tis true. _di_. i, and 'tis the gods that rais'd this punishment to scourge the king with his own issue: is it not a shame for us, that should write noble in the land; for us, that should be freemen, to behold a man, that is the bravery of his age, _philaster_, prest down from his royal right, by this regardless king; and only look, and see the scepter ready to be cast into the hands of that lascivious lady, that lives in lust with a smooth boy, now to be married to yon strange prince, who, but that people please to let him be a prince, is born a slave, in that which should be his most noble part, his mind? _thra_. that man that would not stir with you, to aid _philaster_, let the gods forget, that such a creature walks upon the earth. _cle_. _philaster_ is too backward in't himself; the gentry do await it, and the people against their nature are all bent for him, and like a field of standing corn, that's mov'd with a stiff gale, their heads bow all one way. _di_. the only cause that draws _philaster_ back from this attempt, is the fair princess love, which he admires and we can now confute. _thra_. perhaps he'l not believe it. _di_. why gentlemen, 'tis without question so. _cle_. i 'tis past speech, she lives dishonestly. but how shall we, if he be curious, work upon his faith? _thra_. we all are satisfied within our selves. _di_. since it is true, and tends to his own good, i'le make this new report to be my knowledge, i'le say i know it, nay, i'le swear i saw it. _cle_. it will be best. _thra_. 'twill move him. [ _enter_ philaster. _di_. here he comes. good morrow to your honour, we have spent some time in seeking you. _phi_. my worthy friends, you that can keep your memories to know your friend in miseries, and cannot frown on men disgrac'd for vertue: a good day attend you all. what service may i do worthy your acceptation? _di_. my good lord, we come to urge that vertue which we know lives in your breast, forth, rise, and make a head, the nobles, and the people are all dull'd with this usurping king: and not a man that ever heard the word, or knew such a thing as vertue, but will second your attempts. _phi_. how honourable is this love in you to me that have deserv'd none? know my friends (you that were born to shame your poor _philaster_, with too much courtesie) i could afford to melt my self in thanks; but my designs are not yet ripe, suffice it, that ere long i shall imploy your loves: but yet the time is short of what i would. _di_. the time is fuller sir, than you expect; that which hereafter will not perhaps be reach'd by violence, may now be caught; as for the king, you know the people have long hated him; but now the princess, whom they lov'd. _phi_. why, what of her? _di_. is loath'd as much as he. _phi_. by what strange means? _di_. she's known a whore. _phi_. thou lyest. _di_. my lord-_phi_. thou lyest, [_offers to draw and is held_. and thou shalt feel it; i had thought thy mind had been of honour; thus to rob a lady of her good name, is an infectious sin, not to be pardon'd; be it false as hell, 'twill never be redeem'd, if it be sown amongst the people, fruitful to increase all evil they shall hear. let me alone, that i may cut off falshood, whilst it springs. set hills on hills betwixt me and the man that utters this, and i will scale them all, and from the utmost top fall on his neck, like thunder from a cloud. _di_. this is most strange; sure he does love her. _phi_. i do love fair truth: she is my mistress, and who injures her, draws vengeance from me sirs, let go my arms. _thra_. nay, good my lord be patient. _cle_. sir, remember this is your honour'd friend, that comes to do his service, and will shew you why he utter'd this. _phi_. i ask you pardon sir, my zeal to truth made me unmannerly: should i have heard dishonour spoke of you, behind your back untruly, i had been as much distemper'd, and enrag'd as now. _di_. but this my lord is truth. _phi_. o say not so, good sir forbear to say so, 'tis the truth that all womenkind is false; urge it no more, it is impossible; why should you think the princess light? _di_. why, she was taken at it. _phi_. 'tis false, o heaven 'tis false: it cannot be, can it? speak gentlemen, for love of truth speak; is't possible? can women all be damn'd? _di_. why no, my lord. _phi_. why then it cannot be. _di_. and she was taken with her boy. _phi_. what boy? _di_. a page, a boy that serves her. _phi_. oh good gods, a little boy? _di_. i, know you him my lord? _phi_. hell and sin know him? sir, you are deceiv'd; i'le reason it a little coldly with you; if she were lustful, would she take a boy, that knows not yet desire? she would have one should meet her thoughts and knows the sin he acts, which is the great delight of wickedness; you are abus'd, and so is she, and i. _di_. how you my lord? _phi_. why all the world's abus'd in an unjust report. _di_. oh noble sir your vertues cannot look into the subtil thoughts of woman. in short my lord, i took them: i my self. _phi_. now all the devils thou didst flie from my rage, would thou hadst ta'ne devils ingendring plagues: when thou didst take them, hide thee from my eyes, would thou hadst taken thunder on thy breast, when thou didst take them, or been strucken dumb for ever: that this foul deed might have slept in silence. _thra_. have you known him so ill temper'd? _cle_. never before. _phi_. the winds that are let loose, from the four several corners of the earth, and spread themselves all over sea and land, kiss not a chaste one. what friend bears a sword to run me through? _di_. why, my lord, are you so mov'd at this? _phi_. when any falls from vertue i am distract, i have an interest in't. _di_. but good my lord recal your self, and think what's best to be done. _phi_. i thank you. i will do it; please you to leave me, i'le consider of it: tomorrow i will find your lodging forth, and give you answer the readiest way. _di_. all the gods direct you. _thra_. he was extream impatient. _cle_. it was his vertue and his noble mind. [_exeunt_ di. cle. _and_ thra. _phi_. i had forgot to ask him where he took them, i'le follow him. o that i had a sea within my breast, to quench the fire i feel; more circumstances will but fan this fire; it more afflicts me now, to know by whom this deed is done, than simply that 'tis done: and he that tells me this is honourable, as far from lies, as she is far from truth. o that like beasts, we could not grieve our selves, with that we see not; bulls and rams will fight, to keep their females standing in their sight; but take 'em from them, and you take at once their spleens away; and they will fall again unto their pastures, growing fresh and fat, and taste the waters of the springs as sweet, as 'twas before, finding no start in sleep. but miserable man; see, see you gods, [_enter_ bellario. he walks still; and the face you let him wear when he was innocent, is still the same, not blasted; is this justice? do you mean to intrap mortality, that you allow treason so smooth a brow? i cannot now think he is guilty. _bell_. health to you my lord; the princess doth commend her love, her life, and this unto you. _phi_. oh _bellario_, now i perceive she loves me, she does shew it in loving thee my boy, she has made thee brave. _bell_. my lord she has attired me past my wish, past my desert, more fit for her attendant, though far unfit for me, who do attend. _phi_. thou art grown courtly boy. o let all women that love black deeds, learn to dissemble here, here, by this paper she does write to me, as if her heart were mines of adamant to all the world besides, but unto me, a maiden snow that melted with my looks. tell me my boy how doth the princess use thee? for i shall guess her love to me by that. _bell_. scarce like her servant, but as if i were something allied to her; or had preserv'd her life three times by my fidelity. as mothers fond do use their only sons; as i'de use one, that's left unto my trust, for whom my life should pay, if he met harm, so she does use me. _phi_. why, this is wondrous well: but what kind language does she feed thee with? _bell_. why, she does tell me, she will trust my youth with all her loving secrets; and does call me her pretty servant, bids me weep no more for leaving you: shee'l see my services regarded; and such words of that soft strain, that i am nearer weeping when she ends than ere she spake. _phi_. this is much better still. _bell_. are you ill my lord? _phi_. ill? no _bellario_. _bell_. me thinks your words fall not from off your tongue so evenly, nor is there in your looks that quietness, that i was wont to see. _phi_. thou art deceiv'd boy: and she stroakes thy head? _bell_. yes. _phi_. and she does clap thy cheeks? _bell_. she does my lord. _phi_. and she does kiss thee boy? ha! _bell_. how my lord? _phi_. she kisses thee? _bell_. not so my lord. _phi_. come, come, i know she does. _bell_. no by my life. _phi_. why then she does not love me; come, she does, i had her do it; i charg'd her by all charms of love between us, by the hope of peace we should enjoy, to yield thee all delights naked, as to her bed: i took her oath thou should'st enjoy her: tell me gentle boy, is she not paralleless? is not her breath sweet as _arabian_ winds, when fruits are ripe? are not her breasts two liquid ivory balls? is she not all a lasting mine of joy? _bell_. i, now i see why my disturbed thoughts were so perplext. when first i went to her, my heart held augury; you are abus'd, some villain has abus'd you; i do see whereto you tend; fall rocks upon his head, that put this to you; 'tis some subtil train, to bring that noble frame of yours to nought. _phi_. thou think'st i will be angry with thee; come thou shalt know all my drift, i hate her more, than i love happiness, and plac'd thee there, to pry with narrow eyes into her deeds; hast thou discover'd? is she fain to lust, as i would wish her? speak some comfort to me. _bell_. my lord, you did mistake the boy you sent: had she the lust of sparrows, or of goats; had she a sin that way, hid from the world, beyond the name of lust, i would not aid her base desires; but what i came to know as servant to her, i would not reveal, to make my life last ages. _phi_. oh my heart; this is a salve worse than the main disease. tell me thy thoughts; for i will know the least that dwells within thee, or will rip thy heart to know it; i will see thy thoughts as plain, as i do know thy face. _bell_. why, so you do. she is (for ought i know) by all the gods, as chaste as ice; but were she foul as hell and i did know it, thus; the breath of kings, the points of swords, tortures nor bulls of brass, should draw it from me. _phi_. then 'tis no time to dally with thee; i will take thy life, for i do hate thee; i could curse thee now. _bell_. if you do hate you could not curse me worse; the gods have not a punishment in store greater for me, than is your hate. _phi_. fie, fie, so young and so dissembling; tell me when and where thou di[d]st enjoy her, or let plagues fall on me, if i destroy thee not. _bell_. heaven knows i never did: and when i lie to save my life, may i live long and loath'd. hew me asunder, and whilst i can think i'le love those pieces you have cut away, better than those that grow: and kiss these limbs, because you made 'em so. _phi_. fearest thou not death? can boys contemn that? _bell_. oh, what boy is he can be content to live to be a man that sees the best of men thus passionate, thus without reason? _phi_. oh, but thou dost not know what 'tis to die. _bell_. yes, i do know my lord; 'tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep, a quiet resting from all jealousie; a thing we all pursue; i know besides, it is but giving over of a game that must be lost. _phi_. but there are pains, false boy, for perjur'd souls; think but on these, and then thy heart will melt, and thou wilt utter all. _bell_. may they fall all upon me whilst i live, if i be perjur'd, or have ever thought of that you charge me with; if i be false, send me to suffer in those punishments you speak of; kill me. _phi_. oh, what should i do? why, who can but believe him? he does swear so earnestly, that if it were not true, the gods would not endure him. rise _bellario_, thy protestations are so deep; and thou dost look so truly, when thou utterest them, that though i [know] 'em false, as were my hopes, i cannot urge thee further; but thou wert to blame to injure me, for i must love thy honest looks, and take no revenge upon thy tender youth; a love from me to thee is firm, what ere thou dost: it troubles me that i have call'd the blood out of thy cheeks, that did so well become thee: but good boy let me not see thee more; something is done, that will distract me, that will make me mad, if i behold thee: if thou tender'st me, let me not see thee. _bell_. i will fly as far as there is morning, ere i give distaste to that most honour'd mind. but through these tears shed at my hopeless parting, i can see a world of treason practis'd upon you, and her and me. farewel for evermore; if you shall hear, that sorrow struck me dead, and after find me loyal, let there be a tear shed from you in my memorie, and i shall rest at peace. [_exit_ bel. _phi_. blessing be with thee, what ever thou deserv'st. oh, where shall i go bath thy body? nature too unkind, that made no medicine for a troubled mind! [_exit_. phi. _enter_ arethuse. _are_. i marvel my boy comes not back again; but that i know my love will question him over and over; how i slept, wak'd, talk'd; how i remembred him when his dear name was last spoke, and how, when i sigh'd, wept, sung, and ten thousand such; i should be angry at his stay. [_enter _king. _king_. what are your meditations? who attends you? _are_. none but my single self, i need no guard, i do no wrong, nor fear none. _king_. tell me: have you not a boy? _are_. yes sir. _king_. what kind of boy? _are_. a page, a waiting boy. _king_. a handsome boy? _are_. i think he be not ugly: well qualified, and dutiful, i know him, i took him not for beauty. _king_. he speaks, and sings and plays? _are_. yes sir. _king_. about eighteen? _are_. i never ask'd his age. _king_. is he full of service? _are_. by your pardon why do you ask? _king_. put him away. _are_. sir? _king_. put him away, h'as done you that good service, shames me to speak of. _are_. good sir let me understand you. _king_. if you fear me, shew it in duty; put away that boy. _are_. let me have reason for it sir, and then your will is my command. _king_. do not you blush to ask it? cast him off, or i shall do the same to you. y'are one shame with me, and so near unto my self, that by my life, i dare not tell my self, what you, my self have done. _are_. what have i done my lord? _king_. 'tis a new language, that all love to learn, the common people speak it well already, they need no grammer; understand me well, there be foul whispers stirring; cast him off! and suddenly do it: farewel. [_exit_ king. _are_. where may a maiden live securely free, keeping her honour safe? not with the living, they feed upon opinions, errours, dreams, and make 'em truths: they draw a nourishment out of defamings, grow upon disgraces, and when they see a vertue fortified strongly above the battery of their tongues; oh, how they cast to sink it; and defeated (soul sick with poyson) strike the monuments where noble names lie sleeping: till they sweat, and the cold marble melt. _enter_ philaster. _phi_. peace to your fairest thoughts, dearest mistress. _are_. oh, my dearest servant i have a war within me. _phi_. he must be more than man, that makes these crystals run into rivers; sweetest fair, the cause; and as i am your slave, tied to your goodness, your creature made again from what i was, and newly spirited, i'le right your honours. _are_. oh, my best love; that boy! _phi_. what boy? _are_. the pretty boy you gave me. _phi_. what of him? _are_. must be no more mine. _phi_. why? _are_. they are jealous of him. _phi_. jealous, who? _are_. the king. _phi_. oh, my fortune, then 'tis no idle jealousie. let him go. _are_. oh cruel, are you hard hearted too? who shall now tell you, how much i lov'd you; who shall swear it to you, and weep the tears i send? who shall now bring you letters, rings, bracelets, lose his health in service? wake tedious nights in stories of your praise? who shall sing your crying elegies? and strike a sad soul into senseless pictures, and make them mourn? who shall take up his lute, and touch it, till he crown a silent sleep upon my eye-lid, making me dream and cry, oh my dear, dear _philaster_. _phi_. oh my heart! would he had broken thee, that made thee know this lady was not loyal. mistress, forget the boy, i'le get thee a far better. _are_. oh never, never such a boy again, as my _bellario_. _phi_. 'tis but your fond affection. _are_. with thee my boy, farewel for ever, all secrecy in servants: farewel faith, and all desire to do well for it self: let all that shall succeed thee, for thy wrongs, sell and betray chast love. _phi_. and all this passion for a boy? _are_. he was your boy, and you put him to me, and the loss of such must have a mourning for. _phi_. o thou forgetful woman! _are_. how, my lord? _phi_. false _arethusa_! hast thou a medicine to restore my wits, when i have lost 'em? if not, leave to talk, and do thus. _are_. do what sir? would you sleep? _phi_. for ever _arethusa_. oh you gods, give me a worthy patience; have i stood naked, alone the shock of many fortunes? have i seen mischiefs numberless, and mighty grow li[k]e a sea upon me? have i taken danger as stern as death into my bosom, and laught upon it, made it but a mirth, and flung it by? do i live now like him, under this tyrant king, that languishing hears his sad bell, and sees his mourners? do i bear all this bravely, and must sink at length under a womans falshood? oh that boy, that cursed boy? none but a villain boy, to ease your lust? _are_. nay, then i am betray'd, i feel the plot cast for my overthrow; oh i am wretched. _phi_. now you may take that little right i have to this poor kingdom; give it to your joy, for i have no joy in it. some far place, where never womankind durst set her foot, for bursting with her poisons, must i seek, and live to curse you; there dig a cave, and preach to birds and beasts, what woman is, and help to save them from you. how heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts, more hell than hell has; how your tongues like scorpions, both heal and poyson; how your thoughts are woven with thousand changes in one subtle webb, and worn so by you. how that foolish man, that reads the story of a womans face, and dies believing it, is lost for ever. how all the good you have, is but a shadow, i'th' morning with you, and at night behind you, past and forgotten. how your vows are frosts, fast for a night, and with the next sun gone. how you are, being taken all together, a meer confusion, and so dead a _chaos_, that love cannot distinguish. these sad texts till my last hour, i am bound to utter of you. so farewel all my wo, all my delight. [_exit_ phi. _are_. be merciful ye gods and strike me dead; what way have i deserv'd this? make my breast transparent as pure crystal, that the world jealous of me, may see the foulest thought my heart holds. where shall a woman turn her eyes, to find out constancy? save me, how black, [_enter_ bell. and guilty (me thinks) that boy looks now? oh thou dissembler, that before thou spak'st wert in thy cradle false? sent to make lies, and betray innocents; thy lord and thou, may glory in the ashes of a maid fool'd by her passion; but the conquest is nothing so great as wicked. fly away, let my command force thee to that, which shame would do without it. if thou understoodst the loathed office thou hast undergone, why, thou wouldst hide thee under heaps of hills, lest men should dig and find thee. _bell_. oh what god angry with men, hath sent this strange disease into the noblest minds? madam this grief you add unto me is no more than drops to seas, for which they are not seen to swell; my lord had struck his anger through my heart, and let out all the hope of future joyes, you need not bid me fly, i came to part, to take my latest leave, farewel for ever; i durst not run away in honesty, from such a lady, like a boy that stole, or made some grievous fault; the power of gods assist you in your sufferings; hasty time reveal the truth to your abused lord, and mine: that he may know your worth: whilst i go seek out some forgotten place to die. [_exit_ bell. _are_. peace guide thee, th'ast overthrown me once, yet if i had another _troy_ to lose, thou or another villain with thy looks, might talk me out of it, and send me naked, my hair dishevel'd through the fiery streets. [ _enter a_ lady _la_. madam, the king would hunt, and calls for you with earnestness. _are_. i am in tune to hunt! _diana_ if thou canst rage with a maid, as with a man, let me discover thee bathing, and turn me to a fearful hind, that i may die pursu'd by cruel hounds, and have my story written in my wounds. [_exeunt_. _actus quartus. scena prima_. _enter_ king, pharamond, arethusa, galatea, megra, dion, cleremont, thrasilin, _and attendants_. _k_. what, are the hounds before, and all the woodmen? our horses ready, and our bows bent? _di_. all sir. _king_. y'are cloudy sir, come we have forgotten your venial trespass, let not that sit heavy upon your spirit; none dare utter it. _di_. he looks like an old surfeited stallion after his leaping, dull as a dormouse: see how he sinks; the wench has shot him between wind and water, and i hope sprung a leak. _thra_. he needs no teaching, he strikes sure enough; his greatest fault is, he hunts too much in the purlues, would he would leave off poaching. _di_. and for his horn, has left it at the lodge where he lay late; oh, he's a precious lime-hound; turn him loose upon the pursuit of a lady, and if he lose her, hang him up i'th' slip. when my fox-bitch beauty grows proud, i'le borrow him. _king_. is your boy turn'd away? _are_. you did command sir, and i obey you. _king_. 'tis well done: hark ye further. _cle_. is't possible this fellow should repent? me thinks that were not noble in him: and yet he looks like a mortified member, as if he had a sick mans salve in's mouth. if a worse man had done this fault now, some physical justice or other, would presently (without the help of an almanack) have opened the obstructions of his liver, and let him bloud with a dog-whip. _di_. see, see, how modestly your lady looks, as if she came from churching with her neighbour; why, what a devil can a man see in her face, but that she's honest? _pha_. troth no great matter to speak of, a foolish twinkling with the eye, that spoils her coat; but he must be a cunning herald that finds it. _di_. see how they muster one another! o there's a rank regiment where the devil carries the colours, and his dam drum major, now the world and the flesh come behind with the carriage. _cle_. sure this lady has a good turn done her against her will: before she was common talk, now none dare say, cantharides can stir her, her face looks like a warrant, willing and commanding all tongues, as they will answer it, to be tied up and bolted when this lady means to let her self loose. as i live she has got her a goodly protection, and a gracious; and may use her body discreetly, for her healths sake, once a week, excepting lent and dog-days: oh if they were to be got for mony, what a great sum would come out of the city for these licences? _king_. to horse, to horse, we lose the morning, gentlemen. [_exeunt_. _enter two_ woodmen. _1 wood_.what, have you lodged the deer? _2 wood_. yes, they are ready for the bow. _1 wood_. who shoots? _2 wood_. the princess. _1 wood_. no she'l hunt. _2 wood_. she'l take a stand i say. _1 wood_. who else? _2 wood_. why the young stranger prince. _1 wood_. he shall shoot in a stone-bow for me. i never lov'd his beyond-sea-ship, since he forsook the say, for paying ten shillings: he was there at the fall of a deer, and would needs (out of his mightiness) give ten groats for the dowcers; marry the steward would have had the velvet-head into the bargain, to turf his hat withal: i think he should love venery, he is an old sir _tristram_; for if you be remembred, he forsook the stagg once, to strike a rascal milking in a medow, and her he kill'd in the eye. who shoots else? _2 wood_. the lady _galatea_. _1 wood_. that's a good wench, and she would not chide us for tumbling of her women in the brakes. she's liberal, and by my bow they say she's honest, and whether that be a fault, i have nothing to do. there's all? _2 wood_. no, one more, _megra_. _1 wood_. that's a firker i'faith boy; there's a wench will ride her haunces as hard after a kennel of hounds, as a hunting-saddle; and when she comes home, get 'em clapt, and all is well again. i have known her lose her self three times in one afternoon (if the woods had been answerable) and it has been work enough for one man to find her, and he has sweat for it. she rides well, and she payes well. hark, let's go. [_exeunt_. _enter_ philaster. _phi_. oh, that i had been nourished in these woods with milk of goats, and acorns, and not known the right of crowns, nor the dissembling trains of womens looks; but dig'd my self a cave, where i, my fire, my cattel, and my bed might have been shut together in one shed; and then had taken me some mountain girl, beaten with winds, chast as the hardened rocks whereon she dwells; that might have strewed my bed with leaves, and reeds, and with the skins of beasts our neighbours; and have born at her big breasts my large course issue. this had been a life free from vexation. [ _enter_ bellario. _bell_. oh wicked men! an innocent man may walk safe among beasts, nothing assaults me here. see, my griev'd lord sits as his soul were searching out a way, to leave his body. pardon me that must break thy last commandment; for i must speak; you that are griev'd can pity; hear my lord. _phi_. is there a creature yet so miserable, that i can pity? _bell_. oh my noble lord, view my strange fortune, and bestow on me, according to your bounty (if my service can merit nothing) so much as may serve to keep that little piece i hold of life from cold and hunger. _phi_. is it thou? be gone: go sell those misbeseeming cloaths thou wear'st, and feed thy self with them. _bell_. alas! my lord, i can get nothing for them: the silly country people think 'tis treason to touch such gay things. _phi_. now by my life this is unkindly done, to vex me with thy sight, th'art fain again to thy dissembling trade: how should'st thou think to cozen me again? remains there yet a plague untri'd for me? even so thou wept'st and spok'st when first i took thee up; curse on the time. if thy commanding tears can work on any other, use thy art, i'le not betray it. which way wilt thou take, that i may shun thee; for thine eyes are poyson to mine; and i am loth to grow in rage. this way, or that way? _bell_. any will serve. but i will chuse to have that path in chase that leads unto my grave. [_exeunt_ phil. _and_ bell. _severally_. _enter_ dion _and the_ woodmen. _di_. this is the strangest sudden change! you _woodman_. _1 wood_. my lord _dion_. _di_. saw you a lady come this way on a sable-horse stubbed with stars of white? _2 wood_. was she not young and tall? _di_. yes; rode she to the wood, or to the plain? _2 wood_. faith my lord we saw none. [_exeunt_ wood. _enter_ cleremont. _di_. pox of your questions then. what, is she found? _cle_. nor will be i think. _di_. let him seek his daughter himself; she cannot stray about a little necessary natural business, but the whole court must be in arms; when she has done, we shall have peace. _cle_. there's already a thousand fatherless tales amongst us; some say her horse run away with her; some a wolf pursued her; others, it was a plot to kill her; and that armed men were seen in the wood: but questionless, she rode away willingly. _enter_ king, _and_ thrasiline. _king_. where is she? _cle_. sir, i cannot tell. _king_. how is that? answer me so again. _cle_. sir, shall i lie? _king_. yes, lie and damn, rather than tell me that; i say again, where is she? mutter not; sir, speak you where is she? _di_. sir, i do not know. _king_. speak that again so boldly, and by heaven it is thy last. you fellows answer me, where is she? mark me all, i am your king. i wish to see my daughter, shew her me; i do command you all, as you are subjects, to shew her me, what am i not your king? if i, then am i not to be obeyed? _di_. yes, if you command things possible and honest. _king_. things possible and honest! hear me, thou, thou traytor, that darest confine thy king to things possible and honest; shew her me, or let me perish, if i cover not all _cicily_ with bloud. _di_. indeed i cannot, unless you tell me where she is. _king_. you have betray'd me, y'have, let me lose the jewel of my life, go; bring her me, and set her before me; 'tis the king will have it so, whose breath can still the winds, uncloud the sun, charm down the swelling sea, and stop the flouds of heaven; speak, can it not? _di_. no. _king_. no, cannot the breath of kings do this? _di_. no; nor smell sweet it self, if once the lungs be but corrupted. _king_. is it so? take heed. _di_. sir, take you heed; how you dare the powers that must be just. _king_. alas! what are we kings? why do you gods place us above the rest; to be serv'd, flatter'd, and ador'd till we believe we hold within our hands your thunder, and when we come to try the power we have, there's not a leaf shakes at our threatnings. i have sin'd 'tis true, and here stand to be punish'd; yet would not thus be punish'd; let me chuse my way, and lay it on. _di_. he articles with the gods; would some body would draw bonds, for the performance of covenants betwixt them. _enter_ pha. galatea, _and_ megra. _king_. what, is she found? _pha_. no, we have ta'ne her horse. he gallopt empty by: there's some treason; you _galatea_ rode with her into the wood; why left you her? _gal_. she did command me. _king_. command! you should not. _gal_. 'twould ill become my fortunes and my birth to disobey the daughter of my king. _king_. y'are all cunning to obey us for our hurt, but i will have her. _pha_. if i have her not, by this hand there shall be no more _cicily_. _di_. what will he carry it to _spain_ in's pocket? _pha_. i will not leave one man alive, but the king, a cook and a taylor. _di_. yet you may do well to spare your ladies bed-fellow, and her you may keep for a spawner. _king_. i see the injuries i have done must be reveng'd. _di_. sir, this is not the way to find her out. _king_. run all, disperse your selves: the man that finds her, or (if she be kill'd) the traytor; i'le [make] him great. _di_. i know some would give five thousand pounds to find her. _pha_. come let us seek. _king_. each man a several way, here i my self. _di_. come gentlemen we here. _cle_. lady you must go search too. _meg_. i had rather be search'd my self. [_exeunt omnes_. _enter_ arethusa. _are_. where am i now? feet find me out a way, without the counsel of my troubled head, i'le follow you boldly about these woods, o're mountains, thorow brambles, pits, and flouds: heaven i hope will ease me. i am sick. _enter_ bellario. _bell_. yonder's my lady; heaven knows i want nothing; because i do not wish to live, yet i will try her charity. oh hear, you that have plenty, from that flowing store, drop some on dry ground; see, the lively red is gone to guard her heart; i fear she faints. madam look up, she breaths not; open once more those rosie twins, and send unto my lord, your latest farewell; oh, she stirs: how is it madam? speak comfort. _are_. 'tis not gently done, to put me in a miserable life, and hold me there; i pray thee let me go, i shall do best without thee; i am well. _enter_ philaster. _phil_. i am to blame to be so much in rage, i'le tell her coolely, when and where i heard this killing truth. i will be temperate in speaking, and as just in hearing. oh monstrous! tempt me not ye gods, good gods tempt not a frail man, what's he, that has a heart but he must ease it here? _bell_. my lord, help the princess. _are_. i am well, forbear. _phi_. let me love lightning, let me be embrac'd and kist by scorpions, or adore the eyes of basilisks, rather than trust to tongues, and shrink these veins up; stick me here a stone lasting to ages in the memory of this damn'd act. hear me you wicked ones, you have put the hills on fire into this breast, not to be quench'd with tears, for which may guilt sit on your bosoms; at your meals, and beds, despair await you: what, before my face? poyson of aspes between your lips; diseases be your best issues; nature make a curse and throw it on you. _are_. dear _philaster_, leave to be enrag'd, and hear me. _phi_. i have done; forgive my passion, not the calm'd sea, when _ã�olus_ locks up his windy brood, is less disturb'd than i, i'le make you know it. dear _arethusa_, do but take this sword, and search how temperate a heart i have; then you and this your boy, may live and raign in lust without control; wilt thou _bellario_? i prethee kill me; thou art poor, and maist nourish ambitious thoughts, when i am dead: this way were freer; am i raging now? if i were mad i should desire to live; sirs, feel my pulse; whether have you known a man in a more equal tune to die? _bel_. alas my lord, your pulse keeps madmans time, so does your tongue. _phi_. you will not kill me then? _are_. kill you? _bell_. not for a world. _phi_. i blame not thee, _bellario_; thou hast done but that, which gods would have transform'd themselves to do; be gone, leave me without reply; this is the last of all our meeting. kill me with this sword; be wise, or worse will follow: we are two earth cannot bear at once. resolve to do, or suffer. _are_. if my fortunes be so good to let me fall upon thy hand, i shall have peace in death. yet tell me this, will there be no slanders, no jealousies in the other world, no ill there? _phi_. no. _are_. shew me then the way. _phi_. then guide my feeble hand, you that have power to do it, for i must perform a piece of justice. if your youth have any way offended heaven, let prayers short and effectual reconcile you to it. _are_. i am prepared. _enter a_ country-fellow. _coun_. i'le see the king if he be in the forest, i have hunted him these two hours; if i should come home and not see him my sisters would laugh at me; i can see nothing but people better horst than my self, that outride me; i can hear nothing but shouting. these kings had need of good brains, this whooping is able to put a mean man out of his wits. there's a courtier with his sword drawn, by this hand upon a woman, i think. _phi_. are you at peace? _are_. with heavens and earth. _phi_. may they divide thy soul and body? _coun_. hold dastard, strike a woman! th'art a craven i warrant thee, thou wouldst be loth to play half a dozen of venies at wasters with a good fellow for a broken head. _phi_. leave us good friend. _are_. what ill bred man art thou, to intrude thy self upon our private sports, our recreations? _coun_. god 'uds, i understand you not, but i know the rogue has hurt you. _phi_. pursue thy own affairs: it will be ill to multiply bloud upon my head; which thou wilt force me to. _coun_. i know not your rhetorick, but i can lay it on if you touch the woman. [_they fight_. _phi_. slave, take what thou deservest. _are_. heavens guard my lord. _coun_. oh do you breath? _phi_. i hear the tread of people: i am hurt. the gods take part against me, could this boor have held me thus else? i must shift for life, though i do loath it. i would find a course, to lose it, rather by my will than force. [_exit_ phil. _coun_. i cannot follow the rogue. i pray thee wench come and kiss me now. _enter_ phara. dion, cle. thra. _and_ woodmen. _pha_. what art thou? _coun_. almost kil'd i am for a foolish woman; a knave has hurt her. _pha_. the princess gentlemen! where's the wound madam? is it dangerous? _are_. he has not hurt me. _coun_. i'faith she lies, has hurt her in the breast, look else. _pha_. o sacred spring of innocent blood! _di_. 'tis above wonder! who should dare this? _are_. i felt it not. _pha_. speak villain, who has hurt the princess? _coun_. is it the princess? _di_. i. _coun_. then i have seen something yet. _pha_. but who has hurt her? _coun_. i told you a rogue i ne're saw him before, i. _pha_. madam who did it? _are_. some dishonest wretch, alas i know him not, and do forgive him. _coun_. he's hurt too, he cannot go far, i made my fathers old fox flie about his ears. _pha_. how will you have me kill him? _are_. not at all, 'tis some distracted fellow. _pha_. by this hand, i'le leave ne'er a piece of him bigger than a nut, and bring him all in my hat. _are_. nay, good sir; if you do take him, bring him quick to me, and i will study for a punishment, great as his fault. _pha_. i will. _are_. but swear. _pha_. by all my love i will: woodmen conduct the princess to the king, and bear that wounded fellow to dressing: come gentlemen, we'l follow the chase close. [_ex_. are. pha. di. cle. thra. _and_ 1 woodman. _coun_. i pray you friend let me see the king. _2 wood_.that you shall, and receive thanks. [_exeunt_. _coun_. if i get clear with this, i'le go see no more gay sights. _enter_ bellario. _bell_. a heaviness near death sits on my brow, and i must sleep: bear me thou gentle bank, for ever if thou wilt: you sweet ones all, let me unworthy press you: i could wish i rather were a coarse strewed o're with you, than quick above you. dulness shuts mine eyes, and i am giddy; oh that i could take so sound a sleep, that i might never wake. _enter_ philaster. _phi_. i have done ill, my conscience calls me false, to strike at her, that would not strike at me: when i did fight, me thought i heard her pray the gods to guard me. she may be abus'd, and i a loathed villain: if she be, she will conceal who hurt her; he has wounds, and cannot follow, neither knows he me. who's this; _bellario_ sleeping? if thou beest guilty, there is no justice that thy sleep [_cry within_. should be so sound, and mine, whom thou hast wrong'd, so broken: hark i am pursued: you gods i'le take this offer'd means of my escape: they have no mark to know me, but my wounds, if she be true; if false, let mischief light on all the world at once. sword, print my wounds upon this sleeping boy: i ha' none i think are mortal, nor would i lay greater on thee. [_wounds him_. _bell_. oh death i hope is come, blest be that hand, it meant me well; again, for pities sake. _phi_. i have caught my self, [phi. _falls_. the loss of bloud hath stayed my flight. here, here, is he that stroke thee: take thy full revenge, use me, as i did mean thee, worse than death: i'le teach thee to revenge this luckless hand wounded the princess, tell my followers thou didst receive these hurts in staying me, and i will second thee: get a reward. _bell_. fly, fly my lord and save your self. _phi_. how's this? wouldst thou i should be safe? _bell_. else it were vain for me to live. these little wounds i have, ha' not bled much, reach me that noble hand, i'le help to cover you. _phi_. art thou true to me? _bell_. or let me perish loath'd. come my good lord, creep in amongst those bushes: who does know but that the gods may save your (much lov'd) breath? _phi_. then i shall die for grief, if not for this, that i have wounded thee: what wilt thou do? _bell_. shift for my self well: peace, i hear 'em come. _within_. follow, follow, follow; that way they went. _bell_. with my own wounds i'le bloudy my own sword. i need not counterfeit to fall; heaven knows, that i can stand no longer. _enter_ pha. dion, cle. _and_ thra. _pha_. to this place we have tract him by his bloud. _cle_. yonder, my lord, creeps one away. _di_. stay sir, what are you? _bell_. a wretched creature wounded in these woods by beasts; relieve me, if your names be men, or i shall perish. _di_. this is he my lord, upon my soul that hurt her; 'tis the boy, that wicked boy that serv'd her. _pha_. o thou damn'd in thy creation! what cause could'st thou shape to hurt the princess? _bell_. then i am betrayed. _di_. betrayed! no, apprehended. _bell_. i confess; urge it no more, that big with evil thoughts i set upon her, and did take my aim her death. for charity let fall at once the punishment you mean, and do not load this weary flesh with tortures. _pha_. i will know who hir'd thee to this deed? _bell_. mine own revenge. _pha_. revenge, for what? _bell_. it pleas'd her to receive me as her page, and when my fortunes ebb'd, that men strid o're them carelesly, she did showr her welcome graces on me, and did swell my fortunes, till they overflow'd their banks, threatning the men that crost 'em; when as swift as storms arise at sea, she turn'd her eyes to burning suns upon me, and did dry the streams she had bestowed, leaving me worse and more contemn'd than other little brooks, because i had been great: in short, i knew i could not live, and therefore did desire to die reveng'd. _pha_. if tortures can be found, long as thy natural life, resolve to feel the utmost rigour. [philaster _creeps out of a bush_. _cle_. help to lead him hence. _phi_. turn back you ravishers of innocence, know ye the price of that you bear away so rudely? _pha_. who's that? _di_. 'tis the lord _philaster_. _phi_. 'tis not the treasure of all kings in one, the wealth of _tagus_, nor the rocks of pearl, that pave the court of _neptune_, can weigh down that vertue. it was i that hurt the princess. place me, some god, upon a _piramis_, higher than hills of earth, and lend a voice loud as your thunder to me, that from thence, i may discourse to all the under-world, the worth that dwells in him. _pha_. how's this? _bell_. my lord, some man weary of life, that would be glad to die. _phi_. leave these untimely courtesies _bellario_. _bell_. alas he's mad, come will you lead me on? _phi_. by all the oaths that men ought most to keep: and gods do punish most, when men do break, he toucht her not. take heed _bellario_, how thou dost drown the vertues thou hast shown with perjury. by all that's good 'twas i: you know she stood betwixt me and my right. _pha_. thy own tongue be thy judge. _cle_. it was _philaster_. _di_. is't not a brave boy? well sirs, i fear we were all deceived. _phi_. have i no friend here? _di_. yes. _phi_. then shew it; some good body lend a hand to draw us nearer. would you have tears shed for you when you die? then lay me gentle on his neck that there i may weep flouds, and breath out my spirit: 'tis not the wealth of _plutus_, nor the gold lockt in the heart of earth, can buy away this arm-full from me, this had been a ransom to have redeem'd the great _augustus caesar_, had he been taken: you hard-hearted men, more stony than these mountains, can you see such clear pure bloud drop, and not cut your flesh to stop his life? to bind whose better wounds, queens ought to tear their hair, and with their tears, bath 'em. forgive me, thou that art the wealth of poor _philaster_. [_enter_ king, arethusa _and a_ guard. _king_. is the villain ta'ne? _pha_. sir, here be two confess the deed; but say it was _philaster_. _phi_. question it no more, it was. _king_. the fellow that did fight with him will tell us. _are_. ay me, i know he will. _king_. did not you know him? _are_. sir, if it was he, he was disguised. _phi_. i was so. oh my stars! that i should live still. _king_. thou ambitious fool; thou that hast laid a train for thy own life; now i do mean to do, i'le leave to talk, bear him to prison. _are_. sir, they did plot together to take hence this harmless life; should it pass unreveng'd, i should to earth go weeping: grant me then (by all the love a father bears his child) their custodies, and that i may appoint their tortures and their death. _di_. death? soft, our law will not reach that, for this fault. _king_. 'tis granted, take 'em to you, with a guard. come princely _pharamond_, this business past, we may with more security go on to your intended match. _cle_. i pray that this action lose not _philaster_ the hearts of the people. _di_. fear it not, their overwise heads will think it but a trick. [_exeunt omnes_. _actus quintus. scena prima_. _enter_ dion, cleremont, _and_ thrasiline. _thra_. has the king sent for him to death? _di_. yes, but the king must know, 'tis not in his power to war with heaven. _cle_. we linger time; the king sent for _philaster_ and the headsman an hour ago. _thra_. are all his wounds well? _di_. all they were but scratches; but the loss of bloud made him faint. _cle_. we dally gentlemen. _thra_. away. _di_. we'l scuffle hard before he perish. [_exeunt_. _enter_ philaster, arethusa, _and_ bellario. _are_. nay dear _philaster_ grieve not, we are well. _bell_. nay good my lord forbear, we are wondrous well. _phi_. oh _arethusa_! o _bellario_! leave to be kind: i shall be shot from heaven, as now from earth, if you continue so; i am a man, false to a pair of the most trusty ones that ever earth bore, can it bear us all? forgive and leave me, but the king hath sent to call me to my death, oh shew it me, and then forget me: and for thee my boy, i shall deliver words will mollifie the hearts of beasts, to spare thy innocence. _bell_. alas my lord, my life is not a thing worthy your noble thoughts; 'tis not a life, 'tis but a piece of child-hood thrown away: should i out-live, i shall then out-live vertue and honour. and when that day comes, if ever i should close these eyes but once, may i live spotted for my perjury, and waste my limbs to nothing. _are_. and i (the woful'st maid as ever was, forc'd with my hands to bring my lord to death) do by the honour of a virgin swear, to tell no hours beyond it. _phi_. make me not hated so. _are_. come from this prison, all joyful to our deaths. _phi_. people will tear me when they find you true to such a wretch as i; i shall die loath'd. injoy your kingdoms peaceably, whil'st i for ever sleep forgotten with my faults, every just servant, every maid in love will have a piece of me if you be true. _are_. my dear lord say not so. _bell_. a piece of you? he was not born of women that can cut it and look on. _phi_. take me in tears betwixt you, for my heart will break with shame and sorrow. _are_. why 'tis well. _bell_. lament no more. _phi_. what would you have done if you had wrong'd me basely, and had found my life no price, compar'd to yours? for love sirs, deal with me truly. _bell_. 'twas mistaken, sir. _phi_. why if it were? _bell_. then sir we would have ask'd you pardon. _phi_. and have hope to enjoy it? _are_. injoy it? i. _phi_. would you indeed? be plain. _bell_. we would my lord. _phi_. forgive me then. _are_. so, so. _bell_. 'tis as it should be now. _phi_. lead to my death. [_exeunt_. _enter_ king, dion, cleremont, _and_ thrasiline. _king_. gentlemen, who saw the prince? _cle_. so please you sir, he's gone to see the city, and the new platform, with some gentlemen attending on him. _king_. is the princess ready to bring her prisoner out? _thra_. she waits your grace. _king_. tell her we stay. _di_. king, you may be deceiv'd yet: the head you aim at cost more setting on than to be lost so slightly: if it must off like a wild overflow, that soops before him a golden stack, and with it shakes down bridges, cracks the strong hearts of _pines_, whose cable roots held out a thousand storms, a thousand thunders, and so made mightier, takes whole villages upon his back, and in that heat of pride, charges strong towns, towers, castles, palaces, and layes them desolate: so shall thy head, thy noble head, bury the lives of thousands that must bleed with thee like a sacrifice, in thy red ruines. _enter_ phil. are. _and_ bell, _in a robe and garland_. _king_. how now, what mask is this? _bell_. right royal sir, i should sing you an epithalamium of these lovers, but having lost my best ayres with my fortunes, and wanting a celestial harp to strike this blessed union on; thus in glad story i give you all. these two fair cedar-branches, the noblest of the mountain, where they grew straightest and tallest, under whose still shades the worthier beasts have made their layers, and slept free from the _syrian_ star, and the fell thunder-stroke, free from the clouds, when they were big with humour, and delivered in thousand spouts, their issues to the earth: o there was none but silent quiet there! till never pleas'd fortune shot up shrubs, base under brambles to divorce these branches; and for a while they did so, and did raign over the mountain, and choakt up his beauty with brakes, rude thornes and thistles, till thy sun scorcht them even to the roots, and dried them there: and now a gentle gale hath blown again that made these branches meet, and twine together, never to be divided: the god that sings his holy numbers over marriage beds, hath knit their noble hearts, and here they stand your children mighty king, and i have done. _king_. how, how? _are_. sir, if you love it in plain truth, for there is no masking in't; this gentleman the prisoner that you gave me is become my keeper, and through all the bitter throws your jealousies and his ill fate have wrought him, thus nobly hath he strangled, and at length arriv'd here my dear husband. _king_. your dear husband! call in the captain of the cittadel; there you shall keep your wedding. i'le provide a mask shall make your hymen turn his saffron into a sullen coat, and sing sad requiems to your departing souls: bloud shall put out your torches, and instead of gaudy flowers about your wanton necks, an ax shall hang like a prodigious meteor ready to crop your loves sweets. hear you gods: from this time do i shake all title off, of father to this woman, this base woman, and what there is of vengeance, in a lion cast amongst dogs, or rob'd of his dear young, the same inforc't more terrible, more mighty, expect from me. _are_. sir, by that little life i have left to swear by, there's nothing that can stir me from my self. what i have done, i have done without repentance, for death can be no bug-bear unto me, so long as _pharamond_ is not my headsman. _di_. sweet peace upon thy soul, thou worthy maid when ere thou dyest; for this time i'le excuse thee, or be thy prologue. _phi_. sir, let me speak next, and let my dying words be better with you than my dull living actions; if you aime at the dear life of this sweet innocent, y'are a tyrant and a savage monster; your memory shall be as foul behind you as you are living, all your better deeds shall be in water writ, but this in marble: no chronicle shall speak you, though your own, but for the shame of men. no monument (though high and big as _pelion_) shall be able to cover this base murther; make it rich with brass, with purest gold, and shining jasper, like the pyramids, lay on epitaphs, such as make great men gods; my little marble (that only cloaths my ashes, not my faults) shall far out shine it: and for after issues think not so madly of the heavenly wisdoms, that they will give you more, for your mad rage to cut off, unless it be some snake, or something like your self, that in his birth shall strangle you. remember, my father king; there was a fault, but i forgive it: let that sin perswade you to love this lady. if you have a soul, think, save her, and be saved, for my self, i have so long expected this glad hour, so languisht under you, and daily withered, that heaven knows it is my joy to dye, i find a recreation in't. _enter a_ messenger. _mess_. where's the king? _king_. here. _mess_. get you to your strength, and rescue the prince _pharamond_ from danger, he's taken prisoner by the citizens, fearing the lord _philaster_. _di_. oh brave followers; mutiny, my fine dear country-men, mutiny, now my brave valiant foremen, shew your weapons in honour of your mistresses. [_enter another_ messenger. _mess_. arm, arm, arm. _king_. a thousand devils take 'em. _di_. a thousand blessings on 'em. _mess_. arm o king, the city is in mutiny, led by an old gray ruffin, who comes on in rescue of the lord _philaster_. [_exit with_ are. phi. bell. _king_. away to the cittadel, i'le see them safe, and then cope with these burgers: let the guard and all the gentlemen give strong attendance. [_ex. king_. [_manent_ dion, cleremont, thrasiline. _cle_. the city up! this was above our wishes. _di_. i and the marriage too; by my life, this noble lady has deceiv'd us all, a plague upon my self; a thousand plagues, for having such unworthy thoughts of her dear honour: o i could beat my self, or do you beat me and i'le beat you, for we had all one thought. _cle_. no, no, 'twill but lose time. _di_. you say true, are your swords sharp? well my dear country-men, what ye lack, if you continue and fall not back upon the first broken shin, i'le have you chronicled, and chronicled, and cut and chronicled and all to be prais'd, and sung in sonnets, and bath'd in new brave ballads, that all tongues shall troule you _in saecula saeculorum_ my kind can-carriers. _thra_. what if a toy take 'em i'th' heels now, and they run all away, and cry the devil take the hindmost? _di_. then the same devil take the foremost too, and sowce him for his breakfast; if they all prove cowards, my curses fly amongst them and be speeding. may they have murreins raign to keep the gentlemen at home unbound in easie freeze: may the moths branch their velvets, and their silks only be worn before sore eyes. may their false lights undo 'em, and discover presses, holes, stains, and oldness in their stuffs, and make them shop-rid: may they keep whores and horses, and break; and live mued up with necks of beef and turnips: may they have many children, and none like the father: may they know no language but that gibberish they prattle to their parcels, unless it be the goarish latine they write in their bonds, and may they write that false, and lose their debts. _enter the_ king. _king_. now the vengeance of all the gods confound them; how they swarm together! what a hum they raise; devils choak your wilde throats; if a man had need to use their valours, he must pay a brokage for it, and then bring 'em on, they will fight like sheep. 'tis _philaster_, none but _philaster_ must allay this heat: they will not hear me speak, but fling dirt at me, and call me tyrant. oh run dear friend, and bring the lord _philaster_: speak him fair, call him prince, do him all the courtesie you can, commend me to him. oh my wits, my wits! [_exit_ cle. _di_. oh my brave countrymen! as i live, i will not buy a pin out of your walls for this; nay, you shall cozen me, and i'le thank you; and send you brawn and bacon, and soil you every long vacation a brace of foremen, that at _michaelmas_ shall come up fat and kicking. _king_. what they will do with this poor prince, the gods know, and i fear. _di_. why sir: they'l flea him, and make church buckets on's skin to squench rebellion, then clap a rivet in's sconce, and hang him up for a sign. _enter_ cleremont _with_ philaster. _king_. o worthy sir forgive me, do not make your miseries and my faults meet together, to bring a greater danger. be your self, still sound amongst diseases, i have wrong'd you, and though i find it last, and beaten to it, let first your goodness know it. calm the people, and be what you were born to: take your love, and with her my repentance, and my wishes, and all my prayers, by the gods my heart speaks this: and if the least fall from me not perform'd, may i be struck with thunder. _phi_. mighty sir, i will not do your greatness so much wrong, as not to make your word truth; free the princess, and the poor boy, and let me stand the shock of this mad sea breach, which i'le either turn or perish with it. _king_. let your own word free them. _phi_. then thus i take my leave kissing your hand, and hanging on your royal word: be kingly, and be not moved sir, i shall bring your peace, or never bring my self back. _king_. all the gods go with thee. [_exeunt omnes_. _enter an old captain and citizens with_ pharamond. _cap_. come my brave mirmidons let's fall on, let our caps swarm my boys, and you nimble tongues forget your mothers gibberish, of what do you lack, and set your mouths up children, till your pallats fall frighted half a fathom, past the cure of bay-salt and gross pepper. and then cry _philaster_, brave _philaster_, let _philaster_ be deeper in request, my ding-dongs, my pairs of dear indentures, king of clubs, than your cold water chamblets or your paintings spitted with copper; let not your hasty silks, or your branch'd cloth of bodkin, or your tishues, dearly belov'd of spiced cake and custard, your robin-hoods scarlets and johns, tie your affections in darkness to your shops; no, dainty duckers, up with your three pil'd spirits, your wrought valours. and let your un-cut coller make the king feel the measure of your mightiness _philaster_. cry my rose nobles, cry. _all_. philaster, philaster. _cap_. how do you like this my lord prince, these are mad boys, i tell you, these are things that will not strike their top-sayles to a foist. and let a man of war, an argosie hull and cry cockles. _pha_. why you rude slave, do you know what you do? _cap_. my pretty prince of puppets, we do know, and give your greatness warning, that you talk no more such bugs-words, or that soldred crown shall be scratch'd with a musket: dear prince pippen, down with your noble bloud; or as i live, i'le have you codled: let him lose my spirits, make us a round ring with your bills my hectors, and let us see what this trim man dares do. now sir, have at you; here i [lie], and with this swashing blow, do you swear prince; i could hulk your grace, and hang you up cross-leg'd, like a hare at a poulters, and do this with this wiper. _pha_. you will not see me murder'd wicked villains? _1 cit_. yes indeed will we sir, we have not seen one fo[r] a great while. _capt_. he would have weapons would he? give him a broad-side my brave boyes with your pikes, branch me his skin in flowers like a satin, and between every flower a mortal cut, your royalty shall ravel, jag him gentlemen, i'le have him cut to the kell, then down the seames, oh for a whip to make him galoone-laces, i'le have a coach-whip. _pha_. o spare me gentlemen. _cap_. hold, hold, the man begins to fear and know himself, he shall for this time only be seal'd up with a feather through his nose, that he may only see heaven, and think whither he's going, nay beyond-sea sir, we will proclaim you, you would be king thou tender heir apparent to a church-ale, thou sleight prince of single sarcenet; thou royal ring-tail, fit to fly at nothing but poor mens poultry, and have every boy beat thee from that too with his bread and butter. _pha_. gods keep me from these hell-hounds. _2 cit_. shall's geld him captain? _cap_. no, you shall spare his dowcets my dear donsels, as you respect the ladies let them flourish; the curses of a longing woman kill as speedy as a plague, boys. _1 cit_. i'le have a leg that's certain. _2 cit_. i'le have an arm. _3 cit_. i'le have his nose, and at mine own charge build a colledge, and clap't upon the gate. _4 cit_. i'le have his little gut to string a kit with, for certainly a royal gut will sound like silver. _pha_. would they were in thy belly, and i past my pain once. _5 cit_. good captain let me have his liver to feed ferrets. _cap_. who will have parcels else? speak. _pha_. good gods consider me, i shall be tortur'd. _1 cit_. captain, i'le give you the trimming of your hand-sword, and let me have his skin to make false scabbards. _2_. he had no horns sir had he? _cap_. no sir, he's a pollard, what would'st thou do with horns? _cit_. o if he had, i would have made rare hafts and whistles of 'em, but his shin-bones if they be sound shall serve me. [_enter_ philaster. _all_. long live _philaster_, the brave prince _philaster_. _phi_. i thank you gentlemen, but why are these rude weapons brought abroad, to teach your hands uncivil trades? _cap_. my royal rosiclear, we are thy mirmidons, thy guard, thy rorers, and when thy noble body is in durance, thus do we clap our musty murrions on, and trace the streets in terrour: is it peace thou _mars_ of men? is the king sociable, and bids thee live? art thou above thy foemen, and free as _phoebus_? speak, if not, this stand of royal blood shall be abroach, atilt, and run even to the lees of honour. _phi_. hold and be satisfied, i am my self free as my thoughts are, by the gods i am. _cap_. art thou the dainty darling of the king? art thou the _hylas_ to our _hercules_? do the lords bow, and the regarded scarlets, kiss their gumd-gols, and cry, we are your servants? is the court navigable, and the presence struck with flags of friendship? if not, we are thy castle and this man sleeps. _phi_. i am what i desire to be, your friend, i am what i was born to be, your prince. _pha_. sir, there is some humanity in you, you have a noble soul, forget my name, and know my misery, set me safe aboard from these wild _canibals_, and as i live, i'le quit this land for ever: there is nothing, perpetual prisonment, cold, hunger, sickness of all sorts, all dangers, and all together the worst company of the worst men, madness, age, to be as many creatures as a woman, and do as all they do, nay to despair; but i would rather make it a new nature, and live with all those than endure one hour amongst these wild dogs. _phi_. i do pity you: friends discharge your fears, deliver me the prince, i'le warrant you i shall be old enough to find my safety. _3 cit_. good sir take heed he does not hurt you, he's a fierce man i can tell you sir. _cap_. prince, by your leave i'le have a sursingle, and male you like a hawke. [_he stirs_. _phi_. away, away, there is no danger in him: alas he had rather sleep to shake his fit off. look you friends, how gently he leads, upon my word he's tame enough, he need[s] no further watching. good my friends go to your houses and by me have your pardons, and my love, and know there shall be nothing in my power you may deserve, but you shall have your wishes. to give you more thanks were to flatter you, continue still your love, and for an earnest drink this. _all_. long maist thou live brave prince, brave prince, brave prince. [_exeunt_ phi. _and_ pha. _cap_. thou art the king of courtesie: fall off again my sweet youths, come and every man trace to his house again, and hang his pewter up, then to the tavern and bring your wives in muffes: we will have musick and the red grape shall make us dance, and rise boys. [_exeunt_. _enter_ king, are. gal. meg. cle. dion, thra. bellario, _and attendants_. _king_. is it appeas'd? _di_. sir, all is quiet as this dead of night, as peaceable as sleep, my lord _philaster_ brings on the prince himself. _king_. kind gentlemen! i will not break the least word i have given in promise to him, i have heap'd a world of grief upon his head, which yet i hope to wash away. _enter_ philaster _and_ pharamond. _cle_. my lord is come. _king_. my son! blest be the time that i have leave to call such vertue mine; now thou art in mine arms, me thinks i have a salve unto my breast for all the stings that dwell there, streams of grief that i have wrought thee, and as much of joy that i repent it, issue from mine eyes: let them appease thee, take thy right; take her, she is thy right too, and forget to urge my vexed soul with that i did before. _phi_. sir, [it is] blotted from my memory, past and forgotten: for you prince of _spain_, whom i have thus redeem'd, you have full leave to make an honourable voyage home. and if you would go furnish'd to your realm with fair provision, i do see a lady me thinks would gladly bear you company: how like you this piece? _meg_. sir, he likes it well, for he hath tried it, and found it worth his princely liking; we were ta'ne a bed, i know your meaning, i am not the first that nature taught to seek a fellow forth: can shame remain perpetually in me, and not in others? or have princes salves to cure ill names that meaner people want? _phi_. what mean you? _meg_. you must get another ship to clear the princess and the boy together. _di_. how now! _meg_. others took me, and i took her and him at that all women may be ta'ne sometimes: ship us all four my lord, we can endure weather and wind alike. _king_. clear thou thy self, or know not me for father. _are_. this earth, how false it is? what means is left for me to clear my self? it lies in your belief, my lords believe me, and let all things else struggle together to dishonour me. _bell_. o stop your ears great king, that i may speak as freedom would, then i will call this lady as base as be her actions, hear me sir, believe [y]our hated bloud when it rebels against your reason sooner than this lady. _meg_. by this good light he bears it hansomely. _phi_. this lady? i will sooner trust the wind with feathers, or the troubled sea with pearl, than her with any thing; believe her not! why think you, if i did believe her words; i would outlive 'em: honour cannot take revenge on you, then what were to be known but death? _king_. forget her sir, since all is knit between us: but i must request of you one favour, and will sadly be denied. _phi_. command what ere it be. _king_. swear to be true to what you promise. _phi_. by the powers above, let it not be the death of her or him, and it is granted. _king_. bear away the boy to torture, i will have her clear'd or buried. _phi_. o let me call my words back, worthy sir, ask something else, bury my life and right in one poor grave, but do not take away my life and fame at once. _king_. away with him, it stands irrevocable. _phi_. turn all your eyes on me, here stands a man the falsest and the basest of this world: set swords against this breast some honest man, for i have liv'd till i am pitied, my former deeds are hateful, but this last is pitifull, for i unwillingly have given the dear preserver of my life [_offers to kill himself_.] unto his torture: is it in the power of flesh and blood, to carry this and live? _are_. dear sir be patient yet, or stay that hand. _king_. sirs, strip that boy. _di_. come sir, your tender flesh will try your constancie. _bell_. o kill me gentlemen. _di_. no, help sirs. _bell_. will you torture me? _king_. hast there, why stay you? _bell_. then i shall not break my vow, you know just gods, though i discover all. _king_. how's that? will he confess? _di_. sir, so he says. _king_. speak then. _bell_. great king if you command this lord to talk with me alone, my tongue urg'd by my heart, shall utter all the thoughts my youth hath known, and stranger things than these you hear not often. _king_. walk aside with him. _di_. why speak'st thou not? _bell_. know you this face my lord? _di_. no. _bell_. have you not seen it, nor the like? _di_. yes, i have seen the like, but readily i know not where. _bell_. i have been often told in court, of one _euphrasia,_ a lady and daughter to you; betwixt whom and me (they that would flatter my bad face would swear) there was such strange resemblance, that we two could not be known asunder, drest alike. _di_. by heaven and so there is. _bell_. for her fair sake, who now doth spend the spring time of her life in holy pilgrimage, move to the king, that i may scape this torture. _di_. but thou speak'st as like _euphrasia_ as thou dost look, how came it to thy knowledge that she lives in pilgrimage? _bell_. i know it not my lord, but i have heard it, and do scarce believe it. _di_. oh my shame, is't possible? draw near, that i may gaze upon thee, art thou she? or else her murderer? where wert thou born? _bell_. in _siracusa_. _di_. what's thy name? _bell. euphrasia_. _di_. o 'tis just, 'tis she now, i do know thee, oh that thou hadst died and i had never seen thee nor my shame, how shall i own thee? shall this tongue of mine e're call thee daughter more? _bell_. would i had died indeed, i wish it too, and so i must have done by vow, e're published what i have told, but that there was no means to hide it longer, yet i joy in this, the princess is all clear. _king_. what have you done? _di_. all is discovered. _phi_. why then hold you me? _di_. all is discovered, pray you let me go. [he offers to stab himself_.] _king_. stay him. _are_. what is discovered? _di_. why my shame, it is a woman, let her speak the rest. _phi_. how! that again. _di_. it is a woman. _phi_. blest be you powers that favour innocence. _king_. lay hold upon that lady. _phi_. it is a woman sir, hark gentlemen! it is a woman. _arethusa_ take my soul into thy breast, that would be gone with joy: it is a woman, thou art fair, and vertuous still to ages, in despight of malice. _king_. speak you, where lies his shame? _bell_. i am his daughter. _phi_. the gods are just. _di_. i dare accuse none, but before you two the vertue of our age, i bend my knee for mercy. _phi_. take it freely; for i know, though what thou didst were undiscreetly done, 'twas meant well. _are_. and for me, i have a power to pardon sins as oft as any man has power to wrong me. _cle_. noble and worthy. _phi_. but _bellario_, (for i must call thee still so) tell me why thou didst conceal thy sex, it was a fault, a fault _bellario_, though thy other deeds of truth outweigh'd it: all these jealousies had flown to nothing, if thou hadst discovered, what now we know. _bell_. my father would oft speak your worth and vertue, and as i did grow more and more apprehensive, i did thirst to see the man so rais'd, but yet all this was but a maiden longing to be lost as soon as found, till sitting in my window, printing my thoughts in lawne, i saw a god i thought (but it was you) enter our gates, my bloud flew out, and back again as fast as i had puft it forth, and suck't it in like breath, then was i call'd away in hast to entertain you. never was a man heav'd from a sheep-coat to a scepter rais'd so high in thoughts as i, you left a kiss upon these lips then, which i mean to keep from you for ever, i did hear you talk far above singing; after you were gone, i grew acquainted with my heart, and search'd what stir'd it so, alas i found it love, yet far from lust, for could i have but liv'd in presence of you, i had had my end, for this i did delude my noble father with a feign'd pilgrimage, and drest my self in habit of a boy, and, for i knew my birth no match for you, i was past hope of having you. and understanding well that when i made discovery of my sex, i could not stay with you, i made a vow by all the most religious things a maid could call together, never to be known, whilst there was hope to hide me from mens eyes, for other than i seem'd; that i might ever abide with you, then sate i by the fount where first you took me up. _king_. search out a match within our kingdom where and when thou wilt, and i will pay thy dowry, and thy self wilt well deserve him. _bell_. never sir will i marry, it is a thing within my vow, but if i may have leave to serve the princess, to see the vertues of her lord and her, i shall have hope to live. _are_. i _philaster_, cannot be jealous, though you had a lady drest like a page to serve you, nor will i suspect her living here: come live with me, live free, as i do, she that loves my lord, curst be the wife that hates her. _phi_. i grieve such vertues should be laid in earth without an heir; hear me my royal father, wrong not the freedom of our souls so much, to think to take revenge of that base woman, her malice cannot hurt us: set her free as she was born, saving from shame and sin. _king_. set her at liberty, but leave the court, this is no place for such: you _pharamond_ shall have free passage, and a conduct home worthy so great a prince, when you come there, remember 'twas your faults that lost you her, and not my purpos'd will. _pha_. i do confess, renowned sir. _king_. last joyn your hands in one, enjoy _philaster_ this kingdom which is yours, and after me what ever i call mine, my blessing on you, all happy hours be at your marriage joyes, that you may grow your selves over all lands, and live to see your plenteous branches spring where ever there is sun. let princes learn by this to rule the passions of their blood, for what heaven wills, can never be withstood. [_exeunt omnes_. philaster. (a) phylaster. | or, | love lyes a bleeding. | acted at the globe by his majesties servants. | written by francis baymont and john fletcher. gent. | printed at london for thomas walkley, and are to be sold at his | shop at the eagle and child, in brittaines bursse. 1620. this edition contains, on the title-page, a wood-cut representing 'the princes' (the princess) and 'a cuntrie gentellman' seated on the ground, and 'phielaster' leaving them. see the scene in act iv (_ante_, p. 125). (b) philaster. | or, | love lies a bleeding. | as it hath beene diverse times acted, | at the globe, and blacke-friers, by | his majesties servants. | written by francis beaumont, and john fletcher. gent. | the second impression, corrected, and | amended. | london, | printed for thomas walkley, and are to | be solde at his shoppe, at the signe of the | eagle and childe, in brittaines bursse. | 1622. (c) philaster, | or | love lies a bleeding. | acted at the globe, and blackfriers. by his majesties servants. | the authors being francis beaumont, and john fletcher. | gentlemen. | the third impression. | london, | printed by a.m. for richard hawkins, and are to | be sold at his shop in chancery-lane, adjoyning | to sarjeants inne gate. 1628. (d) philaster, | or | love lies a bleeding. | acted at the globe, and blackfriers. by his majesties servants. | the authors being francis beaumont, and john fletcher. gentlemen. | the fourth impression. | london, | printed by w.j. for richard hawkins, and are to | be sold at his shop in chancery-lane, adjoyning | to sarjeants inne gate. 1634. (e) philaster | or | love lies a bleeding. | acted at the globe, and blackfriers. by his majesties servants. | the authors being francis beaumont, and john fletcher. gent. | the fourth impression. | london, | printed by e. griffin for william leak, and are to | be sold at his shop in chancerie lane neere | the rowles. 1639. (f) philaster: | or, | love lies a bleeding. | acted at the globe, and blackfriers, by his majesties servants. | the authors being francis beaumont, and john fletcher, gent. | the fifth impression. | london: | printed for william leake, and are to be sold at his shop at the | sign of the crown in fleetstreet, between the two | temple gates. 1652. this edition contains on the title-page a small device of fleurs-de-lis. (g) philaster | or, | love lies a bleeding. | acted at the globe, and black-friers, by his majesties servants. | the authors being francis beaumont, and john fletcher, gent. | the fifth impression. | london: | printed for william leake, and are to be sold at his shop at the | signe of the crown in fleet street, between the two | temple gates. 1652. on the back of the title-page (which contains the device of a crown) is a list of books printed or sold by william leake. (h) philaster | or, | love lies a bleeding: | acted at the globe, and blackfriers, by his majesties servants. | the authors being francis beaumont, and john fletcher, gent. | the sixth impression. | london, | printed for william leake, and are to be sold at his shop at the | signe of the crown in fleet street, between the two | temple gates. this edition, conjecturally dated 1660 in the british museum catalogue, contains, on the back of the title-page and at the foot of the list of persons represented, lists of books printed or sold by william leake at the crown in fleet street. a the first few pages and the last few pages of the play as printed in a vary so completely from the other texts that it has been necessary to print them separately. see _post_, pp. 401--3, 413--17. b contains the following address to the reader: _'to the reader_. 'courteous reader. _philaster_, and _anthusa_ his love, have laine so long a bleeding, by reason of some dangerous and gaping wounds, which they received in the first impression, that it is wondered how they could goe abroad so long, or travaile so farre as they have done. although they were hurt neither by me, nor the printer; yet i knowing and finding by experience, how many well-wishers they have abroad, have adventured to bind up their wounds, & to enable them to visite upon better tearmes, such friends of theirs, as were pleased to take knowledge of them, so mained [? maimed] and deformed, as they at the first were; and if they were then gracious in your sight, assuredly they will now finde double favour, being reformed, and set forth suteable, to their birth, and breeding. _by your serviceable friend_, thomas walkley.' c prefixes to the play the following address repeated with variations of spelling in the five later quartos: 'the stationer, to the understanding gentrie. 'this play so affectionatly taken, and approoved by the seeing auditors, or hearing spectators, (of which sort, i take, or conceive you to bee the greatest part) hath received (as appeares by the copious vent of two [d and e three; f, g and h four] editions,) no lesse acceptance with improovement of you likewise the readers, albeit the first impression swarm'd with errors, prooving it selfe like pure gold, which the more it hath beene tried and refined, the better is esteemed; the best poems of this kind, in the first presentation, resemble [d--h resembling] that all tempting minerall newly digged up, the actors being onely the labouring miners, but you the skilfull triers and refiners: now considering [d--h consider] how currant this hath passed, under the infallible stampe of your judicious censure, and applause, and (like a gainefull office in this age) eagerly sought for, not onely by those that have heard & seene it, [f--h _omit_ heard and] but by others that have meerely heard thereof: here you behold me acting the merchant-adventurers part, yet as well for their satisfaction, as mine owne benefit, and if my hopes (which i hope, shall never lye like this love a bleeding,) doe fairely arrive at their intended haven, i shall then be ready to lade a new bottome, and [d--h _omit_ and] set foorth againe, to game the good-will both of you and them. to whom respectively i convey this hearty greeting: adieu.' p. 75 1. 3. a and b _omit_] or, love lies a bleeding. ii. 4 _et seq_. a] the actors names. king of cecely arathusa, the princesse. phylaster. pharamont, a spanish prince, leon, a lord. gleremon} two noble gentlemen trasilm } bellario a page, leon's daughter. callatea, a lady of honor. megra, another lady. a waiting gentlewoman. two woodmen. a countrey gallant. an old captaine. and souldiers. a messenger. b _omits_ the list of persons represented in the play and also _the scene_, etc.1. 5. c--h] the persons presented are these, viz. in a the play, down to i. 26 of p. 78, begins as follows] _actus_ i. _scoen_. i. _enter at severall doores _lord lyon, trasiline, _followes him_, clerimon _meetes them_. trasiline. well ore tane my lord. lyon. noble friend welcome, and see who encounters us, honourable good _clerimon_. cle. my good lord _lyon_, most happily met worthy _trasiline_, come gallants, what's the newes, the season affoords us variety, the novilsts of our time runnes on heapes, to glut their itching eares with airie sounds, trotting to'th burse; and in the temple walke with greater zeale to heare a novall lye, than a pyous anthum tho chanted by cherubins. trans. true sir: and holds set counsels, to vent their braine sicke opinions with presagements what all states shall designe. cle. thats as their intelligence serves. lyon. and that shall serve as long as invention lastes, there dreames they relate, as spoke from oracles, or if the gods should hold a synod, and make them their secritaries, they will divine and prophecie too: but come and speake your thoughts of the intended marriage with the spanish prince. he is come you see, and bravely entertainde. tras. hee is so, but not married yet. cle. but like to be, and shall have in dowry with the princesse this kingdome of _cycele_. leon. soft and faire, there is more will forbid the baines, then say amen to the marriage: though the king usurped the kingdome during the non-age of the prince _phylaster_, hee must not thinke to bereave him of it quite; hee is now come to yeares to claime the crowne. tra. and lose his head i' the asking. leon. a diadem worn by a headlesse king wold be wonderous, _phylaster_ is too weake in power. cle. he hath many friends. leon. and few helpers. tra. the people love him. leon. i grant it, that the king knowes too well, and makes this contract to make his faction strong: whats a giddy-headed multitude, that's not disciplinde nor trainde up in armes, to be trusted unto? no, he that will bandy for a monarchic, must provide brave marshall troopes with resolution armde, to stand the shock of bloudy doubtfull warre, not danted though disastrous fate doth frowne, and spit all spightfull fury in their face: defying horror in her ugliest forme, and growes more valiant, the more danger threats; or let leane famine her affliction send, whose pining plagues a second hel doth bring, thei'le hold their courage in her height of spleene, till valour win plenty to supply them, what thinke ye, would yer feast-hunting citizens indure this? tra. no sir, a faire march a mile out of town that their wives may bring them their dinners, is the hottest service that they are trained up to. cle. i could wish their experience answered their loves, then should the much too much wrongd _phylaster_, possesse his right in spight of don and the divell. tra. my heart is with your wishes. leon. and so is mine, and so should all that loves their true borne prince, then let us joyne our forces with our mindes, in whats our power to right this wronged lord, and watch advantage as best may fit the time to stir the murmuring people up, who is already possest with his wrongs, and easily would in rebellion rise, which full well the king doth both know and feare, but first our service wee'le proffer to the prince, and set our projects as he accepts of us; but husht, the king is comming. _sound musicke within_. _enter the king_, pharamont, _the princesse, the lady gallatea, the lady megra, a gentlewoman, loith lords attending, the king takes his seate_. king. faire prince, since heavens great guider furthers our intents, and brought you with safety here to arrive within our kingdome and court of _cycele_, we bid you most welcome, princely _pharamont_, and that our kingly bounty shall confirme, even whilst the heavens hold so propitious aspect wee'le crowne your wisht desires (with our owne) lend me your hand sweet prince, hereby enjoy a full fruition of your best contents, the interest i hold i doe possesse you with, onely a fathers care, and prayers retaine, that heaven may heape on blessings, take her prince, a sweeter mistrisse then the offered language of any dame, were she a queene whose eye speakes common loves, and comfort to her servants: last noble son, for so i [now must call you, what i have done thus publik, is not to add a comfort [in particular to you or mee, but all, and to confirme the nobles and the gentrie of our kingdom'e by oath to your succession: which [shall be within this moneth at most. l. 28. b--e] nor lords, nor ladyes. l. 33. b and c] desired. l. 34. folio] ghess. p. 76, l. 1. b and c] faith sir. l. 8. f] for me. p. 77, l. 1. b and c] faith, i thinke. l. 29. b] quickly to bee. l. 33. d--h] to give a stranger. l. 35. in b--h bracket ends with this line. l. 37. f, g, h and the folio _misprint_] your daughter. l. 38. c, d and e] your subjects. p. 78, l. 9. e--h] i making. l. 13. b] to talke of her. l. 22. b _omits_] a. l. 29. a] when it is. l. 30. a--e] is wrong'd. p. 79, l. 4. a] and in me. l. 5. a, b and c] by more then all the gods, i hold it happy. d and e] by more then all my hopes i hold it happy (a--e _repeat happy at beginning of next line_). l. 9. a] rotting age. l. 10. a--h] open. l. 15. a] finde it out. l. 16. a, b and c] and tye it to this countrey. by all the gods. l. 17. a] as easie to the subjects. l. 27. a] miracles. l. 30. a prints this stage-direction after the word 'shape' in l. 32. l. 31. a] he'le sell him, he has so be praised his shape. b--g] sell himself. l. 33. a] large praises. ll. 34 and 35. a] let mee bee swallowed quicke, if i can finde all the anatomy of yon mans vertues unseene to sound enough. l. 37. a, b and c] of trifles. l. 39. a _omits_] and. p. 80, l. 1. a] for favour. l. 3. a, b and c] how pale he lookes, he feares. l. 4. a] and this same whoresone conscience, ah how it jades us. l. 5. b] intent. l. 6. a] speak on. l. 11. f and g] turn'd. l. 15. a] sweet princesse. l. 25. a, b and c _add after_] ashes, as i. l. 26. f] goes. l. 30. a] his hidden bowels. l. 31. a, b and c] by the just gods it shall. l. 35. a] i prince of popines, i will make it well appeare. l. 40. a] turcle. p. 81, l. 2. a] make. ll. 3 and 4. a] i doe not fancy this choller, sure hee's somewhat tainted. l. 8. a] be constant gentle heavens, i'le run. b and c] be constant gentlemen, by heaven i'le run. l. 10. a--d] we are all one. l. 17. a] leave it to me. l. 19. d, e and g] were. l. 21. a--f] any thing but thine. g] any thine. l. 25. a and b] belied. l. 26. a] and from his presence. spit all those bragges. b--e] presence. b _omits_] all. ll. 29 and 30. a _omits_] to brave our best friends. you deserve our frown. l. 31. a] noblier. l. 32. a gives this speech to leon, i.e., dion. l. 34. a] never. l. 35. a] this is. l. 37. a _omits_] your. l. 38. a] but i'm sure tothers the man set in my eye. a--g] my eye. p. 82, l. 4. a] griefe. l. 5. a] my wants. a, b and c] now nothing hopes and feares. l. 7. a and b _omit_] not. l. 8. a] phy: whispers the king. l. 9. a _omits_ this line. ll. 12 and 13. a] has a soule of christall,* to read their actions, though mens faces. l. 14. a _omits_] do. a] but view the stranger well. f] your stranger. l. 15. a] throw all. a] braveries. l. 16. a] a true truant. l. 17. a] i am no augery. l. 21. a] you are. l. 22. a] smooth your selfe. l. 24. a, b and c _omit_] not. l. 25. a--e] my weake starres lead me too; [a:] all my weake fortunes. l. 26. a] dare. a _omits_ parenthesis. b] presence (speake, that is. l. 30. a _omits_] sure. l. 31. a] yes, with my fathers spirit is heare o king. l. 32. a] and now. l. 34. a--e] these are. l. 39. the folio _misprints_] hour hand. p. 83, l. 2. a] of your life. l. 4. a _omits_] your. a _omits_] ex. king, pha. and are. b--h _omit_] and. l. 6. a gives this speech to 'tra.', i.e., thrasiline. l. 8. a--g] is he not. l. 10. a--g] i could. a] their nation. l. 12. a gives this speech to 'lad.', i.e., lady. a, b and c] gods comfort. a _omits_] lady. l. 13. a] has. a, b and c with variations of spelling _add_] exet ladies. l. 27. a] recluses. l. 28. a] how doe your worth sir. l. 30. a _omits_] i find. l. 32. a] sir, the king must please. l. 33. a] who you are, and what you are. f] what we are and who you are. l. 34. the folio _misprints_] juriuries. a] your wrongs and vertues. l. 35. a] but call your father to you. l. 38. a _omits_] to. p. 84, l. 2. a] friend. l. 3. a--d] our eares. l. 5. f] do you love. l. 6. a] lyon. l. 10. a] a penance. l. 12. for this line a after l. 8 _reads_] enter a gentlewoman. l. 13. a] i'st to me, or to any of these gentlemen you come. l. 14. here and at l. 17 for 'la.' a _reads_] gent-woo. l. 16. a] you are. l. 17. a _omits_] to. l. 18. a, b and c] her faire hand. l. 19. a _adds_] exit gent-woo. l. 21. f] but do weigh. l. 28. a] and white fiend frends in her cheekes. l. 30. in d--h the stage-direction 'ex. phil.' is printed at the end of l. 29. l. 32. b--g] th' art. l. 35. a] enter princesse and her gentlewoman. ll. 36 and 37. for 'are.' a _reads_ throughout the scene 'prin.' and for 'la.' _reads_ 'woo.' p. 85, l. 2. a] at the first. l. 5. a--h] dangers. l. 7. a] dares. l. 12. a, b and c] you all are. l. 17. a _omits_] fear. a] mee thoughts. l. 21. a] with such a woing jesture and puicke looks. l. 22. a _omits_] him. l. 27. a] his ends. l. 29. a] to things so opposite, so bound to put. l. 31. a _omits_] of mine. l. 32. a _omits_] of. l. 35. a] that will not have your dens withstood. l. 37. a, b and c] passions. l. 38. a] into. l. 40. a and b] oh it is well. p. 86, l. 5. a] dos so ill become. l. 14. a] injury. l. 15. a] found to be so great. l. 24. a] both, or i do. a, b and c] by heaven. l. 25. a] if i not calmely die injoy them both. l. 28. h] give. l. 40. a and b] i can indure it. p. 87, l. 1. a] saw yet. l. 2. a--h] dreadfully. l. 3. a] speake. l. 4. a--d] horrible. l. 7. a] a womans tongue. l. 10. a] you that beg. l. 11. f and g] unprice. l. 17. f] the love. l. 22. a _omits_] doth. b--e] doe. l. 26. a] might have. l. 35. a _omits_] the gods. l. 36. a] the worthier, and the better blest. l. 39. a] unwelcom'd. p. 88, l. 5. a--g] true loves. l. 9. b--h] fountaines. l. 11. a] as much againe. l. 13. a] bred in the vayle. l. 16. a] eye. l. 17. a] make them. l. 23. a] the course. l. 24. a] it yeelded him his life. l. 30. a] me thoughts. l. 32. a] whom was glad. l. 33. f and g] the truliest. f] gentle. l. 36. a] enter woman. in a and b this stage-direction occurs after l. 37. l. 38. a for 'la.' _reads_] woo. l. 39. a] phylaster doe. p. 89, l.4. a, b and c] the voyce of god. l.5. a] yet i doe not hide my selfe. l.13. folio has a full-stop at end of line. l.14. a _omits_] for my sake do. l.16. a] enter pharamont and a woman. ll. 19 and 20. a] the deare love within my heart. l.21. a] if i shall have an answer or no, derectly i am gone. l.23. a] to what? what would he have answer. b--e _omit_] an. l.25. a--d] forbare. l.29. a] though it lie. l.31. a, b and c] and by the gods. l.32. a] if then. l.35. a _omits_ this line, though the words 'pha. you' are printed as turn-over words at the foot of the page. p. 90, l.i. a] nothing. l.5. a] so much. ll. 7 and 8. a] but wert the church at the high altar. l.9. a] injurie. l.10. a. _omits_] sir. l.12. a and b _omit_] phi. l.16. a _omits_] but. l.17. a, b and c] but yet. l. 19. a] before our hearts bee so, then if you please. l.21. a--e] dreaming forme. l.23. a] your thoughts. l.28. a] and his boy, called bellario. l.31. a] thy owne. l.33. a _reads_ 'boy' for 'bell.' here and throughout the play. l.34. a] and i am onely yet some thing. l.35. a--h] were apt. l.37. a] crafty. p. 91, l.6. a] bear'st. l.7. a] claps. a _omits_] yet. l.8. a] but when judgement comes no rule those passions. l.17. a _omits_] grown. l.30. a] dos plead. l.32. a] knowst. l.33. a] dos call. l.34. b] dwellest. p. 92, l.5. a] your loves, your sighes. l.7. b--h] heaven. a] exit boy. l.8. c] lord. l. ii. a] i must see. l.12. a _omits_] phi. l.18. a] before in my life. l.20. a] i'le hound at her. madame. f] heer's on boulted, i'le bound at her. l.21. in a the words 'enter gallatea' occur after the word 'fault' in l.19. l.25. a] y'are. l.26. a _omits_] but. 1. 28. a] those two i onely barre. l.32. a] couch. l.33. a] a play and a banquet. ll.34 and 35. a] to make you blush, this is my owne hayre, and this face. l.36. a--d and f] a peny painting. l.37. a and h] wardrop. g] wardrope. l.38. a] the jealous silke-mans wife curse our doing. p. 93, l.l.a] you much mistake me lady. l.2. folio _misprints_ _pha_. for _gal_. after this line a _adds_] pha. y'are very dangerous bitter, like a potion. _gal_. no sir, i do not mean to purge you, though i meane to purge a little time on you. l.8. a and b] cardus. a] about five. l. ii. a] and conger. a] they are dullers. l.12. a] the vitall anymales. l.13. a] all this time. 11. 16 and 17. a] shee's daintie, and must be courted with a shewer of gold. l.19. a] what ha you. l.20. a] you'd have silver fort. l.21. a] a worse time sir. l.23. a] gold safe for you. a _adds_] she slips behind the orras. ii. 25 and 26. in place of these two lines a] _gal_. shes comming sir behind, will ye take white money yet for all this. _exit_. l.-27. a] if there be but two such in this kingdome more. b--h] if there be but two such more in this kingdome. l.28. a] ene. l.31. a] would breed. l.39. a] doe not call you lady. p. 94, l.i.a--g] talke an houre. l.5. a] your lip. l.6. a] time enough. l.8. a--d] and red enough. l.10. a) twend cherries dyde in blush. l. ii. a] deepe beames. i.14. a] sweete looker on. a] these blessings. l.15. a. _adds as a stage-direction_] they kisse. l.18. a _omits_] off. l.19. a] it may be a number without probatum. l.20. a] by such neate poetrie. l.26. a] but you. l.28. a] now you ha don't before me. l.29. a] and yet. l.31-a] never. l.34. a] ye. l.36. a--h and folio] this is all. p. 95, l. 5. a] my masculine imagination. l. 7. b] mine honor. l. 9. a] my other. l. 10. a] sir _timen_ a schoolemaister. l. 11. a] keepe. b and c _add_] madam. l. 14. folio] apoplex? l. 15. a _omits_ 'and' and 'sir.' l. 17. a] tied toot. l. 19. a _omits_] look well about you, and you may find a tongue-bolt. l. 21. a and b] whether. l. 24. a _omits_ the second 'i dare not.' l. 27. a] give worship to you thoughts. l. 28. a] y'are. l. 29. a] i shall visit you. l. 30. a] most uncertaine. l. 34. a] exit ambo. b] exeunt. l. 35. a] the orras. l. 38. a] dowsabell. a] for it. l. 39. a _omits_] gal. p. 96, l. 1. a] enter princesse and her gentlewoman. these characters are in a indicated by 'prin.' and 'wo.' throughout the scene. l. 3. a _omits_] madam. l. 8. a--h and folio] boy. a] i'st not. l. 11. in a this stage-direction occurs after l. 7. l. 14. a--g] has done. l. 19. a] they shall be. l. 23. a, b and c] suspected. l. 26. a] presents. l. 31. a--h] was never. l. 34. a] enter boy. he is called 'boy' throughout the scene. l. 35. a] your sad. l. 38. a] then trust in me. p. 97, l. 6. a] a crosse schoole-maister. l. 8. a] water. l. 9. h and folio _misprint_] dreath. f, g and h] trouble. l. 10. a _omits_] out. l. 11. a] it selfe. l. 12. a, b and c] doth. l. 13. a] _boy_. i know not madame, what it is. l. 18. a, b and c] respect to. l. 19. a, b and c] with thinking. l. 20. a, b and c] thinke away. l. 21. a] with mingling starts, and crying. l. 22. a _omits_] and hastily. a] in streetes. l. 24. a] any woman. l. 28. a] drop beades. ll. 30 and 31. a] taught to your lords credit. l. 35. a] thus away. l. 36. a] enter the three gentlewomen, megra, gallatea, and another lady. b--h _omit_] and. l. 37. a gives this speech to 'tra.', i.e., thrasiline. l. 38. a--g] talke an hour. p. 98, l. 4. a] theyre. b] theile scarce find. l. 5. a and b] your owne lodging. l. 6. a] enter pharamont, the princesse boy, and a woman. l. 9. a] pleasing. l. 11. a] i shall choose. l. 12. a _omits_ this stage-direction. 1. 13. here and throughout the scene 'are.' is 'prin.' in a. a _omits_] my lord. a and b] these ladyes. l. 15. a gives this speech to galatea. l. 17. a _omits_] you. l. 18. a _omits_] has. a] hilus. l. 20. a] why this is that. l. 27. a] to hide it. l. 32. a] you have. g] y'are. l. 34. a _omits_] come. l. 35. a _omits_] ex. gal. and meg. b--h _omit_] and. p. 99 l. 3. a as stage-direction after the word 'late' on p. 98, l. 37 _reads_] enter the king, the princesse, and a guard. l. 4. c _omits_] your. l. 11. a. _omits_] have. l. 12. a. _omits_] ex. are. and bel. b--h omit] and. l. 19. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion, and _adds_] exit leon. l. 28. a] from the earth. l. 33. a] undeserving child. a _omits_] of mine. l. 34. a] if she has not broke your lawes, but how could i. l. 36. a] in wrong. p. 100, l. 9. a] get from them. a _omits_] i think. a] shee's. l. 11. f] not time. l. 14. a _omits_] louder yet. l. 15. a] your pleasure ... your hearing. l. 16. a] meditation. folio] meditations? ll. 17 and 18. a] and lowder, not yet, i do not thinke he sleepes, having such larumes by him, once more, pharamont. _they knock_. ll. 17 and 18. b] his larum. l. 19. a] enter pharamont above. l. 23. a] prince, prince. l. 26. a] the same, sir. come downe sir. l. 29. a _omits_] pha. below. l. 31. a] i have certain private reasons to my selfe sir. ll. 31 and 32. a as a marginal direction] they prease to come in. l. 33. a _omits_] gentlemen. l. 35. a] i must come, and will come enter. d--h and folio print 'enter' after a space at the end of preceding line. l. 36. a] dishonoured thus. l. 39. a] runagates. p. 101, l. 3. a _omits_] so. l. 4. a omits] i'le. l. 5. a _omits_] known. 1. 6. a] i so no. a _omits_] meg. above. l. 8. a _omits_] and ready. l. 9. a] tis a poore. l. 15. a] whoting. l. 18. a] still in store. l. 22. a--e and g] wring. l. 24. a] chide you dearly. l. 25. a _omits_] worthy. l. 26. a] his lodging. l. 28. a] stage. l. 31. a, b and c] pray god. il. 31 and 32. a has marginal stage-direction] they come downe to the king. l. 33. a _omits_ this stage-direction. l. 37. a] apothecaries. p. 102, l. 2. a] all sinne and hell. l. 5. a _omits_] and. l. 7. a] reball rymes. l. 9. b, c and d] ye. l. 13. a--g] those gods. l. 15. a] that shall make. l. 17. a] upon wals. a] or any thing. l. 19. a] her fayre leaps and out-lying, and will discover all, and will dishonour her. l. 22. a omits} and. l.31. a] sinke alone. l.32. a] in print. ll. 33 and 34. a] they're. l. 37. a _omits_] nay. p. 103, l. 1. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 3. a] quarters. ll. 5 and 6. a] do so, and i'le forget your----. l. 6. a] and the guard. b--h _omit_] and. l. 7. a _omits_] why. a and b] fit for hercules. l. 8. a] worthy. c] woman. a] aside. l. 10. a--h] has. l. 11. a--h] uttered. b and c] metled. l. 12. a] will not cure him. l. 13. a, b and c] infections. l. 14. a] chast, brave. l. 16. a] leave yee. l. 18. a] exit three gentlemen. l. 20. a] enter three gentlemen. b--h _omit_] and. 1.21. a] and doubtlesse. l.25. a] for all us. a _omits_] should. l.33. strange thing. p. 104, l. 3. a _omits_ this line. l. 5. a omits] bent. l. 6. a _omits_] that's. l. 8. a] draweth. l. 10. a] and we can now comfort. l. 11. a omits] it. l. 12. a gives this speech to cleremont. l. 13. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 15. a] on his beleefe. l. 17. a] lords to his owne good. l. 19. a _omits_] nay. l. 23. a gives this speech to cleremont. ll. 27 and 28. a] frame on men disgrace for vertue. l. 30. a _omits_] good. l.33-a] dull. l.35-a _omits_] or. a] knowes. b] knowne. l. 38. a] deserved more. p. 105, l. 2. a and b] to thankes. l. 3. a] sufficient. l. 5. a _omits_] sir. l.6. a _omits_] will not. l.8. a] long have. l. 11. a gives this speech to 'tra.', i.e., thrasiline. l. 14. b by mistake gives this speech to di. l. 16. a] he offers to draw his sword, and is held. l. 18. a] then to rob. l. 22. a] faithfull to increase. l. 24. a] cut out falsehood where it growes. l. 25. a] that man. l. 32. a] injuries. l. 38. a] your pardon. l. 39. a] makes. p. 106, l. 1. a] backs. l. 5. a] tis then truth that women all are false. b and c] tis then truth that woman-kind is false. d] thee truth. d--g] woman-kind. l. 6. a] tis. l. 9. a, b and c] by heaven. ll. 10 and 11. a _omits_] for love of truth speak; is't possible? l. 10. b and c] for god's love speake. l. 12. a _omits_ this line. l.13. a gives this line to 'tra.', i.e., thrasiline. l. 14. a gives this speech to cleremont. l. 20. a] a little milder. l. 22. a] desires. l. 23. a] and know the sinne she acts. b and c] know. l. 26. a gives this speech to cleremont. l. 30. a] women. l. 34. a and b] mine eyes. l. 35. a] daggers in thy breast. b] tane. l. 36. a] stuacke dumb. c] did. l. 37. a] this fault might. il. 38 and 39. in a the speakers are transposed. p. 107, l. 1. a omits] several. l. 2. a] and spreads them selfe. l. 3. a] meetes not a fayre on. what, etc. l. 4. a] thorow. l. 5. a gives this speech to 'tra.', i.e., thrasiline. l.6. a--d] fall. a, b and c] distracted. l. 10. a] do't. l. 12. a] lodgings. a _omits_] forth. ll. 14 and 15. a] omnes. all the gods direct you the readiest way. b, c and d] di. all the gods direct you the readiest way. a _adds_] exit three gent. ll. 16--18. a _omits_ these lines. l. 18. b--h _omit_] and. l. 19. a] aske um where he tooke her. l. 22. a] would but flame. l. 24. a] the deede. a] it is. l. 30. a] take them. l. 33. f] spring. l. 36. a prints after the words 'miserable man'] enter boy. l. 39. a] not blush. p. 108, l. 4. in a throughout the scene bellario is indicated by 'boy.' l. 6. a adds stage-direction] he gives him a letter. l. 10. a _omits_] my. 1. 12. a] but far unfit for me that doe attend. l. 13. a] my boy. l. 15. a] with this paper. l. 16. a] twines of adamant. l. 19. a] how dos. l. 20. a _omits_ this line. l. 26. a] meet. l. 28. a] why, tis. l. 31. a] with al her maiden store. l. 33. a] service. l. 34. a] rewarded. l. 36. a] speakes. l. 38. a] not well. b--g] not ill. p. l09, l. 1. a] fall out from your tongue, so unevenly. l. 2. a] quicknesse. l. 12. a, b and c] never my lord, by heaven. l. 13. a, b and c] that's strange, i know, etc. l. 16. a] i bid her do 't. l. 18. a] delight. l. 19. a] as to her lord. l. 21. a] paradise. b] parrallesse. c and d] parallesse. l. 25. a] yes, now i see why my discurled thoughts. 1. 27. a] augeries. l. 29. a] where you tend. l. 31. a] noble friend. 1. 35. a] with sparrowes eyes. l. 39. a] and of goates. l. 40. a] that weighed from. p. 110, l. 2. a] come. l. 4. a] main deceit. l. 8. a--h] as i do now thy face. l. 14. a] wrack it. l. 17. a] hate me. l. 19. a _omits_} greater. a] to me. l. 21. folio] dist. l. 22. a] upon me. a _adds_ stage-direction] he drawes his sword. l. 23. a, b and c] by heaven i never did. l. 27. a--g] kiss those limbs. l. 29. a--d] fear'st. l. 32. a] could be. l. 34. a _omits_] but. b] doest. l. 39. a] giving ore againe, that must be lost. p. 111 l. i. a, b and c] those. l. 2. a] and then thou wilt. l. 7. b by mistake _omits_] _phi_. l. 12. b--e] doest. b] utterst. h] uttrest. 1. 13. folio _misprints_] known. l. 17. a] thy honest lookes. l. 18. b] doest. l. 19. a] thy blood. l. 23. a] tenderest. l. 27. a] honord frame. l. 28. a] haplesse. l.31. a] sorrowes. l. 33. folio has full-stop at end of line. l. 34. a _omits_] exit bel. l. 36. a] what ere. a, b and c] deservest. f] deserv'd. l. 37. a and b] bathe. a--g] this body. 1. 38. a] mad'st no medicine to. p. 112, l. 1. a] enter princesse. l. 2. for 'are.' a prints throughout scene] prin. a _omits_] again. l. 4. a] slept, make talke. l. 5. a] remember. 1. 6. a] was last spoken, and how spoke when i sight song. l. 9. a] what, in your. b--e and g] what, at your. f] what of your. l. 17. a] ugly sir. l. 28. a and b] put him away i say. l. 32. a _omits_] sir. 1. 33. a] a command. l. 35. a] that shame to you, ye are one. l. 36. a _omits_] unto. l. 37. a] by the gods. p. 113, l. i. b] i have. a _omits_] my lord. l. 7. a] maid. l. 8. a, b and c] honour faire. l. 10. a] truth. l. 14. a] oh how they mind to. 1. 15. a] foule sicke. a] stricke the mountaines. l. 16. a] be sleeping. 1. 25. e--h _misprint_] he right. a--g] honour. l. 35. a] oh my misfortune. b, a space being left between the 'i' and the 'f'] my mi fortune. c] oh my my fortune. l. 36. f] let me go. p. 114, l. 1. h] your letters. l. 2. a] make. l. 3. a] who shall now sing. l. 5. a] and make them warme. l. 7. a, b and c] eye-lids. l. 8. a] make me. d, e, g and h] philast. l. 12. a] get you. l. 14. folio _misprints_] bell. l. 16. a] all service in servants. l. 17. a] and all desires to doe well, for thy sake. l. 21. a] unto. l. 29. a by mistake _omits_] phi. a] o ye gods, ye gods. l. 30. a] a wealthy patience. l. 31. a] above the shocke. l. 32. a] mischiefe. l. 33. folio _misprints_] live. 1. 34. a] as deepe as. l. 36. a] and flowing it by. l. 38. a] heare. 1. 39. a _omits_] must. p. 115, l. 8. a] poyson. l. 10. a] and there dig. a] beasts and birds. 1. 11. a] women are. a _omits_} and help to save them from you. l. 16. a _omits_] so. a] men. l. 17. a] reade. l. 21. a] frost. l. 28. a] you gods. f _omits_] ye. l. 30. a _omits_} as pure crystal. c] a pure christall. 1. 32. a] shall women turne their eies. l. 33. a after 'constancy'] enter boy. l. 34. a] and vile. b] and guiltily. l. 35. a] spokst. h] speak'st. 1. 37. a] and to betray innocence. l. 38. a] maist. p. 116, l. 3. a] undertooke. l. 5. a] lest we should. l. 7. a] angry with me. l. 11. a] has. b--h] hath. l. 17. a] some greater fault. l. 18. a] suffering. l. 21. a] exit boy. l. 22. a] thou hast. 1. 23. a] but if i had another time to lose. l. 25. a] might take. l. 30. a _omits_] a lady. l. 35. a] exit princesse. p. 117, ll. 2 and 3. a] enter the king, pharamont, princesse, megra, gallatea, leon, cle., tra. and two wood-men. l. 7. a] you are. l. 8. a] trespasses. l. 9. a, b and c] here's none. a] dares. l. 12. a] lake. 1. 17. a] pernitious. a _omits_'] loose. l. 18. a, b and c] pursue. a] any lady. l. 22. a--h] obeyed. l. 23. a and b] furder. l. 24. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion, and the following speech to 'tra.' l. 31. a--g] yon lady. l. 32. a and b] neighbours. l. 33. a] can you see. 1. 34. a gives this speech to cleremont, b and c to 'tra.' a, b and c] faith no great. l. 37. a gives this speech to 'tra.', and the following speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 38. a] regient. a] damn'd. p. 118, l. 1. a] the flesh and the world. l. 3. a] done against. l. 4. a] dares. l. 8. a _omits_] her. l. 9. a--d] health. l. 10. a] except. l. 11. a and b] large summe. 11. 14 and 15. a] exit king and lords, manet wood-men. l. 16. a] the deere below. l. 23. a] strange. l. 28. a] docets. b, c and d] dowcets. a] his steward. a--e _omit_] had. l. 30. a] he and old sir tristram. a] ye. l. 31. a] a stagge. l. 37. a, b and c] by the gods. a _omits_'] she's. a] a fault or no. p. 119 l.2. a--g] haunches. l.5. b--g] have been. l. 8. a] harke else. a _omits_] exeunt. l. 9. a] enter philaster solus. l. 10. a] the woods. l. 11. a] acrons. b--h] akrons. l. 13. a] of cruell love. ll. 17 and 18. a] chaste as the rocke whereon she dwelt. l. 20. a] borne out her. l. 22. a] enter boy. l. 24. a--h _omit_] man. l. 25. a] i see. 11. 27 and 28. a] that brake. i-33-a] fortunes. l. 38. a _omits_ this and the five succeeding lines. p. 120, l. l. b, c and d] wearest. l. 6. a, b and c] by the gods. 1. 8. a] thou art. l. 11. a, b and c] even so thou wepst, and lookst, and spokst. a] when i first tooke thee. l. 12. a. _omits_] up. l. 17. a _adds_] exit phylaster. l. 20. a] exit boy. b--h _omit_ and, l. 21. a] enter leon, cle. and wood-men. l. 22. a--g] chance. l. 23. a] cle. my lord leon. c and d] my lord don. l. 25. a] starre-dyed with stars. b--g] studded with. l. 26. a] i wood. l. 28. a _omits_]exeunt wood. 1. 29. a _omits_] enter cleremont. l. 30. b] you questions. c] yon. l. 36. b--g] ran. l. 37. a and b] twas. p. 121, l. 3. a] enter the king, tra. and other lords. l. 5. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 6. a and b] howe's that. l. 7. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 18. a] why then. ll. 20 and 21. a] heare me then, thou traytor. l. 21. a] darst. b--h] dar'st. ll. 21 and 22. a] possible and honest, things. l. 24. a, b and c] faith i cannot. a] you'le. l. 25. a] you have let me. l. 27. a--g] her here before me. l. 32. a] a king. l. 33. a gives this speech to cleremont. a] no more smell. l. 35. a _omits_ is it so _and reads_ take you heed. l. 36. a _omits_] sir. p. 122, l. 1. a] still we. l. 3. a] power we thinke we have. l. 5. a] here i stand. l. 6. a] these be punisht. l. 9. a] covenant. l. 10. a _omits_] and. l. 14. a] into the wood with her. l. 19. a] o y'are all. a and b] hurts. l. 22. a] by this sword. l. 26. a, b and c] yes, you may. a] to leave. a--g] lady bedfellow. ll. 26 and 27. a] bedfellow here for a spincer. l. 31. folio] may. l. 32. a] i, some would. ll. 33 and 34. a gives these two speeches to the king and pharamont respectively. l. 37 a gives this speech to galatea. a] the search my selfe. l. 38. a] enter the princesse solus. l. 39. a] finde out the way. p. 123, l. 3. a] or mountaines. a--c] through. l. 4. a _adds_ stage-direction] she sits downe. l. 5. a] enter boy. l. 6. a] yonder my lady is. a] gods knowes. b and c] god knowes. l.9. a] grounds. l.12. a _omits_] more. a] twines. l. 13. f, g] [oh. h] he stirres. l. 14. a] i'st. 1. 18. a _omits_] i am well. l. 24. a--h] you gods. l. 25. a] who's hee. l. 26. a] ease it with his tongue. l. 27. a, b and c] helpe, helpe. l. 29. a] lightnings. l. 31. a, b and c] trust the tongues. a, b and c with variations of spelling _add_] of hell-bred women [b woman]. some good god looke downe. l. 33. a _omits_] ages in the. l. 35. a--g] put hills of fire. a] my breast. p. 124, l. 2. d--g] makes. l.3. b] through. l.5. a]to inrage. l.8. d, e and g] looks up. l. 9. a _omits_] it. b] know't. l. 10. a _omits_] do but. l. 16. a] thy way. l. 18. a] you have. l. 19. a] in more. l. 20. a gives this speech to 'prin.', i.e., arethusa. a] madmens. l. 23. a gives this speech to 'boy', and the following speech to 'prin.' l. 24. a, b and c] the world. l. 25. folio _misprints_] _pha_. l. 28. a adds stage-direction] exit boy. b] exit bell. l. 29. a] meetings. l. 32. b--h] fortune. l. 33. a] peace with earth. l. 34. a and b] there will. l. 35. a--e] jealousie. a] no il here. l. 37. a] shew me the way to joy. p. 125, l. 2. a] to 't. l. 4. a] countrey gallant. l. 5. a] i will. 1. 6. a] this two houres. c, d and e] these two houre. l. 8. b] then then. e, g and h] out rid. l. 9. a] strong braines. l. 10. a] the whooping would put a man. l. 12. a _adds_] phy. wounds her. l. 13. a--heaven. l. 14. a] nay, they. l. 16. a] thoud'st. c--h] wouldest. a, b and c _omit_] of. l. 17. b and c] veines. a] with a man. l. 21. a] god judge me. b and c] god uds me. l. 25. a] rethrack. l. 26. a prints 'they fight' at the end of the following line. l. 28. a] gods guard. b and c] heaven. l. 31. a] would this bore. l. 33. a] though i doe lose it. l. 34. a prints 'exit phy.' after the word 'rogue' in the following line. l. 36. a _omits_] and. p. 126, l. 3. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 6. a and b] by god she lies. a] i' the breast. l. 7. a] oh secret spring. l.12. a] omnes. l. l. 14. a] but who has done it. l. 16. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 19. a] i let. l. 20. a] about 's eares. l. 23. a] by this ayre. a--e] never. a _omits_] of him. l. 24. b and c] all to you in my hat. l. 28. a] sinne. l. 29. f] i will. i will. l. 31. a, b and c] woodman. l. 32. a] unto the king. l. 34. a prints simply] exit. l. 36. a gives this speech to cleremont. l. 37. a, b and c] of this. a] i'le see. b--h] goe to see. l. 38. a] enter the boy. l. 39. a] o heavens! heavy death sits on my brow. p. 127, l. 2. a] sweete on all. l. 5. a] my eyes. l. 6. a _omits_\ oh. 1. 17. a prints stage-direction after the word 'broken' in l. 19. l. 21. a] but my blood. l. 24. a] upon his sleeping body, he has none. l. 25. a] he wounds him. l. 27. a] it wisht. a] for pittie. l. 28. a prints after the first 'here' in following line] phy. falls downe. l. 36. a] hide, hide. 1. 39. b--g] were it. p. 128, l. 1. a _omits_] little. l. 2. a] has not. l. 4. a] art thou then true to me. l. 5. a _omits_] good. l. 6. a] these. l. 7. a] your breeth in't, shromd. l. n. a _omits_ one 'follow.' l. 14. a _omits_] that. a _adds_] boy falls downe. l.15. b--h _omit_] and. l. 16. a] i tract. l.17. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion, and the next to cleremont. l. 22. a gives this speech to thrasiline. l. 23. a] it is. l. 25. f] the creation. 1. 26. a and b] to strike. l. 31. a, b and c] did make. l. 34. a] tortour. l. 36. a] my. l. 37. a gives this speech to cleremont. p. 129, l. 1. a, b and c] carelesse. l. 4. a] them. l. 6. a] sines. 1. 14. a] vigour. a prints the stage-direction at the end of the following line. 1. 16. a] innocents. l. 17. a] know you the price of what. l. 19. a] my lord phylaster. a _omits_] tis. l. 23. h] as hurt. l. 24. a] on a pyramades. l. 26. a] as you. l. 27. a] teach the under-world. l. 32. a] this untimely courtesie. l. 33. c--h] he is. a] you beare me hence. 1. 35. a] to punish. l. 38. a, b and c] by all the gods. p. 130. a gives the first five speeches to dion, thrasiline, bellario, dion and bellario respectively. l. 2. c] is it. l. 3. a] well, i feare me sir, we. b--h] fear me, we. a _omits_] all. l. 9. a] gentlie. b--g] gently. l. 10. a and b] breath forth my. l. 11. a] not all the wealth of pluto. l. 17. a] a cleere. l. 18. a, b and c] bitter. l. 19. a] haires. l. 20. a] bathe them. l. 21. a] enter the king, princesse, and a guard. l. 23. a gives this speech to dion. a] but sute it was phylaster. l. 24. a gives this speech to the king, and the following one to pharamond. l. 25. a--d] will tell us that. l. 26. a] ay me, i know him well. l. 28. a] sir, if it were he. l. 32. beare them. l. 35. a _omits_] go. l. 36. a] loves. 1. 37. a _omits_] and. l. 38. a--g] deaths. l. 39. a] your law. p. 131 i. 3. a] we shall. a] on with our intended match. a _adds_] exit king and pharamont. l. 4. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion, and the following one to cleremont. l. 7. a _omits_] omnes. b--h _add_] finis actus quarti. l. 10. this speech and the seven succeeding ones are given by a to 'leon' (dion), cleremont, thrasiline, 'leon', thrasiline, cleremont, 'leon' and thrasiline respectively. l. 19. a _omits_] exeunt. l. 20. a] shufle. a _omits_] exeunt. l. 21. a] enter phylaster, princesse, boy, in prison. b--h omit] and. l. 22. a, b and c] nay faith philaster. l.23. b] forbeare, were wondrous well. l.24. a] and bellario. l. 25. a] shut. a _omits_] as now from earth. l. 27. a] the truest ones. l. 29. a] forgive me, and. p. 132, l. 2. a--g] should i outlive you. a] i should out live. b--h] i should then outlive. l. 3. a] come. l. 4. a--h] shall close. l. 6. a] waste by time. b] waste by limbs. l. 7. a--g] that ever. a] ever liv'd. 1. 10. a] houre behind it. l. 15. a] kingdome. l. 17. a] every just maiden. l. 19. a] my deerest, say not so. l. 21. a] woman. l.26. a] why? what. l. 28. a] life no whit compared. l. 32. b] your pardon. 1. 36. a gives this speech to 'prin.', i.e., arethusa. p. 133, l. 1. a] enter the king, leon, cle., tra. and a guard. b--h _omit_] and. l. 3. a gives this speech to 'leon', i.e., dion. l. 4. a] plotforme. 1. 8. a gives this speech to cleremont. l. 9. a _adds_] exit tra. 1. 12. a] to lose it. a--e] lightly. a after the word 'lightly' adds stage-direction] aside. l. 14. a] stocke. l. 17. a] weightier. l. 18. a] the heate. l. 20. a] and leaves them desolate. l. 24. a] enter phi., princesse, boy, with a garland of flowers on's head. b--h _omit_ the first 'and.' l. 16. a] shal. l.27. a] epethelamon. a _omits_] of these lovers. l. 18. f] but have lost. l. 30. a _omits_] on. l. 31. a] cã¦dor. l. 32. a] mountaines. 1.35. a] free from the firver of the serian starre. b--g] sirian. l.37-a, b and c] deliver. a] that issues. p. 134, l. 1. a--d] pleased. l. 2. a] base, under branches, to devour. 1. 4. a] did choake. b--d] choake. l. 5. a] brakes, rud, thornes. a--g] the sun. l. 6. a _omits_] even. a] roote. a] um there. l. 7. f _omits_] a. b and c] gentler. a] has. l. 9. a] never to be unarmde. l. 10. a, b and c] number. a _omits_] holy. a] ore. l. 11. a] has. f _omits_] noble. 1. 12. a] worthy king. l. 15. a, b and c] for now there. l. 17. a] bitter threats. l. 19. a--e] struggled. l. 22. a] where you. l. 28. a] metour. l. 32. a] of venge-in. l. 33. a] chaft amongst. b--e] chast. b--g] among. l. 35. a] looke from me. l. 37. a] that i have left. l. 38. f] there is. a _omits_] that. l. 40. a] for death to me can be life. p. 135 l. 1. a] as long as. l. 4. a] ore by. l. 8. a _omits_] dear. 1. 9. a] you are. a after this line _adds_] that feedes upon the blood you gave a life to. l. 14. a] a shame. l. 15. f] pelican. l. 17. a _omits_] with purest. l. 32. a, b and c] that by the gods it is a joy. l. 37. a _omits_] you. p. 136, l. 1. a _omits_] fearing. a] for the lord phylaster. l. 2. a] fellowes. l. 6. a _omits_ this line. l. 7. a] 2 mes. b and c] arme, arme, arme, arme. l. 8. a] take these citizens. l. 9. a] them. l. 12. a _omits_] exit with are., phi., bell. l. 16. a] exit king, manet leon, cle. and tra. l. 18. a] by al the gods. l. 25. a] you lackes. b] ye lacks. 1. 26. a] skin. a] see you. b] have ye. l. 28. a] brave new. l. 29. a] my kinde countrimen. l. 33. a] sawce. l. 34. a] flush amongst um, and ill speeding. 11. 34 and 35. a] have injurious raine. a _omits_] unbound. 11. 35 and 36. a] in rafine freeze. a] moth. l. 38. a] preases. p. 137, l. r. f] neck. l. 3. a] and know. l. 4. a] gotish. b and c] goatish. l. 10. a] wide. a] your valours. l. 11. a] we must. a] for't. a _omits_] 'em. l. 12. a] and you will. b--e] and they. l. 15. a] speake him well. l. 16. a] courtesies. l. 17. a _omits_] exit cle. l. 18. a] citizens. l. 20. a _omits_] and soil you. ll. 21 and 22. a] every long vocation; and foule shall come up fat and in brave liking. l. 21. b] ever long. l. 23. a] that poore. l. 24. a _omits_] and. l. 25. a _omits_] sir. 1. 26. a--g] quench. l. 28. a] enter phylaster. l. 33. a] to 't. l. 34. a] let me your goodnesse know. l. 36. a, b and c] all my wishes. l. 37. a] speakes all this. p. 138, l. 4. a _omits_} poor. l. 7. a] free her. l. 9. a] noble word. 1. 10. a] you peace. l. 12. a] now all the. a _omits_] exeunt omnes. 1. 13. a] enter an olde captaine, with a crew of citizens leading pharamont prisoner. l.15. b and c] your nimble. b--g] mother. l. 21. b and c] kings. l. 22. e and g] you paintings. l. 25. b] beloved. b and c] custards. l. 29. b--d] collers. p. 139, l. 1. b] solder'd. l. 6. b] me see. l. 7. for 'lie' g prints 'ie' with a space at the beginning where the 'i' should be. h and the folio _misprint_] here i it. l. 8. b] washing. b] do you see sweete prince. c] do you sweet prince. d, e, g and h] sweat. f] swet. l. 12. b--h and folio j foe. l. 26. b--g] nay my beyond, etc. l. 28. b--h] scarcenet. 1. 33. b and c] i cit. l. 36. b--h] kills. p. 140, l. 4. d, e and g] god captaine. l. 7. b and c] of your 2-hand sword. l. 9. b--e, g and h] 2 ci. f] 2 cit. l. n. b--e, g and h] 2 ci. f] 2 cit. b and c] had had. l. 12. c--g] skin bones. l. 35. b, c and d] stucke. e] stuck. l. 38. b--h] i do desire to be. p. 141, l. 2. f] thy name. l. 7. b--h] of all dangers. b--h] altogether. 1. 12. b and c] all these. l. 20. b--g] and make. b and f] he strives. l. 23. h] your friends. l. 34. b and c] go thy wayes, thou art. p. 142, l. 2. b and c] attendance. l. 24. folio _misprints_] is it. l. 33. b] and hath found. l. 35. f] knew. p. 143,1. 4. b--g with variations in spelling] to bear. b] her boy. l. 7. b--g] sometime. l. 9. d] wine. l. 17. b] as base as are. c _omits_] be. 1. 18. folio _misprints_] hour. b] heated. l. 36. b--h] that boy. l. 38. b and c] word. l. 39. f--h] life and rig. p. 144, l. 6. b--g] were hateful. l. 11. b and c] oh stay. l. 12. f] sir. l. 13. b] tire your constancy. p. 145, l. 9. f _omits_] it. l. 22. b and c _omit_] l. l. 27. b--g] all's. 1. 29. b--d make this line the conclusion of philaster's speech, and consequently apply the marginal stage-direction to him. p. 146, l. 22. b--e] oft would. p. 147, l. 1. b--g] but have. l. 17. f _omits_] thou wilt. l. 31. b--h] vertue. l. 35. f] set us free. p. 148, l. 9. f] your self. l. 10. b--e] and like to see. l. 14. after this line b--f, h add] finis. from p. 138, l. 13, to end of play, a reads] _enter an olde captaine, with a crew of citizens_, _leading_ pharamont _prisoner_. cap. come my brave mermedons, fal on, let your caps swarm, & your nimble tongues forget your gibrish, of what you lack, and set your mouthes ope' children, till your pallats fall frighted halfe a fathom past the cure of bay-salt & grosse pepper; and then crie _phylaster_, brave _phylaster_. let _phylaster_ be deep in request, my ding-a-dings, my paire of deare indentures: king of clubs, the your cut-water chamlets, and your painting: let not your hasty silkes, deerly belovers of custards & cheescakes, or your branch cloth of bodkins, or your tyffenies, your robbin-hood scarlet and johns, tie your affections in durance to your shops, my dainty duckers, up with your three pil'd spirit's, that rightvalourous, and let your accute colours make the king to feele the measure of your mightinesse; phylaster, cry, myrose nobles, cry. omnes. _phylaster_, _phylasier_. cap. how doe you like this, my lord prisoner? these are mad boyes i can tell you, these bee things that will not strike top-sayle to a foyst, and let a man of warre, an argosea, stoope to carry coales. phar. why, you damn'd slaves, doe you know who i am? cap. yes, my pretie prince of puppits, we do know, and give you gentle warning, you talke no more such bugs words, lest that sodden crowne should be scracht with a musket; deare prince pippin, i'le have you codled, let him loose my spirits, and make a ring with your bils my hearts: now let mee see what this brave man dares doe: note sir, have at you with this washing blow, here i lie, doe you huffe sweete prince? i could hock your grace, and hang you crosse leg'd, like a hare at a poulters stall; and do thus. phar. gentlemen, honest gentlemen-soul. a speakes treason captaine, shal's knock him downe? cap. hold, i say. 2 soul. good captaine let me have one mal at's mazard, i feele my stomacke strangely provoked to bee at his spanish pot-nowle, shal's kill him? omnes. i, kill him, kill him. cap. againe i say hold. 3 soul. o how ranke he lookes, sweete captaine let's geld him, and send his dowsets for a dish to the burdello. 4 soul. no, let's rather sell them to some woman chymist, that extractions, shee might draw an excellent provocative oyle from useth them, that might be very usefull. cap. you see, my scurvy don, how precious you are in esteem amongst us, had you not beene better kept at home, i thinke you had: must you needes come amongst us, to have your saffron hide taw'd as wee intend it: my don, _phylaster_ must suffer death to satisfie your melancholly spleene, he must my don, he must; but we your physitians, hold it fit that you bleede for it: come my robusticks, my brave regiment of rattle makers, let's cal a common cornuted counsell, and like grave senators, beare up our brancht crests, in sitting upon the severall tortures we shall put him to, and with as little sense as may be, put your wils in execution. some cries. burne him, burne him. others. hang him, hang him. [enter phylaster. cap. no, rather let's carbinade his cods-head, and cut him to collops: shall i begin? phi. stay your furies my loving countrimen. omnes. _phylaster_ is come, _phylaster_, _phylaster_. cap. my porcupines of spite, make roome i say, that i may salute my brave prince: and is prince _phylaster_ at liberty? phi. i am, most loving countrimen. cap. then give me thy princely goll, which thus i kisse, to whom i crouch and bow; but see my royall sparke, this head-strong swarme that follow me humming like a master bee, have i led forth their hives, and being on wing, and in our heady flight, have seazed him shall suffer for thy wrongs. omnes. i, i, let's kill him, kill him. phi. but heare me, countrimen. cap. heare the prince, i say, heare _phylaster_. omnes. i, i, heare the prince, heare the prince. phi. my comming is to give you thanks, my deere countrimen, whose powerfull sway hath curb'd the prossecuting fury of my foes. omnes. we will curb um, we will curb um. phi. i finde you will, but if my intrest in your loves be such, as the world takes notice of, let me crave you would deliver _pharamont_ to my hand, and from me accept this [_gives um his purse_. testimonie of my love. which is but a pittance of those ample thankes, which shall redowne with showred courtesies. cap. take him to thee brave prince, and we thy bounty thankefully accept, and will drinke thy health, thy perpetuall health my prince, whilst memory lasts amongst us, we are thy mermidons, my _achillis_: we are those will follow thee, and in thy service will scowre our rusty murins and bill-bow-blades, most noble _phylaster_, we will: come my rowtists let's retyer till occasion calls us to attend the noble _phylaster_. omnes. _phylaster_, _phylaster_, _phylaster_. [ _exit_ captaine, and citizens. phar. worthy sir, i owe you a life, for but your selfe theres nought could have prevail'd. phi. tis the least of service that i owe the king, who was carefull to preserve ye. [_exit_. [_enter_ leon, trasiline, and clerimon. tra. i ever thought the boy was honest. leon. well, tis a brave boy-gentlemen. cle. yet you'ld not beleeve this. leon. a plague on my forwardnesse, what a villaine was i, to wrong um so; a mischiefe on my muddy braines, was i mad? tra. a little frantick in your rash attempt, but that was your love to _phylaster_, sir. leon. a pox on such love, have you any hope my countinance will ere serve me to looke on them? cle. o very well sir. leon. very ill sir, uds death, i could beate out my braines, or hang my selfe in revenge. cle. there would be little gotten by it, ene keepe you as ye are. leon. an excellent boy, gentlemen beleeve it, harke the king is comming, [ _cornets sounds_. _enter the king, princesse_, gallatea, megra, bellario, _a gentlewoman, and other attendants_. k. no newes of his returne, will not this rable multitude be appeas'd? i feare their outrage, lest it should extend with dangering of _pharamonts_ life. enter _philaster_ with _pharamont_. leon. see sir, _phylaster_ is return'd. phi. royall sir, receive into your bosome your desired peace, those discontented mutineares be appeasde, and this fortaigne prince in safety. k. how happie am i in thee _phylaster_? whose excellent vertues begets a world of love, i am indebted to thee for a kingdome. i here surrender up all soveraignetie, raigne peacefully with thy espoused bride, [_delivers his crowne to him_. ashume my son to take what is thy due. pha. how sir, yer son, what am i then, your daughter you gave to me. kin. but heaven hath made asignement unto him, and brought your contract to anullity: sir, your entertainment hath beene most faire, had not your hell-bred lust dride up the spring, from whence flow'd forth those favours that you found: i am glad to see you safe, let this suffice, your selfe hath crost your selfe. leon. they are married sir. phar. how married? i hope your highnesse will not use me so, i came not to be disgraced, and returne alone. king. i cannot helpe it sir. leon. to returne alone, you neede not sir, here is one will beare you company. you know this ladies proofe, if you fail'd not in the say-taging. me. i hold your scoffes in vildest base contempt, or is there said or done, ought i repent, but can retort even to your grinning teeths, your worst of spights, tho princesse lofty steps may not be tract, yet may they tread awry, that boy there-bel. if to me ye speake lady, i must tell you, you have lost your selfe in your too much forwardnesse, and hath forgot both modesty and truth, with what impudence you have throwne most damnable aspertions on that noble princesse and my selfe: witnesse the world; behold me sir. [_kneeles to_ leon, _and discovers her haire_. leon. i should know this face; my daughter. bel. the same sir. prin. how, our sometime page, _bellario_, turn'd woman? bel. madame, the cause induc't me to transforme my selfe, proceeded from a respective modest affection i bare to my my lord, the prince _phylaster_, to do him service, as farre from any lacivious thought, as that lady is farre from goodnesse, and if my true intents may be beleeved, and from your highnesse madame, pardon finde, you have the truth. prin. i doe beleeve thee, _bellario_ i shall call thee still. phi. the faithfullest servant that ever gave attendance. leon. now lady lust, what say you to'th boy now; doe you hang the head, do ye, shame would steale into your face, if ye had grace to entertaine it, do ye slinke away? [ _exit_ megra _hiding her face_, king. give present order she be banisht the court, and straightly confinde till our further pleasure is knowne. phar. heres such an age of transformation, that i doe not know how to trust my selfe, i'le get me gone to: sir, the disparagement you have done, must be cald in question. i have power to right my selfe, and will. [ _exit_ pharamont. king. we feare ye not sir. phi. let a strong convoy guard him through the kingdome, with him, let's part with all our cares and feare, and crowne with joy our happy loves successe. king. which to make more full, lady _gallatea_, let honour'd _clerimont_ acceptance finde in your chast thoughts. phi. tis my sute too. prin. such royall spokes-men must not be deni'd. gal. nor shall not, madame. king. then thus i joyne your hands. gal. our hearts were knit before. [ _they kisse_. phi. but tis you lady, must make all compleat, and gives a full perod to content, let your loves cordiall againe revive, the drooping spirits of noble _trasiline_. what saies lord _leon_ to it? leon. marry my lord i say, i know she once lov'd him. at least made shew she did, but since tis my lord _phylasters_ desire, i'le make a surrender of all the right a father has in her; here take her sir, with all my heart, and heaven give you joy. king. then let us in these nuptuall feastes to hold, heaven hath decreed, and fate stands uncontrold. finis. philaster. verse and prose variations. the variations are those of a except where otherwise stated. p. 78, l. 35. a prints this speech as prose. p. 79, l. 39, and p. 80, l. 1. a reads as one line. p. 80, 11. 6 and 7. one line. ll. 8 and 9. one line. l. 11. a gives this speech as prose. ll. 37--40, and p. 81, l. r. four lines ending bold, turcle, shaddow, over. p. 81, ll. 12--17. five lines ending _armes, hath, disputing, are, me_. 1. 19. eight lines ending _him, his, thine, cold, such, follies, presence, me_. l. 28. this speech in two lines ending _freedome_, _temperde_. l. 32. this speech in four lines ending _succession_, _is_, _within_, _knowledge_. p. 82, ll. 1 and 2. one line. l.9. c, d, e] two lines, _them_, _atlas_. l. 18. this speech and the next as prose. l. 33. the rest of the speech in seven lines, ending _whispers_, _will_, _there_, _service_, _factious_, _hand_, _servant_. l. 39. b, c, d, e] two lines, _hand_, _servant_. p. 83, ll. 1-4. prose. l. 14. this speech and the next prose. ll. 29-31. two lines ending _please_ and _yeares_. l. 33. the rest of the speech in prose. p. 84, ll. 2-4. two lines ending _age_ and _me_. ll. 6-11. four lines ending _gentlewoman_, _alive_, _idle_, _pilgrimage_. ll. 22 and 23. prose. l. 26. this speech and the next in prose. p. 85, ll. 1 and 2. one line. ll. 3-32. prose. ll. 34-38. four lines ending _with-_, _make_, _your_, _obay_. l. 40 and p. 86, l. 1. one line. p. 86, ll. 4-11. seven lines ending _say_, _woman_, _them_, _detracted_, _you_, _disgrace_, _vertues_. ll. 14-16. two lines ending _fortunes_, _question_. ll. 18-20. two lines ending _affoord_, _wisht_. ll. 21 and 22. one line. ll. 27-32. four lines ending _stories_, _crowne_, _longing_, _more_. p. 87, ll. 1-12. ten lines ending _dreadfully_, _he_, _tongue_, _his_, _begin_, _love_, _you_, _beg_, _price_, _heare_. ll. 17-19. two lines ending _yet_, _in_. ll. 21-23. prose. ll. 26-30. prose. ll. 34-40. six lines ending _so_, _better_, _gods_, _some_, _us_, _it_. l. 30. b, c, d, e] two lines, _man_, _jealous_. p. 88, ll. 1-6. five lines ending _long_, _often_, _intelligence_, _agree_, _tread_. l. 6. b, c, d, e] two lines, _agree_, _tread_. l. 7. b, c, d, e] two lines, _boy_, _intent_. l. 7. this speech in prose. p. 89, l. 2. b, c, d, e] two lines, _selfe_, _prince_. l. 7. b, d, e] two lines, _made_, _himselfe_. l. 7. two lines ending _phylaster_ and _himselfe_. ll. 10 and 11. two lines ending _ever_, _lie_. ll. 18-20. two lines ending _ceremonies_ and _heart_. ll. 21 and 22. one line. ll. 27-29. prose. l. 38. this speech in prose. p. 90, ll. 4 and 5. two lines ending _much_, _princesse_. l. 6. this speech and the next in prose. l. 16. this speech beginning from 'madam' and the next speech in prose. ll. 29-34. six lines ending _regard_, _modesty_, _aske_, _deserve_, _nothing_, _yours_. l. 32. b, c, d, e] two lines, _aske_, _deserve_. l. 35. the rest of the speech in prose. p. 91, ll. 6-11. prose. ll. 13-17. prose. l. 18 and b, c, d, e] two lines ending _all_, _behaviour_. ll. 19-29. ten lines ending _ignorance_, _learne_, _larger_, _fault_, _once_, _boy_, _warning_, _stubborneness_, _off_, _mend_. ll. 32-40. seven lines ending _businesse_, _her_, _full_, _trust_, _joy_, _weepe_, _princesse_. p. 92, ll. 1-12. prose. ll. 14-20. nine lines ending _must_, _not_, _word_, _all_, _taking_, _life_, _fault_, _boulted_, _madame_. p. 93, ll. 5-12. nine lines ending _grace_, _remedy_, _morning_, _cardus_, _exercise_, _tiller_, _flebotomie_, _whay_, _anymales_. ll. 15-18. four lines ending _well_, _appetite_, _gold_, _then_. ll. 25 and 26. two lines ending _behind_, _this_. p. 94, ll. 5 and 6. two lines ending _enough_, _age_. ll. 7 and 8. two lines ending _smooth_, _enough_. ll. 16-23. prose. l. 24. two lines ending _prose_, _madame_. l. 27. two lines ending _first_, _now_. ll. 30-32. two lines ending _sweetest_, _me_. ll. 35 and 36. three lines ending _sentence, memory, me_. ll. 38-40. three lines ending _endeavour_, _night_, _for't_. p. 95, ll. 1--20. twenty-one lines ending _owne, teaching, measures, function, selfe, her, her, indeed, sir, selfe, schoolemaister, maid, gallatea, favour, now, wit, guard, toot, jubiter, lady, welcome_. ll. 25--29. six lines ending _um, want, thoughts, bashfull, with, you_. p. 96, ll. 8 and 9. one line. ll. 26--32. prose. ll. 36 and 37. prose. p. 97, ll. 17--29. prose. ll. 30--35. five lines ending _credit, sound, satyes, too, away_. ll. 37--39. prose. p. 98, ll. 1--5. prose (probably). ll. 8--10. prose. ll. 20--23. four lines ending _by, hand, princesse, selfe_. ll. 25 and 26. one line. ll. 33 and 34. two lines ending _grace, bed_. l. 37 and p. 99, ll. 1 and 2. three lines ending _late, comes, him_. p. 99, ll. 5--16. prose. ll. 19--36. prose. p. 100, ll. 11--18. prose. ll. 20--22. prose. ll. 26 and 27. two lines ending _sir, you_. ll. 33 and 34. two lines ending _life, heere_. ll. 36--39 and p. 101, l. 1. prose. p. 101, ll. 2--5. three lines ending _wrongd, lodging, say_. ll. 8--23. prose. ll. 28--32. five lines ending _two, hold, lye, not, mistaken_. ll. 37--39 and p. 102, ll. 1--9. ten lines ending _lust, thoughts, diseases, me, courtesies, daughter, court, orrenges, candles, venus_. p. 102, ll. 10--25. thirteen lines ending _laugh, king, by, fellowes, mirth, me, more, leaps, her, eighteene, when, madness, height_. ll. 32--39. seven lines ending _it, commonly, at, forraigne, tongue, people, princesse_. p. 103, ll. 1 and 2. two lines ending _her, boy_. ll. 10--17. eight lines ending _tongue, king, him, infections, brave, boy, else, gentlemen_. ll. 24--36. eleven lines ending _us, freemen, age, right, scepter, lady, boy, thing, prince, part, mind_. l. 37 and p. 104, ll. 1 and 2. three lines ending _phylaster, creature, earth_. p. 104, ll. 4--7. three lines ending _people, corne, way_. ll. 25--29. prose. l. 29. b, c, d] two lines, _doe, acceptation_. ll. 30--38. seven lines ending _know, head, king, word, attempts, me, friends_. p. 105, l. 4. b, c, d, e] two lines, _time, would_. ll. 1--9. nine lines ending _selfe, sufficient, loves, would, expect, violence, know, now, lov'd_. ll. 16--28. ten lines ending _thought, lady, pardon'd, redeemed, increase, i, hils, all, necke, denude_. ll. 29 and 30. one line. ll. 31--37. prose. l. 40 and p. 106, ll. 1 and 2. prose. p. 106, l. 4 (from 'good sir')--7. prose. ll. 21--25. prose. ll. 27 and 28. one line. ll. 29--31. three lines ending _looke, lord, selfe_. ll. 36 and 37. three lines ending _them, fault, silence_. l. 37. b, c, d, e] two lines, _slept, silence_. l. 40 and p. 107, ll. 1 and 2. two lines ending _corners, land_. p. 107, ll. 12 and 13. one line. ll. 19--39 and p. 108, ii. 1--3. twenty lines ending _her, breast, circumstances, now, simply, honourable, truth, selves, fight, sight, once, againe, fat, before, man, weare, blush, mortalitie, brow, guilty_. l. 35. b] two lines, _man, gods_. p. 108, ll. 7--9. three lines ending _me, boy, brave_. ll. 13 and 14. two lines ending _boy, here_. ll. 17--19. three lines ending _snow, boy, thee_. ll. 22--27. five lines ending _life, fond, trust, pay, me_. ll. 30--36. prose. l. 40 and p. 109, ll. 1--3. prose. p. 109, ll. 4 and 5. one line. ll. 15 (from 'come she dos')--37. prose. l. 40 and p. 110, ll. 1--3. four lines ending _lust, desires, her, ages_. p. 110, l. 3. b, c, d, e] two lines, _reveale, ages_. l. 4. b, c, d, e] two lines, _heart, disease_. l. 4. two lines ending _heart, deceit_. ll. 9 and 10. one line. ll. 15 and 16. two lines ending _life, now_. l. 16. b, c, d] two lines, _hate thee, now_. ll. 20--22. three lines ending _where, me, not_. ll. 23--26. three lines ending _life, asunder, away_. ll. 29 and 30. one line. ll. 31--33. three lines ending _live, passionate, reason_. l. 33. b, c, d, e] two lines, _passionate, reason_. ll. 35--39. four lines ending _borne, jealousie, againe, lost_. l. 39. b, c, d, e] two lines, _game, lost_. p. 111, ll. 1 and 2. two lines ending _melt, all_. ll. 4--6. three lines ending _with, of, me_. l. 6. b, c, d, e] two lines, _punishments, me_. ll. 7--24. prose. ll. 26--34. prose. ll. 35--37. two lines ending _deservest, unkind_. p. 112, ll. 3--7. five lines ending _over, him, spoken, such, stay_. l. 7. b, c, d, e] two lines, _angry, slay_. ll. 17 and 18. two lines ending _well, him_. l. 31. b, c, d, e] two lines, _me, boy_. ll. 32 and 33. one line. ll. 35--38. four lines ending _me, gods, selfe, done_. p. 113, ll. 4--6. three lines ending _foule, it, farewell_. ll. 9--15. six lines ending _truth, defamings, fortified, tongues, foule, mountains_. l. 20. two lines ending _servant, me_. ll. 21--25. prose. p. 114, ll. 6--8. four lines ending it, _eye-lids, crie, phylaster_. l. 8. b, c, d, e] my deere | deare _philaster_. ll. 9--12. three lines ending _thee, loyal, better_. l. 13. b, c, d, e] two lines, _againe, bellario_. ll. 16--18. three lines ending _all, that, wrongs_. l. 27. two lines ending _not, thus_. l. 27. b, c, d, e] two lines, _talke, thus_. ll. 30--40 and p. 115, l. 1. ten lines ending _naked, mischiefe, me, bosome, mirth, king, mourners, length, cursed boy, lust_. p. 115, l. 1. b, c, d, e] two lines, _boy, lust_. l. 3 and b, c, d, e] two lines ending _overthrow, wretched_. ll. 4--23. sixteen lines ending _this, it, foote, seeke, cave, are, hell, scorpyons, woven, you, face, have, you, night, are, altogether_. ll. 29--34. five lines ending _transparant, me, holds, constancie, now_. ll. 38--40 and p. 116, l. 2. four lines ending _passion, wicked, that, understoodst,_ p. 116, ll. 6--10. three lines ending _desease, me, swell_. ll. 14--21. eight lines ending _leave, ever, lady, fault, suffering, mine, seeke, die_. ll. 28 and 29. two lines ending _hunt, earnestness_. ll. 30--32. two lines ending _canst, thee_. p. 117, ll. 7--9. three lines ending _veniall, spirit, it_. ll. 13--15. three lines ending _enough, purlewes, poaching_. ll. 24--30. nine lines ending _repent, him, member, mouth, now, presently, almanacks, liver, dog-whip_. il. 31--33. four lines ending _lookes, neighbours, face, honest_. p. 119, ll. 17--21. five lines ending _dwelt, reedes, borne, isstie, vexation_. 1. 21. b, c, d, e] two lines, _life, vexation_. ll. 23--37. ten lines ending _beasts, as, body, speake, lord, pittie, fortunes, bounty, keepe, hunger_. p. 120, ll. 6--17. ten lines ending _me, trade, againe, so, thee, worke, way, are, rage, way_. ll. 32--37 and p. 121, ll. i and 2. eight lines ending _stray, businesse, armes, peace, us, her, seene, willingly_. p. 121, ll. 12--18. prose. l. 23. c, d, e] two lines, _not, blood_. ll. 20--34. prose. ll. 38 and 39 and p. 122, ll. i and 2. three lines ending _gods, adord, thunder_. p. 122, ll. 6 and 7. two lines ending _way, on_. ll. 12--14. prose l. 14. b, c, d, e] two lines, _wood, her_. ll. 21 and 22. prose. ll. 24 and 25. two lines ending _alive, taylor_. ll. 30 and 31. prose. l. 39 and p. 123, ll. 1--18. prose. p. 123, ll. 22--26. two lines ending _speaking, not_, and prose. l. 29 and p. 124, ll. 4--19. eleven lines ending _kist, basaliskes, women, up, act, fire, teares, beds, face, issues, you_. p. 124, ll. 4--19. thirteen lines ending _me, done, eolus, i, sword, you, controule, me, thoughts, now, pulse, more, die_. ll. 25--35. ten lines ending _that, do, last, wise, resolve, suffer, hand, earth, other, here_. l. 31. b, c, d, e] two lines, _doe, suffer_. ll. 38--40 and p. 125, ll. 1 and 2. four lines ending _power, justice, heaven, to't_. p. 125, ll. 5--10. seven lines ending _forrest, home, me, selfe, shouting, braines, wits_. ll. 19 and 20. prose. ll. 21 and 22. two lines ending _not, ye_. ll. 23 and 24. prose. l. 24. b, c, d, e] two lines, _head, to_. il. 30--32. prose. ll. 35 and 36. two lines ending _rogue, now_. p. 126, ll. 1 and 2. two lines ending _woman, her_. ll. 25--28. prose. p. 127, ll. 5--7. three lines ending _giddy, sleepe, wake_. ll. 13--25. fourteen lines ending _conceale, follow, sleeping, sleepe, wronged, broken, take, escape, blood, mischiefe, once, body, mortal, thee_. ll. 26 and 27. prose. l. 29. line ends with first _here_. ll. 33 and 34. two lines ending _thou, me_. ll. 37 and 38. one line. l. 39 and p. 128, ll. l--3. three lines ending _live, much, you_. p. 128, ll. 19 and 20. two lines ending _beasts, men_. ll.22--24. two lines ending _her, her_. ll. 25 and 26. prose. ll. 29--34. four lines ending _thoughts, death, mectne, tortour_. l. 38 and p. 129, ll. 1--11. eleven lines ending _page, carelesse, me, over-fiowde, them, turnde, streames, contem'd, great, live, revenged_. p. 129, ll. 12--14. two lines ending _life, vigor_. l. 17 and b, c, d] two lines ending _away, rudely_. ll. 24--28. four lines ending _then, you, teach, him_. ll. 30 and 31. one line. p. 130, ll. 6--20. prose. l. 20. b, c, d, e] two lines, _wealth, philaster_. 1. 23. b, c, d, e] two lines, _two, philaster_. ll. 30--38. prose. l. 32. b, c, d, e] two lines, _talke, prison_. p. 131, l. 3 and b, c, d, e] two lines ending _on, match_. l. 6. two lines ending _heads, trick_. ll. 24--33. nine lines ending _bellario, heaven, paire, bore, me, death, boy, beasts, innocence_. l. 34 and p. 132, ll. 1--6. seven lines _ending worthy, peece, you, honour, close, perjurie, nothing_. p. 132, ll. 15--17. two lines ending _sleepe, love_. ll. 20 and 21. prose. 1. 21. b, c, d, e] two lines, _it, on_. ll. 28 and 29. two lines ending _love, truely_. p. 133, h. 6 and 7. one line. ll. 10--23. twelve lines ending _at, lightly, him, bridges, rootes, thunders, back, townes, desolate, lives, sacrifice, ruines_. ll. 26--38 and p. 134, ll. 1--12. prose. p. 134, ll. 14--35. prose. ll. 36 and 37. one line. l. 40 and p. 135, 1. i. two lines ending _pharamont, heads-man_. p. 135, ll. 3 and 4. prose. ll. 7--33. twenty-three lines ending _life, monster, to, living, writ, you, men, pelion, brasse, pyramides, gods, faults, issues, wisedomes, off, self, king, sinne, soule, long, you, die, in't_. p. 136, ll. 2 and 3. one line. ll. 24--29. seven lines ending _deere, not, chronicled, prais'd, ballads, seculorum, countrimen_. p. 137, ll. 8--22. sixteen lines ending _them, raise, neede, for't, sheepe, heate, me, lord, prince, him, wits, pin, me, bakon, fat, liking_. ll. 29--39 and p. 138, ll. 1--6. thirteen lines ending _miseries, danger, you, to't, be, repentance, gods, me, thunder, wrong, boy, sea-breach, it_. p. 138, ll. 33--36. b--g] four lines ending _boyes, top-sailes, argosie, cockels_. f and g print last 2 ll. as one. p. 139, l. 26. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _you and king_. l. 36. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _kils, boyes_. p. 143, l. 11. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _earth, me_. l. 40. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _away, once_. p. 145, l. 8. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _lives, pilgrimage_. l. 17. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _she, dyed_, l. 32. b, c, d, e] two lines ending _shame, rest_. [illustration: the parthenon] seeing europe with famous authors selected and edited with introductions, etc. by francis w. halsey _editor of "great epochs in american history" associate editor of "the world's famous orations" and of "the best of the world's classics," etc._ in ten volumes illustrated vol. viii italy, sicily, and greece part two funk & wagnalls company new york and london copyright, 1914, by funk & wagnalls company [_printed in the united states of america_] contents of volume viii italy, sicily, and greece--part two iv. three famous cities page in the streets of genoa--by charles dickens 1 milan cathedral--by hippolyte adolphe taine 4 pisa's four glories--by hippolyte adolphe taine 7 the walls and "skyscrapers" of pisa--by janet ross and nelly erichson 11 v. naples and its environs in and about naples--by charles dickens 18 the tomb of virgil--by augustus j. c. hare 24 two ascents of vesuvius--by johann wolfgang von goethe 26 another ascent--by charles dickens 31 castellamare and sorrento--by hippolyte adolphe taine 37 capri--by augustus j. c. hare 42 pompeii--by percy bysshe shelley 45 vi. other italian scenes verona--by charles dickens 52 padua--by theophile gautier 55 ferrara--by theophile gautier 59 lake lugano--by victor tissot 62 lake como--by percy bysshe shelley 64 bellagio on lake como--by w. d. m'crackan 66 the republic of san marino--by joseph addison 69 perugia--by nathaniel hawthorne 73 siena---by mr. and mrs. edwin h. blashfield 75 the assissi of st. francis--by hippolyte adolphe taine 78 ravenna--by edward a. freeman 80 benedictine subiaco--by augustus j. c. hare 83 etruscan volterra--by william cullen bryant 86 the paestum of the greeks--by edward a. freeman 88 vii. sicilian scenes palermo--by will s. monroe 91 girgenti--by edward a. freeman 93 segeste--by johann wolfgang von goethe 97 taormina--by johann wolfgang von goethe 99 mount ætna--by will s. monroe 101 syracuse--by rufus b. richardson 104 malta--by theophile gautier 107 viii. the mainland of greece arriving in athens--the acropolis--by j. p. mahaffy 112 a winter in athens half a century ago--by bayard taylor 119 the acropolis as it was--by pausanias 122 the elgin marbles--by j. p. mahaffy 127 the theater of dionysus--by j. p. mahaffy 130 where st. paul preached--by j. p. mahaffy 134 from athens to delphi on horseback--by bayard taylor 136 corinth--by j. p. mahaffy 140 olympia--by philip s. marden 143 the temple of zeus at olympia as it was--by pausanias 146 thermopylæ--by rufus b. richardson 152 salonica--by charles dudley warner 155 from the pierian plain to marathon--by charles dudley warner 157 sparta and maina--by bayard taylor 160 messenia--by bayard taylor 164 tiryns and mycenæ--by j. p. mahaffy 169 ix. the greek islands a tour of crete--by bayard taylor 175 the colossal ruins at cnossos--by philip s. marden 179 corfu--by edward a. freeman 182 rhodes--by charles dudley warner 185 mt. athos--by charles dudley warner 189 list of illustrations volume viii frontispiece the parthenon preceding page 1 venice: santa maria del salute feeding the doves in front of st. mark's venice: statue of colleoni palace in st. mark's place gondola on the grand canal general view of florence palace of the dukes of este, ferrara lake lugano titian's birthplace at cadore the bridge of sighs verona: tomb of the scaligers milan cathedral baptistery, cathedral, and leaning tower of pisa following page 96 city and bay of naples with vesuvius in the distance temple of theseus at athens palermo, sicily, from the sea greek theater, segesta, sicily temple of concord, girgenti, sicily temple of juno, girgenti, sicily amphitheater at syracuse, sicily greek temple at segesta, sicily harbor of syracuse, sicily the so-called "ship of ulysses," off corfu temple of the olympian zeus at athens the plain below delphi the road near delphi entrance to the stadium at olympia throne of minos in crete [illustration: venice: santa maria del salute] [illustration: feeding the doves in front of st. mark's (see vol. vii for article on these doves)] [illustration: venice: statue of colleoni courtesy john c. winston co.] [illustration: palace in st. mark's place, venice (base of the old campanile at the right)] [illustration: gondola on the grand canal, venice] [illustration: general view of florence] [illustration: palace of the dukes of este. ferrara] [illustration: lake lugano] [illustration: titian's birthplace at cadore (cadore is in the italian part of the dolomites)] [illustration: the bridge of sighs, venice] [illustration: tomb of the scalígers at verona] [illustration: milan cathedral (see vol. vii for article on milan cathedral)] [illustration: baptistery, cathedral, and leaning tower of pisa (see vol. vii for article on pisa)] iv three famous cities in the streets of genoa[1] by charles dickens the great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare can well be, where people (even italian people) are supposed to live and walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or breathing-place. the houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of colors, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of repair. they are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses in the old town of edinburgh, or many houses in paris.... when shall i forget the streets of palaces: the strada nuova and the strada baldi! the endless details of these rich palaces; the walls of some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by vandyke! the great, heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier; with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up--a huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers; among which the eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by another--the terrace gardens between house and house, with green arches of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street--the painted halls, moldering and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still shining out in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where the walls are dry--the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and standing in niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial--the steep, steep, up-hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways--the magnificent and innumerable churches; and the rapid passage from a street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and whole worlds of dirty people--make up, altogether, such a scene of wonder; so lively, and yet so dead; so noisy, and yet so quiet; so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering; so wide-awake, and yet so fast asleep; that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. a bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality!... in the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great size notwithstanding, and extremely high. they are very dirty; quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable; and emit a peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets. notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would seem to have been a lack of room in the city, for new houses are thrust in everywhere. wherever it has been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a crack or corner, in it has gone. if there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, there you are sure to find some kind of habitation; looking as if it had grown there, like a fungus. against the government house, against the old senate house, round about any large building, little shops stick close, like parasite vermin to the great carcass. and for all this, look where you may; up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere; there are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their neighbors, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further. milan cathedral[2] by hippolyte adolphe taine the cathedral, at the first sight, is bewildering. gothic art, transported entire into italy at the close of the middle ages,[3] attains at once its triumph and its extravagance. never had it been seen so pointed, so highly embroidered, so complex, so overcharged, so strongly resembling a piece of jewelry; and as, instead of coarse and lifeless stone, it here takes for its material the beautiful lustrous italian marble, it becomes a pure chased gem as precious through its substance as through the labor bestowed on it. the whole church seems to be a colossal and magnificent crystallization, so splendidly do its forests of spires, its intersections of moldings, its population of statues, its fringes of fretted, hollowed, embroidered and open marblework, ascend in multiple and interminable bright forms against the pure blue sky. truly is it the mystic candelabra of visions and legends, with a hundred thousand branches bristling and overflowing with sorrowing thorns and ecstatic roses, with angels, virgins, and martyrs upon every flower and on every thorn, with infinite myriads of the triumphant church springing from the ground pyramidically even into the azure, with its millions of blended and vibrating voices mounting upward in a single shout, hosannah!... we enter, and the impression deepens. what a difference between the religious power of such a church and that of st. peter's at rome! one exclaims to himself, this is the true christian temple! four rows of enormous eight-sided pillars, close together, seem like a serried hedge of gigantic oaks. their strange capitals, bristling with a fantastic vegetation of pinnacles, canopies, foliated niches and statues, are like venerable trunks crowned with delicate and pendent mosses. they spread out in great branches meeting in the vault overhead, the intervals of the arches being filled with an inextricable network of foliage, thorny sprigs and light branches, twining and intertwining, and figuring the aerial dome of a mighty forest. as in a great wood, the lateral aisles are almost equal in height to that of the center, and, on all sides, at equal distances apart, one sees ascending around him the secular colonnades. here truly is the ancient germanic forest, as if a reminiscence of the religious groves of irmensul. light pours in transformed by green, yellow and purple panes, as if through the red and orange tints of autumnal leaves. this, certainly, is a complete architecture like that of greece, having, like that of greece, its root in vegetable forms. the greek takes the trunk of the tree, drest, for his type; the german the entire tree with all its leaves and branches. true architecture, perhaps, always springs out of vegetal nature, and each zone may have its own edifices as well as plants; in this way oriental architectures might be comprehended--the vague idea of the slender palm and of its bouquet of leaves with the arabs, and the vague idea of the colossal, prolific, dilated and bristling vegetation of india. in any event i have never seen a church in which the aspect of northern forests was more striking, or where one more involuntarily imagines long alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses of daylight, curved branches meeting in acute angles, domes of irregular and commingling foliage, universal shade scattered with lights through colored and diaphanous leaves. sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows like a luminous glade. a vast rosace behind the choir, a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall, exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the delicate meshes of some marvelous twining and climbing plant. a day might be passed here as in a forest, in the presence of grandeurs as solemn as those of nature, before caprices as fascinating, amid the same intermingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible fecundity, before contrasts and metamorphoses of light as rich and as unexpected. a mystic reverie, combined with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the source of gothic architecture. pisa's four glories[4] by hippolyte adolphe taine there are two pisas--one in which people have lapsed into ennui, and live from hand to mouth since the decadence, which is in fact the entire city, except a remote corner; the other is this corner, a marble sepulcher where the duomo, baptistery, leaning tower and campo-santo silently repose like beautiful dead beings. this is the genuine pisa, and in these relics of a departed life, one beholds a world. in 1083 in order to honor the virgin, who had given them a victory over the saracens of sardignia, they [the pisans] laid the foundations of their duomo. this edifice is almost a roman basilica, that is to say a temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you prefer it, a house having a gable for its façade which gable is cut off at the peak to support another house of smaller dimensions. five stories of columns entirely cover the façade with their superposed porticos. two by two they stand coupled together to support small arcades; all these pretty shapes of white marble under their dark arcades form an aerial population of the utmost grace and novelty. nowhere here are we conscious of the dolorous reverie of the medieval north; it is the fête of a young nation which is awakening, and, in the gladness of its recent prosperity, honoring its gods. it has collected capitals, ornaments, entire columns obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and its commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments enter into its work without incongruity; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mold, and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the pleasing. every antique form reappears, but reshaped in the same sense by a fresh and original impulse. the outer columns of the greek temple are reduced, multiplied and uplifted in the air, and from a support have become an ornament. the roman or byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness diminished under a crown of slender columns with a miter ornament, which girds it midway with its delicate promenade. on the two sides of the great door two corinthian columns are enveloped with luxurious foliage, calyxes and twining or blooming acanthus; and from the threshold we see the church with its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses of black and white marble and its multitude of slender and brilliant forms, rising upward like an altar of candelabra. a new spirit appears here, a more delicate sensibility; it is not excessive and disordered as in the north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave simplicity, the robust nudity of antique architecture. it is the daughter of the pagan mother, healthy and gay, but more womanly than its mother. she is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps--she is somewhat awkward. the lateral façades on the exterior are monotonous; the cupola within is a reversed funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. the junction of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory and so many modernized chapels dispel the charm due to purity, as at sienna. at the second glance however all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a complete whole. four rows of corinthian columns, surmounted with arcades, divide the church into five naves, and form a forest. a second passage, as richly crowded, traverses the former crosswise, and, above the beautiful grove, files of still smaller columns prolong and intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the prolongation and intersection of the quadruple gallery. the ceiling is flat; the windows are small, and for the most part, without sashes; they allow the walls to retain the grandeur of their mass and the solidity of their position; and among these long, straight and simple lines, in this natural light, the innumerable shafts glow with the serenity of an antique temple.... nothing more can be added in relation to the baptistery or the leaning tower; the same ideas prevail in these, the same taste, the same style. the former is a simple, isolated dome, the latter a cylinder, and each has an outward dress of small columns. and yet each has its own distinct and expressive physiognomy; but description and writing consume too much time, and too many technical terms are requisite to define their differences. i note, simply, the inclination of the tower. some suppose that, when half constructed, the tower sank in the earth on one side, and that the architects continued on; seeing that they did continue this deflection was only a partial obstacle to them. in any event, there are other leaning towers in italy, at bologna, for example; voluntarily or involuntarily this feeling for oddness, this love of paradox, this yielding to fancy is one of the characteristics of the middle ages. in the center of the baptistery stands a superb font with eight panels; each panel is incrusted with a rich complicated flower in full bloom, and each flower is different. around it a circle of large corinthian columns supports round-arch arcades; most of them are antique and are ornamented with antique bas-reliefs; meleager with his barking dogs, and the nude torsos of his companions in attendance on christian mysteries. on the left stands a pulpit similar to that of sienna, the first work of nicholas of pisa (1260), a simple marble coffer supported by marble columns and covered with sculptures. the sentiment of force and of antique nudity comes out here in striking features. the sculptor comprehended the postures and torsions of bodies. his figures, somewhat massive, are grand and simple; he frequently reproduces the tunics and folds of the roman costume; one of his nude personages, a sort of hercules bearing a young lion on his shoulders, has the broad breast and muscular tension which the sculptors of the sixteenth century admired. the last of these edifices, the campo-santo, is a cemetery, the soil of which, brought from palestine, is holy ground. four high walls of polished marble surround it with their white and crowded panels. inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the court through arcades trellised with ogive windows. it is filled with funereal monuments, busts, inscriptions and statues of every form and of every age. nothing could be simpler and nobler. a framework of dark wood supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against the crystal sky. at the angles are four rustling cypress trees, tranquilly swayed by the breeze. grass is growing in the court with a wild freshness and luxuriance. here and there a climbing flower twined around a column, a small rosebush, or a shrub glows beneath a gleam of sunshine. there is no noise; this quarter is deserted; only now and then is heard the voice of some promenader which reverberates as under the vault of a church. it is the veritable cemetery of a free and christian city; here, before the tombs of the great, people might well reflect over death and public affairs. the walls and "skyscrapers" of pisa[5] by janet ross and nelly erichson few cities have preserved their medieval walls with such loving care as pisa. the circuit is complete save where the traveler enters the city; and there, alas, a wide breach has been made by the restless spirit of modernity. but once past the paltry barrier and the banal square, with its inevitable statue of victor emanuel, that take the place of the old porta romana, one quickly perceives that the city is a walled one. glimpses of battlements close the vistas of the streets, and green fields peep through the open gates, marking that abrupt transition between town and country peculiar to a fortified city. the walls are best seen from without. an admirable impression of them can be had on leaving the city by the porta lucchese. turning to the left, after passing a crucifix overshadowed by cypresses, we come to the edge of a stretch of level marshy meadows, gaily pied in spring with orchids and grape hyacinths. above our heads the high air vibrates with the song of larks. before us is the long line of the city walls. strong, grim and gray, they look with nothing to break the outline of square battlements against the sky, but that majestic groups of domes and towers for whose defense they were built. at the angle of the wall to the right is a square watch-tower, backed by groups of cypresses that rise into the air like dark flames. its little windows command the flat plain as far as the horizon. how easy to imagine the warning blast of the warder's trumpet as he caught sight of a distant enemy, and the wall springing into life at the sound. armed men buckling on their harness would swarm up ladders to the battlements, the catapult groan and squeak as its lever was forced backward, and at the sharp word of command the first flight of arrows would be loosed. but the dream fades, and we pass on to the angle of the wall where the cypresses stand. from the picturesque jews' cemetery, to which access is easy, the structure of the walls can be studied in detail because the hand of the restorer has been perforce withheld within its gates. the wall is some forty feet high, built of stone from the pisan hills, weathered for the most part to a grayish hue. the masonry of the lower half is good. the blocks of stone are large and well laid. those of the upper half are smaller and the masonry is in places careless and irregular. the red brick battlements are square. at short intervals there are walled-up gateways, round-headed or ogival in form, and the whole surface is rent and patched. centuries of war and earthquakes, rain and fire, have given it a pleasant irregularity, the record of violent and troublous times. the city can be reentered by the porta nuova, only a few yards to the left of the cemetery. so venerable do these battered walls look that we need the full evidence of history to realize that they had more than one predecessor. the memory even of the first walls of pisa, an ancient city when rome was young, has been lost. the earliest record of which we know anything appears on a map of the ninth century drawn by one bonanno; a map, we should rather say professing to be of the ninth century, for churches of the thirteenth century are marked upon it, so it must either have been made, or the churches inserted, then.... the ancient walls were practically swept away by the prosperity of pisa. beside the balearic islands she had conquered carthage, the lipari islands, elba, corsica, and palermo, and her galleys poured their spoils into the pisan port. she traded with the east, and was successful in commerce as in war. her inhabitants increased rapidly. they could no longer be penned within the narrow limits of the old wall, but overflowed in all directions beyond it. not only was the borgo thickly populated, but a whole new region called forisportae, sprang up. so masked was the wall by houses, built into it and huddling against it both on the outside and the inside, that it seems to have been actually invisible. so much so that contemporary chroniclers spoke of pisa as without walls, and attributed her safety to the valor of her citizens and the multitude of her towers. the ancient wall was evidently so hidden and decayed that pisa must be regarded as a defenseless city in the twelfth century. it is curious that her citizens should have neglected their own safety at a time when they were masters of fortification and defense; when their fame in these arts had reached as far as egypt and syria, and when the milanese came to them to beg for engineers.... the external appearance of an italian city in the twelfth century was so unlike anything we are accustomed to in modern times that a strong effort of the imagination is needed to conceive it. seen from a distance the walls enclosed, not houses, but a forest of tall square shafts, rising into the sky like the crowded chimney stacks in a manufacturing town but far more thickly set together. the city appeared, to use a graphic contemporary metaphor, like a sheaf of corn bound together by its walls. [illustration: panel in the cathedral, showing part of the medieval wall and towers of pisa] san gimignano, tho most of its towers have perished long ago, helps us to imagine faintly what italian towns were like in the days of frederick barbarossa or his grandson frederick ii. for most of the houses were actually towers, long rectangular columns, vying with each other in height and crowded close together on either side of the narrow, airless, darkened streets. sometimes they were connected with one another by wooden bridges, and all were furnished with wooden balconies used in defensive and offensive warfare with their neighbors. cities full of towers were common all over southern france and central italy, but tuscany had more than any other state, and those of pisa were the most famous of all. the habit of building and dwelling in towers rather than in houses may have arisen from the difficulty of expanding laterally within an enclosed city; but a stronger reason may be found in the dangers and uncertainty of life in a period when a man might be attacked at any moment by his fellow-citizen, as well as by the enemy of the state. it was a distinct military advantage to overlook one's neighbor, who might be an enemy; and towers rose higher and higher. the spirit of emulation entered, and rich nobles gloried in adding tower to tower and in looking down on all rivals. but whatever the cause of their existence, they were picturesque, and must have presented a gallant sight on the eve of a high festival. the tall shafts were tinged with gold by the western sun, their battlements crowned with three fluttering banners--the eagle of the emperor, the white cross of the commune, and the device of the people--looking as tho a cloud of many-colored butterflies were hovering over the city. again, how dramatic the scene when the city was rent by one of the perpetually recurring faction-fights. light bridges with grappling-irons were thrown from tower to tower, doors and windows were barricaded, balconies and battlements lined with men in shining mail, bearing the fantastic device of their leader on helm and shield. mangonels, or catapults, huge engines stationed on the roofs of the towers, sent masses of stone hurtling through the air, whistling arbelast bolts and clothyard shafts flew in thick showers, boiling oil or lead rained down on the heads of those who ventured down to attack the doors, and arrows, with greek fire attached, were shot with nice aim into the wooden balconies and bridges. vile insults were hurled where missiles failed to strike. the shouts and shrieks of the combatants were mingled with the crash of a falling tower or with the hissing of a fire-arrow. where those struck, a red glow arose and a thick cloud of smoke enveloped the defenders. altho it is evident that towers were very numerous in pisa, it is difficult to arrive at their precise number. the chroniclers differ greatly in their estimates. benjamin da tudela, for instance, says that there were 10,000 in the twelfth century; while marangone puts the number at 15,000 and tronci at 16,000. these are round numbers such as the medieval mind loved, but we have abundant evidence that they are not much exaggerated. an intarsia panel in the duomo, shows how closely the towers were packed together, while the mass of legislation relating to them was directed against abuses that could only have arisen if their number was very large. v naples and its environs in and about the city[6] by charles dickens so we go, rattling down-hill, into naples. a funeral is coming up the street, toward us. the body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. the mourners, in white gowns and masks. if there be death abroad, life is well represented too, for all naples would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in carriages. some of these, the common vetturino vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart trappings and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. not that their loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging behind, and two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie half-suffocated with mud and dust. exhibitors of punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and bustle. ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels; the gentry, gaily drest, are dashing up and down in carriages on the chiaja, or walking in the public gardens; and quiet letter-writers, perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the portico of the great theater of san carlo, in the public street, are waiting for clients. why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands, when you look at them? everything is done in pantomime in naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger. a man who is quarreling with another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs--expressive of a donkey's ears--whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation. two people bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told the price, and walks away without a word, having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he considers it too dear. two people in carriages, meeting, one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. the other nods briskly, and goes his way. he has been invited to a friendly dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come. all over italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative--the only negative beggars will ever understand. but, in naples, those five fingers are a copious language. all this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily.... capri--once made odious by the deified beast tiberius--ischia, procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a day; now close at hand, now far off, now unseen. the fairest country in the world, is spread about us. whether we turn toward the miseno shore of the splendid watery amphitheater, and go by the grotto of posilipo to the grotto del cane and away to baiae, or take the other way, toward vesuvius and sorrento, it is one succession of delights. in the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of san gennaro, with this canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the burning mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful sea beach, past the town of torre del greco, built upon the ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of vesuvius, within a hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni manufacturies; to castellamare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of saint angelo, the highest neighboring mountain, down to the water's edge--among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark-haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer villas--to sorrento, where the poet tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. returning, we may climb the heights above castellamare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in distant naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice. the coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset; with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain (vesuvius), with its smoke and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the day. that church by the porta capuna--near the old fisher-market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty naples, where the revolt of masaniello began--is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejeweled saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous number of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. the cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of african and egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of san gennaro or januarius, which is preserved in two phials in a silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a year, to the great admiration of the people. at the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where the saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. it is said that the officiating priests turn faintly red also, sometimes, when these miracles occur. the old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the royal hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. two of these old specters totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death--as unconcerned as if they were immortal. they were used as burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great mortality occasioned by a plague. in the rest, there is nothing but dust. they consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths, hewn out of the rock. at the end of some of these long passages, are unexpected glimpses of the daylight, shining down from above. it looks as ghastly and as strange; among the torches, and the dust, and the dark vaults; as if it, too, were dead and buried. the present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the city and vesuvius. the old campo santo with its three hundred and sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, and are unclaimed by their friends. the graceful new cemetery, at no great distance from it, tho yet unfinished, has already many graves among its shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. it might be reasonably objected elsewhere, that some of the tombs are meretricious and too fanciful; but the general brightness seems to justify it here; and mount vesuvius, separated from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the scene. if it be solemn to behold from this new city of the dead, with its dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of herculaneum and pompeii! stand at the bottom of the great market-place of pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of jupiter and isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to mount vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of seeing the destroyed and the destroyer making this quiet picture in the sun. then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habitation and everyday pursuits, the chafing of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track of carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street; the marks of drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the amphoræ in private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour--all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. the tomb of virgil[7] by augustus j. c. hare a road to the right at the end of the chiaja, leads to the mouth of the grotto of posilipo, above which those who do not wish to leave their carriages may see, high on the left, close above the grotto, the ruined columbarium known as the tomb of virgil. a door in the wall, on the left of the approach to the grotto, and a very steep staircase, lead to the columbarium, which is situated in a pretty fruit-garden. virgil desired that his body should be brought to naples from brundusium, where he died, b.c. 19, and there is every probability that he was buried on this spot, which was visited as virgil's burial-place little more than a century after his death by the poet statius, who was born at naples, and who describes composing his own poems while seated in the shadow of the tomb. if further confirmation were needed of the story that virgil was laid here, it would be found in the fact that silius italicus, who lived at the same time with statius, purchased the tomb of virgil, restored it from the neglect into which it had fallen, and celebrated funeral rites before it. the tomb was originally shaded by a gigantic bay-tree, which is said to have died on the death of dante. petrarch, who was brought hither by king robert, planted another, which existed in the time of sannazaro, but was destroyed by relic-collectors in the last century. a branch was sent to frederick the great by the margravine of baireuth, with some verses by voltaire. if from no other cause, the tomb would be interesting from its visitors; here boccaccio renounced the career of a merchant for that of a poet, and a well-known legend, that st. paul visited the sepulcher of virgil at naples, was long commemorated in the verse of a hymn used in the service for st. paul's day at mantua. the tomb is a small, square, vaulted chamber with three windows. early in the sixteenth century a funeral urn, containing the ashes of the poet, stood in the center, supported by nine little marble pillars. some say that robert of anjou removed it, in 1326, for security to the castel nuovo, others that it was given by the government to a cardinal from mantua, who died at genoa on his way home. in either event the urn is now lost. it is just beneath the tomb that the road to pozzuoli enters the famous grotto of posilipo, a tunnel about half a mile long, in breadth from 25 to 30 feet, and varying from about 90 feet in height near the entrance, to little more than 20 feet at points of the interior. petronius and seneca mention its narrow gloomy passage with horror, in the reign of nero, when it was so low that it could only be used for foot-passengers, who were obliged to stoop in passing through. in the fifteenth century king alphonso i. gave it height by lowering the floor, which was paved by don pedro di toledo a hundred years later. in the middle ages the grotto was ascribed to the magic arts of virgil. in recent years it has been the chief means of communication between naples and baiae, and is at all times filled with dust and noise, the flickering lights and resounding echoes giving it a most weird effect. however much one may abuse neapolitans, we may consider in their favor, as swinburne observes, "what a terror this dark grotto would be in london!" two ascents of vesuvius[8] by johann wolgang von goethe at the foot of the steep ascent, we were received by two guides, one old, the other young, but both active fellows. the first pulled me up the path, the other tischbein[9]--pulled i say, for these guides are girded round the waist with a leathern belt, which the traveler takes hold of, and being drawn up by his guide, makes his way the easier with foot and staff. in this manner we reached the flat from which the cone rises; toward the north lay the ruins of the summit. a glance westward over the country beneath us, removed, as well as a bath could, all feeling of exhaustion and fatigue, and we now went round the ever-smoking cone, as it threw out its stones and ashes. wherever the space allowed of our viewing it at a sufficient distance, it appeared a grand and elevating spectacle. in the first place, a violent thundering toned forth from its deepest abyss, then stones of larger and smaller sizes were showered into the air by thousands, and enveloped by clouds of ashes. the greatest part fell again into the gorge; the rest of the fragments, receiving a lateral inclination, and falling on the outside of the crater, made a marvelous rumbling noise. first of all the larger masses plumped against the side, and rebounded with a dull heavy sound; then the smaller came rattling down; and last of all, drizzled a shower of ashes. all this took place at regular intervals, which by slowly counting, we were able to measure pretty accurately. between the summit, however, and the cone the space is narrow enough; moreover, several stones fell around us, and made the circuit anything but agreeable. tischbein now felt more disgusted than ever with vesuvius, as the monster, not content with being hateful, showed an inclination to become mischievous also. as, however, the presence of danger generally exercises on man a kind of attraction, and calls forth a spirit of opposition in the human breast to defy it, i bethought myself that, in the interval of the eruptions, it would be possible to climb up the cone to the crater, and to get back before it broke out again. i held a council on this point with our guides under one of the overhanging rocks of the summit, where, encamped in safety, we refreshed ourselves with the provisions we had brought with us. the younger guide was willing to run the risk with me; we stuffed our hats full of linen and silk handkerchiefs, and, staff in hand, we prepared to start, i holding on to his girdle. the little stones were yet rattling around us, and the ashes still drizzling, as the stalwart youth hurried forth with me across the hot glowing rubble. we soon stood on the brink of the vast chasm, the smoke of which, altho a gentle air was bearing it away from us, unfortunately veiled the interior of the crater, which smoked all round from a thousand crannies. at intervals, however, we caught sight through the smoke of the cracked walls of the rock. the view was neither instructive nor delightful; but for the very reason that one saw nothing, one lingered in the hope of catching a glimpse of something more; and so we forgot our slow counting. we were standing on a narrow ridge of the vast abyss; of a sudden the thunder pealed aloud; we ducked our heads involuntarily, as if that would have rescued us from the precipitated masses. the smaller stones soon rattled, and without considering that we had again an interval of cessation before us, and only too much rejoiced to have outstood the danger, we rushed down and reached the foot of the hill together with the drizzling ashes, which pretty thickly covered our heads and shoulders.... the news [two weeks later] that an eruption of lava had just commenced, which, taking the direction of ottajano, was invisible at naples, tempted me to visit vesuvius for the third time. scarcely had i jumped out of my cabriolet at the foot of the mountain, when immediately appeared the two guides who had accompanied us on our previous ascent. i had no wish to do without either, but took one out of gratitude and custom, the other for reliance on his judgment--and the two for the greater convenience. having ascended the summit, the older guide remained with our cloaks and refreshment, while the younger followed me, and we boldly went straight toward a dense volume of smoke, which broke forth from the bottom of the funnel; then we quickly went downward by the side of it, till at last, under the clear heaven, we distinctly saw the lava emitted from the rolling clouds of smoke. we may hear an object spoken of a thousand times, but its peculiar features will never be caught till we see it with our own eyes. the stream of lava was small, not broader perhaps than ten feet, but the way in which it flowed down a gentle and tolerably smooth plain was remarkable. as it flowed along, it cooled both on the sides and on the surface, so that it formed a sort of canal, the bed of which was continually raised in consequence of the molten mass congealing even beneath the fiery stream, which, with uniform action, precipitated right and left the scoria which were floating on its surface. in this way a regular dam was at length thrown up, in which the glowing stream flowed on as quietly as any mill-stream. we passed along the tolerably high dam, while the scoria rolled regularly off the sides at our feet. some cracks in the canal afforded opportunity of looking at the living stream, from below, and as it rushed onward, we observed it from above. a very bright sun made the glowing lava look dull; but a moderate steam rose from it into the pure air. i felt a great desire to go nearer to the point where it broke out from the mountain; there my guide averred, it at once formed vaults and roofs above itself, on which he had often stood. to see and experience this phenomenon, we again ascended the hill, in order to come from behind to this point. fortunately at this moment the place was cleared by a pretty strong wind, but not entirely, for all round it the smoke eddied from a thousand crannies; and now at last we stood on the top of the solid roof (which looked like a hardened mass of twisted dough), but which, however, projected so far outward, that it was impossible to see the welling lava. we ventured about twenty steps further, but the ground on which we stept became hotter and hotter, while around us rolled an oppressive steam, which obscured and hid the sun; the guide, who was a few steps in advance of me, presently turned back, and seizing hold of me, hurried out of this stygian exhalation. after we had refreshed our eyes with the clear prospect, and washed our gums and throat with wine, we went round again to notice any other peculiarities which might characterize this peak of hell, thus rearing itself in the midst of a paradise. i again observed attentively some chasms, in appearance like so many vulcanic forges, which emitted no smoke, but continually shot out a steam of hot glowing air. they were all tapestried, as it were, with a kind of stalactite, which covered the funnel to the top, with its knobs and chintz-like variation of colors. in consequence of the irregularity of the forges, i found many specimens of this sublimation hanging within reach, so that, with our staves and a little contrivance, we were able to hack off a few, and to secure them. i saw in the shops of the dealers in lava similar specimens, labeled simply "lava"; and i was delighted to have discovered that it was volcanic soot precipitated from the hot vapor, and distinctly exhibiting the sublimated mineral particles which it contained. another ascent[10] by charles dickens no matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of vesuvius, or that we have been on foot all day at pompeii, or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in such unusual season. let us take advantage of the fine weather; make the best of our way to resina, the little village at the foot of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can, on so short a notice, at the guide's house, ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to come down in! at four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible uproar in the little stable-yard of signor salvatore, the recognized head guide, with the gold band round his cap; and thirty under-guides who are all scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the journey. every one of the thirty quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens the six ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into the little stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and gets trodden on by the cattle. after much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice for the storming of naples, the procession starts. the head guide, who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance of the party; the other thirty guides proceed on foot. eight go forward with the litters that are to be used by and by; and the remaining two-and-twenty beg. we ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of stairs, for some time. at length, we leave these, and the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty masses; as if the earth had been plowed up by burning thunder-bolts. and now, we halt to see the sunset. the change that falls upon the dreary region and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on--and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has witnessed it, can ever forget! it is dark, when after winding, for some time, over the broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone, which is extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. the only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with which the cone is covered. it is now intensely cold, and the air is piercing. the thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise before we reach the top. two of the litters are devoted to the two ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from naples, whose hospitality and good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and determined him to assist in doing the honors of the mountain. the rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies by half-a-dozen. we who walk, make the best use of our staves; and so the whole party begin to labor upward over the snow--as if they were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian twelfth-cake. we are a long time toiling up; and the head guide looks oddly about him when one of the company--not an italian, tho an habitué of the mountain for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose, mr. pickle of portici--suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to descend. but the sight of the litters above, tilting up, and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers continually slip, and tumble, diverts our attention, more especially as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downward. the rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flagging spirits of the bearers. stimulating each other with their usual watchword, "courage, friend! it is to eat maccaroni!" they press on, gallantly, for the summit. from tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band of light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white mountain side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny naples in the distance, and every village in the country round. the whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top--the region of fire--an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulfurous smoke is pouring out; while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth; reddening the night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. what words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene! the broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from the sulfur; the fear of falling down through the crevices in the yawning ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody who is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon); the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse roaring of the mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that we reel again. but, dragging the ladies through it, and across another exhausted crater to the foot of the present volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence; faintly estimating the action that is going on within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it was six weeks ago. there is something in the fire and roar, that generates an irresistible desire to get nearer to it. we can not rest long, without starting off, two of us on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head guide, to climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, and call to us to come back; frightening the rest of the party out of their wits. what with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet and plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be any); and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke and sulfur; we may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken men. but, we contrive to climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into the hell of boiling fire below. then, we all three come rolling down; blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy; and each with his dress alight in half-a-dozen places. you have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending, is, by sliding down the ashes; which, forming a gradually-increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. but, when we have crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this precipitous place, there is (as mr. pickle has foretold) no vestige of ashes to be seen; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice. in this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join hands, and make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as well as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. the way being fearfully steep, and none of the party--even of the thirty--being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two careful persons; while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward--a necessary precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. the rather heavy gentleman is abjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so, than trusting to his own legs. in this order, we begin the descent; sometimes on foot, sometimes shuffling on the ice; always proceeding much more quietly and slowly than on our upward way; and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody's ankles. it is impossible for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made; and its appearance behind us, overhead--with some one or other of the bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs always in the air--is very threatening and frightful. we have gone on thus, a very little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and regarding it as a great success--and have all fallen several times, and have all been stopt, somehow or other, as we were sliding away when mr. pickle of portici, in the act of remarking on these uncommon circumstances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disengages himself, with quick presence of mind, from those about him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of the cone! giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is pickle of portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses are waiting; but, thank god, sound in limb! and never are we likely to be more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to see him now--making light of it too, tho sorely bruised and in great pain. the boy is brought into the hermitage on the mountain, while we are at supper, with his head tied up; and the man is heard of, some hours afterward. he, too, is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and stone, and rendered them harmless. castellamare and sorrento[11] by hippolyte adolphe taine the sky is almost clear. only above naples hangs a bank of clouds, and around vesuvius huge white masses of smoke, moving and stationary. i never yet saw, even in summer at marseilles, the blue of the sea so deep, bordering even on hardness. above this powerful lustrous azure, absorbing three-quarters of the visible space, the white sky seems to be a firmament of crystal. as we recede we obtain a better view of the undulating coast, embraced in one grand mountain form, all its parts uniting like the members of one body. ischia and the naked promontories on the extreme end repose in their lilac envelop, like a slumbering pompeiian nymph under her veil. veritably, to paint such nature as this, this violet continent extending around this broad luminous water, one must employ the terms of the ancient poets, and represent the great fertile goddess embraced and beset by the eternal ocean, and above them the serene effulgence of the dazzling jupiter. we encounter on the road some fine faces with long elegant features, quite grecian; some intelligent noble-looking girls, and here and there hideous mendicants cleaning their hairy breasts. but the race is much superior to that of naples, where it is deformed and diminutive, the young girls there appearing like stunted, pallid grisets. the railroad skirts the sea a few paces off and almost on a level with it. a harbor appears blackened with lines of rigging, and then a mole, consisting of a small half-ruined fort, reflecting a clear sharp shadow in the luminous expanse. surrounding this rise square houses, gray as if charred, and heaped together like tortoises under round roofs, serving them as a sort of thick shell. on this fertile soil, full of cinders, cultivation extends to the shore and forms gardens; a simple reed hedge protects them from the sea and the wind; the indian fig with its clumsy thorny leaves clings to the slopes; verdure begins to appear on the branches of the trees, the apricots showing their smiling pink blossoms; half-naked men work the friable soil without apparent effort; a few square gardens contain columns and small statues of white marble. everywhere you behold traces of antique beauty and joyousness. and why wonder at this when you feel that you have the divine vernal sun for a companion, and on the right, whenever you turn to the sea, its flaming golden waves. with what facility you here forget all ugly objects! i believe i passed at castellamare some unsightly modern structures, a railroad station, hotels, a guard-house, and a number of rickety vehicles hurrying along in quest of fares. this is all effaced from my mind; nothing remains but impressions of obscure porches with glimpses of bright courts filled with glossy oranges and spring verdure, of esplanades with children playing on them and nets drying, and happy idlers snuffing the breeze and contemplating the capricious heaving of the tossing sea. on leaving castellamare the road forms a corniche[12] winding along the bank. huge white rocks, split off from the cliffs above, lie below in the midst of the eternally besieging waves. on the left the mountains lift their shattered pinnacles, fretted walls, and projecting crags, all that scaffolding of indentations which strike you as the ruins of a line of rocked and tottering fortresses. each projection, each mass throws its shadow on the surrounding white surfaces, the entire range being peopled with tints and forms. sometimes the mountain is rent in twain, and the sides of the chasm are lined with cultivation, descending in successive stages. sorrento is thus built on three deep ravines. all these hollows contain gardens, crowded with masses of trees overhanging each other. nut-trees, already lively with sap, project their white branches like gnarled fingers; everything else is green; winter lays no hand on this eternal spring. the thick lustrous leaf of the orange-tree rises from amid the foliage of the olive, and its golden apples glisten in the sun by thousands, interspersed with gleams of the pale lemon; often in these shady lanes do its glittering leaves flash out above the crest of the walls. this is the land of the orange. it grows even in miserable court-yards, alongside of dilapidated steps, spreading its luxuriant tops everywhere in the bright sunlight. the delicate aromatic odor of all these opening buds and blossoms is a luxury of kings, which here a beggar enjoys for nothing. i passed an hour in the garden of the hotel, a terrace overlooking the sea about half-way up the bank. a scene like this fills the imagination with a dream of perfect bliss. the house stands in a luxurious garden, filled with orange and lemon-trees, as heavily laden with fruit as those of a normandy orchard; the ground at the foot of the trees is covered with it. clusters of foliage and shrubbery of a pale green, bordering on blue, occupy intermediate spaces. the rosy blossoms of the peach, so tender and delicate, bloom on its naked branches. the walks are of bright blue porcelain, and the terrace displays its round verdant masses overhanging the sea, of which the lovely azure fills all space. i have not yet spoken of my impressions after leaving castellamare. the charm was only too great. the pure sky, the pale azure almost transparent, the radiant blue sea as chaste and tender as a virgin bride, this infinite expanse so exquisitely adorned as if for a festival of rare delight, is a sensation that has no equal. capri and ischia on the line of the sky lie white in their soft vapory tissue, and the divine azure gently fades away surrounded by this border of brightness. where find words to express all this? the gulf seemed like a marble vase purposely rounded to receive the sea. the satin sheen of a flower, the soft luminous petals of the velvet orris with shimmering sunshine on their pearly borders, such are the images that fill the mind, and which accumulate in vain and are ever inadequate. the water at the base of these rocks is now a transparent emerald, reflecting the tints of topaz and amethyst; again a liquid diamond, changing its hue according to the shifting influences of rock and depth; or again a flashing diadem, glittering with the splendor of this divine effulgence. capri[13] by augustus j. c. hare the island of capri (in the dialect of the people crapi), the ancient capreae, is a huge limestone rock, a continuation of the mountain range which forms the southern boundary of the bay of naples. legend says that it was once inhabited by a people called teleboae, subject to a king called telon. augustus took possession of capreae as part of the imperial domains, and repeatedly visited it. his stepson tiberius (a.d. 27) established his permanent residence on the island, and spent the latter years of his life there, abandoning himself to the voluptuous excesses which gave him the name of caprineus.... the first point usually visited in capri is the blue grotto (grotta azzurra), which is entered from the sea by an arch under the wall of limestone cliff, only available when the sea is perfectly calm. visitors have to lie flat down in the boat, which is carried in by the wave and is almost level with the top of the arch. then they suddenly find themselves in a magical scene. the water is liquid sapphire, and the whole rocky vaulting of the cavern shimmers to its inmost recesses with a pale blue light of marvelous beauty. a man stands ready to plunge into the water when the boats from the steamers arrive, and to swim about; his body, in the water, then sparkles like a sea-god with phosphorescent silver; his head, out of the water, is black like that of a moor. nothing can exaggerate the beauty of the blue grotto, and perhaps the effect is rather enhanced than spoiled by the shouting of the boatmen, the rush of boats to the entrance, the confusion on leaving and reaching the steamers. that the grotta azzurra was known to the romans is evinced by the existence of a subterranean passage, leading to it from the upper heights, and now blocked up; it was also well known in the seventeenth century, when it was described by capraanica. there are other beautiful grottoes in the cliffs surrounding the island, the most remarkable being the natural tunnel called the green grotto (grotta verde), under the southern rocks, quite as splendid in color as the grotta azzurra itself--a passage through the rocks, into which the boat glides (through no hole, as in the case of the grotta azzurra) into water of the most exquisite emerald. the late afternoon is the best time for visiting this grotto. occasionally a small steamer makes the round of the island, stopping at the different caverns. on landing at the marina, a number of donkey women offer their services, and it will be well to accept them, for the ascent of about one mile, to the village of capri is very hot and tiring. on the left we pass the church of st. costanzo, a very curious building with apse, cupola, stone pulpit, and several ancient marble pillars and other fragments taken from the palaces of tiberius. the little town of capri, overhung on one side by great purple rocks, occupies a terrace on the high ridge between the two rocky promontories of the island. close above the piazza stands the many-domed ancient church, like a mosque, and so many of the houses--sometimes of dazzling whiteness, sometimes painted in gay colors--have their own little domes, that the appearance is quite that of an oriental village, which is enhanced by the palm-trees which flourish here and there. in the piazza is a tablet to major hamill, who is buried in the church. he fell under french bayonets, when the troops of murat, landing at orico, recaptured the island, which had been taken from the french two years and a half before (may, 1806) by sir sidney smith. through a low wide arch in the piazza is the approach to the principal hotels. there is a tiny english chapel. an ascent of half an hour by stony donkey-paths leads from capri to the ruins called the villa tiberiana, on the west of the island, above a precipitous rock 700 feet high, which still bears the name of il salto.... the visitor who lingers in capri may interest himself in tracing out the remains of all the twelve villas of tiberius. a relief exhibiting tiberius riding a led donkey, as modern travelers do now, was found on the island, and is now in the museum at naples. capri has a delightful winter climate, and is most comfortable as a residence. the natives are quite unlike the neapolitans, pleasant and civil in their manners, and full of courtesies to strangers. the women are frequently beautiful. pompeii[14] by percy bysshe shelley we have been to see pompeii, and are waiting now for the return of spring weather, to visit, first, paestum, and then the islands; after which we shall return to rome. i was astonished at the remains of this city; i had no conception of anything so perfect yet remaining. my idea of the mode of its destruction was this: first, an earthquake shattered it, and unroofed almost all its temples, and split its columns; then a rain of light small pumice-stones fell; then torrents of boiling water, mixed with ashes, filled up all its crevices. a wide, flat hill, from which the city was excavated, is now covered by thick woods, and you see the tombs and the theaters, the temples and the houses, surrounded by the uninhabited wilderness. we entered the town from the side toward the sea, and first saw two theaters; one more magnificent than the other, strewn with the ruins of the white marble which formed their seats and cornices, wrought with deep, bold sculpture. in the front, between the stage and the seats, is the circular space, occasionally occupied by the chorus. the stage is very narrow, but long, and divided from this space by a narrow enclosure parallel to it, i suppose for the orchestra. on each side are the consuls' boxes, and below, in the theater at herculaneum, were found two equestrian statues of admirable workmanship, occupying the same place as the great bronze lamps did at drury lane. the smallest of the theaters is said to have been comic, tho i should doubt. from both you see, as you sit on the seats, a prospect of the most wonderful beauty. you then pass through the ancient streets; they are very narrow, and the houses rather small, but all constructed on an admirable plan, especially for this climate. the rooms are built round a court, or sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. in the midst is a fountain, sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and more or less beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant. there were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to decorate the royal museums. little winged figures, and small ornaments of exquisite elegance, yet remain. there is an ideal life in the forms of these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, tho most are evidently the work of very inferior artists. it seems as if, from the atmosphere of mental beauty which surrounded them, every human being caught a splendor not his own. in one house you see how the bed-rooms were managed; a small sofa was built up, where the cushions were placed; two pictures, one representing diana and endymion, the other venus and mars, decorate the chamber; and a little niche, which contains the statue of a domestic god. the floor is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of the portico they supported. the houses have only one story, and the apartments, tho not large, are very lofty. a great advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our cities. the public buildings, whose ruins are now forests, as it were, of white fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. this was the excellence of the ancients. their private expenses were comparatively moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful specimens of art, but small. but their public buildings are everywhere marked by the bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. in the little town of pompeii (it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants), it is wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of their public buildings. another advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious scenery around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient pompeiians could contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise high behind vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of golden vapor, between inarime and misenum. we next saw the temples. of the temples of aesculapius little remains but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales of a serpent. his statue, in terra-cotta, was found in the cell. the temple of isis is more perfect. it is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the most exquisite proportion; its panels are adorned with figures in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most delicate and perfect that can be conceived. they are egyptian subjects, executed by a greek artist, who has harmonized all the unnatural extravagances of the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. they scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and their wind-uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. the temple in the midst raised on a high platform, and approached by steps, was decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum at portici. it is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a pavement of mosaic, and fluted ionic columns of white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look at it. thence through the other porticos and labyrinths of walls and columns (for i can not hope to detail everything to you), we came to the forum. this is a large square, surrounded by lofty porticos of fluted columns, some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. the temple of jupiter, of venus, and another temple, the tribunal, and the hall of public justice, with their forest of lofty columns, surround the forum. two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for, whether they supported equestrian statues, or were the altars of the temple of venus, before which they stand, the guide could not tell), occupy the lower end of the forum. at the upper end, supported on an elevated platform, stands the temple of jupiter. under the colonnade of its portico we sat and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and medlars (sorry fare, you will say), and rested to eat. here was a magnificent spectacle. above and between the multitudinous shafts of the sun-shining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its line the dark lofty mountains of sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and tinged toward their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow. between was one small green island. to the right was capreae, inarime, prochyta, and misenum. behind was the single summit of vesuvius, rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes darted into the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the wind. between vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm, was seen the main line of the loftiest apennines, to the east. the day was radiant and warm. every now and then we heard the subterranean thunder of vesuvius; its distant deep peals seemed to shake the very air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames with the sullen and tremendous sound. this sound was what the greeks beheld (pompeii, you know, was a greek city). they lived in harmony with nature; and the interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. if such is pompeii, what was athens? what scene was exhibited from the acropolis, the parthenon, and the temples of hercules, and theseus, and the winds? the island and the ægean sea, the mountains of argolis, and the peaks of pindus and olympus, and the darkness of the boeotian forests interspersed? from the forum we went to another public place; a triangular portico, half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. it is built on the edge of the hill overlooking the sea. that black point is the temple. in the apex of the triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and before the altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. returning hence, and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of the city. the walls are of an enormous strength, and enclose a space of three miles. on each side of the road beyond the gate are built the tombs. how unlike ours! they seem not so much hiding-places for that which must decay, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. they are of marble, radiantly white; and two, especially beautiful, are loaded with exquisite bas-reliefs. on the stucco-wall that encloses them are little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending in groups in some funereal office. the high reliefs represent, one a nautical subject, and the other a bacchanalian one. within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. it is said that paintings were found within, which are now, as has been everything movable in pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal museums. these tombs were the most impressive things of all. the wild woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the step of ghosts. the radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely-finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them, contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were living when vesuvius overwhelmed them. i have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude, tho much inferior to the coliseum. i now understand why the greeks were such great poets; and, above all, i can account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all their works of art. they lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature, and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. their theaters were all open to the mountains and the sky. their columns, the ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted the light and wind; the odor and the freshness of the country penetrated the cities. their temples were mostly upaithric; and the flying clouds, the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above. vi other italian scenes verona[15] by charles dickens i had been half afraid to go to verona, lest it should at all put me out of conceit with romeo and juliet. but, i was no sooner come into the old market-place, than the misgiving vanished. it is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town; scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful of stories. it was natural enough, to go straight from the market-place, to the house of the capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those times. the orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off many years ago; but there used to be one attached to the house--or at all events there may have been--and the hat (cappello), the ancient cognizance of the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the yard. the geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed; and it would have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have been able to walk through the disused rooms. but the hat was unspeakably comfortable; and the place where the garden used to be, hardly less so. besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would desire to see, tho of a very moderate size. so i was quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion of old capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the padrona of the hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at the geese. from juliet's home, to juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to the visitor, as to fair juliet herself, or to the proudest juliet that ever has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. so, i went off, with a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, i suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants and young flowers were prettily growing among fragments of old wall, and ivy-covered mounds; and was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which the bright-eyed woman--drying her arms upon her 'kerchief--called "la tomba di giulietta la sfortunáta." with the best disposition in the world to believe, i could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed woman believed; so i gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money. it was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that juliet's resting-place was forgotten. however consolatory it may have been to yorick's ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors but such as come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine. pleasant verona! with its beautiful old palaces, and charming country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, balustraded galleries. with its roman gates, still spanning the fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. with its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of montagues and capulets once resounded. and made verona's ancient citizens cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments, to wield old partisans. with its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle, waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful! pleasant verona! in the midst of it, in the piazza di brá--a spirit of old time among the familiar realities of the passing hour--is the great roman amphitheater. so well preserved, and carefully maintained, that every row of seats is there, unbroken. over certain of the arches, the old roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are corridors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts, and winding ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody shows of the arena. nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and grass, upon the parapet. but little else is greatly changed. when i had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely panorama closed in by the distant alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow crown; the plaits being represented by the four-and-forty rows of seats. the comparison is a homely and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it was irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless. padua[16] by théophile gautier padua is an ancient city and exhibits a rather respectable appearance against the horizon with its bell-turrets, its domes, and its old walls upon which myriads of lizards run and frisk in the sun. situated near a center which attracts life to itself, padua is a dead city with an almost deserted air. its streets, bordered by two rows of low arcades, in nowise recall the elegant and charming architecture of venice. the heavy, massive structures have a serious, somewhat crabbed aspect, and its somber porticos in the lower stories of the houses resemble black mouths which yawn with ennui. we were conducted to a big inn, established probably in some ancient palace, and whose great halls, dishonored by vulgar uses, had formerly seen better company. it was a real journey to go from the vestibule to our room by a host of stairways and corridors; a map of ariadne's thread would have been needed to find one's way back. our windows opened upon a very pleasant view; a river flows at the foot of the wall--the brenta or the bacchiglione, i know not which, for both water padua. the banks of this watercourse were adorned with old houses and long walls, and trees, too, overhung the banks; some rather picturesque rows of piles, from which the fishermen cast their lines with that patience characteristic of them in all countries; huts with nets and linen hanging from the windows to dry, formed under the sun's rays a very pretty subject for a water-color. after dinner we went to the café pedrocchi, celebrated throughout all italy for its magnificence. nothing could be more monumentally classic. there are nothing but pillars, columnets, ovolos, and palm leaves of the percier and fontain kind, the whole very fine and lavish of marble. what was most curious was some immense maps forming a tapestry and representing the different divisions of the world on an enormous scale. this somewhat pedantic decoration gives to the hall an academic air; and one is surprized not to see a chair in place of the bar, with a professor in his gown in place of a dispenser of lemonade. the university of padua was formerly famous. in the thirteenth century eighteen thousand young men, a whole people of scholars, followed the lessons of the learned professors, among whom later galileo figured, one of whose bones is preserved there as a relic, a relic of a martyr who suffered for the truth. the façade of the university is very beautiful; four doric columns give it a severe and monumental air; but solitude reigns in the class-rooms where to-day scarcely a thousand students can be reckoned.... we paid a visit to the cathedral dedicated to saint anthony, who enjoys at padua the same reputation as saint januarius at naples. he is the "genius loci," the saint venerated above all others. he used to perform not less than thirty miracles each day, if casanova[17] is to be believed. such a performance fairly earned for him his surname of thaumaturge, but this prodigious zeal has fallen off greatly. nevertheless, the reputation of the saint has not suffered, and so many masses are paid for at his altar that the number of the priests of the cathedral and of days in the year are not sufficient. to liquidate the accounts, the pope has granted permission, at the end of the year, for masses to be said, each, one of which is of the value of a thousand; in this fashion saint anthony is saved from being bankrupt to his faithful devotees. on the place which adjoins the cathedral, a beautiful equestrian statue by donatello, in bronze, rises to view, the first which had been cast since the days of antiquity, representing a leader of banditti: gattamelata, a brigand who surely did not deserve that honor. but the artist has given him a superb bearing and a spirited figure with his baton of a roman emperor, and it is entirely sufficient.... one thing which must not be neglected in passing through padua is a visit to the old church of the arena, situated at the rear of a garden of luxuriant vegetation, where it would certainly not be conjectured to be located unless one were advised of the fact. it is entirely painted in its interior by giotto. not a single column, not a single rib, nor architectural division interrupts that vast tapestry of frescoes. the general aspect is soft, azure, starry, like a beautiful, calm sky; ultramarine dominates; thirty compartments of large dimensions, indicated by simple lines, contain the life of the virgin and of her divine son in all their details; they might be called illustrations in miniature of a gigantic missal. the personages, by naïve anachronisms very precious for history, are clothed in the mode of the times in which giotto painted. below these compositions of the purest religious feeling, a painted plinth shows the seven deadly sins symbolized in an ingenious manner, and other allegorical figures of a very good style; a paradise and a hell, subjects which greatly imprest the minds of the artists of that epoch, complete this marvelous whole. there are in these paintings weird and touching details; children issue from their little coffins to mount to paradise with a joyous ardor, and launch themselves forth to go to play upon the blossoming turf of the celestial garden; others stretch forth their hands to their half-resurrected mothers. the remark may also be made that all the devils and vices are obese, while the angels and virtues are thin and slender. the painter wishes to mark the preponderance of matter in the one class and of spirit in the other. ferrara[18] by théophile gautier ferrara rises solitary in the midst of a flat country more rich than picturesque. when one enters it by the broad street which leads to the square, the aspect of the city is imposing and monumental. a palace with a grand staircase occupies a corner of this vast square; it might be a court-house or a town hall, for people of all classes were entering and departing through its wide doors.... the castle of the ancient dukes of ferrara, which is to be found a little farther on, has a fine feudal aspect. it is a vast collection of towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which one enters by a protected bridge. the castle, built wholly of brick or of stones reddened by the sun, has a vermilion tint which deprives it of its imposing effect. it is too much like a decoration of a melodrama. it was in this castle that the famous lucretia borgia lived, whom victor hugo has made such a monster for us, and whom ariosto depicts as a model of chastity, grace and virtue; that blonde lucretia who wrote letters breathing the purest love, and some of whose hair, fine as silk and shining as gold, byron possest. it was there that the dramas of tasso and ariosto and guarini were played; there that those brilliant orgies took place, mingled with poisonings and assassinations, which characterized that learned and artistic, refined and criminal, period of italy. it is the custom to pay a pious visit to the problematical dungeon in which tasso, mad with love and grief, passed so many years, according to the poetic legend which grew up concerning his misfortune. we did not have time to spare and we regretted it very little. this dungeon, a perfectly correct sketch of which we have before our eyes, consists only of four walls, ceiled by a low arch. at the back is to be seen a window grated by heavy bars and a door with big bolts. it is quite unlikely that in this obscure hole, tapestried with cobwebs, tasso could have worked and retouched his poem, composed sonnets, and occupied himself with small details of toilet, such as the quality of the velvet of his cap and the silk of his stockings, and with kitchen details, such as with what kind of sugar he ought to powder his salad, that which he had not being fine enough for his liking. neither did we see the house of ariosto, another required pilgrimage. not to speak of the little faith which one should place in these unauthenticated traditions, in these relics without character, we prefer to seek ariosto in the "orlando furioso," and tasso in the "jerusalem délivrée" or in the fine drama of goethe. the life of ferrara is concentrated on the plaza nuova, in front of the church and in the neighborhood of the castle. life has not yet abandoned this heart of the city; but in proportion as one moves away from it, it becomes more feeble, paralysis begins, death gains; silence, solitude, and grass invade the streets; one feels that one is wandering about a thebes peopled with ghosts of the past and from which the living have evaporated like water which has dried up. there is nothing more sad than to see the corpse of a dead city slowly falling into dust in the sun and rain. one at least buries human bodies. lake lugano[19] by victor tissot on emerging from the second tunnel,[20] beyond a wild and narrow gorge, there lies suddenly before us, as in a gorgeous fairyland or in the landscape of a dream, the blue expanse of lake lugano, with its setting of green meadows and purple mountains, with the many-colored village spires, and the great white fronts of the hotels and villas. oh, what a wonderful picture! we feel as if we were going down into an enchanted garden that has been hidden by the great snowy walls of the alps. the air is full of the perfume of roses and jessamine. the hedges are in flower, butterflies are dancing, insects are humming, birds are singing. up above, in the mountain, is snow, ice, winter, and silence; here there is sunshine, life, joy, love--all the living delights of spring and summer. golden harvests are shining on the plains, and the lake in the distance is like a piece of the sky brought down to earth. lugano is already italy, not only because of the richness of the soil and the magnificence of the vegetation, but also as regards the language, the manners, and the picturesque costumes. in each valley the dress is different; in one place the women wear a short skirt, an apron held in by a girdle, and a bright colored bodice; in another they wear a cap above which is a large shady hat; in the val maroblio they have a woolen dress not very different from that of the capuchins. the men have not the square figure, the slow, heavy walk of the people of basle and lucerne; they are brisk, vigorous, easy; and the women have something of the wavy suppleness of vine branches twining among the trees. these people have the happy, childlike joyousness, the frank good-nature, of those who live in the open air, who do not shut themselves up in their houses, but grow freely like the flowers under the strong, glowing sunshine. at every street corner sellers are sitting behind baskets of extraordinary vegetables and magnificent fruit; and under the arcades that run along the houses, big grocers in shirt sleeves come at intervals to their shop doors to take breath, like hippopotami coming out of the water for the same purpose. in this town, ultramontane in its piety, the bells of churches and convents are sounding all day long, and women are seen going to make their evening prayer together in the nearest chapel. but if the fair sex in lugano are diligent in frequenting the churches, they by no means scorn the cafés. after sunset the little tables that are all over the great square are surrounded by an entire population of men and women. how gay and amusing those italian cafés are! full of sound and color, with their red and blue striped awnings, their advance guard of little tables under the shade of the orange-trees, and their babbling, stirring, gesticulating company. the waiters, in black vests and leather slippers, a corner of their apron tucked up in their belt, run with the speed of kangaroos, carrying on metal plates syrups of every shade, ices, sweets in red, yellow, or green pyramids. between seven and nine o'clock the whole society of lugano defiles before you. there are lawyers with their wives, doctors with their daughters, bankers, professors, merchants, public officials, with whom are sometimes misted stout, comfortable, jovial-looking canons, wrapping themselves in the bitter smoke of a regalia, as in a cloud of incense. lake como[21] by percy bysshe shelley we have been to como, looking for a house. this lake exceeds anything i ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of killarney. it is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests. we sailed from the town of como to a tract of country called the tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. the mountains between como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. but usually the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. other flowering shrubs, which i can not name, grow there also. on high, the towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests. beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains descend less precipitously to the lake, and altho they are much higher, and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the other, such as i should fancy the abysses of ida or parnassus. here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than leaves--and vineyards. this shore of the lake is one continued village, and the milanese nobility have their villas here. the union of culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. but the finest scenery is that of the villa pliniana; so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the younger pliny, which is in the courtyard. this house, which was once a magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are endeavoring to procure. it is built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a semicircular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chestnut. the scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. on one side is the mountain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees, of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky. above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. on the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains, speckled with sails and spires. the apartments of the pliniana are immensely large, but ill-furnished and antique. the terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of pythian, are most delightful. bellagio on lake como[22] by w. d. m'cracken the picture of the promontory of bellagio is so beautiful as a whole that the traveler had better stand off for awhile to admire it at a distance and at his leisure. indeed it is a question whether the lasting impressions which we treasure of bellagio are not, after all, those derived from across the lake, from the shore-fronts of tremezzo, cadenabbia, menaggio, or varenna. a colossal, conquering geological lion appears to have come up from the south in times immemorial, bound for the north, and finding further progress stopt by the great sheet of water in front of him, seems to have halted and to be now crouching there with his noble head between his paws and his eyes fixt on the snow-covered alps. the big white house on the lion's neck is the villa serbelloni, now used as the annex of a hotel, and the park of noble trees belonging to the villa forms the lion's mane. hotels, both large and small, line the quay at the water's edge; then comes a break in the houses, and stately villa melzi is seen to stand off at one side. villa trotti gleams from among its bowers farther south; on the slope villa trivulzio, formerly poldi, shows bravely, and villa giulia has cut for itself a wide prospect over both arms of the lake. at the back of this lion couchant, in the middle ground, sheer mountain walls tower protectingly, culminating in monte grigna. the picture varies from hour to hour, from day to day, and from season to season. its color-scheme changes with wind and sun, its sparkle comes and goes from sunrise to sunset; only its form remains untouched through the night and lives to delight us another day. as the evening wears on, lights appear one by one on the quay of bellagio, until there is a line of fire along the base of the dark peninsula. the hotel windows catch the glare, the villas light their storied corridors, and presently bellagio, all aglow, presents the spectacle of a venetian night mirrored in the lake. by this time the mountains have turned black and the sky has faded. it grows so still on the water that the tinkle of a little italian band reaches across the lake to cadenabbia, a laugh rings out into the quiet air from one of the merry little rowboats, and even the slight clatter made by the fishermen, in putting their boats to rights for the night and in carrying their nets indoors, can be distinguished as one of many indications that the day is done. when we land at bellagio by daylight, we find it to be very much of a bazaar of souvenirs along the water-front, and everybody determined to carry away a keepsake. there is so much to buy--ornamental olive wood and tortoise-shell articles, como blankets, lace, and what may be described in general terms as modern antiquities. these abound from shop to shop; even english groceries are available. bellagio's principal street is suddenly converted at its northern end into a delightful arcade, after the arrangement which constitutes a characteristic charm of the villages and smaller towns on the italian lakes; moreover, the vista up its side street is distinctly original. this mounts steeply from the waterside, like the streets of algiers, is narrow and constructed in long steps to break the incline. the republic of san marino[23] by joseph addison the town and republic of st. marino stands on the top of a very high and craggy mountain. it is generally hid among the clouds, and lay under snow when i saw it, though it was clear and warm weather in all the country about it. there is not a spring or fountain, that i could hear of, in the whole dominions; but they are always well provided with huge cisterns and reservoirs of rain and snow water. the wine that grows on the sides of their mountain is extraordinarily good, much better than any i met with on the cold side of the apennines. this mountain, and a few neighboring hillocks that lie scattered about the bottom of it, is the whole circuit of these dominions. they have what they call three castles, three convents, and five churches and can reckon about five thousand souls in their community.[24] the inhabitants, as well as the historians who mention this little republic, give the following account of its origin. st. marino was its founder, a dalmatian by birth, and by trade a mason. he was employed above thirteen hundred years ago in the reparation of rimini, and after he had finished his work, retired to this solitary mountain, as finding it very proper for the life of a hermit, which he led in the greatest rigors and austerities of religion. he had not been long here before he wrought a reputed miracle, which, joined with his extraordinary sanctity, gained him so great an esteem, that the princess of the country made him a present of the mountain, to dispose of at his own discretion. his reputation quickly peopled it, and gave rise to the republic which calls itself after his name. so that the commonwealth of marino may boast, at least, of a nobler original than that of rome, the one having been at first an asylum for robbers and murderers, and the other a resort of persons eminent for their piety and devotion. the best of their churches is dedicated to the saint, and holds his ashes. his statue stands over the high altar, with the figure of a mountain in its hands, crowned with three castles, which is likewise the arms of the commonwealth. they attribute to his protection the long duration of their state, and look on him as the greatest saint next the blessed virgin. i saw in their statute-book a law against such as speak disrespectfully of him, who are to be punished in the same manner as those convicted of blasphemy. this petty republic has now lasted thirteen hundred years,[25] while all the other states of italy have several times changed their masters and forms of government. their whole history is comprised in two purchases, which they made of a neighboring prince, and in a war in which they assisted the pope against a lord of rimini. in the year 1100 they bought a castle in the neighborhood, as they did another in the year 1170. the papers of the conditions are preserved in their archives, where it is very remarkable that the name of the agent for the commonwealth, of the seller, of the notary, and the witnesses, are the same in both the instruments, tho drawn up at seventy years' distance from each other. nor can it be any mistake in the date, because the popes' and emperors' names, with the year of their respective reigns, are both punctually set down. about two hundred and ninety years after this they assisted pope pius the second against one of the malatestas, who was then, lord of rimini; and when they had helped to conquer him, received from the pope, as a reward for their assistance, four little castles. this they represent as the flourishing time of the commonwealth, when their dominions reached half-way up a neighboring hill; but at present they are reduced to their old extent.... the chief officers of the commonwealth are the two capitaneos, who have such a power as the old roman consuls had, but are chosen every six months. i talked with some that had been capitaneos six or seven times, tho the office is never to be continued to the same persons twice successively. the third officer is the commissary, who judges in all civil and criminal matters. but because the many alliances, friendships, and intermarriages, as well as the personal feuds and animosities, that happen among so small a people might obstruct the course of justice, if one of their own number had the distribution of it, they have always a foreigner for this employ, whom they choose for three years, and maintain out of the public stock. he must be a doctor of law, and a man of known integrity. he is joined in commission with the capitaneos, and acts something like the recorder of london under the lord mayor. the commonwealth of genoa was forced to make use of a foreign judge for many years, while their republic was torn into the divisions of guelphs and ghibelines. the fourth man in the state is the physician, who must likewise be a stranger, and is maintained by a public salary. he is obliged to keep a horse, to visit the sick, and to inspect all drugs that are imported. he must be at least thirty-five years old, a doctor of the faculty, and eminent for his religion and honesty, that his rashness or ignorance may not unpeople the commonwealth. and, that they may not suffer long under any bad choice, he is elected only for three years. the people are esteemed very honest and rigorous in the execution of justice, and seem to live more happy and contented among their rocks and snows, than others of the italians do in the pleasantest valleys of the world. nothing, indeed, can be a greater instance of the natural love that mankind has for liberty, and of their aversion to an arbitrary government, than such a savage mountain covered with people, and the campania of rome, which lies in the same country, almost destitute of inhabitants. perugia[26] by nathaniel hawthorne we pursued our way, and came, by and by, to the foot of the high hill on which stands perugia, and which is so long and steep that gaetano took a yoke of oxen to aid his horses in the ascent. we all, except my wife, walked a part of the way up, and i myself, with j----[27] for my companion, kept on even to the city gate, a distance, i should think, of two or three miles, at least. the lower part of the road was on the edge of the hill, with a narrow valley on our left; and as the sun had now broken out, its verdure and fertility, its foliage and cultivation, shone forth in miraculous beauty, as green as england, as bright as only italy. perugia appeared above us, crowning a mighty hill, the most picturesque of cities; and the higher we ascended, the more the view opened before us, as we looked back on the course that we had traversed, and saw the wide valley, sweeping down and spreading out, bounded afar by mountains, and sleeping in sun and shadow. no language nor any art of the pencil can give an idea of the scene.... we plunged from the upper city down through some of the strangest passages that ever were called streets; some of them, indeed, being arched all over, and, going down into the unknown darkness, looked like caverns; and we followed one of them doubtfully, till it opened, out upon the light. the houses on each side were divided only by a pace or two, and communicated with one another, here and there, by arched passages. they looked very ancient, and may have been inhabited by etruscan princes, judging from the massiveness of some of the foundation stones. the present inhabitants, nevertheless, are by no means princely, shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people, one of whom was guiding a child in leading-strings through these antique alleys, where hundreds of generations have trod before those little feet. finally we came out through a gateway, the same gateway at which we entered last night. the best part of perugia, that in which the grand piazzas and the principal public edifices stand, seems to be a nearly level plateau on the summit of the hill; but it is of no very great extent, and the streets rapidly run downward on either side. j---and i followed one of these descending streets, and were led a long way by it, till we at last emerged from one of the gates of the city, and had another view of the mountains and valleys, the fertile and sunny wilderness in which this ancient civilization stands. on the right of the gate there was a rude country path, partly overgrown with grass, bordered by a hedge on one side, and on the other by the gray city wall, at the base of which the tract kept onward. we followed it, hoping that it would lead us to some other gate by which we might reenter the city; but it soon grew so indistinct and broken, that it was evidently on the point of melting into somebody's olive-orchard or wheat-fields or vineyards, all of which lay on the other side of the hedge; and a kindly old woman of whom i inquired told me (if i rightly understood her italian) that i should find no further passage in that direction. so we turned back, much broiled in the hot sun, and only now and then relieved by the shadow of an angle or a tower. siena[28] by mr. and mrs. edwin h. blashfield that admirers of minute designs and florid detail could appreciate grandeur as well, no one can doubt who has seen the plans of the sienese cathedral. its history is one of a grand result, and of far grander, tho thwarted endeavor, and it is hard to realize to-day, that the church as it stands is but a fragment, the transept only, of what siena willed. from the state of the existing works no one can doubt that the brave little republic would have finished it had she not met an enemy before whom the sword of monteaperto was useless. the plague of 1348 stalked across tuscany, and the chill of thirty thousand sienese graves numbed the hand of master and workman, sweeping away the architect who planned, the masons who built, the magistrates who ordered, it left but the yellowed parchment in the archives which conferred upon maestro lorenzo maitani the superintendence of the works. the façade of the present church is amazing in its richness, undoubtedly possesses some grand and much lovely detail, and is as undoubtedly suggestive, with its white marble ornaments upon a pink marble ground, of a huge, sugared cake. it is impossible to look at this restored whiteness with the sun upon it; the dazzled eyes close involuntarily and one sees in retrospect the great, gray church front at rheims, or the solemn façade of notre dame de paris. it is like remembering an organ burst of handel after hearing the florid roulades of the mass within the cathedral. the interior is rich in color and fine in effect, but the northerner is painfully imprest by the black and white horizontal stripes which, running from vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the vision, and the closely set bars of the piers are positively irritating. in the hexagonal lantern, however, they are less offensive than elsewhere, because the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great gilded statues breaks up the horizontal effect. the decoration of the stone-work is not happy; the use of cold red and cold blue with gilt bosses in relief does much to vulgarize, and there is constant sally in small masses which belittles the general effect. it is evident that the sienese tendency to floridity is answerable for much of this, and that having added some piece of big and bad decoration, the cornice of papal head, for instance, they felt forced to do away with it or continue it throughout. but this fault and many others are forgotten when we examine the detail with which later men have filled the church. other italian cathedrals possess art-objects of a higher order; perhaps no other one is so rich in these treasures. the great masters are disappointing here. raphael, as the co-laborer of pinturicchio, is dainty, rather than great, and michelangelo passes unnoticed in the huge and coldly elaborate altar-front of the piccolomini. but marrina, with his doors of the library; barili, with his marvelous casing of the choir-stalls; beccafumi, with his bronze and neillo--these are the artists whom one wonders at; these wood-carvers and bronze-founders, creators of the microcosmic detail of the renaissance which had at last burst triumphantly into siena. this treasure is cumulative, as we walk eastward from the main door, where the pillars are a maze of scroll-work in deepest cutting, and by the time we reach the choir the head fairly swims with the play of light and color. we wander from point to point, we finger and caress the lustrous stalls of barili, and turn with a kind of confusion of vision from panel to panel; above our heads the tabernacle of vecchietta, the lamp bearing angels of beccafumi make spots of bituminous color, with glittering high-lights, strangely emphasizing their modeling; from these youths, who might be pages to some roman prefect, the eye travels upward still further, along the golden convolutions of the heavily stuccoed pilasters to the huge, gilded cherubs' heads that frame the eastern rose.... it is incredible that these frescoes are four hundred years old. surely pinturicchio came down from his scaffolding but yesterday. this is how the hardly dried plaster must have looked to pope and cardinal and princes when the boards were removed, and when the very figures on these walls--smart youths in tights and slashes, bright-robed scholars, ecclesiastics caped in ermine, ladies with long braids bound in nets of silk--crowded to see themselves embalmed in tempera for curious after-centuries to gaze upon. the assissi of st. francis[29] by hippolyte adolphe taine on the summit of an abrupt height, over a double row of arcades, appears the monastery; at its base a torrent plows the soil, winding off in the distance between banks of boulders; beyond is the old town prolonging itself on the ridge of the mountain. we ascend slowly under the burning sun, and suddenly, at the end of a court surrounded by slender columns, enter within the obscurity of the cathedral. it is unequalled; before having seen it one has no idea of the art and the genius of the middle ages. append to it dante and the "fioretti" of st. francis, and it becomes the masterpiece of mystic christianity. there are three churches, one above the other, all of them arranged around the tomb of st. francis. over this venerated body, which the people regard as ever living and absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an inaccessible cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. the lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher, into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the dripping walls and grope along in order to reach the grating. here is the tomb, in a pale, dim light, similar to that of limbo. a few brass lamps, almost without lights, burn here eternally like stars lost in mournful obscurity. the ascending smoke clings to the arches, and the heavy odor of the tapers mingles with that of the cave. the guide trims his torch; and the sudden flash in this horrible darkness, above the bones of a corpse, is like one of dante's visions. here is the mystic grave of a saint who, in the midst of corruption and worms, beholds his slimy dungeon of earth filled with the supernatural radiance of the savior. but that which can not be represented by words is the middle church, a long, low spiracle supported by small, round arches curving in the half-shadow, and whose voluntary depression makes one instinctively bend his knees. a coating of somber blue and of reddish bands starred with gold, a marvelous embroidery of ornaments, wreaths, delicate scroll-work, leaves, and painted figures, covers the arches and ceilings with its harmonious multitude; the eye is overwhelmed by it; a population of forms and tints lives on its vaults; i would not exchange this cavern for all the churches of rome! on the summit, the upper church shoots up as brilliant, as aerial, as triumphant, as this is low and grave. really, if one were to give way to conjecture, he might suppose that in these three sanctuaries the architect meant to represent the three worlds; below, the gloom of death and the horrors of the infernal tomb; in the middle, the impassioned anxiety of the beseeching christian who strives and hopes in this world of trial; aloft, the bliss and dazzling glory of paradise. ravenna[30] by edward a. freeman with exceptions, all the monuments of ravenna belong to the days of transition from roman to medieval times, and the greater part of them come within the fifth and sixth centuries. it was then that ravenna became, for a season, the head of italy and of the western world. the sea had made ravenna a great haven: the falling back of the sea made her the ruling city of the earth. augustus had called into being the port of caesarea as the peiraieus of the old thessalian or umbrian ravenna. haven and city grew and became one; but the faithless element again fell back; the haven of augustus became dry land covered by orchards, and classis arose as the third station, leaving ravenna itself an inland city. again has the sea fallen back; caesarea has utterly perished; classis survives only in one venerable church; the famous pine forest has grown up between the third haven and the now distant hadriatic. out of all this grew the momentary greatness of ravenna. the city, girded with the three fold zone of marshes, causeways, and strong walls, became the impregnable shelter of the later emperors; and the earliest teutonic kings naturally fixt their royal seat in the city of their imperial predecessors. when this immediate need had passed away, the city naturally fell into insignificance, and it plays hardly any part in the history of medieval italy. hence it is that the city is crowded with the monuments of an age which has left hardly any monuments elsewhere. in britain, indeed, if dr. merivale be right in the date which he gives to the great northern wall, we have a wonderful relic of those times; but it is the work, not of the architect, but of the military engineers. in other parts of europe also works of this date are found here and there; but nowhere save at ravenna is there a whole city, so to speak, made up of them. nowhere but at ravenna can we find, thickly scattered around us, the churches, the tombs, perhaps the palaces, of the last roman and the first teutonic rulers of italy. in the old and in the new rome, and in milan also, works of the same date exist; but either they do not form the chief objects of the city, or they have lost their character and position through later changes. if ravenna boasts of the tombs of honorius and theodoric, milan boasts also, truly or falsely, of the tombs of stilicho and athaulf. but at milan we have to seek for the so-called tomb of athaulf in a side-chapel of a church which has lost all ancient character, and the so-called tomb of stilicho, tho placed in the most venerable church of the city, stands in a strange position as the support of a pulpit. at ravenna, on the other hand, the mighty mausoleum of theodoric, and the chapel which contains the tombs of galla placidia, her brother, and her second husband, are among the best known and best preserved monuments of the city. ravenna, in the days of its exarchs, could never have dared to set up its own st. vital as a rival to imperial st. sophia. but at st. sophia, changed into the temple of another faith, the most characteristic ornaments have been hidden or torn away, while at st. vital hebrew patriarchs and christian saints, and the imperial forms of justinian and his strangely-chosen empress, still look down, as they did thirteen hundred years back, upon the altars of christian worship. ravenna, in short, seems, as it were, to have been preserved all but untouched to keep up the memory of the days which were alike roman, christian, and imperial. benedictine subiaco[31] by augustus j. c. hare one of the excellent mountain roads constructed by pius ix. leads through a wild district from olevano to subiaco. a few miles before reaching subiaco we skirt a lake, probably one of the simbrivii lacus which nero is believed to have made by damming up the anio. here he fished for trout with a golden net, and here he built the mountain villa which he called sublaqueum--a name which still exists in subiaco. four centuries after the valley had witnessed the orgies of nero, a young patrician of the family of the anicii-benedictus, or "the blessed one," being only fourteen at the time, fled from the seductions of the capital to the rocks of mentorella, but, being followed thither, sought a more complete solitude in a cave above the falls of the anio. here he lived unknown to any except the hermit romanus, who daily let down food to him, half of his own loaf, by a cord from the top of the cliff. at length the hiding-place was revealed to the village priest in a vision, and pilgrims flocked from all quarters to the valley. through the disciples who gathered around benedict, this desolate ravine became the cradle of monastic life in the west, and twelve monasteries rose amid its peaks under the benedictine rule.... nothing can exceed the solemn grandeur of the situation of the convent dedicated to st. scholastica, the sainted sister of st. benedict, which was founded in the fifth century, and which, till quite lately, included as many as sixteen towns and villages among its possessions. the scenery becomes more romantic and savage at every step as we ascend the winding path after leaving st. scholastica, till a small gate admits us to the famous immemorial ilex grove of st. benedict, which is said to date from the fifth century, and which has never been profaned by ax or hatchet. beyond it the path narrows, and a steep winding stair, just wide enough to admit one person at a time, leads to the platform before the second convent, which up to that moment is entirely concealed. its name, sacro speco, commemorates the holy cave of st. benedict. at the portal, the thrilling interest of the place is suggested by the inscription--"here is the patriarchal cradle of the monks of the west order of st. benedict." the entrance corridor, built on arches over the abyss, has frescoes of four sainted popes, and ends in an ante-chamber with beautiful umbrian frescoes, and a painted statue of st. benedict. here we enter the all-glorious church of 1116, completely covered with ancient frescoes. a number of smaller chapels, hewn out of the rock, are dedicated to the sainted followers of the founder. some of the paintings are by the rare umbrian master concioli. a staircase in front of the high altar leads to the lower church. at the foot of the first flight of steps, above the charter of 1213, setting forth all its privileges, is the frescoed figure of innocent iii., who first raised subiaco into an abbacy; in the same fresco is represented abbot john of tagliacozzo, under whom (1217-1277) many of the paintings were executed. on the second landing, the figure of benedict faces us on a window with his finger on his lips, imposing silence. on the left is the coro, on the right the cave where benedict is said to have passed three years in darkness. a statue by raggi commemorates his presence here; a basket is a memorial of that lowered with his food by st. romanus; an ancient bell is shown as that which rang to announce its approach. as we descend the scala santa trodden by the feet of benedict, and ascended by the monks upon their knees, the solemn beauty of the place increases at every step. on the right is a powerful fresco of death mowing down the young and sparing the old; on the left, the preacher shows the young and thoughtless the three states to which the body is reduced after death. lastly, we reach the holy of holies, the second cave, in which benedict laid down the rule of his order, making its basis the twelve degrees of humility. here also an inscription enumerates the wonderful series of saints, who, issuing from subiaco, founded the benedictine order throughout the world. etruscan volterra[32] by william cullen bryant for several miles before reaching volterra, our attention was fixt by the extraordinary aspect of the country through which we were passing. the road gradually ascended, and we found ourselves among deep ravines and steep, high, broken banks, principally of clay, barren, and in most places wholly bare of herbage, a scene of complete desolation, were it not for a cottage here and there perched upon the heights, a few sheep attended by a boy and a dog grazing on the brink of one of the precipices, or a solitary patch of bright green wheat in some spot where the rains had not yet carried away the vegetable mold. in the midst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there interspersed with fertile spots, rises the mountain on which volterra is situated, where the inhabitants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere, almost perpetually cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies; while below, on the banks of the cecina, which in full sight winds its way to the sea, they die of fevers. one of the ravines of which i have spoken--the "balza," they call it at volterra--has plowed a deep chasm on the north side of this mountain, and is every year rapidly approaching the city on its summit. i stood on its edge and looked down a bank of soft, red earth five hundred feet in height. a few rods in front of me i saw where a road had crossed the spot in which the gulf now yawned; the tracks of the last year's carriages were seen reaching to the edge on both sides. the ruins of a convent were close at hand, the inmates of which, two or three years since, had been removed by the government to the town for safety.... the antiquities of volterra consist of an etruscan burial-ground, in which the tombs still remain, pieces of the old and incredibly massive etruscan wall, including a far larger circuit than the present city, two etruscan gates of immemorial antiquity, older, doubtless, than any thing at rome, built of enormous stones, one of them serving even yet as an entrance to the town, and a multitude of cinerary vessels, mostly of alabaster, sculptured with numerous figures in "alto relievo." these figures are sometimes allegorical representations, and sometimes embody the fables of the greek mythology. among them are many in the most perfect style of grecian art, the subjects of which are taken from the poems of homer; groups representing the besiegers of troy and its defenders, or ulysses with his companions and his ships. i gazed with exceeding delight on these works of forgotten artists, who had the verses of homer by heart--works just drawn from the tombs where they had been buried for thousands of years, and looking as if fresh from the chisel. the paestum of the greeks[33] by edward a. freeman few buildings are more familiar than the temples of paestum; yet the moment when the traveler first comes in sight of works of untouched hellenic skill is one which is simply overwhelming. suddenly, by the side of a dreary road, in a spot backed indeed by noble mountains, but having no charm of its own, we come on these works, unrivaled on our side of the hadriatic and the messenian strait, standing in all their solitary grandeur, shattered indeed, but far more perfect than the mass of ruined buildings of later days. the feeling of being brought near to hellenic days and hellenic men, of standing face to face with the fathers of the world's civilization, is one which can never pass away. descriptions, pictures, models, all fail; they give us the outward form; they can not give us the true life. the thought comes upon us that we have passed away from that roman world out of which our own world has sprung into that earlier and fresher and brighter world by which rome and ourselves have been so deeply influenced, but out of which neither the roman nor the modern world can be said to spring. there is the true doric in its earliest form, in all its unmixed and simple majesty. the ground is strewed with shells and covered with acanthus-leaves; but no shell had suggested the ionic volute, no acanthus-leaf had suggested the corinthian foliage. the vast columns, with the sudden tapering, the overhanging capitals, the stern, square abacus, all betoken the infancy of art. but it is an infancy like that of their own hêraklês; the strength which clutched the serpent in his cradle is there in every stone. later improvements, the improvements of attic skill, may have added grace; the perfection of art may be found in the city which the vote of the divine assembly decreed to athênê; but for the sense of power, of simplicity without rudeness, the city of poseidon holds her own. unlike in every detail, there is in these wonderful works of early greek art a spirit akin to some of the great churches of romanesque date, simple, massive, unadorned, like the poseidônian doric. and they show, too, how far the ancient architects were from any slavish bondage to those minute rules which moderns have invented for them. in each of the three temples of paestum differences both of detail and of arrangement may be marked, differences partly of age, but also partly of taste. and some other thoughts are brought forcibly upon the mind. here indeed we feel that the wonders of hellenic architecture are things to kindle our admiration, even our reverence; but that, as the expression of a state of things which has wholly passed away, nothing can be less fit for reproduction in modern times. and again, we may be sure that the admiration and reverence which they may awaken in the mind of the mere classical purist is cold beside that which they kindle in the mind which can give them their true place in the history of art. the temples of paestum are great and noble from any point of view. but they become greater and nobler as we run over the successive steps in the long series by which their massive columns and entablatures grew into the tall clusters and soaring arches of westminster and amiens. vii sicilian scenes palermo[34] by will s. monroe while not one of the original hellenic city-states, palermo has a superb location on the northern shores of the central island of the central sea; its harbor is guarded by the two picturesque cliffs and the fertile plain that forms the "compagne" is hemmed in by a semicircular cord of rugged mountains. "perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the globe more beautiful than palermo," writes arthur symonds. "the hills on either hand descend upon the sea with long-drawn delicately broken outlines, so delicately tinted with aerial hues at early dawn or beneath the blue light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of fancy, that must fade away, 'like shapes of clouds we form,' to nothing. within the cradle of these hills, and close upon the tideless water, lies the city. behind and around on every side stretches the famous conco d'oro, or golden shell, a plain of marvelous fertility, so called because of its richness and also because of its shape; for it tapers to a fine point where the mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they diverge, like a cornucopia. the whole of this long vega is a garden, thick with olive-groves and orange trees, with orchards of nespole and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trees that blush in spring, and with flowers as multitudinously brilliant as the fretwork of sunset clouds." during the days of phoenician and carthagenian supremacy palermo was a busy mart--a great clearing-house for the commerce of the island and that part of the mediterranean. but during the days of the saracens it became not only a very busy city but also a very beautiful city. the arabian poets extolled its charms in terms that sound to us exceedingly extravagant. one of them wrote: "oh how beautiful is the lakelet of the twin palms and the island where the spacious palace stands. the limpid waters of the double springs resemble liquid pearls, and their basin is a sea; you would say that the branches of the trees stretched down to see the fishes in the pool and smile at them. the great fishes in those clear waters, and the birds among the gardens tune their songs. the ripe oranges of the island are like fire that burns on boughs of emerald; the pale lemon reminds me of a lover who has passed the night in weeping for his absent darling. the two palms may be compared to lovers who have gained an inaccessible retreat against their enemies, or raise themselves erect in pride to confound the murmurs and the ill thoughts of jealous men. o palms of two lakelets of palermo, ceaseless, undisturbed, and plenteous days for ever keep your freshness." with the coming of the normans palermo enjoyed even greater prosperity than had been experienced under the liberal rule of the saracens. this was the most brilliant period in the history of the city. the population was even more mixed than during moslem supremacy. besides the greeks, normans, saracens, and hebrews, there were commercial colonies of slavs, venetians, lombardians, catalans, and pisans. the most interesting public monuments at palermo date from the norman period; and while many of the buildings are strikingly saracenic in character and recall similar structures erected by the arabs in spain, it will be remembered that the normans brought no trained architects to the island, but employed the arabs, greeks, and hebrews who had already been in the service of the saracen emirs. but the arab influence in architecture was dominant, and it survived well into the fourteenth century. girgenti[35] by edward a. freeman the reported luxury of the sikeliot cities in this age is, in the double-edged saying of empedocles, connected with one of their noblest tastes. they built their houses as if they were going to live for ever. and if their houses, how much more their temples and other public buildings? in some of the sikeliot cities, this was the most brilliant time of architectural splendor. at syracuse indeed the greatest buildings which remain to tell their own story belong either to an earlier or to a later time. it is the theater alone, as in its first estate a probable work of the first hierôn, which at all connects itself with our present time. but at akragas[36] and at selinous the greatest of the existing buildings belong to the days of republican freedom and independence. at akragas what the tyrant began the democracy went on with. the series of temples that line the southern wall are due to an impulse which began under thêrôn and went on to the days of the carthaginian siege. of the greatest among them, the temple of olympian zeus, this is literally true. there can be little doubt that it was begun as one of the thank-offerings after the victory of himera, and it is certain that at the coming of hannibal and hamilkôn it was still so far imperfect that the roof was not yet added. it was therefore in building during a time of more than seventy years, years which take in the whole of the brilliant days of akragantine freedom and well-being. to the same period also belong the other temples in the lower city, temples which abide above ground either standing or in ruins, while the older temples in the akropolis have to be looked for underneath buildings of later ages. it was a grand conception to line the southern wall, the wall most open to the attacks of mortal enemies, with this wonderful series of holy places of the divine protectors of the city. it was a conception due, we may believe, in the first instance, to thêrôn, but which the democracy fully entered into and carried out. the two best preserved of the range stand to the east; one indeed occupies the southeastern corner of the fortified enclosure. next in order to the west comes the temple which bears a name not unlikely, but altogether impossible and unmeaning, the so-called temple of concord. no reasonable guess can be made at its pagan dedication; in the fifteenth century of our era it followed the far earlier precedent of the temples in the akropolis. it became the church of saint gregory, not of any of the great pontiffs and doctors of the church, but of the local bishop whose full description as saint gregory of the turnips can hardly be written without a smile. the peristyle was walled up, and arches were cut through the walls of the cella, exactly as in the great church of syracuse. saint gregory of girgenti plays no such part in the world's history as was played by the panagia of syracuse; we may therefore be more inclined to extend some mercy to the bourbon king who set free the columns as we now see them. when he had gone so far, one might even wish that he had gone on to wall up the arches. in each of the former states of the building there was a solid wall somewhere to give shelter from the blasts which sweep round this exposed spot. as the building now stands, it is, after the athenian house of theseus and saint george, the best preserved greek temple in being. like its fellow to the east, it is a building of moderate size, of the middle stage of doric, with columns less massive than those of syracuse and corinth, less slender than those of nemea. again to the west stood a temple of greater size, nearly ranging in scale with the athenian parthenon, which is assigned, with far more of likelihood than the other names, to hêraklês. save one patched-up column standing amid the general ruin, it has, in the language of the prophet, become heaps. all that is left is a mass of huge stones, among which we can see the mighty columns, fallen, each in its place, overthrown, it is clear, by no hand of man but by those powers of the nether world whose sway is felt in every corner of sicilian soil. these three temples form a continuous range along the eastern part of the southern wall of the city. to the west of them, parted from them by a gate, which, in roman times at least, bore, as at constantinople and spalato, the name of golden, rose the mightiest work of akragantine splendor and devotion, the great olympieion itself. of this gigantic building, the vastest greek temple in europe, we happily have somewhat full descriptions from men who had looked at it, if not in the days of its full glory, yet at least when it was a house standing up, and not a ruin. as it now lies, a few fragments of wall still standing amid confused heaps of fallen stones, of broken columns and capitals, no building kindles a more earnest desire to see it as it stood in the days of its perfection. [illustration: city and bay of naples with vesuvius in the distance courtesy international mercantile marine co.] [illustration: temple of theseus at athens] [illustration: palermo, sicily, from the sea courtesy l. c. page & co.] [illustration: greek theater at segesta, sicily] [illustration: temple of concord, girgenti, sicily] [illustration: temple of juno at girgenti, sicily] [illustration: amphitheater at syracuse, sicily] [illustration: greek temple at segesta, sicily courtesy l. c. page & co.] [illustration: harbor of syracuse, sicily courtesy l. c. page & co.] [illustration: the so-called "ship of ulysses" off corfu courtesy houghton, mifflin co.] [illustration: temple of the olympian zeus at athens courtesy houghton, mifflin co.] [illustration: the plain below delphi courtesy houghton, mifflin co.] [illustration: the road near delphi courtesy houghton, mifflin co.] [illustration: entrance to the stadium at olympia courtesy houghton, mifflin co.] [illustration: throne of minos in crete (minoan civilization in crete antedates the homeric age--perhaps by many centuries) courtesy houghton, mifflin co.] segeste[37] by johann wolfgang von goethe the temple of segeste was never finished; the ground around it was never even leveled; the space only being smoothed on which the peristyle was to stand. for, in several places, the steps are from nine to ten feet in the ground, and there is no hill near, from which the stone or mold could have fallen. besides, the stones lie in their natural position, and no ruins are found near them. the columns are all standing; two which had fallen, have very recently been raised again. how far the columns rested on a socle is hard to say; and without an engraving it is difficult to give an idea of their present state. at some points it would seem as if the pillars rested on the fourth step. in that case to enter the temple you would have to go down a step. in other places, however, the uppermost step is cut through, and then it looks as if the columns had rested on bases; and then again these spaces have been filled up, and so we have once more the first case. an architect is necessary to determine this point. the sides have twelve columns, not reckoning the corner ones; the back and front six, including them. the rollers on which the stones were moved along, still lie around you on the steps. they have been left in order to indicate that the temple was unfinished. but the strongest evidence of this fact is the floor. in some spots (along the sides) the pavement is laid down; in the middle, however, the red limestone rock still projects higher than the level of the floor as partially laid; the flooring, therefore, can not ever have been finished. there is also no trace of an inner temple. still less can the temple have ever been overlaid with stucco; but that it was intended to do so, we may infer from the fact that the abaci of the capitals have projecting points probably for the purpose of holding the plaster. the whole is built of a limestone, very similar to the travertine; only it is now much fretted. the restoration which was carried on in 1781, has done much good to the building. the cutting of the stone, with which the parts have been reconnected, is simple, but beautiful. the site of the temple is singular; at the highest end of a broad and long valley, it stands on an isolated hill. surrounded, however, on all sides by cliffs, it commands a very distant and extensive view of the land, but takes in only just a corner of the sea. the district reposes in a sort of melancholy fertility--every where well cultivated, but scarce a dwelling to be seen. flowering thistles were swarming with countless butterflies, wild fennel stood here from eight to nine feet high, dry and withered of the last year's growth, but so rich and in such seeming order that one might almost take it to be an old nursery-ground. a shrill wind whistled through the columns as if through a wood, and screaming birds of prey hovered around the pediments. taormina[38] by johann wolfgang von goethe when you have ascended to the top of the wall of rocks [at taormina], which rise precipitously at no great distance from the sea, you find two peaks, connected by a semicircle. whatever shape this may have had originally from nature has been helped by the hand of man, which has formed out of it an amphitheater for spectators. walls and other buildings have furnished the necessary passages and rooms. right across, at the foot of the semicircular range of seats, the scene was built, and by this means the two rocks were joined together, and a most enormous work of nature and art combined. now, sitting down at the spot where formerly sat the uppermost spectators, you confess at once that never did any audience, in any theater, have before it such a spectacle as you there behold. on the right, and on high rocks at the side, castles tower in the air--farther on the city lies below you; and altho its buildings are all of modern date, still similar ones, no doubt, stood of old on the same site. after this the eye falls on the whole of the long ridge of ætna, then on the left it catches a view of the sea-shore, as far as catania, and even syracuse, and then the wide and extensive view is closed by the immense smoking volcano, but not horribly, for the atmosphere, with its softening effect, makes it look more distinct, and milder than it really is. if now you turn from this view toward the passage running at the back of the spectators, you have on the left the whole wall of the rocks between which and the sea runs the road to messina. and then again you behold vast groups of rocky ridges in the sea itself, with the coast of calabria in the far distance, which only a fixt and attentive gaze can distinguish from the clouds which rise rapidly from it. we descended toward the theater, and tarried awhile among its ruins, on which an accomplished architect would do well to employ, at least on paper, his talent of restoration. after this i attempted to make a way for myself through the gardens to the city. but i soon learned by experience what an impenetrable bulwark is formed by a hedge of agaves planted close together. you can see through their interlacing leaves, and you think, therefore, it will be easy to force a way through them; but the prickles on their leaves are very sensible obstacles. if you step on these colossal leaves, in the hope that they will bear you, they break off suddenly; and so, instead of getting out, you fall into the arms of the next plant. when, however, at last we had wound our way out of the labyrinth, we found but little to enjoy in the city; tho from the neighboring country we felt it impossible to part before sunset. infinitely beautiful was it to observe this region, of which every point had its interest, gradually enveloped in darkness. mount ætna[39] by will s. monroe by the ancients ætna was supposed to be the prison of the mighty chained giant typhon, the flames proceeding from his breath and the noises from his groans; and when he turned over earthquakes shook the island. many of the myths of the greek poets were associated with the slopes of ætna, such as demeter, torch in hand, seeking persephone, acis and galatea, polyphemus and the cyclops. ætna was once a volcano in the mediterranean and in the course of ages it completely filled the surrounding sea with its lava. a remarkable feature of the mountain is the large number of minor cones on its sides--some seven hundred in all. most of these subsidiary cones are from three to six thousand feet in height and they make themselves most strongly felt during periods of great activity. the summit merely serves as a vent through which the vapors and gases make their escape. the natural boundaries of ætna are the alcantara and simeto rivers on the north, west, and south, and the sea on the east. the most luxurious fertility characterizes the gradual slopes near the base, the decomposed volcanic soil being almost entirely covered with olives, figs, grapes, and prickly pears. higher up is the timber zone. formerly there was a dense forest belt between the zone of cultivated land and the tore of cinders and snow; but the work of forest extermination was almost completed during the reign of the spanish bourbons. one may still find scattered oak, ilex, chestnut, and pine interspersed with ferns and aromatic herbs. chestnut trees of surprizing growth are found on the lower slopes. "the chestnut tree of the hundred horses," for which the slopes of ætna are famous, is not a single tree but a group of several distinct trunks together forming a circle, under whose spreading branches a hundred horses might find shelter. above the wooded zone ætna is covered with miniature cones thrown up by different eruptions and regions of dreary plateau covered with scoriae and ashes and buried under snow a part of the year. while the upper portions of the volcano are covered with snow the greater portion of the year, ætna does not reach the limit of perpetual snow, and the heat which is emitted from its sides prevents the formation of glaciers in the hollows. one might expect that the quantities of snow and rain which fall on the summit would give rise to numerous streams. but the small stones and cinders absorb the moisture, and springs are found only on the lower slopes. the cinders, however, retain sufficient moisture to support a rich vegetation wherever the surface of the lava is not too compact to be penetrated by roots. the surface of the more recent lava streams is not, as might be supposed, smooth and level, but full of yawning holes and rents. the regularity of the gradual slopes is broken on the eastern side by the valle del bove, a vast amphitheater more than three thousand feet in depth, three miles in width, and covering an area of ten square miles. the bottom of the valley is dotted with craters which rise in gigantic steps; and, when ætna is in a state of eruption, these craters pour forth fiery cascades of lava. the monte centenari rise from the valle del bove to an elevation of 6,026 feet. at the head of the valley is the torre del filosofo at an altitude of 9,570 feet. this is the reputed site of the observatory of empedocles, the poet and philosopher, who is fabled to have thrown himself into the crater of ætna to immortalize his name. the lower slopes of ætna--after the basin of palermo--include the most densely populated parts of sicily. more than half a million people live on the slopes of a mountain that might be expected to inspire terror. "towns succeed towns along its base like pearls in a necklace, and when a stream of lava effects a breach in the chain of human habitations, it is closed up again as soon as the lava has had time to cool." as soon as the lava has decomposed, the soil produces an excellent yield and this tempts the farmer and the fruit grower to take chances. speaking of the dual effect of ætna, freeman says: "he has been mighty to destroy, but he has also been mighty to create and render fruitful. if his fiery streams have swept away cities and covered fields, they have given the cities a new material for their buildings and the fields a new soil rich above all others." syracuse[40] by rufus b. richardson the ruins of syracuse are not to the casual observer very imposing. but even these ruins have great interest for the archeologist. there is, for example, an old temple near the northern end of ortygia, for the most part embedded in the buildings of the modern city, yet with its east end cleared and showing several entire columns with a part of the architrave upon them. and what a surprize here awaits one who thinks of a doric temple as built on a stereotyped plan! instead of the thirteen columns on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite certain which. the columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the abaci are so broad that they nearly touch. so small is the inter-columnar space that archeologists incline to the belief that in this one doric temple there were triglyphs only over the columns, and not also between them as in all other known cases. everything about this temple stamps it as the oldest in sicily. an inscription on the top step, in very archaic letters, much worn and difficult to read, contains the name of apollo in the ancient form.... the inscription may, of course, be later than the temple; but it is in itself old enough to warrant the supposition that the temple was erected soon after the first corinthian colonists established themselves in the island. while the inscription makes it reasonably certain that the temple belonged to apollo, the god under whose guiding hand all these dorians went out into these western seas, tradition, with strange perversity, has given it the name of "temple of diana." but it is all in the family. another temple ruin on the edge of the plateau, which begins about two miles south of the city, across the anapos, one might also easily overlook in a casual survey, because it consists only of two columns without capitals, and a broad extent of the foundations from which the accumulated earth has been only partially removed. this was the famous temple of olympian zeus, built probably in the days of hiero i., soon after the persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable. one seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a distance from the city. holm, the german historian of sicily, argues with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of syracuse, but the original syracuse itself. in the first place, the list of the citizens of syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the athenian invasion. in the second place, tradition, which, when rightly consulted, tells so much, says that archias, the founder of syracuse, had two daughters, ortygia and syracusa, which may point to two coordinate settlements, ortygia and syracuse; the latter, which was on this temple plateau, being subsequently merged in the former, but, as sometimes happens in such cases, giving its name to the combined result. besides these temple ruins there are many more foundations that tell a more or less interesting story. then there are remains of the ancient city that can never be ruined--for instance, the great stone quarries, pits over a hundred feet deep and acres broad, in some of which the athenian prisoners were penned up to waste away under the gaze of the pitiless captors; the greek theater cut out of the solid rock; the great altar of hiero ii., six hundred feet long and about half as broad, also of solid rock. then there is a mighty hexapylon, which closed the fortifications of dionysius at the northwest at the point where they challenged attack from the land side. with its sally-ports and rock-hewn passages, some capacious enough to quarter regiments of cavalry, showing holes cut in the projecting corners of rock, through which the hitch-reins of the horses were wont to be passed, and its great magazines, it stands a lasting memorial to the energy of a tyrant. but while this fortress is practically indestructible, an impregnable fortress is a dream incapable of realization. marcellus and his stout romans came in through these fortifications, not entirely, it is true, by their own might, but by the aid of traitors, against whom no walls are proof. one of the stone quarries, the latomia del paradiso, has an added interest from its association with the tyrant who made himself hated as well as feared, while gelon was only feared without being hated. an inner recess of the quarry is called the "ear of dionysius," and tradition says that at the inner end of this recess either he or his creatures sat and listened to the murmurs that the people uttered against him, and that these murmurs were requited with swift and fatal punishment. certain it is that a whisper in this cave produces a wonderful resonance, and a pistol shot is like the roar of a cannon; but that people who had anything to say about the butcher should come up within ear-shot of him to utter it is not very likely. historians are not quite sure that the connection of dionysius with this recess is altogether mythical, but that he shaped it with the fell purpose above mentioned is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his time, and was probably, with the latomia dei cappuccini, a prison for the athenians. malta[41] by théophile gautier the city of valetta, founded in 1566, by the grand master whose name it bears, is the capital of malta. the city of la sangle, and the city of victoria, which occupy two points of land on the other side of the harbor of the marse, together with the suburbs of floriana and burmola, complete the town; encircled by bastions, ramparts, counterscarps, forts, and fortifications, to an extent which renders siege impossible! if you follow one of the streets which surround the town, at each step that you take, you find yourself face to face with a cannon. gibraltar itself does not bristle more completely with mouths of fire. the inconvenience of these extended works is, that they enclose a vast radius, and demand to defend them, in case of attack, an enormous garrison; always difficult to maintain at a distance from the mother country. from the height of the ramparts, one sees in the distance the blue and transparent sea, broken into ripples by the breeze, and dotted with snowy sails. the scarlet sentinels are on guard from point to point, and the heat of the sun is so fierce upon the glacis, that a cloth stretched upon a frame and turning upon a pivot at the top of a pole, forms a shade for the soldiers, who, without this precaution, must inevitably be roasted on their posts.... the city of valetta, altho built with regularity, and, so to speak, all in one "block," is not, therefore, the less picturesque. the decided slope of the ground neutralizes what the accurate lines of the street might otherwise have of monotony, and the town mounts by degrees and by terraces the hillside, which it forms into an amphitheater. the houses, built very high like those of cadiz, terminate in flat roofs that their inhabitants may the better enjoy the sea view. they are all of white maltese stone; a sort of sandstone easy to work, and with which, at small expense, one can indulge various caprices of sculpture and ornamentation. these rectilinear houses stand well, and have an air of grandeur, which they owe to the absence of (visible) roofs, cornices, and attics. they stand out sharply and squarely against the azure of the heavens, which their dazzling whiteness renders only the more intense; but that which chiefly gives them a character of originality is the projecting balcony hung upon each front; like the "moucharabys" of the east, or the "miradores" of spain. the palace of the grand masters--to-day the palace of the government--has nothing remarkable in the way of architecture. its date is recent, and it responds but imperfectly to the idea one would form of the residence of villiers de i'lle adam, of lavalette, and of their warlike ancestors. nevertheless, it has a certain monumental air, and produces a fine effect upon the great place, of which it forms one entire side. two doorways, with rustic columns, break the uniformity of the long façade; while an immense balcony, supported by gigantic sculptured brackets, encircles the building at the level of the first floor, and gives to the edifice the stamp of malta. this detail, so strictly local in its character, relieves what might be heavy and flat in this architecture; and this palace, otherwise vulgar, becomes thus original. the interior, which i visited, presents a range of vast halls and galleries, decorated with pictures representing battles by sea and land, sieges, and combats between turkish galleys and the galleys of the "religion." ... to finish with the knights, i turned my steps toward the church of st. john--the pantheon of the order. its façade, with a triangular porch flanked by two towers terminating in stone belfries, having for ornament only four pillars, and pierced by a window and door, without sculpture or decoration, by no means prepares the traveler for the splendor within. the first thing which arrests the sight is an immense arch, painted in fresco, which runs the whole length of the nave. this fresco, unhappily much deteriorated by time, is the work of matteo preti, called the calabrese; one of those great second-rate masters, who, if they have less genius, have often more talent than the princes of the art. what there is of science, facility, spirit, expression, and abundant resource, in this colossal picture, is beyond description. each section of the arch contains a scene from the life of st. john, to whom the church is dedicated, and who was the patron of the order. these sections are supported, at their descent, by groups of captives--saracens, turks, christians, and others--half naked, or clad in the remains of shattered armor, and placed in positions of humiliation or constraint, who form a species of barbaric caryatides strikingly suited to the subject. all this part of the fresco is full of character, and has a force of coloring very rare in this species of picture. these solid and massive effects give additional strength to the lighter tone of the arch, and throw the skies into a relief and distance singularly profound. i know no similar work of equal grandeur except the ceiling by fumiana in the church of st. pantaleone at venice, representing the life, martyrdom, and apotheosis of that saint. but the style of the decadence makes itself less felt in the work of the calabrese than in that of the venetian. in recompense of this gigantic work, the artist had the honor, like carravaggio, to be made a knight of the order. the pavement of the church is composed of four hundred tombs of knights, incrusted with jasper, porphyry, verd-antique, and precious stones of various kinds, which should form the most splendid sepulchral mosaics conceivable. i say should form, because at the moment of my visit, the whole floor was covered with those immense mats, so constantly used for carpeting the southern churches--a usage which is explained by the absence of pews or chairs, and the habit of kneeling upon the floor to perform one's devotions. i regretted this exceedingly; but the crypt and the chapel contain enough sepulchral wealth to offer some atonement. viii the mainland of greece on arriving in athens--the acropolis[42] by j. p. mahaffy there is probably no more exciting voyage, to any educated man, than the approach to athens from the sea. every promontory, every island, every bay, has its history. if he knows the map of greece, he needs no guide-book or guide to distract him; if he does not, he needs little greek to ask of any one near him the name of this or that object; and the mere names are sufficient to stir up all his classical recollections. but he must make up his mind not to be shocked at "ægina" or "phalrum," and even to be told that he is utterly wrong in his way of pronouncing them. it was our fortune to come into greece by night, with a splendid moon shining upon the summer sea. the varied outlines of sunium, on the one side, and ægina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience of seeing all in the light of common day; and tho we had passed ægina, and had come over against the rocky salamis, as yet there was no sign of peiræus. then came the light on psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right opposite. yet we came nearer and nearer, and no harbor could be seen. the barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one unbroken line, and nowhere was there a sign of indentation or of break in the land. but suddenly, as we turned from gazing on psyttalea, where the flower of the persian nobles had once stood in despair, looking upon their fate gathering about them, the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the famous harbor. small it looked, very small, but evidently deep to the water's edge, for great ships seemed touching the shore; and so narrow is the mouth, that we almost wondered how they had made their entrance in safety. but we saw it some weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above all its merchant shipping and its steamers, and among them crowds of ferryboats skimming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. then we found out that, like the rest of greece, the peiræus was far larger than it looked. it differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbors in the noise and confusion of disembarking; in the delays of its custom-house; in the extortion and insolence of its boatmen. it is still, as in plato's day, "the haunt of sailors, where good manners are unknown." but when we had escaped the turmoil, and were seated silently on the way to athens, almost along the very road of classical days, all our classical notions, which had been seared away by vulgar bargaining and protesting, regained their sway. we had sailed in through the narrow passage where almost every great greek that ever lived had some time passed; now we went along the line, hardly less certain, which had seen all these great ones going to and fro between the city and the port. the present road is shaded with great silver poplars, and plane trees, and the moon had set, so that our approach to athens was even more mysterious than our approach to the peiræus. we were, moreover, perplexed at our carriage stopping under some large plane trees, tho we had driven but two miles, and the night was far spent. our coachman would listen to no advice or persuasion. we learned afterward that every carriage going to and from the peiræus stops at this half-way house, that the horses may drink, and the coachman take "turkish delight" and water. there is no exception made to this custom, and the traveler is bound to submit. at last we entered the unpretending ill-built streets at the west of athens.... we rose at the break of dawn to see whether our window would afford any prospect to serve as a requital for angry sleeplessness. and there, right opposite, stood the rock which of all rocks in the world's history has done most for literature and art--the rock which poets, and orators, and architects, and historians have ever glorified, and can not stay their praise--which is ever new and ever old, ever fresh in its decay, ever perfect in its ruin, ever living in its death--the acropolis of athens. when i saw my dream and longing of many years fulfilled, the first rays of the rising sun had just touched the heights, while the town below was still hid in gloom. rock, and rampart, and ruined fanes--all were colored in uniform tints; the lights were of a deep rich orange, and the shadows of dark crimson, with the deeper lines of purple. there was no variety in color between what nature and what man had set there. no whiteness shone from the marble, no smoothness showed upon the hewn and polished blocks; but the whole mass of orange and crimson stood out together into the pale, pure attic air. there it stood, surrounded by lanes and hovels, still perpetuating the great old contrast in greek history, of magnificence and meanness--of loftiness and lowness--as well in outer life as in inward motive. and, as it were in illustration of that art of which it was the most perfect bloom, and which lasted in perfection but a day of history, i saw it again and again, in sunlight and in shade, in daylight and at night, but never again in this perfect and singular beauty.... i suppose there can be no doubt whatever that the ruins on the acropolis of athens are the most remarkable in the world. there are ruins far larger, such as the pyramids, and the remains of karnak. there are ruins far more perfectly preserved, such as the great temple at paestum. there are ruins more picturesque, such as the ivy-clad walls of medieval abbeys beside the rivers in the rich valleys of england. but there is no ruin all the world over which combines so much striking beauty, so distinct a type, so vast a volume of history, so great a pageant of immortal memories. there is, in fact, no building on earth which can sustain the burden of such greatness, and so the first visit to the acropolis is and must be disappointing. when the traveler reflects how all the old world's culture culminated in greece--all greece in athens--all athens in its acropolis--all the acropolis in the parthenon--so much crowds upon the mind confusedly that we look for some enduring monument whereupon we can fasten our thoughts, and from which we can pass as from a visible starting-point into all this history and all this greatness. and at first we look in vain. the shattered pillars and the torn pediments will not bear so great a strain; and the traveler feels forced to admit a sense of disappointment, sore against his will. he has come a long journey into the remoter parts of europe; he has reached at last what his soul had longed for many years in vain; and as is wont to be the case with all great human longings, the truth does not answer to his desire. the pang of disappointment is all the greater when he sees that the tooth of time and the shock of earthquake have done but little harm. it is the hand of man--of reckless foe and ruthless lover--which has robbed him of his hope.... nothing is more vexatious than the reflection, how lately these splendid remains have been reduced to their present state. the parthenon, being used as a greek church, remained untouched and perfect all through the middle ages. then it became a mosque, and the erechtheum a seraglio, and in this way survived without damage till 1687, when, in the bombardment by the venetians under morosini, a shell dropt into the parthenon, where the turks had their powder stored, and blew out the whole center of the building. eight or nine pillars at each side have been thrown down, and have left a large gap, which so severs the front and rear of the temple, that from the city below they look like the remains of two different buildings. the great drums of these pillars are yet lying there, in their order, just as they fell, and some money and care might set them all up again in their places; yet there is not in greece the patriotism or even the common sense to enrich the country by this restoration, matchless in its certainty as well as in its splendor. but the venetians were not content with their exploit. they were, about this time, when they held possession of most of greece, emulating the pisan taste for greek sculptures; and the four fine lions standing at the gate of the arsenal in venice still testify to their zeal in carrying home greek trophies to adorn their capital. in its great day, and even as pausanias saw it, the acropolis was covered with statues, as well as with shrines. it was not merely an holy of holies in religion; it was also a palace and museum of art. at every step and turn the traveler met new objects of interest. there were archaic specimens, chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the devotee; there were the great masterpieces which were the joint admiration of the artist and the vulgar. even all the sides and slopes of the great rock were honeycombed into sacred grottos, with their altars and their gods, or studded with votive monuments. all these lesser things are fallen away and gone; the sacred eaves are filled with rubbish, and desecrated with worse than neglect. the grotto of pan and apollo is difficult of access, and when reached, an object of disgust rather than of interest. there are left but the remnants of the surrounding wall, and the ruins of the three principal buildings, which were the envy and wonder of all the civilized world. the beautiful little temple of athena nike, tho outside the propylæa--thrust out as it were on a sort of great buttress high on the right--must still be called a part, and a very striking part, of the acropolis. it is only of late years that it has been cleared of rubbish and modern stone-work, thus destroying, no doubt, some precious traces of turkish occupation which the fastidious historian may regret, but realizing to us a beautiful greek temple of the ionic order in some completeness. the peculiarity of this building, which is perched upon a platform of stone, and commands a splendid prospect, is that its tiny peribolus, or sacred enclosure, was surrounded by a parapet of stone slabs covered with exquisite reliefs of winged victories, in various attitudes. some of these slabs are now in the museum of the acropolis, and are of great interest--apparently less severe than the school of phidias, and therefore later in date, but still of the best epoch, and of marvelous grace. the position of this temple also is not parallel with the propylæa, but turned slightly outward, so that the light strikes it at moments when the other building is not illuminated. at the opposite side is a very well-preserved chamber, and a fine colonnade at right angles with the gate, which looks like a guard-room. this is the chamber commonly called the pinacotheca, where pausanias saw pictures or frescoes by polygnotus. a winter in athens half a century ago[43] by bayard taylor our sitting-room fronted the south (with a view of the acropolis and the areopagus), and could be kept warm without more labor or expense than would be required for an entire dwelling at home. our principal anxiety was, that the supply of fuel, at any price, might become exhausted. we burned the olive and the vine, the cypress and the pine, twigs of rose trees and dead cabbage-stalks, for aught i know, to feed our one little sheet-iron stove. for full two months we were obliged to keep up our fire, from morning until night. know ye the land of the cypress and myrtle, where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine? here it is, with almost snow enough in the streets for a sleighing party, with the ilissus frozen, and with a tolerable idea of lapland, when you face the gusts which drive across the cephissian plain. as the other guests were greek, our mode of living was similar to that of most greek families. we had coffee in the morning, a substantial breakfast about noon, and dinner at six in the evening. the dishes were constructed after french and italian models, but the meat is mostly goat's flesh. beef, when it appears, is a phenomenon of toughness. vegetables are rather scarce. cow's milk, and butter or cheese therefrom, are substances unknown in greece. the milk is from goats or sheep, and the butter generally from the latter. it is a white, cheesy material, with a slight flavor of tallow. the wine, when you get it unmixed with resin, is very palatable. we drank that of santorin, with the addition of a little water, and found it an excellent beverage.... except during the severely cold weather, athens is as lively a town as may be. one-fourth of the inhabitants, i should say, are always in the streets, and many of the mechanics work, as is common in the orient, in open shops. the coffee-houses are always thronged, and every afternoon crowds may be seen on the patissia road--a continuation of eolus street--where the king and queen take their daily exercise on horseback. the national costume, both male and female, is gradually falling into disuse in the cities, altho it is still universal in the country. the islanders adhere to their hideous dress with the greatest persistence. with sunrise the country people begin to appear in the streets with laden donkeys and donkey-carts, bringing wood, grain, vegetables, and milk, which they sell from house to house.... venders of bread and coffee-rolls go about with circular trays on their heads, calling attention to their wares by loud and long-drawn cries. later in the day, peddlers make their appearance, with packages of cheap cotton stuffs, cloth, handkerchiefs, and the like, or baskets of pins, needles, buttons, and tape. they proclaim loudly the character and price of their articles, the latter, of course, subject to negotiation. the same custom prevails as in turkey, of demanding much more than the seller expects to get. foreigners are generally fleeced a little in the beginning, tho much less so, i believe, than in italy.... the winter of 1857-58 was the severest in the memory of any inhabitant. for nearly eight weeks, we had an alternation of icy north winds and snow-storms. the thermometer went down to 20 degrees of fahrenheit--a degree of cold which seriously affected the orange-, if not the olive-trees. winter is never so dreary as in those southern lands, where you see the palm trees rocking despairingly in the biting gale, and the snow lying thick on the sunny fruit of the orange groves. as for the pepper trees, with their hanging tresses and their loose, misty foliage, which line the broad avenues radiating from the palace, they were touched beyond recovery. the people, who could not afford to purchase wood or charcoal, at treble the usual price, even tho they had hearths, which they have not, suffered greatly. they crouched at home, in cellars and basements, wrapt in rough capotes, or hovering around a mangal, or brazier of coals, the usual substitute for a stove. from constantinople we had still worse accounts. the snow lay deep everywhere; charcoal sold at twelve piastres the oka (twenty cents a pound), and the famished wolves, descending from the hills, devoured people almost at the gates of the city. in smyrna, beyrout, and alexandria, the winter was equally severe, while in odessa it was mild and agreeable, and in st. petersburg there was scarcely snow enough for sleighing. all northern europe enjoyed a winter as remarkable for warmth as that of the south for its cold. the line of division seemed to be about the parallel of latitude 45 degrees. whether this singular climatic phenomenon extended further eastward, into asia, i was not able to ascertain. i was actually less sensitive to the cold in lapland, during the previous winter, with the mercury frozen, than in attica, within the belt of semi-tropical productions. the acropolis as it was[44] by pausanias to the acropolis there is only one approach; it allows of no other, being everywhere precipitous and walled off. the vestibules have a roof of white marble, and even now are remarkable for both their beauty and size. as to the statues of the horsemen, i can not say with precision whether they are the sons of xenophon, or merely put there for decoration. on the right of the vestibules is the shrine of the wingless victory. from it the sea is visible; and there ægeus drowned himself, as they say. for the ship which took his sons to crete had black sails, but theseus told his father (for he knew there was some peril in attacking the minotaur) that he would have white sails if he should sail back a conqueror. but he forgot this promise in his loss of ariadne. and ægeus, seeing the ship with black sails, thinking his son was dead, threw himself in and was drowned. and the athenians have a hero-chapel to his memory. and on the left of the vestibules is a building with paintings; and among those that time has not destroyed are diomedes and odysseus--the one taking away philoctetes's bow in lemnos, the other taking the palladium from ilium. among other paintings here is ægisthus being slain by orestes; and pylades slaying the sons of nauplius that came to ægisthus's aid. and polyxena about to have her throat cut near the tomb of achilles. homer did well not to mention this savage act.... and there is a small stone such as a little man can sit on, on which they say silenus rested, when dionysus came to the land. silenus is the name they give to all old satyrs. about the satyrs i have conversed with many, wishing to know all about them. and euphemus, a carian, told me that sailing once on a time to italy he was driven out of his course by the winds, and carried to a distant sea, where people no longer sail. and he said that here were many desert islands, some inhabited by wild men; and at these islands the sailors did not like to land, as they had landed there before and had experience of the natives; but they were obliged on that occasion. these islands he said were called by the sailors satyr-islands; the dwellers in them were red-haired, and had tails at their loins not much smaller than horses.... and as regards the temple which they call the parthenon, as you enter it everything portrayed on the gables relates to the birth of athene, and behind is depicted the contest between poseidon and athene for the soil of attica. and this work of art is in ivory and gold. in the middle of her helmet is an image of the sphinx--about whom i shall give an account when i come to boeotia--and on each side of the helmet are griffins worked. these griffins, says aristus the proconnesian, in his poems, fought with the arimaspians beyond the issedones for the gold of the soil which the griffins guarded. and the arimaspians were all one-eyed men from their birth; and the griffins were beasts like lions, with wings and mouth like an eagle. let so much suffice for these griffins. but the statue of athene is full length, with a tunic reaching to her feet; and on her breast is the head of medusa worked in ivory, and in one hand she has a victory four cubits high, in the other hand a spear, and at her feet a shield; and near the spear a dragon which perhaps is erichthonius. and on the base of the statue is a representation of the birth of pandora--the first woman, according to hesiod and other poets; for before her there was no race of women. here too i remember to have seen the only statue here of the emperor adrian; and at the entrance one of iphicrates, the celebrated athenian general. and outside the temple is a brazen apollo said to be by phidias; and they call it apollo, averter of locusts, because when the locusts destroyed the land the god said he would drive them out of the country. and they know that he did so, but they don't say how. i myself know of locusts having been thrice destroyed on mount sipylus, but not in the same way; for some were driven away by a violent wind that fell on them, and others by a strong light that came on them after showers, and others were frozen to death by a sudden frost. all this came under my own notice. there is also a building called the erechtheum, and in the vestibule is an altar of supreme zeus, where they offer no living sacrifice, but cakes without the usual libation of wine. and as you enter there are three altars: one to poseidon (on which they also sacrifice to erechtheus according to the oracle), one to the hero butes, and the third to hephæstus. and on the walls are paintings of the family of butes. the building is a double one; and inside there is sea-water in a well. and this is no great marvel; for even those who live in inland parts have such wells, as notably aphrodisienses in caria. but this well is represented as having a roar as of the sea when the south wind blows. and in the rock is the figure of a trident. and this is said to have been poseidon's proof in regard to the territory athene disputed with him. sacred to athene is all the rest of athens, and similarly all attica; for altho they worship different gods in different townships, none the less do they honor athene generally. and the most sacred of all is the statue of athene in what is now called the acropolis, but was then called the polis (city) which was universally worshiped many years before the various townships formed one city; and the rumor about it is that it fell from heaven. as to this i shall not give an opinion, whether it was so or not. and callimachus made a golden lamp for the goddess. and when they fill this lamp with oil it lasts for a whole year, altho it burns continually night and day. and the wick is of a particular kind of cotton flax, the only kind indestructible by fire. and above the lamp is a palm tree of brass reaching to the roof and carrying off the smoke. and callimachus, the maker of this lamp, altho he comes behind the first artificers, yet was remarkable for ingenuity, and was the first who perforated stone, and got the name of "art-critic," whether his own appellation or given him by others. in the temple of athene polias is a hermes of wood (said to be a votive offering of cecrops), almost hidden by myrtle leaves. and of the antique votive offerings worthy of record, is a folding-chair, the work of dædalus, and spoils taken from the persians--as a coat of mail of masistius, who commanded the cavalry at platæa, and a scimitar said to have belonged to mardonius. masistius we know was killed by the athenian cavalry; but as mardonius fought against the lacedæmonians and was killed by a spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it likely that the lacedæmonians would have allowed the athenians to carry off such a trophy. and about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country, when it was contested by poseidon. and they record also that this olive was burnt when the persians set fire to athens; but tho burnt, it grew the same day two cubits. and next to the temple of athene is the temple of pandrosus; who was the only one of the three sisters who didn't peep into the forbidden chest. now the things i most marveled at are not universally known. i will therefore write of them as they occur to me. two maidens live not far from the temple of athene polias, and the athenians call them the "carriers of the holy things"; for a certain time they live with the goddess, but when her festival comes they act in the following way, by night: putting upon their heads what the priestess of athene gives them to carry (neither she nor they know what these things are), these maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an inclosure in the city sacred to aphrodite of the gardens. in the sanctuary below they deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapt up. and these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two they elect instead of them for the acropolis. the elgin marbles[45] by j. p. mahaffy morosini[46] wished to take down the sculptures of phidias from the eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted it so clumsily that the figures fell from their place and were dashed to pieces on the ground. an observing traveler[47] was present when a far more determined and systematic attack was made upon the remaining ruins of the parthenon. while he was traveling in the interior, lord elgin had obtained his famous firman from the sultan, to take down and remove any antiquities or sculptured stones he might require, and the infuriated dodwell saw a set of ignorant workmen, under equally ignorant overseers, let loose upon the splendid ruins of the age of pericles. he speaks with much good sense and feeling of this proceeding. he is fully aware that the world would derive inestimable benefit from the transplanting of these splendid fragments to a more accessible place, but he can not find language strong enough to express his disgust at the way in which the thing was done. incredible as it may appear, lord elgin himself seems not to have superintended the work, but to have left it to paid contractors, who undertook the job for a fixt sum. little as either turks or greeks cared for the ruins, he says that a pang of grief was felt through all athens at the desecration, and that the contractors were obliged to bribe workmen with additional wages to undertake the ungrateful task. dodwell will not even mention lord elgin by name, but speaks of him with disgust as "the person" who defaced the parthenon. he believes that had this person been at athens himself, his underlings could hardly have behaved in the reckless way they did, pulling down more than they wanted, and taking no care to prop up and save the work from which they had taken the support. he especially notices their scandalous proceeding upon taking up one of the great white marble blocks which form the floor or stylobate of the temple. they wanted to see what was underneath, and dodwell, who was there, saw the foundation--a substructure of peiræic sandstone. but when they had finished their inspection they actually left the block they had removed, without putting it back into its place. so this beautiful pavement, made merely of closely-fitting blocks, without any artificial or foreign joinings, was ripped up, and the work of its destruction began. i am happy to add that, tho a considerable rent was then made, most of it is still intact, and the traveler of to-day may still walk on the very stones which bore the tread of every great athenian. the question has often been discust, whether lord elgin was justified in carrying off this pediment, the metopes, and the friezes, from their place; and the greeks of to-day hope confidently that the day will come when england will restore these treasures to their place. this is, of course, absurd, and it may fairly be argued that people who would bombard their antiquities in a revolution are not fit custodians of them in the intervals of domestic quiet. this was my reply to an old greek gentleman who assailed the memory of lord elgin with reproaches. i confess i approved of this removal until i came home from greece, and went again to see the spoil in its place in our great museum. tho there treated with every care--tho shown to the best advantage, and explained by excellent models of the whole building, and clear descriptions of their place on it--notwithstanding all this, it was plain that these wonderful fragments lost so terribly by being separated from their place--they looked so unmeaning in an english room, away from their temple, their country and their lovely atmosphere--that one earnestly wished they had never been taken from their place, even at the risk of being made a target by the greeks or the turks. i am convinced, too, that the few who would have seen them, as intelligent travelers, on their famous rock, would have gained in quality the advantage now diffused among many, but weakened and almost destroyed by the wrench in associations, when the ornament is severed from its surface, and the decoration of a temple exhibited apart from the temple itself. we may admit, then, that it had been better if lord elgin had never taken away these marbles. nevertheless, it would be absurd to send them back. but i do think that the museum on the acropolis should be provided with a better set of casts of the figures than those which are now to be seen there. they look very wretched, and carelessly prepared.... the theater of dionysus[48] by j. p. mahaffy some ten or twelve years ago, a very extensive and splendidly successful excavation was made when a party of german archeologists laid bare the theater of dionysus--the great theater in which æschylus, sophocles, and euripides brought out their immortal plays before an immortal audience. there is nothing more delightful than to descend from the acropolis, and rest awhile in the comfortable marble arm-chairs with which the front row of the circuit is occupied. they are of the pattern usual in the sitting portrait statues of the greeks--very deep, and with a curved back, which exceeds both in comfort and in grace any chairs made by modern workmen.[49] each chair has the name of a priest inscribed on it, showing how the theater among the greeks corresponded to our cathedral, and this front row to the stalls of canons and prebendaries. but unfortunately all this sacerdotal prominence is probably the work of the later restorers of the theater. for after having been first beautified and adorned with statues by lycurgus (in demosthenes' time), it was again restored and embellished by herodes atticus, or about his time, so that the theater, as we now have it, can only be called the building of the second or third century after christ. the front wall of the stage, which is raised some feet above the level of the empty pit, is adorned with a row of very elegant sculptures, among which one--a shaggy old man, in a stooping posture, represented as coming out from within, and holding up the stone above him--is particularly striking. some greek is said to have knocked off, by way of amusement, the heads of most of these figures since they were discovered, but this i do not know upon any better authority than ordinary report. the pit or center of the theater is empty, and was never in greek days occupied by seats, but a wooden structure was set up adjoining the stage, and on this the chorus performed their dances, and sang their odes. but now there is a circuit of upright slabs of stone close to the front seat, which can hardly have been an arrangement of the old greek theater. they are generally supposed to have been added when the building was used for contests of gladiators or of wild beasts; but the partition, being not more than three feet high, would be no protection whatever from an evil-disposed wild beast. all these later additions and details are, i fear, calculated to detract from the reader's interest in this theater, which i should indeed regret--for nothing can be more certain than that this is the veritable stone theater which was built when the wooden one broke down, at the great competition of æschylus and pratinas; and tho front seats may have been added, and slight modifications introduced, the general structure can never have required alteration. it is indeed very large, tho i think exaggerated statements have been made about its size. i have heard it said that the enormous number of 30,000 people could fit into it--a statement i think incredible; for it did not to me seem larger than, or as large as, other theaters i have seen, at syracuse, at megalopolis, or even at argos. but, no doubt, all such open-air enclosures and sittings look far smaller than covered rooms of the same size. this is certain, that any one speaking on the stage, as it now is, can be easily and distinctly heard by people sitting on the highest row of seats now visible, which can not, i fancy, have been far from the original top of the house. and we may doubt that any such thing were possible when 30,000 people, or a crowd approaching that number, were seated. we hear, however, that the old actors had recourse to various artificial means of increasing the range of their voices. yet there is hardly a place in athens which forces back the mind so strongly to the old days, when all the crowd came jostling in, and settled down in their seats, to hear the great novelties of the year from sophocles or euripides. no doubt there were cliques and cabals and claqueurs, noisy admirers and cold critics, the supporters of the old, and the lovers of the new, devotees and sceptics, wondering foreigners and self-complacent citizens. they little thought how we should come, not only to sit in the seats they occupied, but to reverse the judgments which they pronounced, and correct with sober temper the errors of prejudice, of passion, and of pride. where paul preached to the athenians[50] by j. p. mahaffy it was on this very areopagus, where we are now standing, that these philosophers of fashion came into contact with the thorough earnestness, the profound convictions, the red-hot zeal of the apostle paul. the memory of that great scene still lingers about the place, and every guide will show you the exact place where the apostle stood, and in what direction he addrest his audience. there are, i believe, even some respectable commentators who transfer their own estimate of st. paul's importance to the athenian public, and hold that it was before the court of the areopagus that he was asked to expound his views. this is more than doubtful. the "blasés" philosophers, who probably yawned over their own lectures, hearing of a new lay preacher, eager to teach and apparently convinced of the truth of what he said, thought the novelty too delicious to be neglected, and brought him forthwith out of the chatter and bustle of the crowd, probably past the very orchestra where anaxagoras' books had been proselytizing before him, and where the stiff old heroes of athenian history stood, a monument of the escape from political slavery. it is even possible that the curious knot of idlers did not bring him higher than this platform, which might well be called part of mars' hill. but if they chose to bring him to the top, there was no hindrance, for the venerable court held its sittings in the open air, on stone seats; and when not thus occupied, the top of the rock may well have been a convenient place of retirement for people who did not want to be disturbed by new acquaintances, and the constant eddies of new gossip in the market-place. it is, however, of far less import to know on what spot of the areopagus paul stood, than to understand clearly what he said, and how he sought to conciliate as well as to refute the philosophers who, no doubt, looked down upon him as an intellectual inferior. he starts naturally enough from the extraordinary crowd of votive statues and offerings, for which athens was remarkable above all other cities of greece. he says, with a slight touch of irony, that he finds them very religious indeed, so religious that he even found an altar to a god professedly unknown, or perhaps unknowable.... thus ended, to all appearance ignominiously, the first heralding of the faith which was to supplant all the temples and altars and statues with which athens had earned renown as a beautiful city, which was to overthrow the schools of the sneering philosophers, and even to remodel all the society and the policy of the world. and yet, in spite of this great and decisive triumph of christianity, there was something curiously prophetic in the contemptuous rejection of its apostle at athens. was it not the first expression of the feeling which still possesses the visitor who wanders through its ruins, and which still dominates the educated world--the feeling that while other cities owe to the triumph of christianity all their beauty and their interest, athens has to this day resisted this influence; and that while the christian monuments of athens would elsewhere excite no small attention, here they are passed by as of no import compared with its heathen splendor? there are very old and very beautiful little churches in athens, "delicious little byzantine churches," as renan calls them. they are very peculiar, and unlike what one generally sees in europe. they strike the observer with their quaintness and smallness, and he fancies he here sees the tiny model of that unique and splendid building, the cathedral of st. mark at venice. but yet it is surprizing how little we notice them at athens. i was even told--i sincerely hope it was false--that public opinion at athens was gravitating toward the total removal of one, and that the most perfect, of these churches, which stands in the middle of a main street, and so breaks the regularity of the modern boulevard! from athens to delphi on horseback[51] by bayard taylor we left athens on the 13th of april, for a journey to parnassus and the northern frontier of greece. it was a teeming, dazzling day, with light scarfs of cloud-crape in the sky, and a delicious breeze from the west blowing through the pass of daphne. the gulf of salamis was pure ultramarine, covered with a velvety bloom, while the island and mount kerata swam in transparent pink and violet tints. crossing the sacred plain of eleusis, our road entered the mountains--lower offshoots of cithæron, which divide the plain from that of boeotia.... we climbed the main ridge of the mountains; and, in less than an hour, reached the highest point--whence the great boeotian plain suddenly opened upon our view. in the distance gleamed lake capaïs, and the hills beyond; in the west, the snowy top of parnassus, lifted clear and bright above the morning vapors; and, at last, as we turned a shoulder of the mountain in descending, the streaky top of helicon appeared on the left, completing the classic features of the landscape.... as we entered the plain, taking a rough path toward platæa, the fields were dotted, far and near, with the white easter shirts of the people working among the vines. another hour, and our horses' hoofs were upon the sacred soil of platæa. the walls of the city are still to be traced for nearly their entire extent. they are precisely similar in construction to those of oenoë--like which, also, they were strengthened by square towers. there are the substructions of various edifices--some of which may have been temples--and on the side next the modern village lie four large sarcophagi, now used as vats for treading out the grapes in vintage-time. a more harmless blood than once curdled on the stones of platæa now stains the empty sepulchers of the heroes. we rode over the plain, fixt the features of the scene in our memories, and then kept on toward the field of leuktra, where the brutal power of sparta received its first check. the two fields are so near, that a part of the fighting may have been done upon the same ground.... i then turned my horse's head toward thebes, which we reached in two hours. it was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two thousand years ago. the town is built partly on the hill of the cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. an aqueduct, on mossy arches, supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. the plain to the north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the sphinx, beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a chain of barren hills, and over all the snowy cone of mount delphi, in euboea. the only remains of the ancient city are stones; for the massive square tower, now used as a prison, can not be ascribed to an earlier date than the reign of the latin princes.... the next morning we rode down from the cadmeion, and took the highway to livadia, leading straight across the boeotian plain. it is one of the finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark, vegetable mold--which would produce almost without limit, were it properly cultivated. before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay parnassus; and far across the immense plain the blue peaks of mount oeta. in three hours we reached the foot of helicon, and looked up at the streaks of snow which melt into the fountain of the muses.... as we left arachova, proceeding toward delphi, the deep gorge opened, disclosing a blue glimpse of the gulf of corinth and the achaian mountains. tremendous cliffs of blue-gray limestone towered upon our right, high over the slope of delphi, which ere long appeared before us. our approach to the sacred spot was marked by tombs cut in the rock. a sharp angle of the mountain was passed; and then, all at once, the enormous walls, buttressing the upper region of parnassus, stood sublimely against the sky, cleft right through the middle by a terrible split, dividing the twin peaks which gave a name to the place. at the bottom of this chasm issue forth the waters of castaly, and fill a stone trough by the road-side. on a long, sloping mountain-terrace, facing the east, stood once the town and temples of delphi, and now the modern village of kastri. as you may imagine, our first walk was to the shrine of the delphic oracle, at the bottom of the cleft between the two peaks. the hewn face of the rock, with a niche, supposed to be that where the pythia sat upon her tripod, and a secret passage under the floor of the sanctuary, are all that remain. the castalian fountain still gushes out at the bottom, into a large square enclosure, called the pythia's bath, and now choked up with mud, weeds, and stones. among those weeds, i discerned one of familiar aspect, plucked and tasted it. watercress, of remarkable size and flavor! we thought no more of apollo and his shrine, but delving wrist-deep into castalian mud, gathered huge handfuls of the profane herb, which we washed in the sacred front, and sent to françois for a salad.... as the sun sank, i sat on the marble blocks and sketched the immortal landscape. high above me, on the left, soared the enormous twin peaks of pale-blue rock, lying half in the shadow of the mountain slope upheaved beneath, half bathed in the deep yellow luster of sunset. before me rolled wave after wave of the parnassian chain, divided by deep lateral valleys, while helicon, in the distance, gloomed like a thunder-storm under the weight of gathered clouds. across this wild, vast view, the breaking clouds threw broad belts of cold blue shadow, alternating with zones of angry orange light, in which the mountains seemed to be heated to a transparent glow. the furious wind hissed and howled over the piles of ruin, and a few returning shepherds were the only persons to be seen. and this spot, for a thousand years, was the shrine where spake the awful oracle of greece. corinth[52] by j. p. mahaffy the gulf of corinth is a very beautiful and narrow fiord, with chains of mountains on either side, through the gaps of which you can see far into the morea on one side, and into northern greece on the other. but the bays or harbors on either coast are few, and so there was no city able to wrest the commerce of these waters from old corinth, which held the keys by land of the whole peloponnesus, and commanded the passage from sea to sea. it is, indeed, wonderful how corinth did not acquire and maintain the first position in greece. but as soon as the greater powers of greece decayed and fell away, we find corinth immediately taking the highest position in wealth, and even in importance. the capture of corinth, in 146 b.c., marks the roman conquest of all greece, and the art-treasures carried to rome seem to have been as great and various as those which even athens could have produced. no sooner had julius cæsar restored and rebuilt the ruined city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the societies addrest in the epistles of st. paul, none seems to have lived in greater wealth or luxury. it was, in fact, well-nigh impossible that corinth should die. nature had marked out her site as one of the great thoroughfares of the old world; and it was not till after centuries of blighting misrule by the wretched turks that she sank into the hopeless decay from which not even another julius cæsar could rescue her. the traveler who expects to find any sufficient traces of the city of periander and of timoleon, and, i may say, of st. paul, will be grievously disappointed. in the middle of the wretched straggling modern village there stand up seven enormous rough stone pillars of the doric order, evidently of the oldest and heaviest type; and these are the only visible relic of the ancient city, looking altogether out of place, and almost as if they had come there by mistake. these pillars, tho insufficient to admit of our reconstructing the temple, are in themselves profoundly interesting. their shaft up to the capital is of one block, about twenty-one feet high and six feet in diameter. it is to be observed, that over these gigantic monoliths the architrave, in which other greek temples show the largest blocks, is not in one piece, but two, and made of beams laid together longitudinally. the length of the shafts (up to the neck of the capital) measures about four times their diameter, on the photograph which i possess; i do not suppose that any other doric pillar known to us is so stout and short. straight over the site of the town is the great rock known as the acro-corinthus. a winding path leads up on the southwest side to the turkish drawbridge and gate, which are now deserted and open; nor is there a single guard or soldier to watch a spot once the coveted prize of contending empires. in the days of the achæan league it was called one of the fetters of greece, and indeed it requires no military experience to see the extraordinary importance of the place. next to the view from the heights of parnassus, i suppose the view from this citadel is held the finest in greece. i speak here of the large and diverse views to be obtained from mountain heights. to me, personally, such a view as that from the promontory of sunium, or, above all, from the harbor of nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye prospect. any one who looks at the map of greece will see how the acro-corinthus commands coasts, islands, and bays. the day was too hazy when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, and i can not say how near to mount olympus the eye may reach in a suitable atmosphere. but a host of islands, the southern coasts of attica and boeotia, the acropolis of athens, salamis and ægina, helicon and parnassus, and endless ætolian peaks were visible in one direction; while, as we turned round, all the waving reaches of arcadia and argolis, down to the approaches toward mantinea and karytena, lay stretched out before us. the plain of argos, and the sea at that side, are hidden by the mountains. but without going into detail, this much may be said, that if a man wants to realize the features of these coasts, which he has long studied on maps, half an hour's walk about the top of this rock will give him a geographical insight which no years of study could attain. olympia[53] by philip s. marden olympia, like delphi, is a place of memories chiefly. the visible remains are numerous, but so flat that some little technical knowledge is needed to restore them in mind. there is no village at the modern olympia at all--nothing but five or six little inns and a railway station--so that delphi really has the advantage of olympia in this regard. as a site connected with ancient greek history and greek religion, the two places are as similar in nature as they are in general ruin. the field in which the ancient structures stand lies just across the tiny tributary river cladeus, spanned by a footbridge. even from the opposite bank, the ruins present a most interesting picture, with its attractiveness greatly enhanced by the neighboring pines, which scatter themselves through the precinct itself and cover densely the little conical hill of kronos close by, while the grasses of the plain grow luxuriantly among the fallen stones of the former temples and apartments of the athletes. the ruins are so numerous and so prostrate that the non-technical visitor is seriously embarrassed to describe them, as is the case with every site of the kind. all the ruins, practically, have been identified and explained, and naturally they all have to do with the housing or with the contests of the visiting athletes of ancient times, or with the worship of tutelary divinities. almost the first extensive ruin that we found on passing the encircling precinct wall was the prytaneum--a sort of ancient training table at which victorious contestants were maintained gratis--while beyond lay other equally extensive remnants of exercising places, such as the palæstra for the wrestlers. but all these were dominated, evidently, by the two great temples, an ancient one of comparatively small size sacred to hera, and a mammoth edifice dedicated to zeus, which still gives evidence of its enormous extent, while the fallen column-drums reveal some idea of the other proportions. it was in its day the chief glory of the enclosure, and the statue of the god was even reckoned among the seven wonders of the world. unfortunately this statue, like that of athena at athens, has been irretrievably lost. but there is enough of the great shrine standing in the midst of the ruins to inspire one with an idea of its greatness; and, in the museum above, the heroic figures from its two pediments have been restored and set up in such wise as to reproduce the external adornment of the temple with remarkable success. gathered around this central building, the remainder of the ancient structures having to do with the peculiar uses of the spot present a bewildering array of broken stones and marbles. an obtrusive remnant of a byzantine church is the one discordant feature. aside from this the precinct recalls only the distant time when the regular games called all greece to olympia, while the "peace of god" prevailed throughout the kingdom. just at the foot of kronos a long terrace and flight of steps mark the position of a row of old treasuries, as at delphi, while along the eastern side of the precinct are to be seen the remains of a portico once famous for its echoes, where sat the judges who distributed the prizes. there is also a most graceful arch remaining to mark the entrance to the ancient stadium, of which nothing else now remains. of the later structures on the site, the "house of nero" is the most interesting and extensive. the olympic games were still celebrated, even after the roman domination, and nero himself entered the lists in his own reign. he caused a palace to be erected for him on that occasion--and of course he won a victory, for any other outcome would have been most impolite, not to say dangerous. nero was more fortunately lodged than were the other ancient contestants, it appears, for there were no hostelries in old olympia in which the visiting multitudes could be housed, and the athletes and spectators who came from all over the land were accustomed to bring their own tents and pitch them roundabout, many of them on the farther side of the alpheios. the temple of zeus at olympia as it was[54] by pausanias many various wonders may one see, or hear of, in greece; but the eleusinian mysteries and olympian games seem to exhibit more than anything else the divine purpose. and the sacred grove of zeus they have from old time called altis, slightly changing the greek word for grove; it is, indeed, called altis also by pindar, in the ode he composed for a victor at olympia. and the temple and statue of zeus were built out of the spoils of pisa, which the people of elis razed to the ground, after quelling the revolt of pisa, and some of the neighboring towns that revolted with pisa. and that the statue of zeus was the work of phidias is shown by the inscription written at the base of it: "phidias the athenian, the son of charmides, made me." the temple is a doric building, and outside it is a colonnade. and the temple is built of stone of the district. its height up to the gable is sixty-eight feet, and its length 2,300 feet. and its architect was libon, a native of ellis. and the tiles on the roof are not of baked earth; but pentelican marble, to imitate tiles. they say such roofs are the invention of a man of naxos called byzes, who made statues at naxos with the inscription: "euergus of naxos made me, the son of byzes, and descended from leto, the first who made tiles of stone." this byzes was a contemporary of alyattes the lydian, and astyages (the son of cyaxares), the king of persia. and there is a golden vase at each end of the roof, and a golden victory in the middle of the gable. and underneath the victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive offering, with the gorgon medusa worked on it. the inscription on the shield states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. for this is what it says: "this temple's golden shield is a votive offering from the lacedæmonians at tanagra and their allies, a gift from the argives, the athenians, and the ionians, a tithe offering for success in war." the battle i mentioned in my account of attica, when i described the tombs at athens. and in the same temple at olympia, above the zone that runs round the pillars on the outside, are twenty-one golden shields, the offering of mummius the roman general, after he had beaten the achæans and taken corinth, and expelled the dorians from corinth. and on the gables in bas-relief is the chariot race between pelops and oenomaus; and both chariots in motion. and in the middle of the gable is a statue of zeus; and on the right hand of zeus is oenomaus with a helmet on his head; and beside him his wife sterope, one of the daughters of atlas. and myrtilus, who was the charioteer of oenomaus, is seated behind the four horses. and next to him are two men whose names are not recorded, but they are doubtless oenomaus's grooms, whose duty was to take care of the horses.... the carvings on the gables in front are by pæonius of mende in thracia; those behind by alcamenes, a contemporary of phidias and second only to him as statuary. and on the gables is a representation of the fight between the lapithæ and the centaurs at the marriage of pirithous. pirithous is in the center, and on one side of him is eurytion trying to carry off pirithous's wife, and cæneus coming to the rescue, and on the other side theseus laying about among the centaurs with his battle-ax; and one centaur is carrying off a maiden, another a blooming boy. alcamenes has engraved this story, i imagine, because he learned from the lines of homer that pirithous was the son of zeus, and knew that theseus was fourth in descent from pelops. there are also in bas-relief at olympia most of the labors of hercules. above the doors of the temple is the hunting of the erymanthian boar, and hercules taking the mares of diomede the thracian, and robbing geryon of his oxen in the island of erytheia, and supporting the load of atlas, and clearing the land of elis of its dung.... the image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. and a crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive tree. in his right hand he holds a victory in ivory and gold, with a tiara and crown on his head; and in his left hand a scepter adorned with all manner of precious stones, and the bird seated on the scepter is an eagle. the robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. and the throne is richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. and there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it. there are four victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne, and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet are theban boys carried off by sphinxes, and below the sphinxes, apollo and artemis shooting down the children of niobe. and between the feet of the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from each of the four feet. in the division nearest the entrance there are seven models--the eighth has vanished no one knows where or how. and they are imitations of ancient contests, for in the days of phidias the contests for boys were not yet established. and the figure with its head muffled up in a scarf is, they say, pantarcas, who was a native of elis and the darling of phidias. this pantarces won the wrestling-prize for boys in the 86th olympiad. and in the remaining divisions is the band of hercules fighting against the amazons. the number on each side is twenty-nine, and theseus is on the side of hercules. and the throne is supported not only by the four feet, but also by four pillars between the feet. but one can not get under the throne, as one can at amyclæ, and pass inside; for at olympia there are panels like walls that keep one off. at the top of the throne, phidias has represented above the head of zeus the three graces and three seasons. for these too, as we learn from the poets, were daughters of zeus. homer in the iliad has represented the seasons as having the care of heaven, as a kind of guards of a royal palace. and the base under the feet of zeus (what is called in attic "thranion") has golden lions engraved on it, and the battle between theseus and the amazons--the first famous exploit of the athenians beyond their own borders. and on the platform that supports the throne there are various ornaments round zeus, and gilt carving--the sun seated in his chariot, and zeus and hera; and near is grace. hermes is close to her, and vesta close to hermes. and next to vesta is eros receiving aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by persuasion. and apollo and artemis, athene and hercules, are standing by, and at the end of the platform amphitrite and poseidon, and selene apparently urging on her horse. and some say it is a mule and not a horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about this mule. i know that the size of the olympian zeus both in height and breadth has been stated; but i can not bestow praise on the measurers, for their recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from looking at the statue. they make the god also to have testified to the art of phidias. for they say that when the statue was finished, phidias prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately zeus, struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day is a brazen urn with a lid. and all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black stone. and a border of parian marble runs round this black stone, as a preservative against spilled oil. for oil is good for the statue at olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the grove. but in the acropolis at athens, in regard to the statue of athene called the maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water freely. and when i was at epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither water nor oil to the statue of æsculapius, the sacristans of the temple informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well. thermopylæ[55] by rufus b. richardson we took thermopylæ at our leisure, passing out from lamia over the spercheios on the bridge of alamana, at which diakos, famous in ballad, resisted with a small band a turkish army, until he was at last captured and taken to lamia to be impaled.... it may be taken as a well-known fact that the spercheios has since the time of herodotus made so large an alluvial deposit around its mouth that, if he himself should return to earth, he would hardly recognize the spot which he has described so minutely. the western horn, which in his time came down so near to the gulf as to leave space for a single carriage-road only, is now separated from it by more than a mile of plain. each visit to thermopylæ has, however, deepened my conviction that herodotus exaggerated the impregnability of this pass. the mountain spur which formed it did not rise so abruptly from the sea as to form an impassable barrier to the advance of a determined antagonist. it is of course difficult ground to operate on, but certainly not impossible. the other narrow place, nearly two miles to the east of this, is still more open, a fact that is to be emphasized, because many topographers, including colonel leake, hold that the battle actually took place there, as the great battle between the romans and antioches certainly did. this eastern pass is, to be sure, no place where "a thousand may well be stopt by three," and there can not have taken place any great transformation here since classical times, inasmuch as this region is practically out of reach of the spercheios, and the deposit from the hot sulfur streams, which has so broadened the theater-shaped area enclosed by the two horns, can hardly have contributed to changing the shape of the eastern horn itself. artificial fortification was always needed here; but it is very uncertain whether any of the stones that still remain can be claimed as parts of such fortification. it is a fine position for an inferior force to choose for defense against a superior one; but while it can not be declared with absolute certainty that this is not the place where the fighting took place, yet the western pass fits better the description of herodotus. besides this, if the western pass had been abandoned to the persians at the outset the fact would have been worth mentioning. as to the heroic deed itself, the view that leonidas threw away his own life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that sparta had for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of greece. it was audacious in the athenians to fight the battle of marathon without them, and they did so only because the spartans did not come at their call. sparta had not come to thermopylæ in force, it is true; but her king was there with three hundred of her best men. only by staying and fighting could he show that sparta held by right the place she had won. it had to be done. "so the glory of sparta was not blotted out." one may have read, and read often, the description of the battle in the school-room, but he reads it with different eyes on the spot, when he can look up at the hillock crowned with a ruined cavalry barrack just inside the western pass and say to himself: "here on this hill they fought their last fight and fell to the last man. here once stood the monuments to leonidas, to the three hundred, and to the four thousand." the very monuments have crumbled to dust, but the great deed lives on. we rode back to lamia under the spell of it. it was as if we had been in church and been held by a great preacher who knows how to touch the deepest chords of the heart. euboea was already dark blue, while the sky above it was shaded from pink to purple. tymphrestos in the west was bathed in the light of the sun that had gone down behind it. the whole surrounding was most stirring, and there was ever sounding in our hearts that deep bass note: "what they did here." salonica[56] by charles dudley warner the city of salonica lies on a fine bay, and presents an attractive appearance from the harbor, rising up the hill in the form of an amphitheater. on all sides, except the sea, ancient walls surround it, fortified at the angles by large, round towers and crowned in the center, on the hill, by a respectable citadel. i suppose that portions of these walls are of hellenic, and perhaps, pelasgic date, but the most are probably of the time of the latin crusaders' occupation, patched and repaired by saracens and turks. we had come to thessalonica on st. paul's account, not expecting to see much that would excite us, and we were not disappointed. when we went ashore we found ourselves in a city of perhaps sixty thousand inhabitants, commonplace in aspect, altho its bazaars are well filled with european goods, and a fair display of oriental stuffs and antiquities, and animated by considerable briskness of trade. i presume there are more jews here than there were in paul's time, but turks and greeks, in nearly equal numbers, form the bulk of the population. in modern salonica there is not much respect for pagan antiquities, and one sees only the usual fragments of columns and sculptures worked into walls or incorporated in christian churches. but those curious in early byzantine architecture will find more to interest them here than in any place in the world except constantinople. we spent the day wandering about the city, under the guidance of a young jew, who was without either prejudices or information. on our way to the mosque of st. sophia, we passed through the quarter of the jews, which is much cleaner than is usual with them. these are the descendants of spanish jews, who were expelled by isabella, and they still retain, in a corrupt form, the language of spain. in the doors and windows were many pretty jewesses; banishment and vicissitude appear to agree with this elastic race, for in all the countries of europe jewish women develop more beauty in form and feature than in palestine. we saw here and in other parts of the city a novel head-dress, which may commend itself to america in the revolutions of fashion. a great mass of hair, real or assumed, was gathered into a long, slender, green bag, which hung down the back and was terminated by a heavy fringe of silver. otherwise, the dress of the jewish women does not differ much from that of the men; the latter wear a fez or turban, and a tunic which reaches to the ankles, and is bound about the waist by a gay sash or shawl. the mosque of st. sophia, once a church, and copied in its proportions and style from its namesake in constantinople, is retired, in a delightful court, shaded by gigantic trees and cheered by a fountain. so peaceful a spot we had not seen in many a day; birds sang in the trees without disturbing the calm of the meditative pilgrim. in the portico and also in the interior are noble columns of marble and verd-antique, and in the dome is a wonderfully quaint mosaic of the transfiguration. we were shown also a magnificent pulpit of the latter beautiful stone cut from a solid block, in which it is said st. paul preached. as the apostle, according to his custom, reasoned with the people out of the scriptures in a synagogue, and this church was not built for centuries after his visit, the statement needs confirmation; but pious ingenuity suggests that the pulpit stood in a subterranean church underneath this. i should like to believe that paul sanctified this very spot with his presence; but there is little in its quiet seclusion to remind one of him who had the reputation when he was in thessalonica of one of those who turn the world upside down. from the pierian plain to marathon[57] by charles dudley warner at early light of a cloudless morning we were going easily down the gulf of thermæ or salonica, having upon our right the pierian plain; and i tried to distinguish the two mounds which mark the place of the great battle near pydna, one hundred and sixty-eight years before christ, between æmilius paulus and king perseus, which gave macedonia to the roman empire. beyond, almost ten thousand feet in the air, towered olympus, upon whose "broad" summit homer displays the ethereal palaces and inaccessible abode of the grecian gods. shaggy forests still clothe its sides, but snow now, and for the greater part of the year, covers the wide surface of the height, which is a sterile, light-colored rock. the gods did not want snow to cool the nectar at their banquets. this is the very center of the mythologic world; there between olympus and ossa is the vale of tempe, where the peneus, breaking through a narrow gorge fringed with the sacred laurel, reaches the gulf, south of ancient heracleum. into this charming but secluded retreat the gods and goddesses, weary of the icy air, or the pumblechookian deportment of the court of olympian jove, descended to pass the sunny hours with the youths and maidens of mortal mold; through this defile marks of chariot-wheels still attest the passage of armies which flowed either way, in invasion or retreat; and here pompey, after a ride of forty miles from the fatal field of pharsalia, quenched his thirst. at six o'clock the cape of posilio was on our left, we were sinking olympus in the white haze of morning, ossa, in its huge silver bulk, was near us, and pelion stretched its long white back below. the sharp cone of ossa might well ride upon the extended back of pelion, and it seems a pity that the titans did not succeed in their attempt. we were leaving, and looking our last on the thracian coasts, once rimmed from mt. athos to the bosphorus with a wreath of prosperous cities. what must once have been the splendor of the ægean sea and its islands, when every island was the seat of a vigorous state, and every harbor the site of a commercial town which sent forth adventurous galleys upon any errand of trade or conquest!... we ascended mt. pentelicus. hymettus and pentelicus are about the same height--thirty-five hundred feet--but the latter, ten miles to the northeast of athens, commands every foot of the attic territory; if one should sit on its summit and read a history of the little state, he would need no map. up to the highest quarries the road is steep, and strewn with broken marble, and after that there is an hour's scramble through bushes and over a rocky path. from these quarries was hewn the marble for the temple of theseus, the parthenon, the propylæ, the theaters, and other public buildings, to which age has now given a soft and creamy tone; the pentelic marble must have been too brilliant for the eye, and its dazzling luster was, no doubt, softened by the judicious use of color. fragments which we broke off had the sparkle and crystalline grain of loaf-sugar, and if they were placed upon the table one would unhesitatingly take them to sweeten his tea. the whole mountain-side is overgrown with laurel, and we found wild flowers all the way to the summit.... we looked almost directly down upon marathon. there is the bay and the curving sandy shore where the persian galleys landed; here upon a spur, jutting out from the hill, the athenians formed before they encountered the host in the plain, and there--alas! it was hidden by a hill--is the mound where the one hundred and ninety-two athenian dead are buried. it is only a small field, perhaps six miles along the shore and a mile and a half deep, and there is a considerable marsh on the north and a small one at the south end. the victory at so little cost, of ten thousand over a hundred thousand, is partially explained by the nature of the ground; the persians had not room enough to maneuver, and must have been thrown into confusion on the skirts of the northern swamp, and if over six thousand of them were slain, they must have been killed on the shore in the panic of their embarkation. but still the shore is broad, level, and firm, and the greeks must have been convinced that the gods themselves terrified the hearts of the barbarians, and enabled them to discomfit a host which had chosen this plain as the most feasible in all attica for the action of cavalry. an excursion to sparta and maina[58] by bayard taylor as we approached sparta, the road descended to the banks of the eurotas. traces of the ancient walls which restrained the river still remain in places, but, in his shifting course, he has swept the most of them away, and spread his gravelly deposits freely over the bottoms inclosed between the spurs of the hills. toward evening we saw, at a distance, the white houses of modern sparta, and presently some indications of the ancient city. at first, the remains of terraces and ramparts, then the unmistakable hellenic walls, and, as the superb plain of the eurotas burst upon us, stretching, in garden-like beauty, to the foot of the abrupt hills, over which towered the sun-touched snows of taygetus, we saw, close on our right, almost the only relic of the lost ages--the theater. riding across the field of wheat, which extended all over the scene of the spartan gymnastic exhibitions, we stood on the proscenium and contemplated these silent ruins, and the broad, beautiful landscape. it is one of the finest views in greece--not so crowded with striking points, not so splendid in associations as that of athens, but larger, grander, richer in coloring. besides the theater, the only remains are some masses of roman brickwork, and the massive substructions of a small temple which the natives call the tomb of leonidas.... we spent the night in a comfortable house, which actually boasted of a floor, glass windows, and muslin curtains. on returning to the theater in the morning, we turned aside into a plowed field to inspect a sarcophagus which had just been discovered. it still lay in the pit where it was found, and was entire, with the exception of the lid. it was ten feet long by four broad, and was remarkable in having a division at one end, forming a smaller chamber, as if for the purpose of receiving the bones of a child. from the theater i made a sketch of the valley, with the dazzling ridge of taygetus in the rear, and mistra, the medieval sparta, hanging on the steep sides of one of his gorges. the sun was intensely hot, and we were glad to descend again, making our way through tall wheat, past walls of roman brickwork and scattering blocks of the older city, to the tomb of leonidas. this is said to be a temple, tho there are traces of vaults and passages beneath the pavement which do not quite harmonize with such a conjecture. it is composed of huge blocks of breccia, some of them thirteen feet long. i determined to make an excursion to maina. this is a region rarely visited by travelers, who are generally frightened off by the reputation of its inhabitants, who are considered by the greeks to be bandits and cut-throats to a man. the mainotes are, for the most part, lineal descendants of the ancient spartans, and, from the decline of the roman power up to the present century, have preserved a virtual independence in their mountain fastnesses. the worship of the pagan deities existed among them as late as the eighth century. they were never conquered by the turks, and it required considerable management to bring them under the rule of otho.... starting at noon, we passed through the modern sparta, which is well laid out with broad streets. the site is superb, and in the course of time the new town will take the place of mistra. we rode southward, down the valley of the eurotas, through orchards of olive and mulberry. we stopt for the night at the little khan of levetzova. i saw some cows pasturing here, quite a rare sight in greece, where genuine butter is unknown. that which is made from the milk of sheep and goats is no better than mild tallow. the people informed me, however, that they make cheese from cow's milk, but not during lent. they are now occupied with rearing paschal lambs, a quarter of a million of which are slaughtered in greece on easter day. the next morning, we rode over hills covered with real turf, a little thin, perhaps, but still a rare sight in southern lands. in two hours we entered the territory of maina, on the crest of a hill, where we saw marathonisi (the ancient gythium), lying warm upon the laconian gulf. the town is a steep, dirty, labyrinthine place, and so rarely visited by strangers that our appearance created quite a sensation.... a broad, rich valley opened before us, crossed by belts of poplar and willow trees, and inclosed by a semicircle of hills, most of which were crowned with the lofty towers of the mainotes. in maina almost every house is a fortress. the law of blood revenge, the right of which is transmitted from father to son, draws the whole population under its bloody sway in the course of a few generations. life is a running fight, and every foe slain entails on the slayer a new penalty of retribution for himself and his descendants for ever. previous to the revolution most of the mainote families lived in a state of alternate attack and siege. their houses are square towers, forty or fifty feet high, with massive walls, and windows so narrow that they may be used as loopholes for musketry. the first story is at a considerable distance from the ground, and reached by a long ladder which can be drawn up so as to cut off all communication. some of the towers are further strengthened by a semicircular bastion, projecting from the side most liable to attack. the families supplied themselves with telescopes, to look out for enemies in the distance, and always had a store of provisions on hand, in case of a siege. altho this private warfare has been supprest, the law of revenge exists. from the summit of the first range we overlooked a wild, glorious landscape. the hills, wooded with oak, and swimming in soft blue vapor, interlocked far before us, inclosing the loveliest green dells in their embraces, and melting away to the break in taygetus, which yawned in the distance. on the right towered the square, embrasured castle of passava on the summit of an almost inaccessible hill--the site of the ancient las. far and near, the lower heights were crowned with tall, white towers. messenia[59] by bayard taylor the plain of messenia is the richest part of the morea. altho its groves of orange and olive, fig and mulberry, were entirely destroyed during the egyptian occupation, new and more vigorous shoots have sprung up from the old stumps and the desolated country is a garden again, apparently as fair and fruitful as when it excited the covetousness of the spartan thieves. sloping to the gulf on the south, and protected from the winds on all other sides by lofty mountains, it enjoys an almost egyptian warmth of climate. here it was already summer, while at sparta, on the other side of taygetus, spring had but just arrived, and the central plain of arcadia was still bleak and gray as in winter. as it was market-day, we met hundreds of the country people going to kalamata with laden asses.... we crossed the rapid pamisos with some difficulty, and ascended its right bank, to the foot of mount evan, which we climbed, by rough paths through thickets of mastic and furze, to the monastery of vurkano. the building has a magnificent situation, on a terrace between mount evan and mount ithome, overlooking both the upper and lower plains of the pamisos--a glorious spread of landscape, green with spring, and touched by the sun with the airiest prismatic tints through breaks of heavy rain-clouds. inside the courts is an old byzantine chapel, with fleurs-de-lis on the decorations, showing that it dates from the time of the latin princes. the monks received us very cordially, gave us a clean, spacious room, and sent us a bottle of excellent wine for dinner. we ascended ithome and visited the massive ruins of messene the same day. the great gate of the city, a portion of the wall, and four of the towers of defense, are in tolerable condition. the name of epaminondas hallows these remains, which otherwise, grand as they are, do not impress one like the cyclopean walls of tiryns. the wonder is, that they could have been built in so short a time--eighty-five days, says history, which would appear incredible, had not still more marvelous things of the kind been done in russia. the next day, we rode across the head of the messenian plain, crossed the mount lycæus and the gorge of the neda, and lodged at the little village of tragoge, on the frontiers of arcadia. our experience of grecian highways was pleasantly increased by finding fields plowed directly across our road, fences of dried furze built over it, and ditches cutting it at all angles. sometimes all trace of it would be lost for half a mile, and we were obliged to ride over the growing crops until we could find a bit of fresh trail. the bridle-path over mount lycæus was steep and bad, but led us through the heart of a beautiful region. the broad back of the mountain is covered with a grove of superb oaks, centuries old, their long arms muffled in golden moss, and adorned with a plumage of ferns. the turf at their feet was studded with violets, filling the air with delicious odors. this sylvan retreat was the birthplace of pan, and no more fitting home for the universal god can be imagined. on the northern side we descended for some time through a forest of immense ilex trees, which sprang from a floor of green moss and covered our pathway with summer shade.... we were now in the heart of the wild mountain region of messenia, in whose fastnesses aristomenes, the epic hero of the state, maintained himself so long against the spartans. the tremendous gorge below us was the bed of the neda, which we crossed in order to enter the lateral valley of phigalia, where lay tragoge. the path was not only difficult but dangerous--in some places a mere hand's-breath of gravel, on the edge of a plane so steep that a single slip of a horse's foot would have sent him headlong to the bottom. in the morning, a terrible sirocco levante was blowing, with an almost freezing cold. the fury of the wind was so great that in crossing the exposed ridges it was difficult to keep one's seat upon the horse. we climbed toward the central peak of the lycæan hills, through a wild dell between two ridges, which were covered to the summit with magnificent groves of oak. starry blue flowers, violets and pink crocuses spangled the banks as we wound onward, between the great trunks. the temple of apollo epicurius stands on a little platform between the two highest peaks, about 3,500 feet above the sea. on the day of our visit, its pillars of pale bluish-gray limestone rose against a wintry sky, its guardian oaks were leafless, and the wind whistled over its heaps of ruin; yet its symmetry was like that of a perfect statue, wherein you do not notice the absence of color, and i felt that no sky and no season could make it more beautiful. for its builder was ictinus, who created the parthenon. it was erected by the phigalians, out of gratitude to apollo the helper, who kept from their city a plague which ravaged the rest of the peloponnesus. owing to its secluded position, it has escaped the fate of other temples, and might be restored from its own undestroyed materials. the cella had been thrown down, but thirty-five out of thirty-eight columns are still standing. through the doric shafts you look upon a wide panorama of gray mountains, melting into purple in the distance, and crowned by arcs of the far-off sea. on one hand is ithome and the messenian gulf, on the other the ionian sea and the strophades.... we now trotted down the valley, over beautiful meadows, which were uncultivated except in a few places where the peasants were plowing for maize, and had destroyed every trace of the road. the hills on both sides began to be fringed with pine, while the higher ridges on our right were clothed with woods of oak. i was surprised at the luxuriant vegetation of this region. the laurel and mastic became trees, the pine shot to a height of one hundred feet, and the beech and sycamore began to appear. some of the pines had been cut for ship-timber, but in the rudest and most wasteful way, only the limbs which had the proper curve being chosen for ribs. i did not see a single sawmill in the peloponnesus; but i am told that there are a few in euboea and acarnania.... as we approached olympia, i could almost have believed myself among the pine-hills of germany or america. in the old times this must have been a lovely, secluded region, well befitting the honored repose of xenophon, who wrote his works here. the sky became heavier as the day wore on, and the rain, which had spared us so long, finally inclosed us in its misty circle. toward evening we reached a lonely little house, on the banks of the alpheus. nobody was at home, but we succeeded in forcing a door and getting shelter for our baggage. françois had supper nearly ready before the proprietor arrived. the latter had neither wife nor child, tho a few chicks, and took our burglarious occupation very good-humoredly. we shared the same leaky roof with our horses, and the abundant fleas with the owner's dogs. tiryns and mycenæ[60] by j. p. mahaffy the fortress of tiryns may fitly be commented on before approaching the younger, or at least more artistically finished, mycenæ. it stands several miles nearer to the sea, in the center of the great plain of argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope for fortification. instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted blocks of mycenæ, we have here the older style of rude masses piled together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with smaller fragments. this is essentially cyclopean building. there is a smaller fort, of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall, which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. it looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large inclosure for cattle around it. just below the northeast angle of the inner fort, and where the lower circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a massive projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right side, so as to defend it from attack. the most remarkable feature in the walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the southeast angle. the whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty feet, and in the center a rude arched way is made--or rather, i believe, two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost untraceable--and this merely by piling together the great stones so as to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a gothic arch. within the passage, there are five niches in the outer side, made of rude arches in the same way as the main passage. the length of the gallery i measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way round. the niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once windows, or at least to have had some lookout points into the hill country. it is remarkable that, altho the walls are made of perfectly rude stones, the builders have managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking outward, that the face of the wall seems quite clean and well built. at the southeast corner of the higher and inner fort, we found a large block of red granite, quite different from the rough, gray stone of the building, with its surface square and smooth, and all the four sides neatly beveled, like the portal stones at the treasury of atreus. i found two other similar blocks close by, which were likewise cut smooth on the surface. the intention of these stones we could not guess, but they show that some ornament, and some more finished work, must have once existed in the inner fort. tho both the main entrances have massive towers of stone raised on their right, there is a small postern at the opposite or west side, not more than four feet wide, which has no defenses whatever, and is a mere hole in the wall. the whole ruin is covered in summer with thistles, such as english people can hardly imagine. the needles at the points of the leaves are fully an inch long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than any two-edged sword. no clothes except a leather dress can resist them. they pierce everywhere with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom, which can only be supported by a very burning thirst for knowledge, or the sure hope of future fame. the rough masses of stone are so loose that one's footing is insecure, and when the traveler loses his balance, and falls among the thistles, he will wish that he had gone to jericho instead, or even fallen among thieves on the way. it is impossible to approach mycenæ from any side without being struck with the picturesqueness of the site. if you come down over the mountains from corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the valley of the inachus, which is the plain of argos, you turn aside to the left, or east, into a secluded corner--"a recess of the horse-feeding argos," as homer calls it--and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of charváti. when you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty mount elias is separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are divided by deep gorges. the loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky citadel of mycenæ--the argion, as it was once called. i need not attempt a fresh description of the great treasury. it is in no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous age, but, on the contrary, the product of enormous appliances, and of a perfect knowledge of all the mechanical requirements for any building, if we except the application of the arch. the stones are hewn square, or curved to form the circular dome within, with admirable exactness. above the enormous lintel-stone, nearly twenty-seven feet long, and which is doubly grooved, by way of ornament, all along its edge over the doorway, there is now a triangular window or aperture, which was certainly filled with some artistic carving like the analogous space over the lintel in the gate of the acropolis. shortly after lord elgin had cleared the entrance, gell and dodwell found various pieces of green and red marble carved with geometrical patterns, some of which are reproduced in dodwell's book. gell also found some fragments in a neighboring chapel, and others are said to be built into a wall at nauplia. there are supposed to have been short columns standing on each side in front of the gate, with some ornament surmounting them; but this seems to me to rest on doubtful evidence, and on theoretical reconstruction. dr. schliemann, however, asserts them to have been found at the entrance of the second treasury which mrs. schliemann excavated, tho his account is somewhat vague. there is the strongest architectural reason for the triangular aperture over the door, as it diminishes the enormous weight to be borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some ornament very like lions on the other gate may have been applied. there has been much controversy about the use to which this building was applied, and we can not now attempt to change the name, even if we could prove its absurdity. pausanias, who saw mycenæ in the second century a.d., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no better informed than we, tho he tells us the popular belief that this and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the minyæ at orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most wonderful things in all greece. standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the walls of mycenæ, on the hillock over against you. close behind this is a dark and solemn chain of mountains. the view is narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. we can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier which he had passed into an unknown land. but one more remark seems necessary. this treasure-house is by no means a greek building in its features. it has the same perfection of construction which can be seen at eleutheræ, or any other greek fort, but still the really analogous buildings are to be found in far distant lands--in the raths of ireland, and the barrows of the crimea. "and yet how lovely in thine age of woe, land of lost gods and godlike men, are thou! thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, proclaim thee nature's varied favourite now: thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, commingling slowly with heroic earth, broke by the share of every rustic plough: "yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild: sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, thine olives ripe as when minerva smiled, and still his honeyed wealth hymettus yields; there the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, the freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, still in his beam mendeli's marbles glare; art, glory, freedom fail, but nature still is fair." --from byron's "childe harold." ix the greek islands a tour of crete[61] by bayard taylor crete lies between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees, not much farther removed from africa than from europe, and its climate, consequently, is intermediate between that of greece and that of alexandria. in the morning it was already visible, altho some thirty miles distant, the magnificent snowy mass of the white mountains gleaming before us, under a bank of clouds. by ten o'clock, the long blue line of the coast broke into irregular points, the dictynnæan promontory and that of akroteri thrusting themselves out toward us so as to give an amphitheatric character to that part of the island we were approaching, while the broad, snowy dome of the cretan ida, standing alone, far to the east, floated in a sea of soft, golden light. the white mountains were completely enveloped in snow to a distance of 4,000 feet below their summits, and scarcely a rock pierced the luminous covering. the shores of the gulf of khania, retaining their amphitheatric form, rose gradually from the water, a rich panorama of wheat-fields, vineyards and olive groves, crowded with sparkling villages, while khania, in the center, grew into distinctness--a picturesque jumble of mosques, old venetian arches and walls, pink and yellow buildings, and palm trees. the character of the scene was syrian rather than greek, being altogether richer and warmer than anything in greece. khania occupies the site of the ancient cydonia, by which name the greek bishopric is still called. the venetian city was founded in 1252, and any remnants of the older town which may have then remained, were quite obliterated by it. the only ruins now are those of venetian churches, some of which have been converted into mosques, and a number of immense arched vaults, opening on the harbor, built to shelter the galleys of the republic. just beyond the point on which stands the serai, i counted fifteen of these, side by side, eleven of which are still entire. a little further, there are three more, but all are choked up with sand, and of no present use. the modern town is an exact picture of a syrian seaport, with its narrow, crooked streets, shaded bazaars, and turbaned merchants. its population is 9,500, including the garrison, according to a census just completed at the time of our visit. it is walled, and the gates are closed during the night.... passing through the large turkish cemetery, which was covered with an early crop of blue anemones, we came upon the rich plain of khania, lying broad and fair, like a superb garden, at the foot of the white mountains, whose vast masses of shining snow filled up the entire southern heaven. eastward, the plain slopes to the deep bay of suda, whose surface shone blue above the silvery line of the olive groves; while, sixty miles away, rising high above the intermediate headlands, the solitary peak of mount ida, bathed in a warm afternoon glow, gleamed like an olympian mount, not only the birthplace, but the throne of immortal jove. immense olive trees from the dark-red, fertile earth; cypresses and the canopied italian pine interrupted their gray monotony, and every garden hung the golden lamps of its oranges over the wall. the plain is a paradise of fruitfulness.... in the morning, the horses were brought to us at an early hour, in charge of a jolly old officer of gendarmes, who was to accompany us. as far as the village of kalepa, there is a carriage road; afterward, only a stony path. from the spinal ridge of the promontory, which we crossed, we overlooked all the plain of khania, and beyond the dictynnæan peninsula, to the western extremity of crete. the white mountains, tho less than seven thousand, feet in height, deceive the eye by the contrast between their spotless snows and the summer at their base, and seem to rival the alps. the day was cloudless and balmy; birds sang on every tree, and the grassy hollows were starred with anemones, white, pink, violet and crimson. it was the first breath of the southern spring, after a winter which had been as terrible for crete as for greece. after a ride of three hours, we reached a broad valley, at the foot of that barren mountain mass in which the promontory terminates. to the eastward we saw the large monastery of agia triada (the holy trinity), overlooking its fat sweep of vine and olive land.... in the deep, dry mountain glen which we entered, i found numbers of carob-trees. rocks of dark-blue limestone, stained with bright orange oxydations, overhung us as we followed the track of a torrent upward into the heart of this bleak region, where, surrounded by the hot, arid peaks, is the monastery of governato. we descended on foot to the monastery of katholiko, which we reached in half an hour. its situation is like that of san saba in palestine, at the bottom of a split in the stony hills, and the sun rarely shines upon it. steps cut in the rock lead down the face of the precipice to the deserted monastery, near which is a cavern 500 feet long, leading into the rock. the ravine is spanned by an arch, nearly fifty feet high. at agia triada, as we rode up the stately avenue of cypresses, between vineyards and almond trees in blossom, servants advanced to take our horses, and the abbot shouted, "welcome," from the top of the steps. we were ushered into a clean room, furnished with a tolerable library of orthodox volumes. a boy of fifteen, with a face like the young raphael, brought us glasses of a rich, dark wine, something like port, some jelly and coffee. the size and substantial character of this monastery attests its wealth, no less than the flourishing appearance of the lands belonging to it. its large courtyard is shaded with vine-bowers and orange trees, and the chapel in the center has a façade supported by doric columns. the colossal ruins of cnossos[62] by philip s. marden the ruins [of the cnossos palace] lie at the east of the high road, in a deep valley. their excavation has been very complete and satisfactory, and while some restorations have been attempted here and there, chiefly because of absolute necessity to preserve portions of the structure, they are not such restorations as to jar on one, but exhibit a fidelity to tradition that saves them from the common fate of such efforts. little or no retouching was necessary in the case of the stupendous flights of steps that were found leading up to the door of this prehistoric royal residence, and which are the first of the many sights the visitor of to-day may see. it is in the so-called "throne room of minos" that the restoring hand is first met. here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky spot, rather below the general level of the place. its chief treasure is the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. the roof is supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are known to have prevailed not only in the minoan but in mycenæan period; monoliths noticeably larger at the top than at the bottom, reversing the usual form of stone pillar with which later ages have made us more familiar. this quite illogical inversion of what we now regard as the proper form has been accounted for in theory, by assuming that it was the natural successor of the sharpened wooden stake. when the ancients adopted stone supports for their roofs, they simply took over the forms they had been familiar with in the former use of wood, and the result was a stone pillar that copied the earlier wooden one in shape. time, of course, served to show that the natural way of building demanded the reversal of this custom; but in the mycenæan age it had not been discovered, for there are evidences that similar pillars existed in buildings of that period, and the representation of a pillar that stands between the two lions on mycenæ's famous gate has this inverted form. many hours may be spent in detailed examination of this colossal ruin, testifying to what must have been in its day an enormous and impressive palace. one can not go far in traversing it without noticing the traces still evident enough of the fire that obviously destroyed it many hundred, if not several thousand, years before christ. along the western side have been discovered long corridors, from which scores of long and narrow rooms were to be entered. these, in the published plans, serve to give to the ruin a large share of its labyrinthine character. it seems to be agreed now that these were the storerooms of the palace, and in them may still be seen the huge earthen jars which once served to contain the palace supplies. long rows of them stand in the ancient hallways and in the narrow cells that lead off them, each jar large enough to hold a fair-sized man, and in number sufficient to have accommodated ali baba and the immortal forty thieves. in the center of the palace little remains; but in the southeastern corner, where the land begins to slope abruptly to the valley below, there are to be seen several stories of the ancient building. here one comes upon the rooms marked with the so-called "distaff" pattern, supposed to indicate that they were the women's quarters. the restorer has been busy here, but not offensively so. much of the ancient wall is intact, and in one place is a bathroom with a very diminutive bathtub still in place. along the eastern side is also shown the oil press, where olives were once made to yield their coveted juices, and from the press proper a stone gutter conducted the fluid down to the point where jars were placed to receive it. this discovery of oil presses in ancient buildings, by the way, has served in more than one case to arouse speculation as to the antiquity of oil lamps such as were once supposed to belong only to a much later epoch. whether in the minoan days they had such lamps or not, it is known that they had at least an oil press and a good one. in the side of the hill below the main palace of minos has been unearthed a smaller structure, which they now call the "villa," and in which several terraces, have been uncovered rather similar to the larger building above. here is another throne room, cunningly contrived to be lighted by a long shaft of light from above falling on the seat of justice itself, while the rest of the room is in obscurity. it may be that it requires a stretch of the imagination to compare the palace of cnossos with troy, but nevertheless there are one or two features that seem not unlike the discoveries made by dr. schliemann on that famous site. notably so, it seems to me, are the traces of the final fire, which are to be seen at cnossos as at troy, and the huge jars, which may be compared with the receptacles the trojan excavators unearthed, and found still to contain dried peas and other things that the trojans left behind when they fled from their sacked and burning city. few are privileged to visit the site of priam's city, which is hard, indeed, to reach; but it is easy enough to make the excursion to candia and visit the palace of old king minos, which is amply worth the trouble, besides giving a glimpse of a civilization that is possibly vastly older than even that of troy and mycenæ. for those who reverence the great antiquities, candia and its pre-classic suburb are distinctly worth visiting, and are unique among the sights of the ancient hellenic and pre-hellenic world. corfu[63] by edward a. freeman from whichever side our traveler draws near to corfu, he comes from lands where greek influence and greek colonization spread in ancient times, but from which the greek elements have been gradually driven out, partly by the barbarism of the east, partly by the rival civilization of the west. the land which we see is hellenic in a sense in which not even sicily, not even the great hellas of southern italy, much less than the dalmatian archipelago, ever became hellenic. prom the first historic glimpse which we get of korkyra,[64] it is not merely a land fringed by hellenic colonies; it is a hellenic island, the dominion of a single hellenic city, a territory the whole of whose inhabitants were, at the beginning of recorded history, either actually hellenic or so thoroughly hellenized that no one thought of calling their hellenic position in question. modern policy has restored it to its old position by making it an integral portion of the modern greek kingdom. to the south of the present town, connected with it by a favorite walk of the inhabitants of corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly into the sea. both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive trees which form so marked a feature in the scenery of the island. a few houses skirt the base, growing on the land side into the suburb of kastrades, which may pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. and from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town, stands out the villa of the king of the greeks, the chief modern dwelling on the site of ancient korkyra. this peninsular hill, still known as palaiopolis, was the site of the old corinthian city whose name is so familiar to every reader of thucydides. on either side of it lies one of its two forsaken harbors. between the old and the new city lies the so-called harbor of alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far inland, lies the old hyllaic harbor, bearing the name of one of the three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a dorian commonwealth.... this last is the corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world, with one exception. for fourteen hundred years the history of the island is the history of endless changes of masters. we see it first a nominal ally, then a direct possession, of rome and of constantinople; we then see it formed into a separate byzantine principality, conquered by the norman lord of sicily, again a possession of the empire, then a momentary possession of venice, again a possession of the sicilian kingdom under its angevin kings, till at last it came back to venetian rule, and abode for four hundred years under the lion of saint mark. then it became part of that first strange septinsular republic of which the czar was to be the protector and the sultan the overlord. then it was a possession of france; then a member of the second septinsular republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of england; now at last it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces of the modern greek kingdom. of the modern city there is but little to say. as becomes a city which was so long a venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the character of an italian town. it is rich in street arcades; but they present but few architectural features; and we find none of those various forms of ornamental window so common, not only in venice and verona, but in spalato, cattaro, and traü. the churches in the modern city are architecturally worthless. they are interesting so far as they will give to many their first impression of orthodox arrangement and orthodox ritual. the few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong to the elder city. the suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of its own. rhodes[65] by charles dudley warner coming on deck the next morning at the fresh hour of sunrise, i found we were at rhodes. we lay just off the semicircular harbor, which is clasped by walls--partly shaken down by earthquakes--which have noble, round towers at each embracing end. rhodes is, from the sea, one of the most picturesque cities in the mediterranean, altho it has little remains of that ancient splendor which caused strabo to prefer it to rome or alexandria. the harbor wall, which is flanked on each side by stout and round, stone windmills, extends up the hill, and becoming double, surrounds the old town; these massive fortifications of the knights of st. john have withstood the onsets of enemies and the tremors of the earth, and, with the ancient moat, excite the curiosity of this so-called peaceful age of iron-clads and monster cannon. the city ascends the slope of the hill and passes beyond the wall. outside and on the right toward the sea are a picturesque group of a couple of dozen stone windmills, and some minarets and a church-tower or two. higher up the hill is sprinkled a little foliage, a few mulberry trees, and an isolated palm or two; and, beyond, the island is only a mass of broken, bold, rocky mountains. of its forty-five miles of length, running southwesterly from the little point on which the city stands, we can see but little. whether or not rhodes emerged from the sea at the command of apollo, the greeks exprest by this tradition of its origin their appreciation of its gracious climate, fertile soil, and exquisite scenery. from remote antiquity it had fame as a seat of arts and letters, and of a vigorous maritime power, and the romance of its early centuries was equaled if not surpassed when it became the residence of the knights of st. john. i believe that the first impress of its civilization was given by the phoenicians; it was the home of the dorian race before the time of the trojan war, and its three cities were members of the dorian hexapolis; it was, in fact, a flourishing maritime confederacy strong enough to send colonies to the distant italian coast, and sybaris and parthenope (modern naples) perpetuated the luxurious refinement of their founders. the city of rhodes itself was founded about four hundred years before christ, and the splendor of its palaces, its statues and paintings gave it a pre-eminence among the most magnificent cities of the ancient world. if the earth of this island could be made to yield its buried treasures as cyprus has, we should doubtless have new proofs of the influence of asiatic civilization upon the greeks, and be able to trace in the early doric arts and customs the superior civilization of the phoenicians, and of the masters of the latter in science and art, the egyptians. naturally, every traveler who enters the harbor of rhodes hopes to see the site of one of the seven wonders of the world, the colossus. he is free to place it on either mole at the entrance of the harbor, but he comprehends at once that a statue which was only one hundred and five feet high could never have extended its legs across the port. the fame of this colossal bronze statue of the sun is disproportioned to the period of its existence; it stood only fifty-six years after its erection, being shaken down by an earthquake in the year 224 b.c., and encumbering the ground with its fragments till the advent of the moslem conquerors. passing from the quay through a highly ornamented gothic gateway, we ascended the famous historic street, still called the street of the knights, the massive houses of which have withstood the shocks of earthquakes and the devastation of saracenic and turkish occupation. this street, of whose palaces we have heard so much, is not imposing; it is not wide, its solid stone houses are only two stories high, and their fronts are now disfigured by cheap arab balconies; but the façades are gray with age. all along are remains of carved windows. gothic sculptured doorways and shields and coats of arms, crosses and armorial legends, are set in the walls, partially defaced by time and the respect of suleiman for the knights, have spared the mementos of their faith and prowess. i saw no inscriptions that are intact, but made out upon one shield the words "voluntas mei est." the carving is all beautiful. we went through the silent streets, waking only echoes of the past, out to the ruins of the once elegant church of st. john, which was shaken down by a powder-explosion some thirty years ago, and utterly flattened by an earthquake some years afterward. outside the ramparts we met, and saluted, with the freedom of travelers, a gorgeous turk who was taking the morning air, and whom our guide in bated breath said was the governor. in this part of the town is the mosque of suleiman; in the portal are two lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of some troubadour knight. wherever we went we found bits of old carving, remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. the town is saturated with the old knights. near the mosque is a foundation of charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to come and cook their food; it is in decay now, and the rooks were sailing about its old, round-topped chimneys. there are no hellenic remains in the city, and the only remembrance of that past which we searched for was the antique coin, which has upon one side the head of medusa and upon the other the rose (rhoda) which gave the town its name. the town was quiet; but in pursuit of this coin in the jews' quarter we started up swarms of traders, were sent from isaac to jacob, and invaded dark shops and private houses where jewish women and children were just beginning to complain of the morning light. our guide was a jolly greek, who was willing to awaken the whole town in search of a silver coin. the traders, when we had routed them out, had little to show in the way of antiquities. perhaps the best representative of the modern manufactures of rhodes is the wooden shoe, which is in form like the damascus clog, but is inlaid with more taste. the people whom we encountered in our morning walk were greeks or jews. the morning atmosphere was delicious, and we could well believe that the climate of rhodes is the finest in the mediterranean, and also that it is the least exciting of cities. mt. athos[66] by charles dudley warner beyond thasos is the thracian coast and mt. pangaus, and at the foot of it philippi, the macedonian town where republican rome fought its last battle, where cassius leaned upon his sword-point, believing everything lost. brutus transported the body of his comrade to thasos and raised for him a funeral pyre; and twenty days later, on the same field, met again that specter of death which had summoned him to philippi. it was not many years after this victory of the imperial power that a greater triumph was won at philippi, when paul and silas, cast into prison, sang praises unto god at midnight, and an earthquake shook the house and opened the prison doors. in the afternoon we came in sight of snowy mt. athos, an almost perpendicular limestone rock, rising nearly six thousand four hundred feet out of the sea. the slender promontory which this magnificent mountain terminates is forty miles long and has only an average breadth of four miles. the ancient canal of xerxes quite severed it from the mainland. the peninsula, level at the canal, is a jagged stretch of mountains (seamed by chasms), which rise a thousand, two thousand, four thousand feet, and at last front the sea with the sublime peak of athos, the site of the most conspicuous beacon-fire of agamemnon. the entire promontory is, and has been since the time of constantine, ecclesiastic ground; every mountain and valley has its convent; besides the twenty great monasteries are many pious retreats. all the sects of the greek church are here represented; the communities pay a tribute to the sultan, but the government is in the hands of four presidents, chosen by the synod, which holds weekly sessions and takes the presidents, yearly, from the monasteries in rotation. since their foundation these religious houses have maintained against christians and saracens an almost complete independence, and preserved in their primitive simplicity the manners and usages of the earliest foundations. here, as nowhere else in europe or asia, can one behold the architecture, the dress, the habits of the middle ages. the good devotees have been able to keep themselves thus in the darkness and simplicity of the past by a rigorous exclusion of the sex always impatient of monotony, to which all the changes of the world are due. no woman, from the beginning till now, has ever been permitted to set foot on the peninsula. nor is this all; no female animal is suffered on the holy mountain, not even a hen. i suppose, tho i do not know, that the monks have an inspector of eggs, whose inherited instincts of aversion to the feminine gender enable him to detect and reject all those in which lurk the dangerous sex. few of the monks eat meat, half the days of the year are fast days, they practise occasionally abstinence from food for two or three days, reducing their pulses to the feeblest beating, and subduing their bodies to a point that destroys their value even as spiritual tabernacles. the united community is permitted to keep a guard of fifty christian soldiers, and the only moslem on the island is the solitary turkish officer who represents the sultan; his position can not be one generally coveted by the turks, since the society of women is absolutely denied him. the libraries of mt. athos are full of unarranged manuscripts, which are probably mainly filled with the theologic rubbish of the controversial ages, and can scarcely be expected to yield again anything so valuable as the tishendorf scriptures. at sunset we were close under mt. athos, and could distinguish the buildings of the laura convent, amid the woods beneath the frowning cliff. and now was produced the apparition of a sunset, with this towering mountain cone for a centerpiece, that surpassed all our experience and imagination. the sea was like satin for smoothness, absolutely waveless, and shone with the colors of changeable silk, blue, green, pink, and amethyst. heavy clouds gathered about the sun, and from behind them he exhibited burning spectacles, magnificent fireworks, vast shadow-pictures, scarlet cities, and gigantic figures stalking across the sky. from one crater of embers he shot up a fan-like flame that spread to the zenith and was reflected on the water. his rays lay along the sea in pink, and the water had the sheen of iridescent glass. the whole sea for leagues was like this; even lemnos and samothrace lay in a dim pink and purple light in the east. there were vast clouds in huge walls, with towers and battlements, and in all fantastic shapes--one a gigantic cat with a preternatural tail, a cat of doom four degrees long. all this was piled about mt. athos, with its sharp summit of snow, its dark sides of rock. footnotes: [1] from "pictures from italy." dickens made his trip to italy in 1844. [2] from "italy: florence and venice." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers. henry holt & co. copyright, 1869. translated by john durand. [3] begun in 1386. its architects were germans and frenchmen. [4] from "italy: florence and venice." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1869. translated by john durand. [5] from "the story of pisa." published by e. p. dutton & co. [6] from "pictures from italy." [7] from "cities of southern italy and sicily." [8] from "travels in italy." [9] a german friend with whom goethe was traveling. [10] from "pictures from italy." [11] from "italy: rome and naples." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1869. translated by john durand. [12] this term designates a road built along the rocky shore of a seaside, being a figurative application of the architectural term "cornice."--translator's note. [13] from "cities of southern italy and sicily." [14] from a letter to thomas love peacock, written in 1819. [15] from "pictures from italy." [16] from "journeys in italy." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, brentano's. copyright, 1902. [17] the memoir writer. [18] from "journeys in italy." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, brentano's. copyright, 1902. [19] from "unknown switzerland." published by james pott & co. politically, lake lugano is part swiss and part italian. [20] the st. gothard. [21] from a letter to thomas love peacock, written in 1818. [22] from "the spell of the italian lakes." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, l. c. page & co. copyright, 1907. [23] from "remarks on several parts of italy in the years 1701, 1702, 1703." [24] in the town are now about 1,500 people; in the whole territory of the republic, 9,500. san marino lies about fourteen miles southwest from rimini. [25] at the present time, fourteen hundred years; so that san marino is the oldest as well as the smallest republic in the world. [26] from "french and italian note-books." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, houghton, mifflin co., publishers of hawthorne's works. copyright, 1871, 1883, 1889. [27] the author's son, julian hawthorne. [28] from "italian cities." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, charles scribner's sons. copyright, 1900. [29] from "italy: florence and venice." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1869. [30] from "historical and architectural sketches: chiefly italian." published by the macmillan co. [31] from "cities of southern italy and sicily." [32] from "letters of a traveler." [33] from "historical and architectural sketches: chiefly italian." published by the macmillan co. [34] from "sicily: the garden of the mediterranean." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, l. c. page & co. copyright, 1909. [35] from "the history of sicily." published by the macmillan co. [36] the greek name for girgenti. [37] from "travels in italy." [38] from "travels in italy." [39] from "sicily: the garden of the mediterranean." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, l. c. page & co. copyright, 1909. [40] from "vacation days in greece." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, charles scribner's sons. copyright, 1903. [41] from "constantinople." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1875. [42] from "rambles and studies in greece." published by the macmillan co. [43] from "travels in greece and russia." published by g. p. putnam's sons. [44] from the "description of greece." pausanias was a greek traveler and geographer who lived in the second century a.d.--in the time of the roman emperors, hadrian and marcus aurelius. [45] from "rambles and studies in greece." published by the macmillan co. [46] the venetian commander who bombarded the parthenon in 1687. [47] edward dodwell (1767-1832), an english traveler and archeologist, notable for his investigations in greece when it had been little explored, and author of various records of his work.--author's note. [48] from "rambles and studies in greece." published by the macmillan co. [49] this very pattern, in mahogany, with cane seats, and adapted, like all greek chairs, for loose cushions, was often used in chippendale work, and may still be found in old mansions furnished at that epoch.--author's note. [50] from "rambles and studies in greece." published by the macmillan co. [51] from "travels in greece and russia." published by g. p. putnam's sons. [52] from "rambles and studies in greece." published by the macmillan co. [53] from "greece and the aegean islands." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1907. [54] from the "description of greece." pausanias wrote in the time of hadrian and marcus aurelius. [55] from "vacation days in greece." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, charles scribner's sons. copyright, 1903. [56] from "in the levant." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1875. salonica, formerly turkish territory, was added to the territory of greece in 1913, under the terms of the treaty of peace that followed the balkan war against turkey. [57] from "in the levant." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1875. [58] from "travels in greece and russia." published by g. p. putnam's sons. [59] from "travels in greece and russia," published by g. p. putnam's sons. [60] from "rambles and studies in greece." published by the macmillan co. [61] from "travels in greece and russia." published by g. p. putnam's sons. [62] from "greece and the ægean islands." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1907. [63] from "sketches from the subject and neighbor lands of venice." published by the macmillan co. [64] the ancient greek name of corfu. [65] from "in the levant." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1876. [66] from "in the levant." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1876. as one of the results of the balkan war of 1912-1913, mt. athos, which had formerly been under turkish rule, was added to the territory of greece. nature made mt. athos a part of the mainland, but a canal was cut by xerxes across the lowland at the base of the lofty promontory, making it an island. some parts of this canal still remain. [illustration: courtesy international mercantile marine co. the coliseum and arch of titus] seeing europe with famous authors selected and edited with introductions, etc. by francis w. halsey _editor of "great epochs in american history" associate editor of "the worlds famous orations" and of "the best of the world's classics," etc._ in ten volumes illustrated vol. vii italy, sicily, and greece part one funk & wagnalls company new york and london copyright, 1914, by funk & wagnalls company [_printed in the united states of america_] introduction to volumes vii and viii italy, sicily and greece tourists in great numbers now go to italy by steamers that have naples and genoa for ports. by the fast channel steamers, however, touching at cherbourg and havre, one may make the trip in less time (rail journey included). in going to rome, four days could thus be saved; but the expense will be greater--perhaps forty per cent. ... "and now, fair italy! thou art the garden of the world, the home of all art yields, and nature can decree; even in thy desert, what is like to thee? thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste more rich than other climes' fertility; thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced with an immaculate charm which can not be defaced." at least four civilizations, and probably five, have dominated italy; together they cover a period of more than 3,000 years--pelasgian, etruscan, greek, roman, italian. of these the pelasgian is, in the main, legendary. next came the etruscan. how old that civilization is no man knows, but its beginnings date from at least 1000 b.c.--that is, earlier than homer's writings, and earlier by nearly three centuries than the wall built by romulus around rome. the etruscan state was a federation of twelve cities, embracing a large part of central and northern italy--from near naples as far north perhaps as milan and the great lombard plain. etruscans thus dominated the largest, and certainly the fairest, parts of italy. before rome was founded, the etruscan cities were populous and opulent commonwealths. together they formed one of the great naval powers of the mediterranean. of their civilization, we have abundant knowledge from architectural remains, and, from thousands of inscriptions still extant. cortona was one of their oldest towns. "ere troy itself arose, cortona was." after the etruscans, came greeks, who made flourishing settlements in southern italy, the chief of which was paestum, founded not later than 600 b.c. stupendous ruins survive at paestum; few more interesting ones have come down to us from the world of ancient hellas. the oldest dates from about 570 b.c. here was once the most fertile and beautiful part of italy, celebrated for its flowers so that virgil praised them. it is now a lonely and forsaken land, forbidding and malarious. once thickly populated, it has become scarcely more than a haunt of buffalos and peasants, who wander indifferent among these colossal remains of a vanished race. these, however, are not the civilizations that do most attract tourists to italy, but the remains found there of ancient rome. of that empire all modern men are heirs--heirs of her marvelous political structure, of her social and industrial laws. last of these five civilizations is the italian, the beginnings of which date from theodoric the goth, who in the fifth century set up a kingdom independent of rome; but gothic rule was of short life, and then came the lombards, who for two hundred years were dominant in northern and central parts, or until charlemagne grasped their tottering kingdom and put on their famous iron crown. in the south charlemagne's empire never flourished. that part of italy was for centuries the prey of saracens, magyars and scandinavians. from these events emerged modern italy--the rise of her vigorous republics, pisa, genoa, florence, venice; the dawn, meridian splendor and decline of her great schools of sculpture, painting and architecture, the power and beauty of which have held the world in subjection; her literature, to which also the world has become a willing captive; her splendid municipal spirit; a church, whose influence has circled the globe, and in which historians, in a spiritual sense, have seen a survival of imperial rome. but here are tales that every schoolboy hears. sicily is reached in a night by steamer from naples to palermo, or the tourist may go by train from naples to reggio, and thence by ferry across the strait to messina. its earliest people were contemporaries of the etruscans. phoenicians also made settlements there, as they did in many parts of the mediterranean, but these were purely commercial enterprises. real civilization in sicily dates from neither of those races, but from dorian and ionic greeks, who came perhaps as early as the founding of rome--that is, in the seventh or eighth century b.c. the great cities of the sicilian greeks were syracuse, segesta and girgenti, where still survive colossal remains of their genius. in military and political senses, the island for 3,000 years has been overrun, plundered and torn asunder by every race known to mediterranean waters. beside those already named, are carthaginians under hannibal, vandals under genseric, goths under theodoric, byzantines under belisarius, saracens from asia minor, normans under robert guiscard, german emperors of the thirteenth century, french angevine princes (in whose time came the sicilian vespers), spaniards of the house of aragon, french under napoleon, austrians of the nineteenth century, and then--that glorious day when garibaldi transferred it to the victorious sardinian king. the tourist who seeks greece from northern europe may go from trieste by steamer along the dalmatian coast (in itself a trip of fine surprizes), to cattaro and corfu, transferring to another steamer for the piræus, the port of athens; or from italy by steamer direct from brindisi, the ancient brundusium, whence sailed all roman expeditions to the east, and where in retirement once dwelt cicero. no writer has known where to date the beginnings of civilization in greece, but with mycenæ, tiryns, and the minoan palace of crete laid bare, antiquarians have pointed the way to dates far older than anything before recorded. the palace of minos is ancient enough to make the homeric age seem modern. with the dorian invasion of greece about 1000 b.c., begins that greek civilization of which we have so much authentic knowledge. dorian influence was confined largely to sparta, but it spread to many greek colonies in the central mediterranean and in the levant. it became a powerful influence, alike in art, in domestic life, and in political supremacy. one of its noblest achievements was its help in keeping out the persian, and another in supplanting in the mediterranean the commercial rule of phoenicians. attica and sparta became world-famous cities, with stupendous achievements in every domain of human art and human efficiency. the colossal debt all europe and all america owe them, is known to everyone who has ever been to school. f. w. h. contents of volume vii italy, sicily, and greece--part one introduction to vols. vii and viii--by the editor. i--rome page first days in the eternal city--by johann wolfgang von goethe 1 the antiquities--by joseph addison 10 the palace of the cæsars--by rodolfo lanciani 17 the coliseum--by george s. hillard 24 the pantheon--by george s. hillard 29 hadrian's tomb--by rodolfo lanciani 32 trajan's forum--by francis wey 35 the baths of caracalla--by hippolyte adolphe taine 37 the aqueduct builders--by rodolfo lanciani 41 the quarries and bricks of the ancient city--by rodolfo lanciani 45 palm sunday in st. peter--by grace greenwood (mrs. lippincott) 53 the election of a pope--by cardinal wiseman 55 an audience with pius x.--by mary emogene hazeltine 59 the ascent of the dome of st. peter's--by george s. hillard 64 santa maria maggiore--by hippolyte adolphe taine 67 catacombs and crypts--by charles dickens 69 the cemetery of the capuchins--by nathaniel hawthorne 73 the burial place of keats and shelley--by nathaniel parker willis 75 excursions near rome--by charles dickens 78 ii--florence the approach by carriage road--by nathaniel hawthorne 83 the old palace and the loggia--by theophile gautier 86 the origins of the city--by grant allen 92 the cathedral--by hippolyte adolphe taine 96 the ascent of the dome of brunelleschi--by mr. and mrs. edwin h. blashfield 102 arnolfo, giotto and brunelleschi--by mrs. oliphant 106 ghiberti's gates--by charles yriarte 116 the ponte vecchio--by charles yriarte 119 santa croce--by charles yriarte 121 the uffizi gallery--by hippolyte adolphe taine 125 florence eighty years ago--by william cullen bryant 131 iii--venice the approach from the sea--by charles yriarte 138 the approach by train--by the editor 140 a tour of the grand canal--by theophile gautier 143 st. mark's church--by john ruskin 148 how the old campanile was built--by horatio f. brown 155 how the campanile fell--by horatio f. brown 161 the palace of the doges--by john ruskin 163 the lagoons--by horatio f. brown 174 the decline amid splendor--by hippolyte adolphe taine 177 the doves of st. mark's--by horatio f. brown 183 torcello, the mother city--by john ruskin 186 cadore, titian's birthplace--by amelia b. edwards 189 list of illustrations volume vii frontispiece the coliseum and the arch of titus preceding page 1 the pantheon, rome rome: the tiber, castle of st. angelo, and dome of st. peter's rome: ruins of the palace of the cæsars rome: the san sebastian gate the tomb of metella on the appian way the tarpian rock in rome interior of the coliseum the coliseum, rome st. peter's, rome rome: interior of st. peter's rome: interior of santa maria maggiore the cathedral, florence following page 96 florence: bridge across the arno florence: the old palace florence: the loggia di lanzi florence: cloister of santa maria novella florence: cloister of san marco florence: the pitti palace florence: house of dante front of st. mark's, venice interior of st. mark's, venice the ducal palace, venice venice: piazza of st. mark's, ducal palace on the left view of venice from the campanile [illustration: the pantheon of rome courtesy john c. winston co.] [illustration: the tiber, castle of st. angelo, and dome of st. peter's ruins of the palace of the cæsars] [illustration: the san sebastian gate of rome] [illustration: the tomb of metella on the appian way courtesy john c. winston co.] [illustration: the tarpeian rock in rome] [illustration: interior of the coliseum] [illustration: the coliseum] [st. peter's, rome courtesy john c. winston co.] [illustration: rome: interior of st. peter's] [illustration: rome: interior of santa maria maggiore] [illustration: the cathedral of florence] i rome first days in the eternal city[1] by johann wolfgang von goethe at last i am arrived in this great capital of the world. if fifteen years ago i could have seen it in good company, with a well-informed guide, i should have thought myself very fortunate. but as it was to be that i should thus see it alone, and with my own eyes, it is well that this joy has fallen to my lot so late in life. over the mountains of the tyrol i have as good as flown. verona, vicenza, padua, and venice i have carefully looked at; hastily glanced at ferrara, cento, bologna, and scarcely seen florence at all. my anxiety to reach rome was so great, and it so grew with me every moment, that to think of stopping anywhere was quite out of the question; even in florence, i only stayed three hours. now i am here at my ease, and as it would seem, shall be tranquilized for my whole life; for we may almost say that a new life begins when a man once sees with his own eyes all that before he has but partially heard or read of. all the dreams of my youth i now behold realized before me; the subjects of the first engravings i ever remembered seeing (several views of rome were hung up in an anteroom of my father's house) stand bodily before my sight, and all that i had long been acquainted with, through paintings or drawings, engravings, or wood-cuts, plaster-casts, and cork models are here collectively presented to my eye. wherever i go i find some old acquaintance in this new world; it is all just as i had thought it, and yet all is new; and just the same might i remark of my own observations and my own ideas. i have not gained any new thoughts, but the older ones have become so defined, so vivid, and so coherent, that they may almost pass for new ones.... i have now been here seven days, and by degrees have formed in my mind a general idea of the city. we go diligently backward and forward. while i am thus making myself acquainted with the plan of old and new rome, viewing the ruins and the buildings, visiting this and that villa, the grandest and most remarkable objects are slowly and leisurely contemplated. i do but keep my eyes open and see, and then go and come again, for it is only in rome one can duly prepare oneself for rome. it must, in truth, be confessed, that it is a sad and melancholy business to prick and track out ancient rome in new rome; however, it must be done, and we may hope at least for an incalculable gratification. we meet with traces both of majesty and of ruin, which alike surpass all conception; what the barbarians spared, the builders of new rome made havoc of.... when one thus beholds an object two thousand years old and more, but so manifoldly and thoroughly altered by the changes of time, but, sees nevertheless, the same soil, the same mountains, and often indeed the same walls and columns, one becomes, as it were, a contemporary of the great counsels of fortune, and thus it becomes difficult for the observer to trace from the beginning rome following rome, and not only new rome succeeding to the old, but also the several epochs of both old and new in succession. i endeavor, first of all, to grope my way alone through the obscurer parts, for this is the only plan by which one can hope fully and completely to perfect by the excellent introductory works which have been written from the fifteenth century to the present day. the first artists and scholars have occupied their whole lives with these objects. and this vastness has a strangely tranquilizing effect upon you in rome, while you pass from place to place, in order to visit the most remarkable objects. in other places one has to search for what is important; here one is opprest, and borne down with numberless phenomena. wherever one goes and casts a look around, the eye is at once struck with some landscape--forms of every kind and style; palaces and ruins, gardens and statuary, distant views of villas, cottages and stables, triumphal arches and columns, often crowding so close together, that they might all be sketched on a single sheet of paper. he ought to have a hundred hands to write, for what can a single pen do here; and, besides, by the evening one is quite weary and exhausted with the day's seeing and admiring. my strange, and perhaps whimsical, incognito proves useful to me in many ways that i never should have thought of. as every one thinks himself in duty bound to ignore who i am, and consequently never ventures to speak to me of myself and my works,[2] they have no alternative left them but to speak of themselves, or of the matters in which they are most interested, and in this way i become circumstantially informed of the occupations of each, and of everything remarkable that is either taken in hand or produced. hofrath reiffenstein good-naturedly humors this whim of mine; as, however, for special reasons, he could not bear the name which i had assumed, he immediately made a baron of me, and i am now called the "baron gegen rondanini über" (the baron who lives opposite to the palace rondanini). this designation is sufficiently precise, especially as the italians are accustomed to speak of people either by their christian names, or else by some nickname. enough; i have gained my object; and i escape the dreadful annoyance of having to give to everybody an account of myself and my works.... in rome, the rotunda,[3] both by its exterior and interior, has moved me to offer a willing homage to its magnificence. in st. peter's i learned to understand how art, no less than nature, annihilates the artificial measures and dimensions of man. and in the same way the apollo belvidere also has again drawn me out of reality. for as even the most correct engravings furnish no adequate idea of these buildings, so the case is the same with respect to the marble original of this statue, as compared with the plaster models of it, which, however, i formerly used to look upon as beautiful. here i am now living with a calmness and tranquility to which i have for a long while been a stranger. my practise to see and take all things as they are, my fidelity in letting the eye be my light, my perfect renunciation of all pretension, have again come to my aid, and make me calmly, but most intensely, happy. every day has its fresh remarkable object--every day its new grand unequaled paintings, and a whole which a man may long think of, and dream of, but which with all his power of imagination he can never reach. yesterday i was at the pyramid of cestius, and in the evening on the palatine, on the top of which are the ruins of the palace of the cæsars, which stand there like walls of rock. of all this, however, no idea can be conveyed! in truth, there is nothing little here; altho, indeed, occasionally something to find fault with--something more or less absurd in taste, and yet even this partakes of the universal grandeur of all around.... yesterday i visited the nymph egeria, and then the hippodrome of caracalla, the ruined tombs along the via appia, and the tomb of metella, which is the first to give one a true idea of what solid masonry really is. these men worked for eternity--all causes of decay were calculated, except the rage of the spoiler, which nothing can resist. the remains of the principal aqueduct are highly venerable. how beautiful and grand a design, to supply a whole people with water by so vast a structure! in the evening we came upon the coliseum, when it was already twilight. when one looks at it, all else seems little; the edifice is so vast, that one can not hold the image of it in one's soul--in memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to find it every time greater than before. we entered the sistine chapel, which we found bright and cheerful, and with a good light for the pictures. "the last judgment" divided our admiration with the paintings on the roof by michael angelo. i could only see and wonder. the mental confidence and boldness of the master, and his grandeur of conception, are beyond all expression. after we had looked at all of them over and over again, we left this sacred building, and went to st. peter's, which received from the bright heavens the loveliest light possible, and every part of it was clearly lit up. as men willing to be pleased, we were delighted with its vastness and splendor, and did not allow an over-nice or hypercritical taste to mar our pleasure. we supprest every harsher judgment; we enjoyed the enjoyable. lastly we ascended the roof of the church, where one finds in little the plan, of a well-built city. houses and magazines, springs (in appearance at least), churches, and a great temple all in the air, and beautiful walks between. we mounted the dome, and saw glistening before us the regions of the apennines, soracte, and toward tivoli the volcanic hills. frascati, castelgandolfo, and the plains, and beyond all the sea. close at our feet lay the whole city of rome in its length and breadth, with its mountain palaces, domes, etc. not a breath of air was moving, and in the upper dome it was (as they say) like being in a hot-house. when we had looked enough at these things, we went down, and they opened for us the doors in the cornices of the dome, the tympanum, and the nave. there is a passage all round, and from above you can take a view of the whole church, and of its several parts. as we stood on the cornices of the tympanum, we saw beneath us the pope passing to his mid-day devotions. nothing, therefore, was wanting to make our view of st. peter's perfect. we at last descended to the piazza, and took in a neighboring hotel a cheerful but frugal meal, and then set off for st. cecilia's. it would take many words to describe the decorations of this church, which was crammed full of people; not a stone of the edifice was to be seen. the pillars were covered with red velvet wound round with gold lace; the capitals were overlaid with embroidered velvet, so as to retain somewhat of the appearance of capitals, and all the cornices and pillars were in like manner covered with hangings. all the entablatures of the walls were also covered with life-like paintings, so that the whole church seemed to be laid out in mosaic. around the church, and on the high altar more than two hundred wax tapers were burning. it looked like a wall of lights, and the whole nave was perfectly lit up. the aisles and side altars were equally adorned and illuminated. right opposite the high altar, and under the organ, two scaffolds were erected, which also were covered with velvet, on one of which were placed the singers, and on the other the instruments, which kept up one unbroken strain of music.... and yet these glorious objects are even still like new acquaintances to me. one has not yet lived with them, nor got familiar with their peculiarities. some of them attract us with irresistible power, so that for a time one feels indifferent, if not unjust, toward all others. thus, for instance, the pantheon, the apollo belvedere, some colossal heads, and very recently the sistine chapel, have by turns so won my whole heart, that i scarcely saw any thing besides them. but, in truth, can man, little as man always is, and accustomed to littleness, ever make himself equal to all that here surrounds him of the noble, the vast, and the refined? even tho he should in any degree adapt himself to it, then how vast is the multitude of objects that immediately press upon him from all sides, and meet him at every turn, of which each demands for itself the tribute of his whole attention. how is one to get out of the difficulty? no other way assuredly than by patiently allowing it to work, becoming industrious, and attending the while to all that others have accomplished for our benefit. of the beauty of a walk through rome by moonlight it is impossible to form a conception, without having witnessed it. all single objects are swallowed up by the great masses of light and shade, and nothing but grand and general outlines present themselves to the eye. for three several days we have enjoyed to the full the brightest and most glorious of nights. peculiarly beautiful at such a time is the coliseum. at night it is always closed; a hermit dwells in a little shrine within its range, and beggars of all kinds nestle beneath its crumbling arches; the latter had lit a fire on the arena, and a gentle wind bore down the smoke to the ground, so that the lower portion of the ruins was quite hid by it, while above the vast walls stood out in deeper darkness before the eye. as we stopt at the gate to contemplate the scene through the iron gratings, the moon shone brightly in the heavens above. presently the smoke found its way up the sides, and through every chink and opening, while the moon lit it up like a cloud. the sight was exceedingly glorious. in such a light one ought also to see the pantheon, the capitol, the portico of st. peter's, and the other grand streets and squares--and thus sun and moon, like the human mind, have quite a different work to do here from elsewhere, where the vastest and yet the most elegant of masses present themselves to their rays. the antiquities of the city[4] by joseph addison there are in rome two sets of antiquities, the christian, and the heathen. the former, tho of a fresher date, are so embroiled with fable and legend, that one receives but little satisfaction from searching into them. the other give a great deal of pleasure to such as have met with them before in ancient authors; for a man who is in rome can scarce see an object that does not call to mind a piece of a latin poet or historian. among the remains of old rome, the grandeur of the commonwealth shows itself chiefly in works that were either necessary or convenient, such as temples, highways, aqueducts, walls, and bridges of the city. on the contrary, the magnificence of rome under the emperors is seen principally in such works as were rather for ostentation or luxury, than any real usefulness or necessity, as in baths, amphitheaters, circuses, obelisks, triumphal pillars, arches, and mausoleums; for what they added to the aqueducts was rather to supply their baths and naumachias, and to embellish the city with fountains, than out of any real necessity there was for them.... no part of the antiquities of rome pleased me so much as the ancient statues, of which there is still an incredible variety. the workmanship is often the most exquisite of anything in its kind. a man would wonder how it were possible for so much life to enter into marble, as may be discovered in some of the best of them; and even in the meanest, one has the satisfaction of seeing the faces, postures, airs, and dress of those that have lived so many ages before us. there is a strange resemblance between the figures of the several heathen deities, and the descriptions that the latin poets have given us of them; but as the first may be looked upon as the ancienter of the two, i question not but the roman poets were the copiers of the greek statuaries. tho on other occasions we often find the statuaries took their subjects from the poets. the laocöon is too known an instance among many others that are to be met with at rome. i could not forbear taking particular notice of the several musical instruments that are to be seen in the hands of the apollos, muses, fauns, satyrs, bacchanals, and shepherds, which might certainly give a great light to the dispute for preference between the ancient and modern music. it would, perhaps, be no impertinent design to take off all their models in wood, which might not only give us some notion of the ancient music, but help us to pleasanter instruments than are now in use. by the appearance they make in marble, there is not one string-instrument that seems comparable to our violins, for they are all played on either by the bare fingers, or the plectrum, so that they were incapable of adding any length to their notes, or of varying them by those insensible swellings, and wearings away of sound upon the same string, which give so wonderful a sweetness to our modern music. besides that, the string-instruments must have had very low and feeble voices, as may be guessed from the small proportion of wood about them, which could not contain air enough to render the strokes, in any considerable measure, full and sonorous. there is a great deal of difference in the make, not only of the several kinds of instruments, but even among those of the same name. the syringa, for example, has sometimes four, and sometimes more pipes, as high as the twelve. the same variety of strings may be observed on their harps, and of stops on their tibiæ, which shows the little foundation that such writers have gone upon, who, from a verse perhaps in virgil's eclogues, or a short passage in a classic author, have been so very nice in determining the precise shape of the ancient musical instruments, with the exact number of their pipes, strings, and stops.... tho the statues that have been found among the ruins of old rome are already very numerous, there is no question but posterity will have the pleasure of seeing many noble pieces of sculpture which are still undiscovered; for, doubtless, there are greater treasures of this nature under ground, than what are yet brought to light.[5] they have often dug into lands that are described in old authors, as the places where such particular statues or obelisks stood, and have seldom failed of success in their pursuits. there are still many such promising spots of ground that have never been searched into. a great part of the palatine mountain, for example, lies untouched, which was formerly the seat of the imperial palace, and may be presumed to abound with more treasures of this nature than any other part of rome. but whether it be that the richest of these discoveries fall into the pope's hands, or for some other reason, it is said that the prince farnese, who is the present owner of this seat, will keep his own family in the chair. there are undertakers in rome who often purchase the digging of fields, gardens, or vineyards, where they find any likelihood of succeeding, and some have been known to arrive at great estates by it. they pay according to the dimensions of the surface they are to break up; and after having made essays into it, as they do for coal in england, they rake into the most promising parts of it, tho they often find, to their disappointment, that others have been beforehand with them. however, they generally gain enough by the rubbish and bricks, which the present architects value much beyond those of a modern make, to defray the charges of their search. i was shown two spaces of ground, where part of nero's golden house stood, for which the owner has been offered an extraordinary sum of money. what encouraged the undertakers, are several very ancient trees, which grow upon the spot, from whence they conclude that these particular tracts of ground must have lain untouched for some ages. it is pity there is not something like a public register, to preserve the memory of such statues as have been found from time to time, and to mark the particular places where they have been taken up, which would not only prevent many fruitless searches for the future, but might often give a considerable light into the quality of the place, or the design of the statue. but the great magazine for all kinds of treasure, is supposed to be the bed of the tiber. we may be sure, when the romans lay under the apprehensions of seeing their city sacked by a barbarous enemy, as they have done more than once, that they would take care to bestow such of their riches this way as could best bear the water, besides what the insolence of a brutish conqueror may be supposed to have contributed, who had an ambition to waste and destroy all the beauties of so celebrated a city. i need not mention the old common-shore of rome, which ran from all parts of the town with the current and violence of an ordinary river, nor the frequent inundations of the tiber, which may have swept away many of the ornaments of its banks, nor the several statues that the romans themselves flung into it, when they would revenge themselves on the memory of an ill citizen, a dead tyrant, or a discarded favorite. at rome they have so general an opinion of the riches of this river, that the jews have formerly proffered the pope to cleanse it, so they might have for their pains what they found in the bosom of it. i have seen the valley near ponte molle, which they proposed to fashion into a new channel for it, until they had cleared the old for its reception. the pope, however, would not comply with the proposal, as fearing the heats might advance too far before they had finished their work, and produce a pestilence among his people; tho i do not see why such a design might not be executed now with as little danger as in augustus's time, were there as many hands employed upon it. the city of rome would receive a great advantage from the undertaking, as it would raise the banks and deepen the bed of the tiber, and by consequence free them from those frequent inundations to which they are so subject at present; for the channel of the river is observed to be narrower within the walls than either below or above them. next to the statues, there is nothing in rome more surprizing than that amazing variety of ancient pillars of so many kinds of marble. as most of the old statues may be well supposed to have been cheaper to their first owners than they are to a modern purchaser, several of the pillars are certainly rated at a much lower price at present than they were of old. for not to mention what a huge column of granite, serpentine, or porphyry must have cost in the quarry, or in its carriage from egypt to rome, we may only consider the great difficulty of hewing it into any form, and of giving it the due turn, proportion, and polish. the most valuable pillars about rome, for the marble of which they are made, are the four columns of oriental jasper in st. paulina's chapel at st. maria maggiore; two of oriental granite in st. pudenziana; one of transparent oriental jasper in the vatican library; four of nero-bianco, in st. cecilia transtevere; two of brocatello, and two of oriental agate in don livio's palace; two of giallo antico in st. john lateran, and two of verdi antique in the villa pamphilia. these are all entire and solid pillars, and made of such kinds of marble as are nowhere to be found but among antiquities, whether it be that the veins of it are undiscovered, or that they were quite exhausted upon the ancient buildings. among these old pillars, i can not forbear reckoning a great part of an alabaster column, which was found in the ruins of livia's portico. it is of the color of fire, and may be seen over the high altar of st. maria in campitello; for they have cut it into two pieces, and fixt it in the shape of a cross in a hole of the wall that was made on purpose to receive it; so that the light passing through it from without, makes it look, to those who are in the church, like a huge transparent cross of amber. the palace of the cæsars[6] by rodolfo lanciani the palatine hill became the residence of the roman emperors, and the center of the roman empire, not on account of its historical and traditional associations with the foundation and first growth of the city, nor because of its central and commanding position, but by a mere accident. at daybreak on september 21st, of the year 63 b.c., augustus was born in this region, in a modest house, opening on the lane called "ad capita bubula," which led from the valley, where now the coliseum stands, up the slopes of the hill toward the modern church and convent of st. bonaventura. this man, sent by god to change the condition of mankind and the state of the world, this founder of an empire which is still practically in existence,[7] never deserted the palatine hill all through his eventful career. from the lane "ad capita bubula" he moved to the house of calvus, the orator, at the northeast corner of the hill overlooking the forum; and in process of time, having become absolute master of the roman commonwealth, he settled finally on the top of the hill, having purchased for his residence the house of hortensius, a simple and modest house, indeed, with columns of the commonest kind of stone, pavements of rubble-work, and simple whitewashed walls. whether this selection of a site was made because the palatine had long before been the faubourg st. honoré, the belgravia of ancient rome, is difficult to determine. we know that the house of hortensius, chosen by augustus, was surrounded by those of clodius, scaurus, crassus, caecina, sisenna, flaccus, catiline, and other members of the aristocracy. i am persuaded, however, that the secret of the selection is to be found in the simplicity, i will even say in the poverty, of the dwelling; in fact, such extreme modesty is worthy of the good sense and the spirit of moderation shown by augustus throughout his career. he could very well sacrifice appearances to the reality of an unbounded power. it is just, at any rate, to recognize that even in his remotest resorts for temporary rest and retirement from the cares of government, he led the same kind of plain, modest life, spending all his leisure hours in arranging his collections of natural history, more especially the palaeo-ethnological or prehistoric, for which the ossiferous caverns of the island of capri supplied him with abundant materials. it was only after the victory of actium that, finding himself master of the world, he thought it expedient to give up, in a certain measure, his former habits, and live in better style. having bought through his agents some of the aristocratic palaces adjoining the old house of hortensius, among them the historical palace of catiline, he built a new and very handsome residence, but declared at the same time that he considered it as public property, not as his own. the solemn dedication of the palace took place on january 14th, of the year 26 before christ. here he lived, sleeping always in the same small cubiculum, for twenty-eight years; that is to say, until the third year after christ, when the palace was almost destroyed by fire. as soon as the news of the disaster spread throughout the empire, an almost incredible amount of money was subscribed at once, by all orders of citizens, to provide him with a new residence; and altho, with his usual moderation, he would consent to accept only one denarius from each individual subscribed, it is easy to imagine how many millions he must have realized in spite of his modesty. a new, magnificent palace rose from the ruins of the old one, but it does not appear that the plan and arrangement were changed; otherwise augustus could not have continued to sleep in the same room during the last ten years of his life, as we are told positively that he did. the work of augustus was continued by his successor and kinsman, tiberius, who built a new wing near the northwest corner of the hill, overlooking the velabrum. caligula filled with new structures the whole space between the "domus tiberiana" and the roman forum. nero, likewise, occupied with a new palace the south-east corner of the hill, overlooking the valley, where the coliseum was afterward built. domitian rebuilt the "domus augustana," injured by fire, adding to its accommodations a stadium for gymnastic sports. the same emperor raised an altogether new palace, in the space between the house of augustus, on one side, and those of caligula and tiberius on the other. septimius severus and his son restored the whole group of imperial buildings, adding a new wing at the southwest corner, known under the name of septizonium. the latest additions, of no special importance, took place under julia mamaea and heliogabalus. every emperor, to a certain extent, enlarged, altered, destroyed, and reconstructed the work of his predecessors; cutting new openings, walling up old ones, subdividing large rooms into smaller apartments, and changing their destination. one section alone of the imperial palatine buildings remained unaltered, and kept the former simplicity of its plans down to the fall of the empire--the section built by augustus across the center of the hill, which comprised the main entrance, the portico surrounding the temple of apollo, the temple itself, the greek and latin libraries, the shrine of vesta, and the imperial residence. the architectural group raised by augustus on the palatine, formed, as it were, the vestibule to his own imperial residence. we know with absolute certainty that it contained at least one hundred and twenty columns of the rarest kinds of marbles and breccias, fifty-two of which were of numidian marble, with capitals of gilt bronze; a group of lysias, comprising one chariot, four horses and two drivers, all cut in a single block of marble; the hercules of lysippus; the apollo of scopas; the latona of cephisodotos, the diana of timotheos; the bas-reliefs of the pediment by bupalos and anthermos; the quadriga of the sun in gilt bronze; exquisite ivory carvings; a bronze colossus fifty feet high; hundreds of medallions in gold, silver, and bronze; gold and silver plate; a collection of gems and cameos; and, lastly, candelabras which had been the property of alexander the great, and the admiration of the east. has the world ever seen a collection of greater artistic and material value exhibited in a single building? and we must recollect that the group built by augustus comprises only a very modest section of the palatine; that to his palace we must join the palaces of tiberius, caligula, nero, vespasian, domitian, septimius serverus, julia mamaea, and heliogabalus; that each one of these imperial residences equalled the residence of augustus, if not in pure taste, certainly in wealth, in luxury, in magnificence, in the number and value of works of art collected and stolen from greece and the east, from egypt and persia. by multiplying eight or ten times the list i have given above, the reader will get an approximate idea of the "home" of the roman emperors in its full pride and glory. i have deliberately excluded from my description the residence or private house of augustus, because he himself had deliberately excluded from it any trace of that grandeur he had so lavishly bestowed on the buildings which constituted the approach to it.... during the rule of claudius, the successor of caligula, little or nothing was done toward the enlargement or the embellishment of the palace of the cæsars. nero, however, the successor of claudius, conceived the gigantic plan of renewing and of rebuilding from the very foundations, not only the imperial residence, but the whole metropolis. in the rebuilding of the city the emperor secured for himself the lion's share; and his golden house, of which we possess such beautiful remains, occupied the whole extent from the palatine to the quirinal, where now the central railway station has been erected. its area amounted to nearly a square mile, and this enormous district was appropriated, or rather usurped, by the emperor, right in the center of a city numbering about two million inhabitants. of the wonders of the golden house it is enough to say that there were comprised within the precincts of the enchanting residence waterfalls supplied by an aqueduct fifty miles long, lakes and rivers shaded by dense masses of foliage, with harbors and docks for the imperial galleys; a vestibule containing a bronze colossus one hundred and twenty feet high; porticos three thousand feet long; farms and vineyards, pasture grounds and woods teeming with the rarest and costliest kind of game, zoological and botanical gardens; sulfur baths supplied from springs twelve miles distant; sea baths supplied from the waters of the mediterranean, sixteen miles distant at the nearest point; thousands of columns crowned with capitals of corinthian gilt metal; thousands of statues stolen from greece and asia minor; walls encrusted with gems and mother-of-pearl; banqueting-halls with ivory ceilings, from which rare flowers and precious perfumes could fall gently on the recumbent guests. more marvelous still was the ceiling of the state dining-room. it was spherical in shape, and cut in ivory, to represent the constellated skies, and kept in constant motion by machinery in imitation of the movements of the stars and planets. all these details sound like fairy-tales, like the dream of a fertile imagination; still they are described minutely by contemporary and serious writers, by suetonius, by martial and by tacitus. suetonius adds that the day nero took possession of his golden house, he was heard to exclaim, "at last i am lodged like a man." the wonders created by him, however, did not last very long. otho, his successor, on the very day of his election to the throne, signed an order of fifty millions of sesterces (two million dollars) to bring the golden house to perfection; but after his murder vespasian and titus gave back to the people the greater portion of the ground usurped by nero. they built the coliseum on the very site of nero's artificial lake, and the thermæ of titus on the foundation of his private palace; they respected only that portion of nero's insane construction which was comprised within the boundaries of the palatine hill. the coliseum[8] by george stillman hillard the venerable bede, who lived in the eighth century, is the first person who is known to have given to the flavian amphitheater its comparatively modern and now universal designation of the coliseum; tho the name, derived from a colossal statue of the emperor nero which stood near it, was probably then familiar to men's ears, as we may infer from his so calling it without explanation or remark. when in its perfect state, the exterior, with its costly ornaments in marble, and its forest of columns, lost the merit of simplicity without gaining that of grandeur. the eye was teased with a multitude of details, not in themselves good; the same defects were repeated in each story, and the real height was diminished by the projecting and ungraceful cornices. the interior arrangements were admirable; and modern architects can not sufficiently commend the skill with which eighty thousand spectators were accommodated with seats; or the ingenious contrivances, by which, through the help of spacious corridors, multiplied passages, and staircases, every person went directly to his place, and immense audiences were dispersed in less time than is required for a thousand persons to squeeze through the entries of a modern concert-room. we know that this interior of the coliseum was decorated with great splendor. the principal seats were of marble, and covered with cushions. gilded gratings, ornaments of gold, ivory, and amber, and mosaics of precious stones, displayed the generosity of the emperors, and gratified the taste of the people. how, or at what period, the work of ruin first began does not distinctly appear. an earthquake may have first shattered its ponderous arches, and thus made an opening for the destroying hand of time. there can be no doubt that it suffered violence from the hands of civil and foreign war. but more destructive agencies than those of earthquake, conflagration or war, were let loose upon it. its massive stones, fitted to each other with such nice adaptation, presented a strong temptation to the cupidity of wealthy nobles and cardinals, with whom building was a ruling passion; and for many ages the coliseum became a quarry. the palazzo della cancelleria, the palazzo barberini, the palazzo farnese, and the palazzo veneziano were all built mainly from the plunder of the coliseum; and meaner robbers emulated the rapacity of their betters, by burning into lime the fragments not available for architectural purposes. the material of which the coliseum was built is exactly fitted to the purposes of a great ruin. it is travertine, of a rich, dark, warm color, deepened and mellowed by time. there is nothing glaring, harsh, or abrupt in the harmony of tints. the blue sky above, and the green earth beneath, are in unison with a tone of coloring not unlike the brown of one of our own early winter landscapes. the travertine is also of a coarse grain and porous texture, not splintering into points and edges, but gradually corroding by natural decay. stone of such a texture everywhere opens laps and nooks for the reception and formation of soil. every grain of dust that is borne through the air by the lazy breeze of summer, instead of sliding from a glassy surface, is held where it falls. the rocks themselves crumble and decompose, and turn into a fertile mold. thus, the coliseum is throughout crowned and draped with a covering of earth, in many places of considerable depth. trailing plants clasp the stones with arms of verdure; wild flowers bloom in their seasons; and long grass nods and waves on the airy battlements. life has everywhere sprouted from the trunk of death. insects hum and sport in the sunshine; the burnished lizard darts like a tongue of green flame along the walls; and birds make the hollow quarry overflow with their songs. there is something beautiful and impressive in the contrast between luxuriant life and the rigid skeleton upon which it rests. as a matter of course, everybody goes to see the coliseum by moonlight. the great charm of the ruin under this condition is, that the imagination is substituted for sight; and the mind for the eye. the essential character of moonlight is hard rather than soft. the line between light and shadow is sharply defined, and there is no gradation of color. blocks and walls of silver are bordered by, and spring out of, chasms of blackness. but moonlight shrouds the coliseum in mystery. it opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, upon which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and tragic colors. shadowy forms of emperor and lictor and vestal virgin and gladiator and martyr come out of the darkness, and pass before us in long and silent procession. the breezes which blow through the broken arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a vast audience. by day, the coliseum is an impressive fact; by night, it is a stately vision. by day, it is a lifeless form; by night, a vital thought. the coliseum should by all means be seen by a bright starlight, or under the growing sickle of a young moon. the fainter ray and deeper gloom bring out more strongly its visionary and ideal character. when the full moon has blotted out the stars, it fills the vast gulf of the building with a flood of spectral light, which falls with a chilling touch upon the spirit; for then the ruin is like a "corpse in its shroud of snow," and the moon is a pale watcher by its side. but when the walls, veiled in deep shadow, seem a part of the darkness in which they are lost--when the stars are seen through their chasms and breaks, and sparkle along the broken line of the battlements--the scene becomes another, tho the same; more indistinct, yet not so mournful; contracting the sphere of sight, but enlarging that of thought; less burdening, but more suggestive. but under all aspects, in the blaze of noon, at sunset, by the light of the moon or stars--the coliseum stands alone and unapproached. it is the monarch of ruins. it is a great tragedy in stone, and it softens and subdues the mind like a drama of aeschylus or shakespeare. it is a colossal type of those struggles of humanity against an irresistible destiny, in which the tragic poet finds the elements of his art. the calamities which crusht the house of atreus are symbolized in its broken arches and shattered walls. built of the most durable materials, and seemingly for eternity--of a size, material, and form to defy the "strong hours" which conquer all, it has bowed its head to their touch, and passed into the inevitable cycle of decay. "and this too shall pass away"--which the eastern monarch engraved upon his signet ring--is carved upon these cyclopean blocks. the stones of the coliseum were once water; and they are now turning into dust. such is ever the circle of nature. the solid is changing into the fluid, and the fluid into the solid; and that which is unseen is alone indestructible. he does not see the coliseum aright who carries away from it no other impressions than those of form, size, and hue. it speaks an intelligible language to the wiser mind. it rebukes the peevish and consoles the patient. it teaches us that there are misfortunes which are clothed with dignity, and sorrows that are crowned with grandeur. as the same blue sky smiles upon the ruin which smiled upon the perfect structure, so the same beneficent providence bends over our shattered hopes and our answered prayers. the pantheon[9] by george stillman hillard the best preserved monument of ancient rome, and one of the most beautiful buildings of the modern city, is unhappily placed. the pantheon stands in a narrow and dirty piazza, and is shouldered and elbowed by a mob of vulgar houses. there is no breathing-space around, which it might penetrate with the light of its own serene beauty. its harmonious proportions can be seen only in front; and it has there the disadvantage of being approached from a point higher than that on which it stands. on one side is a market; and the space before the matchless portico is strewn with fish-bones, decayed vegetables, and offal.[10] forsyth, the sternest and most fastidious of architectural critics, has only "large draughts of unqualified praise" for the pantheon; and, where he finds nothing to censure, who will venture to do any thing but commend? the character of the architecture, and the sense of satisfaction which it leaves upon the mind, are proofs of the enduring charm of simplicity. the portico is perfectly beautiful. it is one hundred and ten feet long and forty-four deep, and rests upon sixteen columns of the corinthian order, the shafts being of granite and the capitals of marble. eight of these are in front, and of these eight, there are four (including the two on the extreme right and left) which have two others behind them; the portico being thus divided into three portions, like the nave and side aisles of a cathedral; the middle space, leading to the door, being wider than the others. the granite of the shafts is partly gray and partly rose-colored, but, in the shadow in which they stand, the difference of hue is hardly perceptible. the proportions of these columns are faultless; and their massive shafts and richly-carved capitals produce the effect, at once, of beauty and sublimity. the pediment above is now a bald front of ragged stone, but it was once adorned with bas-reliefs in bronze; and the holes, made by the rivets with which they were fastened, are still to be seen. the aisles of the portico were once vaulted with bronze, and massive beams or slabs of the same metal stretched across the whole structure; but this was removed by urban viii., and melted into a baldachino to deface st. peter's, and cannon to defend the castle of st. angelo; and, not content with this, he has added insult to injury, and commemorated his robbery in a latin inscription, in which he claims to be commended as for a praiseworthy act. but even this is not the heaviest weight resting on the memory of that vandal pope. he shares with bernini the reproach of having added those hideous belfries which now rise above each end of the vestibule--as wanton and unprovoked an offense against good taste as ever was committed. a cocked hat upon the statue of demosthenes in the vatican would not be a more discordant addition. the artist should have gone to the stake, before giving his hand to such a piece of disfigurement. the cell, or main portion of the building to which the portico is attached, is a simple structure, circular in form, and built of brick. it was formerly encrusted with marble. the cell and the portico stand to each other in the most harmonious relation, altho it seems to be admitted that the latter was an addition, not contemplated when the cell was built. but in the combination there is nothing forced or unnatural, and they seem as necessary and as preordained complements, one to the other, as a fine face and a fine head. the cell is a type of masculine dignity, and the portico, of feminine grace; and the result is a perfect architectural union. the interior--a rotunda, surmounted by a dome--is converted into a christian church, a purpose to which its form and structure are not well adapted; and the altars and their accessories are not improvements in an architectural point of view. but in spite of this--in spite of all that it has suffered at the hands of rapacity and bad taste--tho the panels of the majestic dome have been stript of their bronze, and the whole has been daubed over with a glaring coat of whitewash--the interior still remains, with all its rare beauty essentially unimpaired. and the reason of this is that this charm is the result of form and proportion, and can not be lost except by entire destruction. the only light which the temple receives is from a circular opening of twenty-eight feet in diameter at the top; and falling, as it does, directly from the sky, it fills the whole space with the purity of the heavens themselves. the magical effect of this kind of illumination it is impossible to describe.... the pavement of the pantheon, composed of porphyry, pavonazzetto, and giallo antico, tho constantly overflowed by the tiber, and drenched by the rains which fall upon it from the roof, is the finest in rome. there is an opening in the center, through which the water entering by the dome is carried off into a reservoir. the pantheon has a peculiar interest in the history of art, as the burial place of raphael. his grave was opened in 1833, and the remains found to be lying in the spot which vasari had pointed out. hadrian's tomb[11] by rodolfo lanciani nerva was the last emperor buried in the mausoleum of augustus.[12] trajan's ashes were laid to rest in an urn of gold under his monumental column. hadrian determined to raise a new tomb for himself and his successors, and, like augustus, selected a site on the green and shady banks of the tiber, not on the city side, however, but in the gardens of domitia, which, with those of agrippina, formed a crown property called by tacitus "nero's gardens." the mausoleum and the bridge which gave access to it were substantially finished in a.d. 136. antoninus pius, after completing the ornamental part in 139, transferred to it hadrian's ashes from their temporary burial-place in the former villa of cicero at puteoli, and was himself afterward interred there.... beside the passages of the "hadrian's life," and of dion cassius, two descriptions of the monument have come down to us, one by procopius, the other by leo i. from these we learn that it was composed of a square basement of moderate height, each side of which measured 247 feet. it was faced with blocks of parian marble, with pilasters at the corners, crowned by a capital. above the pilasters were groups of men and horses in bronze, of admirable workmanship. the basement was protected around by a sidewalk and a railing of gilt bronze, supported by marble pillars crowned with gilded peacocks, two of which are in the giardino della pigna, in the vatican. a grand circular mole, nearly a thousand feet in circumference, and also faced with blocks of parian marble, stood on the square basement and supported in its turn a cone of earth covered with evergreens, like the mausoleum of augustus. of this magnificent decoration nothing now remains except a few blocks of the coating of marble, on the east side of the quadrangle, near the bastione di s. giovanni. all that is visible of the ancient work from the outside are the blocks of peperino of the mole which once supported the outer casing. the rest, both above and below, is covered by the works of fortification constructed at various periods, from the time of honorius (393-403) to our own days. in no other monument of ancient and medieval rome is our history written, molded, as it were, so vividly, as upon the battered remains of this castle-tomb. within and around it took place all the fights for dominion with which popes, emperors, barons, barbarians, romans, have distracted the city for fifteen hundred years. of the internal arrangement of the monument nothing was known until 1825, when the principal door was discovered in the middle of the square basement facing the bridge. it opens upon a corridor leading to a large niche, which, it is conjectured, contained a statue of hadrian. the walls of this vestibule, by which modern visitors generally begin their inspection, are built of travertine, and bear evidence of having been paneled with numidian marble. the pavement is of white mosaic. on the right side of this vestibule, near the niche, begins an inclined spiral way, 30 feet high and 11 feet wide, leading up to the central chamber, which is in the form of a greek cross. there is no doubt that the tomb was adorned with statues. procopius distinctly says that, during the siege laid by the goths to the castle in 537, many of them were hurled down from the battlements upon the assailants. on the strength of this passage topographers have been in the habit of attributing to the mausoleum all the works of statuary discovered in the neighborhood; like the barberini faun now in munich, the exquisite statue of a river god described by cassiano dal pozzo, etc., as if such subjects were becoming a house of death. the mausoleum of hadrian formed part of one of the largest and noblest cemeteries of ancient rome, crossed by the via triumphalis. the tomb next in importance to it was the so-called "meta," or "sepulcrum romuli," or "sepulcrum neronis," a pyramid of great size, which stood on the site of the church of st. maria transpontina, and was destroyed by alexander vi. in 1499. trajan's forum[13] by francis wey in the midst of the busy quarters lying at the base of the quirinal, you come out upon a great piazza which you name at once without ever having seen it before; trajan's column serves as ensign for a forum, of which apollodorus of damascus erected the porticoes. the lines described by the bases of a plantation of pillars will help you to identify the pesimeter of the temple which hadrian consecrated, and the site of the ulpian library which was divided into two chambers--one for greek books, and the other for latin; and finally the situation of the basilica, opening on to the forum and with its apse in the north-northwest direction.... it was in the ulpian basilica that, in 312, constantine, having assembled the notables of the empire seated himself in the presbyterium, to proclaim his abjuration of polytheism in favor of the religion of christ; on that day and spot the prince closed the cycle of antiquity, opened the catacombs, and inaugurated the modern world. the acts of st. sylvester describe many passages of the discourse in which, "invoking truth against mischievous divisions," and declaring that he "put away superstitions born of ignorance and reared on unreason," the emperor ordains that "churches be opened to christians, and that the priests of the temples and those of christ enjoy the same privileges." he himself undertakes to build a church in his lateran palace. i do not think there exists any monument in the world more precious or more exquisite in its proportions than trajan's column, nor one that has rendered more capital service. this has been set forth with more authority than i can pretend to, by viollet-le-duc, the architect who has written best on his own art; his description sums up the subject and makes everything clear. a set of pictures of the campaigns of trajan against the decians--the bas-reliefs--reproduces the arms, the accouterments, the engines of war, the dwellings of the barbarians; we discern the breed of the warriors and their horses; we look upon the ships of the time, canoes and quinqueremes; women of all ranks, priests of all theogonies, sieges, and assaults. such are the merits of this sculptured host, that polidoro da caravaggio, giulio romano, michael angelo, and all the artists of the renaissance have drawn thence models of style and picturesque grouping. trajan's column is of pure carrara marble. the shaft measures about ninety-four english feet, by twelve in diameter at the base, and ten below the capital, which is doric and carved out of a single block; the column is composed of thirty-four blocks, hollowed out internally and cut into a winding stair. a series of bas-reliefs, divided from one another by a narrow band, run spirally around the shaft parallel to the inner staircase of a hundred and eighty-two steps, and describes twenty-three circuits to reach the platform on which the statue is placed. the foot and the pedestal are seventeen feet high; the torus, of enormous diameter, is a monolith; the whole construction rises a hundred and thirty-five feet from the ground. these thirty-four blocks, measuring eleven meters in circumference by one in height, had--a task of considerable precision--to have holes drilled in them for the screws of the staircase, it being necessary to determine from the inside precisely where these borings must be made in order not to break the continuity of the bas-reliefs, executed by several different hands, and which are more deeply worked in proportion as they gain in height, so as to appear of an equal projection. the baths of caracalla[14] by hippolyte adolphe taine you reach the baths of caracalla, the most imposing object after the coliseum that one sees in rome. these colossal structures are so many signs of their times. imperial rome plundered the entire mediterranean basin, spain, gaul, and two-thirds of england, for the benefit of a hundred thousand idlers. she amused them in the coliseum with massacres of beasts and of men; in the circus maximus with combats of athletes and with chariot races; in the theater of marcellus with pantomimes, plays, and the pageantry of arms and costume; she provided them with baths, to which they resorted to gossip, to contemplate statues, to listen to declaimers, to keep themselves cool in the heats of summer. all that had been invented of the convenient, agreeable, and beautiful, all that could be collected in the world that was curious and magnificent, was for them; the cæsars fed them and diverted them, seeking only to afford them gratification, and to obtain their acclamations. a roman of the middle classes might well regard his emperors as so many public purveyors, administering his property, relieving him from troublesome cares, furnishing him at fair rates, or for nothing, with corn, wine, and oil, giving him sumptuous meals and well-got-up fêtes, providing him with pictures, statues, pantomimists, gladiators, and lions, resuscitating his "blasé" taste every morning with some surprising novelty, and even occasionally converting themselves into actors, charioteers, singers, and gladiators for his especial delight. in order to lodge this group of amateurs in a very suitable to its regal pretensions, architecture invented original and grand forms. vast structures always indicate some corresponding excess, some immoderate concentration and accumulation of the labor of humanity. look at the gothic cathedrals, the pyramids of egypt, paris of the present day, and the docks of london! on reaching the end of a long line of narrow streets, white walls, and deserted gardens, the great ruin appears. there is nothing with which to compare its form, while the line it describes on the sky is unique. no mountains, no hills, no edifices, give any idea of it. it resembles all these; it is a human structure, which time and events have so deformed and transformed, as to render a natural production. rising upward in the air, its moss-stained embossed summit and indented crest with its wide crevices, a red, mournful, decayed mass, silently reposes in a shroud of clouds. you enter, and it seems as if you had never seen anything in the world so grand. the coliseum itself is no approach to it, so much do a multiplicity and irregularity of ruins add to the vastness of the vast enclosure. before these heaps of red corroded masonry, these round vaults spanning the air like the arches of a mighty bridge before these crumbling walls, you wonder whether an entire city did not once exist there. frequently an arch has fallen, and the monstrous mass that sustained it still stands erect, exposing remnants of staircases and fragments of arcades, like so many shapeless, deformed houses. sometimes it is cleft in the center, and a portion appears about to fall and roll away, like a huge rock. sections of wall and pieces of tottering arches cling to it and dart their projections threateningly upward in the air. the courts are strewed with various fragments, and blocks of brick welded together by the action of time, like stones incrusted with the deposits of the sea. elsewhere are arcades quite intact, piled up story upon story, the bright sky appearing behind them, and above, along the dull red brickwork is a verdant head-dress of plants, waving and rustling in the midst of the ethereal blue. here are mystic depths, wherein the bedewed shade prolongs itself among mysterious shadows. into these the ivy descends, and anemones, fennel, and mallows fringe their brinks. shafts of columns lie half-buried under climbing vines and heaps of rubbish, while luxuriant clover carpets the surrounding slopes. small green oaks, with round tops, innumerable green shrubs, and myriads of gillyflowers cling to the various projections, nestle in the hollows, and deck its crest with their yellow clusters. all these murmur in the breeze, and the birds are singing in the midst of the imposing silence.... you ascend, i know not how many stories, and, on the summit, find the pavement of the upper chambers to consist of checkered squares of marble; owing to the shrubs and plants that have taken root among them, these are disjoined in places, a fresh bit of mosaic sometimes appearing intact on removing a layer of earth. here were sixteen hundred seats of polished marble. in the baths of diocletian there were places for three thousand two hundred bathers. from this elevation, on casting your eyes around, you see, on the plain, lines of ancient aqueducts radiating in all directions and losing themselves in the distance, and, on the side of albano, three other vast ruins, masses of red and black arcades, shattered and disintegrated brick by brick, and corroded by time. you descend and take another glance. the hall of the "piscine" is a hundred and twenty paces long; that in which the bathers disrobed is eighty feet in height; the whole is covered with marble, and with such beautiful marble that mantel ornaments are now made of its fragments. in the sixteenth century the farnese hercules was discovered here, and the torso and venus callipygis, and i know not how many other masterpieces; and in the seventeenth century hundreds of statues. no people, probably, will ever again display the same luxurious conveniences, the same diversions, and especially the same order of beauty, as that which the romans displayed in rome. here only can you comprehend this assertion--a civilization other than our own, other and different, but in its kind as complete and as elegant. it is another animal, but equally perfect, like the mastodon, previous to the modern elephant. the aqueduct builders[15] by rodolfo lanciani one of the praises bestowed by cicero on the founder of the city is that "he selected a district very rich in springs." a glance at the plan will at once prove the accuracy of the statement. twenty-three springs have been described within the walls, several of which are still in existence; others have disappeared owing to the increase of modern soil. "for four hundred and forty-one years," says frontinus, "the romans contented themselves with such water as they could get from the tiber, from wells, and from springs. some of these springs are still held in great veneration on account of their health-restoring qualities, like the spring of the camoenae, that of apollo, and that of juturna." the first aqueduct, that of the "aqua appia," is the joint work of appius claudius cæcus and c. plautius venox, censors in 312 b.c. the first built the channel, the second discovered the springs 1,153 meters northeast of the sixth and seventh milestones of the via collatina. they are still to be seen, much reduced in volume, at the bottom of some stone quarries near the farmhouse of la rustica. the second aqueduct was begun in 272 b.c. by manius curius dentatus, censor, and finished three years later by fulvius flaccus. the water was taken from the river anio 850 meters above st. cosimato, on the road from tivoli to arsoli (valeria). the course of the channel can be traced as far as gallicano; from gallicano to rome it is uncertain.... in 144 b.c. the senate, considering that the increase of the population had diminished the rate of distribution of water (from 530 to 430 liters per head), determined that the old aqueducts of the appia and the anio should be repaired, and a new one built, the appropriation for both works being 8,000,000 sesterces, or 1,760,000 lire. the execution of the scheme was entrusted to q. marcius rex. he selected a group of springs at the foot of the monte della prugna, in the territory of arsoli, 4,437 meters to the right of the thirty-sixth milestone of the via valeria; and after many years of untiring efforts he succeeded in making a display of the water on the highest platform of the capitol. agrippa restored the aqueduct in 33 b.c.; augustus doubled the volume of the water in 5 b.c. by the addition of the aqua augusta. in 196 septimius severus brought in a new supply for the use of his thermae severianae; in 212-213 caracalla built a branch aqueduct, four miles long, for the use of his baths; in 305-306 diocletian did the same thing for his great thermæ; and, finally, arcadius and honorius devoted to the restoration of the aqueduct the money seized from count gildo, the african rebel. none of the roman aqueducts are eulogized by frontinus like the claudian. he calls it "a work most magnificently done," and after demonstrating in more than one way that the volume of the springs collected by claudius amounted to 4,607 quinariae, he says that there was a reserve of 1,600 always ready. the works, began by caligula in a.d. 38, lasted fourteen years, the water having reached rome only on august 1, 52 (the birthday of claudius). the course of the aqueduct was first around the slopes of the monte ripoli, like that of the marcia and of the anio vetus. domitian shortened it by several miles by boring a tunnel 4,950 meters long through the monte affiano. length of channel, 68,750 meters, of which 15,000 was on arches; volume per day, 209,252 cubic meters. the claudia was used for the imperial table; a branch aqueduct, 2,000 meters long, left the main channel at spem veterem (porta maggiore), and following the line of the via caelimontana (villa wolkonsky), of the campus caelimontan (lateran), and of the street now called di s. stefano rotondo, reached the temple of claudius by the church of ss. giovanni e paolo, and the imperial palace by the church of st. bonaventura. the anio novus, like the vetus, was at first derived from the river of the same name at the forty-second milestone of the road to subiaco, great precautions being taken for purifying the water. the works were begun by caligula in a.d. 38, and completed by claudius on august 1, 52, on a most magnificent scale, some of the arches reaching the height of thirty-two meters above ground; and there were eight miles of them. yet, in spite of the purifying reservoir, and of the clear springs of the rivus herculaneus (fosso di fioggio), which had been mixed with the water from the river, the anio novus was hardly ever drinkable. whenever a shower fell on the simbruine mountains, the water would get troubled and saturated with mud and carbonate of lime. trajan improved its condition by carrying the head of the aqueduct higher up the valley, where nero had created three artificial lakes for the adornment of his villa sublacensis. these lakes served more efficiently as "purgatories," than the artificial basin of caligula, nine miles below. the anio novus reached rome in its own channel after a course of 86,964 meters, but for the last seven miles it ran on the same arches with the aqua claudia. the anio novus was the largest of all roman aqueducts, discharging nearly three hundred thousand cubic meters per day. there are two places in the suburbs of rome where these marvelous arches of the claudia and anio novus can be seen to advantage; one is the torre fiscale, three miles outside the porta s. giovanni on the albano road (to be reached also from the tavolato station, on the upper albano railway); the other is the vicolo del mandrione, which leaves the labicana one mile outside the porta maggiore and falls into the tusculana at the place called porta furba. the quarries and bricks of the ancient city[16] by rodolfo lanciani the materials used in roman constructions are the "lapis ruber" (tufa); the "lapis albanus" (peperino); the "lapis gabinus" (sperone); the "lapis tiburtinus" (travertino); the silex ("selce"); and bricks and tiles of various kinds. the cement was composed of pozzolana and lime. imported marbles came into fashion toward the end of the republic, and became soon after the pride and glory of rome.... the only material which the first builders of rome found at hand was the volcanic conglomerate called tufa. the quality of the stone used in those early days was far from perfect. the walls of the palatine hill and of the capitoline citadel were built of material quarried on the spot--a mixture of charred pumice-stones and reddish volcanic sand. the quarries used for the fortification of the capitol were located at the foot of the hill toward the argiletum, and were so important as to give their name, lautumiae, to the neighboring district. it is probable that the prison called tullianum, from a jet of water, "tullus," which sprang from the rock, was originally a portion of this quarry. the tufa blocks employed by servius tullius for the building of the city walls, and of the agger, appear to be of three qualities--yellowish, reddish, and gray; the first, soft and easily broken up, seems to have been quarried from the little aventine, near the church of st. saba. the galleries of this quarry, much disfigured by medieval and modern use, can be followed to a considerable distance, altho the collapsing of the vaults makes it dangerous to visit them.... the quarries of the third quality were, or rather one of them was, discovered on february 7, 1872, in the vigna querini, outside the porta st. lorenzo, near the first milestone of the vicolo di valle cupa. it was a surface quarry, comprising five trenches 16 feet wide, 9 feet deep. some of the blocks, already squared, were lying on the floor of the trenches, others were detached on two or three sides only, the size of others was simply traced on the rock by vertical or horizontal lines. this tufa, better known by the name of cappellaccio, is very bad. the only buildings in which it was used, besides the inner wall of the servian agger, are the platform of the temple of jupiter capitolinus, in the gardens of the german embassy, and the "puticuli" in the burial-grounds of the esquiline. its use must have been given up before the end of the period of the kings, in consequence of the discovery of better quarries on the right bank of the tiber, at the foot of the hills now called monte verde.... they cover a space one mile in length and a quarter of a mile wide on each side of the valley of pozzo pantaléo. in fact, this valley, which runs from the via portuensis toward the lake of the villa pamphili, seems to be artificial; i mean, produced by the extraction of the rock of millions of cubic meters in the course of twenty-four centuries. if the work of the ancient quarrymen could be freed from the loose material which conceals it from view, we should possess within a few minutes' drive from the porta portese a reproduction of the famous mines of el masarah, with beds of rock cut into steps and terraces, with roads and lanes, shafts, inclines, underground passages, and outlets for the discharge of rain-water. when a quarry had given out, its galleries were filled up with the refuse of the neighboring ones--chips left over after the squaring of the blocks; so that, in many cases, the color and texture of the chips do not correspond with those of the quarry in which they are found. this layer of refuse, transformed by time into humus, and worked upon by human and atmospheric forces, has given the valley a different aspect, so that it looks as if it were the work not of quarrymen, but of nature. tufa may be found used in many existing monuments of ancient rome, such as the drains of the middle and southern basin of the left bank, the channels and arches of the marcia and anio vetus, the servian walls, the temples of fortuna virilis, of hercules magnus custos, the rostra, the embankment of the tiber, etc. the largest and most magnificent quarries in the suburban district are the so-called grotte della cervara. no words can convey an idea of their size and of the regularity of their plan. they seem to be the work of a fanciful architect who has hewn out of the rock halls and galleries, courts and vestibules, and imitated the forms of an assyrian palace. for the study of the peperino mines, which contain a stone special to the alban district, formed by the action of hot water on gray volcanic cinders, the reader should follow on foot the line of the new albano railway, from the place called il sassone to the town of marino. many of the valleys in this district, now made beautiful by vineyards and oliveyards, owe their existence to the pickax of the roman stonecutter, like the valley of pozzo pantaléo. the most curious sight is a dolmen or isolated rock 10 meters high, left in the center of one of the quarries to certify the thickness of the bed of rock excavated. in fact, the whole district is very interesting both to the archeologist and to the paysagiste. the mines of marino, still worked in the neighborhood of the railway station, would count, like the grotte della cervara, among the wonders of the campagna, were they known to the student as they deserve to be. the principal roman buildings in which the lapis albanus has been used are: the claudian aqueduct, the cloaca maxima, the temples of antonius and faustina, of cybele, of the eventus bonus, of neptune, the inclosure wall of the forum augustum, forum transitorium, and forum pacis, the porticus argonautarum, porticus pompeii, the ustrinum of the appian way, etc. the sarcophagus of cornelius scipio barbatus in the vatican museum, and the tomb of the tibicines in the museo municipale al celio are also of this stone. travertine stone was quarried in the plains of tivoli at places now called le caprine, casal bernini, and il barco. this last was reopened after an interval of many centuries by count g. brazza, brother of the african explorer. lost in the wilderness and overgrown with shrubs, it had not been examined, i believe, since the visit of brocchi. it can be reached by stopping at the station of the aquae albulae, on the tivoli line, and following the ancient road which led to the works. this road, twice as wide as the appian way, is flanked by substructures, and is not paved, but macadamized. parallel with it runs an aqueduct which supplied the works with motive power, derived probably from the sulfur springs. there are also remains of tombs, one of which, octagonal in shape, serves as a foundation to the farmhouse del barco. the most remarkable monument of the whole group is the roman quarry from which five and a half million cubic meters of travertine have been extracted, as proved by the measurement of the hollow space between the two opposite vertical sides. that this is the most important ancient quarry of travertine, and the largest one used by the romans, is proved, in the first place, by its immense size. the sides show a frontage of more than two and a half kilometers; the surface amounts to 500,000 square meters. the sides are quite perpendicular, and have the peculiarity of projecting buttresses, at an angle of 90 degrees. some of these buttresses are isolated on three sides, and still preserve the grooves, by means of which they could be separated from the solid mass.... in order to keep the bottom of the works clean and free from the movement of the carts, for the action of the cranes, and for the maneuvres of the workmen, the chips, or useless product of the squaring of the blocks, were transported to a great distance, as far as the banks of the anio, and there piled up to a great height. this is the origin of that chain of hills which runs parallel to the river, and of whose artificial formation no one, as far as i know, had the least suspicion. one of these hills, visible from every point of the neighboring district, from hadrian's villa as well as from the sulfur baths, is elliptical in shape, 22 meters high, 90 meters long, and 65 meters wide. it can with reason be compared with our testaccio. it is easy to imagine how immense must have been the number of blocks cut from the cava del barco during the period of the formation of this hill alone. another proof of the antiquity of the quarry, and of its abandonment from imperial times down to our own day, is given by this fact.... there are three collections of brick-stamps in rome; one, of little value, in the kircherian museum; the second in the last room of the vatican library, past the "nozze aldobrandine;" the third and best in the museo municipale al celio. this last contains over a thousand specimens, and a unique set of the products of roman kilns. in fact, the first hall of the museo is set apart exclusively for the study of ancient building and decorative materials. roman bricks were square, oblong, triangular, or round, the latter being used only to build columns in the pompeiian style. the largest bricks that have been discovered in my time measure 1.05 meters in length. they were set into an arch of one of the great stairs leading to the avenue or boulevard established in imperial times on the top of the agger of servius. roman bricks are very often stamped with a seal, the legend of which contains the names of the owner and the manager of the kilns, of the maker of the tile, of the merchant entrusted with the sale of the products, and of the consuls under whose term of office the bricks were made. these indications are not necessarily found all in one seal. the most important of them is the consular date, because it helps the student to determine, within certain limits, the date of the building itself. the rule, however, is far from being absolute, and before fixing the date of a roman structure from that of its brick stamps one must take into consideration many other points of circumstantial evidence. when we examine, for instance, the grain warehouses at ostia, or hadrian's villa at tivoli, and find that their walls have never undergone repairs, that their masonry is characteristic of the first quarter of the second century, that their bricks bear the dates of hadrian's age and no others, we may rest assured that the stamps speak the truth. their evidence is, in such a case, conclusive. but if the bricks are variously dated, or bear the names of various kilns, and not of one or two only, then their value as an evidence of the date of a building is diminished, if not lost altogether.... the bricks, again, occasionally bear curious signs, such as footmarks of chickens, dogs, or pigs, which stept over them while still fresh, impressions of coins and medals, words or sentences scratched with a nail, etc. a bricklayer, who had perhaps seen better times in his youth, wrote on a tile the first verse of the aeneid. the great manufacturing center of roman bricks was the district between the viae triumphalis, cornelia, and the two aureliae, now called the monti della creta, which includes the southern slopes of the vatican ridge and the northern of the janiculum. here also, as at pozzo pantaléo, the traces of the work of man are simply gigantic. the valleys del gelsomino, delle fornaci, del vicolo delle cave, della balduina, and a section of the val d'inferno, are not the work of nature, but the result of excavations for "creta figulina," which began 2,300 years ago, and have never been interrupted since. a walk through the monti della creta will teach the student many interesting things. the best point of observation is a bluff between the vicolo della cave and the vicolo del gelsomino, marked with the word "ruderi" and with the altitude of 75 meters, in the military map of the suburbs. the bluff rises 37 meters above the floor of the brick-kilns of the gelsomino.... roman bricks were exported to all the shores of the mediterranean; they have been found in the riviera, on the coasts of benetia, of narbonensis, of spain and africa, and in the island of sardinia. the brick-making business must have been very remunerative, if we judge from the rank and wealth of many personages who had an interest in it. many names of emperors appear in brick-stamps, and even more of empresses and princesses of the imperial family. palm sunday in st. peter's[17] by grace greenwood (mrs. lippincott) yesterday began holy week with the imposing but tedious ceremonies of palm sunday at st. peter's. at nine o'clock in the morning we were in our places--seats erected for the occasion near the high altar, drest in the costume prescribed by church etiquette--black throughout, with black veils on our heads. at about ten the pope entered, and the rites, ordinary and extraordinary, the masses and processions, continued until one. the entrance of the pope into this his grandest basilica was, as usual, a beautiful and brilliant sight. he came splendidly vested, wearing his miter, and borne in his chair of state under a gorgeous canopy, between the flabelli--two enormous fans of white peacock feathers. he was preceded and followed by cardinals, bishops, arch-bishops, monsignori, abbots, the apostolic prothonotaries, generals of the religious orders, officers of the state, of the army, of his household, and the guardia nobile. he took his seat on the throne, and received the homage of the cardinals, who, kneeling, kissed his right hand. this is a ceremony which is always gone through with in the most formal, mechanical, business-like manner possible. some palms, not in natural branches, but cut and wreathed in various strange, fantastic forms, lay on the altar. the pope's chief sacristan took one of these, a deacon another, a sub-deacon a third, and knelt at the foot of the throne. his holiness read prayers over them, sprinkled them with holy water, and incensed them three times. one of these is held beside the throne by the prince assistant during the service; another is borne by the pope when in procession. after this, multitudes of palms were brought up for the papal benediction. first came the cardinals, each, as he received his palm from the pope, kissing it, the right hand and knee of his holiness; then the bishops, who only kissed the palm and his right knee; then the abbots, who were only entitled to kiss the palm and his foot; then the governor of rome, the prince assistant, the auditor, the treasurer, the maggiordomo, the secretaries, the chamberlains, the mace bearers, the deacons and sub-deacons, generals of the religious orders and priests in general, masters of the ceremonies, singers, clerks of the papal chapel, students of roman colleges, foreign ministers and their attachés, italian, french, spanish, austrian, russian, prussian officers, noblemen and gentlemen, all came up in turn, knelt, received blest palms, and kissed the foot of the sovereign pontiff. during the distribution of the palms, anthems were sung by the choir, who were caged up in a sort of trellice workbox at the right of the altar. this long but brilliantly picturesque ceremony through, the pope, after washing his hands, again mounted into his "sedia gestatoria," and bearing his palm, preceded and followed by all those to whom he had given palms, passed slowly down the nave of the church, blessing the kneeling and bending multitude right and left. this procession of palms was very striking and gorgeous from the beauty and variety of military arms and uniforms, and more than royal richness of the priestly vestments, the gleam of miters and maces, and of innumerable sacred symbols and insignia. the election of a pope[18] by cardinal wiseman the interval between the close of one pontificate and the commencement of another is a period of some excitement, and necessarily of much anxiety. time is required for the electors to assemble, from distant provinces, or even foreign countries; and this is occupied in paying the last tribute of respect and affection to the departed pontiff. his body is embalmed, clothed in the robes of his office, of the penitential color, and laid on a couch of state within one of the chapels in st. peter's, so that the faithful may not only see it, but kiss its feet. this last act of reverence to the mortal remains of the immortal pius viii., the writer well recollects performing. these preliminaries occupy three days; during which rises, as if by magic, or from the crypts below, an immense catafalque, a colossal architectural structure, which fills the nave of that basilica illustrated by inscriptions, and adorned by statuary. before this huge monument, for nine days funeral rites are performed, closed by a funeral oration. for the body of the last pope there is a uniform resting-place in st. peter's--a plain sarcophagus, of marbled stucco, hardly noticed by the traveler, over a door beside the choir, on which is simply painted the title of the latest pontiff. on the death of his successor it is broken down at the top, the coffin is removed to the under-church, and that of the new claimant for repose is substituted. this change takes place late in the evening, and is considered private. i can not recollect whether it was on this or on a subsequent occasion that i witnessed it with my college companions.... in the afternoon of the last day of the novendiali, as they are called, the cardinals assemble in a church near the quirinal palace, and walk thence in procession, accompanied by their conclavisiti, a secretary, a chaplain, and a servant or two, to the great gate of the royal residence, in which one will remain as master and supreme lord. of course the hill is crowded by persons lining the avenue kept open for the procession. cardinals never before seen by them, or not for many years, pass before them; eager eyes scan and measure them, and try to conjecture, from fancied omens in eye, or figure, or expression, who will shortly be the sovereign of their fair city, and, what is more, the head of the catholic church from the rising to the setting sun. equal they pass the threshold of that gate; they share together the supreme rule, temporal and spiritual; there is still embosomed in them all the voice yet silent, that soon will sound, from one tongue, over all the world, and the dormant germ of that authority which will soon again be concentrated in one man alone. to-day they are all equal; perhaps to-morrow one will sit enthroned, and all the rest will kiss his feet; one will be sovereign, the others his subjects; one the shepherd, and the others his flock.... while we have been thus sketching, hastily and imperfectly, one of many who passed almost unnoticed in the solemn procession to conclave, on the 2d of september, 1823, we may suppose the doors to have been inexorably closed on those who composed it. the conclave, which formerly used to take place in the vatican, was on this occasion, and has been subsequently, held in the quirinal palace. this noble building, known equally by the name of monte cavallo, consists of a large quadrangle, round which run the papal apartments. from this stretches out, along a whole street, an immense wing, its two upper floors divided into a great number of small but complete suites of apartments, occupied permanently, or occasionally, by persons attached to the court. during conclave these are allotted, literally so, to the cardinals, each of whom lives apart, with his attendants. his food is brought daily from his own house, and is examined, and delivered to him in the shape of "broken victuals," by the watchful guardians of the turns and lattices, through which alone anything, even conversation, can penetrate into the seclusion of that sacred retreat. for a few hours, the first evening, the doors are left open, and the nobility, the diplomatic body, and in fact all presentable persons, may roam from cell to cell, paying a brief compliment to their occupants, perhaps speaking the same good wishes to fifty, which they know can be accomplished in only one. after that all is closed; a wicket is left accessible for the entrance of any cardinal who is not yet arrived; but every aperture is jealously guarded by faithful janitors, judges and prelates of various tribunals, who relieve one another. every letter even is opened and read, that no communications may be held with the outer world. the very street on which the wing of the conclave looks is barricaded and guarded by a picket at each end; and as, fortunately, there are no private residences opposite, and all the buildings have access from the back, no inconvenience is thereby created. while conclave lasts, the administrative power rests in the hands of the cardinal chamberlain, who strikes his own coins during its continuance; and he is assisted by three cardinals, called the "heads of orders," because they represent the three orders in the sacred college, of bishops, priests and deacons. the ambassadors of the great powers receive fresh credentials to the conclave, and proceed in state, to present them to this delegation, at the grille. an address, carefully prepared, is delivered by the envoy, and receives a well-pondered reply from the presiding cardinal. twice a day the cardinals meet in the chapel contained within the palace, and there, on tickets so arranged that the voter's name can not be seen, write the name of him for whom they give their suffrage. these papers are examined in their presence, and if the number of votes given to any one do not constitute the majority, they are burned, in such a manner that the smoke, issuing through a flue, is visible to the crowd usually assembled in the square outside. some day, instead of this usual signal to disperse, the sound of pick and hammer is heard, and a small opening is seen in the wall which had temporarily blocked up the great window over the palace gateway. at last the masons of the conclave have opened a rude door, through which steps out on the balcony the first cardinal deacon, and proclaims to the many, or to the few, who may happen to be waiting, that they again possess a sovereign and a pontiff. an audience with pius x[19] by mary emogene hazeltine we arrived in rome at three in the afternoon, with letters which ensured us an audience with the pope. a friend, long resident in rome, who advised us to present them at once, accompanied us to the vatican. passing through an interesting part of the city, including the st. angelo bridge across the tiber, we soon found ourselves in the world-famous colonnade of st. peter's. ascending the steps leading to the vatican, we passed the swiss guard in their famous uniforms designed by michelangelo, and climbed what seemed like endless stairs, passing guards at almost every turn, who pointed out the way indicated by the address on our credentials. arriving at an anteroom, a priestly secretary, speaking excellent english, read our letter with what seemed to us, from the expression of his face, great interest and evident approval. why should this not have been? our letter was from the apostolic delegate then in washington--the pope's own representative in america. it was in italian, in the highest official form, and conveyed the intelligence that we were traveling in italy for a brief vacation, mentioned all four of us by name, and said that, while we were not catholics, we respected the faith and would carefully observe all the forms prescribed for an audience. the monseigneur whom we were to see was at that time engaged with several bishops. because of this, we were asked to present ourselves at the same hour on saturday, meanwhile leaving our letter. promptly at the hour i was again at the door of the major domo, monseigneur bisleti, to be received again by the priestly secretary, by whom i was taken into the palatial rooms of the monseigneur. a moment here was sufficient to explain my errand and receive from the monseigneur the long-coveted permission, which i found had already been made out in due form for four persons. our cards entitled us to admission on the following day, which made necessary unexpected haste in arranging for the official costume of black. fortunately we had all brought black veils and some of us either gowns or skirts. with help from others, we secured one or two necessary waists, and from our hostess obtained the rosaries i wished to have blest by the pope. our hostess then gave us a dress rehearsal, in order that we might fully understand what to us would be an imposing ceremony. an audience is a great function and the procedure accordingly is rigid. on reaching the vatican next day, we were directed by the swiss guard, not to the major domo's apartments as before, but through a court and thence up the grandest of staircases in three long flights, the walls lined with beautiful marbles more wonderful than many pictures, the light coming through magnificent stained-glass windows. in every sense here was a palatial, an imperial, entrance. at the head of the stairway we were met by gorgeous chamberlains, the body servants of the pope, clad in superb magenta brocaded velvet, with knee breeches, magenta silk stockings, and great silver buckles on their shoes. streamers hanging from their arms at the back, added to the official appearance of these men in their gorgeous uniforms. we were shown through a magnificent antechamber, and then into a series of reception rooms, through which we were motioned on, until we came to the fourth, where were just four chairs which seemed to be waiting for us four. swiss guards patrolled the rooms, and others--chamberlains, i suppose. we had a full half hour in which to wait here, but we could use it to advantage, in watching the gathering company, and viewing the magnificent room, hung as it was with rich red moire silk, as were all others of the suite. the ladies in black garb became very effective figures in this brilliant setting. there were many beautiful tapestries in the rooms, one room having a tapestried frieze. the furniture was massive, either of inlaid wood or heavy gilt, and the floors of beautiful inlaid marble. it is not possible to give any adequate idea of these stately rooms, nor of their exquisite appointments; nor yet of the gathering company, for many high officials of the church passed before us and through to rooms beyond, which added to the interest of the occasion and the splendor of the scene. we learned soon that this was to be no ordinary audience, but a special one granted to alumni of the american college in rome. a few days before we left new york, a large company of american priests, graduates of the american college, had sailed on a chartered steamer to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the college, from which they had received holy orders. this audience had been specially arranged for them. we were therefore more than favored in having an audience at the same time, a fact due probably to the credentials with which we had come provided. we now understood that the officials of the church who had entered this room were our own american bishops. with them had however come others of high rank. over their priestly robes of black they wore rich purple silk capes, falling to the floor, and purple sashes. (there are, of course, technical terms for these garments, but i do not know them.) the special body guard of the pope, three men chosen from the palatine guard, and in soldier's uniform, now passed through the room with a noble guard of the knights of malta and count moroni, also in uniform, with chapeau, feathered with plumes of black and white. at exactly half after eleven, monseigneur bisleti, watch in hand, bustled through, followed by bishops and priests. we were at once on our knees, for his holiness was seen to be approaching from rooms beyond. as he advanced we could see his small figure, clad in white, surrounded by court attendants, american bishops, an archbishop, the palatine guard, monseigneur bisleti, and the knight of malta. between us and the doorway through which he approached, stood a girl of twelve, in white garments and veil. she had come from her first communion. near her was a franciscan monk, who evidently had just returned from some mission field, for he was bronzed, and haggard, and worn as to his garments. as the pope passed he gave a special word of blessing to the monk, and a smile to the child. the ceremony of the audience itself was simple. the pope walked past the kneeling people, giving to each his hand. this each one took, kissing his ring. filling the center of the room, as we were kneeling around the sides, were the priestly courtiers, the papal delegate, in gray robes, a prominent figure among them. the pope passed on through several rooms filled with waiting priests. we were then all bidden to follow to the throne room, for a special ceremony. an audience generally ends when the pope leaves the room in which he receives you, giving his blessing to all as he leaves. in the throne room now the american alumni were to present their addresses to the pope. as we entered, undergraduates of the college were discovered already there singing. until the addresses were read, the singing was continued. it was all a magnificent sight, the little white father on his splendid throne, his court about him, his special body servant holding his red cape (to be used in case of drafts), and, as a background for all the colors of the court scene, several hundred black-robed priests. monseigneur kennedy, rector of the college, read an address, as did rev. father wall of baltimore, president of the association. to these the pope replied, reading from a manuscript. after this, he rose, mingled with his entourage, and chatted pleasantly with bishops and others. a picture was then taken of the court, the priests and students. these american priests and undergraduates were a fine company of men. the pope finally gave his blessing to all who were assembled in the room, and the great function was over. the ascent of the dome of st. peter's[20] by george stillman hillard the visitor to st. peter's should not fail to ascend to the dome; a long journey, but involving no danger and not a great amount of fatigue. from the church to the roof the passage is by an inclined plane of pavement, with so gradual an ascent that loaded mules pass up without difficulty. in stepping out upon the roof, it is difficult to believe that we are more than one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, or that so extensive an architectural surface could have been reared in air by the patient labor of men's hands. it rather seems as if a little village had been lifted up by some geological convulsion. here are wide spaces to walk about in, houses for human habitation, a fountain playing, and all the signs of life. the views are everywhere fine, and one can fancy that the air is purer and the sky more blue than to those left below. the dome soars high above the eye, and a new sense of its magnitude seizes upon the mind. the two cupolas which flank the façade are upward of one hundred feet high, and the five smaller ones which crown the chapels are of great size; but here they seem like dwarfs clinging about a giant's knee. the dome of st. peter's, as is well known, is double; and between the outer and inner wall is a series of winding passages and staircases, by which the ascent is made to the top. the length of these passages and staircases, their number, and the time it takes to traverse them, are a new revelation of the size of this stupendous structure. we begin to comprehend the genius and courage which planned and executed a work so novel and so bold. from the galleries inside, the view of the interior below is most striking. it looks as the earth may look from a balloon. the men moving upon the pavement appear like that "small infantry warred on by cranes"; and even the baldacchino hardly swells beyond the dimensions of a candelabrum. at the base of the ball, a railing, unseen from below, enables the visitor whose nerves are tolerably good to enjoy an extensive and beautiful prospect, embracing a region interesting not merely to the eye but to the mind: the cradle of that mighty roman race which here began its ever-widening circle of conquest and annexation. it comprises the campagna, the tiber, the distant mediterranean, the apennines, the alban and sabine hills, and the isolated bulk of soracte. from no point on earth can the eye rest upon so many spots on which the undying light of human interest lingers. from this place the ascent is made to the interior of the ball itself, into which most travelers climb, probably more for the sake of saying that they have been there than anything else. tho the ball looks like a mere point from below, it is nearly eight feet in diameter; and the interior will hold a dozen persons without inconvenience. altho i visited it on a winter's day, the atmosphere was extremely hot and uncomfortable, from the effect of the sun's rays upon the gilded bronze. by means of an exterior ladder, it is possible to climb to the foot of the cross; a feat which few landsmen would have the nerve to undertake. santa maria maggiore[21] by hippolyte adolphe taine we followed the street which ascends and descends, bordered with palaces and old hedges of thorn, as far as santa maria maggiore. this basilica, standing upon a large eminence, surmounted with its domes, rises nobly upward, at once simple and complete, and when you enter it, it affords still greater pleasure. it belongs to the fifth century; on being rebuilt at a later period, the general plan, its antique idea, was preserved. an ample nave, with a horizontal roof, is sustained by two rows of white ionic columns. you are rejoiced to see so fine an effect obtained by such simple means; you might almost imagine yourself in a greek temple. it is said that a temple of juno was robbed of these columns. each of them bare and polished, with no other ornament than the delicate curves of its small capital, is of healthful and charming beauty. you appreciate here the good sense, and all that is agreeable in genuine natural construction, the file of trunks of trees which bear the beams, resting flat and providing a long walk. all that has since been added is barbarous, and first, the two chapels of sixtus v. and paul v., with their paintings by guido, josepin, and cigoli, and the sculptures of bernini, and the architecture of fontana and flaminio. these are celebrated names, and money has been prodigally spent, but instead of the slight means with which the ancients produced a great effect, the moderns produce a petty effect with great means. when the bewildered eye is satiated with the elaborate sweep of these arches and domes, with the splendors of polychromatic marbles, with friezes and pedestals of agate, with columns of oriental jasper, with angels hanging by their feet, and with all these bas-reliefs of bronze and gold, the visitor hastens to get away from it as he would to escape from a confectioner's shop. it seems as if this grand, glittering box, gilded and labored from pavement to lantern, caught up and tore at every point of its finery the delicate web of poetic reverie; the slender profile of the least of the columns impresses one far more than any of this display of the art of upholsterers and parvenus. similarly to this the façade, loaded with balustrades, and round and angular pediments, and statues roosting on its stones, is a "hôtel-de-ville" frontage. the campanile, belonging to the fourteenth century, alone presents an agreeable object; at that time it was one of the towers of the city, a distinctive sign which marked it on the old plans so black and sharp, and stamped it forever on the still corporeal imaginations of monks and wayfarers. there are traces of every age in these old basilicas; you see the diverse states of christianity, at first enshrined in pagan forms, and then traversing the middle ages and the renaissance to muffle itself up finally, and bedeck itself with modern finery. the byzantine epoch has left its imprint in the mosaics of the great nave and the apsis, and in its bloodless and lifeless christs and virgins, so many staring specters motionless on their gold backgrounds and red panels, the fantoms of an extinct art and a vanished society. catacombs and crypts[22] by charles dickens there is an upper chamber in the mamertine prison, over what is said to have been--and very possibly may have been--the dungeon of st. peter. this chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint; and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my recollection, too. it is very small and low-roofed; and the dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist through the floor. hanging on the walls, among the clustered votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely in keeping, and strangely at variance, with the place--rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments of violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to propitiate offended heaven; as if the blood upon them would drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry with. it is all so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and the dungeons below are so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked; that this little dark spot becomes a dream within a dream; and in the vision of great churches which come rolling past me like a sea, it is a small wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and does not flow on with the rest. it is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are entered from some roman churches, and undermine the city. many churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which, in the ancient time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples, and what not; but i do not speak of them. beneath the church of st. giovanni and st. paolo, there are the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said to have another outlet underneath the coliseum--tremendous darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in the earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in a city of the dead; and show the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip-drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that lie here and there, and never saw, and never will see, one ray of sun. some accounts make these the prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphitheater; some, the prisons of the condemned gladiators; some, both. but the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in the upper range (for there are two stories of these caves) the early christians destined to be eaten at the coliseum shows, heard the wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring down below; until, upon the night and solitude of their captivity, there burst the sudden noon and life of the vast theater crowded to the parapet, and of these, their dreaded neighbors, bounding in! below the church of san sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate of san sebastiano, on the appian way, is the entrance to the catacombs of rome--quarries in the old time, but afterward the hiding-places of the christians. these ghastly passages have been explored for twenty miles; and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in circumference. a gaunt franciscan friar, with a wild, bright eye, was our only guide, down into this profound and dreadful place. the narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by which we had come; and i could not help thinking: "good heaven, if, in a sudden fit of madness he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us!" on we wandered, among martyrs' graves; passing great subterranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a population under rome even worse than that which lives between it and the sun. graves, graves, graves; graves of men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the persecutors, "we are christians! we are christians!" that they might be murdered with their parents; graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood; graves of some who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprized, were hemmed in and walled up; buried before death, and killed by slow starvation. such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, that remain apart and keep their separate identity. i have a fainter recollection, sometimes, of the relics; of the fragment of the pillar of the temple that was rent in twain; of the portion of the table that was spread for the last supper; of the well at which the woman of samaria gave water to our savior; of two columns from the house of pontius pilate; of the stone to which the sacred hands were bound, when the scourging was performed; of the grid-iron of saint lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with the frying of his fat and blood; these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as an old story, or a fable might, and stop them for an instant, as they flit before me. the rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated buildings of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another; of battered pillars of old pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of christian churches; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and ridiculous; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ; of madonne, with their breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle like a modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold; their withered crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or with chaplets of crusht flowers; sometimes, of people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and preaching fiercely; the sun just streaming down through some high window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among the echoes of the roof. then my tired memory comes out upon a flight of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the light; and strolls away, among the rags and smells, and palaces, and hovels, of an old italian street. the cemetery of the capuchins[23] by nathaniel hawthorne the cemetery is beneath the church, but entirely above ground, and lighted by a row of iron-grated windows without glass. a corridor runs along besides these windows, and gives access to three or four vaulted recesses, or chapels, of considerable breadth and height, the floor of which consists of the consecrated earth of jerusalem. it is smoothed decorously over the deceased brethren of the convent, and is kept quite free from grass or weeds, such as would grow even in these gloomy recesses, if pains were not bestowed to root them up. but, as the cemetery is small, and it is a precious privilege to sleep in holy ground, the brotherhood are immemorially accustomed, when one of their number dies, to take the longest-buried skeleton out of the oldest grave, and lay the new slumberer there instead. thus, each of the good friars, in his turn, enjoys the luxury of a consecrated bed, attended with the slight drawback of being forced to get up long before daybreak, as it were, and make room for another lodger. the arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what makes the special interest of the cemetery. the arched and vaulted walls of the burial recesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters made of thigh-bones and skulls; the whole material of the structure appears to be of a similar kind; and the knobs and embossed ornaments of this strange architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, and the more delicate tracery by the smaller bones of the human frame. the summits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. there is no possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, combined with a certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shown in this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how many hundred years, must have contributed their bony framework to build up these great arches of mortality. on some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use of that particular head-piece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the greater number are piled up indistinguishably into the architectural design like the many deaths that make up the one glory of a victory. in the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life, and labeled with their names and the dates of their decease. their skulls (some quite bare, and others still covered with yellow skin, and hair that has known the earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning, hideously repulsive. one reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps is even now screeching through eternity. as a general thing, however, these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. but the cemetery of the capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes; the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty death; the holy earth from jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality, has grown as barren of the flowers of paradise as it is of earthly weeds and grass. thank heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward gaze to give us back our faith. not here can we feel ourselves immortal, where the very altars in these chapels of horrible consecration are heaps of human bones. the burial place of keats and shelley[24] by nathaniel parker willis a beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet high, built into the ancient wall of rome, is the proud "sepulcher of caius cestius." it is the most imperishable of the antiquities, standing as perfect after eighteen hundred years as if it were built but yesterday. just beyond it, on the declivity of a hill, over the ridge of which the wall passes, crowning it with two moldering towers, lies the protestant burying-ground. it looks toward rome, which appears in the distance, between mount aventine and a small hill called mont testaccio, and leaning to the south-east, the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the grass and wild flowers are there the earliest and tallest of the campagna. i have been here to-day, to see the graves of keats and shelley. with a cloudless sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor shelley, and read his own lament over keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. the cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks between, and shelley's grave and one other, without a name, occupy a small nook above, made by the projections of a moldering wall-tower, and crowded with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for several feet. the avenue by which you ascend from the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose in the most luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled with flowers of every dye. in his preface to his lament over keats, shelley says: "he was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the protestants, under the pyramid which is the tomb of cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now moldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient rome. it is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. it might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." if shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would have selected the very spot where he has since been laid--the most sequestered and flowery nook of the place he describes so feelingly. on the second terrace of the declivity are ten or twelve graves, two of which bear the names of americans who have died in rome. a portrait carved in bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the inscription, that one whom i had known was buried beneath. the slightly rising mound was covered with small violets, half hidden by the grass. it takes away from the pain with which one stands over the grave of an acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun lying so warm upon it, and the flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. nature seems to have cared for those who have died so far from home, binding the earth gently over them with grass, and decking it with the most delicate flowers. we descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of the slight declivity. the first grave here is that of keats. the inscription runs thus: "this grave contains all that was mortal of a young english poet, who, on his death-bed in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb: 'here lies one whose name was written in water.'" he died at rome in 1821. every reader knows his history and the cause of his death. shelley says, in the preface to his elegy: "the savage criticism on his poems, which appeared in the "quarterly review," produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted." keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon promise. he had all the wealth of genius within him, but he had not learned, before he was killed by criticism, the received, and, therefore, the best manner of producing it for the eye of the world. had he lived longer, the strength and richness which break continually through the affected style of "endymion" and "lamia" and his other poems, must have formed themselves into some noble monuments of his powers. as it is, there is not a poet living who could surpass the material of his "endymion"--a poem, with all its faults, far more full of beauties. but this is not the place for criticism. he is buried fitly for a poet, and sleeps beyond criticism now. peace to his ashes! excursions near rome[25] by charles dickens the excursions in the neighborhood of rome are charming, and would be full of interest were it only for the changing views they afford of the wild campagna. but every inch of ground in every direction is rich in associations, and in natural beauties. there is albano, with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not improved since the days of horace, and in these times hardly justifies his panegyric. there is squalid tivoli, with the river anio, diverted from its course, and plunging down, headlong, some eighty feet in search of it, with its picturesque temple of the sibyl, perched high on a crag; its minor waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the sun; and one good cavern yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots on, low down under beetling rocks. there, too, is the villa d'este, deserted and decaying among groves of melancholy pine and cypress-trees, where it seems to lie in state. then, there is frascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of tusculum, where cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his favorite house (some fragments of it may yet be seen there), and where cato was born. we saw its ruined amphitheater on a gray, dull day, when a shrill march wind was blowing, and when the scattered stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long-extinguished fire. one day we walked out, a little party of three, to albano, fourteen miles distant; possest by a great desire to go there by the ancient appian way, long since ruined and overgrown. we started at half-past seven in the morning, and within an hour or so were out upon the open campagna. for twelve miles we went climbing on, over an unbroken succession of mounds, and heaps, and hills of ruin. tombs and temples, overthrown and prostrate; small fragments of columns, friezes, pediments; great blocks of granite and marble; moldering arches grass-grown and decayed; ruin enough to build a spacious city from; lay strewn about us. sometimes loose walls, built up from these fragments by the shepherds, came across our path; sometimes a ditch, between two mounds of broken stones, obstructed our progress; sometimes, the fragments themselves, rolling from beneath our feet, made it a toilsome matter to advance; but it was always ruin. now, we tracked a piece of the old road above the ground; now traced it underneath a grassy covering, as if that were its grave; but all the way was ruin. in the distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking on their giant course along the plain; and every breath of wind that swept toward us, stirred early flowers and grasses, springing up, spontaneously, on miles of ruin. the unseen larks above us, who alone disturbed the awful silence, had their nests in ruin; and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed in ruin. the aspect of the desolate campagna in one direction, where it was most level, reminded me of an american prairie; but what is the solitude of a region where men have never dwelt, to that of a desert, where a mighty race have left their footprints in the earth from which they have vanished; where the resting-places of their dead have fallen like their dead; and the broken hour-glass of time is but a heap of idle dust! returning by the road at sunset, and looking, from the distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, i almost felt (as i had felt when i first saw it, at that hour) as if the sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that night, upon a ruined world. to come again to rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition, is a fitting close to such a day. the narrow streets, devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dung-hill-rubbish, contrast so strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and their filth and darkness, with the broad square before some haughty church; in the center of which, a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from egypt in the days of the emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honored statue overthrown, supports a christian saint; marcus aurelius giving place to paul, and trajan to st. peter. then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from the spoliation of the coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains; while here and there are broken arches and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a wound. the little town of miserable houses, walled, and shut in by barred gates, is the quarter where the jews are locked up nightly, when the clock strikes eight--a miserable place, densely populated, and reeking with bad odors, but where the people are industrious and money-getting. in the daytime, as you make your way along the narrow streets, you see them all at work--upon the pavement, oftener than in their dark and frowsy shops; furbishing old clothes, and driving bargains. crossing from these patches of thick darkness out into the moon once more, the fountain of trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. in the narrow little throat of street beyond, a booth drest out with flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky romans around its smoky coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew; its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. as you rattle around the sharply twisting corner, a lumbering sound is heard. the coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer, and a priest; the latter chanting as he goes. it is the dead-cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the sacred field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a year. but whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns, ancient temples, theaters, houses, porticoes or forums, it is strange to see how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been blended into some modern structure, and made to serve some modern purpose--a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable--some use for which it never was designed, and associated with which it can not otherwise than lamely assort. ii florence the approach by carriage road[26] by nathaniel hawthorne immediately after leaving incisa, we saw the arno, already a considerable river, rushing between deep banks, with the greenish hue of a duck-pond diffused through its water. nevertheless, tho the first impression was not altogether agreeable, we soon became reconciled to this hue, and ceased to think it an indication of impurity; for, in spite of it, the river is still, to a certain degree, transparent, and is, at any rate, a mountain stream, and comes uncontaminated from its source. the pure, transparent brown of the new england rivers is the most beautiful color; but i am content that it should be peculiar to them. our afternoon's drive was through scenery less striking than some which we had traversed, but still picturesque and beautiful. we saw deep valleys and ravines, with streams at the bottom; long, wooded hillsides, rising far and high, and dotted with white dwellings, well toward the summits. by and by, we had a distant glimpse of florence, showing its great dome and some of its towers out of a sidelong valley, as if we were between two great waves of the tumultuous sea of hills; while, far beyond, rose in the distance the blue peaks of three or four of the apennines, just on the remote horizon. there being a haziness in the atmosphere, however, florence was little more distinct to us than the celestial city was to christian and hopeful, when they spied at it from the delectable mountains. keeping steadfastly onward, we ascended a winding road, and passed a grand villa, standing very high, and surrounded with extensive grounds. it must be the residence of some great noble; and it has an avenue of poplars or aspens, very light and gay, and fit for the passage of the bridal procession, when the proprietor or his heir brings home his bride; while in another direction from the same front of the palace stretches an avenue or grove of cypresses, very long and exceedingly black and dismal, like a train of gigantic mourners. i have seen few things more striking, in the way of trees, than this grove of cypresses. from this point we descended, and drove along an ugly, dusty avenue, with a high brick wall on one side or both, till we reached the gate of florence, into which we were admitted with as little trouble as custom-house officers, soldiers, and policemen can possibly give. they did not examine our luggage, and even declined a fee, as we had already paid one at the frontier custom-house. thank heaven, and the grand duke! as we hoped that the casa del bello had been taken for us, we drove thither in the first place, but found that the bargain had not been concluded. as the house and studio of mr. powers[27] were just on the opposite side of the street, i went to it, but found him too much engrossed to see me at the moment; so i returned to the "vettura," and we told gaetano to carry us to a hotel. he established us at the albergo della fontana, a good and comfortable house. mr. powers called in the evening--a plain personage, characterized by strong simplicity and warm kindliness, with an impending brow, and large eyes, which kindle as he speaks. he is gray, and slightly bald, but does not seem elderly, nor past his prime. i accept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man, and shall not vary from this judgment. through his good offices, the next day we engaged the casa del bello. this journey from rome has been one of the brightest and most uncareful interludes of my life; we have all enjoyed it exceedingly, and i am happy that our children have it to look back upon. the old palace and the loggia[28] by théophile gautier every great capital has its eye; at rome it is the campo vaccino; at paris, the boulevard des italiens; at venice, the place st. mark; at madrid, the prado; at london, the strand; at naples, the via di toledo. rome is more roman, paris more parisian, venice more venetian, madrid more spanish, london more english, naples more neapolitan, in that privileged locality than anywhere else. the eye of florence is the place of the grand duke--a beautiful eye. in fact, suppress that place and florence has no more meaning--it might be another city. it is at that place, therefore, that every traveler ought to begin, and, moreover, had he not that intention, the tide of pedestrians would carry him and the streets themselves would conduct him thither. the first aspect of the place of the grand duke has an effect so charming, so picturesque, so complete, that you comprehend all at once into what an error the modern capitals like london, paris, st. petersburg, fall in forming, under the pretext of squares, in their compact masses, immense empty spaces upon which they run aground all possible and impossible modes of decoration. one can touch with his finger the reason which makes of the carrousel and place de la concorde, great empty fields which absorb fountains, statues, arches of triumph, obelisks, candelabra, and little gardens. all these embellishments, very pretty on paper, very agreeable also, without doubt, viewed from a balloon, are almost lost for the spectator who can not grasp the whole, his height only rising five feet above the ground. a square, in order to produce a beautiful effect, ought not to be too big; it is also necessary that it should be bordered by varied monuments of diverse elevations. the place of the grand duke at florence unites all these conditions; bordered by monuments regular in themselves, but different from one another, it is pleasing to the eye without wearying by a cold symmetry. the palace of the seigneurie, or old palace, which by its imposing mass and severe elegance at first attracts the attention, occupies a corner of the place, instead of the middle. this idea, a happy one, in our opinion, regrettable for those who only see architectural beauty in geometrical regularity, is not fortuitous; it has a reason wholly florentine. in order to obtain perfect symmetry, it would have been necessary to build upon the detested soil of the ghibelline house, rebellious and proscribed by the uberti; something that the guelph faction, then all-powerful, were not willing to allow the architect, arnolfo di lapo, to do. learned men contest the truth of this tradition; we will not discuss here the value of their objections. it is certain, however, that the old palace gains greatly by the singularity of this location and also leaves space for the great fountain of neptune and the equestrian statue of cosmo the first. the name of fortress would be more appropriate than any other, for the old palace; it is a great mass of stone, without columns, without frontal, without order of architecture. time has gilded the walls with beautiful vermilion tints which the pure blue of the sky sets off marvelously, and the whole structure has that haughty and romantic aspect which accords well with the idea that one forms for oneself of that old palace of the seigneurie, the witness, since the date of its erection in the thirteenth century, of so many intrigues, tumults, violent acts, and crimes. the battlements of the palace, cut square, show that it was built to that height by the guelph faction; the trifurcated battlements of the belfry indicate a sudden change on the accession to power of the ghibelline faction. guelphs and ghibellines detested each other so violently that they exprest their opinions in their garments, in the cut of their hair, in their arms, in their manner of fortifying themselves. they feared nothing so much as to be captured by one another, and differed as much as they possibly could. they had a special salutation after the manner of the freemasons and the companions of duty. the opinions of the ancient owners of the old palace at florence can be recognized by this characteristic; the walls of the city are crenelated squarely in the guelph fashion, and the tower on the ramparts has the ghibelline battlements of swallow-tail shape. the vecchio palace has for its basement several steps which were used in former times as a species of tribune, from the top of which the magistrates and demagogs harangued the people. two colossal statues of marble--hercules slaying cacus, by bandinelli, and david the conqueror of goliath, by michael angelo--mount near the door their age-long watch, like two gigantic sentinels whom someone has forgotten to relieve. the statue of david by michael angelo besides the inconvenience there is in representing under a gigantic form a biblical hero of notoriously small size, seemed to us a trifle common and heavy, a rare defect with this master; his david is a great big boy, fleshy, broad-backed, with monstrous biceps, a market porter waiting to put a sack upon his back. the working of the marble is remarkable and, after all, is a fine piece of study which would do honor to any other sculptor except michael angelo; but there is lacking that olympian mastership which characterizes the works of that superhuman sculptor. one of the most curious features of the old palace is the grand salon, a hall of enormous dimensions, which has its legend. when the medici were driven from florence, in 1494, fra girolamo savonarola, who directed the popular movement, proposed the idea of constructing an immense hall where a council of a thousand citizens would elect the magistrates and regulate the affairs of the republic. the architect cronaca had charge of this task and acquitted himself of it with a celerity so marvelous that brother savonarola caused the rumor to spread that angels descended from heaven to help the masons and continued at night the interrupted work. the invention of these angels tempering the mortar and carrying the hod is all done in the legendary style of the middle ages and would furnish a charming subject for a picture to some ingenuous painter of the school of overbeck or of hauser. in this rapid construction cronaca displayed, if not all his genius, at least all his agility. the work has been justly admired and often consulted by architects. when the medici returned to power and transferred their residence from the palace of the via larga, which they had occupied, to the palace of the seigneurie, cosmo wished to change the council hall into an audience chamber, and charged the presumptuous bacchio bandinelli, whose designs had attracted him, with various alterations of an important character; but the sculptor had undoubtedly presumed too much on his talent as an architect, and in spite of the assistance of giuliano baccio d'agnolo, whom he called to his aid, he worked for ten years without being able to conquer the difficulties which he had created for himself. it was vasari who raised the ceiling several feet, finished the work and decorated the walls with a succession of frescoes which may still be seen, and which represent different episodes in the history of florence--combats, and captures of cities, the whole being a travesty of antiquity, an intermingling of allegories. these frescos, painted with an intrepid and learned mediocrity, display the commonplace tones, swelling muscles and anatomical tricks in use at that epoch among artists. we have already called attention to the fact that colossal dimensions are not at all necessary to produce effect in architecture. the loggia de lanzi, that gem of the place of the grand duke, consists of a portico composed of four arcades, three on the façade, one in return on the gallery of the offices. it is a miniature of a monument; but the harmony of its proportions is so perfect that the eye in contemplating it experiences a sense of satisfaction. the nearness of the palace of the seigneurie, with its compact mass, admirably sets off the elegant slenderness of its arches and columns. the loggia is a species of museum in the open air. the "perseus" of benvenuto cellini, the "judith" of donatello, the "rape of the sabines" of john of bologna, are framed in the arcades. six antique statues--the cardinal and monastic virtues--by jacques, called pietro, a madonna by orgagna adorn the interior wall. two lions, one antique, the other modern, by vacca, almost as good as the greek lions of the arsenal at venice, complete the decoration. the perseus may be regarded as the masterpiece of benvenuto cellini, an artist so highly spoken of in france, without scarcely anything being known about him. this statue, a little affected in its pose, like all the works of the florentine school, has a juvenile grace which is very attractive. the origins of the city[29] by grant allen only two considerable rivers flow from the apennines westward into the mediterranean. the tiber makes rome; the arno makes florence. in prehistoric and early historic times, the mountainous region which forms the basin of these two rivers was occupied by a gifted military race, the etruscans, who possest a singular assimilative power for oriental and hellenic culture. intellectually and artistically, they were the pick of italy. their blood still runs in the veins of the people of tuscany. almost every great thing done in the peninsula, in ancient or modern times, has been done by etruscan hands or brains. the poets and painters, in particular, with few exceptions, have been, in the wide ethnical sense, tuscans. the towns of ancient etruria were hill-top strongholds. florence was not one of these; even its neighbor, fiesole (faesulue), did not rank among the twelve great cities of the etruscan league. but with the roman conquest and the roman peace, the towns began to descend from their mountain peaks into the river valleys; roads grew important, through internal trade; and bridges over rivers assumed a fresh commercial value. florence (florentia), probably founded under sulla as a roman municipium, upon a roman road, guarded the bridge across the arno, and gradually absorbed the population of fiesole. under the later empire, it was the official residence of the "corrector" of tuscany and umbria. during the middle ages, it became, for all practical purposes, the intellectual and artistic capital of tuscany, inheriting in full the remarkable mental and esthetic excellences of the etruscan race. the valley of the arno is rich and fertile, bordered by cultivable hills, which produce the famous chianti wine. it was thus predestined by nature as the seat of the second city on the west slope of italy. florence, however, was not always that city. the seaport of pisa (now silted up and superseded by leghorn) first rose into importance; possest a powerful fleet; made foreign conquests; and erected the magnificent group of buildings just outside the town which still form its chief claim upon the attention of tourists. but florence with its bridge commanded the inland trade, and the road to rome from germany. after the destruction of fiesole in 1125, it grew rapidly in importance; and, pisa having sustained severe defeats from genoa, the inland town soon rose to supremacy in the arno basin. nominally subject to the emperor, it became practically an independent republic, much agitated by internal quarrels, but capable of holding its own against neighboring cities. its chief buildings are thus an age or two later than those of pisa; it did not begin to produce splendid churches and palaces, in emulation of those of pisa and siena, till about the close of the 13th century. to the same period belongs the rise of its literature under dante, and its painting under giotto. this epoch of rapid commercial, military, and artistic development forms the main glory of early florence. the 14th century is chiefly interesting at florence as the period of giottesque art, finding its final crown in fra angelico. with the beginning of the 15th, we get the dawn of the renaissance--the age when art set out once more to recover the lost perfection of antique workmanship. in literature, this movement took the form of humanism; in architecture and sculpture, it exhibited itself in the persons of alberti, ghiberti, della robbia, and donatello; in painting, it showed itself in lippi, botticelli, ghirlandajo, and verrocchio.... we start, then, with the fact that up to nearly the close of the 13th century (1278), florence was a comparatively small and uninteresting town, without any buildings of importance, save the relatively insignificant baptistery; without any great cathedral, like pisa and siena; without any splendid artistic achievement of any kind. it consisted at that period of a labyrinth of narrow streets, enclosing huddled houses and tall towers of the nobles, like the two to be seen to this day at bologna. in general aspect, it could not greatly have differed from albenga or san gimignano in our own time. but commerce was active; wealth was increasing; and the population was seething with the intellectual and artistic spirit of its etruscan ancestry. during the lifetime of dante, the town began to transform itself and to prepare for becoming the glorious florence of the renaissance artists. it then set about building two immense and beautiful churches--santa croce and santa maria novella--while, shortly after, it grew to be ashamed of its tiny san giovanni (the existing baptistery), and girded itself up to raise a superb cathedral, which should cast into the shade both the one long since finished at maritime pisa and the one then still rising to completion on the height of siena. florence at that time extended no further than the area known as old florence, which means from the ponte vecchio to the cathedral in one direction, and from the ponte alla carraja to the grazie in the other. outside the wall lay a belt of fields and gardens, in which one or two monasteries had already sprung up. but italy at that moment was filled with religious enthusiasm by the advent of the friars both great orders of whom, the franciscans and the dominicans, had already established themselves in the rising commercial city of florence. both orders had acquired sites for monastic buildings in the space outside the walls and soon began to erect enormous churches. the dominicans came first, with santa maria novella, the commencement of which dates from 1278; the franciscans were a little later in the field, with santa croce, the first stone not being placed till 1294. the cathedral[30] by hippolyte adolphe taine desirous of seeing the beginnings of this renaissance we go from the palazzo-vecchio to the duomo. both form the double heart of florence, such as it beat in the middle ages, the former for politics, and the latter for religion, and the two so well united that they formed but one. nothing can be nobler than the public edict passed in 1294 for the construction of the national cathedral. "whereas, it being of sovereign prudence on the part of a people of high origin to proceed in its affairs in such a manner that the wisdom no less than the magnanimity of its proceedings can be recognized in its outward works, it is ordered that arnolfo, master architect of our commune, prepare models or designs for the restoration of santa maria reparata, with the most exalted and most prodigal magnificence, in order that the industry and power of men may never create or undertake anything whatsoever more vast and more beautiful; in accordance with that which our wisest citizens have declared and counselled in public session and in secret conclave, to wit, that no hand be laid upon the works of the commune without the intent of making them to correspond to the noble soul which is composed of the souls of all its citizens united in one will." [florence: bridge across the arno illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [florence: the old palace illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [florence: the loggia di lanzi illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [florence: cloister of santa maria novella illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [florence: cloister of san marco illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [florence: the pitti palace illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [florence: the house of dante illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [front of st. mark's, venice illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [interior of st. mark's, venice illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [the ducal palace, venice illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [venice: piazza of st. mark's, ducal palace on the left illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] [view of venice from the campanile illustration: courtesy john c. winston co.] in this ample period breathes the grandiose pride and intense patriotism of the ancient republics. athens under pericles, and rome under the first scipio cherished no prouder sentiments. at each step, here as elsewhere, in texts and in monuments, is found, in italy, the traces, the renewal and the spirit of classic antiquity. let us, accordingly, look at the celebrated duomo--but, the difficulty is to see it. it stands upon flat ground, and, in order that the eye might embrace its mass it would be necessary to level three hundred buildings. herein appears the defect of the great medieval structure; even to-day, after so many openings, effected by modern demolishers, most of the cathedrals are visible only on paper. the spectator catches sight of a fragment, some section of a wall, or the façade; but the whole escapes him; man's work is no longer proportioned to his organs. it was not thus in antiquity; temples were small or of mediocre dimensions, and were almost always erected on an eminence; their general form and complete profile could be enjoyed from twenty different points of view. after the advent of christianity, men's conceptions transcended their forces, and the ambition of the spirit no longer took into account the limitations of the body. the human machine lost its equilibrium. with forgetfulness of the moderate there was established a love of the odd. without either reason or symmetry campaniles or bell-towers were planted, like isolated posts, in front or alongside of cathedrals; there is one of these alongside of the duomo, and this change of human equipoise must have been potent, since even here, among so many latin traditions and classic aptitudes, it declares itself. in other respects, save the ogive arcades, the monument is not gothic, but byzantine, or, rather, original; it is a creature of a new and mixed form like the new and mixed civilization of which it is the offspring. you feel power and invention in it with a touch of quaintness and fancy. walls of enormous grandeur are developed or expanded without the few windows in them happening to impair their massiveness or diminish their strength. there are no flying buttresses; they are self-sustaining. marble panels, alternately yellow and black, cover them with a glittering marquetry, and curves of arches let into their masses seem to be the bones of a robust skeleton beneath the skin. the latin cross, which the edifice figures, contracts at the top, and the chancel and transepts bubble out into rotundities and projections, in petty domes behind the church in order to accompany the grand dome which ascends above the choir, and which, the work of brunnelleschi, newer and yet more antique than that of st. peter, lifts in the air to an astonishing height its elongated form, its octagonal sides and its pointed lantern. but how can the physiognomy of a church be conveyed by words? it has one nevertheless; all its portions appearing together are combined in one chord and in one effect. if you examine the plans and old engravings you will appreciate the bizarre and captivating harmony of these grand roman walls overlaid with oriental fancies; of these gothic ogives arranged in byzantine cupolas; of these light italian columns forming a circle above a bordering of grecian caissons; of this assemblage of all forms, pointed, swelling, angular, oblong, circular and octagonal. greek and latin antiquity, the byzantine and saracenic orient, the germanic and italian middle-age, the entire past, shattered, amalgamated and transformed, seems to have been melted over anew in the human furnace in order to flow out in fresh forms in the hands of the new genius of giotto, arnolfo, brunnelleschi and dante. here the work is unfinished, and the success is not complete. the façade has not been constructed; all that we see of it is a great naked, scarified wall similar to a leper's plaster.[31] there is no light within. a line of small round bays and a few windows fill the immensity of the edifice with a gray illumination; it is bare, and the argillaceous tone in which it is painted depresses the eye with its wan monotony. a "pieta" by michael angelo and a few statues seem like spectres; the bas-reliefs are only vague confusion. the architect, hesitating between medieval and antique taste, fell only upon a lifeless light, that between a pure light and a colored light. the more we contemplate architectural works the more do we find them adapted to express the prevailing spirit of an epoch. here, on the flank of the duomo, stands the campanile by giotto, erect, isolated, like st. michael's tower at bordeaux, or the tower of st. jacques at paris; the medieval man, in fact, loves to build high; he aspires to heaven, his elevations all tapering off into pointed pinnacles; if this one had been finished a spire of thirty feet would have surmounted the tower, itself two hundred and fifty feet high. hitherto the northern architect and the italian architect are governed by the same instinct, and gratify the same penchant; but while the northern artist, frankly gothic, embroiders his tower with delicate moldings, and complex flower-work, and a stone lacework infinitely multiplied and intersected, the southern artist, half-latin through his tendencies and his reminiscences, erects a square, strong and full pile, in which a skilful ornamentation does not efface the general structure, which is not frail sculptured bijou, but a solid durable monument, its coating of red, black and white marble covering it with royal luxuriance, and which, through its healthy and animated statues, its bas-reliefs framed in medallions, recalls the friezes and pediments of an antique temple. in these medallions giotto has symbolized the principal epochs of human civilization; the traditions of greece near those of judea; adam, tubal-cain, and noah, daedalus, hercules, and antaeus, the invention of plowing, the mastery of the horse, and the discovery of the arts and the sciences; laic and philosophic sentiment live freely in him side by side with a theological and religious sentiment. do we not already see in this renaissance of the fourteenth century that of the sixteenth? in order to pass from one to another, it will suffice for the spirit of the first to become ascendant over the spirit of the second; at the end of a century we are to see in the adornment of the edifice, in these statues of donatello, in their baldness so expressive, in the sentiment of the real and natural life displayed among the goldsmiths and sculptors, evidence of the transformation begun under giotto having been already accomplished. every step we take we encounter some sign of this persistency or precocity of a latin and classic spirit. facing the duomo is the baptistery, which at first served as a church, a sort of octagonal temple surmounted by a cupola, built, doubtless, after the model of the pantheon of rome, and which, according to the testimony of a contemporary bishop, already in the eighth century projected upward the pompous rotundities of its imperial forms. here, then, in the most barbarous epoch of the middle ages, is a prolongation, a renewal, or, at least, an imitation of roman architecture. you enter, and find that the decoration is not all gothic; a circle of corinthian columns of precious marbles with, above these, a circle of smaller columns surmounted by loftier arcades, and, on the vault, a legion of saints, and angels peopling the entire space, gathering in four rows around a grand, dull, meager, melancholy byzantine christ. on these three superposed stories the three gradual distortions of antique art appear; but, distorted or intact, it is always antique art. a significant feature, this, throughout the history of italy; she did not become germanic. in the tenth century the degraded roman still subsisted distinct and intact side by side with the proud barbarian.... sculpture, which, once before under nicholas of pisa, had anticipated painting, again anticipated it in the fifteenth century; these very doors of the baptistery enable one to see with what sudden perfection and brilliancy. three men then appeared, brunelleschi, the architect of the duomo, donatello, who decorated the campanile with statues, and ghiberti, who cast the two gates of the baptistery, all three friends and rivals, all three having commenced with the goldsmith's art and a study of the living model, and all three passionately devoted to the antique; brunelleschi drawing and measuring roman monuments, donatello at rome copying statues and bas-reliefs and ghiberti importing from greece torsos, vases and heads which he restored, imitated and worshiped. an ascent of the great dome[32] by mr. and mrs. edwin h. blashfield the traveler who, turning his back to the gates of ghiberti, passes, for the first time, under the glittering new mosaics and through the main doors of santa maria del fiore experiences a sensation. he leaves behind him the façade, dazzling in its patterns of black and white marble, all laced with sculpture, he enters to dim, bare vastness--surely, never was bleaker lining to a splendid exterior. across a floor that seems unending, he makes long journeys, from monument to monument; to gigantic condottieri, riding ghost-like in the semi-darkness against the upper walls; to luca's saints and angels in the sacristies; to donatellos's saint john, grand and tranquil in his niche, and to michelangelo's group, grand and troubled in its rough-hewn marble. at length, in the north transept, he comes to a small door, and entering there, he may, if legs and wind hold out, climb five hundred and fifteen steps to the top of the mightiest dome in the world, the widest in span, and the highest from spring to summit. for the first one hundred and fifty steps or so, there are square turnings, and the stone looks sharp, and new, and solid; a space vaulted by a domical roof follows, and is apparently above one of the apsidal domes to the church; then a narrow spiral staircase leads to where a second door opens upon a very narrow, balustraded walk that runs around the inner side of the dome. he is at an altitude of sixty-seven meters, exactly at the spring of the cupola and the beginning of the vasari frescoes; the feet are at an elevation of one meter less than is that of the lower tops of notre dame de paris, and yet the dome follows away overhead, huge enough, high enough to contain a second church piled, pelion-like upon the first. before, in the dimness, is the vastest roof-covered void in the world; it is terrific, and if the visitor is susceptible, his knees shake, and his diaphragm seems to sink to meet them. the impression is tremendous; no wonder that the tuscans felt brunelleschi to be the central figure of the renaissance. again and again, whether in the gallery or between the walls of the dome, the thought comes; men built this, and one man dared it and planned it. not even the pyramids impress more strongly; for if brunelleschi built a lesser pyramid, he hollowed his and hung it in the air. on the other side of the space, a small black spot becomes a door when the traveler has giddily circled half the dome; it opens upon another staircase, up which he climbs between the two skins of the cupola, or rather between two of the three, like a parasite upon a monster. sometimes the place suggests a ship, with the oculi as gunports, piercing to the outer day, or else, his mind fresh from that red inferno of vasari's frescoes, the traveler is tunneling up through a volcanic crater with a whole typhonic enceladus buried below. to right and left, the smooth, cemented surface curves away and upward, brick buttresses appear constantly, but always with the courses of brick laid slanting to the earth's level, and perpendicular to the thrust of the dome. every possible effect of light and obscurity makes the strange vistas yet more weird, and, now and then, there is a feeling of standing upon the vast, rounding slope of some planet that shines at one's feet, then gradually falls away into the surrounding blackness. the famous "oaken chain" of vasari's life of brunelleschi is there, bolted together in successive beams. last of all, a long, straight staircase, straight because without turn to right or left, curves upward like an unradiant, bowed valhalla-bridge to a great burst of daylight, and the climber is upon the top of the dome. he is as completely cut off from the immediately surrounding earth as upon a cloud girdled mountain, for the dome swells so vastly below that the piazza can not be seen about transept or choir, and not one of the apsidal domes shows a tile of its covering, while the nave, that huge and tremendous nave of santa maria, looks but a narrow, and a distant roof. at one's back, the marble of the lantern is handsome and creamy in color, but battered and broken; its interior is curious--a narrow funnel of marble, little wider than a man's body, set with irons on either side, is the only ladder, so that the climb up is a close squeeze. there is a familiar something gone from the surroundings, and that something is soon remembered to be dante's baptistery, which does not exist from brunelleschi's dome, being blotted out by the façade of santa maria. one hundred feet below, showing its upper and richer portion gloriously from this novel point of view, is what from the piazza is the soaring bell tower, the campanile of giotto. arnolfo, giotto, brunelleschi[33] by mrs. oliphant arnolfo, sometimes called di cambio and sometimes di lapi, was the first of the group of cathedral builders in florence. who arnolfo was seems to be scarcely known, tho few architects after him have left greater works or more evidence of power. his first authentic appearance in history is among the band of workmen engaged upon the pulpit in the duomo at siena, as pupil or journeyman of niccolo pisano, the great reviver of the art of sculpture--when he becomes visible in company with a certain lapo, who is sometimes called his father (as by vasari) and sometimes his instructor, but who appears actually to have been nothing more than his fellow-workman and associate.... the cathedral, the palazzo pubblico, the two great churches of santa croce and santa maria novella, all leaped into being within a few years, almost simultaneously. the duomo was founded, as some say, in 1294, the same year in which santa croce was begun, or, according to others, in 1298; and between these two dates, in 1296, the palace of the signoria, the seat of the commonwealth, the center of all public life, had its commencement. all these great buildings, arnolfo designed and began, and his genius requires no other evidence. the stern strength of the palazzo, upright and strong like a knight in mail, and the large and noble lines of the cathedral, ample and liberal and majestic in ornate robes and wealthy ornaments, show how well he knew to vary and adapt his art to the different requirements of municipal and religious life and to the necessities of the age. we are not informed who they were who carried out the design of the duomo. arnolfo only lived to see a portion of this, his greatest work, completed--"the three principal tribunes which were under the cupola," and which vasari tells us were so solid and strongly built as to be able to bear the full weight of brunelleschi's dome, which was much larger and heavier than the one the original architect had himself designed. arnolfo died when he had built his palazzo in rugged strength, as it still stands, with walls like living rock and heavy tuscan cornices--tho it was reserved to the other masters to put upon it the wonderful crown of its appropriate tower--and just as the round apse of the cathedral approached completion; a hard fate for a great builder to leave such noble work behind him half done, yet the most common of all fates. he died, so far as there is any certainty in dates, in 1300, during the brief period of dante's power in florence, when the poet was one of the priors and much engaged in public business; and the same eventful year concluded the existence of cimabue, the first of the great school of florentine painters--he whose picture was carried home to the church in which it was to dwell for all the intervening centuries with such pride and acclamation that the borgo allegri is said to have taken its name from this wonderful rejoicing.... no more notable or distinct figure than giotto is in all the history of florence. he was born a peasant, in the village of vespignano in the mugello, the same district which afterward gave birth to fra angelico. giotto had at least part of his professional training in the great cathedral at assisi built over the bones of st. francis, was one of those homely, vigorous souls, "a natural person," like his father, whom neither the lapse of centuries nor the neighborhood of much greater and more striking persons about them, can deprive of their naive and genuine individuality. burly, homely, characteristic, he carries our attentions always with him, alike on the silent road, or in the king's palace, or his own simple shop. wherever he is, he is always the same, shrewd, humorous, plain-spoken, seeing through all pretenses, yet never ill-natured in doing so--a character not very lofty or elevated, and to which the racy ugliness of a strong, uncultivated race seems natural--but who under that homely nature carried appreciations and conceptions of beauty such as few fine minds possess. of all the beautiful things with which giotto adorned his city, not one speaks so powerfully to the foreign visitor--the forestiere whom he and his fellows never took into account, tho who occupy so large a space among the admirers of his genius nowadays--as the lovely campanile which stands by the great cathedral like the white royal lily beside the mary of the annunciation, slender and strong and everlasting in its delicate grace. it is not often that a man takes up a new trade when he is approaching sixty, or even goes into a new path out of his familiar routine. but giotto seems to have turned without a moment's hesitation from his paints and panels to the less easily-wrought materials of the builder and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enterprise or doubting his own power to do it. his frescoes and altarpieces and crucifixes, the work he had been so long accustomed to, and which he could execute pleasantly in his own workshop or on the cool new walls of church or convent, with his trained school of younger artists round to aid him, were as different as possible from the elaborate calculations and measurements by which alone the lofty tower, straight, and lightsome as a lily, could have sprung so high and stood so lightly against that italian sky. like the poet or the romancist when he turns from the flowery ways of fiction and invention, where he is unencumbered by any restrictions save those of artistic keeping and personal will, to the grave and beaten path of history--the painter must have felt when he too turned from the freedom and poetry of art to this first scientific undertaking. the cathedral was so far finished by this time, its front not scarred and bare as afterward, but adorned with statues according to old arnolfo's plan, who was dead more than thirty years before; but there was no belfry, no companion peal of peace and sweetness to balance the hoarse old vacca with its voice of iron. giotto seems to have thrown himself into work not only without reluctance but with enthusiasm. the foundation-stone of the building was laid in july of that year, with all the greatness of florence looking on; and the painter entered upon his work at once, working out the most poetic effort of his life in marble and stone, among the masons' chippings and the dust and blaze of the public street. at the same time he designed, tho it does not seem sure whether he lived long enough to execute, a new façade for the cathedral, replacing arnolfo's old statues by something better. of the campanile itself it is difficult to speak in ordinary words. the enrichments of the surface, which is covered by beautiful groups set in a graceful framework of marble, with scarcely a flat or unadorned spot from top to bottom, have been ever since the admiration of artists and of the world. but we confess, for our own part, that it is the structure itself that affords us that soft ecstasy of contemplation, sense of a perfection before which the mind stops short, silenced and filled with the completeness of beauty unbroken, which art so seldom gives, tho nature often attains it by the simplest means, through the exquisite perfection of a flower or a stretch of summer sky. just as we have looked at a sunset we look at giotto's tower, poised far above in the blue air, in all the wonderful dawns and moonlights of italy, swift darkness shadowing its white glory at the tinkle of the ave maria, and a golden glow of sunbeams accompanying the mid-day angelus. between the solemn antiquity of the old baptistery and the historical gloom of the great cathedral, it stands like the lily--if not, rather, like the great angel himself hailing her who was blest among women, and keeping up that lovely salutation, musical and sweet as its own beauty, for century after century, day after day. giotto made not only the design, but even, vasari assures us, worked at the groups and "bassi-relievi" of these "stories in marble, in which are depicted the beginning of all the arts." ... filippo of ser brunellescho of the lapi, which is, according to florentine use, his somewhat cumbrous name, or brunelleschi for short, as custom permitted him to be called, was the son of a notary, who as notaries do, hoped and expected his boy to follow in his steps and succeed to his practise. but, like other sons doomed their fathers' soul to cross, filippo took to those "figuretti" in bronze which were so captivating to the taste of the time, and preferred rather to be a goldsmith, to hang upon the skirts of art, than to work in the paternal office. he was, as vasari insinuates, small, puny, and ugly, but full of dauntless and daring energy as well as genius. from his gold and silver work, the "carvings" which old bartoluccio had been so glad to escape, and from his "figuretti," the ambitious lad took to architectural drawing, of which, according to vasari, he was one of the first amateurs, making "portraits" of the cathedral and baptistery, of the palazzo pubblico, and the other chief buildings of the city. he was so eloquent a talker that a worthy citizen declared of him that he seemed "a new st. paul;" and in his thoughts he was continually busy planning or imagining something skilful and difficult. the idea of completing the cathedral by adding to it a cupola worthy of its magnificent size and proportions seems to have been in the young man's head before the signoria or the city took any action in the matter. arnolfo's designs are said to have been lost, and all the young filippo could do was to study the picture in the spanish chapel of santa maria novella, where the cathedral was depicted according to arnolfo's intention; and this proof to the usefulness of architectural backgrounds, no doubt, moved him to those pictures of building which he was fond of making. after his failure in the competition with ghiberti for the baptistery gates, filippo went to rome, accompanied by donato. here the two friends lived and studied together for some time, one giving himself to sculpture, the other to architecture. brunelleschi, according to vasari, made this a period of very severe study. he examined all the remains of ancient buildings with the keenest care; studying the foundations and the strength of the walls, and the way in which such a prodigious load as the great dome, which already he saw in his mind's eye, could best be supported. so profound were his researches that he was called the treasure-hunter by those who saw him coming and going through the streets of rome, a title so far justified that he is said in one instance to have actually found an ancient earthenware jar full of old coins. while engaged in these studies, his money failing him, he worked for a jeweller according to the robust practise of the time, and after making ornaments and setting gems all day, set to work on his buildings, round and square, octagons, basilicas, arches, colosseums, and amphitheaters, perfecting himself in the principles of his art. in 1407 he returned to florence, and then there began a series of negotiations between the artist and the city, to which there seemed at first as if no end could come. they met, and met again, assemblies of architects, of city authorities, of competitors less hopeful and less eager than himself. his whole heart, it is evident, was set upon the business. hearing donatello at one of these assemblies mention the cathedral at orvieto, which he had visited on his way from rome, filippo, having his mantle and his hood on, without saying a word to anyone, set straight off from the piazza on foot, and got as far as cortona, from whence he returned with various pen-and-ink drawings before donato or any one else had found out that he was away. thus the small, keen, determined, ugly artist, swift and sudden as lightning, struck through all the hesitations, the consultations, the maunderings, the doubts, and the delays of the two authorities who had the matter in hand, the signoria and the operai, as who should say the working committee, and who made a hundred difficulties and shook their wise heads, and considered one foolish and futile plan after another with true burgher hesitation and wariness. at last, in 1420, an assembly of competitors was held in florence, and a great many plans put forth, one of which was to support the proposed vault by a great central pillar, while another advised that the space to be covered should be filled with soil mixed with money, upon which the dome might be built, and which the people would gladly remove without expense afterward for the sake of the farthings! an expedient most droll in its simplicity. brunelleschi, impatient of so much folly, went off to rome, it is said, in the middle of these discussions, disgusted by the absurd ignorance which was thus put in competition with his careful study and long labor. finally the appointment was conceded to him. the greatest difficulty with which he had to contend was a strike of his workmen, of whom, however, there being no trades' unions in those days, the imperious master made short work. and thus, day by day, the great dome swelled out over the shining marble walls and rose against the beautiful italian sky. nothing like it had been seen before by living eyes. the solemn grandeur of the pantheon at rome was indeed known to many, and san giovanni[34] was in some sort an imitation of that; but the immense structure of the cupola, so justly poised, springing with such majestic grace from the familiar walls to which it gave new dignity, flattered the pride of the florentines as something unique, besides delighting the eyes and imagination of so beauty-loving a race. with that veiled and subtle pride which takes the shape of pious fear, some even pretended to tremble, lest it should be supposed to be too near an emulation of the blue vault above, and that florence was competing with heaven; others, with the delightful magniloquence of the time, declared that the hills around the city were scarcely higher than the beautiful duomo; and vasari himself has a doubt that the heavens were envious, so persistent were the storms amid which the cupola arose. yet there it stands to this day, firm and splendid, uninjured by celestial envy, more harmonious than st. peter's, the crown of the beautiful city. its measurements and size and the secrets of its formation we do not pretend to set forth; the reader will find them in every guide-book. but the keen, impetuous, rapid figure of the architect, impatient, and justly impatient, of all rivalry, the murmurs and comments of the workmen; the troubled minds of the city authorities, not knowing how to hold their ground between that gnome of majestic genius who had fathomed all the secrets of construction and built a hundred duomos in his mind, while they were pottering over the preliminaries of one; have all the interest of life for us. through the calm fields of art he goes like a whirlwind, keen, certain, unfailing in his aim, unsparing in means, carried forward by such an impulse of will and self-confidence that nothing can withstand him. sure of his own powers, as he was when he carved in secret the crucifix which was to cover poor donatello with confusion, he saw before him, over his carvings, as he worked for the roman goldsmith, the floating vision of the great dome he was to build--and so built it, all opposition notwithstanding, clearing out of his way with the almost contemptuous impatience of that knowledge which has no doubt of itself, the competing architects. ghiberti's gates[35] by charles yriarte the baptistery is the most ancient building in florence. if not of pagan origin it dates from the earliest ages of christianity. it was coated with marble of different colors by arnolfo di cambio in 1293, while in the sixteenth century agnolo gaddi designed the lantern; but long before arnolfo's time it had been employed as a christian place of worship, being used as a cathedral up to 1128, when it was converted into a baptistery. this building contains three gates, which have no parallel in the world. the oldest is that on the southern side, upon which pisano spent twenty-two years of his life, a most beautiful work representing, in twenty compartments, the life of st. john the baptist. the frieze which runs round it was commenced nearly a century afterward by ghiberti, and pollaiuolo had much to do with its completion. the northern gates are by ghiberti, and, like those of pisano, are divided into twenty compartments, the subject being the life of christ. the bronze door-posts are delicately carved with flowers, fruit, and animals. these gates were first placed on the eastern side, but in 1452 were removed to make room for ghiberti's still finer work. on the third façade, that which faces the duomo, is the porta del paradiso, so named by michael angelo, who declared that this gate was worthy to be the entrance into paradise. ghiberti divided each panel into five parts, taking the following as his subjects, after suggestions made by leonardo bruni aretino: (1) creation of adam and eve; (2) cain and abel; (3) noah; (4) abraham and isaac; (5) jacob and esau; (6) joseph in egypt; (7) moses on mount sinai; (8) the capture of jericho; (9) david slaying goliath; (10) the queen of sheba and soloman. the frieze contains statuettes of the prophets and prophetesses and portrait-busts of men and women still alive, including ghiberti himself, and his father; while the frame-posts, with their masses of vegetation and flora wrought in bronze, are admirable for their truth to nature. bronze groups representing the "decapitation of st. john the baptist," by danti, and the "baptism of our lord," by andrea sansovino, surmount two of the gates, which were at one time heavily gilded, tho few traces of this are now visible. the baptistery, empty as it appears to the eye upon first entering it, is replete with beautiful monuments, a description of which would fill a good-sized volume. it is built, as i have already said, upon an octagonal plan. the altar, which formerly stood beneath the cupola, has been removed. on the 24th of june every year the magnificent retablo in massive silver, which is preserved among the treasures in the opera del duomo, is displayed in the baptistery. the silver alone weighs 325 pounds, including two center-pieces, two side-pieces, and a silver crucifix with two statuettes seven feet high, and weighing 141 pounds, the group being completed by two statues of peace in engine-turned silver. many artists were employed upon the making of it. finiguerra, pollaiuolo, cione, michelozzi, verrocchio, and cennini made the lower parts and the bas-reliefs of the front, while the cross, executed in 1456, is by betto di francesco, and the base of it by milano di domenico dei and antonio pollaiuolo. the interior of the cupola of san giovanni is ornamented with some of the oldest specimens of mosaic decoration in florence, these byzantine artists being the first, after murano and altino, to exercise their craft in italy, and being succeeded by jacopo da turita, andrea tafi, and gaddo gaddi. the handsome tomb of baldassare cossa (pope john xxiii., deposed at the time of the council of constance), was reared in the baptistery by donatello. the holy of holies is relatively modern, having been erected at the expense of the guild of the "calimala," as the men who gave the finishing touch to the woolen stuffs manufactured abroad were called. the baptismal font, in a building specially used for christening, would, as a matter of course, be intrusted to artists of great repute, and that at san giovanni is attributed to andrea pisano. upon each face is represented one of the baptisms most famous in the history of the catholic religion, an inscription beneath explaining each episode; but this font is, unfortunately, so much in the background that it escapes the notice of many visitors. donatello carved the wooden statue of the magdalen which occupies one of the niches, the thin emaciated face being typical of the artist's partiality for reproducing in their smallest details the physical defects of his subject. the exterior aspect of the baptistery does not give one the idea of a building restored in the thirteenth, but rather in the fifteenth century. the ponte vecchio[36] by charles yriarte until the close of 1080 the ponte vecchio was built of wood, the heavy masses of timber, tho offering no steady resistance to the stream, dividing the muddy course of the waters into a thousand small currents, and breaking its force. but in 1177 occurred one of those inundations which were so frequent that traces of them may still be seen on the walls of the quays. these inundations were one of the curses of florence, and tho the evil has been, to a certain extent, cured by the construction of massive quays, they still occur in the direction of the cascine. an attempt was accordingly made in the twelfth century to obviate this inconvenience by the construction of a stone bridge. this, in turn, was carried away in 1333, and taddeo gaddi, who had already made a name for himself by his architectural skill, was employed to build a bridge capable of resisting the highest floods. the present bridge was therefore erected in 1345, being 330 feet long by 44 wide. with the double object of obtaining an income for the city and of introducing a novel feature, shops were built on the two pathways, which were 16 feet wide, and these were let to the butchers of florence, thus realizing the eastern plan of concentrating the meat trade of a town in one place. this arrangement lasted from 1422 until 1593, but in the latter year, under cosimo i., the "capitani di parte," who had the supervision of the streets and highways, ordered that all the goldsmiths and jewelers should take the place of the butchers, and in a few months, the ponte vecchio became the wealthiest and most crowded thoroughfare of florence. in order to avoid shutting out a view of the stream and interfering with the perspective, an open space had been reserved in the center, and when the palazzo vecchio and the uffizi were connected with the pitti palace by means of the large covered way carried over the bridge, this space was left intact so as to afford a view of the eminence of san miniato upon one side, of the windings of the stream on the other, and of the cascine shrubberies and the mountains upon the horizon. santa croce[37] by charles yriarte built by arnolfo, then fifty-four years of age, by order of the friars of st. francis, this venerable temple was raised upon the piazza called santa croce, where formerly stood a small church belonging to the order of the franciscan monks. they had resolved to embellish and enlarge their church, and cardinal matteo d'acquasparta, general of the franciscan order, proclaimed an indulgence to all contributors toward the undertaking. the church was far enough advanced in 1320 for services to be held in it, tho the façade was then, as until a very recent period it remained, a plain brick wall, without facing or any other ornament. santa croce was not singular in this respect, for san lorenzo and many other florentine churches have never been decorated externally. in 1442 cardinal bessarion, the founder of st. mark's library at venice, was delegated to perform the ceremony of consecration. donatello and ghiberti, incomplete as was the façade, executed some statues and a stained-glass window for it, but it is only within the last few years that the city of florence completed the work, leaving untouched the grand piazza which had been the scene of so many fêtes and intestine quarrels, and upon which is now erected a statue to dante. the façade of santa croce was completed in 1863. the expense was principally borne by mr. francis sloane, an englishman. the interior is striking from its vast size, the church being built in the shape of a latin cross with nave, aisles, and transepts, each of the seven pointed arches being supported on the octagonal column. opposite the front entrance is the high altar, while all around the walls and between the side altars--erected in 1557 by vasari by order of cosimo i.--are the monuments of the illustrious dead. first of all on the left there is domenico sestini, a celebrated numismatist, whose bust was carved by pozzetti. while in the first chapel on the right is the tomb of michael angelo, who died at rome on the 17th of february, 1564; the monument was designed by vasari, the bust was executed by battista lorenzo. two contemporary sculptors, valerio cioli and giovanni dell'opera, did the allegories of sculpture and architecture, the frescoes around the monument being by battista naldini. a nobler tomb might well have been raised to the memory of michael angelo. the body was deposited in the church on the 12th of march, 1564, and lay in state, for the people of florence to come and pay him the last tribute of respect. the next tomb is only commemorative, for it does not contain the ashes of dante, in whose honor it was erected in 1829 by ricci, as a tardy homage on the part of florence to one who suffered so much for her sake in life.[38] after dante comes victor alfieri, whose name has been borne with distinction by his descendants. this monument was erected by canova in 1807. compared with the monuments of the fifteenth century and of the renaissance, which are to be seen in such splendid profusion in florence, these tombs seem so inferior that it is impossible not to wonder how the decadence was brought about. it is not at florence alone that this feeling manifests itself; for at venice, in the splendid temple of santa maria gloriosa dei frari, beside the tombs of doges and condottieri of the fifteenth century there stands that wretched monument upon which the great name of titian has been traced. this is evidently the result of an inevitable law to which humanity is subject. genius comes into the world, grows, spreads, and covers the earth with its shadow; then slowly the sap runs back from the verdant trunk, the tree yields less luscious fruit and flowers not so fair, until at last the branches wither and the tree dies. close beside alfieri is buried machiavelli, his tomb, like so many of the others, being of modern erection, and consequently less beautiful than if it had been the work of a sculptor who had studied in the school of ghiberti or donatello. by the side of machiavelli rests luigi lanzi, a name less generally known, tho celebrated in his time as an historiographer of painting, or an art critic as we should now call him. his friend, chevalier ornofrio boni, prepared the design for his tomb, which was executed at public cost. the pulpit--a fine specimen of fifteenth-century sculpture, carved by benedetto da maiano at the cost of pietro mellini, who presented it to the church--is well worth close inspection; and close by, between the tombs of lanzi and leonardo bruni, is a group in freestone, representing the annunciation. this was one of the first of donatello's works, and gave an earnest of his future genius. the tomb of leonardo bruni aretino is one of the five or six greatest works of this nature which ever left the sculptor's hands; it has been used as a model by the sculptors of all the tombs in santa maria del popolo at rome. the monument to leonardo bruni is the highest expression of sculptural art, combining all the taste of ancient greece with the grace, the power, the calm, the supreme harmony, and the perfection which genius alone confers, its tranquil and subdued beauty comparing favorably with the theatrical effect and garish splendor of the monuments in st. john lateran and st. peter's at rome. the superb mausoleums of leopardi and of the lombardi at venice are, perhaps, equally beautiful; but i am inclined to give the preference to the work of bernardo rossellini. he became acquainted with leonardo bruni at the papal court, where he, as well as leo battista alberti, was a director of the pontifical works. the madonna let into the upper part of the monument is by andrea verocchio.... in visiting santa croce it is impossible not to feel how erroneous are the views often held as to the exact place which will be allotted in the roll of history to the men of the day. many of the names in this pantheon are almost unknown, the tomb next to that of galileo containing the dust of mulazzi-signorini, who has never been heard of out of italy. another unavoidable reflection is that the talent of the sculptor is rarely in proportion to that of the man whose memory he is about to perpetuate. machiavelli was commemorated by two obscure sculptors like foggini and ticcati, and michael angelo by battista lorenzi. what has the world not lost by the refusal of michael angelo's offer to erect a tomb to dante when the city of florence was about to ask ravenna to restore his remains to her! the convent annexed to santa croce was also built by arnolfo. it was originally occupied by the franciscan monks, and it was here that, from 1284 to 1782, the inquisition held its sittings. the notorious frenchman, gaulthier de brienne, duke of athens, who for a brief period ruled florence as captain of the people, selected this monastery as his residence in june, 1342, but having in september of the same year succeeded in getting himself elected ruler of florence for life, he removed to the palazzo vecchio. his reign, however, was of only brief duration, for the year following he was expelled by the people. the uffizi gallery[39] by hippolyte adolphe taine what can be said of a gallery containing thirteen hundred pictures? for my own part i abstain. examine catalogs and collections of engravings, or rather come here yourself. the impressions borne away from these grand store-houses are too diverse and too numerous to be transmitted by the pen. observe this, that the uffizi is a universal depot, a sort of louvre containing paintings of all times and schools, bronzes, statues, sculptures, antique and modern terracottas, cabinets of gems, an etruscan museum, artists' portraits painted by themselves, twenty-eight thousand original drawings, four thousand cameos and ivories and eighty thousand medals. one resorts to it as to a library; it is an abridgment and a specimen of everything.... we ascend the great marble staircase, pass the famous antique boar and enter the long horseshoe corridor filled with busts and tapestried with paintings. visitors, about ten o'clock in the morning, are few; the mute custodians remain in their corners; you seem to be really at home. it all belongs to you, and what convenient possessions! keepers and majordomos are here to keep things in order, well dusted and intact; it is not even necessary to give orders; matters go on of themselves without jar or confusion, nobody giving himself the slightest concern; it is an ideal world such as it ought to be. the light is excellent; bright gleams from the windows fall on some distant white statues on the rosy torso of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy obscurity. beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble gods and emperors extend away in files up to the windows through which flickers the light ripple of the arno with the silvery swell on its crests and eddies. you enter into the freedom and sweet repose of abstract life; the will relaxes, the inner tumult subsides; one feels himself becoming a monk, a modern monk. here, as formerly in the cloisters, the tender inward spirit, chafed by the necessities of action, insensibly revives in order to commune with beings emancipated from life's obligations. it is so sweet no longer to be! not to be is so natural! and how peaceful the realm of human forms withdrawn from human conflict! the pure thought which follows them is so conscious that its illusion is transient; it participates in their incorporeal serenity, and reverie, lingering in turn over their voluptuousness and violence, brings back to it plenitude without satiety. on the left of the corridors open the cabinets of precious things--the niobe hall, that of portraits, that of modern bronzes, each with its special group of treasures. you feel that you have a right to enter, that great men are awaiting you. a selection is made among them; you reenter the tribune; five antique statues form a circle here--a slave sharpening his knife; two interlocked wrestlers whose muscles are strained and expanded; a charming apollo of sixteen years whose compact form has all the suppleness of the freshest adolescence; an admirable faun instinct with the animality of his species, unconsciously joyous and dancing with all his might; and finally, the "venus de medici," a slender young girl with a small delicate head, not a goddess like her sister of milo, but a perfect mortal and the work of some praxiteles fond of "hetairae," at ease in a nude state and free from that somewhat mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its copies, and the restored arms with their thin fingers by bernini, seem to impose on her. she is, perhaps, a copy of that venus of cnidus of which lucian relates an interesting story; you imagine while looking at her, the youths' kisses prest on the marble lips, and the exclamations of charicles who, on seeing it, declared mars to be the most fortunate of gods. around the statues, on the eight sides of the wall, hang the masterpieces of the leading painters. there is the "madonna of the goldfinch" by raphael, pure and candid, like an angel whose soul is a bud not yet in bloom; his "st. john," nude, a fine youthful form of fourteen, healthy and vigorous, in which the purest paganism lives over again; and especially a superb head of a crowned female, radiant as a summer noonday, with fixt and earnest gaze, her complexion of that powerful southern carnation which the emotions do not change, where the blood does not pulsate convulsively and to which passion only adds a warmer glow, a sort of roman muse in whom will still prevails over intellect, and whose vivacious energy reveals itself in repose as well as in action. in one corner a tall cavalier by van dyck, in black and with a broad frill, seems as grandly and gloriously proud in character as in proportions, primarily through a well-fed body and next through the undisputed possession of authority and command. three steps more and we come to the "flight into egypt," by correggio, the virgin with a charming spirited face wholly suffused with inward light in which the purity, archness, gentleness and wildness of a young girl combine to shed the tenderest grace and impart the most fascinating allurements. alongside of this a "sibyl" by guercino, with her carefully adjusted coiffure and drapery, is the most spiritual and refined of sentimental poetesses. i pass twenty others in order to reserve the last look for titian's two venuses. one, facing the door, reclines on a red velvet mantle, an ample vigorous torso as powerful as one of rubens' bacchantes, but firmer--an energetic and vulgar figure, a simple, strong unintellectual courtezan. she lies extended on her back, caressing a little cupid naked like herself, with the vacant seriousness and passivity of soul of an animal in repose and expectant. the other, called "venus with the dog," is a patrician's mistress, couched, adorned and ready. we recognize a palace of the day, the alcove fitted up and colors tastefully and magnificently contrasted for the pleasure of the eye; in the background are servants arranging clothes; through a window a section of blue landscape is visible; the master is about to arrive. nowadays we devour pleasure secretly like stolen fruit; then it was served up on golden salvers and people sat down to it at a table. it is because pleasure was not vile or bestial. this woman holding a bouquet in her hand in this grand columnar saloon has not the vapid smile or the wanton and malicious air of an adventuress about to commit a bad action. the calm of evening enters the palace through noble architectural openings. under the pale green of the curtains lies the figure on a white sheet, slightly flushed with the regular pulsation of life, and developing the harmony of her undulating forms. the head is small and placid; the soul does not rise above the corporal instincts; hence she can resign herself to them without shame, while the poesy of art, luxury and security on all sides comes to decorate and embellish them. she is a courtezan but also a lady; in those days the former did not efface the latter; one was as much a title as the other and, probably, in demeanor, affection and intellect one was as good as the other. the celebrated imperia had her tomb in the church of san gregorio, at rome, with this inscription: "imperia, a roman courtezan worthy of so great a name, furnished an example to men of perfect beauty, lived twenty-six years and twelve days, and died in 1511, august 25." ... on passing from the italian into the flemish galleries one is completely turned around; here are paintings executed for merchants content to remain quietly at home eating good dinners and speculating over the profits of their business; moreover in rainy and muddy countries dress has to be cared for, and by the women more than the men. the mind feels itself contracted on entering the circle of this well-to-do domestic life; such is the impression of corinne when from liberal italy she passes to rigid and dreary scotland. and yet there is a certain picture, a large landscape by rembrandt, which equals and surpasses all; a dark sky bursting with showers among flocks of screaming crows; beneath, is an infinite stretch of country as desolate as a cemetery; on the right a mass of barren rocks of so mournful and lugubrious a tint as to attain to the sublime in effect. so is it with an andante of beethoven after an italian opera. florence eighty years ago[40] by william cullen bryant there is a great deal of prattle about italian skies; the skies and clouds of italy, so far as i have had an opportunity of judging, do not present so great a variety of beautiful appearances as our own; but the italian atmosphere is far more uniformly fine than ours. not to speak of its astonishing clearness, it is pervaded by a certain warmth of color which enriches every object. this is more remarkable about the time of sunset, when the mountains put on an aerial aspect, as if they belonged to another and fairer world; and a little after the sun has gone down, the air is flushed with a glory which seems to transfigure all that it encloses. many of the fine old palaces of florence, you know, are built in a gloomy tho grand style of architecture, of a dark-colored stone, massive and lofty, and overlooking narrow streets that lie in almost perpetual shade. but at the hour of which i am speaking, the bright warm radiance reflected from the sky to the earth, fills the darkest lanes, streams into the most shadowy nooks, and makes the prison-like structures glitter as with a brightness of their own. it is now nearly the middle of october, and we have had no frost. the strong summer heats which prevailed when i came hither, have by the slowest gradations subsided into an agreeable autumnal temperature. the trees keep their verdure, but i perceive their foliage growing thinner, and when i walk in the cascine on the other side of the arno, the rustling of the lizards, as they run among the heaps of crisp leaves, reminds me that autumn is wearing away, tho the ivy which clothes the old elms has put forth a profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur with bees like our orchards in spring. as i look along the declivities of the appenines, i see the raw earth every day more visible between the ranks of olive-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines. if i have found my expectations of italian scenery, in some respects, below the reality; in other respects, they have been disappointed. the forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by the buildings, imposing from their architecture or venerable from time, which crown the eminences. but if the hand of man has done something to embellish this region, it has done more to deform it. not a tree is suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural channel. an exterminating war is carried on against the natural herbage of the soil. the country is without woods and green fields; and to him who views the vale of the arno "from the top of fiesole," or any of the neighboring heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it appears, at any time after mid-summer, a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish maple on which vines are trained. the simplicity of nature, so far as can be done, is destroyed; there is no fine sweep of forest, no broad expanse of meadow or pasture ground, no ancient and towering trees clustered about the villas, no rows of natural shrubbery following the course of the brooks and rivers. the streams, which are often but the beds of torrents dry during the summer, are confined in straight channels by stone walls and embankments; the slopes are broken up and disfigured by terraces; and the trees are kept down by constant pruning and lopping, until half way up the sides of the appenines, where the limit of cultivation is reached, and thence to the summit is a barren steep of rock, without herbage or soil. the grander features of the landscape, however, are fortunately beyond the power of man to injure; the lofty mountain-summits, bare precipices cleft with chasms, and pinnacles of rock piercing the sky, betokening, far more than any thing i have seen elsewhere, a breaking up of the crust of the globe in some early period of its existence. i am told that in may and june the country is much more beautiful than at present, and that owing to a drought it now appears under disadvantage.... florence, from being the residence of the court,[41] and from the vast number of foreigners who throng to it, presents during several months of the year an appearance of great bustle and animation. four thousand english, an american friend tells me, visit florence every winter, to say nothing of the occasional residents from france, germany, and russia. the number of visitors from the latter country is every year increasing, and the echoes of the florence gallery have been taught to repeat the strange accents of the slavonic. let me give you the history of a fine day in october, passed at the window of my lodgings on the lung arno, close to the bridge. waked by the jangling of all the bells in florence and by the noise of carriages departing loaded with travelers, for rome and other places in the south of italy, i rise, dress myself, and take my place at the window. i see crowds of men and women from the country, the former in brown velvet jackets, and the latter in broad-brimmed straw hats, driving donkeys loaded with panniers or trundling hand-carts before them, heaped with grapes, figs, and all the fruits of the orchard, the garden, and the field. they have hardly passed, when large flocks of sheep and goats make their appearance, attended by shepherds and their families, driven by the approach of winter from the appenines, and seeking the pastures of the maremma, a rich, but, in the summer, an unhealthy tract on the coast. the men and the boys are drest in knee-breeches, the women in bodices, and both sexes wear capotes with pointed hoods, and felt hats with conical crowns; they carry long staves in their hands, and their arms are loaded with kids and lambs too young to keep pace with their mothers. after the long procession of sheep and goats and dogs and men and women and children, come horses loaded with cloths and poles for tents, kitchen utensils, and the rest of the younglings of the flock. a little after sunrise i see well-fed donkeys, in coverings of red cloth, driven over the bridge to be milked for invalids. maid-servants, bare-headed, with huge high carved combs in their hair, waiters of coffee-houses carrying the morning cup of coffee or chocolate to their customers, baker's boys with a dozen loaves on a board balanced on their heads, milkmen with rush baskets filled with flasks of milk, are crossing the streets in all directions. a little later the bell of the small chapel opposite to my window rings furiously for a quarter of an hour, and then i hear mass chanted in a deep strong nasal tone. as the day advances, the english, in white hats and white pantaloons, come out of their lodgings, accompanied sometimes by their hale and square-built spouses, and saunter stiffly along the arno, or take their way to the public galleries and museums. their massive, clean, and brightly-polished carriages also begin to rattle through the streets, setting out on excursions to some part of the environs of florence--to fiesole, to the pratolino, to the bello sguardo, to the poggio imperiale. sights of a different kind now present themselves. sometimes it is a troop of stout franciscan friars, in sandals and brown robes, each carrying his staff and wearing a brown broad-brimmed hat with a hemispherical crown. sometimes it is a band of young theological students, in purple cassocks with red collars and cuffs, let out on a holiday, attended by their clerical instructors, to ramble in the cascine. there is a priest coming over the bridge, a man of venerable age and great reputation for sanctity--the common people crowd around him to kiss his hand, and obtain a kind word from him as he passes. but what is that procession of men in black gowns, black gaiters, and black masks, moving swiftly along, and bearing on their shoulders a litter covered with black cloth? these are the brethren of mercy, who have assembled at the sound of the cathedral bell, and are conveying some sick or wounded person to the hospital. as the day begins to decline, the numbers of carriages in the streets, filled with gaily-drest people attended by servants in livery, increases. the grand duke's equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen, footmen, and out-riders in drab-colored livery, comes from the pitti palace, and crosses the arno, either by the bridge close to my lodgings, or by that called alla santa trinità, which is in full sight from the windows. the florentine nobility, with their families, and the english residents, now throng to the cascine, to drive at a slow pace through its thickly-planted walks of elms, oaks, and ilexes. as the sun is sinking i perceive the quay, on the other side of the arno, filled with a moving crowd of well-drest people, walking to and fro, and enjoying the beauty of the evening. travelers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashers, in the shabby "vettura," and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. the streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travelers. night at length arrives--the time of spectacles and funerals. the carriages rattle toward the opera-houses. trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pass through the streets chanting the service for the dead. the brethren of mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. the rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of supernatural appearance. i return to bed, and fall asleep amid the shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening. iii venice the approach from the sea[42] by charles yriarte to taste in all their fulness his first impressions of venice, the traveler should arrive there by sea, at mid-day, when the sun is high. by degrees, as the ship which carries him enters the channels, he will see the unparalleled city emerging from the lap of the lagoon, with its proud campaniles, its golden spires, its gray or silvery domes and cupolas. advancing along the narrow channels of navigation, posts and piles dot here and there with black that sheet of steel, and give substance to the dream, making solid and tangible the foreground of the illusive distance. just now, all that enchanted world and fairy architecture floated in the air; little by little all has become distinct; those points of dark green turn into gardens; that mass of deep red is the line of the ship-building yards, with their leprous-looking houses and with the dark-colored stocks on which are erected the skeletons of polaccas and feluccas in course of construction; the white line showing so bright in the sun is the riva dei schiavoni, all alive with its world of gondoliers, fruit-sellers, greek sailors, and chioggiotes in their many-colored costumes. the rose-colored palace with the stunted colonnade is the ducal palace. the vessel, on its way to cast anchor off the piazzetta, coasts round the white and rose-colored island which carries palladio's church of santa maria maggiore, whose firm campanile stands out against the sky with grecian clearness and grace. looking over the bow, the traveler has facing him the grand canal, with the custom house where the figure of fortune veers with the wind above her golden ball; beyond rise the double domes of the salute with their great reversed consoles, forming the most majestic entrance to this watery avenue bordered by palaces. he who comes for the first time to venice by this route realizes a dream--his only dream perhaps ever destined to be surpassed by the reality; and if he knows how to enjoy the beauty of nature, if he can take delight in silver-gray and rose-colored reflections in water, if he loves light and color, the picturesque life of italian squares and streets, the good humor of the people and their gentle speech which seems like the twittering of birds, let him only allow himself to live for a little time under the sky of venice, and he has before him a season of happiness without alloy. the approach by train[43] by the editor after leaving padua the land for several miles is flat sand. no grass or tree grows here. lagoons and canals intersect the land. at the right are marshes bordering the adriatic. along the horizon, light smoky clouds blend imperceptibly with the water. other clouds, floating overhead, are reflected in the brown and waveless water. far across this expanse glides here and there a small boat, propelled by a man standing erect. through dim mists, settled over the bay, we sight flying birds that call loudly as they increase their flight. absolutely without motion is this water. the sole objects that move are boats and birds. the water shimmers and sparkles wherever the sun, passing in and out of clouds, lights it up. the shallow bay broadens until our view includes no land. everywhere extends a realm of waveless waters, in which fishing stakes stand erect, and tall plants grow. how strangely all this differs from the blue mediterranean we saw a fortnight ago when riding from genoa to leghorn, under that cloudless sky of blue; in that stirring breeze, and an almost tropical temperature, tho it was late in december; along that rocky, tunnel-pierced coast, with deep olive groves bordering the way; the sea a boundless vision of water moving and resounding against the shore; whitecaps everywhere visible on its broad expanse. here on this road to venice is complete repose, lifeless, sleepy repose--as of the dead--not without poetry, but of the orient and of mystics, rather than of provence, or the ligurian shore and active, stalwart men. we sight in the distance over the lagoon, the white walls and roof line of venice. the railway starts on its long course over one of the noblest bridges in the world. it is more than two miles long. some 80,000 piles were used in its foundations, the superstructure entirely of stone, with arches of 33 feet span each, and 222 in number. along the roadway, on either side is a stone balustrade. at each pier a balcony curves outward. for four years a thousand men were engaged in building this viaduct, and the total cost was $10,000,000. having crossed, we reach an island; then cross another, but shorter, bridge and pass to another island. our train thereafter comes to a stop for we have reached venice and enter a magnificent station, built of stone, with high semi-circular roof, lofty waiting rooms, mosaic floors. we pass out through a spacious doorway, and directly below, and in front, see the grand canal, bordered on its farther shore by palaces and other noble structures of white marble. a wide and broad plaza here fronts the water, and a stairway at its edge leads downward to where are waiting a score of gondolas. we step into one of these boats, and begin our first gondola ride in adriatic waters. it is late afternoon. the western sun lies dying in a mass of yellow and soft brown clouds. on the high walls of the great white station its rays fall with startling brightness and cast long shadows of waiting gondoliers upon the plaza floor. the white palaces opposite are shrouded in somber hues. a warm mist seems to rise from the water. all is still as in the mid-atlantic. when a sound is made, echoes sharp and clear come from shore to shore. our boat glides away from this scene. adjusting ourselves to its motion, we roll from side to side in our little house of glass on a downy seat and could pass the whole night here contentedly. such rest, such appalling silence, we never knew before. those gondoliers do their work with consummate skill. they have all the ease that comes of practise in any calling however difficult. the sharp cut of an oar as it enters the water is for a moment heard, but never a splash. the boat rolls constantly, but we feel no strain. it moves as if it were a toy swan drawn by a magnet in a child's hand. from the grand canal we enter a narrow street. sharp corners are turned quickly, swift-moving boats are passed, narrow passages entered, and we glide into deep shadows under bridges, but never a collision, or danger of one, occurs. the gondolier at crossings cries out his warning. we hear, but do not see, another who calls aloud in similar tones. the two voices are heard again, each in an echo. far away in this watery but populous solitude, a church bell tolls. we have had a quarter-hour's ride when the gondola comes to rest before broad stone steps leading upward to a wide doorway. here is our hotel, an ancient palace, rich in marble and granite, with broad corridor, a noble stairway, and mosaic floors. it is sunday on st. mark's place--a bright, warm sunday it has been, such as winter can not give in our own country. here, indeed, is a foreign land, its life and spirit more foreign than rome. no scene in the wide world can rival this st. mark's scene, with the islands across the way in the broad lagoon--a magnificent piazza, bordered by the façades of splendid palaces, by statues, columns, and ornate capitals, another piazza near it surrounded on three sides by noble arcaded structures and on the fourth by the half gothic, half byzantine church of st. mark's, the most resplendent christian edifice in europe. in one corner rises the stupendous campanile, high above palace roofs, arcades and church domes, its bells sounding their notes upon an otherwise silent world. a tour of the grand canal[44] by théophile gautier the grand canal of venice is the most wonderful thing in the world. no other city affords a spectacle so fine, so bizarre, so fairy-like. as remarkable bits of architecture, perhaps, can be found elsewhere, but nowhere located under such picturesque conditions. there each palace has a mirror in which to gaze at its beauty, like a coquettish woman. the superb reality is doubled by a charming reflection. the water lovingly caresses the feet of these beautiful façades, which a white light kisses on the forehead, and cradles them in a double sky. the small boats and big ships which are able to ascend it seem to be made fast for the express purpose of serving as set-offs or ground-plans for the convenience of the decorators.... each bit of wall narrates a story; every house is a palace; at each stroke of the oars the gondolier mentions a name which was as well known in the times of the crusades as it is to-day; and this continues both to left and right for a distance of more than half a league. we have made a list of these palaces, not of all, but the most remarkable, and we do not dare to transcribe it here on account of its length. it covers five or six pages: pierre lombard, scamozzi, sansovino, sebastiano mazzoni, sammichelli, the great architect of verona; selva, domenico rossi, visentini, have drawn the plans and directed the construction of these princely dwellings, without reckoning the unknown artists of the middle ages who built the most picturesque and most romantic of them--those which give venice its stamp and its originality. on both banks, façades altogether charming and beautifully diversified succeed one another without interruption. after an architecture of the renaissance with its columns comes a palace of the middle ages in gothic arab style, of which the ducal palace is the prototype, with its balconies, lancet windows, trefoils, and acroteria. further along is a façade adorned with marble placques of various colors, garnished with medallions and consoles; then a great rose-colored wall in which is cut a large window with columnets; all styles are found there--the byzantine, the saracen, the lombard, the gothic, the roman, the greek, and even the rococo; the column and the columnet; the lancet and the semicircle; the fanciful capital, full of birds and of flowers, brought from acre or from jaffa; the greek capital found in athenian ruins; the mosaic and the bas-relief; the classic severity and elegant fantasy of the renaissance. it is an immense gallery open to the sky, where one can study from the bottom of his gondola the art of seven or eight centuries. what treasures of genius, talent, and money have been expended on this space which may be traversed in less than a quarter of an hour! what tremendous artists, but also what intelligent and munificent patrons! what a pity that the patricians who knew how to achieve such beautiful things no longer exist save on the canvases of titian, of tintoretto, and du moro! even before reaching the rialto, you have, on the left, in ascending the canal, the palace dario, in gothic style; the palace venier, which presents itself by an angle, with its ornamentation, its precious marbles and medallions, in the lombard style; the fine arts, a classic façade joined to the old ecole de la charité and surmounted by a figure riding upon a lion; the contarini palace, in architectural style of scamozzi; the rezzonico palace with three superimposed orders; the triple giustiniani palace, in the style of the middle ages, in which resides m. natale schiavoni, a descendant of the celebrated painter schiavoni, who possesses a gallery of pictures and a beautiful daughter, the living reproduction of a canvas painted by her ancestor; the foscari palace, recognizable by its low door, by its two stories of columnets supporting lancets and trefoils, where in other days were lodged the sovereigns who visited venice, but now abandoned; the balbi palace, from the balcony of which the princes leaned to watch the regattas which took place upon the grand canal with so much pomp and splendor, in the palmy days of the republic; the pisani palace, in the german style of the beginning of the fifteenth century; and the tiepolo palace, very smart and relatively modern. on the right, there nestles between two big buildings, a delicious little palace which is composed of a window and a balcony; but such a window and balcony! a guipure of stone, of scrolls, of guillochages, and of open-work, which would seem possible of execution only with a punching machine upon one of those sheets of paper which cover baptismal sugar-plums, or are placed upon globes of lamps. we greatly regretted not having twenty-five thousand francs about us to buy it, since that was all that was demanded for it.... the rialto, which is the most beautiful bridge in venice, with a very grandiose and monumental air, bestrides the canal by a single span with a powerful and graceful curve. it was built in 1691, under the dogeship of pasquale cigogna, by antonio da ponte, and replaced the ancient wooden drawbridge. two rows of shops, separated in the middle by a portico in the form of an arcade and permitting a glimpse of the sky, burden the sides of the bridge, which can be crossed by three paths; that in the center and the exterior passageways furnished with balustrades of marble. around the bridge of the rialto, one of the most picturesque spots of the grand canal, are gathered the oldest houses in venice, with platformed roofs, on which poles are planted to hang banners; their long chimneys, their bulging balconies, their stairways with disjointed steps, and their plaques of red coating, the fallen flakes of which lay bare the brick walls and the foundations made green by contact with the water. there is always near the rialto a tumult of boats and gondolas and of stagnant islets of tied-up craft drying their tawny sails, which are sometimes traversed by a large cross.... below and beyond the rialto are grouped on both banks the ancient fondaco dei tedeschi, upon the colored walls of which, in uncertain tints, may be devined some frescoes of titian and tintoretto, like dreams which come only to vanish; the fish-market, the vegetable market, and the old and new buildings of scarpagnino and of sansovino, almost fallen in ruins, in which are installed various courts.... on the right rises the palace della cà d'oro, one of the most charming on the grand canal. it belongs to mademoiselle taglioni,[45] who has restored it with most intelligent care. it is all embroidered, fringed, carved in a greek, gothic, barbaric style, so fantastic, so light, so aerial, that it might be fancied to have been built expressly for the nest of a sylph. mlle. taglioni has pity for these poor, abandoned palaces. she has several of them en pension, which she maintains out of pure commiseration for their beauty; we were told of three or four upon which she has bestowed this charity of repair.... in going to a distance from the heart of the city, life is extinct. many windows are closed or barred with boards; but this sadness has its beauty; it is more perceptible to the soul than to the eyes, regaled without cessation by the most unforeseen accidents of light and shade, by buildings so varied that even their dilapidation only renders them more picturesque, by the perpetual movement of the waters, and that blue and rose tint which composes the atmosphere of venice. st. mark's church[46] by john ruskin beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory--sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptered and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. and round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers--a confusion of delight, amid which the breasts of the greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the st. mark's lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. between that grim cathedral of england and this, what an interval! there is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the st. mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. and what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it? you may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of st. mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the venders of toys and caricatures. round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its center the austrian bands[47] play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. and in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. and the images of christ and his angels look down upon it continually.... let us enter the church itself. it is lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. what else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. and altho in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "mother of god," she is not here the presiding deity. it is the cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the center of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. at every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshipers scattered through the darker places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. the devotees at the greater number of the renowned shrines of romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of st. mark's; and hardly a moment passes from early morning to sunset in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted.... it must therefore be altogether without reference to its present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning of the architecture of this marvelous building; and it can only be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present neglect of st. mark's is significative of the decline of the venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or influencing the feelings of a civilized community. now the first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed incrustation. it is the purest example in italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials. consider the natural circumstances which give rise to such a style. suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances, in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on the oar rather than the sail. the labor and cost of carriage are just as great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as possible. but in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many marbles pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. there would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. out of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his edifice. how the old campanile was built[48] by horatio f. brown the wide discrepancy of the dates, 888 to 1148, may perhaps be accounted for by the conjecture that the work of the building [the campanile] proceeded slowly, either with a view to allowing the foundations to consolidate, or owing to lack of funds, and that the chroniclers recorded each resumption of work as the beginning of the work. one point may, perhaps, be fixt. the campanile must have been some way above ground by the year 997, for the hospital founded by the sainted doge, pietro orseolo, which is said to have been attached to the base of the tower, was consecrated in that year. the campanile was finished, as far as the bell-chamber at least, in 1148, under the doge domenico moresini, whose sarcophagus and bust surmount the portal of the san nicoll del lido. the chroniclers are at variance among themselves as to the date of the foundation, nor has an examination of the foundations themselves led to any discovery which enables us to determine that date; but one or two considerations would induce us to discard the earlier epochs. the foundations must have been designed to carry a tower of the same breadth, tho possibly not of the same height, as that which has recently fallen. but in the year of 888 had the venetians such a conception of their greatness as to project a tower far more massive than any which had been hitherto constructed in italy? did they possess the wealth to justify them in such an enterprise? would they have designed such a tower to match st. mark's, which was at that time a small church with walls of wood? it is more probable that the construction of the campanile belongs to the period of the second church of st. mark, which was begun after the fire of 976 and consecrated in 1094. the height of the campanile at the time of its fall was 98.60 meters (322 ft.), from the base to the head of the angel, tho a considerable portion of this height was not added till 1510; its width at the base of the shaft 12.80 meters (35 ft. 2 in.), and one meter (3 ft. 3 in.) less at the top of the shaft. the weight has been calculated at about 18,000 tons. thanks to excavations at the base of the tower made by com. giacomo boni, at the request of mr. c. h. blackall, of boston, u. s. a., in the year 1885, a report of which was printed in the archivio veneto, we possess some accurate knowledge about a portion of the foundation upon which this enormous mass rested. the subsoil of venice is composed of layers of clay, sometimes traversed by layers of peat, overlying profound strata of watery sand. this clay is, in places, of a remarkably firm consistency; for example, in the quarter of the town known as dorsoduro or "hard-back," and at the spot where the campanile stood. a bore made at that point brought up a greenish, compact clay mixed with fine shells. this clay, when dried, offered the resisting power of half-baked brick. it is the remarkable firmness of this clay which enabled the venetians to raise so ponderous a structure upon so narrow a foundation. the builders of the campanile proceeded as follows: into this bed of compact clay they first drove piles of about 9 1/2 in. in diameter with a view to consolidate still further, by pressure, the area selected. that area only extends 1.25 meter, or about 4 ft. beyond the spring of the brickwork shaft of the tower. how deep these piles reach boni's report does not state. the piles, at the point where he laid the foundation bare, were found to be of white poplar, in remarkably sound condition, retaining their color, and presenting closely twisted fiber. the clay in which they were embedded has preserved them almost intact. the piles extended for one row only beyond the superimposed structure. on the top of these piles the builders laid a platform consisting of two layers of oak beams, crosswise. the lower layer runs in the line of the piazza, east to west, the upper in the line of the piazzetta, north to south. each beam is square and a little over 4 in. thick. this oak platform appears to be in bad condition; the timbers are blackened and friable. while the excavation was in progress sea-water burst through the interstices, which had to be plugged. upon this platform was laid the foundation proper. this consisted of seven courses of stone of various sizes and of various kinds--sandstone of two qualities, limestone from istria and verona, probably taken from older buildings on the mainland, certainly not fresh-hewn from the quarry. the seventh or lowest course was the deepest, and was the only one which escaped, and that but slightly; the remaining six courses were intended to be perpendicular. these courses varied widely from each other in thickness--from 0.31 to 0.90 meters. they were composed of different and ill-assorted stone, and were held together in places by shallow-biting clamps of iron, and by a mortar of white istrian lime, which, not being hydraulic, and having little affinity for sand, had become disintegrated. boni calls attention to the careless structure of this foundation proper, and maintains that it was designed to carry a tower of about two-thirds of the actual height imposed upon it, but not more. above the foundation proper came the base. this consisted of five courses of stone set in stepwise. these courses of the base were all the same kind of stone, in fairly regular blocks, and of fairly uniform thickness. they were all intended to be seen, and originally rose from the old brick pavement of the piazza; but the gradual subsidence of the soil--which is calculated as proceeding at the rate of nearly a meter per 1,000 years--caused two and a half of these stepped courses to disappear, and only two and a half emerged from the present pavement. thus the structure upon which the brick shaft of the campanile rested was composed of (1) the base of five stepped courses, (2) the foundations of seven courses almost perpendicular, (3) the platform of oak beams, and (4) the piles. the height of the foundation, including the base, was 5.02 meters, about 16 ft., or one-twentieth of the height they carried. not only is this a very small proportion, but it will be further observed that the tradition of star-shaped supports to the foundations is destroyed, and that they covered a very restricted area. in fact, the foundations of the campanile belonged to the primitive or narrow kind. the foundations of the ducal palace, on the other hand, belonged to the more recent or extended kind. those foundations do not rest on piles, but on a very broad platform of larch beams--much thicker than the oak beams of the campanile platform--reposing directly on the clay. upon this platform, foundations with a distended escarpment were built to carry the walls, the weight of which was thus distributed equally over a wide area. little of the old foundations of the campanile will remain when the work on the new foundations is completed. the primitive piles and platform are to stand; but new piles have been driven in all round the original nucleus, and on them are being laid large blocks of istrian stone, which will be so deeply bonded into the old foundations that hardly more than a central core of the early work will be left ... in a peculiar fashion the campanile of san marco summed up the whole life of the city--civil, religious, commercial, and military--and became the central point of venetian sentiment. for the tower served the double needs of the ecclesiastic and the civic sides of the republic. its bells marked the canonical hours; rang the workman to his work, the merchant to his desk, the statesman to the senate; they pealed for victory or tolled for the demise of a doge. the tower, moreover, during the long course of its construction, roughly speaking, from the middle of the tenth to the opening of the sixteenth centuries, was contemporary with all that was greatest in venetian history; for the close of the tenth century saw the conquest of dalmatia, and the foundations of venetian supremacy in the adriatic--that water-avenue to the levant and the orient--while by the opening of the sixteenth the cape route had been discovered, the league of cambray was in sight, and the end at hand. the tower, too, was a landmark to those at sea, and when the mariner had the campanile of san nicolo on the lido covering the campanile of st. marks, he knew he had the route home and could make the lido port. the tower was the center of popular festivals, such as that of the svolo on giovedi grasso, when an acrobat descended by a rope from the summit of the campanile to the feet of the doge, who was a spectator from the loggia of the ducal palace. how the campanile fell[49] by horatio t. brown we come now to the dolorous moment of the fall in july, 1902. infiltration of water had been observed in the roof of sansovino's loggetta where that roof joined the shaft of the campanile. at this point a thin ledge of stone, let into the wall of the campanile, projected over the junction between the leaden roof of the loggetta and the shaft of the tower. in order to remedy the mischief of infiltration it was resolved to remove and replace this projecting ledge. to do this a chase was made in the wall of the campanile, which, at this point, consisted of a comparatively modern surface of masonry, placed there to repair the damage caused by lightning strokes. this chase was cut, not piecemeal, but continuously. the work was carried out on monday, july 7th. during the process the architect in charge became alarmed at the condition of the inner part of the wall laid bare by the cut. he exprest his fears to his superiors, but apparently no examination of the tower was made till the thursday following. even then the imminence of the danger does not seem to have been grasped. on saturday, the 12th, a crack was observed spreading upward in a sloping direction from the cut above the roof of the loggetta toward the northeast angle of the shaft, then crossing the angle and running up almost perpendicularly in the line of the little windows that gave light to the internal passage from the base to the bell-chamber. this crack assumed such a threatening aspect, and was making such visible progress, that the authorities in charge of the tower felt bound to inform the prefect, tho the danger was represented as not immediate, and the worst they expected was the fall of the angle where the crack had appeared. a complete collapse of the whole tower was absolutely excluded. as a precautionary measure the music in the piazza was suspended on saturday evening. on sunday orders were issued to endeavor to bind the threatened angle. but by monday morning early (july 14th) it was evident that the catastrophe could not be averted. dust began to pour out of the widening crack, and bricks to fall. a block of istrian stone crashed down from the bell-chamber, then a column from the same site. at 9.47 the ominous fissure opened, the face of the campanile toward the church and the ducal palace bulged out, the angle on the top and the pyramid below it swayed once or twice, and threatened to crush either the sansovino's library or the basilica of san marco in their fall, then the whole colossus subsided gently, almost noiselessly, upon itself, as it were in a curtsey, the ruined brick and mortar spread out in a pyramidal heap, a dense column of white powder rose from the piazza, and the campanile was no more. it is certainly remarkable, and by the people of venice it is reckoned as a miracle, that the tower in its fall did so little harm. not a single life was lost, tho the crowd in the piazza was unaware of its danger till about ten minutes before the catastrophe. the palace of the doges[50] by john ruskin the ducal palace, which was the great work of venice, was built successively in the three styles. there was a byzantine ducal palace, a gothic ducal palace, and a renaissance ducal palace. the second superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that is left. but the third superseded the second in part only, and the existing building is formed by the union of the two. we shall review the history of each in succession. 1st. the byzantine palace. in the year of the death of charlemagne, 813, the venetians determined to make the island of rialto the seat of the government and capital of their state. their doge, angelo or agnello participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future venice. he appointed persons to superintend the raising of the banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. for the offices of religion, he built the church of st. mark; and on, or near, the spot where the ducal palace now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government. the history of the ducal palace therefore begins with the birth of venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last representation of her power.... in the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire, but repaired before 1116, when it received another emperor, henry v. (of germany), and was again honored by imperial praise. between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and much enlarged by the doge sebastian ziani. sansovino says that this doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every direction;" and, after this enlargement, the palace seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the gothic palace were begun. venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world. the acquiescence in the secure establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity.... in the first year of the fourteenth century, the gothic ducal palace of venice was begun; and as the byzantine palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the state, so the gothic palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the aristocratic power. considered as the principal representation of the venetian school of architecture, the ducal palace is the parthenon of venice, and gradenigo its pericles. before it was finished, occasion had been discovered for farther improvements. the senate found their new council chamber inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion, began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be built. the government was now thoroughly established, and it was probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as well as insufficiency in the size, of the council chamber on the rio. it appears from the entry still preserved in the archivio, and quoted by cadorin, that it was on the 28th of december, 1340, that the commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their report to the grand council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the commencement of a new council chamber on the grand canal. the room then begun is the one now in existence, and its building involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the present ducal palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all prepared for sustaining this sala del gran consiglio. in saying that it is the same now in existence, i do not mean that it has undergone no alterations; it has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, the spectator will see at once that whatever can be known respecting the design of the sea façade, must be gleaned out of the entries which refer to the building of this great council chamber. cadorin quotes two of great importance, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of 1349, resolving that the works at the ducal palace, which had been discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in 1362, which speaks of the great council chamber as having been neglected and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall be forthwith completed. the interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the conspiracy of faliero, and the violent death of the master builder. the work was resumed in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as that guariento was enabled to paint his paradise on the walls, so that the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. its decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400.... the works of addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three years. three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form of the ducal palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the fourteenth century--with the rude byzantine chiselling of the palace of the doge ziani. the magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new council chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in venice as the "palazzo nuovo;" and the old byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the "palazzo vecchio." that fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in venice. the new council chamber had been erected by the side of it toward the sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the riva dei schiavoni, which now renders the sea façade as important as that to the piazzetta. there was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the old palace of ziani still faced the piazzetta, and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the nobles daily met. every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the piazzetta with the same splendor as the sea façade. but no such sweeping measure of renovation had been contemplated by the senate when they first formed the plan of their new council chamber. first a single additional room, then a gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of the ancient edifice. the exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon the political horizon, rendered it more imprudent to incur the vast additional expense which such a project involved; and the senate, fearful of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger. it was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt, but that no one should propose rebuilding it. the feeling of the desirableness of doing so was too strong to permit fair discussion, and the senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it. the decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace, under the penalty of a thousand ducats. but they had rated their own enthusiasm too low; there was a man among them whom the loss of a thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be for the good of the state. some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of st. mark's, and part of the old palace fronting the piazzetta. what followed, i shall relate in the words of sanuto. "therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care to repair and adorn sumptuously, first god's house; but in the prince's house things went on more slowly, for it did not please the doge to restore it in the form in which it was before; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who should propose to throw down the old palace, and to rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. "but the doge, who was magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the city, had the thousand ducats carried into the senate chamber, and then proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, since the late fire had ruined in great part the ducal habitation (not only his own private palace, but all the places used for public business), this occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from god, that they ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the greatness to which, by god's grace, their dominions had reached; and that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish interest; that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the advantage of the state, and the honor of the venetian name; and that, as far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it as his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very old, and broken down with many toils, god would call him to another life before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. and that therefore they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his successors." ... then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to observe the laws, he had brought with him the thousand ducats which had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that he sought, but the dignity of the state.' there was no one (sanuto goes on to tell us) who ventured, or desired to oppose the wishes of the doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses of the work. "and they set themselves with much diligence to the work; and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at present seen; but, as mocenigo[51] had prophesied, not long after, he ended his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but hardly even begun." there are one or two expressions in the above extracts which, if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. we must however remember, that, at this time, the new council chamber, which had been one hundred years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat in it; and it was just as likely that the doge should then propose to destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should propose in our house of commons to throw down the new houses of parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild them.... it was in the year 1422 that the decree passed to rebuild the palace; mocenigo died in the following year, and francesco foscari was elected in his room. the great council chamber was used for the first time on the day when foscari entered the senate as doge--the 3rd of april, 1423, according to the "caroldo chronicle;" the 23d, which is probably correct, by an anonymous ms., no. 60, in the correr museum; and the following year, on the 27th of march, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace of ziani. that hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the "renaissance." it was the knell of the architecture of venice--and of venice herself. the central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun; i date its commencement from the death of mocenigo. a year had not yet elapsed since that great doge had been called to his account; his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future venice, he had forgotten what was due to the venice of long ago. a thousand palaces might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could taken the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her unfrequented shore. it fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of fortune, the city never flourished again. i have no intention of following out, in their intricate details, the operations which were begun under foscari and continued under succeeding doges till the palace assumed its present form, for i am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the architecture of the fifteenth century; but the main facts are the following. the palace of ziani was destroyed; the existing façade to the piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most particulars, the work of the great council chamber. it was carried back from the sea as far as the judgment angle; beyond which is the porta della carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the doge foscari; the interior buildings connected with it were added by the doge christopher moro (the othello of shakespeare) in 1462. some remnants of the ziani palace were perhaps still left between the two extremities of the gothic palace; or, as is more probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the doge. but whatever buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion of the porta della carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479, together with so much of the palace on the rio that, tho the saloon of gradenigo, then known as the sala de pregadi, was not destroyed, it became necessary to reconstruct the entire façades of the portion of the palace behind the bridge of sighs, both toward the court and canal. the palace was not long permitted to remain in finished form. another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire, burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious pictures of the great council chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the sea façade, and most of those on the rio façade, leaving the building a mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. it was debated in the great council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an entirely new palace built in its stead. the opinions of all the leading architects of venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or the possibility of repairing them as they stood. these opinions, given in writing, have been preserved, and published by the abbé cadorin, and they form one of the most important series of documents connected with the ducal palace. i can not help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was first given in favor of the ancient fabric, giovanni rusconi. others, especially palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute designs of their own; but the best architects in venice, and, to his immortal honor, chiefly francesco sansovino, energetically pleaded for the gothic pile, and prevailed. it was successfully repaired, and tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the paradise of guariento had withered before the flames. the repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the palace; still the only serious alteration in its form was the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace, to the other side of the rio del palazzo; and the building of the bridge of sighs, to connect them with the palace, by antonio da ponte. the completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form; with the exception of alterations in doors, partitions, and staircases among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, i suppose, nearly every building of importance in italy. the lagoons[52] by horatio f. brown the colonization of the venetian estuary is usually dated from the year 452, the period of the hunnish invasion under attila, when the scourge of god, as he was named by his terror-stricken opponents, sacked the rich roman cities of aquileia, concordia, opitergium, and padua. in one sense the date is correct. the hunnish invasion certainly gave an enormous increase to the lagoon population, and called the attention of the mainlanders, to the admirable asylum which the estuary offered in times of danger. when alcuin, the great scholar from yorkshire, was teaching charlemagne's son and heir, pepin, he drew up for his pupil's use a curious catechism of questions and answers. among others this occurs: "what is the sea." "a refuge in time of danger." surely a strange answer, and one which can hardly be reckoned as true except in the particular case of the venetian lagoons. for the mainlanders were caught between the devil of attila and the deep sea of the adriatic, and had they not found the lagoons ready at hand to offer them an asylum and to prove a refuge in time of danger, it must have fared hard with them. but this date of 452 is not to be taken as the date of the very earliest occupation of the lagoon. long before attila and his huns swept down upon italy, we know that there was a sparse population occupying the estuary, engaged in fishing and in the salt trade. cassiodorus, the secretary of the gothic king theodoric the great, has left us a picture of this people, hardy, independent, toughened by their life on the salt water; their means of living; the fish of the lagoons; their source of wealth; the salt which they extracted from its waters; their houses, wattled cabins built upon piles driven into the mud; their means of locomotion light boats which were tied to the door posts like horses on mainland. "thus you live in your sea-birds' home," he exclaims, "rich and poor under equal laws; a common food supports you; house is like unto house; and envy, that curse of all the world, hath no place there." no doubt this early population of the lagoons, already intimately associated with its dwelling-place, modified by it and adapted to it, helped to form the basis upon which the latter strata of population, the result of the hunnish invasion, could rest; and in all probability some of the characteristics of this early population, its independence and its hardihood, passed into the composition of the full-grown venetian race. but beyond the brief words of cassiodorus we know little about these early lagoon-dwellers. it is really with the hunnish invasion that the history of venice begins its first period of growth. the population which flocked from the mainland to seek refuge in the estuary of venice came from many different cities--from aquileia, from concordia, from padua; and tho the inhabitants of all these, no doubt, bore the external stamp which rome never failed to impose, yet, equally doubtless, they brought with them their own particular customs, their mutual hates and rivalries. while living on the mainland these animosities had wider space in which to play, and were therefore less dangerous, less explosive. but in the lagoons, under stress of suffering, and owing to confinement and juxtaposition, they became intensified, exaggerated, and perilous. there was a double problem before the growing venetian population which required to be solved before venice and the venetians could, with any justice, be considered a place and a people. first, the various and largely hostile populations who had taken refuge in the lagoon had to be reconciled to each other; and secondly, they had to be reconciled to their new home, to be identified with it and made one with it. the lagoon achieved both reconciliations; the isolation of its waters, their strangeness, gradually created the feeling of unity, of family connection, among the diverse and hostile components of the population, till a fusion took place between the original and the immigrant inhabitants, and between the people and their home, and venice and the venetians emerge upon the history of the world as an individual and full-grown race. but this reconciliation and identification were not accomplished at once. they cost many years of struggle and of danger. the unification of venice is the history of a series of compromises, an historical example of the great law of selection and survival. the decline amid splendor[53] by hippolyte adolphe taine venice the beautiful city ended, pagan-like, as did its sisters the greek republics, through nonchalance and voluptuousness. we find, indeed, from time to time, a francis morosini, who like aratus and philopoemen, renews the heroism and victories of ancient days; but, after the seventeenth century, its bright career is over. the city, municipal and circumscribed, is found to be weak, like athens and corinth, against powerful military neighbors who either neglect or tolerate it; the french and the germans violate its neutrality with impunity; it subsists and that is all, and it pretends to do no more. its nobles care only to amuse themselves; war and politics with them recede in the background; she becomes gallant and worldly.... but the evening of this fallen city is as mellow and as brilliant as a venetian sunset. with the absence of care gaiety prevails. one encounters nothing but public and private fêtes in the memoirs of their writers and in the pictures of their painters. at one time it is a pompous banquet in a superb saloon festooned with gold, with tall lustrous windows and pale crimson curtains, the doge in his simarre dining with the magistrates in purple robes, and masked guests gliding over the floor; nothing is more elegant than the exquisite aristocracy of their small feet, their slender necks and their jaunty little three-cornered hats among skirts flounced with yellow or pearly gray silks. at another it is a regatta of gondolas and we see on the sea between san-marco and san-giorgio, around the huge bucentaur[54] like a leviathan cuirassed with scales of gold, flotillas of boats parting the water with their steel becks. a crowd of pretty dominos, male and female, flutter over the pavements; the sea seems to be of polished slate under a tender azure sky spotted with cloud-flocks while all around, as in a precious frame, like a fantastic border carved and embroidered, the procuraties, the domes, the palaces and the quays thronged with a joyous multitude, encircle the great maritime venetian sheet.... in truth they never concern themselves with religion except to repress the pope; in theory and in practise, in ideas and in instincts, they inherit the manners, customs and spirit of antiquity, and their christianity is only a name. like the ancients, they were at first heroes and artists, and then voluptuaries and dilettanti; in one as in the other case they, like the ancients, confined life to the present. in the eighteenth century they might be compared to the thebans of the decadence who, leagued together to consume their property in common, bequeathed what remained of their fortunes on dying to the survivors at their banquets. the carnival lasts six months; everybody, even the priests, the guardian of the capucins, the nuncio, little children, all who frequent the markets, wear masks. people pass by in processions disguised in the costumes of frenchmen, lawyers, gondoliers, calabrians and spanish soldiery, dancing and with musical instruments; the crowd follows jeering or applauding them. there is entire liberty; prince or artizan, all are equal; each may apostrophize a mask. pyramids of men form "pictures of strength" on the public squares; harlequins in the open air perform parades. seven theaters are open. improvizators declaim and comedians improvize amusing scenes. "there is no city where license has such sovereign rule." ... the chiogga campaign is the last act of the old heroic drama; there, as in the best days of the ancient republics, a besieged people is seen to save itself against all hope, artizans equipping vessels, a pisani conqueror undergoing imprisonment and only released to renew the victory, a carlo zeno, surviving forty wounds, and a doge of seventy years of age; a contarini, who makes a vow not to leave his vessel so long as the enemy's fleet is uncaptured, thirty families, apothecaries, grocers, vintners, tanners admitted among the nobles, a bravery, a public spirit like that of athens under themistocles and of rome under fabius cunctator. if, from this time forth, the inward fire abates we still feel its warmth for many long years, longer kept up than in the rest of italy, and sometimes demonstrating its power by sudden outbursts. the nobles, on their side, are always ready to fight. during the whole of the sixteenth century, even up to the seventeenth and beyond, we see them in dalmatia, in the morea, over the entire mediterranean, defending the soil inch by inch against the infidels. the garrison of famagouste yields only to famine, and its governor, bragadino, burned alive, is a hero of ancient days. at the battle of lepanto the venetians alone furnish one half of the christian fleet. thus on all sides, and notwithstanding their gradual decline, peril, energy, love of country, all, in brief, which constitutes or sustains the grand life of the soul here subsists, while throughout the peninsula foreign dominion, clerical oppression and voluptuous or academical inertia reduces man to the system of the antechamber, the subtleties of dilettantism and the babble of sonnets. but if the human spring is not broken at venice, it is seen insensibly losing its elasticity. the government, changed into a suspicious despotism, elects a mocenigo doge, a shameless speculator profiting on the public distress, instead of that charles zeno who had saved the country; it holds zeno prisoner two years and entrusts the armies on the mainland to condottieri; it is tied up in the hands of three inquisitors, provokes accusations, practises secret executions and commands the people to confine themselves to indulgences of pleasure. on the other hand luxury arises. about the year 1400 the houses "were quite small;" but a thousand nobles were enumerated in venice possessing from four to seventy thousand ducats rental, while three thousand ducats were sufficient to purchase a palace. henceforth this great wealth is no longer to be employed in enterprises and in self-devotion, but in pomp and magnificence. in 1495, commine admires "the grand canal, the most beautiful street, i think, in the world, and with the best houses; the houses are very grand, high and of excellent stone--and these have been built within a century. all have fronts of white marble, which comes from istria, a hundred miles away, and yet many more great pieces of porphyry and of serpentine on them; inside they have, most of them, at least two chambers with gilded ceilings, rich screens of chimneys with carved marble, the bedsteads gilded and the 'ostevents' painted and gilded and well furnished within." on his arrival twenty-five gentlemen attired in silk and scarlet come to meet him; they conduct him to a boat decked with crimson silk; "it is this most triumphant city i ever saw." finally, while the necessity of pleasure grows the spirit of enterprise diminishes; the passage of the cape in the beginning of the sixteenth century places the commerce of asia in the hands of the portuguese; on the mediterranean and the atlantic the financial measures of charles v., joined to bad usage by the turks, render abortive the great maritime caravans which the state dispatches yearly between alexandria and bruges. in respect to industrial matters, the hampered artizans, watched and cloistered in their country, cease to perfect their arts and allow foreign competitors to surpass them in processes and in furnishing supplies to the world. thus, on all sides, the capacity for activity becomes lessened and the desire for enjoyment greater without one entirely effacing the other, but in a way that, both commingling, they produce that ambiguous state of mind similar to a mixed temperature which is never too severe and in which the arts are generated. indeed, it is from 1454 to 1572, between the institution of state inquisitors and the battle of lepanto, between the accomplishment of internal despotism and the last of the great outward victories, that the brilliant productions of venetian art appear. john bellini was born in 1426, giorgone died in 1511, titian in 1578, veronese in 1572 and tintoretto in 1594. in this interval of one hundred and fifty years this warrior city, this mistress of the mediterranean, this queen of commerce and of industry became a casino for masqueraders and a den of courtezans. the doves of st. mark's[55] by horatio f. brown in venice the pigeons do not allow you to forget them, even if one desired to forget a bird that is so intimately connected with the city and with a great ceremony of that ancient republic which has passed away. they belong so entirely to the place, and especially to the great square; they have made their homes for so many generations among the carvings of the basilica, at the feet of the bronze horses, and under the massive cornices of the new procuratie, that the great campanile itself is hardly more essential to the character of the piazza than are these delicate denizens of saint mark's. in the structure of the ducal palace, the wants of the pigeons have been taken into account, and near the two great wells which stand in the inner courtyard little cups of istrian stone have been let into the pavement for the pigeons to drink from. on cold, frosty mornings you may see them tapping disconsolately at the ice which covers their drinking troughs, and may win their thanks by breaking it for them. or if the wind blows hard from the east, the pigeons sit in long rows under the eaves of the procuratie; their necks drawn into their shoulders, and the neck feathers ruffled round their heads, till they have lost all shape, and look like a row of slate-colored cannon-balls. from saint mark's the pigeons have sent out colonies to the other churches and campi of venice. they have crossed the grand canal, and roost and croon among the volutes of the salute, or, in wild weather, wheel high and airly above its domes. they have even found their way to malamocco and mazzorbo; so that all venice in the sea owns and protects its sacred bird. but it is in saint mark's that the pigeons "most do congregate;" and one can not enter the piazza, and stand for a moment at the corner, without hearing the sudden rush of wings upon the air, and seeing the white under-feathers of their pinions, as the doves strike backward to check their flight, and flutter down at one's feet in expectation of peas or grain. they are boundlessly greedy, and will stuff themselves till they can hardly walk, and the little red feet stagger under the loaded crop. they are not virtuous, but they are very beautiful. there is a certain fitness in the fact that the dove should be the sacred bird of the sea city. both english "dove" and latin "columba" mean the diver; and the dove uses the air much as the fish uses the sea, it glides, it dives, it shoots through its airy ocean; it hovers against the breeze, or presses its breast against the sirocco storm, as you may see fish poised in their course against the stream; then with a sudden turn it relaxes the strain and sweeps away down the wind. the dove is an airy emblem of the sea upon which venice and the venetians live, but more than that--the most permanent quality in the color of the lagoons, where the lights are always shifting, is the dove-tone of sea and sky; a tone which holds all colors in solution, and out of which they emerge as the water-ripples or the cloud-flakes pass--just as the colors are shot and varied on a young dove's neck. there is some doubts as to the origin of these flocks of pigeons which shelter in saint mark's. according to one story, henry dandolo, the crusader, was besieging candia; he received valuable information from the interior of the island by means of carrier-pigeons, and, later on, sent news of his successes home to venice by the same messengers. in recognition of these services the government resolved to maintain the carriers at the public cost; and the flocks of to-day are the descendants of the fourteenth-century pigeons. the more probable tradition, however, is that which connects these pigeons with the antique ceremonies of palm sunday. on that festival the doge made the tour of the piazza, accompanied by all the officers of state, the patriarch, the foreign ambassadors, the silver trumpets, all the pomp of the ducal dignity. among other largess of that day, a number of pigeons, weighted by pieces of paper tied to their legs, used to be let loose from the gallery where the bronze horses stand, above the western door of the church. most of the birds were easily caught by the crowd, and kept for their easter dinner; but some escaped, and took refuge in the upper parts of the palace and among the domes of saint mark's. the superstition of the people was easily touched, and the birds that had sought the protection of the saint were thenceforth dedicated to the patron of venice. the charge of supporting them was committed to the superintendents of the corn stores, and the usual hour for feeding the pigeons was nine o'clock in the morning. during the revolution of 1797, the birds fared as badly as the aristocracy, and were left to take care of themselves; but when matters settled down again the feeding of the pigeons was resumed by the municipality, and takes place at two in the afternoon, tho the incessant largess of strangers can leave the birds but little appetite for their regular meal. in spite of the multitudes of pigeons that haunt the squares of the city, a dead pigeon is as rare to see as a dead donkey on the mainland. it is a pious opinion that no venetian ever kills a pigeon, and apparently they never die; but the fact that they do not increase so rapidly as to become a nuisance instead of a pleasure, lends some color to the suspicion that pigeon pies are not unknown at certain tables during the proper season. torcello, the mother city[56] by john ruskin seven miles to the north of venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and hoist themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and interrupted by narrow creeks of sea. one of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburned weeds whitened with webs of fucas, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground-ivy and violets. on this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest lombardic type, which if we ascend toward evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen-gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. no gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. to the very horizon, on the northeast; but to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. to the east, the paleness and roar of the adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bar of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (tho built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and gray moor beyond. there are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. they lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a faraway sea. then look farther to the south. beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long irregular line fretting the southern sky. mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood--torcello and venice. thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. the flames rose from the ruins of altinum; the lament from the multitude of its people, seeking, like israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the sea. the cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. cadore, titian's birthplace[57] by amelia b. edwards we reached pieve di cadore about half-past eleven a.m., delays included. the quaint old piazza with its gloomy arcades, its antique houses with venetian windows, its cafés, its fountain, and its loungers, is just like the piazzas of serravalle, longarone, and other provincial towns of the same epoch. with its picturesque prefettura and belfry-tower one is already familiar in the pages of gilbert's "cadore." there, too, is the fine old double flight of steps leading up to the principal entrance on the first floor, as in the town-hall at heilbronn--a feature by no means italian; and there, about midway up the shaft of the campanile, is the great, gaudy, well-remembered fresco, better meant than painted, wherein titian, some twelve feet in height, robed and bearded, stands out against an ultramarine background, looking very like the portrait of a caravan giant at a fair.... turning aside from the glowing piazza and following the downward slope of a hill to the left of the prefettura, we come, at the distance of only a few yards, upon another open space, grassy and solitary, surrounded on three sides by rambling, dilapidated-looking houses, and opening on the fourth to a vista of woods and mountains. in this little piazza stands a massive stone fountain, time-worn and water-worn, surmounted by a statue of saint tiziano in the robes and square cap of an ecclesiastic. the water trickling through two metal pipes in the pedestal beneath saint tiziano's feet, makes a pleasant murmuring in the old stone basin; while, half hidden behind this fountain, and leaning up as if for shelter against a larger house adjoining, stands-a small whitewashed cottage upon the side-wall of which an incised tablet bears the following record: "nel mcccclxxvii fra queste vmili mura tiziano vecellio vene a celebre vita donde vsciva gia presso a cento anni in venezia addi xxvii agosto mdlxxvi." a poor, mean-looking, low-roofed dwelling, disfigured by external chimney-shafts and a built-out oven; lit with tiny, blinking, medieval windows; altogether unlovely; altogether unnoticeable; but--the birthplace of titian! it looked different, no doubt, when he was a boy and played outside here on the grass. it had probably a high, steep roof, like the homesteads in his own landscape drawings; but the present old brown tiles have been over it long enough to get mottled with yellow lichens. one would like to know if the fountain and the statue were there in his time; and if the water trickled ever to the same low tune; and if the women came there to wash their linen and fill their brazen water jars, as they do now. this lovely green hill, at all events, sheltered the home from the east winds; and monte duranno lifted his strange crest yonder against the southern horizon; and the woods dipt down to the valley, then as now, where the bridle-path slopes away to join the road to venice. we went up to the house, and knocked. the door was opened by a sickly, hunchbacked lad who begged us to walk in, and who seemed to be quite alone there. the house was very dark, and looked much older inside than from without. a long, low, gloomy upstairs chamber with a huge penthouse fire-place jutting into the room, was evidently as old as the days of titian's grandfather, to whom the house originally belonged; while a very small and very dark adjoining closet, with a porthole of window sunk in a slope of massive wall, was pointed out as the room in which the great painter was born. "but how do you know that he was born here?" i asked. the hunchback lifted his wasted hand with a deprecating gesture. "they have always said so, signora," he replied. "they have said so for more than four hundred years." "they?" i repeated, doubtfully. "the vecelli, signora." "i had understood that the vecellio family was extinct." "scusate, signora," said the hunchback. "the last direct descendant of 'il tiziano' died not long ago--a few years before i was born; and the collateral vecelli are citizens of cadore to this day. if the signora will be pleased to look for it, she will see the name of vecellio over a shop on the right-hand side, as she returns to the piazza." i did look for it; and there, sure enough, over a small shop-window i found it. it gave one an odd sort of shock, as if time were for the moment annihilated; and i remember how, with something of the same feeling, i once saw the name of rubens over a shop-front in the market-place at cologne. i left the house less incredulous than i entered it. of the identity of the building there has never been any kind of doubt; and i am inclined to accept with the house the identity of the room. titian, it should be remembered, lived long enough to become, long before he died, the glory of his family. he became rich; he became noble; his fame filled italy. hence the room in which he was born may well have acquired, half a century before his death--perhaps even during the lifetime of his mother--that sort of sacredness which is generally of post-mortem growth. the legend, handed down from vecellio to vecellio in uninterrupted succession, lays claim, therefore, to a more reliable pedigree than most traditions of a similar character. footnotes: [1] from "travels in italy." translated by a. j. w. morrison and charles nisbet. goethe's visit to italy was made in 1786. he was then only thirty-seven years of age. the visit had important influence on his subsequent career. the greatest of his works were still to be written. it was not until after 1794 that goethe devoted himself entirely to literature. [2] goethe at this time had published several short plays besides "the sorrows of werthé," "wilhelm meister," and a few other works less important. [3] by that name italians know the pantheon. [4] from "remarks on several parts of italy in the years 1701, 1702, 1703." at the time of his departure for italy, addison was twenty-nine years old. none of his important works had then been written. [5] addison's belief has been amply justified by the extensive excavations made since his time. [6] from "ancient rome, in the light of recent discoveries." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1888. [7] lanciani here has referred to the catholic church, in which historians have seen, in the spiritual sense, a survival of imperial rome. [8] from "six months in italy." published by houghton, mifflin co. [9] from "six months in italy." published by houghton, mifflin co. [10] mr. hillard was writing in 1853. [11] from "the ruins and excavations of ancient rome." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1897. [12] this mausoleum, built by augustus on the bank of the tiber for himself and his family, had long been used as the imperial sepulcher. [13] from "rome." by arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, john c. winston co. copyright, 1897. [14] from "italy: rome and naples." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1868. translated by john durand. [15] from "the ruins and excavations of ancient rome." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1897. [16] from "the ruins and excavations of ancient rome." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1897. [17] from "haps and mishaps of a tour in europe." mrs. lippincott's visit was made in 1852. [18] from "recollections of the last four popes, and of rome in their times." nicholas patrick stephen wiseman (1802-1865), an english cardinal, was famous during his lifetime for intellectual vigor and scholarly attainments. in presenting an intimate view of a papal election it was his unusual privilege to describe not only "the things he saw," but also, as his later destiny revealed, to tell of the things of which he formed a part. the election pictured is that of leo xii. [19] from "six novices on the grand tour, by one of them." privately printed. (1911.) by permission of the author. [20] from "six months in italy." published by houghton, mifflin co. [21] from "italy: rome and naples." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1868. translated by john durand. [22] from "pictures from italy." [23] from "the marble faun." published by houghton, mifflin co. [24] from "pencillings by the way." [25] from "pictures from italy." [26] from "french and italian note-books." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers of hawthorne's works, houghton, mifflin co. copyright, 1871, 1883, 1899. [27] hiram powers, the american sculptor, who lived long in florence, and is best known for his "greek slave." [28] from "journeys in italy." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, brentano's. copyright, 1902. [29] from "florence." [30] from taine's "italy: florence and venice." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers. henry holt & co. translated by john durand. copyright, 1869. [31] since taine wrote, the façade has been added. [32] from "italian cities." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, charles scribner's sons. copyright, 1900. [33] from "the makers of florence." published by the macmillan co. [34] that is, the baptistery at florence. [35] from "florence." by permission of the publishers, john c. winston co. copyright, 1837. [36] from "florence." by permission of the publishers, john c. winston co. copyright, 1897. [37] from "florence." by permission of the publishers, john c. winston co. copyright, 1897. [38] dante was buried at ravenna. the reader will recall byron's lines: "ungrateful florence! dante sleeps afar, like scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore." [39] from "italy: florence and venice." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, 1869. translated by john durand. [40] from "letters of a traveller." bryant's letter is dated in may, 1834. [41] the court of the austrian grand duke leopold iii. in 1859 leopold was expelled, and florence, with tuscany, was annexed to the sardinian kingdom. [42] from "venice: its history, art, industries and modern life." published by john c. winston co. [43] from "two months abroad." privately printed. (1878.) [44] from "journeys in italy." by arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, brentano's. copyright, 1902. [45] marie taglioni, the ballet dancer, who was born in stockholm of italian parents in 1804 and married to count gilbert de voisons in 1847, when she retired from the stage. she died in 1884. [46] from "the stones of venice." st. mark's is merely a church. it is not a cathedral; that is, it is not the "cathedra" of a bishop. originally it was the private chapel of the doge. likewise, st. peter's at rome is a church only--the church of the pope. the cathedral of the pope (who is the bishop of rome), is st. john lateran. [47] venice and territory adjacent to it were long in subjection to austria. having put an end to the republic in 1797 (the republic had then had an unbroken existence for about thirteen hundred years), napoleon, by the treaty of campo formio, ceded this territory to austria. in 1805, however, venetia was added by napoleon to his kingdom of italy. in 1814, after the first fall of napoleon, it was ceded back to austria and in 1815 became part of the lombardo-venetian kingdom. under the leadership of manin, in 1848, a republic was proclaimed in venice, but austria laid siege to the city and captured it. it was not until 1866, at the conclusion of the war against austria, that venice was annexed to the new italian kingdom of victor emmanuel. [48] from "in and around venice." published by charles scribner's sons. [49] from "in and around venice." published by charles scribner's sons. after its fall, the venetians set about raising funds for rebuilding the campanile. in the course of several years, the new structure was finished and the event duly commemorated. [50] from "the stones of venice." [51] several men of this name are famous in venetian annals, as soldiers, statesmen and doges. the one here referred to is tommaso, who defeated the turks, added dalmatia to the venetian domain, greatly encouraged commerce and founded the venetian library. [52] from "life on the lagoons." published by the macmillan co. [53] from "italy: florence and venice." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers. henry holt & co. copyright, 1869. [54] the state ship of venice. [55] from "life on the lagoons." published by the macmillan co. [56] from "the stones of venice." [57] from "untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys: a midsummer ramble in the dolomites." published by e. p. dutton & co. a sicilian romance by ann radcliffe on the northern shore of sicily are still to be seen the magnificent remains of a castle, which formerly belonged to the noble house of mazzini. it stands in the centre of a small bay, and upon a gentle acclivity, which, on one side, slopes towards the sea, and on the other rises into an eminence crowned by dark woods. the situation is admirably beautiful and picturesque, and the ruins have an air of ancient grandeur, which, contrasted with the present solitude of the scene, impresses the traveller with awe and curiosity. during my travels abroad i visited this spot. as i walked over the loose fragments of stone, which lay scattered through the immense area of the fabrick, and surveyed the sublimity and grandeur of the ruins, i recurred, by a natural association of ideas, to the times when these walls stood proudly in their original splendour, when the halls were the scenes of hospitality and festive magnificence, and when they resounded with the voices of those whom death had long since swept from the earth. 'thus,' said i, 'shall the present generation--he who now sinks in misery--and he who now swims in pleasure, alike pass away and be forgotten.' my heart swelled with the reflection; and, as i turned from the scene with a sigh, i fixed my eyes upon a friar, whose venerable figure, gently bending towards the earth, formed no uninteresting object in the picture. he observed my emotion; and, as my eye met his, shook his head and pointed to the ruin. 'these walls,' said he, 'were once the seat of luxury and vice. they exhibited a singular instance of the retribution of heaven, and were from that period forsaken, and abandoned to decay.' his words excited my curiosity, and i enquired further concerning their meaning. 'a solemn history belongs to this castle, said he, 'which is too long and intricate for me to relate. it is, however, contained in a manuscript in our library, of which i could, perhaps, procure you a sight. a brother of our order, a descendant of the noble house of mazzini, collected and recorded the most striking incidents relating to his family, and the history thus formed, he left as a legacy to our convent. if you please, we will walk thither.' i accompanied him to the convent, and the friar introduced me to his superior, a man of an intelligent mind and benevolent heart, with whom i passed some hours in interesting conversation. i believe my sentiments pleased him; for, by his indulgence, i was permitted to take abstracts of the history before me, which, with some further particulars obtained in conversation with the abate, i have arranged in the following pages. chapter i towards the close of the sixteenth century, this castle was in the possession of ferdinand, fifth marquis of mazzini, and was for some years the principal residence of his family. he was a man of a voluptuous and imperious character. to his first wife, he married louisa bernini, second daughter of the count della salario, a lady yet more distinguished for the sweetness of her manners and the gentleness of her disposition, than for her beauty. she brought the marquis one son and two daughters, who lost their amiable mother in early childhood. the arrogant and impetuous character of the marquis operated powerfully upon the mild and susceptible nature of his lady: and it was by many persons believed, that his unkindness and neglect put a period to her life. however this might be, he soon afterwards married maria de vellorno, a young lady eminently beautiful, but of a character very opposite to that of her predecessor. she was a woman of infinite art, devoted to pleasure, and of an unconquerable spirit. the marquis, whose heart was dead to paternal tenderness, and whose present lady was too volatile to attend to domestic concerns, committed the education of his daughters to the care of a lady, completely qualified for the undertaking, and who was distantly related to the late marchioness. he quitted mazzini soon after his second marriage, for the gaieties and splendour of naples, whither his son accompanied him. though naturally of a haughty and overbearing disposition, he was governed by his wife. his passions were vehement, and she had the address to bend them to her own purpose; and so well to conceal her influence, that he thought himself most independent when he was most enslaved. he paid an annual visit to the castle of mazzini; but the marchioness seldom attended him, and he staid only to give such general directions concerning the education of his daughters, as his pride, rather than his affection, seemed to dictate. emilia, the elder, inherited much of her mother's disposition. she had a mild and sweet temper, united with a clear and comprehensive mind. her younger sister, julia, was of a more lively cast. an extreme sensibility subjected her to frequent uneasiness; her temper was warm, but generous; she was quickly irritated, and quickly appeased; and to a reproof, however gentle, she would often weep, but was never sullen. her imagination was ardent, and her mind early exhibited symptoms of genius. it was the particular care of madame de menon to counteract those traits in the disposition of her young pupils, which appeared inimical to their future happiness; and for this task she had abilities which entitled her to hope for success. a series of early misfortunes had entendered her heart, without weakening the powers of her understanding. in retirement she had acquired tranquillity, and had almost lost the consciousness of those sorrows which yet threw a soft and not unpleasing shade over her character. she loved her young charge with maternal fondness, and their gradual improvement and respectful tenderness repaid all her anxiety. madame excelled in music and drawing. she had often forgot her sorrows in these amusements, when her mind was too much occupied to derive consolation from books, and she was assiduous to impart to emilia and julia a power so valuable as that of beguiling the sense of affliction. emilia's taste led her to drawing, and she soon made rapid advances in that art. julia was uncommonly susceptible of the charms of harmony. she had feelings which trembled in unison to all its various and enchanting powers. the instructions of madame she caught with astonishing quickness, and in a short time attained to a degree of excellence in her favorite study, which few persons have ever exceeded. her manner was entirely her own. it was not in the rapid intricacies of execution, that she excelled so much in as in that delicacy of taste, and in those enchanting powers of expression, which seem to breathe a soul through the sound, and which take captive the heart of the hearer. the lute was her favorite instrument, and its tender notes accorded well with the sweet and melting tones of her voice. the castle of mazzini was a large irregular fabrick, and seemed suited to receive a numerous train of followers, such as, in those days, served the nobility, either in the splendour of peace, or the turbulence of war. its present family inhabited only a small part of it; and even this part appeared forlorn and almost desolate from the spaciousness of the apartments, and the length of the galleries which led to them. a melancholy stillness reigned through the halls, and the silence of the courts, which were shaded by high turrets, was for many hours together undisturbed by the sound of any foot-step. julia, who discovered an early taste for books, loved to retire in an evening to a small closet in which she had collected her favorite authors. this room formed the western angle of the castle: one of its windows looked upon the sea, beyond which was faintly seen, skirting the horizon, the dark rocky coast of calabria; the other opened towards a part of the castle, and afforded a prospect of the neighbouring woods. her musical instruments were here deposited, with whatever assisted her favorite amusements. this spot, which was at once elegant, pleasant, and retired, was embellished with many little ornaments of her own invention, and with some drawings executed by her sister. the cioset was adjoining her chamber, and was separated from the apartments of madame only by a short gallery. this gallery opened into another, long and winding, which led to the grand staircase, terminating in the north hall, with which the chief apartments of the north side of the edifice communicated. madame de menon's apartment opened into both galleries. it was in one of these rooms that she usually spent the mornings, occupied in the improvement of her young charge. the windows looked towards the sea, and the room was light and pleasant. it was their custom to dine in one of the lower apartments, and at table they were always joined by a dependant of the marquis's, who had resided many years in the castle, and who instructed the young ladies in the latin tongue, and in geography. during the fine evenings of summer, this little party frequently supped in a pavilion, which was built on an eminence in the woods belonging to the castle. from this spot the eye had an almost boundless range of sea and land. it commanded the straits of messina, with the opposite shores of calabria, and a great extent of the wild and picturesque scenery of sicily. mount etna, crowned with eternal snows, and shooting from among the clouds, formed a grand and sublime picture in the background of the scene. the city of palermo was also distinguishable; and julia, as she gazed on its glittering spires; would endeavour in imagination to depicture its beauties, while she secretly sighed for a view of that world, from which she had hitherto been secluded by the mean jealousy of the marchioness, upon whose mind the dread of rival beauty operated strongly to the prejudice of emilia and julia. she employed all her influence over the marquis to detain them in retirement; and, though emilia was now twenty, and her sister eighteen, they had never passed the boundaries of their father's domains. vanity often produces unreasonable alarm; but the marchioness had in this instance just grounds for apprehension; the beauty of her lord's daughters has seldom been exceeded. the person of emilia was finely proportioned. her complexion was fair, her hair flaxen, and her dark blue eyes were full of sweet expression. her manners were dignified and elegant, and in her air was a feminine softness, a tender timidity which irresistibly attracted the heart of the beholder. the figure of julia was light and graceful--her step was airy--her mien animated, and her smile enchanting. her eyes were dark, and full of fire, but tempered with modest sweetness. her features were finely turned--every laughing grace played round her mouth, and her countenance quickly discovered all the various emotions of her soul. the dark auburn hair, which curled in beautiful profusion in her neck, gave a finishing charm to her appearance. thus lovely, and thus veiled in obscurity, were the daughters of the noble mazzini. but they were happy, for they knew not enough of the world seriously to regret the want of its enjoyments, though julia would sometimes sigh for the airy image which her fancies painted, and a painful curiosity would arise concerning the busy scenes from which she was excluded. a return to her customary amusements, however, would chase the ideal image from her mind, and restore her usual happy complacency. books, music, and painting, divided the hours of her leisure, and many beautiful summer-evenings were spent in the pavilion, where the refined conversation of madame, the poetry of tasso, the lute of julia, and the friendship of emilia, combined to form a species of happiness, such as elevated and highly susceptible minds are alone capable of receiving or communicating. madame understood and practised all the graces of conversation, and her young pupils perceived its value, and caught the spirit of its character. conversation may be divided into two classes--the familiar and the sentimental. it is the province of the familiar, to diffuse cheerfulness and ease--to open the heart of man to man, and to beam a temperate sunshine upon the mind.--nature and art must conspire to render us susceptible of the charms, and to qualify us for the practice of the second class of conversation, here termed sentimental, and in which madame de menon particularly excelled. to good sense, lively feeling, and natural delicacy of taste, must be united an expansion of mind, and a refinement of thought, which is the result of high cultivation. to render this sort of conversation irresistibly attractive, a knowledge of the world is requisite, and that enchanting case, that elegance of manner, which is to be acquired only by frequenting the higher circles of polished life. in sentimental conversation, subjects interesting to the heart, and to the imagination, are brought forward; they are discussed in a kind of sportive way, with animation and refinement, and are never continued longer than politeness allows. here fancy flourishes,--the sensibilities expand--and wit, guided by delicacy and embellished by taste--points to the heart. such was the conversation of madame de menon; and the pleasant gaiety of the pavilion seemed peculiarly to adapt it for the scene of social delights. on the evening of a very sultry day, having supped in their favorite spot, the coolness of the hour, and the beauty of the night, tempted this happy party to remain there later than usual. returning home, they were surprised by the appearance of a light through the broken window-shutters of an apartment, belonging to a division of the castle which had for many years been shut up. they stopped to observe it, when it suddenly disappeared, and was seen no more. madame de menon, disturbed at this phaenomenon, hastened into the castle, with a view of enquiring into the cause of it, when she was met in the north hall by vincent. she related to him what she had seen, and ordered an immediate search to be made for the keys of those apartments. she apprehended that some person had penetrated that part of the edifice with an intention of plunder; and, disdaining a paltry fear where her duty was concerned, she summoned the servants of the castle, with an intention of accompanying them thither. vincent smiled at her apprehensions, and imputed what she had seen to an illusion, which the solemnity of the hour had impressed upon her fancy. madame, however, persevered in her purpose; and, after along and repeated search, a massey key, covered with rust, was produced. she then proceeded to the southern side of the edifice, accompanied by vincent, and followed by the servants, who were agitated with impatient wonder. the key was applied to an iron gate, which opened into a court that separated this division from the other parts of the castle. they entered this court, which was overgrown with grass and weeds, and ascended some steps that led to a large door, which they vainly endeavoured to open. all the different keys of the castle were applied to the lock, without effect, and they were at length compelled to quit the place, without having either satisfied their curiosity, or quieted their fears. everything, however, was still, and the light did not reappear. madame concealed her apprehensions, and the family retired to rest. this circumstance dwelt on the mind of madame de menon, and it was some time before she ventured again to spend an evening in the pavilion. after several months passed, without further disturbance or discovery, another occurrence renewed the alarm. julia had one night remained in her closet later than usual. a favorite book had engaged her attention beyond the hour of customary repose, and every inhabitant of the castle, except herself, had long been lost in sleep. she was roused from her forgetfulness, by the sound of the castle clock, which struck one. surprised at the lateness of the hour, she rose in haste, and was moving to her chamber, when the beauty of the night attracted her to the window. she opened it; and observing a fine effect of moonlight upon the dark woods, leaned forwards. in that situation she had not long remained, when she perceived a light faintly flash through a casement in the uninhabited part of the castle. a sudden tremor seized her, and she with difficulty supported herself. in a few moments it disappeared, and soon after a figure, bearing a lamp, proceeded from an obscure door belonging to the south tower; and stealing along the outside of the castle walls, turned round the southern angle, by which it was afterwards hid from the view. astonished and terrified at what she had seen, she hurried to the apartment of madame de menon, and related the circumstance. the servants were immediately roused, and the alarm became general. madame arose and descended into the north hall, where the domestics were already assembled. no one could be found of courage sufficient to enter into the courts; and the orders of madame were disregarded, when opposed to the effects of superstitious terror. she perceived that vincent was absent, but as she was ordering him to be called, he entered the hall. surprised to find the family thus assembled, he was told the occasion. he immediately ordered a party of the servants to attend him round the castle walls; and with some reluctance, and more fear, they obeyed him. they all returned to the hall, without having witnessed any extraordinary appearance; but though their fears were not confirmed, they were by no means dissipated. the appearance of a light in a part of the castle which had for several years been shut up, and to which time and circumstance had given an air of singular desolation, might reasonably be supposed to excite a strong degree of surprise and terror. in the minds of the vulgar, any species of the wonderful is received with avidity; and the servants did not hesitate in believing the southern division of the castle to be inhabited by a supernatural power. too much agitated to sleep, they agreed to watch for the remainder of the night. for this purpose they arranged themselves in the east gallery, where they had a view of the south tower from which the light had issued. the night, however, passed without any further disturbance; and the morning dawn, which they beheld with inexpressible pleasure, dissipated for a while the glooms of apprehension. but the return of evening renewed the general fear, and for several successive nights the domestics watched the southern tower. although nothing remarkable was seen, a report was soon raised, and believed, that the southern side of the castle was haunted. madame de menon, whose mind was superior to the effects of superstition, was yet disturbed and perplexed, and she determined, if the light reappeared, to inform the marquis of the circumstance, and request the keys of those apartments. the marquis, immersed in the dissipations of naples, seldom remembered the castle, or its inhabitants. his son, who had been educated under his immediate care, was the sole object of his pride, as the marchioness was that of his affection. he loved her with romantic fondness, which she repaid with seeming tenderness, and secret perfidy. she allowed herself a free indulgence in the most licentious pleasures, yet conducted herself with an art so exquisite as to elude discovery, and even suspicion. in her amours she was equally inconstant as ardent, till the young count hippolitus de vereza attracted her attention. the natural fickleness of her disposition seemed then to cease, and upon him she centered all her desires. the count vereza lost his father in early childhood. he was now of age, and had just entered upon the possession of his estates. his person was graceful, yet manly; his mind accomplished, and his manners elegant; his countenance expressed a happy union of spirit, dignity, and benevolence, which formed the principal traits of his character. he had a sublimity of thought, which taught him to despise the voluptuous vices of the neapolitans, and led him to higher pursuits. he was the chosen and early friend of young ferdinand, the son of the marquis, and was a frequent visitor in the family. when the marchioness first saw him, she treated him with great distinction, and at length made such advances, as neither the honor nor the inclinations of the count permitted him to notice. he conducted himself toward her with frigid indifference, which served only to inflame the passion it was meant to chill. the favors of the marchioness had hitherto been sought with avidity, and accepted with rapture; and the repulsive insensibility which she now experienced, roused all her pride, and called into action every refinement of coquetry. it was about this period that vincent was seized with a disorder which increased so rapidly, as in a short time to assume the most alarming appearance. despairing of life, he desired that a messenger might be dispatched to inform the marquis of his situation, and to signify his earnest wish to see him before he died. the progress of his disorder defied every art of medicine, and his visible distress of mind seemed to accelerate his fate. perceiving his last hour approaching, he requested to have a confessor. the confessor was shut up with him a considerable time, and he had already received extreme unction, when madame de menon was summoned to his bedside. the hand of death was now upon him, cold damps hung upon his brows, and he, with difficulty, raised his heavy eyes to madame as she entered the apartment. he beckoned her towards him, and desiring that no person might be permitted to enter the room, was for a few moments silent. his mind appeared to labour under oppressive remembrances; he made several attempts to speak, but either resolution or strength failed him. at length, giving madame a look of unutterable anguish, 'alas, madam,' said he, 'heaven grants not the prayer of such a wretch as i am. i must expire long before the marquis can arrive. since i shall see him no more, i would impart to you a secret which lies heavy at my heart, and which makes my last moments dreadful, as they are without hope.' 'be comforted,' said madame, who was affected by the energy of his manner, 'we are taught to believe that forgiveness is never denied to sincere repentance.' 'you, madam, are ignorant of the enormity of my crime, and of the secret--the horrid secret which labours at my breast. my guilt is beyond remedy in this world, and i fear will be without pardon in the next; i therefore hope little from confession even to a priest. yet some good it is still in my power to do; let me disclose to you that secret which is so mysteriously connected with the southern apartments of this castle.'--'what of them!' exclaimed madame, with impatience. vincent returned no answer; exhausted by the effort of speaking, he had fainted. madame rung for assistance, and by proper applications, his senses were recalled. he was, however, entirely speechless, and in this state he remained till he expired, which was about an hour after he had conversed with madame. the perplexity and astonishment of madame, were by the late scene heightened to a very painful degree. she recollected the various particulars relative to the southern division of the castle, the many years it had stood uninhabited--the silence which had been observed concerning it--the appearance of the light and the figure--the fruitless search for the keys, and the reports so generally believed; and thus remembrance presented her with a combination of circumstances, which served only to increase her wonder, and heighten her curiosity. a veil of mystery enveloped that part of the castle, which it now seemed impossible should ever be penetrated, since the only person who could have removed it, was no more. the marquis arrived on the day after that on which vincent had expired. he came attended by servants only, and alighted at the gates of the castle with an air of impatience, and a countenance expressive of strong emotion. madame, with the young ladies, received him in the hall. he hastily saluted his daughters, and passed on to the oak parlour, desiring madame to follow him. she obeyed, and the marquis enquired with great agitation after vincent. when told of his death, he paced the room with hurried steps, and was for some time silent. at length seating himself, and surveying madame with a scrutinizing eye, he asked some questions concerning the particulars of vincent's death. she mentioned his earnest desire to see the marquis, and repeated his last words. the marquis remained silent, and madame proceeded to mention those circumstances relative to the southern division of the castle, which she thought it of so much importance to discover. he treated the affair very lightly, laughed at her conjectures, represented the appearances she described as the illusions of a weak and timid mind, and broke up the conversation, by going to visit the chamber of vincent, in which he remained a considerable time. on the following day emilia and julia dined with the marquis. he was gloomy and silent; their efforts to amuse him seemed to excite displeasure rather than kindness; and when the repast was concluded, he withdrew to his own apartment, leaving his daughters in a state of sorrow and surprise. vincent was to be interred, according to his own desire, in the church belonging to the convent of st nicholas. one of the servants, after receiving some necessary orders concerning the funeral, ventured to inform the marquis of the appearance of the lights in the south tower. he mentioned the superstitious reports that prevailed amongst the household, and complained that the servants would not cross the courts after it was dark. 'and who is he that has commissioned you with this story?' said the marquis, in a tone of displeasure; 'are the weak and ridiculous fancies of women and servants to be obtruded upon my notice? away--appear no more before me, till you have learned to speak what it is proper for me to hear.' robert withdrew abashed, and it was some time before any person ventured to renew the subject with the marquis. the majority of young ferdinand now drew near, and the marquis determined to celebrate the occasion with festive magnificence at the castle of mazzini. he, therefore, summoned the marchioness and his son from naples, and very splendid preparations were ordered to be made. emilia and julia dreaded the arrival of the marchioness, whose influence they had long been sensible of, and from whose presence they anticipated a painful restraint. beneath the gentle guidance of madame de menon, their hours had passed in happy tranquillity, for they were ignorant alike of the sorrows and the pleasures of the world. those did not oppress, and these did not inflame them. engaged in the pursuits of knowledge, and in the attainment of elegant accomplishments, their moments flew lightly away, and the flight of time was marked only by improvement. in madame was united the tenderness of the mother, with the sympathy of a friend; and they loved her with a warm and inviolable affection. the purposed visit of their brother, whom they had not seen for several years, gave them great pleasure. although their minds retained no very distinct remembrance of him, they looked forward with eager and delightful expectation to his virtues and his talents; and hoped to find in his company, a consolation for the uneasiness which the presence of the marchioness would excite. neither did julia contemplate with indifference the approaching festival. a new scene was now opening to her, which her young imagination painted in the warm and glowing colours of delight. the near approach of pleasure frequently awakens the heart to emotions, which would fail to be excited by a more remote and abstracted observance. julia, who, in the distance, had considered the splendid gaieties of life with tranquillity, now lingered with impatient hope through the moments which withheld her from their enjoyments. emilia, whose feelings were less lively, and whose imagination was less powerful, beheld the approaching festival with calm consideration, and almost regretted the interruption of those tranquil pleasures, which she knew to be more congenial with her powers and disposition. in a few days the marchioness arrived at the castle. she was followed by a numerous retinue, and accompanied by ferdinand, and several of the italian noblesse, whom pleasure attracted to her train. her entrance was proclaimed by the sound of music, and those gates which had long rusted on their hinges, were thrown open to receive her. the courts and halls, whose aspect so lately expressed only gloom and desolation, now shone with sudden splendour, and echoed the sounds of gaiety and gladness. julia surveyed the scene from an obscure window; and as the triumphal strains filled the air, her breast throbbed; her heart beat quick with joy, and she lost her apprehensions from the marchioness in a sort of wild delight hitherto unknown to her. the arrival of the marchioness seemed indeed the signal of universal and unlimited pleasure. when the marquis came out to receive her, the gloom that lately clouded his countenance, broke away in smiles of welcome, which the whole company appeared to consider as invitations to joy. the tranquil heart of emilia was not proof against a scene so alluring, and she sighed at the prospect, yet scarcely knew why. julia pointed out to her sister, the graceful figure of a young man who followed the marchioness, and she expressed her wishes that he might be her brother. from the contemplation of the scene before them, they were summoned to meet the marchioness. julia trembled with apprehension, and for a few moments wished the castle was in its former state. as they advanced through the saloon, in which they were presented, julia was covered with blushes; but emilia, tho' equally timid, preserved her graceful dignity. the marchioness received them with a mingled smile of condescension and politeness, and immediately the whole attention of the company was attracted by their elegance and beauty. the eager eyes of julia sought in vain to discover her brother, of whose features she had no recollection in those of any of the persons then present. at length her father presented him, and she perceived, with a sigh of regret, that he was not the youth she had observed from the window. he advanced with a very engaging air, and she met him with an unfeigned welcome. his figure was tall and majestic; he had a very noble and spirited carriage; and his countenance expressed at once sweetness and dignity. supper was served in the east hall, and the tables were spread with a profusion of delicacies. a band of music played during the repast, and the evening concluded with a concert in the saloon. chapter ii the day of the festival, so long and so impatiently looked for by julia, was now arrived. all the neighbouring nobility were invited, and the gates of the castle were thrown open for a general rejoicing. a magnificent entertainment, consisting of the most luxurious and expensive dishes, was served in the halls. soft music floated along the vaulted roofs, the walls were hung with decorations, and it seemed as if the hand of a magician had suddenly metamorphosed this once gloomy fabric into the palace of a fairy. the marquis, notwithstanding the gaiety of the scene, frequently appeared abstracted from its enjoyments, and in spite of all his efforts at cheerfulness, the melancholy of his heart was visible in his countenance. in the evening there was a grand ball: the marchioness, who was still distinguished for her beauty, and for the winning elegance of her manners, appeared in the most splendid attire. her hair was ornamented with a profusion of jewels, but was so disposed as to give an air rather of voluptuousness than of grace, to her figure. although conscious of her charms, she beheld the beauty of emilia and julia with a jealous eye, and was compelled secretly to acknowledge, that the simple elegance with which they were adorned, was more enchanting than all the studied artifice of splendid decoration. they were dressed alike in light sicilian habits, and the beautiful luxuriance of their flowing hair was restrained only by bandellets of pearl. the ball was opened by ferdinand and the lady matilda constanza. emilia danced with the young marquis della fazelli, and acquitted herself with the ease and dignity so natural to her. julia experienced a various emotion of pleasure and fear when the count de vereza, in whom she recollected the cavalier she had observed from the window, led her forth. the grace of her step, and the elegant symmetry of her figure, raised in the assembly a gentle murmur of applause, and the soft blush which now stole over her cheek, gave an additional charm to her appearance. but when the music changed, and she danced to the soft sicilian measure, the airy grace of her movement, and the unaffected tenderness of her air, sunk attention into silence, which continued for some time after the dance had ceased. the marchioness observed the general admiration with seeming pleasure, and secret uneasiness. she had suffered a very painful solicitude, when the count de vereza selected her for his partner in the dance, and she pursued him through the evening with an eye of jealous scrutiny. her bosom, which before glowed only with love, was now torn by the agitation of other passions more violent and destructive. her thoughts were restless, her mind wandered from the scene before her, and it required all her address to preserve an apparent ease. she saw, or fancied she saw, an impassioned air in the count, when he addressed himself to julia, that corroded her heart with jealous fury. at twelve the gates of the castle were thrown open, and the company quitted it for the woods, which were splendidly illuminated. arcades of light lined the long vistas, which were terminated by pyramids of lamps that presented to the eye one bright column of flame. at irregular distances buildings were erected, hung with variegated lamps, disposed in the gayest and most fantastic forms. collations were spread under the trees; and music, touched by unseen hands, breathed around. the musicians were placed in the most obscure and embowered spots, so as to elude the eye and strike the imagination. the scene appeared enchanting. nothing met the eye but beauty and romantic splendour; the ear received no sounds but those of mirth and melody. the younger part of the company formed themselves into groups, which at intervals glanced through the woods, and were again unseen. julia seemed the magic queen of the place. her heart dilated with pleasure, and diffused over her features an expression of pure and complacent delight. a generous, frank, and exalted sentiment sparkled in her eyes, and animated her manner. her bosom glowed with benevolent affections; and she seemed anxious to impart to all around her, a happiness as unmixed as that she experienced. wherever she moved, admiration followed her steps. ferdinand was as gay as the scene around him. emilia was pleased; and the marquis seemed to have left his melancholy in the castle. the marchioness alone was wretched. she supped with a select party, in a pavilion on the sea-shore, which was fitted up with peculiar elegance. it was hung with white silk, drawn up in festoons, and richly fringed with gold. the sofas were of the same materials, and alternate wreaths of lamps and of roses entwined the columns. a row of small lamps placed about the cornice, formed an edge of light round the roof which, with the other numerous lights, was reflected in a blaze of splendour from the large mirrors that adorned the room. the count muriani was of the party;--he complimented the marchioness on the beauty of her daughters; and after lamenting with gaiety the captives which their charms would enthral, he mentioned the count de vereza. 'he is certainly of all others the man most deserving the lady julia. as they danced, i thought they exhibited a perfect model of the beauty of either sex; and if i mistake not, they are inspired with a mutual admiration.' the marchioness, endeavouring to conceal her uneasiness, said, 'yes, my lord, i allow the count all the merit you adjudge him, but from the little i have seen of his disposition, he is too volatile for a serious attachment.' at that instant the count entered the pavilion: 'ah,' said muriani, laughingly, 'you was the subject of our conversation, and seem to be come in good time to receive the honors allotted you. i was interceding with the marchioness for her interest in your favor, with the lady julia; but she absolutely refuses it; and though she allows you merit, alleges, that you are by nature fickle and inconstant. what say you--would not the beauty of lady julia bind your unsteady heart?'. 'i know not how i have deserved that character of the marchioness,' said the count with a smile, 'but that heart must be either fickle or insensible in an uncommon degree, which can boast of freedom in the presence of lady julia.' the marchioness, mortified by the whole conversation, now felt the full force of vereza's reply, which she imagined he pointed with particular emphasis. the entertainment concluded with a grand firework, which was exhibited on the margin of the sea, and the company did not part till the dawn of morning. julia retired from the scene with regret. she was enchanted with the new world that was now exhibited to her, and she was not cool enough to distinguish the vivid glow of imagination from the colours of real bliss. the pleasure she now felt she believed would always be renewed, and in an equal degree, by the objects which first excited it. the weakness of humanity is never willingly perceived by young minds. it is painful to know, that we are operated upon by objects whose impressions are variable as they are indefinable--and that what yesterday affected us strongly, is to-day but imperfectly felt, and to-morrow perhaps shall be disregarded. when at length this unwelcome truth is received into the mind, we at first reject, with disgust, every appearance of good, we disdain to partake of a happiness which we cannot always command, and we not unfrequently sink into a temporary despair. wisdom or accident, at length, recal us from our error, and offers to us some object capable of producing a pleasing, yet lasting effect, which effect, therefore, we call happiness. happiness has this essential difference from what is commonly called pleasure, that virtue forms its basis, and virtue being the offspring of reason, may be expected to produce uniformity of effect. the passions which had hitherto lain concealed in julia's heart, touched by circumstance, dilated to its power, and afforded her a slight experience of the pain and delight which flow from their influence. the beauty and accomplishments of vereza raised in her a new and various emotion, which reflection made her fear to encourage, but which was too pleasing to be wholly resisted. tremblingly alive to a sense of delight, and unchilled by disappointment, the young heart welcomes every feeling, not simply painful, with a romantic expectation that it will expand into bliss. julia sought with eager anxiety to discover the sentiments of vereza towards her; she revolved each circumstance of the day, but they afforded her little satisfaction; they reflected only a glimmering and uncertain light, which instead of guiding, served only to perplex her. now she remembered some instance of particular attention, and then some mark of apparent indifference. she compared his conduct with that of the other young noblesse; and thought each appeared equally desirous of the favor of every lady present. all the ladies, however, appeared to her to court the admiration of vereza, and she trembled lest he should be too sensible of the distinction. she drew from these reflections no positive inference; and though distrust rendered pain the predominate sensation, it was so exquisitely interwoven with delight, that she could not wish it exchanged for her former ease. thoughtful and restless, sleep fled from her eyes, and she longed with impatience for the morning, which should again present vereza, and enable her to pursue the enquiry. she rose early, and adorned herself with unusual care. in her favorite closet she awaited the hour of breakfast, and endeavoured to read, but her thoughts wandered from the subject. her lute and favorite airs lost half their power to please; the day seemed to stand still--she became melancholy, and thought the breakfast-hour would never arrive. at length the clock struck the signal, the sound vibrated on every nerve, and trembling she quitted the closet for her sister's apartment. love taught her disguise. till then emilia had shared all her thoughts; they now descended to the breakfast-room in silence, and julia almost feared to meet her eye. in the breakfast-room they were alone. julia found it impossible to support a conversation with emilia, whose observations interrupting the course of her thoughts, became uninteresting and tiresome. she was therefore about to retire to her closet, when the marquis entered. his air was haughty, and his look severe. he coldly saluted his daughters, and they had scarcely time to reply to his general enquiries, when the marchioness entered, and the company soon after assembled. julia, who had awaited with so painful an impatience for the moment which should present vereza to her sight, now sighed that it was arrived. she scarcely dared to lift her timid eyes from the ground, and when by accident they met his, a soft tremour seized her; and apprehension lest he should discover her sentiments, served only to render her confusion conspicuous. at length, a glance from the marchioness recalled her bewildered thoughts; and other fears superseding those of love, her mind, by degrees, recovered its dignity. she could distinguish in the behaviour of vereza no symptoms of particular admiration, and she resolved to conduct herself towards him with the most scrupulous care. this day, like the preceding one, was devoted to joy. in the evening there was a concert, which was chiefly performed by the nobility. ferdinand played the violoncello, vereza the german flute, and julia the piana-forte, which she touched with a delicacy and execution that engaged every auditor. the confusion of julia may be easily imagined, when ferdinand, selecting a beautiful duet, desired vereza would accompany his sister. the pride of conscious excellence, however, quickly overcame her timidity, and enabled her to exert all her powers. the air was simple and pathetic, and she gave it those charms of expression so peculiarly her own. she struck the chords of her piana-forte in beautiful accompaniment, and towards the close of the second stanza, her voice resting on one note, swelled into a tone so exquisite, and from thence descended to a few simple notes, which she touched with such impassioned tenderness that every eye wept to the sounds. the breath of the flute trembled, and hippolitus entranced, forgot to play. a pause of silence ensued at the conclusion of the piece, and continued till a general sigh seemed to awaken the audience from their enchantment. amid the general applause, hippolitus was silent. julia observed his behaviour, and gently raising her eyes to his, there read the sentiments which she had inspired. an exquisite emotion thrilled her heart, and she experienced one of those rare moments which illuminate life with a ray of bliss, by which the darkness of its general shade is contrasted. care, doubt, every disagreeable sensation vanished, and for the remainder of the evening she was conscious only of delight. a timid respect marked the manner of hippolitus, more flattering to julia than the most ardent professions. the evening concluded with a ball, and julia was again the partner of the count. when the ball broke up, she retired to her apartment, but not to sleep. joy is as restless as anxiety or sorrow. she seemed to have entered upon a new state of existence;--those fine springs of affection which had hitherto lain concealed, were now touched, and yielded to her a happiness more exalted than any her imagination had ever painted. she reflected on the tranquillity of her past life, and comparing it with the emotions of the present hour, exulted in the difference. all her former pleasures now appeared insipid; she wondered that they ever had power to affect her, and that she had endured with content the dull uniformity to which she had been condemned. it was now only that she appeared to live. absorbed in the single idea of being beloved, her imagination soared into the regions of romantic bliss, and bore her high above the possibility of evil. since she was beloved by hippolitus, she could only be happy. from this state of entranced delight, she was awakened by the sound of music immediately under her window. it was a lute touched by a masterly hand. after a wild and melancholy symphony, a voice of more than magic expression swelled into an air so pathetic and tender, that it seemed to breathe the very soul of love. the chords of the lute were struck in low and sweet accompaniment. julia listened, and distinguished the following words; sonnet still is the night-breeze!--not a lonely sound steals through the silence of this dreary hour; o'er these high battlements sleep reigns profound, and sheds on all, his sweet oblivious power. on all but me--i vainly ask his dews to steep in short forgetfulness my cares. th' affrighted god still flies when love pursues, still--still denies the wretched lover's prayers. an interval of silence followed, and the air was repeated; after which the music was heard no more. if before julia believed that she was loved by hippolitus, she was now confirmed in the sweet reality. but sleep at length fell upon her senses, and the airy forms of ideal bliss no longer fleeted before her imagination. morning came, and she arose light and refreshed. how different were her present sensations from those of the preceding day. her anxiety had now evaporated in joy, and she experienced that airy dance of spirits which accumulates delight from every object; and with a power like the touch of enchantment, can transform a gloomy desert into a smiling eden. she flew to the breakfast-room, scarcely conscious of motion; but, as she entered it, a soft confusion overcame her; she blushed, and almost feared to meet the eyes of vereza. she was presently relieved, however, for the count was not there. the company assembled--julia watched the entrance of every person with painful anxiety, but he for whom she looked did not appear. surprised and uneasy, she fixed her eyes on the door, and whenever it opened, her heart beat with an expectation which was as often checked by disappointment. in spite of all her efforts, her vivacity sunk into languor, and she then perceived that love may produce other sensations than those of delight. she found it possible to be unhappy, though loved by hippolitus; and acknowledged with a sigh of regret, which was yet new to her, how tremblingly her peace depended upon him. he neither appeared nor was mentioned at breakfast; but though delicacy prevented her enquiring after him, conversation soon became irksome to her, and she retired to the apartment of madame de menon. there she employed herself in painting, and endeavoured to beguile the time till the hour of dinner, when she hoped to see hippolitus. madame was, as usual, friendly and cheerful, but she perceived a reserve in the conduct of julia, and penetrated without difficulty into its cause. she was, however, ignorant of the object of her pupil's admiration. the hour so eagerly desired by julia at length arrived, and with a palpitating heart she entered the hall. the count was not there, and in the course of conversation, she learned that he had that morning sailed for naples. the scene which so lately appeared enchanting to her eyes, now changed its hue; and in the midst of society, and surrounded by gaiety, she was solitary and dejected. she accused herself of having suffered her wishes to mislead her judgment; and the present conduct of hippolitus convinced her, that she had mistaken admiration for a sentiment more tender. she believed, too, that the musician who had addressed her in his sonnet, was not the count; and thus at once was dissolved all the ideal fabric of her happiness. how short a period often reverses the character of our sentiments, rendering that which yesterday we despised, to-day desirable. the tranquil state which she had so lately delighted to quit, she now reflected upon with regret. she had, however, the consolation of believing that her sentiments towards the count were unknown, and the sweet consciousness that her conduct had been governed by a nice sense of propriety. the public rejoicings at the castle closed with the week; but the gay spirit of the marchioness forbade a return to tranquillity; and she substituted diversions more private, but in splendour scarcely inferior to the preceding ones. she had observed the behaviour of hippolitus on the night of the concert with chagrin, and his departure with sorrow; yet, disdaining to perpetuate misfortune by reflection, she sought to lose the sense of disappointment in the hurry of dissipation. but her efforts to erase him from her remembrance were ineffectual. unaccustomed to oppose the bent of her inclinations, they now maintained unbounded sway; and she found too late, that in order to have a due command of our passions, it is necessary to subject them to early obedience. passion, in its undue influence, produces weakness as well as injustice. the pain which now recoiled upon her heart from disappointment, she had not strength of mind to endure, and she sought relief from its pressure in afflicting the innocent. julia, whose beauty she imagined had captivated the count, and confirmed him in indifference towards herself, she incessantly tormented by the exercise of those various and splenetic little arts which elude the eye of the common observer, and are only to be known by those who have felt them. arts, which individually are inconsiderable, but in the aggregate amount to a cruel and decisive effect. from julia's mind the idea of happiness was now faded. pleasure had withdrawn her beam from the prospect, and the objects no longer illumined by her ray, became dark and colourless. as often as her situation would permit, she withdrew from society, and sought the freedom of solitude, where she could indulge in melancholy thoughts, and give a loose to that despair which is so apt to follow the disappointment of our first hopes. week after week elapsed, yet no mention was made of returning to naples. the marquis at length declared it his intention to spend the remainder of the summer in the castle. to this determination the marchioness submitted with decent resignation, for she was here surrounded by a croud of flatterers, and her invention supplied her with continual diversions: that gaiety which rendered naples so dear to her, glittered in the woods of mazzini, and resounded through the castle. the apartments of madame de menon were spacious and noble. the windows opened upon the sea, and commanded a view of the straits of messina, bounded on one side by the beautiful shores of the isle of sicily, and on the other by the high mountains of calabria. the straits, filled with vessels whose gay streamers glittered to the sun-beam, presented to the eye an ever-moving scene. the principal room opened upon a gallery that overhung the grand terrace of the castle, and it commanded a prospect which for beauty and extent has seldom been equalled. these were formerly considered the chief apartments of the castle; and when the marquis quitted them for naples, were allotted for the residence of madame de menon, and her young charge. the marchioness, struck with the prospect which the windows afforded, and with the pleasantness of the gallery, determined to restore the rooms to their former splendour. she signified this intention to madame, for whom other apartments were provided. the chambers of emilia and julia forming part of the suite, they were also claimed by the marchioness, who left julia only her favorite closet. the rooms to which they removed were spacious, but gloomy; they had been for some years uninhabited; and though preparations had been made for the reception of their new inhabitants, an air of desolation reigned within them that inspired melancholy sensations. julia observed that her chamber, which opened beyond madame's, formed a part of the southern building, with which, however, there appeared no means of communication. the late mysterious circumstances relating to this part of the fabric, now arose to her imagination, and conjured up a terror which reason could not subdue. she told her emotions to madame, who, with more prudence than sincerity, laughed at her fears. the behaviour of the marquis, the dying words of vincent, together with the preceding circumstances of alarm, had sunk deep in the mind of madame, but she saw the necessity of confining to her own breast doubts which time only could resolve. julia endeavoured to reconcile herself to the change, and a circumstance soon occurred which obliterated her present sensations, and excited others far more interesting. one day that she was arranging some papers in the small drawers of a cabinet that stood in her apartment, she found a picture which fixed all her attention. it was a miniature of a lady, whose countenance was touched with sorrow, and expressed an air of dignified resignation. the mournful sweetness of her eyes, raised towards heaven with a look of supplication, and the melancholy languor that shaded her features, so deeply affected julia, that her eyes were filled with involuntary tears. she sighed and wept, still gazing on the picture, which seemed to engage her by a kind of fascination. she almost fancied that the portrait breathed, and that the eyes were fixed on hers with a look of penetrating softness. full of the emotions which the miniature had excited, she presented it to madame, whose mingled sorrow and surprise increased her curiosity. but what were the various sensations which pressed upon her heart, on learning that she had wept over the resemblance of her mother! deprived of a mother's tenderness before she was sensible of its value, it was now only that she mourned the event which lamentation could not recall. emilia, with an emotion as exquisite, mingled her tears with those of her sister. with eager impatience they pressed madame to disclose the cause of that sorrow which so emphatically marked the features of their mother. 'alas! my dear children,' said madame, deeply sighing, 'you engage me in a task too severe, not only for your peace, but for mine; since in giving you the information you require, i must retrace scenes of my own life, which i wish for ever obliterated. it would, however, be both cruel and unjust to withhold an explanation so nearly interesting to you, and i will sacrifice my own ease to your wishes. 'louisa de bernini, your mother, was, as you well know, the only daughter of the count de bernini. of the misfortunes of your family, i believe you are yet ignorant. the chief estates of the count were situated in the _val di demona_, a valley deriving its name from its vicinity to mount aetna, which vulgar tradition has peopled with devils. in one of those dreadful eruptions of aetna, which deluged this valley with a flood of fire, a great part of your grandfather's domains in that quarter were laid waste. the count was at that time with a part of his family at messina, but the countess and her son, who were in the country, were destroyed. the remaining property of the count was proportionably inconsiderable, and the loss of his wife and son deeply affected him. he retired with louisa, his only surviving child, who was then near fifteen, to a small estate near cattania. there was some degree of relationship between your grandfather and myself; and your mother was attached to me by the ties of sentiment, which, as we grew up, united us still more strongly than those of blood. our pleasures and our tastes were the same; and a similarity of misfortunes might, perhaps, contribute to cement our early friendship. i, like herself, had lost a parent in the eruption of aetna. my mother had died before i understood her value; but my father, whom i revered and tenderly loved, was destroyed by one of those terrible events; his lands were buried beneath the lava, and he left an only son and myself to mourn his fate, and encounter the evils of poverty. the count, who was our nearest surviving relation, generously took us home to his house, and declared that he considered us as his children. to amuse his leisure hours, he undertook to finish the education of my brother, who was then about seventeen, and whose rising genius promised to reward the labours of the count. louisa and myself often shared the instruction of her father, and at those hours orlando was generally of the party. the tranquil retirement of the count's situation, the rational employment of his time between his own studies, the education of those whom he called his children, and the conversation of a few select friends, anticipated the effect of time, and softened the asperities of his distress into a tender complacent melancholy. as for louisa and myself, who were yet new in life, and whose spirits possessed the happy elasticity of youth, our minds gradually shifted from suffering to tranquillity, and from tranquillity to happiness. i have sometimes thought that when my brother has been reading to her a delightful passage, the countenance of louisa discovered a tender interest, which seemed to be excited rather by the reader than by the author. these days, which were surely the most enviable of our lives, now passed in serene enjoyments, and in continual gradations of improvement. 'the count designed my brother for the army, and the time now drew nigh when he was to join the sicilian regiment, in which he had a commission. the absent thoughts, and dejected spirits of my cousin, now discovered to me the secret which had long been concealed even from herself; for it was not till orlando was about to depart, that she perceived how dear he was to her peace. on the eve of his departure, the count lamented, with fatherly yet manly tenderness, the distance which was soon to separate us. "but we shall meet again," said he, "when the honors of war shall have rewarded the bravery of my son." louisa grew pale, a half suppressed sigh escaped her, and, to conceal her emotion, she turned to her harpsichord. 'my brother had a favorite dog, which, before he set off, he presented to louisa, and committing it to her care, begged she would be kind to it, and sometimes remember its master. he checked his rising emotion, but as he turned from her, i perceived the tear that wetted his cheek. he departed, and with him the spirit of our happiness seemed to evaporate. the scenes which his presence had formerly enlivened, were now forlorn and melancholy, yet we loved to wander in what were once his favorite haunts. louisa forbore to mention my brother even to me, but frequently, when she thought herself unobserved, she would steal to her harpsichord, and repeat the strain which she had played on the evening before his departure. 'we had the pleasure to hear from time to time that he was well: and though his own modesty threw a veil over his conduct, we could collect from other accounts that he had behaved with great bravery. at length the time of his return approached, and the enlivened spirits of louisa declared the influence he retained in her heart. he returned, bearing public testimony of his valour in the honors which had been conferred upon him. he was received with universal joy; the count welcomed him with the pride and fondness of a father, and the villa became again the seat of happiness. his person and manners were much improved; the elegant beauty of the youth was now exchanged for the graceful dignity of manhood, and some knowledge of the world was added to that of the sciences. the joy which illumined his countenance when he met louisa, spoke at once his admiration and his love; and the blush which her observation of it brought upon her cheek, would have discovered, even to an uninterested spectator, that this joy was mutual. 'orlando brought with him a young frenchman, a brother officer, who had rescued him from imminent danger in battle, and whom he introduced to the count as his preserver. the count received him with gratitude and distinction, and he was for a considerable time an inmate at the villa. his manners were singularly pleasing, and his understanding was cultivated and refined. he soon discovered a partiality for me, and he was indeed too pleasing to be seen with indifference. gratitude for the valuable life he had preserved, was perhaps the groundwork of an esteem which soon increased into the most affectionate love. our attachment grew stronger as our acquaintance increased; and at length the chevalier de menon asked me of the count, who consulted my heart, and finding it favorable to the connection, proceeded to make the necessary enquiries concerning the family of the stranger. he obtained a satisfactory and pleasing account of it. the chevalier was the second son of a french gentleman of large estates in france, who had been some years deceased. he had left several sons; the family-estate, of course, devolved to the eldest, but to the two younger he had bequeathed considerable property. our marriage was solemnized in a private manner at the villa, in the presence of the count, louisa, and my brother. soon after the nuptials, my husband and orlando were remanded to their regiments. my brother's affections were now unalterably fixed upon louisa, but a sentiment of delicacy and generosity still kept him silent. he thought, poor as he was, to solicit the hand of louisa, would be to repay the kindness of the count with ingratitude. i have seen the inward struggles of his heart, and mine has bled for him. the count and louisa so earnestly solicited me to remain at the villa during the campaign, that at length my husband consented. we parted--o! let me forget that period!--had i accompanied him, all might have been well; and the long, long years of affliction which followed had been spared me.' the horn now sounded the signal for dinner, and interrupted the narrative of madame. her beauteous auditors wiped the tears from their eyes, and with extreme reluctance descended to the hall. the day was occupied with company and diversions, and it was not till late in the evening that they were suffered to retire. they hastened to madame immediately upon their being released; and too much interested for sleep, and too importunate to be repulsed, solicited the sequel of her story. she objected the lateness of the hour, but at length yielded to their entreaties. they drew their chairs close to hers; and every sense being absorbed in the single one of hearing, followed her through the course of her narrative. 'my brother again departed without disclosing his sentiments; the effort it cost him was evident, but his sense of honor surmounted every opposing consideration. louisa again drooped, and pined in silent sorrow. i lamented equally for my friend and my brother; and have a thousand times accused that delicacy as false, which withheld them from the happiness they might so easily and so innocently have obtained. the behaviour of the count, at least to my eye, seemed to indicate the satisfaction which this union would have given him. it was about this period that the marquis mazzini first saw and became enamoured of louisa. his proposals were very flattering, but the count forbore to exert the undue authority of a father; and he ceased to press the connection, when he perceived that louisa was really averse to it. louisa was sensible of the generosity of his conduct, and she could scarcely reject the alliance without a sigh, which her gratitude paid to the kindness of her father. 'but an event now happened which dissolved at once our happiness, and all our air-drawn schemes for futurity. a dispute, which it seems originated in a trifle, but soon increased to a serious degree, arose between the _chevalier de menon_ and my brother. it was decided by the sword, and my dear brother fell by the hand of my husband. i shall pass over this period of my life. it is too painful for recollection. the effect of this event upon louisa was such as may be imagined. the world was now become indifferent to her, and as she had no prospect of happiness for herself, she was unwilling to withhold it from the father who had deserved so much of her. after some time, when the marquis renewed his addresses, she gave him her hand. the characters of the marquis and his lady were in their nature too opposite to form a happy union. of this louisa was very soon sensible; and though the mildness of her disposition made her tamely submit to the unfeeling authority of her husband, his behaviour sunk deep in her heart, and she pined in secret. it was impossible for her to avoid opposing the character of the marquis to that of him upon whom her affections had been so fondly and so justly fixed. the comparison increased her sufferings, which soon preyed upon her constitution, and very visibly affected her health. her situation deeply afflicted the count, and united with the infirmities of age to shorten his life. 'upon his death, i bade adieu to my cousin, and quitted sicily for italy, where the chevalier de menon had for some time expected me. our meeting was very affecting. my resentment towards him was done away, when i observed his pale and altered countenance, and perceived the melancholy which preyed upon his heart. all the airy vivacity of his former manner was fled, and he was devoured by unavailing grief and remorse. he deplored with unceasing sorrow the friend he had murdered, and my presence seemed to open afresh the wounds which time had begun to close. his affliction, united with my own, was almost more than i could support, but i was doomed to suffer, and endure yet more. in a subsequent engagement my husband, weary of existence, rushed into the heat of battle, and there obtained an honorable death. in a paper which he left behind him, he said it was his intention to die in that battle; that he had long wished for death, and waited for an opportunity of obtaining it without staining his own character by the cowardice of suicide, or distressing me by an act of butchery. this event gave the finishing stroke to my afflictions;--yet let me retract;--another misfortune awaited me when i least expected one. the _chevalier de menon_ died without a will, and his brothers refused to give up his estate, unless i could produce a witness of my marriage. i returned to sicily, and, to my inexpressible sorrow, found that your mother had died during my stay abroad, a prey, i fear, to grief. the priest who performed the ceremony of my marriage, having been threatened with punishment for some ecclesiastical offences, had secretly left the country; and thus was i deprived of those proofs which were necessary to authenticate my claims to the estates of my husband. his brothers, to whom i was an utter stranger, were either too prejudiced to believe, or believing, were too dishonorable to acknowledge the justice of my claims. i was therefore at once abandoned to sorrow and to poverty; a small legacy from the count de bernini being all that now remained to me. 'when the marquis married maria de vellorno, which was about this period, he designed to quit mazzini for naples. his son was to accompany him, but it was his intention to leave you, who were both very young, to the care of some person qualified to superintend your education. my circumstances rendered the office acceptable, and my former friendship for your mother made the duty pleasing to me. the marquis was, i believe, glad to be spared the trouble of searching further for what he had hitherto found it difficult to obtain--a person whom inclination as well as duty would bind to his interest.' madame ceased to speak, and emilia and julia wept to the memory of the mother, whose misfortunes this story recorded. the sufferings of madame, together with her former friendship for the late marchioness, endeared her to her pupils, who from this period endeavoured by every kind and delicate attention to obliterate the traces of her sorrows. madame was sensible of this tenderness, and it was productive in some degree of the effect desired. but a subject soon after occurred, which drew off their minds from the consideration of their mother's fate to a subject more wonderful and equally interesting. one night that emilia and julia had been detained by company, in ceremonial restraint, later than usual, they were induced, by the easy conversation of madame, and by the pleasure which a return to liberty naturally produces, to defer the hour of repose till the night was far advanced. they were engaged in interesting discourse, when madame, who was then speaking, was interrupted by a low hollow sound, which arose from beneath the apartment, and seemed like the closing of a door. chilled into a silence, they listened and distinctly heard it repeated. deadly ideas crowded upon their imaginations, and inspired a terror which scarcely allowed them to breathe. the noise lasted only for a moment, and a profound silence soon ensued. their feelings at length relaxed, and suffered them to move to emilia's apartment, when again they heard the same sounds. almost distracted with fear, they rushed into madame's apartment, where emilia sunk upon the bed and fainted. it was a considerable time ere the efforts of madame recalled her to sensation. when they were again tranquil, she employed all her endeavours to compose the spirits of the young ladies, and dissuade them from alarming the castle. involved in dark and fearful doubts, she yet commanded her feelings, and endeavoured to assume an appearance of composure. the late behaviour of the marquis had convinced her that he was nearly connected with the mystery which hung over this part of the edifice; and she dreaded to excite his resentment by a further mention of alarms, which were perhaps only ideal, and whose reality she had certainly no means of proving. influenced by these considerations, she endeavoured to prevail on emilia and julia to await in silence some confirmation of their surmises; but their terror made this a very difficult task. they acquiesced, however, so far with her wishes, as to agree to conceal the preceding circumstances from every person but their brother, without whose protecting presence they declared it utterly impossible to pass another night in the apartments. for the remainder of this night they resolved to watch. to beguile the tediousness of the time they endeavoured to converse, but the minds of emilia and julia were too much affected by the late occurrence to wander from the subject. they compared this with the foregoing circumstance of the figure and the light which had appeared; their imaginations kindled wild conjectures, and they submitted their opinions to madame, entreating her to inform them sincerely, whether she believed that disembodied spirits were ever permitted to visit this earth. 'my children,' said she, 'i will not attempt to persuade you that the existence of such spirits is impossible. who shall say that any thing is impossible to god? we know that he has made us, who are embodied spirits; he, therefore, can make unembodied spirits. if we cannot understand how such spirits exist, we should consider the limited powers of our minds, and that we cannot understand many things which are indisputably true. no one yet knows why the magnetic needle points to the north; yet you, who have never seen a magnet, do not hesitate to believe that it has this tendency, because you have been well assured of it, both from books and in conversation. since, therefore, we are sure that nothing is impossible to god, and that such beings _may_ exist, though we cannot tell how, we ought to consider by what evidence their existence is supported. i do not say that spirits _have_ appeared; but if several discreet unprejudiced persons were to assure me that they had seen one, i should not be proud or bold enough to reply--'it is impossible.' let not, however, such considerations disturb your minds. i have said thus much, because i was unwilling to impose upon your understandings; it is now your part to exercise your reason, and preserve the unmoved confidence of virtue. such spirits, if indeed they have ever been seen, can have appeared only by the express permission of god, and for some very singular purposes; be assured that there are no beings who act unseen by him; and that, therefore, there are none from whom innocence can ever suffer harm.' no further sounds disturbed them for that time; and before the morning dawned, weariness insensibly overcame apprehension, and sunk them in repose. when ferdinand learned the circumstances relative to the southern side of the castle, his imagination seized with avidity each appearance of mystery, and inspired him with an irresistible desire to penetrate the secrets of his desolate part of the fabric. he very readily consented to watch with his sisters in julia's apartment; but as his chamber was in a remote part of the castle, there would be some difficulty in passing unobserved to her's. it was agreed, however, that when all was hushed, he should make the attempt. having thus resolved, emilia and julia waited the return of night with restless and fearful impatience. at length the family retired to rest. the castle clock had struck one, and julia began to fear that ferdinand had been discovered, when a knocking was heard at the door of the outer chamber. her heart beat with apprehensions, which reason could not justify. madame rose, and enquiring who was there, was answered by the voice of ferdinand. the door was cheerfully opened. they drew their chairs round him, and endeavoured to pass the time in conversation; but fear and expectation attracted all their thoughts to one subject, and madame alone preserved her composure. the hour was now come when the sounds had been heard the preceding night, and every ear was given to attention. all, however, remained quiet, and the night passed without any new alarm. the greater part of several succeeding nights were spent in watching, but no sounds disturbed their silence. ferdinand, in whose mind the late circumstances had excited a degree of astonishment and curiosity superior to common obstacles, determined, if possible, to gain admittance to those recesses of the castle, which had for so many years been hid from human eye. this, however, was a design which he saw little probability of accomplishing, for the keys of that part of the edifice were in the possession of the marquis, of whose late conduct he judged too well to believe he would suffer the apartments to be explored. he racked his invention for the means of getting access to them, and at length recollected that julia's chamber formed a part of these buildings, it occurred to him, that according to the mode of building in old times, there might formerly have been a communication between them. this consideration suggested to him the possibility of a concealed door in her apartment, and he determined to survey it on the following night with great care. chapter iii the castle was buried in sleep when ferdinand again joined his sisters in madame's apartment. with anxious curiosity they followed him to the chamber. the room was hung with tapestry. ferdinand carefully sounded the wall which communicated with the southern buildings. from one part of it a sound was returned, which convinced him there was something less solid than stone. he removed the tapestry, and behind it appeared, to his inexpressible satisfaction, a small door. with a hand trembling through eagerness, he undrew the bolts, and was rushing forward, when he perceived that a lock withheld his passage. the keys of madame and his sisters were applied in vain, and he was compelled to submit to disappointment at the very moment when he congratulated himself on success, for he had with him no means of forcing the door. he stood gazing on the door, and inwardly lamenting, when a low hollow sound was heard from beneath. emilia and julia seized his arm; and almost sinking with apprehension, listened in profound silence. a footstep was distinctly heard, as if passing through the apartment below, after which all was still. ferdinand, fired by this confirmation of the late report, rushed on to the door, and again tried to burst his way, but it resisted all the efforts of his strength. the ladies now rejoiced in that circumstance which they so lately lamented; for the sounds had renewed their terror, and though the night passed without further disturbance, their fears were very little abated. ferdinand, whose mind was wholly occupied with wonder, could with difficulty await the return of night. emilia and julia were scarcely less impatient. they counted the minutes as they passed; and when the family retired to rest, hastened with palpitating hearts to the apartment of madame. they were soon after joined by ferdinand, who brought with him tools for cutting away the lock of the door. they paused a few moments in the chamber in fearful silence, but no sound disturbed the stillness of night. ferdinand applied a knife to the door, and in a short time separated the lock. the door yielded, and disclosed a large and gloomy gallery. he took a light. emilia and julia, fearful of remaining in the chamber, resolved to accompany him, and each seizing an arm of madame, they followed in silence. the gallery was in many parts falling to decay, the ceiling was broke, and the window-shutters shattered, which, together with the dampness of the walls, gave the place an air of wild desolation. they passed lightly on, for their steps ran in whispering echoes through the gallery, and often did julia cast a fearful glance around. the gallery terminated in a large old stair-case, which led to a hall below; on the left appeared several doors which seemed to lead to separate apartments. while they hesitated which course to pursue, a light flashed faintly up the stair-case, and in a moment after passed away; at the same time was heard the sound of a distant footstep. ferdinand drew his sword and sprang forward; his companions, screaming with terror, ran back to madame's apartment. ferdinand descended a large vaulted hall; he crossed it towards a low arched door, which was left half open, and through which streamed a ray of light. the door opened upon a narrow winding passage; he entered, and the light retiring, was quickly lost in the windings of the place. still he went on. the passage grew narrower, and the frequent fragments of loose stone made it now difficult to proceed. a low door closed the avenue, resembling that by which he had entered. he opened it, and discovered a square room, from whence rose a winding stair-case, which led up the south tower of the castle. ferdinand paused to listen; the sound of steps was ceased, and all was profoundly silent. a door on the right attracted his notice; he tried to open it, but it was fastened. he concluded, therefore, that the person, if indeed a human being it was that bore the light he had seen, had passed up the tower. after a momentary hesitation, he determined to ascend the stair-case, but its ruinous condition made this an adventure of some difficulty. the steps were decayed and broken, and the looseness of the stones rendered a footing very insecure. impelled by an irresistible curiosity, he was undismayed, and began the ascent. he had not proceeded very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had just quitted, loosened by his weight, gave way; and dragging with them those adjoining, formed a chasm in the stair-case that terrified even ferdinand, who was left tottering on the suspended half of the steps, in momentary expectation of falling to the bottom with the stone on which he rested. in the terror which this occasioned, he attempted to save himself by catching at a kind of beam which projected over the stairs, when the lamp dropped from his hand, and he was left in total darkness. terror now usurped the place of every other interest, and he was utterly perplexed how to proceed. he feared to go on, lest the steps above, as infirm as those below, should yield to his weight;--to return was impracticable, for the darkness precluded the possibility of discovering a means. he determined, therefore, to remain in this situation till light should dawn through the narrow grates in the walls, and enable him to contrive some method of letting himself down to the ground. he had remained here above an hour, when he suddenly heard a voice from below. it seemed to come from the passage leading to the tower, and perceptibly drew nearer. his agitation was now extreme, for he had no power of defending himself, and while he remained in this state of torturing expectation, a blaze of light burst upon the stair-case beneath him. in the succeeding moment he heard his own name sounded from below. his apprehensions instantly vanished, for he distinguished the voices of madame and his sisters. they had awaited his return in all the horrors of apprehension, till at length all fear for themselves was lost in their concern for him; and they, who so lately had not dared to enter this part of the edifice, now undauntedly searched it in quest of ferdinand. what were their emotions when they discovered his perilous situation! the light now enabled him to take a more accurate survey of the place. he perceived that some few stones of the steps which had fallen still remained attached to the wall, but he feared to trust to their support only. he observed, however, that the wall itself was partly decayed, and consequently rugged with the corners of half-worn stones. on these small projections he contrived, with the assistance of the steps already mentioned, to suspend himself, and at length gained the unbroken part of the stairs in safety. it is difficult to determine which individual of the party rejoiced most at this escape. the morning now dawned, and ferdinand desisted for the present from farther enquiry. the interest which these mysterious circumstances excited in the mind of julia, had withdrawn her attention from a subject more dangerous to its peace. the image of vereza, notwithstanding, would frequently intrude upon her fancy; and, awakening the recollection of happy emotions, would call forth a sigh which all her efforts could not suppress. she loved to indulge the melancholy of her heart in the solitude of the woods. one evening she took her lute to a favorite spot on the seashore, and resigning herself to a pleasing sadness, touched some sweet and plaintive airs. the purple flush of evening was diffused over the heavens. the sun, involved in clouds of splendid and innumerable hues, was setting o'er the distant waters, whose clear bosom glowed with rich reflection. the beauty of the scene, the soothing murmur of the high trees, waved by the light air which overshadowed her, and the soft shelling of the waves that flowed gently in upon the shores, insensibly sunk her mind into a state of repose. she touched the chords of her lute in sweet and wild melody, and sung the following ode: evening evening veil'd in dewy shades, slowly sinks upon the main; see th'empurpled glory fades, beneath her sober, chasten'd reign. around her car the pensive hours, in sweet illapses meet the sight, crown'd their brows with closing flow'rs rich with chrystal dews of night. her hands, the dusky hues arrange o'er the fine tints of parting day; insensibly the colours change, and languish into soft decay. wide o'er the waves her shadowy veil she draws. as faint they die along the distant shores; through the still air i mark each solemn pause, each rising murmur which the wild wave pours. a browner shadow spreads upon the air, and o'er the scene a pensive grandeur throws; the rocks--the woods a wilder beauty wear, and the deep wave in softer music flows; and now the distant view where vision fails, twilight and grey obscurity pervade; tint following tint each dark'ning object veils, till all the landscape sinks into the shade. oft from the airy steep of some lone hill, while sleeps the scene beneath the purple glow: and evening lives o'er all serene and still, wrapt let me view the magic world below! and catch the dying gale that swells remote, that steals the sweetness from the shepherd's flute: the distant torrent's melancholy note and the soft warblings of the lover's lute. still through the deep'ning gloom of bow'ry shades to fancy's eye fantastic forms appear; low whisp'ring echoes steal along the glades and thrill the ear with wildly-pleasing fear. parent of shades!--of silence!--dewy airs! of solemn musing, and of vision wild! to thee my soul her pensive tribute bears, and hails thy gradual step, thy influence mild. having ceased to sing, her fingers wandered over the lute in melancholy symphony, and for some moments she remained lost in the sweet sensations which the music and the scenery had inspired. she was awakened from her reverie, by a sigh that stole from among the trees, and directing her eyes whence it came, beheld--hippolitus! a thousand sweet and mingled emotions pressed upon her heart, yet she scarcely dared to trust the evidence of sight. he advanced, and throwing himself at her feet: 'suffer me,' said he, in a tremulous voice, 'to disclose to you the sentiments which you have inspired, and to offer you the effusions of a heart filled only with love and admiration.' 'rise, my lord,' said julia, moving from her seat with an air of dignity, 'that attitude is neither becoming you to use, or me to suffer. the evening is closing, and ferdinand will be impatient to see you.' 'never will i rise, madam,' replied the count, with an impassioned air, 'till'--he was interrupted by the marchioness, who at this moment entered the grove. on observing the position of the count she was retiring. 'stay, madam,' said julia, almost sinking under her confusion. 'by no means,' replied the marchioness, in a tone of irony, 'my presence would only interrupt a very agreeable scene. the count, i see, is willing to pay you his earliest respects.' saying this she disappeared, leaving julia distressed and offended, and the count provoked at the intrusion. he attempted to renew the subject, but julia hastily followed the steps of the marchioness, and entered the castle. the scene she had witnessed, raised in the marchioness a tumult of dreadful emotions. love, hatred, and jealousy, raged by turns in her heart, and defied all power of controul. subjected to their alternate violence, she experienced a misery more acute than any she had yet known. her imagination, invigorated by opposition, heightened to her the graces of hippolitus; her bosom glowed with more intense passion, and her brain was at length exasperated almost to madness. in julia this sudden and unexpected interview excited a mingled emotion of love and vexation, which did not soon subside. at length, however, the delightful consciousness of vereza's love bore her high above every other sensation; again the scene more brightly glowed, and again her fancy overcame the possibility of evil. during the evening a tender and timid respect distinguished the behaviour of the count towards julia, who, contented with the certainty of being loved, resolved to conceal her sentiments till an explanation of his abrupt departure from mazzini, and subsequent absence, should have dissipated the shadow of mystery which hung over this part of his conduct. she observed that the marchioness pursued her with steady and constant observation, and she carefully avoided affording the count an opportunity of renewing the subject of the preceding interview, which, whenever he approached her, seemed to tremble on his lips. night returned, and ferdinand repaired to the chamber of julia to pursue his enquiry. here he had not long remained, when the strange and alarming sounds which had been heard on the preceding night were repeated. the circumstance that now sunk in terror the minds of emilia and julia, fired with new wonder that of ferdinand, who seizing a light, darted through the discovered door, and almost instantly disappeared. he descended into the same wild hall he had passed on the preceding night. he had scarcely reached the bottom of the stair-case, when a feeble light gleamed across the hall, and his eye caught the glimpse of a figure retiring through the low arched door which led to the south tower. he drew his sword and rushed on. a faint sound died away along the passage, the windings of which prevented his seeing the figure he pursued. of this, indeed, he had obtained so slight a view, that he scarcely knew whether it bore the impression of a human form. the light quickly disappeared, and he heard the door that opened upon the tower suddenly close. he reached it, and forcing it open, sprang forward; but the place was dark and solitary, and there was no appearance of any person having passed along it. he looked up the tower, and the chasm which the stair-case exhibited, convinced him that no human being could have passed up. he stood silent and amazed; examining the place with an eye of strict enquiry, he perceived a door, which was partly concealed by hanging stairs, and which till now had escaped his notice. hope invigorated curiosity, but his expectation was quickly disappointed, for this door also was fastened. he tried in vain to force it. he knocked, and a hollow sullen sound ran in echoes through the place, and died away at a distance. it was evident that beyond this door were chambers of considerable extent, but after long and various attempts to reach them, he was obliged to desist, and he quitted the tower as ignorant and more dissatisfied than he had entered it. he returned to the hall, which he now for the first time deliberately surveyed. it was a spacious and desolate apartment, whose lofty roof rose into arches supported by pillars of black marble. the same substance inlaid the floor, and formed the stair-case. the windows were high and gothic. an air of proud sublimity, united with singular wildness, characterized the place, at the extremity of which arose several gothic arches, whose dark shade veiled in obscurity the extent beyond. on the left hand appeared two doors, each of which was fastened, and on the right the grand entrance from the courts. ferdinand determined to explore the dark recess which terminated his view, and as he traversed the hall, his imagination, affected by the surrounding scene, often multiplied the echoes of his footsteps into uncertain sounds of strange and fearful import. he reached the arches, and discovered beyond a kind of inner hall, of considerable extent, which was closed at the farther end by a pair of massy folding-doors, heavily ornamented with carving. they were fastened by a lock, and defied his utmost strength. as he surveyed the place in silent wonder, a sullen groan arose from beneath the spot where he stood. his blood ran cold at the sound, but silence returning, and continuing unbroken, he attributed his alarm to the illusion of a fancy, which terror had impregnated. he made another effort to force the door, when a groan was repeated more hollow, and more dreadful than the first. at this moment all his courage forsook him; he quitted the door, and hastened to the stair-case, which he ascended almost breathless with terror. he found madame de menon and his sisters awaiting his return in the most painful anxiety; and, thus disappointed in all his endeavours to penetrate the secret of these buildings, and fatigued with fruitless search, he resolved to suspend farther enquiry. when he related the circumstances of his late adventure, the terror of emilia and julia was heightened to a degree that overcame every prudent consideration. their apprehension of the marquis's displeasure was lost in a stronger feeling, and they resolved no longer to remain in apartments which offered only terrific images to their fancy. madame de menon almost equally alarmed, and more perplexed, by this combination of strange and unaccountable circumstances, ceased to oppose their design. it was resolved, therefore, that on the following day madame should acquaint the marchioness with such particulars of the late occurrence as their purpose made it necessary she should know, concealing their knowledge of the hidden door, and the incidents immediately dependant on it; and that madame should entreat a change of apartments. madame accordingly waited on the marchioness. the marchioness having listened to the account at first with surprise, and afterwards with indifference, condescended to reprove madame for encouraging superstitious belief in the minds of her young charge. she concluded with ridiculing as fanciful the circumstances related, and with refusing, on account of the numerous visitants at the castle, the request preferred to her. it is true the castle was crowded with visitors; the former apartments of madame de menon were the only ones unoccupied, and these were in magnificent preparation for the pleasure of the marchioness, who was unaccustomed to sacrifice her own wishes to the comfort of those around her. she therefore treated lightly the subject, which, seriously attended to, would have endangered her new plan of delight. but emilia and julia were too seriously terrified to obey the scruples of delicacy, or to be easily repulsed. they prevailed on ferdinand to represent their situation to the marquis. meanwhile hippolitus, who had passed the night in a state of sleepless anxiety, watched, with busy impatience, an opportunity of more fully disclosing to julia the passion which glowed in his heart. the first moment in which he beheld her, had awakened in him an admiration which had since ripened into a sentiment more tender. he had been prevented formally declaring his passion by the circumstance which so suddenly called him to naples. this was the dangerous illness of the marquis de lomelli, his near and much-valued relation. but it was a task too painful to depart in silence, and he contrived to inform julia of his sentiments in the air which she heard so sweetly sung beneath her window. when hippolitus reached naples, the marquis was yet living, but expired a few days after his arrival, leaving the count heir to the small possessions which remained from the extravagance of their ancestors. the business of adjusting his rights had till now detained him from sicily, whither he came for the sole purpose of declaring his love. here unexpected obstacles awaited him. the jealous vigilance of the marchioness conspired with the delicacy of julia, to withhold from him the opportunity he so anxiously sought. when ferdinand entered upon the subject of the southern buildings to the marquis, he carefully avoided mentioning the hidden door. the marquis listened for some time to the relation in gloomy silence, but at length assuming an air of displeasure, reprehended ferdinand for yielding his confidence to those idle alarms, which he said were the suggestions of a timid imagination. 'alarms,' continued he, 'which will readily find admittance to the weak mind of a woman, but which the firmer nature of man should disdain.--degenerate boy! is it thus you reward my care? do i live to see my son the sport of every idle tale a woman may repeat? learn to trust reason and your senses, and you will then be worthy of my attention.' the marquis was retiring, and ferdinand now perceived it necessary to declare, that he had himself witnessed the sounds he mentioned. 'pardon me, my lord,' said he, 'in the late instance i have been just to your command--my senses have been the only evidences i have trusted. i have heard those sounds which i cannot doubt.' the marquis appeared shocked. ferdinand perceived the change, and urged the subject so vigorously, that the marquis, suddenly assuming a look of grave importance, commanded him to attend him in the evening in his closet. ferdinand in passing from the marquis met hippolitus. he was pacing the gallery in much seeming agitation, but observing ferdinand, he advanced to him. 'i am ill at heart,' said he, in a melancholy tone, 'assist me with your advice. we will step into this apartment, where we can converse without interruption.' 'you are not ignorant,' said he, throwing himself into a chair, 'of the tender sentiments which your sister julia has inspired. i entreat you by that sacred friendship which has so long united us, to afford me an opportunity of pleading my passion. her heart, which is so susceptible of other impressions, is, i fear, insensible to love. procure me, however, the satisfaction of certainty upon a point where the tortures of suspence are surely the most intolerable.' 'your penetration,' replied ferdinand, 'has for once forsaken you, else you would now be spared the tortures of which you complain, for you would have discovered what i have long observed, that julia regards you with a partial eye.' 'do not,' said hippolitus, 'make disappointment more terrible by flattery; neither suffer the partiality of friendship to mislead your judgment. your perceptions are affected by the warmth of your feelings, and because you think i deserve her distinction, you believe i possess it. alas! you deceive yourself, but not me!' 'the very reverse,' replied ferdinand; 'tis you who deceive yourself, or rather it is the delicacy of the passion which animates you, and which will ever operate against your clear perception of a truth in which your happiness is so deeply involved. believe me, i speak not without reason:--she loves you.' at these words hippolitus started from his seat, and clasping his hands in fervent joy, 'enchanting sounds!' cried he, in a voice tenderly impassioned; '_could_ i but believe ye!--could i _but_ believe ye-this world were paradise!' during this exclamation, the emotions of julia, who sat in her closet adjoining, can with difficulty be imagined. a door which opened into it from the apartment where this conversation was held, was only half closed. agitated with the pleasure this declaration excited, she yet trembled with apprehension lest she should be discovered. she hardly dared to breathe, much less to move across the closet to the door, which opened upon the gallery, whence she might probably have escaped unnoticed, lest the sound of her step should betray her. compelled, therefore, to remain where she was, she sat in a state of fearful distress, which no colour of language can paint. 'alas!' resumed hippolitus, 'i too eagerly admit the possibility of what i wish. if you mean that i should really believe you, confirm your assertion by some proof.'--'readily,' rejoined ferdinand. the heart of julia beat quick. 'when you was so suddenly called to naples upon the illness of the marquis lomelli, i marked her conduct well, and in that read the sentiments of her heart. on the following morning, i observed in her countenance a restless anxiety which i had never seen before. she watched the entrance of every person with an eager expectation, which was as often succeeded by evident disappointment. at dinner your departure was mentioned:--she spilt the wine she was carrying to her lips, and for the remainder of the day was spiritless and melancholy. i saw her ineffectual struggles to conceal the oppression at her heart. since that time she has seized every opportunity of withdrawing from company. the gaiety with which she was so lately charmed--charmed her no longer; she became pensive, retired, and i have often heard her singing in some lonely spot, the most moving and tender airs. your return produced a visible and instantaneous alteration; she has now resumed her gaiety; and the soft confusion of her countenance, whenever you approach, might alone suffice to convince you of the truth of my assertion.' 'o! talk for ever thus!' sighed hippolitus. 'these words are so sweet, so soothing to my soul, that i could listen till i forgot i had a wish beyond them. yes!--ferdinand, these circumstances are not to be doubted, and conviction opens upon my mind a flow of extacy i never knew till now. o! lead me to her, that i may speak the sentiments which swell my heart.' they arose, when julia, who with difficulty had supported herself, now impelled by an irresistible fear of instant discovery, rose also, and moved softly towards the gallery. the sound of her step alarmed the count, who, apprehensive lest his conversation had been overheard, was anxious to be satisfied whether any person was in the closet. he rushed in, and discovered julia! she caught at a chair to support her trembling frame; and overwhelmed with mortifying sensations, sunk into it, and hid her face in her robe. hippolitus threw himself at her feet, and seizing her hand, pressed it to his lips in expressive silence. some moments passed before the confusion of either would suffer them to speak. at length recovering his voice, 'can you, madam,' said he, 'forgive this intrusion, so unintentional? or will it deprive me of that esteem which i have but lately ventured to believe i possessed, and which i value more than existence itself. o! speak my pardon! let me not believe that a single accident has destroyed my peace for ever.'--'if your peace, sir, depends upon a knowledge of my esteem,' said julia, in a tremulous voice, 'that peace is already secure. if i wished even to deny the partiality i feel, it would now be useless; and since i no longer wish this, it would also be painful.' hippolitus could only weep his thanks over the hand he still held. 'be sensible, however, of the delicacy of my situation,' continued she, rising, 'and suffer me to withdraw.' saying this she quitted the closet, leaving hippolitus overcome with this sweet confirmation of his wishes, and ferdinand not yet recovered from the painful surprize which the discovery of julia had excited. he was deeply sensible of the confusion he had occasioned her, and knew that apologies would not restore the composure he had so cruelly yet unwarily disturbed. ferdinand awaited the hour appointed by the marquis in impatient curiosity. the solemn air which the marquis assumed when he commanded him to attend, had deeply impressed his mind. as the time drew nigh, expectation increased, and every moment seemed to linger into hours. at length he repaired to the closet, where he did not remain long before the marquis entered. the same chilling solemnity marked his manner. he locked the door of the closet, and seating himself, addressed ferdinand as follows:-'i am now going to repose in you a confidence which will severely prove the strength of your honour. but before i disclose a secret, hitherto so carefully concealed, and now reluctantly told, you must swear to preserve on this subject an eternal silence. if you doubt the steadiness of your discretion--now declare it, and save yourself from the infamy, and the fatal consequences, which may attend a breach of your oath;--if, on the contrary, you believe yourself capable of a strict integrity--now accept the terms, and receive the secret i offer.' ferdinand was awed by this exordium--the impatience of curiosity was for a while suspended, and he hesitated whether he should receive the secret upon such terms. at length he signified his consent, and the marquis arising, drew his sword from the scabbard.--'here,' said he, offering it to ferdinand, 'seal your vows--swear by this sacred pledge of honor never to repeat what i shall now reveal.' ferdinand vowed upon the sword, and raising his eyes to heaven, solemnly swore. the marquis then resumed his seat, and proceeded. 'you are now to learn that, about a century ago, this castle was in the possession of vincent, third marquis of mazzini, my grandfather. at that time there existed an inveterate hatred between our family and that of della campo. i shall not now revert to the origin of the animosity, or relate the particulars of the consequent feuds--suffice it to observe, that by the power of our family, the della campos were unable to preserve their former consequence in sicily, and they have therefore quitted it for a foreign land to live in unmolested security. to return to my subject.--my grandfather, believing his life endangered by his enemy, planted spies upon him. he employed some of the numerous banditti who sought protection in his service, and after some weeks past in waiting for an opportunity, they seized henry della campo, and brought him secretly to this castle. he was for some time confined in a close chamber of the southern buildings, where he expired; by what means i shall forbear to mention. the plan had been so well conducted, and the secrecy so strictly preserved, that every endeavour of his family to trace the means of his disappearance proved ineffectual. their conjectures, if they fell upon our family, were supported by no proof; and the della campos are to this day ignorant of the mode of his death. a rumour had prevailed long before the death of my father, that the southern buildings of the castle were haunted. i disbelieved the fact, and treated it accordingly. one night, when every human being of the castle, except myself, was retired to rest, i had such strong and dreadful proofs of the general assertion, that even at this moment i cannot recollect them without horror. let me, if possible, forget them. from that moment i forsook those buildings; they have ever since been shut up, and the circumstance i have mentioned, is the true reason why i have resided so little at the castle.' ferdinand listened to this narrative in silent horror. he remembered the temerity with which he had dared to penetrate those apartments--the light, and figure he had seen--and, above all, his situation in the stair-case of the tower. every nerve thrilled at the recollection; and the terrors of remembrance almost equalled those of reality. the marquis permitted his daughters to change their apartments, but he commanded ferdinand to tell them, that, in granting their request, he consulted their ease only, and was himself by no means convinced of its propriety. they were accordingly reinstated in their former chambers, and the great room only of madame's apartments was reserved for the marchioness, who expressed her discontent to the marquis in terms of mingled censure and lamentation. the marquis privately reproved his daughters, for what he termed the idle fancies of a weak mind; and desired them no more to disturb the peace of the castle with the subject of their late fears. they received this reproof with silent submission--too much pleased with the success of their suit to be susceptible of any emotion but joy. ferdinand, reflecting on the late discovery, was shocked to learn, what was now forced upon his belief, that he was the descendant of a murderer. he now knew that innocent blood had been shed in the castle, and that the walls were still the haunt of an unquiet spirit, which seemed to call aloud for retribution on the posterity of him who had disturbed its eternal rest. hippolitus perceived his dejection, and entreated that he might participate his uneasiness; but ferdinand, who had hitherto been frank and ingenuous, was now inflexibly reserved. 'forbear,' said he, 'to urge a discovery of what i am not permitted to reveal; this is the only point upon which i conjure you to be silent, and this even to you, i cannot explain.' hippolitus was surprized, but pressed the subject no farther. julia, though she had been extremely mortified by the circumstances attendant on the discovery of her sentiments to hippolitus, experienced, after the first shock had subsided, an emotion more pleasing than painful. the late conversation had painted in strong colours the attachment of her lover. his diffidence--his slowness to perceive the effect of his merit--his succeeding rapture, when conviction was at length forced upon his mind; and his conduct upon discovering julia, proved to her at once the delicacy and the strength of his passion, and she yielded her heart to sensations of pure and unmixed delight. she was roused from this state of visionary happiness, by a summons from the marquis to attend him in the library. a circumstance so unusual surprized her, and she obeyed with trembling curiosity. she found him pacing the room in deep thought, and she had shut the door before he perceived her. the authoritative severity in his countenance alarmed her, and prepared her for a subject of importance. he seated himself by her, and continued a moment silent. at length, steadily observing her, 'i sent for you, my child,' said he, 'to declare the honor which awaits you. the duke de luovo has solicited your hand. an alliance so splendid was beyond my expectation. you will receive the distinction with the gratitude it claims, and prepare for the celebration of the nuptials.' this speech fell like the dart of death upon the heart of julia. she sat motionless--stupified and deprived of the power of utterance. the marquis observed her consternation; and mistaking its cause, 'i acknowledge,' said he, 'that there is somewhat abrupt in this affair; but the joy occasioned by a distinction so unmerited on your part, ought to overcome the little feminine weakness you might otherwise indulge. retire and compose yourself; and observe,' continued he, in a stern voice, 'this is no time for finesse.' these words roused julia from her state of horrid stupefaction. 'o! sir,' said she, throwing herself at his feet, 'forbear to enforce authority upon a point where to obey you would be worse than death; if, indeed, to obey you were possible.'--'cease,' said the marquis, 'this affectation, and practice what becomes you.'--'pardon me, my lord,' she replied, 'my distress is, alas! unfeigned. i cannot love the duke.'--'away!' interrupted the marquis, 'nor tempt my rage with objections thus childish and absurd.'--'yet hear me, my lord,' said julia, tears swelling in her eyes, 'and pity the sufferings of a child, who never till this moment has dared to dispute your commands.' 'nor shall she now,' said the marquis. 'what--when wealth, honor, and distinction, are laid at my feet, shall they be refused, because a foolish girl--a very baby, who knows not good from evil, cries, and says she cannot love! let me not think of it--my just anger may, perhaps, out-run discretion, and tempt me to chastise your folly.--attend to what i say--accept the duke, or quit this castle for ever, and wander where you will.' saying this, he burst away, and julia, who had hung weeping upon his knees, fell prostrate upon the floor. the violence of the fall completed the effect of her distress, and she fainted. in this state she remained a considerable time. when she recovered her senses, the recollection of her calamity burst upon her mind with a force that almost again overwhelmed her. she at length raised herself from the ground, and moved towards her own apartment, but had scarcely reached the great gallery, when hippolitus entered it. her trembling limbs would no longer support her; she caught at a bannister to save herself; and hippolitus, with all his speed, was scarcely in time to prevent her falling. the pale distress exhibited in her countenance terrified him, and he anxiously enquired concerning it. she could answer him only with her tears, which she found it impossible to suppress; and gently disengaging herself, tottered to her closet. hippolitus followed her to the door, but desisted from further importunity. he pressed her hand to his lips in tender silence, and withdrew, surprized and alarmed. julia, resigning herself to despair, indulged in solitude the excess of her grief. a calamity, so dreadful as the present, had never before presented itself to her imagination. the union proposed would have been hateful to her, even if she had no prior attachment; what then must have been her distress, when she had given her heart to him who deserved all her admiration, and returned all her affection. the duke de luovo was of a character very similar to that of the marquis. the love of power was his ruling passion;--with him no gentle or generous sentiment meliorated the harshness of authority, or directed it to acts of beneficence. he delighted in simple undisguised tyranny. he had been twice married, and the unfortunate women subjected to his power, had fallen victims to the slow but corroding hand of sorrow. he had one son, who some years before had escaped the tyranny of his father, and had not been since heard of. at the late festival the duke had seen julia; and her beauty made so strong an impression upon him, that he had been induced now to solicit her hand. the marquis, delighted with the prospect of a connection so flattering to his favorite passion, readily granted his consent, and immediately sealed it with a promise. julia remained for the rest of the day shut up in her closet, where the tender efforts of madame and emilia were exerted to soften her distress. towards the close of evening ferdinand entered. hippolitus, shocked at her absence, had requested him to visit her, to alleviate her affliction, and, if possible, to discover its cause. ferdinand, who tenderly loved his sister, was alarmed by the words of hippolitus, and immediately sought her. her eyes were swelled with weeping, and her countenance was but too expressive of the state of her mind. ferdinand's distress, when told of his father's conduct, was scarcely less than her own. he had pleased himself with the hope of uniting the sister of his heart with the friend whom he loved. an act of cruel authority now dissolved the fairy dream of happiness which his fancy had formed, and destroyed the peace of those most dear to him. he sat for a long time silent and dejected; at length, starting from his melancholy reverie, he bad julia good-night, and returned to hippolitus, who was waiting for him with anxious impatience in the north hall. ferdinand dreaded the effect of that despair, which the intelligence he had to communicate would produce in the mind of hippolitus. he revolved some means of softening the dreadful truth; but hippolitus, quick to apprehend the evil which love taught him to fear, seized at once upon the reality. 'tell me all,' said he, in a tone of assumed firmness. 'i am prepared for the worst.' ferdinand related the decree of the marquis, and hippolitus soon sunk into an excess of grief which defied, as much as it required, the powers of alleviation. julia, at length, retired to her chamber, but the sorrow which occupied her mind withheld the blessings of sleep. distracted and restless she arose, and gently opened the window of her apartment. the night was still, and not a breath disturbed the surface of the waters. the moon shed a mild radiance over the waves, which in gentle undulations flowed upon the sands. the scene insensibly tranquilized her spirits. a tender and pleasing melancholy diffused itself over her mind; and as she mused, she heard the dashing of distant oars. presently she perceived upon the light surface of the sea a small boat. the sound of the oars ceased, and a solemn strain of harmony (such as fancy wafts from the abodes of the blessed) stole upon the silence of night. a chorus of voices now swelled upon the air, and died away at a distance. in the strain julia recollected the midnight hymn to the virgin, and holy enthusiasm filled her heart. the chorus was repeated, accompanied by a solemn striking of oars. a sigh of exstacy stole from her bosom. silence returned. the divine melody she had heard calmed the tumult of her mind, and she sunk in sweet repose. she arose in the morning refreshed by light slumbers; but the recollection of her sorrows soon returned with new force, and sickening faintness overcame her. in this situation she received a message from the marquis to attend him instantly. she obeyed, and he bade her prepare to receive the duke, who that morning purposed to visit the castle. he commanded her to attire herself richly, and to welcome him with smiles. julia submitted in silence. she saw the marquis was inflexibly resolved, and she withdrew to indulge the anguish of her heart, and prepare for this detested interview. the clock had struck twelve, when a flourish of trumpets announced the approach of the duke. the heart of julia sunk at the sound, and she threw herself on a sopha, overwhelmed with bitter sensations. here she was soon disturbed by a message from the marquis. she arose, and tenderly embracing emilia, their tears for some moments flowed together. at length, summoning all her fortitude, she descended to the hall, where she was met by the marquis. he led her to the saloon in which the duke sat, with whom having conversed a short time, he withdrew. the emotion of julia at this instant was beyond any thing she had before suffered; but by a sudden and strange exertion of fortitude, which the force of desperate calamity sometimes affords us, but which inferior sorrow toils after in vain, she recovered her composure, and resumed her natural dignity. for a moment she wondered at herself, and she formed the dangerous resolution of throwing herself upon the generosity of the duke, by acknowledging her reluctance to the engagement, and soliciting him to withdraw his suit. the duke approached her with an air of proud condescension; and taking her hand, placed himself beside her. having paid some formal and general compliments to her beauty, he proceeded to profess himself her admirer. she listened for some time to his professions, and when he appeared willing to hear her, she addressed him--'i am justly sensible, my lord, of the distinction you offer me, and must lament that respectful gratitude is the only sentiment i can return. nothing can more strongly prove my confidence in your generosity, than when i confess to you, that parental authority urges me to give my hand whither my heart cannot accompany it.' she paused--the duke continued silent.--''tis you only, my lord, who can release me from a situation so distressing; and to your goodness and justice i appeal, certain that necessity will excuse the singularity of my conduct, and that i shall not appeal in vain.' the duke was embarrassed--a flush of pride overspread his countenance, and he seemed endeavouring to stifle the feelings that swelled his heart. 'i had been prepared, madam,' said he, 'to expect a very different reception, and had certainly no reason to believe that the duke de luovo was likely to sue in vain. since, however, madam, you acknowledge that you have already disposed of your affections, i shall certainly be very willing, if the marquis will release me from our mutual engagements, to resign you to a more favored lover.' 'pardon me, my lord,' said julia, blushing, 'suffer me to'--'i am not easily deceived, madam,' interrupted the duke,--'your conduct can be attributed only to the influence of a prior attachment; and though for so young a lady, such a circumstance is somewhat extraordinary, i have certainly no right to arraign your choice. permit me to wish you a good morning.' he bowed low, and quitted the room. julia now experienced a new distress; she dreaded the resentment of the marquis, when he should be informed of her conversation with the duke, of whose character she now judged too justly not to repent the confidence she had reposed in him. the duke, on quitting julia, went to the marquis, with whom he remained in conversation some hours. when he had left the castle, the marquis sent for his daughter, and poured forth his resentment with all the violence of threats, and all the acrimony of contempt. so severely did he ridicule the idea of her disposing of her heart, and so dreadfully did he denounce vengeance on her disobedience, that she scarcely thought herself safe in his presence. she stood trembling and confused, and heard his reproaches without the power to reply. at length the marquis informed her, that the nuptials would be solemnized on the third day from the present; and as he quitted the room, a flood of tears came to her relief, and saved her from fainting. julia passed the remainder of the day in her closet with emilia. night returned, but brought her no peace. she sat long after the departure of emilia; and to beguile recollection, she selected a favorite author, endeavouring to revive those sensations his page had once excited. she opened to a passage, the tender sorrow of which was applicable to her own situation, and her tears flowed wean. her grief was soon suspended by apprehension. hitherto a deadly silence had reigned through the castle, interrupted only by the wind, whose low sound crept at intervals through the galleries. she now thought she heard a footstep near her door, but presently all was still, for she believed she had been deceived by the wind. the succeeding moment, however, convinced her of her error, for she distinguished the low whisperings of some persons in the gallery. her spirits, already weakened by sorrow, deserted her: she was seized with an universal terror, and presently afterwards a low voice called her from without, and the door was opened by ferdinand. she shrieked, and fainted. on recovering, she found herself supported by ferdinand and hippolitus, who had stolen this moment of silence and security to gain admittance to her presence. hippolitus came to urge a proposal which despair only could have suggested. 'fly,' said he, 'from the authority of a father who abuses his power, and assert the liberty of choice, which nature assigned you. let the desperate situation of my hopes plead excuse for the apparent boldness of this address, and let the man who exists but for you be the means of saving you from destruction. alas! madam, you are silent, and perhaps i have forfeited, by this proposal, the confidence i so lately flattered myself i possessed. if so, i will submit to my fate in silence, and will to-morrow quit a scene which presents only images of distress to my mind.' julia could speak but with her tears. a variety of strong and contending emotions struggled at her breast, and suppressed the power of utterance. ferdinand seconded the proposal of the count. 'it is unnecessary,' my sister, said he, 'to point out the misery which awaits you here. i love you too well tamely to suffer you to be sacrificed to ambition, and to a passion still more hateful. i now glory in calling hippolitus my friend--let me ere long receive him as a brother. i can give no stronger testimony of my esteem for his character, than in the wish i now express. believe me he has a heart worthy of your acceptance--a heart noble and expansive as your own.'--'ah, cease,' said julia, 'to dwell upon a character of whose worth i am fully sensible. your kindness and his merit can never be forgotten by her whose misfortunes you have so generously suffered to interest you.' she paused in silent hesitation. a sense of delicacy made her hesitate upon the decision which her heart so warmly prompted. if she fled with hippolitus, she would avoid one evil, and encounter another. she would escape the dreadful destiny awaiting her, but must, perhaps, sully the purity of that reputation, which was dearer to her than existence. in a mind like hers, exquisitely susceptible of the pride of honor, this fear was able to counteract every other consideration, and to keep her intentions in a state of painful suspense. she sighed deeply, and continued silent. hippolitus was alarmed by the calm distress which her countenance exhibited. 'o! julia,' said he, 'relieve me from this dreadful suspense!--speak to me--explain this silence.' she looked mournfully upon him--her lips moved, but no sounds were uttered. as he repeated his question, she waved her hand, and sunk back in her chair. she had not fainted, but continued some time in a state of stupor not less alarming. the importance of the present question, operating upon her mind, already harassed by distress, had produced a temporary suspension of reason. hippolitus hung over her in an agony not to be described, and ferdinand vainly repeated her name. at length uttering a deep sigh, she raised herself, and, like one awakened from a dream, gazed around her. hippolitus thanked god fervently in his heart. 'tell me but that you are well,' said he, 'and that i may dare to hope, and we will leave you to repose.'--'my sister,' said ferdinand, 'consult only your own wishes, and leave the rest to me. suffer a confidence in me to dissipate the doubts with which you are agitated.'--'ferdinand,' said julia, emphatically, 'how shall i express the gratitude your kindness has excited?'--'your gratitude,' said he, 'will be best shown in consulting your own wishes; for be assured, that whatever procures your happiness, will most effectually establish mine. do not suffer the prejudices of education to render you miserable. believe me, that a choice which involves the happiness or misery of your whole life, ought to be decided only by yourself.' 'let us forbear for the present,' said hippolitus, 'to urge the subject. repose is necessary for you,' addressing julia, 'and i will not suffer a selfish consideration any longer to with-hold you from it.--grant me but this request--that at this hour to-morrow night, i may return hither to receive my doom.' julia having consented to receive hippolitus and ferdinand, they quitted the closet. in turning into the grand gallery, they were surprised by the appearance of a light, which gleamed upon the wall that terminated their view. it seemed to proceed from a door which opened upon a back stair-case. they pushed on, but it almost instantly disappeared, and upon the stair-case all was still. they then separated, and retired to their apartments, somewhat alarmed by this circumstance, which induced them to suspect that their visit to julia had been observed. julia passed the night in broken slumbers, and anxious consideration. on her present decision hung the crisis of her fate. her consciousness of the influence of hippolitus over her heart, made her fear to indulge its predilection, by trusting to her own opinion of its fidelity. she shrunk from the disgraceful idea of an elopement; yet she saw no means of avoiding this, but by rushing upon the fate so dreadful to her imagination. on the following night, when the inhabitants of the castle were retired to rest, hippolitus, whose expectation had lengthened the hours into ages, accompanied by ferdinand, revisited the closet. julia, who had known no interval of rest since they last left her, received them with much agitation. the vivid glow of health had fled her cheek, and was succeeded by a languid delicacy, less beautiful, but more interesting. to the eager enquiries of hippolitus, she returned no answer, but faintly smiling through her tears, presented him her hand, and covered her face with her robe. 'i receive it,' cried he, 'as the pledge of my happiness;--yet--yet let your voice ratify the gift.' 'if the present concession does not sink me in your esteem,' said julia, in a low tone, 'this hand is yours.'--'the concession, my love, (for by that tender name i may now call you) would, if possible, raise you in my esteem; but since that has been long incapable of addition, it can only heighten my opinion of myself, and increase my gratitude to you: gratitude which i will endeavour to shew by an anxious care of your happiness, and by the tender attentions of a whole life. from this blessed moment,' continued he, in a voice of rapture, 'permit me, in thought, to hail you as my wife. from this moment let me banish every vestige of sorrow;--let me dry those tears,' gently pressing her cheek with his lips, 'never to spring again.'--the gratitude and joy which ferdinand expressed upon this occasion, united with the tenderness of hippolitus to soothe the agitated spirits of julia, and she gradually recovered her complacency. they now arranged their plan of escape; in the execution of which, no time was to be lost, since the nuptials with the duke were to be solemnized on the day after the morrow. their scheme, whatever it was that should be adopted, they, therefore, resolved to execute on the following night. but when they descended from the first warmth of enterprize, to minuter examination, they soon found the difficulties of the undertaking. the keys of the castle were kept by robert, the confidential servant of the marquis, who every night deposited them in an iron chest in his chamber. to obtain them by stratagem seemed impossible, and ferdinand feared to tamper with the honesty of this man, who had been many years in the service of the marquis. dangerous as was the attempt, no other alternative appeared, and they were therefore compelled to rest all their hopes upon the experiment. it was settled, that if the keys could be procured, ferdinand and hippolitus should meet julia in the closet; that they should convey her to the seashore, from whence a boat, which was to be kept in waiting, would carry them to the opposite coast of calabria, where the marriage might be solemnized without danger of interruption. but, as it was necessary that ferdinand should not appear in the affair, it was agreed that he should return to the castle immediately upon the embarkation of his sister. having thus arranged their plan of operation, they separated till the following night, which was to decide the fate of hippolitus and julia. julia, whose mind was soothed by the fraternal kindness of ferdinand, and the tender assurances of hippolitus, now experienced an interval of repose. at the return of day she awoke refreshed, and tolerably composed. she selected a few clothes which were necessary, and prepared them for her journey. a sentiment of generosity justified her in the reserve she preserved to emilia and madame de menon, whose faithfulness and attachment she could not doubt, but whom she disdained to involve in the disgrace that must fall upon them, should their knowledge of her flight be discovered. in the mean time the castle was a scene of confusion. the magnificent preparations which were making for the nuptials, engaged all eyes, and busied all hands. the marchioness had the direction of the whole; and the alacrity with which she acquitted herself, testified how much she was pleased with the alliance, and created a suspicion, that it had not been concerted without some exertion of her influence. thus was julia designed the joint victim of ambition and illicit love. the composure of julia declined with the day, whose hours had crept heavily along. as the night drew on, her anxiety for the success of ferdinand's negociation with robert increased to a painful degree. a variety of new emotions pressed at her heart, and subdued her spirits. when she bade emilia good night, she thought she beheld her for the last time. the ideas of the distance which would separate them, of the dangers she was going to encounter, with a train of wild and fearful anticipations, crouded upon her mind, tears sprang in her eyes, and it was with difficulty she avoided betraying her emotions. of madame, too, her heart took a tender farewell. at length she heard the marquis retire to his apartment, and the doors belonging to the several chambers of the guests successively close. she marked with trembling attention the gradual change from bustle to quiet, till all was still. she now held herself in readiness to depart at the moment in which ferdinand and hippolitus, for whose steps in the gallery she eagerly listened, should appear. the castle clock struck twelve. the sound seemed to shake the pile. julia felt it thrill upon her heart. 'i hear you,' sighed she, 'for the last time.' the stillness of death succeeded. she continued to listen; but no sound met her ear. for a considerable time she sat in a state of anxious expectation not to be described. the clock chimed the successive quarters; and her fear rose to each additional sound. at length she heard it strike one. hollow was that sound, and dreadful to her hopes; for neither hippolitus nor ferdinand appeared. she grew faint with fear and disappointment. her mind, which for two hours had been kept upon the stretch of expectation, now resigned itself to despair. she gently opened the door of her closet, and looked upon the gallery; but all was lonely and silent. it appeared that robert had refused to be accessary to their scheme; and it was probable that he had betrayed it to the marquis. overwhelmed with bitter reflections, she threw herself upon the sopha in the first distraction of despair. suddenly she thought she heard a noise in the gallery; and as she started from her posture to listen to the sound, the door of her closet was gently opened by ferdinand. 'come, my love,' said he, 'the keys are ours, and we have not a moment to lose; our delay has been unavoidable; but this is no time for explanation.' julia, almost fainting, gave her hand to ferdinand, and hippolitus, after some short expression of his thankfulness, followed. they passed the door of madame's chamber; and treading the gallery with slow and silent steps, descended to the hall. this they crossed towards a door, after opening which, they were to find their way, through various passages, to a remote part of the castle, where a private door opened upon the walls. ferdinand carried the several keys. they fastened the hall door after them, and proceeded through a narrow passage terminating in a stair-case. they descended, and had hardly reached the bottom, when they heard a loud noise at the door above, and presently the voices of several people. julia scarcely felt the ground she trod on, and ferdinand flew to unlock a door that obstructed their way. he applied the different keys, and at length found the proper one; but the lock was rusted, and refused to yield. their distress was not now to be conceived. the noise above increased; and it seemed as if the people were forcing the door. hippolitus and ferdinand vainly tried to turn the key. a sudden crash from above convinced them that the door had yielded, when making another desperate effort, the key broke in the lock. trembling and exhausted, julia gave herself up for lost. as she hung upon ferdinand, hippolitus vainly endeavoured to sooth her--the noise suddenly ceased. they listened, dreading to hear the sounds renewed; but, to their utter astonishment, the silence of the place remained undisturbed. they had now time to breathe, and to consider the possibility of effecting their escape; for from the marquis they had no mercy to hope. hippolitus, in order to ascertain whether the people had quitted the door above, began to ascend the passage, in which he had not gone many steps when the noise was renewed with increased violence. he instantly retreated; and making a desperate push at the door below, which obstructed their passage, it seemed to yield, and by another effort of ferdinand, burst open. they had not an instant to lose; for they now heard the steps of persons descending the stairs. the avenue they were in opened into a kind of chamber, whence three passages branched, of which they immediately chose the first. another door now obstructed their passage; and they were compelled to wait while ferdinand applied the keys. 'be quick,' said julia, 'or we are lost. o! if this lock too is rusted!'--'hark!' said ferdinand. they now discovered what apprehension had before prevented them from perceiving, that the sounds of pursuit were ceased, and all again was silent. as this could happen only by the mistake of their pursuers, in taking the wrong _route_, they resolved to preserve their advantage, by concealing the light, which ferdinand now covered with his cloak. the door was opened, and they passed on; but they were perplexed in the intricacies of the place, and wandered about in vain endeavour to find their way. often did they pause to listen, and often did fancy give them sounds of fearful import. at length they entered on the passage which ferdinand knew led directly to a door that opened on the woods. rejoiced at this certainty, they soon reached the spot which was to give them liberty. ferdinand turned the key; the door unclosed, and, to their infinite joy, discovered to them the grey dawn. 'now, my love,' said hippolitus, 'you are safe, and i am happy.'--immediately a loud voice from without exclaimed, 'take, villain, the reward of your perfidy!' at the same instant hippolitus received a sword in his body, and uttering a deep sigh, fell to the ground. julia shrieked and fainted; ferdinand drawing his sword, advanced towards the assassin, upon whose countenance the light of his lamp then shone, and discovered to him his father! the sword fell from his grasp, and he started back in an agony of horror. he was instantly surrounded, and seized by the servants of the marquis, while the marquis himself denounced vengeance upon his head, and ordered him to be thrown into the dungeon of the castle. at this instant the servants of the count, who were awaiting his arrival on the seashore, hearing the tumult, hastened to the scene, and there beheld their beloved master lifeless and weltering in his blood. they conveyed the bleeding body, with loud lamentations, on board the vessel which had been prepared for him, and immediately set sail for italy. julia, on recovering her senses, found herself in a small room, of which she had no remembrance, with her maid weeping over her. recollection, when it returned, brought to her mind an energy of grief, which exceeded even all former conceptions of sufferings. yet her misery was heightened by the intelligence which she now received. she learned that hippolitus had been borne away lifeless by his people, that ferdinand was confined in a dungeon by order of the marquis, and that herself was a prisoner in a remote room, from which, on the day after the morrow, she was to be removed to the chapel of the castle, and there sacrificed to the ambition of her father, and the absurd love of the duke de luovo. this accumulation of evil subdued each power of resistance, and reduced julia to a state little short of distraction. no person was allowed to approach her but her maid, and the servant who brought her food. emilia, who, though shocked by julia's apparent want of confidence, severely sympathized in her distress, solicited to see her; but the pain of denial was so sharply aggravated by rebuke, that she dared not again to urge the request. in the mean time ferdinand, involved in the gloom of a dungeon, was resigned to the painful recollection of the past, and a horrid anticipation of the future. from the resentment of the marquis, whose passions were wild and terrible, and whose rank gave him an unlimited power of life and death in his own territories, ferdinand had much to fear. yet selfish apprehension soon yielded to a more noble sorrow. he mourned the fate of hippolitus, and the sufferings of julia. he could attribute the failure of their scheme only to the treachery of robert, who had, however, met the wishes of ferdinand with strong apparent sincerity, and generous interest in the cause of julia. on the night of the intended elopement, he had consigned the keys to ferdinand, who, immediately on receiving them, went to the apartment of hippolitus. there they were detained till after the clock had struck one by a low noise, which returned at intervals, and convinced them that some part of the family was not yet retired to rest. this noise was undoubtedly occasioned by the people whom the marquis had employed to watch, and whose vigilance was too faithful to suffer the fugitives to escape. the very caution of ferdinand defeated its purpose; for it is probable, that had he attempted to quit the castle by the common entrance, he might have escaped. the keys of the grand door, and those of the courts, remaining in the possession of robert, the marquis was certain of the intended place of their departure; and was thus enabled to defeat their hopes at the very moment when they exulted in their success. when the marchioness learned the fate of hippolitus, the resentment of jealous passion yielded to emotions of pity. revenge was satisfied, and she could now lament the sufferings of a youth whose personal charms had touched her heart as much as his virtues had disappointed her hopes. still true to passion, and inaccessible to reason, she poured upon the defenceless julia her anger for that calamity of which she herself was the unwilling cause. by a dextrous adaptation of her powers, she had worked upon the passions of the marquis so as to render him relentless in the pursuit of ambitious purposes, and insatiable in revenging his disappointment. but the effects of her artifices exceeded her intention in exerting them; and when she meant only to sacrifice a rival to her love, she found she had given up its object to revenge. chapter iv the nuptial morn, so justly dreaded by julia, and so impatiently awaited by the marquis, now arrived. the marriage was to be celebrated with a magnificence which demonstrated the joy it occasioned to the marquis. the castle was fitted up in a style of grandeur superior to any thing that had been before seen in it. the neighbouring nobility were invited to an entertainment which was to conclude with a splendid ball and supper, and the gates were to be thrown open to all who chose to partake of the bounty of the marquis. at an early hour the duke, attended by a numerous retinue, entered the castle. ferdinand heard from his dungeon, where the rigour and the policy of the marquis still confined him, the loud clattering of hoofs in the courtyard above, the rolling of the carriage wheels, and all the tumultuous bustle which the entrance of the duke occasioned. he too well understood the cause of this uproar, and it awakened in him sensations resembling those which the condemned criminal feels, when his ears are assailed by the dreadful sounds that precede his execution. when he was able to think of himself, he wondered by what means the marquis would reconcile his absence to the guests. he, however, knew too well the dissipated character of the sicilian nobility, to doubt that whatever story should be invented would be very readily believed by them; who, even if they knew the truth, would not suffer a discovery of their knowledge to interrupt the festivity which was offered them. the marquis and marchioness received the duke in the outer hall, and conducted him to the saloon, where he partook of the refreshments prepared for him, and from thence retired to the chapel. the marquis now withdrew to lead julia to the altar, and emilia was ordered to attend at the door of the chapel, in which the priest and a numerous company were already assembled. the marchioness, a prey to the turbulence of succeeding passions, exulted in the near completion of her favorite scheme.--a disappointment, however, was prepared for her, which would at once crush the triumph of her malice and her pride. the marquis, on entering the prison of julia, found it empty! his astonishment and indignation upon the discovery almost overpowered his reason. of the servants of the castle, who were immediately summoned, he enquired concerning her escape, with a mixture of fury and sorrow which left them no opportunity to reply. they had, however, no information to give, but that her woman had not appeared during the whole morning. in the prison were found the bridal habiliments which the marchioness herself had sent on the preceding night, together with a letter addressed to emilia, which contained the following words: 'adieu, dear emilia; never more will you see your wretched sister, who flies from the cruel fate now prepared for her, certain that she can never meet one more dreadful.--in happiness or misery--in hope or despair--whatever may be your situation--still remember me with pity and affection. dear emilia, adieu!--you will always be the sister of my heart--may you never be the partner of my misfortunes!' while the marquis was reading this letter, the marchioness, who supposed the delay occasioned by some opposition from julia, flew to the apartment. by her orders all the habitable parts of the castle were explored, and she herself assisted in the search. at length the intelligence was communicated to the chapel, and the confusion became universal. the priest quitted the altar, and the company returned to the saloon. the letter, when it was given to emilia, excited emotions which she found it impossible to disguise, but which did not, however, protect her from a suspicion that she was concerned in the transaction, her knowledge of which this letter appeared intended to conceal. the marquis immediately dispatched servants upon the fleetest horses of his stables, with directions to take different routs, and to scour every corner of the island in pursuit of the fugitives. when these exertions had somewhat quieted his mind, he began to consider by what means julia could have effected her escape. she had been confined in a small room in a remote part of the castle, to which no person had been admitted but her own woman and robert, the confidential servant of the marquis. even lisette had not been suffered to enter, unless accompanied by robert, in whose room, since the night of the fatal discovery, the keys had been regularly deposited. without them it was impossible she could have escaped: the windows of the apartment being barred and grated, and opening into an inner court, at a prodigious height from the ground. besides, who could she depend upon for protection--or whither could she intend to fly for concealment?--the associates of her former elopement were utterly unable to assist her even with advice. ferdinand himself a prisoner, had been deprived of any means of intercourse with her, and hippolitus had been carried lifeless on board a vessel, which had immediately sailed for italy. robert, to whom the keys had been entrusted, was severely interrogated by the marquis. he persisted in a simple and uniform declaration of his innocence; but as the marquis believed it impossible that julia could have escaped without his knowledge, he was ordered into imprisonment till he should confess the fact. the pride of the duke was severely wounded by this elopement, which proved the excess of julia's aversion, and compleated the disgraceful circumstances of his rejection. the marquis had carefully concealed from him her prior attempt at elopement, and her consequent confinement; but the truth now burst from disguise, and stood revealed with bitter aggravation. the duke, fired with indignation at the duplicity of the marquis, poured forth his resentment in terms of proud and bitter invective; and the marquis, galled by recent disappointment, was in no mood to restrain the impetuosity of his nature. he retorted with acrimony; and the consequence would have been serious, had not the friends of each party interposed for their preservation. the disputants were at length reconciled; it was agreed to pursue julia with united, and indefatigable search; and that whenever she should be found, the nuptials should be solemnized without further delay. with the character of the duke, this conduct was consistent. his passions, inflamed by disappointment, and strengthened by repulse, now defied the power of obstacle; and those considerations which would have operated with a more delicate mind to overcome its original inclination, served only to encrease the violence of his. madame de menon, who loved julia with maternal affection, was an interested observer of all that passed at the castle. the cruel fate to which the marquis destined his daughter she had severely lamented, yet she could hardly rejoice to find that this had been avoided by elopement. she trembled for the future safety of her pupil; and her tranquillity, which was thus first disturbed for the welfare of others, she was not soon suffered to recover. the marchioness had long nourished a secret dislike to madame de menon, whose virtues were a silent reproof to her vices. the contrariety of their disposition created in the marchioness an aversion which would have amounted to contempt, had not that dignity of virtue which strongly characterized the manners of madame, compelled the former to fear what she wished to despise. her conscience whispered her that the dislike was mutual; and she now rejoiced in the opportunity which seemed to offer itself of lowering the proud integrity of madame's character. pretending, therefore, to believe that she had encouraged ferdinand to disobey his father's commands, and had been accessary to the elopement, she accused her of these offences, and stimulated the marquis to reprehend her conduct. but the integrity of madame de menon was not to be questioned with impunity. without deigning to answer the imputation, she desired to resign an office of which she was no longer considered worthy, and to quit the castle immediately. this the policy of the marquis would not suffer; and he was compelled to make such ample concessions to madame, as induced her for the present to continue at the castle. the news of julia's elopement at length reached the ears of ferdinand, whose joy at this event was equalled only by his surprize. he lost, for a moment, the sense of his own situation, and thought only of the escape of julia. but his sorrow soon returned with accumulated force when he recollected that julia might then perhaps want that assistance which his confinement alone could prevent his affording her. the servants, who had been sent in pursuit, returned to the castle without any satisfactory information. week after week elapsed in fruitless search, yet the duke was strenuous in continuing the pursuit. emissaries were dispatched to naples, and to the several estates of the count vereza, but they returned without any satisfactory information. the count had not been heard of since he quitted naples for sicily. during these enquiries a new subject of disturbance broke out in the castle of mazzini. on the night so fatal to the hopes of hippolitus and julia, when the tumult was subsided, and all was still, a light was observed by a servant as he passed by the window of the great stair-case in the way to his chamber, to glimmer through the casement before noticed in the southern buildings. while he stood observing it, it vanished, and presently reappeared. the former mysterious circumstances relative to these buildings rushed upon his mind; and fired with wonder, he roused some of his fellow servants to come and behold this phenomenon. as they gazed in silent terror, the light disappeared, and soon after, they saw a small door belonging to the south tower open, and a figure bearing a light issue forth, which gliding along the castle walls, was quickly lost to their view. overcome with fear they hurried back to their chambers, and revolved all the late wonderful occurrences. they doubted not, that this was the figure formerly seen by the lady julia. the sudden change of madame de menon's apartments had not passed unobserved by the servants, but they now no longer hesitated to what to attribute the removal. they collected each various and uncommon circumstance attendant on this part of the fabric; and, comparing them with the present, their superstitious fears were confirmed, and their terror heightened to such a degree, that many of them resolved to quit the service of the marquis. the marquis surprized at this sudden desertion, enquired into its cause, and learned the truth. shocked by this discovery, he yet resolved to prevent, if possible, the ill effects which might be expected from a circulation of the report. to this end it was necessary to quiet the minds of his people, and to prevent their quitting his service. having severely reprehended them for the idle apprehension they encouraged, he told them that, to prove the fallacy of their surmises, he would lead them over that part of the castle which was the subject of their fears, and ordered them to attend him at the return of night in the north hall. emilia and madame de menon, surprised at this procedure, awaited the issue in silent expectation. the servants, in obedience to the commands of the marquis, assembled at night in the north hall. the air of desolation which reigned through the south buildings, and the circumstance of their having been for so many years shut up, would naturally tend to inspire awe; but to these people, who firmly believed them to be the haunt of an unquiet spirit, terror was the predominant sentiment. the marquis now appeared with the keys of these buildings in his hands, and every heart thrilled with wild expectation. he ordered robert to precede him with a torch, and the rest of the servants following, he passed on. a pair of iron gates were unlocked, and they proceeded through a court, whose pavement was wildly overgrown with long grass, to the great door of the south fabric. here they met with some difficulty, for the lock, which had not been turned for many years, was rusted. during this interval, the silence of expectation sealed the lips of all present. at length the lock yielded. that door which had not been passed for so many years, creaked heavily upon its hinges, and disclosed the hall of black marble which ferdinand had formerly crossed. 'now,' cried the marquis, in a tone of irony as he entered, 'expect to encounter the ghosts of which you tell me; but if you fail to conquer them, prepare to quit my service. the people who live with me shall at least have courage and ability sufficient to defend me from these spiritual attacks. all i apprehend is, that the enemy will not appear, and in this case your valour will go untried.' no one dared to answer, but all followed, in silent fear, the marquis, who ascended the great stair-case, and entered the gallery. 'unlock that door,' said he, pointing to one on the left, 'and we will soon unhouse these ghosts.' robert applied the key, but his hand shook so violently that he could not turn it. 'here is a fellow,' cried the marquis, 'fit to encounter a whole legion of spirits. do you, anthony, take the key, and try your valour.' 'please you, my lord,' replied anthony, 'i never was a good one at unlocking a door in my life, but here is gregory will do it.'--'no, my lord, an' please you,' said gregory, 'here is richard.'--'stand off,' said the marquis, 'i will shame your cowardice, and do it myself.' saying this he turned the key, and was rushing on, but the door refused to yield; it shook under his hands, and seemed as if partially held by some person on the other side. the marquis was surprized, and made several efforts to move it, without effect. he then ordered his servants to burst it open, but, shrinking back with one accord, they cried, 'for god's sake, my lord, go no farther; we are satisfied here are no ghosts, only let us get back.' 'it is now then my turn to be satisfied,' replied the marquis, 'and till i am, not one of you shall stir. open me that door.'--'my lord!'--'nay,' said the marquis, assuming a look of stern authority--'dispute not my commands. i am not to be trifled with.' they now stepped forward, and applied their strength to the door, when a loud and sudden noise burst from within, and resounded through the hollow chambers! the men started back in affright, and were rushing headlong down the stair-case, when the voice of the marquis arrested their flight. they returned, with hearts palpitating with terror. 'observe what i say,' said the marquis, 'and behave like men. yonder door,' pointing to one at some distance, 'will lead us through other rooms to this chamber--unlock it therefore, for i will know the cause of these sounds.' shocked at this determination, the servants again supplicated the marquis to go no farther; and to be obeyed, he was obliged to exert all his authority. the door was opened, and discovered a long narrow passage, into which they descended by a few steps. it led to a gallery that terminated in a back stair-case, where several doors appeared, one of which the marquis unclosed. a spacious chamber appeared beyond, whose walls, decayed and discoloured by the damps, exhibited a melancholy proof of desertion. they passed on through a long suite of lofty and noble apartments, which were in the same ruinous condition. at length they came to the chamber whence the noise had issued. 'go first, robert, with the light,' said the marquis, as they approached the door; 'this is the key.' robert trembled--but obeyed, and the other servants followed in silence. they stopped a moment at the door to listen, but all was still within. the door was opened, and disclosed a large vaulted chamber, nearly resembling those they had passed, and on looking round, they discovered at once the cause of the alarm.--a part of the decayed roof was fallen in, and the stones and rubbish of the ruin falling against the gallery door, obstructed the passage. it was evident, too, whence the noise which occasioned their terror had arisen; the loose stones which were piled against the door being shook by the effort made to open it, had given way, and rolled to the floor. after surveying the place, they returned to the back stairs, which they descended, and having pursued the several windings of a long passage, found themselves again in the marble hall. 'now,' said the marquis, 'what think ye? what evil spirits infest these walls? henceforth be cautious how ye credit the phantasms of idleness, for ye may not always meet with a master who will condescend to undeceive ye.'--they acknowledged the goodness of the marquis, and professing themselves perfectly conscious of the error of their former suspicions, desired they might search no farther. 'i chuse to leave nothing to your imagination,' replied the marquis, 'lest hereafter it should betray you into a similar error. follow me, therefore; you shall see the whole of these buildings.' saying this, he led them to the south tower. they remembered, that from a door of this tower the figure which caused their alarm had issued; and notwithstanding the late assertion of their suspicions being removed, fear still operated powerfully upon their minds, and they would willingly have been excused from farther research. 'would any of you chuse to explore this tower?' said the marquis, pointing to the broken stair-case; 'for myself, i am mortal, and therefore fear to venture; but you, who hold communion with disembodied spirits, may partake something of their nature; if so, you may pass without apprehension where the ghost has probably passed before.' they shrunk at this reproof, and were silent. the marquis turning to a door on his right hand, ordered it to be unlocked. it opened upon the country, and the servants knew it to be the same whence the figure had appeared. having relocked it, 'lift that trapdoor; we will desend into the vaults,' said the marquis. 'what trapdoor, my lord?' said robert, with encreased agitation; 'i see none.' the marquis pointed, and robert, perceived a door, which lay almost concealed beneath the stones that had fallen from the stair-case above. he began to remove them, when the marquis suddenly turning--'i have already sufficiently indulged your folly,' said he, 'and am weary of this business. if you are capable of receiving conviction from truth, you must now be convinced that these buildings are not the haunt of a supernatural being; and if you are incapable, it would be entirely useless to proceed. you, robert, may therefore spare yourself the trouble of removing the rubbish; we will quit this part of the fabric.' the servants joyfully obeyed, and the marquis locking the several doors, returned with the keys to the habitable part of the castle. every enquiry after julia had hitherto proved fruitless; and the imperious nature of the marquis, heightened by the present vexation, became intolerably oppressive to all around him. as the hope of recovering julia declined, his opinion that emilia had assisted her to escape strengthened, and he inflicted upon her the severity of his unjust suspicions. she was ordered to confine herself to her apartment till her innocence should be cleared, or her sister discovered. from madame de menon she received a faithful sympathy, which was the sole relief of her oppressed heart. her anxiety concerning julia daily encreased, and was heightened into the most terrifying apprehensions for her safety. she knew of no person in whom her sister could confide, or of any place where she could find protection; the most deplorable evils were therefore to be expected. one day, as she was sitting at the window of her apartment, engaged in melancholy reflection, she saw a man riding towards the castle on full speed. her heart beat with fear and expectation; for his haste made her suspect he brought intelligence of julia; and she could scarcely refrain from breaking through the command of the marquis, and rushing into the hall to learn something of his errand. she was right in her conjecture; the person she had seen was a spy of the marquis's, and came to inform him that the lady julia was at that time concealed in a cottage of the forest of marentino. the marquis, rejoiced at this intelligence, gave the man a liberal reward. he learned also, that she was accompanied by a young cavalier; which circumstance surprized him exceedingly; for he knew of no person except the count de vereza with whom she could have entrusted herself, and the count had fallen by his sword! he immediately ordered a party of his people to accompany the messenger to the forest of marentino, and to suffer neither julia nor the cavalier to escape them, on pain of death. when the duke de luovo was informed of this discovery, he entreated and obtained permission of the marquis to join in the pursuit. he immediately set out on the expedition, armed, and followed by a number of his servants. he resolved to encounter all hazards, and to practice the most desperate extremes, rather than fail in the object of his enterprize. in a short time he overtook the marquis's people, and they proceeded together with all possible speed. the forest lay several leagues distant from the castle of mazzini, and the day was closing when they entered upon the borders. the thick foliage of the trees spread a deeper shade around; and they were obliged to proceed with caution. darkness had long fallen upon the earth when they reached the cottage, to which they were directed by a light that glimmered from afar among the trees. the duke left his people at some distance; and dismounted, and accompanied only by one servant, approached the cottage. when he reached it he stopped, and looking through the window, observed a man and woman in the habit of peasants seated at their supper. they were conversing with earnestness, and the duke, hoping to obtain farther intelligence of julia, endeavoured to listen to their discourse. they were praising the beauty of a lady, whom the duke did not doubt to be julia, and the woman spoke much in praise of the cavalier. 'he has a noble heart,' said she; 'and i am sure, by his look, belongs to some great family.'--'nay,' replied her companion, 'the lady is as good as he. i have been at palermo, and ought to know what great folks are, and if she is not one of them, never take my word again. poor thing, how she does take on! it made my heart ache to see her.' they were some time silent. the duke knocked at the door, and enquired of the man who opened it concerning the lady and cavalier then in his cottage. he was assured there were no other persons in the cottage than those he then saw. the duke persisted in affirming that the persons he enquired for were there concealed; which the man being as resolute in denying, he gave the signal, and his people approached, and surrounded the cottage. the peasants, terrified by this circumstance, confessed that a lady and cavalier, such as the duke described, had been for some time concealed in the cottage; but that they were now departed. suspicious of the truth of the latter assertion, the duke ordered his people to search the cottage, and that part of the forest contiguous to it. the search ended in disappointment. the duke, however, resolved to obtain all possible information concerning the fugitives; and assuming, therefore, a stern air, bade the peasant, on pain of instant death, discover all he knew of them. the man replied, that on a very dark and stormy night, about a week before, two persons had come to the cottage, and desired shelter. that they were unattended; but seemed to be persons of consequence in disguise. that they paid very liberally for what they had; and that they departed from the cottage a few hours before the arrival of the duke. the duke enquired concerning the course they had taken, and having received information, remounted his horse, and set forward in pursuit. the road lay for several leagues through the forest, and the darkness, and the probability of encountering banditti, made the journey dangerous. about the break of day they quitted the forest, and entered upon a wild and mountainous country, in which they travelled some miles without perceiving a hut, or a human being. no vestige of cultivation appeared, and no sounds reached them but those of their horses feet, and the roaring of the winds through the deep forests that overhung the mountains. the pursuit was uncertain, but the duke resolved to persevere. they came at length to a cottage, where he repeated his enquiries, and learned to his satisfaction that two persons, such as he described, had stopped there for refreshment about two hours before. he found it now necessary to stop for the same purpose. bread and milk, the only provisions of the place, were set before him, and his attendants would have been well contented, had there been sufficient of this homely fare to have satisfied their hunger. having dispatched an hasty meal, they again set forward in the way pointed out to them as the route of the fugitives. the country assumed a more civilized aspect. corn, vineyards, olives, and groves of mulberry-trees adorned the hills. the vallies, luxuriant in shade, were frequently embellished by the windings of a lucid stream, and diversified by clusters of half-seen cottages. here the rising turrets of a monastery appeared above the thick trees with which they were surrounded; and there the savage wilds the travellers had passed, formed a bold and picturesque background to the scene. to the questions put by the duke to the several persons he met, he received answers that encouraged him to proceed. at noon he halted at a village to refresh himself and his people. he could gain no intelligence of julia, and was perplexed which way to chuse; but determined at length to pursue the road he was then in, and accordingly again set forward. he travelled several miles without meeting any person who could give the necessary information, and began to despair of success. the lengthened shadows of the mountains, and the fading light gave signals of declining day; when having gained the summit of a high hill, he observed two persons travelling on horseback in the plains below. on one of them he distinguished the habiliments of a woman; and in her air he thought he discovered that of julia. while he stood attentively surveying them, they looked towards the hill, when, as if urged by a sudden impulse of terror, they set off on full speed over the plains. the duke had no doubt that these were the persons he sought; and he, therefore, ordered some of his people to pursue them, and pushed his horse into a full gallop. before he reached the plains, the fugitives, winding round an abrupt hill, were lost to his view. the duke continued his course, and his people, who were a considerable way before him, at length reached the hill, behind which the two persons had disappeared. no traces of them were to be seen, and they entered a narrow defile between two ranges of high and savage mountains; on the right of which a rapid stream rolled along, and broke with its deep resounding murmurs the solemn silence of the place. the shades of evening now fell thick, and the scene was soon enveloped in darkness; but to the duke, who was animated by a strong and impetuous passion, these were unimportant circumstances. although he knew that the wilds of sicily were frequently infested with banditti, his numbers made him fearless of attack. not so his attendants, many of whom, as the darkness increased, testified emotions not very honourable to their courage: starting at every bush, and believing it concealed a murderer. they endeavoured to dissuade the duke from proceeding, expressing uncertainty of their being in the right route, and recommending the open plains. but the duke, whose eye had been vigilant to mark the flight of the fugitives, and who was not to be dissuaded from his purpose, quickly repressed their arguments. they continued their course without meeting a single person. the moon now rose, and afforded them a shadowy imperfect view of the surrounding objects. the prospect was gloomy and vast, and not a human habitation met their eyes. they had now lost every trace of the fugitives, and found themselves bewildered in a wild and savage country. their only remaining care was to extricate themselves from so forlorn a situation, and they listened at every step with anxious attention for some sound that might discover to them the haunts of men. they listened in vain; the stillness of night was undisturbed but by the wind, which broke at intervals in low and hollow murmurs from among the mountains. as they proceeded with silent caution, they perceived a light break from among the rocks at some distance. the duke hesitated whether to approach, since it might probably proceed from a party of the banditti with which these mountains were said to be infested. while he hesitated, it disappeared; but he had not advanced many steps when it returned. he now perceived it to issue from the mouth of a cavern, and cast a bright reflection upon the overhanging rocks and shrubs. he dismounted, and followed by two of his people, leaving the rest at some distance, moved with slow and silent steps towards the cave. as he drew near, he heard the sound of many voices in high carousal. suddenly the uproar ceased, and the following words were sung by a clear and manly voice: song pour the rich libation high; the sparkling cup to bacchus fill; his joys shall dance in ev'ry eye, and chace the forms of future ill! quick the magic raptures steal o'er the fancy-kindling brain. warm the heart with social zeal, and song and laughter reign. then visions of pleasure shall float on our sight, while light bounding our spirits shall flow; and the god shall impart a fine sense of delight which in vain _sober_ mortals would know. the last verse was repeated in loud chorus. the duke listened with astonishment! such social merriment amid a scene of such savage wildness, appeared more like enchantment than reality. he would not have hesitated to pronounce this a party of banditti, had not the delicacy of expression preserved in the song appeared unattainable by men of their class. he had now a full view of the cave; and the moment which convinced him of his error served only to encrease his surprize. he beheld, by the light of a fire, a party of banditti seated within the deepest recess of the cave round a rude kind of table formed in the rock. the table was spread with provisions, and they were regaling themselves with great eagerness and joy. the countenances of the men exhibited a strange mixture of fierceness and sociality; and the duke could almost have imagined he beheld in these robbers a band of the early romans before knowledge had civilized, or luxury had softened them. but he had not much time for meditation; a sense of his danger bade him fly while to fly was yet in his power. as he turned to depart, he observed two saddle-horses grazing upon the herbage near the mouth of the cave. it instantly occurred to him that they belonged to julia and her companion. he hesitated, and at length determined to linger awhile, and listen to the conversation of the robbers, hoping from thence to have his doubts resolved. they talked for some time in a strain of high conviviality, and recounted in exultation many of their exploits. they described also the behaviour of several people whom they had robbed, with highly ludicrous allusions, and with much rude humour, while the cave re-echoed with loud bursts of laughter and applause. they were thus engaged in tumultuous merriment, till one of them cursing the scanty plunder of their late adventure, but praising the beauty of a lady, they all lowered their voices together, and seemed as if debating upon a point uncommonly interesting to them. the passions of the duke were roused, and he became certain that it was julia of whom they had spoken. in the first impulse of feeling he drew his sword; but recollecting the number of his adversaries, restrained his fury. he was turning from the cave with a design of summoning his people, when the light of the fire glittering upon the bright blade of his weapon, caught the eye of one of the banditti. he started from his seat, and his comrades instantly rising in consternation, discovered the duke. they rushed with loud vociferation towards the mouth of the cave. he endeavoured to escape to his people; but two of the banditti mounting the horses which were grazing near, quickly overtook and seized him. his dress and air proclaimed him to be a person of distinction; and, rejoicing in their prospect of plunder, they forced him towards the cave. here their comrades awaited them; but what were the emotions of the duke, when he discovered in the person of the principal robber his own son! who, to escape the galling severity of his father, had fled from his castle some years before, and had not been heard of since. he had placed himself at the head of a party of banditti, and, pleased with the liberty which till then he had never tasted, and with the power which his new situation afforded him, he became so much attached to this wild and lawless mode of life, that he determined never to quit it till death should dissolve those ties which now made his rank only oppressive. this event seemed at so great a distance, that he seldom allowed himself to think of it. whenever it should happen, he had no doubt that he might either resume his rank without danger of discovery, or might justify his present conduct as a frolic which a few acts of generosity would easily excuse. he knew his power would then place him beyond the reach of censure, in a country where the people are accustomed to implicit subordination, and seldom dare to scrutinize the actions of the nobility. his sensations, however, on discovering his father, were not very pleasing; but proclaiming the duke, he protected him from farther outrage. with the duke, whose heart was a stranger to the softer affections, indignation usurped the place of parental feeling. his pride was the only passion affected by the discovery; and he had the rashness to express the indignation, which the conduct of his son had excited, in terms of unrestrained invective. the banditti, inflamed by the opprobium with which he loaded their order, threatened instant punishment to his temerity; and the authority of riccardo could hardly restrain them within the limits of forbearance. the menaces, and at length entreaties of the duke, to prevail with his son to abandon his present way of life, were equally ineffectual. secure in his own power, riccardo laughed at the first, and was insensible to the latter; and his father was compelled to relinquish the attempt. the duke, however, boldly and passionately accused him of having plundered and secreted a lady and cavalier, his friends, at the same time describing julia, for whose liberation he offered large rewards. riccardo denied the fact, which so much exasperated the duke, that he drew his sword with an intention of plunging it in the breast of his son. his arm was arrested by the surrounding banditti, who half unsheathed their swords, and stood suspended in an attitude of menace. the fate of the father now hung upon the voice of the son. riccardo raised his arm, but instantly dropped it, and turned away. the banditti sheathed their weapons, and stepped back. riccardo solemnly swearing that he knew nothing of the persons described, the duke at length became convinced of the truth of the assertion, and departing from the cave, rejoined his people. all the impetuous passions of his nature were roused and inflamed by the discovery of his son in a situation so wretchedly disgraceful. yet it was his pride rather than his virtue that was hurt; and when he wished him dead, it was rather to save himself from disgrace, than his son from the real indignity of vice. he had no means of reclaiming him; to have attempted it by force, would have been at this time the excess of temerity, for his attendants, though numerous, were undisciplined, and would have fallen certain victims to the power of a savage and dexterous banditti. with thoughts agitated in fierce and agonizing conflict, he pursued his journey; and having lost all trace of julia, sought only for an habitation which might shelter him from the night, and afford necessary refreshment for himself and his people. with this, however, there appeared little hope of meeting. chapter v the night grew stormy. the hollow winds swept over the mountains, and blew bleak and cold around; the clouds were driven swiftly over the face of the moon, and the duke and his people were frequently involved in total darkness. they had travelled on silently and dejectedly for some hours, and were bewildered in the wilds, when they suddenly heard the bell of a monastery chiming for midnight-prayer. their hearts revived at the sound, which they endeavoured to follow, but they had not gone far, when the gale wafted it away, and they were abandoned to the uncertain guide of their own conjectures. they had pursued for some time the way which they judged led to the monastery, when the note of the bell returned upon the wind, and discovered to them that they had mistaken their route. after much wandering and difficulty they arrived, overcome with weariness, at the gates of a large and gloomy fabric. the bell had ceased, and all was still. by the moonlight, which through broken clouds now streamed upon the building, they became convinced it was the monastery they had sought, and the duke himself struck loudly upon the gate. several minutes elapsed, no person appeared, and he repeated the stroke. a step was presently heard within, the gate was unbarred, and a thin shivering figure presented itself. the duke solicited admission, but was refused, and reprimanded for disturbing the convent at the hour sacred to prayer. he then made known his rank, and bade the friar inform the superior that he requested shelter from the night. the friar, suspicious of deceit, and apprehensive of robbers, refused with much firmness, and repeated that the convent was engaged in prayer; he had almost closed the gate, when the duke, whom hunger and fatigue made desperate, rushed by him, and passed into the court. it was his intention to present himself to the superior, and he had not proceeded far when the sound of laughter, and of many voices in loud and mirthful jollity, attracted his steps. it led him through several passages to a door, through the crevices of which light appeared. he paused a moment, and heard within a wild uproar of merriment and song. he was struck with astonishment, and could scarcely credit his senses! he unclosed the door, and beheld in a large room, well lighted, a company of friars, dressed in the habit of their order, placed round a table, which was profusely spread with wines and fruits. the superior, whose habit distinguished him from his associates, appeared at the head of the table. he was lifting a large goblet of wine to his lips, and was roaring out, 'profusion and confusion,' at the moment when the duke entered. his appearance caused a general alarm; that part of the company who were not too much intoxicated, arose from their seats; and the superior, dropping the goblet from his hands, endeavoured to assume a look of austerity, which his rosy countenance belied. the duke received a reprimand, delivered in the lisping accents of intoxication, and embellished with frequent interjections of hiccup. he made known his quality, his distress, and solicited a night's lodging for himself and his people. when the superior understood the distinction of his guest, his features relaxed into a smile of joyous welcome; and taking him by the hand, he placed him by his side. the table was quickly covered with luxurious provisions, and orders were given that the duke's people should be admitted, and taken care of. he was regaled with a variety of the finest wines, and at length, highly elevated by monastic hospitality, he retired to the apartment allotted him, leaving the superior in a condition which precluded all ceremony. he departed in the morning, very well pleased with the accommodating principles of monastic religion. he had been told that the enjoyment of the good things of this life was the surest sign of our gratitude to heaven; and it appeared, that within the walls of a sicilian monastery, the precept and the practice were equally enforced. he was now at a loss what course to chuse, for he had no clue to direct him towards the object of his pursuit; but hope still invigorated, and urged him to perseverance. he was not many leagues from the coast; and it occurred to him that the fugitives might make towards it with a design of escaping into italy. he therefore determined to travel towards the sea and proceed along the shore. at the house where he stopped to dine, he learned that two persons, such as he described, had halted there about an hour before his arrival, and had set off again in much seeming haste. they had taken the road towards the coast, whence it was obvious to the duke they designed to embark. he stayed not to finish the repast set before him, but instantly remounted to continue the pursuit. to the enquiries he made of the persons he chanced to meet, favorable answers were returned for a time, but he was at length bewildered in uncertainity, and travelled for some hours in a direction which chance, rather than judgment, prompted him to take. the falling evening again confused his prospects, and unsettled his hopes. the shades were deepened by thick and heavy clouds that enveloped the horizon, and the deep sounding air foretold a tempest. the thunder now rolled at a distance, and the accumulated clouds grew darker. the duke and his people were on a wild and dreary heath, round which they looked in vain for shelter, the view being terminated on all sides by the same desolate scene. they rode, however, as hard as their horses would carry them; and at length one of the attendants spied on the skirts of the waste a large mansion, towards which they immediately directed their course. they were overtaken by the storm, and at the moment when they reached the building, a peal of thunder, which seemed to shake the pile, burst over their heads. they now found themselves in a large and ancient mansion, which seemed totally deserted, and was falling to decay. the edifice was distinguished by an air of magnificence, which ill accorded with the surrounding scenery, and which excited some degree of surprize in the mind of the duke, who, however, fully justified the owner in forsaking a spot which presented to the eye only views of rude and desolated nature. the storm increased with much violence, and threatened to detain the duke a prisoner in his present habitation for the night. the hall, of which he and his people had taken possession, exhibited in every feature marks of ruin and desolation. the marble pavement was in many places broken, the walls were mouldering in decay, and round the high and shattered windows the long grass waved to the lonely gale. curiosity led him to explore the recesses of the mansion. he quitted the hall, and entered upon a passage which conducted him to a remote part of the edifice. he wandered through the wild and spacious apartments in gloomy meditation, and often paused in wonder at the remains of magnificence which he beheld. the mansion was irregular and vast, and he was bewildered in its intricacies. in endeavouring to find his way back, he only perplexed himself more, till at length he arrived at a door, which he believed led into the hall he first quitted. on opening it he discovered, by the faint light of the moon, a large place which he scarcely knew whether to think a cloister, a chapel, or a hall. it retired in long perspective, in arches, and terminated in a large iron gate, through which appeared the open country. the lighting flashed thick and blue around, which, together with the thunder that seemed to rend the wide arch of heaven, and the melancholy aspect of the place, so awed the duke, that he involuntarily called to his people. his voice was answered only by the deep echoes which ran in murmurs through the place, and died away at a distance; and the moon now sinking behind a cloud, left him in total darkness. he repeated the call more loudly, and at length heard the approach of footsteps. a few moments relieved him from his anxiety, for his people appeared. the storm was yet loud, and the heavy and sulphureous appearance of the atmosphere promised no speedy abatement of it. the duke endeavoured to reconcile himself to pass the night in his present situation, and ordered a fire to be lighted in the place he was in. this with much difficulty was accomplished. he then threw himself on the pavement before it, and tried to endure the abstinence which he had so ill observed in the monastery on the preceding night. but to his great joy his attendants, more provident than himself, had not scrupled to accept a comfortable quantity of provisions which had been offered them at the monastery; and which they now drew forth from a wallet. they were spread upon the pavement; and the duke, after refreshing himself, delivered up the remains to his people. having ordered them to watch by turns at the gate, he wrapt his cloak round him, and resigned himself to repose. the night passed without any disturbance. the morning arose fresh and bright; the heavens exhibited a clear and unclouded concave; even the wild heath, refreshed by the late rains, smiled around, and sent up with the morning gale a stream of fragrance. the duke quitted the mansion, re-animated by the cheerfulness of morn, and pursued his journey. he could gain no intelligence of the fugitives. about noon he found himself in a beautiful romantic country; and having reached the summit of some wild cliffs, he rested, to view the picturesque imagery of the scene below. a shadowy sequestered dell appeared buried deep among the rocks, and in the bottom was seen a lake, whose clear bosom reflected the impending cliffs, and the beautiful luxuriance of the overhanging shades. but his attention was quickly called from the beauties of inanimate nature, to objects more interesting; for he observed two persons, whom he instantly recollected to be the same that he had formerly pursued over the plains. they were seated on the margin of the lake, under the shade of some high trees at the foot of the rocks, and seemed partaking of a repast which was spread upon the grass. two horses were grazing near. in the lady the duke saw the very air and shape of julia, and his heart bounded at the sight. they were seated with their backs to the cliffs upon which the duke stood, and he therefore surveyed them unobserved. they were now almost within his power, but the difficulty was how to descend the rocks, whose stupendous heights and craggy steeps seemed to render them impassable. he examined them with a scrutinizing eye, and at length espied, where the rock receded, a narrow winding sort of path. he dismounted, and some of his attendants doing the same, followed their lord down the cliffs, treading lightly, lest their steps should betray them. immediately upon their reaching the bottom, they were perceived by the lady, who fled among the rocks, and was presently pursued by the duke's people. the cavalier had no time to escape, but drew his sword, and defended himself against the furious assault of the duke. the combat was sustained with much vigour and dexterity on both sides for some minutes, when the duke received the point of his adversary's sword, and fell. the cavalier, endeavouring to escape, was seized by the duke's people, who now appeared with the fair fugitive; but what was the disappointment--the rage of the duke, when in the person of the lady he discovered a stranger! the astonishment was mutual, but the accompanying feelings were, in the different persons, of a very opposite nature. in the duke, astonishment was heightened by vexation, and embittered by disappointment:--in the lady, it was softened by the joy of unexpected deliverance. this lady was the younger daughter of a sicilian nobleman, whose avarice, or necessities, had devoted her to a convent. to avoid the threatened fate, she fled with the lover to whom her affections had long been engaged, and whose only fault, even in the eye of her father, was inferiority of birth. they were now on their way to the coast, whence they designed to pass over to italy, where the church would confirm the bonds which their hearts had already formed. there the friends of the cavalier resided, and with them they expected to find a secure retreat. the duke, who was not materially wounded, after the first transport of his rage had subsided, suffered them to depart. relieved from their fears, they joyfully set forward, leaving their late pursuer to the anguish of defeat, and fruitless endeavour. he was remounted on his horse; and having dispatched two of his people in search of a house where he might obtain some relief, he proceeded slowly on his return to the castle of mazzini. it was not long ere he recollected a circumstance which, in the first tumult of his disappointment, had escaped him, but which so essentially affected the whole tenour of his hopes, as to make him again irresolute how to proceed. he considered that, although these were the fugitives he had pursued over the plains, they might not be the same who had been secreted in the cottage, and it was therefore possible that julia might have been the person whom they had for some time followed from thence. this suggestion awakened his hopes, which were however quickly destroyed; for he remembered that the only persons who could have satisfied his doubts, were now gone beyond the power of recall. to pursue julia, when no traces of her flight remained, was absurd; and he was, therefore, compelled to return to the marquis, as ignorant and more hopeless than he had left him. with much pain he reached the village which his emissaries had discovered, when fortunately he obtained some medical assistance. here he was obliged by indisposition to rest. the anguish of his mind equalled that of his body. those impetuous passions which so strongly marked his nature, were roused and exasperated to a degree that operated powerfully upon his constitution, and threatened him with the most alarming consequences. the effect of his wound was heightened by the agitation of his mind; and a fever, which quickly assumed a very serious aspect, co-operated to endanger his life. chapter vi the castle of mazzini was still the scene of dissension and misery. the impatience and astonishment of the marquis being daily increased by the lengthened absence of the duke, he dispatched servants to the forest of marentino, to enquire the occasion of this circumstance. they returned with intelligence that neither julia, the duke, nor any of his people were there. he therefore concluded that his daughter had fled the cottage upon information of the approach of the duke, who, he believed, was still engaged in the pursuit. with respect to ferdinand, who yet pined in sorrow and anxiety in his dungeon, the rigour of the marquis's conduct was unabated. he apprehended that his son, if liberated, would quickly discover the retreat of julia, and by his advice and assistance confirm her in disobedience. ferdinand, in the stillness and solitude of his dungeon, brooded over the late calamity in gloomy ineffectual lamentation. the idea of hippolitus--of hippolitus murdered--arose to his imagination in busy intrusion, and subdued the strongest efforts of his fortitude. julia too, his beloved sister--unprotected--unfriended--might, even at the moment he lamented her, be sinking under sufferings dreadful to humanity. the airy schemes he once formed of future felicity, resulting from the union of two persons so justly dear to him--with the gay visions of past happiness--floated upon his fancy, and the lustre they reflected served only to heighten, by contrast, the obscurity and gloom of his present views. he had, however, a new subject of astonishment, which often withdrew his thoughts from their accustomed object, and substituted a sensation less painful, though scarcely less powerful. one night as he lay ruminating on the past, in melancholy dejection, the stillness of the place was suddenly interrupted by a low and dismal sound. it returned at intervals in hollow sighings, and seemed to come from some person in deep distress. so much did fear operate upon his mind, that he was uncertain whether it arose from within or from without. he looked around his dungeon, but could distinguish no object through the impenetrable darkness. as he listened in deep amazement, the sound was repeated in moans more hollow. terror now occupied his mind, and disturbed his reason; he started from his posture, and, determined to be satisfied whether any person beside himself was in the dungeon, groped, with arms extended, along the walls. the place was empty; but coming to a particular spot, the sound suddenly arose more distinctly to his ear. he called aloud, and asked who was there; but received no answer. soon after all was still; and after listening for some time without hearing the sounds renewed, he laid himself down to sleep. on the following day he mentioned to the man who brought him food what he had heard, and enquired concerning the noise. the servant appeared very much terrified, but could give no information that might in the least account for the circumstance, till he mentioned the vicinity of the dungeon to the southern buildings. the dreadful relation formerly given by the marquis instantly recurred to the mind of ferdinand, who did not hesitate to believe that the moans he heard came from the restless spirit of the murdered della campo. at this conviction, horror thrilled his nerves; but he remembered his oath, and was silent. his courage, however, yielded to the idea of passing another night alone in his prison, where, if the vengeful spirit of the murdered should appear, he might even die of the horror which its appearance would inspire. the mind of ferdinand was highly superior to the general influence of superstition; but, in the present instance, such strong correlative circumstances appeared, as compelled even incredulity to yield. he had himself heard strange and awful sounds in the forsaken southern buildings; he received from his father a dreadful secret relative to them--a secret in which his honor, nay even his life, was bound up. his father had also confessed, that he had himself there seen appearances which he could never after remember without horror, and which had occasioned him to quit that part of the castle. all these recollections presented to ferdinand a chain of evidence too powerful to be resisted; and he could not doubt that the spirit of the dead had for once been permitted to revisit the earth, and to call down vengeance on the descendants of the murderer. this conviction occasioned him a degree of horror, such as no apprehension of mortal powers could have excited; and he determined, if possible, to prevail on peter to pass the hours of midnight with him in his dungeon. the strictness of peter's fidelity yielded to the persuasions of ferdinand, though no bribe could tempt him to incur the resentment of the marquis, by permitting an escape. ferdinand passed the day in lingering anxious expectation, and the return of night brought peter to the dungeon. his kindness exposed him to a danger which he had not foreseen; for when seated in the dungeon alone with his prisoner, how easily might that prisoner have conquered him and left him to pay his life to the fury of the marquis. he was preserved by the humanity of ferdinand, who instantly perceived his advantage, but disdained to involve an innocent man in destruction, and spurned the suggestion from his mind. peter, whose friendship was stronger than his courage, trembled with apprehension as the hour drew nigh in which the groans had been heard on the preceding night. he recounted to ferdinand a variety of terrific circumstances, which existed only in the heated imaginations of his fellow-servants, but which were still admitted by them as facts. among the rest, he did not omit to mention the light and the figure which had been seen to issue from the south tower on the night of julia's intended elopement; a circumstance which he embellished with innumerable aggravations of fear and wonder. he concluded with describing the general consternation it had caused, and the consequent behaviour of the marquis, who laughed at the fears of his people, yet condescended to quiet them by a formal review of the buildings whence their terror had originated. he related the adventure of the door which refused to yield, the sounds which arose from within, and the discovery of the fallen roof; but declared that neither he, nor any of his fellow servants, believed the noise or the obstruction proceeded from that, 'because, my lord,' continued he, 'the door seemed to be held only in one place; and as for the noise--o! lord! i never shall forget what a noise it was!--it was a thousand times louder than what any stones could make.' ferdinand listened to this narrative in silent wonder! wonder not occasioned by the adventure described, but by the hardihood and rashness of the marquis, who had thus exposed to the inspection of his people, that dreadful spot which he knew from experience to be the haunt of an injured spirit; a spot which he had hitherto scrupulously concealed from human eye, and human curiosity; and which, for so many years, he had not dared even himself to enter. peter went on, but was presently interrupted by a hollow moan, which seemed to come from beneath the ground. 'blessed virgin!' exclaimed he: ferdinand listened in awful expectation. a groan longer and more dreadful was repeated, when peter started from his seat, and snatching up the lamp, rushed out of the dungeon. ferdinand, who was left in total darkness, followed to the door, which the affrighted peter had not stopped to fasten, but which had closed, and seemed held by a lock that could be opened only on the outside. the sensations of ferdinand, thus compelled to remain in the dungeon, are not to be imagined. the horrors of the night, whatever they were to be, he was to endure alone. by degrees, however, he seemed to acquire the valour of despair. the sounds were repeated, at intervals, for near an hour, when silence returned, and remained undisturbed during the rest of the night. ferdinand was alarmed by no appearance, and at length, overcome with anxiety and watching, he sunk to repose. on the following morning peter returned to the dungeon, scarcely knowing what to expect, yet expecting something very strange, perhaps the murder, perhaps the supernatural disappearance of his young lord. full of these wild apprehensions, he dared not venture thither alone, but persuaded some of the servants, to whom he had communicated his terrors, to accompany him to the door. as they passed along he recollected, that in the terror of the preceding night he had forgot to fasten the door, and he now feared that his prisoner had made his escape without a miracle. he hurried to the door; and his surprize was extreme to find it fastened. it instantly struck him that this was the work of a supernatural power, when on calling aloud, he was answered by a voice from within. his absurd fear did not suffer him to recognize the voice of ferdinand, neither did he suppose that ferdinand had failed to escape, he, therefore, attributed the voice to the being he had heard on the preceding night; and starting back from the door, fled with his companions to the great hall. there the uproar occasioned by their entrance called together a number of persons, amongst whom was the marquis, who was soon informed of the cause of alarm, with a long history of the circumstances of the foregoing night. at this information, the marquis assumed a very stern look, and severely reprimanded peter for his imprudence, at the same time reproaching the other servants with their undutifulness in thus disturbing his peace. he reminded them of the condescension he had practised to dissipate their former terrors, and of the result of their examination. he then assured them, that since indulgence had only encouraged intrusion, he would for the future be severe; and concluded with declaring, that the first man who should disturb him with a repetition of such ridiculous apprehensions, or should attempt to disturb the peace of the castle by circulating these idle notions, should be rigorously punished, and banished his dominions. they shrunk back at his reproof, and were silent. 'bring a torch,' said the marquis, 'and shew me to the dungeon. i will once more condescend to confute you.' they obeyed, and descended with the marquis, who, arriving at the dungeon, instantly threw open the door, and discovered to the astonished eyes of his attendants--ferdinand!--he started with surprize at the entrance of his father thus attended. the marquis darted upon him a severe look, which he perfectly comprehended.--'now,' cried he, turning to his people, 'what do you see? my son, whom i myself placed here, and whose voice, which answered to your calls, you have transformed into unknown sounds. speak, ferdinand, and confirm what i say.' ferdinand did so. 'what dreadful spectre appeared to you last night?' resumed the marquis, looking stedfastly upon him: 'gratify these fellows with a description of it, for they cannot exist without something of the marvellous.' 'none, my lord,' replied ferdinand, who too well understood the manner of the marquis. ''tis well,' cried the marquis, 'and this is the last time,' turning to his attendants, 'that your folly shall be treated with so much lenity.' he ceased to urge the subject, and forbore to ask ferdinand even one question before his servants, concerning the nocturnal sounds described by peter. he quitted the dungeon with eyes steadily bent in anger and suspicion upon ferdinand. the marquis suspected that the fears of his son had inadvertently betrayed to peter a part of the secret entrusted to him, and he artfully interrogated peter with seeming carelessness, concerning the circumstances of the preceding night. from him he drew such answers as honorably acquitted ferdinand of indiscretion, and relieved himself from tormenting apprehensions. the following night passed quietly away; neither sound nor appearance disturbed the peace of ferdinand. the marquis, on the next day, thought proper to soften the severity of his sufferings, and he was removed from his dungeon to a room strongly grated, but exposed to the light of day. meanwhile a circumstance occurred which increased the general discord, and threatened emilia with the loss of her last remaining comfort--the advice and consolation of madame de menon. the marchioness, whose passion for the count de vereza had at length yielded to absence, and the pressure of present circumstances, now bestowed her smiles upon a young italian cavalier, a visitor at the castle, who possessed too much of the spirit of gallantry to permit a lady to languish in vain. the marquis, whose mind was occupied with other passions, was insensible to the misconduct of his wife, who at all times had the address to disguise her vices beneath the gloss of virtue and innocent freedom. the intrigue was discovered by madame, who, having one day left a book in the oak parlour, returned thither in search of it. as she opened the door of the apartment, she heard the voice of the cavalier in passionate exclamation; and on entering, discovered him rising in some confusion from the feet of the marchioness, who, darting at madame a look of severity, arose from her seat. madame, shocked at what she had seen, instantly retired, and buried in her own bosom that secret, the discovery of which would most essentially have poisoned the peace of the marquis. the marchioness, who was a stranger to the generosity of sentiment which actuated madame de menon, doubted not that she would seize the moment of retaliation, and expose her conduct where most she dreaded it should be known. the consciousness of guilt tortured her with incessant fear of discovery, and from this period her whole attention was employed to dislodge from the castle the person to whom her character was committed. in this it was not difficult to succeed; for the delicacy of madame's feelings made her quick to perceive, and to withdraw from a treatment unsuitable to the natural dignity of her character. she therefore resolved to depart from the castle; but disdaining to take an advantage even over a successful enemy, she determined to be silent on that subject which would instantly have transferred the triumph from her adversary to herself. when the marquis, on hearing her determination to retire, earnestly enquired for the motive of her conduct, she forbore to acquaint him with the real one, and left him to incertitude and disappointment. to emilia this design occasioned a distress which almost subdued the resolution of madame. her tears and intreaties spoke the artless energy of sorrow. in madame she lost her only friend; and she too well understood the value of that friend, to see her depart without feeling and expressing the deepest distress. from a strong attachment to the memory of the mother, madame had been induced to undertake the education of her daughters, whose engaging dispositions had perpetuated a kind of hereditary affection. regard for emilia and julia had alone for some time detained her at the castle; but this was now succeeded by the influence of considerations too powerful to be resisted. as her income was small, it was her plan to retire to her native place, which was situated in a distant part of the island, and there take up her residence in a convent. emilia saw the time of madame's departure approach with increased distress. they left each other with a mutual sorrow, which did honour to their hearts. when her last friend was gone, emilia wandered through the forsaken apartments, where she had been accustomed to converse with julia, and to receive consolation and sympathy from her dear instructress, with a kind of anguish known only to those who have experienced a similar situation. madame pursued her journey with a heavy heart. separated from the objects of her fondest affections, and from the scenes and occupations for which long habit had formed claims upon her heart, she seemed without interest and without motive for exertion. the world appeared a wide and gloomy desert, where no heart welcomed her with kindness--no countenance brightened into smiles at her approach. it was many years since she quitted calini--and in the interval, death had swept away the few friends she left there. the future presented a melancholy scene; but she had the retrospect of years spent in honorable endeavour and strict integrity, to cheer her heart and encouraged her hopes. but her utmost endeavours were unable to express the anxiety with which the uncertain fate of julia overwhelmed her. wild and terrific images arose to her imagination. fancy drew the scene;--she deepened the shades; and the terrific aspect of the objects she presented was heightened by the obscurity which involved them. [end of vol. i] chapter vii towards the close of day madame de menon arrived at a small village situated among the mountains, where she purposed to pass the night. the evening was remarkably fine, and the romantic beauty of the surrounding scenery invited her to walk. she followed the windings of a stream, which was lost at some distance amongst luxuriant groves of chesnut. the rich colouring of evening glowed through the dark foliage, which spreading a pensive gloom around, offered a scene congenial to the present temper of her mind, and she entered the shades. her thoughts, affected by the surrounding objects, gradually sunk into a pleasing and complacent melancholy, and she was insensibly led on. she still followed the course of the stream to where the deep shades retired, and the scene again opening to day, yielded to her a view so various and sublime, that she paused in thrilling and delightful wonder. a group of wild and grotesque rocks rose in a semicircular form, and their fantastic shapes exhibited nature in her most sublime and striking attitudes. here her vast magnificence elevated the mind of the beholder to enthusiasm. fancy caught the thrilling sensation, and at her touch the towering steeps became shaded with unreal glooms; the caves more darkly frowned--the projecting cliffs assumed a more terrific aspect, and the wild overhanging shrubs waved to the gale in deeper murmurs. the scene inspired madame with reverential awe, and her thoughts involuntarily rose, 'from nature up to nature's god.' the last dying gleams of day tinted the rocks and shone upon the waters, which retired through a rugged channel and were lost afar among the receding cliffs. while she listened to their distant murmur, a voice of liquid and melodious sweetness arose from among the rocks; it sung an air, whose melancholy expression awakened all her attention, and captivated her heart. the tones swelled and died faintly away among the clear, yet languishing echoes which the rocks repeated with an effect like that of enchantment. madame looked around in search of the sweet warbler, and observed at some distance a peasant girl seated on a small projection of the rock, overshadowed by drooping sycamores. she moved slowly towards the spot, which she had almost reached, when the sound of her steps startled and silenced the syren, who, on perceiving a stranger, arose in an attitude to depart. the voice of madame arrested her, and she approached. language cannot paint the sensation of madame, when in the disguise of a peasant girl, she distinguished the features of julia, whose eyes lighted up with sudden recollection, and who sunk into her arms overcome with joy. when their first emotions were subsided, and julia had received answers to her enquiries concerning ferdinand and emilia, she led madame to the place of her concealment. this was a solitary cottage, in a close valley surrounded by mountains, whose cliffs appeared wholly inaccessible to mortal foot. the deep solitude of the scene dissipated at once madame's wonder that julia had so long remained undiscovered, and excited surprize how she had been able to explore a spot thus deeply sequestered; but madame observed with extreme concern, that the countenance of julia no longer wore the smile of health and gaiety. her fine features had received the impressions not only of melancholy, but of grief. madame sighed as she gazed, and read too plainly the cause of the change. julia understood that sigh, and answered it with her tears. she pressed the hand of madame in mournful silence to her lips, and her cheeks were suffused with a crimson glow. at length, recovering herself, 'i have much, my dear madam, to tell,' said she, 'and much to explain, 'ere you will admit me again to that esteem of which i was once so justly proud. i had no resource from misery, but in flight; and of that i could not make you a confidant, without meanly involving you in its disgrace.'--'say no more, my love, on the subject,' replied madame; 'with respect to myself, i admired your conduct, and felt severely for your situation. rather let me hear by what means you effected your escape, and what has since be fallen you.'--julia paused a moment, as if to stifle her rising emotion, and then commenced her narrative. 'you are already acquainted with the secret of that night, so fatal to my peace. i recall the remembrance of it with an anguish which i cannot conceal; and why should i wish its concealment, since i mourn for one, whose noble qualities justified all my admiration, and deserved more than my feeble praise can bestow; the idea of whom will be the last to linger in my mind till death shuts up this painful scene.' her voice trembled, and she paused. after a few moments she resumed her tale. 'i will spare myself the pain of recurring to scenes with which you are not unacquainted, and proceed to those which more immediately attract your interest. caterina, my faithful servant, you know, attended me in my confinement; to her kindness i owe my escape. she obtained from her lover, a servant in the castle, that assistance which gave me liberty. one night when carlo, who had been appointed my guard, was asleep, nicolo crept into his chamber, and stole from him the keys of my prison. he had previously procured a ladder of ropes. o! i can never forget my emotions, when in the dead hour of that night, which was meant to precede the day of my sacrifice, i heard the door of my prison unlock, and found myself half at liberty! my trembling limbs with difficulty supported me as i followed caterina to the saloon, the windows of which being low and near to the terrace, suited our purpose. to the terrace we easily got, where nicolo awaited us with the rope-ladder. he fastened it to the ground; and having climbed to the top of the parapet, quickly slided down on the other side. there he held it, while we ascended and descended; and i soon breathed the air of freedom again. but the apprehension of being retaken was still too powerful to permit a full enjoyment of my escape. it was my plan to proceed to the place of my faithful caterina's nativity, where she had assured me i might find a safe asylum in the cottage of her parents, from whom, as they had never seen me, i might conceal my birth. this place, she said, was entirely unknown to the marquis, who had hired her at naples only a few months before, without any enquiries concerning her family. she had informed me that the village was many leagues distant from the castle, but that she was very well acquainted with the road. at the foot of the walls we left nicolo, who returned to the castle to prevent suspicion, but with an intention to leave it at a less dangerous time, and repair to farrini to his good caterina. i parted from him with many thanks, and gave him a small diamond cross, which, for that purpose, i had taken from the jewels sent to me for wedding ornaments.' chapter viii 'about a quarter of a league from the walls we stopped, and i assumed the habit in which you now see me. my own dress was fastened to some heavy stones, and caterina threw it into the stream, near the almond grove, whose murmurings you have so often admired. the fatigue and hardship i endured in this journey, performed almost wholly on foot, at any other time would have overcome me; but my mind was so occupied by the danger i was avoiding that these lesser evils were disregarded. we arrived in safety at the cottage, which stood at a little distance from the village of ferrini, and were received by caterina's parents with some surprise and more kindness. i soon perceived it would be useless, and even dangerous, to attempt to preserve the character i personated. in the eyes of caterina's mother i read a degree of surprise and admiration which declared she believed me to be of superior rank; i, therefore, thought it more prudent to win her fidelity by entrusting her with my secret than, by endeavouring to conceal it, leave it to be discovered by her curiosity or discernment. accordingly, i made known my quality and my distress, and received strong assurances of assistance and attachment. for further security, i removed to this sequestered spot. the cottage we are now in belongs to a sister of caterina, upon whose faithfulness i have been hitherto fully justified in relying. but i am not even here secure from apprehension, since for several days past horsemen of a suspicious appearance have been observed near marcy, which is only half a league from hence.' here julia closed her narration, to which madame had listened with a mixture of surprise and pity, which her eyes sufficiently discovered. the last circumstance of the narrative seriously alarmed her. she acquainted julia with the pursuit which the duke had undertaken; and she did not hesitate to believe it a party of his people whom julia had described. madame, therefore, earnestly advised her to quit her present situation, and to accompany her in disguise to the monastery of st augustin, where she would find a secure retreat; because, even if her place of refuge should be discovered, the superior authority of the church would protect her. julia accepted the proposal with much joy. as it was necessary that madame should sleep at the village where she had left her servants and horses, it was agreed that at break of day she should return to the cottage, where julia would await her. madame took all affectionate leave of julia, whose heart, in spite of reason, sunk when she saw her depart, though but for the necessary interval of repose. at the dawn of day madame arose. her servants, who were hired for the journey, were strangers to julia: from them, therefore, she had nothing to apprehend. she reached the cottage before sunrise, having left her people at some little distance. her heart foreboded evil, when, on knocking at the door, no answer was returned. she knocked again, and still all was silent. through the casement she could discover no object, amidst the grey obscurity of the dawn. she now opened the door, and, to her inexpressible surprise and distress, found the cottage empty. she proceeded to a small inner room, where lay a part of julia's apparel. the bed had no appearance of having being slept in, and every moment served to heighten and confirm her apprehensions. while she pursued the search, she suddenly heard the trampling of feet at the cottage door, and presently after some people entered. her fears for julia now yielded to those for her own safety, and she was undetermined whether to discover herself, or remain in her present situation, when she was relieved from her irresolution by the appearance of julia. on the return of the good woman, who had accompanied madame to the village on the preceding night, julia went to the cottage at farrini. her grateful heart would not suffer her to depart without taking leave of her faithful friends, thanking them for their kindness, and informing them of her future prospects. they had prevailed upon her to spend the few intervening hours at this cot, whence she had just risen to meet madame. they now hastened to the spot where the horses were stationed, and commenced their journey. for some leagues they travelled in silence and thought, over a wild and picturesque country. the landscape was tinted with rich and variegated hues; and the autumnal lights, which streamed upon the hills, produced a spirited and beautiful effect upon the scenery. all the glories of the vintage rose to their view: the purple grapes flushed through the dark green of the surrounding foliage, and the prospect glowed with luxuriance. they now descended into a deep valley, which appeared more like a scene of airy enchantment than reality. along the bottom flowed a clear majestic stream, whose banks were adorned with thick groves of orange and citron trees. julia surveyed the scene in silent complacency, but her eye quickly caught an object which changed with instantaneous shock the tone of her feelings. she observed a party of horsemen winding down the side of a hill behind her. their uncommon speed alarmed her, and she pushed her horse into a gallop. on looking back madame de menon clearly perceived they were in pursuit. soon after the men suddenly appeared from behind a dark grove within a small distance of them; and, upon their nearer approach, julia, overcome with fatigue and fear, sunk breathless from her horse. she was saved from the ground by one of the pursuers, who caught her in his arms. madame, with the rest of the party, were quickly overtaken; and as soon as julia revived, they were bound, and reconducted to the hill from whence they had descended. imagination only can paint the anguish of julia's mind, when she saw herself thus delivered up to the power of her enemy. madame, in the surrounding troop, discovered none of the marquis's people, and they were therefore evidently in the hands of the duke. after travelling for some hours, they quitted the main road, and turned into a narrow winding dell, overshadowed by high trees, which almost excluded the light. the gloom of the place inspired terrific images. julia trembled as she entered; and her emotion was heightened, when she perceived at some distance, through the long perspective of the trees, a large ruinous mansion. the gloom of the surrounding shades partly concealed it from her view; but, as she drew near, each forlorn and decaying feature of the fabric was gradually disclosed, and struck upon her heart a horror such as she had never before experienced. the broken battlements, enwreathed with ivy, proclaimed the fallen grandeur of the place, while the shattered vacant window-frames exhibited its desolation, and the high grass that overgrew the threshold seemed to say how long it was since mortal foot had entered. the place appeared fit only for the purposes of violence and destruction: and the unfortunate captives, when they stopped at its gates, felt the full force of its horrors. they were taken from their horses, and conveyed to an interior part of the building, which, if it had once been a chamber, no longer deserved the name. here the guard said they were directed to detain them till the arrival of their lord, who had appointed this the place of rendezvous. he was expected to meet them in a few hours, and these were hours of indescribable torture to julia and madame. from the furious passions of the duke, exasperated by frequent disappointment, julia had every evil to apprehend; and the loneliness of the spot he had chosen, enabled him to perpetrate any designs, however violent. for the first time, she repented that she had left her father's house. madame wept over her, but comfort she had none to give. the day closed--the duke did not appear, and the fate of julia yet hung in perilous uncertainty. at length, from a window of the apartment she was in, she distinguished a glimmering of torches among the trees, and presently after the clattering of hoofs convinced her the duke was approaching. her heart sunk at the sound; and throwing her arms round madame's neck, she resigned herself to despair. she was soon roused by some men, who came to announce the arrival of their lord. in a few moments the place, which had lately been so silent, echoed with tumult; and a sudden blaze of light illumining the fabric, served to exhibit more forcibly its striking horrors. julia ran to the window; and, in a sort of court below, perceived a group of men dismounting from their horses. the torches shed a partial light; and while she anxiously looked round for the person of the duke, the whole party entered the mansion. she listened to a confused uproar of voices, which sounded from the room beneath, and soon after it sunk into a low murmur, as if some matter of importance was in agitation. for some moments she sat in lingering terror, when she heard footsteps advancing towards the chamber, and a sudden gleam of torchlight flashed upon the walls. 'wretched girl! i have at least secured you!' said a cavalier, who now entered the room. he stopped as he perceived julia; and turning to the men who stood without, 'are these,' said he, 'the fugitives you have taken?'--'yes, my lord.'--'then you have deceived yourselves, and misled me; this is not my daughter.' these words struck the sudden light of truth and joy upon the heart of julia, whom terror had before rendered almost lifeless; and who had not perceived that the person entering was a stranger. madame now stepped forward, and an explanation ensued, when it appeared that the stranger was the marquis murani, the father of the fair fugitive whom the duke had before mistaken for julia. the appearance and the evident flight of julia had deceived the banditti employed by this nobleman, into a belief that she was the object of their search, and had occasioned her this unnecessary distress. but the joy she now felt, on finding herself thus unexpectedly at liberty, surpassed, if possible, her preceding terrors. the marquis made madame and julia all the reparation in his power, by offering immediately to reconduct them to the main road, and to guard them to some place of safety for the night. this offer was eagerly and thankfully accepted; and though faint from distress, fatigue, and want of sustenance, they joyfully remounted their horses, and by torchlight quitted the mansion. after some hours travelling they arrived at a small town, where they procured the accommodation so necessary to their support and repose. here their guides quitted them to continue their search. they arose with the dawn, and continued their journey, continually terrified with the apprehension of encountering the duke's people. at noon they arrived at azulia, from whence the monastery, or abbey of st augustin, was distant only a few miles. madame wrote to the _padre abate_, to whom she was somewhat related, and soon after received an answer very favourable to her wishes. the same evening they repaired to the abbey; where julia, once more relieved from the fear of pursuit, offered up a prayer of gratitude to heaven, and endeavoured to calm her sorrows by devotion. she was received by the abbot with a sort of paternal affection, and by the nuns with officious kindness. comforted by these circumstances, and by the tranquil appearance of every thing around her, she retired to rest, and passed the night in peaceful slumbers. in her present situation she found much novelty to amuse, and much serious matter to interest her mind. entendered by distress, she easily yielded to the pensive manners of her companions and to the serene uniformity of a monastic life. she loved to wander through the lonely cloisters, and high-arched aisles, whose long perspectives retired in simple grandeur, diffusing a holy calm around. she found much pleasure in the conversation of the nuns, many of whom were uncommonly amiable, and the dignified sweetness of whose manners formed a charm irresistibly attractive. the soft melancholy impressed upon their countenances, pourtrayed the situation of their minds, and excited in julia a very interesting mixture of pity and esteem. the affectionate appellation of sister, and all that endearing tenderness which they so well know how to display, and of which they so well understand the effect, they bestowed on julia, in the hope of winning her to become one of their order. soothed by the presence of madame, the assiduity of the nuns, and by the stillness and sanctity of the place, her mind gradually recovered a degree of complacency to which it had long been a stranger. but notwithstanding all her efforts, the idea of hippolitus would at intervals return upon her memory with a force that at once subdued her fortitude, and sunk her in a temporary despair. among the holy sisters, julia distinguished one, the singular fervor of whose devotion, and the pensive air of whose countenance, softened by the languor of illness, attracted her curiosity, and excited a strong degree of pity. the nun, by a sort of sympathy, seemed particularly inclined towards julia, which she discovered by innumerable acts of kindness, such as the heart can quickly understand and acknowledge, although description can never reach them. in conversation with her, julia endeavoured, as far as delicacy would permit, to prompt an explanation of that more than common dejection which shaded those features, where beauty, touched by resignation and sublimed by religion, shone forth with mild and lambent lustre. the duke de luovo, after having been detained for some weeks by the fever which his wounds had produced, and his irritated passions had much prolonged, arrived at the castle of mazzini. when the marquis saw him return, and recollected the futility of those exertions, by which he had boastingly promised to recover julia, the violence of his nature spurned the disguise of art, and burst forth in contemptuous impeachment of the valour and discernment of the duke, who soon retorted with equal fury. the consequence might have been fatal, had not the ambition of the marquis subdued the sudden irritation of his inferior passions, and induced him to soften the severity of his accusations, by subsequent concessions. the duke, whose passion for julia was heightened by the difficulty which opposed it, admitted such concessions as in other circumstances he would have rejected; and thus each, conquered by the predominant passion of the moment, submitted to be the slave of his adversary. emilia was at length released from the confinement she had so unjustly suffered. she had now the use of her old apartments, where, solitary and dejected, her hours moved heavily along, embittered by incessant anxiety for julia, by regret for the lost society of madame. the marchioness, whose pleasures suffered a temporary suspense during the present confusion at the castle, exercised the ill-humoured caprice, which disappointment and lassitude inspired, upon her remaining subject. emilia was condemned to suffer, and to endure without the privilege of complaining. in reviewing the events of the last few weeks, she saw those most dear to her banished, or imprisoned by the secret influence of a woman, every feature of whose character was exactly opposite to that of the amiable mother she had been appointed to succeed. the search after julia still continued, and was still unsuccessful. the astonishment of the marquis increased with his disappointments; for where could julia, ignorant of the country, and destitute of friends, have possibly found an asylum? he swore with a terrible oath to revenge on her head, whenever she should be found, the trouble and vexation she now caused him. but he agreed with the duke to relinquish for a while the search; till julia, gaining confidence from the observation of this circumstance, might gradually suppose herself secure from molestation, and thus be induced to emerge from concealment. chapter ix meanwhile julia, sheltered in the obscure recesses of st augustin, endeavoured to attain a degree of that tranquillity which so strikingly characterized the scenes around her. the abbey of st augustin was a large magnificent mass of gothic architecture, whose gloomy battlements, and majestic towers arose in proud sublimity from amid the darkness of the surrounding shades. it was founded in the twelfth century, and stood a proud monument of monkish superstition and princely magnificence. in the times when italy was agitated by internal commotions, and persecuted by foreign invaders, this edifice afforded an asylum to many noble italian emigrants, who here consecrated the rest of their days to religion. at their death they enriched the monastery with the treasures which it had enabled them to secure. the view of this building revived in the mind of the beholder the memory of past ages. the manners and characters which distinguished them arose to his fancy, and through the long lapse of years he discriminated those customs and manners which formed so striking a contrast to the modes of his own times. the rude manners, the boisterous passions, the daring ambition, and the gross indulgences which formerly characterized the priest, the nobleman, and the sovereign, had now begun to yield to learning--the charms of refined conversation--political intrigue and private artifices. thus do the scenes of life vary with the predominant passions of mankind, and with the progress of civilization. the dark clouds of prejudice break away before the sun of science, and gradually dissolving, leave the brightening hemisphere to the influence of his beams. but through the present scene appeared only a few scattered rays, which served to shew more forcibly the vast and heavy masses that concealed the form of truth. here prejudice, not reason, suspended the influence of the passions; and scholastic learning, mysterious philosophy, and crafty sanctity supplied the place of wisdom, simplicity, and pure devotion. at the abbey, solitude and stillness conspired with the solemn aspect of the pile to impress the mind with religious awe. the dim glass of the high-arched windows, stained with the colouring of monkish fictions, and shaded by the thick trees that environed the edifice, spread around a sacred gloom, which inspired the beholder with congenial feelings. as julia mused through the walks, and surveyed this vast monument of barbarous superstition, it brought to her recollection an ode which she often repeated with melancholy pleasure, as the composition of hippolitus. superstition an ode high mid alverna's awful steeps, eternal shades, and silence dwell. save, when the gale resounding sweeps, sad strains are faintly heard to swell: enthron'd amid the wild impending rocks, involved in clouds, and brooding future woe, the demon superstition nature shocks, and waves her sceptre o'er the world below. around her throne, amid the mingling glooms, wild--hideous forms are slowly seen to glide, she bids them fly to shade earth's brightest blooms, and spread the blast of desolation wide. see! in the darkened air their fiery course! the sweeping ruin settles o'er the land, terror leads on their steps with madd'ning force, and death and vengeance close the ghastly band! mark the purple streams that flow! mark the deep empassioned woe! frantic fury's dying groan! virtue's sigh, and sorrow's moan! wide--wide the phantoms swell the loaded air with shrieks of anguish--madness and despair! cease your ruin! spectres dire! cease your wild terrific sway! turn your steps--and check your ire, yield to peace the mourning day! she wept to the memory of times past, and there was a romantic sadness in her feelings, luxurious and indefinable. madame behaved to julia with the tenderest attention, and endeavoured to withdraw her thoughts from their mournful subject by promoting that taste for literature and music, which was so suitable to the powers of her mind. but an object seriously interesting now obtained that regard, which those of mere amusement failed to attract. her favorite nun, for whom her love and esteem daily increased, seemed declining under the pressure of a secret grief. julia was deeply affected with her situation, and though she was not empowered to administer consolation to her sorrows, she endeavoured to mitigate the sufferings of illness. she nursed her with unremitting care, and seemed to seize with avidity the temporary opportunity of escaping from herself. the nun appeared perfectly reconciled to her fate, and exhibited during her illness so much sweetness, patience, and resignation as affected all around her with pity and love. her angelic mildness, and steady fortitude characterized the beatification of a saint, rather than the death of a mortal. julia watched every turn of her disorder with the utmost solicitude, and her care was at length rewarded by the amendment of cornelia. her health gradually improved, and she attributed this circumstance to the assiduity and tenderness of her young friend, to whom her heart now expanded in warm and unreserved affection. at length julia ventured to solicit what she had so long and so earnestly wished for, and cornelia unfolded the history of her sorrows. 'of the life which your care has prolonged,' said she, 'it is but just that you should know the events; though those events are neither new, or striking, and possess little power of interesting persons unconnected with them. to me they have, however, been unexpectedly dreadful in effect, and my heart assures me, that to you they will not be indifferent. 'i am the unfortunate descendant of an ancient and illustrious italian family. in early childhood i was deprived of a mother's care, but the tenderness of my surviving parent made her loss, as to my welfare, almost unfelt. suffer me here to do justice to the character of my noble father. he united in an eminent degree the mild virtues of social life, with the firm unbending qualities of the noble romans, his ancestors, from whom he was proud to trace his descent. their merit, indeed, continually dwelt on his tongue, and their actions he was always endeavouring to imitate, as far as was consistent with the character of his times, and with the limited sphere in which he moved. the recollection of his virtue elevates my mind, and fills my heart with a noble pride, which even the cold walls of a monastery have not been able to subdue. 'my father's fortune was unsuitable to his rank. that his son might hereafter be enabled to support the dignity of his family, it was necessary for me to assume the veil. alas! that heart was unfit to be offered at an heavenly shrine, which was already devoted to an earthly object. my affections had long been engaged by the younger son of a neighbouring nobleman, whose character and accomplishments attracted my early love, and confirmed my latest esteem. our families were intimate, and our youthful intercourse occasioned an attachment which strengthened and expanded with our years. he solicited me of my father, but there appeared an insuperable barrier to our union. the family of my lover laboured under a circumstance of similar distress with that of my own--it was noble--but poor! my father, who was ignorant of the strength of my affection, and who considered a marriage formed in poverty as destructive to happiness, prohibited his suit. 'touched with chagrin and disappointment, he immediately entered into the service of his neapolitan majesty, and sought in the tumultuous scenes of glory, a refuge from the pangs of disappointed passion. 'to me, whose hours moved in one round of full uniformity--who had no pursuit to interest--no variety to animate my drooping spirits--to me the effort of forgetfulness was ineffectual. the loved idea of angelo still rose upon my fancy, and its powers of captivation, heightened by absence, and, perhaps even by despair, pursued me with incessant grief. i concealed in silence the anguish that preyed upon my heart, and resigned myself a willing victim to monastic austerity. but i was now threatened with a new evil, terrible and unexpected. i was so unfortunate as to attract the admiration of the marquis marinelli, and he applied to my father. he was illustrious at once in birth and fortune, and his visits could only be unwelcome to me. dreadful was the moment in which my father disclosed to me the proposal. my distress, which i vainly endeavoured to command, discovered the exact situation of my heart, and my father was affected. 'after along and awful pause, he generously released me from my sufferings by leaving it to my choice to accept the marquis, or to assume the veil. i fell at his feet, overcome by the noble disinterestedness of his conduct, and instantly accepted the latter. 'this affair removed entirely the disguise with which i had hitherto guarded my heart;--my brother--my generous brother! learned the true state of its affections. he saw the grief which prayed upon my health; he observed it to my father, and he nobly--oh how nobly! to restore my happiness, desired to resign apart of the estate which had already descended to him in right of his mother. alas! hippolitus,' continued cornelia, deeply sighing, 'thy virtues deserved a better fate.' 'hippolitus!' said julia, in a tremulous accent, 'hippolitus, count de vereza!'--'the same,' replied the nun, in a tone of surprize. julia was speechless; tears, however, came to her relief. the astonishment of cornelia for some moment surpassed expression; at length a gleam of recollection crossed her mind, and she too well understood the scene before her. julia, after some time revived, when cornelia tenderly approaching her, 'do i then embrace my sister!' said she. 'united in sentiment, are we also united in misfortune?' julia answered with her sighs, and their tears flowed in mournful sympathy together. at length cornelia resumed her narrative. 'my father, struck with the conduct of hippolitus, paused upon the offer. the alteration in my health was too obvious to escape his notice; the conflict between pride and parental tenderness, held him for some time in indecision, but the latter finally subdued every opposing feeling, and he yielded his consent to my marriage with angelo. the sudden transition from grief to joy was almost too much for my feeble frame; judge then what must have been the effect of the dreadful reverse, when the news arrived that angelo had fallen in a foreign engagement! let me obliterate, if possible, the impression of sensations so dreadful. the sufferings of my brother, whose generous heart could so finely feel for another's woe, were on this occasion inferior only to my own. 'after the first excess of my grief was subsided, i desired to retire from a world which had tempted me only with illusive visions of happiness, and to remove from those scenes which prompted recollection, and perpetuated my distress. my father applauded my resolution, and i immediately was admited a noviciate into this monastery, with the superior of which my father had in his youth been acquainted. 'at the expiration of the year i received the veil. oh! i well remember with what perfect resignation, with what comfortable complacency i took those vows which bound me to a life of retirement, and religious rest. 'the high importance of the moment, the solemnity of the ceremony, the sacred glooms which surrounded me, and the chilling silence that prevailed when i uttered the irrevocable vow--all conspired to impress my imagination, and to raise my views to heaven. when i knelt at the altar, the sacred flame of pure devotion glowed in my heart, and elevated my soul to sublimity. the world and all its recollections faded from my mind, and left it to the influence of a serene and, holy enthusiasm which no words can describe. 'soon after my noviciation, i had the misfortune to lose my dear father. in the tranquillity of this monastery, however, in the soothing kindness of my companions, and in devotional exercises, my sorrows found relief, and the sting of grief was blunted. my repose was of short continuance. a circumstance occurred that renewed the misery, which, can now never quit me but in the grave, to which i look with no fearful apprehension, but as a refuge from calamity, trusting that the power who has seen good to afflict me, will pardon the imperfectness of my devotion, and the too frequent wandering of my thoughts to the object once so dear to me.' as she spoke she raised her eyes, which beamed with truth and meek assurance to heaven; and the fine devotional suffusion of her countenance seemed to characterize the beauty of an inspired saint. 'one day, oh! never shall i forget it, i went as usual to the confessional to acknowledge my sins. i knelt before the father with eyes bent towards the earth, and in a low voice proceeded to confess. i had but one crime to deplore, and that was the too tender remembrance of him for whom i mourned, and whose idea, impressed upon my heart, made it a blemished offering to god. 'i was interrupted in my confession by a sound of deep sobs, and rising my eyes, oh god, what were my sensations, when in the features of the holy father i discovered angelo! his image faded like a vision from my sight, and i sunk at his feet. on recovering i found myself on my matrass, attended by a sister, who i discovered by her conversation had no suspicion of the occasion of my disorder. indisposition confined me to my bed for several days; when i recovered, i saw angelo no more, and could almost have doubted my senses, and believed that an illusion had crossed my sight, till one day i found in my cell a written paper. i distinguished at the first glance the handwriting of angelo, that well-known hand which had so often awakened me to other emotions. i trembled at the sight; my beating heart acknowledged the beloved characters; a cold tremor shook my frame, and half breathless i seized the paper. but recollecting myself, i paused--i hesitated: duty at length yielded to the strong temptation, and i read the lines! oh! those lines prompted by despair, and bathed in my tears! every word they offered gave a new pang to my heart, and swelled its anguish almost beyond endurance. i learned that angelo, severely wounded in a foreign engagement, had been left for dead upon the field; that his life was saved by the humanity of a common soldier of the enemy, who perceiving signs of existence, conveyed him to a house. assistance was soon procured, but his wounds exhibited the most alarming symptoms. during several months he languished between life and death, till at length his youth and constitution surmounted the conflict, and he returned to naples. here he saw my brother, whose distress and astonishment at beholding him occasioned a relation of past circumstances, and of the vows i had taken in consequence of the report of his death. it is unnecessary to mention the immediate effect of this narration; the final one exhibited a very singular proof of his attachment and despair;--he devoted himself to a monastic life, and chose this abbey for the place of his residence, because it contained the object most dear to his affections. his letter informed me that he had purposely avoided discovering himself, endeavouring to be contented with the opportunities which occurred of silently observing me, till chance had occasioned the foregoing interview.--but that since its effects had been so mutually painful, he would relieve me from the apprehension of a similar distress, by assuring me, that i should see him no more. he was faithful to his promise; from that day i have never seen him, and am even ignorant whether he yet inhabits this asylum; the efforts of religious fortitude, and the just fear of exciting curiosity, having withheld me from enquiry. but the moment of our last interview has been equally fatal to my peace and to my health, and i trust i shall, ere very long, be released from the agonizing ineffectual struggles occasioned by the consciousness of sacred vows imperfectly performed, and by earthly affections not wholly subdued.' cornelia ceased, and julia, who had listened to the narrative in deep attention, at once admired, loved, and pitied her. as the sister of hippolitus, her heart expanded towards her, and it was now inviolably attached by the fine ties of sympathetic sorrow. similarity of sentiment and suffering united them in the firmest bonds of friendship; and thus, from reciprocation of thought and feeling, flowed a pure and sweet consolation. julia loved to indulge in the mournful pleasure of conversing of hippolitus, and when thus engaged, the hours crept unheeded by. a thousand questions she repeated concerning him, but to those most interesting to her, she received no consolatory answer. cornelia, who had heard of the fatal transaction at the castle of mazzini, deplored with her its too certain consequence. chapter x julia accustomed herself to walk in the fine evenings under the shade of the high trees that environed the abbey. the dewy coolness of the air refreshed her. the innumerable roseate tints which the parting sun-beams reflected on the rocks above, and the fine vermil glow diffused over the romantic scene beneath, softly fading from the eye, as the nightshades fell, excited sensations of a sweet and tranquil nature, and soothed her into a temporary forgetfulness of her sorrows. the deep solitude of the place subdued her apprehension, and one evening she ventured with madame de menon to lengthen her walk. they returned to the abbey without having seen a human being, except a friar of the monastery, who had been to a neighbouring town to order provision. on the following evening they repeated their walk; and, engaged in conversation, rambled to a considerable distance from the abbey. the distant bell of the monastery sounding for vespers, reminded them of the hour, and looking round, they perceived the extremity of the wood. they were returning towards the abbey, when struck by the appearance of some majestic columns which were distinguishable between the trees, they paused. curiosity tempted them to examine to what edifice pillars of such magnificent architecture could belong, in a scene so rude, and they went on. there appeared on a point of rock impending over the valley the reliques of a palace, whose beauty time had impaired only to heighten its sublimity. an arch of singular magnificence remained almost entire, beyond which appeared wild cliffs retiring in grand perspective. the sun, which was now setting, threw a trembling lustre upon the ruins, and gave a finishing effect to the scene. they gazed in mute wonder upon the view; but the fast fading light, and the dewy chillness of the air, warned them to return. as julia gave a last look to the scene, she perceived two men leaning upon a part of the ruin at some distance, in earnest conversation. as they spoke, their looks were so attentively bent on her, that she could have no doubt she was the subject of their discourse. alarmed at this circumstance, madame and julia immediately retreated towards the abbey. they walked swiftly through the woods, whose shades, deepened by the gloom of evening, prevented their distinguishing whether they were pursued. they were surprized to observe the distance to which they had strayed from the monastery, whose dark towers were now obscurely seen rising among the trees that closed the perspective. they had almost reached the gates, when on looking back, they perceived the same men slowly advancing, without any appearance of pursuit, but clearly as if observing the place of their retreat. this incident occasioned julia much alarm. she could not but believe that the men whom she had seen were spies of the marquis;--if so, her asylum was discovered, and she had every thing to apprehend. madame now judged it necessary to the safety of julia, that the _abate_ should be informed of her story, and of the sanctuary she had sought in his monastery, and also that he should be solicited to protect her from parental tyranny. this was a hazardous, but a necessary step, to provide against the certain danger which must ensue, should the marquis, if he demanded his daughter of the _abate_, be the first to acquaint him with her story. if she acted otherwise, she feared that the _abate_, in whose generosity she had not confided, and whose pity she had not solicited, would, in the pride of his resentment, deliver her up, and thus would she become a certain victim to the duke de luovo. julia approved of this communication, though she trembled for the event; and requested madame to plead her cause with the _abate_. on the following morning, therefore, madame solicited a private audience of the _abate_; she obtained permission to see him, and julia, in trembling anxiety, watched her to the door of his apartment. this conference was long, and every moment seemed an hour to julia, who, in fearful expectation, awaited with cornelia the sentence which would decide her destiny. she was now the constant companion of cornelia, whose declining health interested her pity, and strengthened her attachment. meanwhile madame developed to the _abate_ the distressful story of julia. she praised her virtues, commended her accomplishments, and deplored her situation. she described the characters of the marquis and the duke, and concluded with pathetically representing, that julia had sought in this monastery, a last asylum from injustice and misery, and with entreating that the _abate_ would grant her his pity and protection. the _abate_ during this discourse preserved a sullen silence; his eyes were bent to the ground, and his aspect was thoughful and solemn. when madame ceased to speak, a pause of profound silence ensued, and she sat in anxious expectation. she endeavoured to anticipate in his countenance the answer preparing, but she derived no comfort from thence. at length raising his head, and awakening from his deep reverie, he told her that her request required deliberation, and that the protection she solicited for julia, might involve him in serious consequences, since, from a character so determined as the marquis's, much violence might reasonably be expected. 'should his daughter be refused him,' concluded the _abate_, 'he may even dare to violate the sanctuary.' madame, shocked by the stern indifference of this reply, was a moment silent. the _abate_ went on. 'whatever i shall determine upon, the young lady has reason to rejoice that she is admitted into this holy house; for i will even now venture to assure her, that if the marquis fails to demand her, she shall be permitted to remain in this sanctuary unmolested. you, madam, will be sensible of this indulgence, and of the value of the sacrifice i make in granting it; for, in thus concealing a child from her parent, i encourage her in disobedience, and consequently sacrifice my sense of duty, to what may be justly called a weak humanity.' madame listened to pompous declamation in silent sorrow and indignation. she made another effort to interest the _abate_ in favor of julia, but he preserved his stern inflexibility, and repeating that he would deliberate upon the matter, and acquaint her with the result, he arose with great solemnity, and quitted the room. she now half repented of the confidence she had reposed in him, and of the pity she had solicited, since he discovered a mind incapable of understanding the first, and a temper inaccessible to the influence of the latter. with an heavy heart she returned to julia, who read in her countenance, at the moment she entered the room, news of no happy import. when madame related the particulars of the conference, julia presaged from it only misery, and giving herself up for lost--she burst into tears. she severely deplored the confidence she had been induced to yield; for she now saw herself in the power of a man, stern and unfeeling in his nature: and from whom, if he thought it fit to betray her, she had no means of escaping. but she concealed the anguish of her heart; and to console madame, affected to hope where she could only despair. several days elapsed, and no answer was returned from the _abate_. julia too well understood this silence. one morning cornelia entering her room with a disturbed and impatient air, informed her that some emissaries from the marquis were then in the monastery, having enquired at the gate for the _abate_, with whom, they said, they had business of importance to transact. the _abate_ had granted them immediate audience, and they were now in close conference. at this intelligence the spirits of julia forsook her; she trembled, grew pale, and stood fixed in mute despair. madame, though scarcely less distressed, retained a presence of mind. she understood too justly the character of the superior to doubt that he would hesitate in delivering julia to the hands of the marquis. on this moment, therefore, turned the crisis of her fate!--this moment she might escape--the next she was a prisoner. she therefore advised julia to seize the instant, and fly from the monastery before the conference was concluded, when the gates would most probably be closed upon her, assuring her, at the same time, she would accompany her in flight. the generous conduct of madame called tears of gratitude into the eyes of julia, who now awoke from the state of stupefaction which distress had caused. but before she could thank her faithful friend, a nun entered the room with a summons for madame to attend the _abate_ immediately. the distress which this message occasioned can not easily be conceived. madame advised julia to escape while she detained the _abate_ in conversation, as it was not probable that he had yet issued orders for her detention. leaving her to this attempt, with an assurance of following her from the abbey as soon as possible, madame obeyed the summons. the coolness of her fortitude forsook her as she approached the _abate_'s apartment, and she became less certain as to the occasion of this summons. the _abate_ was alone. his countenance was pale with anger, and he was pacing the room with slow but agitated steps. the stern authority of his look startled her. 'read this letter,' said he, stretching forth his hand which held a letter, 'and tell me what that mortal deserves, who dares insult our holy order, and set our sacred prerogative at defiance.' madame distinguished the handwriting of the marquis, and the words of the superior threw her into the utmost astonishment. she took the letter. it was dictated by that spirit of proud vindictive rage, which so strongly marked the character of the marquis. having discovered the retreat of julia, and believing the monastery afforded her a willing sanctuary from his pursuit, he accused the _abate_ of encouraging his child in open rebellion to his will. he loaded him and his sacred order with opprobrium, and threatened, if she was not immediately resigned to the emissaries in waiting, he would in person lead on a force which should compel the church to yield to the superior authority of the father. the spirit of the _abate_ was roused by this menace; and julia obtained from his pride, that protection which neither his principle or his humanity would have granted. 'the man shall tremble,' cried he, 'who dares defy our power, or question our sacred authority. the lady julia is safe. i will protect her from this proud invader of our rights, and teach him at least to venerate the power he cannot conquer. i have dispatched his emissaries with my answer.' these words struck sudden joy upon the heart of madame de menon, but she instantly recollected, that ere this time julia had quitted the abbey, and thus the very precaution which was meant to ensure her safety, had probably precipitated her into the hand of her enemy. this thought changed her joy to anguish; and she was hurrying from the apartment in a sort of wild hope, that julia might not yet be gone, when the stern voice of the _abate_ arrested her. 'is it thus,' cried he, 'that you receive the knowledge of our generous resolution to protect your friend? does such condescending kindness merit no thanks--demand no gratitude?' madame returned in an agony of fear, lest one moment of delay might prove fatal to julia, if haply she had not yet quitted the monastery. she was conscious of her deficiency in apparent gratitude, and of the strange appearance of her abrupt departure from the _abate_, for which it was impossible to apologize, without betraying the secret, which would kindle all his resentment. yet some atonement his present anger demanded, and these circumstances caused her a very painful embarrassment. she formed a hasty excuse; and expressing her sense of his goodness, again attempted to retire, when the _abate_ frowning in deep resentment, his features inflamed with pride, arose from his seat. 'stay,' said he; 'whence this impatience to fly from the presence of a benefactor?--if my generosity fails to excite gratitude, my resentment shall not fail to inspire awe.--since the lady julia is insensible of my condescension, she is unworthy of my protection, and i will resign her to the tyrant who demands her.' to this speech, in which the offended pride of the _abate_ overcoming all sense of justice, accused and threatened to punish julia for the fault of her friend, madame listened in dreadful impatience. every word that detained her struck torture to her heart, but the concluding sentence occasioned new terror, and she started at its purpose. she fell at the feet of the _abate_ in an agony of grief. 'holy father,' said she, 'punish not julia for the offence which i only have committed; her heart will bless her generous protector, and for myself, suffer me to assure you that i am fully sensible of your goodness.' 'if this is true,' said the _abate_, 'arise, and bid the lady julia attend me.' this command increased the confusion of madame, who had no doubt that her detention had proved fatal to julia. at length she was suffered to depart, and to her infinite joy found julia in her own room. her intention of escaping had yielded, immediately after the departure of madame, to the fear of being discovered by the marquis's people. this fear had been confirmed by the report of cornelia, who informed her, that at that time several horsemen were waiting at the gates for the return of their companions. this was a dreadful circumstance to julia, who perceived it was utterly impossible to quit the monastery, without rushing upon certain destruction. she was lamenting her destiny, when madame recited the particulars of the late interview, and delivered the summons of the _abate_. they had now to dread the effect of that tender anxiety, which had excited his resentment; and julia, suddenly elated to joy by his first determination, was as suddenly sunk to despair by his last. she trembled with apprehension of the coming interview, though each moment of delay which her fear solicited, would, by heightening the resentment of the _abate_, only increase the danger she dreaded. at length, by a strong effort, she reanimated her spirits, and went to the abate's closet to receive her sentence. he was seated in his chair, and his frowning aspect chilled her heart. 'daughter,' said he, 'you have been guilty of heinous crimes. you have dared to dispute--nay openly to rebel, against the lawful authority of your father. you have disobeyed the will of him whose prerogative yields only to ours. you have questioned his right upon a point of all others the most decided--the right of a father to dispose of his child in marriage. you have even fled from his protection--and you have dared--insidiously, and meanly have dared, to screen your disobedience beneath this sacred roof. you have prophaned our sanctuary with your crime. you have brought insult upon our sacred order, and have caused bold and impious defiance of our high prerogative. what punishment is adequate to guilt like this?' the father paused--his eyes sternly fixed on julia, who, pale and trembling, could scarcely support herself, and who had no power to reply. 'i will be merciful, and not just,' resumed he,--'i will soften the punishment you deserve, and will only deliver you to your father.' at these dreadful words, julia bursting into tears, sunk at the feet of the _abate_, to whom she raised her eyes in supplicating expression, but was unable to speak. he suffered her to remain in this posture. 'your duplicity,' he resumed, 'is not the least of your offences.--had you relied upon our generosity for forgiveness and protection, an indulgence might have been granted;--but under the disguise of virtue you concealed your crimes, and your necessities were hid beneath the mask of devotion.' these false aspersions roused in julia the spirit of indignant virtue; she arose from her knees with an air of dignity, that struck even the _abate_. 'holy father,' said she, 'my heart abhors the crime you mention, and disclaims all union with it. whatever are my offences, from the sin of hypocrisy i am at least free; and you will pardon me if i remind you, that my confidence has already been such, as fully justifies my claim to the protection i solicit. when i sheltered myself within these walls, it was to be presumed that they would protect me from injustice; and with what other term than injustice would you, sir, distinguish the conduct of the marquis, if the fear of his power did not overcome the dictates of truth?' the _abate_ felt the full force of this reproof; but disdaining to appear sensible to it, restrained his resentment. his wounded pride thus exasperated, and all the malignant passions of his nature thus called into action, he was prompted to that cruel surrender which he had never before seriously intended. the offence which madame de menon had unintentionally given his haughty spirit urged him to retaliate in punishment. he had, therefore, pleased himself with exciting a terror which he never meant to confirm, and he resolved to be further solicited for that protection which he had already determined to grant. but this reproof of julia touched him where he was most conscious of defect; and the temporary triumph which he imagined it afforded her, kindled his resentment into flame. he mused in his chair, in a fixed attitude.--she saw in his countenance the deep workings of his mind--she revolved the fate preparing for her, and stood in trembling anxiety to receive her sentence. the _abate_ considered each aggravating circumstance of the marquis's menace, and each sentence of julia's speech; and his mind experienced that vice is not only inconsistent with virtue, but with itself--for to gratify his malignity, he now discovered that it would be necessary to sacrifice his pride--since it would be impossible to punish the object of the first without denying himself the gratification of the latter. this reflection suspended his mind in a state of torture, and he sat wrapt in gloomy silence. the spirit which lately animated julia had vanished with her words--each moment of silence increased her apprehension; the deep brooding of his thoughts confirmed her in the apprehension of evil, and with all the artless eloquence of sorrow she endeavoured to soften him to pity. he listened to her pleadings in sullen stillness. but each instant now cooled the fervour of his resentment to her, and increased his desire of opposing the marquis. at length the predominant feature of his character resumed its original influence, and overcame the workings of subordinate passion. proud of his religious authority, he determined never to yield the prerogative of the church to that of the father, and resolved to oppose the violence of the marquis with equal force. he therefore condescended to relieve julia from her terrors, by assuring her of his protection; but he did this in a manner so ungracious, as almost to destroy the gratitude which the promise demanded. she hastened with the joyful intelligence to madame de menon, who wept over her tears of thankfulness. chapter xi near a fortnight had elapsed without producing any appearance of hostility from the marquis, when one night, long after the hour of repose, julia was awakened by the bell of the monastery. she knew it was not the hour customary for prayer, and she listened to the sounds, which rolled through the deep silence of the fabric, with strong surprise and terror. presently she heard the doors of several cells creak on their hinges, and the sound of quick footsteps in the passages--and through the crevices of her door she distinguished passing lights. the whispering noise of steps increased, and every person of the monastery seemed to have awakened. her terror heightened; it occurred to her that the marquis had surrounded the abbey with his people, in the design of forcing her from her retreat; and she arose in haste, with an intention of going to the chamber of madame de menon, when she heard a gentle tap at the door. her enquiry of who was there, was answered in the voice of madame, and her fears were quickly dissipated, for she learned the bell was a summons to attend a dying nun, who was going to the high altar, there to receive extreme unction. she quitted the chamber with madame. in her way to the church, the gleam of tapers on the walls, and the glimpse which her eye often caught of the friars in their long black habits, descending silently through the narrow winding passages, with the solemn toll of the bell, conspired to kindle imagination, and to impress her heart with sacred awe. but the church exhibited a scene of solemnity, such as she had never before witnessed. its gloomy aisles were imperfectly seen by the rays of tapers from the high altar, which shed a solitary gleam over the remote parts of the fabric, and produced large masses of light and shade, striking and sublime in their effect. while she gazed, she heard a distant chanting rise through the aisles; the sounds swelled in low murmurs on the ear, and drew nearer and nearer, till a sudden blaze of light issued from one of the portals, and the procession entered. the organ instantly sounded a high and solemn peal, and the voices rising altogether swelled the sacred strain. in front appeared the _padre abate_, with slow and measured steps, bearing the holy cross. immediately followed a litter, on which lay the dying person covered with a white veil, borne along and surrounded by nuns veiled in white, each carrying in her hand a lighted taper. last came the friars, two and two, cloathed in black, and each bearing a light. when they reached the high altar, the bier was rested, and in a few moments the anthem ceased. 'the _abate_ now approached to perform the unction; the veil of the dying nun was lifted--and julia discovered her beloved cornelia! her countenance was already impressed with the image of death, but her eyes brightened with a faint gleam of recollection, when they fixed upon julia, who felt a cold thrill run through her frame, and leaned for support on madame. julia now for the first time distinguished the unhappy lover of cornelia, on whose features was depictured the anguish of his heart, and who hung pale and silent over the bier. the ceremony being finished, the anthem struck up; the bier was lifted, when cornelia faintly moved her hand, and it was again rested upon the steps of the altar. in a few minutes the music ceased, when lifting her heavy eyes to her lover, with an expression of ineffable tenderness and grief, she attempted to speak, but the sounds died on her closing lips. a faint smile passed over her countenance, and was succeeded by a fine devotional glow; she folded her hands upon her bosom, and with a look of meek resignation, raising towards heaven her eyes, in which now sunk the last sparkles of expiring life--her soul departed in a short deep sigh. her lover sinking back, endeavoured to conceal his emotions, but the deep sobs which agitated his breast betrayed his anguish, and the tears of every spectator bedewed the sacred spot where beauty, sense, and innocence expired. the organ now swelled in mournful harmony; and the voices of the assembly chanted in choral strain, a low and solemn requiem to the spirit of the departed. madame hurried julia, who was almost as lifeless as her departed friend, from the church. a death so sudden heightened the grief which separation would otherwise have occasioned. it was the nature of cornelia's disorder to wear a changeful but flattering aspect. though she had long been declining, her decay was so gradual and imperceptible as to lull the apprehensions of her friends into security. it was otherwise with herself; she was conscious of the change, but forbore to afflict them with the knowledge of the truth. the hour of her dissolution was sudden, even to herself; but it was composed, and even happy. in the death of cornelia, julia seemed to mourn again that of hippolitus. her decease appeared to dissolve the last tie which connected her with his memory. in one of the friars of the convent, madame was surprized to find the father who had confessed the dying vincent. his appearance revived the remembrance of the scene she had witnessed at the castle of mazzini; and the last words of vincent, combined with the circumstances which had since occurred, renewed all her curiosity and astonishment. but his appearance excited more sensations than those of wonder. she dreaded lest he should be corrupted by the marquis, to whom he was known, and thus be induced to use his interest with the _abate_ for the restoration of julia. from the walls of the monastery, julia now never ventured to stray. in the gloom of evening she sometimes stole into the cloisters, and often lingered at the grave of cornelia, where she wept for hippolitus, as well as for her friend. one evening, during vespers, the bell of the convent was suddenly rang out; the _abate_, whose countenance expressed at once astonishment and displeasure, suspended the service, and quitted the altar. the whole congregation repaired to the hall, where they learned that a friar, retiring to the convent, had seen a troop of armed men advancing through the wood; and not doubting they were the people of the marquis, and were approaching with hostile intention, had thought it necessary to give the alarm. the _abate_ ascended a turret, and thence discovered through the trees a glittering of arms, and in the succeeding moment a band of men issued from a dark part of the wood, into a long avenue which immediately fronted the spot where he stood. the clattering of hoofs was now distinctly heard; and julia, sinking with terror, distinguished the marquis heading the troops, which, soon after separating in two divisions, surrounded the monastery. the gates were immediately secured; and the _abate_, descending from the turret, assembled the friars in the hall, where his voice was soon heard above every other part of the tumult. the terror of julia made her utterly forgetful of the _padre_'s promise, and she wished to fly for concealment to the deep caverns belonging to the monastery, which wound under the woods. madame, whose penetration furnished her with a just knowledge of the _abate_'s character, founded her security on his pride. she therefore dissuaded julia from attempting to tamper with the honesty of a servant who had the keys of the vaults, and advised her to rely entirely on the effect of the _abate_'s resentment towards the marquis. while madame endeavoured to soothe her to composure, a message from the _abate_ required her immediate attendance. she obeyed, and he bade her follow him to a room which was directly over the gates of the monastery. from thence she saw her father, accompanied by the duke de luovo; and as her spirits died away at the sight, the marquis called furiously to the _abate_ to deliver her instantly into his hands, threatening, if she was detained, to force the gates of the monastery. at this threat the countenance of the _abate_ grew dark: and leading julia forcibly to the window, from which she had shrunk back, 'impious menacer!' said he, 'eternal vengeance be upon thee! from this moment we expel thee from all the rights and communities of our church. arrogant and daring as you are, your threats i defy--look here,' said he, pointing to julia, 'and learn that you are in my power; for if you dare to violate these sacred walls, i will proclaim aloud, in the face of day, a secret which shall make your heart's blood run cold; a secret which involves your honour, nay, your very existence. now triumph and exult in impious menace!' the marquis started involuntarily at this speech, and his features underwent a sudden change, but he endeavoured to recover himself, and to conceal his confusion. he hesitated for a few moments, uncertain how to act--to desist from violence was to confess himself conscious of the threatened secret; yet he dreaded to inflame the resentment of the _abate_, whose menaces his own heart too surely seconded. at length--'all that you have uttered,' said he, 'i despise as the dastardly subterfuge of monkish cunning. your new insults add to the desire of recovering my daughter, that of punishing you. i would proceed to instant violence, but that would now be an imperfect revenge. i shall, therefore, withdraw my forces, and appeal to a higher power. thus shall you be compelled at once to restore my daughter and retract your scandalous impeachment of my honor.' saying this, the turned his horse from the gates, and his people following him, quickly withdrew, leaving the _abate_ exulting in conquest, and julia lost in astonishment and doubtful joy. when she recounted to madame the particulars of the conference, she dwelt with emphasis on the threats of the _abate_; but madame, though her amazement was heightened at every word, very well understood how the secret, whatever it was, had been obtained. the confessor of vincent she had already observed in the monastery, and there was no doubt that he had disclosed whatever could be collected from the dying words of vincent. she knew, also, that the secret would never be published, unless as a punishment for immediate violence, it being one of the first principles of monastic duty, to observe a religious secrecy upon all matters entrusted to them in confession. when the first tumult of julia's emotions subsided, the joy which the sudden departure of the marquis occasioned yielded to apprehension. he had threatened to appeal to a higher power, who would compel the _abate_ to surrender her. this menace excited a just terror, and there remained no means of avoiding the tyranny of the marquis but by quitting the monastery. she therefore requested an audience of the _abate_; and having represented the danger of her present situation, she intreated his permission to depart in quest of a safer retreat. the _abate_, who well knew the marquis was wholly in his power, smiled at the repetition of his menaces, and denied her request, under pretence of his having now become responsible for her to the church. he bade her be comforted, and promised her his protection; but his assurances were given in so distant and haughty a manner, that julia left him with fears rather increased than subdued. in crossing the hall, she observed a man hastily enter it, from an opposite door. he was not in the habit of the order, but was muffled up in a cloak, and seemed to wish concealment. as she passed he raised his head, and julia discovered--her father! he darted at her a look of vengeance; but before she had time even to think, as if suddenly recollecting himself, he covered his face, and rushed by her. her trembling frame could scarcely support her to the apartment of madame, where she sunk speechless upon a chair, and the terror of her look alone spoke the agony of her mind. when she was somewhat recovered, she related what she had seen, and her conversation with the _abate_. but madame was lost in equal perplexity with herself, when she attempted to account for the marquis's appearance. why, after his late daring menace, should he come secretly to visit the _abate_, by whose connivance alone he could have gained admission to the monastery? and what could have influenced the _abate_ to such a conduct? these circumstances, though equally inexplicable, united to confirm a fear of treachery and surrender. to escape from the abbey was now inpracticable, for the gates were constantly guarded; and even was it possible to pass them, certain detection awaited julia without from the marquis's people, who were stationed in the woods. thus encompassed with danger, she could only await in the monastery the issue of her destiny. while she was lamenting with madame her unhappy fate, she was summoned once more to attend the _abate_. at this moment her spirits entirely forsook her; the crisis of her fate seemed arrived; for she did not doubt that the _abate_ intended to surrender her to the marquis, with whom she supposed he had negotiated the terms of accommodation. it was some time before she could recover composure sufficient to obey the summons; and when she did, every step that bore her towards the _abate_'s room increased her dread. she paused a moment at the door, 'ere she had courage to open it; the idea of her father's immediate resentment arose to her mind, and she was upon the point of retreating to her chamber, when a sudden step within, near the door, destroyed her hesitation, and she entered the closet. the marquis was not there, and her spirits revived. the flush of triumph was diffused over the features of the _abate_, though a shade of unappeased resentment yet remained visible. 'daughter,' said he, 'the intelligence we have to communicate may rejoice you. your safety now depends solely on yourself. i give your fate into your own hands, and its issue be upon your head.' he paused, and she was suspended in wondering expectation of the coming sentence. 'i here solemnly assure you of my protection, but it is upon one condition only--that you renounce the world, and dedicate your days to god.' julia listened with a mixture of grief and astonishment. 'without this concession on your part, i possess not the power, had i even the inclination, to protect you. if you assume the veil, you are safe within the pale of the church from temporal violence. if you neglect or refuse to do this, the marquis may apply to a power from whom i have no appeal, and i shall be compelled at last to resign you. 'but to ensure your safety, should the veil be your choice, we will procure a dispensation from the usual forms of noviciation, and a few days shall confirm your vows.' he ceased to speak; but julia, agitated with the most cruel distress, knew not what to reply. 'we grant you three days to decide upon this matter,' continued he, 'at the expiration of which, the veil, or the duke de luovo, awaits you.' julia quitted the closet in mute despair, and repaired to madame, who could now scarcely offer her the humble benefit of consolation. meanwhile the _abate_ exulted in successful vengeance, and the marquis smarted beneath the stings of disappointment. the menace of the former was too seriously alarming to suffer the marquis to prosecute violent measures; and he had therefore resolved, by opposing avarice to pride, to soothe the power which he could not subdue. but he was unwilling to entrust the _abate_ with a proof of his compliance and his fears by offering a bribe in a letter, and preferred the more humiliating, but safer method, of a private interview. his magnificent offers created a temporary hesitation in the mind of the _abate_, who, secure of his advantage, shewed at first no disposition to be reconciled, and suffered the marquis to depart in anxious uncertainty. after maturely deliberating upon the proposals, the pride of the _abate_ surmounted his avarice, and he determined to prevail upon julia effectually to destroy the hopes of the marquis, by consecrating her life to religion. julia passed the night and the next day in a state of mental torture exceeding all description. the gates of the monastery beset with guards, and the woods surrounded by the marquis's people, made escape impossible. from a marriage with the duke, whose late conduct had confirmed the odious idea which his character had formerly impressed, her heart recoiled in horror, and to be immured for life within the walls of a convent, was a fate little less dreadful. yet such was the effect of that sacred love she bore the memory of hippolitus, and such her aversion to the duke, that she soon resolved to adopt the veil. on the following evening she informed the _abate_ of her determination. his heart swelled with secret joy; and even the natural severity of his manner relaxed at the intelligence. he assured her of his approbation and protection, with a degree of kindness which he had never before manifested, and told her the ceremony should be performed on the second day from the present. her emotion scarcely suffered her to hear his last words. now that her fate was fixed beyond recall, she almost repented of her choice. her fancy attached to it a horror not its own; and that evil, which, when offered to her decision, she had accepted with little hesitation, she now paused upon in dubious regret; so apt we are to imagine that the calamity most certain, is also the most intolerable! when the marquis read the answer of the _abate_, all the baleful passions of his nature were roused and inflamed to a degree which bordered upon distraction. in the first impulse of his rage, he would have forced the gates of the monastery, and defied the utmost malice of his enemy. but a moment's reflection revived his fear of the threatened secret, and he saw that he was still in the power of the superior. the _abate_ procured the necessary dispensation, and preparations were immediately began for the approaching ceremony. julia watched the departure of those moments which led to her fate with the calm fortitude of despair. she had no means of escaping from the coming evil, without exposing herself to a worse; she surveyed it therefore with a steady eye, and no longer shrunk from its approach. on the morning preceding the day of her consecration, she was informed that a stranger enquired for her at the grate. her mind had been so long accustomed to the vicissitudes of apprehension, that fear was the emotion which now occurred; she suspected, yet scarcely knew why, that the marquis was below, and hesitated whether to descend. a little reflection determined her, and she went to the parlour--where, to her equal joy and surprise, she beheld--ferdinand! during the absence of the marquis from his castle, ferdinand, who had been informed of the discovery of julia, effected his escape from imprisonment, and had hastened to the monastery in the design of rescuing her. he had passed the woods in disguise, with much difficulty eluding the observation of the marquis's people, who were yet dispersed round the abbey. to the monastery, as he came alone, he had been admitted without difficulty. when he learned the conditions of the _abate_'s protection, and that the following day was appointed for the consecration of julia, he was shocked, and paused in deliberation. a period so short as was this interval, afforded little opportunity for contrivance, and less for hesitation. the night of the present day was the only time that remained for the attempt and execution of a plan of escape, which if it then failed of success, julia would not only be condemned for life to the walls of a monastery, but would be subjected to whatever punishment the severity of the _abate_, exasperated by the detection, should think fit to inflict. the danger was desperate, but the occasion was desperate also. the nobly disinterested conduct of her brother, struck julia with gratitude and admiration; but despair of success made her now hesitate whether she should accept his offer. she considered that his generosity would most probably involve him in destruction with herself; and she paused in deep deliberation, when ferdinand informed her of a circumstance which, till now, he had purposely concealed, and which at once dissolved every doubt and every fear. 'hippolitus,' said ferdinand, 'yet lives.'--'lives!' repeated julia faintly,--'lives, oh! tell me where--how.'--her breath refused to aid her, and she sunk in her chair overcome with the strong and various sensations that pressed upon her heart. ferdinand, whom the grate withheld from assisting her, observed her situation with extreme distress. when she recovered, he informed her that a servant of hippolitus, sent no doubt by his lord to enquire concerning julia, had been lately seen by one of the marquis's people in the neighbourhood of the castle. from him it was known that the count de vereza was living, but that his life had been despaired of; and he was still confined, by dangerous wounds, in an obscure town on the coast of italy. the man had steadily refused to mention the place of his lord's abode. learning that the marquis was then at the abbey of st augustin, whither he pursued his daughter, the man disappeared from mazzini, and had not since been heard of. it was enough for julia to know that hippolitus lived; her fears of detection, and her scruples concerning ferdinand, instantly vanished; she thought only of escape--and the means which had lately appeared so formidable--so difficult in contrivance, and so dangerous in execution, now seemed easy, certain, and almost accomplished. they consulted on the plan to be adopted, and agreed, that in attempting to bribe a servant of the monastery to their interest, they should incur a danger too imminent, yet it appeared scarcely practicable to succeed in their scheme without risquing this. after much consideration, they determined to entrust their secret to no person but to madame. ferdinand was to contrive to conceal himself till the dead of night in the church, between which and the monastery were several doors of communication. when the inhabitants of the abbey were sunk in repose, julia might without difficulty pass to the church, where ferdinand awaiting her, they might perhaps escape either through an outer door of the fabric, or through a window, for which latter attempt ferdinand was to provide ropes. a couple of horses were to be stationed among the rocks beyond the woods, to convey the fugitives to a sea-port, whence they could easily pass over to italy. having arranged this plan, they separated in the anxious hope of meeting on the ensuing night. madame warmly sympathized with julia in her present expectations, and was now somewhat relieved from the pressure of that self-reproach, with which the consideration of having withdrawn her young friend from a secure asylum, had long tormented her. in learning that hippolitus lived, julia experienced a sudden renovation of life and spirits. from the languid stupefaction which despair had occasioned she revived as from a dream, and her sensations resembled those of a person suddenly awakened from a frightful vision, whose thoughts are yet obscured in the fear and uncertainty which the passing images have impressed on his fancy. she emerged from despair; joy illumined her countenance; yet she doubted the reality of the scene which now opened to her view. the hours rolled heavily along till the evening, when expectation gave way to fear, for she was once more summoned by the _abate_. he sent for her to administer the usual necessary exhortation on the approaching solemnity; and having detained her a considerable time in tedious and severe discourse, dismissed her with a formal benediction. chapter xii the evening now sunk in darkness, and the hour was fast approaching which would decide the fate of julia. trembling anxiety subdued every other sensation; and as the minutes passed, her fears increased. at length she heard the gates of the monastery fastened for the night; the bell rang the signal for repose; and the passing footsteps of the nuns told her they were hastening to obey it. after some time, all was silent. julia did not yet dare to venture forth; she employed the present interval in interesting and affectionate conversation with madame de menon, to whom, notwithstanding her situation, her heart bade a sorrowful adieu. the clock struck twelve, when she arose to depart. having embraced her faithful friend with tears of mingled grief and anxiety, she took a lamp in her hand, and with cautious, fearful steps, descended through the long winding passages to a private door, which opened into the church of the monastery. the church was gloomy and desolate; and the feeble rays of the lamp she bore, gave only light enough to discover its chilling grandeur. as she passed silently along the aisles, she cast a look of anxious examination around--but ferdinand was no where to be seen. she paused in timid hesitation, fearful to penetrate the gloomy obscurity which lay before her, yet dreading to return. as she stood examining the place, vainly looking for ferdinand, yet fearing to call, lest her voice should betray her, a hollow groan arose from apart of the church very near her. it chilled her heart, and she remained fixed to the spot. she turned her eyes a little to the left, and saw light appear through the chinks of a sepulchre at some distance. the groan was repeated--a low murmuring succeeded, and while she yet gazed, an old man issued from the vault with a lighted taper in his hand. terror now subdued her, and she utterred an involuntary shriek. in the succeeding moment, a noise was heard in a remote part of the fabric; and ferdinand rushing forth from his concealment, ran to her assistance. the old man, who appeared to be a friar, and who had been doing penance at the monument of a saint, now approached. his countenance expressed a degree of surprise and terror almost equal to that of julia's, who knew him to be the confessor of vincent. ferdinand seized the father; and laying his hand upon his sword, threatened him with death if he did not instantly swear to conceal for ever his knowledge of what he then saw, and also assist them to escape from the abbey. 'ungracious boy!' replied the father, in a calm voice, 'desist from this language, nor add to the follies of youth the crime of murdering, or terrifying a defenceless old man. your violence would urge me to become your enemy, did not previous inclination tempt me to be your friend. i pity the distresses of the lady julia, to whom i am no stranger, and will cheerfully give her all the assistance in my power.' at these words julia revived, and ferdinand, reproved by the generosity of the father, and conscious of his own inferiority, shrunk back. 'i have no words to thank you,' said he, 'or to entreat your pardon for the impetuosity of my conduct; your knowledge of my situation must plead my excuse.'--'it does,' replied the father, 'but we have no time to lose;--follow me.' they followed him through the church to the cloisters, at the extremity of which was a small door, which the friar unlocked. it opened upon the woods. 'this path,' said he, 'leads thro' an intricate part of the woods, to the rocks that rise on the right of the abbey; in their recesses you may secrete yourselves till you are prepared for a longer journey. but extinguish your light; it may betray you to the marquis's people, who are dispersed about this spot. farewell! my children, and god's blessing be upon ye.' julia's tears declared her gratitude; she had no time for words. they stepped into the path, and the father closed the door. they were now liberated from the monastery, but danger awaited them without, which it required all their caution to avoid. ferdinand knew the path which the friar had pointed out to be the same that led to the rocks where his horses were stationed, and he pursued it with quick and silent steps. julia, whose fears conspired with the gloom of night to magnify and transform every object around her, imagined at each step that she took, she perceived the figures of men, and fancied every whisper of the breeze the sound of pursuit. they proceeded swiftly, till julia, breathless and exhausted, could go no farther. they had not rested many minutes, when they heard a rustling among the bushes at some distance, and soon after distinguished a low sound of voices. ferdinand and julia instantly renewed their flight, and thought they still heard voices advance upon the wind. this thought was soon confirmed, for the sounds now gained fast upon them, and they distinguished words which served only to heighten their apprehensions, when they reached the extremity of the woods. the moon, which was now up, suddenly emerging from a dark cloud, discovered to them several man in pursuit; and also shewed to the pursuers the course of the fugitives. they endeavoured to gain the rocks where the horses were concealed, and which now appeared in view. these they reached when the pursuers had almost overtaken them--but their horses were gone! their only remaining chance of escape was to fly into the deep recesses of the rock. they, therefore, entered a winding cave, from whence branched several subterraneous avenues, at the extremity of one of which they stopped. the voices of men now vibrated in tremendous echoes through the various and secret caverns of the place, and the sound of footsteps seemed fast approaching. julia trembled with terror, and ferdinand drew his sword, determined to protect her to the last. a confused volley of voices now sounded up that part of the cave were ferdinand and julia lay concealed. in a few moments the steps of the pursuers suddenly took a different direction, and the sounds sunk gradually away, and were heard no more. ferdinand listened attentively for a considerable time, but the stillness of the place remained undisturbed. it was now evident that the men had quitted the rock, and he ventured forth to the mouth of the cave. he surveyed the wilds around, as far as his eye could penetrate, and distinguished no human being; but in the pauses of the wind he still thought he heard a sound of distant voices. as he listened in anxious silence, his eye caught the appearance of a shadow, which moved upon the ground near where he stood. he started back within the cave, but in a few minutes again ventured forth. the shadow remained stationary, but having watched it for some time, ferdinand saw it glide along till it disappeared behind a point of rock. he had now no doubt that the cave was watched, and that it was one of his late pursuers whose shade he had seen. he returned, therefore, to julia, and remained near an hour hid in the deepest recess of the rock; when, no sound having interrupted the profound silence of the place, he at length once more ventured to the mouth of the cave. again he threw a fearful look around, but discerned no human form. the soft moon-beam slept upon the dewy landscape, and the solemn stillness of midnight wrapt the world. fear heightened to the fugitives the sublimity of the hour. ferdinand now led julia forth, and they passed silently along the shelving foot of the rocks. they continued their way without farther interruption; and among the cliffs, at some distance from the cave, discovered, to their inexpressible joy, their horses, who having broken their fastenings, had strayed thither, and had now laid themselves down to rest. ferdinand and julia immediately mounted; and descending to the plains, took the road that led to a small sea-port at some leagues distant, whence they could embark for italy. they travelled for some hours through gloomy forests of beech and chesnut; and their way was only faintly illuminated by the moon, which shed a trembling lustre through the dark foliage, and which was seen but at intervals, as the passing clouds yielded to the power of her rays. they reached at length the skirts of the forest. the grey dawn now appeared, and the chill morning air bit shrewdly. it was with inexpressible joy that julia observed the kindling atmosphere; and soon after the rays of the rising sun touching the tops of the mountains, whose sides were yet involved in dark vapours. her fears dissipated with the darkness.--the sun now appeared amid clouds of inconceivable splendour; and unveiled a scene which in other circumstances julia would have contemplated with rapture. from the side of the hill, down which they were winding, a vale appeared, from whence arose wild and lofty mountains, whose steeps were cloathed with hanging woods, except where here and there a precipice projected its bold and rugged front. here, a few half-withered trees hung from the crevices of the rock, and gave a picturesque wildness to the object; there, clusters of half-seen cottages, rising from among tufted groves, embellished the green margin of a stream which meandered in the bottom, and bore its waves to the blue and distant main. the freshness of morning breathed over the scene, and vivified each colour of the landscape. the bright dewdrops hung trembling from the branches of the trees, which at intervals overshadowed the road; and the sprightly music of the birds saluted the rising day. notwithstanding her anxiety the scene diffused a soft complacency over the mind of julia. about noon they reached the port, where ferdinand was fortunate enough to obtain a small vessel; but the wind was unfavourable, and it was past midnight before it was possible for them to embark. when the dawn appeared, julia returned to the deck; and viewed with a sigh of unaccountable regret, the receding coast of sicily. but she observed, with high admiration, the light gradually spreading through the atmosphere, darting a feeble ray over the surface of the waters, which rolled in solemn soundings upon the distant shores. fiery beams now marked the clouds, and the east glowed with increasing radiance, till the sun rose at once above the waves, and illuminating them with a flood of splendour, diffused gaiety and gladness around. the bold concave of the heavens, uniting with the vast expanse of the ocean, formed, a _coup d'oeil_, striking and sublime magnificence of the scenery inspired julia with delight; and her heart dilating with high enthusiasm, she forgot the sorrows which had oppressed her. the breeze wafted the ship gently along for some hours, when it gradually sunk into a calm. the glassy surface of the waters was not curled by the lightest air, and the vessel floated heavily on the bosom of the deep. sicily was yet in view, and the present delay agitated julia with wild apprehension. towards the close of day a light breeze sprang up, but it blew from italy, and a train of dark vapours emerged from the verge of the horizon, which gradually accumulating, the heavens became entirely overcast. the evening shut in suddenly; the rising wind, the heavy clouds that loaded the atmosphere, and the thunder which murmured afar off terrified julia, and threatened a violent storm. the tempest came on, and the captain vainly sounded for anchorage: it was deep sea, and the vessel drove furiously before the wind. the darkness was interrupted only at intervals, by the broad expanse of vivid lightnings, which quivered upon the waters, and disclosing the horrible gaspings of the waves, served to render the succeeding darkness more awful. the thunder, which burst in tremendous crashes above, the loud roar of the waves below, the noise of the sailors, and the sudden cracks and groanings of the vessel conspired to heighten the tremendous sublimity of the scene. far on the rocky shores the surges sound, the lashing whirlwinds cleave the vast profound; while high in air, amid the rising storm, driving the blast, sits danger's black'ning form. julia lay fainting with terror and sickness in the cabin, and ferdinand, though almost hopeless himself, was endeavouring to support her, when aloud and dreadful crash was heard from above. it seemed as if the whole vessel had parted. the voices of the sailors now rose together, and all was confusion and uproar. ferdinand ran up to the deck, and learned that part of the main mast, borne away by the wind, had fallen upon the deck, whence it had rolled overboard. it was now past midnight, and the storm continued with unabated fury. for four hours the vessel had been driven before the blast; and the captain now declared it was impossible she could weather the tempest much longer, ordered the long boat to be in readiness. his orders were scarcely executed, when the ship bulged upon a reef of rocks, and the impetuous waves rushed into the vessel:--a general groan ensued. ferdinand flew to save his sister, whom he carried to the boat, which was nearly filled by the captain and most of the crew. the sea ran so high that it appeared impracticable to reach the shore: but the boat had not moved many yards, when the ship went to pieces. the captain now perceived, by the flashes of lightning, a high rocky coast at about the distance of half a mile. the men struggled hard at the oars; but almost as often as they gained the summit of a wave, it dashed them back again, and made their labour of little avail. after much difficulty and fatigue they reached the coast, where a new danger presented itself. they beheld a wild rocky shore, whose cliffs appeared inaccessible, and which seemed to afford little possibility of landing. a landing, however, was at last affected; and the sailors, after much search, discovered a kind of pathway cut in the rock, which they all ascended in safety. the dawn now faintly glimmered, and they surveyed the coast, but could discover no human habitation. they imagined they were on the shores of sicily, but possessed no means of confirming this conjecture. terror, sickness, and fatigue had subdued the strength and spirits of julia, and she was obliged to rest upon the rocks. the storm now suddenly subsided, and the total calm which succeeded to the wild tumult of the winds and waves, produced a striking and sublime effect. the air was hushed in a deathlike stillness, but the waves were yet violently agitated; and by the increasing light, parts of the wreck were seen floating wide upon the face of the deep. some sailors, who had missed the boat, were also discovered clinging to pieces of the vessel, and making towards the shore. on observing this, their shipmates immediately descended to the boat; and, putting off to sea, rescued them from their perilous situation. when julia was somewhat reanimated, they proceeded up the country in search of a dwelling. they had travelled near half a league, when the savage features of the country began to soften, and gradually changed to the picturesque beauty of sicilian scenery. they now discovered at some distance a villa, seated on a gentle eminence, crowned with woods. it was the first human habitation they had seen since they embarked for italy; and julia, who was almost sinking with fatigue, beheld it with delight. the captain and his men hastened towards it to make known their distress, while ferdinand and julia slowly followed. they observed the men enter the villa, one of whom quickly returned to acquaint them with the hospitable reception his comrades had received. julia with difficulty reached the edifice, at the door of which she was met by a young cavalier, whose pleasing and intelligent countenance immediately interested her in his favor. he welcomed the strangers with a benevolent politeness that dissolved at once every uncomfortable feeling which their situation had excited, and produced an instantaneous easy confidence. through a light and elegant hall, rising into a dome, supported by pillars of white marble, and adorned with busts, he led them to a magnificent vestibule, which opened upon a lawn. having seated them at a table spread with refreshments he left them, and they surveyed, with surprise, the beauty of the adjacent scene. the lawn, which was on each side bounded by hanging woods, descended in gentle declivity to a fine lake, whose smooth surface reflected the surrounding shades. beyond appeared the distant country, arising on the left into bold romantic mountains, and on the right exhibiting a soft and glowing landscape, whose tranquil beauty formed a striking contrast to the wild sublimity of the opposite craggy heights. the blue and distant ocean terminated the view. in a short time the cavalier returned, conducting two ladies of a very engaging appearance, whom he presented as his wife and sister. they welcomed julia with graceful kindness; but fatigue soon obliged her to retire to rest, and a consequent indisposition increased so rapidly, as to render it impracticable for her to quit her present abode on that day. the captain and his men proceeded on their way, leaving ferdinand and julia at the villa, where she experienced every kind and tender affection. the day which was to have devoted julia to a cloister, was ushered in at the abbey with the usual ceremonies. the church was ornamented, and all the inhabitants of the monastery prepared to attend. the _padre abate_ now exulted in the success of his scheme, and anticipated, in imagination, the rage and vexation of the marquis, when he should discover that his daughter was lost to him for ever. the hour of celebration arrived, and he entered the church with a proud firm step, and with a countenance which depictured his inward triumph; he was proceeding to the high altar, when he was told that julia was no where to be found. astonishment for awhile suspended other emotions--he yet believed it impossible that she could have effected an escape, and ordered every part of the abbey to be searched--not forgetting the secret caverns belonging to the monastery, which wound beneath the woods. when the search was over, and he became convinced she was fled, the deep workings of his disappointed passions fermented into rage which exceeded all bounds. he denounced the most terrible judgments upon julia; and calling for madame de menon, charged her with having insulted her holy religion, in being accessary to the flight of julia. madame endured these reproaches with calm dignity, and preserved a steady silence, but she secretly determined to leave the monastery, and seek in another the repose which she could never hope to find in this. the report of julia's disappearance spread rapidly beyond the walls, and soon reached the ears of the marquis, who rejoiced in the circumstance, believing that she must now inevitably fall into his hands. after his people, in obedience to his orders, had carefully searched the surrounding woods and rocks, he withdrew them from the abbey; and having dispersed them various ways in search of julia, he returned to the castle of mazzini. here new vexation awaited him, for he now first learned that ferdinand had escaped from confinement. the mystery of julia's flight was now dissolved; for it was evident by whose means she had effected it, and the marquis issued orders to his people to secure ferdinand wherever he should be found. chapter xiii hippolitus, who had languished under a long and dangerous illness occasioned by his wounds, but heightened and prolonged by the distress of his mind, was detained in a small town in the coast of calabria, and was yet ignorant of the death of cornelia. he scarcely doubted that julia was now devoted to the duke, and this thought was at times poison to his heart. after his arrival in calabria, immediately on the recovery of his senses, he dispatched a servant back to the castle of mazzini, to gain secret intelligence of what had passed after his departure. the eagerness with which we endeavour to escape from misery, taught him to encourage a remote and romantic hope that julia yet lived for him. yet even this hope at length languished into despair, as the time elapsed which should have brought his servant from sicily. days and weeks passed away in the utmost anxiety to hippolitus, for still his emissary did not appear; and at last, concluding that he had been either seized by robbers, or discovered and detained by the marquis, the count sent off a second emissary to the castle of mazzini. by him he learned the news of julia's flight, and his heart dilated with joy; but it was suddenly checked when he heard the marquis had discovered her retreat in the abbey of st augustin. the wounds which still detained him in confinement, now became intolerable. julia might yet be lost to him for ever. but even his present state of fear and uncertainty was bliss compared with the anguish of despair, which his mind had long endured. as soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he quitted italy for sicily, in the design of visiting the monastery of st augustin, where it was possible julia might yet remain. that he might pass with the secrecy necessary to his plan, and escape the attacks of the marquis, he left his servants in calabria, and embarked alone. it was morning when he landed at a small port of sicily, and proceeded towards the abbey of st augustin. as he travelled, his imagination revolved the scenes of his early love, the distress of julia, and the sufferings of ferdinand, and his heart melted at the retrospect. he considered the probabilities of julia having found protection from her father in the pity of the _padre abate_; and even ventured to indulge himself in a flattering, fond anticipation of the moment when julia should again be restored to his sight. he arrived at the monastery, and his grief may easily be imagined, when he was informed of the death of his beloved sister, and of the flight of julia. he quitted st augustin's immediately, without even knowing that madame de menon was there, and set out for a town at some leagues distance, where he designed to pass the night. absorbed in the melancholy reflections which the late intelligence excited, he gave the reins to his horse, and journeyed on unmindful of his way. the evening was far advanced when he discovered that he had taken a wrong direction, and that he was bewildered in a wild and solitary scene. he had wandered too far from the road to hope to regain it, and he had beside no recollection of the objects left behind him. a choice of errors, only, lay before him. the view on his right hand exhibited high and savage mountains, covered with heath and black fir; and the wild desolation of their aspect, together with the dangerous appearance of the path that wound up their sides, and which was the only apparent track they afforded, determined hippolitus not to attempt their ascent. on his left lay a forest, to which the path he was then in led; its appearance was gloomy, but he preferred it to the mountains; and, since he was uncertain of its extent, there was a possibility that he might pass it, and reach a village before the night was set in. at the worst, the forest would afford him a shelter from the winds; and, however he might be bewildered in its labyrinths, he could ascend a tree, and rest in security till the return of light should afford him an opportunity of extricating himself. among the mountains there was no possibility of meeting with other shelter than what the habitation of man afforded, and such a shelter there was little probability of finding. innumerable dangers also threatened him here, from which he would be secure on level ground. having determined which way to pursue, he pushed his horse into a gallop, and entered the forest as the last rays of the sun trembled on the mountains. the thick foliage of the trees threw a gloom around, which was every moment deepened by the shades of evening. the path was uninterrupted, and the count continued to follow it till all distinction was confounded in the veil of night. total darkness now made it impossible for him to pursue his way. he dismounted, and fastening his horse to a tree, climbed among the branches, purposing to remain there till morning. he had not been long in this situation, when a confused sound of voices from a distance roused his attention. the sound returned at intervals for some time, but without seeming to approach. he descended from the tree, that he might the better judge of the direction whence it came; but before he reached the ground, the noise was ceased, and all was profoundly silent. he continued to listen, but the silence remaining undisturbed, he began to think he had been deceived by the singing of the wind among the leaves; and was preparing to reascend, when he perceived a faint light glimmer through the foliage from afar. the sight revived a hope that he was near some place of human habitation; he therefore unfastened his horse, and led him towards the spot whence the ray issued. the moon was now risen, and threw a checkered gleam over his path sufficient to direct him. before he had proceeded far the light disappeared. he continued, however, his way as nearly as he could guess, towards the place whence it had issued; and after much toil, found himself in a spot where the trees formed a circle round a kind of rude lawn. the moonlight discovered to him an edifice which appeared to have been formerly a monastery, but which now exhibited a pile of ruins, whose grandeur, heightened by decay, touched the beholder with reverential awe. hippolitus paused to gaze upon the scene; the sacred stillness of night increased its effect, and a secret dread, he knew not wherefore, stole upon his heart. the silence and the character of the place made him doubt whether this was the spot he had been seeking; and as he stood hesitating whether to proceed or to return, he observed a figure standing under an arch-way of the ruin; it carried a light in its hand, and passing silently along, disappeared in a remote part of the building. the courage of hippolitus for a moment deserted him. an invincible curiosity, however, subdued his terror, and he determined to pursue, if possible, the way the figure had taken. he passed over loose stones through a sort of court till he came to the archway; here he stopped, for fear returned upon him. resuming his courage, however, he went on, still endeavouring to follow the way the figure had passed, and suddenly found himself in an enclosed part of the ruin, whose appearance was more wild and desolate than any he had yet seen. seized with unconquerable apprehension, he was retiring, when the low voice of a distressed person struck his ear. his heart sunk at the sound, his limbs trembled, and he was utterly unable to move. the sound which appeared to be the last groan of a dying person, was repeated. hippolitus made a strong effort, and sprang forward, when a light burst upon him from a shattered casement of the building, and at the same instant he heard the voices of men! he advanced softly to the window, and beheld in a small room, which was less decayed than the rest of the edifice, a group of men, who, from the savageness of their looks, and from their dress, appeared to be banditti. they surrounded a man who lay on the ground wounded, and bathed in blood, and who it was very evident had uttered the groans heard by the count. the obscurity of the place prevented hippolitus from distinguishing the features of the dying man. from the blood which covered him, and from the surrounding circumstances, he appeared to be murdered; and the count had no doubt that the men he beheld were the murderers. the horror of the scene entirely overcame him; he stood rooted to the spot, and saw the assassins rifle the pockets of the dying person, who, in a voice scarcely articulate, but which despair seemed to aid, supplicated for mercy. the ruffians answered him only with execrations, and continued their plunder. his groans and his sufferings served only to aggravate their cruelty. they were proceeding to take from him a miniature picture, which was fastened round his neck, and had been hitherto concealed in his bosom; when by a sudden effort he half raised himself from the ground, and attempted to save it from their hands. the effort availed him nothing; a blow from one of the villains laid the unfortunate man on the floor without motion. the horrid barbarity of the act seized the mind of hippolitus so entirely, that, forgetful of his own situation, he groaned aloud, and started with an instantaneous design of avenging the deed. the noise he made alarmed the banditti, who looking whence it came, discovered the count through the casement. they instantly quitted their prize, and rushed towards the door of the room. he was now returned to a sense of his danger, and endeavoured to escape to the exterior part of the ruin; but terror bewildered his senses, and he mistook his way. instead of regaining the arch-way, he perplexed himself with fruitless wanderings, and at length found himself only more deeply involved in the secret recesses of the pile. the steps of his pursuers gained fast upon him, and he continued to perplex himself with vain efforts at escape, till at length, quite exhausted, he sunk on the ground, and endeavoured to resign himself to his fate. he listened with a kind of stern despair, and was surprised to find all silent. on looking round, he perceived by a ray of moonlight, which streamed through a part of the ruin from above, that he was in a sort of vault, which, from the small means he had of judging, he thought was extensive. in this situation he remained for a considerable time, ruminating on the means of escape, yet scarcely believing escape was possible. if he continued in the vault, he might continue there only to be butchered; but by attempting to rescue himself from the place he was now in, he must rush into the hands of the banditti. judging it, therefore, the safer way of the two to remain where he was, he endeavoured to await his fate with fortitude, when suddenly the loud voices of the murderers burst upon his ear, and he heard steps advancing quickly towards the spot where he lay. despair instantly renewed his vigour; he started from the ground, and throwing round him a look of eager desperation, his eye caught the glimpse of a small door, upon which the moon-beam now fell. he made towards it, and passed it just as the light of a torch gleamed upon the walls of the vault. he groped his way along a winding passage, and at length came to a flight of steps. notwithstanding the darkness, he reached the bottom in safety. he now for the first time stopped to listen--the sounds of pursuit were ceased, and all was silent! continuing to wander on in effectual endeavours to escape, his hands at length touched cold iron, and he quickly perceived it belonged to a door. the door, however, was fastened, and resisted all his efforts to open it. he was giving up the attempt in despair, when a loud scream from within, followed by a dead and heavy noise, roused all his attention. silence ensued. he listened for a considerable time at the door, his imagination filled with images of horror, and expecting to hear the sound repeated. he then sought for a decayed part of the door, through which he might discover what was beyond; but he could find none; and after waiting some time without hearing any farther noise, he was quitting the spot, when in passing his arm over the door, it struck against something hard. on examination he perceived, to his extreme surprize, that the key was in the lock. for a moment he hesitated what to do; but curiosity overcame other considerations, and with a trembling hand he turned the key. the door opened into a large and desolate apartment, dimly lighted by a lamp that stood on a table, which was almost the only furniture of the place. the count had advanced several steps before he perceived an object, which fixed all his attention. this was the figure of a young woman lying on the floor apparently dead. her face was concealed in her robe; and the long auburn tresses which fell in beautiful luxuriance over her bosom, served to veil a part of the glowing beauty which the disorder of her dress would have revealed. pity, surprize, and admiration struggled in the breast of hippolitus; and while he stood surveying the object which excited these different emotions, he heard a step advancing towards the room. he flew to the door by which he had entered, and was fortunate enough to reach it before the entrance of the persons whose steps he heard. having turned the key, he stopped at the door to listen to their proceedings. he distinguished the voices of two men, and knew them to be those of the assassins. presently he heard a piercing skriek, and at the same instant the voices of the ruffians grew loud and violent. one of them exclaimed that the lady was dying, and accused the other of having frightened her to death, swearing, with horrid imprecations, that she was his, and he would defend her to the last drop of his blood. the dispute grew higher; and neither of the ruffians would give up his claim to the unfortunate object of their altercation. the clashing of swords was soon after heard, together with a violent noise. the screams were repeated, and the oaths and execrations of the disputants redoubled. they seemed to move towards the door, behind which hippolitus was concealed; suddenly the door was shook with great force, a deep groan followed, and was instantly succeeded by a noise like that of a person whose whole weight falls at once to the ground. for a moment all was silent. hippolitus had no doubt that one of the ruffians had destroyed the other, and was soon confirmed in the belief--for the survivor triumphed with brutal exultation over his fallen antagonist. the ruffian hastily quitted the room, and hippolitus soon after heard the distant voices of several persons in loud dispute. the sounds seemed to come from a chamber over the place where he stood; he also heard a trampling of feet from above, and could even distinguish, at intervals, the words of the disputants. from these he gathered enough to learn that the affray which had just happened, and the lady who had been the occasion of it, were the subjects of discourse. the voices frequently rose together, and confounded all distinction. at length the tumult began to subside, and hippolitus could distinguish what was said. the ruffians agreed to give up the lady in question to him who had fought for her; and leaving him to his prize, they all went out in quest of farther prey. the situation of the unfortunate lady excited a mixture of pity and indignation in hippolitus, which for some time entirely occupied him; he revolved the means of extricating her from so deplorable a situation, and in these thoughts almost forgot his own danger. he now heard her sighs; and while his heart melted to the sounds, the farther door of the apartment was thrown open, and the wretch to whom she had been allotted, rushed in. her screams now redoubled, but they were of no avail with the ruffian who had seized her in his arms; when the count, who was unarmed, insensible to every pulse but that of a generous pity, burst into the room, but became fixed like a statue when he beheld his julia struggling in the grasp of the ruffian. on discovering hippolitus, she made a sudden spring, and liberated herself; when, running to him, she sunk lifeless in his arms. surprise and fury sparkled in the eyes of the ruffian, and he turned with a savage desperation upon the count; who, relinquishing julia, snatched up the sword of the dead ruffian, which lay upon the floor, and defended himself. the combat was furious, but hippolitus laid his antagonist senseless at his feet. he flew to julia, who now revived, but who for some time could speak only by her tears. the transitions of various and rapid sensations, which her heart experienced, and the strangely mingled emotions of joy and terror that agitated hippolitus, can only be understood by experience. he raised her from the floor, and endeavoured to soothe her to composure, when she called wildly upon ferdinand. at his name the count started, and he instantly remembered the dying cavalier, whose countenance the glooms had concealed from his view. his heart thrilled with secret agony, yet he resolved to withhold his terrible conjectures from julia, of whom he learned that ferdinand, with herself, had been taken by banditti in the way from the villa which had offered them so hospitable a reception after the shipwreck. they were on the road to a port whence they designed again to embark for italy, when this misfortune overtook them. julia added, that ferdinand had been immediately separated from her; and that, for some hours, she had been confined in the apartment where hippolitus found her. the count with difficulty concealed his terrible apprehensions for ferdinand, and vainly strove to soften julia's distress. but there was no time to be lost--they had yet to find a way out of the edifice, and before they could accomplish this, the banditti might return. it was also possible that some of the party were left to watch this their abode during the absence of the rest, and this was another circumstance of reasonable alarm. after some little consideration, hippolitus judged it most prudent to seek an outlet through the passage by which he entered; he therefore took the lamp, and led julia to the door. they entered the avenue, and locking the door after them, sought the flight of steps down which the count had before passed; but having pursued the windings of the avenue a considerable time without finding them, he became certain he had mistaken the way. they, however, found another flight, which they descended and entered upon a passage so very narrow and low, as not to admit of a person walking upright. this passage was closed by a door, which on examination was found to be chiefly of iron. hippolitus was startled at the sight, but on applying his strength found it gradually yield, when the imprisoned air rushed out, and had nearly extinguished the light. they now entered upon a dark abyss; and the door which moved upon a spring, suddenly closed upon them. on looking round they beheld a large vault; and it is not easy to imagine their horror on discovering they were in a receptacle for the murdered bodies of the unfortunate people who had fallen into the hands of the banditti. the count could scarcely support the fainting spirits of julia; he ran to the door, which he endeavoured to open, but the lock was so constructed that it could be moved only on the other side, and all his efforts were useless. he was constrained, therefore, to seek for another door, but could find none. their situation was the most deplorable that can be imagined; for they were now inclosed in a vault strewn with the dead bodies of the murdered, and must there become the victims of famine, or of the sword. the earth was in several places thrown up, and marked the boundaries of new-made graves. the bodies which remained unburied were probably left either from hurry or negligence, and exhibited a spectacle too shocking for humanity. the sufferings of hippolitus were increased by those of julia, who was sinking with horror, and who he endeavoured to support to apart of the vault which fell into a recess--where stood a bench. they had not been long in this situation, when they heard a noise which approached gradually, and which did not appear to come from the avenue they had passed. the noise increased, and they could distinguish voices. hippolitus believed the murderers were returned; that they had traced his retreat, and were coming towards the vault by some way unknown to him. he prepared for the worst--and drawing his sword, resolved to defend julia to the last. their apprehension, however, was soon dissipated by a trampling of horses, which sound had occasioned his alarm, and which now seemed to come from a courtyard above, extremely near the vault. he distinctly heard the voices of the banditti, together with the moans and supplications of some person, whom it was evident they were about to plunder. the sound appeared so very near, that hippolitus was both shocked and surprised; and looking round the vault, he perceived a small grated window placed very high in the wall, which he concluded overlooked the place where the robbers were assembled. he recollected that his light might betray him; and horrible as was the alternative, he was compelled to extinguish it. he now attempted to climb to the grate, through which he might obtain a view of what was passing without. this at length he effected, for the ruggedness of the wall afforded him a footing. he beheld in a ruinous court, which was partially illuminated by the glare of torches, a group of banditti surrounding two persons who were bound on horseback, and who were supplicating for mercy. one of the robbers exclaiming with an oath that this was a golden night, bade his comrades dispatch, adding he would go to find paulo and the lady. the effect which the latter part of this sentence had upon the prisoners in the vault, may be more easily imagined than described. they were now in total darkness in this mansion of the murdered, without means of escape, and in momentary expectation of sharing a fate similar to that of the wretched objects around them. julia, overcome with distress and terror, sunk on the ground; and hippolitus, descending from the grate, became insensible of his own danger in his apprehension for her. in a short time all without was confusion and uproar; the ruffian who had left the court returned with the alarm that the lady was fled, and that paulo was murdered, the robbers quitting their booty to go in search of the fugitive, and to discover the murderer, dreadful vociferations resounded through every recess of the pile. the tumult had continued a considerable time, which the prisoners had passed in a state of horrible suspence, when they heard the uproar advancing towards the vault, and soon after a number of voices shouted down the avenue. the sound of steps quickened. hippolitus again drew his sword, and placed himself opposite the entrance, where he had not stood long, when a violent push was made against the door; it flew open, and a party of men rushed into the vault. hippolitus kept his position, protesting he would destroy the first who approached. at the sound of his voice they stopped; but presently advancing, commanded him in the king's name to surrender. he now discovered what his agitation had prevented him from observing sooner, that the men before him were not banditti, but the officers of justice. they had received information of this haunt of villainy from the son of a sicilian nobleman, who had fallen into the hands of the banditti, and had afterwards escaped from their power. the officers came attended by a guard, and were every way prepared to prosecute a strenuous search through these horrible recesses. hippolitus inquired for ferdinand, and they all quitted the vault in search of him. in the court, to which they now ascended, the greater part of the banditti were secured by a number of the guard. the count accused the robbers of having secreted his friend, whom he described, and demanded to have liberated. with one voice they denied the fact, and were resolute in persisting that they knew nothing of the person described. this denial confirmed hippolitus in his former terrible surmise; that the dying cavalier, whom he had seen, was no other than ferdinand, and he became furious. he bade the officers prosecute their search, who, leaving a guard over the banditti they had secured, followed him to the room where the late dreadful scene had been acted. the room was dark and empty; but the traces of blood were visible on the floor; and julia, though ignorant of the particular apprehension of hippolitus, almost swooned at the sight. on quitting the room, they wandered for some time among the ruins, without discovering any thing extraordinary, till, in passing under the arch-way by which hippolitus had first entered the building, their footsteps returned a deep sound, which convinced them that the ground beneath was hollow. on close examination, they perceived by the light of their torch, a trapdoor, which with some difficulty they lifted, and discovered beneath a narrow flight of steps. they all descended into a low winding passage, where they had not been long, when they heard a trampling of horses above, and a loud and sudden uproar. the officers apprehending that the banditti had overcome the guard, rushed back to the trapdoor, which they had scarcely lifted, when they heard a clashing of swords, and a confusion of unknown voices. looking onward, they beheld through the arch, in an inner sort of court, a large party of banditti who were just arrived, rescuing their comrades, and contending furiously with the guard. on observing this, several of the officers sprang forward to the assistance of their friends; and the rest, subdued by cowardice, hurried down the steps, letting the trapdoor fall after them with a thundering noise. they gave notice to hippolitus of what was passing above, who hurried julia along the passage in search of some outlet or place of concealment. they could find neither, and had not long pursued the windings of the way, when they heard the trapdoor lifted, and the steps of persons descending. despair gave strength to julia, and winged her flight. but they were now stopped by a door which closed the passage, and the sound of distant voices murmured along the walls. the door was fastened by strong iron bolts, which hippolitus vainly endeavoured to draw. the voices drew near. after much labour and difficulty the bolts yielded--the door unclosed--and light dawned upon them through the mouth of a cave, into which they now entered. on quitting the cave they found themselves in the forest, and in a short time reached the borders. they now ventured to stop, and looking back perceived no person in pursuit. chapter xiv when julia had rested, they followed the track before them, and in a short time arrived at a village, where they obtained security and refreshment. but julia, whose mind was occupied with dreadful anxiety for ferdinand, became indifferent to all around her. even the presence of hippolitus, which but lately would have raised her from misery to joy, failed to soothe her distress. the steady and noble attachment of her brother had sunk deep in her heart, and reflection only aggravated her affliction. yet the banditti had steadily persisted in affirming that he was not concealed in their recesses; and this circumstance, which threw a deeper shade over the fears of hippolitus, imparted a glimmering of hope to the mind of julia. a more immediate interest at length forced her mind from this sorrowful subject. it was necessary to determine upon some line of conduct, for she was now in an unknown spot, and ignorant of any place of refuge. the count, who trembled at the dangers which environed her, and at the probabilities he saw of her being torn from him for ever, suffered a consideration of them to overcome the dangerous delicacy which at this mournful period required his silence. he entreated her to destroy the possibility of separation, by consenting to become his immediately. he urged that a priest could be easily procured from a neighboring convent, who would confirm the bonds which had so long united their hearts, and who would thus at once arrest the destiny that so long had threatened his hopes. this proposal, though similar to the one she had before accepted; and though the certain means of rescuing her from the fate she dreaded, she now turned from in sorrow and dejection. she loved hippolitus with a steady and tender affection, which was still heightened by the gratitude he claimed as her deliverer; but she considered it a prophanation of the memory of that brother who had suffered so much for her sake, to mingle joy with the grief which her uncertainty concerning him occasioned. she softened her refusal with a tender grace, that quickly dissipated the jealous doubt arising in the mind of hippolitus, and increased his fond admiration of her character. she desired to retire for a time to some obscure convent, there to await the issue of the event, which at present involved her in perplexity and sorrow. hippolitus struggled with his feelings and forbore to press farther the suit on which his happiness, and almost his existence, now depended. he inquired at the village for a neighbouring convent, and was told, that there was none within twelve leagues, but that near the town of palini, at about that distance, were two. he procured horses; and leaving the officers to return to palermo for a stronger guard, he, accompanied by julia, entered on the road to palini. julia was silent and thoughtful; hippolitus gradually sunk into the same mood, and he often cast a cautious look around as they travelled for some hours along the feet of the mountains. they stopped to dine under the shade of some beach-trees; for, fearful of discovery, hippolitus had provided against the necessity of entering many inns. having finished their repast, they pursued their journey; but hippolitus now began to doubt whether he was in the right direction. being destitute, however, of the means of certainty upon this point, he followed the road before him, which now wound up the side of a steep hill, whence they descended into a rich valley, where the shepherd's pipe sounded sweetly from afar among the hills. the evening sun shed a mild and mellow lustre over the landscape, and softened each feature with a vermil glow that would have inspired a mind less occupied than julia's with sensations of congenial tranquillity. the evening now closed in; and as they were doubtful of the road, and found it would be impossible to reach palini that night, they took the way to a village, which they perceived at the extremity of the valley. they had proceeded about half a mile, when they heard a sudden shout of voices echoed from among the hills behind them; and looking back perceived faintly through the dusk a party of men on horseback making towards them. as they drew nearer, the words they spoke were distinguishable, and julia heard her own name sounded. shocked at this circumstance, she had now no doubt that she was discovered by a party of her father's people, and she fled with hippolitus along the valley. the pursuers, however, were almost come up with them, when they reached the mouth of a cavern, into which she ran for concealment. hippolitus drew his sword; and awaiting his enemies, stood to defend the entrance. in a few moments julia heard the clashing of swords. her heart trembled for hippolitus; and she was upon the point of returning to resign herself at once to the power of her enemies, and thus avert the danger that threatened him, when she distinguished the loud voice of the duke. she shrunk involuntarily at the sound, and pursuing the windings of the cavern, fled into its inmost recesses. here she had not been long when the voices sounded through the cave, and drew near. it was now evident that hippolitus was conquered, and that her enemies were in search of her. she threw round a look of unutterable anguish, and perceived very near, by a sudden gleam of torchlight, a low and deep recess in the rock. the light which belonged to her pursuers, grew stronger; and she entered the rock on her knees, for the overhanging craggs would not suffer her to pass otherwise; and having gone a few yards, perceived that it was terminated by a door. the door yielded to her touch, and she suddenly found herself in a highly vaulted cavern, which received a feeble light from the moon-beams that streamed through an opening in the rock above. she closed the door, and paused to listen. the voices grew louder, and more distinct, and at last approached so near, that she distinguished what was said. above the rest she heard the voice of the duke. 'it is impossible she can have quitted the cavern,' said he, 'and i will not leave it till i have found her. seek to the left of that rock, while i examine beyond this point.' these words were sufficient for julia; she fled from the door across the cavern before her, and having ran a considerable way, without coming to a termination, stopped to breathe. all was now still, and as she looked around, the gloomy obscurity of the place struck upon her fancy all its horrors. she imperfectly surveyed the vastness of the cavern in wild amazement, and feared that she had precipitated herself again into the power of banditti, for whom along this place appeared a fit receptacle. having listened a long time without hearing a return of voices, she thought to find the door by which she had entered, but the gloom, and vast extent of the cavern, made the endeavour hopeless, and the attempt unsuccessful. having wandered a considerable time through the void, she gave up the effort, endeavoured to resign herself to her fate, and to compose her distracted thoughts. the remembrance of her former wonderful escape inspired her with confidence in the mercy of god. but hippolitus and ferdinand were now both lost to her--lost, perhaps, for ever--and the uncertainty of their fate gave force to fancy, and poignancy to sorrow. towards morning grief yielded to nature, and julia sunk to repose. she was awakened by the sun, whose rays darting obliquely through the opening in the rock, threw a partial light across the cavern. her senses were yet bewildered by sleep, and she started in affright on beholding her situation; as recollection gradually stole upon her mind, her sorrows returned, and she sickened at the fatal retrospect. she arose, and renewed her search for an outlet. the light, imperfect as it was, now assisted her, and she found a door, which she perceived was not the one by which she had entered. it was firmly fastened; she discovered, however, the bolts and the lock that held it, and at length unclosed the door. it opened upon a dark passage, which she entered. she groped along the winding walls for some time, when she perceived the way was obstructed. she now discovered that another door interrupted her progress, and sought for the bolts which might fasten it. these she found; and strengthened by desparation forced them back. the door opened, and she beheld in a small room, which received its feeble light from a window above, the pale and emaciated figure of a woman, seated, with half-closed eyes, in a kind of elbow-chair. on perceiving julia, she started from her seat, and her countenance expressed a wild surprise. her features, which were worn by sorrow, still retained the traces of beauty, and in her air was a mild dignity that excited in julia an involuntary veneration. she seemed as if about to speak, when fixing her eyes earnestly and steadily upon julia, she stood for a moment in eager gaze, and suddenly exclaiming, 'my daughter!' fainted away. the astonishment of julia would scarcely suffer her to assist the lady who lay senseless on the floor. a multitude of strange imperfect ideas rushed upon her mind, and she was lost in perplexity; but as she examined the features of the stranger; which were now rekindling into life, she thought she discovered the resemblance of emilia! the lady breathing a deep sigh, unclosed her eyes; she raised them to julia, who hung over her in speechless astonishment, and fixing them upon her with a tender earnest expression--they filled with tears. she pressed julia to her heart, and a few moments of exquisite, unutterable emotion followed. when the lady became more composed, 'thank heaven!' said she, 'my prayer is granted. i am permitted to embrace one of my children before i die. tell me what brought you hither. has the marquis at last relented, and allowed me once more to behold you, or has his death dissolved my wretched bondage?' truth now glimmered upon the mind of julia, but so faintly, that instead of enlightening, it served only to increase her perplexity. 'is the marquis mazzini living?' continued the lady. these words were not to be doubted; julia threw herself at the feet of her mother, and embracing her knees in an energy of joy, answered only in sobs. the marchioness eagerly inquired after her children, 'emilia is living,' answered julia, 'but my dear brother--' 'tell me,' cried the marchioness, with quickness. an explanation ensued; when she was informed concerning ferdinand, she sighed deeply, and raising her eyes to heaven, endeavoured to assume a look of pious resignation; but the struggle of maternal feelings was visible in her countenance, and almost overcame her powers of resistance. julia gave a short account of the preceding adventures, and of her entrance into the cavern; and found, to her inexpressible surprize, that she was now in a subterranean abode belonging to the southern buildings of the castle of mazzini! the marchioness was beginning her narrative, when a door was heard to unlock above, and the sound of a footstep followed. 'fly!' cried the marchioness, 'secret yourself, if possible, for the marquis is coming.' julia's heart sunk at these words; she paused not a moment, but retired through the door by which she had entered. this she had scarcely done, when another door of the cell was unlocked, and she heard the voice of her father. its sounds thrilled her with a universal tremour; the dread of discovery so strongly operated upon her mind, that she stood in momentary expectation of seeing the door of the passage unclosed by the marquis; and she was deprived of all power of seeking refuge in the cavern. at length the marquis, who came with food, quitted the cell, and relocked the door, when julia stole forth from her hiding-place. the marchioness again embraced, and wept over her daughter. the narrative of her sufferings, upon which she now entered, entirely dissipated the mystery which had so long enveloped the southern buildings of the castle. 'oh! why,' said the marchioness, 'is it my task to discover to my daughter the vices of her father? in relating my sufferings, i reveal his crimes! it is now about fifteen years, as near as i can guess from the small means i have of judging, since i entered this horrible abode. my sorrows, alas! began not here; they commenced at an earlier period. but it is sufficient to observe, that the passion whence originated all my misfortunes, was discovered by me long before i experienced its most baleful effects. 'seven years had elapsed since my marriage, when the charms of maria de vellorno, a young lady singularly beautiful, inspired the marquis with a passion as violent as it was irregular. i observed, with deep and silent anguish, the cruel indifference of my lord towards me, and the rapid progress of his passion for another. i severely examined my past conduct, which i am thankful to say presented a retrospect of only blameless actions; and i endeavoured, by meek submission, and tender assiduities, to recall that affection which was, alas! gone for ever. my meek submission was considered as a mark of a servile and insensible mind; and my tender assiduities, to which his heart no longer responded, created only disgust, and exalted the proud spirit it was meant to conciliate. 'the secret grief which this change occasioned, consumed my spirits, and preyed upon my constitution, till at length a severe illness threatened my life. i beheld the approach of death with a steady eye, and even welcomed it as the passport to tranquillity; but it was destined that i should linger through new scenes of misery. 'one day, which it appears was the paroxysm of my disorder, i sunk in to a state of total torpidity, in which i lay for several hours. it is impossible to describe my feelings, when, on recovering, i found myself in this hideous abode. for some time i doubted my senses, and afterwards believed that i had quitted this world for another; but i was not long suffered to continue in my error, the appearance of the marquis bringing me to a perfect sense of my situation. 'i now understood that i had been conveyed by his direction to this recess of horror, where it was his will i should remain. my prayers, my supplications, were ineffectual; the hardness of his heart repelled my sorrows back upon myself; and as no entreaties could prevail upon him to inform me where i was, or of his reason for placing me here, i remained for many years ignorant of my vicinity to the castle, and of the motive of my confinement. 'from that fatal day, until very lately, i saw the marquis no more--but was attended by a person who had been for some years dependant upon his bounty, and whom necessity, united to an insensible heart, had doubtless induced to accept this office. he generally brought me a week's provision, at stated intervals, and i remarked that his visits were always in the night. 'contrary to my expectation, or my wish, nature did that for me which medicine had refused, and i recovered as if to punish with disappointment and anxiety my cruel tyrant. i afterwards learned, that in obedience to the marquis's order, i had been carried to this spot by vincent during the night, and that i had been buried in effigy at a neighbouring church, with all the pomp of funeral honor due to my rank.' at the name of vincent julia started; the doubtful words he had uttered on his deathbed were now explained--the cloud of mystery which had so long involved the southern buildings broke at once away: and each particular circumstance that had excited her former terror, arose to her view entirely unveiled by the words of the marchioness.--the long and total desertion of this part of the fabric--the light that had appeared through the casement--the figure she had seen issue from the tower--the midnight noises she had heard--were circumstances evidently dependant on the imprisonment of the marchioness; the latter of which incidents were produced either by vincent, or the marquis, in their attendance upon her. when she considered the long and dreadful sufferings of her mother, and that she had for many years lived so near her, ignorant of her misery, and even of her existence--she was lost in astonishment and pity. 'my days,' continued the marchioness, 'passed in a dead uniformity, more dreadful than the most acute vicissitudes of misfortune, and which would certainly have subdued my reason, had not those firm principles of religious faith, which i imbibed in early youth, enabled me to withstand the still, but forceful pressure of my calamity. 'the insensible heart of vincent at length began to soften to my misfortunes. he brought me several articles of comfort, of which i had hitherto been destitute, and answered some questions i put to him concerning my family. to release me from my present situation, however his inclination might befriend me, was not to be expected, since his life would have paid the forfeiture of what would be termed his duty. 'i now first discovered my vicinity to the castle. i learned also, that the marquis had married maria de vellorno, with whom he had resided at naples, but that my daughters were left at mazzini. this last intelligence awakened in my heart the throbs of warm maternal tenderness, and on my knees i supplicated to see them. so earnestly i entreated, and so solemnly i promised to return quietly to my prison, that, at length, prudence yielded to pity, and vincent consented to my request. 'on the following day he came to the cell, and informed me my children were going into the woods, and that i might see them from a window near which they would pass. my nerves thrilled at these words, and i could scarcely support myself to the spot i so eagerly sought. he led me through long and intricate passages, as i guessed by the frequent turnings, for my eyes were bound, till i reached a hall of the south buildings. i followed to a room above, where the full light of day once more burst upon my sight, and almost overpowered me. vincent placed me by a window, which looked towards the woods. oh! what moments of painful impatience were those in which i awaited your arrival! 'at length you appeared. i saw you--i saw my children--and was neither permitted to clasp them to my heart, or to speak to them! you was leaning on the arm of your sister, and your countenances spoke the sprightly happy innocence of youth.--alas! you knew not the wretched fate of your mother, who then gazed upon you! although you were at too great a distance for my weak voice to reach you, with the utmost difficulty i avoided throwing open the window, and endeavouring to discover myself. the remembrance of my solemn promise, and that the life of vincent would be sacrificed by the act, alone restrained me. i struggled for some time with emotions too powerful for my nature, and fainted away. 'on recovering i called wildly for my children, and went to the window--but you were gone! not all the entreaties of vincent could for some time remove me from this station, where i waited in the fond expectation of seeing you again--but you appeared no more! at last i returned to my cell in an ecstasy of grief which i tremble even to remember. 'this interview, so eagerly sought, and so reluctantly granted, proved a source of new misery--instead of calming, it agitated my mind with a restless, wild despair, which bore away my strongest powers of resistance. i raved incessantly of my children, and incessantly solicited to see them again--vincent, however, had found but too much cause to repent of his first indulgence, to grant me a second. 'about this time a circumstance occurred which promised me a speedy release from calamity. about a week elapsed, and vincent did not appear. my little stock of provision was exhausted, and i had been two days without food, when i again heard the doors that led to my prison creek on their hinges. an unknown step approached, and in a few minutes the marquis entered my cell! my blood was chilled at the sight, and i closed my eyes as i hoped for the last time. the sound of his voice recalled me. his countenance was dark and sullen, and i perceived that he trembled. he informed me that vincent was no more, and that henceforward his office he should take upon himself. i forbore to reproach--where reproach would only have produced new sufferings, and withheld supplication where it would have exasperated conscience and inflamed revenge. my knowledge of the marquis's second marriage i concealed. 'he usually attended me when night might best conceal his visits; though these were irregular in their return. lately, from what motive i cannot guess, he has ceased his nocturnal visits, and comes only in the day. 'once when midnight increased the darkness of my prison, and seemed to render silence even more awful, touched by the sacred horrors of the hour, i poured forth my distress in loud lamentation. oh! never can i forget what i felt, when i heard a distant voice answered to my moan! a wild surprize, which was strangely mingled with hope, seized me, and in my first emotion i should have answered the call, had not a recollection crossed me, which destroyed at once every half-raised sensation of joy. i remembered the dreadful vengeance which the marquis had sworn to execute upon me, if i ever, by any means, endeavoured to make known the place of my concealment; and though life had long been a burden to me, i dared not to incur the certainty of being murdered. i also well knew that no person who might discover my situation could effect my enlargement, for i had no relations to deliver me by force; and the marquis, you know, has not only power to imprison, but also the right of life and death in his own domains; i, therefore, forbore to answer the call, though i could not entirely repress my lamentation. i long perplexed myself with endeavouring to account for this strange circumstance, and am to this moment ignorant of its cause.' julia remembering that ferdinand had been confined in a dungeon of the castle, it instantly occurred to her that his prison, and that of the marchioness, were not far distant; and she scrupled not to believe that it was his voice which her mother had heard. she was right in this belief, and it was indeed the marchioness whose groans had formerly caused ferdinand so much alarm, both in the marble hall of the south buildings, and in his dungeon. when julia communicated her opinion, and the marchioness believed that she had heard the voice of her son--her emotion was extreme, and it was some time before she could resume her narration. 'a short time since,' continued the marchioness, 'the marquis brought me a fortnight's provision, and told me that i should probably see him no more till the expiration of that term. his absence at this period you have explained in your account of the transactions at the abbey of st augustin. how can i ever sufficiently acknowledge the obligations i owe to my dear and invaluable friend madame de menon! oh! that it might be permitted me to testify my gratitude.' julia attended to the narrative of her mother in silent astonishment, and gave all the sympathy which sorrow could demand. 'surely,' cried she, 'the providence on whom you have so firmly relied, and whose inflictions you have supported with a fortitude so noble, has conducted me through a labyrinth of misfortunes to this spot, for the purpose of delivering you! oh! let us hasten to fly this horrid abode--let us seek to escape through the cavern by which i entered.' she paused in earnest expectation awaiting a reply. 'whither can i fly?' said the marchioness, deeply sighing. this question, spoken with the emphasis of despair, affected julia to tears, and she was for a while silent. 'the marquis,' resumed julia, 'would not know where to seek you, or if he found you beyond his own domains, would fear to claim you. a convent may afford for the present a safe asylum; and whatever shall happen, surely no fate you may hereafter encounter can be more dreadful than the one you now experience.' the marchioness assented to the truth of this, yet her broken spirits, the effect of long sorrow and confinement, made her hesitate how to act; and there was a kind of placid despair in her look, which too faithfully depicted her feelings. it was obvious to julia that the cavern she had passed wound beneath the range of mountains on whose opposite side stood the castle of mazzini. the hills thus rising formed a screen which must entirely conceal their emergence from the mouth of the cave, and their flight, from those in the castle. she represented these circumstances to her mother, and urged them so forcibly that the lethargy of despair yielded to hope, and the marchioness committed herself to the conduct of her daughter. 'oh! let me lead you to light and life!' cried julia with warm enthusiasm. 'surely heaven can bless me with no greater good than by making me the deliverer of my mother.' they both knelt down; and the marchioness, with that affecting eloquence which true piety inspires, and with that confidence which had supported her through so many miseries, committed herself to the protection of god, and implored his favor on their attempt. they arose, but as they conversed farther on their plan, julia recollected that she was destitute of money--the banditti having robbed her of all! the sudden shock produced by this remembrance almost subdued her spirits; never till this moment had she understood the value of money. but she commanded her feelings, and resolved to conceal this circumstance from the marchioness, preferring the chance of any evil they might encounter from without, to the certain misery of this terrible imprisonment. having taken what provision the marquis had brought, they quitted the cell, and entered upon the dark passage, along which they passed with cautious steps. julia came first to the door of the cavern, but who can paint her distress when she found it was fastened! all her efforts to open it were ineffectual.--the door which had closed after her, was held by a spring lock, and could be opened on this side only with a key. when she understood this circumstance, the marchioness, with a placid resignation which seemed to exalt her above humanity, addressed herself again to heaven, and turned back to her cell. here julia indulged without reserve, and without scruple, the excess of her grief. the marchioness wept over her. 'not for myself,' said she, 'do i grieve. i have too long been inured to misfortune to sink under its pressure. this disappointment is intrinsically, perhaps, little--for i had no certain refuge from calamity--and had it even been otherwise, a few years only of suffering would have been spared me. it is for you, julia, who so much lament my fate; and who in being thus delivered to the power of your father, are sacrificed to the duke de luovo--that my heart swells.' julia could make no reply, but by pressing to her lips the hand which was held forth to her, she saw all the wretchedness of her situation; and her fearful uncertainty concerning hippolitus and ferdinand, formed no inferior part of her affliction. 'if,' resumed the marchioness, 'you prefer imprisonment with your mother, to a marriage with the duke, you may still secret yourself in the passage we have just quitted, and partake of the provision which is brought me.' 'o! talk not, madam, of a marriage with the duke,' said julia; 'surely any fate is preferable to that. but when i consider that in remaining here, i am condemned only to the sufferings which my mother has so long endured, and that this confinement will enable me to soften, by tender sympathy, the asperity of her misfortunes, i ought to submit to my present situation with complacency, even did a marriage with the duke appear less hateful to me.' 'excellent girl!' exclaimed the marchioness, clasping julia to her bosom; 'the sufferings you lament are almost repaid by this proof of your goodness and affection! alas! that i should have been so long deprived of such a daughter!' julia now endeavoured to imitate the fortitude of her mother, and tenderly concealed her anxiety for ferdinand and hippolitus, the idea of whom incessantly haunted her imagination. when the marquis brought food to the cell, she retired to the avenue leading to the cavern, and escaped discovery. chapter xv the marquis, meanwhile, whose indefatigable search after julia failed of success, was successively the slave of alternate passions, and he poured forth the spleen of disappointment on his unhappy domestics. the marchioness, who may now more properly be called maria de vellorno, inflamed, by artful insinuations, the passions already irritated, and heightened with cruel triumph his resentment towards julia and madame de menon. she represented, what his feelings too acutely acknowledged,--that by the obstinate disobedience of the first, and the machinations of the last, a priest had been enabled to arrest his authority as a father--to insult the sacred honor of his nobility--and to overturn at once his proudest schemes of power and ambition. she declared it her opinion, that the _abate_ was acquainted with the place of julia's present retreat, and upbraided the marquis with want of spirit in thus submitting to be outwitted by a priest, and forbearing an appeal to the pope, whose authority would compel the _abate_ to restore julia. this reproach stung the very soul of the marquis; he felt all its force, and was at the same time conscious of his inability to obviate it. the effect of his crimes now fell in severe punishment upon his own head. the threatened secret, which was no other than the imprisonment of the marchioness, arrested his arm of vengeance, and compelled him to submit to insult and disappointment. but the reproach of maria sunk deep in his mind; it fomented his pride into redoubled fury, and he now repelled with disdain the idea of submission. he revolved the means which might effect his purpose--he saw but one--this was the death of the marchioness. the commission of one crime often requires the perpetration of another. when once we enter on the ladyrinth of vice, we can seldom return, but are led on, through correspondent mazes, to destruction. to obviate the effect of his first crime, it was now necessary the marquis should commit a second, and conceal the _imprisonment_ of the marchioness by her _murder_. himself the only living witness of her existence, when she was removed, the allegations of the _padre abate_ would by this means be unsupported by any proof, and he might then boldly appeal to the pope for the restoration of his child. he mused upon this scheme, and the more he accustomed his mind to contemplate it, the less scrupulous he became. the crime from which he would formerly have shrunk, he now surveyed with a steady eye. the fury of his passions, unaccustomed to resistance, uniting with the force of what ambition termed necessity--urged him to the deed, and he determined upon the murder of his wife. the means of effecting his purpose were easy and various; but as he was not yet so entirely hardened as to be able to view her dying pangs, and embrue his own hands in her blood, he chose to dispatch her by means of poison, which he resolved to mingle in her food. but a new affliction was preparing for the marquis, which attacked him where he was most vulnerable; and the veil, which had so long overshadowed his reason, was now to be removed. he was informed by baptista of the infidelity of maria de vellorno. in the first emotion of passion, he spurned the informer from his presence, and disdained to believe the circumstance. a little reflection changed the object of his resentment; he recalled the servant, whose faithfulness he had no reason to distrust, and condescended to interrogate him on the subject of his misfortune. he learned that an intimacy had for some time subsisted between maria and the cavalier de vincini; and that the assignation was usually held at the pavilion on the sea-shore, in an evening. baptista farther declared, that if the marquis desired a confirmation of his words, he might obtain it by visiting this spot at the hour mentioned. this information lighted up the wildest passions of his nature; his former sufferings faded away before the stronger influence of the present misfortune, and it seemed as if he had never tasted misery till now. to suspect the wife upon whom he doated with romantic fondness, on whom he had centered all his firmest hopes of happiness, and for whose sake he had committed the crime which embittered even his present moment, and which would involve him in still deeper guilt--to find _her_ ungrateful to his love, and a traitoress to his honor--produced a misery more poignant than any his imagination had conceived. he was torn by contending passions, and opposite resolutions:--now he resolved to expiate her guilt with her blood--and now he melted in all the softness of love. vengeance and honor bade him strike to the heart which had betrayed him, and urged him instantly to the deed--when the idea of her beauty--her winning smiles--her fond endearments stole upon his fancy, and subdued his heart; he almost wept to the idea of injuring her, and in spight of appearances, pronounced her faithful. the succeeding moment plunged him again into uncertainty; his tortures acquired new vigour from cessation, and again he experienced all the phrenzy of despair. he was now resolved to end his doubts by repairing to the pavilion; but again his heart wavered in irresolution how to proceed should his fears be confirmed. in the mean time he determined to watch the behaviour of maria with severe vigilance. they met at dinner, and he observed her closely, but discovered not the smallest impropriety in her conduct. her smiles and her beauty again wound their fascinations round his heart, and in the excess of their influence he was almost tempted to repair the injury which his late suspicions had done her, by confessing them at her feet. the appearance of the cavalier de vincini, however, renewed his suspicions; his heart throbbed wildly, and with restless impatience he watched the return of evening, which would remove his suspence. night at length came. he repaired to the pavilion, and secreted himself among the trees that embowered it. many minutes had not passed, when he heard a sound of low whispering voices steal from among the trees, and footsteps approaching down the alley. he stood almost petrified with terrible sensations, and presently heard some persons enter the pavilion. the marquis now emerged from his hiding-place; a faint light issued from the building. he stole to the window, and beheld within, maria and the cavalier de vincini. fired at the sight, he drew his sword, and sprang forward. the sound of his step alarmed the cavalier, who, on perceiving the marquis, rushed by him from the pavilion, and disappeared among the woods. the marquis pursued, but could not overtake him; and he returned to the pavilion with an intention of plunging his sword in the heart of maria, when he discovered her senseless on the ground. pity now suspended his vengeance; he paused in agonizing gaze upon her, and returned his sword into the scabbard. she revived, but on observing the marquis, screamed and relapsed. he hastened to the castle for assistance, inventing, to conceal his disgrace, some pretence for her sudden illness, and she was conveyed to her chamber. the marquis was now not suffered to doubt her infidelity, but the passion which her conduct abused, her faithlessness could not subdue; he still doated with absurd fondness, and even regretted that uncertainty could no longer flatter him with hope. it seemed as if his desire of her affection increased with his knowledge of the loss of it; and the very circumstance which should have roused his aversion, by a strange perversity of disposition, appeared to heighten his passion, and to make him think it impossible he could exist without her. when the first energy of his indignation was subsided, he determined, therefore, to reprove and to punish, but hereafter to restore her to favor. in this resolution he went to her apartment, and reprehended her falsehood in terms of just indignation. maria de vellorno, in whom the late discovery had roused resentment, instead of awakening penitence; and exasperated pride without exciting shame--heard the upbraidings of the marquis with impatience, and replied to them with acrimonious violence. she boldly asserted her innocence, and instantly invented a story, the plausibility of which might have deceived a man who had evidence less certain than his senses to contradict it. she behaved with a haughtiness the most insolent; and when she perceived that the marquis was no longer to be misled, and that her violence failed to accomplish its purpose, she had recourse to tears and supplications. but the artifice was too glaring to succeed; and the marquis quitted her apartment in an agony of resentment. his former fascinations, however, quickly returned, and again held him in suspension between love and vengeance. that the vehemence of his passion, however, might not want an object, he ordered baptista to discover the retreat of the cavalier de vincini on whom he meant to revenge his lost honor. shame forbade him to employ others in the search. this discovery suspended for a while the operations of the fatal scheme, which had before employed the thoughts of the marquis; but it had only suspended--not destroyed them. the late occurrence had annihilated his domestic happiness; but his pride now rose to rescue him from despair, and he centered all his future hopes upon ambition. in a moment of cool reflection, he considered that he had derived neither happiness or content from the pursuit of dissipated pleasures, to which he had hitherto sacrificed every opposing consideration. he resolved, therefore, to abandon the gay schemes of dissipation which had formerly allured him, and dedicate himself entirely to ambition, in the pursuits and delights of which he hoped to bury all his cares. he therefore became more earnest than ever for the marriage of julia with the duke de luovo, through whose means he designed to involve himself in the interests of the state, and determined to recover her at whatever consequence. he resolved, without further delay, to appeal to the pope; but to do this with safety it was necessary that the marchioness should die; and he returned therefore to the consideration and execution of his diabolical purpose. he mingled a poisonous drug with the food he designed for her; and when night arrived, carried it to the cell. as he unlocked the door, his hand trembled; and when he presented the food, and looked consciously for the last time upon the marchioness, who received it with humble thankfulness, his heart almost relented. his countenance, over which was diffused the paleness of death, expressed the secret movements of his soul, and he gazed upon her with eyes of stiffened horror. alarmed by his looks, she fell upon her knees to supplicate his pity. her attitude recalled his bewildered senses; and endeavouring to assume a tranquil aspect, he bade her rise, and instantly quitted the cell, fearful of the instability of his purpose. his mind was not yet sufficiently hardened by guilt to repel the arrows of conscience, and his imagination responded to her power. as he passed through the long dreary passages from the prison, solemn and mysterious sounds seemed to speak in every murmur of the blast which crept along their windings, and he often started and looked back. he reached his chamber, and having shut the door, surveyed the room in fearful examination. ideal forms flitted before his fancy, and for the first time in his life he feared to be alone. shame only withheld him from calling baptista. the gloom of the hour, and the death-like silence that prevailed, assisted the horrors of his imagination. he half repented of the deed, yet deemed it now too late to obviate it; and he threw himself on his bed in terrible emotion. his head grew dizzy, and a sudden faintness overcame him; he hesitated, and at length arose to ring for assistance, but found himself unable to stand. in a few moments he was somewhat revived, and rang his bell; but before any person appeared, he was seized with terrible pains, and staggering to his bed, sunk senseless upon it. here baptista, who was the first person that entered his room, found him struggling seemingly in the agonies of death. the whole castle was immediately roused, and the confusion may be more easily imagined than described. emilia, amid the general alarm, came to her father's room, but the sight of him overcame her, and she was carried from his presence. by the help of proper applications the marquis recovered his senses and his pains had a short cessation. 'i am dying,' said he, in a faultering accent; 'send instantly for the marchioness and my son.' ferdinand, in escaping from the hands of the banditti, it was now seen, had fallen into the power of his father. he had been since confined in an apartment of the castle, and was now liberated to obey the summons. the countenance of the marquis exhibited a ghastly image; ferdinand, when he drew near the bed, suddenly shrunk back, overcome with horror. the marquis now beckoned his attendants to quit the room, and they were preparing to obey, when a violent noise was heard from without; almost in the same instant the door of the apartment was thrown open, and the servant, who had been sent for the marchioness, rushed in. his look alone declared the horror of his mind, for words he had none to utter. he stared wildly, and pointed to the gallery he had quitted. ferdinand, seized with new terror, rushed the way he pointed to the apartment of the marchioness. a spectacle of horror presented itself. maria lay on a couch lifeless, and bathed in blood. a poignard, the instrument of her destruction, was on the floor; and it appeared from a letter which was found on the couch beside her, that she had died by her own hand. the paper contained these words: to the marquis de mazzini your words have stabbed my heart. no power on earth could restore the peace you have destroyed. i will escape from my torture. when you read this, i shall be no more. but the triumph shall no longer be yours--the draught you have drank was given by the hand of the injured maria de mazzini. it now appeared that the marquis was poisoned by the vengeance of the woman to whom he had resigned his conscience. the consternation and distress of ferdinand cannot easily be conceived: he hastened back to his father's chamber, but determined to conceal the dreadful catastrophe of maria de vellorno. this precaution, however, was useless; for the servants, in the consternation of terror, had revealed it, and the marquis had fainted. returning pains recalled his senses, and the agonies he suffered were too shocking for the beholders. medical endeavours were applied, but the poison was too powerful for antidote. the marquis's pains at length subsided; the poison had exhausted most of its rage, and he became tolerably easy. he waved his hand for the attendants to leave the room; and beckoning to ferdinand, whose senses were almost stunned by this accumulation of horror, bade him sit down beside him. 'the hand of death is now upon me,' said he; 'i would employ these last moments in revealing a deed, which is more dreadful to me than all the bodily agonies i suffer. it will be some relief to me to discover it.' ferdinand grasped the hand of the marquis in speechless terror. 'the retribution of heaven is upon me,' resumed the marquis. 'my punishment is the immediate consequence of my guilt. heaven has made that woman the instrument of its justice, whom i made the instrument of my crimes;----that woman, for whose sake i forgot conscience, and braved vice--for whom i imprisoned an innocent wife, and afterwards murdered her.' at these words every nerve of ferdinand thrilled; he let go the marquis's hand and started back. 'look not so fiercely on me,' said the marquis, in a hollow voice; 'your eyes strike death to my soul; my conscience needs not this additional pang.'--'my mother!' exclaimed ferdinand--'my mother! speak, tell me.'--'i have no breath,' said the marquis. 'oh!--take these keys--the south tower--the trapdoor.--'tis possible--oh!--' the marquis made a sudden spring upwards, and fell lifeless on the bed; the attendants were called in, but he was gone for ever. his last words struck with the force of lightning upon the mind of ferdinand; they seemed to say that his mother might yet exist. he took the keys, and ordering some of the servants to follow, hastened to the southern building; he proceeded to the tower, and the trapdoor beneath the stair-case was lifted. they all descended into a dark passage, which conducted them through several intricacies to the door of the cell. ferdinand, in trembling horrible expectation, applied the key; the door opened, and he entered; but what was his surprize when he found no person in the cell! he concluded that he had mistaken the place, and quitted it for further search; but having followed the windings of the passage, by which he entered, without discovering any other door, he returned to a more exact examination of the cell. he now observed the door, which led to the cavern, and he entered upon the avenue, but no person was found there and no voice answered to his call. having reached the door of the cavern, which was fastened, he returned lost in grief, and meditating upon the last words of the marquis. he now thought that he had mistaken their import, and that the words ''tis possible,' were not meant to apply to the life of the marchioness, he concluded, that the murder had been committed at a distant period; and he resolved, therefore, to have the ground of the cell dug up, and the remains of his mother sought for. when the first violence of the emotions excited by the late scenes was subsided, he enquired concerning maria de vellorno. it appeared that on the day preceding this horrid transaction, the marquis had passed some hours in her apartment; that they were heard in loud dispute;--that the passion of the marquis grew high;--that he upbraided her with her past conduct, and threatened her with a formal separation. when the marquis quitted her, she was heard walking quick through the room, in a passion of tears; she often suddenly stopped in vehement but incoherent exclamation; and at last threw herself on the floor, and was for some time entirely still. here her woman found her, upon whose entrance she arose hastily, and reproved her for appearing uncalled. after this she remained silent and sullen. she descended to supper, where the marquis met her alone at table. little was said during the repast, at the conclusion of which the servants were dismissed; and it was believed that during the interval between supper, and the hour of repose, maria de vellorno contrived to mingle poison with the wine of the marquis. how she had procured this poison was never discovered. she retired early to her chamber; and her woman observing that she appeared much agitated, inquired if she was ill? to this she returned a short answer in the negative, and her woman was soon afterwards dismissed. but she had hardly shut the door of the room when she heard her lady's voice recalling her. she returned, and received some trifling order, and observed that maria looked uncommonly pale; there was besides a wildness in her eyes which frightened her, but she did not dare to ask any questions. she again quitted the room, and had only reached the extremity of the gallery when her mistress's bell rang. she hastened back, maria enquired if the marquis was gone to bed, and if all was quiet? being answered in the affirmative, she replied, 'this is a still hour and a dark one!--good night!' her woman having once more left the room, stopped at the door to listen, but all within remaining silent, she retired to rest. it is probable that maria perpetrated the fatal act soon after the dismission of her woman; for when she was found, two hours afterwards, she appeared to have been dead for some time. on examination a wound was discovered on her left side, which had doubtless penetrated to the heart, from the suddenness of her death, and from the effusion of blood which had followed. these terrible events so deeply affected emilia that she was confined to her bed by a dangerous illness. ferdinand struggled against the shock with manly fortitude. but amid all the tumult of the present scenes, his uncertainty concerning julia, whom he had left in the hands of banditti, and whom he had been withheld from seeking or rescuing, formed, perhaps, the most affecting part of his distress. the late marquis de mazzini, and maria de vellorno, were interred with the honor due to their rank in the church of the convent of st nicolo. their lives exhibited a boundless indulgence of violent and luxurious passions, and their deaths marked the consequences of such indulgence, and held forth to mankind a singular instance of divine vengeance. chapter xvi in turning up the ground of the cell, it was discovered that it communicated with the dungeon in which ferdinand had been confined, and where he had heard those groans which had occasioned him so much terror. the story which the marquis formerly related to his son, concerning the southern buildings, it was now evident was fabricated for the purpose of concealing the imprisonment of the marchioness. in the choice of his subject, he certainly discovered some art; for the circumstance related was calculated, by impressing terror, to prevent farther enquiry into the recesses of these buildings. it served, also, to explain, by supernatural evidence, the cause of those sounds, and of that appearance which had been there observed, but which were, in reality, occasioned only by the marquis. the event of the examination in the cell threw ferdinand into new perplexity. the marquis had confessed that he poisoned his wife--yet her remains were not to be found; and the place which he signified to be that of her confinement, bore no vestige of her having been there. there appeared no way by which she could have escaped from her prison; for both the door which opened upon the cell, and that which terminated the avenue beyond, were fastened when tried by ferdinand. but the young marquis had no time for useless speculation--serious duties called upon him. he believed that julia was still in the power of banditti; and, on the conclusion of his father's funeral, he set forward himself to palermo, to give information of the abode of the robbers, and to repair with the officers of justice, accompanied by a party of his own people, to the rescue of his sister. on his arrival at palermo he was informed, that a banditti, whose retreat had been among the ruins of a monastery, situated in the forest of marentino, was already discovered; that their abode had been searched, and themselves secured for examples of public justice--but that no captive lady had been found amongst them. this latter intelligence excited in ferdinand a very serious distress, and he was wholly unable to conjecture her fate. he obtained leave, however, to interrogate those of the robbers, who were imprisoned at palermo, but could draw from them no satisfactory or certain information. at length he quitted palermo for the forest of marentino, thinking it possible that julia might be heard of in its neighbourhood. he travelled on in melancholy and dejection, and evening overtook him long before he reached the place of his destination. the night came on heavily in clouds, and a violent storm of wind and rain arose. the road lay through a wild and rocky country, and ferdinand could obtain no shelter. his attendants offered him their cloaks, but he refused to expose a servant to the hardship he would not himself endure. he travelled for some miles in a heavy rain; and the wind, which howled mournfully among the rocks, and whose solemn pauses were filled by the distant roarings of the sea, heightened the desolation of the scene. at length he discerned, amid the darkness from afar, a red light waving in the wind: it varied with the blast, but never totally disappeared. he pushed his horse into a gallop, and made towards it. the flame continued to direct his course; and on a nearer approach, he perceived, by the red reflection of its fires, streaming a long radiance upon the waters beneath--a lighthouse situated upon a point of rock which overhung the sea. he knocked for admittance, and the door was opened by an old man, who bade him welcome. within appeared a cheerful blazing fire, round which were seated several persons, who seemed like himself to have sought shelter from the tempest of the night. the sight of the fire cheered him, and he advanced towards it, when a sudden scream seized his attention; the company rose up in confusion, and in the same instant he discovered julia and hippolitus. the joy of that moment is not to be described, but his attention was quickly called off from his own situation to that of a lady, who during the general transport had fainted. his sensations on learning she was his mother cannot be described. she revived. 'my son!' said she, in a languid voice, as she pressed him to her heart. 'great god, i am recompensed! surely this moment may repay a life of misery!' he could only receive her caresses in silence; but the sudden tears which started in his eyes spoke a language too expressive to be misunderstood. when the first emotion of the scene was passed, julia enquired by what means ferdinand had come to this spot. he answered her generally, and avoided for the present entering upon the affecting subject of the late events at the castle of mazzini. julia related the history of her adventures since she parted with her brother. in her narration, it appeared that hippolitus, who was taken by the duke de luovo at the mouth of the cave, had afterwards escaped, and returned to the cavern in search of julia. the low recess in the rock, through which julia had passed, he perceived by the light of his flambeau. he penetrated to the cavern beyond, and from thence to the prison of the marchioness. no colour of language can paint the scene which followed; it is sufficient to say that the whole party agreed to quit the cell at the return of night. but this being a night on which it was known the marquis would visit the prison, they agreed to defer their departure till after his appearance, and thus elude the danger to be expected from an early discovery of the escape of the marchioness. at the sound of footsteps above, hippolitus and julia had secreted themselves in the avenue; and immediately on the marquis's departure they all repaired to the cavern, leaving, in the hurry of their flight, untouched the poisonous food he had brought. having escaped from thence they proceeded to a neighbouring village, where horses were procured to carry them towards palermo. here, after a tedious journey, they arrived, in the design of embarking for italy. contrary winds had detained them till the day on which ferdinand left that city, when, apprehensive and weary of delay, they hired a small vessel, and determined to brave the winds. they had soon reason to repent their temerity; for the vessel had not been long at sea when the storm arose, which threw them back upon the shores of sicily, and brought them to the lighthouse, where they were discovered by ferdinand. on the following morning ferdinand returned with his friends to palermo, where he first disclosed the late fatal events of the castle. they now settled their future plans; and ferdinand hastened to the castle of mazzini to fetch emilia, and to give orders for the removal of his household to his palace at naples, where he designed to fix his future residence. the distress of emilia, whom he found recovered from her indisposition, yielded to joy and wonder, when she heard of the existence of her mother, and the safety of her sister. she departed with ferdinand for palermo, where her friends awaited her, and where the joy of the meeting was considerably heightened by the appearance of madame de menon, for whom the marchioness had dispatched a messenger to st augustin's. madame had quitted the abbey for another convent, to which, however, the messenger was directed. this happy party now embarked for naples. from this period the castle of mazzini, which had been the theatre of a dreadful catastrophe; and whose scenes would have revived in the minds of the chief personages connected with it, painful and shocking reflections--was abandoned. on their arrival at naples, ferdinand presented to the king a clear and satisfactory account of the late events at the castle, in consequence of which the marchioness was confirmed in her rank, and ferdinand was received as the sixth marquis de mazzini. the marchioness, thus restored to the world, and to happiness, resided with her children in the palace at naples, where, after time had somewhat mellowed the remembrance of the late calamity, the nuptials of hippolitus and julia were celebrated. the recollection of the difficulties they had encountered, and of the distress they had endured for each other, now served only to heighten by contrast the happiness of the present period. ferdinand soon after accepted a command in the neapolitan army; and amidst the many heroes of that warlike and turbulent age, distinguished himself for his valour and ability. the occupations of war engaged his mind, while his heart was solicitous in promoting the happiness of his family. madame de menon, whose generous attachment to the marchioness had been fully proved, found in the restoration of her friend a living witness of her marriage, and thus recovered those estates which had been unjustly withheld from her. but the marchioness and her family, grateful to her friendship, and attached to her virtues, prevailed upon her to spend the remainder of her life at the palace of mazzini. emilia, wholly attached to her family, continued to reside with the marchioness, who saw her race renewed in the children of hippolitus and julia. thus surrounded by her children and friends, and engaged in forming the minds of the infant generation, she seemed to forget that she had ever been otherwise than happy. * * * * * here the manuscript annals conclude. in reviewing this story, we perceive a singular and striking instance of moral retribution. we learn, also, that those who do only that which is right, endure nothing in misfortune but a trial of their virtue, and from trials well endured derive the surest claim to the protection of heaven. finis [transcriber's note: some words which appear to be typos are printed thus in the original book. a list of these possible words follows: cioset, skriek, ladyrinth, and bad (presumably for bade, "he bad julia good-night"). in addition, the book contains (and i have retained) inconsistant spelling of both common words (e.g. extacy, exstacy) and proper nouns (farrini, ferrini). i have used the _underscore_ notation to indicate italics. (the text in capitals is printed as it appears in the original book). finally, the line of spaced asterisks, was used to indicate an additional blank line seperating sections of the text.] proofreading team. html version by al haines. the secret power by marie corelli author of "god's good man" "the master christian" "innocent," "the treasure of heaven," etc. jtable 5 26 1 the secret power chapter i a cloud floated slowly above the mountain peak. vast, fleecy and white as the crested foam of a sea-wave, it sailed through the sky with a divine air of majesty, seeming almost to express a consciousness of its own grandeur. over a spacious tract of southern california it extended its snowy canopy, moving from the distant pacific ocean across the heights of the sierra madre, now and then catching fire at its extreme edge from the sinking sun, which burned like a red brand flung on the roof of a roughly built hut situated on the side of a sloping hollow in one of the smaller hills. the door of the hut stood open; there were a couple of benches on the burnt grass outside, one serving as a table, the other as a chair. papers and books were neatly piled on the table,--and on the chair, if chair it might be called, a man sat reading. his appearance was not prepossessing at a first glance, though his actual features could hardly be seen, so concealed were they by a heavy growth of beard. in the way of clothing he had little to trouble him. loose woollen trousers, a white shirt, and a leathern belt to keep the two garments in place, formed his complete outfit, finished off by wide canvas shoes. a thatch of dark hair, thick and ill combed, apparently served all his need of head covering, and he seemed unconscious of, or else indifferent to, the hot glare of the summer sky which was hardly tempered by the long shadow of the floating cloud. at some moments he was absorbed in reading,--at others in writing. close within his reach was a small note-book in which from time to time he jotted down certain numerals and made rapid calculations, frowning impatiently as though the very act of writing was too slow for the speed of his thought. there was a wonderful silence everywhere,--a silence such as can hardly be comprehended by anyone who has never visited wide-spreading country, over-canopied by large stretches of open sky, and barricaded from the further world by mountain ranges which are like huge walls built by a race of titans. the dwellers in such regions are few--there is no traffic save the coming and going of occasional pack-mules across the hill tracks--no sign of modern civilisation. among such deep and solemn solitudes the sight of a living human being is strange and incongruous, yet the man seated outside his hut had an air of ease and satisfied proprietorship not always found with wealthy owners of mansions and park-lands. he was so thoroughly engrossed in his books and papers that he hardly saw, and certainly did not hear, the approach of a woman who came climbing wearily up the edge of the sloping hill against which his cabin presented itself to the view as a sort of fitment, and advanced towards him carrying a tin pail full of milk. this she set down within a yard or so of him, and then, straightening her back, she rested her hands on her hips and drew a long breath. for a minute or two he took no notice of her. she waited. she was a big handsome creature, sun-browned and black-haired, with flashing dark eyes lit by a spark that was not originally caught from heaven. presently, becoming conscious of her presence, he threw his book aside and looked up. "well! so you've come after all! yesterday you said you wouldn't." she shrugged her shoulders. "i do not wish you to starve." "very kind of you! but nothing can starve me." "if you had no food--" "i should find some"--he said--"yes!--i should find some,--somewhere! i want very little." he rose, stretching his arms lazily above his head,--then, stooping, he lifted the pail of milk and carried it into his cabin. disappearing for a moment, he returned, bringing back the pail empty. "i have enough for two days now," he said--"and longer. what you brought me at the beginning of the week has turned beautifully sour,--a 'lovely curd' as our cook at home used to say--, and with that 'lovely curd' and plenty of fruit i'm living in luxury." here he felt in his pockets and took out a handful of coins. "that's right, isn't it?" she counted them over as he gave them to her--bit one with her strong white teeth and nodded. "you don't pay me"--she said, emphatically--"it's the plaza you pay." "how many times will you remind me of that!" he replied, with a laugh--"of course i know i don't pay you! of course i know i pay the plaza!--that amazing hotel and 'sanatorium' with a tropical garden and no comfort--" "it is more comfortable than this"--she said, with a disparaging glance at his log dwelling. "how do you know?" and he laughed again--"what have you ever experienced in the line of hotels? you are employed at the plaza to fetch and carry;--to wait on the wretched invalids who come to california for a 'cure' of diseases incurable--" "you are not an invalid!" she said with a slight accent of contempt. "no! i only pretend to be!" "why do you pretend?" "oh, manella! what a question! why do we all pretend?--all!--every human being from the child to the dotard! simply because we dare not face the truth! for example, consider the sun! it is a furnace with flames five thousand miles high, but we 'pretend' it is our beautiful orb of day! we must pretend! if we didn't we should go mad!" manella knitted her black brows perplexedly. "i do not understand you"--she said--"why do you talk nonsense about the sun? i suppose you are ill after all,--you have an illness of the head." he nodded with mock solemnity. "that's it! you're a wise woman, manella! that's why i'm here. not tubercles on the lungs,--tubercles on the brain! oh, those tubercles! they could never stand the plaza!--the gaiety, the brilliancy--the--the all-too dazzling social round!..." he paused, and a gleam of even white teeth under his dark moustache gave the suggestion of a smile--"that's why i stay up here." "you make fun of the plaza"--said manella, biting her lips vexedly--"and of me, too. i am nothing to you!" "absolutely nothing, dear! but why should you be any thing?" a warm flush turned her sunburnt skin to a deeper tinge. "men are often fond of women"--she said. "often? oh, more than often! too often! but what does that matter?" she twisted the ends of her rose-coloured neckerchief nervously with one hand. "you are a man"--she replied, curtly--"you should have a woman." he laughed--a deep, mellow, hearty laugh of pleasure. "should i? you really think so? wonderful manella? come here!--come quite close to me!" she obeyed, moving with the soft tread of a forest animal, and, face to face with him, looked up. he smiled kindly into her dark fierce eyes, and noted with artistic approval the unspoiled beauty of natural lines in her form, and the proud poise of her handsome head on her full throat and splendid shoulders. "you are very good-looking, manella"--he then remarked, lazily--"quite the model for a juno. be satisfied with yourself. you should have scores of lovers!" she stamped her foot suddenly and impatiently. "i have none!" she said--"and you know it! but you do not care!" he shook a reproachful forefinger at her. "manella, manella, you are naughty! temper, temper! of course i do not care! be reasonable! why should i?" she pressed both hands tightly against her bosom, seeking to control her quick, excited breathing. "why should you? i do not know! but _i_ care! i would be your woman! i would be your slave! i would wait upon you and serve you faithfully! i would obey your every wish. i am a good servant,--i can cook and sew and wash and sweep--i can do everything in a house and you should have no trouble. you should write and read all day,--i would not speak a word to disturb you. i would guard you like a dog that loves his master!" he listened, with a strange look in his eyes,--a look of wonder and something of compassion. there was a pause. the silence of the hills was, or seemed more intense and impressive--the great white cloud still spread itself in large leisure along the miles of slowly darkening sky. presently he spoke. "and what wages, manella? what wages should i have to pay for such a servant?--such a dog?" her head drooped, she avoided his steady, searching gaze. "what wages, manella? none, you would say, except--love! you tell me you would be my woman,--and i know you mean it. you would be my slave--you mean that, too. but you would want me to love you! manella, there is no such thing as love!--not in this world! there is animal attraction,--the magnetism of the male for the female, the female for the male,--the magnetism that pulls the opposite sexes together in order to keep this planet supplied with an ever new crop of fools,--but love! no, manella! there is no such thing!" here he gently took her two hands away from their tightly folded position on her bosom and held them in his own. "no such thing, my dear!" he went on, speaking softly and soothingly, as though to a child--"except in the dreams of poets, and you--fortunately!--know nothing about poetry! the wild animal in you is attracted to the tame, ruminating animal in me,--and you would be my woman, though i would not be your man. i quite believe that it is the natural instinct of the female to select her mate,--but, though the rule may hold good in the forest world, it doesn't always work among the human herd. man considers that he has the right of selection--quite a mistake of his i'm sure, for he has no real sense of beauty or fitness, and generally selects most vilely. all the same he is an obstinate brute, and sticks to his brutish ideas as a snail sticks to its shell. _i_ am an obstinate brute!--i am absolutely convinced that i have the right to choose my own woman, if i want one--which i don't,--or if ever i do want one--which i never shall!" she drew her hands quickly from his grasp. there were tears in her splendid dark eyes. "you talk, you talk!" she said, with a kind of sob in her voice--"it is all talk with you--talk which i cannot understand! i don't want to understand!--i am only a poor, ignorant girl. i cannot talk--but i can love! ah yes, i can love! you say there is no such thing as love! what is it then, when one prays every night and morning for a man?--when one would work one's fingers to the bone for him?--when one would die to keep him from sickness and harm? what do you call it?" he smiled. "self-delusion, manella! the beautiful self-delusion of every nature-bred woman when her fancy is attracted by a particular sort of man. she makes an ideal of him in her mind and imagines him to be a god, when he is nothing but a devil!" something sinister and cruel in his look startled her,--she made the sign of the cross on her bosom. "a devil?" she murmured--"a devil--?" "ah, now you are frightened!" he said, with a flash of amusement in his eyes--"you are a good catholic, and you believe in devils. so you make the sign of the cross as a protection. that's right! that's the way to defend yourself from my evil influence! wise manella!" the light mockery of his tone roused her pride,--that pride which had been suppressed in her by the force of a passionate emotion she could not restrain. she lifted her head and regarded him with an air of sorrow and scorn. "after all, i think you must be a wicked man!" she said--"you have no heart! you are not worthy to be loved!" "quite true, manella! you've hit the bull's eye in the very middle three times! i am a wicked man,--i have no heart,--i'm not worthy to be loved. no i'm not. i should find it a bore!" "bore?" she echoed--"what is that?" "what is that? it is itself, manella! 'bore' is just 'bore.' it means tiredness--worn-out-ness--a state in which you wish yourself in a hot bath or a cold one, so that nobody can come near you. to be 'loved' would finish me off in a month!" her big eyes opened more widely than their wont in piteous perplexity. "but how?" she asked. "how? why, just as you have put it,--to be prayed for night and morning,--to be worked for and waited on till fingers turned to bones,--to be guarded from sickness and harm,--heavens!--think of it! no more adventures in life,--no more freedom!--just love, love, love, which would not be love at all but the chains of a miserable wretch in prison!" she flushed an angry crimson. "who is it that would chain you?" she demanded, "not i! you could do as you liked with me--you know it!--and when you go away from this place, you could leave me and forget me,--i should never trouble you or remind you that i lived!! i should have had my happiness,--enough for my day!" the pathos in her voice moved him though he was not easily moved. on a sudden impulse he put an arm about her, drew her to him and kissed her. she trembled at his caress, while he smiled at her emotion. "a kiss is nothing, manella!" he said--"we kiss children as i kiss you! you are a child,--a child-woman. physically you are a juno,--mentally you are an infant! by and by you will grow up,--and you will be glad i did no more than kiss you! it's getting late,--you must go home." he released her and put her gently away from him. then, as he saw her eyes still uplifted questioningly to his face, he laughed. "upon my word!" he exclaimed--"i am making a nice fool of myself! actually wasting time on a woman. go home, manella, go home! if you are wise you won't stop here another minute! see now! you are full of curiosity--all women are! you want to know why i stay up here in this hill cabin by myself instead of staying at the 'plaza.' you think i'm a rich englishman. i'm not. no englishman is ever rich,--not up to his own desires. he wants the earth and all that therein is--does the englishman, and of course he can't have it. he rather grudges america her large slice of rich plum-pudding territory, forgetting that he could have had it himself for the price of tea. but i don't grudge anybody anything--america is welcome to the whole bulk as far as i'm concerned--britain ditto,--let them both eat and be filled. all _i_ want is to be left alone. do you hear that, manella? to be left alone! particularly by women. that's one reason why i came here. this cabin is supposed to be a sort of tuberculosis 'shelter,' where a patient in hopeless condition comes with a special nurse to die. i don't want a nurse, and i'm not going to die. tubercles don't touch me--they don't flourish on my soil. so this solitude just suits me. if i were at the 'plaza' i should have to meet a lot of women--" "no, you wouldn't," interrupted manella, suddenly and sharply--"only one woman." "only one? you?" she sighed, and moved impatiently. "oh, no! not me. a stranger." he looked at her with a touch of inquisitiveness. "an invalid?" "she may be. i don't know. she has golden hair." he gave a gesture of dislike. "dreadful! that's enough! i can imagine her,--a die-away creature with a cough and a straw-coloured wig. yes!--that will do, manella! you'd better go and wait upon her. i've got all i want for a couple of days at least." he seated himself and took up his note-book. she turned away. "stop a minute, manella!" she obeyed. "golden hair, you said?" she nodded. "old or young?" "she might be either"--and manella gazed dreamily at the darkening sky--"there is nobody old nowadays--or so it seems to me." "an invalid?" "i don't think so. she looks quite well. she arrived at the plaza only yesterday." "ah! well, good-night, manella! and if you want to know anything more about me, i don't mind telling you this,--that there's nothing in the world i so utterly detest as a woman with golden hair! there!" she looked at him, surprised at his harsh tone. he shook his forefinger at her. "fact!" he said--"fact as hard as nails! a woman with golden hair is a demon--a witch--a mischief and a curse! see? always has been and always will be! good-night!" but manella paused, meditatively. "she looks like a witch," she said slowly--"one of those creatures they put in pictures of fairy tales,--small and white. very small,--i could carry her." "i wouldn't try it if i were you"--he answered, with visible impatience--"off you go! good-night!" she gave him one lingering glance; then, turning abruptly picked up her empty milk pail and started down the hill at a run. the man she left gave a sigh, deep and long of intense relief. evening had fallen rapidly, and the purple darkness enveloped him in its warm, dense gloom. he sat absorbed in thought, his eyes turned towards the east, where the last stretches of the afternoon's great cloud trailed filmy threads of woolly black through space. his figure seemed gradually drawn within the coming night so as almost to become part of it, and the stillness around him had a touch of awe in its impalpable heaviness. one would have thought that in a place of such utter loneliness, the natural human spirit of a man would instinctively desire movement,--action of some sort, to shake off the insidious depression which crept through the air like a creeping shadow, but the solitary being, seated somewhat like an aryan idol, hands on knees and face bent forwards, had no inclination to stir. his brain was busy; and half unconsciously his thoughts spoke aloud in words-"have we come to the former old stopping place?" he said, as though questioning some invisible companion; "must we cry 'halt!' for the thousand millionth time? or can we go on? dare we go on? if actually we discover the secret--wrapped up like the minutest speck of a kernel in the nut of an electron,--what then? will it be well or ill? shall we find it worth while to live on here with nothing to do?--nothing to trouble us or compel us to labour? without pain shall we be conscious of health?--without sorrow shall we understand joy?" a sudden whiteness flooded the dark landscape, and a full moon leaped to the edge of the receding cloud. its rising had been veiled in the drift of black woolly vapour, and its silver glare, sweeping through the darkness flashed over the land with astonishing abruptness. the man lifted his eyes. "one would think that done for effect!" he said, half aloud--"if the moon were the goddess cynthia beloved of endymion, as woman and goddess in an impulse of vanity she would certainly have done that for effect! as it is--" here he paused,--an instinctive feeling warned him that some one was looking at him, and he turned his head quickly. on the slope of the hill where manella had lately stood, there was a figure, white as the white moonlight itself, outlined delicately against the dark background. it seemed to be poised on the earth like a bird just lightly descended; in the stirless air its garments appeared closed about it fold on fold like the petals of an unopened magnolia flower. as he looked, it came gliding towards him with the floating ease of an air bubble, and the strong radiance of the large moon showed its woman's face, pale with the moonbeam pallor, and set in a wave of hair that swept back from the brows and fell in a loosely twisted coil like a shining snake stealthily losing itself in folds of misty drapery. he rose to meet the advancing phantom. "entirely for effect!" he said, "well planned and quite worthy of you! all for effect!" chapter ii a laugh, clear and cold as a sleigh-bell on a frosty night rang out on the silence. "why did you run away from me?" he replied at once, and brusquely. "because i was tired of you!" she laughed again. a strange white elf as she looked in the spreading moonbeams she was woman to the core, and the disdainful movement of her small uplifted head plainly expressed her utter indifference to his answer. "i followed you"--she said--"i knew i should find you! what are you doing up here? shamming to be ill?" "precisely! 'sham' is as much in my line as yours. i have to 'pretend' in order to be real!" "paradoxical as usual!" and she shrugged her shoulders--"anyway you've chosen a good place to do your shamming in. it's quite lovely up here,--much better than the plaza. i am at the plaza." "automobile and all i suppose!" he said, sarcastically--"how many servants?--how many boxes with how many dresses?" she laughed again. "that's no concern of yours!" she replied--"i am my own mistress." "more's the pity!" he retorted. they faced each other. the moon, now soaring high in clear space, shed a luminous rain of silver over all the visible breadth of wild country, and their two figures looked mere dark silhouettes half drowned in the pearly glamour. "it's worth travelling all the long miles to see!" she declared, stretching her arms out with an enthusiastic gesture--"oh, beautiful big moon of california! i'm glad i came!" he was silent. "you are not glad!" she continued--"you are a bear-man in hiding, and the moon says nothing to you!" "it says nothing because it is nothing"--he answered, impatiently--"it is a dead planet without heart,--a mere shell of extinct volcanoes where fire once burned, and its light is but the reflection of the sun on its barren surface. it is like all women,--but mostly like you!" she made him a sweeping curtsy so exquisitely graceful that the action resembled nothing so much as the sway of a lily in a light wind. "thanks, gentle knight!--flower of chivalry!" she said--"i see you love me in spite of yourself!" he made a quick stride towards her,--then stopped. "love you!" he echoed,--then laughed loudly and derisively-"great god! love you? you? if i did i should be mad! when will you learn the truth of me?--that women are less in my estimation than the insects crawling on a blade of grass or spawning in a stagnant pond?--that they have no power to move me to the smallest pulse of passion or desire?--and that you, of all your sex, seem to my mind the most--" "hateful?" she suggested, smilingly. "no--the most complete and unmitigated bore!" "dreadful!" and she made a face at him like that of a naughty child,--then she sank down on the sun-baked turf in an easy half-reclining attitude--"it's certainly much worse to be a bore than to be hated. hate is quite a live sentiment,--besides it always means, or has meant--love! you can't hate anything that is quite indifferent to you, but of course you can be bored! you are bored by me and i am bored by you!--and we are absolutely indifferent to each other! what a comedy it is! isn't it?" he stood still and sombre, gazing down at the figure resting on the ground at his feet, its white garments gathering about it as though they were sentiently aware that they must keep the line of classic beauty in every fold. "boredom is the trouble"--she went on--"no one escapes it. the very babies of to-day are bored. we all know too much. people used to be happy because they were ignorant--they had no sort of idea why they were born, or what they came into the world for. now they've learned the horrid truth that they are only here just as the trees and flowers are here--to breed other trees and flowers and then go out of it--for no purpose, apparently. they are 'disillusioned.' they say 'what's the use?' to put up with so much trouble and labour for the folks coming after us whom we shall never see,--it seems perfectly foolish and futile. they used to believe in another life after this--but that hope has been knocked out of them. besides it's quite open to question whether any of us would care to live again. probably it might mean more boredom. there's really nothing left. that's why so many of us go reckless--it's just to escape being bored." he listened in cold silence. after a pause-"have you done?" he said. she looked up at him. the moonbeams set tiny frosty sparkles in her eyes. "have i done?" she echoed--"no,--not quite! i love talking--and it's a new and amusing sensation for me to talk to a man in his shirt-sleeves on a hill in california by the light of the moon! so wild and picturesque you know! all the men i've ever met have been dressed to death! have you had your dinner?" "i never dine," he replied. "really! don't you eat and drink at all?" "i live simply,"--he said--"bread and milk are enough for me, and i have these." she laughed and clapped her hands. "like a baby!" she exclaimed--"a big bearded baby! it's too delicious! and you're doing all this just to get away from me! what a compliment!" with angry impetus he bent over her reclining figure and seized her two hands. "get up!" he said harshly--"don't lie there like a fallen angel!" she yielded to his powerful grasp as he pulled her to her feet--then looked at him still laughing. "plenty of muscle!" she said--"well?" he held her hands still and gripped them fiercely. she gave a little cry. "don't! you forget my rings,--they hurt!" at once he loosened his hold, and gazed moodily at her small fingers on which two or three superb diamond circlets glittered like drops of dew. "your rings!" he said--"yes--i forgot them! wonderful rings!--emblems of your inordinate vanity and vulgar wealth--i forgot them! how they sparkle in this wide moonlight, don't they? just a drifting of nature's refuse matter, turned into jewels for women! strange ordinance of strange elements! there!" and he let her hands go free--"they are not injured, nor are you." she was silent pouting her under-lip like a spoilt child, and rubbing one finger where a ring had dinted her flesh. "so you actually think i have come here to get away from you?" he went on--"well for once your ineffable conceit is mistaken. you think yourself a personage of importance--but you are nothing,--less than nothing to me, i never give you a thought--i have come here to study--to escape from the crazy noise of modern life--the hurtling to and fro of the masses of modern humanity,--i want to work out certain problems which may revolutionise the world and its course of living--" "why revolutionise it?" she interrupted--"who wants it to be revolutionised? we are all very well as we are--it's a breeding place and a dying place--voila tout!" she gave a french shrug of her shoulder and waved her hands expressively. then she pushed back her flowing hair,--the moonbeams trickled like water over it, making a network of silver on gold. "what did you come here for?" he asked, abruptly. "to see you!" she answered smilingly--"and to tell you that i'm 'on the war-path' as they say, taking scalps as i go. this means that i'm travelling about,--possibly i may go to europe--" "to pick up a bankrupt nobleman!" he suggested. she laughed. "dear, no! nothing quite so stupid! neither noblemen nor bankrupts attract me. no! i'm doing a scientific 'prowl,' like you. i believe i've discovered something with which i could annihilate you--so!" and she made a round o of her curved fingers and blew through it--"one breath!--from a distance, too! and hey presto!--the bear-man on the hills of california eating bread and milk is gone!--a complete vanishing trick--no more of him anywhere!" the bear-man, as she called him, gloomed upon her with a scowl. "you'd better leave such things alone!" he said, angrily--"women have no business with science." "no, of course not!" she agreed--"not in men's opinion. that's why they never mention madame curie without the poor monsieur! she found radium and he didn't,--but 'he' is always first mentioned." he gave an impatient gesture. "enough of all this!" he said--"do you know it's nearly ten o'clock at night?--i suppose you do know!--and the people at the plaza--" "they know!"--she interrupted, nodding sagaciously--"they know i am rich--rich--rich! it doesn't matter what i do, because i am rich! i might stay out all night with a bear-man, and nobody would say a word against me, because i am rich! i might sit on the roof of the plaza and swing my legs over the visitors' windows and it would be called 'charming' because i am rich! i can appear at the table d'hote in a bath-wrap and eat peas with a hair-pin if i like--and my conduct will be admired, because i am rich! when i go to europe my photo will be in all the london pictorials with the grinning chorus-girls, because i am rich! and i shall be called 'the beautiful,' 'the exquisite'--'the fascinating' by all the unwashed penny journalists because i am rich! o-ooh!" and she gave a comic little screw of her mouth and eyes--"it's great fun to be rich if you know what to do with your riches!" "do you?" he enquired, sarcastically. "i think so!" here she put her head on one side like a meditative bird and her wonderful hair fell aslant like a golden wing--"i amuse myself--as much as i can. i learn all that can be done with greedy, stupid humanity for so much cash down! i would,"--here she paused, and with a sudden feline swiftness of movement came close up to him--"i would have married you!--if you would have had me! i would have given you all my money to play with,--you could have got everything you want for your inventions and experiments, and i would have helped you,--and then--then--you could have blown up the world and me with it, so long as you gave me time to look at the magnificent sight! and i wouldn't have married you for love, mind you!--only for curiosity!" he withdrew from her a couple of paces,--a glimmer of white teeth between his dark moustache and beard gave his face the expression of a snarl more than a smile. "for curiosity!" she repeated, stretching out a hand and touching his arm--"to see what the thing that calls itself a man is made of! i did my very best with you, didn't i?--uncouth as you always were and are!--but i did my best! and all washington thought it was settled! why wouldn't you do what washington expected?" the light of the moon fell full on her upturned face. it was a wonderful face,--not beautiful according to the monotonous press-camera type, but radiant with such a light of daring intelligence as to make beauty itself seem cheap and meretricious in comparison with its glowing animation. he moved away from her another step, and shook his arm free from her touch. "why wouldn't you?" she reiterated softly; then with a sudden ripple of laughter, she clasped her hands and uplifted them in an attitude of prayer--"why wouldn't he? oh, big moon of california, why? oh, pagan gods and goddesses and fauns and fairies, tell me why? why wouldn't he?" he gave her a glance of cool contempt. "you should have been on the stage!" he said. "'all the world's a stage,'" she quoted, letting her upraised arms fall languidly at her sides--"and ours is a real comedy! not 'as you like it' but 'as you don't like it!' poor shakespeare!--he never imagined such characters as we are! now, suppose you had satisfied the expectations of all washington city and married me, of course we should have bored each other dreadfully--but with plenty of money we could have run away from each other whenever we liked--they all do it nowadays!" "yes--they all do it!" he repeated, mechanically. "they don't 'love' you know!" she went on--"love is too much of a bore. you would find it so!" "i should, indeed!" he said, with sudden energy--"it would be worse than any imaginable torture!--to be 'loved' and looked after, and watched and coddled and kissed--" "oh, surely no woman would want to kiss you!" she exclaimed--"never! that would be too much of a good thing!" and she gave a little peal of laughter, merry as the lilt of a sky-lark in the dawn. he stared at her angrily, moved by an insensate desire to seize her and throw her down the hill like a bundle of rubbish. "to kiss you," she said, "one would have to wear a lip-shield of leather! as well kiss a bunch of nettles! no, no! i have quite a nice little mouth--soft and rosy! i shouldn't like to spoil it by scratching it against yours! it's curious how all men imagine women like to kiss them! they never grasp an idea of the frequent unpleasantness of the operation! now i'm going!" "thank god!" he ejaculated fervently. "and don't worry yourself"--she continued, airily--"i shall not stay long at the plaza." "thank god again!" he interpolated. "it would be too dull,--especially as i'm not shamming to be ill, like you. besides, i have work to do!--wonderful work! and i don't believe in doing it shut up like a hermit. humanity is my crucible! good-night,--good-bye!" he checked her movement by a quick, imperious gesture. "wait!" he said--"before you go i want you to know a bit of my mind--" "is it necessary?" she queried. "i think so," he answered--"it will save you the trouble of ever trying to see me again, which will be a relief to me, if not to you. listen!--and look at yourself with my eyes--" "too difficult!" she declared--"i can look at nothing with your eyes any more than you can with mine!" "madam--" she uttered a little laughing "oh!" and put her hand to her ears. "not 'madam' for heaven's sake!" she exclaimed; "it sounds as if i were either a queen or a dressmaker!" his sombre eyes had no smile in them. "how should you be addressed?" he demanded, "a woman of such wealth and independence as you possess can hardly be called 'miss' as if she were in parental leading-strings!" she looked up at the clear dark sky where the moon hung like a huge silver air-ball. "no, i suppose not!" she replied--"the old english word was 'mistress.' so quaint and pretty, don't you think?" 'oh mistress mine, where are you roaming? oh stay and hear! your true love's coming!' she sang the two lines in a deliciously entrancing voice, full of youth and tenderness. with one quick stride he advanced upon her and caught her by the shoulders. "my god, i could shake the life out of you!" he said, fiercely--"i wonder you are not afraid of me!" she laughed, careless of his grasp. "why should i be? you couldn't kill me if you tried--and if you could--" "if i could--ah, if i could!" he muttered, fiercely. "why then there would be another murderer added to the general world of murderers!" she said--"that's all! it's not worth it!" still he held her in his grip. "see here!" he said--"before you go i want yon to know a thing or two,--you may as well learn once for all my views on women. they're brief, but they're fixed. and they're straight! women are nothing--just necessary for the continuation of the race--no more. they may be beautiful or homely--it's all one--they serve the same purpose. i'm under no delusions about them. without men they are utterly useless,--mere waste on the wind! to idealise them is a stupid mistake. to think that they can do anything original, intellectual or imaginative is to set one's self down an idiot. you,--you the spoilt only child of one of the biggest rascal financiers in new york,--you, left alone in the world with a fortune so vast as to be almost criminal--you think you are something superlative in the way of women,--you play the cleopatra,--you are convinced you can draw men after you--but it's your money that draws them,--not you! can't you see that?--or are you too vain to see it? and you've no mercy on them,--you make them believe you care for them and then you throw them over like empty nutshells! that's your way! but you never fooled me,--and you never will!" he released her as suddenly as he had grasped her,--she drew her white draperies round her shoulders with a statuesque grace, and lifted her head, smiling. "empty nutshells are a very good description of men who come after a woman for her money"--she observed, placidly--"and it's quite natural that the woman should throw them over her shoulder. there's nothing in them--not even a flavour! no--never fooled you,--you fooled yourself--you are fooling yourself now, only you don't know it. but there!--let's finish talking! i like the romance of the situation--you in your shirt-sleeves on a hill in california, and i in silken stuff and diamonds paying you a moonlight visit--it's really quite novel and charming!--but it can't go on for ever! just now you said you wanted me to know a thing or two, and i presume you have explained yourself. what you think or what you don't think about women doesn't interest me. i'm one of the 'wastes on the wind!' _i_ shall not aid in the continuation of the race,--heaven forbid! the race is too stupid and too miserable to merit continuance. everything has been done for it that can be done, over and over again, from the beginning--till now,--and now--now!" she paused, and despite himself the tone of her voice sent a thrill through his blood of something like fear. "now?--well! what now?" he demanded. she lifted one hand and pointed upwards. her face in the moonbeams looked austere and almost spectral in outline. "now--the change!" she answered--"the change when all things shall be made new!" a silence followed her words,--a strange and heavy silence. it was broken by her voice hushed to an extreme softness, yet clearly audible. "good-night!--good-bye!" he turned impatiently away to avoid further leave-taking--then, on a sudden impulse, his mood changed. "morgana!" the call echoed through emptiness. she was gone. he called again,--the long vowel in the strange name sounding like "mor-ga-ar-na" as a shivering note on the g string of a violin may sound at the conclusion of a musical phrase. there was no reply. he was--as he had desired to be,--alone. chapter iii "she left new york several weeks ago,--didn't you know it? dear me!--i thought everybody was convulsed at the news!" the speaker, a young woman fashionably attired and seated in a rocking chair in the verandah of a favourite summer hotel on long island, raised her eyes and shrugged her shoulders expressively as she uttered these words to a man standing near her with a newspaper in his hand. he was a very stiff-jointed upright personage with iron grey hair and features hard enough to suggest their having been carved out of wood. "no--i didn't know it"--he said, enunciating his words in the deliberate dictatorial manner common to a certain type of american--"if i had i should have taken steps to prevent it." "you can't take steps to prevent anything morgana royal decides to do!" declared his companion. "she's a law to herself and to nobody else. i guess you couldn't stop her, mr. sam gwent!" mr. sam gwent permitted himself to smile. it was a smile that merely stretched the corners of his mouth a little,--it had no geniality. "possibly not!" he answered--"but i should have had a try! i should certainly have pointed out to her the folly of her present adventure." "do you know what it is?" he paused before replying. "well,--hardly! but i have a guess!" "is that so? then i'll admit you're cleverer than i am!" "thats a great compliment! but even miss lydia herbert, brilliant woman of the world as she is, doesn't know everything!" "not quite!" she replied, stifling a tiny yawn--"nor do you! but most things that are worth knowing i know. there's a lot one need never learn. the chief business of life nowadays is to have heaps of money and know how to spend it. that's morgana's way." mr. sam gwent folded up his newspaper, flattened it into a neat parcel, and put it in his pocket. "she has a great deal too much money"--he said, "and-to my thinking--she does not know how to spend it,--not in the right womanly way. she has gone off in the midst of many duties to society at a time when she should have stayed--" miss herbert opened her brown, rather insolent eyes wide at this and laughed. "does it matter?" she asked. "the old man left his pile to her 'absolutely and unconditionally'--without any orders as to society duties. and i don't believe you've any authority over her, have you? or are you suddenly turning up as a trustee?" he surveyed her with a kind of admiring sarcasm. "no. i'm only an uncle,"--he said--"uncle of the boy that shot himself this morning for her sake!" miss herbert uttered a sharp cry. she was startled and horrified. "what!... jack?... shot himself?... oh, how dreadful!--i'm--i'm sorry--!" "you're not!"--retorted gwent--"so don't pretend. no one is sorry for anybody else nowadays. there's no time. and no inclination. jack was always a fool--perhaps he's best out of it. i've just seen him--dead. he's better-looking so than when alive." she sprang up from her rocking chair in a blaze of indignation. "you are brutal!" she exclaimed, with a half sob--"positively brutal!" "not at all!" he answered, composedly--"only commonplace. it is you advanced women that are brutal,--not we left-behind men. jack was a fool, i say--he staked the whole of his game on morgana royal, and he lost. that was the last straw. if he could have married her he would have cleared all his debts over and over--and that's what he had hoped for. the disappointment was too much for him." "but--didn't he love her?" lydia herbert put the question almost imperatively. mr. sam gwent raised his eyebrows quizzically. "i guess you came out of the middle ages!" he observed--"what's 'love'? did you ever know a woman with millions of money who got 'loved'? not a bit of it! her money is loved--but not herself. she's the encumbrance to the cash." "then--then--you mean to tell me jack was only after the money--?" "what else should he be after? the woman? there are thousands of women,--all to be had for the asking--they pitch themselves at men headlong--no hesitation or modesty about them nowadays! jack's asking would never have been refused by any one of them. but the millions of morgana royal are not to be got every day!" miss herbert's rather thin lips tightened into a close line,--she flicked some light tear-drops away from her eyes with a handkerchief as fine as a cobweb delicately perfumed, and stood silently looking out on the view from the verandah. "you see," pursued gwent, in his cold, deliberate accents, "jack was ruined financially. and he has all but ruined me. now he has taken himself out of the way with a pistol shot, and left me to face the music for him. morgana royal was his only chance. she led him on,--she certainly led him on. he thought he had her,--then--just as he was about to pin the butterfly to his specimen card, away it flew!" "cute butterfly!" interjected miss herbert. "maybe. maybe not. we shall see. anyway jack's game is finished." "and i suppose this is why, as you say, morgana has gone off 'in the midst of many social duties'? was jack one of her social duties?" gwent gazed at her with an unrevealing placidity. "no. not exactly," he replied--"i give her credit for not knowing anything of his intention to clear out. though i don't think she would have tried to alter his intention if she had." miss herbert still surveyed the scenery. "well,--i don't feel so sorry for him now you tell me it was only the money he was after"--she said--"i thought he was a finer character--" "you're talking 'middle ages' again,"--interrupted gwent--"who wants fine characters nowadays? the object of life is to live, isn't it? and to 'live' means to get all you can for your own pleasure and profit,--take care of number one!--and let the rest of the world do as it likes. it's quite your method,--though you pretend it isn't!" "you're not very polite!" she said. "now, why should i be?" he pursued, argumentatively--"what's politeness worth unless you want to flatter something for yourself out of somebody? i never flatter, and i'm never polite. i know just how you feel,--you haven't got as much money as you want and you're looking about for a fellow who has. then you'll marry him--if you can. you, as a woman, are doing just what jack did as a man. but,--if you miss your game, i don't think you'll commit suicide. you're too well-balanced for that. and i think you'll succeed in your aims--if you're careful!" "if i'm careful?" she echoed, questioningly. "yes--if you want a millionaire. especially the old rascal you're after. don't dress too 'loud.' don't show all your back--leave some for him to think about. don't paint your face,--let it alone. and be, or pretend to be, very considerate of folks' feelings. that'll do!" "here endeth the first lesson!" she said. "thanks, preacher gwent! i guess i'll worry through!" "i guess you will!"--he answered, slowly. "i wish i was as certain of anything in the world as i am of that!" she was silent. the corners of her mouth twitched slightly as though she sought to conceal a smile. she watched her companion furtively as he took a cigar from a case in his pocket and lit it. "i must go and fix up the funeral business"--he said, "jack has gone, and his remains must be disposed of. that's my affair. just now his mother's crying over him,--and i can't stand that sort of thing. it gets over me." "then you actually have a heart?" she suggested. "i suppose so. i used to have. but it isn't the heart,--that's only a pumping muscle. i conclude it's the head." he puffed two or three rings of smoke into the clear air. "you know where she's gone?" he asked, suddenly. "morgana?" "yes." lydia herbert hesitated. "i think i know," she replied at last--"but i'm not sure." "well, i'm sure"--said gwent--"she's after the special quarry that has given her the slip,--roger seaton. he went to california a month ago." "then she's in california?" "certain!" mr. gwent took another puff at his cigar. "you must have been in washington when every one thought that he and she were going to make a matrimonial tie of it"--he went on--"why, nothing else was talked of!" she nodded. "i know! i was there. but a man who has set his soul on science doesn't want a wife." "and what about a woman who has set her soul in the same direction?" he asked. she shrugged her shoulders. "oh, that's all popcorn! morgana is not a scientist,--she's hardly a student. she just 'imagines' she can do things. but she can't." "well! i'm not so sure!" and gwent looked ruminative--"she's got a smart way of settling problems while the rest of us are talking about them." "to her own satisfaction only"--said miss herbert, ironically,--"certainly not to the satisfaction of anybody else! she talks the wildest nonsense about controlling the world! imagine it! a world controlled by morgana!" she gave an impatient little shake of her skirts. "i do hate these sorts of mysterious, philosophising women, don't you? the old days must have been ever so much better! when it was all poetry and romance and beautiful idealism! when dante and beatrice were possible!" gwent smiled sourly. "they never were possible!" he retorted--"dante was, like all poets, a regular humbug. any peg served to hang his stuff on,--from a child of nine to a girl of eighteen. the stupidest thing ever written is what he called his 'new life' or 'vita nuova.' i read it once, and it made me pretty nigh sick. think of all that twaddle about beatrice 'denying him her most gracious salutation'! that any creature claiming to be a man could drivel along in such a style beats me altogether!" "it's perfectly lovely!" declared miss herbert--"you've no taste in literature, mr. gwent!" "i've no taste for humbug"--he answered--"that's so! i guess i know the difference between tragedy and comedy, even when i see them side by side." he flicked a long burnt ash from his cigar. "i've had a bit of comedy with you this morning--now i'm going to take up tragedy! i tell you there's more written in jack's dead face than in all dante!" "the tragedy of a lost gamble for money!" she said, with a scornful uplift of her eyebrows. he nodded. "that's so! it upsets the mental balance of a man more than a lost gamble for love!" and he walked away. lydia herbert, left to herself, played idly with the leaves of the vine that clambered about the high wooden columns of the verandah where she stood, admiring the sparkle of her diamond bangle which, like a thin circlet of dewdrops, glittered on her slim wrist. now and then she looked far out to the sea gleaming in the burning sun, and allowed her thoughts to wander from herself and her elegant clothes to some of the social incidents in which she had taken part during the past couple of months. she recalled the magnificent ball given by morgana royal at her regal home, when all the fashion and frivolity of the noted "four hundred" were assembled, and when the one whispered topic of conversation among gossips was the possibility of the marriage of one of the richest women in the world to a shabbily clothed scientist without a penny, save what he earned with considerable difficulty. morgana herself played the part of an enigma. she laughed, shook her head, and moved her daintily attired person through the crowd of her guests with all the gliding grace of a fairy vision in white draperies showered with diamonds, but gave no hint of special favour or attention to any man, not even to roger seaton, the scientist in question, who stood apart from the dancing throng, in a kind of frowning disdain, looking on, much as one might fancy a forest animal looking at the last gambols of prey it purposed to devour. he had taken the first convenient interval to disappear, and as he did not return, miss herbert had asked her hostess what had become of him? morgana, her cheeks flushed prettily by a just-finished dance, smiled in surprise at the question. "how should i know?" she replied--"i am not his keeper?" "but--but--you are interested in him?" lydia suggested. "interested? oh, yes! who would not be interested in a man who says he can destroy half the world if he wants to! he assumes to be a sort of deity, you know!--jove and his thunderbolts in the shape of a man in a badly cut suit of modern clothes! isn't it fun!" she gave a little peal of laughter. "and every one in the room to-night thinks i am going to marry him!" "and are you not?" "can you imagine it! me, married? lydia, lydia, do you take me for a fool!" she laughed again--then grew suddenly serious. "to think of such a thing! fancy me!--giving my life into the keeping of a scientific wizard who, if he chose, could reduce me to a little heap of dust in two minutes, and no one any the wiser! thank you! the sensational press has been pretty full lately of men's brutalities to women,--and i've no intention of adding myself to the list of victims! men are brutes! they were born brutes, and brutes they will remain!" "then you don't like him?" persisted lydia, moved, in spite of herself, by curiosity, and also by a vague wonder at the strange brilliancy of complexion and eyes which gave to morgana a beauty quite unattainable by features only--"you're not set on him?" morgana held up a finger. "listen!" she said--"isn't that a lovely valse? doesn't the music seem to sweep round and tie us all up in a garland of melody! how far, far above all these twirling human microbes it is!--as far as heaven from earth! if we could really obey the call of that music we should rise on wings and fly to such wonderful worlds!--as it is, we can only hop round and round like motes in a sunbeam and imagine we are enjoying ourselves for an hour or two! but the music means so much more!" she paused, enrapt;--then in a lighter tone went on--"and you think i would marry? i would not marry an emperor if there were one worth having--which there isn't!--and as for roger seaton, i certainly am not 'set' on him as you so elegantly put it! and he's not 'set' on me. we're both 'set' on something else!" she was standing near an open window as she spoke, and she looked up at the dark purple sky sprinkled with stars. she continued slowly, and with emphasis-"i might--possibly i might--have helped him to that something else--if i had not discovered something more!" she lifted her hand with a commanding gesture as though unconsciously,--then let it drop at her side. lydia herbert looked at her perplexedly. "you talk so very strangely!" she said. morgana smiled. "yes, i know i do!" she admitted--"i am what old scotswomen call 'fey'! you know i was born away in the hebrides,--my father was a poor herder of sheep at one time before he came over to the states. i was only a baby when i was carried away from the islands of mist and rain--but i was 'fey' from my birth--" "what is fey?" interrupted miss herbert. "it's just everything that everybody else is not"--morgana replied--"'fey' people are magic people; they see what no one else sees,--they hear voices that no one else hears--voices that whisper secrets and tell of wonders as yet undiscovered--" she broke off suddenly. "we must not stay talking here"--she resumed-"all the folks will say we are planning the bridesmaids' dresses and that the very day of the ceremony is fixed! but you can be sure that i am not going to marry anybody--least of all roger seaton!" "you like him though! i can see you like him!" "of course i like him! he's a human magnet,--he 'draws'! you fly towards him as if he were a bit of rubbed sealing-wax and you a snippet of paper! but you soon drop off! oh, that valse! isn't it entrancing!" and, swinging herself round lightly like a bell-flower in a breeze she danced off alone and vanished in the crowd of her guests. lydia herbert recalled this conversation now, as she stood looking from the vine-clad verandah of her hotel towards the sea, and again saw, as in a vision, the face and eyes of her "fey" friend,--a face by no means beautiful in feature, but full of a sparkling attraction which was almost irresistible. "nothing in her!" had declared new york society generally--"except her money! and her hair--but not even that unless she lets it down!" lydia had seen it so "let down," once, and only once, and the sight of such a glistening rope of gold had fairly startled her. "all your own?" she had gasped. and with a twinkling smile, and comic hesitation of manner morgana had answered. "i--i think it is! it seems so! i don't believe it will come off unless you pull very hard!" lydia had not pulled hard, but she had felt the soft rippling mass falling from head to far below the knee, and had silently envied the owner its possession. "it's a great bother," morgana declared--"i never know what to do with it. i can't dress it 'fashionably' one bit, and when i twist it up it's so fine it goes into nothing and never looks the quantity it is. however, we must all have our troubles!--with some it's teeth--with others it's ankles--we're never quite all right! the thing is to endure without complaining!" "and this curious creature who talked "so very strangely," possessed millions of money! her father, who had arrived in the states from the wildest north of scotland with practically not a penny, had so gathered and garnered every opportunity that came in his way that every investment he touched seemed to turn to five times its first value under his fingers. when his wife died very soon after his wealth began to accumulate, he was beset by women of beauty and position eager to take her place, but he was adamant against all their blandishments and remained a widower, devoting his entire care to the one child he had brought with him as an infant from the highland hills, and to whom he gave a brilliant but desultory and uncommon education. life seemed to swirl round him in a glittering ring of gold of which he made himself the centre,--and when he died suddenly "from overstrain" as the doctors said, people were almost frightened to name the vast fortune his daughter inherited, accustomed as they were to the counting of many millions. and now---?" "california!" mused lydia--"sam gwent thinks she has gone there after roger seaton. but what can be her object if she doesn't care for him? it's far more likely she's started for sicily--she's having a palace built there for her small self to live in 'all by her lonesome'! well! she can afford it!" and with a short sigh she let go her train of thought and left the verandah,--it was time to change her costume and prepare "effects" to dazzle and bewilder the uncertain mind of a crafty old croesus who, having freely enjoyed himself as a bachelor up to his present age of seventy-four, was now looking about for a young strong woman to manage his house and be a nurse and attendant for him in his declining years, for which service, should she be suitable, he would concede to her the name of "wife" in order to give stability to her position. and lydia herbert herself was privately quite aware of his views. moreover she was entirely willing to accommodate herself to them for the sake of riches and a luxurious life, and the "settlement" she meant to insist upon if her plans ripened to fulfilment. she had no great ambitions; few women of her social class have. to be well housed, well fed and well clothed, and enabled to do the fashionable round without hindrance--this was all she sought, and of romance, sentiment, emotion or idealism she had none. now and again she caught the flash of a thought in her brain higher than the level of material needs, but dismissed it more quickly than it came as--"ridiculous! absolute nonsense! like morgana!" and to be like morgana, meant to be like what cynics designate "an impossible woman,"--independent of opinions and therefore "not understood of the people." chapter iv "why do you stare at me? you have such big eyes!" morgana, dotted only in a white silk nightgown, sitting on the edge of her bed with her small rosy toes peeping out beneath the tiny frill of her thin garment, looked at the broad-shouldered handsome girl manella who had just brought in her breakfast tray and now stood regarding her with an odd expression of mingled admiration and shyness. "such big eyes!" she repeated--"like great head-lamps flaring out of that motor-brain of yours! what do you see in me?" manella's brown skin flushed crimson. "something i have never seen before!" she answered--"you are so small and white! not like a woman at all!" morgana laughed merrily. "not like a woman! oh dear! what am i like then?" manella's eyes grew darker than ever in the effort to explain her thought. "i do not know"--she said, hesitatingly--"but--once--here in this garden--we found a wonderful butterfly with white wings--all white,--and it was resting on a scarlet flower. we all went out to look at it, because it was unlike any other butterfly we had ever seen,--its wings were like velvet or swansdown. you remind me of that butterfly." morgana smiled. "did it fly away?" "oh, yes. very soon! and an hour or so after it had flown, the scarlet flower where it had rested was dead." "most thrilling!" and morgana gave a little yawn. "is that breakfast? yes? stay with me while i have it! are you the head chambermaid at the plaza?" manella shrugged her shoulders. "i do not know what i am! i do everything i am asked to do as well as i can." "obliging creature! and are you well paid?" "as much as i want"--manella answered, indifferently. "but there is no pleasure in the work." "is there pleasure in any work?" "if one works for a person one loves,--surely yes!" the girl murmured as if she were speaking to herself, "the days would be too short for all the work to be done!" morgana glanced at her, and the flash of her eyes had the grey-blue of lightning. then she poured out the coffee and tasted it. "not bad!" she commented--"did you make it?" manella nodded, and went on talking at random. "i daresay it's not as good as it ought to be"--she said--"if you had brought your own maid i should have asked her to make it. women of your class like their food served differently to us poor folk, and i don't know their ways." morgana laughed. "you quaint, handsome thing! what do you know about it? what, in your opinion, is my class?" manella pulled nervously at the ends of the bright coloured kerchief she wore knotted across her bosom, and hesitated a moment. "well, for one thing you are rich"--she said, at last--"there is no mistaking that. your lovely clothes--you must spend a fortune on them! then--all the people here wonder at your automobile--and your chauffeur says it is the most perfect one ever made! and all these riches make you think you ought to have everything just as you fancy it. i suppose you ought--i'm not sure! i don't believe you have much feeling,--you couldn't, you know! it is not as if you wanted something very badly and there was no chance of your getting it,--your money would buy all you could desire. it would even buy you a man!" morgana paused in the act of pouring out a second cup of coffee, and her face dimpled with amusement. "buy me a man!" she echoed--"you think it would?" "of course it would!" manella averred--"if you wanted one, which i daresay you don't. for all i know, you may be like the man who is living in the consumption hut on the hill,--he ought to have a woman, but he doesn't want one." morgana buttered her little breakfast roll very delicately. "the man who lives in the consumption hut on the hill!" she repeated, slowly, and with a smile--"what man is that?" "i don't know--" and manella's large dark eyes filled with a strangely wistful perplexity. "he is a stranger--and he's not ill at all. he is big and strong and healthy. but he has chosen to live in the 'house of the dying,' as it is sometimes called--where people from the plaza go when there's no more hope for them. he likes to be quite alone--he thinks and writes all day. i take him milk and bread,--it is all he orders from the plaza. i would be his woman. i would work for him from morning till night. but he will not have me." morgana raised her eyes, glittering with the "fey" light in them that often bewildered and rather scared her friends. "you would be his woman? you are in love with him?" she said. something in her look checked manella's natural impulse to confide in one of her own sex. "no, i am not!"--she answered coldly--"i have said too much." morgana smiled, and stretching out her small white hand, adorned with its sparkling rings, laid it caressingly on the girl's brown wrist. "you are a dear!"--she murmured, lazily--"just a dear! a big, beautiful creature with a heart! that's the trouble--your heart! you've found a man living selfishly alone, scribbling what he perhaps thinks are the most wonderful things ever put on paper, when they are very likely nothing but rubbish, and it enters into your head that he wants mothering and loving! he doesn't want anything of the sort! and you want to love and mother him! oh heavens!--have you ever thought what loving and mothering mean?" manella drew a quick soft breath. "all the world, surely!" she answered, with emotion--"to love!--to possess the one we love, body and soul!--and to mother a life born of such love!--that must be heaven!" the smile flitted away from morgana's lips, and her expression became almost sorrowful. "you are like a trusting animal!" she said--"an animal all innocent of guns and steel-traps! you poor girl! i should like you to come with me out of these mountain solitudes into the world! what is your name?" "manella." "manella--what?" "manella soriso"--the girl answered--"i am spanish by both parents,--they are dead now. i was born at monterey." morgana began to hum softly- "under the walls of monterey at dawn the bugles began to play come forth to thy death victor galbraith." she broke off,--then said-"you have not seen many men?" "oh, yes, i have!" and manella tossed her head airily--"men all more or less alike--greedy for dollars, fond of smoke and cinema women,--i do not care for them. some have asked me to marry, but i would rather hang myself than be wife to one of them!" morgana slid off the edge of her bed and stood upright, her white silk nightgown falling symmetrically round her small figure. with a dexterous movement she loosened the knot into which she had twisted her hair for the night, and it fell in a sinuous coil like a golden snake from head to knee. manella stepped back in amazement. "oh!" she cried--"how beautiful! i have quite as much in quantity, but it is black and heavy--ugly!--no good. and he,--that man who lives in the hut on the hill--says there is nothing he hates so much as a woman with golden hair! how can he hate such a lovely thing!" morgana shrugged her shoulders. "each one to his taste!" she said, airily--"some like black hair--some red--some gold--some nut-brown. but does it matter at all what men think or care for? to me it is perfectly indifferent! and you are quite right to prefer hanging to marriage--i do, myself!" fascinated by her wonderful elfin look as she stood like a white iris in its silken sheath, her small body's outline showing dimly through the folds of her garment, manella drew nearer, somewhat timidly. "ah, but i do not mean that i prefer hanging to real, true marriage!" she said--"when one loves, it is different! in love i would rather hang than not give myself to the man i love--give myself in all i am, and all i have! and you--you who look so pretty and wonderful--almost like a fairy!--do you not feel like that too?" morgana laughed--a little laugh sweet and cold as rain tinkling on glass. "no, indeed!" she answered--"i have never felt like that! i hope i shall never feel like that! to feel like that is to feel like the female beasts of the field who only wait and live to be used by the males, giving 'all they are and all they have,' poor creatures! the bull does not 'love' the cow--he gives her a calf. when the calf is born and old enough to get along by itself, it forgets its mother just as its mother forgets it, while the sire is blissfully indifferent to both! it's really the same thing with human animals,--especially nowadays--only we haven't the honesty to admit it! no, manella soriso!--with your good looks you ought to be far above 'feeling like that!--you are a nobler creature than a cow! no wonder men despise women who are always on the cow level!" she laughed again, and tripped lightly to the looking-glass. "i must dress;"--she said--"and you can take a message to my chauffeur and tell him to get everything ready to start. i've had a lovely night's rest and am quite fit for a long run." "oh, are you going?" and manella gave a little cry of pain--"i am sorry! i do want you to stay!" morgana's eyes flashed mingled humour and disdain. "you quaint creature! why should i stay? there's nothing to stay for!" "if there's nothing to stay for, why did you come?" this was an unexpected question, the result of a subconscious suggestion in manella's mind which she herself could not have explained. morgana seemed amused. "what did i come for? really, i hardly know! i am full of odd whims and fancies, and i like to humour myself in my various ways. i think i wanted to see a bit of california,--that's all!" "then why not see more of it?" persisted manella. "enough is better than too much!" laughed morgana--"i am easily bored! this plaza hotel would bore me to death! what do you want me to stay for? to see your man on the mountain?" "no!" manella replied with sudden sharpness--"no! i would not like you to see him! he would either hate you or love you!" the grey-blue lightning flash glittered in morgana's eyes. "you are a curious girl!" she said, slowly--"you might be a tragic actress and make your fortune on the stage, with that voice and that look! and yet you stay here as 'help' in a sanatorium! well! it's a dull, dreary way of living, but i suppose you like it!" "i don't like it!" declared manella, vehemently, "i hate it! but what am i to do? i have no home and no money. i must earn my living somehow." "will you come away with me?" said morgana--"i'll take you at once if you like!" manella stared in a kind of child-like wonderment,--her big dusky eyes grew brilliant,--then clouded with a sombre sadness. "thank you, senora!" she answered, pronouncing the spanish form of address with a lingering sweetness, "it is very good of you! but i should not please you. i do not know the world, and i am not quick to learn. i am better where i am." a little smile, dreamy and mysterious, crept round morgana's lips. "yes!-perhaps you are!" she said--"i understand! you would not like to leave him! i am sure that is so! you want to feed your big bear regularly with bread and milk--yes, you poor deluded child! courage! you may still have a chance to be, as you say, 'his woman!' and when you are i wonder how you will like it!" she laughed, and began to brush her shining hair out in two silky lengths on either side. manella gazed and gazed at the glittering splendour till she could gaze no more for sheer envy, and then she turned slowly and left the room. alone, morgana continued brushing her hair meditatively,--then, twisting it up in a great coil out of her way, she proceeded with her toilette. everything of the very finest and daintiest was hers to wear, from the silken hose to the delicate lace camisole, and when she reached the finishing point in her admirably cut summer serge gown and becoming close-fitting hat, she studied herself from head to foot in the mirror with fastidious care to be sure that every detail of her costume was perfect. she was fully aware that she was not a newspaper camera "beauty" and that she had subtle points of attraction which no camera could ever catch, and it was just these points which she knew how to emphasise. "i hate untidy travellers!"--she would say--"horrors of men and women in oil-skins, smelling of petrol! no goblin ever seen in a nightmare could be uglier than the ordinary motorist!" she had no luggage with her, save an adaptable suitcase which, she declared "held everything." this she quickly packed and locked, ready for her journey. then she stepped to the window and waved her hand towards the near hill and the "hut of the dying." "fool of a bear man!" she said, apostrophising the individual she chose to call by that name--"here you come along to a wild place in california running away from me,--and here you find a sort of untutored female savage eager and willing to be your 'woman!' well, why not? she's just the kind of thing you want--to fetch wood, draw water, cook food, and--bear children! and when the children come they'll run about the hill like savages themselves, and yell and dance and be greedy and dirty--and you'll presently wonder whether you are a civilised man or a species of unthinking baboon! you will be living the baboon life,--and your brain will grow thicker and harder as you grow older,--and your great scientific discovery will be buried in the thickness and hardness and never see the light of day! all this, if she is 'your woman!' it's a great 'if' of course!--but she's big and handsome, with a beautiful body and splendid strength, and i never heard of a man who could resist beauty and strength together. as for me and my 'vulgar wealth' as you call it, i'm a little wisp of straw not worth your thought!--or so you assume--no, good bear!--not till we come to a tussle--if we ever do!" she took up her gloves and hand-bag and went downstairs, entering the broad, airy flower-bordered lounge of the plaza with a friendly nod and smile to the book-keeper in the office where she paid her bill. her chauffeur, a smart frenchman in quiet livery, was awaiting her with an assistant groom or page beside him. "we go on to-day, madame?" he enquired. "yes,--we go on"--she replied--"as quickly and as far as possible. just fetch my valise--it's ready packed in my room." the groom hurried away to obey this order, and morgana glancing around her saw that she was an object of intense curiosity to some of the hotel inmates who were in the lounge--men and women both. her grey-blue eyes flashed over them all carelessly and lighted on manella who stood shrinking aside in a corner. to her she beckoned smilingly. "come and see me off!" she said--"take a look at my car and see how you'd like to travel in it!" manella pursed her lips and shook her head. "i'd rather not!" she murmured--"it's no use looking at what one can never have!" morgana laughed. "as you please!" she said--"you are an odd girl, but you are quite beautiful! don't forget that! tell the man on the mountain that i said so!--quite beautiful! good-bye!" she passed through the lounge with a swift grace of movement and entered her sumptuous limousine, lined richly in corded rose silk and fitted with every imaginable luxury like a queen's boudoir on wheels, while manella craned her neck forward to see the last of her. her valise was quickly strapped in place, and in another minute to the sound of a high silvery bugle note (which was the only sort of "hooter" she would tolerate) the car glided noiselessly away down the broad, dusty white road, its polished enamel and silver points glittering like streaks of light vanishing into deeper light as it disappeared. "there goes the richest woman in america!" said the hotel clerk for the benefit of anyone who might care to listen to the announcement,--"morgana royal!" "is that so?" drawled a sallow-faced man, reclining in an invalid chair--"she's not much to look at!" and he yawned expansively. he was right. she was not much to look at. but she was more than looks ever made. so, with sorrow and with envy, thought manella, who instinctively felt that though she herself might be something to look at and "quite beautiful," she was nothing else. she had never heard the word "fey." the mystic glamour of the western highlands was shut away from her by the wide barrier of many seas and curtains of cloud. and therefore she did not know that "fey" women are a race apart from all other women in the world. chapter v that evening at sunset manella made her way towards the hill and the "house of the dying," moved by she knew not what strange impulse. she had no excuse whatever for going; she knew that the man living up there in whom she was so much interested had as much food for three days as he asked for or desired, and that he was likely to be vexed at the very sight of her. yet she had an eager wish to tell him something about the wonderful little creature with lightning eyes who had left the plaza that morning and had told her, manella, that she was "quite beautiful." pride, and an innocent feminine vanity thrilled her; "if another woman thinks so, it must be so,"--she argued, being aware that women seldom admire each other. she walked swiftly, with head bent,--and was brought to a startled halt by meeting and almost running against the very individual she sought, who in his noiseless canvas shoes and with his panther-like tread had come upon her unawares. checked in her progress she stood still, her eyes quickly lifted, her lips apart. in her adoration of the strength and magnificent physique of the stranger whom she knew only as a stranger, she thought he looked splendid as a god descending from the hill. far from feeling god-like, he frowned as he saw her. "where are you going?" he demanded, brusquely. the rich colour warmed her cheeks to a rose-red that matched the sunset. "i was going--to see if you--if you wanted anything"--she stammered, almost humbly. "you know i do not"--he said--"you can spare yourself the trouble." she drew herself up with a slight air of offence. "if you want nothing why do you come down into the valley?" she asked. "you say you hate the plaza!" "i do!" and he spoke almost vindictively--"but, at the moment, there's some one there i want to see." her black eyes opened inquisitively. "a man?" "no. strange to say, a woman." a sudden light flashed on her mind. "i know!" she exclaimed--"but you will not see her! she has gone!" "what do you mean?" he asked, impatiently--"what do you know?" "oh, i know nothing!" and there was a sobbing note of pathos in her voice--"but i feel here!"--and she pressed her hands against her bosom--"something tells me that you have seen her--the little wonderful white woman, sweetly perfumed like a rose,--with her silks and jewels and her fairy car!--and her golden hair... ah!--you said you hated a woman with golden hair! is that the woman you hate?" he stood looking at her with an amused, half scornful expression. "hate is too strong a word"--he answered--"she isn't worth hating!" her brows contracted in a frown. "i do not believe that!"--she said--"you are not speaking truly. more likely it is, i think, you love her!" he caught her roughly by the arm. "stop that!" he exclaimed, angrily--"you are foolish and insolent! whether i love or hate anybody or anything is no affair of yours! how dare you speak to me as if it were!" she shrank away from him. her lips quivered, and tears welled through her lashes. "forgive me! ... oh, forgive!" she murmured, pleadingly--"i am sorry!..." "so you ought to be!" he retorted--"you--manella--imagine yourself in love with me ... yes, you do!--and you cannot leave me alone! no amorous man ever cadged round for love as much or as shamelessly as an amorous woman! then you see another woman on the scene, and though she's nothing but a stray visitor at the plaza where you help wash up the plates and dishes, you suddenly conceive a lot of romantic foolery in your head and imagine me to be mysteriously connected with her! oh, for god's sake don't cry! it's the most awful bore! there's nothing to cry for. you've set me up like a sort of doll in a shrine and you want to worship me--well!--i simply won't be worshipped. as for your 'little wonderful white woman sweetly perfumed like a rose,' i don't mind saying that i know her. and i don't mind also telling you that she came up the hill last night to ferret me out." step by step manella drew nearer, her eyes blazing. "she went to see you?--she did that!--in the darkness?--like a thief or a serpent!" he laughed aloud. "no thief and no serpent in it!" he said--"and no darkness, but in the full light of the moon! such a moon it was, too! a regular stage moon! a perfect setting for such an actress, in her white gown and her rope of gold hair! yes--it was very well planned!--effective in its way, though it left me cold!" "ah, but it did not leave you cold!" cried manella; "else you would not have come down to see her to-day! you say she went 'to ferret you out'--" "of course she did"--he interrupted her--"she would ferret out any man she wanted for the moment. forests could not hide him,--caves could not cover him if she made up her mind to find him. i had hoped she would not find me--but she has--however,--you say she has gone--" the colour had fled from manella's face,--she was pale and rigid. "she will come back," she said stiffly. "i hope not!" and he threw himself carelessly down on the turf to rest--"come and sit beside me here and tell me what she said to you!" but manella was silent. her dark, passionate eyes rested upon him with a world of scorn and sorrow in their glowing depths. "come!" he repeated--"don't stare at me as if i were some new sort of reptile!" "i think you are!" she said, coldly--"you seem to be a man, but you have not the feelings of a man!" "oh, have i not!" and he gave a light gesture of indifference--"i have the feelings of a modern man,--the 'kultur' of a perfect super-german! yes, that is so! sentiment is the mere fly-trap of sensuality--the feeler thrust out to scent the prey, but once the fly is caught, the trap closes. do you understand? no, of course you don't! you are a dreadfully primitive woman!" "i did not think you were german," she said. "nor did i!" and he laughed--"nor am i. i said just now that i had the 'kultur' of a super-german--and a super-german means something above every other male creature except himself. he cannot get away from himself--nor can i! that's the trouble! come, obey me, manella! sit down here beside me!" very slowly and very reluctantly she did as he requested. she sat on the grass some three or four paces off. he stretched out a hand to touch her, but she pushed it back very decidedly. he smiled. "i mustn't make love to you this morning, eh?" he queried. "all right! i don't want to make love--it doesn't interest me--i only want to put you in a good temper! you are like a rumpled pussy-cat--your fur must be stroked the right way." "you will not stroke it so!" said manella, disdainfully. "no?" "no. never again!" "oh, dire tragedy!" and he stretched himself out on the turf with his arms above his head--"but what does it matter! give me your news, silly child! what did the 'little wonderful white woman' say to you?" "you want to know?" "i think so! i am conscious of a certain barbaric spirit of curiosity, like that of a savage who sees a photograph of himself for the first time! yes! i want to know what the modern feminine said to the primitive!" manella gave an impatient gesture. "i do not understand all your fine words"--she said--"but i will answer you. i told her about you--how you had come to live in the hut for the dying on the hill rather than at the plaza--and how i took to you all the food you asked for, and she seemed amused--" "amused?" he echoed. "yes--amused. she laughed,--she looks very pretty when she laughs. and--and she seemed to fancy--" he lifted himself upright in a sitting posture. "seemed to fancy? ... what?--" "that i was not bad to look at--" and manella, gathering sudden boldness, lifted her dark eyes to his face--"she said i could tell you that she thinks me quite beautiful! yes!--quite beautiful!" he smiled--a smile that was more like a sneer. "so you are! i've told you so, often. 'there needs no ghost come from the grave' to emphasise the fact. but she--the purring cat!--she told you to repeat her opinion to me, because--can you guess why?" "no!" "simpleton! because she wishes you to convey to me the message that she considers me your lover and that she admires my taste! now she'll go back to new york full of the story! subtle little devil! but i am not your lover, and never shall be,--not even for half an hour!" manella sprang up from the turf where she had been sitting. "i know that!" she said, and her splendid eyes flashed proud defiance--"i know i have been a fool to let myself care for you! i do not know why i did--it was an illness! but i am well now!" "you are well now? good! o let us be joyful! keep well, manella!--and be 'quite beautiful'--as you are! to be quite beautiful is a fine thing--not so fine as it used to be in the greek period--still, it has its advantages! i wonder what you will do with your beauty?" as he spoke, he rose, stretching and shaking him self like a forest animal. "what will you do with it?" he repeated--"you must give it to somebody! you must transmit it to your offspring! that's the old law of nature--it's getting a bit monotonous, still it's the law! now she--the wonderful white woman--she's all for upsetting the law! fortunately she's not beautiful--" "she is!" exclaimed manella--"_i_ think her so!" he looked down upon her from his superior height with a tolerant amusement. "really! you think her so! and she thinks you so! quite a mutual admiration society! and both of you obsessed by the same one man! i pity that man! the only thing for him to do is to keep out of it! no, manella!--think as you like, she is not beautiful. you are beautiful. but she is clever, you are not clever. you may thank god for that! she is outrageously, unnaturally, cursedly clever! and her cleverness makes her see the sham of life all through; the absurdity of birth that ends in death--the freakishness of civilisation to no purpose--and she's out for something else. she wants some thing newer than sex-attraction and family life. a husband would bore her to extinction--the care of children would send her into a lunatic asylum!" manella looked bewildered. "i cannot understand!" she said--"a woman lives for husband and children!" "some women do!" he answered--"not all! there are a good few who don't want to stay on the animal level. men try to keep them there--but it's a losing game nowadays. ('foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests'--but we cannot fail to see that when mother fox has reared her puppies she sends them off about their own business and doesn't know them any more--likewise mother bird does the same. nature has no sentiment.) we have, because we cultivate artificial feelings--we imagine we 'love,' when we only want something that pleases us for the moment. to live, as you say, for husband and children would make a woman a slave--a great many women are slaves--but they are beginning to get emancipated--the woman with the gold hair, whom you so much admire, is emancipated." manella gave a slight disdainful movement of her head. "that only means she is free to do as she likes"--she said--"to marry or not to marry--to love or not to love. i think if she loved at all, she would love very greatly. why did she go so secretly in the evening to see you? i suppose she loves you!" a sudden red flush of anger coloured his brow. "yes"--he answered with a kind of vindictive slowness--"i suppose she does! you, manella, are after me as a man merely--she is after me as a brain! you would steal my physical liberty,--she would steal my innermost thought! and you will both be disappointed! neither my body nor my brain shall ever be dominated by any woman!" he turned from her abruptly and began the ascent that led to his solitary retreat. once he looked back-"don't let me see you for two days at least!" he called--"i've more than enough food to keep me going." he strode on, and manella stood watching him, her tall handsome figure silhouetted against the burning sky. her dark eyes were moist with suppressed tears of shame and suffering,--she felt herself to be wronged and slighted undeservedly. and beneath this personal emotion came now a smarting sense of jealousy, for in spite of all he had said, she felt that there was some secret between him and "the little wonderful white woman," which she could not guess and which was probably the reason of his self-sought exile and seclusion. "i wish now i had gone with her!" she mused--"for if i am 'quite beautiful,' as she said, she might have helped me in the world,--i might have become a lady!" she walked slowly and dejectedly back to the plaza, knowing in her heart that lady or no lady, her rich beauty was useless to her, inasmuch as it made no effect on the one man she had elected to care for, unwanted and unasked. certain physiologists teach that the law of natural selection is that the female should choose her mate, but the difficulty along this line of argument is that she may choose where her choice is unwelcome and irresponsive. manella was a splendid type of primitive womanhood,--healthy, warm-blooded and full of hymeneal passion,--as a wife she would have been devoted,--as a mother superb in her tenderness; but, measured by modern standards of advanced and restless femininity she was a mere drudge, without the ability to think for herself or to analyse subtleties of emotion. intellectuality had no part in her; most people's talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day. she was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,--she could not follow him at all,--and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. she would have gladly been his servant on the mere chance and hope that possibly in some moment of abandonment he might have yielded to the importunity of her tenderness; adonis himself in all the freshness of his youth never exercised a more potent spell upon enamoured venus than this plain, big bearded man over the lonely, untutored californian girl with the large loveliness of a goddess and the soul of a little child. what was the singular fascination which like the "pull" of a magnetic storm on telegraph wires, forced a woman's tender heart under the careless foot of a rough creature as indifferent to it as to a flower he trampled in his path? nature might explain it in some unguarded moment of self-betrayal,--but nature is jealous of her secrets,--they have to be coaxed out of her in the slow course of centuries. and with all the coaxing, the subtle work of her woven threads between the like and the unlike remains an unsolved mystery. chapter vi from california to sicily is a long way. it used to be considered far longer than it is now but in these magical days of aerial and motor travelling, distance counts but little,--indeed as almost nothing to the mind of any man or woman brought up in america and therefore accustomed to "hustle." morgana royal had "hustled" the whole business, staying in paris a few days only,--in rome but two nights; and now here she was, as if she had been spirited over sea and land by supernatural power, seated in a perfect paradise-garden of flowers and looking out on the blue mediterranean with dreamy eyes in which the lightning flash was nearly if not wholly subdued. about quarter of a mile distant, and seen through the waving tops of pines and branching oleander, stood the house to which the garden belonged,--a "restored" palace of ancient days, built of rose-marble on the classic lines of greek architecture. its "restoration" was not quite finished; numbers of busy workmen were employed on the facade and surrounded loggia; and now and again she turned to watch them with a touch of invisible impatience in her movement. a slight smile sweetened her mouth as she presently perceived one figure approaching her,--a lithe, dark, handsome man, who, when he drew near enough, lifted his hat with a profoundly marked reverence, and, as she extended her hand, raised it to his lips. "a thousand welcomes, madama!" he said, speaking in english with a scarcely noticeable foreign accent--"last night i heard you had arrived, but could hardly believe the good fortune! you must have travelled quickly?" "never quickly enough for my mind!" she answered--"the whole world moves too slowly for me!" "you must carry that complaint to the buon dio!" he said, gaily--"perhaps he will condescend to spin this rolling planet a little faster! but in my mind, time flies far too rapidly! i have worked--we all have worked--to get this place finished for you, yet much remains to be done--" she interrupted him. "the interior is quite perfect"--she said--"you have carried out my instructions more thoroughly than i imagined could be possible. it is now an abode for fairies to live in,--for poets to dream in--" "for women to love in!" he said, with a sudden warmth in his dark eyes. she looked at him, laughing. "you poor marchese!"--she said--"still you think of love! i really believe italians keep all the sentiment of le moyen age in their hearts,--other peoples are gradually letting it go. you are like a child believing in childish things! you imagine i could be happy with a lover--or several lovers! to moon all day and embrace all night! oh fie! what a waste of time! and in the end nothing is so fatiguing!" she broke off a spray of flowering laurel and hit him with it playfully on the hand. "don't moon or spoon, caro amico! what is it all about? do i leave you nothing on which to write poetry? i find you out in sicily--a delightful poor nobleman with a family history going back to the caesars!--handsome, clever, with beautiful ideas--and i choose and commission you to restore and rebuild for me a fairy palace out of a half-ruined ancient one, because you have taste and skill, and i know you can do everything when money is no object--and you have done, and are doing it all perfectly. why then spoil it by falling in love with me? fie, fie!" she laughed again and rising, gave him her hand. "hold that!" she said--"and while you hold it, tell me of my other palace--the one with wings!" he clasped her small white fingers in his own sun-browned palm and walked beside her bare-headed. "ah!" and he drew a deep breath--"that is a miracle! what we called your 'impossible' plan has been made possible! but who would have thought that a woman--" "stop there!" she interrupted--"do not repeat the old gander-cackle of barbaric man, who, while owing his every comfort as well as the continuance of his race, to woman, denied her every intellectual initiative! 'who would have thought that a woman'--could do anything but bend low before a man with grovelling humility saying 'my lord, here am i, the waiting vessel of your lordship's pleasure!--possess me or i die!' we have changed that beggarly attitude!" her eyes flashed,--her voice rang out--the little fingers he held, stiffened resolutely in his clasp. he looked at her with a touch of anxiety. "pardon me!--i did not mean--" he stammered. in a second her mood changed, and she laughed. "no!--of course you 'did not mean' anything, marchese! you are naturally surprised that my 'idea' which was little more than an idea, has resolved itself into a scientific fact--but you would have been just as surprised if the conception had been that of a man instead of a woman. only you would not have said so!" she laughed again,--a laugh of real enjoyment,--then went on-"now tell me--what of my white eagle?--what movement?--what speed?" "amazing!" and the marchese lowered his voice to almost a whisper--"i hardly dare speak of it!--it is like something supernatural! we have carried out your instructions to the letter--the thing is living, in all respects save life. i made the test with the fluid you gave me--i charged the cells secretly--none of the mechanics saw what i did--and when she rose in air they were terrified--" "brave souls!" said morgana, and now she withdrew her hand from his grasp--"so you went up alone?" "i did. the steering was easy--she obeyed the helm,--it was as though she were a light yacht in a sea,--wind and tide in her favour. but her speed outran every air-ship i have ever known--as also the height to which she ascends." "we will take a trip in her to-morrow pour passer le temps"--said morgana, "you shall choose a place for us to go. nothing can stop us--nothing on earth or in the air!--and nothing can destroy us. i can guarantee that!" giulio rivardi gazed at her wonderingly,--his dark deep southern eyes expressed admiration with a questioning doubt commingled. "you are very sure of yourself"--he said, gently. "of course one cannot but marvel that your brain should have grasped in so short a time what men all over the world are still trying to discover--" "men are slow animals!" she said, lightly. "they spend years in talking instead of in doing. then again, when one of them really does something, all the rest are up in arms against him, and more years are wasted in trying to prove him right or wrong. i, as a mere woman, ask nobody for an opinion--i risk my own existence--spend my own money--and have nothing to do with governments. if i succeed i shall be sought after fast enough!--but i do not propose to either give or sell my discovery." "surely you will not keep it to yourself?" "why not? the world is too full of inventions as it is--and it is not the least grateful to its inventors or explorers. it would make the fool of a film a three-fold millionaire--but it would leave a great scientist or a noble thinker to starve. no, no! let it swing on its own round--i shall not enlighten it!" she walked on, gathering a flower here and there, and he kept pace beside her. "the men who are working here"--he at last ventured to say--"are deeply interested. you can hardly expect them not to talk among each other and in the outside clubs and meeting-places of the wonderful mechanism on which they have been engaged. they have been at it now steadily for fifteen months." "do i not know it?" and she turned her head to him, smiling, "have i not paid their salaries regularly?--and yours? i do not care how they talk or where,--they have built the white eagle, but they cannot make her fly!--not without me! you were as brave as i thought you would be when you decided to fly alone, trusting to the means i gave you and which i alone can give!" she broke off and was silent for a moment, then laying her hand lightly on his arm, she added-"i thank you for your confidence in me! as i have said, you were brave!--you must have felt that you risked your life on a chance!--nevertheless, for once, you allowed yourself to believe in a woman!" "not only for once but for always would i so believe!--in such a woman--if she would permit me!" he answered in a low tone of intense passion. she smiled. "ah! the old story! my dear marchese, do not fret your intellectual perception uselessly! think what we have in store for us!--such wonders as none have yet explored,--the mysteries of the high and the low--the light and the dark--and in those far-off spaces strewn with stars, we may even hear things that no mortal has yet heard--" "and what is the use of it all?" he suddenly demanded. she opened her deep blue eyes in amaze. "the use of it?... you ask the use of it?--" "yes--the use of it--without love!" he answered, his voice shaken with a sudden emotion--"madonna, forgive me!--listen with patience for one moment!--and think of the whole world mastered and possessed--but without anyone to love in it--without anyone to love you! suppose you could command the elements--suppose every force that science could bestow were yours, and yet!--no love for you--no love in yourself for anyone--what would be the use of it all? think, madonna!" she raised her delicate eyebrows in a little surprise,--a faint smile was on her lips. "dear marchese, i do think! i have thought!" she answered--"and i have observed! love--such as i imagined it when i was quite a young girl--does not exist. the passion called by that name is too petty and personal for me. men have made love to me often--not as prettily perhaps as you do!--but in america at least love means dollars! yes, truly! any man would love my dollars, and take me with them, just thrown in! you, perhaps--" "i should love you if you were quite poor!" he interposed vehemently. she laughed. "would you? don't be angry if i doubt it! if i were 'quite poor' i could not have given you your big commission here--this house would not have been restored to its former beauty, and the white eagle would be still a bird of the brain and not of the air! no, you very charming marchese!--i should not have the same fascination for you without my dollars!--and i may tell you that the only man i ever felt disposed to like,--just a little,--is a kind of rude brute who despises my dollars and me!" his brows knitted involuntarily. "then there is some man you like?" he asked, stiffly. "i'm not sure!" she answered, lightly--"i said i felt 'disposed' to like him! but that's only in the spirit of contradiction, because he detests me! and it's a sort of duel between us of sheer intellectuality, because he is trying to discover--in the usual slow, laborious, calculating methods of man--the very thing i have discovered! he's on the verge--but not across it!" "and so--he may outstrip you?" and the marchese's eyes glittered with sudden anger--"he may claim your discovery as his own?" morgana smiled. she was ascending the steps of the loggia, and she paused a moment in the full glare of the sicilian sunshine, her wonderful gold hair shining in it with the hue of a daffodil. "i think not!" she said--"though of course it depends on the use he makes of it. he--like all men--wishes to destroy; i, like all women, wish to create!" one or two of the workmen who were busy polishing the rose-marble pilasters of the loggia, here saluted her--she returned their salutations with an enchanting smile. "how delightful it all is!" she said--"i feel the real use of dollars at last! this beautiful 'palazzo,' in one of the loveliest places in the world--all the delicious flowers running down in garlands to the very shore of the sea-and liberty to enjoy life as one wishes to enjoy it, without hindrance or argument--without even the hindrance and argument of--love!" she laughed, and gave a mirthful upward glance at the marchese's somewhat sullen countenance. "come and have luncheon with me! you are the major-domo for the present--you have engaged the servants and you know the run of the house--you must show me everything and tell me everything! i have quite a nice chaperone--such a dear old english lady 'of title' as they say in the 'morning post'--so it's all quite right and proper--only she doesn't know a word of italian and very little french. but that's quite british you know!" she passed, smiling, into the house, and he followed. chapter vii perhaps there is no lovelier effect in all nature than a sicilian sunset, when the sky is one rich blaze of colour and the sea below reflects every vivid hue as in a mirror,--when the very air breathes voluptuous indolence, and all the restless work of man seems an impertinence rather than a necessity. morgana, for once in her quick restless life, felt the sudden charm of sweet peace and holy tranquility, as she sat, or rather reclined at ease in a long lounge chair after dinner in her rose-marble loggia facing the sea and watching the intense radiance of the heavens burning into the still waters beneath. she had passed the afternoon going over her whole house and gardens, and to the marchese giulio rivardi had expressed herself completely satisfied,--while he, to whom unlimited means had been entrusted to carry out her wishes, wondered silently as to the real extent of her fortune, and why she should have spent so much in restoring a "palazzo" for herself alone. an occasional thought of "the only man" she had said she was "disposed" to like, teased his brain; but he was not petty-minded or jealous. he was keenly and sincerely interested in her intellectual capacity, and he knew, or thought he knew, the nature of woman. he watched her now as she reclined, a small slim figure in white, with the red glow of the sun playing on the gold uptwisted coil of her hair,--a few people of the neighbourhood had joined her at dinner, and these were seated about, sipping coffee and chatting in the usual frivolous way of after-dinner guests--one or two of them were english who had made their home in sicily,--the others were travelling americans. "i guess you're pretty satisfied with your location, miss royal"--said one of these, a pleasant-faced grey-haired man, who for four or five years past had wintered in sicily with his wife, a frail little creature always on the verge of the next world--"it would be difficult to match this place anywhere! you only want one thing to complete it!" morgana turned her lovely eyes indolently towards him over the top of the soft feather fan she was waving lightly to and fro. "one thing? what is that?" she queried. "a husband!" she smiled. "the usual appendage!" she said--"to my mind, quite unnecessary, and likely to spoil the most perfect environment! though the marchese rivardi did ask me to-day what was the use of my pretty 'palazzo' and gardens without love! a sort of ethical conundrum!" she glanced at rivardi as she spoke--he was rolling a cigarette in his slim brown fingers and his face was impassively intent on his occupation. "well, that's so!"--and her american friend looked at her kindly--"even a fairy palace and a fairy garden might prove lonesome for one!" "and boresome for two!" laughed morgana--"my dear colonel boyd! it is not every one who is fitted for matrimony--and there exist so many that are,--eminently fitted--we can surely allow a few exceptions! i am one of those exceptions. a husband would be excessively tiresome to me, and very much in my way!" colonel boyd laughed heartily. "you won't always think so!" he said--"such a charming little woman must have a heart somewhere!" "oh, yes, dear!" chimed in his fragile invalid wife, "i am sure you have a heart!" morgana raised herself on her cushions to a sitting posture and looked round her with a curious little air or defiance. "a heart i must have!" she said--"otherwise i could not live. it is a necessary muscle. but what you call 'heart'--and what the dear elusive poets write about, is simply brain,--that is to say, an impulsive movement of the brain, suggesting the desirability of a particular person's companionship--and we elect to call that 'love'! on that mere impulse people marry." "it's a good impulse"--said colonel boyd, still smiling broadly--"it founds families and continues the race!" "ah, yes! but i often wonder why the race should be continued at all!" said morgana--"the time is ripe for a new creation!" a slow footfall sounded on the garden path, and the tall figure of a man clad in the everyday ecclesiastical garb of the roman church ascended the steps of the loggia. "don aloysius!" quickly exclaimed the marchese, and every one rose to greet the newcomer, morgana receiving him with a profound reverence. he laid his hand on her head with a kindly touch of benediction. "so the dreamer has come to her dream!" he said, in soft accents--"and it has not broken like an air-bubble!--it still floats and shines!" as he spoke he courteously saluted all present by a bend of his head,--and stood for a moment gazing at the view of the sea and the dying sunset. he was a very striking figure of a man--tall, and commanding in air and attitude, with a fine face which might be called almost beautiful. the features were such as one sees in classic marbles--the full clear eyes were set somewhat widely apart under shelving brows that denoted a brain with intelligence to use it, and the smile that lightened his expression as he looked from, the sea to his fair hostess was of a benignant sweetness. "yes"--he continued--"you have realised your vision of loveliness, have you not? our friend giulio rivardi has carried out all your plans?" "everything is perfect!" said morgana--"or will be when it is finished. the workmen still have things to do." "all workmen always have things to do!" said don aloysius, tranquilly--"and nothing is ever finished! and you, dear child!--you are happy?" she flushed and paled under his deep, steady gaze. "i--i think so!" she murmured--"i ought to be!" the priest smiled and after a pause took the chair which the marchese rivardi offered him. the other guests in the loggia looked at him with interest, fascinated by his grave charm of manner. morgana resumed her seat. "i ought to be happy"--she said--"and of course i am--or i shall be!" "'man never is but always to be blest'!" quoted colonel boyd--"and woman the same! i have been telling this lady, reverend father, that maybe she will find her 'palazzo' a bit lonesome without some one to share its pleasures." don aloysius looked round with a questioning glance. "what does she herself think about it?" he asked, mildly. "i have not thought at all"--said morgana, quickly, "i can always fill it with friends. no end of people are glad to winter in sicily." "but will such 'friends' care for you or your happiness?" suggested the marchese, pointedly. morgana laughed. "oh, no, i do not expect that! nowadays no one really cares for anybody else's happiness but their own. besides, i shall be much too busy to want company. i'm bent on all sorts of discoveries, you know!--i want to dive 'deeper than ever plummet sounded'!" "you will only find deeper depths!" said don aloysius, slowly--"and in the very deepest depth of all is god!" there was a sudden hush as he spoke. he went on in gentle accents. "how wonderful it is that he should be there,--and yet here! no one need 'dive deep' to find him. he is close to us as our very breathing! ah!" and he sighed--"i am sorry for all the busy 'discoverers'--they will never arrive at the end,--and meanwhile they miss the clue--the little secret by the way!" another pause ensued. then morgana spoke, in a very quiet and submissive tone. "dear don aloysius, you are a 'religious' as they say--and naturally you mistrust all seekers of science--science which is upsetting to your doctrine." aloysius raised a deprecating hand. "my child, there is no science that can upset the source of all science! the greatest mathematician that lives did not institute mathematics--he only copies the existing divine law." "that is perfectly true"--said the marchese rivardi--"but la signora royal means that the dogma of the church is in opposition to scientific discovery--" "i have not found it so"--said don aloysius, tranquilly--"we have believed in what you call your 'wireless telephony'--for centuries;--when the sanctus bell rings at mass, we think and hope a message from our lord comes to every worshipper whose soul is 'in tune' with the heavenly current; that is one of your 'scientific discoveries'--and there are hundreds of others which the church has incorporated through a mystic fore-knowledge and prophetic instinct. no--i find nothing upsetting in science,--the only students who are truly upset both physically and morally, are they who seek to discover god while denying his existence." there followed a silence. the group in the loggia seemed for the moment mesmerised by the priest's suave calm voice, steady eyes and noble expression, a bell rang slowly and sweetly--a call to prayer in some not far distant monastery, and the first glimmer of the stars began to sparkle faintly in the darkening heavens. a little sigh from morgana stirred the stillness. "if one could always live in this sort of mood!" she suddenly exclaimed--"this lovely peace in the glow of the sunset and the perfume of the flowers!--and you, don aloysius, talking beautiful things!--why then, one would be perpetually happy and good! but such living would not be life!--one must go with the time--" don aloysius smiled indulgently. "must one? is it so vitally necessary? if i might take the liberty to go on speaking i would tell you a story--a mere tradition--but it might weary you--" a general chorus of protest from all present assured him of their eagerness to hear. "as if you could weary anybody!" morgana said. "you never do--only you have an effect upon me which is not very flattering to my self-love!--you make me feel so small!" you are small, physically"--said don aloysius--do you mind that? small things are always sweetest!" she flushed, and turned her head away as she caught the marchese rivardi's eyes fixed upon her. "you should not make pretty compliments to a woman, reverend father!" she said, lightly--"it is not your vocation!" his grave face brightened and he laughed with real heartiness. "dear lady, what do you know of my vocation?" he asked--"will you teach it to me? no!--i am sure you will not try! listen now!--as you all give me permission--let me tell you of certain people who once 'went with the time'--and decided to stop en route, and are still at the stopping-place. perhaps some of you who travel far and often, have heard of the brazen city?" each one looked at the other enquiringly, but with no responsive result. "those who visit the east know of it"--went on aloysius--"and some say they have seen a glimpse of its shining towers and cupolas in the far distance. however this may be, tradition declares that it exists, and that it was founded by st. john, the 'beloved disciple.' you will recall that when our lord was asked when and how john should die he answered--'if i will that he tarry till i come, what is that to thee?' so--as we read--the rumour went forth that john was the one disciple for whom there should be no death. and now--to go on with the legend--it is believed by many, that deep in the as yet unexplored depths of the deserts of egypt--miles and miles over rolling sand-waves which once formed the bed of a vast ocean, there stands a great city whose roofs and towers are seemingly of brass,--a city barricaded and built in by walls of brass and guarded by gates of brass. here dwells a race apart--a race of beautiful human creatures who have discovered the secret of perpetual youth and immortality on this earth. they have seen the centuries come and go,--the flight of time touches them not,--they only await the day when the whole world will be free to them--that 'world to come' which is not made for the 'many,' but the 'few.' all the discoveries of our modern science are known to them--our inventions are their common everyday appliances--and on the wings of air and rays of light they hear and know all that goes on in every country. our wars and politics are no more to them than the wars and politics of ants in ant-hills,--they have passed beyond all trivialities such as these. they have discovered the secret of life's true enjoyment--and--they enjoy!" "that's a fine story if true!" said colonel boyd-"but all the same, it must be dull work living shut up in a city with nothing to do,--doomed to be young and to last for ever!" morgana had listened intently,--her eyes were brilliant. "yes--i think it would be dull after a couple of hundred years or so"--she said--"one would have tested all life's possibilities and pleasures by then." "i am not so sure of that!" put in the marchese rivardi--"with youth nothing could become tiresome--youth knows no ennui." some of the other listeners to the conversation laughed. "i cannot quite agree to that"--said a lady who had not yet spoken--"nowadays the very children are 'bored' and ever looking for something new--it is just as if the world were 'played out'--and another form of planet expected." "that is where we retain the vitality of our faith--" said don aloysius--"we expect--we hope! we believe in an immortal progress towards an ever higher good." "but i think even a soul may grow tired!" said morgana, suddenly--"so tired that even the highest good may seem hardly worth possessing!" there was a moment's silence. "povera figlia!" murmured aloysius, hardly above his breath,--but she caught the whisper, and smiled. "i am too analytical and pessimistic," she said--"let us all go for a ramble among the flowers and down to the sea! nature is the best talker, for the very reason that she has no speech!" the party broke up in twos and threes and left the loggia for the garden. rivardi remained a moment behind, obeying a slight sign from aloysius. "she is not happy!" said the priest--"with all her wealth, and all her gifts of intelligence she is not happy, nor is she satisfied. do you not find it so?" "no woman is happy or satisfied till love has kissed her on the mouth and eyes!" answered rivardi, with a touch of passion in his voice,--"but who will convince her of that? she is satisfied with her beautiful surroundings,--all the work i have designed for her has pleased her,--she has found no fault--" "and she has paid you loyally!" interpolated aloysius--"do not forget that! she has made your fortune. and no doubt she expects you to stop at that and go no further in an attempt to possess herself as well as her millions!" the marchese flushed hotly under the quiet gaze of the priest's steady dark eyes. "it is a great temptation," went on aloysius, gently--"but you must resist it, my son! i know what it would mean to you--the restoration of your grand old home--that home which received a roman emperor in the long ago days of history and which presents now to your eyes so desolate a picture with its crumbling walls and decaying gardens beautiful in their wild desolation!--yes, i know all this!--i know how you would like to rehabilitate the ancient family and make the venerable genealogical tree sprout forth into fresh leaves and branches by marriage with this strange little creature whose vast wealth sets her apart in such loneliness,--but i doubt the wisdom or the honour of such a course--i also doubt whether she would make a fitting wife for you or for any man!" the marchese raised his eyebrows expressively with the slightest shrug of his shoulders. "you may doubt that of every modern woman!" he said--"few are really 'fitting' for marriage nowadays. they want something different--something new!--god alone knows what they want!" don aloysius sighed. "aye! god alone knows! and god alone will decide what to give them!" "it must be something more 'sensational' than husband and children!" said rivardi a trifle bitterly--"only a primitive woman will care for these!" the priest laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "come, come! do not be cynical, my son! i think with you that if anything can find an entrance to a woman's soul it is love--but the woman must be capable of loving. that is the difficulty with the little millionairess royal. she is not capable!" he uttered the last words slowly and with emphasis. rivardi gave him a quick searching glance. "you seem to know that as a certainty"--he said, "how and why do you know it?" aloysius raised his eyes and looked straight ahead of him with a curious, far-off, yet searching intensity. "i cannot tell you how or why"--he answered--"you would not believe me if i told you that sometimes in this wonderful world of ours, beings are born who are neither man nor woman, and who partake of a nature that is not so much human as elemental and ethereal--or might one not almost say, atmospheric? that is, though generated of flesh and blood, they are not altogether flesh and blood, but possess other untested and unproved essences mingled in their composition, of which as yet we can form no idea. we grope in utter ignorance of the greatest of mysteries--life!--and with all our modern advancement, we are utterly unable to measure or to account for life's many and various manifestations. in the very early days of imaginative prophecy, the 'elemental' nature of certain beings was accepted by men accounted wise in their own time,--in the long ago discredited assertions of the count de gabalis and others of his mystic cult,--and i am not entirely sure that there does not exist some ground for their beliefs. life is many-sided;--humanity can only be one facet of the diamond." giulio rivardi had listened with surprised attention. "you seem to imply then"--he said--"that this rich woman, morgana royal, is hardly a woman at all?--a kind of sexless creature incapable of love?" "incapable of the usual kind of so-called 'love'--yes!" answered aloysius--"but of love in other forms i can say nothing, for i know nothing!--she may be capable of a passion deep and mysterious as life itself. but come!--we might talk all night and arrive no closer to the solving of this little feminine problem! you are fortunate in your vocation of artist and designer, to have been chosen by her to carry out her conceptions of structural and picturesque beauty--let the romance stay there!--and do not try to become the husband of a sphinx!" he smiled, resting his hand on the marchese's shoulder with easy familiarity. "see where she stands!" he continued,--and they both looked towards the beautiful flower-bordered terrace at the verge of the gardens overhanging the sea where for the moment morgana stood alone, a small white figure bathed in the deep rose afterglow of the sunken sun--"like a pearl dropped in a cup of red wine!--ready to dissolve and disappear!" his voice had a strange thrill in it, and giulio looked at him curiously. "you admire her very much, my father!" he said, with a touch of delicate irony in his tone. "i do, my son!" responded aloysius, composedly, "but only as a poor priest may--at a distance!" the marchese glanced at him again quickly,--almost suspiciously--and seemed about to say something further, but checked himself,--and the two walked on to join their hostess, side by side together. chapter viii early dawn peered through the dark sky like the silvery light of a pale lamp carried by an advancing watchman,--and faintly illumined the outline of a long, high, vastly extending wooden building which, at about a mile distant from morgana's "palazzo" ran parallel with the sea-shore. the star-sparkle of electric lamps within showed it to be occupied--and the murmur of men's voices and tinkle of working tools suggested that the occupants were busy. the scarcely visible sea made pleasant little kissing murmurs on the lip-edges of the sand, and nature, drowsing in misty space, seemed no more than the formless void of the traditional beginning of things. outside the building which, by its shape, though but dimly defined among shadows, was easily recognisable as a huge aerodrome, the tall figure of giulio rivardi paced slowly up and down like a sentinel on guard. he, whose marquisate was inherited from many noble sicilian houses renowned in caesar's day, apparently found as much satisfaction in this occupation as any warrior of a roman legion might have experienced in guarding the tent of his emperor,--and every now and then he lifted his eyes to the sky with a sense of impatience at the slowness of the sun's rising. in his mind he reviewed the whole chapter of events which during the past three years had made him the paid vassal of a rich woman's fancy--his entire time taken up, and all the resources of his inventive and artistic nature (which were exceptionally great) drawn upon for the purpose of carrying out designs which at first seemed freakish and impossible, but which later astonished him by the extraordinary scientific acumen they displayed, as well as by their adaptability to the forces of nature. then, the money!--the immense sums which this strange creature, morgana royal, had entrusted to him!--and with it all, the keen, business aptitude she had displayed, knowing to a centime how much she had spent, though there seemed no limit to how much she yet intended to spend! he looked back to the time he had first seen her, when on visiting sicily apparently as an american tourist only, she had taken a fancy to a ruined "palazzo" once an emperor's delight, but crumbling slowly away among its glorious gardens, and had purchased the whole thing then and there. her guide to the ruins at that period had been don aloysius, a learned priest, famous for his archaeological knowledge--and it was through don aloysius that he, the marchese rivardi, had obtained the commission to restore to something of its pristine grace and beauty the palace of ancient days. and now everything was done, or nearly done; but much more than the "palazzo" had been undertaken and completed, for the lady of many millions had commanded an air-ship to be built for her own personal use and private pleasure with an aerodrome for its safe keeping and anchorage. this airship was the crux of the whole business, for the men employed to build it were confident that it would never fly, and laughed with one another as they worked to carry out a woman's idea and a woman's design. how could it fly without an engine?--they very sensibly demanded,--for engine there was none! however, they were paid punctually and most royally for their labours; and when, despite their ominous predictions, the ship was released on her trial trip, manipulated by giulio rivardi, who ascended in her alone, sailing the ship with an ease and celerity hitherto unprecedented, they were more scared than enthusiastic. surely some devil was in it!--for how could the thing fly without any apparent force to propel it? how was it that its enormous wings spread out on either side as by self-volition and moved rhythmically like the wings of a bird in full flight? every man who had worked at the design was more or less mystified. they had, according to plan and instructions received, "plumed" the airship for electricity in a new and curious manner, but there was no battery to generate a current. two small boxes or chambers, made of some mysterious metal which would not "fuse" under the strongest heat, were fixed, one at either end of the ship;--these had been manufactured secretly in another country and sent to sicily by morgana herself,--but so far, they contained nothing. they seemed unimportant--they were hardly as large as an ordinary petrol-can holding a gallon. when rivardi had made a trial ascent he had inserted in each of these boxes a cylindrical tube made to fit an interior socket as a candle fits into a candle-stick,--all the workmen watched him, waiting for a revelation, but he made none. he was only particular and precise as to the firm closing down of the boxes when the tubes were in. and then in a few minutes the whole machine began to palpitate noiselessly like a living thing with a beating heart,--and to the amazement and almost fear of all who witnessed what seemed to be a miracle, the ship sprang up like a bird springing from the ground, and soared free and away into space, its vast white wings cleaving the air with a steady rise and fall of rhythmic power. once aloft she sailed in level flight, apparently at perfect ease--and after several rapid "runs," and circlings, descended slowly and gracefully, landing her pilot without shock or jar. he was at once surrounded and was asked a thousand questions which it was evident he could not answer. "how can i tell!" he replied, to all interrogations. "the secret is the secret of a woman!" a woman! man's pretty toy!--man's patient slave! how should a woman master any secret! engineers and mechanics laughed scornfully and shrugged their shoulders--yet--yet--the great airship stared them in the face as a thing created,--a thing of such power and possibility as seemed wholly incredible. and now the creator,--the woman--had arrived,--the woman whose rough designs on paper had been carefully followed and elaborated into actual shape;--and there was a tense state of expectation among all the workers awaiting her presence. meanwhile the lantern-gleam in the sky broadened and the web of mist which veiled the sea began to lift and giulio rivardi, pacing to and fro, halted every now and then to look in the direction of a path winding downward from the mainland to the shore, in watchful expectation of seeing an elfin figure, more spiritlike than mortal, floating towards him through the dividing vapours of the morning. the words of don aloysius haunted him strangely, though his common sense sharply rejected the fantastic notions to which they had given rise. she,--morgana royal,--was "not capable" of love, the priest had implied,--and yet, at times--only at times,--she seemed eminently lovable. at times,--again, only at times--he was conscious of a sweeping passion of admiration for her that well-nigh robbed him of his self-control. but a strong sense of honour held him in check--he never forgot that he was her paid employe, and that her wealth was so enormous that any man presuming too personally upon her indulgence could hardly be exonerated from ulterior sordid aims. and while he mused, somewhat vexedly, on all the circumstances of his position, the light widened in the heavens, showing the very faintest flush of rose in the east as an indication of the coming sun. he lifted his eyes.... "at last!" he exclaimed, with relief, as he saw a small gliding shadow among shadows approaching him,--he figure of morgana so wrapped in a grey cloak and hood as to almost seem part of the slowly dispersing mists of the morning. she pushed back the hood as she came near, showing a small eager white face in which the eyes glittered with an almost unearthly brightness. "i have slept till now,"--she said--"imagine!--all night through without waking! so lazy of me!--but the long rest has done me good and i'm ready for anything! are you? you look very solemn and morose!--like a warrior in bronze! anything gone wrong?" "not that i am aware of"--he replied--"the men are finishing some small detail of ornament. i have only looked in to tell them you are coming." "and are they pleased?" "madama, they are not of a class to be either pleased or displeased"--he said--"they are instructed to perform certain work, and they perform it. in all that they have been doing for you, according to your orders, i truly think they are more curious than interested." a streak of rose and silver flared through the sky flushing the pallor of morgana's face as she lifted it towards him, smiling. "quite natural!" she said--"no man is ever 'interested' in woman's work, but he is always 'curious.' woman is a many-cornered maze--and man is always peeping round one corner or another in the hope to discover her--but he never does!" rivardi gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "never?" he queried. "never!" she affirmed, emphatically--"don't be sarcastic, amico!--even in this dim morning light i can see the scornful curve of your upper lip!--you are really very good-looking, you know!--and you imply the same old garden of eden story of man giving away woman as a wholly incomprehensible bad job! adam flung her back as a reproach to her creator--'the woman thou gavest me;'--oh, that woman and that apple! but he had to confess 'i did eat.' he always eats,--he eats everything woman can give him--he will even eat her if he gets the chance!" she laughed and pointed to the brightening sky. "see? ''tis almost morning!' as shakespeare's juliet remarked--but i would not 'have thee gone'--not unless i go also. whither shall we fly?" he looked at her, moved as he often was by a thrill of admiration and wonder. "it is for you to decide"--he answered--"you know best the possibilities-and the risks---" "i know the possibilities perfectly,"--she said--"but i know nothing of risks--there are none. this is our safety"--and she drew out from the folds of her cloak, two small packets of cylindrical form--"this emanation of nature's greatest force will keep us going for a year if needful! oh man!--i do not mean you particularly, but man generally!--why could you not light on this little, little clue!--why was it left to a woman! come!--let us see the white eagle in its nest,--it shall spread its wings and soar to-day--we will give it full liberty!" the dawn was spreading in threads of gold and silver and blue all over the heavens, and the sea flushed softly under the deepening light, as she went towards the aerodrome, he walking slowly by her side. "are you so sure?" he said--"will you not risk your life in this attempt?" she stopped abruptly. "my life? what is it? the life of a midge in the sun! it is no good to me unless i do something with it! i would live for ever if i could!--here, on this dear little ball of earth--i do not want a better heaven. the heaven which the clergy promise us is so remarkably unattractive! but i run no risk of losing my life or yours in our aerial adventures; we carry the very essence of vitality with us. come!--i want to see my flying palace! when i was a small child i used to feed my fancy on the 'arabian nights,' and most dearly did i love the story of aladdin and his palace that was transported through the air. i used to say 'i will have a flying palace myself!' and now i have realised my dream." "that remains to be proved"--said rivardi--"with all our work we may not have entirely carried out your plan." "if not, it will have to be carried out"--returned morgana, tranquilly--"there is no reason, moral or scientific, why it should not be carried out--we have all the forces of nature on our side." he was silent, and accompanied her as she walked to the aerodrome and entered it. there were half a dozen or more men within, all working--but they ceased every movement as they saw her,--while she, on her part, scarcely seemed to note their presence. her eyes were uplifted and fixed on a vast, smooth oblong object, like the body of a great bird with shut wings, which swung from the roof of the aerodrome and swayed lightly to and fro as though impelled by some mysterious breathing force. morgana's swift glance travelled from its one end to the other with a flash of appreciation, while at the same time she received the salutations of all the men who advanced to greet her. "you have done well, my friends!"--she said, speaking in fluent french--"this beautiful creature you have made seems a perfect thing,--from the outside. what of the interior?" a small, dark, intelligent looking man, in evident command of the rest, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "ah, signora! it is as you commanded!" he answered--"it is beautiful--like a chrysalis for a butterfly. but a butterfly has the advantage--it comes to life, to use its wings!" "quite true, monsieur gaspard!" and morgana gave him a smile as sunny as his own. "but what is life? is it not a composition of many elements? and should we not learn to combine such elements to vitalise our 'white eagle'? it is possible!" "with god all things are possible!" quoted the marchese rivardi--"but with man--" "we are taught that god made man 'in his image. in the image of god created he him.' if this is true, all things should be possible to man"--said morgana, quietly--"to man,--and to that second thought of the creator--woman! and we mustn't forget that second thoughts are best!" she laughed, while the man called gaspard stared at her and laughed also for company. "now let me see how i shall be housed in air!" and with very little assistance she climbed into the great bird-shaped vessel through an entrance so deftly contrived that it was scarcely visible,--an entrance which closed almost hermetically when the ship was ready to start, air being obtained through other channels. once inside it was easy to believe in fairyland. not a scrap of any sort of mechanism could be seen. there were two exquisitely furnished saloons--one a kind of boudoir or drawing-room where everything that money could buy or luxury suggest as needful or ornamental was collected and arranged with thoughtful selection and perfect taste. a short passage from these apartments led at one end to some small, daintily fitted sleeping-rooms beyond,--at the other was the steering cabin and accommodation for the pilot and observer. the whole interior was lined with what seemed to be a thick rose-coloured silk of a singularly smooth and shining quality, but at a sign from morgana, rivardi and gaspard touched some hidden spring which caused this interior covering to roll up completely, thus disclosing a strange and mysterious "installation" beneath. every inch of wall-space was fitted with small circular plates of some thin, shining substance, set close together so that their edges touched, and in the center of each plate or disc was a tiny white knob resembling the button of an ordinary electric bell. there seemed to be at least two or three thousand of these discs--seen all together in a close mass they somewhat resembled the "suckers" on the tentacles of a giant octopus. morgana, seating herself in an easy chair of the richly carpeted "drawing-room" of her "air palace," studied every line, turn and configuration of this extraordinary arrangement with a keenly observant and criticising eye. the marchese rivardi and gaspard watched her expression anxiously. "you are satisfied?" asked rivardi, at last--"it is as you planned?" she turned towards gaspard with a smile. "what do you think about it?" she queried--"you are an expert in modern scientific work--you understand many of the secrets of natural force--what do you think?" "madama, i think as i have always thought!--a body without soul!" "what is soul?" she said--"is it not breath?--the breath of life? is it not said that god 'made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul!' and what is the breath of life? is it not composed of such elements as are in the universe and which we may all discover if we will, and use to our advantage? you cannot deny this! come, marchese!--and you, monsieur gaspard! call to them below to set this eagle free; we will fly into the sunrise for an hour or two,--no farther, as we are not provisioned." "madama!" stammered gaspard--"i am not prepared--" "you are frightened, my friend!" and morgana smiled, laying her little white hand soothingly on his arm--"but if i tell you there is no cause for fear, will you not believe me? do you not think i love my own life? oh yes, i love it so much that i seek to prolong it, not risk it by sudden loss. nor would i risk your life--or his!" and she looked towards rivardi--"he is not frightened--he will come with me wherever i go! now, monsieur gaspard, see! here is our breath of life!" and she held up before his eyes the two cylindrically shaped packages she had previously shown to rivardi--"the marchese has already had some experience of it"--here she unfastened the wrappings of the packages, and took out two tubes made of some metallic substance which shone like purest polished gold--"i will fix these in myself--will you open the lower end chamber first, please?" silently the two men obeyed her gesture and opened the small compartment fixed at what might be called the hull end of the air-ship. the interior was seen to be lined with the same round discs which covered the walls of the vessel, every disc closely touching its neighbour. with extreme caution and delicacy morgana set one of the tubes she held upright in the socket made to receive it, and as she did this, fine sharp, needle like flashes of light broke from it in a complete circle, filling the whole receptacle with vibrating rays which instantly ran round each disc, and glittered in and out among them like a stream of quicksilver. as soon as this manifestation occurred, morgana beckoned to her two assistants to shut the compartment. they did so with scarcely an effort, yet it closed down with a silent force and tenacity that suggested some enormous outward pressure, yet pressure there seemed none. and now a sudden throbbing movement pulsated through the vessel--its huge folded wings stirred. "quick! tell them below to lose no time! open the shed and let her rise!--when the contact is once established there will not be half a second to spare!" hurriedly the man gaspard, though obviously terrified, shouted the necessary orders, while morgana went to the other end of the ship where rivardi opened for her the second compartment into which she fixed the second tube. once again the circular flashes broke out, but this time directly the compartment was closed down, the shining stream of light was seen to run rapidly and completely round the interior of the vessel, touching every disc that lined the walls as with the sparkling point of a jewel. the wings of the ship palpitated as with life and began to spread open.... "let her go!" cried morgana--"away to your place, pilot!" and she waved a commanding hand as rivardi sprang to the steering gear--"hold her fast! ... keep her steady! straight towards the sun-rise!" as she spoke, a wonderful thing happened--every disc that lined the interior of the ship started throbbing like a pulse,--every little white knob in the centre of each disc vibrated with an extraordinary rapidity of motion which dazzled the eyes like the glittering of swiftly falling snow, and gaspard, obeying morgana's sign, drew down at once all the rose silk covering which completely hid the strange mechanism from view. there was absolutely no noise in this intense vibration,--and there was no start or jar, or any kind of difficulty, when the air-ship, released from bondage, suddenly rose, and like an actual living bird sprang through the vast opening gateway of the aerodrome and as it sprang, spread out its wings as though by its own volition. in one moment, it soared straight upright, far far into space, and the men who were left behind stood staring amazedly after it, themselves looking no more than tiny black pin-heads down below,--then, with a slow diving grace it righted itself as it were, and as if it had of its own will selected the particular current of air on which to sail. it travelled with a steady swiftness in absolute silence,--its great wings moved up and down with a noiseless power and rhythm for which there seemed no possible explanation,--and morgana turned her face, now delicately flushed with triumph, on the pale and almost breathless gaspard, smiling as she looked at him, her eyes questioning his. he seemed stricken dumb with astonishment,--his lips moved, but no word issued from them. "you believe me now, do you not?" she said--"we have nothing further to do but to steer. the force we use re-creates itself as it works--it cannot become exhausted. to slow down and descend to earth one need only open the compartments at either end--then the vibration grows less and less, and like a living creature the 'white eagle' sinks gently to rest. you see there is no cause for fear!" while she yet spoke, the light of the newly risen sun bathed her in its golden glory, the long dazzling beams filtering through mysterious apertures inserted cunningly in the roof of the vessel and mingling with the roseate hues of the silken sheathing that covered its walls. so fired with light she looked ethereal--a very spirit of air or of flame; and rivardi, just able to see her from his steering place, began to think there was some truth an the strange words of don aloysius--"sometimes in this wonderful world of ours beings are born who are neither man nor woman and who partake of a nature that is not so much human as elemental--or, might not one almost say atmospheric?" at the moment morgana seemed truly "atmospheric"--a small creature so fine and fair as to almost suggest an evanescent form about to melt away in mist. some sudden thrill of superstitious fear moved gaspard to make the sign of the cross and mutter an "ave,"--morgana heard him and smiled kindly. "i am not an evil spirit, my friend!" she said--"you need not exorcise me! i am nothing but a student with a little more imagination than is common, and in the moving force which carries our ship along i am only using a substance which, as our scientists explain, 'has an exceptional capacity for receiving the waves of energy emanating from the sun and giving them off.' on the 'giving off' of those waves we move--it is all natural and easy, and, like every power existent in the universe, is meant for our comprehension and use. you cannot say you feel any sense of danger?--we are sailing with greater steadiness than any ship at sea--there is scarcely any consciousness of movement--and without looking out and down, we should not realise we are so far from earth. indeed we are going too far now--we do not realize our speed." "too far!" said gaspard, nervously--"madama, if we go too far we may also go too high--we may not be able to breathe!..." she laughed. "that is a very remote possibility!" she said--"the waves of energy which bear us along are concerned in our own life-supply,--they make our air to breathe--our heat to warm. all the same it is time we returned--we are not provisioned." she called to rivardi, and he, with the slightest turn of the wheel, altered the direction in which the air-ship moved, so that it travelled back again on the route by which it had commenced its flight. soon, very soon, the dainty plot of earth, looking no more than a gay flower-bed, where morgana's palazzo was situated, appeared below--and then, acting on instructions, gaspard opened the compartments at either end of the vessel. the vibrating rays within dwindled by slow degrees--their light became less and less intense--their vibration less powerful,--till very gradually with a perfectly beautiful motion expressing absolute grace and lightness the vessel descended towards the aerodrome it had lately left, and all the men who were waiting for its return gave a simultaneous shout of astonishment and admiration, as it sank slowly towards them, folding its wings as it came with the quiet ease of a nesting-bird flying home. so admirably was the distance measured between itself and the great shed of its local habitation, that it glided into place as though it had eyes to see its exact whereabouts, and came to a standstill within a few seconds of its arrival. morgana descended, and her two companions followed. the other men stood silent, visibly inquisitive yet afraid to express their curiosity. morgana's eyes flashed over them all with a bright, half-laughing tolerance. "i thank you, my friends!" she said--"you have done well the work i entrusted you to do under the guidance of the marchese rivardi, and you can now judge for yourselves the result it mystifies you i can see! you think it is a kind of 'black magic'? not so!--unless all our modern science is 'black magic' as well, born of the influence of those evil spirits who, as we are told in tradition, descended in rebellion from heaven and lived with the daughters of men! from these strange lovers sprang a race of giants,--symbolical i think of the birth of the sciences, which mingle in their composition the active elements of good and evil. you have built this airship of mine on lines which have never before been attempted;--you have given it wings which are plumed like the wings of a bird, not with quills, but with channels many and minute, to carry the runlets of the 'emanation' from the substance held in the containers at either end of the vessel,--its easy flight therefore should not surprise you. briefly--we have filled a piece of mechanism with the composition or essence of life!--that is the only answer i can give to your enquiring looks!--let it be enough!" "but, madama"--ventured gaspard--"that composition or essence of life!--what is it?" there was an instant's silence. every man's head craned forward eagerly to hear the reply. morgana smiled strangely. "that," she said--"is my secret!" chapter ix "and now you have attained your object, what is the use of it?" said don aloysius. the priest was pacing slowly up and down the old half-ruined cloister of an old half-ruined monastery, and beside his stately, black-robed figure moved the small aerial form of morgana, clad in summer garments of pure white, her golden head uncovered to the strong sicilian sunshine which came piercing in sword-like rays through the arches of the cloister, and filtered among the clustering leaves which hung in cool twining bunches from every crumbling grey pillar of stone. "what is the use of it?" he repeated, his calm eyes resting gravely on the little creature gliding sylph-like beside him. "suppose your invention out-reaped every limit of known possibility--suppose your air-ship to be invulnerable, and surpassing in speed and safety everything ever experienced,--suppose it could travel to heights unimaginable, what then? suppose even that you could alight on another star--another world than this--what purpose is served?--what peace is gained?--what happens?" morgana stopped abruptly in her walk beside him. "i have not worked for peace or happiness,"--she said and there was a thrill of sadness in her voice--"because to my mind neither peace nor happiness exist. from all we can see, and from the little we can learn, i think the maker of the universe never meant us to be happy or peaceful. all nature is at strife with itself, incessantly labouring for such attainment as can hardly be won,--all things seem to be haunted by fear and sorrow. and yet it seems to me that there are remedies for most of our evils in the very composition of the elements--if we were not ignorant and stupid enough to discourage our discoverers on the verge of discovery. my application of a certain substance, known to scientists, but scarcely understood, is an attempt to solve the problem of swift aerial motion by light and heat--light and heat being the chiefest supports of life. to use a force giving out light and heat continuously seemed to me the way to create and command equally continuous movement. i have--i think and hope--fairly succeeded, and in order to accomplish my design i have used wealth that would not have been at the service of most inventors,--wealth which my father left to me quite unconditionally,--but were i able to fly with my 'white eagle' to the remotest parts of the milky way itself, i should not look to find peace or happiness!" "why?" the priest's simple query had a note of tender pity in it. morgana looked up at him with a little smile, but her eyes were tearful. "dear don aloysius, how can i tell 'why'? nobody is really happy, and i cannot expect to have what is denied to the whole world!" aloysius resumed his slow walk to and fro, and she kept quiet pace with him. "have you ever thought what happiness is?" he asked, then--"have you ever felt it for a passing moment?" "yes"--she answered quickly--"but only at rare intervals--oh so rare!..." "poor little rich child!" he said, kindly--"tell me some of those 'intervals'! cannot they be repeated? let us sit here"--and he moved towards a stone bench which fronted an ancient disused well in the middle square of the cloistered court,--a well round which a crimson passion-flower twined in a perfect arch of blossom--"what was the first 'interval'?" he sat down, and the sunshine sent a dazzling ray on the silver crucifix he wore, giving it the gleam of a great jewel. morgana took her seat beside him. "interval one!" he said, playfully--"what was this little lady's first experience of happiness? when she played with her dolls?" "no, oh no!" cried morgana, with sudden energy--"that was anything but happiness! i hated dolls!--abominable little effigies!" don aloysius raised his eyebrows in surprise and amusement. "horrid little stuffed things of wood and wax and saw-dust!" continued morgana, emphatically--"with great beads for eyes--or eyes made to look like beads--and red cheeks,--and red lips with a silly smile on them! of course they are given to girl-children to encourage the 'maternal instinct' as it is called--to make them think of babies,--but _i_ never had any 'maternal instinct'!--and real babies have always seemed to me as uninteresting as sham ones!" "dear child, you were a baby yourself once!"--said aloysius gently. a shadow swept over her face. "do you think i was?" she queried meditatively--"i cannot imagine it! i suppose i must have been, but i never remember being a child at all. i had no children to play with me--my father suspected all children of either disease or wickedness, and imagined i would catch infection of body or of soul by association with them. i was always alone--alone!--yet not lonely!" she broke off a moment, and her eyes grew dark with the intensity of her thought "no--never lonely! and the very earliest 'interval' of happiness i can recall was when i first saw the inside of a sun-ray!" don aloysius turned to look at her, but said nothing. she laughed. "dear father aloysius, what a wise priest you are! not a word falls from those beautifully set lips of yours! if you were a fool--(so many men are!) you would have repeated my phrase, 'the inside of a sun-ray,' with an accent of scornful incredulity, and you would have stared at me with all a fool's contempt! but you are not a fool,--you know or you perceive instinctively exactly what i mean. the inside of a sun-ray!--it was disclosed to me suddenly--a veritable miracle! i have seen it many times since, but not with all the wonder and ecstasy of the first revelation. i was so young, too! i told a renowned professor at one of the american colleges just what i saw, and he was so amazed and confounded at my description of rays that had taken the best scientists years to discover, that he begged to be allowed to examine my eyes! he thought there must be something unusual about them. in fact there is!--and after his examination he seemed more puzzled than ever. he said something about 'an exceptionally strong power of vision,' but frankly admitted that power of vision alone would not account for it. anyhow i plainly saw all the rays within one ray--there were seven. the ray itself was--or so i fancied--the octave of colour. i was little more than a child when this 'interval' of happiness--perfect happiness!--was granted to me--i felt as if a window had been opened for me to look through it into heaven!" "do you believe in heaven?" asked aloysius, suddenly. she hesitated. "i used to,--in those days. as i have just said i was only a child, and heaven was a real place to me,--even the angels were real presences--" "and you have lost them now?" she gave a little gesture of resignation. "they left me"--she answered--"i did not lose them. they simply went." he was silent. his fine, calm features expressed a certain grave patience, but nothing more. she resumed-"that was my first experience of real 'happiness.' till then i had lived the usual monotonous life of childhood, doing what i was told, and going whither i was taken, but the disclosure of the sun-ray was a key to individuality, and seemed to unlock my prison doors. i began to think for myself, and to find my own character as a creature apart from others. my second experience was years after,--just when i left school and when my father took me to see the place where i was born, in the north of scotland. oh, it is such a wild corner of the world! beautiful craggy hills and dark, deep lakes--rough moorlands purple with heather and such wonderful skies at sunset! the cottage where my father had lived as a boy when he herded sheep is still there--i have bought it for myself now,--it is a little stone hut of three rooms,--and another one about a mile off where he took my mother to live, and where i came into the world!--i have bought that too. yes--i felt a great thrill of happiness when i stood there knee-deep among the heather, my father clasping my hand, and looking, with me, on those early scenes of his boyhood when he had scarcely a penny to call his own! yet he was sad!--very sad! and told me then that he would give all his riches to feel as light of heart and free from care as he did in those old days! and then--then we went to see old alison--" here she broke off,--a strange light came into her eyes and she smiled a little. "i think i had better not tell you about old alison!" she said. "why not?" and don aloysius returned her smile. "if old alison has anything to do with your happiness i should like to hear." "well, you see, you are a priest," went on morgana, slowly, "and she is a witch. oh yes, truly!--a real witch! there is no one in all that part of the highlands that does not know of her, and the power she has! she is very, very old--some folks say she is more than a hundred. she knew my father and grandfather--she came to my father's cottage the night i was born, and said strange things about a 'may child'--i was born in may. we went--as i tell you--to see her, and found her spinning. she looked up from her wheel as we entered--but she did not seem surprised at our coming. her eyes were very bright--not like the eyes of an old person. she spoke to my father at once--her voice was very clear and musical. 'is it you, john royal?' she said--'and you have brought your fey lass along with you!' that was the first time i ever heard the word 'fey.' i did not understand it then." "and do you understand it now?" asked aloysius. "yes"--she replied,--"i understand it now! it is a wonderful thing to be born 'fey'! but it is a kind of witchcraft,--and you would be displeased--" "at what should i be displeased?" and the priest bent his eyes very searchingly upon her--"at the fact,--which none can disprove,--that 'there are things in heaven and earth' which are beyond our immediate knowledge? that there are women strangely endowed with premonitory instincts land preternatural gifts? dear child, there is nothing in all this that can or could displease me! my faith--the faith of my church--is founded on the preternatural endowment of a woman!" she lifted her eyes to his, and a little sigh came from her lips. "yes, i know what you mean!"--she said--"but i am sure you cannot possibly realise the weird nature of old alison! she made me stand before her, just where the light of the sun streamed through the open doorway, and she looked at me for a long time with such a steady piercing glance that i felt as if her eyes were boring through my flesh. then she got up from her spinning and pushed away the wheel, and stretched out both her hands towards me, crying out in quite a strange, wild voice--'morgana! morgana! go your ways, child begotten of the sun and shower!--go your ways! little had mortal father or mother to do with your making, for you are of the fey folk! go your ways with your own people!--you shall hear them whispering in the night and singing in the morning,--and they shall command you and you shall obey!--they shall beckon and you shall follow! nothing of mortal flesh and blood shall hold you--no love shall bind you,--no hate shall wound you!--the clue is given into your hand,--the secret is disclosed--and the spirits of air and fire and water have opened a door that you may enter in! hark!--i can hear their voices calling "morgana! morgana!" go your ways, child!--go hence and far!--the world is too small for your wings!' she looked so fierce and grand and terrible that i was frightened--i was only a girl of sixteen, and i ran to my father and caught his hand. he spoke quite gently to alison, but she seemed quite beyond herself and unable to listen. 'your way lies down a different road, john royal'--she said--'you that herded sheep on these hills and that now hoard millions of money--of what use to you is your wealth? you are but the worker,--gathering gold for her--the "fey" child born in an hour of may moonlight! you must go, but she must stay,--her own folk have work for her to do!' then my father said, 'dear alison, don't frighten the child!' and she suddenly changed in her tone and manner. 'frighten her?' she muttered. 'i would not frighten her for the world!' and my father pushed me towards her and whispered--'ask her to bless you before you go.' so i just knelt before her, trembling very much, and said, 'dear alison, bless me!'--and she stared at me and lifted her old brown wrinkled hands and laid them on my head. then she spoke some words in a strange language as to herself, and afterwards she said, 'spirit of all that is and ever shall be, bless this child who belongs to thee, and not to man! give her the power to do what is commanded, to the end.' and at this she stopped suddenly and bending down she lifted my head in her two hands and looked at me hard--'poor child, poor child! never a love for you--never a love! alone you are, alone you must be! never a love for a "fey" woman!' and she let me go, and sat down again to her spinning-wheel, nor would she say another word--neither to me nor to my father." "and you call this your second experience of happiness?" said don aloysius, wonderingly--"what happiness did you gain by your interview with this old alison?" "ah!" and morgana smiled--"you would not understand me if i tried to explain! everything came to me!--yes, everything! i began to live in a world of my own--" she paused, and her eyes grew dark and pensive, "and i have lived in it ever since. that is why i say my visit to old alison was my second experience of happiness. i've seen her again many times since then, but not with quite the same impression." "she is alive still?" "oh, yes! i often fancy she will never die!" there was a silence of some minutes. morgana rose, and crossing over to the old well, studied the crimson passion-flowers which twined about it, with almost loving scrutiny. "how beautiful they are!" she said--"and they seem to serve no purpose save that of simple beauty!" "that is enough for many of god's creatures"--said aloysius--"to give joy and re-create joy is the mission of perfection." she looked at him wistfully. "alas, poor me!" she sighed--"i can neither give joy nor create it!" "not even with all your wealth?" "not even with all my wealth!" she echoed. "surely you--a priest--know what a delusion wealth really is so far as happiness goes?--mere happiness? course you can buy everything with it--and there's the trouble! when everything is bought there's nothing left! and if you try to help the poor they resent it--they think you are doing it because you are afraid of them! perhaps the worst of all things to do is to help artists--artists of every kind!--for they say you want to advertise yourself as a 'generous patron'! oh, i've tried it all and it's no use. i was just crazy to help all the scientists,--once!--but they argued and quarrelled so much as to which 'society' deserved most money that i dropped the whole offer, and started 'scientising' myself. there is one man i tried to lift out of his brain-bog,--but he would have none of me, and he is still in his bog!" "oh! there is one man!" said aloysius, with a smile. "yes, good father!" and morgana left the passion-flowers and moved slowly back to her seat on the stone-bench--"there is one man! he was my third and last experience of happiness. when i first met him, my whole heart gave itself in one big pulsation--but like a wave of the sea, the pulsation recoiled, and never again beat on the grim rock of human egoism!" she laughed gaily, and a delicate colour flushed her face. "but i was happy while the 'wave' lasted,--and when it broke, i still played on the shore with its pretty foam-bells." "you loved this man?" and the priest's grave eyes dwelt on her searchingly. "i suppose so--for the moment! yet no,--it was not love--it was just an 'attraction'--he was--he is--clever, and thinks he can change the face of the world. but he is fooling with fire! i tell you i tried to help him--for he is deadly poor. but he would have none of me nor of what he calls my 'vulgar wealth.' this is a case in point where wealth is useless! you see?" don aloysius was silent. "then"--morgana went on--"alison is right. the witchery of the northern highlands is in my blood,--never a love for me--alone i am--alone i must be!--never a love for a 'fey' woman!" over the priest's face there passed a quiver as of sudden pain. "you wrong yourself, my child"--he said, slowly--"you wrong yourself very greatly! you have a power of which you appear to be unconscious--a great, a terrible power!--you compel interest--you attract the love of others even if you yourself love no one--you draw the very soul out of a man--" he paused, abruptly. morgana raised her eyes,--the blue lightning gleam flashed in their depths. "ah, yes!" she half whispered--"i know i have that power!" don aloysius rose to his feet. "then,--if you know it,--in god's name do not exercise it!" he said. his voice shook--and with his right hand he gripped the crucifix he wore as though it were a weapon of self-defence. morgana looked at him wonderingly for a moment,--then drooped her head with a strange little air of sudden penitence. aloysius drew a quick sharp breath as of one in effort,--then he spoke again, unsteadily-"i mean"--he said, smiling forcedly--"i mean that you should not--you should not break the heart of--of--the poor giulio for instance!... it would not be kind." she lifted her eyes again and fixed them on him. "no, it would not be kind!" she said, softly--"dear don aloysius, i understand! and i will remember!" she glanced at a tiny diamond-set watch-bracelet on her wrist--"how late it is!--nearly all the morning gone! i have kept you so long listening to my talk--forgive me! i will run away now and leave you to think about my 'intervals' of happiness,--will you?--they are so few compared to yours!" "mine?" he echoed amazedly. "yes, indeed!--yours! your whole life is an interval of happiness between this world and the next, because you are satisfied in the service of god!" "a poor service!" he said, turning his gaze away from her elfin figure and shining hair--"unworthy,--shameful!--marred by sin at every moment! a priest of the church must learn to do without happiness such as ordinary life can give--and without love,--such as woman may give--but--after all--the sacrifice is little." she smiled at him, sweetly--tenderly, "very little!" she said--"so little that it is not worth a regret! good-bye! but not for long! come and see me soon!" moving across the cloister with her light step she seemed to float through the sunshine like a part of it, and as she disappeared a kind of shadow fell, though no cloud obscured the sun. don aloysius watched her till she had vanished,--then turned aside into a small chapel opening out on the cloistered square--a chapel which formed part of the monastic house to which he belonged as superior,--and there, within that still, incense-sweetened sanctuary, he knelt before the noble, pictured head of the man of sorrows in silent confession and prayer. chapter x roger seaton was a man of many philosophies. he had one for every day in the week, yet none wherewith to thoroughly satisfy himself. while still a mere lad he had taken to the study of science as a duck takes to water,--no new discovery or even suggestion of a new discovery missed his instant and close attention. his avidity for learning was insatiable,--his intense and insistent curiosity on all matters of chemistry gave a knife-like edge to the quality of his brain, making it sharp, brilliant and incisive. to him the ordinary social and political interests of the world were simply absurd. the idea that the greater majority of men should be created for no higher purpose than those of an insect, just to live, eat, breed, and die, was to him preposterous. "think of it!" he would exclaim--"all this wondrous organisation of our planet for that! for a biped so stupid as to see nothing in his surroundings but conveniences for satisfying his stomach and his passions! we men are educated chiefly in order to learn how to make money, and all we can do with the money when made, is to build houses to live in, eat as much as we want and more, and breed children to whom we leave all the stuff we have earned, and who either waste it or add to it, whichever suits their selfishness best. such lives are absolutely useless,--they repeat the same old round, leading nowhere. occasionally, in the course of centuries a real brain is born--and at once, all who are merely bodies leap up against it, like famished wolves, striving to tear it to pieces and devour it--if it survives the attack its worth is only recognised long after its owner has perished. the whole scheme is manifestly unintelligent and ludicrous, but it is not intended to be so--of that i am sure. there must be something else!" when urged to explain what he conceived as this "something else," he would answer-"there has always been 'something else' in our environment,--something that stupid humanity has taken centuries to discover. sound-waves for example--light-rays,--electricity--these have been freely at our service from the beginning. electricity might have been used ages ago, had not dull-witted man refused to find anything better for lighting purposes than an oil-lamp or a tallow candle! if, in past periods, he had been told 'there is something else'--he would have laughed his informant to scorn. so with our blundering methods of living--'there is something else'--not after death, but now and here. we are going about in the darkness with a candle when a great force of wider light is all round us, only awaiting connection and application to our uses." those who heard him speak in this way--(and they were few, for seaton seldom discussed his theories with others)--convinced themselves that he was either a fool or a madman,--the usual verdict given for any human being who dares break away from convention and adopt an original line of thought and action. but they came to the conclusion that as he was direfully poor, and nevertheless refused various opportunities of making money, his folly or his madness would be brought home to him sooner or later by strong necessity, and that he would then either arrive at a sane every-day realisation of "things as they are"--or else be put away in an asylum and quietly forgotten. this being the sagacious opinion of those who knew him best, there was a considerable flutter in such limited american circles as call themselves "upper" when the wealthiest young woman in the states, morgana royal, suddenly elected to know him and to bring him into prominent notice at her parties as "the most wonderful genius of the time"--"a man whose scientific discoveries might change the very face of the globe"--and other fantastically exaggerated descriptions of her own which he himself strongly repudiated and resented. gossip ran amok concerning the two, and it was generally agreed that if the "madman" of science were to become the husband of a woman multi-millionaire, he would not have to be considered so mad after all! but the expected romance did not materialise,--there came apparently a gradual "cooling off" in the sentiments of both parties concerned,--and though roger seaton was still occasionally seen with morgana in her automobile, in her opera-box, or at her receptions, his appearances were fewer, and other men, in fact many other men, were more openly encouraged and flattered,--morgana herself showing as much indifference towards him as she had at first shown interest. when, therefore, he suddenly left the social scene of action, his acquaintances surmised that he had got an abrupt dismissal, or as they more brusquely expressed it--"the game's up"! "he's lost his chance!" they said, shaking their heads forlornly--"and he's poorer than job! he'll be selling newspapers in the cars for a living by and by!" however, he was never met engaged in this lucrative way of business,--he simply turned his back on everybody, morgana royal included, and so far as "society" was concerned, just disappeared. in the "hut of the dying" on that lonely hill-slope in california he was happy, feeling a relief from infinite boredom, and thankful to be alone. he had much to think about and much to do--inhabited places and the movement of people were to him tedious and fatiguing, and he decided that nature,--wild nature in a solitary and savage aspect,--would suit his speculative and creative tendencies best. yet, like all human beings, he had his odd, almost child-like moods, inexplicable even to himself--moods illogical, almost pettish, and wholly incongruous with his own accepted principles of reasoning. for instance, he maintained that women had neither attraction nor interest for him--yet he found himself singularly displeased when after two or three days of utter solitude, and when he was rather eagerly expecting manella to arrive with the new milk which was his staple food, a lanky, red-haired ugly boy appeared instead of her--a boy who slouched along, swinging the milk pail in one hand and clutching a half-munched slice of pine-apple in the other. "hello--o!" called this individual. "not dead yet?" for answer seaton strode forward and taking the milk-pail from him gripped him by the dirty cotton shirt and gave him a brief but severe shaking. "no,--not dead yet!" he said--"you insolent young monkey! who are you?" the boy wriggled in his captor's clutch, and tried to squirm himself out of it. "i'm--i'm jake--they calls me irish jake"--he gasped--"o blessed mary!--my breath! i clean the knives at the plaza--" "i'll clean knives for you presently!" remarked seaton, with a threatening gesture--"yes, irish jake, i will! who sent you here?" "she did--oh, mary mother!" and the youth gave a further wriggle--"miss soriso--the girl they call manella. she told me to say she's too busy to come herself." seaton let go the handful of shirt he had held. "too busy to come herself!" he repeated, slowly--then smiled--"well! that's all right!" here he lifted the pail of milk, took it into his hut and brought it back empty, while "irish jake," as the boy had called himself, stood staring--"tell miss soriso that i quite understand! and that i'm delighted to hear she is so busy! now, let us see!" here he pulled some money out of his pocket, and fingered a few dirty paper notes--"there, irish jake! you'll find that's correct. and when you come here again don't forget your manners! see? then you may be able to keep that disgraceful shirt of yours on! otherwise it's likely to be torn off! if you are irish you should remember that in very ancient days there used to be manners in the emerald isle. yes, positively! fine, gracious, lovely manners! it doesn't look as if that will be ever any more--but we live in hope. anyway, you--you young offspring of an irish hybrid gorilla--you'd best remember what _i_ say, or there'll be trouble! and"--here he made a mock solemn bow--"my compliments to miss soriso!" the red-haired youth remained for a moment stock-still with mouth and eyes open,--then, snatching up the empty milk-pail he scampered down the hill-slope at a lightning quick run. seaton looked after him with an air of contemptuous amusement. "ugly little devil!" he soliloquised--"and yet nature made him,--as she makes many hideous things--in a hurry, i presume, without any time for details or artistic finish. well!"--here he stretched his arms out with a long sigh--"and the silly girl is 'too busy' to come! as if i could not see through that little game! she'd give her eyes to come!--fine eyes they are, too! she just thinks she'll pay me out for being rough with her the other day--she's got an idea that she'll vex me, and make me want to see her. she's right,--i am vexed!--and i do want to see her!" it was mid-morning, and the sun blazed down upon the hill-side with the scorching breath of a volcano. he turned into his hut,--it was a dark, cool little dwelling, comfortable enough for a single inhabitant. there was a camp-bed in one corner--and there were a couple of wicker chairs made for easy transposition into full-length couches if so required, a good sized deal table occupied the centre of the living-room,--and on the table was a clear crystal bowl full of what appeared at a first glance to be plain water, but which on closer observation showed a totally different quality. unlike water it was never still,--some interior bubbling perpetually moved it to sway and sparkle, throwing out tiny flashes as though the smallest diamond cuttings were striving to escape from it--while it exhaled around itself an atmosphere of extreme coldness and freshness like that of ice. seaton threw himself indolently into one of wicker chairs by the window--a window which was broad and wide, commanding a full view of distant mountains, and far away to the left a glimpse of sea. "i am vexed, and i want to see her"--he repeated, speaking aloud to himself--"now--why? why am i vexed?--and why do i want to see her? reason gives no answer! if she were here she would bore me to death. i could do nothing. she would ask me questions--and if i answered them she would not understand,--she is too stupid. she has no comprehension of any thing beyond simple primitive animalism. now if it were morgana--" he stopped in his talk, and started as if he had been stung. some subtle influence stole over him like the perfumed mist of incense--he leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes. what was the stealthy, creeping magnetic power that like an invisible hand touched his brain and pulled at his memory, and forced him to see before him a small elf-like figure clad in white, with a rope of gold hair twisting, snake-like, down over its shoulders and glistening in the light of the moon? for the moment he lost his usual iron mastery of will and let himself go on the white flood of a dream. he recalled his first meeting with morgana,--one of accident, not design--in the great laboratory of a distinguished scientist,--he had taken her for a little girl student trying to master a few principles of chemistry, and was astonished and incredulous when the distinguished scientist himself had introduced her as "one of our most brilliant theorists on the future development of radio activity." such a description seemed altogether absurd, applied to a little fair creature with beseeching blue eyes and gold hair! they had left the laboratory together, walking some way in company and charmed with each other's conversation, then, when closer acquaintance followed, and he had learned her true position in social circles and the power she wielded owing to her vast wealth, he at once withdrew from her as much as was civilly possible, disliking the suggestion of any sordid motive for his friendship. but she had so sweetly reproached him for this, and had enticed him on--yes!--he swore it within himself,--she had enticed him on in a thousand ways,--most especially by the amazing "grip" she had of scientific problems in which he was interested and which puzzled him, but which she seemed to unravel as easily as she might unravel a skein of wool. her clear brightness of brain and logical precision of argument first surprised him into unqualified admiration, calling to his mind the assertion of a renowned physiologist that "from the beginning woman had lived in another world than man. formed of finer vibrations and consequently finer chemical atoms she is in touch with more subtle planes of existence and of sensation and ideation. she holds unchallenged the code of life." then admiration yielded to the usual under-sense of masculine resentment against feminine intellectuality, and a kind of smouldering wrath and opposition took the place of his former chivalry and the almost tender pleasure he had previously felt in her exceptional genius and ability. and there came an evening--why did he think of it now, he wondered?--when, after a brilliant summer ball given at the beautiful residence of a noted society woman on long island, he had taken morgana out into their hostess's garden which sloped to the sea, and they had strolled together almost unknowingly down to the shore where, under the light of the moon, the atlantic waves, sunken to little dainty frills of lace-like foam, broke murmuringly at their feet,--and he, turning suddenly to his companion, was all at once smitten by a sense of witchery in her looks as she stood garmented in her white, vaporous ball-gown, with diamonds in her hair and on her bosom--smitten with an overpowering lightning-stroke of passion which burnt his soul as a desert is burnt by the hot breath of the simoon, and, yielding to its force, he had caught the small, fine, fairy creature in his arms and kissed her wildly on lips and eyes and hair. and she,--she had not resisted. then--as swiftly as he had clasped her he let her go--and stood before her in a strange spirit of defiance. "forgive me!" he said, in low uneven tones--"i--i did not mean it!" she lifted her eyes to his, half proudly half appealingly. "you did not mean it?" she asked, quietly. an amazed scorn flashed into her face, clouding its former sweetness--then she smiled coldly, turned away and left him. in a kind of stupor he watched her go, her light figure disappearing by degrees, as she went up the ascending path from the sea to the house where gay music was still sounding for dancers not yet grown weary. and from that evening a kind of silence fell between them,--they were separated as by an ice-floe. they met often in the social round, but scarcely spoke more than the ordinary words of conventional civility, and morgana apparently gave herself up to frivolity, coquetting with her numerous admirers and would-be husbands in a casual, not to say heartless, manner which provoked seaton past endurance,--so much so that he worked himself up to a kind of cynical detestation and contempt for her, both as a student of science and a woman of wealth. and yet--and yet--he had almost loved her! and a thing that goaded him to the quick was that so far as scientific knowledge and attainment were concerned she was more than his equal. irritated by his own quarrelsome set of sentiments which pulled him first this way and then that, he decided that the only thing possible for him was to put a "great divide" of distance between himself and her. this he had done--and to what purpose? apparently merely to excite her ridicule!--and to prick her humor up to the mischievous prank of finding out where he had fled and following him! and she--even she--who had kept him aloof ever since that fatal moment on the seashore,--had discovered him on this lonely hill-side, and had taunted him with her light mockery--and actually said that "to kiss him would be like kissing a bunch of nettles!"--she said that!--she who for one wild moment he had held in his arms--bah!--he sprang up from his chair in a kind of rage with himself, as his thoughts crowded thick and fast one on the other--why did he think of her at all! it was as if some external commanding force compelled him to do so. then--she had seen manella, and had naturally drawn her own conclusions, based on the girl's rich beauty which was so temptingly set within his reach. he began to talk to himself aloud once more, picking up the thread of his broken converse where he had left it-"if it were morgana it would be far worse than if it were manella!" he said--"the one is too stupid--the other too clever. but the stupid woman would make the best wife--if i wanted one--which i do not; and the best mother, if i desired children,--which i do not. the question is,--what do i want? i think i know--but supposing i get it, shall i be satisfied? will it fulfil my life's desire? what is my life's desire?" he stood inert--his tall figure erect--his eyes full of strange and meditative earnestness, and for a moment he seemed to gather his mental forces together with an effort. turning towards the table where the bowl of constantly sparkling fluid danced in tiny flashing eddies within its crystal prison, he watched its movement. "there's the clue!" he said--"so little--yet so much! life that cannot cease--force that cannot die! for me--for me alone this secret!--to do with it what i will--to destroy or to re-create! how shall i use it? if i could sweep the planet clean of its greedy, contentious human microbes, and found a new race i might be a power for good,--but should i care to do this? if god does not care, why should i?" he lost himself anew in musing--then, rousing his mind to work, he put paper, pens and ink on the table, and started writing busily--only interrupting himself once for a light meal of dry bread and milk during a stretch of six or seven hours. at the end of his self-appointed time, he went out of the hut to see, as he often expressed it, "what the sky was doing." it was not doing much, being a mere hot glare in which the sun was beginning to roll westwards slowly like a sinking fire-ball. he brought out one of the wicker chairs from the hut and set it in the only patch of shade by the door, stretching himself full length upon it, and closing his eyes, composed himself to sleep. his face in repose was a remarkably handsome one,--a little hard in outline, but strong, nobly featured and expressive of power,--an ambitious sculptor would have rejoiced in him as a model for achilles. he was as unlike the modern hideous type of man as he could well be,--and most particularly unlike any specimen of american that could be found on the whole huge continent. in truth he was purely and essentially english of england,--one of the fine old breed of men nurtured among the winds and waves of the north, for whom no labour was too hard, no service too exacting, no death too difficult, provided "the word was the bond." his natural gifts of intellect were very great, and profound study had ripened and rounded them to fruition,--certain discoveries in chemistry which he had tested were brought to the attention of his own country's scientists, who in their usual way of accepting new light on old subjects smiled placidly, shook their heads, pooh-poohed, and finally set aside the matter "for future discussion." but roger seaton was not of a nature to sink under a rebuff. if the wise men of gotham in england refused to take first advantage of the knowledge he had to offer them, then the wise men of gotham in germany or the united states should have their chance. he tried the united states and was received with open arms and open minds. so he resolved to stay there, for a few years at any rate, and managed to secure a position with the tireless magician edison, in whose workshops he toiled patiently as an underling, obtaining deeper grasp of his own instinctive knowledge, and further insight into an immense nature secret which he had determined to master alone. he had not mastered it yet--but felt fairly confident that he was near the goal. as he slept peacefully, with the still shade of a heavily foliaged vine which ramped over the roof of the hut, sheltering his face from the sun, his whole form in its relaxed, easy attitude expressed force in repose,--physical energy held in leash. the sun sank lower, its hue changing from poppy red to burning orange--and presently a woman's figure appeared on the hill slope, and cautiously approached the sleeper--a beautiful figure of classic mould and line, clothed in a simple white linen garb, with a red rose at its breast. it was manella. she had taken extraordinary pains with her attire, plain though it was--something dainty and artistic in the manner of its wearing made its simplicity picturesque,--and the red rose at her bosom was effectively supplemented by another in her hair, showing brilliantly against its rich blackness. she stopped when about three paces away from the sleeping man and watched him with a wonderful tenderness. her lips quivered sweetly--her lovely eyes shone with a soft wistfulness,--she looked indeed, as morgana had said of her, "quite beautiful." instinctively aware in slumber that he was not alone, seaton stirred--opened his eyes, and sprang up. "what! manella!" he exclaimed--"i thought you were too busy to come!" she hung her head a little shamefacedly. "i had to come"--she answered--"there was no one else ready to bring this--for you." she held out a telegram. he opened and read it. it was very brief--"shall be with you to-morrow. gwent." he folded it and put it in his pocket. then he turned to manella, smiling. "very good of you to bring this!" he said--"why didn't you send irish jake?" "he is taking luggage down from the rooms," she answered--"many people are going away to-day." "is that why you are 'so busy'"? he asked, the smile still dancing in his eyes. she gave a little toss of her head but said nothing. "and how fine we are to-day!" he said, glancing over her with an air of undisguised admiration--"white suits you, manella! you should always wear it! for what fortunate man have you dressed yourself so prettily?" she shrugged her shoulders expressively-"for you!" "for me? oh, manella! what a frank confession! and what a contradiction you are to yourself! for did you not send word by that irish monkey that you were 'too busy to come'? and yet you dress yourself in white, with red roses, for me! and you come after all! capricious child! oh senora soriso, how greatly honoured i am!" she looked straight at him. "you laugh, you laugh!" she said--"but i do not care! you can laugh at me all the time if you like. but--you cannot help looking at me! ah yes!--you cannot help that!" a triumphant glory flashed in her eyes--her red lips parted in a ravishing smile. "you cannot help it!" she repeated--"that little white lady--that friend of yours whom you hate and love at the same time!--she told me i was 'quite beautiful!' i know i am!--and you know it too!" he bent his eyes upon her gravely. "i have always known it--yes!"--he said, then paused--"dear child, beauty is nothing--" she made a swift step towards him and laid a hand on his arm. her ardent, glowing face was next to his. "you speak not truly!" and her voice was tremulous--"to a man it is everything!" her physical fascination was magnetic, and for a moment he had some trouble to resist its spell. very gently he put an arm round her,--and with a tender delicacy of touch unfastened the rose she wore at her bosom. "there, dear!" he said--"i will keep this with me for company! it is like you--except that it doesn't talk and doesn't ask for love--" "it has it without asking!" she murmured. he smiled. "has it? well,--perhaps it has!" he paused--then stooping his tall head kissed her once on the lips as a brother might have kissed her. "and perhaps--one day--when the right man comes along, you will have it too!" chapter xi mr. sam gwent stood in what was known as the "floral hall" of the plaza hotel, so called because it was built in colonnades which opened into various vistas of flowers and clambering vines growing with all the luxuriance common to california. he had just arrived, and while divesting himself of a light dust overcoat interrogated the official at the enquiry office. "so he doesn't live here after all,"--he said--"then where's he to be found?" "mr. seaton has taken the hill hut"--replied the book-keeper--"'the hut of the dying' it is sometimes called. he prefers it to the hotel. the air is better for his lungs." "air? lungs?"--gwent sniffed contemptuously. "there's very little the matter with his lungs if he's the man _i_ know! where's this hut of the dying? can i get there straight?" the bookkeeper touched a bell, and manella appeared. gwent stared openly. here--if "prize beauties" were anything--was a real winner! "this gentleman wants mr. seaton"--said the bookkeeper--"just show him the way up the hill." "sorry to trouble you!" said gwent, raising his hat with a courtesy not common to his manner. "oh, it is no trouble!" and manella smiled at him in the most ravishing way--"the path is quite easy to follow." she preceded him out of the "floral hall," and across the great gardens, now in their most brilliant bloom to a gate which she opened, pointing with one hand towards the hill where the flat outline of the "hut of the dying" could be seen clear against the sky. "there it is"--she explained--"it's nothing of a climb, even on the warmest day. and the air is quite different up there to what it is down here." "better, i suppose?" "oh, yes! much better!" "and is that why mr. seaton lives in the hut? on account of the air?" manella waved her hands expressively with a charming spanish gesture of indifference. "i suppose so! how should i know? he is here for his health." sam gwent uttered a curious inward sound, something between a grunt and a cough. "ah! i should like to know how long he's been ill!" manella again gave her graceful gesture. "surely you do know if you are a friend of his?" she said. he looked keenly at her. "are you a friend of his?" she smiled--almost laughed. "i? i am only a help in the plaza--i take him his food--" "take him his food!" sam gwent growled out something like an oath--"what! can't he come and get it for himself? is he treated like a bear in a cage or a baby in a cradle?" manella gazed at him with reproachful soft eyes. "oh, you are rough!" she said--"he pays for whatever little trouble he gives. indeed it is no trouble! he lives very simply--only on new milk and bread. i expect his health will not stand anything else--though truly he does not look ill--" gwent cut her description short. "well, thank you for showing me the way, senora or senorita, whichever you are--i think you must be spanish--" "senorita"--she said, with gentle emphasis--"i am not married. you are right that i am spanish." "such eyes as yours were never born of any blood but spanish!" said gwent--"i knew that at once! that you are not married is a bit of luck for some man--the man you will marry! for the moment adios! i shall dine at the plaza this evening, and shall very likely bring my friend with me." she shook her head smiling. "you will not!" "how so?" "because he will not come!" she turned away, back towards the hotel, and gwent started to ascend the hill alone. "here's a new sort of game!"--he thought--"a game i should never have imagined possible to a man like roger seaton! hiding himself up here in a consumption hut, and getting a beautiful woman to wait on him and 'take him his food'! it beats most things i've heard of! dollar sensation books aren't in it! i wonder what morgana royal would say to it, if she knew! he's given her the slip this time!" half-way up the hill he paused to rest, and saw seaton striding down at a rapid pace to meet him. "hullo, gwent!" "hullo!" the two men shook hands. "i got your wire at the beginning of the week"--said gwent--"and came as soon as i could get away. it's been a stiff journey too--but i wouldn't keep you waiting." "thanks,--it's as much your affair as mine"--said seaton--"the thing is ripe for action if you care to act. it's quite in your hands, i hardly thought you'd come--" "but i sent you a reply wire?" "oh, yes--that's all right! but reply wires don't always clinch business. yours arrived last night." "i wonder if it was ever delivered!" grumbled gwent--"it was addressed to the plaza hotel--not to a hut on a hill!" seaton laughed. "you've heard all about it i see! but the hut on the hill is a 'dependence' of the plaza--a sort of annex where dying men are put away to die peaceably--" "you are not a dying man!" said gwent, very meaningly--"and i can't make out why you pretend to be one!" again seaton laughed. "i'm not pretending!--my dear gwent, we're all dying men! one may die a little faster than another, but it's all the same sort of 'rot, and rot, and thereby hangs a tale!' what's the news in washington?" they walked up the hill slowly, side by side. "not startling"--answered gwent--then paused--and repeated--"not startling--there's nothing startling nowadays--though some folks made a very good show of being startled when my nephew jack shot himself." seaton stopped in his walk. "shot himself? that lad? was he insane?" "of course!--according to the coroner. everybody is called 'insane' who gets out of the world when it's too difficult to live in. some people would call it sane. i call it just--cowardice! jack had lost his last chance, you see. morgana royal threw him over." seaton paced along with a velvet-footed stride like a tiger on a trail. "had she led him on?" "rather! she leads all men 'on'--or they think she does. she led you on at one time!" seaton turned upon him with a quick, savage movement. "never! i saw through her from the first! she could never make a fool of me!" sam gwent gave a short cough, expressing incredulity. "well! washington thought you were the favoured 'catch' and envied your luck! certainly she showed a great preference for you--" "can't you talk of something else?" interposed seaton, impatiently. gwent gave him an amused side-glance. "why, of course i can!" he responded--"but i thought i'd tell you about jack--" "i'm sorry!" said seaton, hastily, conscious that he had been lacking in sympathy--"he was your heir, i believe?" "yes,--he might have been, had he kept a bit straighter"--said gwent--"but heirs are no good anywhere or anyhow. they only spend what they inherit and waste the honest work of a life-time. is that your prize palace?" he pointed to the hut which they had almost reached. "that's it!" answered seaton--"and i prefer it to any palace ever built. no servants, no furniture, no useless lumber--just a place to live in--enough for any man." "a tub was enough for diogenes"--commented gwent--"if we all lived in his way or your way it would be a poor look-out for trade! however, i presume you'll escape taxation here!" seaton made no reply, but led the way into his dwelling, offering his visitor a chair. "i hope you've had breakfast"--he said--"for i haven't any to give you. you can have a glass of milk if you like?" gwent made a wry face. "i'm not a good subject for primitive nourishment"--he said--"i've been weaned too long for it to agree with me!" he sat down. his eyes were at once attracted by the bowl of restless fluid on the table. "what's that?" he asked. roger seaton smiled enigmatically. "only a trifle"--he answered--"just health! it's a sort of talisman;--germ-proof, dust-proof, disease-proof! no microbe of mischief, however infinitesimal, can exist near it, and a few drops, taken into the system, revivify the whole." "if that's so, your fortune's made"--said gwent, "give your discovery, or recipe, or whatever it is, to the world---" "to keep the world alive? no, thank you!" and the look of dark scorn on seaton's face was astonishing in its almost satanic expression--"that is precisely what i wish to avoid! the world is over-ripe and over-rotten,--and it is over-crowded with a festering humanity that is inhuman, and worse than bestial in its furious grappling for self and greed. one remedy for the evil would be that no children should be born in it for the next thirty or forty years--the relief would be incalculable,--a monstrous burden would be lifted, and there would be some chance of betterment,--but as this can never be, other remedies must be sought and found. it's pure hypocrisy to talk of love for children, when every day we read of mothers selling their offspring for so much cash down,--lately in china during a spell of famine parents killed their daughters like young calves, for food. ugly facts like these have to be looked in the face--it's no use putting them behind one's back, and murmuring beautiful lies about 'mother-love' and such nonsense. as for the old mosaic commandment 'honour thy father and mother'--it's ordinary newspaper reading to hear of boys and girls attacking and murdering their parents for the sake of a few dollars." "you've got the ugly facts by heart"--said gwent slowly--"but there's another and more cheerful outlook--if you choose to consider it. newspaper reading always gives the worst and dirtiest side of everything--it wouldn't be newspaper stuff if it was clean. newspapers remind me of the rotting heaps in gardens--all the rubbish piled together till the smell becomes a nuisance--then a good burning takes place of the whole collection and it makes a sort of fourth-rate manure." he paused a moment--then went on-"i'm not given to sentiment, but i dare say there are still a few folks who love each other in this world,--and it's good to know of when they do. my sister"--he paused again, as if something stuck in his throat; "my sister loved her boy,--jack. his death has driven her silly for the time--doctors say she will recover--that it's only 'shock.' 'shock' is answerable for a good many tragedies since the european war." seaton moved impatiently, but said nothing, "you're a bit on the fidgets"--resumed gwent, placidly--"you want me to come to business--and i will. may i smoke?" his companion nodded, and he drew out his cigar-case, selecting from it a particularly fragrant havana. "you don't do this sort of thing, or i'd offer you one,"--he said,--"pity you don't, it soothes the nerves. but i know your 'fads'; you are too closely acquainted with the human organism to either smoke or drink. well--every man to his own method! now what you want me to do is this--to represent the force and meaning of a certain substance which you have discovered, to the government of the united states and induce them to purchase it. is that so?" "that is so!" and roger seaton fixed his eyes on gwent's hard, lantern-jawed face with a fiery intensity--"remember, it's not child's play! whoever takes what i can give, holds the mastery of the world! i offer it to the united states--but i would have preferred to offer it to great britain, being as i am, an englishman. but the dilatory british men of science have snubbed me once--and i do not intend them to have the chance of doing it again. briefly--i offer the united states the power to end wars, and all thought or possibility of war for ever. no treaty of versailles or any other treaty will ever be necessary. the only thing i ask in reward for my discovery is the government pledge to use it. that is, of course, should occasion arise. for my material needs, which are small, an allowance of a sum per annum as long as i live, will satisfy my ambition. the allowance may be as much or as little as is found convenient. the pledge to use my discovery is the one all-important point--it must be a solemn, binding pledge--never to be broken." gwent puffed slowly at his cigar. "it's a bit puzzling!"--he said--"when and where should it be used?" seaton stretched out a hand argumentatively. "now listen!" he said--"suppose two nations quarrel--or rather, their governments and their press force them to quarrel--the united states (possessing my discovery) steps between and says--'very well! the first move towards war--the first gun fired--means annihilation for one of you or both! we hold the power to do this!'" gwent drew his cigar from his lips. "annihilation!" he murmured--"annihilation? for one or both!" "just so--absolute annihilation!" and seaton smiled with a pleasant air of triumph--"a holocaust of microbes! the united states must let the whole world know of their ability to do this (without giving away my discovery). they must say to the nations 'we will have no more wars. if innocent people are to be killed, they can be killed quite as easily in one way as another, and our way will cost nothing--neither ships nor ammunition nor guns.' and, of course, the disputants will be given time to decide their own fate for themselves." sam gwent, holding his cigar between his fingers and looking meditatively at its glowing end, smiled shrewdly. "all very well!"--he said--"but you forget money interests. money interests always start a war--it isn't nations that do it, it's 'companies.' your stuff won't annihilate companies all over the globe. governments are not likely to damage their own financial moves. suppose the united states government agreed to your proposition and took the sole possession and proprietorship of your discovery, and gave you their written, signed and sealed pledge to use it, it doesn't at all follow that they would not break that pledge at the first opportunity. in these days governments break promises as easily as eggshells. and there would be ample excuse for breaking the pledge to you--simply on the ground of inhumanity." "war is inhumanity"--said seaton--"the use of my discovery would be no worse than war." "granted!--but war makes money for certain sections of the community,--you must think of that!" and gwent's little shrewd eyes gleamed like bits of steel.--"money!--money! stores--food, clothing--transport--all these things in war mean fortunes to the contractors--while the wiping out of a nation in your way would mean loss of money. loss of life wouldn't matter,--it never does really matter--not to governments!--but loss of money--ah, well!--that's a very different and much more serious affair!" a cynical smile twisted his features as he spoke, and roger seaton, standing opposite to him with his fine head well thrown back on his shoulders and his whole face alive with the power of thought, looked rather like a viking expostulating with some refractory vassal. "so you think the united states wouldn't take my 'discovery?'" he said--"or--if they took it--couldn't be trusted to keep a pledged word?" gwent shrugged his shoulders. "of course our government could be trusted as much as any other government in the world,"--he said--"perhaps more. but it would exonerate itself for breaking even a pledged word which necessitated an inhuman act involving loss of money! see? war is an inhuman act, but it brings considerable gain to those who engineer it,--this makes all the difference between humanity and inhumanity!" "well!--you are a senator, and you ought to know!" replied seaton--"and if your opinion is against my offer, i will not urge you to make it. but--as i live and stand here talking to you, you may bet every dollar you possess that if neither the united states nor any other government will accept the chance i give it of holding the nations like dogs in leash, i'll hold them myself! i! one single unit of the overteeming millions! yes, mr. senator gwent, i swear it! i'll be master of the world!" chapter xii gwent was silent. with methodical care he flicked off the burnt end of his cigar and watched it where it fell, as though it were something rare and curious. he wanted a few minutes to think. he gave a quick upward glance at the tall athletic figure above him, with its magnificent head and flashing eyes,--and the words "i'll be master of the world" gave him an unpleasant thrill. one man on the planet with power to destroy nations seemed quite a fantastic idea--yet science made it actually possible! he bethought himself of a book he had lately read concerning radio-activity, in which he had been struck by the following passage--"radio-activity is an explosion of great violence; the energy exerted is millions of times more powerful than the highest explosive substance yet made in our laboratories; one bomb loaded with such energy would be equal to millions of bombs of the same size and energy as used in the trenches. one's mind stands aghast at the thought of what could be possible if such power were used for destructive purposes; a single aeroplane could carry sufficient to annihilate a whole army, or lay the biggest city in ruins with the death of all its inhabitants." the writer of the book in question had stated that, so far, no means had been found of conserving and concentrating this tremendous force for such uses,--but gwent, looking at roger seaton, said within himself--"he's got it!" and this impression, urging itself strongly in on his brain, was sufficiently startling to give him a touch of what is called "nerves." after a considerably long pause he said, slowly--"well, 'master of the world' is a pretty tall order! now, look here, seaton--you're a plain, straight man, and so am i, as much as my business will let me. what are you after, anyway? what is your aim and end? you say you don't want money--yet money is the chief goal of all men's ambition. you don't care for fame, though you could have it for the lifting of a finger, and i suppose you don't want love--" seaton laughed heartily, pushing back with a ruffling hand the thick hair from his broad open brow. "all three propositions are nil to me"--he said--"i suppose it is because i can have them for the asking! and what satisfaction is there in any one of them? a man only needs one dinner a day, a place to sleep in and ordinary clothes to wear--very little money is required for the actual necessaries of life--enough can be earned by any day-labourer. as for fame--whosoever reads the life of even one 'famous' man will never be such a fool as to wish for the capricious plaudits of a fool-public. and love!--love does not exist--not what _i_ call love!" "oh! may i have your definition?" "why yes!--of course you may! love, to my thinking, means complete harmony between two souls--like two notes that make a perfect chord. the man must feel that he can thoroughly trust and reverence the woman,--the woman must feel the same towards the man. and the sense of 'reverence' is perhaps the best and most binding quality. but nowadays what woman will you find worth reverence?--what man so free from drink and debauchery as to command it? the human beings of our day are often less respectable than the beasts! i can imagine love,--what it might be--what it should be--but till we have a very different and more spiritualised world, the thing is impossible." again, gwent was silent for some minutes. then he said-"apparently the spirit of destructiveness is strong in you. as 'master of the world'--to quote your own words, i presume that in the event of a nation or nations deciding on war, you would give them a time-limit to consider and hold conference, with their allies--and then--if they were resolved to begin hostilities--" "then i could--and would--wipe them off the face of the earth in twenty-four hours!" said seaton, calmly--"from nations they should become mere dust-heaps! war makes its own dust-heaps, but with infinitely more cost and trouble--the way of exit i offer would be cheap in comparison!" gwent smiled a grim smile. "well, i come back to my former question"--he said--"suppose the occasion arose, and you did all this, what pleasure to yourself do you foresee?" "the pleasure of clearing the poor old earth of some of its pestilential microbes!"--answered seaton, "something of the same thankful satisfaction sir ronald ross must have experienced when he discovered the mosquito-breeders of yellow fever and malaria, and caused them to be stamped out. the men who organise national disputes are a sort of mosquito, infecting their fellow-creatures with perverted mentality and disease,--they should be exterminated." "why not begin with the newspaper offices?" suggested gwent--"the purlieus of cheap journalism are the breeding-places of the human malaria-mosquito." "true! and it wouldn't be a bad idea to stamp them out," here seaton threw back his head with the challenging gesture which was characteristic of his temperament--"but what is called 'the liberty of the press'(it should be called 'the license of the press') is more of an octopus than a mosquito. cut off one tentacle, it grows another. it's entirely octopus in character, too,--it only lives to fill its stomach." "oh, come, come!" and gwent's little steely eyes sparkled--"it's the 'safe-guard of nations' don't you know?--it stands for honest free speech, truth, patriotism, justice--" "good god!" burst out seaton, impatiently--"when it does, then the 'new world' about which men talk so much may get a beginning! 'honest free speech--truth!' why, modern journalism is one great lie advertised on hoardings from one end of the world to the other!" "i agree!" said gwent--"and there you have the root and cause of war! no need to exterminate nations with your destructive stuff,--you should get at the microbes who undermine the nations first. when you can do that, you will destroy the guilty and spare the innocent,--whereas your plan of withering a nation into a dust-heap involves the innocent along with the guilty." "war does that,"--said seaton, curtly. "it does. and your aim is to do away with all chance or possibility of war for ever. good! but you need to attack the actual root of the evil." seaton's brow clouded into a frown. "you're a careful man, gwent,"--he said--"and, in the main, you are right. i know as well as you do that the license of the press is the devil's finger in the caldron of affairs, stirring up strife between nations that would probably be excellent friends and allies, if it were not for this 'licensed' mischief. but so long as the mob read the lies, so long will the liars flourish. and my argument is that if any two peoples are so brainless as to be led into war by their press, they are not fit to live--no more fit than the mosquitoes that once made panama a graveyard." gwent smoked leisurely, regarding his companion with unfeigned interest. "apparently you haven't much respect for life?" he said. "not when it is diseased life--not when it is perverted life;"--returned seaton--"then it is mere deformity and encumbrance. for life itself in all its plenitude, health and beauty i have the deepest, most passionate respect. it is the outward ray or reflex of the image of god--" "stop there!" interrupted gwent--"you believe in god?" "i do,--most utterly! that is to say i believe in an all-pervading mind originating and commanding the plan of the universe. we talk of 'ions' and 'electrons'--but we are driven to confess that a supreme intelligence has the creation of electrons, and directs them as to the formation of all existing things. to that mind--to that intelligence--i submit my soul! and i do not believe that this supreme mind desires evil or sorrow,--we create disaster ourselves, and it is ourselves that must destroy it, we are given free-will--if we 'will' to create disease, we must equally 'will' to exterminate it by every means in our power." "i think i follow you"--said gwent, slowly--"but now, as regards this supreme intelligence, i suppose you will admit that the plan of creation is a dual sort of scheme--that is to say 'male and female created he them'?" "why, of course!" and seaton smiled--"the question is superfluous!" "i asked it," went on gwent--"because you seem to eliminate the female element from your life altogether. therefore, so i take it, you are not at your full strength, either as a scientist or philosopher. you are a kind of eagle, trying to fly high on one wing. you'll need the other! there, don't look at me in that savage way! i'm merely making my own comments on your position,--you needn't mind them. i want to get out of the tangle-up of things you have suggested. you fancy it would be easy to get the united states government to purchase your discovery and pledge themselves to use it on occasion for the complete wiping out of a nation,--any nation--that decided to go to war,--and, failing their acceptance, or the acceptance of any government on these lines, you purpose doing the deed yourself. well!--i can tell you straight away it's no use my trying to negotiate such a business, the inhumanity of it is to palpable." "what of the inhumanity of war?" asked seaton. "that pays!" replied gwent, with emphasis--"you don't, or won't, seem to recognise that blistering fact! the inhumanity of war pays everybody concerned in it except the fellows who fight to order. they are the 'raw material.' they get used up. your business wouldn't 'pay.' and what won't 'pay' is no good to anybody in this present sort of world." seaton, still standing erect, bent his eyes on the lean hard features of his companion with eloquent scorn. "so! everything must be measured and tested by money!" he said--"and yet you senators talk of reform!--of a 'new' world!--of a higher code of conduct between man and man--" "yes, we talk"--interrupted gwent--"but we don't mean what we say!--we should never think of meaning it!" "'scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!'" quoted seaton with passionate emphasis. "just so! the lord christ said it two thousand years ago, and it's true to-day! we haven't improved!" with an impatient movement, seaton strode to the door of his hut and looked out at the wide sky,--then turned back again. gwent watched him critically. "after all," he said, "it isn't as if you wanted anything of anybody. money is no object of yours. if it were i should advise your selling your discovery to morgana royal,--she'd buy it--and, i tell you what!--she'd use it!" "thanks!" and seaton nodded curtly--"i can use it myself!" "true!" and gwent looked interestedly at his dwindling havana--"you can!" there followed a pause during which gwent thought of the strange predicament in which the world might find itself, under the scientific rule of one man who had it in his power to create a terrific catastrophe without even "showing his hand." "anyway, seaton, you surely want to make something out of life for yourself, don't you?" "what is there to be made out of it?" he asked. "well!-happiness--the physical pleasure of living--" "i am happy"--declared seaton--"and i entirely appreciate the physical pleasure of living. but i should be happier and better pleased with life if i could rid the earth of some of its mischief, disease and sorrow--" "how about leaving that to the supreme intelligence?" interposed gwent. "that's just it! the supreme intelligence led me to the discovery i have made--and i feel that it has been given into my hands for a purpose. gwent, i am positive that this same supreme intelligence expects his creature, man, to help him in the evolvement and work of the universe! it is the only reasonable cause for man's existence. we must help, not hinder, the scheme of which we are a part. and wherever hindrance comes in we are bound to remove and destroy it!" the last ash of gwent's cigar fell to the floor, and gwent himself rose from his chair. "well, i suppose we've had our talk out"--he said; "i came here prepared to offer you a considerable sum for your discovery--but i can't go so far as a government pledge. so i must leave you to it. you know"--here he hesitated--"you know a good many people would consider you mad--" seaton laughed. "oh, that goes without saying! did you ever hear of any scientist possessing a secret drawn from the soul of nature that was not called 'mad' at once by his compeers and the public? i can stand that accusation! pray heaven i never get as mad as a wall street gambler!" "you will, if you gamble with the lives of nations!" said gwent. "let the nations beware how they gamble with their own lives!" retorted seaton--"you say war is a method of money-making--let them take heed how they touch money coined in human blood! i--one man only,--but an instrument of the supreme intelligence,--i say and swear there shall be no more wars!" as he uttered these words there was something almost supernatural in the expression of his face--his attitude, proudly erect, offered a kind of defiance to the world,--and involuntarily gwent, looking at him, thought of the verse in the third psalm-"i laid me down and slept; i awaked for the lord sustained me. i will not be afraid of ten thousands of the people that have set themselves against me round about." "no--he would not be afraid!" gwent mused--"he is a man for whom there is no such thing as fear! but--if it knew--the world might be afraid of him!" aloud he said--"well, you may put an end to war, but you will never put an end to men's hatred and envy of one another, and if they can't 'let the steam off' in fighting, they'll find some other way which may be worse. if you come to consider it, all nature is at war with itself,--it's a perpetual struggle to live, and it's evident that the struggle was intended and ordained as universal law. life would be pretty dull without effort--and effort means war." "war against what?--against whom?" asked seaton. "against whatever or whoever opposes the effort," replied gwent, promptly--"there must be opposition, otherwise effort would be unnecessary. my good fellow, you've got an idea that you can alter the fixed plan of things, but you can't. the cleverest of us are only like goldfish in a glass bowl--they see the light through, but they cannot get to it. the old ship of the world will sail on its appointed way to its destined port,--and the happiest creatures are those who are content to sail with it in the faith that god is at the helm!" he broke off, smiling at his own sudden eloquence, then added--"by-the-by, where is your laboratory?" "haven't got one!" replied seaton, briefly. "what! haven't got one! why, how do you make your stuff?" seaton laughed. "you think i'm going to tell you? mr. senator gwent, you take me for a greater fool than i am! my 'stuff' needs neither fire nor crucible,--the formula was fairly complete before i left washington, but i wanted quiet and solitude to finish what i had begun. it is finished now. that's why i sent for you to make the proposition which you say you cannot carry through." "finished, is it?" queried gwent, abstractedly--"and you have it here?--in a finished state?" seaton nodded affirmatively. "then i suppose"--said gwent with a nervous laugh--"you could 'finish' me, if it suited your humour?" "i could, certainly!" and seaton gave him quite an encouraging smile--"i could reduce mr. senator gwent into a small pinch of grey dust in about forty seconds, without pain! you wouldn't feel it i assure you! it would be too swift for feeling." "thanks! much obliged!" said gwent--"i won't trouble you this morning! i rather enjoy being alive." "so do i!" declared seaton, still smiling--"i only state what i could do." gwent stood at the door of the hut and surveyed the scenery. "you've a fine, wild view here"--he said--"i think i shall stay at the plaza a day or two before returning to washington. there's a very attractive girl there." "oh, you mean manella"--said seaton, carelessly; "yes, she's quite a beauty. she's the maid, waitress or 'help' of some sort at the hotel." "she's a good 'draw' for male visitors"--said gwent--"many a man i know would pay a hundred dollars a day to have her wait upon him!" "would you?" asked seaton, amused. "well!--perhaps not a hundred dollars a day, but pretty near it! her eyes are the finest i've ever seen." seaton made no comment. "you'll come and dine with me to-night, won't you?" went on gwent--"you can spare me an hour or two of your company?" "no, thanks"--seaton replied--"don't think me a churlish brute--but i don't like hotels or the people who frequent them. besides--we've done our business." "unfortunately there was no business doing!" said gwent--"sorry i couldn't take it on." "don't be sorry! i'll take it on myself when the moment comes. i would have preferred the fiat of a great government to that of one unauthorised man--but if there's no help for it then the one man must act." gwent looked at him with a grave intentness which he meant to be impressive. "seaton, these new scientific discoveries are dangerous tools!" he said--"if they are not handled carefully they may work more mischief than we dream of. be on your guard! why, we might break up the very planet we live on, some day!" "very possible!" answered seaton, lightly--"but it wouldn't be missed! come,--i'll walk with you half way down the hill." he threw on a broad palmetto hat as a shield against the blazing sun, for it was now the full heat of the afternoon, while gwent solemnly unfurled a white canvas umbrella which, folded, served him on occasion as a walking-stick. a greater contrast could hardly be imagined than that afforded by the two men,--the conventionally clothed, stiff-jointed washington senator, and the fine, easy supple figure of his roughly garbed companion; and manella, watching them descend the hill from a coign of vantage in the plaza gardens, criticised their appearance in her own special way. "poof!" she said to herself, snapping her fingers in air--"he is so ugly!--that one man--so dry and yellow and old! but the other--he is a god!" and she snapped her fingers again,--then kissed them towards the object of her adoration,--an object as unconscious and indifferent as any senseless idol ever worshipped by blind devotees. chapter xiii on his return to the plaza mr. sam gwent tried to get some conversation with manella, but found it difficult. she did not wait on the visitors in the dining-room, and gwent imagined he knew the reason why. her beauty was of too brilliant and riante a type to escape the notice and admiration of men, whose open attentions were likely to be embarrassing to her, and annoying to her employers. she was therefore kept very much out of the way, serving on the upper floors, and was only seen flitting up and down the staircase or passing through the various corridors and balconies. however, when evening fell and its dark, still heat made even the hotel lounge, cooled as it was by a fountain in full play, almost unbearable, gwent, strolling forth into the garden, found her there standing near a thick hedge of myrtle which exhaled a heavy scent as if every leaf were being crushed between invisible fingers. she looked up as she saw him approaching and smiled. "you found your friend well?" she said. "very well, indeed!" replied gwent, promptly--"in fact, i never knew he was ill!" manella gave her peculiar little uplift of the head which was one of her many fascinating gestures. "he is not ill"--she said--"he only pretends! that is all! he has some reason for pretending. i think it is love!" gwent laughed. "not a bit of it! he's the last man in the world to worry himself about love!" manella glanced him over with quite a superior air. "ah, perhaps you do not know!" and she waved her hands expressively. "there was a wonderful lady came here to see him some weeks ago--she stole up the hill at night, like a spirit--a little, little fairy woman with golden hair--" gwent pricked up his ears and stood at attention. "yes? really? you don't say so! 'a little fairy woman'? sounds like a story!" "she wore the most lovely clothes"--went on manella, clasping her hands in ecstasy--"she stayed at the plaza one night--i waited upon her. i saw her in her bed--she had skin like satin, and eyes like blue stars--her hair fell nearly to her ankles--she was like a dream! and she went up the hill by moonlight all by herself, to find him!" gwent listened with close interest. "and i presume she found him?" manella nodded, and a sigh escaped her. "oh, yes, she found him! he told me that. and i am sure--something tells me here" and she pressed one hand against her heart--"by the way he spoke--that he loves her!" "you seem to be a very observant young woman," said gwent, smiling--"one would think you were in love with him yourself!" she raised her large dark eyes to his with perfect frankness. "i am!" she said--"i see no shame in that! he is a fine man--it is good to love him!" gwent was completely taken aback. here was primitive passion with a vengeance!--passion which admitted its own craving without subterfuge. manella's eyes were still uplifted in a kind of childlike confidence. "i am happy to love him!" she went on--"i wish only to serve him. he does not love me--oh, no!--he loves her! but he hates her too--ah!" and she gave a little shivering movement of her shoulders--"there is no love without hate!--and when one loves and hates with the same heart-beat, that is a love for life and death!" she checked herself abruptly--then with a simplicity which was not without dignity added--"i am saying too much, perhaps? but you are his friend--and i think he must be very lonely up there!" mr. senator gwent was perplexed. he had not looked to stumble on a romantic episode, yet here was one ready made to his hand. his nature was ill attuned to romance of any kind, but he felt a certain compassion for this girl, so richly dowered with physical beauty, and smitten with love for a man like roger seaton who, according to his own account, had no belief in love's existence. and the "fairy woman" she spoke of--who could that be but morgana royal? after his recent interview with seaton his thoughts were rather in a whirl, and he sought for a bit of commonplace to which he could fasten them without the risk of their drifting into greater confusion. yet that bit of commonplace was hard to find with a woman's lovely passionate eyes looking straight into his, and the woman herself, a warm-blooded embodiment of exquisite physical beauty, framed like a picture among the scented myrtle boughs under the dusky violet sky, where glittered a few stars with that large fiery brilliance so often seen in california. he coughed--it was a convenient thing to cough--it cleared the throat and helped utterance. "i--i--well!--i hardly think he is lonely"--he said at last, hesitatingly--"perhaps you don't know it--but he's a very clever man--an inventor--a great thinker with new ideas--" he stopped. how could this girl understand him? what would she know of "inventors"--and "thinkers with new ideas"? a trifle embarrassed, he looked at her. she nodded her dark head and smiled. "i know!" she said--"he is a god!" sam gwent almost jumped. a god! oh, these women! of what fantastic exaggerations they are capable! "a god!" she repeated, nodding again, complacently; "he can do anything! i feel that all the time. he could rule the whole world!" gwent's nerves "jumped" for the second time. roger seaton's own words--"i'll be master of the world" knocked repeatingly on his brain with an uncomfortable thrill. he gathered up the straying threads of his common sense and twisted them into a tough string. "that's all nonsense!" he said, as gruffly as he could--"he's not a god by any means! i'm afraid you think too much of him, miss--miss--er--" "soriso," finished manella, gently--"manella soriso." "thank you!" and gwent sought for a helpful cigar which he lit--"you have a very charming name! yes--believe me, you think too much of him!" "you say that? but--are you not his friend?" her tone was reproachful. but gwent was now nearly his normal business self again. "no,--i am scarcely his friend"--he replied--"'friend' is a big word,--it implies more than most men ever mean. i just know him--i've met him several times, and i know he worked for a while under edison--and--and that's about all. then i think"--he was cautious here--"i think i've seen him at the house of a very wealthy lady in new york--a miss royal--" "ah!" exclaimed manella--"that is the name of the fairy woman who came here!" gwent went on without heeding her. "she, too, is very clever,--she is also an inventor and a scientist--and if it was she who came here--(i daresay it was!) it was probably because she wished to ask his advice and opinion on some of the difficult things she studies--" manella snapped her fingers as though they were castanets. "ah--bah!" she exclaimed--"not at all! no difficult thing takes a woman out by moonlight, all in soft white and diamonds to see a man!--no difficult thing at all, except to tempt him to love! yes! that is the way it is done! i begin to learn! and you, if you are not his friend, what are you here for?" gwent began to feel impatient with this irrepressible "prize" beauty. "i came to see him at his own request on business;" he answered curtly--"the business is concluded and i go away to-morrow." manella was silent. the low chirping of a cicada hidden in the myrtle thicket made monotonous sweetness on the stillness. moved by some sudden instinct which he did not attempt to explain to himself, gwent decided to venture on a little paternal advice. "now don't you fly off in a rage at what i'm going to say,"--he began, slowly--"you're only a child to me--so i'm just taking the liberty of talking to you as a child. don't give too much of your time or your thought to the man you call a 'god.' he's no more a god than i am. but i tell you one thing--he's a dangerous customer!" manella's great bright eyes opened wide like stars in the darkness. "dangerous?--how?--i do not understand---!" "dangerous!"--repeated gwent, shaking his head at her--"not to you, perhaps,--for you probably wouldn't mind if he killed you, so long as he kissed you first! oh, yes, i know the ways of women! god made them trusting animals, ready to slave all their lives for the sake of a caress. you are one of that kind--you'd willingly make a door-mat of yourself for seaton to wipe his boots on. i don't mean that he's dangerous in that way, because though _i_ might think him so, you wouldn't. no,--what i mean is that he's dangerous to himself--likely to run risks of his life---" here he paused, checked by the sudden terror in the beautiful eyes that stared at him. "his life!" and manella's voice trembled--"you think he is here to kill himself---" "no, no--bless my soul, he doesn't intend to kill himself"--said gwent, testily--"he's not such a fool as all that! now look here!--try and be a sensible girl! the man is busy with an invention--a discovery--which might do him harm--i don't say it will--but it might. you've heard of bombs, haven't you?--timed to explode at a given moment?" manella nodded--her lips trembled, and she clasped her hands nervously across her bosom. "well!--i believe--i won't say it for certain,--that he's got something worse than that!" said gwent, impressively--"and that's why he was chosen to live up on that hill in the 'hut of the dying' away from everybody. see? and--of course--anything may happen at any moment. he's plucky enough, and is not the sort of man to involve any other man in trouble--and that's why he stays alone. now you know! so you can put away your romantic notions of his being 'in love'! a very good thing for him if he were! it might draw him away from his present occupation. in fact, the best that could happen to him would be that you should make him fall in love with you!" she gave a little cry. "with me?" "yes, with you! why not? why don't you manage it? a beautiful woman like you could win the game in less than a week?" she shook her head sorrowfully. "you do not know him!" she said--"but--he knows!" "knows what?" she gave a despairing little gesture. "that i love him!" "ah! that's a pity!" said gwent--"men are curious monsters in their love-appetites; they always refuse the offered dish and ask for something that isn't in the bill of fare. you should have pretended to hate him!" "i could not pretend that!" said manella, sadly--"but if i could, it would not matter. he does not want a woman." "oh, doesn't he?" gwent was amused at her quaint way of putting it. "well, he's the first man i ever heard of, that didn't! that's all bunkum, my good girl! probably he's crying for the moon!" "what is that?" she asked, wistfully. "crying for the moon? just hankering after what can't be got. lots of men are afflicted that way. but they've been known to give up crying and content themselves with something else." "he would never content himself!" she said--"if she--the woman that came here, is the moon, he will always want her. even _i_ want her!" "you?" exclaimed gwent, amazed. "yes! i want to see her again!" a puzzled look contracted her brows. "since she spoke to me i have always thought of her,--i cannot get her out of my mind! she just holds me--yes!--in one of her little white hands! there are few women like that i think!--women who hold the souls of others as prisoners till they choose to let them go!" mr. senator gwent was fairly nonplussed. this dark-eyed spanish beauty with her romantic notions was almost too much for him. had he met her in a novel he would have derided the author of the book for delineating such an impossible character,--but coming in contact with her in real life, he was at a loss what to say. especially as he himself was quite aware of the mysterious "hold" exercised by morgana royal on those whom she chose to influence either near or at a distance. after a few seconds of deliberation he answered-"yes--i should say there are very few women of that rather uncomfortable sort of habit,--the fewer the better, in my opinion. now miss manella soriso, remember what i say to you! don't think about being 'held' by anybody except by a lover and husband! see? play the game! with such looks as god has given you, it should be easy! win your 'god' away from his thunderbolts before he begins havoc with them from his miniature olympus. if he wants the 'moon' (and possibly he doesn't!) he won't say no to a star,--it's the next best thing. seriously now,"--and gwent threw away the end of his cigar and laid a hand gently on her arm--"be a good girl and think over what i've said to you. marry him if you can!--it will be the making of him!" manella gazed about her in the darkness, bewildered. a glittering little mob of fire-flies danced above her head like a net of jewels. "oh, you talk so strangely!" she said--"you forget!--i am a poor girl--i have no money--" "neither has he,"--and gwent gave a short laugh. "but he could make a million dollars to-morrow--if he chose. having only himself to consider, he doesn't choose! if he had you, he'd change his opinion. seaton's not the man to have a wife without keeping her in comfort. i tell you again, you can be the making of him. you can save his life!" she clasped her hands nervously. a little gasping sigh came from her lips. "oh!--santa madonna!--to save his life!" "ah, just that!" said gwent impressively--"think of it! i'm not speaking lies--that's not my way. the man is making for himself what we in the european war called a 'danger zone,' where everybody not 'in the know' was warned off hidden mines. hidden mines! he's got them! that's so! you can take my word! it's no good looking for them, no one will ever find them but himself, and he thinks of nothing else. but if he fell in love with you---" she gave a hopeless gesture. "he will not--he thinks nothing of me--nothing!--no!--though he says i am beautiful!" "oh, he says that, does he?" and gwent smiled--"well, he'd be a fool if he didn't!" "ah, but he does not care for beauty!" manella went on. "he sees it and he smiles at it, but it does not move him!" gwent looked at her in perplexity, not knowing quite how to deal with the subject he himself had started. truth to tell his nerves had been put distinctly "on edge" by seaton's cool, calculating and seemingly callous assertion as to the powers he possessed to destroy, if he chose, a nation,--and all sorts of uncomfortable scraps of scientific information gleaned from books and treatises suggested themselves vividly to his mind at this particular moment when he would rather have forgotten them. as, for example--"a pound weight of radio-active energy, if it could be extracted in as short a time as we pleased, instead of in so many million years, could do the work of a hundred and fifty tons of dynamite." this agreeable fact stuck in his brain as a bone may stick in a throat, causing a sense of congestion. then the words of one of the "pulpit thunderers" of new york rolled back on his ears--"this world will be destroyed, not by the hand of god, but by the wilful and devilish malingering of man!" another pleasant thought! and he felt himself to be a poor weak fool to even try to put up a girl's beauty, a girl's love as a barrier to the output of a destroying force engineered by a terrific human intention,--it was like the old story of the scottish heroine who thrust a slender arm through the great staple of a door to hold back the would-be murderers of a king. "beauty does not move him!" she said. she was right. nothing was likely to move roger seaton from any purpose he had once resolved upon. what to him was beauty? merely a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" moving for a time in one personality. what was a girl? just the young "female of the species"--no more. and love? sexual attraction, of which there was enough and too much in seaton's opinion. and the puzzled gwent wondered whether after all he would not have acted more wisely--or diplomatically--in accepting seaton's proposal to part with his secret to the united states government, even with the proviso and state pledge that it was to be "used" should occasion arise, rather than leave him to his own devices to do as he pleased with the apparently terrific potentiality of which he alone had the knowledge and the mastery. and while his thoughts thus buzzed in his head like swarming bees, manella stood regarding him in a kind of pitiful questioning like a child with a broken toy who can not understand "why" it is broken. as he did not speak at once she took up the thread of conversation. "you see how it is no use," she said. "no use to think of his ever loving me! but love for him--ah!--that i have, and that i will ever keep in my heart!--and to save his life i would myself gladly die!" gwent uttered a sound between a grunt and a sigh. "there it is! you women always run to extremes! 'gladly die' indeed! poor girl, why should you 'die' for him or for any man! that's sheer sentimental nonsense! there's not a man that ever lived, or that ever will live, that's worth the death of a woman! that's so! men think too much of themselves--they've been killing women ever since they were born--it's time they stopped a bit." manella's beautiful eyes expressed bewilderment. "killing women? is that what they do?" "yes, my good girl!--that is what they do! the silly trusting creatures go to them like lambs, and get their throats cut! in marriage or out of it--the throat-cutting goes on, for men are made of destructive stuff and love the sport of killing. they are never satisfied unless they can kill something--a bird, a fox or a woman. i'm a man myself and i know!" "you would kill a woman?" manella's voice was a horrified whisper. gwent laughed. "no,--not i, my child! i'm too old. i've done with love-making and 'sport' of all kinds. i don't even drive a golf-ball, in make-believe that it's a woman i'm hitting as fast and far as i can. oh, yes!--you stare!--you are wondering why, if i have such ideas, i should suggest love-making and marriage to you,--well, i don't actually recommend it!--but i'm rather thinking more of your 'god' than of you. you might possibly help him a bit--" "ah, i am not clever!" sighed manella. "no--you're not clever--thank god for it! but you're devoted--and devotion is sometimes more than cleverness." he paused, reflectively. "well, i'll have to go away tomorrow--it wouldn't be any use my staying on here. in fact, i'd rather be out of the way. but i've a notion i may be able to do something for seaton in washington when i get back--in the meantime i'll leave a letter for you to give him--" "you will not write of me in that letter!" interrupted the girl, hastily. "no--you must not--you could not!---" gwent raised a deprecating hand. "don't be afraid, my girl! i'm not a cad. i wouldn't give you away for the world! i've no right to say a word about you, and i shall not. my letter will be a merely business one--you shall read it if you like---" "oh no!"--she said at once, with proud frankness; "i would not doubt your word!" gwent gave her a comprehensively admiring glance. even in the dusk of evening her beauty shone with the brilliance of a white flower among the dark foliage. "what a sensation she would make in new york!" he thought--"with those glorious eyes and that hair!" and a vague regret for his lost youth moved him; he was a very wealthy man, and had he been in his prime he would have tried a matrimonial chance with this unspoilt beautiful creature,--it would have pleased him to robe her in queenly garments and to set the finest diamonds in her dark tresses, so that she should be the wonder and envy of all beholders. he answered her last remark with a kindly little nod and smile. "good! you needn't doubt it ever!"--he said--"if at any time you want a friend you can bet on sam gwent. i'm a member of congress and you can always find me easily. but remember my advice--don't make a 'god' of any man;--he can't live up to it---" as he spoke a sudden jagged flash of lightning tore the sky, followed almost instantaneously by a long, low snarl of thunder rolling through the valley. great drops of rain began to fall. "come along! let us get in!" and gwent caught manella's hand--"run!" and like children they ran together through the garden into the plaza lounge, reaching it just before a second lightning flash and peal of thunder renewed double emphasis. "storm!" observed a long-faced invalid man in a rocking-chair, looking at them as they hurried in. "yes! storm it is!" responded gwent, releasing the hand of his companion--"good-night, miss soriso!" she inclined her head graceful, smiling. "good-night, senor!" chapter xiv convention is still occasionally studied even in these unconventional days, and morgana royal, independent and wealthy young woman as she was, had subscribed to its rule and ordinance by engaging a chaperone,--a "dear old english lady of title," as she had described her to the marchese rivardi. lady kingswood merited the description thus given of her, for she was distinctly a dear old english lady, and her title was the least thing about her, especially in her own opinion. there was no taint of snobbery in her simple, kindly disposition, and when her late husband, a distinguished military officer, had been knighted for special and splendid service in the war, she had only deplored that the ruin of his health and disablement by wounds, prevented him from taking any personal pleasure in the "honour." his death followed soon after the king's recognition of his merit, and she was left with his pension to live upon, and a daughter who having married in haste repented at leisure, being deserted by a drunken husband and left with two small children to nourish and educate. naturally, lady kingswood took much of their care upon herself--but the pension of a war widow will not stretch further than a given point, and she found it both necessary and urgent to think of some means by which she could augment her slender income. she was not a clever woman,--she had no special talents,--her eyes would not stand her in good stead for plain sewing, and she could not even manage a typing machine. but she had exquisitely gentle manners,--she was well-bred and tactful, and, rightly judging that good-breeding and tact are valuable assets in some quarters of the "new" society, she sought, through various private channels, for a post as companion or "chaperone" to "one lady." just when she was rather losing hope as to the success of her effort, the "one lady" came along in the elfin personality of morgana royal, who, after a brief interview in london, selected her with a decision as rapid as it was inexplicable, offering her a salary of five hundred a year, which to lady kingswood was a small fortune. "you will have nothing to do but just be pleasant!" morgana had told her, smilingly, "and enjoy your self as you like. of course i do not expect to be controlled or questioned,--i am an independent woman, and go my own way, but i'm not at all 'modern.' i don't drink or smoke or 'dope,' or crave for male society. i think you'll find yourself all right!" and lady kingswood had indeed "found herself all right." her own daughter had never been so thoughtful for her comfort as morgana was, and she became day by day more interested and fascinated by the original turn of mind and the bewitching personality of the strange little creature for whom the ordinary amusements of society seemed to have no attraction. and now, installed in her own sumptuously fitted rooms in the palazzo d'oro, morgana's sicilian paradise, she almost forgot there was such a thing as poverty, or the sordid business of "making both ends meet." walking up and down the rose-marble loggia and looking out to the exquisite blue of the sea, she inwardly thanked god for all his mercies, and wondered at the exceptional good luck that had brought her so much peace, combined with comfort and luxury in the evening of her days. she was a handsome old lady; her refined features, soft blue eyes and white hair were a "composition" for an eighteenth-century french miniature, and her dress combined quiet elegance with careful taste. she was inflexibly loyal to her stated position; she neither "questioned" nor "controlled" morgana, or attempted to intrude an opinion as to her actions or movements,--and if, as was only natural, she felt a certain curiosity concerning the aims and doings of so brilliant and witch-like a personality she showed no sign of it. she was interested in the marchese rivardi, but still more so in the priest, don aloysius, to whom she felt singularly attracted, partly by his own dignified appearance and manner, and partly by the leaning she herself had towards the catholic faith where "woman" is made sacred in the person of the holy virgin, and deemed worthy of making intercession with the divine. she knew, as we all in our innermost souls know, that it is a symbol of the greatest truth that can ever be taught to humanity. the special morning on which she walked, leaning slightly on a silver-knobbed stick, up and down the loggia and looked at the sea, was one of rare beauty even in sicily, the sky being of that pure ethereal blue for which one can hardly find a comparison in colour, and the ocean below reflecting it, tone for tone, as in a mirror. in the terraced garden, half lost among the intertwining blossoms, morgana moved to and fro, gathering roses,--her little figure like a white rose itself set in among the green leaves. lady kingswood watched her, with kindly, half compassionate eyes. "it must be a terrible responsibility for her to have so much money!" she thought. "she can hardly know what to do with it! and somehow--i do not think she will marry." at that moment morgana came slowly up the steps cut in the grass bordered on either side by flowers, and approached her. "here are some roses for you, dear 'duchess!'" she said, "duchess" being the familiar or "pet" name she elected to call her by. "specially selected, i assure you! are you tired?--or may i have a talk?" lady kingswood took the roses with a smile, touching morgana's cheek playfully with one of the paler pink buds. "a talk by all means!" she replied--"how can i be tired, dear child? i'm a lazy old woman, doing nothing all day but enjoy myself!" morgana nodded her golden head approvingly. "that's right!--i'm glad!" she said. "that's what i want you to do! it's a pretty place, this palazzo d'oro, don't you think?" "more than pretty--it's a perfect paradise!" declared lady kingswood, emphatically. "well, i'm glad you like it"--went on morgana--"because then you won't mind staying here and looking after it when i'm away. i'll have to go away quite soon." lady kingswood controlled her first instinctive movement of surprise. "really?" she said--"that seems a pity as you only arrived so recently--" morgana gave a wistful glance round her at the beautiful gardens and blue sea beyond. "yes--perhaps it is a pity!" she said, with a light shrug of her shoulders--"but i have a great deal to do, and ever so much to learn. i told you, didn't i?--that i have had an air-ship built for me quite on my own lines?--an air-ship that moves like a bird and is quite different from any other air-ship ever made or known?" "yes, you told me something about it"--answered lady kingswood--"but you know, my dear, i am very stupid about all these wonderful new inventions. 'progress of science' they call it. well, i'm rather afraid of the 'progress of science.' i'm an old-fashioned woman and i cannot bear to hear of aeroplanes and air-ships and poor wretched people falling from the sky and being dashed to pieces. the solid earth is quite good enough for my old feet as long as they will support me!" morgana laughed. "you dear duchess!" she said, affectionately--"don't worry! i'm not going to ask you to travel in my air-ship--i wouldn't so try your nerves for the world! though it is an absolutely safe ship,--nothing"--and she emphasised the word--"nothing can upset it or drive it out of its course unless natural law is itself upset! now let us sit here"--and she drew two wicker chairs into the cool shadow of the loggia and set them facing the sea--"and have our talk! i've begun it--i'll go on! tell me"--and she nestled down among the cushions, watching lady kingswood seat herself in slower, less supple fashion--"tell me--what does it feel like to be married?" lady kingswood opened her eyes, surprised and amused. "what does it feel like? my dear--?" "oh, surely you know what i mean!" pursued morgana--"you have been married. well, when you were first married were you very, very happy? did your husband love you entirely without a thought for anybody or anything else?--and were you all in all to each other?" lady kingswood was quite taken aback by the personal directness of these questions, but deciding within herself that morgana must be contemplating marriage on her own behalf, answered simply and truthfully-"my husband and i were very fond of each other. we were the best of friends and good companions. of course he had his military duties to attend to and was often absent--" "and you stayed at home and kept house,"--interpolated morgana, musingly--"i see! that is what all wives have to do! but i suppose he just adored you?" lady kingswood smiled. "'adore' is a very strong word to use, my dear!" she said--"i doubt if any married people 'adore' each other! if they can be good friends and rub along pleasantly through all the sorrows and joys of life together, they should be satisfied." "and you call that love!" said morgana, with a passionate thrill in her voice--"love! 'love that is blood within the veins of time!' just 'rubbing along pleasantly together!' dear 'duchess,' that wouldn't suit me!" lady kingswood looked at her with interested, kind eyes. "but then, what would suit you?" she queried--"you know you mustn't expect the impossible!" "what the world calls the impossible is always the possible"--said morgana--"and only the impossible appeals to me!" this was going beyond the boundary-line of lady kingswood's brain capacity, so she merely remained agreeably quiescent. "and when your child was born"--pursued morgana--"did you feel a wonderful ecstasy?--a beautiful peace and joy?--a love so great that it was as if god had given you something of his own to hold and keep?" lady kingswood laughed outright. "my dear girl, you are too idealistic! having a baby is not at all a romantic business!--quite the reverse! and babies are not interesting till they 'begin to take notice' as the nurses say. then when they get older and have to go to school you soon find out that you have loved them far more than they have loved or ever will love you!" as she said this her voice trembled a little and she sighed. "i see! i think i quite understand!" said morgana--"and it is just what i have always imagined--there is no great happiness in marriage. if it is only a matter of 'rubbing along pleasantly together' two friends can always do that without any 'sex' attraction, or tying themselves up together for life. and it's not much joy to bring children into the world and waste treasures of love on them, if after you have done all you can, they leave you without a regret,--like the birds that fly from a nest when once they know how to use their wings." lady kingswood's eyes were sorrowful. "my daughter was a very pretty girl,"--she said--"her father and i were proud of her looks and her charm of manner. we spared every shilling we could to give her the best and most careful education--and we surrounded her with as much pleasure and comfort at home as possible,--but at the first experience of 'society,' and the flattery of strangers, she left us. her choice of a husband was most unfortunate--but she would not listen to our advice, though we had loved her so much--she thought 'he' loved her more." morgana lifted her eyes. the "fey" light was glittering in them. "yes! she thought he loved her! that's what many a woman thinks--that 'he'--the particular 'he' loves her! but how seldom he does! how much more often he loves himself!" "you must not be cynical, my dear!" said lady kingswood, gently--"life is certainly full of disappointments, especially in love and marriage--but we must endure our sorrows patiently and believe that god does everything for the best." this was the usual panacea which the excellent lady offered for all troubles, and morgana smiled. "yes!--it must be hard work for god!" she said--"cruel work! to do everything for the best and to find it being turned into the worst by the very creatures one seeks to benefit, must be positive torture! well, dear 'duchess,' i asked you all these questions about love and marriage just to know if you could say anything that might alter my views--but you have confirmed them. i feel that there is no such thing in the world as the love _i_ want--and marriage without it would be worse than any imagined hell. so i shall not marry." lady kingswood's face expressed a mild tolerance. "you say that just now"--she said--"but i think you will alter your mind some day! you would not like to be quite alone always--not even in the palazzo d'oro." "you are quite alone?" "ah, but i am an old woman, my dear! i have lived my day!" "that's not true," said morgana, decisively--"you have not 'lived your day' since you are living now! and if you are old, that is just a reason why you should not be alone. but you are. your husband is dead, and your daughter has other ties. so even marriage left you high and dry on the rocks as it were till my little boat came along and took you off them!" "a very welcome little boat!" said lady kingswood, with feeling--"a rescue in the nick of time!" "never mind that!" and morgan waved her pretty hand expressively--"my point is that marriage--just marriage--has not done much for you. it is what women clamour for, and scheme for,--and nine out of ten regret the whole business when they have had their way. there are so many more things in life worth winning!" lady kingswood looked at her interestedly. she made a pretty picture just then in her white morning gown, seated in a low basket chair with pale blue silk cushions behind her on which her golden head rested with the brightness of a daffodil. "so many more things!" she repeated--"my air-ship for instance!--it's worth all the men and all the marriages i've ever heard of! my beloved 'white eagle!'--my own creation--my baby--such a baby!" she laughed. "but i must learn to fly with it alone!" "i hope you will do nothing rash!"--said lady kingswood, mildly; she was very ignorant of modern discovery and invention, and all attempt to explain anything of the kind to her would have been a hope less business--"i understand that it is always necessary to take a pilot and an observer in these terrible sky-machines--" she was interrupted by a gay little peal of laughter from morgana. "terrible?--oh, dear 'duchess,' you are too funny! there's nothing 'terrible' about my 'sky-machine!' do you ever read poetry? no?--well then you don't know that lovely and prophetic line of keats--" 'beautiful things made new for the surprise of the sky-children.' "poets are always prophetic,--that is, real poets, not modern verse mongers; and i fancy keats must have imagined something in the far distant future like my 'white eagle!' for it really is 'a beautiful thing made new'--a beautiful natural force put to new uses--and who knows?--i may yet surprise those 'sky-children!'" lady kingswood's mind floundered helplessly in this flood of what, to her, was incomprehensibility. morgana went on in the sweet fluting voice which was one of her special charms. "if you haven't read keats, you must have read at some time or other the 'arabian nights' and the story of 'sindbad the sailor'? yes? you think you have? well, you know how poor sindbad got into the valley of diamonds and waited for an eagle to fly down and carry him off! that's just like me! i've been dropped into a valley of diamonds and often wondered how i should escape--but the eagle has arrived!" "i'm afraid i don't quite follow you"--said lady kingswood--"i'm rather dense, you know! surely your valley of diamonds--if you mean wealth--has made your 'eagle' possible?" morgana nodded. "exactly! if there had been no valley of diamonds there would have been no eagle! but, all the same, this little female sindbad is glad to get out of the valley!" lady kingswood laughed. "my dear child, if you are making a sort of allegory on your wealth, you are not 'out of the valley' nor are you likely to be!" morgana sighed. "my vulgar wealth!" she murmured. "what? vulgar?" "yes. a man told me it was." "a vulgar man himself, i should imagine!" said lady kingswood, warmly. morgana shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "oh, no, he isn't. he's eccentric, but not vulgar. he's aristocratic to the tips of his toes--and english. that accounts for his rudeness. sometimes, you know--only sometimes--englishmen can be very rude! but i'd rather have them so--it's a sort of well-bred clumsiness, like the manners of a newfoundland dog. it's not the 'make-a-dollar' air of american men." "you are quite english yourself, aren't you?" queried her companion. "no--not english in any sense. i'm pure celtic of celt, from the farthest highlands of scotland. but i hate to say i'm 'scotch,' as slangy people use that word for whisky! i'm just highland-born. my father and mother were the same, and i came to life a wild moor, among mists and mountains and stormy seas--i'm always glad of that! i'm glad my eyes did not look their first on a city! there's a tradition in the part of scotland where i was born which tells of a history far far back in time when sailors from phoenicia came to our shores,--men greatly civilised when we all were but savages, and they made love to the highland women and had children by them,--then when they went away back to egypt they left many traces of eastern customs and habits which remain to this day. my father used always to say that he could count his ancestry back to egypt!--it pleased him to think so and it did nobody any harm!" "have you ever been to the east?" asked lady kingswood. "no--but i'm going! my 'white eagle' will take me there in a very short time! but, as i've already told you, i must learn to fly alone." "what does the marchese rivardi say to that?" "i don't ask him!" replied morgana, indifferently--"what i may decide to do is not his business." she broke off abruptly--then continued--"he is coming to luncheon,--and afterwards you shall see my air-ship. i won't persuade you to go up in it!" "i couldn't!" said lady kingswood, emphatically--"i've no nerve for such an adventure." morgana rose from her chair, smiling kindly. "dear 'duchess' be quite easy in your mind!" she said--"i want you very much on land, but i shall not want you in the air! you will be quite safe and happy here in the palazzo d'oro"--she turned as she saw the shadow of a man's tall figure fall on the smooth marble pavement of the loggia--"ah! here is the marchese! we were just speaking of you!" "tropp' onore!" he murmured, as he kissed the little hand she held out to him in the sicilian fashion of gallantry--"i fear i am perhaps too early?" "oh no! we were about to go in to luncheon--i know the hour by the bell of the monastery down there--you hear it?" a soft "ting-ting tong"--rang from the olive and ilex woods below the palazzo,--and morgana, listening, smiled. "poor don aloysius!" she said--"he will now go to his soup maigre--and we to our poulet, sauce bechamel,--and he will be quite as contented as we are!" "more so, probably!" said rivardi, as he courteously assisted lady kingswood, who was slightly lame, to rise from her chair--"he is one of the few men who in life have found peace." morgana gave him a keen glance. "you think he has really found it?" "i think so,--yes! he has faith in god--a great support that has given way for most of the peoples of this world." lady kingswood looked pained. "i am sorry to hear you say that!" "i am sorry myself to say it, miladi, but i fear it is true!" he rejoined--"it is one sign of a general break-up." "oh, you are right! you are very right!" exclaimed morgana suddenly, and with emphasis--"we know that when even one human being is unable to recognise his best friend we say--'poor man! his brain is gone!' it's the same thing with a nation. or a world! when it is so ailing that it cannot recognise the friend who brought it into being, who feeds it, keeps it, and gives it all it has, we must say the same thing--'its brain is gone!'" rivardi was surprised at the passionate energy she threw into these words. "you feel that deeply?" he said--"and yet--pardon me!--you do not assume to be religious?" "marchese, i 'assume' nothing!" she answered--"i cannot 'pretend'! to 'assume' or to 'pretend' would hardly serve the creator adequately. creative or natural force is so far away from sham that one must do more than 'assume'--one must be!" her voice thrilled on the air, and lady kingswood, who was crossing the loggia, leaning on her stick, paused to look at the eloquent speaker. she was worth looking at just then, for she seemed inspired. her eyes were extraordinarily brilliant, and her whole personality expressed a singular vitality coupled with an ethereal grace that suggested some thing almost superhuman. "yes--one must be!" she repeated--"i have not been a student of science so long without learning that there is no 'assuming' anything in the universe. one must see straight, and think straight too! i could not 'assume' religion, because i feel it--in the very depths of my soul! as don aloysius said the other day, it is marvellous how close we are to the source of all life, and yet we imagine we are far away! if we could only realise the truth of the divine nearness, and work with it and in it, we should make discoveries worth knowing! we work too much with ourselves and of ourselves." she paused,--then added slowly and seriously--"i have never done any work that way. i have always considered myself nothing,--the force i have obeyed was and is everything." "and so--being nothing--you still made your air-ship possible!" said rivardi, smiling indulgently at her fantastic speech. she answered him with unmoved and patient gravity. "it is as you say,--being nothing myself, and owning myself to be nothing; the force that is everything made my air-ship possible!" chapter xv two or three hours later the "white eagle" was high in air above the palazzo d'oro. down below lady kingswood stood on the seashore by the aerodrome, watching the wonderful ship of the sky with dazzled, scared eyes--amazed at the lightning speed of its ascent and the steadiness of its level flight. she had seen it spread its great wings as by self-volition and soar out of the aerodrome with morgana seated inside like an elfin queen in a fairy car--she had seen the marchese giulio rivardi "take the helm" with the assistant gaspard, now no longer a prey to fear, beside him. up, up and away they had flown, waving to her till she could see their forms no longer--till the "white eagle" itself looked no bigger than a dove soaring in the blue. and while she waited, even this faint dove-image vanished! she looked in every direction, but the skies were empty. to her there was something very terrifying in this complete disappearance of human beings in the vast stretches of the air--they had gone so silently, too, for the "white eagle's" flight made no sound, and though the afternoon was warm and balmy she felt chilled with the cold of nervous apprehension. yet they had all assured her there was no cause for alarm,--they were only going on a short trial trip and would be back to dinner. "nothing more than a run in a motor-car!" morgana said, gaily. nothing more,--but to lady kingswood it seemed much more. she belonged to simple victorian days--days of quiet home-life and home affections, now voted "deadly dull!" and all the rushing to and fro and gadding about of modern men and women worried and distressed her, for she had the plain common sense to perceive that it did no good either to health or morals, and led nowhere. she looked wistfully out to sea,--the blue sicilian sea so exquisite in tone and play of pure reflections,--and thought how happy a life lived after the old sweet ways might be for a brilliant little creature like morgana, if she could win "a good man's love" as shakespeare puts it. and yet--was not this rather harking back to mere sentiment, often proved delusive? her own "good man's love" had been very precious to her,--but it had not fulfilled all her heart's longing, though she considered herself an entirely commonplace woman. and what sort of a man would it be that could hold morgana? as well try to control a sunbeam or a lightning flash as the restless vital and intellectual spirit that had, for the time being, entered into feminine form, showing itself nevertheless as something utterly different and superior to women as they are generally known. some thoughts such as these, though vague and disconnected, passed through lady kingswood's mind as she turned away from the sea-shore to re-ascend the flower-bordered terraces of the palazzo d'oro,--and it was with real pleasure that she perceived on the summit of the last flight of grassy steps, the figure of don aloysius. he was awaiting her approach, and came down a little way to meet her. "i saw the air-ship flying over the monastery,"--he explained, greeting her--"and i was anxious to know whether la signora had gone away into the skies or was still on earth! she has gone, i suppose?" "yes, she has gone!" sighed lady kingswood--"and the marchese with her, and one assistant. her 'nerve' is simply astonishing!" "you did not think of venturing on a trip with her yourself?"--and the priest smiled kindly, as he assisted her to ascend the last flight of steps to the loggia. "no indeed! i really could not! i feel i ought to be braver--but i cannot summon up sufficient courage to leave terra firma. it seems altogether unnatural." "then what will you do when you are an angel, dear lady?" queried aloysius, playfully--"you will have to leave terra firma then! have you ever thought of that?" she smiled. "i'm afraid i don't think!" she said--"i take my life on trust. i always believe that god who brought me here will take care of me there!--wherever 'there' is. you understand me, don't you? you speak english so well that i'm sure you do." "yes--i understand you perfectly"--he replied--"that i speak english is quite natural, for i was educated at stonyhurst, in england. i was then for a time at fort augustus in scotland, and studied a great many of the strange traditions of the highland celts, to which mystic people miss royal by birth belongs. her ancestry has a good deal to do with her courage and character." while he spoke lady kingswood gazed anxiously into the sky, searching it north, south, east, west, for the first glimpse of the returning "white eagle," but there was no sign of it. "you must not worry yourself,"--went on the priest, putting a chair for her in the loggia, and taking one himself--"if we sit here we shall see the air-ship returning, i fancy, by the western line,--certainly near the sunset. in any case let me assure you there is no danger!" "no danger?" "absolutely none!" lady kingswood looked at him in bewildered amazement. "surely there must be danger?" she said--"the terrible accidents that happen every day to these flying machines--" "yes--but you speak of ordinary flying machines," said aloysius,--"this 'white eagle' is not an ordinary thing. it is the only one of its kind in the world--the only one scientifically devised to work with the laws of nature. you saw it ascend?" "i did." "it made no sound?" "none." "then how did its engines move, if it had engines?" pursued aloysius--"had you no curiosity about it?" "i'm afraid i hadn't--i was really too nervous! morgana begged me to go inside, but i could not!" don aloysius was silent for a minute or two, out of gentle tolerance. he recognised that lady kingswood belonged to the ordinary class of good, kindly women not overburdened with brains, to whom thought, particularly of a scientific or reflective nature, would be a kind of physical suffering. and how fortunate it is that there are, and always will be such women! many of them are gifted with the supreme talent of making happiness around themselves,--and in this way they benefit humanity more than the often too self-absorbed student of things which are frequently "past finding out." "i understand your feeling";--he said, at last--"and i hardly wonder at your very natural fears. i must admit that i think human daring is going too fast and too far--the science of to-day is not tending to make men and women happier--and after all, happiness is the great goal." a slight sigh escaped him, and lady kingswood looked at his fine, composed features with deep interest. "do you think god meant us to be happy?" she asked, gently. "it is a dubious question!" he answered--"when we view the majesty and loveliness of nature--we cannot but believe we were intended to enjoy the splendid treasures of beauty freely spread out before us,--then again, if we look back thousands of years and consider the great civilisations of the past that have withered into dust and are now forgotten, we cannot help wondering why there should be such a waste of life for apparently no purpose. i speak in a secular sense,--of course my church has but one reply to doubt, or what we call 'despair of god's mercy'--that it is sin. we are not permitted to criticise or to question the divine." "and surely that is best!" said lady kingswood, "and surely you have found happiness, or what is nearest to happiness, in your beautiful faith?" his eyes were shadowed by deep gravity. "miladi, i have never sought happiness," he replied; "from my earliest boyhood i felt it was not for me. among the comrades of my youth many started the race of life with me--happiness was the winning post they had in view--and they tried many ways to reach it--some through ambition, some through wealth, some through love--but i have never chanced to meet one of them who was either happy or satisfied. my mind was set on nothing for myself--except this--to grope through the darkness for the great mind behind the universe--to drop my own 'ego' into it, as a drop of rain into the sea--and so--to be content! and in this way i have learned much,--more than i consider myself worthy to know. modern science of the surface kind--(not the true deep discoveries)--has done its best to detach the rain-drop from the sea!--but it has failed. i stay where i have plunged my soul!" he spoke as it were to himself with the air of one inspired; he had almost forgotten the presence of lady kingswood, who was gazing at him in a rapture of attention. "oh, if i could only think as you do!" she said, in a low tone--"is it truly the catholic church that teaches these things?" "the catholic church is the sign and watchword of all these things!" he answered--"not only that, but its sacred symbols, though ancient enough to have been adopted from babylonia and chaldea, are actually the symbols of our most modern science. catholicism itself does not as yet recognise this. like a blind child stumbling towards the light it has felt the discoveries of science long before discovery. in our sacraments there are the hints of the transmutation of elements,--the 'sanctus' bell suggests wireless telegraphy or telepathy, that is to say, communication between ourselves and the divine unseen,--and if we are permitted to go deeper, we shall unravel the mystery of that 'rising from the dead' which means renewed life. i am a 'prejudiced' priest, of course,"--and he smiled, gravely--"but with all its mistakes, errors, crimes (if you will) that it is answerable for since its institution, through the sins of unworthy servants, catholicism is the only creed with the true seed of spiritual life within it--the only creed left standing on a firm foundation in this shaking world!" he uttered these words with passionate eloquence and added-"there are only three things that can make a nation great,--the love of god, the truth of man, the purity of woman. without these three the greatest civilisation existing must perish,--no matter how wide its power or how vast its wealth. ignorant or vulgar persons may sneer at this as 'the obvious'--but it is the 'obvious' sun alone that rules the day." lady kingswood's lips trembled; there were tears in her eyes. "how truly you speak!" she murmured--"and yet we live in a time when such truths appear to have no influence with people at all. every one is bent on pleasure--on self--" "as every one was in the 'cities of the plain,'"--he said, "and we may well expect another rain of fire!" here, lifting his eyes, he saw in the soft blush rose of the approaching sunset a small object like a white bird flying homeward across the sea. "here it comes!" he exclaimed--"not the rain of fire, but something more agreeable! i told you, did i not, miladi, that there was no danger? see!" lady kingswood looked where he pointed. "surely that is not the air-ship?" she said--"it is too small!" "at this distance it is small"--answered aloysius--"but wait! watch,--and you will soon perceive its great wings! what a marvellous thing it is! marvellous!--and a woman's work!" they stood together, gazing into the reddening west, thrilled with expectancy,--while with a steady swiftness and accuracy of movement the bird-like object which at the first glimpse had seemed so small gradually loomed larger with nearer vision, its enormous wings spreading wide and beating the air rhythmically as though the true pulsation of life impelled their action. neither lady kingswood nor don aloysius exchanged a word, so absorbed were they in watching the "white eagle" arrive, and not till it began to descend towards the shore did they relax their attention and turn to each other with looks of admiration and amazement. "how long have they been gone?" asked aloysius then. lady kingswood glanced at her watch. "barely two hours." at that moment the "white eagle" swooped suddenly over the gardens, noiselessly and with an enormous spread of wing that was like a white cloud in the sky--then gracefully swerved aside towards its "shed" or aerodrome, folding its huge pinions as of its own will and sliding into its quarters as easily as a hand may slide into a loose-fitting glove. the two interested watchers of its descent and swift "run home" had no time to exchange more than a few words of comment before morgana ran lightly up the terrace, calling to them with all the gaiety of a child returning on a holiday. "it was glorious!" she exclaimed--"just glorious! we've been to naples,--crowds gathered in the street to stare at us,--we were ever so high above them and they couldn't make us out, as we moved so silently! then we hovered for a bit over capri,--the island looked like a lovely jewel shining with sun and sea,--and now here we are!--home in plenty of time to dress for dinner! you see, dear 'duchess'--you need not have been nervous,--the 'white eagle' is safer than any railway train, and ever so much pleasanter!" "well, i'm glad you've come back all right"--said lady kingswood--"it's a great relief! i certainly was afraid---" "oh, you must never be afraid of anything!" laughed morgana--"it does no good. we are all too much afraid of everything and everybody,--and often when there's nothing to be afraid of! am i not right, most reverend father aloysius?" and she turned with a radiant smile to the priest whose serious dark eyes rested upon her with an expression of mingled admiration and wonder--"i'm so glad to find you here with lady kingswood--i'm sure you told her there was no danger for me, didn't you? yes? i thought so! now do stay and dine with us, please!--i want you to talk to the marchese rivardi--he's rather cross! he cannot bear me to have my own way!--i suppose all men are like that!--they want women to submit, not to command!" she laughed again. "see!--here he comes,--with the sulky air of a naughty boy!" this, as rivardi slowly mounted the terrace steps and approached--"i'm off to dress for dinner--come, 'duchess!' we'll leave the men to themselves!" she slipped her arm through lady kingswood's and hurried her away. don aloysius was puzzled by her words,--and, as rivardi came up to him raised his eyebrows interrogatively. the marchese answered the unspoken query by an impatient shrug. "altro! she is impossible!" he said irritably--"wild as the wind!--uncontrollable! she will kill herself!--but she does not care!" "what has she done?" asked aloysius, smiling a little--"has she invented something new?--a parachute in which to fall gracefully like a falling star?" "nothing of the kind"--retorted rivardi; vexed beyond all reason at the priest's tranquil air of good-humored tolerance--"but she insists on steering the air-ship herself! she took my place to-day." "well?" "well! you think that nothing? i tell you it is very serious--very foolhardy. she knows nothing of aerial navigation--" "was her steering faulty?" rivardi hesitated. "no,--it was wonderful"--he admitted, reluctantly; "especially for a first attempt. and now she declares she will travel with the 'white eagle' alone! alone! think of it! that little creature alone in the air with a huge air-ship under her sole control! the very idea is madness!" "have patience, giulio!" said don aloysius, gently--"i think she cannot mean what she says in this particular instance. she is naturally full of triumph at the success of her invention,--an amazing invention you must own!--and her triumph makes her bold. but be quite easy in your mind!--she will not travel alone!" "she will--she will!" declared rivardi, passionately--"she will do anything she has a mind to do! as well try to stop the wind as stop her! she has some scheme in her brain,--so fantastic vision of that brazen city you spoke of the other day--" don aloysius gave a sudden start. "no!--not possible!" he said--"she will not pursue a phantasm,--a dream!" he spoke nervously, and his face paled. rivardi looked at him curiously. "there is no such place then?" he asked--"it is only a legend?" "only a legend!" replied aloysius, slowly--"some travellers say it is a mirage of the desert,--others tell stories of having heard the bells in the brazen towers ring,--but no one--no one," and he repeated the words with emphasis--"has ever been able to reach even the traditional environs of the place. our hostess," and he smiled--"is a very wonderful little person, but even she will hardly be able to discover the undiscoverable!" "can we say that anything is undiscoverable?" suggested rivardi. don aloysius thought a moment before replying. "perhaps not!"--he said, at last--"our life all through is a voyage of discovery wherein we have no certainty of the port of arrival. the puzzling part of it is that we often 'discover' what has been discovered before in past ages where the discoverers seemed to make no use of their discoveries!--and so we lose ourselves in wonder--and often in weariness!" he sighed,--then added--"had we not better go in and prepare to meet our hostess at dinner? and giulio!--unbend your brows!--you must not get angry with your charming benefactress! if you do not let her have her way, she will never let you have yours!" rivardi gave a resigned gesture. "oh, mine! i must give up all hope--she will never think of me more than as a workman who has carried out her design. there is something very strange about her--she seems, at certain moments, to withdraw herself from all the interests of mere humanity. to-day, for instance, she looked down from the air-ship on the swarming crowds in the streets of naples and said 'poor little microbes! how sad it is to see them crawling about and festering down there! what is the use of them! i wish i knew!' then, when i ventured to suggest that possibly they were more than 'microbes,'--they were human beings that loved and worked and thought and created, she looked at me with those wonderful eyes of hers and answered--'microbes do the same--only we don't take the trouble to think about them! but if we knew their lives and intentions, i dare say we should find they are quite as clever in their own line as we are in ours!' what is one to say to a woman who argues in this way?" don aloysius laughed gently. "but she argues quite correctly after all! my son, you are like the majority of men--they grow impatient with clever women,--they prefer stupid ones. in fact they deliberately choose stupid ones to be the mothers of their children--hence the ever increasing multitude of fools!" he moved towards the open doors of the beautiful lounge-hall of the palazzo, rivardi walking at his side. "but you will grant me a measure of wisdom in the advice i gave you the other day-the little millionairess is unlike other women--she is not capable of loving,--not in the way loving is understood in this world,--therefore do not seek from her what she cannot give!--as for her 'flying alone'--leave that to the fates!--i do not think she will attempt it." they entered the palazzo just as a servant was about to announce to them that dinner would be served in a quarter of an hour, and their talk, for the time being, ended. but the thoughts of both men were busy; and unknown to each other, centered round the enigmatical personality of one woman who had become more interesting to them than anything else in the world,--so much so indeed that each in his own private mind wondered what life would be worth without her! chapter xvi that evening morgana was in one of her most bewitching moods--even the old highland word "fey" scarcely described her many brilliant variations from grave to gay, from gay to romantic, and from romantic to a kind of humorous-satiric vein which moved her to utter quick little witticisms which might have seemed barbed with too sharp a point were they not so quickly covered with a sweetness of manner which deprived them of all malice. she looked her best, too,--she had robed herself in a garment of pale shimmering blue which shone softly like the gleam of moonbeams through crystal--her wonderful hair was twisted up in a coronal held in place by a band of diamonds,--tiny diamonds twinkled in her ears, and a star of diamonds glittered on her breast. her elfin beauty, totally unlike the beauty of accepted standards, exhaled a subtle influence as a lily exhales fragrance--and the knowledge she had of her own charm combined with her indifference as to its effect upon others gave her a dangerous attractiveness. as she sat at the head of her daintily adorned dinner-table she might have posed for a fairy queen in days when fairies were still believed in and queens were envied,--and giulio rivardi's thoughts were swept to and fro in his brain by cross-currents of emotion which were not altogether disinterested or virtuous. for years his spirit had been fretted and galled by poverty,--he, the descendant of a long line of proud sicilian nobles, had been forced to earn a precarious livelihood as an art decorator and adviser to "newly rich" people who had neither taste nor judgment, teaching them how to build, restore or furnish their houses according to the pure canons of art, in the knowledge of which he excelled,--and now, when chance or providence had thrown morgana in his way,--morgana with her millions, and an enchanting personality,--he inwardly demanded why he should not win her to have and to hold for his own? he was a personable man, nobly born, finely educated,--was it possible that he had not sufficient resolution and force of character to take the precious citadel by storm? these ideas flitted vaguely across his mind as he watched his fair hostess talking, now to don aloysius, now to lady kingswood, and sometimes flinging him a light word of badinage to rally him on what she chose to call his "sulks." "he can't get over it!" she declared, smiling--"poor marchese giulio! that i should have dared to steer my own air-ship was too much for him, and he can't forgive me!" "i cannot forgive your putting yourself into danger," said rivardi--"you ran a great risk--you must pardon me if i hold your life too valuable to be lightly lost." "it is good of you to think it valuable,"--and her wonderful blue eyes were suddenly shadowed with sadness--"to me it is valueless." "my dear!" exclaimed lady kingswood--"how can you say such a thing!" "only because i feel it"--replied morgana--"i dare say my life is not more valueless than other lives--they are all without ultimate meaning. if i knew, quite positively, that i was all in all to some one being who would be unhappy without me,--to whom i could be helper and inspirer, i dare say i should value my life more,--but unfortunately i have seen too much of the modern world to believe in the sincerity of even that 'one' being, could i find him--or her. i am very positively alone in life,--no woman was ever more alone than i!" "but--is not that your own fault?" suggested don aloysius, gently. "quite!" she answered, smiling--"i fully admit it. i am what they call 'difficult' i know,--i do not like 'society' or its amusements, which to me seem very vulgar and senseless,--i do not like its conversation, which i find excessively banal and often coarse--i cannot set my soul on tennis or golf or bridge--so i'm quite an 'outsider.' but i'm not sorry!--i should not care to be inside the human menagerie. too much barking, biting, scratching, and general howling among the animals!--it wouldn't suit me!" she laughed lightly, and continued,-"that's why i say my life is valueless to anyone but myself. and that's why i'm not afraid to risk it in flying the 'white eagle' alone." her hearers were silent. indeed there was nothing to be said. whatever her will or caprice there was no one with any right to gainsay it. rivardi was inwardly seething with suppressed irritation--but his handsome face showed no sign of annoyance save in an extreme pallor and gravity of expression. "i think,"--said don aloysius, after a pause--"i think our hostess will do us the grace of believing that whatever she has experienced of the world in general, she has certainly won the regard and interest of those whom she honours with her company at the present moment!"--and his voice had a thrill of irresistible kindness--"and whatever she chooses to do, and however she chooses to do it, she cannot avoid involving such affection and interest as those friends represent--" "dear father aloysius!" interrupted morgana, quickly and impulsively--"forgive me!--i did not think!--i am sure you and the marchese and lady kingswood have the kindest feeling for me!--but--" "but!"--and aloysius smiled--"but--it is a little lady that will not be commanded or controlled! yes--that is so! however this may be, let us not imagine that in the rush of commerce and the marvels of science the world is left empty of love! love is still the strongest force in nature!" morgana's eyes flashed up, then drooped under their white lids fringed with gold. "you think so?" she murmured--"to me, love leads nowhere!" "except to heaven!" said aloysius. there followed a silence. it was broken by the entrance of a servant announcing that coffee was served in the loggia. they left the dinner-table and went out into the wonder of a perfect sicilian moonlight. all the gardens were illumined and the sea beyond, with wide strands of silver spreading on all sides, falling over the marble pavements and steps of the loggia and glistening on certain white flowering shrubs with the smooth sheen of polished pearl. the magical loveliness of the scene, made lovelier by the intense silence of the hour, held them as with a binding spell, and morgana, standing by one of the slender columns which not only supported the loggia but the whole palazzo d'oro as with the petrified stems of trees, made a figure completely in harmony with her surroundings. "could anything be more enchantingly beautiful!" sighed lady kingswood--"one ought to thank god for eyes to see it!" "and many people with eyes would not see it at all,"--said don aloysius--"they would go indoors, shut the shutters and play bridge! but those who can see it are the happiest!" and he quoted- "'on such a night as this, when the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise,--on such a night troilus, methinks, mounted the trojan walls and sighed his soul towards the grecian tents where cressid lay!'" "you know your shakespeare!" said rivardi. "who would not know him!" replied aloysius--"one is not blind to the sun!" "ah, poor shakespeare!" said morgana--"what a lesson he gives us miserable little moderns in the worth of fame! so great, so unapproachable,--and yet!--doubted and slandered and reviled three hundred years after his death by envious detractors who cannot write a line!" "but what does that matter?" returned aloysius. "envy and detraction in their blackness only emphasise his brightness, just as a star shines more brilliantly in a dark sky. one always recognises a great spirit by the littleness of those who strive to wound it,--if it were not great it would not be worth wounding!" "shakespeare might have imagined my air-ship!" said morgana, suddenly--"he was perhaps dreaming vaguely of something like it when he wrote about--" 'a winged messenger of heaven when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air!' "the 'white eagle' sails upon the bosom of the air!" "quite true"--said the marchese rivardi, looking at her as she stood, bathed in the moonlight, a nymph-like figure of purely feminine charm, as unlike the accepted idea of a "science" scholar as could well be imagined--"and the manner of its sailing is a mystery which you only can explain! surely you will reveal this secret?--especially when so many rush into the air-craft business without any idea of the scientific laws by which you uphold your great design? much has been said and written concerning new schemes for air-vessels moved by steam--" "that is so like men!" interrupted morgana, with a laugh--"they will think of steam power when they are actually in possession of electricity!--and they will stick to electricity without moving the one step further which would give them the full use of radio-activity! they will 'bungle' to the end!--and their bungling is always brought about by an ineffable conceit of their own so-called 'logical' conclusions! poor dears!--they 'get there' at last--and in the course of centuries find out what they could have discovered in a month if they had opened their minds as well as their eyes!" "well, then,--help them now," said rivardi--"give them the chance to learn your secret!" morgana moved away from the column where she had leaned, and came more fully into the broad moonlight. "my dear marchese giulio!" she said, indulgently, "you really are a positive child in your very optimistic look-out on the world of to-day! suppose i were to 'give them the chance,' as you suggest, to learn my secret, how do you think i should be received? i might go to the great scientific institutions of london and paris and i might ask to be heard--i might offer to give a 'demonstration,'" here she began to laugh; "oh dear!--it would never do for a woman to 'demonstrate' and terrify all the male professors, would it! no!--well, i should probably have to wait months before being 'heard,'--then i should probably meet with the chill repudiation dealt out to that wonderful hindu scientist, jagadis bose, by burdon sanderson when the brilliant indian savant tried to teach men what they never knew before about the life of plants. not only that, i should be met with incredulity and ridicule--'a woman! a woman dares to assume knowledge superior to ours!' and so forth. no, no! let the wise men try their steam air-ships and spoil the skies by smoke and vapour, so that agriculture becomes more and more difficult, and sunshine an almost forgotten benediction!--let them go their own foolish way till they learn wisdom of themselves--no one could ever teach them what they refuse to learn, till they tumble into a bog or quicksand of dilemma and have to be forcibly dragged out." "by a woman?" hinted don aloysius, with a smile. she shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "very often! marja sklodowska curie, for example, has pulled many scientists out of the mud, but they are not grateful enough to acknowledge it. one of the greatest women of the age, she is allowed to remain in comparative obscurity,--even anatole france, though he called her a 'genius,' had not the generosity or largeness of mind to praise her as she deserves. though, of course, like all really great souls she is indifferent to praise or blame--the notice of the decadent press, noisy and vulgar like the beating of the cheap-jack's drum at a country fair, has no attraction for her. nothing is known of her private life,--not a photograph of her is obtainable--she has the lovely dignity of complete reserve. she is one of my heroines in this life--she does not offer herself to the cheap journalist like a milliner's mannequin or a film face. she will not give herself away--neither will i!" "but you might benefit the human race"--said rivardi--"would not that thought weigh with you?" "not in the least!"--and she smiled--"the human race in its present condition is 'an unweeded garden, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely,' and it wants clearing. i have no wish to benefit it. it has always murdered its benefactors. it deludes itself with the idea that the universe is for it alone,--it ignores the fact that there are many other sharers in its privileges and surroundings--presences and personalities as real as itself. i am almost a believer in what the old-time magicians called 'elementals'--especially now." don aloysius rose from his chair and put aside his emptied coffee-cup. his tall fine figure silhouetted more densely black by the whiteness of the moon-rays had a singularly imposing effect. "why especially now?" he asked, almost imperatively--"what has chanced to make you accept the idea--an old idea, older than the lost continent of atlantis!--of creatures built up of finer life-cells than ours?" morgana looked at him, vaguely surprised by his tone and manner. "nothing has chanced that causes me any wonder," she said--"or that would 'make' me accept any theory which i could not put to the test for myself. but, out in new york while i have been away, a fellow-student of mine--just a boy,--has found out the means of 'creating energy from some unknown source'--that is, unknown to the scientists of rule-and-line. they call his electric apparatus 'an atmospheric generator.' naturally this implies that the atmosphere has something to 'generate' which has till now remained hidden and undeveloped. i knew this long ago. had i not known it i could not have thought out the secret of the 'white eagle'!" she paused to allow the murmured exclamations of her hearers to subside,--then she went on--"you can easily understand that if atmosphere generates one form of energy it is capable of many other forms,--and on these lines there is nothing to be said, against the possibility of 'elementals.' i feel quite 'elemental' myself in this glorious moonlight!--just as if i could slip out of my body like a butterfly out of a chrysalis and spread my wings!" she lifted her fair arms upward with a kind of expansive rapture,--the moonbeams seemed to filter through the delicate tissue of her garments adding brightness to their folds and sparkling frostily on the diamonds in her hair,--and even lady kingswood's very placid nature was conscious of an unusual thrill, half of surprise and half of fear, at the quite "other world" appearance she thus presented. "you have rather the look of a butterfly!" she said, kindly--"one of those beautiful tropical things--or a fairy!--only we don't know what fairies are like as we have never seen any!" morgana laughed, and let her arms drop at her sides. she felt rather than saw the admiring eyes of the two men upon her and her mood changed. "yes--it is a lovely night,--for sicily,"--she said. "but it would be lovelier in california!" "in california!" echoed rivardi--"why california?" "why? oh, i don't know why! i often think of california--it is so vast! sicily is a speck of garden-land compared with it--and when the moon rises full over the great hills and spreads a wide sheet of silver over the pacific ocean you begin to realise a something beyond ordinary nature--it helps you to get to the 'beyond' yourself if you have the will to try!" just then the soft slow tolling of a bell struck through the air and don aloysius prepared to take his leave. "the 'beyond' calls to me from the monastery," he said, smiling--"i have been too long absent. will you walk with me, giulio?" "willingly!" and the marchese bowed over lady kingswood's hand as he bade her "good night." "i will accompany you both to the gate,"--said morgana, suddenly--"and then--when you are both gone i shall wander a little by myself in the light of the moon!" lady kingswood looked dubiously at her, but was too tactful to offer any objection such as the "danger of catching cold" which the ordinary duenna would have suggested, and which would have seemed absurd in the warmth and softness of such a summer night. besides, if morgana chose to "wander by the light of the moon" who could prevent her? no one! she stepped off the loggia on to the velvety turf below with an aerial grace more characteristic of flying than walking, and glided along between the tall figures of the marchese and don aloysius like a dream-spirit of the air, and lady kingswood, watching her as she descended the garden terraces and gradually disappeared among the trees, was impressed, as she had often been before, by a strange sense of the supernatural,--as if some being wholly unconnected with ordinary mortal happenings were visiting the world by a mere chance. she was a little ashamed of this "uncanny" feeling,--and after a few minutes' hesitation she decided to retire within the house and to her own apartments, rightly judging that morgana would be better pleased to find her so gone than waiting for her return like a sentinel on guard. she gave a lingering look at the exquisite beauty of the moonlit scene, and thought with a sigh-"what it would be if one were young once more!" and then she turned, slowly pacing across the loggia and entering the palazzo, where the gleam of electric lamps within rivalled the moonbeams and drew her out of sight. meanwhile, morgana, between her two escorts stepped lightly along, playfully arguing with them both on their silence. "you are so very serious, you good padre aloysius!" she said--"and you, marchese--you who are generally so charming!--to-night you are a very morose companion! you are still in the dumps about my steering the 'white eagle!'--how cross of you!" "madama, i think of your safety,"--he said, curtly. "it is kind of you! but if i do not care for my safety?" "i do!" he said, decisively. "and i also!"--said aloysius, earnestly--"dear lady, be advised! think no more of flying in the vast spaces of air alone--alone with an enormous piece of mechanism which might fail at any moment--" "it cannot fail unless the laws of nature fail!"--said morgana, emphatically--"how strange it is that neither of you seems to realise that the force which moves the 'white eagle' is natural force alone! however--you are but men!" here she stopped in her walk, and her brilliant eyes flashed from one to the other--"men!--with pre-conceived ideas wedged in obstinacy!--yes!--you cannot help yourselves! even father aloysius--" she paused, as she met his grave eyes fixed full upon her. "well!" he said gently--"what of father aloysius? he is 'but man' as you say!--a poor priest having nothing in common with your wealth or your self-will, my child!--one whose soul admits no other instruction than that of the great intelligence ruling the universe, and from whose ordinance comes forth joy or sorrow, wisdom or ignorance. we are but dust on the wind before this mighty power!--even you, with all your study and attainment are but a little phantom on the air!" she smiled as he spoke. "true!" she said--"and you would save this phantom from vanishing into air utterly?" "i would!" he answered--"i would fain place you in god's keeping,"--and with a gesture infinitely tender and solemn, he made the sign of the cross above her head--"with a prayer that you may be guided out of the tangled ways of life as lived in these days, to the true realisation of happiness!" she caught his hand and impulsively kissed it. "you are good!--far too good!" she said--"and i am wild and wilful--forgive me! i will say good night here--we are just at the gate. good night, marchese! i promise you shall fly with me to the east--i will not go alone. there!--be satisfied!" and she gave him a bewitching smile--then with another markedly gentle "good night" to aloysius, she turned away and left them, choosing a path back to the house which was thickly overgrown with trees, so that her figure was almost immediately lost to view. the two men looked at each other in silence. "you will not succeed by thwarting her!"--said aloysius, warningly. rivardi gave an impatient gesture. "and you?" "i? my son, i have no aim in view with regard to her! i should like to see her happy--she has great wealth, and great gifts of intellect and ability--but these do not make real happiness for a woman. and yet--i doubt whether she could ever be happy in the ordinary woman's way." "no, because she is not an 'ordinary' woman," said rivardi, quickly--"more's the pity i think--for her!" "and for you!" added aloysius, meaningly. rivardi made no answer, and they walked on in silence, the priest parting with his companion at the gate of the monastery, and the marchese going on to his own half-ruined villa lifting its crumbling walls out of wild verdure and suggesting the historic past, when a caesar spent festal hours in its great gardens which were now a wilderness. meanwhile, morgana, the subject of their mutual thoughts, followed the path she had taken down to the seashore. alone there, she stood absorbed,--a fairylike figure in her shimmering soft robe and the diamonds flashing in her hair--now looking at the moonlit water,--now back to the beautiful outline of the palazzo d'oro, lifted on its rocky height and surrounded by a paradise of flowers and foliage--then to the long wide structure of the huge shed where her wonderful air-ship lay, as it were, in harbour. she stretched out her arms with a fatigued, appealing gesture. "i have all i want!"--she said softly aloud,--"all!--all that money can buy--more than money has ever bought!--and yet--the unknown quantity called happiness is not in the bargain. what is it? why is it? i am like the princess in the 'arabian nights' who was quite satisfied with her beautiful palace till an old woman came along and told her that it wanted a roc's egg to make it perfect. and she became at once miserable and discontented because she had not the roc's egg! i thought her a fool when i read that story in my childhood--but i am as great a fool as she to-day. i want that roc's egg!" she laughed to herself and looked up at the splendid moon, round as a golden shield in heaven. "how the moon shone that night in california!" she murmured--"and roger seaton--bear-man as he is--would have given worlds to hold me in his arms and kiss me as he did once when he 'didn't mean it!' ah! i wonder if he ever will mean it! perhaps--when it is too late!" and there swept over her mind the memory of manella--her rich, warm, dark beauty--her frank abandonment to passions purely primitive,--and she smiled, a cold little weird smile. "he may marry her,"--she said--"and yet--i think not! but--if he does marry her he will never love her--as he loves me! how we play at cross-purposes in our lives!--he is not a marrying man--i am not a marrying woman--we are both out for conquest on other lines,--and if either of us wins our way, what then? shall we be content to live on a triumph of power,--without love?" chapter xvii "so the man from washington told you to bring this to me?" roger seaton asked the question of manella, twirling in his hand an unopened letter she had just given him. she nodded in the affirmative. he looked at her critically, amused at the evident pains she had taken with her dress and general appearance. he twirled the letter again like a toy in his fingers. "i wonder what it's all about? do you know?" manella shrugged her shoulders with a charming air of indifference. "i? how should i know? he is your friend i suppose?" "not a bit of it!" and roger stretched himself lazily and yawned--"he's the friend of nobody who is poor. but he's the comrade of everybody with plenty of cash. he's as hard as a dried old walnut, without the shred of a heart--" "you are wrong!" said manella, flushing up suddenly--"you are wrong and unjust! he is an ugly old man, but he is very kind." seaton threw back his head and laughed heartily with real enjoyment. "manella, oh, manella!" he exclaimed--"what has he said or done to you to win your good opinion? has he made you some pretty compliments, and told you that you are beautiful? every one can tell you that, my dear! it does not need mr. senator gwent's assurance to emphasise the fact! that you find him an ugly old man is natural--but that you should also think him 'very kind' does surprise me!" manella gazed at him seriously--her lovely eyes gleaming like jewels under her long black lashes. "you mock at everything,"--she said--"it is a pity!" her tone was faintly reproachful. he smiled. "my dear girl, i really cannot regard mr. senator gwent as a figure to be reverenced!"--he said--"he's one of the dustiest, driest old dollar-grabbers in the states. i gave him the chance of fresh grab--but he was too much afraid to take it--" "afraid of what?" asked manella, quickly. "of shadows!--shadows of coming events!--yes, they scared him! now if you are a good girl, and will sit very quiet, you can come into my hut out of this scorching sun, and sit down while i read the letter--i may have to write an answer--and if so you can post it at the plaza." he went before her into the hut, and she followed. he bade her sit down in the chair by the window,--she obeyed, and glanced about her shyly, yet curiously. the room was not untidy, as she expected it would be without a woman's hand to set it in order,--on the contrary it was the perfection of neatness and cleanliness. her gaze was quickly attracted by the bowl of perpetually moving fluid in the center of the table. "what is that?" she asked. "that? oh, nothing! an invention of mine--just to look pretty and cool in warm weather! it reminds me of women's caprices and fancies--always on the jump! yes!--don't frown, manella!--that is so! now--let me see what mr. sam gwent has to say that he didn't say before---" and seating himself, he opened the letter and began to read. manella watched him from under the shadow of her long-fringed eyelids--her heart beat quickly and uncomfortably. she was fearful lest gwent should have broken faith with her after all, and have written of her and her vain passion, to the man who already knew of it only too well. she waited patiently for the "god of her idolatry" to look up. at last he did so. but he seemed to have forgotten her presence. his brows were knitted in a frown, and he spoke aloud, as to himself-"a syndicate! old humbug! he knows perfectly well that the thing could not be run by a syndicate! it must be a state's own single possession--a state's special secret. if i were as bent on sheer destructiveness as he imagines me to be, i should waste no more time, but offer it to germany. germany would take it at once--germany would require no persuasion to use it!--germany would make me a millionaire twice over for the monopoly of such a force!--that is, if i wanted to be a millionaire, which i don't. but gwent's a fool--i must have scared him out of his wits, or he wouldn't write all this stuff about risks to my life, advising me to marry quickly and settle down! good god! i?--marry and settle down? what a tame ending to a life's adventure! hello, manella!" his eyes lighted upon her as if he had only just seen her. he rose from his chair and went over to where she sat by the window. "patient girl!" he said, patting her dark head with his big sun-browned hand--"as good as gold and quieter than a mouse! well! you may go now. i've read the letter and there's no answer. nothing for me to write, or for you to post!" she lifted her brilliant eyes to his--what glorious eyes they were! he would not have been man had he not been conscious of their amorous fire. he patted her head again in quite a paternal way. "nothing for me to write or for you to post"--he repeated, abstractedly--"and how satisfactory that is!" "then you are pleased?" she said. "pleased? my dear, there is nothing to be pleased or displeased about! the ugly old man whom you found so 'very kind' tells me to take care of myself--which i always do. also--to marry and settle down--which i always don't!" she stood upright, turning her head away from the touch of his hand. she had never looked more attractive than at that moment,--she wore the white gown in which he had before admired her, and a cluster of roses which were pinned to her bodice gave rich contrast to the soft tone of her smooth, suntanned skin, and swayed lightly with the unquiet heaving of the beautiful bosom which might have served a sculptor as a perfect model. a faint, quivering smile was on her lips. "you always don't? that sounds very droll! you will be unlike every man in the world, then,--they all marry!" "oh, do they? you know all about it? wise manella!" and he looked at her, smiling. her passionate eyes, full of glowing ardour, met his,--a flashing fire seemed to leap from them into his own soul, and for the moment he almost lost his self-possession. "wise manella!" he repeated, his voice shaking a little, while he fought with the insidious temptation which beset him,--the temptation to draw her into his arms and take his fill of the love she was so ready to give--"they always marry? no dear, they do not! many of them avoid marriage--" he paused, then continued--"and do you know why?" she shook her head. "because it is the end of romance! because it rings down the curtain on a beautiful play! the music ceases--the lights are put out--the audience goes home,--and the actors take off their fascinating costumes, wash away their paint and powder and sit down to supper--possibly fried steak and onions and a pot of beer. the fried steak and onions--also the beer--make a very good ordinary 'marriage.'" in this flippant talk he gained the mastery over himself he had feared to lose--and laughed heartily as he saw manella's expression of utter bewilderment. "i do not understand!" she said, plaintively--"what is steak and onions?--how do they make a marriage? you say such strange things!" he laughed again, thoroughly amused. "yes, don't i!" he rejoined--"but not half such strange things as i could say if i were so inclined! i'm a queer fellow!" he touched her hair gently, putting back a stray curl that had fallen across her forehead. "now, dear," he continued, "it's time you went. you'll be wanted at the plaza--and they mustn't think i'm keeping you up here, making love to you!" she tossed her head back, and her eyes flashed almost angrily. "there's no danger of that!" she said, with a little suppressed tremor in her throat like the sob of a nightingale at the close of its song. "isn't there?" and putting his arm round her, he drew her close to himself and looked full in her eyes--"manella--there was!--a moment ago!" she remained still and passive in his arms--hardly daring to breathe, so rapt was she in a sudden ecstasy, but he could feel the wild beating of her heart against his own. "a moment ago!" he repeated, in a half whisper. "a moment ago i could have made such desperate love to you as would have astonished myself!--and you! and i should have regretted it ever afterwards--and so would you!" the struggling emotion in her found utterance. "no, no--not i!" she said, in quick little passionate murmurs--"i could not regret it!--if you loved me for an hour it would be the joy of my life-time!--you might leave me,--you might forget!--but that would not take away my pride and gladness! you might kill me--i would die gladly if it saved your life!--ah, you do not understand love--not the love of manella!" and she lifted her face to his--a face so lovely, so young, so warm with her soul's inward rapture that its glowing beauty might have made a lover of an anchorite. but with roger seaton the impulses of passion were brief--the momentary flame had gone out in vapour, and the spirit of the anchorite prevailed. he looked at the dewy red lips, delicately parted like rose petals--but he did not kiss them, and the clasp of his arms round her gradually relaxed. "hush, hush manella!" he said, with a mild kindness, which in her overwrought state was more distracting than angry words would have been--"hush! you talk foolishness--beautiful foolishness--all women do when they set their fancies on men. it is nature, of course,--you think it is love, but, my dear girl, there is no such thing as love! there!--now you are cross!" for she drew herself quickly away from his hold and stood apart, her eyes sparkling, her breast heaving, with the air of a goddess enraged,--"you are cross because i tell you the truth---" "it is not the truth," she said, in a low voice quivering with intense feeling--"you tell me lies to disguise yourself. but i can see! you yourself love a woman--but you have not my courage!--you are afraid to own it! you would give the world to hold her in your arms as you just now held me--but you will not admit it--not even to yourself--and you pretend to hate when you are mad for love!--just as you pretend to be ill when you are well! you should be ashamed to say there is no such thing as love! what mean you then by playing so false with yourself?--with me?--and with her?" she looked lovelier than ever in her anger, and he was taken by surprise at the impetuous and instinctive guess she had made at the complexity of his moods, which he himself scarcely understood. for a moment he stood inert, embarrassed by her straight, half-scornful glance--then he regained his usual mental poise and smiled with provoking good humour and tolerance. "temper, manella!--temper again! a pity, a pity! your spanish blood is too fiery, manella!--it is indeed! you have been very rude--do you know how rude you have been? but there! i forgive you! you are only a naughty child! as for love---" he paused, and going to the door of the hut looked out. "manella, there is a big cloud in the west just over the ocean. it is shaped like a great white eagle and its wings are edged with gold,--it is the beginning of a fine sunset. come and look at it,--and while we watch it floating along i will talk to you about love!" she hesitated,--her whole spirit was up in arms against this man whom she loved, and who, so she argued with herself, had allowed her to love him, while having no love for her; and yet,--since gwent had told her that his mysterious occupation might result in disaster and danger to his life, her devotion had received a new impetus which was wholly unselfish,--that of watchful guardianship such as inspires a faithful dog to defend its master. and, moved by this thought, she obeyed his beckoning hand, and stood with him on the sward outside the hut, looking at the cloud he described. it was singularly white,--new-fallen snow could be no whiter,--and, shaped like a huge bird, its great wings spread out to north and south were edged with a red-gold fire. seaton pushed an old tree stump into position and sat down upon it, making manella sit beside him. "now for this talk!" he said--"love is the subject,--love the theme! we are taught that we must love god and love our neighbor--but we don't, because we can't! in the case of god we cannot love what we don't know and don't see,--and we cannot love our neighbor because he is often a person whom we do know and can see, and who is extremely offensive. now let us consider what is love? you, manella, are angry because i say there is no such thing--and you accuse me of indulging in love for a woman myself. yet--i still declare, in spite of you, there is no such thing as love! i ought to be ashamed of myself for saying this--so you think!--but i'm not ashamed. i know i'm right! love is a divine idea, never realised. it is like a ninth new note in the musical scale--not to be attained. it is suggested in the highest forms of poetry and art, but the suggestion can never be carried out. what men and women call 'love' is the ordinary attraction of sex,--the same attraction that pulls all male and female living things together and makes them mate. it is very unromantic! and to a man of my mind, very useless." she looked at him in a kind of sorrowful perplexity. "you have much talk"--she said--"and no doubt you are clever. but i think you are all wrong!" "you do? wise child! now listen to my much talk a little longer! have you ever watched silkworms? no? they are typical examples of humanity. a silkworm, while it is a worm, feeds to repletion,--you can never get it as many mulberry leaves as it would like to eat--then when it is gorged, it builds itself a beautiful house of silk (which is taken away from it in due course) and comes out at the door in wings!--wings it hardly uses and seems not to understand--then, if it is a female moth, it looks about for 'love' from the male. if the male 'loves' it, the female produces a considerable number of eggs like pin-heads--and then?--what then? why she promptly dies, and there's an end of her! her sole aim and end of being was to produce eggs, which in their turn become worms and repeat the same dull routine of business. now--think me as brutal as you like--i say a woman is very like a female silkworm,--she comes out of her beautiful silken cocoon of maidenhood with wings which she doesn't know how to use--she merely flutters about waiting to be 'loved'--and when this dream she calls 'love' comes to her, she doesn't dream any longer--she wakes--to find her life finished!--finished, manella!--dry as a gourd with all the juice run out!" manella rose from her seat beside him. the warm light in her eyes had gone--her face was pale, and as she drew herself up to her stately height she made a picture of noble scorn. "i am sorry for you!" she said. "if you think these things your thoughts are quite dreadful! you are a cruel man after all! i am sorry i spoke of the beautiful little lady who came here to see you--you do not love her--you cannot!--i felt sure you did--but i am wrong!--there is no love in you except for yourself and your own will!" she spoke, breathing quickly, and trembling with suppressed emotion. he smiled,--and, rising, saluted her with a profound bow. "thank you, manella! you give me a true character!--myself and my own will are certainly the chief factors in my life--and they may work wonders yet!--who knows! and there is no love in me--no!--not what you call love!--but--as concerns the 'beautiful little lady,' you may know this much of me--that _i_ want her!" he threw out his hands with a gesture that was almost tragic, and such an expression came into his face of savagery and tenderness commingled that manella retreated from him in vague terror. "i want her!" he repeated--"and why? not to 'love' her,--but to break her wings,--for she, unlike a silkworm moth, knows how to use them! i want her, to make her proud mind bend to my will and way!--i want her to show her how a man can, shall, and must be master of a woman's brain and soul!" a sudden heat of pent-up feeling broke out in this impulsive rush of words;--he checked himself,--and seeing manella's pale, scared face he went up to her and took her hand. "you see, manella?" he said, in quiet tones--"there is no such thing as 'love,' but there is such a thing as 'wanting.' and--for the most selfish reasons man ever had--i want her--not you!" the colour rushed back to her cheeks in a warm glow--her great dark eyes were ablaze with indignation. she drew her hand quickly from his hold. "and i hope you will never get her!" she said, passionately--"i will pray the holy virgin to save her from you! for you are wicked! she is like an angel--and you are a devil!--yes, surely you must be, or you could not say such horrible things! you do not want me, you say? i know that! i am a fool to have shown you my heart--you have broken it, but you do not care--you could have been master of my brain and soul whenever you pleased---" "ah yes, dear!" he interrupted, with a smile--"that would be so easy!" the touch of satire in these words was lost on her,--she took them quite literally, and a sudden softness sweetened her anger. "yes!--quite easy!" she said--"and you would be pleased! you would do as you wished with me--men like to rule women!" "when it is worth while!" he thought, looking at her with a curious pitifulness as one might look at a struggling animal caught in a net. aloud he said-"yes, manella!--men like to rule women. it is their special privilege--they have enjoyed it always, even in the days when the indian 'braves' beat their squaws out here in california, and killed them outright if they dared to complain of the beating! women are busy just now trying to rule men--it's an experiment, but it won't do! men are the masters of life! they expect to be obeyed by all the rest of creation. _i_ expect to be obeyed!--and so, manella, when i tell you to go home, you must go! yes!--love, tempers and all!--you must go!" she met his eyes with a resolved look in her own. "i am going!" she answered--"but i shall come again. oh, yes! and yet again! and very often! i shall come even if it is only to find you dead on this hill--killed by your own secret! yes--i shall come!" he gave an involuntary movement of surprise and annoyance. had mr. senator gwent discussed his affairs with this beautiful foolish girl who, like some forest animal, cared for nothing but the satisfaction of mating where her wishes inclined. "what do you mean, manella?" he demanded, imperatively--"do you expect to find me dead?" she nodded vehemently. tears were in her eyes and she turned her head away that he might not see them. "what a cheerful prospect!" he exclaimed, gaily--"and i'm to be killed by my own secret, am i? i wonder what it is! ah, manella, manella! that stupid old gwent has been at you, stuffing your mind with a lot of nonsense--don't you believe him! i've no 'secret' that will kill me--i don't want to be killed; no, manella! though you come 'again and yet again and ever so often' as you say, you will not find me dead! i'm too strong!" but manella, yielding to her inward excitement, pointed a hand at him with a warning air of a tragedy queen. "do not boast!" she said--"god is always listening! no man is too strong for god! i am not clever--i have no knowledge of what you do--but this i will tell you surely! you may have a secret,--or you may not have it,--but if you play with the powers of god you will be punished! yes!--of that i am quite certain! and this i will also say--if you were to pull all the clouds down upon you and the thunders and the lightnings and all the terrible things of destruction in the world, i would be there! and you would know what love is!--yes!"--her voice choked, and then pealed out like that of a sybilline prophetess, "if god struck you down to hell, i would be there!" and with a wild, sobbing cry she rushed away from him down the hill before he could move or utter a word. chapter xviii a red sky burned over egypt,--red with deep intensity of spreading fire. the slow-creeping waters of the nile washed patches of dull crimson against the oozy mud-banks, tipping palms and swaying reeds with colour as though touched with vermilion, and here and there long stretches of wet sand gleamed with a tawny gold. all cairo was out, inhabitants and strangers alike, strangers especially, conceiving it part of their "money's worth" never to miss a sunset,--and beyond cairo, where the pyramids lifted their summits aloft,--stern points of warning or menace from the past to the present and the future,--a crowd of tourists with their arab guides were assembled, staring upward in, amazement at a white wonder in the red sky, a great air-ship, which, unlike other air-ships, was noiseless, and that moved vast wings up and down with the steady, swift rhythm of a bird's flight, as though of its own volition. it soared at an immense height so that it was quite impossible to see any pilot or passenger. it hung over the pyramids almost motionless for three or four minutes as if about to descend, and the watching groups below made the usual alarmist prognostications of evil, taking care to look about for the safest place of shelter for themselves should the huge piece of mechanism above them suddenly escape control and take a downward dive. but apparently nothing was further from the intention of its invisible guides. its pause above the pyramids was brief--and almost before any of the observers had time to realise its departure it had floated away with an easy grace, silence and swiftness, miraculous to all who saw it vanish into space towards the libyan desert and beyond. the pyramids, even the sphinx--lost interest for the time being, every eye being strained to watch the strange aerial visitant till it disappeared. then a babble of question and comment began in all languages among the travellers from many lands, who, though most of them were fairly well accustomed to aeroplanes, air-ships and aerial navigation as having become part of modern civilisation, found themselves nonplussed by the absolute silence and lightning swiftness of this huge bird-shaped thing that had appeared with extraordinary suddenness in the deep rose glow of the egyptian sunset sky. meanwhile the object of their wonder and admiration had sped many miles away, and was sailing above a desert which, from the height it had attained, looked little more than a small stretch of sand such as children play upon by the sea. its speed gradually slackened--and its occupants, morgana, the marchese rivardi and their expert mechanic, gaspard, gazed down on the unfolding panorama below them with close and eager interest. there was nothing much to see. every sign of humanity seemed blotted out. the red sky burning on the little stretch of sand was all. "how small the world looks from the air!" said morgana--"it's not worth half the fuss made about it! and yet--it's such a pretty little god's toy!" she smiled,--and in her smiling expressed a lovely sweetness. rivardi raised his eyes from his steering gear. "you are not tired, madama?" he asked. "tired? no, indeed! how can i be tired with so short a journey!" "yet we have travelled a thousand miles since we left sicily this morning"--said rivardi--"we have kept up the pace, have we not, gaspard?--or rather, the 'white eagle' has proved its speed?" gaspard looked up from his place at the end of the ship. "about two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles an hour,"--he said--"one does not realise it in the movement." "but you realise that the flight is as safe as it is quick?" said morgana--"do you not?" "madama, i confess my knowledge is outdistanced by yours,"--replied gaspard--"i am baffled by your secret--but i freely admit its power and success." "good! now let us dine!" said morgana, opening a leather case such as is used for provisions in motoring, set plates, glasses, wine and food on the table--"a cold collation--but we'll have hot coffee to finish. we could have dined in cairo, but it would have been a bore! marchese, we'll stop here, suspended in mid-air, and the stars shall be our festal lamps, vying with our own!" and she turned on a switch which illumined the whole interior of the air-ship with a soft bright radiance--"whereabouts are we? still over the libyan desert?" rivardi consulted the chart which was spread open in his steering-cabin. "no--i think not. we have passed beyond it. we are over the sahara. just now we can take no observations--the sunset is dying rapidly and in a few minutes it will be quite dark." as he spoke he brought the ship to a standstill--it remained absolutely motionless except for the slight swaying as though touched by wave-like ripples of air. morgana went to the window aperture of her silken-lined "drawing-room" and looked out. all round the great air-ship were the illimitable spaces of the sky, now of a dense dark violet hue with here and there a streak of dull red remaining of the glow of the vanished sun,--below there was only blackness. for the first time a nervous thrill ran through her frame at the look of this dark chaos--and she turned quickly back to the table where rivardi and gaspard awaited her before sitting down to their meal. something quite foreign to her courageous spirit chilled her blood, but she fought against it, and seating herself became the charming hostess to her two companions as they ate and drank, though she took scarcely anything herself. for most unquestionably there was something uncanny in a meal served under such strange circumstances, and so far as the two men were concerned it was only eaten to sustain strength. "well, now, have i not been very good?" she asked suddenly of rivardi--"did i not say you should fly with me to the east, and are you not here? i have not come alone--though that was my wish,--i have even brought gaspard who had no great taste for the trip!" gaspard moved uneasily. "that is true, madama,"--he said--"the art of flying is still in its infancy, and though in my profession as an engineer i have studied and worked out many problems, i dare not say i have fathomed all the mysteries of the air or the influences of atmosphere. i am glad that we have made this voyage safely so far--but i shall be still more glad when we return to sicily!" morgana laughed. "we can do that to-morrow, i dare say!" she said; "if there is nothing to see in the whole expanse of the desert but dark emptiness"-"but--what do you expect to see, madama?" enquired gaspard, with lively curiosity. she laughed again as she met rivardi's keen glance. "why, ruins of temples--columns--colossi--a new sphinx-all sorts of things!" she replied--"but at night, of course, we can see nothing--and we must move onward slowly--i cannot rest swaying like this in mid-air." she put aside the dinner things, and served them with hot coffee from one of the convenient flasks that hold fluids hot or cold for an interminable time, and when they had finished this, they went back to their separate posts. the great ship began to move--and she was relieved to feel it sailing steadily, though at almost a snail's pace "on the bosom of the air." the oppressive nervousness which affected her had not diminished; she could not account for it to herself,--and to rally her forces she went to the window, so-called, of her luxurious cabin. this was a wide aperture filled in with a transparent, crystal-clear material, which looked like glass, but which was wholly unbreakable, and through this she gazed, awe-smitten, at the magnificence of the starry sky. the millions upon millions of worlds which keep the mystery of their being veiled from humanity flashed upon her eyes and moved her mind to a profound sadness. "what is the use of it all!" she thought--"if one could only find the purpose of this amazing creation! we learn a very little, only to see how much more there is to know! we live our lives, all hoping, searching, praying--and never an answer comes for all our prayers! from the very beginning--not a word from the mysterious poet who has written the poem! we are to breed and die--and there an end!--it seems strange and cruel, because so purposeless! or is it our fault? do we fail to discover the things we ought to know?" so she mused, while her "white eagle" ship sailed serenely on with a leisurely, majestic motion through a seeming wilderness of stars. courageous as she was, with a veritable lion-heart beating in her delicate little body, and firm as was her resolve to discover what no woman had ever discovered before, to-night she was conscious of actual fear. something--she knew not what--crept with a compelling influence through her blood,--she felt that some mysterious force she had never reckoned with was insidiously surrounding her with an invisible ring. she called to rivardi-"are we not flying too high? have you altered the course?" "no, madama," he replied at once--"we are on the same level." she turned towards him. her face was very pale. "well--be careful! to my mind we seem to be in a new atmosphere--there is a sensation of greater tension in the air--or--it is my fancy. we must not be too adventurous,--we must avoid the great nebula in orion for example!" "madama, you jest! we are trillions upon trillions of miles distant from any great constellation--" "do i not know it? you are too literal, marchese! of course i jest--you could not suppose me to be in earnest! but i am sure we are passing through the waves of a new ether--not altogether suited to the average human being. the average human being is not made to inhabit the higher spaces of the upper air--hark!--what was that?" she held up a warning hand, and listened. there was a distinct and persistent chiming of bells. bells loud and soft,--bells mellow and deep, clear and silvery--clanging in bass and treble shocks of rising and falling rhythm and tune! "do you hear?" rivardi and gaspard simultaneously rose to their feet, amazed. undoubtedly they heard! it was impossible not to hear such a clamour of concordant sound! startled beyond all expression, morgana sprang to the window of her cabin, and looking out uttered a cry of mingled terror and rapture... for there below her, in the previously inky blackness of the great desert, lay a great city, stretching out for miles, and glittering from end to end with a peculiarly deep golden light which seemed to bathe it in the lustre of a setting sun. towers, cupolas, bridges, streets, squares, parks and gardens could be plainly seen from the air-ship, which had suddenly stopped, and now hung immovably in mid-air; though for some moments morgana was too excited to notice this. again she called to her companions-"look! look!" she exclaimed--"we have found it! the brazen city!" but she called in vain. turning for response, she saw, to her amazement and alarm, both men stretched on the floor, senseless! she ran to them and made every effort to rouse them,--they were breathing evenly and quietly as in profound and comfortable sleep--but it was beyond her skill to renew their consciousness. then it flashed upon her that the "white eagle" was no longer moving,--that it was, in fact, quite stationary,--and a quick rush of energy filled her as she realised that now she was as she had wished to be, alone with her air-ship to do with it as she would. all fear had left her,--her nerves were steady, and her daring spirit was fired with resolution. whatever the mischance which had so swiftly overwhelmed rivardi and gaspard, she could not stop now to question, or determine it,--she was satisfied that they were not dead, or dying. she went to the steering-gear to take it in hand--but though the mysterious mechanism of the air-ship was silently and rapidly throbbing, the ship did not move. she grasped the propeller--it resisted her touch with hard and absolute inflexibility. all at once a low deep voice spoke close to her ear-"do not try to steer. you cannot proceed." her heart gave one wild bound,--then almost stood still from sheer terror. she felt herself swaying into unconsciousness, and made a violent effort to master the physical weakness that threatened her. that voice--what voice? surely one evoked from her own imagination! it spoke again--this time with an intonation that was exquisitely soothing and tender. "why are you afraid? for you there is nothing to fear!" she raised her eyes and looked about nervously. the soft luminance which lit the "white eagle's" interior from end to end showed nothing new or alarming,--her dainty, rose-lined cabin held no strange or supernatural visitant,--all was as usual. after a pause she rallied strength enough to question the audible but invisible intruder. "who is it that speaks to me?" she asked, faintly. "one from the city below,"--was the instant reply given in full clear accents--"i am speaking on the sound ray." she held her breath in mute wonder, listening. the voice went on, equably-"you know the use of wireless telephony--we have it as you have it, only your methods are imperfect. we speak on sound rays which are not yet discovered in your country. we need neither transmitter nor receiver. wherever we send our messages, no matter how great the distance, they are always heard." slowly morgana began to regain courage. by degrees she realised that she was attaining the wish of her heart--namely, to know what no woman had ever known before. again she questioned the voice-"you tell me i cannot proceed,"--she said--"why?" "because our city is guarded and fortified by the air,"--was the answer--"we are surrounded by a belt of etheric force through which nothing can pass. a million bombs could not break it,--everything driven against it would be dashed to pieces. we saw you coming--we were surprised, for no air-ship has ever ventured so far--we rang the bells of the city to warn you, and stopped your flight." the warm gentleness of the voice thrilled her with a sudden sympathy. "that was kind!" she said, and smiled. some one smiled in response--or she thought so. presently she spoke again-"then you hold me here a prisoner?" "no. you can return the way you came, quite freely." "may i not come down and see your city?" "no." "why?" "because you are not one of us." the voice hesitated. "and because you are not alone." morgana glanced at the prostrate and unconscious forms of rivardi and gaspard with a touch of pity. "my companions are half dead!" she said. "but not wholly!" was the prompt reply. "is it that force you speak of--the force which guards your city--that has struck them down?" she asked. "yes." "then why was i not also struck down?" "because you are what you are!" then--after a silence--"you are morgana!" at this every nerve in her body started quivering like harp strings pulled by testing fingers. the unseen speaker knew her name!--and uttered it with a soft delicacy that made it sound more than musical. she leaned forward, extending a hand as though to touch the invisible. "how do you know me?" she asked. "as we all know you,"--came the answer--"even as you have known the inside of a sun-ray!" she listened, amazed--utterly mystified. whoever or whatever it was that spoke knew not only her name, but the trend of her earliest studies and theories. the "inside of a sun-ray"! this was what she had only the other day explained to father aloysius as being her first experience of real happiness! she tried to set her thoughts in order--to realise her position. here she was, a fragile human thing, in a flying ship of her own design, held fast by atmospheric force above an unknown city situate somewhere in the great desert,--and some one in that city was conversing with her by a method of "wireless" as yet undiscovered by admitted science,--yet communication was perfect and words distinct. following up the suggestion presented to her she said-"you are speaking to me in english. are you all english folk in your city?" a faint quiver as of laughter vibrated through the "sound ray." "no, indeed! we have no nationality." "no nationality?" "none. we are one people. but we speak every language that ever has been spoken in the past, or is spoken in the present. i speak english to you because it is your manner of talk, though not your manner of life." "how do you know it is not my manner of life?" "because you are not happy in it. your manner of life is ours. it has nothing to do with nations or peoples. you are morgana." "and you?" she cried with sudden eagerness--"oh, who are you that speak to me?--man, woman, or angel? what are the dwellers in your city, if it is in truth a city, and not a dream!" "look again and see!" answered the voice--"convince yourself!--do not be deceived! you are not dreaming--look and make yourself sure!" impelled to movement, she went to the window which she had left to take up the steering-gear,--and from there saw again the wonderful scene spread out below, the towers, spires, cupolas and bridges, all lit with that mysterious golden luminance like smouldering sunset fire. "it is beautiful!" she said--"it seems true--it seems real--" "it is true-it is real!"--the voice replied--"it has been seen by many travellers,--but because they can never approach it they call it a desert 'mirage.' it is more real and more lasting than any other city in the world." "can i never enter it?" she asked, appealingly--"will you never let me in?" there was a silence, which seemed to her very long. still standing at the window of her cabin she looked down on the shining city, a broad stretch of splendid gold luminance under the canopy of the dark sky with its millions of stars. then the voice answered her-"yes--if you come alone!" these words sounded so close to her ear that she felt sure the speaker must be standing beside her. "i will come!" she said, impulsively--"somehow--some way!--no matter how difficult or dangerous! i will come!" as she spoke she was conscious of a curious vibration round her, as though some other thing than the ceaseless, silent throbbing of the air-ship's mechanism had disturbed the atmosphere. "wait!" said the voice--"you say this without thought. you do not realise the meaning of your words. for--if you come, you must stay!" a thrill ran through her blood. "i must stay!" she echoed--"why?" "because you have learned the life-secret,"--answered the voice--"and, as you have learned it, so must you live. i will tell you more if you care to hear--" an inrush of energy came to her as she listened--she felt that the unseen speaker acknowledged the power which she herself knew she possessed. "with all my soul i care to hear!" she said--"but where do you speak from? and who are you that speak?" "i speak from the central watch-tower,"--the voice replied--"the city is guarded from that point--and from there we can send messages all over the world in every known language. sometimes they are understood--more often they are ignored,--but we, who have lived since before the coming of christ, have no concern with such as do not or will not hear. our business is to wait and watch while the ages go by,--wait and watch till we are called forth to the new world. sometimes our messages cross the 'wireless' marconi system--and some confusion happens--but generally the 'sound ray' carries straight to its mark. you must well understand all that is implied when you say you will come to us,--it means that you leave the human race as you have known it and unite yourself with another human race as yet unknown to the world!" here was an overwhelming mystery--but, nothing daunted, morgana pursued her enquiry. "you can talk to me on the sound ray"--she said--"and i understand its possibility. you should equally be able to project your own portrait--a true similitude of yourself--on a light ray. let me see you!" "you are something of a wilful spirit!" answered the voice--"but you know many secrets of our science and their results. so--as you wish it--" another second, and the cabin was filled with a pearly lustre like the vapour which sweeps across the hills in an early summer dawn--and in the center of this as in an aureole stood a nobly proportioned figure, clad in gold-coloured garments fashioned after the early greek models. presumably this personage was human,--but never was a semblance of humanity so transfigured. the face and form were those of a beautiful youth,--the eyes were deep and brilliant,--and the expression of the features was one of fine serenity and kindliness. morgana gazed and gazed, bending herself towards her wonderful visitor with all her soul in her eyes,--when suddenly the vision, if so it might be called, paled and vanished. she uttered a little cry. "oh, why have you gone so soon?" she exclaimed. "it is not i who have gone,"--replied the voice--"it is only the reflection of me. we cannot project a light picture too far or too long. and even now--when you come to us--if you ever do come!--do you think you will remember me?" "how could i forget anyone so beautiful!" she said, with passionate enthusiasm. this time the sound ray conveyed a vibration of musical laughter. "where every being has beauty for a birthright, how should you know me more than another!" said the voice--"beauty is common to all in our city--as common as health, because we obey the divine laws of both." she stretched out her hands appealingly. "oh, if i could only come to you now!" she murmured. "patience!" and the voice grew softer--"there is something for you to do in the world. you must lose a love before you find it!" she drew a quick breath. what could these words mean? "it is time for you now to turn homeward,"--went on the voice--"you must not be seen above this city at dawn. you would be attacked and instantly destroyed, as having received a warning which you refused to heed." "do you attack and destroy all strangers so?" she asked--"is that your rule?" "it is our rule to keep away the mischief of the modern world"--replied the voice--"as well admit a pestilence as the men and women of to-day!" "i am a woman of to-day,"--said morgana. "no, you are not,--you are a woman of the future!" and the voice was grave and insistent--"you are one of the new race. at the appointed hour you will take your part with us in the new world?" "when will be that hour?" there was a pause. then, with an exceeding sweetness and solemnity the voice replied-"if he will that we tarry till he come, what is that to thee?" a sense of great awe swept over her, oppressive and humiliating. she looked once more through her cabin window at the city spread out below, and saw that some of the lights were being extinguished in the taller buildings and on the bridges which connected streets and avenues in a network of architectural beauty. the voice spoke again-"we are releasing you from the barrier. you are free to depart." she sighed. "i have no wish to go!" she said. "you must!" the voice became commanding. "if you stay now, you and your companions are doomed to perish. there is no alternative. be satisfied that we know you--we watch you--we shall expect you sooner or later. meanwhile--guide your ship!--the way is open." quickly she sprang to the steering-gear--she felt the "white eagle" moving, and lifting its vast wings for flight. "farewell!" she cried, with a sense of tears in her throat--"farewell!" "not farewell!" came the reply, spoken softly and with tenderness--"we shall meet again soon! i will speak to you in sicily!" "in sicily!" she exclaimed, joyfully--"you will speak to me there?" "there and everywhere!" answered the voice--"the sound ray knows no distance. i shall speak--and you shall hear--whenever you will!" the last syllables died away like faintly sung music--and in a few more seconds the great air-ship was sailing steadily in a level line and at a swift pace onward,--the last shining glimpse of the mysterious city vanished, and the "white eagle" soared over a sable blackness of empty desert, through a dark space besprinkled with stars. filled with a new sense of power and gladness, morgana held the vessel in the guidance of her slight but strong hands, and it had flown many miles before the marchese rivardi sprang up suddenly from where he had lain lost in unconsciousness and stared around him amazed and confused. "a thousand pardons, madama!" he stammered--"i shall never forgive myself! i have been asleep!" chapter xix at almost the same moment gaspard stumbled to his feet. "asleep--asleep!" he exclaimed--"_mon dieu!_--the shame of it!--the shame! what pigs are men! to sleep after food and wine, and to leave a woman alone like this!... the shame!" morgana, quietly steering the "white eagle," smiled. "poor gaspard!" she said--"you could not help it! you were so tired! and you, marchese! you were both quite worn out! i was glad to see you sleeping--there is no shame in it! as i have often told you, i can manage the ship alone." but rivardi was white with anger and self-reproach. "gross pigs we are!" he said, hotly--"gaspard is right! and yet--" here he passed a hand across his brow and tried to collect his thoughts--"yes!--surely something unusual must have happened! we heard bells ringing--" morgana watched him closely, her hand on her air-vessel's helm. "yes--we all thought we heard bells"--she said--"but that was a noise in our own brains--the clamour of our own blood brought on by pressure--we were flying at too great a height and the tension was too strong--" gaspard threw out his hands with a half defiant gesture. "no, madama! it could not be so! i swear we never left our own level! what happened i cannot tell--but i felt that i was struck by a sudden blow--and i fell without force to recover--" "sleep struck you that sudden blow, you poor gaspard!" said morgana, "and you have not slept so long--barely an hour--just long enough for me to hover a while above this black desert and then turn homeward,--i want no more of the sahara!" rivardi, smarting under a sense of loss and incompetency, went up to her. "give me the helm!" he said, almost sharply--"you have done enough!" she resigned her place to him, smiling at his irritation. "you are sure you are quite rested?" she asked. "rested!" he echoed the word disdainfully--"i should never have rested at all had i been half the man i profess to be! why do you turn back? i thought you were bent on exploring the great desert!--that you meant to try and find the traditional brazen city?" she shrugged her shoulders. "i do not like the prospect"--she said--"there is nothing but sand--interminable billows of sand! i can well believe it was all ocean once,--when the earth gave a sudden tilt, and all the water was thrown off from one surface to another. if we could dig deep enough below the sand i think we should find remains of wrecked ships, with the skeletons of antediluvian men and animals, remains of one of the many wasted civilisations--" "you do not answer me--" interrupted rivardi with impatience--"what of your search for the brazen city?" she raised her lovely, mysterious eyes and looked full at him. "do you believe it exists?" she asked. he gave a gesture of annoyance. "whether i believe or not is of no importance,"--he answered--"you have some idea about it, and you have every means of proving the truth of your idea--yet, after making the journey from sicily for the purpose, you suddenly turn back!" still she kept her eyes upon him. "you must not mind the caprices of a woman!" she said, with a smile--"and do please remember the 'brazen city' is not my idea! the legend of this undiscovered place in the desert was related by your friend don aloysius--and he was careful to say it was 'only' a legend. why should you think i accept it as a truth?" "surely it was the motive of your flight here?" he demanded, imperatively. her brows drew together in a slight frown. "my dear marchese, i allow no one to question my motives"--she said with sudden coldness--"that i have decided to go no farther in search of the brazen city is my own affair." "but--not even to wait for the full daylight!" he expostulated--"you could not see it by night even if it existed!" "not unless it was lit like other cities!" she said, smiling--"i suppose if such a city existed, its inhabitants would need some sort of illuminant--they would not grope about in the dark. in that case it would be seen from our ship as well by night as by day." gaspard, busy with some mechanical detail, looked up. "then why not make a search for it while we are here?" he said--"you evidently believe in it!" "i have turned the 'white eagle' homeward, and shall not turn again"--she said--"but i do not see any reason why such a city should not exist and be discovered some day. explorers in tropical forests find the remains or beginnings of a different race of men from our own--pygmies, and such like beings--there is nothing really against the possibility of an undiscovered city in the great desert. we modern folk think we know a great deal--but our wisdom is very superficial and our knowledge limited. we have not mastered everything under the sun!" the marchese rivardi looked at her with something of defiance in his glance. "i will adventure in search of the legendary city myself, alone!" he said. morgana laughed, her clear little cold laugh of disdain. "do so, my friend! why not?" she said--"you are a daring airman on many forms of airships--i knew that,--before i entrusted you with the scheme of mine. discover the legendary 'brazen city' if you can!--i promise not to be jealous!--and return to the world of curiosity mongers--(also, if you can!) with a full report of its inhabitants and their manners and customs. and so--you will become famous! but you must not fall asleep on the way!" he paled with anger and annoyance,--she still smiled. "do not be cross, amico!" she said, sweetly. "think where we are!--in the wide spaces of heaven, pilgrims with the stars! this is no place for personal feeling of either disappointment or irritation. you asked me a while ago if i was tired--i thought i was hot, but i am--very tired!--i am going to rest. and i trust you both to take care of me and the 'white eagle'!" "we are to make straight for sicily?" he asked. "yes--straight for sicily." she retired into her sleeping-cabin and disappeared. the marchese rivardi looked at gaspard questioningly. "we must obey her, i suppose?" "we could not think of disobeying!" returned gaspard. "she is a strange woman!" and as he spoke rivardi gripped his steering-gear with a kind of vindictive force--"it seems absurd that we,--two men of fair intelligence and scientific attainment,--should be ruled by her whim,--her fancies--for after all she is made up of fancies--" gaspard shook his finger warningly. "this air-ship is not a 'whim' or a 'fancy'"--he said, impressively--"it is the most wonderful thing of its kind ever invented! if it is given to the world it will revolutionise the whole system of aerial navigation. here we are, flying at top speed in perfect ease and safety with no engine--nothing to catch fire--nothing to break or bust--and the whole mechanism mysteriously makes its own motive power as it goes. radio-activity it may be--but its condensation and use for such a purpose is the secret invention of a woman--and surely we must admit her genius! as for our obedience--eccellenza, we are both royally paid to obey!" rivardi flushed red. "i know!" he said, curtly--"i never forget it. but money is not everything." gaspard's mobile french face lit up with a mirthful smile. "it is most things!" he replied--"without it even science is crippled. and this lady has so much of it!--it seems without end! again,--it is seldom one meets with money and brains and beauty--all together!" "beauty?" rivardi queried. "why, yes!--beauty that only flashes out at moments--of all beauty the most fascinating! a face that is always beautiful is fatiguing,--it is the changeful face with endless play of expression that enthralls,--or so it is to me!" and gaspard gave an eloquent gesture--"this lady we both work for seems to have no lovers--but if she had, not one of them could ever forget her!" rivardi was silent. "i should not wonder," ventured gaspard, presently--"if--while we slept--she had seen her 'brazen city'!" rivardi uttered something like an oath. "impossible!" he exclaimed--"she would have awakened us!" "if she could, no doubt!" agreed gaspard--"but if she could not, how then?" for a moment rivardi looked puzzled,--then he dismissed his companion's suggestion with a contemptuous shrug. "basta! there is no 'brazen city'! when she heard the old tradition she was like a child with a fairy tale--a child who, reading of strawberries growing in the winter snow, goes out forthwith to find them--she did not really believe in it--but it pleased her to imagine she did. the mere sight of the arid empty desert has been enough for her." "we certainly heard bells"--said gaspard. "in our brains! such sounds often affect the nerves when flying for a long while at high speed. for all our cleverness we are only human. i have heard on the 'wireless,' sounds that do not seem of this world at all." "so have i"--said gaspard--"and though it may be my own brain talking, i'm not so obstinate in my own knowledge as to doubt a possible existing means of communication between one continent and another apart from our special 'wireless.' in fact i'm sure there is something of the kind,--though where it comes from and how it travels i cannot say. but certain people get news of occurring events somehow, from somewhere, long before it reaches paris or london. i dare say the lady we are with could tell us something about it." "her powers are not limitless!" said rivardi--"she is only a woman after all!" gaspard said no more, and there followed a silence,--a silence all the more tense and deep because of the amazing swiftness with which the "white eagle" kept its steady level flight, making no sound despite the rapidity of its movement. very gradually the darkness of night lifted, as it were, one corner of its sable curtain to show a grey peep-hole of dawn, and soon it became apparent that the ship was already far away from the mysterious land of egypt--"the land shadowing with wings"--and was flying over the sea. there was something terrific in the complete noiselessness with which it sped through the air, and rivardi, though now he had a good grip on his nerves, hardly dared allow himself to think of the adventurous business on which he was engaged. a certain sense of pride and triumph filled him, to realise that he had been selected from many applicants for the post he occupied--and yet with all his satisfaction there went a lurking spirit of envy and disappointed ambition. if he could win morgana's love--if he could make the strange elfin creature with all her genius and inventive ability his own,--why then!--what then? he would share in her fame,--aye, more than share it, since it is the way of the world to give its honour to no woman whose life is connected with that of a man. the man receives the acknowledgment invariably, even if he has done nothing to deserve it, and herein is the reason why many gifted women do not marry, and prefer to stand alone in effort and achievement rather than have their hardly won renown filched from them by unjust hands. when roger seaton confessed to the girl manella that his real desire was to bend and subdue morgana's intellectuality to his own, he spoke the truth, not only for himself but for all men. absolutely disinterested love for a brilliantly endowed woman would be difficult to find in any male nature,--men love what is inferior to themselves, not superior. thus women who are endowed with more than common intellectual ability have to choose one of two alternatives--love, or what is called love, and child-bearing,--or fame, and lifelong loneliness. the marchese rivardi, thinking along the usual line of masculine logic, had frequently turned over the problem of morgana's complex character such as it appeared to him,--and had almost come to the conclusion that if he only had patience he would succeed in persuading her that wifehood and motherhood were more conducive to a woman's happiness than all the most amazing triumphs of scientific discovery and attainment. he was perfectly right according to simple natural law,--but he chose to forget that women's mental outlook has, in these modern days, been greatly widened,--whether for their gain or loss it is not yet easy to say. even for men "much knowledge increaseth sorrow,"--and it may be hinted that women, with their often overstrung emotions and exaggerated sentiments, are not fit to plunge deeply into studies which tax the brain to its utmost capacity and try the nerves beyond the level of the calm which is essential to health. though it has to be admitted that married life is less peaceful than hard study--and the bright woman who recently said, "a husband is more trying than any problem in euclid," no doubt had good cause for the remark. married or single, woman both physically and mentally is the greatest sufferer in the world--her time of youth and unthinking joy is brief, her martyrdom long--and it is hardly wonderful that she goes so often "to the bad" when there is so little offered to attract her towards the good. rivardi, letting himself go on the flood-tide of hope and ambition, pleased his mind with imaginary pictures of morgana as his wife and as mother of his children, rehabilitating his fallen fortunes, restoring his once great house and building a fresh inheritance for its former renown. he saw no reason why this should not be,--yet--even while he indulged in his thoughts of her, he knew well enough that behind her small delicate personality there was a powerful intellectual "lens," so to speak, through which she examined the ins and outs of character in man or woman; and he felt that he was always more or less under this "lens," looked at as carefully as a scientist might study bacteria, and that as a matter of fact it was as unlikely as the descent of the moon-goddess to endymion that she would ever submit herself to his possession. nevertheless, he argued, stranger things had happened! the grey peep of dawn widened into a silver rift, and the silver rift streamed into a bar of gold, and the gold broke up into long strands of blush pink and pale blue like festal banners hanging in heaven's bright pavilion, and the "white eagle" flew on swiftly, steadily, securely, among all the glories of the dawn like a winged car for the conveyance of angels. and both rivardi and gaspard thought they were not far from the realisation of an angel when morgana suddenly appeared at the door of her sleeping-cabin, attired in a fleecy-wool gown of purest white, her wonderful gold hair unbound and falling nearly to her feet. "what a perfect morning!" she exclaimed--"all things seem new! and i have had such a good rest! the air is so pure and clean--surely we are over the sea?" "we are some fifteen thousand feet above the mediterranean"--answered rivardi, looking at her as he spoke with unconcealed admiration;--never, he thought, had she seemed so charming, youthful and entirely lovable--"i am glad you have rested--you look quite refreshed and radiant. after all, it is a test of endurance--this journey to egypt and back." "do you think so?" and morgana smiled--"it should be nothing--it really is nothing! we ought to be quite ready and willing to travel like this for a week on end! but you and gaspard are not yet absolutely sure of our motive power!--you cannot realise that as long as we keep going so long will our 'going' force be generated without effort--yet surely it is proved!" gaspard lifted his eyes towards her where she stood like a little white madonna in a shrine. "yes, madama, it is proved!" he said--"but the secret of its proving?--" "ah! that, for the present, remains locked up in the mystery box--here!" and she tapped her forehead with her finger--"the world is not ready for it. the world is a destructive savage, loving evil rather than good, and it would work mischief more than usefulness with such a force--if it knew! now i will dress, and give you breakfast in ten minutes." she waved a hand to them and disappeared, returning after a brief interval attired in her "aviation" costume and cap. soon she had prepared quite a tempting breakfast on the table. "thermos coffee!" she said, gaily--"all hot and hot! we could have had thermos tea, but i think coffee more inspiriting. tea always reminds me of an afternoon at a country vicarage where good ladies sit round a table and talk of babies and rheumatism. kind,--but so dull! come--you must take it in turns--you, marchese, first, while gaspard steers--and gaspard next--just as you did last night at what we called dinner, before you fell asleep! men do fall asleep after dinner you know!--it's quite ordinary. married men especially!--i think they do it to avoid conversation with their wives!" she laughed, and her eyes flashed mirthfully as rivardi seated himself opposite to her at table. "well, _i_ am not married"--he said, rather petulantly--"nor is gaspard. but some day we may fall into temptation and not be delivered from evil." "ah yes!" and morgana shook her fair head at him with mock dolefulness--"and that will be very sad! though nowadays it will not bind you to a fettered existence. marriage has ceased to be a sacrament,--you can leave your wives as soon as you get tired of them,--or--they can leave you!" rivardi looked at her with reproach in his handsome face and dark eyes. "you read the modern press"--he said--"a pity you do!" "yes--it's a pity anyone reads it!"--she answered--"but what are we to read? if low-minded and illiterate scavengers are employed to write for the newspapers instead of well-educated men, we must put up with the mud the scavengers collect. we know well enough that every journal is more or less a calendar of lies,--all the same we cannot blind ourselves to the great change that has come over manners and morals--particularly in relation to marriage. of course the press always chronicles the worst items bearing on the subject--" "the press is chiefly to blame for it"--declared rivardi. "oh, i think not!" and morgana smiled as she poured out a second cup of coffee--"the press cannot create a new universe. no--i think human nature alone is to blame--if blame there be. human nature is tired." "tired?" echoed rivardi--"in what way?" "in every way!"--and a lovely light of tenderest pity filled her eyes as she spoke--"tired of the same old round of working, mating, breeding and dying--for no results really worth having! civilisation after civilisation has arisen--always with strife and difficulty, only to pass away, leaving, in many cases, scarce a memory. human nature begins to weary of the continuous 'grind'--it demands the 'why' of its ceaseless labour. latterly, poor striving men and women have been deprived of faith--they used to believe they had a loving father in heaven who cared for them,--but the monkeys of the race, the atheists, swinging from point to point of argument and chattering all the time, have persuaded them that they are as tennyson once mournfully wrote--" "poor orphans of nothing--alone on that lonely shore, born of the brainless nature who knew not that which she bore!" "can we wonder then that they are tired?--tired of pursuing a useless quest? human nature is craving for a change--for a newer world--a newer race,--and those who see that nature is not 'brainless' but full of intelligent conception, are sure that the change will come!" "and you are one of 'those who see'?--" said rivardi, incredulously. "i do not say i am,--that would be too much self-assertion"--she answered--"but i hope i am! i long to see the world endowed more richly with health and happiness. see how gloriously the sun has risen! in what splendour of light and air we are sailing! if we can do as much as this we ought to be able to do more!" "we shall do more in time"--he said--"the advance of one step leads to another." "in time!" echoed morgana--"what time the human race has already taken to find out the simplest forces of nature! it is the horrible bulk of blank stupidity that hinders knowledge--the heavy obstinate bulk that declines to budge an inch out of its own fixity. nowadays we triumph in our so-called 'discoveries' of wireless telegraphy and telephony, light-rays and other marvels--but these powers have always been with us from the beginning of things,--it is we, we only, who have refused to accept them as facts of the universe. let us talk no more about it!--stupidity is the only thing that moves me to despair!" she rose from the little table, and called gaspard to breakfast, while rivardi went back to the business of steering. the day was now fully declared, and the great air-ship soared easily in a realm of ethereal blue--blue above, blue below--its vast wings moving up and down with perfect rhythm as if it were a living, sentient creature, revelling in the joys of flight. for the rest of the day morgana was very silent, contenting herself to sit in her charming little rose-lined nest of a room, and read,--now and then looking out on the radiating space around her, and watching for the first slight downward movement of the "white eagle" towards land. she had plenty to occupy her thoughts--and strange to say she did not consider as anything unexpected or remarkable, her brief communication with the "brazen city." on the contrary it seemed quite a natural happening. of course it had always been there, she said to herself,--only people were too dull and unenterprising to discover it,--besides, if they had ever found it (certain travellers having declared they had seen it in the distance) they would not have been allowed to approach it. this fact was the one point that chiefly dwelt in her mind--a secret of science which she puzzled her brain to fathom. what could be the unseen force that guarded the city?--girding it round with an unbreakable band from all exterior attack? a million bombs could not penetrate it,--so had said the voice travelling to her ears on the mysterious sound ray. she thought of shakespeare's lines on england- "this precious stone set in the silver sea which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house against the envy of less happy lands." modern science had made the sea useless as a "wall" or "moat defensive" against attacks from the air,--but if there existed an atmospheric or "etheric" force which could be utilised and brought to such pressure as to encircle a city or a country with a protective ring that should resist all effort to break it, how great a security would be assured "against the envy of less happy lands"! here was a problem for study,--study of the intricate character which she loved--and she became absorbed in what she called "thinking for results," a form of introspection which she knew, from experience, sometimes let in unexpected light on the creative cells of the brain and impelled them to the evolving of hitherto untried suggestions. she sat quietly with a book before her, not reading, but bent on seeking ways and means for the safety and protection of nations,--as bent as roger seaton was on a force for their destruction. so the hours passed swiftly, and no interruption or untoward obstacle hindered the progress of the "white eagle" as it careered through the halcyon blue of the calmest, loveliest sky that ever made perfect weather, till late afternoon when it began to glide almost insensibly downward towards earth. then she roused herself from her long abstraction and looked through the window of her cabin, watching what seemed to be the gradual rising of the land towards the air-ship, showing in little green and brown patches like the squares of a chess-board,--then the houses and towns, tiny as children's toys--then the azure gleam of the sea and the boats dancing like bits of cork upon it,--then finally the plainer, broader view, wherein the earth with its woods and hills and rocky promontories appeared to heave up like a billow crowned with varying colours,--and so steadily, easily down to the pattern of grass and flowers from the centre of which the palazzo d'oro rose like a little white house for the abode of fairies. "well steered!" said morgana, as the ship ran into its shed with the accuracy of a sword slipping into its sheath, and the soundless vibration of its mysterious motive-power ceased--"home again safely!--and only away forty-eight hours! to the sahara and back!--how far we have been, and what we have seen!" "we have seen nothing"--said rivardi meaningly, as he assisted her to alight--"the seeing is all with you!" "and the believing!" she answered, smiling--"all my thanks to you both for your skilful pilotage. you must be very tired--" here she gave her hand to them each in turn--"again a thousand thanks! no air-ship could be better manned!" "or woman'd?" suggested rivardi. she laughed. "if you like! but i only steered while you slept. that is nothing! good night!" she left them, running up the garden path lightly like a child returning from a holiday, and disappeared. "but that which she calls nothing"--said gaspard as he watched her go--"is everything!" chapter xx for some days after her adventurous voyage to the great desert and back morgana chose to remain in absolute seclusion. save for lady kingswood and her own household staff, she saw no one, and was not accessible even to don aloysius, who called several times, moved not only by interest, but genuine curiosity, to enquire how she fared. many of the residents in the vicinity of the palazzo d'oro had gleaned scraps of information here and there concerning the wonderful air-ship which they had seen careering over their heads during its testing trials, and as a matter of course they had heard more than scraps in regard to its wealthy owner. but nowadays keen desire to know and to investigate has given place to a sort of civil apathy which passes for good form--that absolute indifferentism which is too much bored to care about other people's affairs, and which would not disturb itself if it heard of a neighbour deciding to cross the atlantic in a washtub. "nothing matters," is the general verdict on all events and circumstances. nevertheless, the size, the swiftness and soundlessness of the "white eagle" and the secrecy observed in its making, had somewhat moved the heavy lump of human dough called "society," and the whispered novelty of morgana's invention had reached rome and paris, nay, almost london, without her consent or knowledge. so that she was more or less deluged with letters; and noted scientists, both in france and italy, though all incredulous as to her attainment, made it a point of "business" to learn all they could about her, which was not much more than can be usually learned about any wealthy woman or man with a few whims to gratify. a murderer gains access to the whole press,--his look, his manner, his remarks, are all carefully noted and commented upon,--but a scientist, an explorer, a man or woman whose work is that of beneficence and use to humanity, is barely mentioned except in the way of a sneer. so it often chances that the public know nothing of its greatest till they have passed beyond the reach of worldly honour. morgana, however, had no desire that her knowledge or attainment should be admitted or praised. she was entirely destitute of ambition. she had read too much and studied too deeply to care for so-called "fame," which, as she knew, is the mere noise of one moment, to be lost in silence the next. she was self-centered and yet not selfish. she felt that to understand her own entity, its mental and physical composition, and the possibilities of its future development, was sufficient to fill her life--that life which she quite instinctively recognised as bearing within itself the seed of immortality. her strange interview with the "voice" from the city in the desert, and the glimpse she had been permitted to see of the owner of that voice, had not so much surprised her as convinced her of a theory she had long held,--namely that there were other types of the human race existing, unknown to the generality of ordinary men and women--types that were higher in their organisation and mental capacity,--types which by reason of their very advancement kept themselves hidden and aloof from modern civilisation. and she forthwith plunged anew into the ocean of scientific problems, where she floated like a strong swimmer at ease with her mind upturned to the stars. yet she did not neglect the graceful comforts and elegancies of the palazzo d'oro, and life went on in that charming abode peacefully. morgana always being the kindest of patrons to lady kingswood, and discoursing feminine commonplaces with her as though there were no other subjects of conversation in the world than embroidery and specific cures for rheumatism. she said little--indeed almost nothing,--of her aerial voyage to the east, except that she had enjoyed it, and that the pyramids and the sphinx were dwarfed into mere insignificant dots on the land as seen from the air,--she had apparently nothing more to describe, and lady kingswood was not sufficiently interested in air-travel to press enquiry. one bright sunny morning, after a week of her self-imposed seclusion, she announced her intention of calling at the monastery to see don aloysius. "i have been rather rude"--she said--"of course he has wanted to know how my flight to the east went off!--and i have given no sign and sent no message." "he has called several times"--replied lady kingswood--"and i think he has been very much disappointed not to be received." "poor reverend father!" and morgana smiled--"he should not bother his mind about a woman! well! i'm going to see him now." lady kingswood looked at her critically. she was gowned in a simple white morning frock with touches of blue,--and she wore a broad-brimmed tuscan straw hat with a fold of blue carelessly twined about it. she made a pretty picture--one of extraordinary youthfulness for any woman out of her 'teens--so much so that lady kingswood wondered if voyages in the air would be found to have a rejuvenating effect. "they do not admit women into the actual monastery"--she went on--"feminine frivolities are forbidden! but the ruined cloister is open to visitors and i shall ask to see don aloysius there." she lightly waved adieu and went, leaving her amiable and contented chaperone to the soothing companionship of a strip of embroidery at which she worked with the leisurely tranquillity which such an occupation engenders. the ruined cloister looked very beautiful that morning, with its crumbling arches crowned and festooned with roses climbing every way at their own sweet will, and morgana's light figure gave just the touch of human interest to the solemn peacefulness of the scene. she waited but two or three minutes before don aloysius appeared--he had seen her arrive from the window of his own private library. he approached her slowly--there was a gravity in the expression of his face that almost amounted to coldness, and no smile lightened it as she met his keen, fixed glance. "so you have come to me at last!" he said--"i have not merited your confidence till now! why?" his rich voice had a ring of deep reproach in its tone--and she was for a moment taken aback. then her native self-possession and perfect assurance returned. "dear father aloysius, you do not want my confidence! you know all i can tell you!" she said--and drawing close to him she laid her hand on his arm--"am i not right?" a tremor shook him--gently he put her hand aside. "you think i know!" he replied--"you imagine--" "oh, no, i imagine nothing!" and she smiled--"i am sure--yes, sure!--that you have the secret of things that seem fabulous and yet are true! it was you who first told me of the brazen city in the great desert,--you said it was a mere tradition--but you filled my mind with a desire to find it--" "and you found it?" he interrupted, quickly--"you found it?" "you know i did!" she replied--"why ask the question? messages on a sound-ray can reach you, as well as me!" he moved to the stone bench which occupied a corner of the cloister and sat down. he was very pale and his eyes were feverishly bright. presently he seemed to recover himself, and spoke more in his usual manner. "rivardi has been here every day"--he said--"he has talked of nothing but you. he told me that he and gaspard fell suddenly asleep--for which they were grievously ashamed of themselves--and that you took control of the air-ship and turned it homeward before you had given them any chance to explore the desert--" "quite true!" she answered, tranquilly--"and--you knew all that before he told you! you knew that i was compelled to turn the ship homeward because it was not allowed to proceed! dear father aloysius, you cannot hide yourself from me! you are one of the few who have studied the secrets of the approaching future,--the 'change' which is imminent--the 'world to come' which is coming! yes!--and you are brave to live as you do in the fetters of a conventional faith when you have such a far wider outlook--" he stopped her by a gesture, rising from where he sat and extending a hand of warning and authority. "child, beware what you say!" and his voice had a ring of sternness in its mellow tone--"if i know what you think i know, on what ground do you suppose i have built my knowledge? only on that faith which you call 'conventional'--that faith which has never been understood by the world's majority! that faith which teaches of the god-in-man, done to death by the man without god in him!--and who, nevertheless, by the spiritual strength of a resurrection from the grave, proves that there is no death but only continuous renewal of life! this is no mere 'convention' of faith,--no imaginary or traditional tale--it is pure scientific fact. the virginal conception of divinity in woman, and the transfiguration of manhood, these things are true--and the advance of scientific discovery will prove them so beyond all denial. we have held the faith, as it should be held, for centuries,--and it has led us, and continues to lead us, to all we know." "we?" queried morgana, softly--"we--of the church?--or of the brazen city?" he looked at her for some moments without speaking. his tall fine figure seemed more than ever stately and imposing--and his features expressed a calm assurance and dignity of thought which gave them additional charm. "your question is bold!" he said--"your enterprising spirit stops at nothing! you have learned much--you are resolved to learn more! well,--i cannot prevent you,--nor do i see any reason why i should try! you are a resolved student,--you are also a woman:--a woman different to ordinary women and set apart from ordinary womanhood. so i say to you 'we of the brazen city'--if you will! for more than three thousand years 'we' have existed--'we' have studied, 'we' have discovered--'we' have known. 'we,' the selected offspring of all the race that ever were born,--'we,' the pure blood of the earth,--'we,' the progenitors of the world to be,--'we' have lived, watching temporary civilisations rise and fall,--seeing generations born and die, because, like weeds, they have grown without any root of purpose save to smother their neighbours and destroy. 'we' remain as commanded, waiting for the full declaration and culmination of those forces which are already advancing to the end,--when the 'kingdom' comes!" morgana moved close to him, and looked up at his grave, dark face beseechingly. "then why are you here?" she asked--"if you know,--if you were ever in the 'brazen city' how did it happen that you left it? how could it happen?" he smiled down into the jewel-blue of her clear eyes. "little child!" he said--"brilliant soul, that rejoiced in the perception that gave you what you called 'the inside of a sun-ray,'--you, for whom the things which interest men and women of the moment are mere toys of poor invention--you, of all others, ought to know that when the laws of the universe are understood and followed, there can be no fetters on the true liberty of the subject? if i were ever in the 'brazen city'--mind! i say 'if'--there could be nothing to prevent my leaving it if i chose--" she interrupted him by the uplifting of a hand. "i was told"--she said slowly--"by a voice that spoke to me--that if i went there i should have to stay there!" "no doubt!" he answered--"for love would keep you!" "love!" she echoed. "even so! such love as you have never dreamed of, dear soul weighted with millions of gold! love!--the only force that pulls heaven to earth and binds them together!" "but you--you--if you were in the brazen city--" "if!" he repeated, emphatically. "if--yes! if"--she said--"if you were there, love did not hold you?" "no!" there was a silence. the sunshine burned down on the ancient grey flagstones of the cloister, and two gorgeous butterflies danced over the climbing roses that hung from the arches in festal wreaths of pink and white. a luminance deeper than that of the sun seemed to encircle the figures standing together--the one so elfin, light and delicate,--the other invested with a kind of inward royalty expressing itself outwardly in stateliness of look and bearing. something mysteriously suggestive of super-humanity environed them; a spirit and personality higher than mortal. after some minutes aloysius spoke again-"the city is not a 'brazen' city"--he said--"it has been called so by travellers who have seen its golden towers glistening afar off in a sudden refraction of light lasting but a few seconds. gold often looks like brass and brass like gold, in human entities as in architectural results." he paused--then went on slowly and impressively--"surely you remember,-you must remember, that it is written 'the city lieth four-square, and the length is as large as the breadth. the wall thereof is according to the measure of a man--that is, of the angel. and the city is of pure gold.' does that give you no hint of the measure of a man, that is, of the angel?--of the 'new heavens and the new earth,' the old things being passed away? dear child, you have studied deeply--you have adventured far and greatly!--continue your quest, but do not forget to take your guiding light, the faith which half the world and more ignores!" she sprang to him impulsively and caught his hands. "oh, you must help me!" she cried--"you must teach me--i want to know what you know!--" he held her gently and with reverent tenderness. "i know no more than you,"--he answered--"you work by science--i, by faith, the bed-rock from which all science proceeds--and we arrive at the same discoveries by different methods. i am a poor priest in the temple of the divine, serving my turn--but i am not alone in service, for in every corner of the habitable globe there is one member of our 'city' who communicates with the rest. one!--but enough! to-day's commercial world uses old systems of wireless telegraphy and telephony which were known and done with thousands of years ago--but 'we' have the sound-ray--the light which carries music on its wings and creates form as it goes." here he released her hands. "knowing what you do know you have no need of my help"--he continued--"you have not found happiness yet, because that only comes through one source--love. but i doubt not that god will give you that in his own good time." he paused--then went on--"as you go out, enter the chapel for a moment and send a prayer on the sound-ray to the centre of all knowledge,--the source of all discovery--have no fear but that it will arrive! the rest is for you to decide." she hesitated. "and--the brazen city?" she queried. "the golden city!" he answered--"well, you have had your experience! your name is known there--and no doubt you can hear from it when you will." "do you hear from it?" she asked, pointedly. he smiled gravely. "i may not speak of what i hear"--he answered. "nor may you!" she was silent for a space--then looked up at him appealingly. "the world is changed for me"--she said--"it will never be the same again! i do not seem to belong to it--other influences surround me,--how i live in it?--how shall i work--what shall i do?" "you will do as you have always done--go your own way"--he replied--"the way which has led you to so much discovery and attainment. you must surely know in your own soul that you have been guided in that way--and your success is the result of allowing yourself to be guided. in all things you will be guided now--have no fear for yourself! all will be well for you!" "and for you?" she asked impulsively. he smiled. "why think of me?" he said, gently--"i am nothing in your life--" "you are!" she replied--"you are more than you imagine. i begin to realise--" he held up his hand with a warning gesture. "hush!" he said--"there are things of which we must not speak!" at that moment the monastery bell tolled the midday "angelus." don aloysius bent his head--morgana instinctively did the same. within the building the deep voices of the brethren sounded, chanting,- "angelus domini nuntiavit maria et concepit de spiritu sancto." as the salutation to heaven finished, the mellow music of the organ in the chapel sent a wave of solemn and prayerful tenderness on the air, and, moved by the emotion of the hour, morgana's heart beat more quickly and tears filled her eyes. "there must be beautiful music in the golden city!" she said. don aloysius smiled. "there is! and when the other things of life give you pause to listen, you will often hear it!" she smiled happily in response, and then, with a silent gesture of farewell, left the cloister and made her way to the chapel, part of which was kept open for public worship. it was empty, but the hidden organist was still playing. she went towards the high altar and knelt in front of it. she was not of the catholic faith,--she was truly of no faith at all save that which is taught by science, which like a door opened in heaven shows all the wonders within,--but her keen sense of the beautiful was stirred by the solemn peace of the shut tabernacle with the cross above it, and the great lilies bending under their own weight of loveliness and fragrance on either side. "it is the symbol of a great truth which is true for all time"--she thought, as she clasped her hands in an attitude of prayer--"and how sad and strange it is to feel that there are thousands among its best-intentioned worshippers and priests who have not discovered its mystic meaning. the god in man, born of purity in woman! is it only in the golden city that they know?" she raised her eyes in half unconscious appeal--and, as she did so, a brilliant ray of light flashed downward from the summit of the cross which surmounted the altar, and remained extended slantwise towards her. she saw it,--and waited expectantly. close to her ears a voice spoke with extreme softness, yet very distinctly. "can you hear me?" "yes," she replied at once, with equal softness. "then, listen! i have a message for you!" and morgana listened,--listened intently,--the sapphire hue of the ray lighting her gold hair, as she knelt, absorbed. what she heard filled her with a certain dread; and a tremor of premonition, like the darkness preceding storm, shook her nerves. but the inward spirit of her was as a warrior clothed in steel,--she was afraid of nothing--least of all of any event or incident passing for "supernatural," knowing beyond all doubt that the most seeming miraculous circumstances are all the result of natural movement and transmutation. there never had been anything surprising to her in the fact that light is a conveyor of sound; and that she was receiving a message by such means seemed no more extraordinary to her mind than receiving it by the accepted telephonic service. every word spoken she heard with the closest attention--until--as though a cloud had suddenly covered it,--the "sound-ray" vanished, and the voice ceased. she rose at once from her knees, alert and ready for action--her face was pale, her lips set, her eyes luminous. "i must not hesitate"--she said--"if i can save him i will!" she left the chapel and hurried home, where as soon as she reached her own private room she wrote to the marchese rivardi the following note, which was more than unpleasantly startling to him when he received it. "i shall need you and gaspard for a long journey in the 'white eagle.' prepare everything in the way of provisioning and other necessary details. no time must be lost, and no expense need be spared. we must start as quickly as possible." this message written, sealed and dispatched by one of her servants to the marchese's villa, she sat for some moments lost in thought, wistfully looking out on her flower-filled gardens and the shimmering blue of the mediterranean beyond. "i may be too late!" she said, speaking aloud to herself--"but i will take the risk! he will not care--no!--a man like that cares for nothing but himself. he would have broken my life--(had i given him the chance!)--for the sake of an experiment. now--if i can--i will rescue his for the sake of an ideal!" chapter xxi "there shall be no more wars!--there can be none!" roger seaton said these words aloud with defiant emphasis, addressing the dumb sky. it was early morning, but an intense heat had so scorched the earth that not the smallest drop of dew glittered on any leaf or blade of grass; it was all arid, brown and burned into a dryness as of fever. but seaton was far too much engrossed with himself and his own business to note the landscape, or to be troubled by the suffocating closeness of the atmosphere,--he stood gazing with the idolatry of a passionate lover at a small, plain metal case, containing a dozen or more small plain metal cylinders, as small as women's thimbles, all neatly ranged side by side, divided from contact with one another by folded strips of cotton. "there it is!" he went on, apostrophising the still air--"complete,--perfected! if i sold that to any nation under the sun, that nation could rule the world!--could wipe out everything save itself and its own people! i have wrested the secret from the very womb of nature!--it is mine--all mine! i would have given it to britain--or to the united states--but neither will accept my terms--so therefore i hold it--i, only!--which is just as well! i--just i--am master of destiny!--the power we call god, has put this tiling into my hands! what a marvel and shall i not use it? i will! let germany but stir an inch towards aggression, and germany shall exist no longer!--the same with any other nation that starts a quarrel--i--i alone will settle it!" his eyes blazed with the light of fanaticism--he was obsessed by the force of his own ideas and schemes, and the metal case on the table before him was, to his mind, time, life, present and future. he had arrived at that questionable point of intellectual attainment when man forgets that there is any existing force capable of opposing him, and imagines that he has but to go on in his own way to grasp all worlds and the secrets of their being. at this juncture, so often arrived at by many, a kind of super-sureness sets in, persuading the finite nature that it has reached the infinite. the whole mental organisation of the man thrilled with an awful consciousness of power. he said within himself "i hold the lives of millions at my mercy!" other thoughts--other dreams had passed away for the moment--he had forgotten life as it presents itself to the ordinary human being. now and again a flitting vision of morgana vaguely troubled him,--her intellectual capacity annoyed him, and yet he would have been glad to discuss with her the scientific unfolding of his great secret--she would understand it in all its bearings,--she might advise--advice!--no!--he did not need the advice of a woman! as for manella, he had not seen her since her last violent outburst of what he called "temper"--and he had no wish for her presence. for now he had a thing to do which was of paramount importance,--and this was, to deposit the treasured discovery of his life in a secret hiding-place he had found for it, till he should be ready to remove it to safer quarters--or--till he resolved to use it. had he been a religious man, of such humility as should accompany true religion, he would have prayed that its use should never be called upon,--but he had trained himself into an attitude of such complete indifferentism towards life and the things of life, that to him it seemed useless to pray for what did not matter. sometimes the thought, appalling in its truth, flashed across his brain that the force he had discovered and condensed within small compass might as easily destroy half the world as a nation! the fabled thunderbolts of jove were child's play compared with those plain-looking, thimble-like cylinders which contained such terrific power! a touch of hesitation--of pure human dread affected his nerves for the moment,--he shivered in the sultry air as with cold, and looked about him right and left as though suspecting some hidden witness of his actions. there was not so much as a bird or a butterfly in sight, and he drew a long deep breath of relief. the day was treading in the steps of dawn with the full blazonry of burning californian sunlight, and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. there was great stillness everywhere,--a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. the twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,--so seaton felt, though accustomed to deep silence. "better get through with this at once"--he said, aloud--"now that a safe place is prepared." here he looked at his watch. "in a couple of hours they will be sending up from the plaza to know if i want anything--irish jake or manilla will be coming on some trivial matter--i'd better take the opportunity of complete secrecy while i can." for the next few minutes or so he hesitated. with the sudden fancy that he had forgotten something, he turned out his pockets, looking for he scarcely knew what. the contents were mixed and various, and among them was a crumpled letter which he had received some days since from sam gwent. he smoothed it out carefully and re-read it, especially one passage-"i think the states will never get involved in another war, but i am fairly sure germany will. if she joins up with russia look out for squalls. in your old country, which appears to be peopled by madmen, there's a writing chap who spent a fortnight in russia, not long enough to know the ins and outs of a village, yet assuming to know everything about the biggest territory in europe, and the press is puffing up his ignorance as if it were wisdom. germany has her finger on the spot--so perhaps your stuff will come in useful. but don't forget that if you make up your mind to use it you will ruin america, commercially speaking. and many other countries besides. so think it well over,--more than a hundred times! lydia herbert, whom perhaps you remember, and perhaps you don't, has caught her 'ancient mariner'--that is to say, her millionaire,--and all fashionable new york is going to the wedding, including yours truly. i had expected morgana royal to grace the function, but i hear she is quite engrossed with the decoration and furnishing of her sicilian palace, as well as with her advising artist, a very good-looking marquis or marchese as he is called. it is also whispered that she has invented a wonderful air-ship which has no engines, and creates its own motive power as it goes! sounds rather tall talk!--but this is an age of wonders and we never know what next. there is a new light ray just out which prospects for gold, oil and all ores and minerals, and finds them in a fifty-mile circuit--so probably nobody need be poor for the future. when we've all got most things we want, and there's nothing left to work for, i wonder what the world will be worth!" seaton left off reading and thrust the letter again in his pocket. "what will the world be worth?" he soliloquised--"why, nothing!" suddenly struck by this thought, which had not always presented itself with such sharp and clear precision as now, he took time to consider it. capital and labour, the two forces which are much more prone to rend each other than to co-operate--these would both possibly be non-existent if science had its full way. if gold, silver and other precious minerals could be "picked up" as on the fabled tom tiddler's ground, by a ray of light, then the striving for wealth would cease and work would be reduced to a minimum. the prospect was stupendous, but hardly entirely pleasing. if there were no need for effort, then the powers of mind and body would sink into inertia. "what object should we live for?" he mused--"merely to propagate our own kind and bring more effortless beings into the world to cumber it? the very idea is horrible! work is the very blood and bone of existence--without it we should rot! but one must work for something or some one--wife?--children?--useless labour!--for in nine cases out often the wife becomes a bore,--and the children grow up ungrateful. why waste strength and feeling on either?" thus mentally arguing, the exquisite lines of tennyson's "lotus eaters" suddenly rang in his memory like a chime of bells from the old english village where he had lived as a boy, when his mother, one of the past sweet "old-fashioned" women, used to read to him and teach him much of the best in literature,- "death is the end of life; ah, why should life all labour be? let us alone. time driveth onward fast and in a little while our lips are dumb, let us alone. what is it that will last? all things are taken from us and become portions and parcels of the dreadful past, let us alone. what pleasure can we have to war with evil? is there any peace in ever climbing up the climbing wave?" an effortless existence would be the existence of such as these fabled lotus eaters--moreover, it was not possible it could go on, since all nature shows effort without cessation. roger seaton knew this as all know it--but his soul's demand remained unsatisfied, for he sought to know the cause of all the toil and trouble,--the "why" it should be. and at the back of his mind there was ever a teasing reminder of morgana and her strange theories, some of which she had half imparted to him when their friendship had first begun. for her tennyson's line--"death is the end of life"--would be the statement of a foolish fallacy, as she held that there is no such thing as death, only failure to adapt the spirit to advancing and higher change in its physical organisation. to-day he remembered with curious clearness what she had said on this subject-"radio-activity is the chief secret of life. it is for us to learn how to absorb it into our systems as we grow,--to add by its means to our supplies of vitality and energy. it never gives out,--nor should we. the nature-intention is that we should become better, stronger, more beautiful, more mentally and spiritually perfect--and that we do not fulfil this intention is our own fault. the decimation of the human race by wars and plagues and famines has always been traceable to human error. all accidents happen through those who make accidents possible,--diseases are bred through human dirt, greed, ignorance, and neglect. they are no part of the divine scheme of things. the plan is to advance and make progress from one point of excellence to another,--not to stop half way and turn back on the road. humanity dies, because it will not learn how to live." she had spoken these words with a quiet simplicity and earnestness that impressed him at the time as being almost child-like, considering the depth of thought into which she must have plunged, notwithstanding her youth and her sex--and on this morning of all others, this morning on which he had set himself a task for which he had made long and considerable preparation, he found himself half mechanically repeating her phrase--"humanity dies because it will not learn how to live." there was no fatalism,--no fixed destiny in this; only the force of will was implied--the will to learn,--the will to know. "and why should not humanity die?" he argued within himself--"if, in the long course of ages, it is proved that it will neither learn nor know,--why should it remain? room should be made for a new race! a clever gardener can produce a perfectly beautiful flower from an insignificant and common weed,--surely this is a lesson to us that it may be possible to produce a god from a man!" he bent his eyes lovingly on the case of small cylinders lying open before him;--the just risen sun brightened them to a glitter as of cold steel,--and for a moment he fancied they flashed upon him with an almost sinister gleam. "power of good or power of evil?" he questioned his inward spirit--"who can decide? if it is good to destroy evil then the force is a good force--if it is evil to destroy good with evil, then it is an evil thing. but nature makes no such particular discriminations--she destroys evil and good together at one blow. why therefore should i--or anyone--offer to discriminate?--since evil is always the preponderating factor. when the 'lusitania' was torpedoed neither god nor nature interfered to save the innocent from the guilty--men, women and children were all plunged into the pitiless sea. i--as a part of nature--if i destroy, i only follow her example. war is an evil,--an abominable crime--and those that attempt to make it should be swept from the face of the earth even if good and peace-loving units are swept along with them. this cannot be helped." he went into his hut, and in a few minutes came out again clothed in thick garments of a dark, earth colour, and carrying a stout staff, steel-pointed at its end something after the fashion of a swiss alpenstock. he brought with him a small metal box into which he placed the case of cylinders, covering it with a closely fitting lid. then he put the package into a basket made of rough twigs and strips of bark, having a strong handle, to which he fastened a leather strap, and slung the whole thing over his shoulders like a knapsack. then, casting another look round to make sure that there was no one about, he started to walk towards a steeper descent of the hill in a totally different direction from that which led to the "plaza" hotel. he went swiftly, at a steady swinging pace,--and though his way took him among confused masses of rock, and fallen boulders, he thought nothing of these obstacles, vaulting lightly across them with the ease of a chamois, till he came to a point where there was a declivity running sheer down to invisible depths, from whence came the rumbling echo of falling water. in this almost perpendicular wall of rock were a few ledges, like the precarious rungs of a broken ladder, and down these he prepared to go. clinging at first to the topmost edge of the precipice, he let himself down warily inch by inch till his figure entirely disappeared, sunken, as it were in darkness. as he vanished there was a sudden cry--a rush as of wings--and a woman sprang up from amid bushes where she had lain hidden,--it was manella. for days and nights she had stolen away in the intervals of her work, to watch him--and nothing had chanced to excite her alarm till now--till now, when she had seen him emerge from his hut and pack up the mysterious box he carried,--and when she had heard him talking strangely to himself in a way she could not understand. as soon as he started to walk she followed him, pushing through heavy brushwood and crawling along the ground where she could not be seen;--and now,--with dishevelled hair, and staring, terrified eyes she leaned over the edge of the precipice, baffled and desperate. tearless sobs convulsed her throat,-"oh, god of mercy!" she moaned in suffocated accents--"how can i follow him down there! oh, help me, mary mother! help me! i must--i must be with him!" she gathered up her hair in a close coil and wound her skirts tightly about her, looking everywhere for a footing. she saw a deep cranny which had been hollowed out by some torrent of water--it cut sharply through the rock like a path,--she could risk that perhaps, she thought,--and yet her brain reeled--she felt sick and giddy--would it not be wiser to stay where she was and wait for the return of the reckless creature who had ventured all alone into one of the deepest canons of the whole country? while she hesitated she caught a sudden glimpse of him, stepping with apparent ease over huge heaps of stones and fallen pieces of rock at the bottom of the declivity,--she watched his movements in breathless suspense. on he went towards a vast aperture, shaped arch-wise like the entrance to a cavern--he paused a moment--then entered it. this was enough for manella--her wild love and wilder terror gave her an almost supernatural strength and daring,--and all heedless now of results she sprang boldly towards the deep cutting in the rock, swinging herself from jagged point to point till--reaching the bottom of the declivity at last, bruised and bleeding, but undaunted,--she stopped, checked by a rushing stream which tumbled over great boulders and dashed its cold spray in her face. looking about her she saw to her dismay that the vaulted cavern wherein seaton had disappeared was on the other side of this stream--she stood almost opposite to it--but how to get across? gazing despairingly in every direction she suddenly perceived the fallen trunk of a tree lying half in and half out of the brawling torrent--it was green with slippery moss and offered but a dangerous foothold,--nevertheless she resolved to attempt it. "i said i would die for him!" she thought--"and i will!" getting astride the tree, it swayed under her,--but she found she could push one of the larger boughs forward to lengthen the extemporary bridge,--and so, as it were, riding the waters, which surged noisily around her, she managed by dint of super-human effort to reach the projection of pebbly shore where the entrance to the cavern yawned open before her, black and desolate. the sun in its full morning glory blazed slanting down upon the darkness of the canon, and as she stood shivering, wet through and utterly exhausted, wondering what next she should do, she caught sight of a form moving within the cave like a moving shadow, and ascending a steep natural stairway of columnar rocks piled one on top of the other. affrighted as she was by the tomb-like aspect of the deep vault, she had not ventured so far that she should now shrink from further dangers or fail in her quest;--the cherished object of her constant watchful care was within that subterranean blackness,--for what purpose?--she did not dare to think! but there was an instinctive sense of dread foreknowledge upon her,--a warning of impending evil,--and had she not sworn to him--"if god struck you down to hell i would be there!" the entrance to the cavern looked like the mouth of hell itself, as she had seen it depicted in one of her catholic early lesson books. there were serpents and dragons in the picture ready to devour the impenitent sinner,--there might be serpents and dragons in this cave, for all she knew! but what matter? if the man she loved were actually in hell she "would be there"--as she had said!--and would surely find it heaven! and so,--seeing the mere outline of his form moving ghost-like in the gloom, it was to her a guiding presence,--a light amid darkness,--and when,--after a minute or two--her straining eyes perceived him climbing steadily up the steep and perilous rocks, seeming about to disappear altogether,--she mastered the tremor of her nerves and crept cautiously step by step into the sombre vault, blindly feeling her way through the damp, thick murkiness, reckless of all danger, and only bent on following him. chapter xxii of all the vagaries and humours of humanity when considered in crowds, there is nothing which appears more senseless and objectless than the way in which it congregates outside the door of a church at a fashionable or "society" wedding. the massed people pushing and shoving each other about have nothing whatever to do with either bride or bridegroom, the ceremony inside the sacred edifice has in most cases ceased to be a "sacrament"--and has become a mere show of dressed-up manikins and womenkins, many of the latter being mere object d'art,--stands for the display of millinery. and yet--the crowds fight and jostle,--women scramble and scream,--all to catch a glimpse of the woman who is to be given to the man, and the man who has agreed to accept the woman. the wealthier the pair the wilder the frenzy to gaze upon them. savages performing a crazy war-dance are decorous of behaviour in contrast with these "civilised" folk who tramp on each other's feet and are ready to squeeze each other into pulp for the chance of staring at two persons whom the majority of them have never seen before and are not likely to see again. the wedding of miss lydia herbert with her "ancient mariner," a seventy-year-old millionaire reputed to be as wealthy as rockefeller,--was one of these "sensations"--chiefly on account of the fact that every unmarried woman young and old, and every widow, had been hunting him in vain for fully five years. miss herbert had been voted "no chance," because she made no secret of her extravagant tastes in dress and jewels,--yet despite society croakers she had won the game. this in itself was interesting,--as the millionaire she had secured was known to be particularly close-fisted and parsimonious. nevertheless he had shown remarkable signs of relaxing these tendencies; for he had literally showered jewels on his chosen bride, leaving no door open for any complaint in that quarter. her diamonds were the talk of new york, and on the day of her wedding her gowns literally flashed like a firework with numerous dazzling points of light. "the voice that breathed o'er eden" had little to do with the magnificence of her attire, or with the brilliancy of the rose-wreathed bridesmaids, young girls of specially selected beauty and elegance who were all more or less disappointed in failing to win the millionaire themselves. for these youthful persons in their 'teens had social ambitions hidden in hearts harder than steel--"a good time" of self-indulgence and luxury was all they sought for in life--in fact, they had no conception of any higher ideal. the millionaire himself, though old, maintained a fairly middle-aged appearance--he was a thin, wiry, well-preserved man, his wizened and furrowed countenance chiefly showing the marks of time's ploughshare. it would have been difficult to say why, out of all the feminine butterflies hovering around him, he had chosen lydia herbert,--but he was a shrewd judge of character in his way, and he had decided that as she was not in her first youth it would be more worth her while to conduct herself decorously as wife and housekeeper, and generally look after his health and comfort, than it would be for a less responsible woman. then, she had "manner,"--her appearance was attractive and she wore her clothes well and stylishly. all this was enough for a man who wanted some one to attend to his house and entertain his friends, and he was perfectly satisfied with himself as he repeated after the clergyman the words, "with my body i thee worship, and with all my worldly goods i thee endow," knowing that "with his body" he had never worshipped anything, and that the "endowment" of his worldly goods was strictly limited to certain settlements. he felt himself to be superior to his old bachelor friend sam gwent, who supported him as "best man" at the ceremony, and who, as he stood, stiffly upright in immaculate "afternoon visiting attire" among the restlessly swaying, semi-whispering throng, was all the time thinking of the dusky night-gloom in the garden of the "plaza" far away in california and a beautiful face set against the dark background of myrtle bushes exhaling rich perfume. "what a startling contrast she would be to these dolls of fashion!" he thought--"what a sensation she would make! there's not a woman here who can compare with her! if i were only a bit younger i'd try my luck!--anyway i'm younger than to-day's bridegroom!--but she--manella--would never look at any other man than seaton, who doesn't care a rap for her or any other woman!" here his thoughts took another turn. "no," he repeated inwardly--"he doesn't care a rap for her or any other woman--except--perhaps--morgana! and even if it were morgana, it would be for himself and himself alone! while she--ah!--it would be a clever brain indeed that could worry out what she cares for! nothing in this world, so far as i can see!" here the organ poured the rich strains of a soft and solemn prelude through the crowded church--the "sacred" part of the ceremony was over, and bride and bridegroom made their way to the vestry, there to sign the register in the presence of a selected group of friends. sam gwent was one of these,--and though he had attended many such functions before, he was more curiously impressed than usual by the unctuous and barefaced hypocrisy of the whole thing--the smiling humbug of the officiating clergy,--the affected delight of the "society" toadies fluttering like wasps round bride and bride-groom as though they were sweet dishes specially for stinging insects to feed upon, and in his mind he seemed to hear the warm, passionate voice of manella in frank admission of her love for seaton. "it is good to love him!" she had said--"i am happy to love him. i wish only to serve him!" this was primitive passion,--the passion of primitive woman for her mate whom she admitted to be stronger than herself, to whom she instinctively looked for shelter and protection, and round whose commanding force she sought to rear the lovely fabric of "home,"--a state of feeling as far removed from the sentiments of modern women as the constellation of orion is removed from earth. and sam gwent's fragmentary reflections flitting through his brain were more serious--one might say more romantic, than the consideration of dollars, which usually occupied all his faculties. he had always thought that there was a good deal in life which he had missed somehow, and which dollars could not purchase; and a certain irate contempt filled him for the man who, unlike himself, was in the prime of strength, and who, with all the glories of nature about him and the love and beauty of an exquisite womanhood at his hand for possession, could nevertheless devote his energies to the science of destruction and the compassing of death without compunction, on the lines roger seaton had laid down as the remedy against all war. "the kindest thing to think of him is that he's not quite sane,"--gwent mused--"he has been obsessed by the horrible carnage of the great war, and disgusted by the utter inefficiency of governments since the armistice, and this appalling invention of his is the result." the crashing chords of the bridal march from "lohengrin" put an end to his thoughts for the moment,--people began to crush and push out of church, or stand back on each other's toes to stare at the bride's diamonds as she moved very slowly and gracefully down the aisle on the arm of her elderly husband. she certainly looked very well,--and her smile suggested entire satisfaction with herself and the world. press-camera men clambered about wherever they could find a footing, to catch and perpetuate that smile, which when enlarged and reproduced in newspapers would depict the grinning dental display so much associated with woodrow wilson and the prince of wales,--though more suggestive of a skull than anything else. skulls invariably show their teeth, we know--but it has been left to the modern press-camera man to insist on the death-grin in faces that yet live. the crowd outside the church was far denser than the crowd within, and the fighting and scrambling for points of view became terrific, especially when the wedding guests' motor-cars began to make their way, with sundry hoots and snorts, through the densely packed mob. women screamed,--some fainted--but none thought of giving way to others, or retiring from the wild scene of contest. gwent judged it wisest to remain within the church portal till the crowd should clear, and there, safely ensconced, he watched the maddened mass of foolish sight-seers, all of whom had plainly left their daily avocations merely to stare at a man and woman wedded, with whom, personally, they had nothing whatever to do. "people talk about unemployment!" he mused--"there's enough human material in this one street to make wealth for themselves and the whole community, yet they are idle by their own choice. if they had anything to do they wouldn't be here!" he laughed grimly,--the utter stodginess and stupidity of humanity en masse had of late struck him very forcibly, and he found every excuse for the so-called incapacity of governments, seeing the kind of folk they are called upon to govern. he realised, as we all who read history, must do, that we are no worse and no better than the peoples of the past,--we are just as hypocritical, fraudulent, deceptive and cruel as ever they were in legalised torture-times, and just as ineradicably selfish. the pagans practised a religion which they did not truly believe in, and so do we. all through the ages god has been mocked;--all through the ages divine vengeance has fallen on the mockers and the mockery. "and after all," thought gwent--"wars are as necessary as plagues to clear out a superabundant population, only most unfortunately nature adopts such recklessness in her methods that it most often happens the best among us are taken, and the worst left. i tried to impress this on seaton, whose system of destruction would involve the good as well as the bad--but these intellectual monsters of scientific appetite have no conscience and no sentiment. to prove their theories they would annihilate a continent." here a sudden ugly rush of the crowd, dangerous to both life and limb, pushed him back against the church portal with the force of a tidal wave,--it was not concerned with the bridal pair who had already driven away in their automobile, nor with the wedding guests who were following them to the great hotel where the bride's reception was held--it was caused by the wild dash of half a dozen or so of unkempt men and boys who tore a passage for themselves through the swaying mob of sightseers, waving newspapers aloft and shouting loudly with voices deep and shrill, clear and hoarse-"earthquake in california! terrible loss of life! thousands dead! awful scenes! earthquake in california!" the people swayed again--then stopped in massed groups,--some clutching at the newsboys as they ran and buying the papers as fast as they could be sold, while all the time above the muffled roar of the city they sent their cries aloft, echoing near and far-"thousands dead! awful scenes! towns destroyed! terrible earthquake in california!" sam gwent stepped out from the church portal, elbowing his way through the confusion,--the yells of the news vendors rang sharply in his ears and yet for the moment he scarcely grasped their meaning; "california" was the one word that caught him, as it were, with a hammer stroke,--then "thousands dead!" finding at last an open passage through the dispersing crowd, he went at something of a run after one of the newsboys, and snatched the last paper he had to sell out of his hand. "what is it?" he demanded as he paid his money. "dunno!" the boy replied, breathlessly--"'xpect everybody's dead down california way!" gwent unfolded the journal and stared at the great headlines, printed in fat black letters, still smelling strongly of printer's ink. appalling earthquake in california!--mountain upheaval!--towns wiped out!--plaza hotel engulfed!--frightful loss of life! his eyes grew dim and dazzled--his brain swam,--he gazed up unseeingly at the blue sky, the tall "sky-scraper" houses, the sweep of human and vehicular traffic around him; and to his excited fancy the beautiful face of manella came, like a phantom, between him and all else that was presented to his vision--that face warm and glowing with woman's tenderness--the splendid dark eyes aflame with love for a man whose indifference to her only strengthened her adoration and he seemed to hear the deep defiant voice of roger seaton ringing in his ears-"annihilation! a holocaust of microbes! i would--and could--wipe them off the face of the earth in twenty-four hours!" he could--and would! "and by heaven," said gwent, within himself--"he's done it!" chapter xxiii struck by the hand of god! so men say when, after denying god's existence ail their lives, the seeming solid earth heaves up like a ship on a storm-billow, dragging down in its deep recoil their lives and habitations. an earthquake! its irresistible rise and fall makes human beings more powerless than insects,--their houses and possessions have less stability than the spider's web which swings its frail threads across broken columns in greater safety than any man-made bridge of stone,--and terror, mad, hopeless, helpless terror, possesses every creature brought face to face with the dire cruelty of natural forces, which from the very beginning have played havoc with struggling mankind. struck by the hand of god!--and with a merciless blow! all the sunny plains and undulating hills of the beautiful stretch of land in southern california, in the centre of which the "plaza" hotel and sanatorium had stood, were now unrecognisable,--the earth was torn asunder and thrown into vast heaps--great rocks and boulders were tumbled over each other pell-mell in appalling heights of confusion, and, for miles around, towns, camps and houses were laid in ruins. the scene was one of absolute horror,--there was no language to express or describe it--no word of hope or comfort that could be fitly used to lighten the blackness of despair and loss. gangs of men were at relief work as soon as they could be summoned, and these busied themselves in extricating the dead, and rescuing the dying whose agonised cries and moans reproached the power that made them for such an end,--and perhaps as terrible as any other sound was the savage roar and rush of a loosened torrent which came tearing furiously down from the cleft hills to the lower land, through the great canon beyond the site where the plaza had stood,--a canon which had become enormously widened by the riving and the rending of the rocks, thus giving free passage to wild waters that had before been imprisoned in a narrow gorge. the persistent rush of the flood filled every inch of space with sound of an awful, even threatening character, suggesting further devastation and death. the men engaged in their dreadful task of lifting crushed corpses from under the stones that had fallen upon them, were almost overcome and rendered incapable of work by the appalling clamour, which was sufficient to torture the nerves of the strongest; and some of them, sickened at the frightful mutilation of the bodies they found gave up altogether and dropped from sheer fatigue and exhaustion into unconsciousness, despite the heroic encouragement of their director, a man well used to great emergencies. late afternoon found him still organising and administering aid, with the assistance of two or three catholic priests who went about seeking to comfort and sustain those who were passing "the line between." all the energetic helpers were prepared to work all night, delving into the vast suddenly made grave wherein were tumbled the living with the dead,--and it was verging towards sunset when one of the priests, chancing to raise his eyes from the chaos of earth around him to the clear and quiet sky, saw what at first he took to be a great eagle with outspread wings soaring slowly above the scene of devastation. it moved with singular lightness and ease,--now and then appearing to pause as though seeking some spot whereon to descend,--and after watching it for a minute or two he called the attention of some of the men around him to its appearance. they looked up wearily from their gruesome task of excavating the dead. "that's an air-ship"--said one--"and a big thing, too!" "an air-ship!" echoed the priest amazedly,--and then was silent, gazing at the shining expanse of sky through which the bird-shaped vessel made its leisurely way like the vision of a fairy tale more than any reality. there was something weirdly terrible in the contrast it made, moving so tranquilly through clear space in apparent safety, while down below on the so-called "solid" earth, all nature had been convulsed and overthrown. the wonderful result of human ingenuity as measured with the remorseless action of natural forces seemed too startling to be real to the mind of a spanish priest who, despite all the evidences of triumphant materialism, still clung to the cross and kept his simple, faithful soul high above the waves that threatened to engulf it. turning anew to his melancholy duties, he bent over a dying youth just lifted from beneath a weight of stones that had crushed him. the boy's fast glazing eyes were upturned to the sky. "see the angel coming?" he whispered, thickly--"never used to believe in them!--but there's one sure enough! glory--!" and his utterance ceased for ever. the priest crossed his hands upon his breast and said a prayer--then again looked up to where the air-ship floated in the darkening blue. it was now directly over the canon,--immediately above the huge rift made by the earthquake, through which the clamorous rush of water poured. while he watched it, it suddenly stood still, then dived slowly as though bent on descending into the very depths of the gully. he could not forbear uttering an exclamation, which made all the men about him look in the direction where his own gaze was fixed. "that air-ship's going to kingdom-come!" said one--"nothing can save it if it takes to nose-diving down there!" they all stared amazed--but the dreadful work on which they were engaged left them no time for consideration of any other matter. the priest watched a few minutes longer, more or less held spell-bound with a kind of terror, for he saw that without doubt the great vessel was either purposely descending or being drawn into the vast abyss yawning black beneath it, and that falling thus it must be inevitably doomed to destruction. whoever piloted it must surely be determined to invite this frightful end to its voyage, for nothing was ever steadier or more resolute than its downward movement towards the whirling waters that rushed through the canon. all suddenly it disappeared, whelmed as it seemed in darkness and the roaring flood, and the watching priest made the sign of the cross in air murmuring-"god have mercy on their souls!" had he been able to see what happened he might have thought that the confused brain of the dying boy who had imagined the air-ship to be an angel, was not so far wrong, for no romancer or teller of wild tales could have pictured a stranger or more unearthly sight than the wonderful "white eagle" poised at ease amid the tossed-up clouds of spray flung from the seething mass of waters, while at her prow stood a woman fair as any fabled goddess--a woman reckless of all danger, and keenly on the alert, with bright eyes searching every nook and cranny that could be discerned through the mist. clear above the roaring torrent her voice rang like a silver trumpet as she called her instructions to the two men who, equally defying every peril, had ventured on this journey at her command,--rivardi and gaspard. "let her down very gently inch by inch!" she cried; "it must be here that we should seek!" in absolute silence they obeyed. both had given themselves up for lost and were resigned and ready to meet death at any moment. from the first they had made no effort to resist morgana's orders--she and they had left sicily at a couple of hours' notice--and their three days' journey across the ocean had been accomplished without adventure or accident, at such a speed that it was hardly to be thought of without a thrill of horror. no information had been given them as to the object of their long and rapid aerial voyage,--and only now when the "white eagle," swooping over california, reached the scene of the terrific devastation wrought by the earthquake did they begin to think they had submitted their wills and lives to the caprice of a madwoman. however, there was no drawing back,--nothing for it but still to obey,--for even in the stress and terror naturally excited by their amazing position, they did not fail to see that the great air-ship was steadily controlled, and that whatever was the force controlling it, it maintained its level, its mysterious vibrating discs still throbbing with vital and incessant regularity. apparently nothing could disturb its equilibrium or shatter its mechanism. and, according to its woman-designer's command, they lowered it gently till it was, so to say, almost immersed in the torrent and covered with spray--indeed morgana's light figure itself at the prow looked like a fair spirit risen from the waters rather than any form of flesh and blood, so wreathed and transfigured it was by the dust of the ceaseless foam. she stood erect, bent on a quest that seemed hopeless, watching every eddying curve of water,--every flickering ripple,--her eyes, luminous as stars, searched the black and riven rocks with an eager passion of discovery,--when all suddenly as she gazed, a thin ray of light,--pure gold in colour,--struck sharply like a finger-point on a shallow pool immediately below her. she looked and uttered a cry, beckoning to rivardi. "come! come!" he hurried to her side, gaspard following. the pool on which her eyes were fixed was shallow enough to show the pebbly bed beneath the water--and there lay apparently two corpses--one of a man, the other of a woman whose body was half flung across that of the man. morgana pointed to them. "they must be brought up here!" she said, insistently--"you must lift them! we have emergency ropes and pulleys--it is easily done! why do you hesitate?" "because you demand the impossible!" said rivardi--"you send us to death to rescue the already dead!" she turned upon him with wrath in her eyes. "you refuse to obey me?" what a face confronted him! white as marble, and as terrible in expression as that of a medusa, it had a paralysing effect on his nerves, and he shrank and trembled at her glance. "you refuse to obey me?" she repeated--"then--if you do--i destroy this air-ship and ourselves in less than two minutes! choose! obey, and live!--disobey and die!" he staggered back from her in terror at her looks, which gave her a supernatural beauty and authority. the "fey" woman was "fey" indeed!--and the powers with which superstition endows the fairy folk seemed now to invest her with irresistible influence. "choose!" she reiterated. without another word he turned to gaspard, who in equal silence got out the ropes and pulleys of which she had spoken. the air-ship stopped dead--suspended immovably over the wild waters and almost hidden in spray; and though the strange vibration of its multitudinous discs continued in itself it was fixed as a rock. a smile sweet as sunshine after storm changed and softened morgana's features as she saw rivardi swing over the vessel's side to the pool below, while gaspard unwound the gear by which he would be able to lift and support the drowned creatures he was bidden to bring. "that's a true noble!" she exclaimed--"i knew your courage would not fail! believe me, no harm shall come to you!" inspirited by her words, he flung himself down--and raising the body of the woman first, was entangled by the wet thick strands of her long dark hair which, like sea-weed, caught about his feet and hands and impeded his movements. he had time just to see a face white as marble under the hair,--then he had enough to do to fasten ropes round the body and push it upward while gaspard pulled--both men doubting whether the weight of it would not alter the balance of the air-ship despite its extraordinary fixity of position. morgana, bending over from the vessel, watched every action,--she showed neither alarm nor impatience nor anxiety--and when gaspard said suddenly-"it is easier than i thought it would be!" she merely smiled as if she knew. another few moments and the drowned woman's body was hauled into the cabin of the ship, where morgana knelt down beside it. parting the heavy masses of dark hair that enshrouded it she looked--and saw what she had expected to see--the face of manella soriso. but it was the death-mask of a face--strangely beautiful--but awful in its white rigidity. morgana bent over it anxiously, but only for a moment, drawing a small phial from her bosom she forced a few drops of the liquid it contained between the set lips, and with a tiny syringe injected the same at the pulseless wrist and throat. while she busied herself with these restorative measures, the second body,--that of the man,--was landed almost at her feet--and she found herself gazing in a sort of blank stupefaction at what seemed to be the graven image of roger seaton. no effigy of stone ever looked colder, harder, greyer than this inert figure of man,--uninjured apparently, for there were no visible marks of wounds or bruises upon his features, which appeared frozen into stiff rigidity, but a man as surely dead as death could make him! morgana heard, as in a far-off dream, the marchese rivardi speaking-"i have done your bidding because it was you who bade,"--he said, his voice shaking with the tremor and excitement of his daring effort--"and it was not so very difficult. but it is a vain rescue! they are past recall." morgana looked up from her awed contemplation of seaton's rigid form. her eyes were heavy with unshed tears. "i think not,"--she said--"there is life in them--yes, there is life, though for the time it is paralysed. but"--here she gave him the loveliest smile of tenderness--"you brave giulio!--you are exhausted and wet through--attend to yourself first--then you can help me with these unhappy ones--and you gaspard,--gaspard!" "here, madama!" "you have done so well!" she said--"without fear or failure!" "only by god's mercy!" answered gaspard--"if the rope had broken; if the ship had lost balance--" she smiled. "so many 'ifs' gaspard? have i not told you it cannot lose balance? and are not my words proved true? now we have finished our rescue work we may go--we can start at once--" he looked at her. "there is more weight on board!" he said meaningly, "if we are to carry two dead bodies through the air, it may mean a heavenly funeral for all of us! the 'white eagle' has not been tested for heavy transport." she heard him patiently,--then turned to rivardi and repeated her words-"we can start at once. steer upwards and onwards." like a man hypnotised he obeyed,--and in a few moments the air-ship, answering easily to the helm, rose lightly as a bubble from the depths of the canon, through the fiercely dashing showers of spray tossed by the foaming torrent, and soared aloft, high and ever higher, as swiftly as any living bird born for long and powerful flight. night was falling; and through the dense purple shadows of the californian sky a big white moon rose, bending ghost-like over the scene of destruction and chaos, lighting with a pale glare the tired and haggard faces of the relief men at their terrible work of digging out the living and the dead from the vast pits of earth into which they had been suddenly engulfed,--while far, far above them flew the "white eagle," gradually lessening in size through distance till it looked no bigger than a dove on its homeward way. some priests watching by a row of lifeless men, women and children killed in the earthquake, chanted the "nunc dimittis" as the evening grew darker,--and the only one among them who had first seen the air-ship over the canon, where it fell, as it were in the deep gulf surrounded by flood and foam, now raised his eyes in wonderment as he perceived it once more soaring at liberty towards the moon. "surely a miracle!" he ejaculated, under his breath--"an escape from destruction through god's mercy! god be praised!" and he crossed himself devoutly, joining in the solemn chanting of his brethren, kneeling in the moonlight, which threw a ghastly lustre on the dead faces of the victims of the earthquake,--victims not "struck by the hand of god" but by the hand of man! and he who was responsible for the blow lay unconscious of having dealt it, and was borne through the air swiftly and safely away for ever from the tragic scene of the ruin and desolation he had himself wrought. chapter xxiv a great silence pervaded the palazzo d'oro,--the strained silence of an intense activity weighted with suspense. servants moved about here and there with noiseless rapidity,--don aloysius was seen constantly pacing up and down the loggia absorbed in anxious thought and prayer, and the marchese rivardi came and went on errands of which he alone knew the import. overhead the sky was brilliantly blue and cloudless,--the sun flashed a round shield of dazzling gold all day long on the breast of the placid sea,--but within the house, blinds were drawn to shade and temper the light for eyes that perhaps might never again open to the blessing and glory of the day. a full week had passed since the "white eagle" had returned from its long and adventurous flight over the vast stretches of ocean, bearing with it the two human creatures cast down to death in the deep californian canon,--and only one of them had returned to the consciousness of life,--the other still stayed on the verge of the "great divide." morgana had safely landed the heavy burden of seeming death her ship had carried,--and simply stating to lady kingswood and her household staff that it was a case of rescue from drowning, had caused the two corpses--(such as they truly appeared)--to be laid, each in a separate chamber, surrounded with every means that could be devised or thought of for their resuscitation. in an atmosphere glowing with mild warmth, on soft beds they were placed, inert and white as frozen clay, their condition being apparently so hopeless that it seemed mere imaginative folly to think that the least breath could ever again part their set lips or the smallest pulsation of blood stir colour through their veins. but morgana never wavered in her belief that they lived, and hour after hour, day after day she watched with untiring patience, administering the mysterious balm or portion which she kept preciously in her own possession,--and not till the fifth day of her vigil, when manella showed faint signs of returning consciousness, did she send to rome for a famous scientist and physician with whom she had frequently corresponded. she entrusted the dispatch of this message to rivardi, saying-"it is now time for further aid than mine. the girl will recover--but the man--the man is still in the darkness!" and her eyes grew heavy with a cloud of sorrow and regret which softened her delicate beauty and made it more than ever unearthly. "what are they--what is he--to you?" demanded rivardi jealously. "my friend, there was a time when i should have considered that question an impertinence from you!" she said, tranquilly--"but yours is the great share of the rescue--and your magnificent bravery wins you my pardon,--for many things!" and she smiled as she saw him flush under her quiet gaze--"what is this man to me, you ask? why nothing!--not now! once he was everything,--though he never knew it. some quality in him struck the keynote of the scale of life for me,--he was the great delusion of a dream! the delusion is ended--the dream is over! but for that he was to me, though only in my own thoughts, i have tried to save his life--not for myself, but for the woman who loves him." "the woman we rescued with him?--the woman who is here?" she bent her head in assent. rivardi's eyes dwelt on her with greater tenderness than he had ever felt before,--she looked so frail and fairy-like, and withal so solitary. he took her little hand and gently kissed it with courteous reverence. "then--after all--you have known love!" he said in a low voice--"you have felt what it is,--though you have assumed to despise it?" "my good giulio, i do despise most heartily what the world generally understands as love"--she replied; "there is no baser or more selfish sentiment!--a sentiment made up half of animal desire and half of a personal seeking for admiration, appreciation and self-gratification! yes, giulio!--it is so, and i despise it for all these attributes--in truth it is not what i understand or accept as love at all--" "what do you understand and accept?" he asked, softly. her eyes shone kindly as she raised them to his face. "not what you can ever give, giulio!" she said--"love--to my mind--is the spiritual part of our being--it should be the complete union of two souls that move as one,--like the two wings of a bird making the body subservient to the highest flights, even as far as heaven! the physical mating of man and woman is seldom higher than the physical mating of any other animals under the sun,--the animals know nothing beyond--but we--we ought to know something!" she paused, then went on--"there is sometimes a great loftiness even in the physical way of so-called 'love'--such passion as the woman we have rescued has for the man she was ready to die with,--a primitive passion of primitive woman at her best. such feeling is out of date in these days--we have passed that boundary line--and a great unexplored world lies open before us--who can say what we may find there! perhaps we shall discover what all women have sought for from the beginning of things--" "and that is?" he asked. "happiness!" she replied--"the perfect happiness of life in love!" he had held her hand till now, when he released it. "i wish i could give it to you!" he said. "you cannot, giulio! i am not made for any man--as men go!" "it is a pity you think so"--he said--"for--after all--you are just--a woman!" "am i?" she murmured,--and a strange flitting smile brightened her features--"perhaps!--and yet--perhaps not! who knows!" she left him puzzled and uneasy. somehow she always managed to evade his efforts to become more intimate in his relations with her. generous and kind-hearted as she was, she held him at a distance, and maintained her own aloof position inexorably. a less intelligent man than rivardi would have adopted the cynic's attitude and averred that her rejection of love and marriage arose from her own unlovableness and unmarriageableness, but he knew better than that. he was wise enough to perceive the rareness and delicacy of her physical and mental organisation and temperament,--a temperament so finely strung as to make all other women seem gross and material beside her. he felt and knew her to be both his moral and intellectual superior,--and this very fact rendered it impossible that he could ever master her mind and tame it down to the subservience of married life. that dauntless spirit of hers would never bend to an inferior,--not even love (if she could feel it) would move her thus far. and the man she had adventured across ocean to rescue--what was he? she confessed that she had loved him, though that love was past. and now she had set herself to watch night and day by his dead body (for dead he surely was in rivardi's opinion) sparing no pains to recover what seemed beyond recovery; while one of the greatest mysteries of the whole mysterious affair was just this--how had she known the man's life was in danger? all these questions rivardi discussed with don aloysius, who listened to him patiently without committing himself to any reply. whatever morgana had confided to him--(and she had confided much)--he kept his own counsel. within forty-eight hours of morgana's summons the famous specialist from rome, professor marco ardini, noted all over the world for his miraculous cures of those whom other physicians had given up as past curing, arrived. he heard the story of the rescue of a man and woman from drowning with emotionless gravity, more taken for the moment by morgana herself, whom he had never seen before, but with whom he had corresponded on current questions of scientific importance. from the extremely learned and incisive tone of her letters he had judged her to be an elderly woman of profound scholarship who had spent the greater part of her life in study, and his astonishment at the sight of the small, dainty creature who received him in the library of the palazzo d'oro was beyond all verbal expression,--in fact, he took some minutes to recover from the magnetic "shock" of her blue eyes and wistful smile. "i must be quite frank with you,"--she said, after a preliminary conversation with the great man in his own italian tongue--"these two people have suffered their injuries by drowning--but not altogether. they are the victims of an earthquake,--and were thrown by the earth's upheaval into a deep chasm flooded by water--" the professor interrupted her. "pardon, signora! there has been no recent earthquake in europe." she gave a little gesture of assent. "not in europe--no! but in america--in california there has been a terrible one!" "in california!" he echoed amazedly-"gran' dio! you do not mean to say that you brought these people from california, across that vast extent of ocean?" she smiled. "by air-ship--yes! really nothing so very remarkable! you will not ask for further details just now, professor!" and she laid her pretty hand coaxingly on his arm--"you and i both know how advisable it is to say as little as possible of our own work or adventures, while any subject is awaiting treatment and every moment counts! i will answer any question you may ask when you have seen my patients. the girl is a beautiful creature--she is beginning to regain consciousness--but the man i fear is past even your skill. come!" she led the way and professor ardini followed, marvelling at her ethereal grace and beauty, and more than interested in the "case" on which his opinion was sought. entering a beautiful room glowing with light and warmth and colour, he saw, lying on a bed and slightly propped up by pillows, a lovely girl, pale as ivory, with dark hair loosely braided on either side of her head. her eyes were closed, and the long black lashes swept the cheeks in a curved fringe,--the lips were faintly red, and the breath parted them slowly and reluctantly. the professor bent over her and listened,--her heart beat slowly but regularly,--he felt her pulse. "she will live!"--he said--"there are no injuries?" "none"--morgana replied, as he put his questions--"some few bruises--but no bones broken--nothing serious." "you have examined her?" "yes." "you have no nurses?" "no. i and my house people are sufficient." her tone became slightly peremptory. "there is no need for outside interference. whatever your orders are, they shall be carried out." he looked at her. his face was a somewhat severe one, furrowed with thought and care,--but when he smiled, a wonderful benevolence gave it an almost handsome effect. and he smiled now. "you shall not be interfered with,"--he said--"you have done very well! complete rest, nourishment and your care are all that this patient needs. she will be quite herself in a very short time. she is extraordinarily beautiful!" "i wish you could see her eyes!" said morgana. almost as if the uttered wish had touched some recess of her stunned brain, manella's eyelids quivered and lifted,--the great dark glory of the stars of her soul shone forth for an instant, giving sudden radiance to the pallor of her features--then they closed again as in utter weariness. "magnificent!" said ardini, under his breath--"and full of the vital light,--she will live!" "and she will love!" added morgana, softly. the professor looked at her enquiringly. "the man she loves is in the next room"--she continued--"we rescued him with her--if it can be called a rescue. he is the worst case. only you may be able to bring him back to consciousness,--i have done my best in vain. if you fail then we must give up hope." she preceded him into the adjoining chamber; as he entered it after her he paused--almost intimidated, despite his long medical and surgical experience, by the stone-like figure of man that lay before him. it was as if one should have unearthed a statue, grey with time--a statue nobly formed, with a powerful head and severe features sternly set,--the growth of beard revealing, rather than concealing, the somewhat cruel contour of mouth and chin. the professor walked slowly up to the bed and looked at this strange effigy of a human being for many minutes in silence,--morgana watching him with strained but quiet suspense. presently he touched the forehead--it was stone-cold--then the throat, stone-cold and rigid--he bent down and listened for the heart's pulsations,--not a flutter--not a beat! drawing back from this examination he looked at morgana,--she met his eyes with the query in her own which she emphasised by the spoken word-"dead?" "no!"--he answered--"i think not. it is very difficult for a man of this type to die at all. granted favourable conditions--and barring accidents caused by the carelessness of others--he ought to be one of those destined to live for ever. but"--here he hesitated--"if i am right in my surmise,--of course it is only a first opinion--death would be the very best thing for him." "oh, why do you say that?" she asked, pitifully. "because the brain is damaged--hopelessly! this man--whoever he is--has been tampering with some chemical force he does not entirely understand,--his whole body is charged with its influence, and this it is that gives his form its unnatural appearance which, though death-like, is not death. if i leave him alone and untouched he will probably expire unconsciously in a few days,--but if--after what i have just told you--you wish me to set the life atoms going again,--even as a clock is wound up,--i can relax the tension which now paralyses the cells, muscles and nerves, and he will live--yes!--like most people without brains he will live a long time--probably too long!" morgana moved to the bedside and gazed with a solemn earnestness at the immobile, helpless form stretched out before her as though ready for burial. her heart swelled with suppressed emotion,--she thought with anguish of the brilliant brain, the strong, self-sufficient nature brought to such ruin through too great an estimate of human capability. tears rushed to her eyes-"oh, give him life!" she whispered--"give him life for the sake of the woman who loves him more than life!" the professor gave her a quick, keen glance. "you?" she shivered at the question as though struck by a cold wind,--then conquering the momentary weakness, answered-"no. the girl you have just seen. he is her world!" ardini's brows met in a saturnine frown. "her world will be an empty one!" he said, with an expressive gesture--"a world without fruit or flower,--without light or song! a dreary world! but such as it is,--such as it is bound to be,--it can live on,--a life-in-death." "are you quite sure of this?" morgana asked--"can any of us, however wise, be quite sure of anything?" his frown relaxed and his whole features softened. he took her hand and patted it kindly. "signora, you know as well as i do, that the universe and all within it represents law and order. a man is a little universe in himself--and if the guiding law of his system is destroyed, there is chaos and darkness. we scientists can say 'let there be light,' but the fulfilled result 'and there was light' comes from god alone!" "why should not god help in this case?" she suggested. "ah, why!" and ardini shrugged his shoulders--"how can i tell? my long experience has taught me that wherever the law has been broken god does not help! who knows whether this frozen wreck of man has obeyed or disobeyed the law? i can do all that science allows--" "and you will do it!" interrupted morgana eagerly, "you will use your best skill and knowledge--everything you wish shall be at your service--name whatever fee your merit claims--" he raised his hand with a deprecatory gesture. "money does not count with me, signora!" he said--"nor with you. the point with both of us in all our work is--success! is it not so? yes! and it is because i do not see a true success in this case that i hesitate; true success would mean the complete restoration of this man to life and intelligence,--but life without intelligence is no triumph for science. i can do all that science will allow--" "and you will do this 'all'"--said morgana, eagerly--"you will forego triumph for simple pity!--pity for the girl who would surely die if he were dead!--and perhaps after all, god may help the recovery!" "it shall be as you wish, signora! i must stay here two or three days--" "as long as you find it necessary"--said morgana--"all your orders shall be obeyed." "good! send me a trustworthy man-servant who can help to move and support the patient, and we can get to work. i left a few necessary appliances in your hall--i should like them brought into this room--and then--" here he took her hand and pressed it kindly--"you can leave us to our task, and take some rest. you must be very tired." "i am never tired"--she answered, gently--"i thank you in advance for all you are going to do!" she left the room then, with one backward glance at the inert stiff figure on the bed,--and went to arrange matters with her household that the professor's instructions should be strictly carried out. lady kingswood, deeply interested, heard her giving certain orders and asked-"there is hope then? these two poor creatures will live?" "i think so"--answered morgana, with a thrill of sadness in her sweet voice--"they will live--pray god their lives may be worth living!" she watched the man-servant whom she had chosen to wait on ardini depart on his errand--she saw him open the door of the room where seaton lay, and shut it--then there was a silence. oppressed by a sudden heaviness of heart she thought of manella, and entered her apartment softly to see how she fared. the girl's beautiful dark eyes were wide open and full of the light of life and consciousness. she smiled and stretched out her arms. "it is my angel!" she murmured faintly--"my little white angel who came to me in the darkness! and this is heaven!" swiftly and silently morgana went to her side, and taking her outstretched arms put them round her own neck. "manella!" she said, tenderly--"dear, beautiful manella! do you know me?" the great loving eyes rested on her with glowing warmth and pleasure. "indeed i know you!" and manella's voice, weak as that of a sick child, sounded ever so far away--"the little white lady of my dreams! oh, i have wanted you!--wanted you so much! why did you not come back sooner?" afraid to trouble her brain by the sudden shock of too rapidly recurring memories, morgana made no reply, but merely soothed her with tender caresses, when all at once she made a violent struggle to rise from the bed. "i must go!" she cried--"he is calling me! i must follow him--yes, even if he kills me for it--he is in danger!" morgana held her close and firmly. "hush, hush, dear!" she murmured--"be quite still! he is safe--believe me! he is near you--in the next room!--out of all danger." "oh, no, it is not possible!" and the girl's eyes grew wild with terror--"he cannot be safe!--he is destroying himself! i have followed him every step of the way--i have watched him,--oh!--so long!--and he came out of the hut this morning--i was hidden among the trees--he could not see me--" she broke off, and a violent trembling shook her whole body. morgana tried to calm her into silence, but she went on rambling incoherently. "there was something he carried as though it was precious to him--something that glittered like gold,--and he went away quickly--quickly to the canyon,--i followed him like a dog, crawling through the brushwood--i followed him across the deep water--to the cave where it was all dark--black as midnight!" she paused--then suddenly flung her arms round morgana crying--"oh, hold me!--hold me!--i am in this darkness trying to find him!--there!--there!--he turns and sees me by the light of a lamp he carries; he knows i have followed him, and he is angry! oh, dear god, he is angry--he raises his arm to strike me!" she uttered a smothered shriek, and clung to morgana in a kind of frenzy. "no mercy, no pity! that thing that glitters in his hand--it frightens me--what is it? i kneel to him on the cold stones--i pray him to forgive me--to come with me--but his arm is still raised to strike--he does not care--!" here a pale horror blanched her features--she drew herself away from morgana's hold and put out her hands with the instinctive gesture of one who tries to escape falling from some great height. morgana, alarmed at her looks, caught her again in her arms and held her tenderly, whereat a faint smile hovered on her lips and her distraught movements ceased. "what is this?"--she asked--then murmured--"my little white lady, how did you come here? how could you cross the flood?--unless on wings? ah!--you are a fairy and you can do all you wish to do--but you cannot save him!--it is too late! he will not save himself--and he does not care,--he does not care--neither for me nor you!" she drooped her head against morgana's shoulder and her eyes closed in utter exhaustion. morgana laid her back gently on her pillows, and pouring a few drops of the cordial she had used before, and of which she had the sole secret, into a wineglassful of water, held it to her lips. she drank it obediently, evidently conscious now that she was being cared for. but she was still restless, and presently she sat up in a listening attitude, one hand uplifted. "listen!" she said in a low, awed tone--"thunder! do you hear it? god speaks!" she lay down again passively and was silent for a long time. the hours passed and the day grew into late afternoon, and morgana, patiently watchful, thought she slept. all suddenly she sprang up, wide-eyed and alert. "what was that?" she cried--"i heard him call!" morgana, startled by her swift movement, stood transfixed--listening. the deep tones of a man's voice rang out loudly and defiantly-"there shall be no more wars! there can be none! i say so! i am master of the world!" chapter xxv a brilliant morning broke over the flower-filled gardens of the palazzo d'oro, and the sea, stretched out in a wide radiance of purest blue shimmered with millions of tiny silver ripples brushed on its surface by a light wind as delicate as a bird's wing. morgana stood in her rose-marble loggia, looking with a pathetic wistfulness at the beauty of the scene, and beside her stood marco ardini, scientist, surgeon and physician, looking also, but scarcely seeing, his whole thought being concentrated on the "case" with which he had been dealing. "it is exactly as i at first told you,"--he said--"the man is strong in muscle and sinew,--but his brain is ruined. it can no longer control or command the body's mechanism,--therefore the body is practically useless. power of volition is gone,--the poor fellow will never be able to walk again or to lift a hand. a certain faculty of speech is left,--but even this is limited to a few words which are evidently the result of the last prevailing thoughts impressed on the brain-cells. it is possible he will repeat those words thousands of times!--the oftener he repeats them the more he will like to say them." "what are they?" morgana asked in a tone of sorrow and compassion. "strange enough for a man in his condition"--replied ardini--"and always the same. 'there shall be no more wars! there can be none! i say it!--_i_ only! it is my great secret! _i_ am master of the world!' poor devil! what a 'master of the world' is there!" morgana shuddered as with cold, shading her eyes from the radiant sunshine. "does he say nothing else?" she murmured--"is there no name--no place--that he seems to remember?" "he remembers nothing--he knows nothing"--answered ardini--"he does not even realize me as a man--i might be a fish or a serpent for all his comprehension. one glance at his moveless eyes is enough to prove that. they are like pebbles in his head--without cognisance or expression. he mutters the words 'great secret' over and over again, and tacks it on to the other phrase of 'no more wars' in a semi-conscious sort of gabble,--this is, of course, the disordered action of the brain working to catch up and join together hopelessly severed fragments." morgana lifted her sea-blue eyes and looked with grave appeal into the severely intellectual, half-frowning face of the great professor. "is there no hope of an ultimate recovery?" she asked--"with time and rest and the best of unceasing care, might not this poor brain right itself?" "medically and scientifically speaking, there is no hope,--none whatever"--he replied--"though of course we all know that nature's remedial methods are inexhaustible, and often, to the wisest of us, seem miraculous, because as yet we do not understand one tithe of her processes. but--in this case,--this strange and terrible case"--and he uttered the words with marked gravity,--"it is nature's own force that has wrought the damage,--some powerful influence which the man has been testing has proved too much for him--and it has taken its own vengeance." morgana heard this with strained interest and attention. "tell me just what you mean,"--she said--"there is something you do not quite express--or else i am too slow to understand--" ardini took a few paces up and down the loggia and then halted, facing her in the attitude of a teacher preparing to instruct a pupil. "signora,"--he said--"when you began to correspond with me some years ago from america, i realised that i was in touch with a highly intelligent and cultivated mind. i took you to be many years older than you are, with a ripe scientific experience. i find you young, beautiful, and pathetic in the pure womanliness of your nature, which must be perpetually contending with an indomitable power of intellectuality and of spirituality,--spirituality is the strongest force of your being. you are not made like other women. this being so i can say to you what other women would not understand. science is my life-subject, as it is yours,--it is a window set open in the universe admitting great light. but many of us foolishly imagine that this light emanates from ourselves as a result of our own cleverness, whereas it comes from that divine source of all things, which we call god. we refuse to believe this,--it wounds our pride. and we use the discoveries of science recklessly and selfishly--without gratitude, humbleness or reverence. so it happens that the first tendency of godless men is to destroy. the love of destruction and torture shows itself in the boy who tears off the wing of an insect, or kills a bird for the pleasure of killing. the boy is father of the man. and we come, after much ignorant denial and obstinacy, back to the inexorable truth that 'they who take the sword shall perish with the sword.' if we consider the 'sword' as a metaphor for every instrument of destruction, we shall see the force of its application--the submarine, for example, built for the most treacherous kind of sea-warfare--how often they that undertake its work are slain themselves! and so it is through the whole gamut of scientific discovery when it is used for inhuman and unlawful purposes. but when this same 'sword' is lifted to put an end to torture, disease, and the manifold miseries of life, then the power that has entrusted it to mankind endows it with blessing and there are no evil results. i say this to you by way of explaining the view i am forced to take of this man whose strange case you ask me to deal with,--my opinion is that through chance or intention he has been playing recklessly with a great natural force, which he has not entirely understood, for some destructive purpose, and that it has recoiled on himself." morgana looked him steadily in the eyes. "you may be right,"--she said--"he is--or was--one of the most brilliant of our younger scientists. you know his name--i have sent you from new york some accounts of his work--he is roger seaton, whose experiments in the condensation of radioactivity startled america some four or five years ago--" "roger seaton!" he exclaimed--"what! the man who professed to have found a new power which would change the face of the world? ... he,--this wreck?--this blind, deaf lump of breathing clay? surely he has not fallen on so horrible a destiny!" tears rushed to morgana's eyes,--she could not answer. she could only bend her head in assent. profoundly moved, ardini took her hand, and kissed it with sympathetic reverence. "signora," he said--"this is indeed a tragedy! you have saved this life at i know not what risk to yourself--and as i am aware what a life of great attainment it promised to be, you may be sure i will spare no pains to bring it back to normal conditions. but frankly i do not think it will be possible. there is the woman who loves him--her influence may do something--" "if he ever loved her--yes"--and morgana smiled rather sadly--"but if he did not--if the love is all on her side--" ardini shrugged his shoulders. "a great love is always on the woman's side,"--he said--"men are too selfish to love perfectly. in this case, of course, there is no emotion, no sentiment of any sort left in the mere hulk of man. but still i will continue my work and do my best." he left her then,--and she stood for a while alone, gazing far out to the blue sea and sunlight, scarcely seeing them for the half-unconscious tears that blinded her eyes. suddenly a ray, not of the sun, shot athwart the loggia and touched her with a deep gold radiance. she saw it and looked up, listening. "morgana!" the voice quivered along the ray like the touched string of an aeolian harp. she answered it in almost a whisper-"i hear!" "you grieve for sorrows not your own," said the voice--"and we love you for it. but you must not waste your tears on the errors of others. each individual spirit makes its own destiny, and no other but itself can help itself. you are one of the chosen and beloved!--you must fulfil the happiness you have created for your own soul! come to us soon!" a thrill of exquisite joy ran through her. "i will!" she said--"when my duties here are done." the golden ray decreased in length and brilliancy, and finally died away in a fine haze mingling with the air. she watched it till it vanished,--then with a sense of relief from her former sadness, she went into the house to see manella. the girl had risen from her bed, and with the assistance of lady kingswood, who tended her with motherly care, had been arrayed in a loose white woollen gown, which, carelessly gathered round her, intensified by contrast the striking beauty of her dark eyes and hair, and ivory pale skin. as morgana entered the room she smiled, her small even teeth gleaming like tiny pearls in the faint rose of her pretty mouth, and stretched out her hand. "what has he said to you?" she asked--"tell me! is he not glad to see you?--to know he is with you?--safe with you in your home?" morgana sat down beside her. "dear manella"--she answered, gently and with tenderest pity--"he does not know me. he knows nothing! he speaks a few words,--but he has no consciousness of what he is saying." manella looked at her wonderingly-"ah, that is because he is not himself yet"--she said--"the crash of the rocks--the pouring of the flood--this was enough to kill him--but he will recover in a little while and he will know you!--yes, he will know you, and he will thank god for life to see you!" her unselfish joy in the idea that the man she loved would soon recognise the woman he preferred to herself, was profoundly touching, and morgana kissed the hand she held. "dear, i am afraid he will never know anything more in this world"--she said, sorrowfully--"neither man nor woman! nor can he thank god for a life which will be long, living death! unless you can help him!" "i?" and manella's eyes dilated with brilliant eagerness; "i will give my life for his! what can i do?" and then, with patient slowness and gentleness, little by little, morgana told her all. lady kingswood, sitting in an arm-chair near the window, worked at her embroidery, furtive tears dropping now and again on the delicate pattern, as she heard the details of the tragic verdict given by one of europe's greatest medical scientists on the hopelessness of ever repairing the damage wrought by the shock which had shaken a powerful brain into ruins. but it was wonderful to watch manella's face as she listened. sorrow, pity, tenderness, love, all in turn flashed their heavenly radiance in her eyes and intensified her beauty, and when she had heard all, she smiled as some lovely angel might smile on a repentant soul. her whole frame seemed to vibrate with a passion of unselfish emotion. "he will be my care!" she said--"the good god has heard my prayers and given him to me to be all mine!" she clasped her hands in a kind of ecstasy, "my life is for him and him alone! he will be my little child!--this big, strong, poor broken man!--and i will nurse him back to himself,--i will watch for every little sign of hope!--he shall learn to see through my eyes--to hear through my ears--to remember all that he has forgotten!..." her voice broke in a half sob. morgana put an arm about her. "manella, manella!" she said--"you do not know what you say--you cannot understand the responsibility--it would make you a prisoner for life--" "oh, i understand!" and manella shook back her dark hair with the little proud, decisive gesture characteristic of her temperament--"yes!--and i wish to be so imprisoned! if we had not been rescued by you, we should have died together!--now you will help us to live together! will you not? you are a little white angel--a fairy!--yes!--to me you are!--your heart is full of unspent love! you will let me stay with him always--always?--as his nurse?--his servant?--his slave?" morgana looked at her tenderly, touched to the quick by her eagerness and her beauty, now intensified by the glow of excitement which gave a roseate warmth to her cheeks and deeper darkness to her eyes. all ignorant and unsuspecting as she was of the world's malignity and cruel misjudgments, how could it be explained to her that a woman of such youth and loveliness, electing to dwell alone with a man, even if the man were a hopeless paralytic, would make herself the subject of malicious comment and pitiless scandal! some reflection of this feeling showed itself in the expression of morgana's face while she hesitated to answer, holding the girl's hand in her own and stroking it affectionately the while. manella, gazing at her as a worshipper might gaze at a sacred picture, instinctively divined her thought. "ah? i know what you would say!" she exclaimed, "that i might bring shame to him by my companionship--always--yes!--that is possible!--wicked people would talk of him and judge him wrongly--" "oh, manella, dear!" murmured morgana--"not him--not him--but you!" "me?" she tossed back her wealth of hair, and smiled--"what am i? just a bit of dust in his path! i am nothing at all! i do not care what anybody says or thinks of me!--what should it matter! but see!--to save him--let me be his wife!" "his wife!" morgana repeated the words in amazement, and lady kingswood, laying down her work, gazed at the two beautiful women, the one so spiritlike and fair, the other so human and queenly, in a kind of stupefaction, wondering if she had heard aright. "his wife! yes!"... manella spoke with a thrill of exultation in her voice,--and she caught morgana's hand and kissed it fondly--"his wife! it is the only way i can be his slave-woman! let me marry him while he knows nothing, so that i may have the right to wait upon him and care for him! he shall never know! for--if he comes to himself again--please god he will!--as soon as that happens i will go away at once. he will never know!--he shall never learn who it is that has cared for him! you see? i shall never be really his wife--nor he my husband--only in name. and then--when he comes out of the darkness--when he is strong and well once more, he will go to you!--you whom he loves--" morgana silenced her by a gesture which was at once commanding and sweetly austere. "dear girl, he never loved me!" she said, gently--"he has always loved himself. yes!--you know that as well as i do! once--i fancied i loved him--but now i know my way of love is not his. let us say no more of it! you wish to be his wife? do you think what that means? he will never know he is your husband--never recognise you,--your life will be sacrificed to a helpless creature whose brain is gone--who will be unconscious of your care and utterly irresponsive. oh, sweet, too loving manella!--you must not pledge the best years of your youth and beauty to such a destiny!" manella's dark eyes flashed with passionate ardour and enthusiasm. "i must--i must!" she said--"it is the work god gives me to do! do you not see how it is with me? it is my one love--the best of my heart!--the pulse of my life! youth and beauty!--what are they without him? ill or well, he is all i care for, and if i may not care for him i will die! it is quite easy to die--to make an end!--but if there is any youth or beauty to spend, it will be better to spend it on love than in death! my white angel, listen and be patient with me! you are patient but still be more so!--you know there will be none in the world to care for him!--ah!--when he was well and strong he said that love would weary him--he did not think he would ever be helpless and ill!--ah, no!--but a broken brain is put away--out of sight--to be forgotten like a broken toy! he was at work on some wonderful invention--some great secret!--it will never be known now--not a soul will ever ask what has become of it or of him! the world does not care what becomes of anyone--it has no sympathy. only those who love greatly have any pity!" she clasped her hands and lifted them in an attitude of prayer, laying them against morgana's breast. "you will let me have my way--surely you will?" she pleaded--"you are a little angel of mercy, unlike any other woman i ever saw--so white and pure and sweet!--you understand it all! in his dreadful weakness and loneliness, god gives him to me!--happy me, who am young and strong enough to care for him and attend upon him. i have no money,--perhaps he has none either, but i will work to keep him,--i am clever at my needle--i can embroider quite well--and i will manage to earn enough for us both." her voice broke in a sob, and morgana, the tears falling from her own eyes, drew her into a close embrace. and she murmured plaintively again-"his wife!--i must be his wife,--his serving-woman--then no one can forbid me to be with him! you will find some good priest to say the marriage service for us and give us god's benediction--it will mean nothing to him, because he cannot know or understand,--but to me it will be a holy sacrament!" then she broke down and wept softly till the pent-up passion of her heart was relieved, and morgana, mastering her own emotion, had soothed her into quietude. leaning back from her arm-chair where she had rested since rising from her bed, she looked up with an anxious appeal in her lovely eyes. "let me tell you something before i forget it again"--she said--"it is something terrible--the earthquake." "yes, yes, do not think of it now"--said morgana, hastily, afraid that her mind would wander into painful mazes of recollection--"that is all over." "ah, yes! but you should know the truth! it was not an earthquake!" she persisted--"it was not god's doing! it was his work!" and she indicated by a gesture the next room where roger seaton lay. a cold horror ran through morgana's blood. his work!--the widespread ruin of villages and townships,--the devastation of a vast tract of country--the deaths of hundreds of men, women and little children--his work? could it be possible? she stood transfixed,--while manella went on-"i know it was his work!" she said--"i was warned by a friend of his who came to 'la plaza' that he was working at something which might lose him his life. and so i watched. i told you how i followed him that morning--how i saw him looking at a box full of shining things that glittered like the points of swords,--how he put this box in a case and then in a basket, and slung the basket over his shoulder, and went down into the canon, and then to the cave where i found him. i called him--he heard, and held up a miner's lamp and saw me!--then--then, oh, dear god!--then he cursed me for following him,--he raised his arm to strike me, and in his furious haste to reach me he slipped on the wet, mossy stones. something fell from his hand with a great crash like thunder--and there was a sudden glare of fire!--oh, the awfulness of that sound and that flame!--and the rocks rose up and split asunder--the ground shook and broke under me--and i remember no more--no more till i found myself here!--here with you!" morgana roused herself from the stupefaction of horror with which she had listened to this narration. "do not think of it any more!" she said in a low sad voice--"try to forget it all. yes, dear!--try to forget all the mad selfishness and cruelty of the man you love! poor, besotted soul!--he has a bitter punishment!" she could say no more then,--stooping, she kissed the girl on the white forehead between the rippling waves of dark hair, and strove to meet the searching eyes with a smile. "dear, beautiful angel, you will help me?" manella pleaded--"you will help me to be his wife?" and morgana answered with pitiful tenderness. "i will!" and with a sign to lady kingswood to come nearer and sit by the girl as she lay among her pillows more or less exhausted, she herself left the room. as she opened the door on her way out, the strong voice of roger seaton rang out with singularly horrible harshness-"there shall be no more wars! there can be none! i say it! my great secret! i am master of the world!" shuddering as she heard, she pressed her hands over her ears and hurried along the corridor. her thoughts paraphrased the saying of madame roland on liberty--"oh, science! what crimes are committed in thy name!" she was anxious to see and speak with professor ardini, but came upon the marchese rivardi instead, who met her at the door of the library and caught her by both hands. "what is all this?" he demanded, insistently--"i must speak to you! you have been weeping! what is troubling you?" she drew her hands gently away from his. "nothing, giulio!" and she smiled kindly--"i grieve for the griefs of others--quite uselessly!--but i cannot help it!" "there is no hope, then?" he said. "none--not for the man"--she replied--"his body will live,--but his brain is dead." rivardi gave an expressive gesture. "horrible! better he should die!" "yes, far better! but the girl loves him. she is an ardent spanish creature--warm-hearted and simple as a child,--she believes"--and morgana's eyes had a pathetic wistfulness--"she believes,--as all women believe when they love for the first time,--that love has a divine power next to that of god!--that it will work miracles of recovery when all seems lost. the disillusion comes, of course, sooner or later,--but it has to come of itself--not through any other influence. she--manella soriso--has resolved to be his wife." "gran' dio!" rivardi started back in utter amazement--"his wife?--that girl? young, beautiful? she will chain herself to a madman? surely you will not allow it!" morgana looked at him with a smile. "poor giulio!" she said, softly--"you are a most unfortunate descendant of your roman ancestors as far as we women are concerned! you fall in love with me--and you find i am not for you!--then you see a perfectly lovely woman whom you cannot choose but admire--and a little stray thought comes flying into your head--yes!--quite involuntarily!--that perhaps--only perhaps--her love might come your way! do not be angry, my friend!--it was only a thought that moved you when you saw her the other day--when i called you to look at her as she recovered consciousness and lay on her bed like a sleeping figure of the loveliest of pagan goddesses! what man could have seen her thus without a thrill of tenderness!--and now you have to hear that all that beauty and warmth of youthful life is to be sacrificed to a stone idol!--(for the man she worships is little more!) ah, yes!--i am sorry for you, giulio!--but can do nothing to prevent the sacrifice,--indeed, i have promised to assist it!" rivardi had alternately flushed and paled while she spoke,--her keen, incisive probing of his most secret fancies puzzled and vexed him,--but with a well-assumed indifference he waved aside her delicately pointed suggestions as though he had scarcely heard them, and said-"you have promised to assist? can you reconcile it to your conscience to let this girl make herself a prisoner for life?" "i can!" she answered quietly--"for if she is opposed in her desire for such imprisonment she will kill herself. so it is wisest to let her have her way. the man she loves so desperately may die at any moment, and then she will be free. but meanwhile she will have the consolation of doing all she can for him, and the hope of helping him to recover; vain hope as it may be, there is a divine unselfishness in it. for she says that if he is restored to health she will go away at once and never let him know she is his wife." rivardi's handsome face expressed utter incredulity. "will she keep her word i wonder?" "she will!" "marvellous woman!" and there was bitterness in his tone--"but women are all amazing when you come to know them! in love? in hate, in good, in evil, in cleverness and in utter stupidity, they are wonderful creatures! and you, amica bella, are perhaps the most wonderful of them all! so kind and yet so cruel!" "cruel?" she echoed. "yes! to me!" she looked at him and smiled. that smile gave such a dreamy, spiritlike sweetness to her whole personality that for the moment she seemed to float before him like an aerial vision rather than a woman of flesh and blood, and the bold desire which possessed him to seize and clasp her in his arms was checked by a sense of something like fear. her eyes rested on his with a full clear frankness. "if i am cruel to you, my friend"--she said, gently, "it is only to be more kind!" she left him then and went out. he saw her small, elfin figure pass among the chains of roses which at this season seemed to tie up the garden in brilliant knots of colour, and then go down the terraces, one by one, towards the monastic retreat half buried among pine and olive, where don aloysius governed his little group of religious brethren. he guessed her intent. "she will tell him all"--he thought--"and with his strange semi-religious, semi-scientific notions, it will be easy for her to persuade him to marry the girl to this demented creature who fills the house with his shouting 'there shall be no more wars!' i should never have thought her capable of tolerating such a crime!" he turned to leave the loggia,--but paused as he perceived professor ardini advancing from the interior of the house, his hands clasped behind his back and his furrowed brows bent in gloomy meditation. "you have a difficult case?" he queried. "more than difficult!" replied ardini--"beyond human skill! perhaps not beyond the mysterious power we call god." rivardi shrugged his shoulders. he was a sceptic of sceptics and his modern-world experiences had convinced him that what man could not do was not to be done at all. "the latest remedy proposed by the signora is--love!" he said, carelessly--"the girl who is here,--manella soriso--has made up her mind to be the wife of this unfortunate--" ardini gave an expressive gesture. "altro! if she has made up her mind, heaven itself will not move her! it will be a sublime sacrifice of one life for another,--what would you? such sacrifices are common, though the world does not hear of them. in this instance there is no one to prevent it." "you approve--you tolerate it?" exclaimed rivardi angrily. "i have no power to approve or to tolerate"--replied the scientist, coldly--"the matter is not one in which i have any right to interfere. nor,--i think,--have you!--i have stated such facts as exist--that the man's brain is practically destroyed--but that owing to the strength of the life-centres he will probably exist in his present condition for a full term of years. to keep him so alive will entail considerable care and expense. he will need a male nurse--probably two--food of the best and absolutely tranquil surroundings. if the signora, who is rich and generous, guarantees these necessities, and the girl who loves him desires to be his wife under such terrible conditions, i do not see how anyone can object to the marriage." "then he poor devil of a man will be married without his knowledge, and probably (if he had his senses) against his will!" said rivardi. ardini bent his brows yet more frowningly. "just so!" he answered--"but he has neither knowledge nor will--nor is he likely ever to have them again. these great attributes of the god in man have been taken from him. power and will!--will and power!--the two wings of the soul!--they are gone, probably for ever. science can do nothing to bring them back, but i will not deny the possibility of other forces which might work a remedy on this ruin of a 'master of the world' as he calls himself! therefore i say let the love-woman try her best!" chapter xxvi don aloysius sat in his private library,--a room little larger than a monastic cell, and at his feet knelt morgana like a child at prayer. the rose and purple glow of the sunset fell aslant through a high oriel window of painted glass, shedding an aureole round her golden head, and intensified the fine, dark intellectual outline of the priest's features as he listened with fixed attention to the soft pure voice, vibrating with tenderness and pity as she told him of the love that sought to sacrifice itself for love's sake only. "in your creed and in mine,"--she said--"there is no union which is real or binding save the spiritual,--and this may be consummated in some way beyond our knowledge when once the sacred rite is said. you need no explanation from me,--you who are a member and future denizen of the golden city,--you, who are set apart to live long after these poor human creatures have passed away with the unthinking millions of the time--and you can have no hesitation to unite them as far as they can be united, so that they may at least be saved from the malicious tongues of an always evil-speaking world. you once asked me to tell you of the few moments of real happiness i have known,--this will be one of the keenest joys to me if i can satisfy this loving-hearted girl and aid her to carry out her self-chosen martyrdom. and you must help me!" gently aloysius laid his hand on her bent head. "it will be indeed a martyrdom!" he said, slowly, "long and torturing! think well of it!--a woman, youthful and beautiful, chained to a mere breathing image of man,--a creature who cannot recognise either persons or objects, who is helpless to move, and who will remain in that pitiable state all his life, if he lives!--dear child, are you convinced there is no other way?" "not for her!" morgana replied--"she has set her soul to try if god will help her to restore him,--she will surround him with the constant influence of a perfectly devoted love. dare we say there shall be no healing power in such an influence?--we who know so much of which the world is ignorant!" he stroked her shining hair with a careful tenderness as one might stroke the soft plumage of a bird. "and you?" he said, in a low tone--"what of you?" she raised her eyes to his. a light of heaven's own radiance shone in those blue orbs--an angelic peace beyond all expression. "what should there be of me except the dream come true?" she responded, smiling--"you know my plans,--you also know my destiny, for i have told you everything! you will be the controller of all my wealth, entrusted to carry out all my wishes, till it is time either for you to come where i am, or for me to return hither. we never know how or when that may be. but it has all seemed plain sailing for me since i saw the city called 'brazen' but which we know is golden!--and when i found that you belonged to it, and were only stationed here for a short time, i knew i could give you my entire confidence. it is not as if we were of the passing world or its ways--we are of the new race, and time does not count with us." "quite true," he said--"but for these persons in whom you are interested, time is still considered--and for the girl it will be long!" "not with such love as hers!" replied morgana. "each moment, each hour will be filled with hope and prayer and constant vigilance. love makes all things easy! it is useless to contend with a fate which both the man and woman have made for themselves. he is--i should say he was a scientist, who discovered the means of annihilating any section of humanity at his own wish and will--he played with the fires of god and brought annihilation on himself. my discovery--the force that moves my air-ship--the force that is the vital element of all who live in the golden city--is the same as his!--but _i_ use it for health and movement, progress and power--not for the destruction of any living soul! by one single false step he has caused the death and misery of hundreds of helpless human creatures--and this terror has recoiled on his own head. the girl manella has no evil thought in her--she simply loves!--her love is ill placed, but she also has brought her own destiny on herself. you have worked--and so have i--with the universal force, not as the world does, against it,--and we have made ourselves what we are and what we shall be. there is no other way either forward or backward,--you know there is not!" here she rose from her knees and confronted him, a light aerial creature of glowing radiance and elfin loveliness--"and you must fulfil her wish--and mine!" he rose also and stood erect, a noble figure of a man with a dignified beauty of mien and feature that seemed to belong to the classic age rather than ours. "so be it!" he said--"i will carry out all your commands to the letter! may i just say that your generosity to giulio rivardi seems almost unnecessary? to endow him with a fortune for life is surely too indulgent! does he merit such bounty at your hands?" she smiled. "dear father aloysius, giulio has lost his heart to me!" she said--"or what he calls his heart! he should have some recompense for the loss! he wants to restore his old roman villa--and when i am gone he will have nothing to distract him from this artistic work,--i leave him the means to do it! i hope he will marry--it is the best thing for him!" she turned to go. "and your own palazzo d'oro?--" "will become the abode of self-sacrificing love," she replied--"it could not be put to better use! it was a fancy of mine;--i love it and its gardens--and i should have tried to live there had i not found out the secret of a large and longer life!" she paused--then added--"to-morrow morning you will come?" he bent his head. "to-morrow!" with a salute of mingled reverence and affection she left him. he watched her go,--and hearing the bell begin to chime in the chapel for vespers, he lifted his eyes for a moment in silent prayer. a light flashed downward, playing on his hands like a golden ripple,--and he stood quietly expectant and listening. a voice floated along the ray--"you are doing well and rightly!" it said--"you will release her now from the strain of seeming to be what she is not. she is of the new race, and her spirit is advanced too far to endure the grossness and materialism of the old generation. she deserves all she has studied and worked for,--lasting life, lasting beauty, lasting love! nothing must hinder her now!" "nothing shall!" he answered. the ray lessened in brilliancy and gradually diminished till it entirely vanished,--and don aloysius, with the rapt expression of a saint and visionary, entered the chapel where his brethren were already assembled, and chanted with them- "magna opera domini; exquisita in omnes voluntates ejus!" the next morning, all radiant with sunshine, saw the strangest of nuptial ceremonies,--one that surely had seldom, if ever, been witnessed before in all the strange happenings of human chance. manella soriso, pale as a white arum lily, her rich dark hair adorned with a single spray of orange-blossom gathered from the garden, stood trembling beside the bed where lay stretched out the immobile form of the once active, world-defiant roger seaton. his eyes, wide open and staring into vacancy, were, like dull pebbles, fixed in his head,--his face was set and rigid as a mask of clay--only his regular breathing gave evidence of life. manella's pitiful gazing on this ruin of the man to whom she had devoted her heart and soul, her tender sorrow, her yearning beauty, might have almost moved a stone image to a thrill of response,--but not a flicker of expression appeared on the frozen features of that terrible fallen pillar of human self-sufficiency. standing beside the bed with manella was marco ardini, intensely watchful and eager to note even a quiver of the flesh or the tremor of a muscle,--and near him was lady kingswood, terrified yet enthralled by the scene, and anxious on behalf of morgana, who looked statuesque and pensive like a small attendant angel close to don aloysius. he, in his priestly robes, read the marriage service with soft and impressive intonation, himself speaking the responses for the bride-groom,--and taking manella's hand he placed it on seaton's, clasping the two together, the one so yielding and warm, the other stiff as marble, and setting the golden marriage ring which morgana had given, on the bride's finger. as he made the sign of the cross and uttered the final blessing, manella sank on her knees and covered her face. there followed a tense silence--aloysius laid his hand on her bent head-"god help and bless you!" he said, solemnly--"only the divine power can give you strength to bear the burden you have taken on yourself!" but at his words she sprang up, her eyes glowing with a great joy. "it is no burden!" she said--"i have prayed to be his slave--and now i am his wife! that is more than i ever dared to dream of!--for now i have the right to care for him, to work for him, and no one can separate me from him! what happiness for me! but i will not take a mean advantage of this--ah, no!--no good, father! listen!--i swear before you and the holy cross you wear, that if he recovers he shall never know!--i will leave him at once without a word--he shall think i am a servant in his employ--or rather he shall not think at all about me for i will go where he can never find me, and he will be as free as ever he was! yes, truly!--by the blessed madonna i swear it! i will kill myself rather than let him know!" she looked regally beautiful, her face flushed with the pride and love of her soul,--and in her newly gained privilege as a wife she bent down and kissed the pallid face that lay like the face of a corpse on the pillow before her. "he is a poor wounded child just now!" she murmured, tenderly--"but i will care for him in his weakness and sorrow! the doctor will tell me what to do--and it shall all be done! i will neglect nothing--as for money, i have none--but i will work--" morgana put an arm about her. "dear, do not think of that!" she said--"for the present you will stay here--i am going on a journey very soon, and you and lady kingswood will take care of my house till i return. be quite satisfied!--you will have all you want for him and for yourself. professor ardini will talk to you now and tell you everything--come away--" but manella was gazing intently at the figure on the bed--she saw its grey lips move. with startling suddenness a harsh voice smote the air-"there shall be no more wars! there can be none! my great secret! i am master of the world!" she shrank and shivered, and a faint sobbing cry escaped her. "come!" said morgana again,--and gently led her away. the spray of orange-blossom fell from her hair as she moved, and don aloyslus, stooping, picked it up. marco ardini saw his action. "you will keep that as a souvenir of this strange marriage?" he said. "no,--" and don aloysius touched the white fragrant flower with his crucifix--"i will lay it as a votive offering on the altar of the eternal virgin!" * * * * * about a fortnight later life at the palazzo d'oro had settled into organised lines of method and routine. professor ardini had selected two competent men attendants, skilled in surgery and medicine to watch seaton's case with all the care trained nursing could give, and himself had undertaken to visit the patient regularly and report his condition. seaton's marriage to manella soriso had been briefly announced in the european papers and cabled to the american press, senator gwent being one of the first who saw it thus chronicled, much to his amazement. "he has actually become sane at last!" he soliloquised, "and beauty has conquered science! i gave the girl good advice--i told her to marry him if she could,--and she's done it! i wonder how they escaped that earthquake? perhaps that brought him to his senses! well, well! i daresay i shall be seeing them soon over here--i suppose they are spending their honeymoon with morgana. curious affair! i'd like to know the ins and outs of it!" "have you seen that roger seaton is married?" was the question asked of him by every one he knew, especially by the flashing society butterfly once lydia herbert, who in these early days of her marriage was getting everything she could out of her millionaire--"and not to morgana! just think! what a disappointment for her!--i'm sure she was in love with him!" "i thought so"--gwent answered, cautiously--"and he with her! but--one never knows--" "no, one never does!" laughed the fair lydia--"poor morgana! left on the stalk! but she's so rich it won't matter. she can marry anybody she likes." "marriage isn't everything," said gwent--"to some it may be heaven,--but to others--" "the worser place!"--agreed lydia--"and morgana is not like ordinary women. i wonder what she's doing, and when we shall see her again?" "yes--i wonder!" gwent responded vaguely,--and the subject dropped. they might have had more than ordinary cause to "wonder" had they been able to form even a guess as to the manner and intentions of life held by the strange half spiritual creature whom they imagined to be but an ordinary mortal moved by the same ephemeral aims and desires as the rest of the grosser world. who,--even among scientists, accustomed as they are to study the evolution of grubs into lovely rainbow-winged shapes, and the transformation of ordinary weeds into exquisite flowers of perfect form and glorious colour, goes far enough or deep enough to realise similar capability of transformation in a human organism self-trained to so evolve and develop itself? who, at this time of day,--even with the hourly vivid flashes kindled by the research lamps of science, reverts to former theories of men like de gabalis, who held that beings in process of finer evolution and formation, and known as "elementals," nourishing their own growth into exquisite existence, through the radio-force of air and fire, may be among us, all unrecognised, yet working their way out of lowness to highness, indifferent to worldly loves, pleasures and opinions, and only bent on the attainment of immortal life? such beliefs serve only as material for the scoffer and iconoclast,--nevertheless they may be true for all that, and may in the end confound the mockery of materialism which in itself is nothing but the deep shadow cast by a great light. the strangest and most dramatic happenings have the knack of settling down into the commonplace,--and so in due course the days at the palazzo d'oro went on tranquilly,--manella being established there and known as "la bella signora seaton" by the natives of the little surrounding villages, who were gradually brought to understand the helpless condition of her husband and pitied her accordingly. lady kingswood had agreed to stay as friend and protectress to the girl as long as morgana desired it,--indeed she had no wish to leave the beautiful sicilian home she had so fortunately found, and where she was treated with so much kindness and consideration. there was no lack or stint of wealth to carry out every arranged plan, and manella was too simple and primitive in her nature to question anything that her "little white angel" as she called her, suggested or commanded. intensely grateful for the affectionate care bestowed upon her, she acquiesced in what she understood to be the methods of possible cure for the ruined man to whom she had bound her life. "if he gets well--quite, quite well"--she said, lifting her splendid dark eyes to morgana's blue as "love-in-a-mist" "i will go away and give him to you!" and she meant it, having no predominant idea in her mind save that of making her elect beloved happy. meanwhile morgana announced her intention of taking another aerial voyage in the "white eagle"--much to the joy of giulio rivardi. receiving his orders to prepare the wonderful air-ship for a long flight, he and gaspard worked energetically to perfect every detail. where he had previously felt a certain sense of fear as to the capabilities of the great vessel, controlled by a force of which morgana alone had the secret, he was now full of certainty and confidence, and told her so. "i am glad"--he said--"that you are leaving this place where you have installed people who to me seem quite out of keeping with it. that terrible man who shouts 'i am master of the world'!--ah, cara madonna!--i did not work at your fairy palazzo d'oro for such an occupant!" "i know you did not;"-=she answered, gently--"nor did i intend it to be so occupied. i dreamed of it as a home of pleasure where i should dwell--alone! and you said it would be lonely!--you remember?" "i said it was a place for love!" he replied. "you were right! and love inhabits it--love of the purest, most unselfish nature--" "love that is a cruel martyrdom!" he interposed. "true!" and her eyes shone with a strange brilliancy--"but love--as the world knows it--is never anything else! there, do not frown, my friend! you will never wear its crown of thorns! and you are glad i am going away?" "yes!--glad that you will have a change"--he said--"your constant care and anxiety for these people whom we rescued from death must have tired you out unconsciously. you will enjoy a free flight through space,--and the ship is in perfect condition; she will carry you like an angel in the air!" she smiled and gave him her hand. "good giulio!--you are quite a romancist!--you talk of angels without believing in them!" "i believe in them when i look at you!" he said, with all an italian's impulsive gallantry. "very pretty of you!" and she withdrew her hand from his too fervent clasp,--"i feel sorry for myself that i cannot rightly appreciate so charming a compliment!" "it is not a compliment"--he declared, vehemently; "it is a truth!" her eyes dwelt on him with a wistful kindness. "you are what some people call 'a good fellow,' giulio!" she said--"and you deserve to be very happy. i hope you will be so! i want you to prosper so that you may restore your grand old villa to its former beauty,--i also want you to marry--and bring up a big family"--here she laughed a little--"a family of sons and daughters who will be grateful to you, and not waste every penny you give them--though that is the modern way of sons and daughters." she paused, smiling at his moody expression. "and you say everything is ready?--the 'white eagle' is prepared for flight?" "she will leave the shed at a moment's touch"--he answered--"when you supply the motive power!" she nodded comprehensively, and thought a moment. "come to me the day after to-morrow"--she said--"you will then have your orders." "is it to be a long flight this time?" he asked. "not so long as to california!" she answered--"but long enough!" with that she left him. and he betook himself to the air-shed where the superb "white eagle" rested all a-quiver for departure, palpitating, or so it seemed to him, with a strange eagerness for movement which struck him as unusual and "uncanny" in a mere piece of mechanism. the next day moved on tranquilly. morgana wrote many letters--and varied this occupation by occasionally sitting in the loggia to talk with manella and lady kingswood, both of whom now seemed the natural inhabitants of the palazzo d'oro. she spoke easily of her intended air-trip,--so that they accepted her intention as a matter of course, manella only entreating--"do not be long away!" her lovely, eloquent eyes emphasising her appeal. now and again the terrible cries of "there shall be no more wars! there can be none! my great secret! i am master of the world!" rang through the house despite the closed doors,--cries which they feigned not to hear, though manella winced with pain, as at a dagger thrust, each time the sounds echoed on the air. and the night came,--mildly glorious, with a full moon shining in an almost clear sky--clear save for little delicate wings of snowy cloud drifting in the east like wandering shapes of birds that haunted the domain of sunrise. giulio rivardi, leaning out of one of the richly sculptured window arches of his half-ruined villa, looked at the sky with pleasurable anticipation of the morrow's intended voyage in the "white eagle." "the weather will be perfect!" he thought--"she will be pleased. and when she is pleased no woman can be more charming! she is not beautiful, like manella--but she is something more than beautiful--she is bewitching! i wonder where she means to go!" suddenly a thought struck him,--a vivid impression coming from he knew not whence--an idea that he had forgotten a small item of detail in the air-ship which its owner might or might not notice, but which would certainly imply some slight forgetfulness on his part. he glanced at his watch,--it was close on midnight. acting on a momentary impulse he decided not to wait till morning, but to go at once down to the shed and see that everything in and about the vessel was absolutely and finally in order. as he walked among the perfumed tangles of shrub and flower in his garden, and out towards the sea-shore he was impressed by the great silence everywhere around him. everything looked like a moveless picture--a study in still life. passing through a little olive wood which lay between his own grounds and the sea, he paused as he came out of the shadow of the trees and looked towards the height crowned by the palazzo d'oro, where from the upper windows twinkled a few lights showing the position of the room where the "master of the world" lay stretched in brainless immobility, waited upon by medical nurses ever on the watch, and a wife of whom he knew nothing, guarding him with the fixed devotion of a faithful dog rather than of a human being. going onwards in a kind of abstract reverie, he came to a halt again on reaching the shore, enchanted by the dreamy loveliness of the scene. in an open stretch of dazzling brilliancy the sea presented itself to his eyes like a delicate network of jewels finely strung on swaying threads of silver, and he gazed upon it as one might gaze on the "fairy lands forlorn" of keats in his enchanting poesy. never surely, he thought, had he seen a night so beautiful,--so perfect in its expression of peace. he walked leisurely,--the long shed which sheltered the air-ship was just before him, its black outline silhouetted against the sky--but as he approached it more nearly, something caused him to stop abruptly and stare fixedly as though stricken by some sudden terror--then he dashed off at a violent run, till he came to a breathless halt, crying out--"gran' dio! it has gone!" gone! the shed was empty! no air-ship was there, poised trembling on its own balance all prepared for flight,--the wonderful "white eagle" had unfurled its wings and fled! whither? like a madman he rushed up and down, shouting and calling in vain--it was after midnight and there was no one about to hear him. he started to run to the palazzo d'oro to give the alarm--but was held back--held by an indescribable force which he was powerless to resist. he struggled with all his might,--uselessly. "morganna!" he cried in a desperate voice--"morganna!" running down to the edge of the sea he gazed across it and up to the wonderful sky through which the moon rolled lazily like a silver ball. was there nothing to be seen there save that moon and the moon-dimmed stars? with eager straining eyes he searched every quarter of the visible space--stay! was that a white dove soaring eastwards?--or a cloud sinking to its rest? "morgana!" he cried again, stretching out his arms in despair--"she has gone! and alone!" even as he spoke the dove-like shape was lost to sight beyond the shining of the evening star. l'envoi several months ago the ruin of a great air-ship was found on the outskirts of the great desert so battered and broken as to make its mechanism unrecognisable. no one could trace its origin,--no one could discover the method of its design. there was no remnant of any engine, and its wings were cut to ribbons. the travellers who came upon its fragments half buried in the sand left it where they found it, deciding that a terrible catastrophe had overtaken the unfortunate aviators who had piloted it thus far. they spoke of it when they returned to europe, but came upon no one who could offer a clue to its possible origin. these same travellers were those who a short time since filled a certain section of the sensational press with tales of a "brazen city" seen from the desert in the distance, with towers and cupolas that shone like brass or like "the city of pure gold," revealed to st. john the divine, where "in the midst of the street of it" is the tree of life. such tales were and are received with scorn by the world's majority, for whom food and money constitute the chief interest of existence,--nevertheless tradition sometimes proves to be true, and dreams become realities. however this may be, morgana lives,--and can make her voice heard when she will along the "sound ray"--that wonderful "wireless" which is soon to be declared to the world. for there is no distance that is not bridged by light,--and no separation of sounds that cannot be again brought into unison and harmony. "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,"--and the "golden city" is one of those things! "masters of the world" are poor creatures at best,--but the secret makers of the new race are the gods of the future! the end [illustration: "i do not know why i have summoned you," she said] the net a novel by rex beach author of "the spoilers," "the barrier," "the silver horde," etc. with four illustrations by walter tittle contents chap. i. the train from palermo ii. a confession and a promise iii. the golden girl iv. the feast at terranova v. what waited at the roadside vi. a new resolve vii. the search begins viii. old trails ix. "one who knows" x. myra nell warren xi. the kidnapping xii. la mafia xiii. the blood of his ancestors xiv. the net tightens xv. the end of the quest xvi. quarantine xvii. an obligation is met xviii. belisario cardi xix. felicite xx. the man in the shadows xxi. under fire xxii. a misunderstanding xxiii. the trial and the verdict xxiv. at the feet of the statue xxv. the appeal xxvi. at the dusk illustrations "i do not know why i have summoned you,' she said _frontispiece_ "silenzio!" he growled, "i play my own game, and i lose" he wrestled for possession of the gun "p-please don't kill yourself, dear? i couldn't help it" i the train from palermo the train from palermo was late. already long, shadowy fingers were reaching down the valleys across which the railroad track meandered. far to the left, out of an opalescent sea, rose the fairy-like lipari islands, and in the farthest distance stromboli lifted its smoking cone above the horizon. on the landward side of the train, as it reeled and squealed along its tortuous course, were gray and gold sicilian villages perched high against the hills or drowsing among fields of artichoke and sumac and prickly pear. to one familiar with modern sicilian railway trains the journey eastward from palermo promises no considerable discomfort, but twenty-five years ago it was not to be lightly undertaken--not to be undertaken at all, in fact, without an unusual equipment of patience and a resignation entirely lacking in the average anglo-saxon. it was not surprising, therefore, that norvin blake, as the hours dragged along, should remark less and less upon the beauties of the island and more and more upon the medieval condition of the rickety railroad coach in which he was shaken and buffeted about. he shifted himself to an easier position upon the seat and lighted a cheroot; for although this was his first glimpse of sicily, he had watched the same villages come and go all through a long, hot afternoon, had seen the same groves of orange and lemon and dust-green olive-trees, the same fields of barbary figs, the same rose-grown garden spots, until he was heartily tired of them all. he felt at liberty to smoke, for the only other occupant of the compartment was a young priest in flowing mantle and silk beaver hat. finding that blake spoke italian remarkably well for a foreigner, the priest had shown an earnest desire for closer acquaintance and now plied him eagerly with questions, hanging upon his answers with a childlike intensity of gaze which at first had been amusing. "and so the signore has traveled all the way from paris to attend the wedding at terranova. veramente! that is a great journey. many wonderful adventures befell you, perhaps. eh?" the priest's little eyes gleamed from his full cheeks, and he edged forward until his knees crowded blake's. it was evident that he anticipated a thrilling tale and did not intend to be disappointed. "it was very tiresome, that's all, and the beggars at naples nearly tore me asunder." "incredible! you will tell me about it?" "there's nothing to tell. these european trains cannot compare with ours." evidently discouraged at this lack of response, the questioner tried a new line of approach. "the signore is perhaps related to our young conte?" he suggested. "and yet that can scarcely be, for you are inglese--" "americano." "indeed?" "martel and i are close friends, however. we met in paris. we are almost like brothers." "truly! i have heard that he spends much time studying to be a great painter. it is very strange, but many of our rich people leave sicily to reside elsewhere. as for me, i cannot understand it." "martel left when his father was killed. he says this country is behind the times, and he prefers to be out in the world where there is life and where things progress." but the priest showed by a blank stare that he did not begin to grasp the meaning of this statement. he shook his head. "he was always a wild lad. now as to the signorina ginini, who is to be his beautiful contessa, she loves sicily. she has spent most of her life here among us." with a flash of interest blake inquired: "what is she like? martel has spoken of her a great many times, but one can't place much dependence on a lover's description." "bellissima!" the priest sighed, and rolled his eyes eloquently. "you have never seen anything like her, i assure you. she is altogether too beautiful. if i had my way all the beautiful women would be placed in a convent where no man could see them. then there would be no fighting and no flirting, and the plain women could secure husbands. beautiful women are dangerous. she is rich, too." "of course! that's what martel says, and that is exactly the way he says it. but describe her." "oh, i have never seen her! i merely know that she is very rich and very beautiful." he went off into a number of rapturous "issimas!" "now as for the conte, i know him like a book. i know his every thought." "but martel has been abroad for ten years, and he has only returned within a month." "to be sure, but i come from the village this side of san sebastiano, and my second cousin ricardo is his uomo d'affare--his overseer. it is a very great position of trust which ricardo occupies, for i must tell you that he attends to the leasing of the entire estate during the conte's absence in france, or wherever it is he draws those marvelous pictures. ricardo collects the rents." with true sicilian naivete the priest added: "he is growing rich! beato lui! he for one will not need to go to your golden america. is it true, signore, that in america any one who wishes may be rich?" "quite true," smiled the young man. "even our beggars are rich." the priest wagged his head knowingly. "my mother's cousin, alfio amato, he is an american. you know him?" "i'm afraid not." "but surely--he has been in america these five years. a tall, dark fellow with fine teeth. think! he is such a liar any one would remember him. ebbene! _he_ wrote that there were poor people in america as here, but we knew him too well to believe him." "i suppose every one knows about the marriage?" "oh, indeed! it will unite two old families--two rich families. you know the savigni are rich also. even before the children were left as orphans it was settled that they should be married. what a great fortune that will make for ricardo to oversee! then, perhaps, he will be more generous to his own people. he is a hard man in money matters, and a man of action also; he does not allow flies to sit upon his nose. he sent his own daughter lucrezia to terranova when the contessa was still a child, and what is the result? lucrezia is no longer a servant. indeed no, she is more like a sister to the signorina. at the marriage no doubt she will receive a fine present, and ricardo as well. he is as silent as a mafioso, but he thinks." young blake stretched his tired muscles, yawning. "i'm sorry martel couldn't marry in france; this has been a tedious trip." "it was the contessa's wish, then, to be wed in sicily?" "i believe she insisted. and martel agreed that it was the proper thing to do, since they are both sicilians. he was determined also that i should be present to share his joy, and so here i am. between you and me, i envy him his lot so much that it almost spoils for me the pleasure of this unique journey." "you are an original!" murmured the priest, admiringly, but it was evident that his thirst for knowledge of the outside world was not to be so easily quenched, for he began to question his traveling companion closely regarding america, paris, the journey thence, the ship which bore him to palermo, and a dozen other subjects upon which his active mind preyed. he was full of the gossip of the countryside, moreover, and norvin learned much of interest about sicily and the disposition of her people. one phenomenon to which the good man referred with the extremest wonder was blake's intimacy with a sicilian nobleman. how an american signore had become such a close friend of the illustrious conte, who was almost a stranger, even to his own people, seemed very puzzling indeed, until norvin explained that they had been together almost constantly during the past three years. "we met quite by chance, but we quickly became friends--what in my country we call chums--and we have been inseparable ever since." "and you, then, are also a great artist?" blake laughed at the indirect compliment to his friend. "i am not an artist at all. i have been exiled to europe for three years, upon my mother's orders. she has her own ideas regarding a man's education and wishes me to acquire a continental polish. my ability to tell you all this shows that i have at least made progress with the languages, although i have doubts about the practical value of anything else i have learned. martel has taught me italian; i have taught him english. we use both, and sometimes we understand each other. my three years are up now, and once i have seen my good friend safely married i shall return to america and begin the serious business of life." "you are then in business? my mother's cousin, alfio amato, is likewise a business man. he deals in fruit. beware of him, for he would sell you rotten oranges and swear by the saints that they were excellent." "like martel, i have land which i lease. i am, or i will be, a cotton-planter." this opened a new field of inquiry for the priest, who was making the most of it when the train drew into a station and was stormed by a horde of chattering country folk. the platform swarmed with vividly dressed women, most of whom carried bundles wrapped up in variegated handkerchiefs, and all of whom were tremendously excited at the prospect of travel. lean-visaged, swarthy men peered forth from the folds of shawls or from beneath shapeless caps of many colors; a pair of carabinieri idled past, a soldier in jaunty feathered hat posed before the contadini. dogs, donkeys, fowls added their clamor to the high-pitched voices. twilight had settled and lights were kindling in the village, while the heights above were growing black against a rose-pink and mother-of-pearl sky. the air was cool and fragrant with the odor of growing things and the open sea glowed with a subdued, pulsating fire. the capo stazione rushed madly back and forth striving by voice and gesture to hasten the movements of his passengers. "partenza! pronto!" he cried, then blew furiously upon his bugle. after a series of shudders and convulsions the train began to hiss and clank and finally crept on into the twilight, while the priest sat knee to knee with his companion and resumed his endless questioning. it was considerably after dark when norvin blake alighted at san sebastiano, to be greeted effusively by a young man of about his own age who came charging through the gloom and embraced him with a great hug. "so! at last you come!" savigno cried. "i have been here these three hours eating my heart out, and every time i inquired of that head of a cabbage in yonder he said, 'pazienza! the world was not made in a day!' "'but when? when?' i kept repeating, and he could only assure me that your train was approaching with the speed of the wind. the saints in heaven--even the superintendent of the railway himself--could not tell the exact hour of its arrival, which, it seems, is never twice the same. and now, yourself? you are well?" "never better. and you? but there is no need to ask. you look disgustingly contented. one would think you were already married." martel savigno showed a row of even, white teeth beneath his military mustache and clapped his friend affectionately on the back. "it is good to be among my own people. i find, after all, that i am a sicilian. but let me tell you, that train is not always late. once, seven years ago, it arrived upon the moment. there were no passengers at the station to meet it, however, so it was forced to wait, and now, in order to keep our good-will it always arrives thus." the count was a well-set-up youth of an alert and active type, tall, dark, and vivacious, with a skin as smooth as a girl's. he had an impulsive, energetic nature that seldom left him in repose, and hence the contrast between the two men was marked, for blake was of a more serious cast of features and possessed a decidedly anglo-saxon reserve. he was much the heavier in build, also, which detracted from his height and robbed him of that elegance which distinguished the young sicilian. yet the two made a fine-looking pair as they stood face to face in the yellow glare of the station lights. "what the deuce made me agree to this trip, i don't know," the american declared. "it was vile. i've been carsick, seasick, homesick--" "and all for poor, lovesick martel!" the count laughed. "ah, but if you knew how glad i am to see you!" "really? then that squares it." blake spoke with that indefinable undernote which creeps into men's voices when friend meets friend. "i've been lost without you, too. i was quite ashamed of myself." the count turned to a middle-aged man who had remained in the shadows, saying: "this is ricardo ferara, my good right hand, of whom you have heard me speak." the overseer raised his hat, and blake took his hand, catching a glimpse of a grizzled face and a stiff mop of iron-gray hair. "you will see to signore blake's baggage, ricardo. michele! ippolito!" the count called. "the carretta, quickly! and now, caro norvin, for the last leg of your journey. will you ride in the cart or on horseback? it is not far, but the roads are steep." "horseback, by all means. my muscles need exercise." the young men mounted a pair of compact sicilian horses, which were held by still another man in the street behind the depot, and set off up the winding road which climbed to the village above. blake regretted the lateness of the hour, which prevented him from gaining an adequate idea of his surroundings. he could see, however, that they were picturesque, for san sebastiano lay in a tiny step hewed out of the mountain-side and was crowded into one street overlooking the railway far below and commanding a view of the sea toward the calabrian coast. as the riders clattered through the poorly lighted village, blake saw the customary low-roofed houses, the usual squalid side-streets, more like steep lanes than thoroughfares, and heard the townspeople pronouncing the name of the count of martinello, while the ever-present horde of urchins fled from their path. a beggar appeared beside his stirrup, crying, "i die of hunger, your worship." but the fellow ran with surprising vigor and manifested a degree of endurance quite unexampled in a starving man. a glimpse of these, and then the lights were left behind and they were moving swiftly upward and into the mountains, skirting walls of stone over which was wafted the perfume of many flowers, passing fragrant groves of orange and lemon trees, and less fragrant cottages, the contents of which were bared to their eyes with utter lack of modesty. they disturbed herds of drowsy cattle and goats lying at the roadside, and all the time they continued to climb, until their horses heaved and panted. the american's impressions of this entire journey, from the time of his leaving paris up to the present moment, had been hurried and unreal, for he had made close connections at rome, at naples, and at palermo. having the leisurely deliberateness of the american southerner, he disliked haste and confusion above all things. he had an intense desire, therefore, to come to anchor and to adjust himself to his surroundings. as martel chattered along, telling of his many doings, blake noted that ricardo and the man who had held the horses were following closely. then, as the cavalcade paused at length to breathe their mounts, he saw that both men carried rifles. "why! we look like an american sheriff's posse, martel," said he. "do all sicilian bridegrooms travel with an armed escort?" savigno showed a trace of hesitation. "the nights are dark; the country is wild." "but, my dear boy, this country is surely old enough to be safe. why, sicily was civilized long before my country was even heard of. all sorts of ancient gods and heroes used to live here, i am told, and i supposed diana had killed all the game long ago." he laughed, but savigno did not join him, and a moment later they were under way again. after a brief gallop they drew up at a big, dark house, hidden among the deeper shadows of many trees, and in answer to martel's shout a wide door was flung back; then by the light which streamed forth from it they dismounted and made their way up a flight of stone steps. once inside, savigno exclaimed: "welcome to my birthplace! a thousand welcomes!" seizing norvin by the shoulders, he whirled him about. "let me see you once. ah! i am glad you made this sacrifice for me, for i need you above all men." his eyes, though bright with affection, were grave--something unusual in him--and the other inquired, quickly: "there's nothing wrong, i hope?" savigno tossed his head and smiled. "wrong! what could be wrong with me now that you are here? no! all is quite right, but i have been accursed with lonesomeness. something was lacking, it was you, caro mio. now, however, i am the most contented of mortals. but you must be famished, so i will show you to your room at once. francesca has provided a feast for us, i assure you." "give me a moment to look around. so this is the castello? jove! it's ripping!" blake found himself in a great hall similar to many he had seen in his european wanderings, but ruder and older by far. he judged the castello to be of norman build, but remodeled to suit the taste of the savigni. to the right, through an open door, he saw a large room where a fat sicilian woman was laying the table; to the left was a drawing-room lighted only by a fire of fagots in a huge, black fireplace, the furniture showing curiously distorted in the long shadows. other rooms opened towards the rear, and he realized that the old place was very large. it was unkempt also, and showed the lack of a woman's hand. "you exaggerate!" said savigno. "after paris the castello will seem very mean. we siciliani do not live in grand style, and, besides, i have spent practically no time here, since my father (may the saints receive him) left me free to wander. the place has been closed; the old servants have gone; it is dilapidated." "on the contrary, it's just the sort of place it should be--venerable and overflowing with romance. you must rule like a medieval baron. why, you could sell this woodwork to some millionaire countryman of mine for enough to realize a fortune." "per dio! if taxes are not reduced i shall be forced to some such expedient," the count laughed. "it was my mother's home, it is my birthplace, so i love it--even though i neglect it. as you perceive, it is high time i took a wife. but enough! if you are lacking in appetite, i am not, and francesca is an unbearable tyrant when her meals grow cold." he led his friend up the wide stairs and left him to prepare for supper. "and so this ends it all," said blake, as the two young men lounged in the big, empty drawing-room later that evening. they had dined and gossiped as only friends of their age can gossip, had relived their adventures of the past three years, and still were loath to part, even for sleep. "how so?" queried savigno. "you speak of marriage as if it were dissolution." "it might as well be, so far as the other fellow is concerned." "nonsense! i shall not change." "oh, yes, you will! besides, i am returning to america." "even so, we are rich; we shall travel; we shall meet frequently. you will come to sicily. perhaps the contessa and i may even go to america. friendship such as ours laughs at the leagues." but blake was pessimistic. "perhaps she won't like me." martel laughed at this. "impossible! she is a woman, she has eyes, she will see you as i see you. more than that, i have told her that she must love you." "then that does settle it! you have hung the crepe on our future intimacy, for good and all. she will instruct your cook to put a spider in my dumpling or to do away with me by some characteristic sicilian method." martel seemed puzzled by the americanism of this speech, but norvin merely smiled and changed to italian. "do you really love her?" he asked. "of course! since i was a boy so high i have known we would marry. she adores me, she is young, she is beautiful, she is--rich!" "in heaven's name don't use that tone in speaking of her wealth. you make me doubt you." "no, no!" the count smiled. "it would be the same if she were a peasant girl. we shall be so happy--oh, there is no expressing how happy we intend being." "i've no doubt. and that makes it quite certain to end our comradeship." "you croak like a raven!" declared the sicilian. "what has soured you?" "nothing. i am a wise young man, that's all. you see, happiness is all-sufficient; it needs nothing to complete itself. it is a wall beyond which the owner does not care to wander, so, when you are quite happy with the new countess, you will forget your friends of unmarried days." "would you then have me unhappily married?" "by no means. i am full of regrets at losing you, nothing more." "it is plain, then, that you also must marry. is there no admirable american lady?" "any quantity of them, but i don't care much for women except in an impersonal sort of way, or perhaps i don't attract them. i might enjoy falling in love if it were not such a tedious process." "it is not necessarily tedious. one may love with the suddenness of an explosion. i have done so, many times." "i know you have, but you are a sicilian; we go about such things in a dignified and respectable manner. love is a serious matter with us. we don't explode." "yes. when you love, you marry; and you marry in the same way you buy a farm. but we have blood in our veins and lime in our bones. i have loved many women to distraction; there is only one whom i would marry." ricardo entered at the moment, and the count arose with a word of apology to his guest. he spoke earnestly with his overseer, but, as they were separated from him by the full width of the great room, blake overheard no more than a word now and then. they were speaking in the sicilian dialect, moreover, which was unfamiliar to him, yet he caught the mention of ippolito, one of the men who had met him at the station, also of an orange-grove, and the word "mafioso." then he heard martel say: "the shells for the new rifle--ippolito is a bad shot--take plenty." when ricardo had gone and the count had returned to his seat, norvin fancied he detected once more that grave look he had surprised in his friend's countenance upon their arrival at the castello. "what were you telling ricardo about rifles and cartridges?" he inquired. "eh? it was nothing. we are forced to guard our oranges; there are thieves about. i have been too long away from martinello." later, as norvin blake composed himself to sleep he wondered idly if martel had told him the whole truth. he recalled again the faint, grave lines that had gathered about the count's eyes, where there had never been aught but wrinkles of merriment, and he recalled also that word "mafioso." it conjured memories of certain tales he had heard of sicilian outlawry and brigandage, and of that evil, shadowy society of "friends" which he understood dominated this island. there was a story about the old count's death also, but martel had never told him much. norvin tried to remember what it was, but sleep was heavy upon him and he soon gave up. ii a confession and a promise norvin blake slept soundly, as befitted a healthy young man with less than the usual number of cares upon his mind, and, notwithstanding the fact that he had retired at a late hour, somewhat worn by his journey, he awoke earlier than usual. still lacking an adequate idea of his surroundings, he arose and, flinging back the blinds of his window, looked out upon a scene which set him to dressing eagerly. the big front door of the hall below was barred when he came down, and only yielded to his efforts with a clanging which would have awakened any one except martel, letting him out upon a well-kept terrace beneath which the hills fell away in majestic sweeps and curves to the coast-line far beneath. it was a true sicilian morning, filled with a dazzling glory of color, and although it was not early, from a countryman's point of view, the dewy freshness had not entirely faded, and rosy tints still lingered in the valleys and against the calabrian coast in the distance. an odor of myrtle and jessamine came from a garden beneath the outer terrace wall, and on either side of the manor rose wooded hills the lower slopes of which were laid out in vineyards and groves of citrus fruits. having in full measure the normal man's unaffected appreciation of nature, blake found himself wondering how martel could ever leave this spot for the artificialities of paris. the count was amply able to live where he chose, and it was no love for art which had kept him in france these many years. on the contrary, they had both recognized the mediocrity of his talent and had often joked about it. it was perhaps no more than a youthful restlessness and craving for excitement, he concluded. knowing that his luxurious host would not be stirring for another hour, he set out to explore the place at his leisure, and in time came around to the stables and outhouses. it is not the front of any residence which shows its real character, any more than a woman's true nature is displayed by her sunday attire. norvin made friends with a surly, stiff-haired dog, then with a patriarchal old goat which he found grazing atop a wall, and at last he encountered francesca bearing a bundle of fagots upon her head. she was in a bad temper, it appeared, for in answer to his cheerful greeting she began to revile the names of ippolito and michele. "lazy pigs!" she cried, fiercely. "is it not sufficient that old francesca should bare her bones and become a shadow with the cares of the household? is it not sufficient that she performs the labor of twenty in caring for the padrone? no! is it not the devil's task to prepare the many outlandish delicacies he learned to eat in his travels? yes! ha! what of that! she must also perform the duties of an ass and bear wood for the fires! and what, think you, those two young giants are doing all the day? sleeping, si'or! up all night, asleep all day! a fine business. and francesca with a broken back!" "i'll carry your wood," he offered, at which the mountainous old woman stared at him as if she did not in the least comprehend his words. although her burden was enough to tax a man's strength, she balanced it easily upon her head and made no move to go. "and the others! may they all be blinded--attilio, gaspare, roberto! the hangman will get them, surely. briganti, indeed!" she snorted like a horse. "may belisario cardi roast them over these very fagots." slowly she moved her head from side to side while the bundle swayed precariously. "it is a bad business, si'or. the padrone is mad to resist. you may tell him he is quite mad. mark me, ricardo knows that no good will come of it, but he is like a bull when he is angry. he lowers his head and sees blood. veramente, it is a bad business and we shall all lose our ears." she moved off majestically, her eyes rolling in her fat cheeks, her lips moving; leaving the american to speculate as to what her evil prediction had to do with ippolito and the firewood. he was still smiling at her anger when ippolito himself, astride a horse, came clattering into the courtyard and dismounted stiffly, giving him a good morning with a wide yawn. "corpo di baccho!" exclaimed the rider. "i shall sleep for a century." he stretched luxuriously and, unslinging a gun from his shoulder, leaned it against the wall. blake was surprised to find it a late model of an american repeating rifle. "francesca!" he called loudly. "madonna mia, i am famished!" "francesca was here a moment ago," norvin volunteered. "in a frightful temper, too." "just so! it was the wood, i presume." he scowled. "one cannot be in ten places unless he is in ten pieces. i am glad to be here, and not here and there." "well, she wants you roasted by some fellow named cardi--" "eh? what?" ippolito started, jerking the horse's head by the bridle rein, through which he had thrust his arm. "what is this?" "belisario cardi, i believe she said. i don't know him." the sicilian muttered an oath and disappeared into the stable; he was still scowling when he emerged. prompted by a feeling that he was close to something mysterious, blake tried to sound the fellow. "you are abroad early," he suggested. but ippolito seemed in no mood for conversation, and merely replied: "si, signore, quite early." he was a lean, swarthy youth, square-jawed and well put up. although his clothes were poor, he wore them with a certain grace and moved like a man who is sure of himself. "did you see any robbers?" "robbers?" ippolito's look was one of quick suspicion. "who has ever seen a robber?" "come, come! i heard the count and ricardo talking. you have been away, among the orange-groves, all night. am i right?" "you are right." "tell me, is it common thieves or outlaws whom you watch? i have heard about your brigands." "ippolito!" came the harsh voice of ricardo, who at that moment appeared around the corner of the stable. "in the kitchen you will find food." ippolito bowed to the american and departed, his rifle beneath his arm. blake turned his attention to the overseer, for his mind, once filled with an idea, was not easily satisfied. but ricardo would give him no information. he raised his bushy, gray eyebrows at the american's question. "brigands? ippolito is a great liar." seeing the angry sparkle in the old fellow's eyes, norvin hastened to say: "he told me nothing, i assure you." "thieves, yes! we have ladri here, as elsewhere. sometimes it is well to take precautions." "but francesca was quite excited, and i heard you and martel mention la mafia last night," blake persisted. "i see you all go armed. i am naturally curious. i thought you might be in trouble with the society." "children's tales!" said ricardo, gruffly. "there is no society of la mafia." "oh, see here! we have it even in my own country. the new orleans papers have been full of stories about the mala vita, the mafia, or whatever you choose to call it. there is a big italian population there, you know, and they are causing our police a great deal of worry. i live in louisiana, so i ought to know. we understand it's an offshoot of the sicilian mafia." "in naples i hear there is a camorra. but this is sicily. we have no societies." "nevertheless, i heard you say something about 'mafioso' last night," blake insisted. "perhaps," grudgingly admitted the overseer. "but la mafia is not a man, not a society, as you say. it is--" he made a wide gesture. "it is all sicily. you do not understand." "no, i do not." "very well. one does not speak of it. would the signore care to see the horses?" "thank you, yes." the two went into the stables together, and blake for the time gave up the hope of learning anything further about sicilian brigandage. nor did martel show any willingness to enlighten him when he tentatively introduced the subject at breakfast, but laughingly turned the conversation into another channel. "to-day you shall see the star of my life," he declared. "be prepared to worship as all men do." "assuredly." "and promise you will not fall in love." "is that why you discouraged my coming until a week before your wedding? really, if she is all you claim, we might have been such delightful enemies." "enemies are never that," said the count, gravely. "i know men in my country who cherish their enemies like friends. they seem to enjoy them tremendously, until one or the other has passed on to glory. even then they are highly spoken of." "i am impatient for you to see her. she, of course, has many preparations to make, for the wedding-day is almost here; but it is arranged that we are to dine there to-night with her and her aunt, the donna teresa. ah, norvin mine, seven days separate me from paradise. you can judge of my ecstasy. the hours creep, the moments are leaden. each night when i retire, i feel faithless in allowing sleep to rob my thoughts of her. when i awake it is with the consolation that more of those miserable hours have crept away. i am like a man insane." "i am beginning to think you really are so." "diamine! wait! you have not seen her. we are to be married by a bishop." "no doubt that will insure your happiness." "a marriage like this does not occur every day. it will be an event, i tell you." "and you're sure i won't be in the way this evening?" "no, no! it is arranged. she is waiting--expecting you. she knows you already. this morning, however, you will amuse yourself--will you not?--for i must ride down to san sebastiano and meet the colonel of carabinieri from messina." "certainly. don't mind me." martel hesitated an instant, then explained: "it is a matter of business. one of my farm-hands is in prison." "indeed! what for?" "oh, it is nothing. he killed a fellow last week." "jove! what a peaceful, pastoral place you have here! i arrive to be met by an armed guard, i hear talk of mafiosi, men ride out at night with rifles, and old women predict unspeakable evil. what is all the mystery?" "nonsense! there is no mystery. do you think i would drag you, my best friend, into danger?" savigno's lips were smiling, but he awaited an answer with some restraint. "that would not be quite the--quite a nice thing to do, would it?" "so, that's it! now i know you have something on your mind. and it must be of considerable importance or you would have told me before this." "you are right," the count suddenly declared, "although i hoped you would not discover it. i might have known. but i suppose it is better to make a clean breast of it now. i have enemies, my friend, and i assure you i do not cherish them." "the countess margherita is a famous beauty, eh? well! it is not remarkable that you should have rivals." "no, no. this has nothing to do with her, unless our approaching marriage has roused them to make a demonstration. have you ever heard of--belisario cardi?" "not until this morning. who is he?" "i would give much to know. if you had asked me a month ago, i would have said he is an imaginary character, used to frighten people--a modern fra diavolo, a mere name with which to inspire terror--for nobody has ever seen him. now, however, he seems real enough, and i learn that the carabinieri believe in his existence." martel pushed back the breakfast dishes and, leaning his elbows upon the table, continued, after a pause: "to you sicily is all beauty and peace and fragrance; she is old and therefore civilized, so you think. everything you have seen so far is reasonably modern, eh?" he showed his white teeth as blake assured him: "it's the most peaceful, restful spot i ever saw." "you see nothing but the surface. sicily is much what she was in my grandfather's time. you have inquired about la mafia. well, there is such a thing. it killed my father. it forced me to give up my home and be an exile." at norvin's exclamation of astonishment, he nodded. "there's a long story behind it which you could not appreciate without knowing my father and the character of our sicilian people, for, after all, sicilian character constitutes la mafia. it is no sect, no cult, no secret body of assassins, highwaymen, and robbers, as you foreigners imagine; it is a national hatred of authority, an individual expression of superiority to the law." "in our own new orleans we are beginning to talk of the mafia, but with us it is a mysterious organization of italian criminals. we treat it as somewhat of a joke." "be not so sure. some day it may dominate your american cities as it does all sicily." "still i don't understand. you say it is an organization and yet it is not; it terrorizes a whole island and yet you say it is no more than your national character. it must have a head, it must have arms." "it has no head, or, rather, it has many heads. it is not a band. it is the sicilian intolerance of restraint, the individual's sense of superiority to moral, social, and political law. it is the freemasonry that results from this common resistance to authority. it is an idea, not an institution; it is sicily's curse and that which makes her impossible of government. i do not mean to deny that we have outlawry and brigandage; they are merely the most violent demonstrations of la mafia. it afflicts the cities; it is a tyranny in the country districts. la mafia taxes us with blackmail, it saddles us with a great force of carabinieri, it gives food and drink and life to men like belisario cardi. every landholder, every man of property, contributes to its support. you still do not understand, but you will as i go along. as an instance of its workings, all fruit-growers hereabouts are obliged to maintain watchmen, in addition to their regular employees. otherwise their groves will be robbed. these guards are mafiosi. let us say that one of us opposes this monopoly. what happens? he loses his crop in a night; his trees are cut down. should he appeal to the law for protection, he is regarded as a weakling, a man of no spirit. this is but one small example of the workings of la mafia; as a matter of fact, it permeates the political, the business, and the social life of the whole island. knowing the impotence of the law to protect any one, peaceable citizens shield the criminals. they perjure themselves to acquit a mafioso rather than testify against him and thus incur the certainty of some fearful vengeance. should the farmer persist in his independence, something ends his life, as in my father's case. the whole country is terrorized by a conspiracy of a few bold and masterful men. it is unbearable. there are, of course, capi-mafia--leaders--whose commands are enforced, but there is no single well-organized society. it is a great interlocking system built upon patronage, friendship, and the peculiar sicilian character." "now i think i begin to understand." "my father was not strong enough to throw off the yoke and it meant his death. i was too young to take his place, but now that i am a man i intend to play a man's part, and i have served notice. it means a battle, but i shall win." to martel's hasty and very incomplete sketch of the hidden influences of sicilian life blake listened with the greatest interest, noting the grave determination that had settled upon his friend; yet he could scarcely bring himself to accept an explanation that seemed so far-fetched. the whole theory of the mafia struck him as grotesque and theatrical. "and one man has already been killed, you say?" he asked. "yes, i discharged all the watchmen whom i knew to be mafiosi. it caused a commotion, i can tell you, and no little uneasiness among the country people, who love me even if, to them, i have been a more or less imaginary person since my father's death. naturally they warned me to desist in this mad policy of independence. a week ago one of my campieri, paolo--he who is now in prison--surprised a fellow hacking down my orange-trees and shot him. the miscreant proved to be a certain galli, whom i had discharged. he left a family, i regret to say, but his reputation was bad. notwithstanding all this, paolo is still in prison despite my utmost efforts. the machinery of the mafia is in motion, they will perjure witnesses, they will spend money in any quantity to convict my poor paolo. heaven knows what the result will be." "and where does this bogey-man enter--this belisario cardi?" "i have had a letter from him." "really?" "it is in the hands of the carabinieri, hence this journey of my friend, colonel neri, from messina." "what did the letter say?" "it demanded a great sum of money, with my life as the penalty for refusal. it was signed by cardi; there was no mistaking the name. if it had been from narcone, for instance, i would have paid no attention to it, for he is no more than a cattle-thief. but belisario cardi! my boy, you don't appreciate the significance of that name. i should not care to fall into his hands, i assure you, and have my feet roasted over a slow fire--" "good heavens!" norvin cried, rising abruptly from his chair. "you don't really mean he's that sort?" "as a matter of fact," the count reassured his guest, "i don't believe in his existence at all. it is merely a name to be used upon occasion. but as for the punishment, that is perhaps the least i might expect if i were so unfortunate as to be captured." "why, this can't be! do you realize that this is the year 1886? such things are not possible any longer. in your father's time--yes." "all things are possible in sicily," smiled savigno. "we are a century behind the times. but, caro mio, i did wrong to tell you--" "no, no." "i shall come to no harm, believe me. i am known to be young, rich, and my marriage is but a few days off. what more natural, therefore, than for some mafioso to try to frighten me and profit by the dreaded name of cardi? i am a stranger here in my own birthplace. when i become better known, there will be no more feeble attempts at blackmail. other landholders have maintained their independence, and i shall do the same, for an enemy who fears to fight openly is a coward, and i am in the right." "i am glad i came. i shall be glad, too, when you are married and safely off on your wedding journey." "i feared to tell you all this lest you should think i had no right to bring you here at such a time--" "don't be an utter idiot, martel." "you are an american; you have your own way of looking at things. of course, if anything should happen--if ill-fortune should overtake me before the marriage--" "see here! if there is the slightest danger, the faintest possibility, you ought to go away, as you did before," norvin declared, positively. "i am no longer a child. i am to be married a week hence. wild horses could not drag me away." "you could postpone it--explain it to the countess--" "there is no necessity; there is no cause for alarm, even. all the same, i feel much easier with you here. margherita has relatives, to be sure, but they are--well, i have no confidence in them. in the remote possibility that the worst should come, you could look out for her, and i am sure you would. am i right?" "of course you are." "and now let us think of something pleasanter. we won't talk of it any more, eh?" "i'm perfectly willing to let it drop. you know i would do anything for you or yours, so we needn't discuss that point any further." "good!" martel rose and with his customary display of affection flung an arm about his friend's shoulders. "and now ricardo is waiting to go to san sebastiano, so you must amuse yourself for an hour or two. i have had the billiard-table recovered, and the cushions are fairly good. you will find books in the library, perhaps a portfolio of my earlier drawings--" "billiards!" exclaimed the american, fervently, whereupon the count laughed. "till i return, then, a riverderci!" he seized his hat and strode out of the room. iii the golden girl shortly after the heat of the day had begun to subside the two friends set out for terranova. ricardo accompanied them--it seemed he went everywhere with martel--following at a distance which allowed the young men freedom to talk, his watchful eyes scanning the roadside as if even in the light of day he feared some lurking danger. the prospect of seeing his fiancee acted like wine upon savigno, and from his exuberant spirits it was evident that he had completely forgotten his serious talk at the breakfast table. his disposition was mercurial, and if he had ever known real forebodings they were forgotten now. it was a splendid ride along a road which wound in serpentine twinings high above the sea, now breasting ridges bare of all save rock and spurge, and now dipping into valleys shaded by flowering trees and cloyed with the scent of blooms. it meandered past farms, in haphazard fashion, past vineyards and gardens and groves of mandarin, lime, and lemon, finally toiling up over a bold chestnut-studded shoulder of the range, where blake drew in to enjoy the scene. a faint haze, impalpable as the memory of dreams, lay over the land, the sea was azure, the mountains faintly purple. a gleam of white far below showed terranova, and when the american had voiced his appreciation the three horsemen plunged downward, leaving a rolling cloud of yellow dust behind them. the road from here on led through a wild and somewhat forbidding country, broken by ravines and watercourses and quite densely wooded with thickets which swept upward into the interior as far as the eye could reach; but in the neighborhood of terranova the land blossomed and flowered again as on the other side of the mountains. leaving the main road by a driveway, the three horsemen swung through spacious grounds and into a courtyard behind the house, where an old man came shuffling slowly forward, his wrinkled face puckered into a smile of welcome. "ha! aliandro!" cried the count. "what do i see? the rheumatism is gone at last, grazie dio!" aliandro's loose lips parted over his toothless gums and he mumbled: "illustrissimo, the accursed affliction is worse." "impossible! then why these capers? my dear aliandro, you are shamming. why, you came leaping like a goat." "as god is my judge, carino, i can sleep only in the sun. it is like the tortures of the devil, and my bones creak like a gate." "and yet each day i declare to myself: 'aliandro, that rascal, is growing younger as the hours go by. it is well we are not rivals in love or i should be forced to hate him!'" the old man chuckled and beamed upon savigno, who proceeded to make norvin known. aliandro's face had once been long and pointed, but with the loss of teeth and the other mysterious shrinkages of time it had shortened until in repose the chin and the nose seemed to meet like the points of calipers. when he moved his jaws his whole countenance lengthened magically, as if made of some substance more elastic than flesh. it stretched and shortened rapidly now, in the most extraordinary fashion, for the count had a knack of pleasing people. "and where are the ladies?" savigno inquired. aliandro cocked a watery eye at the heavens and replied: "they will be upon the loggiato at this hour, illustrissimo. the donna teresa will have a book." he squinted respectfully at a small note which martel handed him, then inquired, "do you wish change?" "not at all. it is yours for your courtesy." "grazie! grazie! a million thanks." the old fellow made off with surprising agility. "what a sham he is!" the count laughed, as he and norvin walked on around the house. "he will do no labor, and yet the contessa supports him in idleness. there is a mafioso for you! he has been a brigand, a robber. he is, to this day, as you see. margherita has an army of such people who impose upon her. every time i am here i tip him. every time he receives it with the same words." although the country-seat of the ginini was known as a castello, it was more in the nature of a comfortable and pretentious villa. it had dignity, however, and drowsed upon a commanding eminence fronted by a splendid terraced lawn which one beheld through clumps of flowering shrubs and well-tended trees. here and there among the foliage gleamed statuary, and the musical purl of a fountain fell upon the ear. as the young men mounted to the loggiato, or covered gallery, a delicate, white-haired italian lady arose and came to meet them. "ah, martel, my dear boy! we have been expecting you," she cried. it was the donna teresa fazello, and she turned a sweet face upon mattel's friend, bidding him welcome to terranova with charming courtesy. she was still exchanging with him the pleasantries customary upon first meetings when he heard the count exclaim softly, and, looking up, saw him bowing low over a girl's hands. her back was half turned toward norvin, but although he had not seen her features clearly, he felt a great surprise. his preconceived notion of her had been all wrong; it seemed, for she was not dark--on the contrary, she was as tawny as a lioness. her hair, of which there was an abundance, was not the ordinary saxon yellow, but iridescent, as if burned by the fierce heat of a tropical sun. the neck and cheeks were likewise golden, or was it the light from her splendid crown? he was still staring at her when she turned and came forward to give him her hand, thus allowing her full glory to flash upon him. "welcome!" she said, in a voice as low-pitched as a cello string, and her lover, watching eagerly for some sign from his friend, smiled delightedly at the emotion he saw leap up in norvin's face. that young man was quite unconscious of martel's espionage--unconscious of everything, in fact, save the splendid creature who stood smiling at him as if she had known him all her days. his first impression, that she was all golden, all gleaming, like a flame, did not leave him; for the same warm tints that were in her hair were likewise present in her cheeks, her neck, her hands. it was like the hue which underlies old ivory. her skin was clear and of unusual pallor, yet it seemed to radiate warmth. something rich and vivid in her voice also lent strength to the odd impression she had given him, as if her very speech were gold made liquid. except for the faintest tinge of olive, her cheeks were colorless, yet they spoke of perfect health, and shone with that same pale, effulgent glow, like the reflection of a late sun. her lips were richly red and as fresh as a half-opened flower, affording the only contrast to that puzzling radiance. her unusual effect was due as much perhaps to the color of her eyes as to her hair and skin, for while they were really of a greenish hazel they held the fires of an opal in their depths. they were oriental, slumbrous, meditative, and the black pupils were of an exaggerated size. her brows were dark and met above a finely chiseled nose. all in all, blake was quite taken aback, for he had not been prepared for such a vision, and a sort of panic robbed him of speech. but when his halting tongue had done its duty and his eyes had turned once more to the aunt, some irresistible power swept them back to the young woman's face. the more he observed her the more he was puzzled by that peculiar effect, that glow which seemed to envelop her. even her gown, of some shimmering material, lent its part to the illusion. yellow was undeniably her color; she seemed steeped in it. he had to make a determined effort to recover his composure. savigno fell quickly into a lover's rhapsody, devouring the girl with ardent glances under which she thrilled, and soon they began to chatter of the wedding preparations. "it was very good of you to come so long a way," said the countess at last, turning to the american for a second time. "martel has told us all about you and about your adventures together." "not all!" cried savigno, lightly. "we have pasts, i assure you." "martel tries so hard to impress us with his wickedness," the aunt explained. "but we know him to be jesting. perhaps you will confound him here before us." "i shall do nothing of the sort," blake laughed. "who am i to rob him of a delightfully wicked past upon which he can pretend to look back in horror? it is the only past he will ever have, so why spoil it for him? on the contrary, i am prepared to lend a hand and to start him off with a list of damning disclosures which it will require years to live down." "pray begin," urged the count with an air of intense satisfaction. "eh? he hesitates. then i shall begin for him. in the first place, margherita, he openly declares that i covet your riches." the countess joined in the laughter at this, and norvin could only say: "i had not met you then, signorina." "he was quite serious, nevertheless, and predicted that marriage would end our friendship, arguing that supreme happiness is but another term for supreme selfishness." "at least i did not question the certainty of your happiness." the girl spoke up gravely: "i don't agree with you, signor blake. i should hate to think it will make us selfish. it seems to me that such--love as we share will make us very good and sweet and generous." when she spoke of love she hesitated and lowered her eyes until the quivering lashes swept her cheeks, but no flush of embarrassment followed. norvin realized that with all her reserve she could not blush, had probably never blushed. "you shouldn't place the least dependence on the words of a man's best friend under such conditions," he told her, "for he covers his chagrin at losing a comrade by a display of pessimism which he doesn't really feel." norvin suddenly wished the countess would not allow her glance to linger upon him so long and searchingly. it filled him with a most disturbing self-consciousness. he was relieved when the donna teresa engaged him in conversation and the lovers were occupied with each other. it was some time later that the countess addressed her aunt excitedly: "listen! what do you think of this, zia mia? the authorities will not admit poor paolo to bail, and he is still in prison." "poor fellow!" cried the donna teresa. "it is la mafia." "perhaps it is better for him to remain where he is," martel said. "he is at least safe, for the time being. here is something you may not know: galli's wife is sister to gian narcone." "the outlaw?" "then she will probably kill paolo," said the countess margherita, calmly. blake exclaimed wonderingly: "i say--this is worse than breathitt county, kentucky. you talk of murders and outlaws as we discuss the cotton crop or the boll-weevil. this is the most fatal country i ever saw." "it is a great pity that such things exist," the donna teresa agreed, "but one grows accustomed to them in time. it has been so ever since i was a child--we do not seem to progress, here in sicily. now in italy it is much more civilized, much more restful." "how hard it must be to do right," said the countess, musingly. "look at paolo, for instance; he kills a wretched thief quite innocently, and yet the law holds him in prison. it is necessary, of course, to be severe with robbers like this galli and his brother-in-law, who is an open outlaw, and yet, i suppose if i were that galli's wife i should demand blood to wash my blood. she is only a wife." "you sympathize with her?" exclaimed martel in astonishment. "deeply! i am not so sorry the man was killed, but a wife has rights. she will doubtless follow him." "do you believe in the vendetta?" norvin asked, curiously. "who does not? the law is full of tricks. there is a saying which runs, 'the gallows for the poor, justice for the fool!'" "you are a mafiosa," cried the scandalized aunt. "it is one of aliandro's sayings. he has lived a life! he often tells me stories." "aliandro is a terrible liar," martel declared. "i fear his adventures are much like his rheumatism." "you do not exact a reckoning from your enemies in america?" queried margherita. "oh, we do, but not with quite so much enthusiasm as you do," blake answered her. "we aren't ordinarily obliged to kill people in order to protect our property, and wives don't go about threatening vengeance when their husbands meet with accidents. the police take care of such things." "a fine country! it must be so peaceful for old people," ejaculated the aunt. "we have some outlaws, to be sure, like your notorious belisario cardi--" "cardi is but a name," said the girl. "he does not exist." intercepting a warning glance from martel, blake said no more, and the talk drifted to more agreeable subjects. but the count, being possessed of a nervous temperament which called for constant motion, could not long remain inactive, and now, having poured his extravagant devotion into his sweetheart's ears, he rose, saying: "i must go to the village. the baker, the confectioner, the butcher, all have many things to prepare for the festa, and i must order the fireworks from messina. norvin will remain here while ricardo and i complete the arrangements. i tell you it will be a celebration to awaken the countryside. for an hour then, addio!" he touched his lips to margherita's fingers and, bowing to her aunt, ran down the steps. "some gadfly stings him," said the donna teresa, fondly. "he is like a child; he cannot remain seated. he comes, he goes, like the wind. there is no holding him." "so there's to be a festa?" blake observed with interest. "oh, indeed! it will be a great event. it was mattel's idea." margherita arose and the young man followed. "see, out there upon the terrace there will be dancing. you have never seen a sicilian merrymaking? you have never seen the tarantella! then you will be interested. on the night before the ceremony the people will come from the whole countryside. there will be music, games, fireworks. oh, it will be a celebrazione. my cousins from messina will be here, the bishop, many fine people. i--i am more excited than martel. i can scarcely wait." the girl's face mirrored her emotion and her eyes were as deep as the sea. she seemed for the moment very far away, uplifted in contemplation of the great change so soon to occur in her life, and norvin began to suspect her of a tremendous depth of feeling. unknown even to herself she was smouldering; unawakened fires were stirred by the consciousness of coming wifehood. out here in the sun she was more tawny than ever, and, recalling the threat against her lover, the young man fell to wondering how she would take misfortune if it ever came. feeling his eyes upon her, she met his gaze frankly with a smile. "what is it? you have something to say." he recovered himself with an effort. "no! only--you are so different from what i expected." "and you also," she laughed. "you are much more agreeable; i like you immensely, and i want you to tell me all about yourself." that was a wonderful afternoon for blake. the sicilian girl took him into her confidence without the slightest restraint. there was no period of getting acquainted; it was as if they had known each other for a lifetime. he never ceased marveling at her beauty and his ears grew ever more eager for her voice. martel made no secret of his delight at their instantaneous liking for each other, and the dinner that evening was the gayest that had brightened terranova for years. inasmuch as the ride to san sebastiano was long, the young men were forced to leave early, but they were scarcely out of hearing before martel drew his horse in beside norvin and, laying a hand upon his friend's arm, inquired, breathlessly: "well? come, come, brother of mine! you know i perish of eagerness. what have you to say? the truth, between man and man." blake answered him with an odd hesitation: "you must know without asking. there's nothing to say--except that she--she is like a golden flame. she sets one afire. she is different--wonderful. i--i--" "exactly!" savigno laughed with keenest contentment. "there is no other." when blake retired that night it was not to sleep at once, for he was troubled by a growing fear of himself that would not be lightly put aside. iv the feast at terranova during the next few days norvin blake saw much of the countess margherita, for every afternoon he and martel rode to terranova. the preparations for the wedding neared completion and the consciousness of a coming celebration had penetrated the countryside. among all who looked forward to the big event, perhaps the one who watched the hours fly with the greatest degree of suspense was the american. he had half faced the truth on that night after his first meeting with the girl, and the succeeding days enforced the conviction he would have been glad to escape. he could no longer doubt that he was in love, madly infatuated with his best friend's fiancee, and the knowledge came like some crushing misfortune. it could scarcely be called a love at first sight, for he felt that he had always known and always loved this girl. he had never believed in these sudden obsessions, and more than once had been amused at martel's ability to fall violently in love at a moment's notice, and to fall as quickly out again, but in spite of his coolest reasoning and sternest self-reproach he found the spell too strong for him. every decent instinct commanded him to uproot this passion; every impetuous impulse burst into sudden flame and consumed his better sense, his judgment, and his loyalty, leaving him shaken and doubtful. although this was his first serious soul conflict, he possessed more than average self-control, and he managed to conceal his feelings so well that martel, who was the embodiment of loyalty and generosity, never for a moment suspected the truth. as for the girl, she was too full of her own happiness to see anything amiss. she took her lover's comrade into her heart with that odd unrestraint which characterized her, and, recognizing the bond which united the two young men, she strove to widen it sufficiently to include herself. it spoke well for her that she felt no jealousy of that love which a man bears for his life's best friend, but rather strove to encourage it. her intense desire to be a part of her lover and share all his affections led her to strive earnestly for a third place in the union, with the result that blake saw even more of her than did savigno. she deliberately set herself the task of winning the american, a task already more than accomplished, had she but known it, and, although for some women such a course would have been neither easy nor safe, with her a misconception of motive was impossible. she had an ardent, almost reckless manner of attacking problems; she was as intense and yet as changeful as a flame. blake watched her varying moods with the same fascination with which one regards a wind-blown blaze, recognizing, even in her moments of repression, that she was ready to burst forth anew at the slightest breath. she was the sort of woman to dominate men, to inspire them with tremendous enthusiasm for good or for evil as they chanced to lean toward the one or the other. while she seemed wholly admirable, she exercised a damnable effect upon norvin. he was tortured by a thousand devils, he was possessed by dreams and fancies hitherto strange and unrecognized. the nervous strain began to tell in time; he slept little, he grew weary of the struggle, things became unreal and distorted. he longed to end it all by fleeing from sicily, and had there been more time he would have arranged for a summons to america. his mother had not been well for a long time, and he was tempted to use this fact as an excuse for immediate departure, but the thought that martel needed him acted as an effective restraint. the vague menace of la mafia still hung over the count and was not lessened by the receipt of a second threatening letter a few days after blake's arrival. cardi wrote again, demanding instant compliance with the terms contained in his first communication. savigno was directed to send ricardo ferara at a given hour to a certain crossroads above san sebastiano with ten thousand lire. in that case candles would be burned and masses said for the soul of the murdered galli, so the writer promised. the letter put no penalty upon a failure to comply with these demands, beyond a vague prediction of evil. it was short and business-like and very much to the point. as this was the first document of the kind norvin had ever seen, he was greatly interested in it. "don't you think it may be the work of this fellow narcone?" he inquired. "i understand he is the brother-in-law of galli." "narcone would scarcely undertake so bold a piece of blackmail," the count declared. "i knew him slightly before he gave himself to the campagna. he was a butcher; he was brutal and domineering, but he was a coward." "it is not from narcone," ricardo pronounced, positively--they had called in the overseer for the discussion--"he is grossolano. he can neither read nor write. this letter is well spelled and well written." "then you think it is really from cardi?" ricardo shrugged his square shoulders. "who knows? some say there is no such person, others declare he went to america years ago." "what is your belief?" "i know a man who has seen him." "who?" "aliandro." "bah! aliandro is such a liar!" exclaimed savigno. "however that may be, he has seen things in his time. he says that cardi is not what people suppose him to be--a brigand--except when it suits his desires. that is why he comes and goes and the carabinieri can never trace him. that is why he is at home in all parts of sicily; that is why he uses men like narcone when he chooses." "it would please me to capture the wretch," said martel. "let's try it," norvin suggested, and accordingly a trap was laid. four carabinieri were sent to the appointed place, ahead of time, with directions to conceal themselves, and ferara carried out his part of the programme. but no one came to meet him, he encountered no one coming or going to the crossroads, and returned greatly disgusted. however, at his suggestion colonel neri stationed the four soldier policemen at the castello to prevent any demonstration and to profit by any development which might occur. the young men did not permit this diversion to interrupt their daily trips to terranova, although as a matter of precaution they added ippolito to their party. he was delighted at the change of duty, because, as norvin discovered, it brought him to the side of lucrezia ferara. thus it happened that martel had reason to regret the choice of his bodyguard, for on the very first visit ippolito began to strut and swagger before the girl and allowed the secret to escape him, whereupon it was carried to the countess. she appealed to martel to leave san sebastiano for the time being, to postpone the wedding, or at least to go to messina for it; but of course he refused and tried to laugh down her misgivings, and of course she appealed privately to blake for assistance. "you must use your influence to change his mind," she said, earnestly. "he declares he will not be overawed by these ruffians. he says that to pay them the least attention would be to encourage them to another attempt when we return, but--he does not know the mafia as i know it. you will do this for me?" "of course, if you wish it, although i agree with martel, and i'm sure he won't listen to me. he can't play the coward. the wedding is only two days off now. why, to-morrow is the gala-day! how could he notify the whole district, when all his preparations have been completed? what excuse could he give without confessing his fear and making himself liable to a later and stronger attack?" "the country people need not know anything about it. let them come and make merry. he can leave now, tonight. we will join him at messina." norvin shook his head. "i'll do what i can, since you wish it, but i'm sure he won't consent to any change of plan. i'm sure, also, that you are needlessly troubled." "perhaps," she acknowledged, doubtfully. "and yet martel's father--" "yes, yes. but conditions are not what they were fifteen years ago. this is merely a blackmailing scheme, and if he ignores it he'll probably never hear of it again. on the other hand, if he allows it to drive him away it will be repeated upon his return." she searched his face with her eyes, and his wits reeled at her earnest gaze. he was conscious of a single wild desire that such anxiety might be for him. how gladly he would yield to her wishes--how gladly he would yield to any wish of hers! he was a foreigner; he hated this island and its people, for the most part, and yet if he stood in martel's place he would willingly change his life to correspond with hers. he would become sicilian in body and soul. she had the power to dissolve his habits, his likes and dislikes, and reconstruct him through and through. "i hope you are right," she said at last. "and yet--it is said that no one escapes the mafia." "this isn't the mafia. it is the work of some brigand--" "what is the difference? the one merges into the other. blood has been spilled; the forces are at work." suddenly she seized him by the arm, and her eyes blazed. "look you," she cried, "if martel should be injured, if these men should dare--all sicily would not hold them. no power could save them, no hiding-place could be so secret, no lies so cunning, that i would not know. you understand?" blake saw that the girl was at last aroused to that intensity of feeling which he had recognized as latent in her. love had caused her to glow, but it had required this breath of fear to fan the fire into full strength. he was deeply moved and answered simply: "i understand. i--never knew how much you loved him." her humor changed, and she smiled. "one is foolish, perhaps, to be so frank, but that is my nature. you would not have me change it?" "you couldn't if you tried." "martel has always known i loved him. i could never conceal it. i never wished to. if he had not seen it i would have told him. just now, when i heard he was threatened--well, you see." "ippolito had no business to mention the matter. i suppose his tongue ran away with him. tongues have a way of doing such things when their owners are in love." "he is not for lucrezia." "why? he's a fine fellow." "oh, but lucrezia is superior. i have taught her a great many things. she is more like a sister to me than a servant, and i could not see her married to a farm-hand. she can do much better than to marry ippolito." "love goes where it pleases," said the american with so much feeling that margherita's eyes leaped to his. "you know? ah, my good friend, then you have loved?" he nodded. "i have. i do." she was instantly all eagerness, and beamed upon him with a frank delight that stabbed him. "martel? does he know?" "no, you see, there's no use--no possibility." "i'm sorry. there must be some great mistake. i cannot conceive of so sad a thing." "please don't try," he exclaimed, panic-stricken at thought of the dangerous ground he was treading and miserably afraid she would guess the truth in spite of him. "i should think any woman might love you," she said, critically, after a moment's meditation. "you are good and brave and true." "most discerning of women!" he cried, with an elaborate bow. "those are but a few of my admirable traits." he was relieved to see that she had no suspicion of his feelings, for she was extremely quick of wit and her intuition was keen. no doubt, her failure to read him was due to her absorption in her own affairs. he had arrived at a better knowledge of her capabilities to-day and began to realize that she was as changeable as a chameleon. one moment she could be like the sirocco in warmth and languor, the next as sparkling as the sunlit ocean. again she could be steeped in a dreamy abstraction or alive with a pagan joy of life. she might have been sixteen or thirty, as her mood chanced to affect her. of all the crossed strains that go to make up the sicilian race she had inherited more of the oriental than the greek or roman. somewhere back in the ginini family there was saracen blood, he felt sure. blake was as good as his word, and made her wishes known to martel, who laughingly accused him of a lack of faith in his own arguments. the count was bubbling with spirits at the immediate nearness of his nuptials, and declined to consider anything which might interfere with them. he joyfully told blake that the tickets were already bought and all arrangements made to leave for messina immediately after the ceremony, which would take place in the church at terranova. they would catch the boat for naples on the evening after the wedding, he explained, and blake was to accompany them at least that far on his way to america. meanwhile, he had no intention of foregoing the pleasure of to-morrow's celebration, even if belisario cardi himself should appear, to dispute his coming. it was the first, the last, and the only time he intended marrying, and he had promised himself to enjoy the occasion to the utmost, despite those letters, which, after all, were not to be taken seriously. so the matter was allowed to stand. the country people had begun to assemble when martel and his friend arrived at the ginini manor on the following afternoon, and the grounds were filling with gaily dressed peasants. the train from messina had brought margherita's relatives, and the bishop had sent word that he would arrive in ample time for the ceremony on the next morning. the contadini were coming in afoot, astride of donkeys and mules, or in gaily painted carts pictured with the miracles of the saints and the conquests of the moors. there were dark-haired men and women, wild-haired boys with roses above their ears, girls with huge ear-rings and fringed shawls which swept the ground as they walked. as yet they had not entirely lost their restraint, but martel went among them with friendly hand-clasps and exuberant greetings, renewing old acquaintances and welcoming new until at last their shyness disappeared and they began to laugh and chatter unaffectedly. savigno had traveled, he told them. he had arranged many surprises for his friends. there would be games, dances, music, and a wonderful entertainment in the big striped tent yonder, supplied by a troupe of players which he had brought all the way from palermo. as for the feast, well, the tables were already stretched under the trees, as they could see, and if any one wished to tantalize his nostrils just let him wander past the kitchen in the rear, where a dozen women had been at work since dawn. but that was not all; there would be gifts for the children and prizes for the best dancers. the handsomest woman would receive a magnificent shawl the like of which had never been dreamed of in terranova, and then to prevent jealousy the others would receive presents also. but he would not say too much. let them wait and see. finally there would be fireworks, enough to satisfy every one; and all he asked of them was that they drink the health of the countess margherita and wish her lifelong happiness. it was to be a memorable occasion, he hoped, and if they did not enjoy themselves as never before, then he and his bride would feel that their wedding had been a great, a colossal failure. but it seemed, as night approached, that martel had no reason to doubt the quality of his entertainment, for the guests gave themselves up to joy as only southerners can, forgetting poverty, hardship, and all the grinding cares of their barren lives. they yielded quickly to the passion of the festa, and blake began to see sicily for the first time. he would have liked to enter into their merrymaking, but felt himself too much a stranger. the feast was elaborate; no ristorante could have equaled it, no one but a spendthrift lover like martel would have furnished it. but it was not until darkness came and the trees began to twinkle and glow with their myriad lights that the fun reached its highest pitch. then there was true sicilian dancing, true sicilian joking, love-making. eyes were bright, cheeks were flushed, lips were parted, and the halls of terranova echoed to a bacchanalian tumult. there had been an elaborate supper inside also, to which the more prominent townspeople had been invited and from which norvin blake was only too eager to escape as it drew to an end. the strain to which he had been subjected for the past week was growing unbearable, and the sight of margherita ginini clad like a vision in some elaborate parisian gown so intensified his distress that he was glad to slip away into the open air at the first opportunity. he found ricardo leaning against the bole of a eucalyptus-tree, observing the throng with watchful eyes. "why aren't you making merry?" blake inquired. the overseer shrugged his shoulders, replying, somberly, "i am waiting." "for what?" "who knows? there are strangers here." "you mean,"--blake's manner changed quickly--"there may be enemies?" "if cardi is in the mountains behind martinello, may he not be here at terranova? i am looking for a thick, black man. aliandro has described him." "cardi would scarcely come to a wedding feast," said blake, with a certain feeling of uneasiness. "scarcely," the overseer agreed. "have you seen anything?" "nothing." "where is ippolito?" ricardo grunted. "asleep in the stable. the imbecile is drunk." to the american these sicilian people looked very much alike. they were all a bit fantastic, and the scene reminded him of a fancy-dress ball where all the men represented brigands. many of them were, or seemed to be, of truculent countenance; some wore piratical ear-rings, others had shawls wrapped about their heads as if for concealment. any one of them might have been a brigand, for all he knew, and he saw how easy it would be for a handful of evil-intentioned persons to mingle unobserved with such a throng. yet his better sense told him that he was silly to imagine such things. he had allowed old women's tales to upset his nerves. a half-hour later, as he was watching the crowd from the loggiato, margherita appeared, and he thought for a moment that she too might feel some vague foreboding, but her first words reassured him. "my good friend, i missed you," she said, "but i had no chance of leaving until this moment." coming close to him, she inquired: "has something gone amiss? you have seemed sad all this evening. i do not know, but i fear your heart is--heavy." he answered, unsteadily: "perhaps it is. i--don't know." "it is that certain woman." "i dare say. i'm a great fool, you know." "don't say that. this is perhaps the only chance i shall have of seeing you alone." "i'm glad," he broke out in a tone that startled her. "glad for you. i have tried not to be a death's-head at your feast, but it has been a struggle." "we women see things. martel, boy that he is, does not suspect, and yet i, who have known you so short a time, have read your secret. it is our happiness which makes you sad." "no, no. i'm not that sort. i share your happiness. i want it to continue." "if i had one wish it would be that she might care for you as i care for martel. and who knows? perhaps she may. you say it is impossible, yet life is full of blind ways and unseen turnings. somehow i feel that she will." "you are very good," he managed to say. then yielding to a sudden impulse, he took her hand and kissed it. a moment later she left him, but the touch of her cool flesh against his lips remained an unforgetable impression. savigno appeared, yawning prodigiously. "dio!" he exclaimed with a grimace. "those cousins of hers are deadly dull; i do not blame you for escaping. and the judge, and the notary's wife, and that village doctor! colonel neri is a good chap, notwithstanding his mustache in which he takes so much pride. he nurses it like a child, and yet it is older than i. poor friend of mine, you are a martyr, thus to endure for me." "it's tremendously interesting, particularly this part out here," norvin asserted. "i saw them dancing what i took to be the tarantella a moment ago. those peasant boys are like leaping fauns." "yes, and they will continue to dance for hours yet. i fear the donna teresa will not retire at her usual hour. what a day it has been! it is fine to give people happiness. that is one of my new discoveries." "remember to-morrow." "believe me, i think of nothing else. that is why we must be going soon. we cannot wait even for the fireworks, as much as i would like to. it is a long road to martinello and we must be up early in the morning. you do not object?" "on the contrary, i was about to bear you off in spite of yourself." "then i will have ippolito fetch the horses." "ippolito has been demonstrating the mastery of wine over matter. he is asleep in the manger." "drunk? oh, the idiot! he has the appetite of a shark, but the belly of a herring. i ought to warm his soles with a cane," declared savigno, angrily. "don't be too hard on him. i suspect lucrezia would not listen to his suit, poor chap. he's sick from unrequited passion." "very well, we will leave him to sleep it off. i couldn't be harsh with him at this time. and now we had best begin presenting our good-nights, although i hate to go." v what waited at the roadside to avoid the dampening effect of an early departure the three men rode out quietly from the courtyard at the rear of the house, leaving the merrymakers to their fun. "so, this is our last ride together," norvin said, as they left the valley and began the long ascent of the mountain that lay between them and martinello. "yes. henceforth we spare our horses. you see tomorrow we will take the morning train. half of san sebastiano will accompany us, too, and everybody will be dressed in his finest. ricardo here, for instance, will wear his new brown suit--a glorious affair. eh, ricardo?" "it would be as well to refrain from speaking," said the overseer, gruffly. "the road is dark. who knows what may be waiting?" "nonsense! be not always a bear. we are three armed men. i fancy narcone, nay, even our dreadful cardi himself, would scarcely dare molest us." ferara merely grunted and continued to hold his place abreast of his employer. norvin observed that he carried his rifle across his saddle-bow, and involuntarily shifted the strap of his own weapon so that it might be ready in case of an emergency. he had rebelled, somewhat, at carrying a firearm, but martel, after making a clean breast of his troubles that first morning, had insisted, and the american had yielded even though he felt ridiculous. the sky was moonless to-night but crowded with stars which gave light enough so that the riders were able to follow the road without difficulty, although the shadows on either side were dense. the air was sweet, and so still that the sounds of revelry from terranova were plainly audible. strains of music floated up the hillside, the shouts of the master of ceremonies came distinctly as he issued his commands for a country dance. the many lights within the grounds shone cloudily among the tree-tops far below, like the effulgence from some well-lit city hidden behind a hill, now disappearing for a time, now shining out again as the road pursued its meanderings. the hurried footfalls of the horses thudded steadily in the soft dust; the saddles creaked with that music which lulls a horseman like a song. "youth! youth! what a glorious thing it is!" exclaimed martel after a fruitless attempt to hold his tongue. "ricardo would have us go prowling like robbers when our hearts are singing loud enough for all the mountainside to hear. there is no evil in the world to-night, for the world is in love; to-morrow it bursts into happiness! and i am king over it all!" "i shall be glad to be rid of you, just the same," grumbled the old man. "ricardo alone has fears, but he was never young. think you that the gods would permit my wedding-day to be marred? bah! one can see evil before it comes; it casts a shadow; it has a chilling breath which any one with sensibilities can feel. as for me, i see the future as clearly as if it were spread out before me in the sunshine, and there is no misfortune in it anywhere. i cannot conceive of misfortune, with all this gladness and expectancy inside me." "they have begun the fireworks," said blake. "it's too bad you couldn't stay to see them, martel." he turned in his saddle, and the others reined in as a rocket soared into the night sky and burst with a shower of sparks. others followed and a detonation sounded faintly. "poor people!" said the count, gently. "i can hear them crying, 'oh!' 'ah!' 'beautiful!' 'it is an angel from heaven!'" "on the contrary, i'll warrant they're exclaiming, 'it is that angel from san sebastiano.' you have given them a great night." the count laughed. "yes. they will have much to talk and dream about. their lives are very barren, you know, and i hope the countess and i will be able to make them brighter as the years go by. oh, i have plans, caro mio, so many plans i scarcely know where to begin or how to talk about them. i could never be an artist, no matter how furiously i painted, no matter how many beautiful women i drew; but i can paint smiles upon the faces of those sad women down yonder. i can bring happiness into their lives. and that will be a picture to look back upon, eh? don't you think so? when they learn to know me, when they learn to love and trust me, there will be brighter days at terranova and at san sebastiano." "they love you now, i am sure." "i am too much a stranger yet. i have neglected my duties, but--well, in my travels i have learned some things that will be of benefit to us all. i see so much to do. it is delightful to be young and full of hopes, and to have the means of realizing them. above all, it is delicious to know that there is one who will share those ambitions and efforts with you. i see ricardo is disgusted with me, but he is a pessimist. he does not believe in charity and love." "what foolish talk!" protested the old man with heat. "do i not love my girl lucrezia? do i not love you, the countess, and--and--perhaps a few others?" martel laughed. "i was merely teasing you." they resumed their journey, leaving the showering meteors behind them, and the count, in the lightness of his heart, began humming a tune. as for blake, he rode as silently as ferara, being lost in contemplation of a happiness in which he had no part. not until this moment had he realized how entirely unnecessary he was to the existence of martel and margherita. he longed to remain a part of them, but saw that his desire was vain. they were complete without him, their lives would be full. he began to feel like a stranger already. it was a new sensation, for he had always seemed to be a factor in the lives of those about him; but martel had changed with the advent of new interests and ambitions. sicily, too, was different from any land he knew, and even margherita ginini was hard to understand. she seemed to be the spirit of sicily made flesh and blood. he wondered if the very fact that she was so unusual might not help him to forget her once he was away from her influence. he hoped so, for this last week had been the most painful period of his life. he had come south, somewhat against his will, for a kaleidoscopic glimpse of europe, never dreaming that he would carry back to america anything more than the usual flitting memories of a pleasant trip; but instead he was destined to take with him a single vivid picture. he argued that he was merely infatuated with the girl, carried away by the allurement of a new and remarkable type of woman, and that these headlong passions were neither healthy nor lasting; but his reasoning brought him no real sense of conviction, and his life, as he looked forward to it, appeared singularly flat and stale. his one consolation, poor as it seemed, lay in the fact that he had played the man to the best of his ability and was really glad, even if a bit envious, of martel's good-fortune. he let his thoughts run free in this manner, sitting his horse listlessly, for he was tired mentally and physically, watching the gray road idly as it slipped past beneath the muffled hoofs, and lulled by savigno's musical humming. it was while he was still in this half-somnolent, semidetached frame of mind that he rode into a sudden white-hot whirl of events. norvin blake was never clear in his mind regarding the precise sequence of the action that followed, for he was snatched too quickly from his mental relaxation to retain any well-defined impressions. he recalled vaguely that the road lay like a mysterious canon walled in with darkness, and that his thoughts were miles away when his horse shied without warning, nearly unseating him and bringing him back to a sense of his surroundings with a shock. simultaneously he heard a cry from ricardo; it was a scream of agony, cutting through savigno's song like a saber stroke. for a moment blake's heart seemed to stop, then began pounding crazily. a stream of fire leaped out at his left side, splitting the quiet night with a detonation. the wood which had lain so silent and deserted an instant before was lit by answering flashes, the blackness at an arm's-length on every side was stabbed by wicked tongues of flame, and the road swarmed with grotesque bodies leaping and tumbling and fighting. blake's horse reared as something black rose up beneath its forefeet and snatched at its bridle; martel's steed lurched into it, then fell kicking and screaming, sending its mate careening to the roadside. the unexpected movement wrenched norvin's feet from the stirrups and left him clinging desperately to mane and cantle. it all came with a terrifying swiftness--quite as if the three riders had crossed over a powder-train at the instant of its eruption, to find themselves, in the fraction of a second, involved in chaos. ricardo's horse thundered away, riderless, leaving a squirming, wriggling confusion of forms in the road where the overseer was battling for his life. martel's voice rose shrilly in a curse, and then norvin felt himself dragged roughly from his saddle, whether by human hands or by some overhanging tree-branch he never knew. the force of his fall bruised and stunned him, but he struggled weakly to his feet only to find himself in the grasp of a man whose black visage fronted his own. he tried to break away, but his bones were like rope, his muscles were flabby and shaking. he exerted no more force than a child. in front of him something sickening, something unspeakably foul and horrible, was going on, and in its presence he was wholly unmanned. more hands seized him quickly, but he lacked the vigor to attempt an escape. on the contrary, he hung limp and paralyzed with terror. the mystery, the uncertainty, the hideous significance of that wordless scuffle in the dusty road rendered him nerveless, and he cried out shakingly, like a man in a nightmare. a voice commanded him to be silent, a hot breath beat against his cheek; but he could not restrain his hysteria, and one of his captors began to throttle him. he heard his name called and saw savigno's figure outlined briefly against the gray background, saw another figure blend with it, then heard martel's voice end in a rising cry which lived to haunt his memory. it rose in protest, in surprise, as if the count doubted even at the last that death could really claim him. then it broke in a thin, wavering shriek. blake may have fainted; at any rate, his body was beyond his control, and his next remembrance was of being half dragged, half thrust forward out into the lesser shadows. there was no longer any struggling, although men were speaking excitedly and he could hear them panting; some one was working the ejector of a rifle as if it had stuck. a tall man was wiping his hands upon some dried grass pluck'ed from the roadside, and he was cursing. "who is this?" he cried, thrusting his face into the american's and showing a brutal countenance bristly with a week's growth of beard. "the stranger," one of blake's captors answered, whereupon the tall man uttered a violent exclamation. "wait!" cried the other. "he is already dying. he cannot stand." some one else explained, "it is indeed the american, but he is wounded." "let me finish the work; he has seen too much," said the first speaker, roughly. "no, no! he is the american. do you not understand?" "remember the order, narcone," cautioned another. but narcone continued to curse as if mastered by the craving to kill, and if the others had not laid hands upon him he might have made good his intention. they argued with him, all at once, and in the midst of the confusion which ensued a new voice called from the darkness: "what have you there?" "the american! he cannot stand." a square figure came swiftly through the group, muttering angrily, and the others fell back to give him room, all but narcone, who repeated, doggedly: "let me finish the work if you fear to do so." his companions broke out at him again in a babble of argument, whereupon the new-comer shouted at them in a furious voice: "silenzio! who did this?" no one answered for a moment, but at length the brigand who held blake's hands pinioned at his back with a sash or scarf ventured to suggest: "i am not so sure he is injured. we pulled him down first; he may only be frightened." "there was to be no shooting," growled the leader of the band. "eh? but you saw for yourself. there was nothing else to do," said narcone. "that ricardo was an old wolf." the thick-set man, whom norvin took to be the infamous cardi himself, cried sharply: "come, come, signore, speak! are you hurt?" the prisoner shook his head mechanically, although he did not know whether he was injured or not. his denial seemed to satisfy the chief, who said with relief: "it is well. we did not wish to harm you. there would be consequences, you understand? and now a match, somebody." "it is not necessary," narcone assured him with a laugh. "of what use to learn a trade like mine if one cannot strike true? the knife went home, twice--once for us, once for poor galli, who was murdered. it was like killing sheep." picking up the wisp of grass which he had dropped, he began to dry his hands once more. a tiny flame flickered in the darkness. it was lowered until it shone upon the upturned face of ricardo ferara where he lay sprawled in the dust, his teeth showing beneath his gray mustache, then died away, and the black outlines of the bull-necked man leaped into relief again as he stooped to examine martel. not until that instant did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the american, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his bonds like a fear-maddened horse. his actual danger, however, was at an end. one of the band removed the rifle which still hung from his shoulders and which he had forgotten; another slipped the scarf from his wrists and directed him to go. he staggered away down the road along which he and martel and ricardo had come, walking like a sick man, for he was crippled with, fright. after a few steps he began to run, heavily, awkwardly at first, stumbling as if his joints were loose; but as his body awoke and the blood surged through him he went faster and faster until he was fleeing like a wild animal. and as he ran his terror grew. he fell many times, goblin shapes pursued him or leaped forth from the shadows, but he knew that no matter how fast he fled he could never escape the thing he had met back there in the night. it was not the grisly sight of his murdered friend nor the bared teeth of ricardo ferara grinning upward out of the road which filled him with the greatest horror; it was the knowledge of his own foul, sickening cowardice. he ran wildly as if to leave it behind, but it trod in his tracks and kept step with him. the pyrotechnics at terranova were nearly over and the grounds echoed to the applause of the delighted spectators. the donna teresa was leaning upon the arm of colonel neri and saying: "no one but that extravagant martel would have entertained these poor people so magnificently, but there is no reasoning with him when he has an idea." "it is the finest display since the fair at san felice two years ago," the colonel acknowledged. they had come out upon the open piazza which overlooked the lawn, and the other guests who had been present at the supper had followed suit and were gathered there to admire the spectacle. "the country people will never finish discussing it. why, it has been the greatest event this village ever witnessed. and margherita! have you ever seen her so beautiful?" the old lady spoke with pride, for she was very happy. "never!" colonel neri fondled his mustache tenderly. "she is ablaze with love. oh, that martel has broken all our hearts, lucky fellow! i could hate him if i did not like him so." "you men, without exception, pretend to adore her but it is flattery; you know that she loves it and that it pleases me. now martel--madonna mia! what is this?" she broke off sharply and pointed toward the main gateway to the grounds. by the light that gleamed from the trees on each side of the driveway men could be seen approaching at a run; others were hurrying toward them across the terrace, calling excitedly to one another. a woman screamed something unintelligible, but the tone of her voice brought a hush over the merrymakers. in the midst of the group coming up the road was one who labored heavily. he was bareheaded, gray with dust, and he staggered as if wounded. "some one has been hurt," exclaimed the colonel. "maledetto! there has been a fight." he dropped his companion's arm and hastened to the steps, then halfway down paused, staring. he whirled quickly and cried to the old lady: "wait! do not come." but madame fazello had seen the white face of the runner, and screamed: "mother of god! the american!" the other guests from the balcony pressed forward with alarmed inquiries. no one guessed as yet what had befallen, but the loud voices died away, a murmuring tide swept the merrymakers toward the castello. "what has happened, signore?" colonel neri was crying. "speak!" "the mafia!" blake gasped. "martel--is--" his knees sagged and he would have pitched forward had not the soldier supported him. "we met them--in the woods. cardi--" "cardi!" echoed the colonel in a harsh voice. "cardi!" came from a dozen frightened throats. the donna teresa uttered a second shrill cry, and then through the ranks of staring, chalk-faced peasants the countess came running swiftly. "cardi!" she cried. "what is this i hear?" "go away, signorina, i beseech you," exclaimed the colonel of carbineers. "something dreadful has occurred." but she disregarded him and faced norvin blake. he raised his dripping, dust-smeared face and nodded, whereat she closed her eyes an instant and swayed. but she made no outcry. "take her--away," he wheezed painfully. "god in heaven! don't you--understand?" even yet there was no coherent speech and the people merely stared at one another or inquired, dully: "what did he say? what is this about cardi?" "take her away," blake repeated. but the countess recovered herself and with a little gesture bade him go on. he told his story haltingly, clinging to the colonel to prevent himself from falling, his matted head rolling weakly from side to side. when he had finished a furious clamor broke forth from the men, the women, and the children. neri commanded them roughly to silence. "run to the village, some one, and give the alarm," he ordered in the voice of a sick man. "call sandro and his men and bid them bring extra horses." a half-dozen fleet-footed youths broke away and were off before he had finished speaking. then blake was helped into the hall of the castello, where the confusion was less. lucrezia ferara, who had been in the rear of the house and was among the last to hear the evil tidings, came running to him with colorless lips and eyes distended, crying: "the truth, signore, for the love of christ! they tell me he is murdered, but i know it is a lie." the notary's wife attempted to calm her, but the girl began to scream, flinging herself upon her knees at the feet of the american, begging him to tell her it was all a mistake. "my father would not die," she cried, loudly. "he was here but an hour ago and he kissed me." she would not be calmed and became so violent that it required force to remove her. as soon as she was out of the way, colonel neri began questioning norvin rapidly, at the same time striving by his own example to steady the young man, who was in a terrible condition of collapse. bit by bit, the soldier learned all there was to learn of the shocking story, and through it all the countess margherita stood at his elbow, never speaking. her eyes were glazed with horror, her lips were whispering something over and over, but when her cousin appealed to her to leave the scene she seemed not to hear him. she only stood and stared at the exhausted man until he could bear it no longer and, hiding his face in his hands, he began to shiver and cringe and sob. it seemed to him that she must know; that all these people must know the truth, and see his shame as if it were blazoned in fire. their horror was for him; their looks were changing even now to contempt and hatred. why did they not accuse him openly instead of staring with wide, shocked eyes? realization had come to him long before he had reached terranova, and he was sick with loathing for himself. now, therefore, in every blanched cheek, in every parted lip, he felt an accusation. he supposed all the world would have to know it, and it was a thing he could never live down. he wished he might have died as martel had died, might die even now, and escape this torture; but with every breath life flowed back into him, his heart was no longer bursting, his lungs were no longer splitting. "why do you wait?" he queried at length, thinking of martel out there on the lonely mountainside. "why don't you go fetch him?" neri said, soothingly: "help will be here in a few moments, signore. you could not sit a horse yet a while." "i?" blake asked blankly, and shuddered. so they expected him to return through that darkness--to guide them to the horror from which he had just fled! he would not go! his mind recoiled at the thought and terror came upon him afresh. nevertheless, he made an effort at self-control, lurched to his feet, and chattered through clicking teeth: "come on! i'm ready." "presently! presently! there will be men and horses here in a moment." in a lower tone the colonel urged: "for the love of our saviour, can you not send the contessa away? i am afraid she is dying." blake went to the girl and laid a shaking hand upon her arm, stammering, wretchedly: "contessa, you--you--" he could not go on and turned appealingly to the others. "you say he is dead?" she inquired dully. "how can that be when you told me there was no danger?" "i did not know. oh--" he lowered his working features. "if it had only been i, instead!" she nodded. "that would have been better." from somewhere to the rear of the house came the shrill screams of lucrezia, and the countess cried: "poor child! they did not even spare ricardo, but--after all, he was only a father." neri said, gently: "let me help you, signorina. the doctor is with your aunt, but i will call him." "he cannot give me back martel," she answered in the same dull, lifeless tone. voices, footsteps, sounded outside and a man in the cocked hat and uniform of a lieutenant of carbineers came briskly into the hall and saluted his superior. "we are ready, sir." the countess roused herself, saying: "then come! i too am ready." "heaven above us!" neri faltered. "you are not going." he took her by the hand and led her away from the door. "no, my child, we will go alone. you must wait." his face was twitching, and the sweat dripped from his square jaw as he nodded to blake. they went out into the mocking glare of the garden lights, leaving her standing in the great hall like a statue of ivory, her lips dumbly framing the name of her lover. vi a new resolve all sicily blazed with the account of the assassination of the count of martinello and his overseer. all italy took it up and called for vengeance. there went forth to the world by wire, by post, and through the public press a many-voiced and authoritative promise that the brigandage which had cursed the island for so many generations should be extirpated. the outrage was the one topic of conversation from trapani to genoa, from brindisi to venice, in clubs, in homes, upon the streets. carbineers and soldiers came pouring into terranova and san sebastiano. they scoured the mountains and patrolled the roads; they searched the houses and farms, the valleys and thickets, and as the days dragged on, proving the futility of their efforts, still more carbineers arrived. but no trace of cardi, of narcone, or of the other outlaws was discovered. rewards were offered, doubled, trebled; the north coast seethed with excitement. the rank of the young count and his fiancee enlisted the interest of the nobility, the lively-minded middle classes were romantically stirred by the picture of the lonely girl stricken on the eve of her wedding, and yet notwithstanding the fact that towns were searched, forests dragged as with a net, no quarry came to bay. colonel neri explained it to norvin, as he rode in to san sebastiano after thirty-six hours in the saddle. "it is this accursed sicilian mafia," he growled. "the common people are shocked, horrified, sympathetic, and yet they fear to show their true feelings. they dare not tell what they know. mark you, those men are not hiding in the forests, they are here in san sebastiano or the other villages under our very noses; perhaps they are strutting the streets of palermo or bagheria or messina marked by a hundred eyes, discussed by a hundred tongues, and yet we cannot surprise a look or win the slightest hint. fifty arrests have been made, but there will be fifty alibis proven. it is maddening, it is damnable, it is--sicily!" he swore wearily beneath his breath, and twirled his mustache with listless fingers. "then you are losing hope?" "no. i had none to begin with, for i know these people. but we are doing everything possible. god in heaven! the country is wild. from rome has come the order, definite, explicit, to stamp out the banditti, if it requires an army; enough soldiers are coming to defeat the germans. but the more we have the less we shall accomplish. 'sweep sicily!' 'stamp out the mafia!' what does rome know about the mafia? signore, did we arrest one half of those whom we know to be mafiosi, rome would need to send us, not an army of soldiers, but regiments of stone masons to enlarge our prisons. no! send back the armed men, give me ten thousand of your american dollars, and ten of my carbineers, and i will catch cardi, though it would require the cunning of the devil. however, we may find something; who can tell? at any rate we will try." "can't you work secretly?" "it is being done, but we are too many. we make too much noise. the sicilian distrusts the law and above all he distrusts his neighbor. he will perjure himself to acquit a mafioso rather than betray him and become a victim of his vengeance. he who talks little is wise. of that which does not concern him he says neither good nor evil; that is a part of the sicilians' training. but--miracles have happened, and god may intervene for that saintly girl at terranova. and now tell me, how is the poor child bearing up?" "i haven't seen her since we brought in martel's body. i couldn't, in fact, although i have sent word for her to call me when she is ready. it seems a long time since--since--" neri shook his head in sorrowful agreement. "i have never seen such grief. my heart bleeds. she was so still! not a tear! not an outcry! it was terrible! weak women do not act in that manner. but you have suffered also, and i judge you have rested no more than i." "i can't rest," blake said, dully. "i can do nothing but think." he did not reveal the nature of the thoughts which in the short space of thirty-six hours had put lines into his face. instead, he scanned the officer's countenance with fearful eyes to see if by any chance he had guessed the truth. blake had found himself looking thus at every one since the tragedy, and it was a source of constant wonder to him that his secret had remained his own. it seemed that they must know and loathe him as he loathed himself. but on the contrary he was treated with sympathy on all sides, and it was taken merely as an example of the outlaws' cunning that they had refrained from injuring a foreigner. to illustrate how curiously the sicilian mind works on these subjects, there were some who even spoke of it as demonstrating the fairness of the bandits, thus to exclude savigno's friend from any connection with their quarrel. during the long hours since the night of his friend's death blake had looked at himself in all his nakedness of soul, and the sight was not pleasant. he could never escape the thought that if he had acted the part of a man, if he had resisted with the promptness and vigor of his companions, the result might have been different and martel might at this moment be on his way to rome with his bride, alive and well. on such occasions he felt like a murderer. but his mind was not always undivided in this self-condemnation; there were times when with some show of justice he told himself that the result would have been the same or even worse if he had fought; and he tried to ease his conscience by dwelling on the possibility that under other circumstances he might not have proved a coward. he had been physically tired, worn out; his nervous force had been spent. at the moment of ambush his mind had been far away and he had had no time in which to gather his wits. moral courage, he knew, is quite different from physical courage, which may depend upon one's digestion, one's state of mind, or the amount of sleep one has had. it is sometimes present in physical weaklings, and men of great daring may entirely lack it. a man's behavior when suddenly attacked and overpowered is a test of his nerve rather than his true nature. still, at the last, he was always faced by the stark, ugly fact that he had been tried and found wanting. conversation with neri he found rather a relief. "i wonder what the countess will do?" he said. "what would any one do? she will grieve for a long while, but time will gradually rob her of her sorrow. she will remember martel as a saint and marry some sinner like you or me." "marry? never!" "never?" the colonel raised his brows. "she is young, she is human, she is full of fire. it would be a great pity if she did not allow herself to love--a great pity indeed." "i'm afraid she's thinking more of vengeance than of love." "perhaps, but hatred is short-lived, while love grows younger all the time. the world is full of great loves, but great hates usually consume themselves quickly. i hope she will leave all thoughts of such things to us who make a business of them." "if you fail, as you fear, she might feel bound to take up the task where you leave it." "and she might succeed. but--" "but what?" "revenge is a cold bedfellow, and women are designed to cherish finer sentiments. as for lucrezia, she will doubtless swear a vendetta, like those sardinians." "she has." "indeed! well, she is the kind to nourish hatred, for she is like her father, silent, somber, unforgiving, whereas the contessa is all sunshine. but hear me talk! i am dying of fatigue. the funeral is at twelve? it will be very sad and the poor girl will be under the greatest strain then, so we must be with her, you and i. and then i must be off again upon the trail of this infamous cardi, who is, and who is not. ah, well!" he yawned widely. "we may accomplish the impossible, or if not we may press him so closely that he will sail for your america, which would not be so bad, after all." of course the country people turned out for the funeral, but for the most part they came from curiosity. to norvin the presence of such spectators at the last sacred rites for the dead seemed sacrilegious, indecent, and he knew that it must add to margherita's pain. it was an endless, heart-rending ordeal, a great somber, impressive pageant, of which he remembered little save a tall, tawny girl crushed beneath a grief so great that his own seemed trivial in comparison. she was in such a state of physical collapse after the service that she did not send for him until the second day following. he came timidly even then, for he was at a loss how to comfort her, vividly conscious as he was of his own guilt and shame. he found her crouched upon one of the old stone benches in the garden in the full hot glare of the sun. it relieved him to find that she had lost her unnatural self-control, having fallen, it seemed, into much the same mood he would have expected in any woman. it had been so hard to find what to say heretofore--for she was braver than those about her and her grief was so deep as to render words of comfort futile. her eyes now were heavy and full of haunting shadows, her ivory cheeks were pale, her lips tremulous, and she seemed at last to crave sympathy. "i do not know why i have summoned you," she said, leaving her hand in his, "unless it is because my loneliness has begun and i lack the courage to face it." "i have been waiting. it will always be so, contessa. i shall come from across the world whenever you need me." she smiled listlessly. "you are very good. i knew you were waiting. it seems so strange to know that he is gone"--her voice caught, her eyes filled, then cleared without overflowing--"and that the world is moving on again in the same way and only i am left standing by the wayside. you cannot wait with me; you must move on with the rest of the world. you had planned to go home, and you must, for you have your work and it calls you." "please don't think of it. i sha'n't leave you for a long time. i promised martel--" "you promised? then he had reason to suspect?" "he would not acknowledge the possibility, and yet he must have had a premonition." "oh, why will men trust themselves when women know! if he had told me, if he had confided his fears to me, i could have told him what to do." "i couldn't leave now, even if i wished, for i might be needed by the--the law. you understand? it isn't finished with me yet." "the law will not need you," she told him bitterly. "the law will do nothing. the task is for other hands." after a pause he said, "i had news from home to-day,--rather bad news." then at her quick look of inquiry he went on: "nothing serious, i hope, nothing to take me away. my mother is ill and has cabled me to come." "then you will go at once, of course?" "no. i've tried to explain to her the situation here, and the necessity of my remaining for a time at least. unless she grows worse i shall stay and try to help neri in his search." "it is a great comfort to have you near, for in you i see a part of--martel. you were his other half. but there are other aching hearts, it seems. that mother calls to you, and you ought to go. besides, i must begin my work." "what work?" she met his eyes squarely. "you know without asking. neri will fail; no italian could succeed; no one could succeed except a sicilian. i am one." "you mean to bring those men to justice?" she nodded. "certainly! who else can do it?" "but, my dear signorina, think what that means. they are of a class with which you can have no contact. they are the dregs; there is the mafia to reckon with. how will you go about it?" "i will become one of them, if necessary." he answered her in a shocked voice. "no, no! you are mad to think of it. if you were a man you might have some chance for success, but you--a girl, a gentlewoman!" "i am a sicilian. i am rich, too. i have resources." she took him by the arm as she had done that first time when the thought of martel's danger had roused her. "i told you no power could save them; no hiding-place could be so secret, no lies so cunning that i would not know. well! those soldiers have failed and will continue to fail. but you see they did not love martel. i shall live for this thing." "i won't allow you to dwell on the subject; it isn't natural, and it isn't good for you. the desire to see justice done is commendable and proper, but the desire for revenge isn't. you must not sacrifice your life to it. there is a law of compensation; those men will be apprehended." "where is my compensation? what had martel done to warrant this?" he fell silent, and she shook her head as if to indicate the hopelessness of answering her. after a moment of meditation he began again, gravely: "if you feel that way, i shall make you an offer. give up your idea of taking an active personal part in this quest, and i will assume your place. we will work together, but you will direct while i face the risks." "you are a stranger. we would be sure to fail. i thank you, but my mind is made up." "if it becomes known, you will be in great danger. think! life is before you, and all its possibilities. please let other hands do this." "it is useless to argue," she said, firmly. "i am like rock. i have begun already and i have accomplished more than colonel neri and his carbineers. i see aliandro coming now, and i think he has news. he knows many things of which the soldiers do not dream, for he is one of the people. you will excuse me?" "of course, but--i can't let you undertake so dangerous a task without a protest. i shall come back, if i may." he rose as the old man shuffled down the path, and went in search of the donna teresa, for he was determined to offer every discouragement in his power to what struck him as an extremely rash and perilous course. men like belisario cardi, or narcone the butcher, would hesitate no more in attacking a woman than a man. he knew the whole sicilian country to be a web of intrigue and secret understandings, sensitive to the slightest touch and possessed of many means of communication. it was a great ear which heard the slightest stir, and its unfailing efficiency was shown by the ease with which the bandits had forestalled every effort of the authorities. in the hall of the manor house he encountered lucrezia and stopped to speak to her. "you would do a great deal to protect the countess, would you not?" he asked. "yes, signore. she has been both a sister and a mother to me. but what do you mean?" ferara's daughter was a robust girl of considerable physical charm, but although her training at terranova had done much for her, it was still evident that she was a country woman. she had nursed her grief with all the sullen fierceness of a peasant, and even now her face and eyes were swollen from weeping. blake explained briefly his concern, but when he had finished, the girl surprised him by breaking forth into a furious denunciation of the assassins. she surrendered to her passion with complete abandon, and began to curse the names of cardi and gian narcone horribly. "we demand blood to wash our blood," she cried. "i curse them and their souls, living and dead, in the name of god who made my father, in the name of christ who died for him, in the name of the holy saints who could not save him. in the name of the whole world i curse them. may they pray and not be heard. may they repent unforgiven and lie unburied. may every living thing that bears their names die in agony before their eyes. may their women and unborn children be afflicted with every unclean thing until they pray for death at my hands--" "lucrezia!" he seized her roughly and clapped his hand over her mouth, for her voice was rising steadily and threatened to rouse the whole household. her cheeks were white, she was shaking with long, tearless sobs. she would have broken out again when he released her had he not commanded her to be silent. he tried to explain that this work of vengeance was not for her or for the countess, and to point out the ruin that was sure to follow any attempt on their part to take up the work of the carabinieri, but she shook her head, declaring stubbornly: "we have sworn it." the more he argued the more obstinate she became, until, seeing the ineffectiveness of his pleas, he gave up any further effort to move her, sorry that he had raised such a storm. he went on in search of madam fazello, with lucrezia's parting words ringing ominously in his ears: "if we die, we shall be buried; if we live, we shall give them to the hangman." from margherita's aunt he got but little comfort or hope of assistance. "oh, my dear boy, i agree with your every word," the old lady said. "but what can i do? i know better than you what it will lead to, but margherita is like iron--there is no reasoning with her. she would sacrifice herself, lucrezia, even me, to see martel avenged, and if she does not have her way she will burn herself to ashes. as for lucrezia, she is demented, and they do nothing all day but scheme and plan with aliandro, who is himself as bad as any bandit. i have no voice with them; they do with me as they will." she hid her face in her trembling fingers and wept softly. "and to think--we were all so happy with martel!" "nevertheless, somebody must dissuade them from this enterprise. it is no matter for two girls and an old man to undertake." "i pray hourly for guidance, but i am frightened, so frightened! when margherita talks to me, when i see her high resolve, i am ready to follow; then when i am alone i become like water again." "what are her plans?" "i do not know. i have begged her to take her sorrow to god. the bishop who came from messina to marry martel and remained to bury him has joined me. there is a convent at palermo--" "no, no!" blake cried, vehemently. "not that! that life is not for her. she must do nothing at all until her grief has had time to moderate." "it will never be less. you do not know her. but you are the one to reason with her." realizing that the old lady was powerless, he returned to the garden and tried once more to weaken the girl's resolution, but without success. it was with a very troubled mind that he took the train back to san sebastiano that afternoon. the more he thought it over, the more certain he became that it was his duty to remain in sicily until margherita had reached her right senses. martel had put a trust in him, and what could be more important than to prevent her from carrying out this fantastic enterprise? he would take up the search for the assassins in her place, allowing her to work through him and in that way satisfying her determination. what she needed above all things was distraction, occupation. if she remained persistent they would work side by side until justice had been done, and meanwhile he would become a part of her life. he might make himself necessary to her. at least he would prevent her from doing anything rash and perhaps fatal. in time he would prevail upon her to travel, to seek recreation, and then her youth would be bound to tell. that would be the work of a friend indeed, that would remove at least a part of the obligation which rested upon him. some day, he reasoned, the countess might even marry and be happy in spite of what had occurred. as he contemplated the idea, it began to seem less improbable. what if she should come to care for him? he would still be true to martel, for how could he protect her better than by making her his wife? his heart leaped at the thought, but then his old self-disgust returned, reminding him that he had yet to prove himself a man. as he stepped down from the train at san sebastiano the station master met him with a telegram. even before he opened it he guessed its contents, and his spirits sank. was he never to escape these maddening questions of duty--never to be free to pursue his heart's desire? it was a cablegram, and read: "come quickly. "kenear." he regarded it gravely for a moment, striving to balance his duty to martel and the girl against his duty to his mother, but his hesitation was brief. he stepped into the little telegraph office with the mandarin-tree peering in at the open window and wrote his answer. he did not try to deceive himself; the mere fact that dr. kenear had been summoned from new orleans showed as plainly as the message itself that his mother's condition was more serious than he had supposed. she was alone with many responsibilities upon her frail shoulders, and she was calling for her son. there was but one thing to do. he stopped at the barracks to explain the necessity for his immediate departure to colonel neri, who was most sympathetic. "you are not needed here," the soldier assured him, "and you would have to go, even though you were. you made your statement at the inquest; there is nothing further for you to do until we accomplish the capture of somebody. even then i doubt if you could identify any one of those bandits." "i think i should know narcone anywhere." the colonel shrugged. "narcone has been swallowed by the earth. as for cardi and the rest, they have become thin smoke and the wind has carried them away. we are precisely where we were at the start. perhaps it is fortunate for you that you have not been called upon to testify against any of the band, for even the fact that you are a foreigner might not save you from--unpleasant results." norvin reasoned silently that if this were indeed true it more than confirmed his fears for the countess, and after a brief hesitation he told the soldier what he had learned at his visit to terranova. neri rose and paced the room in agitation. "oh! she is mad indeed!" he exclaimed. "what can she do that we have not already done? aliandro? bah! he is a doddering old reprobate who will spread news instead of gather it. he has a bad record, and although he loved martel and doubtless loves margherita, i have no confidence in him whatever. she will accomplish nothing but her own undoing." "i am afraid so, too. that is why i shall return to sicily as soon as possible." "indeed? then you plan to come back? martel was fortunate to have so good a friend as you, signore. we must both do all we can to prevent this folly on the part of his sweetheart. you may rest assured that i shall make every effort in your absence." the colonel extended his hand, and norvin took it, feeling some relief in the knowledge that there was at least one man close to the girl upon whose caution he could rely and upon whose good offices he could count. he had grown to like the soldier during their brief acquaintance, and the fact that neri knew and appreciated the situation helped to reconcile him to the thought of going away. he was not ready to leave sicily, however, without one final appeal, and accordingly he stopped at terranova on the following morning on his way to messina, where a boat was sailing for naples that night. but he found no change in the countess; on the contrary, she told him gently but firmly that she had made up her mind once for all and that she would resent any further efforts at dissuasion. "won't you even wait until i return?" he inquired. she shook her head and smiled sadly. "do not let us deceive ourselves, amico mio; you will not return." "on the contrary, i shall. you make it necessary for me to return whether i wish to or not." "the ocean is wide, the world moves. you are a foreigner and you will forget. it is only in sicily that people remember." "will you give me time to prove you wrong?" "i could not allow it. you have your own life to live; you have a multitude of duties. martel, you see, was only your friend. but with me it is different. he was my lover; my life was a part of his and my duty will not let me sleep." "you have no reason to say i will forget." "it is the way of the world. then, too, there is the other woman. you will see her. you will find a way, perhaps." but he replied, doggedly, "i shall return to sicily." "when?" "i can't tell. a month from now--two months at the longest." "it would be very sweet to have you near," she said musingly, "for i am lonely, very lonely, and with you i feel at rest, at peace in a way. but something drives me, signore, and i cannot promise. if you should not forget, if you should wish to join hands with me, then i should thank god and be very glad. but i sha'n't wish for it; that would be unfair." his voice shook as he said, "i am going to prove to you that your life is not hopelessly wrecked, and to show you that there is something worth living for." she laid her two cool hands in his and looked deeply into his eyes, but if she saw what lay in them she showed no altered feeling in her words or tone. "martel would be glad to have you near me, i am sure," she said, "but i shall only pray for your safety and your happiness in that far-off america. good-by." he kissed her fingers, vowing silently to devote his whole life to her, and finding it very hard to leave. vii the search begins it was ten months later when norvin blake landed at messina and took the morning train westward to terranova. as he disposed his travelling-bags in a corner of the compartment, and settled himself for the short journey, he felt a kind of irrational surprise at the fact that there had been no changes during his absence. the city was just as dirty and uninteresting as when he had left, the beggars were just as ragged and importunate, the street coaches were just as rickety. it required an effort to realize that ten months is, after all, a very short time, for it seemed ten years since he had sailed away. it had been a difficult period for him, one crowded with many changes, readjustments, and responsibilities. he had gone far, he had done much, he had been pressed by cares and anxieties on every side, and even at the last he had willfully abandoned urgent duties, to his own great loss and to the intense disgust of his friends, in order to come back according to his promise. his return had been delayed from week to week, from month to month, in spite of all he could do, and meanwhile his thoughts had not been in america at all, but in sicily, causing him to fret and chafe at the necessities which bound him to his post. now, however, the day upon which he had counted had arrived; he had taken his liberty regardless of consequences, and no dusty pilgrim ever longed more fiercely for a journey's end. he was glad of the impression of sameness he had received, for it made him feel that there would be no great changes in terranova. he had learned little from the countess during the interim, for she had been slow in answering his frequent letters, while her own had been brief and non-commital. they contained hardly a suggestion of that warmth and intimacy which he had known in her presence. her last letter, now quite old, had added to this impression of aloofness and rendered him somewhat timid as the time for meeting her approached. he re-read it for the hundredth time as the train crawled out of the city-"my dear friend,--your good letter was very welcome indeed, and i thank you for your sympathetic interest in our affairs at terranova, but since fate has shown in so many ways that your life lies in louisiana, and not in sicily, i beg of you to let things take their course and give up any idea of returning here. there is nothing that you can do, particularly since time has proved your fears for our safety to be groundless. it is kind and chivalrous of you to persist in offering to take that long journey from america, but nothing would be gained by it, absolutely nothing, i assure you, and it would entail a sacrifice on your part which i cannot permit. "very little of interest or of encouragement had occurred here, but i am working. i shall always work. some day i shall succeed. meanwhile we talk of you and are heartened by your friendship, which seems very close and real, despite the miles that separate us. we shall cherish it and the memory of your loyalty to martel. meanwhile, you must not feel bound by your promise to come back, which was not a promise, after all, but merely an unselfish offer. once again i repeat, it would do no good, and might only disappoint you. besides, i am hoping that you have seen the woman of whom you told me and that she will need you. "we are all well. we have made no plans. "yours gratefully, margherita ginini" it was certainly unsatisfying, but her letters had all been of this somewhat formal nature. she persisted, too, in referring to that imaginary woman, and blake regretted ever having mentioned her. if margherita suspected the truth, she could not help feeling his lack of delicacy, his disloyalty to martel, in confessing his love while the count was still alive; if she really believed him to be in love with some other woman, it would necessitate sooner or later an explanation which he dreaded. at all events, he hoped that the surprise of seeing him unexpectedly, the knowledge that he had really crossed the world to help her, would tend to dissipate her melancholy and restore her old responsiveness. during the months of his absence the girl had never been out of his mind, and he had striven hard to reconcile his unconquerable love for her with the sense of his own unworthiness. his unforgivable cowardice was a haunting shame, and the more he dwelt upon it the more unspeakably vile he appeared in his own sight; for the blakes were honorable people. the family was old and cherished traditions common to fine southern houses; the men of his name prided themselves upon an especially nice sense of honor, which had been conspicuous even in a country where bravery and chivalrous regard for women are basic ideals. having been reared in such an atmosphere, the young man looked upon his own behavior with almost as much surprise as chagrin. he had always taken it for granted that if he should be confronted with peril he would behave himself like a man. it was inexplicable that he had failed so miserably, for he had no reason to suspect a heritage of cowardice, and he was sound in mind and body. he loved margherita ginini with all his heart and his resolution to win her was stronger than ever, but he felt that sooner or later he would have to prove himself as manly as martel had been, and, having lost faith in himself, the prospect frightened him. if she ever discovered the truth--and such things are very hard to conceal--she would spurn him: any self-respecting woman would do the same. he had forced himself to an unflinching analysis of his case, with the result that a fresh determination came to him. he resolved to reconstruct his whole being. if he were indeed a physical coward he would deliberately uproot the weakness and make himself into a man. others had accomplished more difficult tasks, he reasoned; thieves had made themselves into honest men, criminals had become decent. why, then, could not a coward school himself to become brave? it was merely a question of will power, not so hard, perhaps, as the cure of some drug habit. he made up his mind to attack the problem coldly, systematically, and he swore solemnly by all his love for margherita that he would make himself over into a person who could not only win but hold her. as yet there had been no opportunity of putting the plan into operation, but he had mapped out a course. terranova drowsed among the hills just as he had left it, and high up to the right, among the trees, he saw the white walls of the castello. as he mounted the road briskly a goat-herd, flat upon his back in the sun, was piping some haunting air; a tinkle of bells came from the hillside, the vines were purple with fruit. women were busy in the vineyards gathering their burdens and bearing them to the tubs for the white feet of the girls who trod the vintage. nearing his goal, he saw that the house had an unoccupied air, and he found the big gates closed. since no one appeared in answer to his summons, he made his way around to the rear, where he discovered aliandro sunning himself. "well, aliandro!" he cried. "this is good weather for rheumatism." the old man peered up at him uncertainly, muttering: "the saints in heaven are smiling to-day." "where are the contessa margherita and her aunt?" "they are where their business takes them, i dare say. ma che?" "gone to messina, perhaps?" "perhaps." "visiting friends?" "exactly." aliandro nodded. "they are visiting friends in messina." "i wish i had known; i just came from there. will they return soon?" blake's hopes had been so high, his disappointment was so keen, that he failed to notice the old man's lack of greeting and his crafty leer as he answered: "si, veramente! soon, very soon. within a year--five years, at the outside." "what?" "oh, they will return so soon as it pleases them." he chuckled as if delighted at his own secrecy. norvin said sharply: "come, come! don't jest with me. i have traveled a long way to see them. i wish to know their whereabouts." "then ask some one who knows. if ever i was told, i have forgotten, si'or. my memory goes jumping about like a kid. it is the rheumatism." after an instant more, he queried, "you are perhaps a friend of that thrice-blessed angel, my padrona?" with an exclamation of relief norvin laid a hand upon the old fellow's shoulder and shook him gently. "have your eyes failed you, my good aliandro?" he cried. "don't you recognize the american?--the signore blake, who came here with the count of martinello? look at me and tell me where your mistress has gone." aliandro arose and peered into his visitor's face, wagging his loose jaws excitedly. "as god is my judge," he declared, finally, "i believe it is, che dio! who would have expected to see you? yes, yes! i remember as if it were yesterday when you came riding up with that most illustrious gentleman who now sits in paradise. it is a miracle that you have crossed the seas so many times in safety." "so! now tell me what i want to know." "they have gone." "where?" "how do i know? find belisario cardi--may he live a million years in hell! find him, and you will find them also." "you mean--" "find belisario cardi, that most infamous of assassins. my padrona has set out to say good morning to him. he may even now be on his way to purgatory." blake stared at the speaker, for he could not credit the words. once more he asked: "but where? where?" "where, indeed? if i had known in time where this cardi lived i would have knocked at his door some evening with the hilt of a knife. but he was never twice in the same place. he has the ears of a fox. so long as the soldiers went tramping back and forth he laughed. then he must have heard something--perhaps it was aliandro whetting his blade--at any rate he was gone in an hour, in a moment, in a second. now i know nothing more." "she took the donna teresa with her?" "yes, squealing like a cat. she is too old to be of use, but the contessa could not leave her behind, i suppose." norvin felt some relief at this intelligence, reflecting that margherita would hardly draw her aunt into an enterprise which promised to be dangerous. as he considered the matter further he began to doubt the truth of aliandro's story, for the old fellow seemed half daft. perhaps the countess and her aunt were merely traveling and aliandro had construed their trip into a journey of vengeance. he had doubtless spent all his time meditating upon the murder of his friend and benefactor, and that was a subject which might easily unbalance a stronger mind. ten months had worked a change in blake's viewpoint. when he left sicily the idea of a girl's devoting her life to the pursuit of her lover's assassins had seemed to him extravagant, yet not wholly unnatural. now it struck him as beyond belief that margherita should really do this. aliandro was continuing: "it is work for young hands, excellency. old people grow weary and forget, especially women. now that lucrezia, she is a fine child; she can hate like the devil himself and she is as silent as a mafioso. it was two months ago that they went away, and that angel of gold, that sweetest of ladies whom the saints are quarreling over, she left me sufficient money for the balance of my days. but i will tell you something, excellency--a scandal to make your blood boil. she left that money with the notary. and now, what do you think? he gives me scarcely enough for tobacco! once a week, sometimes oftener, i go down to the village and whine like a beggar for what is mine. a fine man to trust, eh? may he lie unburied! sometimes i think i shall have to kill him, he is so hard-hearted, but--i cannot see well enough. if you should find him kicking in the road, however, you will know that he brought it upon himself. you are shocked? no wonder. he is a greater scoundrel than that judas. perhaps you--you are a great friend of the family--perhaps you might force the wolf to disgorge. eh? what do you say? a word would do it. you will save his life in all probability." "very well, i'll speak to him, and meanwhile here is something to please you." norvin handed the old ruffian a gold coin, greatly to his delight. "they have been gone two months and you have had no word?" "not a whisper. once a week the notary comes up from the village to see that all is well with the house. many people have asked me the same questions you asked. some of them know me, and i know some who think i do not. they would like to trick me into betraying the whereabouts of the contessa, but i lie like a lawyer and tell them first one thing, then another. body of christ! i am no fool." when norvin had put himself in possession of all that aliandro knew he retraced his steps to the village, where the notary confirmed practically all the old man had said, but declared positively that the countess and her admirable aunt were traveling for pleasure. "what else would take them abroad?" he inquired. "nothing! i have the honor to look after the castello during their absence and the rents from the land are placed in the bank at messina." "when do you expect them to return?" "privately, signore, i do not expect them to return at all. that shocking tragedy preyed upon the poor child's mind until she could no longer endure terranova. she is highly sensitive, you know; everything spoke of martel savigno. what more natural than for her to wish never to see it again? she consulted me once regarding a sale of all the lands, and only last week some men came with a letter from the bank at messina. they were englishmen, i believe, or perhaps germans--i can never tell the difference, if indeed there is any. i showed them through the house. it would be a great loss to the village, however, yes, and to the whole countryside, if they purchased terranova, for the countess was like a ray of sunshine, like an angel's smile. and so generous!" "tell me--cardi was never found?" the notary shrugged his shoulders. "as for me, i have never believed there was such a person. gian narcone, yes. we all knew him, but he has not been heard from since that terrible night which we both remember. now this cardi, well, he is imaginary. if he were flesh and blood the carabinieri would certainly have caught him--there were enough of them. per baccho! you never saw the like of it. they were thicker than flies." "and yet they didn't catch narcone, and he's real enough." "true," acknowledged the notary, thoughtfully. "i never thought of it in that light. perhaps there is such a person, after all. but why has no one ever seen him?" "where is colonel neri?" "he is stationed at messina. perhaps he could tell you more than i." dismayed, yet not entirely discouraged, by what he had learned, blake caught the first train back to messina and that evening found him at neri's rooms. the colonel was delighted to see him, but could tell him little more than aliandro or the notary. "do you really believe the countess left sicily to travel?" blake asked him. "to you i will confess that i do not. we know better than that, you and i. she was working constantly from the time you left for america until her own departure, but i never knew what she discovered. that she learned more than we did i am certain, and it is my opinion that she found the trail of cardi." "then you're not like the others. you still believe there is such a person?" "whether he calls himself cardi or something else makes no difference; there has been an intelligence of a high order at work among the mafiosi and the banditti of this neighborhood for many years. we learned things after you left; we were many times upon the verge of important discoveries; but invariably we were thwarted at the last moment by that sicilian trait of secrecy and by some very potent terror. we tried our best to get to the bottom of this fear i mention, but we could not. it was more than the customary distrust and dislike of the law; it was a lively personal dread of some man or body of men, the fact that we have been working nearly a year now without result would indicate that the person at the head of the organization is no common fellow. no one dares betray him, even at the price of a fortune. i believe him to be some man of affairs, some well-fed and respected merchant, or banker, perhaps, the knowledge of whose identity would cause a commotion such as etna causes when she turns over in her sleep." "that was ricardo's belief, you remember." "yes. i have many reasons for thinking he was right, but i have no proof. cardi may still be in sicily, although i doubt it. gian narcone has fled; that much i know." "indeed?" "yes! the pursuit became hot; we did not rest! i do not see, even yet, how we failed to capture him. we apprehended a number whom we know were in the band, although we have no evidence connecting them with that particular outrage. i think we will convict them for something or other, however; at any rate, we have broken up this gang, even though we have lost the two men we most desired. narcone went to naples. he may be there now, he may be in any part of italy, or he may even be in your own america, for all i know. and this mysterious cardi is probably with him. it is my hope that we have frightened them off the island for all time." "and sent them to my country! thanks! we're having trouble enough with our own italians, as it is." "you at least have more room than we. but now, before we go further, you must tell me about yourself, about your mother--" norvin shook his head gravely. "i arrived in time to see her, to be with her at the last, that is all." "i am indeed full of sympathy," said neri. "it is no wonder you could not return to sicily as soon as you had planned." "everything conspired to hold me back. there were many things that needed attention, for her affairs had become badly mixed and required a strong hand to straighten them out. yet all the time i knew i was needed here; i knew the countess was in want of some one to lean upon. i came at the first opportunity, but--it seems i am too late. i am afraid, neri--afraid for her. god knows what she may do." "god knows!" agreed the soldier. "i pleaded with her; i tried to argue." "but surely she can't absolutely disappear in this fashion. she will have to make herself known sooner or later." "i'm not so certain. her affairs are in good shape and terranova is for sale." "doesn't the bank know her whereabouts?" "if so, she has instructed them to conceal it." "nevertheless i shall go there in the morning and also to her cousins. will you help me?" "of course!" neri regarded the young man curiously for an instant, then said, "you will pardon this question, i hope, but since she has taken such pains to conceal herself, do you think it wise to--to--" "to force myself upon her? i don't know whether it is wise or foolish; all i know is that i must find her. i must!" blake met the older man's eyes and his own were filled with a great trouble. "you told me once that revenge and hatred are bad companions for a woman and that it would be a great pity if margherita ginini did not allow herself to love and be loved. i think you were right. i'm afraid to let her follow this quest of hers; it may lead her into something--very bad, for she has unlimited capabilities for good or evil. i had hoped to--to show her that god had willed her to be happy. you see, neri, i loved her even when martel was alive." the colonel nodded. "i guessed as much. all men love her, and there lies her danger. i love her, also, signore. i have always loved her, even though i am old enough to be her father, and i would give my life to see her--well, to see her your wife. you understand me? i would help you find her if i could, but i am a soldier. i am chained to my post. i am poor." "jove! you're mighty decent," said the american with an odd breathlessness. "but do you think she could ever forget martel?" "she is not yet twenty." "do you think there is any possibility of my winning her? i thought so once, but lately i have been terribly doubtful." "i should say it will depend largely upon your finding her. we are not the only good men who will love her. they sailed from here to naples on the trail of narcone; that much i believe is reasonably certain. i will give you a letter to the police there, and they will help you. it is possible that we excite ourselves unduly; perhaps you will have no difficulty whatever in locating her, but in the mean time we will do well to talk with her relatives and with the officials of the bank. i look for little help from those quarters, however." colonel neri's misgivings were well founded, as the following day proved. at the bank nothing definite was known as to the whereabouts of the countess. she had left instructions for the rents to be collected until terranova was sold and then for all moneys to be held until she advised further. her cousins were under the impression that she had taken her aunt to northern italy for a change of climate and believed that she could be found in the mountains somewhere. blake was not long in discovering that while the relations between the two branches of the family were maintained with an outward show of cordiality they were really not of the closest. neri told him, as a matter of fact, that margherita had always considered these people covetous and untrustworthy. having exhausted the clues at messina, norvin hastened to naples and there took up his inquiry. he presented his letter, but the police could find no trace of the women and finally told him that they must have passed through the city without stopping, perhaps on their way to rome. so to rome he went, and there met a similar discouragement. by now he was growing alarmed, for it seemed incredible that a woman so conspicuous and so well known as the countess of terranova should be so hard to find unless she had taken unusual pains to hide her identity. if such were the case the search promised many difficulties. nevertheless, he set about it energetically, sparing no expense and yet preserving a certain caution in order not to embarrass the countess. he reasoned that if cardi and narcone had fled their own island they would be unlikely to seek an utterly foreign land, but would probably go where their own tongue was spoken; hence the countess was doubtless in one of the italian cities. when several weeks had been spent without result the young man widened the scope of his efforts and appealed to the police of all the principal cities of southern europe. two months had crept by before word came from colonel neri which put an end to his futile campaign. the bank, it seemed, had received a letter from the countess written in new york. it was merely a request to perform certain duties and contained no return address, but it sent norvin blake homeward on the first ship. now that he knew that the girl was in his own country he felt his hopes revive. it seemed very natural, after all, that she should be there instead of in europe, for cardi and his lieutenant, having found sicily too hot to hold them, had doubtless joined the tide of italian emigration to america, that land of freedom and riches whither all the scum of europe was floating. why should they turn to italy, the mother country, when the criminals of europe were flocking across the westward ocean to a richer field which offered little chance of identification? it seemed certain now that margherita had taken up the work in earnest; nothing less would have drawn her to the united states. blake gave up his last lingering doubt regarding her intentions, but he vowed that if her resolve were firm, his should be firmer; if her life held nothing but thoughts of martel, his held nothing but thoughts of her; if she were determined to hide herself, he was equally determined to find her, and he would keep searching until he had done so. the hunt began to obsess him; he obeyed but one idea, beheld but one image; and he cherished the illusion that once he had overtaken her his task would be completed. only upon rare occasions did he realize that the girl was still unwon--perhaps beyond his power to win. he chose to trust his heart rather than his reason, and in truth something deep within him gave assurance that she was waiting, that she needed him and would welcome his coming. viii old trails mr. bernard dreux was regarded by his friends rather as an institution than as an individual. he was a small man, but he wore the dignity of a senator, and he possessed a pride of that intense and fastidious sort which is rarely encountered outside the oldest southern families. he was thin, with the delicate, bird-like mannerisms of a dyspeptic, and although he was nearing fifty he cultivated all the airs and graces of beardless youth. his feet were small and highly arched, his hands were sensitive and colorless. he was an authority on art, he dabbled in music, and he had once been a lavish entertainer--that was in the early days when he had been a social leader. now, although harassed by a lack of money which he considered degrading, he still mingled in good society, he still dressed elegantly, his hands were still white and sensitive, contrasting a little with his conscience, which had become slightly discolored and calloused. he no longer entertained, however, except by his wit; he exercised a watchful solicitude over his slender wardrobe, and his revenues were derived from sources so uncertain that he seemed to maintain his outwardly placid existence only through a series of lucky chances. but adversity had not soured mr. dreux; it had not dimmed his pride nor coarsened his appreciation of beauty; he remained the gentle, suave, and agreeably cynical beau. young girls had been known to rave over him, despite their mother's frowns; fathers and brothers called him bernie and greeted him warmly--at their clubs. but aside from mr. dreux's inherited right to social recognition he was marked by another and peculiar distinction in that he was the half-brother and guardian of myra nell warren. this fact alone would have assured him a wide acquaintance and a degree of popularity without regard to his personal characteristics. while it was generally known that old captain warren, during a short and riotous life, had dashed through the dreux fortune at a tremendous rate, very few people realized what an utter financial wreck he had left for the two children. there had been barely enough for them to live upon after his death, and inasmuch as myra nell's extravagance steadily increased as the income diminished, her half-brother was always hard pressed to keep up appearances. she was a great responsibility upon the little man's shoulders, particularly since she managed in all innocence and thoughtlessness to spend not only her own share of the income, but his also. he was many times upon the point of remonstrating with her, but invariably his courage failed him and he ended by planning some additional self-sacrifice to offset her expanding necessities. the situation would have been far simpler had bernie lacked that particular inborn pride which forbade him to seek employment. not that he felt himself above work, but he recoiled from any occupation which did not carry with it a dignity matching that of his name. since the name he bore was as highly honored as any in the state, and since his capabilities for earning a living were not greater than those of an eighteen-year-old boy, he was obliged to rely upon his wits. and his wits had become uncommonly keen. the winter climate of new orleans drew thither a stream of northern tourists, and upon these strangers mr. dreux, in a gentlemanly manner, exercised his versatile talents. he made friends easily, he knew everybody and everything, and, being a man of leisure, his time was at the command of those travelers who were fortunate enough to meet him. he understood the good points of each and every little cafe in the foreign quarters; he could order a dinner with the rarest taste; it was due largely to him that the fame of the ramos gin-fizz and the sazerac cocktail became national. his grandfather, general dreux, had drunk at the old absinthe house with no less a person that lafitte, the pirate, and had frequented the house on royal street when lafayette and marechal ney were there. it was in this house, indeed, that he had met louis philippe. his grandson had such a wealth of intimate detail at his finger tips that it was a great pleasure and privilege to go through the french quarter with him. he exhaled the atmosphere of southern aristocracy which is so agreeable to northern sensibilities, he told inimitable stories, and, as for antiques, he knew every shop and bargain in the city. he was liberal, moreover, nay, ingenuous in sharing this knowledge with his new-found friends, even while admitting that he coveted certain of these bargains for his own slender collection. as a result of mr. dreux's knack of making friends and his intimate knowledge of art he did a very good business in antiques. many of his acquaintances wrote him from time to time, asking him to execute commissions, which he was ever willing to do, gratuitously, of course. in this way he was able to bridge over the dull summer season and live without any unpleasant sacrifice of dignity. but it was at best a precarious means of livelihood and one which he privately detested. however, on the particular day in the summer of 1890 on which we first encounter him mr. dreux was well contented, for a lumber-man from minneapolis, who had come south with no appreciation whatever of colonial antiques, had just departed with enough worm-eaten furniture to stock a museum, and bernie had collected his regular commission from the dealer. now that his own pressing necessities were taken care of for the moment, he began, as usual, to plan for myra nell's future. this would have required little thought or worry had she been an ordinary girl, but that was precisely what miss warren was not. the beaux of new orleans were enthusiastically united in declaring that she was quite the contrary, quite the most extraordinary and dazzling of creatures. bernie had led them to the slaughter methodically, one after another, with hope flaming in his breast, only to be disappointed time after time. they had merely served to increase the unhappy number which vainly swarmed about her, and to make bernie himself the target of her satire. popularity had not spoiled the girl, however; her attitude toward marriage was very sensible beneath the surface, and bernie's anxious efforts at matchmaking, instead of relieving their financial distress, merely served to keep him in the antique business. miss warren loved admiration; she might be said to live on it; and she greeted every new admirer with a bubbling gladness which was intoxicating. but she had no appreciation of the sanctity of a promise. she looked upon an engagement to marry in the same light as an engagement to walk or dine, namely, as being subject to the weather or to a prior obligation of the same sort. bernie was too much a gentleman to urge her into any step for which she was not ready, so he merely sighed when he saw his plans go astray, albeit confessing to moments of dismay as he foresaw himself growing old in the second-hand business. but a change had occurred lately, and although no word had passed between brother and sister, the melancholy little bachelor had been highly gratified at certain indications he had marked. it seemed to him that her choice, provided she really had chosen, was excellent; for norvin blake was certainly very young to be the president of the cotton exchange, he was free from any social entanglements, and he was rich. moreover, his name had as many honorable associations as even bernie's own. all in all, therefore, the little man was in an agreeable frame of mind to-day as he strolled up canal street, nodding here and there to his acquaintances, and turned into blake's office. he entered without announcing himself, and norvin greeted him cordially. bernie seldom announced himself, being one of those rare persons who come and go unobtrusively and who interrupt important conversations without offense. "do i find you busy?" he inquired, dropping into one of blake's easy-chairs and lighting a perfumed cigarette. "no. business is over for the day. but i am glad to see you at any time; you're so refreshingly restful." "how are the new duties and responsibilities coming on?" "oh, very well," said blake, "although i'm absurdly self-conscious." "the exchange needed new blood, i'm told. i think you are a happy choice. opportunity has singled you out and evidently intends to bear you forward on her shoulders whether you wish or not. jove! you _have_ made strides! let me see, you are thirty--" "two! this makes me look older than i am." norvin touched his hair, which was gray, and bernie nodded. "funny how your hair changed so suddenly. i remember seeing you four years ago at the lexington races just after you returned from europe the second time. you were dark then. i saw you a year later and you were gray. did the wing of sorrow brush your brow?" blake shrugged. "they say fear will turn men gray." dreux laughed lightly. "fancy! you afraid!" "and why not? have you never been afraid?" "i? to be sure. i rather like it, too! it's invigorating--unusual. you know there's a kind of fascination about certain emotions which are in themselves unpleasant. but--my dear boy, you can't understand. we were talking about you the other night at the boston club after your election, and thompson told about that affair you had with those niggers up the state, when you were sheriff. it was quite thrilling to hear him tell it." "indeed?" "oh, yes! he made you out a great hero. i never knew why you went in for politics, or at least why, if you went in at all, you didn't try for something worth while. you could have gone to the legislature just as easily. but for a blake to be sheriff! well, it knocked us all silly when we heard of it, and i don't understand it yet. we pictured you locking up drunken men, serving subpoenas, and selling widows' farms over their heads." "there's really more to a sheriff's duties than that." "so i judged from thompson's blood-curdling tales. i felt very anaemic and insignificant as i listened to him." "it doesn't hurt a gentleman to hold a minor political office, even in a tough parish. i think men ought to try themselves out and find what they are made of." "it isn't your lack of exclusiveness that strikes one; it's your nerve." "oh, that's mostly imaginary. i haven't much, really. but the truth is i'm interested in courage. they say a man always admires the quality in which he is naturally lacking, and wants to acquire it. i'm interested in brave men, too; they fascinate me. i've studied them; i've tried to analyze courage and find out what it is, where it lies, how it is developed, and all about it, because i have, perhaps, a rather foolish craving to be able to call myself fairly brave." "if you hadn't made a reputation for yourself, this sort of modesty would convict you of cowardice," dreux exclaimed. "it sounds very funny, coming from you, and i think you are posing. now with me it is wholly different. i couldn't stand what you have; why, the sight of a dead man would unsettle me for months and, as for risking my life or attempting the life of a fellow creature--well, it would be a physical impossibility. i--i'd just turn tail. you are exceptional, though you may not know it; you're not normal. the majority of us, away back in the woodsheds of our minds, recognize ourselves as cowards, and i differ from the rest in that i'm brave enough to admit it." "how do you know you are a coward?" "oh, any little thing upsets me." "your people were brave enough." "of course, but conditions were different in those days; we're more advanced now. there's nothing refined about swinging sabers around your head like a windmill and chopping off yankee arms and legs; nor is there anything especially artistic in two gentlemen meeting at dawn under the oaks with shotguns loaded with scrap iron." mr. dreux shuddered. "i'm tremendously glad the war is over and duels are out of fashion." "well, be thankful that antiques are not out of fashion. there is still a profit in them, i suppose?" dreux shook his head mournfully. "not in the good stuff. i just sold the original sword of jean lafitte to a man who makes preserved tomatoes. it is the eighth in three weeks. the business in lafitte sabers is very fair lately. general jackson belt-buckles are moving well, too, not to mention plug hats worn by jefferson davis at his inauguration. there was a fabulous hardwood king at the st. charles whom i inflamed with the beauties of marquetrie du bois. it was all modern, of course, made in baltimore, but i found him a genuine sinurette four-poster which was very fine. i also discovered a royal sevres vase for him, worth a small fortune, but he preferred a bath sponge used by louis xiv. i assured him the sponge was genuine, so he bought a buhl cabinet to put it in. i took the vase for myra nell." "do you think myra nell would care to be queen of the carnival?" norvin inquired. "care?" bernie started forward in his chair, his eyes opened wide. "you're--joking! is--is there any--" he relaxed suddenly, and after an instant's hesitation inquired, "what do you mean?" "i mean what i say. she can be queen if she wishes." dreux shook his head reluctantly. "she'd be delighted, of course; she'd go mad at the prospect, but--frankly, she can't afford it." he flushed under blake's gaze. "i'm sorry, bernie. i've been told to ask her." "i am very much obliged to you for the honor, and it's worth any sacrifice, but--lord! it is disgusting to be poor." he prodded viciously with his cane. "it is a great thing for any girl to be queen. the chance may not come again." dreux made a creditable effort to conceal his disappointment, but he was really beside himself with chagrin. "you needn't tell me," he said, "but there is no use of my even dreaming of it; i've figured over the expense too often. she was queen of momus last year--that's why i've had to vouch for so many lafitte swords and davis high hats. if those tourists ever compare notes they'll think that old pirate must have been a centipede or a devilfish to wield all those weapons." "i would like to have her accept," blake persisted. bernie dreux glanced at the speaker quickly, feeling a warm glow suffuse his withered body at the hint of encouragement for his private hopes. what more natural, he reasoned, than for blake to wish his future wife to accept the highest social honor that new orleans can confer? norvin's next words offered further encouragement, yet awoke a very conflicting emotion. "in view of the circumstances, and in view of all it means to myra nell, i would consider it a privilege to lend you whatever you require. she need never know." involuntarily the little bachelor flushed and drew himself up. "thanks! it's very considerate of you, but--i can't accept, really." "even for her sake?" "if i didn't know you so well, or perhaps if you didn't know us so well, i'd resent such a proposal." "nonsense! don't be foolish." realizing thoroughly what this sacrifice meant to miss warren's half-brother, norvin continued: "suppose we say nothing further about it for the time being. perhaps you will feel differently later." after a pause dreux said: "heaven knows where these carnivals will end if we continue giving bigger pageants every year. it's a frightful drain on the antique business, and i'm afraid i will have to drop out next season. i scarcely know what to do." "why don't you marry?" blake inquired. "marry?" dreux smiled whimsically. "that lumber king had a daughter, but she was freckled." "felicite delord isn't freckled." bernie said nothing for a moment, and then inquired quietly: "what do you know about felicite?" "all there is to know, i believe. enough, at any rate, to realize that you ought to marry her." as dreux made no answer, he inquired, "she is willing, of course?" "of course." "then why don't you do it?" "the very fact that people--well, that i know i ought to, perhaps. then, too, my situation. i have certain obligations which i must live up to." "don't be forever thinking of yourself. there are others to be considered." "exactly. myra nell, for instance." "it seems to me you owe something to felicite." "my dear boy, you don't talk like a--like a--" "southern gentleman?" blake smiled. "nevertheless, miss delord is a delightful little person and you can make her happy. if myra nell should be queen of the mardi gras it would round out her social career. she will marry before long, no doubt, and then you will be left with no obligations beyond those you choose to assume. nobody knows of your relations with felicite." "_you_ know," said the bachelor stiffly, "and therefore others must know, hence it is quite impossible. i'd prefer not to discuss it if you don't mind." "certainly. i want you to keep that loan in mind, however. i think you owe it to your sister to accept. at any rate, i am glad we had this opportunity of speaking frankly." "ah," said bernie, suddenly, as if seizing with relief upon a chance to end the discussion, "i think i heard some one in the outer office." "to be sure," exclaimed blake. "that must be donnelly. i had an appointment with him here which i'd forgotten all about." "the chief of police? he's quite a friend of yours." "yes, we met while i was sheriff. he's a remarkably able officer--one of those men i like to study." "well, then, i'll be going," said bernie, rising. "no, stay and meet him." blake rose to greet a tall, angular man of about dreux's age, who came in without knocking. chief donnelly had an impassive face, into which was set a pair of those peculiar smoky-blue eyes which have become familiar upon our frontiers. he acknowledged his introduction to bernie quietly, and measured the little man curiously. "mr. dreux is a friend of mine, and he was anxious to meet you, so i asked him to stay," norvin explained. "if i'm not intruding," bernie said. "oh, there's nothing much on my mind," the chief declared. "i've come in for some information which i don't believe blake can give me." to norvin he said, "i remembered hearing that you'd been to italy, so i thought you might help me out." mr. dreux sat back, eliminated himself from the conversation in his own effective manner, and regarded the officer as a mouse might gaze upon a lion. "yes, but that was four years ago," norvin replied. "all the better. were you ever in sicily?" blake started. the sudden mention of sicily was like a touch upon an exposed nerve. "i was in sicily twice," he said, slowly. "then perhaps you can help me, after all. i recalled some sort of experience you had over there with the mafia, and took a chance." the chief drew from his pocket a note-book which he consulted. "did you ever hear of a sicilian named--narcone? gian narcone?" he looked up to see that his friend's face had gone colorless. blake nodded silently. "also a chap named--some nobleman--" he turned again to his memorandum-book. "martel savigno, count of martinello," norvin supplied in a strained, breathless voice. "that's him! why, you must know all about this affair." blake rose and began to pace his office while the others watched him curiously, amazed at his agitated manner and his evident effort to control his features. neither of his two friends had deemed him capable of such an exhibition of feeling. as a matter of fact, norvin had grown to pride himself upon his physical self-command and above all upon his impassivity of countenance. he had cultivated it purposely, for it formed a part of his later training--what he chose to call his course in courage. but this sudden probing of an old wound, this unexpected reference to the most painful part of his life, had found him off his guard and with his nerves loose. after his return from europe he had set himself vigorously to the task of uprooting his cowardice. realizing that his parish had always been lawless, it occurred to him that the office of sheriff would compel an exercise of whatever courage he had in him. it had been absurdly easy to win the election, but afterward--the memory of the bitter fight which followed often made him cringe. strangely enough, his theory had not worked out. he found that his cowardice was not a sick spot which could be cauterized or cut out, but rather that it was like some humor of the blood, or something ingrained in the very structure of his nervous tissue. but although his lack of physical courage seemed constitutional and incurable, he had a great and splendid pride which enabled him to conceal his weakness from the world. time and again he had balked, had shied like a frightened horse; time and again he had roweled himself with cruel spurs and ridden down his unruly terrors by force of will. but the struggle had burned him out, had calcined his youth, had grayed his hair, and left him old and tired. even now, when he had begun to consider his self-mastery complete, it had required no more than the unexpected mention of martel savigno's name and that of his murderer to awaken pangs of poignant distress, the signs of which he could not altogether conceal. when after an interval of several minutes he felt that he had himself sufficiently in hand to talk without danger of self-betrayal, he seated himself and inquired: "what do you wish to know about--the count of martinello and narcone the bandit?" "i want to know all there is," said donnelly. "perhaps we can get at it quicker if you will tell me what you know. i had no idea you were familiar with the case. it's remarkable how these old trails recross." "i--i know everything about the murder of martel savigno, for i saw it. i was there. he was my best friend. that is the story of which you read. that is why the mention of his name upset me, even after nearly five years." bernie dreux uttered an exclamation and hitched forward in his chair. this new side of blake's character fascinated him. "if you will tell me the circumstances it will help me piece out my record," said the chief, so blake began reluctantly, hesitatingly, giving the facts clearly, but with a constraint that bore witness to his pain in the recital. when he had finished, it was donnelly's turn to show surprise. "that is remarkable!" he exclaimed. "to think that you have seen gian narcone! d'you suppose you would know him again after four years?" he shot a keen glance at his friend. "i am quite sure i would. but come, you haven't told me anything yet." "well, narcone is in new orleans." "what?" blake leaned forward in his chair, his eyes blazing. "at least i'm informed that he is. i received a letter some time ago containing most of the information you've just given me, and stating that there are extradition papers for him in new york. the letter says that some of his old gang have confessed to their part in the murder and have implicated narcone so strongly that he will hang if they can get him back to sicily." "i believe that. but who is your informant?" "i don't know. the letter is anonymous." a sudden wild hope sprang up in blake's mind. he dared not trust it, yet it clamored for credence. "was it written by a--woman?" he queried, tensely. "no; at least i don't think so. it was written on one of these new-fangled typewriting machines. i left it at the office, or you could judge for yourself." "if it is typewritten, how do you know whether--" "i tell you i don't know. but i can guess pretty closely. it was one of the pallozzo gang. this narcone--he calls himself vito sabella, by the way--is a leader of the quatrones. the two factions have been at war lately and some member of the pallozzo outfit has turned him up." the light died out of norvin's face, his body relaxed. he had followed so many clues, his quest had been so long and fruitless, that he met disappointment half-way. up to this moment bernie dreux had listened without a word or movement, but now he stirred and inquired, hesitatingly: "pardon me, but what is this pallozzo gang and who are the quatrones? i'm tremendously interested in this affair." "the pallozzos and the quatrones," donnelly explained, "are two italian gangs which have come into rivalry over the fruit business. they unload the ships, you know, and they have clashed several times. you probably heard about their last mix-up--one man killed and four wounded." "i never read about such things," dreux acknowledged, at which the chief's eyes twinkled and once more wandered over the little man's immaculate figure. "you are familiar with our italian problem, aren't you?" "i--i'm afraid not. i know we have a large foreign population in the city--in fact, i spend much of my time on the other side of canal street--but i didn't know there was any particular problem." "well, there is, and a very serious one, too," blake assured him. "it's giving our friend donnelly and the rest of the city officials trouble enough and to spare. there have been some eighty killings in the italian quarter." "eighty-four," said donnelly. "and about two hundred outrages of one sort or another." "and almost no convictions. am i right?" "you are. we can't do a thing with them. they are a law to themselves, and they ignore us and ours absolutely. it's getting worse, too. fine situation to exist in the midst of a law-abiding american community, isn't it?" donnelly appealed to dreux. "now that will show you how little a person may know of his own home," reflected bernie. "has it anything to do with this mafia we hear so much about?" "it has. but the mafia is going to end," donnelly announced positively. "i've gone on record to that effect. if those dagos can't obey our laws, they'll have to pull their freight. it's up to me to put a finish to this state of affairs or acknowledge i'm a poor official and don't know my business. the reform crowd has seized upon it as a weapon to put me out of office, claiming that i've sold out to the italians and don't want to run 'em down, so i've got to do something to show i'm not asleep on my beat. i've never had a chance before, but now i'm going after this vito sabella and land him. will you look him over, norvin, and see if he's the right party?" "of course. i owe narcone a visit and i'm glad of this chance. but granting that he is narcone, how can you get him out of new orleans? he'll fight extradition and the quatrones will support him." "i'm blamed if i know. i'll have to figure that out," said the chief as he rose to go. "i'm mighty glad i had that hunch to come and see you, and i wish you were a plain-clothes man instead of the president of the cotton exchange. i think you and i could clean out this mafia and make the town fit for a white man to live in. if you'll drop in on me at eight o'clock to-night we'll walk over toward st. phillip street and perhaps get a look at your old friend narcone. if you care to come along, mr. dreux, i'd be glad to have you." bernie dreux threw up his shapely hands in hasty refusal. "oh dear, no!" he protested. "i haven't lost any italian murderers. this expedition, which you're planning so lightly, may lead to--heaven knows what. at any rate, i should only be in the way, so if it's quite the same to you i'll send regrets." "quite the same," donnelly laughed, then to norvin: "if you think this dago may recognize you, you'd better tote a gun. at eight, then." "at eight," agreed blake and escorted him to the door. ix "one who knows" norvin blake dined at his club that evening, returning to his office at about half-past seven. he was relieved to find the place deserted, for he desired an opportunity to think undisturbed. although this unforeseen twist of events had seemed remarkable, at first, he began to feel that he had been unconsciously waiting for this very hour. something had always forewarned him that a time would come when he would be forced to take a hand once more in that old affair. nor was he so much disturbed by the knowledge that narcone, the butcher, was here in new orleans as by the memories and regrets which the news aroused. entering his private office, he lit the gas, and flinging himself into an easy-chair, gave himself over to recollections of all that the last four years had brought forth. it seemed only yesterday that he had returned from italy, hot upon the scent which colonel neri had uncovered for him. he had been confident, eager, hopeful, yet he had failed, signally, unaccountably. he had combed new york city for a trace of margherita ginini with a thoroughness that left no possible means untried. as he looked back upon it now, he wondered if he could ever summon sufficient enthusiasm to attack any other project with a similar determination. he doubted it. later experience had bred in him a peculiar caution, a shrinking hesitancy at exposing his true feelings, due, no doubt, to that ever-present necessity of watching himself. margherita had never written him after her first disappearance; his own letters had been returned from sicily; the police of new york had failed as those of rome and naples and other cities had failed. he had wasted a small fortune in the hire of private detectives. at last, when it was too late to profit him, he had learned that the three women had been in new york at the time of his arrival, but evidently they had become alarmed at his pursuit and fled. it was this which had forced him to give up--the certainty that margherita knew the motive of his search and resented it. he had never quite recovered from the sting of that discovery, for he was proud, but he had grown too wise to cherish unjust resentment. it merely struck him as a great pity that their lives had fallen out in such unhappy fashion. he never tried to deceive himself into believing that he could forget her, become a new man, and banish the joy and the pain of his past, impartially. there were other women, it is true, who attracted him strongly, aroused his tenderness and appealed to his manhood--and among them myra nell warren. his power of feeling had not been atrophied, rather it had become deeper. yet his loyalty was never really impaired. in the bottom of his heart he knew that that tawny, slumbrous yet passionate sicilian girl was his first and his most sacred love. as he sat alone now, with the evidences of his accomplishment about him, he realized that in spite of his material success, life, so far, at least, had been just as stale and flat as it had promised to be on that night when he and martel had ridden away from the feast at terranova. he had made good, to his own satisfaction, in all respects save one, and even in that he had gained the form if not the substance, for the world regarded him as a man of proven courage. it seemed to him a grim and hideous joke, and he wondered what his friends would think if they knew that the very commonplace adventure planned for this evening filled him with a cringing horror. the prospect of this trip into the italian quarter with the probability of encountering narcone turned him cold and sick. his hands were like ice and the muscles of his back were twitching nervously; he could feel his heart pound as he let his thoughts have free play. but these symptoms were only too familiar; he had conquered them too many times to think of weakening. after five years of intimate self-study he was still at a loss to account for his phenomenal cowardice. he wondered again to-night if it might not be the result of a too powerful imagination. donnelly had no imagination whatever, and the same seemed true of others whom he had studied. as for himself, his fancies took alarm at the slightest hint and went careering off into all the dark byways of supposition, encountering impossible shapes and improbable dangers. whatever the cause, he had long since given up hope of ever winning a permanent victory over himself and had learned that each trial meant a fresh battle. when he saw by the clock that the hour of his appointment had come, he arose, although his body seemed to belong to some one else and his spirit was crying out a mad, panicky warning. he opened the drawer of his desk and, extracting a revolver, raised it at arm's-length. he drew it down before his eye until the sights crept into alignment, and held it there for a throbbing second. then he smiled mirthlessly, for his hand had not shown the slightest tremor. donnelly was waiting as blake walked into headquarters, and, exhuming a box of cigars from the remotest depths of a desk drawer, he offered them, saying: "i've sent o'connell over to reconnoiter. there's no use of our starting out until he locates sabella. you needn't be so suspicious of those perfectos; they won't bite you." "the last one you gave me did precisely that." "must have been one of my cooking cigars. i keep two kinds, one for callers and one for friends." "then if this is a flor de friendship i'll accept," blake said with a laugh. "i see mr. dreux didn't change his mind and decide to join us." "no, this is a little too rough for bernie. he very cheerfully acknowledged that he was afraid narcone might recognize me and make trouble." "i thought of that," donnelly acknowledged. "is there any chance?" in the depths of blake's consciousness something cried out fearfully in the affirmative, but he replied: "hardly. he never saw me except indistinctly, and that was nearly five years ago. he might recall my name, but i dare say not without an introduction, which isn't necessary." "do you think you will know him?" "i-i have reason to think i will." the chief grunted with satisfaction. "a funny little fellow, that dreux!" he remarked. "wasn't it his father who fought a duel with colonel hammond from baton rouge?" "the same. they used shotguns at forty yards. colonel hammond was killed." "humph! and he was afraid to go with us to-night?" "oh, he makes no secret of his cowardice." "well, a mule is a mule, a coward is a coward, and a gambler is a--son-of-a-gun," paraphrased the chief. "if he hasn't any courage he can't force it into himself." "do you think so?" "i know so. i've seen it tried. some people are born cowards and can't help themselves. as for me, i was never troubled much that way. i suppose you find it the same, too." "no. my only consolation lies in thinking it's barely possible the other fellow may be as badly frightened as i am." donnelly scoffed openly. "i never saw a man stand up better than you. why i've touted you as the gamest chap i ever saw. do you remember that dago misetti who jumped from here into your parish when you were sheriff?" blake smiled. "i'm not likely to forget him." "you walked into a gun that day when you knew he'd use it." "he didn't, though--at least not much. perhaps he was as badly rattled as i was." "have it your own way," the chief said. "but that reminds me, he's out again." "indeed! i hadn't heard." "you knew, of course, we couldn't convict him for that killing. we had a perfect case, but the mafia cleared him. same old story--perjury, alibis, and jury-fixing. we put him away for resisting an officer, though; they couldn't stop us there. but they've 'sprung' him and he's back in town again. damn such people! with over two hundred italian outrages of various kinds in this city up to date, i can count the convictions on the fingers of one hand. the rest of the country is beginning to notice it." "it is a serious matter," blake acknowledged, "and it is affecting the business interests of the city. we see that every day." "if i had a free hand i'd tin-can every dago in new orleans." "nonsense! they're not all bad. the great majority of them are good, industrious, law-abiding people. it's a comparatively small criminal element that does the mischief." "you think so, eh? well, if you held down this job for a year you'd be ready to swear they're all blackmailers and murderers. if they're so honest and peaceable, why don't they come out and help us run down the malefactors?" "that's not their way." "no, you bet it isn't," donnelly affirmed. "things are getting worse every day. the reformers don't have to call my attention to it; i'm wise. so far, they have confined their operations to their own people, but what's to prevent them from spreading out? some day those italians will break over and tackle us americans, and then there will be hell to pay. i'll be blamed for not holding them in check. why, you've no idea of the completeness of their organization; it has a thousand branches and it takes in some of their very best people. i dare say you think this mafia is some dago secret society with lodge-rooms and grips and passwords and a picnic once a year. well, i tell you--" "you needn't tell me anything about la mafia," blake interrupted, gravely. "i know as much about it, perhaps, as you do. something ought to be done to choke off this flood of european criminal immigration. believe me, i realize what you are up against, dan, and i know, as you know, that la mafia will beat you." "i'm damned if it will!" exploded the officer. "the policing of this city is under my charge, and if those people want to live here among us--" the telephone bell rang and donnelly broke off to answer it. "hello! is that you, o'connell? good! stick around the neighborhood. we'll be right over." he hung up the receiver and explained: "o'connell has him marked out. we'd better go." it was not until they were well on their way that norvin thought to mention the letter, which he had wished to see. "oh, yes, i meant to show it to you," said donnelly. "but there's nothing unusual about it, except perhaps the signature." "i thought you said it was anonymous." "well, it is; it's merely signed 'one who knows.'" "does it mention an associate of narcone--a man named cardi?" "no. who's he?" "i dare say at least a hundred thousand people have asked that same question." briefly norvin told what he knew of the reputed chief of the banditti, of the terrors his name inspired in sicily, and of his supposed connection with the murder of savigno. "once or twice a year i hear from colonel neri," he added, "but he informs me that cardi has never returned to the island, so it occurred to me that he too might be in new orleans." "it's very likely that he is, and if he was a capo-mafia there, he's probably the same here. lord! i'd like to get inside of that outfit; i'd go through it like a sandstorm." by this time they had threaded the narrow thoroughfares of the old quarter, and were nearing the vicinity of st. phillip street, the heart of what donnelly called "dagotown." there was little to distinguish this part of the city from that through which they had come. there were the same dingy, wrinkled houses, with their odd little balconies and ornamental iron galleries overhanging the sidewalks and peering into one another's faces as if to see what their neighbors were up to; the same queer, musty, dusty shops, dozing amid violent foreign odors; the same open doorways and tunnel-like entrances leading to paved courtyards at the rear. the steep roofs were tiled and moss-grown, the pavements were of huge stone flags, set in between seams of mud, and so unevenly placed as to make traffic impossible save by the light of day. alongside the walks were open sewers, in which the foul and sluggish current was setting not toward, but away from, the river-front. the district was peopled by shadows and mystery; it abounded in strange sights and sounds and smells. at the corner of royal and dumaine they found o'connell loitering in a doorway, and with a word he directed them to a small cafe and wine-shop in the next block. a moment later they pushed through swinging doors and entered. donnelly nodded to the white-haired italian behind the bar and led the way back to a vacant table against the wall, where he and norvin seated themselves. there were perhaps a half-dozen similar tables in the room, at some of which men were eating. but it was late for supper, and for the most part the occupants were either drinking or playing cards. there was a momentary pause in the babble of conversation as the two stalked boldly in, and a score of suspicious glances were leveled at them, for the chief was well known in the italian quarter. the proprietor came bustling toward the new-comers with an obsequious smile upon his grizzled features. taking the end of his apron he wiped the surface of their table dry, at the same time informing donnelly in broken english that he was honored by the privilege of serving him. donnelly ordered a bottle of wine, then drew an envelope from his pocket and began making figures upon it, leaning forward and addressing his companion confidentially, to the complete disregard of his surroundings. norvin glued his eyes upon the paper, nodding now and then as if in agreement. although he had taken but one hasty glance around the cafe upon entering, he had seen a certain heavy-muscled sicilian whose face was only too familiar. it was narcone, without a doubt. blake had seen that brutal, lust-coarsened countenance too many times in his dreams to be mistaken, and while his one and only glimpse had been secured in a half-light, his mind at that instant had been so unnaturally sensitized that the photograph remained clear and unfading. he could feel narcone staring at him now, as he sat nodding to the senseless patter of the chief in a sort of breathless, terrifying suspense. would his own face recall to the fellow's mind that night in the forest of terranova and set his fears aflame? blake's reason told him that such a thing was beyond the faintest probability, yet the flesh upon his back was crawling as if in anticipation of a knife-thrust. nevertheless, he lit a cigar and held the match between fingers which did not tremble. he was fighting his usual, senseless battle, and he was winning. when the proprietor set the bottle in front of him he filled both glasses with a firm hand and then, still listening to donnelly's words, he settled back in his chair and let his eyes rove casually over the room. he encountered narcone's evil gaze when the glass was half-way to his lips and returned it boldly for an instant. it filled him with an odd satisfaction to note that not a ripple disturbed the red surface of the wine. "have you 'made' him?" donnelly inquired under his breath. blake nodded: "the tall fellow at the third table." "that's him, all right," agreed the chief. "he doesn't remember you." "i didn't expect him to; i've changed considerably, and besides he never saw me distinctly, as i told you before." "you've got the policeman's eye," declared donnelly with enthusiasm. "i wanted you to pick him out by yourself. we'll go, now, as soon as we lap up this dago vinegar." out in the street again, blake heaved a sigh of relief, for even this little harmless adventure had been a trial to his unruly nerves. "we'll drift past the red wing club; it's a hang-out of mine and i want to talk further with you," said donnelly. they turned back towards the heart of the city, stopping a moment while the chief directed o'connell to keep a close watch upon narcone. the red wing club was not really a club at all, but a small restaurant which had become known for certain of its culinary specialties and had gathered to itself a somewhat select clientele of bons vivants, who dined there after the leisurely continental fashion. thither the two men betook themselves. "i can't see what real good those extradition papers are going to do you, even now that you're sure of your man," said norvin as soon as they were seated. "it won't be difficult to arrest him, but to extradite him will prove quite another matter. i'm not eager myself to take the stand against him, for obvious reasons." donnelly nodded his appreciation. "i will do so, if necessary, of course, but my evidence won't counterbalance all the testimony sabella will be able to bring. we know he's the man; his friends know it, but they'll unite to swear he is really vito sabella, a gentle, sweet soul whom they knew in sicily, and they'll prove he was here in america at the time martel savigno was murdered. if we had him in new york, away from his friends, it would be different; he'd go back to sicily, and once there he'd hang, as he deserves." donnelly swore under his breath. "it's the thing i run foul of every time i try to enforce the law against these people. but just the same i'm going to get this fellow, somehow, for he's one of the gang that fired into the pallozzos and killed tony alto. that's another thing i know but can't prove. what made you ask if that letter was written by a woman? has sabella a sweetheart?" "not to my knowledge. i--" norvin hesitated. "no, sabella has no sweetheart, but savigno had. i haven't told you much of that part of my story. it's no use my trying to give you an idea of what kind of woman the countess of terranova was, or is--you wouldn't understand. it's enough to say that she is a woman of extraordinary character, wholly devoted to martel's memory, and sicilian to the backbone. after her lover's death, when the police had failed, she swore to be avenged upon his murderers. i know it sounds strange, but it didn't seem so strange to me then. i tried to reason with her, but it was a waste of breath. when i returned to sicily after my mother died, margherita--the countess--had disappeared. i tried every means to find her--you know, martel left her, in a way, under my care--but i couldn't locate her in any italian city. then i learned that she had come to the united states and took up the search on this side. it's a long story; the gist of it is simply that i looked up every possibility, and finally gave up in despair. that was more than four years ago. i have no idea that all this has any connection with our present problem." donnelly listened with interest, and for a time plied blake with shrewd questions, but at length the subject seemed to lose its importance in his mind. "it's a queer coincidence," he said. "but the letter was mailed in this city and by some one familiar with narcone's movements up to date. if your countess was here you'd surely know it. this isn't new york. besides, women don't make good detectives; they get discouraged. i dare say she went back to italy long ago and is married now, with a dozen or more little counts and countesses around her." "i agree with you," said blake, "that she can't be the 'one who knows.' there are too many easier explanations, and i couldn't hope--" he checked himself. "well, i guess i've told you about all i know. call on me at any time that i can be of assistance." he left rather abruptly, struggling with a sense of self-disgust in that he had been led to talk of margherita unnecessarily, yet with a curious undercurrent of excitement running through his mood. x myra nell warren miss myra nell warren seldom commenced her toilet with that feeling of pleasurable anticipation common to most girls of her age. not that she failed to appreciate her own good looks, for she did not, but because in order to attain the desired effects she was forced to exercise a nice discrimination which can be appreciated only by those who have attempted to keep up appearances upon an income never equal to one's requirements. she had many dresses, to be sure, but they were as familiar to her as family portraits, and even among her most blinded admirers they had been known to stir the chords of remembrance. then, too, they were always getting lost, for myra nell had a way of scattering other things than her affections. she had often likened her dresses to an army of central american troops, for mere ragged abundance in which there lay no real fighting strength. having been molded to fit the existing fashions in ladies' clothes, and bred to a careless extravagance, poverty brought the girl many complexities and worries. to-night, however, she was in a very happy frame of mind as she began dressing, and bernie, hearing her singing blithely, paused outside her door to inquire the cause. "can't you guess, stupid?" she replied. "um-m! i didn't know he was coming." "well, he is. and, bernie--have you seen my white satin slippers?" "how in the world should i see them?" "it isn't them, it is just him. i've discovered one under the bed, but the other has disappeared, gone, skedaddled. do rummage around and find it for me, won't you? i think it's down-stairs--" "my dear child," her brother began in mild exasperation, "how can it be down-stairs--" the door of myra nell's room burst open suddenly, and a very animated face peered around the edge at him. "because i left it there, purposely. i kicked it off--it hurt. at least i think i did, although i'm not sure. i kicked it off somewhere." miss warren's words had a way of rushing forth head over heels, in a glad, frolicky manner which was most delightful, although somewhat damaging to grammar. but she was too enthusiastic to waste time on grammar; life forever pressed her too closely to allow repose of thought, of action, or of speech. "now, don't get huffy, honey," she ran on. "if you only knew how i've-oh, goody! you're going out!" "i was going out, but of course--" "now don't be silly. he isn't coming to see you." bernie exclaimed in a shocked voice: "myra nell! you know i never leave you to entertain your callers alone. it isn't proper." she sighed. "it isn't proper to entertain them on one foot, like a stork, either. do be a dear, now, and find my slipper. i've worn myself to the bone, i positively have, hunting for it, and i'm in tears." "very well," he said. "i'll look, but why don't you take care of your things? the idea--" she pouted a pair of red lips at him, slammed the door in his face, and began singing joyously once more. "what dress are you going to wear?" he called to her. "that white one with all the chiffon missing." "what has become of the chiffon?" he demanded, sternly. "i must have stepped on it at the dance. i--in fact, i know i did." "of course you saved it?" "oh, yes. but i can't find it now. if you could only--" "no!" he cried, firmly, and dashed down the stairs two steps at a time. from the lower hall he called up to her, "wear the new one, and be sure to let me see you before he comes." bernie sighed as he hung up his hat, for he had looked forward through a dull, disappointing day to an evening with felicite delord. she was expecting him--she would be greatly disappointed. he sighed a second time, for he was far from happy. life seemed to be one long constant worry over money matters and myra nell. being a prim, orderly man, he intensely disliked searching for mislaid articles, but he began a systematic hunt; for, knowing myra nell's peculiar irresponsibility, he was prepared to find the missing slipper anywhere between the hammock on the front gallery and the kitchen in the rear. however, a full half-hour's search failed to discover it. he had been under most of the furniture and was both hot and dusty when she came bouncing in upon him. miss warren never walked nor glided nor swayed sinuously as languorous southern society belles are supposed to do; she romped and bounced, and she was chattering amiably at this moment. "here i am, bunny, decked out like an empress. the new dress is a duck and i'm ravishing--perfectly ravishing. eh? what?" he wriggled out from beneath the horsehair sofa, rose, and, wiping the perspiration from his brow, pointed with a trembling finger at her feet. "there! there it is," he said in a terrible tone. "that's it on your foot." "oh, yes. i found it right after you came downstairs." she burst out laughing at his disheveled appearance. "i forgot you were looking. but come, admire me!" she revolved before his eyes, and he smiled delightedly. in truth, miss warren presented a picture to bring admiration into any eye, and although she was entirely lacking in poise and dignity, her constant restless vivacity and the witch-like spirit of laughter that possessed her were quite as engaging. she was a madcap, fly-away creature whose ravishing lace was framed by an unruly mop of dark hair, which no amount of attention could hold in place. little dancing curls and wisps and ringlets were forever escaping in coquettish fashion: bernie regarded her critically from head to foot, absent-mindedly brushing from his own immaculate person the dust which bore witness to his sister's housekeeping. in his eyes this girl was more than a queen, she was a sort of deity, and she could do no wrong. he was by no means an admirable man himself, but he saw in her all the virtues which he lacked, and his simple devotion was touching. "you didn't comb your hair," he said, severely. "oh, i did! i combed it like mad, but the hairpins pop right out," she exclaimed. "anyway, there weren't enough." "well, i found some on the piano," he said, "so i'll fix you." with deft fingers he secured the stray locks which were escaping, working as skilfully as a hair-dresser. "oh, but you're a nuisance," she told him, as she accepted his aid with the fidgety impatience of a restless boy. "they'll pop right out again." "they wouldn't if you didn't jerk and flirt around--" "flirt, indeed! bunny! bunny! what an idea!" she kissed him with a resounding smack, squarely upon the end of his thin nose, then flounced over to the old-fashioned haircloth sofa. now, mr. dreux abhorred the name of bunny, and above all things he abominated myra nell's method of saluting him upon the nose, but she only laughed at his exclamation of disgust, saying: "well, well! you haven't told me how nice i look." "there is no possible hope for him," he acknowledged. "the gown fits very nicely, too." "chloe did it--she cut it off, and sewed on the doodads--" "the what?" "the ruffly things." myra nell sighed. "it's hard to make a dressmaker out of a cook. her soul never rises above fried chicken and light bread, but she did pretty well this time, almost as well as--do you know, bunny, you'd have made a dandy dressmaker." "my dear child," he said in scandalized tones, "you get more slangy every day. it's not ladylike." "i know, but it gets you there quicker. lordy! i hope he doesn't keep me waiting until i get all wrinkled up. why don't you go out and have a good time? i'll entertain him." "you know i wouldn't leave you alone." she made a little laughing grimace at him and said: "well, then, if you must stay, i'll keep him out on the gallery all to myself. it's a lovely night, and, besides, the drawing-room is getting to smell musty. mind you, don't get into any mischief." she bounced up from the sofa and gave his ear a playful tweak with her pink fingers, then danced out into the drawing-room, where she rattled off a part of a piano selection at breakneck speed, ending in the middle with a crash, and finally flung open the long french blinds. the next instant he heard her swinging furiously in the hammock. bernie smiled fondly, as a mother smiles, and his pinched little face was glorified, then he sighed for a third time, as he thought of felicite delord, and regretfully settled himself down to a dull and solitary evening. the library had long since been denuded of its valuable books, in the same way that the old frame mansion had lost its finer furniture, piece by piece, as some whim of its mistress made a sacrifice necessary. in consequence, about all that remained now to afford bernie amusement were certain works on art which had no market value. selecting one of these, he lit a cigarette and lost himself among the old masters. when norvin blake came up the walk beneath the live-oak and magnolia trees, myra nell met him at the top of the steps, and her cool, fresh loveliness struck him as something extremely pleasant to look upon, after his heated, bustling day on the exchange. "bernie's in the library feasting on spanish masters, so if you don't mind we'll sit out here," she told him. "i'll be delighted," he assured her. "in that way i may be seen and so excite the jealousy of certain fellows who have been monopolizing you lately." "a little jealousy is a good thing, so i'll help you. but--they don't have it in them. they're as calm and placid as bayou water." blake was fond of mildly teasing the girl about her popularity, assuming, as an old friend, a whimsically injured tone. she could never be sure how much or little his speeches meant, but, being an outrageous little coquette herself, she seldom put much confidence in any one's words. "tell me," he went on--"i haven't seen you for a week--who are you engaged to now?" "the idea! i'm never really engaged; that is, hardly ever." "then there is a terrible misapprehension at large!" "oh, i'm always misapprehended. even bernie misapprehends me; he thinks i'm frivolous and light-minded, but i'm not. i'm really very serious; i'm--i'm almost morose." he laughed at her. "you don't mean to deny you have a bewildering train of admirers?" "perhaps, but i don't like to think of them. you see, it takes years to collect a real train of admirers, and it argues that a girl is a fixture. that's something i won't be. i'm beginning to feel like one of the sights of the city, such as bernie points out to his northern tourists. of course, you're the exception. i don't think we've ever been engaged, have we?" "um-m! i believe not, i don't care to be considered eccentric, however. it isn't too late." "bernie wouldn't allow it for a moment, and, besides, you're too serious. a girl should never engage herself to a serious-minded man unless she's really ready to--marry him." "how true!" "by the way," she chattered on, "what in the world have you done to bernie? he has talked nothing but mafia and murders and vendettas ever since he saw you the other day." "he told you about meeting donnelly in my office?" "yes! he's become tremendously interested in the italian question all at once; he reads all the papers and he haunts the foreign quarter. he tells me we have a fearful condition of affairs here. of course i don't know what he's talking about, but he's very much in earnest, and wants to help mr. donnelly do something or other--kill somebody, i judge." "really! i didn't suppose he cared for such things." "neither did i. but your story worked him all up. of course, i read about _you_ long ago, and that's how i knew you were a hero. when you returned from abroad i was simply smothered with excitement until i met you. the _idea_ of your fighting with bandits, and all that! but tell me, did you discover that murderer creature?" "yes. we identified him." "oh-h!" the girl fairly wriggled with eagerness, and he had to smile at her as she leaned forward waiting for details. "bernie said you asked him to go, but he was afraid. i--i wish you'd take me the next time. fancy! what did he do? was he a tall, dangerous-looking man? did he grind his teeth at you?" "no, no!" norvin briefly explained the very ordinary happenings of his trip with the chief of police, to which she listened with her usual intensity of interest in the subject of the moment. "you won't have to testify against him in those what-do-you-call-'em proceedings?" she asked as soon as he had finished. "extradition?" "why! why, they'll blow you up, or do something dreadful!" "i suppose i'll have to. donnelly is bent on arresting him, and i owe something to the memory of mattel savigno." "you mustn't!" she exclaimed with a gravity quite surprising in her. "when bernie told me what it might lead to, it frightened me nearly to death. he says this mafia is a perfectly awful affair. you won't get mixed up in it, will you? please!" the girl who was speaking now was not the myra nell he knew; her tone of real concern struck him very agreeably. beneath her customary mood of intoxication with the joy of living he had occasionally caught fleeting glimpses of a really unusual depth of feeling, and the thought that she was concerned for his welfare filled him with a selfish gladness. nevertheless, he answered her, truly: "i can't promise that. i rather feel that i owe it to martel" "he's dead! that sounds brutal, but--" "i owe something also to--those he left behind." "you mean that sicilian woman--that countess. i suppose you know i'm horribly jealous of her?" "i didn't know it." "i am. just think of it--a real countess, with a castle, and dozens--thousands of gorgeous dresses! was she--beautiful?" "very!" "_don't_ say it that way. goodness! how i hate her!" miss warren flounced back into the corner of the hammock, and norvin said with a laugh: "no wonder you have a train of suitors." "i've never seen a really beautiful italian woman--except vittoria fabrizi, of course." "your friend, the nurse?" "yes, and she's not really italian, she's just like anybody else. she was here to see me again this afternoon, by the way; it's her day off at the hospital, you know. i want you to meet her. you'll fall desperately in love." "really, i'm not interested in trained nurses, and i wouldn't want you to hate her as you hate the countess." "oh, i couldn't hate vittoria, she's such a dear. she saved my life, you know." "nonsense! you only had a sprained ankle." "yes, but it was a perfectly odious sprain. nobody knows how i suffered. and to think it was all bernie's fault!" "how so? you fell off a horse." "i did not," indignantly declared miss warren. "i was thrown, hurled, flung, violently projected, and then i was frightfully trampled by a snorting steed." norvin laughed heartily at this, for he knew the rickety old family horse very well by sight, and the picture she conjured up was amusing. "how do you manage to blame it on bernie?" he inquired. "well, he forbade me to ride horseback, so of course i had to do it." "oh, i see." "i fixed up a perfectly ravishing habit. i couldn't ask bernie to buy me one, since he refused to let me ride, so i made a skirt out of our grand-piano cover--it was miles long, and a darling shade of green. when it came to a hat i was stumped until i thought of bernie's silk one. no mother ever loved a child as he loved that hat, you know. i twisted his evening scarf around it, and the effect was really stunning--it floated beautifully. babylon and i formed a picture, i can tell you. i call the horse babylon because he's such an old ruin. but i don't believe any one ever rode him before; he didn't seem to know what it was all about. he was very bony, too, and he stuck out in places. i suppose we would have gotten along all right if i hadn't tried to make him prance. he wouldn't do it, so i jabbed him." "jabbed him?" myra nell nodded vigorously. "with my hat-pin. i didn't mean to hurt him, but--oh my! he isn't nearly so old as we think. i suppose the surprise did it. anyhow, he became a raging demon in a second, and when they picked me up i had a sprained ankle and the piano cover was a sight." "i suppose babylon ran away?" "no, he was standing there, with one foot right through bernie's high hat. that was the terrible part of it all--i had to pretend i was nearly killed, just to take bernie's mind off the hat. i stayed in bed for the longest time--i was afraid to get up--and he got vittoria fabrizi to wait on me. so that's how i met her. you can't linger along with your life in a person's hands for weeks at a time without getting attached to her. i was sorry for babylon, so i had chloe put a poultice on his back where i jabbed him. now i'd like to know if that isn't bernie's fault. he should have allowed me to ride and then i wouldn't have wanted to. poor boy! he was the one to suffer after all. he'd planned to take a trip somewhere, but of course he couldn't do that and pay for a trained nurse, too." myra nell's allusion to her brother's financial condition reminded blake of the subject which had been uppermost in his mind all evening, and he decided to broach it now. subsequent to his last talk with dreux he had thought a good deal about that proffered loan and had come to regard bernie's refusal as unwarranted. to be queen of the carnival was an honor given to but few young women, and one that would probably never come to miss warren again, so even at the risk of offending her half-brother he had decided to lay the matter before myra nell herself. she ought at least to have in later years the consoling thought that she had once refused the royal scepter. he hoped, however, that her persuasion added to his own would bring dreux to a change of heart. "if you'll promise to make no scene, refrain from hysterics, and all that," he began, warningly, "i'll tell you some good news." "how silly! i'm an iceberg! i never get excited!" she declared. "well then, how would you like to be queen of the next mardi gras?" myra nell gasped faintly in the darkness, and sat bolt-upright. "you--you're joking." "that's no answer." "i--i--do you mean it? oh!" she was out of the hammock now and poised tremblingly before him, like a bird. "honestly? you're not fooling? norvin, you dear duck!" she clapped her hands together gleefully and began to dance up and down. "i-i'm going to scream." "remember your promise." "oh, but queen! queen! why i'm dreaming, i _must_ scream." "i gather from these rapt incoherences that you'd like it." "_like_ it! you silly! like it? haven't i lived for it? haven't i dreamed about it ever since t was a baby? wouldn't any girl give her eyes to be queen?" she seemed upon the verge of kissing him, perhaps upon the nose, but changed her mind and went dancing around his chair like some moon-mad sprite. he seized her, barely in time to prevent her from crying the news aloud to bernie, explaining hastily that she must breathe no word to any one for the time being and must first win her brother's consent. it was very difficult to impress her with the fact that the carnival was still a long way off and that bernie was yet to be reckoned with. "as if there could be any question of my accepting," she chattered. "dear, dear! why shouldn't i? and it was lovely of you to arrange it for me, too. oh, i know you did, so you needn't deny it. i hope you're to be rex. wouldn't that be splendid--but of course you wouldn't tell me." "i can tell you this much, that i am not to be king. now i have already spoken to bernie--" "the wretch! he never breathed a word of it." "he's afraid he can't afford it." "oh, la, la! he'll have to. i'll die if he refuses--just die. you know i will." "we'll bring him around, between us. you talk to him after i go, and the next time i see him i'll clinch matters. you'll make the most gorgeous of queens, myra nell." "you think so?" she blushed prettily in the gloom. "i'll have to be very dignified; the train is as long as a hall carpet and i'll have to walk this way." she illustrated the royal step, bowing to him with a regal inclination of her dark head, and then broke out into rippling life and laughter so infectious that he felt he was a boy once more. the girl's unaffected spontaneity was her most adorable trait. she was like a dancing ray of sunshine, and underneath her blithesome carelessness was a fine, clean, tender nature. blake watched her with his eyes alight, for all men loved myra nell warren and it was conceded among those who worshiped at her shrine that he who finally received her love in return for his would be favored far above his kind. she was closer to him to-night than ever before; she seemed to reach out and take him into her warm confidence, while he felt her appeal more strongly than at any time in their acquaintance. of course she did not let him do much talking, she never did that, and now her head was full of dreams, of delirious anticipations, of splendid visions. at last, when she had thanked him in as many ways as she could think of for his kindness and the time drew near for him to leave, she fell serious in a most abrupt manner, and then to his great surprise referred once again to his affair with the mafia. "it seems to me that my joy would be supreme to-night if i knew you would drop that italian matter," she said. "the consequences may be terrible and--i--don't want you to get into trouble." "i'll be careful," he told her, but as she stood with her hand in his she looked up at him with eyes which were no longer sparkling with fun, but deep and dark with shadows, saying, gently: "is there nothing which would induce you to change your mind?" "that's not a fair question." "i shall be worried to death--and i detest worry." "there's no necessity for the least bit of concern," he assured her. but there was a plaintive wrinkle upon her brow as she watched him swing down the walk to the street. as blake strolled homeward he began to reflect that this charming intimacy with myra nell warren could not go much farther without doing her an injustice. the time was rapidly nearing when he would have to make up his mind either to have very much more or very much less of her society. he was undeniably fond of her, for she not only interested him, but, what is far rarer and quite as important, she amused him. moreover, she was of his own people; the very music of her southern speech soothed his ear in contrast with the harsh accents of his northern acquaintances. the thought came to him with a profound appeal that she might grow to love him with that unswerving faithfulness which distinguishes the southern woman. and yet, strangely enough, when he retired that night it was not with her picture in his mind, but that of a splendid, tawny sicilian girl with lips as fresh as a half-opened flower and eyes as deep as the sea. xi the kidnapping bernie dreux appeared at blake's office on the following afternoon with a sour look upon his face. norvin had known he would come, but hardly expected myra nell to win her victory so easily. without waiting for the little man to speak, he began: "i know what you're here for and i know just what you're going to tell me, so proceed; run me through with your reproaches; i offer no resistance." "do you think you acted very decently?" dreux inquired. "my dear bernie, a crown was at stake." "a crown of thorns for me. it means bankruptcy." "then you have consented? good! i knew you would." "of course you knew i would; that's what makes your trick so abominable. i didn't think it of you." "that's because you don't know my depravity; few people do." "it would serve you right if i accepted your loan and never paid you back." "it would indeed." blake laughingly laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. "what's more, that is exactly what i would do in your place. i'd borrow all i could and give my sister her one supreme hour, free from all disturbing fears and embarrassments; then i'd tell the impertinent meddler who was to blame for my trouble to go whistle for his satisfaction. of course miss myra nell doesn't suspect?" "oh, heaven forbid!" piously exclaimed dreuix. "now how much will you need?" "i don't know; some fabulous sum. there will be gowns, and luncheons, and carriages, and entertaining. i will have to figure it out." "do. then double it. and thanks awfully for coming to your senses." "that's just the point--i haven't come to them, i'm perfectly insane to consider it," bernie declared, savagely. "but what can i do when she looks at me with her eyes like stars and--and--" he waved his hands hopelessly. "it's mighty decent of you, but understand i consider it a dastardly trick and i'm horribly offended." "exactly, and i don't blame you, but your sister deserves a crown for her royal gift of youth and sweetness. as for being offended, since you are not one of the mafia, i am not afraid." "do you know," said bernie, "i have been thinking about this mafia matter ever since i saw you. i'm tremendously interested and i--i'm beginning to feel the dawning of a civic spirit. remarkable, eh? you know i haven't many interests, and i'd like to--to take a hand in running down these miscreants. i've always had an ambition, ever since i was a child, to be a--don't laugh now. this is a confession. i've always wanted to be a--detective." he looked very grave, and at the same time a little shamefaced. "do you suppose donnelly could make me one?" "well! this is rather startling," said blake, with difficulty restraining a desire to laugh. "i--i can wear disguises wonderfully well," bernie went on, wistfully. "i learned when i was in college theatricals. i was really very good. and you see i might earn a lot of money that way; i understand there are tremendous rewards offered for train-robbers and that sort of people. no one need know, of course, and no one would ever suspect me of being a minion of the law." "that's true enough. but i'm afraid detectives in real life don't wear false beards. it's a pretty mean occupation, i fancy. do you seriously think you are--er--fitted for it?" "heavens! i'm no good at anything else, and i'm perfectly wonderful at worming secrets out of people. this mafia matter would give me a great opportunity. i--think i'll try it." "these italians have no sense of humor, you know. something disagreeable might happen if you went prowling around them." "oh, of course i'd quit if they discovered my intentions--my game. when we were talking of such things, the other day, i said i was a coward, but really i'm not. i've a frightful temper when i'm roused--really fiendish. as a matter of fact, i've"--he smiled sheepishly and tapped his slender, high-arched foot with his rattan cane--"i've already begun." blake settled back in his chair without a word. "i'm taking italian lessons from myra nell's nurse, miss fabrizi. she's a very superior woman, for a nurse, and she knows all about the mafia. quite an inspiration, i call it, thinking of her. i'm working her for informa--for a clue." he winked one eye gravely, and norvin gasped. bernie suddenly seemed very secretive, very different from his usual self. it was the first time blake had ever seen him give this particular facial demonstration, and the effect was much as if some benevolent old lady had winked brazenly. "well!" he exclaimed. "i don't know what to say." "there is nothing to say," mr. dreux answered in a vastly self-satisfied tone. "i'm going to offer my services to donnelly--in confidence, of course. i'm glad you introduced us, for otherwise i'd have to arrange to meet him properly. if he doesn't want me, i'll proceed unaided." when his caller had gone blake gave way to the hearty laughter he had been smothering, dwelling with keen enjoyment upon the probable result of bernie's interview with the chief. dan, he was sure, would not hurt the little man's feelings, so he felt no obligation to interfere. although he was expecting to hear from donnelly at any moment regarding the narcone matter, it was not until two weeks after their nocturnal excursion to the italian quarter that the chief came to see him. he brought unexpected news. "we've had a run of luck," he began. "i've verified the information in that letter and found that those extradition papers for narcone are really in new york. what's more, there's an italian detective there on another matter, and he's ready to take our man back to sicily with him." "really!" "narcone, it seems, was in new york for a year before he came here; that's why steps were taken to extradite him. then he evidently got suspicious and came south. anyhow, the plank is all greased, and if we land him in that city he'll go back to sicily." "i see. all that's necessary is to invite him to run up there and be arrested. it seems to me you're just where you were two weeks ago, dan; unfortunately, this doesn't happen to be new york, and you've still got to solve the important problem of getting him there." "i'm going to kidnap him," said the chief, quietly. "what? you're joking!" "not a bit of it." "but--kidnapping--it isn't done any more! it's not even considered the thing in police circles, i believe. you'll be stealing children next, like any mafioso." donnelly grinned. "that's where i got the idea. this same narcone is mixed up in the domenchino case. the kid has been gone nearly a month, now, but the father won't help us. he made a roar at the start, but they evidently got to him and now he declares that the boy must have strayed away to the river-front and been drowned. well, it occurred to me to treat that quatrone gang to some of its own medicine by stealing their ringleader." "there's poetic justice in the idea--that is, if narcone was really connected with the disappearance of the child." "oh, he was connected with it all right. ordinary blackmail was getting too slow for the outfit, so they went after a good ransom. now that old domenchino has kicked up such a row, they're afraid to come through, and have probably murdered the child. that's what he fears, at any rate, and that's why he won't help us." "it's shocking! but tell me, is this plan your own, or did bernie dreux suggest it?" donnelly laughed silently. "so you knew he'd turned fly cop? i thought i'd split when he came to me." "i hope you didn't offend him." "oh, not at all. those little milliners are mighty sensitive. i told him he had the makings of another le coq, but the force was full. i suggested that he work on the outside, and set him to watching a certain dago fruit-stand on canal street." "why that particular stand?" "because it's owned by one of our men and he can't come to any harm there. he reports every day." "but narcone--are you really in earnest about this scheme?" "i am. it's our only chance to land him, and i've got to accomplish something or quit drawing my salary. here's the layout; the pinkertons have an operative who knew sabella in new york; they were friends, in fact. this fellow arrived here two hours ago--calls himself corte. he's to renew his acquaintance with our man and explain that he is returning to new york in a week. the day he sails we grab mr. narcone, hustle him aboard ship, and corte will see to the rest. if it works right nobody'll know anything about it until narcone is at sea, when it will be too late for interference. it's old stuff, but it'll work." from what he knew of the sicilian bandit, blake felt a certain doubt as to the practicability of this plan, yet he was relieved to learn that he would not be called upon to testify. he therefore expressed himself as gratified at the change of procedure. "it was partly to spare you," the chief replied, "that i decided on this course. i want you to help me though." "in what way?" "well, it will naturally take some force; narcone won't go willingly. i want you to help me take him." instantly those fears which had been lulled in norvin's breast leaped into turmoil; the same sick surge of emotions rose, and he felt himself quailing. after an instant's pause he said: "i'll act any part you cast me for, but don't you think it is work for trained officers like you and this corte?" "that's exactly the point. narcone may put up a fight, and i have more confidence in you, when it comes to a pinch, than in any man i know. corte's job is to get him down to the dock, and i can't ask any of my men to take a hand with me, for it's--well, not exactly regular. besides, i may need a witness." donnelly hesitated. "if i do need one, i'll want some man whose word will carry more weight than that of a policeman. you understand?" he leveled his blue eyes at blake and they looked particularly smoky and cold. "you mean the quatrones may try to break you?" "something like that." "suppose narcone--er--resists?" donnelly shrugged, "we can't very well kill him, that's what makes it hard. i knew you had as much at stake as i, so i felt sure you'd help." blake heard himself assuring the officer that he had not been mistaken, but it was not his own voice that reached his ears, and when his caller had gone he found himself sitting limply in his chair, numb with horror at his own temerity. as he looked back upon it, blaming himself for his too ready agreement, he realized that several mingling emotions had been at the root of it. in the first place, he had said "yes" because his craven spirit had screamed "no" so loudly. he felt that the project was not only dangerous, but impracticable, yet something, which he chose to term his over-will, had warned him that he must not upon any account give way to fear lest he weaken his already insecure hold upon himself. again, donnelly had appealed to him in a way hard to resist. he was not only flattered by the chief's high regard for his courage, but grateful to him for having relieved him of the notoriety and possible consequences of a public proceeding. most of all, perhaps, his final acquiescence had been an instinctive reaction of rage and disgust at the part of his nature that he hated. he struck at it as a man strikes at a snake. but now that he was irrevocably pledged, his reason broke and fled, leaving him a prey to his imagination. what, he wondered, would narcone do when he saw his life at stake--when he recognized in one of his captors the man he had craved to kill in the forest of terranova? there would in all probability be a physical struggle--perhaps he would find his own flabby muscles pitted against the mighty thews of the sicilian butcher. at the thought he felt again the melting horror which had weakened him on that unspeakable night when narcone had turned from wiping the warm blood from his hands to glare into his face. blake feared that the memories would return to betray him at the last moment. that would mean that he would be left naked of the reputation he had guarded so jealously--and a far worse calamity--that his rebellious nature would finally triumph. one defeat, he knew, implied total overthrow. he tried to reason that he was magnifying the danger--that narcone would be easily handled, that other criminals as desperate had been taken without a struggle, but the instant such grains of comfort touched the healed terrors in his mind they vanished like drops of water sprinkled upon an incandescent furnace. nevertheless, he was pledged, and he knew that he would go. he had barely gotten himself under a semblance of control, two days later, when donnelly called him up by telephone to advise him in cautious terms that affairs were nearing a climax and to warn him to make ready. this served to throw him into a renewed panic. it required a tremendous effort to concentrate upon his business affairs, and it took the genius of an actor to carry him through the inconsequent details of his every-day life without betrayal. alone, at home, upon the crowded 'change, in deadly-dull directors' meetings, that sinister shadow overhung him. these long, leaden hours of suspense were doing what nothing else had been able to do since he took himself definitely in hand. they were harder to bear than any of those disciplinary experiences which had turned his hair white and burned his youth to an ash. at last donnelly came. "corte has framed it for to-morrow," he announced with evident satisfaction. "to-morrow?" norvin echoed, faintly. "yes. he's sailing on the _philadelphia_ at eleven o'clock--no stops between here and new york. they'll be waiting for narcone at quarantine." "i'm glad--it's time to do something." donnelly rubbed his palms together and showed his teeth in a smile, "corte says he'll have him at the cromwell line docks without fail, so that will save us grabbing him on the street and holding him until sailing time. if we pull it off quietly, at the last minute, nobody'll know anything about it. you'd better be at my office by nine, in case anything goes wrong." "you may count on me," blake answered in a tone that gave no hint of his inward flinching. but once alone, he found that his nerves would not allow him to work. he closed his desk and went home. when the heat of the afternoon diminished he took out his saddle-horse and went for a gallop, thinking in this way to blow some of the tortured fancies out of his mind, but he did not succeed. despite his agitation, he ate a hearty dinner--much as a condemned man devours his last meal--but he could not sleep. all night he alternately tossed in his bed or paced his room restlessly, his features working, his body shivering. he ate breakfast, however, with an apparent appetite that delighted his colored servant, and as the clock struck nine he walked into donnelly's office, smoking a cigar which he did not taste. "i haven't heard anything further from corte, so we'll go down to the dock," the chief informed him. on the way to the river-front, blake continued to smoke silently, giving a careful ear to donnelly's final directions. when they reached their destination he waited while dan went aboard the ship in search of the captain. in those days, rail transportation had not developed into its present proportions, and new orleans was even more interesting as a shipping-point than now. along the levee stretched rows of craft from every port, big black ocean liners, barques and brigantines, fruit steamers from the tropics, and a tremendous flotilla of flat-nosed river steamers with their huge tows of barges. the cavernous sheds that lined the embankment echoed to a thunder of rumbling trucks, of clanking winches, of stamping hoofs, while through and above it all came the cries and songs of a multitude of roustabouts and deck-hands. down the gangways of the _philadelphia_, a thin, continuous line of dusky truckmen was moving. a growing chaos of trunks and smaller baggage on the dock indicated that her passenger-list was heavy. blake watched the shifting scene with little interest, now and then casting an unseeing eye over the ramparts of cotton bales near by; but although he was outwardly calm, his palms were cold and wet and his mind was working with a panicky swiftness. donnelly reappeared with the assurance that all was arranged with the ship's master, and, taking their stand where they could observe what went on, they settled themselves to wait. again the moments dragged. again blake fought his usual weary battle. he envied donnelly his utter impassivity, for the officer betrayed no more feeling than as if he were standing, rod in hand, waiting for a fish to strike. an hour passed, bringing no sign of their men, although a stream of passengers was filing aboard and the piles of baggage were diminishing. norvin struggled with the desire to voice his misgivings, which were taking the form of hopes; donnelly chewed tobacco, and occasionally spat accurately at a knot-hole. his companion watched him curiously. then, without warning, the chief stirred, and there in the crowd norvin suddenly saw the tall figure of gian narcone, with another man, evidently a sicilian, beside him. "that's corte," donnelly said, quietly. the two watchers mingled with the crowd, gradually drawing closer to their quarry. but it seemed that narcone refused to go aboard with his friend--at any rate, he made no move in that direction. the _philadelphia_ blew a warning blast, the remaining passengers quickened their movements, there was but little baggage left now upon the deck, and still the two italians stood talking volubly. donnelly waited stolidly near by, never glancing at his man. blake held himself with an iron grip, although his heart-throbs were choking him. it was plain that corte also was beginning to feel the strain, and norvin began to fear that donnelly would delay too long. at last the pinkerton man stooped and raised his valise, then extended his hand to the mafioso. donnelly edged closer. blake knew that the moment for action had come, and found that without any exercise of will-power he too was closing in. his mind was working at such high speed that time seemed to halt and wait. donnelly was within arm's-length of narcone before he spoke; then he said, quietly, "going to leave the city, sabella?" "eh?" the sicilian started, his eyes leaped to the speaker, and the smile died from his heavy features. recognizing the officer, however, he pulled at the visor of his cap, and said, brokenly: "no, no, signore. my friend goes." "come, now," the chief said, grimly. "i want you to tell me something about the domenchino boy." narcone recoiled, colliding with blake, who instantly locked his arm within his own. simultaneously donnelly seized the other wrist, repeating, "you know who stole the little domenchino." the tension which had leaped into the giant muscles died away; narcone shrugged his shoulders, crying, excitedly, in his native tongue: "before god you wrong me." it was the instant for which his captor had planned; the ruse had worked; there was a deft movement on donnelly's part, something snapped metallically, and the manacles of the law were upon the murderer of martel savigno. it had all been accomplished quietly, quickly; even those standing near by hardly noticed it, and those who did were unaware of the significance of the arrest. but once his man was safely ironed, the chief's manner changed, and in the next instant the prisoner caught, perhaps from the eye of corte, the stool-pigeon, some fleeting hint that he had been betrayed. following that came the suspicion that he had been seized not for complicity in the domenchino affair, but for something far more significant. with a furious, snarling cry he flung himself backward and raised his manacled hands to strike. but it was too late for effective resistance. they took him across the gang-plank, screaming, struggling, biting like a maddened animal, while curious passengers rushed to the rails above and stared at them, and another crowd yelled and hooted derisively from the dock. a moment later they were in corte's stateroom, panting, grim, triumphant, with their prisoner's back against the wall and their work done. now that narcone realized the deception that had been practised upon him he began to curse his betrayer with incredible violence and fluency. as yet he had no idea whither he was being taken, nor for which of his many crimes he had been apprehended. but it seemed as if his rage would strangle him. with the unrestraint of a lifetime of lawlessness he poured out his passion in a terrifying rush of vilification, anathema, and threat. he hurled himself against the walls of the stateroom as if to burst his way out, and they were forced to clamp leg-irons upon him. when donnelly had regained his breath he savagely commanded the fellow to be silent, but narcone only shifted his fury from his betrayer to the chief of police. to the pinkerton operative donnelly said, gratefully: "that was good work, corte. wire me from new york. we'll have to go now, for the ship is clearing." "wait!" said blake; then pushing himself forward, he addressed the captive in italian, "where is belisario cardi?" the question came like a gunshot, silencing the outlaw as if with a gag. his bloodshot eyes searched his questioner's face; his lips, wet with slaver, were snarling like those of a dog, but he said nothing. "where is belisario cardi?" came the question for a second time. "i do not know him," said the sicilian, sullenly. "i am vito sabella, an honest man--" "you are gian narcone, the butcher, of san sebastiano," said blake. "you are going back to sicily to be hanged for the murder of martel savigno, count of martinello, and his man ricardo." "bah!" cried the prisoner, loudly. "i am not this narcone of which you speak. i do not know him. i am vito sabella, a poor man, i swear it by the body of christ. i have never seen this cardi. god will punish those who persecute me." blake leaned forward until his face was close to narcone's. "look closely," he said. "have you ever seen me before?" they stared at each other, eye to eye, and the sicilian nodded. "you were drinking chianti in the cafe on royal street, but i swear to you i am an innocent man and i curse those who betray me." "think! do you recall a night four years ago? you were waiting beside the road above terranova. there was a feast of all the country people at the castello, and finally three men came riding upward through the darkness. one of them was singing, for it was the eve of his marriage, and you knew him by his voice as the count of martinello. do you remember what happened then? think! you were called narcone the butcher, and you boasted loudly of your skill with the knife as you dried your hands upon a wisp of grass. you left two men in the road that night, but the third returned to terranova. i ask you again if you have ever seen my face." the effect of these words was extraordinary. the fury died from the prisoner's eyes, his coarse lips fell apart, the blood receded from his purple cheeks, he shrank and shivered loosely. in the silence they could hear the breath wheezing hoarsely in his throat. blake made a final appeal. "they will take you back to sicily, to colonel neri and his carbineers, and you will hang. before it is too late, tell me, where is belisario cardi?" narcone moistened his livid lips and glared malignantly at his inquisitors. but he could not be prevailed upon to speak. "well, that was easy," said donnelly, when the _philadelphia_ had cast off and the two friends were once more back in the rush and bustle of the water-front. norvin agreed. "and yet it seemed a bit unfair," he remarked. "there were three of us, you know. if he were not what he is, i'd feel somewhat ashamed of my part in the affair." donnelly showed his contempt for such quixotic views by an expressive grunt. "you can take the next one single-handed, if you prefer. perhaps it may be your friend cardi." "perhaps," said norvin, gravely. "if that should happen, i should feel that i had paid my debt in full." "i'd like a chance to sweat narcone," growled the chief, regretfully. "i'd find cardi, or i'd--" he heaved a sigh of relief. "oh, well, we've done a good day's work as it is. i hope the papers don't get hold of it." but the papers did get hold of it, and with an effect which neither man had anticipated. had they foreseen the consequences of this morning's work, had they even remotely guessed at the forces they had unwittingly set in motion, they would have lost something of their complacency. throughout the greater part of the city that night the kidnapping of vito sabella became the subject of excited comment. in the neighborhood of st. phillip street it was received in an ominous silence. xii la mafia the surprising ease with which the capture of narcone had been effected gratified norvin blake immensely, for it gave him an opportunity to jeer at the weaker side of his nature. he told himself that the incident went to prove what his saner judgment was forever saying--that fear depends largely upon the power of visualization, that danger is real only in so far as the mind sees it. moreover, the admiration his conduct aroused was balm to his soul. his friends congratulated him warmly, agreeing that he and donnelly had taken the only practical means to rid the community of a menace. in our southern and western states, where individual character stands for more than it does in the over-legalized communities of the north and east, men are concerned not so much with red-tape as with effects, and hence there was little disposition to criticize. blake was amazed to discover what a strong public sentiment the italian outrages had awakened. new orleans, it seemed, was not only indignant, but alarmed. his self-satisfaction received a sudden shock, however, when donnelly strolled into his office a few days later, and without a word laid a letter upon his desk. it ran as follows: daniel donnelly, chief of police, new orleans, la. dear sir,--god be praised that gian narcone has gone to his punishment! but you have incurred the everlasting enmity of the mala vita, or what you term la mafia, and it has been decided that your life must pay for his. you are to be killed next thursday night at the red wing club. i cannot name those upon whom the choice has fallen, for that is veiled in secrecy. i pray that you will not ignore this warning, for if you do your blood will rest upon, one who knows. p. s. destroy this letter. the color had receded from norvin's face when he looked up to meet the smoke-blue eyes of his friend. "god!" he exclaimed. "this--looks bad, doesn't it?" "you think it's on the level?" "don't you?" donnelly shrugged. "i'm blessed if i know. it may have come from the very gang i'm after. it strikes me that they wanted to get rid of narcone, but didn't know just how to go about it, so used me for an instrument. now they want to scare me off." "but--he names the very place; the very hour." "sure--everything except the very dago who is to do the killing! if he knew where and when, why wouldn't he know how and who?" "i--that sounds reasonable, and yet--you are not going to the red wing club any more, are you?" "why not? i've got until thursday and--i like their coffee. here is the other letter, by the way." donnelly produced the first communication. the paper was identical and the type appeared to be the same. beyond this norvin could make out nothing. "well," dan exclaimed, when they had exhausted their conjectures, "they've set their date and i reckon they won't change it, so i'm going to eat dinner to-night at the red wing club as usual, just to see what happens." after a brief hesitation norvin said, "i'd like to join you, if you don't mind." donnelly shook his gray head doubtfully. "i don't think you'd better. this may be on the square." "i think it is, and therefore i intend to see you through." "suit yourself, of course. i'd like to have you go along, but i don't want to get you into any fuss." seven o'clock that evening found the two friends dining at the little cafe in the foreign quarter, but they were seated at one of the corner tables and their backs were toward the wall. "i've had my reasons for eating here, and it wasn't altogether the coffee, either," the elder man confessed. "i suspected as much," norvin told him. "at least i couldn't detect anything remarkable about this rio." "you see, it's a favorite hang-out of the better italian class, and i've been working it carefully for a year." "what have you discovered?" "not much, and yet a great deal. i've made friends, for one thing, and that's considerable. here comes one now. you know him, don't you?" dan indicated a thick-necked, squarely built italian who had entered at the moment. "that's caesar maruffi." norvin regarded the new-comer with interest, for maruffi stood for what is best among his americanized countrymen. moreover, if rumor spoke true, he was one of the richest and most influential foreigners in the city. in answer to the chief's invitation he approached and seated himself at the table, accepting his introduction to blake with a smile and a gracious word. "ah! it is my first opportunity to thank you for the service you have done us in arresting that hateful brigand," he began. "did you know the fellow?" norvin queried. "very well indeed." "maruffi knows a whole lot, if he'd only open up. he's a mafioso himself--eh, caesar?" the chief laughed. "no, no!" the other exclaimed, casting a cautious glance over his shoulder. "i tell you everything i learn. but as for this sabella--i thought him a trifle sullen, perhaps, but an honest fellow." "you don't really think there has been any mistake?" "eh? how could that be possible? did not signore blake remember him?" norvin was about to disclaim his part in the affair, but the speaker ran on: "i fear you must regard all us italians as mafiosi, signore blake, but it is not so. no! we are honest people, but we are terrorized by a few bad men. we do not know them, signore. we are robbed, we are blackmailed, and if we resist, behold! something unspeakable befalls us. we do not know who deals the blow, we merely know that we are marked and that some day we--are buried." maruffi shrugged his square shoulders expressively. "do you suffer in your business?" norvin asked. "per dio! who does not? i have adopted your free country, signore, but it is not so free as my own. maledetto! you have too damned many laws in this free america." maruffi spoke hesitatingly, and yet with intense feeling; his black eyes glittered wickedly, and it was plain that he sounded the note of revolt which was rising from the law-abiding italian element. his appearance bore out his reputation for leadership, for he was big and black and dour, and he gave the impression of unusual force. "your home is in sicily, is it not?" blake inquired. "si! i come from palermo." "i have been there." "i remember," said maruffi, calmly. donnelly broke in, "what do you hear regarding our capture of sabella?" "eh?" "how do they take it?" again maruffi shrugged. "how can they take it? my good countrymen are delighted; others, perhaps, not so well pleased." "but sabella has friends. i suppose they've marked me for revenge?" "no doubt! but what can they do? you are the law. with a private citizen, with me, for instance, it would be different. my wife would prepare herself for widowhood." "how's that? you're not married," said donnelly. "not yet. but i have plans. a fine sicilian girl." "good! i congratulate you." "speaking of sabella," blake interposed, curiously, "i had a hand in taking him, and i'm a private citizen." "true!" maruffi regarded him with his impenetrable eyes. "you predict trouble for me, then?" "i predict nothing. we say in my country that no one escapes the mafia. no doubt we are timid. you are an american, you are not easily frightened. but tell me"--he turned to the chief of police--"who is to follow this brigand? there are others quite as black as he, if they were known." "no doubt! but, unfortunately, i don't know them. why don't you help me out, caesar?" "if i could! you have no suspicions, eh?" "plenty of suspicions, but no proofs." maruffi turned back to norvin, saying: "so, you identified the murderer of your friend savigno? madonna mia! you have a memory! but were you not--afraid?" "afraid of what?" "ah! you are american, as i said before; you fear nothing. but it was belisario cardi who killed the conte of martinello." "belisario cardi is only a name," said norvin, guardedly. "true!" maruffi agreed. "being a palermitan myself, he is real to me, but, as you say, nobody knows." he rose and shook hands cordially with both men. when he had joined the group of italians at a near-by table, donnelly said: "there's the whitest dago in the city. i thought he might be the 'one who knows,' but i reckon i was mistaken. he could help me, though, if he dared." "have you confided in him?" "lord, no! i don't trust any of them. say! the more i think about that letter, the more i think it's a bluff." "you can't afford to ignore it." "of course not. i'll plant o'connell and another man outside on thursday night and see if anything suspicious turns up, but i'll take my dinner elsewhere." the two men had finished their meal when bernie dreux strolled in and took the seat which maruffi had vacated. "well, how goes your detecting, bernie?" norvin inquired. "_hist_!" breathed the little man so sharply that his hearers started. he winked mysteriously and they saw that he was bursting with important tidings. "there's something doing!" "what is it?" demanded the chief. but mr. dreux answered nothing. instead he lit a cigarette, and as he raised the match looked guardedly into a mirror behind donnelly's chair. "i'm glad you took this table," he began in a low voice. "i always sit where i can get a flash." "a _what_?" queried the astonished blake. "pianissimo with that talk!" cautioned the speaker. "you'll tip him off." "tip who?" donnelly breathed. "my man! he's one of the gang. do you see that fellow--that wop next to caesar maruffi?" bernie did not lower his eyes from the mirror, "the third from the left." "sure!" "well!" triumphantly. "well?" "that is he." "that's who?" "i don't know." "what the--" "he's one of 'em, that's all i know. i've been on him for a week. i've trailed him everywhere. he has an accomplice--a woman!" the chief's face underwent a remarkable change. "are you sure?" he whispered, eagerly. "it's a cinch! he comes to the fruit-stand every day. i think he's after blackmail, but i'm not sure." "good!" dan exclaimed. "i want you to trail him wherever he goes, and, above all, watch the woman. now tear back to your banana rookery or you'll miss something. better have a drink first, though." "i'll go you; it's tough work on the nerves. i'm all upset." "i thought you never drank whiskey," norvin said, still amazed at the extraordinary transformation in his friend. "i don't as a rule, it kippers my stomach; but it gives me the courage of a lion." donnelly nodded with satisfaction. "don't get pickled, but keep your nerve. remember, i'm depending on you." dreux's slender form writhed and shuddered as he swallowed the liquor, but his eyes were shining when he rose to go. "i'm glad i'm making good," said he. "if anything happens to me, keep your eye skinned for that fellow; there's dirty work afoot." when he had gone donnelly stuck his napkin into his mouth to still his laughter. "'there's dirty work afoot,'" he quoted in a strangling voice. "can you beat that?" "i--can't believe my senses. why, bernie's actually getting tough! who is this fellow he's trailing?" "that? that's joe poggi, the owner of the fruit-stand. he's my best dago detective, and i sent him here to-night in case anything blew off. the woman is his wife--lovely lady, too. 'blackmail!' oh, lord! i'll have to tell poggi about this. i'll have to tell him he's being shadowed, too, or he'll stop suddenly on the street some day and bernie will run into him from behind and break his nose." thursday night passed without incident. donnelly set a watch upon the red wing club, but nothing occurred to give the least color to the written warning. in the course of a fortnight he had well-nigh forgotten it, and when a third letter came he was less than ever inclined to believe it genuine. "you forestalled the first attempt upon your life," wrote the informant, "but another will be made. you are to be shot at police headquarters some night next week. your desk stands just inside a window which opens upon the street. a fight will occur at the corner near by and during the disturbance an assassin will fire upon you out of the darkness, then disappear in the confusion. do not treat this warning lightly or i swear that you will repent it. "one who knows" donnelly showed this to blake, saying, sourly, "you see. it's just as i told you. they're trying to run me out." "what are you going to do?" "i'm going to move my desk, for one thing, then i'm going to run down this writer. o'connell is going through the stationery-stores now, trying to match the water-mark on the paper. the post-office is on the lookout for the next letter and will try to find which mail-box it is dropped into." "then you think there will be other letters to follow this one?" "certainly! when they see that i've moved away from that window they'll think they've got me going, then i'll be warned of another plot, and another, and another. it might work with some people." the speaker's lips curled in a wintry smile. "you no longer think it came from one of the pallozzo gang?" "no! there's nobody in the outfit who can write a letter like that. it's from the mafia." "how can you say that when the same writer betrayed narcone?" "oh, i've asked myself the same question," donnelly answered with a trace of exasperation, "and i can't answer it unless that was merely a case of revenge. take it from me, i'll get another letter inside of ten days. see if i don't." true to his prediction, the tenth day brought another warning. the writer advised him that his enemies had changed their plans once more, but would strike, when the first opportunity offered. as to where or when this would occur, no information was given. the chief was merely urged in the strongest terms to remove himself beyond the possibility of danger. naturally the recipient took this as proof positive that the whole affair was no more than a weak attempt to frighten him. unfortunately, the postal authorities could not determine where the letter had been mailed, and o'connell reported that the paper on which it was written was of a variety in common use. there seemed to be little hope of tracing the matter back to its source, so donnelly dismissed the whole affair from his mind and went about his duties undisturbed. norvin blake, however, could not bring himself to take the same view. as usual, he attributed his fears to imagination, yet they preyed upon him so constantly that he was forced to heed them. his one frightful experience with la mafia had marked him, it seemed, like some prenatal influence, and now the more he dwelt upon the subject, the more his apprehension quickened. he was ashamed to confess to donnelly, and at the same time he was loath to allow the chief to expose himself unnecessarily. therefore he made it a point to be with him as much as possible. this, of course, involved a considerable risk to himself, and he recalled with misgiving what caesar maruffi had said that night in the red wing club. donnelly alone had been warned, but that did not argue that vengeance would be confined to him. october had come; the lazy heat of summer had passed and new orleans was awakening under its magic winter climate. the piny, breeze-swept gulf resorts had emptied their summer colonies cityward, the social season had begun. the preparations for the great february carnival were nearing completion, and blake had the satisfaction of knowing that myra nell warren was to realize her heart's desire. he had forced a loan upon bernie sufficient to meet the requirements of any queen, and had spent several delightful evenings with the girl herself, amused by her plans of royal conquest. it was like a tonic to be with her. norvin invariably parted from her with a feeling of optimism and a gayety quite reasonless; he had no fears, no apprehensions; the universe was peopled with sprites and fairies, the morrow was a glad adventure full of merriment and promise. he was in precisely such a mood one drizzly wednesday night after having made an inexcusably long call upon her. nothing whatever had occurred to put him in this agreeable humor, yet he went homeward humming as blithely as a barefoot boy in springtime. as he neared the neighborhood in which donnelly lived he decided to drop in on him for a few moments and smoke a cigar. business had lately kept him away from the chief, and he felt a bit guilty. but donnelly had either retired early or else he had not returned from headquarters, for his windows were dark, and norvin retraced his steps, a trifle disappointed. in front of a cobbler's shop, across the street, several men were talking, and as he glanced in their direction the door behind them opened, allowing a stream of light to pour forth. he recognized larubio, the old italian shoemaker himself, and he was on the point of inquiring if donnelly had come home, but thought better of it. larubio and his companions were idling beneath the wooden awning or shed which extended over the sidewalk, and in the open doorway, briefly silhouetted against the yellow light, blake noted a man clad in a shining rubber coat. although the picture was fleeting, it caught his attention. the thought occurred to him that these men were italians, and therefore possible mafiosi, but his mood was too optimistic to permit of silly suspicions. to-night the mafia seemed decidedly unreal and indefinite. he found himself smiling again at the memory of an argument in which he had been worsted by myra nell. he had taken her a most elaborate box of chocolates and she had gleefully promised to consume at least half of them that very night after retiring. he had remonstrated at such an unhygienic procedure, whereupon she had confessed to a secret, ungovernable habit of eating candy in bed. he had argued that the pernicious practice was sure to wreck her digestion and ruin her teeth, but she had confounded him utterly by displaying twin rows as sound as pearls, as white and regular as rice kernels. her digestion, he had to confess, was that of a shetland pony, and he had been forced to fall back upon an unconvincing prophecy of a toothless and dyspeptic old age. he pictured her at this moment propped up in the middle of the great mahogany four-poster, all lace and ruffles and ribbons, her wayward hair in adorable confusion about her face, as she pawed over the sweets and breathed ecstatic blessings upon his name. near the corner he stumbled over a boy hiding in the shadows. then as he turned north on rampart street he ran plump into donnelly and o'connell. "i just came from your house," he told dan. "i thought i'd drop in and smoke one of your bad cigars. is there anything new?" "not much! i've had a hard day and there was a police board meeting to-night. i'm fagged out." "no more letters, eh?" "no. but i've heard that sabella is safe in sicily. that means his finish. i'll have something else to tell you in a day or so; something about your other friend, cardi." "no! really?" "if what i suspect is true, it'll be a sensation. i can't credit the thing myself, that's why i don't want to say anything just yet. i'm all up in the air over it." a moment later the three men separated, donnelly and o'connell turning toward their respective homes, blake continuing his way toward the heart of the city. but the chief's words had upset norvin's complacency. his line of thought was changed and he found himself once more dwelling upon the tragedy which had left such a mark upon his life. martel had been the finest, the cleanest fellow he had ever known; his life, so full of promise, had just begun, and yet he had been ruthlessly stricken down. norvin shuddered at the memory. he saw the road to martinello stretching out ahead of him like a ghost-gray canyon walled with gloom; he heard the creaking of saddles, the muffled thud of hoofs in the dust of the causeway, the song of a lover, then-blake halted suddenly, listening. from somewhere not far away came the sound again; it was a gunshot, deadened by the blanket of mist and drizzle that shrouded the streets. he turned. it was repeated for a third time, and as he realized whence it came he cried out, affrightedly: "donnelly! donnelly! oh, god!" then he began to run swiftly, as he had run that night four years before, with the lights of terranova in the distance, and in his heart was that same sickening, horrible terror. but this time he ran, not away from the sound, but towards it. as he raced along the slippery streets the night air was ripped again and again with those same loud reverberations. he saw, by the flickering arc-lamp above the crossing where he had just left donnelly, another figure flying towards him, and recognized o'connell. together they turned into girod street. they were in time to see a flash from the shed that stood in front of larubio's shop, then an answering spurt of flame from the side of the street upon which they were. the place was full of noise and smoke. at the farther crossing a man in a shining rubber coat knelt and fired, then rose and scurried into the darkness beyond. figures broke out from the shadows of the wooden awning in front of larubio's shop and followed, some turning towards the left at basin street, others continuing on through the area lighted by the sputtering street light and into the night. one of them paused and looked back as if loath to leave the spot until certain of his work. side by side blake and o'connell raced towards the chief, whom they saw lurching uncertainly along the banquette ahead of them. the detective was cursing; blake sobbed through his tight-clenched teeth. donnelly was down when they reached him, and his empty revolver lay by his side. norvin raised him with shaking arms, his whole body sick with horror. "are you badly--hit, old man?" he gasped. "i'm--done for!" said the chief, weakly. "and the dagos did it." from an open window above them a woman began to scream loudly: "murder! murder!" the cry was taken up in other quarters and went echoing down the street. doors were flung wide, gates slammed, men came hurrying through the wet night, hurling startled questions at one another, but the powder smoke which hung sluggishly in the dark night air was sufficient answer. it floated in thin blue layers beneath the electric lights, gradually fading and melting as the life ebbed from the mangled body of dan donnelly. it was nearing dawn when norvin blake emerged from the hospital whither donnelly had been taken. the air was dead and heavy, a dripping winding-sheet of fog wrapped the city in its folds; no sound broke the silence of the hour. he was sadly shaken, for he had watched a brave soul pass out of the light, and in his ears the words of his friend were ringing: "don't let them get away with this, norvin. you're the only man i trust." xiii the blood of his ancestors at the central station norvin found a great confusion. city officials and newspaper men were coming and going, telephones were ringing, patrolmen and detectives, summoned from their beds, were reporting and receiving orders; yet all this bustling activity affected him with a kind of angry impatience. it seemed, somehow, perfunctory and inadequate; in the intensity of his feeling he doubted that any one else realized, as he did, the full significance of what had occurred. as quickly as possible he made his way to o'neil, the assistant superintendent of police, who was deep in consultation with mayor wright. for a moment he stood listening to their talk, and then, at the first pause, interposed without ceremony: "tell me--what is being done?" o'neil, who had not seemed to note his approach, answered without a hint of surprise at the interruption: "we are dragging the city." "of course. have you arrested larubio, the cobbler?" "no!" both men turned to blake now with concentrated attention. "then don't lose a moment's time. arrest all his friends and associates. look for a man in a rubber coat. i saw him fire. there's a boy, too," he added, after a moment's pause, "about fourteen years old. he was hiding at the corner. i think he must have been their picket; at any rate, he knows something." the assistant superintendent noted these directions, and listened impassively while norvin poured forth his story of the murder. before it was fairly concluded he was summoned elsewhere, and, turning away abruptly, he left the room, like a man who knows he must think of but one thing at a time. the young man, wiping his face with uncertain hand, turned to the mayor. "dan was the second friend i've seen murdered by these devils," he said. "i'd like to do something." "we'll need your help, if it was really the dagoes." "what? there's no doubt on that score. donnelly was warned." "well, we ought to have them under arrest in short order." "and then what? they've probably arranged their alibis long ago. the fellows who did the shooting are not the only ones, either. we must get the leaders." "exactly. o'neil understands." "but he'll fail, as donnelly failed." "what would you have us do?" blake spoke excitedly, his emotions finding a vent. "do? i'd rouse the people. awaken the city. create an uprising of the law-abiding. strip the courts of their red tape and administer justice with a rope. hang the guilty ones at once, before delay robs their execution of its effect and before there is time to breed doubts and distrust in the minds of the people." "you mean, in plain words--lynch them?" "well, what of that? it's the only--" "but, my dear young man, the law--" "oh, i know what you're going to say, well enough, yet there are times when mob law is justified. if these men are not destroyed quickly they will live to laugh at our laws and our scheme of justice. we must strike terror into the heart of every foreign-born criminal; we must clean the city with fire, unless we wish to see our institutions become a mockery and our community overridden by a band of cutthroats. the killing of dan donnelly is more than a mere murder; it is an attack on our civilization." "you are carried away by your personal feelings." "i think not. if this thing runs through the regular channels, what will happen? you know how hard it is to convict those people. we must fight fire with fire." "personally, i agree with a good deal you say; officially, of course. i can't go so far. you say you want to help. will you assume a large responsibility? will you take the lead in a popular movement to help the enforcement of the law--organize a committee?" "if you think i'm the right man?" "good! understand"--the mayor spoke now with determined earnestness--"we must have no lynchings; but i believe the police will need help in the search, and i think you are the man to stir up the public conscience and secure that aid. if you can help in apprehending the criminals we shall see that the courts do their part. i can trust you in so delicate a matter where i couldn't trust--some others." o'neil appeared at that moment with two strange objects in his hands. "see what we've just found on the basin street banquette." he displayed a pair of sawed-off shotguns the stocks of which were hinged in such a manner that the weapons could be doubled into a length of perhaps eighteen inches and thus be concealed upon the person. blake examined them with mingled feelings. having seen the body of the chief ripped and torn in twenty places by buckshot, slugs, and scraps of iron, he had tried to imagine what sort of firearms had been used. now he knew, and he began to wonder whether death would come to him in the same ugly form. "have you sent for larubio?" he asked. "the men are just leaving." "i'll go with them." o'neil intercepted the officers at the door, and a moment later norvin was hurrying with them toward girod street. mechanically his mind began to review the events leading up to the murder, dwelling on each detail with painful and fruitless persistence. he repictured the scene that his eye had so swiftly and so carelessly recorded; he saw again the dark shed, the dumb group of figures idling beneath it, the open door and the flood of yellow light behind. but when he strove to recall a single face or form, or even the precise number of persons, he was at a loss. nothing stood out distinctly but the bearded face of larubio, the silhouette of a man in a gleaming rubber coat, and, a moment later, a slim stripling boy crouched in the shadows near the corner. as the party turned into girod street he saw by the first streaks of dawn that the curious had already begun to assemble. a dozen or more men were morbidly examining the scene, re-enacting the assassination and tracing the course of bullets by the holes in wall and fence--no difficult matter, since the ground where donnelly had given battle had been swept by a fusillade. larubio's shop was dark. the officers tried the door quietly, then at a signal from norvin they rushed it. the next instant the three men found themselves in an evil-smelling room furnished with a bench, some broken chairs, a litter of tools and shoes and leather findings. it was untenanted, but, seeing another door ahead of him, blake stumbled toward it over the debris. like the outer door, it was barred, but yielded to his shoulder. it was well that the policemen were close upon his heels, for they found him locked in desperate conflict with a huge, half-naked sicilian, who fought with the silent wickedness of a wolf at bay. the chamber was squalid and odorous; a tumbled couch, from which the occupant had leaped, showed that he had been calmly sleeping upon the scene of his crime. through the dim-lit filth of the place the cobbler whirled them, struggling like a man insane. a table fell with a crash of dishes, a stove was wrecked, a chair smashed, then he was pinned writhing to the bed from which he had just arisen. "close the front door--quick!" norvin panted. "keep out the crowd!" one of the policemen dashed to the front of the hovel barely in time to bar the way. larubio, as he crouched there in the half-light, manacled but defiant, made a striking figure. he was a patriarchal man. his hairy, naked chest rose and fell as he fought for his breath, a thick beard grew high upon his cheeks, lending dignity to his fierce aquiline features, a tangled mass of iron-gray hair hung low above his eyes. he looked more like an arab sheik than a beggarly sicilian shoemaker. "why are you here?" he questioned, in a deep voice. blake answered him in his own language: "you killed the chief of police." "no. i had no part--" "don't lie!" "as god is my judge, i am innocent. i heard the shooting; i looked out into the night and saw men running about. i was frightened, so i went to bed. that is all." norvin undertook to stare him down. "you will hang for this, larubio," he said. the fierce gray eyes met his unflinchingly. "you had a hand in the killing, for i saw you. but you acted against your will. am i right?" still the patriarch flung back his glance defiantly. "you were ordered to kill and you dared not disobey. where is belisario cardi?" the old man started. into his eyes for the briefest instant there leaped a look of terror, then it was gone. "i do not know what you are talking about," he answered. "come! the man with the rubber coat has confessed." larubio's gaze roved uncertainly about the squalid quarters; but he shook his head, mumbling: "god will protect the innocent. i know nothing, your excellency." they dragged him, still protesting, from his den as dogs drag an animal from its burrow. but norvin had learned something. that momentary wavering glance, that flitting light of doubt and fear, had told him that to the cobbler the name of cardi meant something real and terrible. back at headquarters o'neil had further information for him. "we've got larubio's brother-in-law, caspardo cressi. it was his son, no doubt, whom you saw waiting at the corner." "have you found the boy?" "no, he's gone." "then make haste before they have time to spirit him away. these men won't talk, but we might squeeze something out of the boy. he's the weakest link in the chain, so you _must_ find him." the morning papers were on the street when norvin went home. new orleans had awakened to the outrage against her good name. men were grouped upon corners, women were gossiping from house to house, the air was surcharged with a great excitement. it was as if a public enemy had been discovered at the gates, as if an alien foe had struck while the city slept. that unformed foreign prejudice which had been slowly growing had crystallized in a single night. to norvin the popular clamor, which rose high during the next few days, had a sickening familiarity. at the time of martel savigno's murder he had looked upon justice as a thing inevitable, he had felt that the public wrath, once aroused, was an irresistible force; yet he had seen how ineffectually such a force could spend itself. and the new orleans police seemed likely to accomplish little more than the italian soldiers. although more than a hundred arrests were made, it was doubtful if, with the exception of larubio and cressi, any of the real culprits had been caught. he turned the matter over in his mind incessantly, consulted with o'neil as to ways and means, conferred with the mayor, sounded his friends. then one morning he awoke to find himself at the head of a committee of justice, composed of fifty leading business men of the city, armed with powers somewhat vaguely defined, but in reality extremely wide. he set himself diligently to his task. there followed through the newspapers an appeal to the italian population for assistance, and offers of tremendous rewards. this resulted in a flood of letters, some signed, but mostly anonymous, a multitude of shadowy clues, of wild accusations. but no sooner was a promising trail uncovered than the witness disappeared or became inspired with a terror which sealed his lips. it began to appear that there was really no evidence to be had beyond what norvin's eyes had photographed. and this, he knew, was not enough to convict even larubio and his brother-in-law. while thus baffled and groping for the faintest clue, he received a letter which brought him at least a ray of sunshine. he had opened perhaps half of his morning's mail one day when he came upon a truly remarkable missive. it was headed with an amateurish drawing or a skull; at the bottom of the sheet was a dagger, and over all, in bright red, was the life-size imprint of a small, plump hand. in round, school-girl characters he read as follows: "beware! you are a traitor and a deserter, therefore you are doomed. escape is impossible unless you heed this warning. meet me at the old house on st. charles street, and bring your ransom. "the avenger." at the lower left-hand corner, in microscopic characters, was written: "i love chocolate nougat best." norvin laughed as he re-read this sanguinary epistle, for he had to admit that it had given him a slight start. being a man of action, he walked to the telephone and called a number which had long since become familiar. "is this the creole candy kitchen? send ten pounds of your best chocolate nougat to miss myra nell warren at once. this is blake speaking. wait! i have enough on my conscience without adding another sin. perhaps you'd better make it five pounds now and five pounds a week hereafter. put it in your fanciest basket, with lots of blue ribbon, and label it 'ransom!'" next he called the girl himself, and after an interminable wait heard a breathless voice say: "hello, norvin! i've been out in the kitchen making cake, so i couldn't get away. it's in the oven now, cooking like mad." "i've just received a threatening letter," he told her. "who in the world could have sent it?" "evidently some blackmailing wretch. it demands a ransom." "heavens! you won't be cowardly enough to yield?" "certainly. i daren't refuse." he heard her laughing softly. "why don't you tell the police?" "indeed! there's an army of men besieging the place now." "then you must expect to catch the writer?" "i've been trying to for a long time." "i'm sure i don't know what you are talking about," she said, innocently. "could i have sent the ransom to the wrong address?" he pretended to be seized with doubt, whereupon myra nell exclaimed, quickly: "oh, not necessarily." then, after a pause, "norvin, how does a person get red ink off of her hands?" "use a cotton broker. let him hold it this evening." "i'd love to, but bernie wouldn't allow it. it was his ink, you know, and i spilled it all over his desk. norvin--is it really nougat?" "it is, the most unhealthy, the most indigestible--" "you _duck_! you _may_ hold my gory hand for--wait!" blake heard a faint shriek. "don't ring off. something terrible--" then the wire was dead. "hello! hello!" he called. "what's wrong, myra nell?" he rattled the receiver violently, and getting no response, applied to central. after some moments he heard her explaining in a relieved tone: "oh, _such_ a fright as i had." "what was it? for heaven's--" "the cake!" "you frightened me. i thought--" "it's four stories high and pasted together with caramel." "you should never leave a 'phone in that way without--" "bernie detests caramel; but i'm expecting a 'certain party' to call on me to-night. norvin, do you think red ink would hurt a cake?" "myra nell," he said, severely, "didn't you wash your hands before mixing that dough?" "of course." "i have my doubts. will you really be at liberty this evening?" "that depends entirely upon you. if i am, i shall exact another ransom--flowers, perhaps." "i'll send them anyhow, marechal neils." "oh, you are a--wait!" for a second time miss warren broke off; but now norvin heard her cry out gladly to some one. he held the receiver patiently until his arm cramped, then rang up again. "oh, i forgot all about you, norvin dear," she chattered. "vittoria has just come, so i can't talk to you any more. won't you run out and meet her? i know she's just dying to--she says she isn't, either! oh, fiddlesticks! you're not so busy as all that. very well, we'll probably eat the cake ourselves. good-by!" "good-by, avenger," he laughed. as he turned away smiling he found bernie dreux comfortably ensconced in an office chair and regarding him benignly. "hello, bernie! i didn't hear you come in." "wasn't that myra nell talking?" inquired the little man. "yes." "you called her 'avenger.' what has she been up to now?" blake handed him the red-hand letter. to his surprise bernie burst out angrily: "how dare she?" "what?" "it's most unladylike--begging a gentleman for gifts. i'll see that she apologizes." "if you do i'll punch your head. she couldn't do anything unladylike if she tried." "i don't approve--" "nonsense!" "i'll see that she gets her chocolates." "oh, i've sent 'em--a deadly consignment--enough to destroy both of you. and i've left a standing order for five pounds a week." "but that letter--it's blackmail." bernie groaned. "she holds me up in the same way whenever she feels like it. she's getting suspicious of me lately, and i daren't tell her i'm a detective. the other day she set remus, our gardener, on my trail, and he shadowed me all over the town. felicite thinks there's something wrong, too, and she's taken to following me. between her and remus i haven't a moment's privacy." "it's tough for a detective to be dogged by his gardener and his sweetheart," norvin sympathized. he began to run through his mail, while his visitor talked on in his amusing, irrelevant fashion. "i'm rather offended that i wasn't named on that committee of fifty," bernie confessed, after a time. "you know how the chief relied on me?" "exactly." "well, i'm full of italian mysteries now. what i haven't discovered by my own investigations, vittoria fabrizi has told me. for instance, i know what became of the boy gino cressi." "you do?" blake looked up curiously from a letter he had been eagerly perusing. "he's in mobile." "are you sure?" "certainly." "i think you're wrong." "why am i wrong?" "read this. my mail is full of anonymous communications." he passed over the letter in his hand, and mr. dreux read as follows: norvin blake, new orleans, louisiana. the cressi boy is hidden at 93 1/2 st. phillip street. go personally and in secret, for there are spies among the police. one who knows. "good lord! do you believe it?" "i shall know in an hour." in reality norvin had no doubt that his informant told the truth. on the contrary, he found that he had been waiting subconsciously for a hint from this mysterious but reliable source, and now that it had come he felt confident and elated. "a leak in the department would explain the maddening series of checkmates up to date." after a moment's hesitation he continued: "if gino cressi proves to be the boy i saw that night, we will put the rope around his father's and his uncle's necks, for he is little more than a child, and they evidently knew he would confess if accused; otherwise they wouldn't have been so careful to hide him." he rose and, eying dreux intently, inquired, "will you go along and help me take him?" bernie fell into a sudden panic of excitement. his face paled, he blinked with incredible rapidity, his lips twitched, and he clasped his thin, bloodless hands nervously. "why--are you--really--going--and alone?" norvin nodded. "if they have spies among our own men the least indiscretion may give the alarm. besides, there is no time to lose; it would be madness to go there after dark. will you come?" "you--b-b-bet," mr. dreux stuttered. after a painful effort to control himself he inquired, with rolling eyes, "s-say, norvin, will there be any fighting--any d-d-danger?" blake's own imagination had already presented that aspect of the matter all too vividly. "yes, there may be danger," he confessed. "we may have to take the boy by force." his nerves began to dance and quiver, as always before every new adventure. "perhaps, after all, you'd better not go. i--understand how you feel." the little man burst out in a forceful expletive. "_pudding!_ i _want_ to fight. d-don't you see?" "no. i don't." "i've never been in a row. i've never done anything brave or desperate, like--like you. i'm aching for trouble. i go looking for it every night." "really!" blake looked his incredulity. "sure thing! last night i insulted a perfectly nice gentleman just to provoke a quarrel. i'd never seen him before, and ordinarily i hesitate to accost strangers; but i felt as if i'd have hysterics if i couldn't lick somebody; so i walked up to this person and told him his necktie was in rotten taste." "what did he say?" "he offered to go home and change it. i was so chagrined that i--cursed him fearfully." "bernie!" dreux nodded with an expression of the keenest satisfaction. "i could have cried. i called him a worm, a bug, a boll-weevil; but he said he had a family and didn't intend to be shot up by some well-dressed desperado." "i suppose it's the blood of your ancestors." "i suppose it is. now let's go get this dago boy. i'm loaded for grizzlies, and if the mafia cuts in i'll croak somebody." he drew a huge rusty military revolver from somewhere inside his clothes and flourished it so recklessly that his companion recoiled. together the two set out for st. phillip street. blake, whose reputation for bravery had become proverbial, went reluctantly, preyed upon by misgivings; dreux, the decadent, overbred dandy, went gladly, as if thirsting for the fray. xiv the net tightens number 93 1/2 st. phillip street proved to be a hovel, in the front portion of which an old woman sold charcoal and kindling. leaving bernie on guard, blake penetrated swiftly to the rooms behind, paying no heed to the crone's protestations. in one corner a slender, dark-eyed boy was cowering, whom he recognized at once as the lad he had seen on the night of donnelly's death. "you are gino cressi," he said, quietly. the boy shook his head. "oh, yes, you are, and you must come with me, gino." the little fellow recoiled. "you have come to kill me," he quavered. "no, no, my little man. why should i wish to do that?" "i am a sicilian; you hate me." "that is not true. we hate only bad sicilians, and you are a good boy." "i did not kill the chief." "true. you did not even know that those other men intended to kill him. you were merely told to wait at the corner until you saw him come home. am i right?" "i do not know anything about the chief," gino mumbled. but it was plain that some of his fear was vanishing under this unexpected kindness. blake had a voice which won dumb animals, and a smile which made friends of children. at last the young sicilian came forward and put his hand into the stranger's. "they told me to hide or the americans would kill me. madonna mia! i am no mafioso! i--i wish to see my father." "i will take you to him now." "you will not harm me?" "no. you are perfectly safe." but the boy still hung back, stammering: "i--am afraid, si'or. after all, you see, i know nothing. perhaps i had better wait here." "but you will come, to please me, will you not? then when you find that the policemen will not hurt you, you will tell us all about it, eh, carino?" he led his shrinking captive out through the front of the house, whence the crone had fled to spread the alarm, and lifted him into the waiting cab. but bernie dreux was loath to acknowledge such a tame conclusion to an adventure upon which he had built high hopes. "l-let's stick round," he shivered. "it's just getting g-g-good." "come on, you idiot." blake fairly dragged him in and commanded the driver to whip up. "that old woman will rouse the neighborhood, and we'll have a mob heaving bricks at us in another minute." "that'll be fine!" dreux declared, his pride revolting at what he considered a cowardly retreat. he had come along in the hope of doing deeds that would add luster to his name, and he did not intend to be disappointed. it required a vigorous muscular effort to keep him from clambering out of the carriage. "i don't understand you at all," said norvin, with one hand firmly gripping his coat collar, "but i understand the value of discretion at this moment, and i don't intend to take any chances on losing our little friend gino before he has turned state's evidence." dreux sank back, gloomily enough, continuing for the rest of the journey to declaim against the fate that had condemned him to a life of insipid peace; but it was not until they had turned out of the narrow streets of the foreign quarter into the wide, clean stretch of canal street that blake felt secure. little gino cressi was badly frightened. his wan, pinched face was ashen and he shivered wretchedly. yet he strove to play the man, and his pitiful attempt at self-control roused something tender and protective in his captor. laying a reassuring hand upon his shoulder, blake said, gently: "coraggio! no harm shall befall you." "i--do not wish to die, excellency." "you will not die. speak the truth, figlio mio, and the police will be very kind to you. i promise." "i know nothing," quavered the child. "my father is a good man. they told me the chief was dead, but i did not kill him. i only hid." "who told you the chief was dead?" "i--do not remember." "who told you to hide?" "i do not remember, si'or." gino's eyes were like those of a hunted deer, and he trembled as if dreadfully cold. it was a wretched, stricken child whom blake led into o'neil's office, and for a long time young cressi's lips were glued; but eventually he yielded to the kind-faced men who were so patient with him and his lies, and told them all he knew. on the following morning the papers announced three new arrests in the donnelly case, resulting from a confession by gino cressi. on the afternoon of the same day the friendly and influential caesar maruffi called upon blake with a protest. "signore, my friend," he began, "you and your committee are doing a great injustice to the italians of this city." "how so?" "already everybody hates us. we cannot walk upon your streets without insult. men curse us, children spit at us. we are not jews; we are italians. there are bad people among my countrymen, of course, but, signore, look upon me. do you think such men as i--" "oh, you stand for all that is best in your community. mr. maruffi. i only wish you'd help us clean house." the sicilian shrugged. "help? how can i help?" "tell what you know of the mafia so that we can destroy it. at every turn we are thwarted by the secrecy of your people." "they know what is good for them. as for me, my flesh will not turn the point of a knife, signore. life is an enjoyable affair, and if i die i can never marry. what would you have me tell?" "the name of the capo-mafia, for instance." "you think there is a capo-mafia?" "i know it. what's more, i know who he is." "belisario cardi? bah! few people believe there is such a man." "you and i believe it." "perhaps. but what if i could lay hands upon him? think you that i, or any sicilian, would dare? all the police of this city could never take belisario cardi. it is to make laugh! our friend donnelly was unwise, he was too zealous. now--he is but a memory. he took a life, his life was taken in return. this affair will mean more deaths. leave things as they are, my friend, before you too are mourned." norvin eyed his caller curiously. "that sounds almost as much like a threat as a warning." "god forbid! i simply state the truth for your own good and for the good of all of us. wherever sicilians are found there your laws will be ignored. for my own part, naturally, i do not approve--i am an american now--but the truth is what i tell you." "in other words, you think we ought to leave your countrymen alone?" "ah, i do not go so far. the laws should be enforced, that is certain. but in trying to do what is impossible you stir up race hatred and make it hard for us reputable sicilians, who would help you so far as lies in our power. you cannot stamp out the mafia in a day, in a week; it is sicilian character. already you have done enough to vindicate the law. if you go on in a mad attempt to catch this cardi--whose existence, even, is doubtful--the consequences may be in every way bad." "we have five of the murderers now, and we'll have the other man soon--the fellow with the rubber coat. the grand jury will indict them. but we won't stop there. we're on a trail that leads higher up, to the man, or men, who directed larubio and the others to do their work." maruffi shook his head mournfully. "and the cressi boy--it was you who found him?" "it was." "how did you do it?" norvin laughed. "if you'd only enlist in the cause i'd tell you all my secrets gladly." "eh! then he was betrayed!" for the life of him norvin could not tell whether the man was pleased or chagrined at his secrecy, but something told him that the sicilian was feeling him out for a purpose. he smiled without answering. "betrayed!" said maruffi. "ah, well, i should not like to be in the shoes of the betrayer." he seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment. "believe me, i would help you if i could, but i know nothing, and besides it is dangerous. i am a good citizen, but i am not a detective. you american-born," he smiled, "assume that all we sicilians are deep in the secrets of the mafia. so the people in the street insult us, and you in authority think that if we would only tell--bah! tell what? we know no more than you, and it is less safe for us to aid." he rose and extended his hand. "of course, if i learn anything i will inform you; but there are times when it is best to let sleeping dogs lie." norvin closed the door behind him with a feeling of relief, for he was puzzled as to the object of this visit and wanted time to think it out undisturbed. the upshot of his reflection was that donnelly had been right and that caesar was indeed the author of the warning letters. as to his want of knowledge, the sicilian protested rather like a man who plays a part openly. on the other hand, his fears for his own safety seemed genuine enough. what more natural, then, than that he should "wish to test donnelly's successor with the utmost care before proceeding with his disclosures?" blake was glad that he had been secretive, for if maruffi were the unknown friend he would find such caution reassuring. as if to confirm this view of the case, there came, a day or two later, another communication, stating that the assassin who was still at large (he, in fact, who had worn the rubber coat) was a laborer in the parish of st. john the baptist, named frank normando. the letter went on to say that in escaping from the scene of the crime the man had fallen on the slippery pavement, and the traces of his injury might still be found upon his body. norvin lost no time in consulting o'neil. "jove! you're the best detective we have," said the acting chief, admiringly. "i'd do well to turn this affair over to you entirely." "have you learned anything more from your prisoners?" "nothing. they refuse to talk. we're giving them the third degree; but it's no use. there was another murder on st. phillip street last night. the old woman who guarded the cressi boy was found dead." "then they think she betrayed the lad?" norvin recalled maruffi's hint that it would go hard with the traitor. "yes; we might have expected it. how many men will you need to take this normando?" "i? you--think i'd better do the trick?" blake had not intended to take any active part in the capture. he was already known as the head of the movement to avenge donnelly; he had apprehended larubio and the cressi boy with his own hand. inner voices warned him wildly to run no further risks. "i thought you'd prefer to lead the raid," o'neil said. "so i would. give me two or three men and we'll bring in normando, dead or alive." six hours later the last of donnelly's actual assassins was in the parish prison and the police were in possession of evidence showing his movements from early morning on the day of the murder up to the hour of the crime. his identification was even more complete than that of his accomplices, and the public press thanked norvin blake in the name of the city for his efficient service. the anonymous letters continued to come to him regularly, and each one contained some important clue, which, followed up, invariably led to evidence of value. slowly, surely, out of nothing as it were, the chain was forged. now came the names of persons who had seen or had talked with some of the accused upon the fatal day, now a hint which turned light upon some dark spot in their records. again the letters aided in the discovery of important witnesses, who, under pressure, confessed to facts which they had feared to make public--until at last the history of the six assassins lay exposed like an open sheet before the prosecuting attorney. the certainty and directness with which the "one who knows" worked was a matter of ever-increasing amazement to blake. he himself was little more than an instrument in these unseen hands. who or what could the writer be? by what means could he remain in such intimate touch with the workings of the mafia, and what reason impelled him to betray its members? hour after hour the young man speculated, racking his head until it ached. he considered every possibility, he began to look with curiosity at every face. at length he came to feel an even greater interest in the identity of this hidden friend than in the result of the struggle itself. but investigations--no matter how cautious--invariably resulted in a prompt and imperative warning to desist upon pain of ruining everything. gradually in his mind the conviction assumed certainty that the omniscient informer could be none other than caesar maruffi. he frequented the red wing club as donnelly had done, and the more he saw of the fellow the more firm became his belief. he had recognized at their first meeting that caesar was unusual--there was something unfathomable about him--but precisely what this peculiarity was he could never quite determine. as for maruffi, he met norvin's advances half-way; but although he was apparently more than once upon the verge of some disclosure, the terror of the brotherhood seemed always to intervene. feeling that he could not openly voice his suspicions until the other was ready to show his hand, blake kept a close mouth, and thus the two played at cross-purposes. maruffi--if he were indeed the author of those letters--had not shrunk from betraying the unthinking instruments of the mafia. would he ever bring himself to implicate the man, or men, higher up? blake doubted it. a certain instinctive distrust of the sicilian was beginning to master him when a letter came which put a wholly different face upon the matter. "the men who really killed chief donnelly," it read, "are salvatore di marco, frank garcia, giordano bolla, and lorenzo cardoni." blake gasped; these were men of standing and repute in the foreign community. "larubio and his companions were but parts of the machine; these are the hands which set them in motion. these four men dined together on the evening of october 15th, at fabacher's, then attended a theater where they made themselves conspicuous. from there they proceeded to the lower section of the city and were purposely arrested for disturbing the peace about the time of donnelly's murder, in order to establish incontestable alibis. nevertheless, it was they who laid the trap, and they are equally guilty with the wretches who obeyed their orders. it was they who paid over the blood money, and with their arrest you will have all the accessories to the crime, save one. of him i can tell you nothing. i fear i can never find him, for he walks in shadow and no man dares identify him." the importance of this information was tremendous, for arrests up to date had been made only among the lower element. an accusation against di marco, garcia, bolla, and cardoni would set the city ablaze. o'neil was aghast at the charge. the mayor was incredulous, the committee of fifty showed signs of hesitation. but blake, staking his reputation on the genuineness of the letter, and urging the reliability of the writer as shown on each occasion in the past, won his point, and the arrests were made. the italian press raised a frightful clamor, the prisoners themselves were righteously indignant, and norvin found that he had begun to lose that confidence which the public had been so quick to place in him. nevertheless, he pursued his work systematically, and soon the mysterious agent proceeded to weave a new web around the four suspected men, while he looked on fascinated, doing as he was bid, keeping his own counsel as he had been advised, and turning over the results of his inquiries to the police as they were completed. then came what he had long been dreading--a warning like those which had foreshadowed donnelly's death--and he began to spend sleepless nights. his daylight hours were passed in a strained expectancy; he fought constantly to hold his fears in check; he began sitting with his face to doors; he turned wide corners and avoided side streets. he became furtive and watchful; his eyes were forever flitting here and there; he chose the outer edges of the sidewalks, and he went nowhere after nightfall unattended. the time was past when he could doubt the constancy of his purpose; but he did fear a nervous breakdown, and even shuddered at the thought of possible insanity. being in fact as sane a man as ever lived, his irrational nerves alarmed him all the more. he could not conceive that an event was immediately before him which, without making his position safer, would rouse him from all thought of self. our lives are swayed by trifles; a feather's weight may alter the course of our destinies. a man's daily existence is made up of an infinite series of choices, every one of which is of the utmost importance, did he but know it. we follow paths of a million forkings, none of which converge. a momentary whim, a passing fancy, a broken promise, turns our feet into trails that wind into realms undreamed of. it so happened that myra nell warren yielded to an utterly reasonless impulse to go calling at the utterly absurd hour of 10 a.m. miss warren followed no set rules in her conduct, her mind reacted according to no given formula, and, therefore, when it suddenly occurred to her to visit a little old creole lady in the french quarter, she went without thoughtful consideration or delay. madame la branche was a distant cousin on bernie's side--so distant, in fact, that no one except herself had ever troubled to trace the precise relationship; but she employed a cook whose skill was celebrated. now myra nell's appetite was a most ungovernable affair, and when she realized that her complete happiness depended upon a certain bouillabaisse, in the preparation of which madame la branche's julia had become famous, she whisked her hair into a knot, jammed her best and largest hat over its unruly confusion, and went bouncing away in the direction of esplanade street. it was in the early afternoon that norvin blake received a note from a coal-black urchin, who, after many attempts, had finally succeeded in penetrating to his inner office. recognizing the writing, norvin tore open the envelope eagerly, ready to be entertained by some fresh example of the girl's infinite variety. he read with startled eyes: "i send this by a trusted messenger, hoping that it will reach you in time. i am a prisoner. i am in danger. i fear my beauty is destroyed. if you love me, come. "your wretched "myra nell." the address was that of a house on esplanade street. "how did you get this?" he demanded, harshly, of the pickaninny. "a lady drap it from a window." "where? where was she?" "in a gre't big house on esplanade street. she seemed mighty put out about something. then a man run me away with a club." a moment later blake was on the street and had hailed a carriage. the driver, reading urgency in the set face of his fare, whipped the horses into a gallop and the vehicle tore across town, leaping and rocking violently. the thought that myra nell was in danger filled blake with a physical sickness. her beauty gone! could it be that the mafia had taken this means of attacking him, knowing of his affection for the girl? of a sudden she became very dear, and he was smothered with fury that any one should cause her suffering. his heart was pounding madly as the carriage slowed into esplanade street, threatening to upset, and he saw ahead of him the house he sought. with a sharp twinge of apprehension he sighted another man approaching the place at a run, and leaping from his conveyance, he raced on with frantic speed. xv the end of the quest evidently the alarm had spread, for there were others ahead of blake. several men were grouped beneath an open window. they were strangely excited; some were panting as if from violent exertion; a young french creole, lecompte rilleau, was sprawled at full length upon the grassy banquette, either badly injured or entirely out of breath. he raised a listless hand to the newcomer, as if waving him to the attack. norvin recognized them all as admirers of myra nell--cotton brokers, merchants, a bank cashier--a great relief surged over him. "thank god! you're here--in time," he gasped. "what's happened to--her?" raymond cline started to speak, but just then blake heard the girl herself calling to him, and saw her leaning from a window, her piquant beauty framed with blushing roses which hung about the sill. "myra nell! you're safe!" he cried, shakingly. "what have they done to you?" she smiled piteously and shook her dark head. "you were good to come. i am a prisoner." "a prisoner!" norvin stared at the young men about him. "come on," he said, "let's get her out!" but murray logan quieted him. "it's no use, old man." "what d'you mean?" "you can't go in." "can't--go--in?" as blake stared uncomprehendingly at the speaker he heard rapid footsteps approaching and saw achille marigny coming on the wings of the wind. it was he who appeared in the distance as norvin rounded the corner, and it was plain now that he was well-nigh spent. rilleau reared himself on one elbow and cried with difficulty: "welcome, achille." "take it easy, marigny," called cline; "we've saved her." some one laughed, and the suspicion that he had been hoaxed swept over blake. "what's the joke?" he demanded. "i was frightened to death." "the house is quarantined." "i never dreamed you'd _all_ come," miss warren was saying, sweetly. "it was very gallant, and i shall _never_ forget it--never." "she says her--beauty is--gone," wildly panted marigny, who had run himself blind and as yet could hear nothing but the drumming in his ears. "judge for yourself." cline steadied him against the low iron fence and pointed to the girl's bewitching face embowered in the leafy window above. from where he lay flat on his back, idly flapping his hands, rilleau complained: "i have a weak heart. will somebody get me a drink?" "it was _splendid_ of you," myra nell called down to the group. "i love you for it. please get me out, right away." norvin now perceived a burly individual seated upon the steps of the la branche mansion. he approached with a view to parleying, but the man forestalled him" saying warningly: "you can't go in. they've got smallpox in there." "smallpox!" "go away from that door!" screamed myra nell; but the fellow merely scowled. "i hate to offend the lady," he explained to norvin, in a hoarse whisper; "but i can't let her out." miss warren repeated in a fury: "go away, i tell you. these are friends of mine. if you were a gentleman you'd know you're not wanted. norvin, make him skedaddle." blake shook his head. "you've scared us all blue. if you're quarantined i don't see what we can do." "the idea! you can at least come in." "if you go in, you can't come out," belligerently declared the watchman. "them's orders." "_oh-h!_ you monster!" cried his prisoner. "she says herself she's got it," the man explained. "i never did!" myra nell wrung her hands. "will you stand there and let me perish? do you refuse to save me?" "where is madame la branche?" norvin asked. "asleep. and cousin montegut is playing solitaire in the library." "then who has the smallpox?" "the cook! they took her screaming to the pest-house an hour after i came. i shall be the next victim; i feel it. we're shut up here for a _week_, maybe longer. think of that! there's nothing to do, nobody to talk to, nothing to look at. we need another hand for whist. i--i supposed somebody would volunteer." "i'd love to," rilleau called, faintly, from the curb, "but i wouldn't survive a week. my heart is beating its last, and besides--i don't play whist." mr. cline called the attention of his companions to two figures which had appeared in the distance, and began to chant: "the animals came in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo," "gentlemen, here come the porpoise and the antelope. we are now complete." the new arrivals proved to be bernie dreux and august kulm, the latter a fat teutonic merchant whose place of business was down near the river. mr. kulm had evidently run all the way, for he was laboring heavily and his gait had long since slackened into a stumbling trot. his eyes were rolling wildly; his fresh young cheeks were purple and sheathed in perspiration. miss warren exclaimed, crossly: "oh, dear! i didn't send for bernie. i'll bet he's furious." and so it proved. when her half-brother's horrified alarm had been dispelled by the noisy group of rescuers it was replaced by the blackest indignation. he thanked them stiffly and undertook to apologize for his sister, in the midst of which rilleau, who had now managed to regain his feet, suggested the formation of "the myra nell contagion club." "its object shall be the alleviation of our lady's distress, and its membership shall be limited to her rejected suitors," he declared. "we'll take turns amusing her. i'll appoint myself chairman of the entertainment committee and one of us will always be on guard. we'll sing, we'll dance, we'll cavort beneath the window, and help to while the dreary hours away." his suggestion was noisily accepted, then after an exchange of views murray logan confessed that he had bolted a directors' meeting, and that ruin stared him in the face unless he returned immediately. achille marigny, it appeared, had unceremoniously fled from the trial of an important lawsuit, and raymond cline was needed at the bank. foote, delavan, and the others admitted that they, too, must leave miss warren to her fate, at least until after 'change had closed. and so, having put themselves at her service with extravagant protestations of loyalty, promising candy, books, flowers, a choir to sing beneath her window, they finally trooped off, half carrying the rotund mr. kulm, who had sprinted himself into a jelly-like state of collapse. rilleau alone maintained his readiness to brave the perils of smallpox, leprosy, or plague at miss warren's side, until bernie informed him that the very idea was shocking, whereupon he dragged himself away with the accusation that all his heart trouble lay at her door. "oh, you spoiled it all!" myra nell told her brother, indignantly. "you might at least have let _him_ come in. cousin althea would have chaperoned us." "the idea! why _did_ you do such an atrocious thing?" "where you frightened, norvin?" the girl beamed hopefully down upon him. "horribly. i'm not over it yet. i'm half inclined to act on lecompte's suggestion and break in." she clapped her hands gleefully, whereupon the watchman arose, saying: "no you don't!" "i wouldn't allow such a thing," said bernie, firmly. "it would mean a scandal." "i--i can't stay here _alone_, for a whole _week_. i'll die." "then i'll join you myself," her brother offered. myra nell looked alarmed. "oh, not _you_! i want some one to nurse me when i fall ill." "what makes you think you'll catch it? were you exposed?" "exposed! heavens! i can feel the disease coming on this very minute. the place is full of germs; i can spear 'em with a hat-pin." she shuddered and managed to counterfeit a tear. "i've an idea," said norvin. "i'll get that trained nurse who saved you when you fell off the horse." "vittoria? she might do. but, norvin, the horse threw me." she warned him with a grimace which bernie did not see. "he's a frightful beast." "i can't afford a trained nurse," dreux objected, "and you don't need one, anyhow." "all right for you, bernie; if you don't care any more for my life than that, i'll sicken and die. when a girl's relatives turn against her it's time she was out of the way." "oh, all right," said her brother, angrily. "it's ruinous, but i suppose you must have it your way." myra nell shook her head gloomily. "no--not if you are going to feel like that. of course, if she were here she could cut off my hair when i take to my bed; she could bathe my face with lime-water when my beauty goes; she could listen to my ravings and understand, for she is a--woman. but no, i'm not worth it. perhaps i can get along all right, and, anyhow, i'll have to teach school or--or be a nun if i'm all pock-marks." "good lord!" bernie wiped his brow with a trembling hand. "d'you think that'll happen, norvin?" "it's bound to," the girl predicted, indifferently. "but what's the odds?" suddenly a new thought dilated her eyes with real horror. "oh!" she cried. "_oh!_ i just happened to remember. i'm to be queen of the carnival! now, i'll be scarred and hideous, even if i happen to recover; but i won't recover. you shall have my royal robe, bunny. keep it always. and norvin shall have my hair." "here! i--don't want your hair," blake asserted, nervously. "i mean not without--" "it is all i have to give." "you may not catch the smallpox, after all." "we'll--have miss fabrizi b-by all means," bernie chattered. "you stay here and talk to her while i go," norvin suggested, quickly. "and, myra nell, i'll fetch you a lot of chocolates. i'll fetch you anything, if you'll only cheer up." "remember, it's against my wishes," the girl said. "but she's not at the hospital now; she's living in the italian quarter." she gave him the street, and number, and he made off in all haste. on his way he had time to think more collectedly of the girl he had just left. her prank had shocked him into a keen realization of his feeling for her, and he began to understand the large part she played in his life. many things inclined him to believe that her regard for him was really deeper than her careless levity indicated, and it seemed now that they had been destined for each other. it was dusk when he reached his destination. a nondescript italian girl ushered him up a dark stairway and into an old-fashioned drawing-room with high ceiling, and long windows which opened out upon a rusty overhanging iron balcony. the room ran through to a court in the rear, after the style of so many of these foreign-built houses. it had once been the home of luxury and elegance, but had long since fallen into a state of shabby decay. he was still lost in thoughts of the important step which he contemplated when he heard the rustle of a woman's garment behind him and rose as a tall figure entered the room. "miss fabrizi?" he inquired. "i came to find you--" he paused, for the girl had given a smothered cry. the light was poor and the shadows played tricks with his eyes. he stepped forward, peering strangely at her, then halted. "margherita!" he whispered; then in a shaking voice, "my god!" "yes," she said, quietly, "it is i." he touched her gently, staring as if bereft of his senses. he felt himself swept by a tremendous excitement. it struck him dumb; it shook him; it set the room to whirling dizzily. the place was no longer ill-lit and shabby, but illumined as if by a burst of light. and through his mad panic of confusion he saw her standing there, calm, tawny, self-possessed. "caro norvin! you have found me, indeed," he heard her say. "i wondered when the day would come." "you--you!" he choked. his arms were hungry for her, his heart was melting with the wildest ecstasy that had ever possessed it. she was clad as he often remembered her, in a dress which partook of her favorite and inseparable color, her hair shone with that unforgettable luster; her face was the face he had dreamed of, and there was no shock of readjustment in his recognition of her. rather, her real presence made the cherished mental image seem poor and weak. "i came to see miss fabrizi. why are _you_ here?" he glanced at the door as if expecting an interruption. "i am she." "contessa!" "hush!" she laid her fingers upon his lips. "i am no longer the contessa margherita. i am vittoria fabrizi." "then--you have been here--in new orleans for a long time?" "more than a year." "impossible! i--you--it's inconceivable! why have we never met?" "i have seen you many times." "and you didn't speak? why, oh, why, margherita?" "my friend, if you care for me, for my safety and my peace of mind, you must not use that name. collect yourself. we will have explanations. but first, remember, i am vittoria fabrizi, the nurse, a poor girl." "i shall remember. i don't understand; but i shall be careful. i don't know what it all means, why you--didn't let me know." in spite of his effort at self-control he fell again into a delicious bewilderment. his spirits leaped, he felt unaccountably young and exhilarated; he laughed senselessly and yet with a deep throbbing undernote of delight. "what are names and reasons, anyhow? what are worries and hopes and despairs? i've found you. you live; you are safe; you are young. i feared you were old and changed--it has seemed so long and--and my search dragged so. but i never ceased thinking and caring--i never ceased hoping--" she laid a gentle hand upon his arm. "come, come! you are upset. it will all seem natural enough when you know the story." "tell me everything, all at once. i can't wait." he led her to a low french _lit de repos_ near by, and seated himself beside her. her nearness thrilled him with the old intoxication, and he hardly heeded what he was saying. "tell me how you came to be vittoria fabrizi instead of margherita ginini; how you came to be here; how you knew of my presence and yet--oh, tell me everything, for i'm smothering. i'm incoherent. i--i--" "first, won't you explain how you happened to come looking for me?" he gathered his wits to tell her briefly of myra nell, feeling a renewed sense of strangeness in the fact that these two knew each other. she made as if to rise. "please!" he cried; "this is more important than miss warren's predicament. she's really delighted with her adventure, you know." "true, she is in no danger. there is so much to tell! that which has taken four years to live cannot be told in five minutes. i--i'm afraid i am sorry you came." "don't destroy my one great moment of gladness." "remember i am vittoria fabrizi--" "i know of no other name." "lucrezia is here, also, and she, too, is another. you have never seen her. you understand?" he nodded. "and her name?" "oliveta! we are cousins." "i respect your reasons for these changes. tell me only what you wish." "oh, i have nothing to conceal," she said, relieved at his growing calmness. "they are old family names which i chose when i gave up my former life. you wonder why? it is part of the story. when martel died the contessa margherita died also. she could not remain at terranova where everything spoke of him. she was young; she began a long quest. as you know, it was fruitless, and when in time her ideas changed she was born to a new life." "you have--abandoned the search?" "long ago. you told me truly that hatred and revenge destroy the soul. i was young and i could not understand; but now i know that only good can survive--good thoughts, good actions, good lives." "and is the donna teresa here?" vittoria shook her head. "she has gone--back, perhaps, to her land of sunshine, her flowers, and her birds and her dream-filled mountain valleys. it was two years ago that we lost her. she could not survive the change. i have--many regrets when i think of her." "you know, of course, that i returned to sicily, and that i followed you?" "yes. and when i learned of it i knew there was but one thing to do." "i was unwise--disloyal there at terranova." she met his eyes frankly, but made no sign. "is that why you avoided me?" "ah, let us not speak of that old time. when one severs all connections with the past and begins a new existence, one should not look back. but i have not lost interest in you, my friend, i have learned much from myra nell; seeing her was like seeing you, for she hardly speaks of any one else. many times we nearly met--only a moment separated us--you came as i went, or i came in time barely to miss you. you walked one street as i walked another; we were in the same crowds, our elbows touched, our paths crossed, but we never chanced to meet until this hour. now i am almost sorry--" "but why--if you have forgiven me; how could you be so indifferent? you must have known how i longed for you." her look checked him on the brink of a passionate avowal. "does my profession tell you nothing?" she asked. "you are a--nurse. what has that to do with it?" "do you know that i have been with the sisters of mercy? i--i am one of them." "impossible!" "in spirit at least. i shall be one in reality, as soon as i am better fitted." "a nun!" he stared at her dumbly, and his face paled. "i have given all i possess to the order excepting only what i have settled upon oliveta. this is her house, i am her guest, her pensioner. i am ready to take the last step--to devote my life to mercy. now you begin to understand my reason for waiting and watching you in silence. you see it is very true that margherita ginini no longer exists. i have not only changed my name, i am a different woman. i am sorry," she said, doing her best to comfort him--"yes, and it is hard for me, too. that is why i would have avoided this meeting." "if you contemplate this--step," he inquired, dully, "why have you left the hospital?" "i am not ready to take orders. i have much to--overcome. now i must prepare oliveta to meet you, for she has not changed as i have, and there might be consequences." "what consequences?" "we wish to forget the past," she said, non-committally. when she returned from her errand she saw him outlined blackly against one of the long windows, his hands clasped behind his back, his head low as if in meditation. he seemed unable to throw off this spell of silence as they drove to the la branche home, but listened contentedly to her voice, so like the low, soft music of a cello. after he left her it was long before he tried to reduce his thoughts to order. he preferred to dwell indefinitely upon the amazing fact that he at last had found her, that he had actually seen and touched her. finally, when he brought himself to face the truth in its entirety, he knew that he was deeply disappointed, and he felt that he ought to be hopeless. yet hope was strong in him. it blazed through his very veins, he felt it thrill him magically. when he fell asleep that night it was with a smile upon his lips, for hope had crystallized into a baseless but none the less assured belief that he would find a way to win her. xvi quarantine blake arose like a boy on christmas morning. he thrilled to an extravagant gladness. at breakfast the truth came to him--he was young! for the first time he realized that he had let himself grow up and lose his illusions; that he had become cynical, tired, prosaic, while all the time the flame of youth was merely smouldering. old he was, but only as a stripling soldier is aged by battle; as for the real, rare joys of living and loving, he had never felt them. myra nell had appealed to his affection like a dear and clever child, and helped to keep some warmth in his heart. but this was magic. the sun had never been so bright, the air so sweet to his nostrils, the strength so vigorous in his limbs. he had become so accustomed to the mysterious letters by this time that he had grown to look for them as a matter of course, and he was not disturbed when, on arriving at his office, he found one in his mail. heretofore the writer had been positive in his statements, but now came the first hint of uncertainty. "i cannot find belisario cardi," he wrote. "his hand is over all, and yet he is more intangible than mist. i am hedged about with difficulties and dangers which multiply as the days pass. i can do no more, hence the task devolves upon you. be careful, for he is more desperate than ever. it is your life or his. "one who knows." it was as daunting a message as he could have received--the withdrawal of assistance, the authoritative confirmation of his fears--yet blake's spirit rose to meet the exigency with a new courage. it occurred to him that if maruffi, or whoever the author was, had exhausted his usefulness, perhaps vittoria could help. she had spent much time in her search for this very cardi, and might have learned something of value concerning him. oliveta, too, could be of assistance. he felt sure that the knowledge of his own peril would be enough to enlist their aid, and he gladly seized upon the thought that a common interest would draw him closer to the woman he loved. he arrived at the la branche house early that afternoon, and found young rilleau sitting on a box beneath myra nell's window, with the girl herself embowered as before in a frame of roses. "any symptoms yet?" norvin inquired, agreeably. "thousands! i'm slowly dying." lecompte nodded dolefully. "look at her color." "no doubt it's the glow from those red roses that i see in her cheeks." "it's fever," miss warren exclaimed, indignantly. she took a hand-glass from her lap and regarded her vivid young features. "smallpox attacks people differently. with me the first sign is fever." she had parted her abundant hair and swept it back from her brow in an attempt to make herself look ill, but with the sole effect of enhancing her appearance of abounding health. madame la branche's best black shawl was drawn about her plump and dimpled shoulders. assuming a hollow tone, she inquired: "do you see any other change in me?" "yes. and i rather like that way of doing your hair." "vittoria says i look like a picture of sister dolorosa, or something." "is miss fabrizi in?" "in? how could she be out? isn't she a dear, norvin? i knew you'd meet some day." "does she play whist?" "of course not, silly. she's--nearly a nun. but we sat up in bed all night talking. oh, it's a comfort to have some one with you at the last, some one in whom you can confide. i can't bear to--to soar aloft with so much on my conscience. i've confessed _everything_." "what's to prevent her from catching the disease and soaring away with you?" "she's a nurse. they're just like doctors, you know, they never catch anything. is that hideous watchman still at his post?" "yes. fast asleep, with his mouth open." "i hope a fly crawls in," said the girl, vindictively; then, in an eager whisper: "couldn't you manage to get past him? we'd have a lovely time here for a week." rilleau raised his voice in jealous protest. "and leave me sitting on my throne? never! i'm giving this box-party for you, myra nell." "oh, you could come, too." "i respect the law," norvin told her; but lecompte continued to complain. "i don't see what you're doing here at this time of day, anyhow, blake, have you no business responsibilities?" "i'm a member of the contagion club; i've a right to be here." "we were discussing rice, old shoes, and orange blossoms when you interrupted," the languid mr. rilleau continued. "frankly, speaking as a friend, i don't see anything in your conversation so far to interest a sick lady. why don't you talk to the yellow-haired nurse?" "i intend to." "vittoria is back in the kitchen preparing my diet," said myra nell. "she's making fudge, i believe. i--i seem to crave sweet things. maybe it's another symptom." "it must be," blake acknowledged. "i'll ask her what she thinks of it." with a glance at the slumbering guard he vaulted the low fence and made his way around to the rear of the house. he heard vittoria singing as he came into the flower-garden, a low-pitched sicilian love-song. he called to her, and she came to a window, smiling down at him, spotless and fresh in her stiff uniform. "do you know that you're trespassing and may get into trouble?" she queried. "the watchman is asleep, and i had to speak to you." "no wonder he sleeps. myra nell holds the poor fellow responsible for all her troubles, and those young men have nearly driven him insane." "is there any danger of smallpox, really?" "not the slightest. this quarantine is merely a matter of form. but that child--" she broke into a frank, sweet laugh. "she pretends to be horribly frightened. all the time she is acting--the little fraud!" norvin flushed a bit under her gaze. "i had no chance to talk to you last night." "and you will have no chance now." vittoria tipped her chin the slightest bit. "i must see you, alone." "impossible!" "to-night. you can slip away on some pretext or other. it is really important." she regarded him questioningly. "if that is true i will try, but--i cannot meet you at oliveta's house. besides, you must not go into that quarter alone at night." "what do you mean?" he inquired, wondering how she could know of his danger. "because--no american is safe there now. perhaps i can meet you on the street yonder." "i'll be waiting." "it may be late, unless i tell myra nell." "heaven above! she'd insist on coming, too, just because it's forbidden." "very well. now go before you are discovered." during the afternoon his excitement increased deliciously, and that evening he found himself pacing the shaded street near the la branche home, with the eager restlessness of a lover. it was indeed late when vittoria finally appeared. "myra nell is such a chatterbox," she explained, "that i couldn't get her to bed. have you waited long?" "i dare say. i'm not sure." "this is very exciting, is it not?" she glanced over her shoulder up the ill-lighted street. rows of shade trees cast long inky blots between the corner illuminations; the houses on either side sat well back in their yards, increasing the sense of isolation. "it is quite a new experience for me." "for me, too." "i hope we're not seen. signore norvin blake and a trained nurse! oh, the comment!" "there's a bench near by where we can sit. passers-by will take us for servants." "you are the butler, i am the maid," she laughed. "i am glad you can laugh," he told her. "you were very sad, there at terranova." "i've learned the value of a smile. life is full of gladness if we can only bring ourselves to see it. now tell me the meaning of this. i knew it must be important or i would not have come." back of the bench upon which she had seated herself a jessamine vine depended, filling the air with perfume; the night was warm and still and languorous; through the gloom she regarded him with curiosity. "i hate to begin," he said. "i dread to speak of unpleasant things--to you. i wish we might just sit here and talk of whatever we pleased." "we cannot sit here long on any account. but let me guess. it is your work against--those men." "exactly. you know the history of our struggle with the mafia?" "everything." "i am leading a hard fight, and i think you can help me." "why do you think so?" she asked, in a low voice. "i have given up my part. i have no desire for revenge." "nor have i. i do not wish to harm any man; but i became involved in this through a desire to see justice done, and i have reached a point where i cannot stop or go back. it started with the arrest of gian narcone. you know how donnelly was killed. they took his life for narcone's, and he, too, was my--dear friend." "all this is familiar to me," she said, in a strained tone. "i will tell you something that no one knows but myself, i have a friend among the mafiosi, and it is he, not i, who has brought the murderers of mr. donnelly to an accounting." "you know him?" "yes. at least i think i do." "his--name?" she was staring at him oddly. "i feel bound not to reveal it even to you. he has told me many things, among them that belisario cardi is alive, is here, and that it is he who worked all this evil." "what has all this to do with me?" she inquired. "have i not told you that i gave my search into other hands?" "it was cardi who killed--one whom we both loved, one for whose life i would have given my own; it was cardi who destroyed my next-best friend, a simple soul who lived for nothing but his duty. now he has threatened my life also--does that count for nothing with you?" she leaned forward, searching his face earnestly. "you are a brave man. you should go away where he cannot harm you." "i would like very much to," he confessed, "but i am too great a coward to run away." "and why do you tell me this?" "i need your help. my mysterious friend can do no more; he has said so. i'm not equal to it alone." "oh," she cried, as if yielding to a feeling long suppressed, "i did so want to be rid of it all, and now you are in danger--the greatest danger. won't you give it up?" he shook his head, puzzled at her vehemence. "i don't wish to drag you into it against your will, but oliveta lives there among her countrypeople. she must know many things which i, as an outsider, could never learn. i--need help." there was a long silence before the girl said: "yes, i will help, for i am still the same woman you knew in sicily. i am still full of hatred. i would give my life to convict martel's assassins; but i am fighting myself. that is why i have gone to live with oliveta until i have conquered and am ready to become a sister." "please don't say that." "oliveta, you know, is alone," she went on, with forced composure, "and so i watch over her. she is to be married soon, and when she is safe, then i think i can return to the sisters and live as i long to. it will be a good match, much better than i ever hoped for, and she loves, which is even more blessed to contemplate." vittoria laid her hands impulsively upon his arm. "meanwhile i cannot refuse such aid as i can give you, for you have already suffered too much through me. you _have_ suffered, have you not?" "it has turned my hair gray," he laughed, trying not to show the depth of his feeling. "but now that i know you are safe and well and happy, nothing seems to matter. does myra nell know who you are?" "no one knows save you and oliveta. if that child even dreamed--" she lifted her slender hands in an eloquent gesture. "my secret would be known in an hour. now i must go, for even housemaids must observe the proprieties." "it's late. i think i had better see you safely home." "i dare say our watchman has found himself a comfortable bed--" "the slumbers of night-watchmen are notoriously deep." "and papa la branche has finished his solitaire. there is no danger." no one was in sight as they stole in through the driveway to the servants' door. she gave him her hand, and he pressed it closely, whispering: "when shall i see you again?" "after the quarantine. i can do nothing until then." "you will go back to oliveta's house?" "yes, but you must never come there, even in daylight." she thought for a moment while he still retained her hand. "i will instruct you later--" she broke off suddenly, and at the same instant blake heard a stir in the darkness behind him. vittoria drew him quickly into the black shadows of the rear porch, where they stood close together, afraid to move until the man had passed. the kitchen gallery was shielded by a latticework covered with vines, and blake felt reasonably safe within its shelter. he was beginning to breathe easier when a voice barely an arm's-length away inquired, gruffly: "who's there?" he would have given something handsome to be out of this foolish predicament, which he knew must be very trying to his companion. but the fates were against him. to his horror, the man struck a match and mounting the steps to the porch flashed it directly into his face. "good evening," said blake, with rather a weak attempt at assurance. "what are you doing here?" the guard demanded. "don't you know that this house is quarantined?" "i do. kindly lower your voice; there are people asleep." the fellow's eyes took in the girl in her stiffly starched uniform before the match burned out and darkness engulfed them once more. "i'm not a burglar." "humph! i don't know whether you are or not." "i assure you," urged vittoria. "strike another match and i'll prove to you that i'm not dangerous." when the light flared up once more norvin selected a card from his case and handed it to the watchman. "i am norvin blake, president of the cotton exchange." but this information failed of the desired effect. "oh, i know you, but this ain't exactly the right time to be calling on a lady." vittoria felt her companion's muscles stiffen. "i will explain my presence later," he said, stiffly; then, turning to vittoria, "i am sorry i disturbed this estimable man. good night." "just a minute," the watchman broke in. "you needn't say good night." "what do you mean?" "this house is quarantined for smallpox." "well?" "nobody can come or go without the doctor's permission." "i understand that." "now that you're here, i reckon you'll stay." miss fabrizi uttered a smothered exclamation. "you're crazy!" said blake, angrily. "yes? well, that's my instructions." "i haven't been inside." "that don't make any difference; the lady has." "it's absurd. you can't force--" "'sh-h!" breathed vittoria. some one had entered the kitchen at their back. a light flashed through the window, the door opened, and mr. la branche, clad in a rusty satin dressing-gown and carpet slippers, stood revealed, a lamp in his hand. "i thought i heard voices," he said. "what is the trouble?" "there's no trouble at all, sir," blake protested, then found himself absurdly embarrassed. vittoria and the guard both began to speak at once, and at length she broke into laughter, saying: "poor mr. blake, i fear he has been exposed to contagion. it was necessary for him to talk with me on a matter of importance, and now this man tells him he cannot leave." but from papa la branche's expression it was evident that he saw nothing humorous in the situation. "to talk with you! at this hour!" "i'm working for the board of health, and those are my orders," declared outraged authority. "it was imperative that i see miss fabrizi; the blame for this complication is entirely mine," norvin assured the old creole. the representative of the board of health inquired, loudly: "didn't the doctors tell you that nobody could come or go, mr. la branche?" "they did." "but, my dear man, this is no ordinary case. now that i have explained, i shall go, first apologizing to mr. la branche for disturbing him." "no, you won't" the master of the house stepped aside, holding his light on high. "miss fabrizi is my guest," he said, quietly, "so no explanations are necessary. this man is but doing his duty, and, therefore, mr. blake, i fear i shall have to offer you the poor hospitality of my roof until the law permits you to leave." "impossible, sir! i--" "i regret that we have never met before; but you are welcome, and i shall do my best to make you comfortable." he waved his hand commandingly toward the open door. "thank you, but i can't accept, really." "i fear that you have no choice." "but the idea is ridiculous, preposterous! i'm a busy man; i can't shut myself up this way for a week or more. besides, i couldn't allow myself to be forced upon strangers in this manner." "if you are a good citizen, you will respect the law," said la branche, coldly. "bother the law! i have obligations! why--the very idea is absurd! i'll see the health officers and explain at once--" the old gentleman, however, still waited, while the watchman took his place at the top of the steps as if determined to do his duty, come, what might. norvin found vittoria's eyes upon him, and saw that beneath her self-possession she was intensely embarrassed. evidently there was nothing to do now but accept the situation and put an end to the painful scene at any sacrifice. once inside, he could perhaps set himself right; but for the present no explanations were possible. he might have braved the board of health, but he could not run away from papa la branche's accusing eye. bowing gravely, he said: "you are quite right, sir, and i thank you for your hospitality. if you will lead the way, i will follow." the two culprits entered the big, empty kitchen, then followed the rotund little figure which waddled ahead of them into the front part of the house. xvii an obligation is met montegut la branche paused in the front hall at the foot of the stairs. "it is late" he said; "no doubt mademoiselle wishes to retire." "i would like to offer a word of explanation," norvin ventured, but vittoria interposed, quietly: "mr. la branche is right--explanations are unnecessary." bowing graciously to them both, she mounted the stairs into the gloom above, followed by the old creole's polite voice: "a pleasant sleep, mademoiselle, and happy dreams." leading the way into the library, he placed the lamp upon a table, then, turning to his unbidden guest, inquired, coldly, "well?" his black eyes were flashing underneath his gray brows, and he presented a fierce aspect despite his gown, which resembled a mother hubbard, and his slippers, which flapped as he walked. "i must apologize for my intrusion," said norvin. "i wish you to understand how it came about." "in view of your attentions to my wife's cousin, it was unfortunate that you should have selected this time, this place, for your--er--adventure." "exactly! i'm wondering how to spare miss warren any annoyance." "i fear that will be impossible. she must know the truth." "she must not know; she must not guess." "m'sieu!" exclaimed the old man. "my wife and i can take no part in your intrigues. myra nell is too well bred to show resentment at your conduct, no matter what may be her feelings." norvin flushed with exasperation, then suddenly felt ashamed of himself. surely he could trust this chivalrous old soul with a part of the truth. once his scruples were satisfied, the man's very sense of honor would prevent him from even thinking of what did not concern him. "i think you will understand better," he said, "when you have heard me through. i can't tell you everything, for i am not at liberty to do so. but you know, perhaps, that i am connected with the committee of justice." "i do." "you don't know the full extent of the task with which i am charged, however." "perhaps not." "its gravity may be understood when you know that i have been marked for the same fate as chief donnelly." the old man started. "my labors have taken me into many quarters. i seek information through many channels. it was upon this business, in a way, that i came to see miss fabrizi." "i do not follow you." "she is a sicilian. she knows much which would be of value to the committee and to me. it was necessary for me to see her alone and secretly. if the truth were known it would mean her--life, perhaps." the creole's bearing altered instantly. "say no more. i believe you to be a man of honor, and i apologize for my suspicions." "may i trust you to respect this confidence?" "it is sealed." "but this doesn't entirely relieve the situation. i can't explain to madame la branche or to miss myra nell even as much as i've explained to you." "some day will you relieve me from my promise of secrecy?" queried the old man, with an eager, bird-like glance from his bright eyes. "assuredly. as soon as we have won our fight against the mafia." "then i will lie for you, and confess later. i have never lied to my wife, m'sieu--except upon rare occasions," mr. la branche chuckled merrily. "and even then only about trifles. so, the result? absolute trust; supreme confidence on her part. a happy state for man and wife, is it not? ha! i am a very good liar, an adept, as you shall see, for i am not calloused by practice and therefore liable to forgetfulness. with me a lie is always fresh in my mind; it is a matter of absorbing interest, hence i do not forget myself. heaven knows the excitement of nursing an innocent deceit and of seeing it grow and flower under my care will be most welcome, for the monotony of this abominable confinement--but i must inquire, do you play piquet?" "i am rather good at it," norvin confessed, whereat papa la branche seemed about to embrace him. "you are sent from heaven!" he declared. "you deliver me from darkness. thirty-seven games of napoleon to-day! think of it! i was dealing the thirty-eighth when you came. but piquet! ah, that is a game, even though my angel wife abominates it. we have still five days of this hideous imprisonment, so let us agree to an hour before lunch, an hour before dinner, then--um-,--perhaps two hours in the evening at a few cents a game, eh? you agree, my friend?" the little man peered up timidly. "perhaps--but no, i dare say you are sleepy, and it _is_ late." "i should enjoy a game or two right now," norvin falsified. "but first, don't you think we'd better rehearse our explanation of my presence?" "a good idea. you came to see me upon business. i telephoned, and you came like a good friend, then--let me see, i was so overjoyed to see a new face that i rushed forth to greet you, and behold! that scorpion, that loathsome reptile outside pronounced you infected. he forced you to enter, even against my protestations. it was all my fault. i am desolated with regrets. eh? how is that? you see nature designed me for a rogue." "excellent! but what is our important business?" "true. since i retired from active affairs i have no business. that is awkward, is it not? may i ask in what line you are engaged?" "i am a cotton factor." "then i shall open an account with you. i shall give you money to invest. come, there need be no deceit about that; i shall write you a check at once." "that's hardly necessary, so long as we understand each other." but mr. la branche insisted, saying: "one lie is all that i dare undertake. i have told two at the same time, but invariably they clashed and disaster resulted. there! i trust you to make use of the money as you think best. but enough! what do women know of business? it is a mysterious word to them. now--piquet!" he dragged norvin to a seat at a table, then trotted away in search of cards, his slippers clap-clapping at every step as if in gleeful applause. "shall we cut for deal, m'sieu? ah!" he sighed gratefully as he won, and began to shuffle. "with four hours of piquet every day, and a lie upon my conscience, i feel that i shall be happy in spite of this execrable smallpox." myra nell's emotions may be imagined when, on the following morning, she learned who had broken through the cordon while she slept. "lordy! lordy!" she exclaimed, with round eyes. "he said he'd do it; but i didn't think he really would." she had flounced into vittoria's room to gossip while she combed her hair. "mr. la branche says it's all his fault, and he's terribly grieved," miss fabrizi told her. "now, now! your eyes are fairly popping out." "wouldn't your eyes pop out if the handsomest, the richest, the bravest man in new orleans deliberately took his life in his hands to see you and be near you?" "but he says it was important business which brought him." vittoria smiled guiltily. "tell that to your granny! you don't know men as i do. have you really seen him? i'm not _dreaming_?" "i have seen him, with these very eyes, and if you were not such a lazy little pig you'd have seen him, too. shall you take your breakfast in your room, as usual?" vittoria's eyes twinkled. "don't tease me!" miss warren exclaimed, with a furious blush. "i--i love to tease other people, but i can't stand it myself. breakfast in my room, indeed! but of course i shall treat him with freezing politeness." "why should you pretend to be offended?" "don't you understand? this is bound to cause gossip. why, the idea of norvin blake, the handsomest, the richest--" "yes, yes." "the idea of his getting himself quarantined in the same house with _me_, and our being here together for days--maybe for _months!_ why, it will create the loveliest scandal. i'll never dare hold up my head again in public, _never_. you see how it must make me feel. i'm compromised." myra nell undertook to show horror in her features, but burst into a gale of laughter. "do you care for him very much?" "i'm crazy about him! why, dearie, after _this_--we're--we're almost married! now watch me show him how deeply i'm offended." but when she appeared in the dining-room, late as usual, her frigidity was not especially marked. on the contrary, her face rippled into one smile after another, and seizing blake by both hands, she danced around him, singing: "you did it! you did it! you did it! hurrah for a jolly life in the pest-house!" madame la branche was inclined to be shocked at this behavior, but inasmuch as papa montegut was beaming angelically upon the two young people, she allowed herself to be mollified. "i couldn't believe vittoria," myra nell told norvin. "don't you know the danger you run?" mr. la branche exclaimed: "i am desolated at the consequences of my selfishness! i did not sleep a wink. i can never atone." "quite right," his wife agreed. "you must have been mad, montegut. it was criminal of you to rush forth and embrace him in that manner." "but, delight of my soul, the news he bore! the joy of seeing him! it unmanned me." the creole waved his hands wildly, as if at a loss for words. "oh, you fibber! norvin told me he'd never met you," said myra nell. "eh! impossible! we are associates in business; business of a most important--but what does that term signify to you, my precious ladybird? nothing! enough, then, to say that he saved me from disaster. naturally i was overjoyed and forgot myself." his wife inquired, timidly, "have your affairs gone disastrously?" "worse than that! ruin stared us in the face until _he_ came. our deliverer!" blake flushed at this fulsome extravagance, particularly as he saw myra nell making faces at him. "fortunately everything is arranged now," he assured his hostess. but this did not satisfy miss warren, who, with apparent innocence, questioned the two men until papa la branche began to bog and flounder in his explanations. fortunately for the men, she was diverted for the moment by discovering that the table was set for only four. "oh, we need another place," she exclaimed, "for vittoria!" the old lady said, quietly: "no, dear. while we were alone it was permissible, but it is better now in this way." myra nell's ready acquiescence was a shock to norvin, arguing, as it did, that these people regarded the countess margherita as an employee. could it be that they were so utterly blind? he was allowed little time for such thoughts, however, since myra nell set herself to the agreeable task of unmasking her lover and confounding montegut la branche. but cousin althea was not of a suspicious nature, and continued to beam upon her husband, albeit a trifle vaguely. then when breakfast was out of the way the girl added to norvin's embarrassment by flirting with him so outrageously that he was glad to flee to papa montegut's piquet game. at the first opportunity he said to vittoria: "i feel dreadfully about this. why, they seem to think you're a--a--servant! it's unbearable!" "that is part of my work; i am accustomed to it." she smiled. "then you _have_ changed. but if they knew the truth, how differently they'd act!" "they must never suspect; more depends upon it than you know." "i feel horribly guilty, all the same." "it can make no difference what they think of me. i'm afraid, however, that you have--made it--difficult for myra nell." "so it appears. i didn't think of her when i entered this delightful prison." "you had no choice." "it wasn't altogether that. i wanted to be near you, vittoria." her glance was level and cool, her voice steady. "it was chivalrous to try to spare me the necessity of explaining. the situation was trying; but we were both to blame, and now we must make the best of it. myra nell's misunderstanding is complete, and she will be unhappy unless you devote yourself to her." "i simply can't. i think i'll keep to myself as much as possible." "you don't know that girl," vittoria said. "you think she is frivolous and inconsequent, that she has the brightness of a sunbeam and no more substance; but you are mistaken. she is good and true and steadfast underneath, and she can feel deeply." blake found that it was impossible to isolate himself. mr. la branche clung to him like a drowning man; his business affairs called him repeatedly to the telephone; myra nell appropriated him with all the calm assurance of a queen, and madame la branche insisted upon seeing personally to his every want. the only person of whom he saw little was vittoria fabrizi. his disappearance, of course, required much explaining and long conversations with his office, with his associates, and with police headquarters, where his plight was regarded as a great joke. this was all very well; but there were other and unforeseen consequences. bernie dreux heard of the affair with blank amazement, which turned into something resembling rage. his duty, however, was plain. he packed a valise and set out for the quarantined house like a man marching to his execution; for he had a deathly horror of disease, and smallpox was beyond compare the most loathsome. but the health department had given strict orders, and he was turned away; nay, he was rudely repulsed. crushed, humiliated, he retired to his club, and there it was that rilleau found him, steeped in melancholy and a very insidious brand of kentucky bourbon. when lecompte accused blake of breaking the rules of the game, the little bachelor rose resolutely to his sister's defense. "norvin's got a perfect right to protect her," he lied, "and i honor him for it." "you mean he's engaged to her?" rilleau inquired, blankly. bernie nodded. "well, so am i, so are delevan and mangny, and the others." "not this way." mr. dreux's alcoholic flush deepened. "he thought she was in danger, so he flew to her side. mighty unselfish to sacrifice his business and brave the disease. he did it with my consent, y'understand? when he asked me, i said, 'norvin, my boy, she needs you.' so he went. unselfish is no word for it; he's a man of honor, a hero." mr. rilleau's gloom thickened, and he, too, ordered the famous bourbon. he sighed. "i'd have done the same thing; i offered to, and i'm no hero. i suppose that ends us. it's a great disappointment, though. i hoped--during carnival week that she'd--well, i wanted her for my real queen." bernie undertook to clap the speaker on the shoulder and admonish him to buck up; but his eye was wavering and his aim so uncertain that he knocked off mr. rilleau's hat. with due apologies he ran on: "she couldn't have been queen at all, only for him. he made it possible." "i had as much to say about it as he did." bernie whispered: "he lent me the money, y'understand? it was all right, under the circumstances, everything being settled but the date, y'understand?" rilleau rose at last, saying: "you're all to be congratulated. he is the best fellow in new orleans, and there's only one man i'd rather see your sister marry than him; that's me. now i'm going to select a present before the rush commences. what would you think of an onyx clock with gold cupids straddling around over it?" "fine! i'm sorry, old man--i like you, y'understand?" bernie upset his chair in rising to embrace his friend, then catching sight of august kulm, who entered at the moment, he made his way to him and repeated his explanations. mr. kulm was silent, attentive, despairing, and spoke vaguely of suicide, whereupon dreux set himself to the task of drowning this teutonic instinct in the flowing bowl. "i don't know what has happened to the boys," myra nell complained to norvin, on the second day after his arrival. "lecompte was going to read me the rubaiyat, and raymond cline promised me a bunch of orchids; but nobody has shown up." "it's jealousy," he said, lightly. "i suppose so. of course it was nice of you to compromise me this way--it's delicious, in fact--but i didn't think it would scare off the others." "you think i have compromised you?" "you know you have, _terribly_. i'm engaged to all of them--everybody, in fact, except you--" "but they know my presence here is unintentional." "oh! _is_ it, really?" she laughed. "don't you believe it is?" "goodness! don't spoil all my pleasure. if ever i saw two cringing, self-conscious criminals, it's you and papa montegut. men are so deceitful. heigh-ho! i thought this was going to be splendid, but you play cards all day with mr. la branche while i die of loneliness." "what would you like me to do?" he faltered. "i don't know. it's very dull. couldn't you sally forth and drag in lecompte or murray or raymond?" she looked up with eyes beaming. "bernie was furious, wasn't he?" mr. la branche came trotting in with the evening newspaper in his hand. "it's in the paper," he chuckled. "those reporters get everything." "what's in the paper?" myra nell snatched the sheet from his hand and read eagerly as he went trotting out again with his slippers applauding every step. "oh, lordy!" blake read over her shoulder, and his face flushed. "norvin, we're really, truly engaged, now. see!" after a pause, "and you've never even asked me." there was only one thing to say. "myra nell," he began, "i want you--will you--" "oh, you goose, you're not taking a cold shower!" "will you do me the honor to be my wife?" she burst into delightful laughter. "so you actually have the courage to propose? shall i take time to think it over, or shall i answer now?" "now, by all means." "very well, of course i--won't." "why not?" he exclaimed, with a start. "the idea! you don't mean it!" "i do." "why, norvin, you're old enough to be my father." "oh, no, i'm not." "do you think i could marry a man with gray hair?" "it all gets gray after a while." "no. i'll be engaged to you, but i'll never marry any one, never. that would spoil all the fun. this very thing shows how stupid it must be; the mere rumor has scared the others away." "you're a mormon." "i'm not. i'll tell you what i'll do; if i ever marry any one, i'll marry you." "that's altogether too indefinite." "i don't see it. meanwhile we're engaged, aren't we?" "if that's the case--" he reached uncertainly for her hand, and pressed it. "i--i'm very happy!" she waited an instant, watching him shyly, then said: "now i must show this to vittoria. but--please don't look so frightened." the next instant she was gone. when miss fabrizi entered her room, a half-hour later, it was to find her with her eyes red from weeping. as for norvin, he had risen to the occasion as best he could. he loved myra nell sincerely, tenderly, in a big-brotherly way; he would have gone to any lengths to serve her, yet he could not feel toward her as he felt toward vittoria fabrizi. he nerved himself to stand by his word, even though it meant the greatest sacrifice. but the thought agonized him. nor was he made more easy as time went on, for mr. and mrs. la branche took it for granted that he was their cousin's affianced lover; and while the girl herself now bewildered him with her shy, inviting coquetry, or again berated him for placing her in an unwelcome position, he could never determine how much she really cared. when the quarantine was finally lifted he walked out with feelings akin to those of a prisoner who has been reprieved. xviii belisario cardi after his enforced idleness blake was keen to resume his task, yet there was little for him to do save study the one big problem which lay at the root of the whole matter. the evidence against the prisoners was in good shape; they were indicted, and the trial date would soon be set. they had hired competent lawyers and were preparing for a desperate fight. where the necessary money came from nobody seemed to know, although it was generally felt that a powerful influence was at work to free them. the district attorney expressed the strongest hopes of obtaining convictions; but there came disturbing rumors of alibis for the accused, of manufactured evidence, and of overwhelming surprises to be sprung at the last moment. detectives were shadowed by other detectives, lawyers were spied upon, their plans leaked out; witnesses for the state disappeared. opposing the authorities was a master hand, at once so cunning and so bold as to threaten a miscarriage of justice. this could be none other then belisario cardi, yet he seemed no nearer discovery than ever. norvin had no idea how to proceed. he could only wait for some word from his new ally, vittoria fabrizi. it might be that she would find a clue, and he feared to complicate matters by any premature or ill-judged action. meanwhile, he encountered the results of bernie dreux's garrulity. he found himself generally regarded as myra nell's accepted suitor, and, of course, could make no denial. but when he telephoned to the girl herself and asked when he might call he was surprised to hear her say: "you can't call at all why, you've ruined all my enjoyment as it is! there hasn't been a man in this whole neighborhood since i came home. even the policeman takes the other side of the street." "all the more reason why i should come." "i won't have you hanging around until i get my carnival dresses fitted. oh, norvin, you ought to see them. there's one-white brocaded peau de soie, all frills and rosebuds; the bodice is trimmed with pearl passementerie, and it's a dear." after a moment's hesitation she added: "norvin dear, what does it cost to rent the front page of a newspaper?" "i don't know. i don't think it can be done." "i wondered if you couldn't do it and--deny our engagement." "do you want to break it?" he could hardly keep the eagerness out of his voice. "oh, no! but i'd like to deny it until after the carnival. now don't be offended. i'll never get my dances filled if i'm as good as married to you. imagine a queen with an empty programme. i just love you to pieces, of course, but i can't allow our engagement to interfere with the success of the carnival, can i?" "don't you know this is a thing we can't joke about?" "of course i do. it has taught me a good lesson." "what?" "i'll never be engaged to another man." "well! i should hope not. do you intend to marry me, myra nell?" "i don't know. sometimes i think i will, then again i'm afraid nobody'd ever come to see me if i did. i'll get old, like you." "i'm not old." "we'd both have gray hair and--i can't talk any more. here comes bernie with an armful of dresses and a mouthful of pins. if he coughs i'll be all alone in the world. no, you can't see me for a week. i don't even want to hear from you except--" "what?" "well, the strain of dress-fitting is tremendous. i'm nearly always hungry--ravenous for nourishment." "you mean you're out of candy, i suppose?" "practically. there's hardly a whole piece left. they've all been nibbled." blake did not know whether to feel amused or ashamed. he was relieved at the girl's apparent carelessness, yet this half-serious engagement had put myra nell in a new light. he could not think of their relations as really unchanged, and this was inevitable since his sentiment for her was genuine. the grotesqueness of the affair--even myra nell's own attitude toward it--seemed a violation of something sacred. but nothing could subdue the joy he felt in his growing intimacy with vittoria, whom he managed to see frequently, although she never permitted him to come to oliveta's house. little by little her reserve melted, and more and more she seemed to forget her intention of devoting herself to a religious life, while fears for her friend's safety appealed to the deep mother instinct which had remained latent in her. she was unable, however, even with oliveta's assistance, to put any information in his way, and blake could think of no better plan than to try once more to sound caesar maruffi. if caesar had really written the letters, it would be strange if he could not be induced to go farther, despite his obvious fear of cardi. it was unbelievable that a man who knew so much about the mafia was really in ignorance of its leader's identity, and blake was convinced that if he acted diplomatically and seized the right occasion he could bring the fellow to unbosom himself. discarding all thought of his own safety, he went often to the red wing club. but he found caesar wary, and he dared not be too abrupt. time and again he was upon the verge of speaking out, but something invariably prevented, some inner voice warned him that the man's mood was unpropitious, that his extravagant caution was not yet satisfied. he allowed the sicilian to feel him out to his heart's content, and, at last, seeing that he made no real progress, he set out one evening resolved to risk all in an effort to reach some definite understanding. he was delayed in reaching the foreign quarter, and the dinner-hour was nearly over when he arrived at the cafe. maruffi was there, as usual, but he had finished his meal and was playing cards with some of his countrymen, swarthy, eager-faced, voluble fellows whose chatter filled the place. they greeted norvin politely as he seated himself near by, then went on with their amusement as he ordered and ate his dinner. he was near enough to hear their talk, and to catch an occasional glimpse of the game, so that he was not long in finding that they played for considerable stakes. they were as earnest as school-boys, and he watched their ever-changing expressions with interest, particularly when he discovered that maruffi was in hard luck. the big sicilian sat bulked up in a corner, black, silent, and sinister, his scowling brows bespeaking his rage. occasionally he growled a curse, then sent the waiter scurrying with an order. other italians were drawn to the scene and crowded about the players. when norvin had finished his meal he sat back to smoke and idly sip his claret, thinking he would wait until the game broke up, so that he might get caesar to himself and perhaps put the issue to the test. he began to study the fellow's face, thinking what force, what passion lay in it, puzzling his brain for some means of enlisting that energy upon his side. but as fortune continued to run against maruffi, he began to fear that the time was not favorable. what a picture those laughing, hawk-like men formed, surrounding the black, resentful merchant! martel savigno could have drawn a group like that, he mused, for he had a rare appreciation of his own people, no matter what might be said of his talent. he had done some very creditable sicilian sketches; in fact, norvin had one framed in his room. what a pity the count had been stricken in the first years of his promise! what a ruthless hand it was that had destroyed him! what a giant mind it was which had kept all sicily in terror and scaled its lips! in that very group yonder there probably was more than one who knew the evil genius in person, and yet they were held in a thralldom of fear which no offer of riches could break. what manner of man was this cardi? what hellish methods did he follow to wield such despotism? those card-players were impudent, unscrupulous blades, as ready to gamble with death as with their jingling coins, and yet they dared not lift a hand against him. blake saw that the game had reached a point of unusual intensity; the players were deeply engrossed; the spectators had fallen silent, with bright eyes fixed upon the mounting stakes. when the tension broke norvin saw that caesar had lost again, and smiled at the excited conversation which ensued. there was a babble of laughter, of curses, of expostulation, shafts of badinage flew at the sicilian merchant. in the midst of it he raised a huge, hairy fist and brought it down, smiting the table until the coins, the cards, and the glasses leaped. his face was distorted; his voice was thick with passion. [illustration: "silenzio" he growled, "i play my own game, and i lose"] "_silenzio!_" he growled, with such imperative fury that the others fell silent; then hoarsely: "i play my own game, and i lose. that is all! you are like old wives with your advice. it is my accursed luck, which will some day bring me to the gallows. now deal!" that same nausea which invariably seized norvin blake in moments of extreme excitement swept over him now. his whole body went cold, the knot of figures faded from his vision, he heard the noisy voices as if from a great distance. a giant hand had reached forth and gripped him, halting his breath and his heart-beats. the room swam dizzily, in a haze. he found, an instant later, that he had risen and was gripping the table in front of him as if for support. he had upset his goblet of wine, and a wide red stain was spreading over the white cloth. to him it was the blood of martel savigno. he stared down at it dazedly, his eyes glazed with horror and surprise. as the crimson splotch widened his heart took up its halting labors, then began to race, faster and faster, until he felt himself smothering; his frame was swept with tremors. then the raucous voices grew louder and louder, mounting into a roar, as if he were coming out from a swoon, and all the time that red blotch grew until he could see no other color; it blurred the room and the quarreling gamblers; it steeped the very air. he was still deathly sick, as only those men are whose blood sours, whose bones and muscles disintegrate at the touch of fear. he did not remember leaving the place, but found the cool night air fanning fresh upon his face as he lurched blindly down the dark street, within his eyes the picture of a scowling, black-browed visage; in his ears that hoarse, unforgettable command, _"silenzio!"_ a single word, burdened with rage and venom, had carried him back over the years to a certain moment and a certain spot on a sicilian mountain-side. the peculiar arrogance, the harsh vibrations of that voice permitted no mistake. he saw again a ghost-gray road walled in with fearful shadows, and at his feet two silent, twisted bodies dimly outlined against the dust. a match flared and ricardo ferara grinned up into the night beneath his grizzled mustache, narcone, the butcher, his hands still wet, was whining for the blood of the american. he heard martel savigno call, heard the young count's voice rise and break in a shriek, heard a thunder of hoofs retreating into the blackness. sicilian men were peering into his face, talking excitedly; through their chatter came that same voice, imperative, furious, filled with rage, and it cried: "_silenzio!_" there was no mistaking it. the veil was ripped at last. blake recalled the dim outlines of that burly, bull-necked figure as it had leaped into brief silhouette against the glare of the blazing match, that night so long ago, and then he cried out aloud in the empty street as he realized how complete was the identification. he remembered donnelly's vague prediction five minutes before he was stricken: "if what i suspect is true, it will cause a sensation," a sensation indeed! the surprise, the realization of consequences, was too overpowering to permit coherent thought. this maruffi, or cardi, or whoever he might prove to be, was tremendous. no wonder he had been hard to uncover. no wonder his power was absolute. he had the genius of a great general, a great politician, and a great criminal, all in one, and he was as pitiless as a panther, more deadly than a moccasin. what influence had perverted such intellect into a weapon of iniquity? what evil of the blood, what lesion of the brain, had distorted his instincts so monstrously? caesar maruffi, rich, respected, honored! it was unbelievable. blake halted after a time and took note of the surroundings into which his feet had led him. he was deep in the foreign quarter, and found, with a start, that he had been heading for vittoria fabrizi's dwelling as if guided by some extraneous power. by a strong exercise of will he calmed himself. what he needed above all things was counsel, some one with whom he could share this amazing discovery. perhaps his presence here was a sign; at any rate, he decided to follow his first impulse, so hastened onward. inside the house his brain cleared in a measure, as he waited; but his agitation must have left plain traces, for no sooner had vittoria appeared than she exclaimed: "my friend! something has happened." he rose and met her half-way. "yes. something tremendous, something terrible." "it was unwise of you to come here--you may be followed. tell me quickly what has made you so indiscreet?" "i have found belisario cardi." she paled; her eyes flamed. "yes--it's incredible." his voice shook. "i know the man well, that's the marvel of it. i've trusted him; i've rubbed shoulders with him; i went to him to-night to enlist his aid." he paused, realizing for the first time that the mystery of those letters was now deeper than ever. if maruffi had not written them, who then? "he's the best and richest italian in the city. god! the thing is appalling." "he must go to justice," said vittoria, quietly. "his name?" "caesar maruffi!" the girl's eager look faded into one of blank dismay. "no!" she said, strangely. "no!" "do you know him?" in a daze she nodded; then cast a hurried, frightened look over her shoulder. "madonna mia! caesar maruffi!" disbelief and horror leaped into her eyes. "you are mad! not caesar. i do not believe it." "caesar, _caesar_." he cried. "why do you call him that? why do you doubt? what is he to you?" she drew away with a look that brought him to his senses. "there is no mistake," he mumbled. "he is cardi. i know it. i--" "wait, wait; don't tell me." she went groping uncertainly to the door. "don't tell me yet." a moment later he heard her call: "oliveta! come quickly, sorella mia. a friend. quickly!" oliveta--recognizably the same girl that he had known in sicily--entered with her black brows lifted in anxious inquiry, her dark eyes wide with apprehension. "some evil has befallen; tell me!" she said, wasting no time in greeting. "no. nothing evil," blake assured her. "our friend has made a terrible discovery," said vittoria, in a faint voice. "i cannot believe--i--want you to hear, carina." she motioned to norvin. "i have been seeking our enemy, belisario cardi, and--i have found him." oliveta cried out in fierce triumph: "god be praised! he lives; that is enough. i feared he had cheated us." "listen!" exclaimed vittoria, in such a tone that the peasant girl started. "you don't understand." "i understand nothing except that he lives. his blood shall wash our blood. that is what we swore, and i have never forgotten, even though you have. he shall go to meet his dead, and his soul shall be accursed." she spoke with the same hysterical ferocity as when she had cursed her father's murderer in the castello of terranova. "he calls himself caesar maruffi," blake told her. there was a pause, then she said, simply: "that is a lie." "no, no! i saw him that night. i saw him again to-night." "it cannot be." "that is what i have said," concurred vittoria, with strange eagerness. "no, no--it would be too dreadful." mystified and offended, blake defended his statement forcibly. "believe it or not, as you please, it is true. that night in sicily he came among the brigands who held me prisoner. they were talking excitedly. he cried, 'silenzio!' in a voice i can never forget. to-night he was gambling, and he lost heavily. he was furious; his friends began to chatter, and he cried that word again! i would know it a thousand years hence. i saw it all in a flash. i saw other things i had failed to grasp--his size, his appearance. i tell you he is belisario cardi." "god help me!" whispered the daughter of ferara, crossing herself with uncertain hand. she was staring affrightedly at vittoria. "god help me!" she kept repeating the words and gesture. blake turned inquiringly to the other woman and read the truth in her eyes. "good lord!" he cried. "he is her--" she nodded. "they were to be married." oliveta began speaking slowly to her foster sister. "yes, it is indeed true. i have suspected something, but i dared not tell you all--the things he said--all that i half learned and would not ask about. i was afraid to know. i closed my eyes and my ears. body of christ! and all the time my father's blood was on his hands!" vittoria appealed helplessly to blake. "you see how it is. what is to be done?" but his attention was all centered upon oliveta, whose face was changing curiously. "his blood!" she exclaimed. "i have loved that infamous man. his hands--" she let her gaze fall to her own, as if they too might be stained from contact. "does maruffi know who you really are?" he asked. vittoria answered; "no. she would have told him soon; we were waiting until we had run down those men. you see, it was largely through her that i worked. those things which i could not discover she learned from--him. it was she who secured the names of di marco and garcia and the others." sudden enlightenment brought a cry from him. "you! then you wrote those letters! you are the 'one who knows'?" vittoria nodded; but her eyes were fixed upon the girl. oliveta was whispering through white lips: "it is the will of god! he has been delivered into my hands." "i am beginning to--" "wait!" vittoria did not withdraw her anxious gaze. after an instant she inquired, gently, "oliveta, what shall we do?" "there is but one thing to do." "you mean--" "i have been sent by god to betray him." her face became convulsed, her voice harsh. "i curse him, living and dead, in the name of my father, in the name of martel savigno, who died by his hand. may he pray unheard, may he burn in agony for a thousand thousand years. take him to the hangman, signore. he shall die with my curse in his ears." "i can't bring him to justice," blake confessed. "i know him to be the assassin, but my mere word isn't enough to convict him. i have no way of connecting him with the murder of chief donnelly, and that is what he must answer for." oliveta's lips writhed into a tortured smile. "never fear, i shall place the loop about his neck where my arms have lain. he has told me little, for i feared to listen. but wait! give me time." vittoria cried in a shocked voice: "child! not--that," "it was from him i learned of gian narcone and his other friends; now i shall learn from his own mouth the whole truth. he shall weave the rope for his own destruction. oh, he is like water in my hands, and i shall lie in his arms--" "lucrezia! you can't touch him--knowing--" "i will have the truth, if i give myself to him in payment, if i am damned for eternity. god has chosen me!" she broke down into frightful sobs. with sisterly affection the other woman put her arms about her and tried to soothe her. at length she led her away, but for a long time norvin could hear sounds of the peasant girl's grief. when vittoria reappeared her face was still pale and troubled. "i can do nothing with her. she seems to think we are all divine instruments." "poor girl! she is in a frightful position. i'm too amazed to talk sensibly. but surely she won't persist." "you do not know her; she is like iron. even i have no power over her now, and i--fear for the result. she is sicilian to the core, she will sacrifice her body, her soul, for vengeance, and that--man is a fiend." "it's better to know the truth now than later." "yes, the web of chance has entangled our enemies and delivered them bound into our hands. we cannot question the wisdom of that power which wove the net. oliveta is perhaps a stronger instrument than i; she will never rest until her father is avenged." "the strangest part is that you are the 'one who knows,' you told me you had given up the quest." "and so i had. i was weary of it. my life was bleak and empty. i could not return to sicily, because of the memories it held. we came south in answer to the call of our blood, and i took up a work of love instead of hate, while oliveta found a new interest in this man, who was wonderful and strong and fierce in his devotion to her. i attained to that peace for which i had prayed. then, when i was nearly ready for my vows, my foster sister learned of gian narcone and came to me. we talked long together, and i finally yielded to her demands--she is a contadina, she never forgets--and i wrote that first letter to mr. donnelly. i feared you might see and recognize my handwriting, so i bought one of those new machines and learned to use it. what followed you know. when we discovered that the mafia had vowed to take chief donnelly's life in payment for narcone's, we were forced to go on or have innocent blood upon our hands. "the chief was killed in spite of our warnings, and then you appeared as the head of his avengers--you--my truest friend, the brother of martel. i knew that the mafia would have your life unless you crushed it, and in a sense i was responsible for your danger. it seemed my duty to help break up this accursed brotherhood, much as i wished that the work might fall to other hands. oliveta was eager for the struggle, and while she fought for her vengeance, i--i fought to save you." "you did this for _me!_" he cried, falteringly. "yes. my position at the hospital, my occupation made it easy for me to learn many things. it was i who discovered the men who actually killed chief donnelly; for normando, after his injury, was brought there and i attended him. i learned of his accomplices, where the boy, gino cressi, was concealed, and other things. lucrezia was a spy here among her countrypeople, and caesar was forever dropping bits of information, though we never dreamed who he was." she went to the long french window, and, shading her eyes with her hands, peered down into the dark street. "then you have--thought of me," he urged. "you thought of me even before we were drawn together by this net of chance?" "you have seldom been out of my thoughts," she told him, quietly. "you were my only friend, and i live a lonely life." turning with a wistful smile, she asked: "and have you now and then remembered that sicilian girl you knew so long ago?" his voice was unruly; it broke as he replied: "your face is always before me, contessa. i grew very tired of waiting, but i always felt that i would find you." she gave him her two hands. "the thought of your affection and loyalty has meant much to me; and it will always mean much. when i have entered upon my new life and know that you are happy in yours--" "but i never shall be happy," he broke out, hoarsely. she stopped him with a grave look. "please! you must go now. i will show you a way. so long as cardi is at liberty you must not return; the risks are too great for all of us. as oliveta learns the truth i shall advise you. poor girl, she needs me tonight. come!" she led him through the house, down a stairway into the courtyard, and directed him into a narrow passageway which led out to the street behind. "even this is not safe, for they may be waiting." she laid her hand upon his arm and said, earnestly, "you will be careful?" "i will." he fought down the wild impulse to take her in his arms. as he skulked through the gloom, searching the darkest shadows like a criminal, his fear was gone, and in his heart was something singing joyously. xix felicite "you're just the man i'm looking for," bernie dreux told norvin, whom he chanced to meet on the following morning. "i've made a discovery." "indeed! what is it?" "hist! the walls have ears." bernie cast a glance over his shoulder at the busy, sunlit street and the hurrying crowds. "come!" with a melodramatic air he led blake into a coffee-house near by. "you can't guess it!" he exclaimed, when they were seated. "and what's more, i won't try. you're getting too mysterious, bernie." "i've found him." "whom?" "the bell-cow; the boss dago; the chief head-hunter; belisario cardi!" blake started and the smile died from his lips. dreux ran on with some heat: "oh, don't look so skeptical. any man with intelligence and courage can become as good a detective as i am. i've found your capo-mafia, that's all." "who is he?" "you won't believe me; but he's well thought of. you know him; o'neil knows him. he's generally trusted." norvin began to suspect that by some freak of fortune his little friend had indeed stumbled upon the truth. dreux was leaning back in his chair and beaming triumphantly. "come, come! what's his name?" "joe poggi." "poggi? he's the owner of that fruit-stand you've been watching." "exactly! chief donnelly suspected him." "nonsense!" norvin's face was twitching once more. "poggi is on the force; he's a detective, like you." "come off!" bernie was shocked and incredulous. "have you shadowed him for months without learning that he's an officer?" "i--i--he's the fellow, just the same." "oh, bernie, you'd better stick to the antique business." mr. dreux flushed angrily. "if he isn't one of the gang," he cried, "what was he doing with salvatore di marco and frank garcia the night after donnelly's murder? what's he doing now with caesar maruffi if he isn't after him for money?" blake's amusement suddenly gave place to eagerness. "maruffi!" he exclaimed. "what's this?" "joe poggi is blackmailing caesar maruffi out of the money to defend his friends. he was at di marco's house an hour before salvatore's arrest. i saw him with garcia and bolla and cardoni more than once." "why didn't you tell this to o'neil?" "i tried to, but he wouldn't listen. when i said i was a detective he laughed in my face, and we had a scene. he told me i couldn't find a ham at a hebrew picnic. since then i've been working alone. poggi has been lying low lately, but--" bernie hesitated, and a slight flush stole into his cheeks. "i've become acquainted with his wife--we're good friends." "and what have you learned from her?" "nothing directly; but i think she's acting as her husband's agent, collecting blackmail to hire lawyers for the defense. poor caesar! he's rich, and poggi is bleeding him. since joe is on the police force he knows every thing that goes on. no wonder you can't break up the mafia!" "by jove!" said norvin. "i was warned of a leak in the department. but it couldn't be poggi!" he began to question bernie with a peremptoriness and rapidity that made the little man blink. mingled with much that was grotesque and irrelevant, he drew out a fairly credible story of nocturnal meetings between the italian detective and caesar maruffi, which, taken in connection with what he already knew, was most disturbing. "how did you come to meet mrs. poggi?" he inquired, at last. the question brought that same flush to mr. dreux's cheeks. "she found i was following her one day," he explained, "so i told her i was smitten by her beauty. i got away with it, too. rather clever, for an amateur, eh?" "is she good-looking?" bernie nodded. "she's an outrageous flirt, though, and--oh, what a temper!" he shuddered nervously. "why, she'd stick a knife into me or bite my ears off if she suspected. she's insanely jealous." "it's not a nice position for you." "no. but i've something far worse than her on my hands--felicite. she's more to be feared than the mafia." "surely miss delord isn't dangerous." "isn't she?" mocked the bachelor. "you ought to see--" he started, his eyes fixed themselves upon the entrance to the cafe with a look of horror, he paled and cast a hurried glance around as if in search of a means of escape. "here she is now!" norvin turned to behold miss delord approaching them like an arrow. she was a tiny creature, but it was plain that she was out in all her fighting strength. her pretty face was dark with passion, her eyes were flashing, and they pierced her lover with a terrible glance as she paused before him, crying furiously: "well? where is she?" "felicite," stammered dreux, "d-don't cause a scene." miss delord stamped a ridiculously small foot and cried again, oblivious of all save her black jealousy: "where is she, i say? eh? you fear to answer. you shield her, perhaps." a plump brown hand darted forth and seized bernie by the ear, giving it a tweak like the bite of a parrot. "ouch!" he exclaimed, loudly. "felicite, you'll ruin us!" a waiter began to laugh in smothered tones. "tell me," stormed the diminutive fury. "it is time we had a settlement, she and i. i will lead you to her by those ass's ears of yours and let her hear the truth from your own mouth." "miss delord, you do bernie an injustice," norvin said, placatingly. she turned swiftly. "injustice? bah! he is a flirt, a loathsome trifler. what could be more abominable?" "felicite! d-don't make a scene," groaned the unhappy dreux, nursing his ear and staring about the cafe with frightened, appealing eyes. "bernie was just--" "you defend him, eh?" stormed the creole girl. "you are his friend. beware, m'sieu, that i do not pull your ears also. i came here to unmask him." "please sit down. you're attracting attention." "attention! yes! but this is nothing to what will follow. i shall make known his depravity to the whole city, for he has sweethearts like that king solomon of old. it is his beauty, m'sieu! listen! he loves a married woman! imagine it!" "felicite! for heaven's sake--" "a dago woman by the name of piggy. but wait, i shall make her squeal. piggy! a suitable name, indeed! he follows her about; he meets her secretly; he adores her, the scoundrel! is it not disgusting? but i am no fool. i, too, have watched; i have followed them both, and i shall scratch her black face until it bleeds, then i shall tell her husband the whole truth." miss delord paused, out of breath for the moment, while bernie pawed at her in a futile manner. beads of perspiration were gathering upon his brow and he seemed upon the verge of swooning. as if from habit, however, he reached forth a trembling hand and deftly replaced a loose hairpin, then tucked in a stray lock which felicite's vehemence had disarranged. "y-your hat's on one side, my dear," he told her. she tossed her head and drew away, saying, "your touch contaminates me--monster!" blake drew out a chair for her; his eyes were twinkling as he said, "won't you allow him to explain?" "there is nothing to explain, since i know everything. see! his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. he quails! he cannot even lie! but wait until i have told the piggy's husband--that big, black ruffian--then perhaps he will find his voice. ah, if i had found that woman here there would have been a scene, i promise you." "help me--out," gasped mr. dreux, and norvin came willingly to his friend's rescue. "bernie loves no one but you," he said. "so? i glory in the fact that i loathe him." "please sit down." "no!" miss delord plumped herself down upon the edge of the proffered seat, her toes bardy touching the floor. "i'm--working mrs. poggi," bernie explained. "i'm a--detective." "what new falsehood is this?" "no falsehood at all," norvin told her. "he is a detective--a very fine one, too--and he has been working on the mafia case for a long time. it has been part of his work to follow the poggis. please don't allow your jealousy to ruin everything." "i am not jealous. i merely will not let him love another, that is all--but what is this you say?" her velvet eyes had lost a little of their hardness; they were as round as buttons and fixed inquiringly upon the speaker. "you must believe me," he said, impressively, "though i can't tell you more. even of this you mustn't breathe a word to any one. mr. dreux has had to permit this misunderstanding, much against his will, because of the secrecy imposed upon him." with wonderful quickness the anger died out of felicite's face, to be replaced by a look of sweetness. "a detective!" she cried, turning to bernie. "you work for the public good, at the risk of your life? and that dago woman is one of the mafia? what a noble work! you forgive me?" instantly mr. dreux's embarrassment left him and he assumed a chilling haughtiness. "forgive you? after such a scene? my dear girl, that's asking a good deal." felicite's lips trembled, her eyes, as they turned to norvin, held such an appeal that he hastened to reassure her. "of course he forgives you. he's delighted that you care enough to be jealous." bernie grinned, whereupon his peppery sweetheart exploded angrily: "you delight in my unhappiness, villain! you enjoy my sufferings! very well! you have flirted; i shall flirt you drive me to distraction; i shall behave accordingly. that antoine giroux worships me and would buy a ring for me to-morrow if i would consent." "i'll murder him!" exclaimed dreux, with more savagery than his friend believed was in him. "now, don't start all over again," blake cautioned them. "you are mad about each other--" "nothing of the sort," declared felicite. "at least bernie worships you." the girl fell silent and beamed openly upon her lover. "why don't you two end this sort of misunderstanding and--marry?" miss delord paled at this bold question. dreux gasped and flushed dully, but seemed to find no words. "that is impossible," he said, finally. "it's nothing of the sort," urged blake. "you think you're happy this way, but you're not and never will be. you're letting the best years of your lives escape. why care what people say if you're happy with each other and unhappy when apart?" to his surprise, the girl turned upon him fiercely. "do not torture bernie so," she cried. "there are reasons why he cannot marry. i love him, he adores me; that is enough." two tears gathered and stole down her smooth cheeks. "you are cruel to hurt him so, m'sieu." "bernie, you're a coward!" blake said, with some degree of feeling, but the girl flew once more to her lover's defense. "coward, indeed! his bravery is unbelievable. does he not risk his life for this miserable committee of yours? he has the courage of a thousand lions." "i admire your loyalty--and of course it's really not my affair, although--why don't you go out to the park where the birds are singing, and talk it all over? those birds are always glad to welcome lovers. meanwhile i'll look into the poggi matter." bernie was glad enough to end the scene, and he arose with alacrity; but his face was very red and he avoided the eye of his friend. as for miss delord, now that her doubts were quelled, she was as sparkling and as cheerful as an april morning. if bernie dreux supposed that his troubles for the day had ended with that stormy scene in the cafe, he was greatly mistaken. he had promised felicite that he would fly to her with the coming of dusk, and that neither the claims of duty nor of family should keep him from her side. but that evening myra nell seized upon him as he was cautiously tiptoeing past her door on his way out. the tone of her greeting gave him an unpleasant start. "i want to talk with you, young man," she said. now nobody, save myra nell, ever assumed the poetic license of calling bernie "young man," and even she did so only upon momentous occasions. a quick glance at her face confirmed his premonition of an uncomfortable half-hour. "i haven't a cent, really," he said, desperately. "this isn't about money." she was very grave. "it is something far more serious." "then what can it be?" he inquired, in a tone of mild surprise. but she deigned no explanation until she had led him into the library, waved him imperiously to a seat upon the hair-cloth sofa, and composed herself on a chair facing him. reflecting that he was already late for his appointment, he wriggled uncomfortably under her gaze. "well?" she said, after a pause. something in her bearing caused his spirits to continue their downward course. her brow was furrowed with a somber portent. "yes'm," he said, nervously, quite like a small schoolboy whose eyes are fixed upon the sunshine outside. "i've heard the truth." "yes'm," he repeated, vaguely. "needless to say i'm crushed," bernie slowly whitened as the meaning of his sister's words sank in. he seemed to melt, to settle together, and his eyes filled with a strange, hunted expression. "what are you talking about?" he demanded, thickly. "you know, very well." "do i?" she nodded her head. "this is the first disgrace which has ever fallen upon us, and i'm heartbroken." "i don't understand," he protested, in a voice so faint she could scarcely hear him. but his pallor increased; he sat upon the edge of the couch, clutching it nervously as if it had begun to move under him. he really felt dizzy. myra nell had a bottle of smelling-salts in her room, and he thought of asking her to fetch it. "even yet i can't believe it of you," she continued. "the idea that you, my protector, the one man upon whom i've always looked with reverence and respect; you, my sole remaining relative.... the idea that you should be entangled in a miserable intrigue.... why, it's appalling!" her lips quivered, tears welled into her eyes, seeing which the little man felt himself strangling. "don't!" he cried, miserably. "i didn't think you'd ever find it out." "i seem to be the only one who doesn't know all about it." myra nell shuddered. "i simply couldn't help it," he told her. "i'm human and i've been in love for years." "but think what people are saying." he passed a shaking hand over his forehead, which had grown damp. "one never realizes the outcome of these things until too late. i hoped you'd never discover it. i've done everything i could to conceal it." "that's the terrible part--your double life. don't you know it's wrong, wicked, vile? i can't really believe it of you. why, you're my own brother! the honor of our name rests upon you. the--the idea that you should fall a victim to the wiles of a low, vulgar--" bernie stiffened his back and his colorless eyes flashed. "myra nell, she's nothing like that!" he declared. "you don't know her." "perhaps. but didn't you think of me?" he nodded his head. "didn't you realize it meant my social ruin?" again he nodded, his mind in a whirl of doubts and fears and furious regrets. "nobody'll care to marry me now. what do you think lecompte will say?" "what the devil has lecompte to do with it? you're engaged to norvin blake." "oh, yes, among the others." bernie was too miserable to voice the indignation which such flippancy evoked in him. he merely said: "norvin isn't like the others. it's different with him; he compromised you." "yes. it was rather nice of him, but do you think he'll care to continue our engagement after this?" "oh, he's known about felicite for a long time. most of the fellows know. that's what makes it so hard." this intelligence entirely robbed myra nell of words; she stared at her half-brother as if trying to realize that the man who had made this shocking admission was he. "do you mean to tell me that your friends have known of this disgrace?" she asked at length. bernie nodded. "of course it seems terrible to you, myra nell, for you're innocent and unworldly, and i'm rather a dissipated old chap. but i'm awfully lonely. the men of my own age are successful and busy and they've all left me behind; the young ones don't find me interesting. you see, i don't know anything, i can't do anything, i'm a failure. nobody cares anything about me, except you and felicite i found a haven in her society; her faith in me is splendid. to her i'm all that's heroic and fine and manly, so when i'm with her i begin to feel that i'm really all she believes, all that i hoped to be once upon a time. she shares my dreams and i allow myself to believe in her beliefs." "and yet you must realize that your conduct is shocking?" "i suppose i do." "you must know that you're an utterly immoral person?" he nodded. "you're my protector, bernie; you're all i have. i'm a poor motherless girl and i lean upon you. but you must appreciate now that you're quite unfit to act as my guardian." the little man wailed his miserable assent. his half-sister's reproachful eyes distracted him; the mention of her defenseless position before the world touched his sorest feeling. it was almost more than he could stand, he was upon the verge of hysterical breakdown, when her manner suddenly changed. her eyes brightened, and, rising swiftly, she flung herself down beside him upon the sofa, where he still sat clutching it as if it were a bucking horse. then, curling one foot under her, she bent toward him, all eagerness, all impulsiveness. with breathless intensity she inquired: "tell me, bunnie, is she pretty?" "very pretty, indeed," he said, lamely. "what's she like? quick! tell me all about her. this is the wickedest thing i ever heard of and i'm _perfectly_ delighted." it was bernie's turn to look shocked. he arose indignantly. "myra nell! you paralyze me. have you no moral--" "rats!" interrupted miss warren, inelegantly. "i've let you preach to me in the past, but never again. we've the same blood in us, bunnie. if i were a man i dare say i'd do the most terrible things--although i've never dreamed of anything so fiercely awful as this." "i should hope not," he gasped. "so come now, tell me everything. does she pet you and call you funny names and ruffle your hair the way i do?" bernie assumed an attitude of military erectness. "it's bad enough for me to be a reprobate in secret," he said, stiffly, "but i sha'n't allow my own flesh and blood to share my shame and gloat over it." the girl's essential innocence, her child-like capacity for seeing only the romance of a situation in which he himself recognized real dishonor, made him feel ashamed, yet he was grateful that she took the matter, after all, so lightly. his respite, however, was of short duration. failing to draw him out on the subject which held her interest for the moment, myra nell followed the beckoning of a new thought. fixing her eyes meditatively upon him, she said, with mellow satisfaction: "it seems we're both being gossiped about, dear." "you? what have _you_ been doing?" he demanded, in despair. "oh, i really haven't done anything, but it's nearly as bad. there's a report that norvin blake is paying all my carnival bills, and naturally it has occasioned talk. of course i denied it; the idea is too preposterous." bernie, who had in a measure recovered his composure, felt himself paling once more. "amy cline told me she'd heard that he actually bought my _dresses_, but amy is a catty creature. she's mad over lecompte, you know; that's why i encourage him; and she wanted to be queen, too, but la, la, she's so skinny! well, i was furious, naturally--" miss warren paused, quick to note the telltale signs in her brother's face. "bernie!" she said. "look me in the eye!" then--"it is true!" her own eyes were round and horrified, her rosy cheeks lost something of their healthy glow; for once in her capricious life she was not acting. "i never dreamed you'd learn about it," her brother protested. "when norvin asked me if you'd like to be queen i forbade him to mention it to you, for i couldn't afford the expense. but he told you in spite of me, and when i saw your heart was set on it--i--i just couldn't refuse. i allowed him to loan me the money." "bernie! bernie!" myra nell rose and, turning her back upon him, stared out of the window into the dusk of the evening. at length she said, with a strange catch in her voice, "you're an anxious comfort, bernie, for an orphan girl." another moment passed in silence before he ventured: "you see, i knew he'd marry you sooner or later, so it wasn't really a loan." he saw the color flood her neck and cheek at his words, but he was unprepared for her reply. "i'll never marry him now; i'll never speak to him again." "why not?" "can't you understand? do you think i'm entirely lacking in pride? what kind of man can he be to _tell_ of his loan, to make it public that the very dresses which cover me were bought with his money?" she turned upon her half-brother with clenched hands and eyes which were gleaming through tears of indignation. "i could _kill_ him for that." "he didn't tell," bernie blurted out. "he must have. nobody knew it except you--" her eyes widened; she hesitated. "you?" she gasped. it was indeed, the hour of bernie's discomfiture. myra nell was his divinity, and to confess his personal offense against her, to destroy her faith in him, was the hardest thing he had ever done. but he was gentleman enough not to spare himself. at the cost of an effort which left him colorless he told her the truth. "i'd been drinking, that day of the quarantine. i thought i'd fix it so he couldn't back out." myra nell's lips were white as she said, slowly, measuring him meanwhile with a curious glance: "well, i reckon you fixed it right enough; i reckon you fixed it so that neither of us can back out." she turned and went slowly up-stairs, past the badly done portraits of her people which stared down at her in all their ancient pride. she carried her head high before them, but, once in her room, she flung herself upon her bed and wept as if her heart were breaking. fortunately for norvin blake's peace of mind, he had no inkling of bernie's indiscretion nor of any change in myra nell. his work now occupied his mind to the exclusion of everything else. while anxiously waiting for some word from oliveta he took up, with o'neil, the investigation of joe poggi, the italian detective. before definite results had been obtained he was delighted to receive a visit from vittoria fabrizi, who explained that she had risked coming to see him because she dared not trust the mails and feared to bring him into the foreign quarter. "then oliveta has made some progress?" he asked, eagerly. "yes." "good! poor girl, it must be terribly hard for her to play such a part." "no one knows how hard it has been. you would not recognize her, she has changed so. her love, for which we were so deeply thankful, has turned into bitter hate. it was a long time before she dared trust herself with maruffi, for always she saw the blood of her father upon his hands. but she is sicilian, she turned to stone and finally welcomed his caresses. ah! that man will suffer for what he has made her endure." blake inquired, curiously, "does he really love her?" "yes. that is the strangest part of the whole affair. it is the one good thing in his character, the bit of gold in that queer alloy which goes to make him up. perhaps if he had met her when he was younger, love would have made him a different man. in her hands he is like wax; he is simple, childlike; he fawns upon her, he would shower her with gifts and attentions; yet underneath there is that streak of devilish cunning." "what has he told, so far?" "much that is significant, little that is definite. we have pieced his words together, bit by bit, and uncovered his life an inch at a time. it was he who paid the blood money to di marco and bolla--thousand dollars." "a thousand dollars for the life of dan donnelly!" the countess lowered her yellow head. "they in turn hired larubio, normando, and the rest. the chain is complete." "then all that remains is to prove it, link by link, before arresting him." "is not oliveta's word sufficient proof?" "no." blake paced his office silently, followed by the anxious gaze of his caller. at length he asked, "will she take the stand at the trial?" "heaven forbid! nothing could induce her to do so. that is no part of her scheme of vengeance, you understand? being sicilian, she will work only in her own way. besides--that would mean the disclosure of her identity and mine." "i feared as much. in that case every point which maruffi confesses to her must be verified by other means. that will not be easy, but i dare say it can be done." "the law is such a stupid thing!" exclaimed vittoria. "it has no eyes, it will not reason, it cannot multiply nor add; it must be led by the hand like a blind old man and be told that two and two make four. however, i have a plan." "i confess that i see no way. what do you advise?" "these accused men are in the parish prison, yes? very well. imprison spies with them who will gain their confidence. in that way we can verify maruffi's words." "that's not so easily done. there is no certainty that they would make damaging admissions." "men who dwell constantly with thoughts of their guilt feel the need of talking. the mind is incapable of continued silence; it must communicate the things that weigh it down. let the imprisoned mafiosi mingle with one another freely whenever ears are open near by, and you will surely get results." seeing him frown in thought, she continued, after a moment, "you told me of a great detective agency--one which sent that man corte here to betray narcone." "yes, the pinkertons. i was thinking of them. i believe it can be done. at any rate, leave it to me to try, and if i succeed no one shall know about it, not even our own police. when our spies enter the prison, if they do, it will be in a way to inspire confidence among the mafiosi. meanwhile, do you think you are entirely safe in that foreign quarter?" "quite safe, although the situation is trying. i have felt the strain almost as deeply as my unfortunate sister." "and when it is all over you will be ready for your vows?" her answer gave no sign of the hesitation he had hoped for and half expected. "of course." he shook his head doubtfully. "somehow, i--i feel that fate will keep you from that life; i cannot think of you as a sister of mercy." in spite of himself his voice was uneven and his eyes were alight with the hope which she so steadfastly refused to recognize. as she rose to leave she said, musingly, "how strange it is that this master of crime and intrigue should betray himself through the one good and unselfish emotion of his life!" "samson was shorn of his strength by the fingers of a woman," he said. "yes. many good men have been betrayed by evil women, but it is not often that evil men meet their punishment through good ones. and now--a riverderci." "good-by, for a few days." he pressed his lips lightly to her fingers. xx the man in the shadows late one day, a fortnight after her visit to blake's office, vittoria returned from a call upon myra nell warren, to find oliveta in a high state of apprehension. the girl, who had evidently kept watch for her, met her at the door, and inquired, nervously: "what news? what have you heard?" "nothing further, sorella mia." "impossible! god in heaven! i am dying! this suspense--i cannot endure it longer." vittoria laid a comforting hand upon her. "courage!" she said. "we can only wait. i too am torn by a thousand demons. caesar has gone, but no one knows where." oliveta shuddered. "we are ruined. he suspects." "so you have said before, but how could he suspect?" "i don't know, yet judge for yourself. i worm his secrets from him at the cost of kisses and endearments; i hold him in my arms and with smiles and caresses i lead him to betray himself. then, suddenly, without warning or farewell, he vanishes. i tell you he knows. he has the cunning of the fiend, and your friend signore blake has blundered." oliveta's face blanched with terror. she clung to her companion weakly, repeating over and over: "he will return. god help us, he will return." "even though he knows the truth, which is far from likely, he would scarcely dare to come here," vittoria said, striving with a show of confidence which she did not feel to calm her foster sister. "you do not know him as i do. you do not know the furies which goad him in his anger." in spite of herself vittoria felt choked again by those fears which during the days since maruffi's disappearance she had with difficulty controlled. she knew that the net had been spread for him in all caution, yet he had slipped through it. whether he had been warned or whether mere chance had taken him from the city at the last moment, neither she, nor blake, nor the chief of police had been able to learn. all had been done with such secrecy that, except a bare half-dozen trusted officers, no one knew him to be even suspected of a part in the mafia's affairs. norvin had been quick to sense the possible danger to the two women, and had urged them to accept his protection; but they had convinced him that such a course had its own dangers, for in case the mafioso was really unsuspicious the slightest indiscretion on their part might frighten him. therefore they had insisted upon living as usual until something more definite was known. this afternoon vittoria had received a message from myra nell, requesting, or rather demanding, her immediate attendance. she had gone gladly, hoping to divert her mind from its present anxieties; but the girl had talked of little except norvin blake and the effect had not been calming. oliveta soon discovered that her sister was in a state to receive rather than give consolation. "carissima, you are ill!" she said with concern. vittoria assented. "it is my eyes--my head. the heat is perhaps as much to blame as our many worries." she removed her hat and pressed slender fingers to her throbbing temples, while oliveta drew the curtains against the fierce rays of a westering sun. later, clad in a loose silken robe, vittoria flung herself upon the low couch and her companion let down her luxuriant masses of hair until it enveloped her like a cloud. she lay back upon the cushions in grateful relaxation, while oliveta combed and brushed the braids, soothing her with an occasional touch of cool palms or straying fingers. "how strange that both our lives should have been blighted by this man!" the peasant girl said at length. "'sh-h! you must not think of him so unceasingly," vittoria warned her. "one's thoughts go where they will when one is sick and wearied. i have grown to hate everything about me--the people, the life, the country." "sicily is calling you, perhaps?" oliveta answered eagerly, "yes! you, too, are unhappy, my dearest. let us go home. home!" she let her hands fall idle and stared ahead of her, seeing the purple hills behind terranova, the dusty gray-green groves of olive-trees, the brilliant fields of sumach, the arbors bent beneath their weight of blushing fruit. "i want to see the village people again, my father's relatives, old aliandro, and the notary's little boy--" "he must be a well-grown lad, by now," murmured vittoria. "aliandro, i fear, is dead. but it is a long road to terranova; we have--changed." "yes--everything has changed. my happiness has changed to misery, my hope to despair, my love to hate." "poor sister mine!" vittoria sympathized. "be patient. no wound is too deep for time to heal. the scar will remain, but the pain will disappear. i should know, for i have suffered." "and do you suffer no longer? it has been a long time since you mentioned--martel." for a moment vittoria remained silent, her eyes closed. when she replied it was not in answer to the question. "i can never return to sicily, for it would awaken nothing but distress in me. but there is no reason why you should not go if you wish. you have the means, while all that i had has been given to the sisters." oliveta cried out at this passionately. "i have nothing. that which you gave me i hold only for you. but i would not go alone; i shall never leave you." "some time you must, my dear. our parting is not far off." "i am not sure." the peasant girl hesitated. "deep in your heart, do you hope to find peace inside the walls of that hospital?" "yes--peace, at least; perhaps contentment and happiness also." "that is impossible," said oliveta, at which vittoria's hazel eyes flew open. "eh? why not?" "because you love this signore blake!" "oliveta! you are losing your wits." "perhaps! but i have not lost my eyes. as for him, he loved you even in sicily." "what then?" "he is a fine man. i think you could hear an echo to the love you cherished for martel, if you but listened." vittoria gazed at her foster-sister with a look half tender and half stern. her voice had lost some of its languid indifference when she replied: "any feeling i might have would indeed be no more than an echo. i--am not like other women; something in me is dead--it is the power to love as women love. i am like a person who emerges from a conflagration, blinded; the eyes are there, but the sight is gone." "perhaps you only sleep, like the princess who waited for a kiss--" vittoria interrupted impatiently: "no, no! and you mistake his feelings. i attract him, perhaps, but he loves miss warren and has asked her to marry him. what is more, she adores him and--they were made for each other." "she adores him!" echoed the other. "che dio! she only plays at love. her affections are as shifting as the winds." "that may be. but he is in earnest. it was he who gave her this social triumph--he made her queen of the carnival. he even bought her dresses. it was that which caused her to send for me this afternoon. heaven knows i was in no mood to listen, but she chattered like a magpie. as if i could advise her wisely!" "she is very dear to you," oliveta ventured. "indeed, yes. she shares with you all the love that is left in me." "i think i understand. you have principles, my sister. you have purposely barred the way to your fairy prince, and will continue sleeping." vittoria's brow showed faint lines, but whether of pain or annoyance it was hard to tell. oliveta sighed. "what evil fortune overhangs us that we should be denied love!" "please! let us speak no more of it." she turned her face away and for a long time her companion soothed her with silent ministrations. meanwhile the dusk settled, the golden flames died out of the western windows, the room darkened. seeing that her patient slept, oliveta arose and with noiseless step went to a little shrine which hung on the wall. she knelt before the figure of the virgin, whispering a prayer, then lit a fresh candle for her sister's pain and left the room, partly closing the door behind her. she had allowed the maid-servant to go for the afternoon, and found, upon examination, that the day's marketing had been neglected. there was still time, however, in which to secure some delicacies to tempt vittoria's taste so she flung a shawl over her dark hair and descended softly to the street. a little earlier on this same afternoon, as norvin blake sat at work in his office, the telephone bell roused him from deep thought. he seized the instrument eagerly, hoping for any news that would relieve the tension upon his nerves. for uncertainty as to maruffi's whereabouts had weighed heavily upon him, especially in view of the possible danger to the woman he loved and to her devoted companion. the voice of o'neil came over the wire, full-toned and distinct: "hello! is this blake?"--and then, "we've got maruffi!" "when? where?" shouted norvin. "five minutes ago; at his own house. johnson and dean have been watching the place. he went with them like a lamb, too. they've just 'phoned me that they're all on their way here." "good! do you need me?" "no! see you later. good-by!" the acting chief slammed up his receiver, leaving his hearer stunned at the suddenness of this long-awaited denouement. maruffi taken! his race run! then this was the end of the fight! a ferocious triumph flooded norvin's brain. with belisario cardi in the hands of the law the spell of the mafia was broken. savigno and donnelly were as good as avenged. he experienced an odd feeling of relaxation, as if both his body and brain were cramped and tired with waiting. then, realizing that the countess and oliveta must have suffered an even greater strain, he set out at once to give them the news in person. as he turned swiftly into royal street he encountered o'connell, who, noting his haste and something unusual in his bearing, detained him to ask the cause. "haven't you heard?" exclaimed norvin. "maruffi's captured at last." "you don't mean it!" "yes. o'neil told me over the wire not ten minutes ago." o'connell fell into step with him, saying, incredulously: "and he came without a fight? lord! i can't believe it." "nor i. i expected trouble with him." "sure! i thought he was a bad one, but that's the way it goes sometimes. i reckon he saw he had no chance." the officer shook his red head. "it's just my blamed luck to miss the fun." o'connell was one of the few who had been first trusted with the news of maruffi's identity, and for the past fortnight he had been casting high and low for the sicilian's trail. ever since that october night when he had supported donnelly in his arms as the life ebbed from the chief, ever since he had knelt on the soft banquette with the sting of powder smoke in his nostrils, he had been obsessed by a fanatical desire to be in at the death of his friend's murderers. he left blake at his destination and hurried on toward st. phillip street in the vague hope that he might not be too late to take a hand in some part of the proceedings. blake's hand was upon oliveta's bell when the door opened and she confronted him. her start, her frightened cry, gave evidence of the nervous dread under which she labored. "don't be afraid, oliveta," he said, quickly. "i come with news--good news." she swayed and groped blindly for support. he put out his hand to sustain her, but she shrank away from him, saying, faintly: "then he is captured? god be praised!" in spite of the words, her eyes filmed over with tears, a look of abject misery bared itself upon her face. "where is the countess?" "above--resting. come; she, too, will rejoice." "let me take her the news. you were going out, and--i think the air will do you good. be brave, oliveta; you have done your share, and there's nothing more to fear." she acquiesced dully; her olive features were ghastly as she felt her way past him; she walked like a sick woman. he watched her pityingly for a moment, then mounted the stairs. as he laid his hand upon the door it gave to his touch and he stood upon the threshold of the parlor. vittoria's name was upon his lips when, by the dim evening light which came through the drawn curtains and by the faint illumination from the solitary shrine candle, he saw her recumbent form upon the couch. she was lying in an attitude of complete relaxation, her sun-gilded hair straying in long thick braids below her waist, those tawny ropes were of a length and thickness to bind a man about the body. her lips were slightly parted; her lashes lay like dark shadows against her ivory cheeks. he was swept by a sudden awed abashment. the impulse to retreat came over him, but he lacked the will. the longing which had remained so strong in him through years of denial, governing the whole course of his life, blazed up in him now and increased with every heartbeat. he found that without willing it he had come close to the couch. the girl's slim hand lay upon the cushions, limply upturned to him; it was half open and there sprang through him an ungovernable desire to bury his lips in its rosy palm. he knelt, then quailed and recovered himself. at the same instant she stirred and, to his incredulous delight, whispered his name. a wild exultation shot through him. why not yield to this madness, he asked himself, dizzily. the long struggle was over now. for this woman's sake he had repeatedly played the part of bravery in a fever of fear. he had done what he had done to make himself worthy of her, and now, at the last, he was to have nothing--absolutely nothing, except a memory. against these thoughts his notions of honorable conduct hastily and confusedly arrayed themselves. but he was in no state to reason. the same enchantment, half psychic, half physical, ethereal yet strongly human, that had mastered him in the old sicilian days, was at work upon him now. dimly he felt that so mighty and natural a thing ought not to be resisted. he stood stiffly like a man spellbound. it may have been oliveta's accusation that affected the course of the sleeping woman's thoughts, it may have been that she felt the man's nearness, or that some influence passed from his mind to hers. however it was, she spoke his name again, her fingers closed over his, she drew him toward her. he yielded; her warm breath beat upon his face; then the last atoms of self-restraint fled away from him like sparks before a fierce night wind. a fiery madness coursed through his veins as he caught her to him. her lips were fevered with sleep. for a moment the caress seemed real; it was the climax of his hopes, the attainment of his longings. he crushed her in his arms; her hair blinded him; he buried his face in it, kissing her brow, her cheek, the curve where neck and shoulder met, and all the time he was speaking her name with hoarse tenderness. so strangely had the fanciful merged into the real that the girl was slow in waking. her eyelids fluttered, her breast rose and fell tumultuously, and even while her wits were struggling back to reality her arms clung to him. but the transition was brief. her eyes opened, and she stiffened as with the shock of an electric current. a cry, a swift, writhing movement, and she was upon her feet, his incoherent words beating upon her ears but making no impression upon her brain. "_you_! god above!" she cried. she faced him, white, terror-stricken, yet splendid in her anger. she was still dazed, but horror and dismay leaped quickly into her eyes. "margherita! you called me. you drew me to you. it was your real self that spoke--i know it." "you--kissed me while--i slept!" he paled at the look with which she scorched him, then broke out, doggedly: "you wanted me; you drew me close. you can't undo that moment--you can't. my god! don't tell me it was all a mistake. that would make it unendurable. i could never forgive myself." she hid her face with a choking cry of shame. "no, no! i didn't know--" he approached and touched her arm timidly. "margherita," he said, "if i thought you really did not call me--if i were made to believe that i had committed an unpardonable offense against your womanhood and our friendship--i would go and kill myself. but somehow i cannot believe that. i was beside myself--but i was never more exalted. something greater than my own will made me do as i did. i think it was your love answering to mine. if that is not so--if it is all a delusion--there is nothing left for me. i have played my part out to the end. my work is done, and i do not see how i can go on living." there was an odd mingling of pain and rapture in the gaze she raised to his. it gave him courage. "why struggle longer?" he urged, gently. "why turn from love when heaven wills you to receive it and learn to be a woman? i was in your thoughts and you longed for me, as i have never ceased, all these years, to hunger for you. please! please! margherita! why fight it longer?" "what have you done? what have you done?" she whispered over and over. she looked toward the open door as if with thought of escape or assistance, and despite his growing hope blake was miserable at sight of her distress. "how came you here, alone with me?" she asked at length. "oliveta was here only a moment ago." "i came with good news for both of you. i met oliveta as she went out, and when i had told her she sent me to you. don't you understand, dear? it was good news. our quest is over, our work is done, and god has seen fit to deliver our enemy--" she flung out a trembling hand, while the other hid itself in the silk and lace at her breast. "what is this you tell me? maruffi? am i still dreaming?" "maruffi has been arrested." "is it possible?--this long nightmare ended at last like this? maruffi is arrested? you are safe? no one has been killed?" "it is all right. o'neil telephoned me and i came here at once to tell you and oliveta." "when did they find him? where?" "not half an hour ago--at his house. we have been watching the place ever since he disappeared, feeling sure he'd have to return sooner or later, if only for a moment. he is under lock and key at this instant." blake attributed a stir in the hall outside to the presence of the maid-servant; margherita, whose eyes were fixed upon him, failed to detect a figure which stood in the shadow just beyond the open door. "does he know of our part in it--oliveta's part?" she asked. "o'neil didn't say. he'll learn of it shortly, in any event. do you realize what his capture means? i--hardly do myself. for one thing, there's no further need of concealment. i--i want people to know who you are. it seems hardly conceivable that belisario cardi has gone to meet his punishment, but it is true. lucrezia has her revenge at last. it has been a terrible task for all of us, but it brought you and me together. i don't intend ever to let you go again, margherita. i loved you there in sicily. i've loved you every moment, every hour--" blake turned at the sound of a door closing behind him. he saw margherita start, then lean forward staring past him with a look of amazement, of frightened incredulity, upon her face. some one, a man, had stepped into the dim-lit room and was fumbling with the lock, his eyes fixed upon them, meanwhile, over his shoulder. the light from the windows had faded, the faint illumination from the taper before the shrine was insufficient fully to pierce the gloom. but on the instant of his interruption all triumph and hope, all thoughts of love, fled from norvin's mind, bursting like iridescent bubbles, at a touch. the flesh along his back writhed, the hair at his neck lifted itself; for there in the shadow, huge, black, and silent, stood caesar maruffi. xxi under fire blake heard margherita's breath release itself. she was staring as if at an apparition. his mind, working with feverish speed, sought vainly to grasp the situation. maruffi had broken away and come for his vengeance, but how or why this had been made possible he could not conceive. it sufficed that the man was here in the flesh, sinister, terrible, malignant as hell. blake knew that the ultimate test of his courage had come. he felt the beginnings of that same shuddering, sickening weakness with which he was only too familiar; felt the strength running out from his body as water escapes from a broken vessel. he froze with the sense of his physical impotency, and yet despite this chaos of conflicting emotions his inner mind was clear; it was bitter, too, with a ferocious self-disgust. there was a breathless pause before maruffi spoke. "lucrezia ferara!" he said, hoarsely, as if wishing to test the sound of the name. "so oliveta is the daughter of the overseer, and you are savigno's sweetheart." his words were directed at margherita, who answered in a thin, shrill, broken voice: "what--are you doing--here?" "i came for that wanton's blood. give her to me." "oliveta? she is--gone." the sicilian cursed. "gone? where?" "away. into the street. you--you cannot find her." "christ!" maruffi reached upward and tore open the collar of his shirt. blake spoke for the first time, but his voice was dead and lifeless. "yes. she's gone. you're wanted. you must go with me!" maruffi gave a snarling, growling cry and his gesture showed that he was armed. involuntarily blake shrank back; his hand groped for his hip, but, half-way, encountered the pile of silken cushions upon which margherita had been lying; his fingers sank into them nervously, his other hand gripped the carven footboard of the couch. he had no weapon. he had not dreamed of such a necessity. in this imminent peril a new fear swept over him greater than any he had ever known. it was not the fear of death. it was something far worse. for the moment, it seemed to him inevitable that margherita ginini should, at last, learn the truth concerning him, should see him as he was that night at terranova. swift upon the heels of his long-deferred declaration of love would come the proof that he was a craven. then he thought of her danger, realizing that this man was quite capable in his fury of killing her, too, and he stiffened in every fiber. his cowardice fell away from him like a rotten garment, and he stood erect. maruffi, it seemed, had not heard his last words, or else his mind was still set upon oliveta. "gone!" he exclaimed. "then i shall not see her face grow black within my fingers--not yet. god! how i ran!" he cursed again. "but i shall not fare so badly, after all." he stirred, and with his movement blake flew to action. swiftly, with one sweep of his right hand, he brought the silken cushions up before his breast and lunged at his enemy. at the same instant maruffi fired. in the closed room the detonation was deafening; it rattled the windows, it seemed to bulge the very walls. blake felt a heavy blow which drove the floss-filled pillows against his body with the force of a giant hammer, it tore them from his grip, it crushed the breath from his lungs and spun him half around. seeing that he did not fall, maruffi cocked and fired a second time without aiming, but his victim was upon him like a tiger and together they crashed back against the wall, locked in each other's arms. blake's will propelled him splendidly. all that indecision with which fear works upon the mind had left him, but the old contraction of his nerves still hampered his action. the blaze from maruffi's second shot half blinded him and its breath smote him like a blow. "two!" he counted, wonderingly. a pain in his left side, due to that first sledge-hammer impact, was spreading slowly, but he had crossed the room under the belching muzzle of the revolver and was practically unharmed. there began a struggle--the more terrible since it was unequal--in which the weaker man had to drive his body at the cost of tremendous effort. blake was like a leader commanding troops which had begun to retreat. but more power came to him under the spur of action and the pressing realization that he must give margherita a chance to get safely away. if he could not wrest the weapon from maruffi's hands he knew that he must receive those four remaining bullets in his own body. he rather doubted that he could take that weight of lead. he shouted to her to run, while he wrestled for possession of the gun. he had flung his right arm about his adversary's body, his other hand gripped his wrist; his head was pressed against maruffi's chest. the weapon described swift circles, jerking parabolas and figures as the men strained to wrest it from each other. maruffi strove violently to free his imprisoned hand, and in doing so he discharged the revolver a third time. the bullet brought a shower of plaster from the ceiling, and blake counted with fierce exultation, "three!" he gasped his warning to the woman again, then twined his leg about his antagonist's in a wrestler's hold, striving mightily to bear maruffi against the wall. but caesar was like an oak-tree. failing to move him, blake suddenly flung himself backward, with all his weight, lifting at the same instant in the hope of a fall. in this he was all but successful. the two reeled out into the room, tripped, went to their knees, then rose, still intertwined in that desperate embrace. the odd, stiff feeling in blake's side had increased rapidly; it began to numb his muscles and squeeze his lungs. his eyes were stinging with sweat and smoke; his ears were roaring. as they swayed and turned he saw that margherita had made no effort to escape and he was seized with an extraordinary rage, which for a brief time renewed his strength. she was at the front window crying for help. "jump! for--god's sake, jump!" he shouted, but she did not obey. instead she ran toward the combatants and seized maruffi's free arm, in a measure checking his effort to break the other man's hold. her closeness to danger agonized blake, the more as he felt his own strength ebbing, under that stabbing pain in his side. he centered his force in the grip of his left hand, clinging doggedly while the sicilian flung his two assailants here and there as a dog worries a scarf. blake fancied he heard a stamping of feet in the hall outside and the sound of voices, of heavy bodies crashing against the door. maruffi heard it, too, for with a bellow of fury he redoubled his exertions. a sweep of his arm flung the girl aside; with a mighty wrench of his body he carried blake half across the room, loosening his hold. then he seized him by the throat and forced his head back. [illustration: he wrestled for possession of the gun] the shouting outside was increasing, the pounding was growing louder. blake's breath was cut off and his strength went swiftly; his death grip on the sicilian's body slackened. as he tore at the fingers which were throttling him, his left hand slipped, citing to maruffi's sleeve, and finally began clawing blindly for the weapon. the next moment he was hurled aside, so violently that he fell, his feet entangled in the cushions with which he had defended himself against the first shot. he rose and renewed his attack, hearing margherita cry out in horror. this time maruffi took deliberate aim, and when he fired the figure lurching toward him was halted as if by some giant fist. "four!" blake counted. he was hit, he knew, but he still had strength; there were but two more shots to come. then he was dazed to find himself upon his knees. as if through a film he saw the italian turn away and raise his weapon toward the girl, who was wrenching at the door. "maruffi!" he shouted. "oh, god!" then he closed his eyes to shut out what followed. but he heard nothing, for he slipped forward, face down, and felt himself falling, falling, into silence and oblivion. as o'connell made his way toward st. phillip street he nursed a growing resentment at the news norvin blake had given him. his feeling toward caesar maruffi had all the fierceness of private hatred, calling for revenge, and he considered himself ill-used in that he had not even been permitted to witness the arrest. he knew maruffi's countrymen would be likely to make a demonstration, and he was grimly desirous of being present when this occurred. as he neared the heart of the italian section he saw a blue-coated officer running toward him. "what's up?" he cried. "have the dagoes started something?" "maruffi was pinched, but he got away," the other answered. "johnson is hurt, and--" o'connell lost the remaining words, for he had broken into a run. a crowd had gathered in front of a little shop where the wounded policeman had been carried to await the arrival of an ambulance, and even before o'connell had heard the full story of the escape acting-chief o'neil drove up behind a lathered horse. he leaped from his mud-stained buggy, demanding, hoarsely: "where is he--maruffi?" officer dean, johnson's companion, met him at the door of the shop. "he made his break while i was 'phoning you," he answered. "hell! didn't you frisk him?" roared the chief. "sure! but we missed his gun." "caesar carries it on a cord around his neck--nigger-fashion," briefly explained o'connell. dean was running on excitedly: "i heard johnson holler, but before i could get out into the street maruffi had shot him twice and was into that alley yonder. i tried to follow, but lost him, so i came back and sent in the alarm." the acting chief cursed under his breath, and with a few sharp orders hurried off the few officers who had reached the scene. then as an ambulance appeared he passed into the room where johnson lay. as he emerged a moment later o'connell drew him aside. "maruffi won't try to leave town till it's good and dark," he said. "he's got a girl, and i've an idea he'll ask her to hide him out." "it was his girl who turned him up--she and blake--" o'connell cried, sharply: "wait! does he know she did that? if he does, he'll make for her, sure." "that may be. those two women are all alone, and i'd feel better if they were safely out of the way. i'll leave you there on the way back." an instant later they were clattering over the uneven flags while their vehicle rocked and bounded in a way that threatened to hurl them out. even before they reached their destination they saw people running through the dusk toward the house in which the two girls lived and heard a shot muffled behind walls. o'neil reined the horse to his haunches as the shrill cry of a woman rang out above them, and the next moment he and o'connell were inside, rushing up the stairs with headlong haste. they were brought to a stop before a bolted door from behind which came the sounds of a furious struggle. "blake! norvin blake!" shouted o'connell. "break it down!" o'neil ordered. he set his back against the opposite wall, then launched himself like a catapult. the patrolman followed suit, but although the panels strained and split the heavy door held. "by god! he's in there!" the chief cried, as he set his shoulder to the barrier for a second time. "once more! together!" through a crevice which had opened in the upper panels they caught a glimpse of the dimly lighted room. what they saw made them struggle like madmen. another shot sounded, and o'neil in desperation inserted his fingers in the opening and tore at it. through the aperture o'connell saw maruffi run to an open window at the rear, then pause long enough to snatch the taper from its sconce at the foot of the little shrine and, stooping, touch its flame to the long lace curtains. they promptly flashed into a blaze. parting them, he bestrode, the sill, lowered himself outside, and disappeared. it was an old but effective ruse to delay pursuit. "quick! he's set fire to the place," o'connell gasped, and dashed down the hall. a tremendous final heave of o'neil's body cleared his way, a few strides and he was at the window, ripping the blazing hangings down and flinging them into the court below. when he turned it was to behold in the dim twilight vittoria fabrizi kneeling beside blake. her arms were about him, her yellow hair entwined his figure. "a light! somebody get a light!" the chief roared to those who had followed him up the stairs, then seeing a lamp near by he lit it hurriedly, revealing the full disorder of the room. he knelt beside vittoria, who drew the fallen man closer to her, moaning something in italian which o'neil could not understand. but her look told him enough, and, rising, he ordered some one to run for a doctor. strangers, white-faced and horrified, were crowding in; the sound of other feet came from the stairs outside, questions and explanations were noisily exchanged. o'neil swore roundly at the crowd and drove it ahead of him down into the street, where he set a man to guard the door. then he returned and helped the girl examine her lover's wounds. her fingers were steady and sure, but in her face was such an abandonment of grief as he had never seen, and her voice was little more than a rasping whisper. they were still working when the doctor came, followed a moment later by a disheveled, stricken figure of tragedy which o'neil recognized as oliveta. at sight of her foster-sister the peasant girl broke into a passion of weeping, but vittoria checked her with an imperious word, meanwhile keeping her tortured eyes upon the physician. she waited upon him, forestalling his every thought and need with a mechanical dexterity that bore witness to her training, but all the while her eyes held a pitiful entreaty. not until she heard o'neil call for an ambulance did she rouse herself to connected speech. then she exclaimed with hysterical insistence: "you shall not take him away! i am a nurse; he shall stay here. who better than i could attend to him?" "he can stay here if you have a place for him," said the doctor. o'neil drew him aside, inquiring, "will he live?" the doctor indicated vittoria with a movement of his head. "i'm sure of it. that girl won't let him die." the news of that combat traveled fast and far and it came to myra nell warren among the first. despite the dreadful false position in which bernie had placed her with respect to norvin, the girl had but one thought and that was to go to her friend. she could not endure the sight of blood, and her somewhat child-like imagination conjured up a gory spectacle. she was afraid that if she tried to act as nurse she would faint or run away when most needed. but she was determined to go to him and to assist in any way she could. it was not consistent with her ideas of loyalty to shrink from the sight of suffering even though she could do nothing to relieve it. when she mounted the stairs to oliveta's living-quarters she was pale and agitated, and she faltered on the threshold at the sight of strangers. within were a newspaper reporter, a doctor, the chief of police, the mayor of the city, while outside a curious throng was gathered. seeing miss fabrizi, she ran toward her, sobbing nervously. "where is he, vittoria? tell me that he's--safe!" some one answered, "he's safe and resting quietly." "t-take me to him." a spasm stirred vittoria's tired features; she petted the girl with a comforting hand, while mayor wright said, gently: "it must have been a great shock to you, myra nell, as it was to all of us, but you may thank god he has been spared to you." the reporter made a note upon his pad, and began framing the heart interest of his story. here was a new and interesting aspect of an event worth many columns. vittoria led the girl toward her room, but outside the door myra nell paused, shaking in every limb. "you--you love him?" asked the other woman. the look which miss warren gave her stabbed like a knife, and when the girl had sunk to her knees beside the bed, with blake's name upon her lips, vittoria stood for a long moment gazing down upon her dazedly. later, when she had sent myra nell home and silence lay over the city, norvin's nurse stole into the great front room where she had experienced so much of gladness and horror that night, and made her way wearily to the little image of the virgin. she noted with a start that the candle was gone, so she lit a new one and, kneeling for many minutes, prayed earnestly for strength to do the right and to quench the leaping, dazzling flame which had been kindled in her heart. xxii a misunderstanding several days later vittoria fabrizi led bernie dreux into the room where norvin lay. the little man walked on tiptoe and wore an expression of such gloomy sympathy that blake said: "please don't look so blamed pious; it makes me hurt all over." bernie's features lightened faintly; he smiled in a manner bordering upon the natural. "they wouldn't let me see you before. lord! how you have frightened us!" "my nurse won't let me talk." blake's eyes rested with puzzled interrogation upon the girl, who maintained her most professional air as she smoothed his pillow and admonished him not to overtax himself. when she had disappeared noiselessly, he said: "well, you needn't put a rose in my hand yet awhile. tell me what has happened? how is myra nell?" "she's heartbroken, of course. she came here that first night; but the smell of drugs makes her sick." "i suppose maruffi got away?" dreux straightened in his chair; his face flushed proudly; he put on at least an inch of stature. "haven't you heard?" he inquired, incredulously. "how could i hear anything when i'm doctored by a deaf-mute and nursed by a divinity without a tongue?" "maruffi was captured that very night. sure! why, the whole country knows about it." again a look of mellow satisfaction glowed on the little man's face. "my dear boy, you're a hero, of course, but--there--are--others." "who caught him?" "i did." "_you!_" norvin stared in open-mouthed amazement. "that's what i said. i--me--mr. bernard effingwell dreux, the prominent cotillion leader, the second-hand dealer, the art critic and amateur detective. i unearthed the notorious and dreaded sicilian desperado in his lair, and now he's cooling his heels in the parish prison along with his little friends." "why--i'm astonished." "naturally! i found him in joe poggi's house. mr. poggi also languishes in the bastille." "how in the world--" "well, it's quite a story, and it all happened through the woman--" bernie flushed a bit as he met his companion's eye. "when i told you about mrs. poggi i didn't exactly go into all the intimate--er--details. the truth is she became deeply interested in me. i told you how i met her--well, she wasn't averse to receiving my attentions--heavens, no! she ate 'em up! before i knew it i found myself entangled in an intrigue--i had hold of an electric current and couldn't let go. when i didn't follow her around, she followed me. when i didn't make love, she did. she learned about felicite, and there was--excuse me!" bernie rose, put his head cautiously outside the door to find the coast clear, then said: "hell to pay! i tried to back out; but you can't back away from some women any more than you can back away from a prairie fire." he shook his head gloomily. "it seems she wasn't satisfied with poggi; she had ambitions. she'd caught a glimpse of the life that went on around her and wanted to take part in it. she thought i was rich, too--my name had something to do with it, i presume--at any rate, she began to talk of divorce, elopement, and other schemes that terrorized me. she was quite willing that i murder her husband, poison her relatives, or adopt any little expedient of that kind which would clear the path for our true love. i was in over my depth, but when i backed water she swam out and grabbed me. when i stayed away from her she looked me up. i tried once to tell her that i didn't really care for her--only once." the memory brought beads of sweat to the detective's brow. "between her and felicite i led a dog's life. if i'd had the money i'd have left town. "i'd been meeting her on street corners up to that point; but she finally told me to come to the house while poggi was away--it was the day you were hurt. i rebelled, but she made such a scene i had to agree or be arrested for blocking traffic. she carries a dagger, norvin, in her stocking, or somewhere; it's no longer than your finger, but it's the meanest-looking weapon i ever saw. well, i went, along about dark, determined to have it out with her once for all; but those aristocrats during the french revolution had nothing on me. i know how it feels to mount the steps of the guillotine. "the poggi's parlor furniture is upholstered in red and smells musty. i sat on the edge of a chair, one eye on her and the other taking in my surroundings. there's a fine crayon enlargement of joe with his uniform, in a gold frame with blue mosquito-netting over it to disappoint the flies--four ninety-eight, and we supply the frame--done by an old master of the county fair school. there's an organ in the parlor, too, with a stuffed fish-hawk on it. "she seemed quite subdued and coy at first, so i took heart, never dreaming she'd wear her dirk in the house. but say! that woman was raised on raw beef. before i could wink she had it out; it has an ivory hilt, and you could split a silk thread with it. i suppose she didn't want to spoil the parlor furniture with me, although i'd never have showed against that upholstery, or else she's in the habit of preparing herself for manslaughter by a system of vocal calisthenics. at any rate, we were having it hot and heavy, and i was trying to think of some good and unselfish actions i had done, when we heard the back door of the cottage open and close, then somebody moving in the hall. "mrs. poggi turned green--not white--green! and i began to picture the head-lines in the morning papers! 'the bachelor and the policeman's wife,' they seemed to say. it wasn't poggi, however, as i discovered when the fellow called to her. he was breathing heavily, as if he had been running. she signaled me to keep quiet, then went out; and i heard them talking, but couldn't understand what was said. when she came back she was greener than ever, and told me to go, which i did, realizing that the day of miracles is not done. i fell down three times, and ran over a child getting out of that neighborhood." blake, who had listened eagerly, inquired: "the man was maruffi?" "exactly! i got back to the club in time to hear about his arrest and escape and your fight here. the town was ringing with it; everybody was horrified and amazed. what particularly stunned me was the news that maruffi, not poggi, was the head of the mafia; but my experience in criminal work has taught me to be guided by circumstances, and not theory, so when i learned more about caesar's escape i fell to wondering where he could hide. then i recalled his secret meetings with joe poggi and that scalding volcano of emotion from whom i had just been delivered. her fright, when she let me out, something familiar in the voice which called to her, came back, and--well, i couldn't help guessing the truth. maruffi was in the house of one of the officers who was supposed to be hunting him." "but his capture?" "simple enough. i went to o'neil and told him. we got a posse together and went after him. we descended in such force and so suddenly that he didn't have a chance to resist. if i'd known who he was at first i'd have tried to take him single-handed." "then it's well you didn't know." blake smiled. "what bothers me," dreux confessed, "is how mrs. poggi regards my action. i--i hate to appear a cad. i'd apologize if i dared." vittoria appeared to warn dreux that his visit must end. when the little man had gone norvin inquired: "you knew of maruffi's arrest?" "oh, yes!" "why didn't you tell me?" "you were in no condition to hear news of importance." "is that why you have been so silent?" "hush! you have talked quite enough for the present." "you act strangely--differently," he insisted. "i am your nurse. i am responsible for your recovery, so i do as i am ordered." "and you haven't changed?" he inquired, wistfully. "not at all, i am quite the same--quite the same girl you knew in sicily!" he did not relish her undertone, and wondered if illness had quickened his imagination, if he was forever seeing more in her manner, hearing more in her words than she meant. there was something intangibly cold and distant about her, or seemed to be. during the first feverish hours after his return to consciousness he had seen her hanging over him with a wonderful loving tenderness--it was that which had closed his wounds and brought him back toward health so swiftly; but as his brain had cleared and he had grown more rational this vision had disappeared along with his other fancies. he wondered whether knowledge of his pseudo-engagement to myra nell had anything to do with her manner. he knew that she was in the girl's confidence. naturally, he himself was not quite at his ease in regard to miss warren. the rumor about his advancing the money for her carnival expenses had been quieted through bernie's efforts, and the knowledge of it restricted to a necessary few. although myra nell had refused his offers of marriage and treated the matter lightly, he could not help feeling that this attitude was assumed or exaggerated to cover her humiliation--or was it something deeper? it would be terrible if she really cared for him in earnest. her own character protected her from scandal. the breaking-off of his supposed engagement with her could not hurt her--unless she really loved him. he closed his eyes, cursing bernie inwardly. after a time he again addressed vittoria. "tell me," he said, "how maruffi came to spare you. my last vision was of him aiming--" "he had but four shots." "four?" "yes, he had used two in his escape from the officers--before he came here." "i see! it was horrible. i felt as if i had failed you at the critical moment, just as i failed--" "as you failed whom?" "martel!" the word sounded in his ears with a terrible significance; he could hardly realize that he had spoken it. he had always meant to tell her, of course, but the moment had taken him unawares. his conscience, his inmost feeling, had found a voice apart from his volition. there was a little silence. at length she said in a low, constrained tone. "did you fail--him?" "i--i did," he said, chokingly; and, the way once opened, he made a full and free confession of his craven fear that night on the road to terranova, told her of the inherent cowardice which had ever since tortured and shamed him, and of his efforts to reconstruct his whole being. "i wanted to expiate my sin," he finished, "and, above all, i have longed to prove myself a man in your sight." she listened with white, set face, slightly averted. when she turned to him at last, he saw that her eyes were wet with tears. "i cannot judge of these matters," she said. "you--you were no coward the other night, amico mio. you were the bravest of the brave. you saved my life. as for that other time, do not ask me to turn back and judge. you perhaps blame yourself too much. it was not as if you could have saved martel. it is rather that you should have at least tried--that is how you feel, is it not? you had to reckon with your own sense of honor. well, you have won your fight; you have become a new person, and you are not to be held responsible for any action of that norvin blake i knew in sicily, who, indeed, did not know his own weakness and could not guard against it. ever since i met you here in new orleans i have known you for a brave, strong man. it is splendid--the way in which you have conquered yourself--splendid! few men could have done it. be comforted," she added, with a note of tenderness that answered the pleading in his eyes--"there is no bitterness in my heart." "margherita," he cried, desperately, "can't you--won't you--" "oh," she interposed, peremptorily, "do not say it. i forbid you to speak." then, as he fell silent, she continued in a manner she strove to make natural: "that dear girl, myra nell warren, has inquired about you daily. she has been distracted, heartbroken. believe me, caro norvin, there is a true and loving woman whom you cannot cast aside. she seems frivolous on the surface, i grant you. even i have been deceived. but at the time of mr. dreux's dreadful faux pas she was so hurt, she grieved so that i couldn't but believe she felt deeply." norvin flushed dully and said nothing. vittoria smiled down upon him with a look that was half maternal in its sweetness. "all this has been painful for you," she said, "and you have become over-excited. you must not talk any more now. you are to be moved soon." "aren't you going to be my nurse any more?" "you are to be taken home." his hand encountered hers, and he tried to thank her for what she had done, but she rose and, admonishing him to sleep, left the room somewhat hurriedly. in the short time which intervened before norvin was taken to his own quarters vittoria maintained her air of cool detachment. myra nell came once, bringing bernie with her, much to the sick man's relief; his other friends began to visit him in rapidly increasing numbers; he gradually took up the threads of his every-day life which had been so rudely severed. meanwhile, he had ample time to think over his situation. he could not persuade himself that vittoria had been right in her reading of myra nell. perhaps she had only put this view forward to shield herself from the expression of a love she was not ready to receive. he could not believe that he had been deluded, that there was in reality no hope for him. mardi gras week found him still in bed and unable to witness myra nell's triumph. during the days of furious social activity she had little time to give him, for the series of luncheons, of pageants, of gorgeous tableaux and brilliant masked balls kept her in a whirl of rapturous confusion, and left her scant leisure in which to snatch even her beauty sleep. since she was to be the flower of the festival, and since her beauty was being saved for the grand climax of the whole affair, she had no idea of sacrificing it. proteus, momus, the mistick krewe of comus, and the other lesser societies celebrated their distinctive nights with torch and float and tableau; the city was transformed by day with bunting and flags, by night it was garlanded with fire; merrymakers thronged the streets, their carnival spirit entered into every breast. it was a glad, mad week of gaiety, of dancing, of laughter, of flirting and love-making under the glamour of balmy skies and velvet torch-lit nights; and to the pleasure of the women was added the delicious torture of curiosity regarding those mysterious men in masks who came through a blaze of fire and departed, no one knew whither. as the spirit of the celebration mounted, myra nell abandoned herself to it; she lived amid a bewilderment of social obligations, through which she strove incessantly to discover the identity of her king. finding herself unsuccessful in this, her excitement redoubled. at last came his entrance to the city; the booming cannon, the applauding thousands, his royal progress through the streets toward the flower-festooned stand where she looked down upon the multitude. miss warren's maids of honor were the fairest of all this fair city, and yet she stood out of that galaxy as by far the most entrancing. her royal consort came at length, a majestic figure upon a float of ivory and gold; he took the goblet from her hand; he pledged her with silent grace while the assembled hordes shouted their allegiance to the pair. she knew he must be very handsome underneath his mask; and he was bold also, in a quite unkingly way, for there was more in his glance than the greeting of a monarch; there was ardent love, a burning adoration which thrilled her breast and fanned her curiosity to a leaping flame. this was, indeed, life, romance, the purple splendor for which she had been born. she could scarcely contain herself until the hour of the rex ball, when she knew her chance would come to match her charm and beauty against his voiceless secrecy. she was no longer a make-believe queen, but a royal ruler, beloved by her subjects, adored by her throne-mate. then the glittering ball that followed!--the blazing lights, the splendid pantomime, the great shifting kaleidoscope of beauteous ladies and knightly men in gold and satin and coats of mail! and, above all, the maddening mystery of that king at her side whose glances were now melting with melancholy, now ablaze with eagerness, and whose whispered words, muffled behind his mask, were not those of a monarch, but rather those of a bold and audacious lover! he poured his vows into her blushing ear; he set her wits to scampering madly; his sincere passion, together with the dream-like unreality of the scene, intoxicated her. who could he be? how dared he say these things? what faint familiar echo did his voice possess? which one of her many admirers had the delightful effrontery to court her thus ardently beneath a thousand eyes? he was drunk with the glory of this hour, it seemed, for he whispered words she dared not listen to. what preposterous proposals he voiced; what insane audacity he showed! and yet he was in deadly earnest, too. she canvassed her many suitors in her mind, she tried artfully to trap him into some betrayal; the game thrilled her with a keen delight. at last she realized there was but one who possessed such brazen impudence, and told him she had known him from the first, whereat he laughed with the abandon of a pagan and renewed the fervor of his suit. blake learned from many sources that myra nell had made a gorgeous queen. the papers lauded her grace, her beauty, the magnificence of her costumes. bernie was full of it and could talk of nothing else when he dropped in as usual. "she's all tired out, and i reckon she'll sleep for a week. i hope so, anyhow." "i'm sorry i couldn't see her, but i'm glad i escaped the carnival. the mardi gras is hard enough on the women; but it kills us men." "i should say so. look at me--a wreck." after a moment he added: "you think myra nell is all frivolity and glitter, but she isn't; she's as deep as the sea, norvin. i can't tell you how glad i am that you two--" blake stirred uneasily. "i--i admire you tremendously, for you're just what i wanted to be and couldn't. i'm talking foolishly, i know, but this carnival has made me see myra nell in a new light; i see now that she was born for joy and luxury and splendor and--and those things which you can give her. she's been a care to me. i've been her mother; i've actually made her dresses--but i'm glad now for all my little sacrifices." two tears gathered and trickled down mr. dreux's cheeks, while blake marveled at the strange mixture of qualities in this withered little beau. bernie's words left him very uncomfortable, however, and the hours that followed did not lessen the feeling. although myra nell sent him daily messages and gifts--now books, now flowers, now a plate of fudge which she had made with her own hands and which he was hard put to dispose of--she nevertheless maintained a shy embarrassment and came to see him but seldom. when she did call, her attitude was most unusual: she overflowed with gossip, yet she talked with a nervous hesitation; when she found his eyes upon her she stammered, flushed, and paled; and he caught her stealing glances of miserable appeal at him. she was very different from the girl he had known and had learned to love in a big, impersonal way. he attributed the change to his own failure in responding to her timid advances, and this made him quite unhappy. nor did he see much of vittoria, although oliveta came daily to inquire about his progress. he was up and about in time for the mafia trial; but his duties in connection with it left him little leisure for society, which he was indeed glad to escape. new orleans, he found, was on tiptoe for the climax of the tragedy which had so long been its source of ferment; the public was roused to a new and even keener suspense than at any time--not so much, perhaps, by the reopening of the case as by the rumors of bribery and corruption which were gaining ground. a startling array of legal talent had appeared for the defense; the trial was expected to prove the greatest legal battle in the history of the commonwealth. maruffi, with his genius for control, had assumed an iron-bound leadership and laughed openly at the possibility of a conviction. he had struck the note of persecution, making a patriotic appeal to the italian populace; and the foreign section of the city seethed in consequence. on the opening day the court-room was packed, the halls and corridors of the criminal court building were filled to suffocation, the neighboring streets were jammed with people clamoring for admittance and hungry for news from within. then began the long, tedious task of selecting a jury. public opinion had run so high that this was no easy undertaking. as day after day went by in the monotonous examination and challenge of talesmen, as panel after panel was exhausted with no result, not only did the ridiculous shortcomings of our jury system become apparent, but also the fact that the mafia had, as usual, made full use of its sinister powers of intimidation. in view of the atrocious character of the crime and the immense publicity given it, those citizens who were qualified by intelligence to act as jurors had of necessity read and heard sufficient to form an opinion, and were therefore automatically debarred from service. it became necessary to place the final adjudication of the matter in the hands of men who were either utterly indifferent to the public weal or lacked the intelligence to read and weigh and think. a remarkable wave of humanity seemed to have overwhelmed the city. four out of every five men examined professed a disbelief in capital punishment, which, although it merely covered a fear of the mafia's antagonism, nevertheless excused them for cause. day after day this mockery went on. as the list of talesmen grew into the hundreds and the same extraordinary antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it occasioned remark, then ridicule. it would have been laughable had it not been so significant. the papers took it up, urging, exhorting, demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect. more than this, the mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large proportion of honest men declared themselves unwilling to believe sicilian testimony unless corroborated, and this prevented them from serving. a week went by, and then another, and still twelve men who could try the issue fairly had not been found. some few had been accepted, to be sure, but they were not representative of the city, and the list of talesmen who had been examined and excused on one pretext or another numbered fully a thousand. meanwhile, maruffi smiled and shrugged and maintained his innocence. xxiii the trial and the verdict blake did not attend these tiresome preliminaries, although he followed them with intense interest, the while a sardonic irritation arose in him. chancing to meet mayor wright one day, he said: "i'm beginning to think my original plan was the best after all." "you mean we should have lynched those fellows as they were taken?" queried the mayor, with a smile. "something like that." "it won't take long to fix their guilt or innocence, once we get a jury." "perhaps--if we ever get one. but the men of new orleans seem filled with a quality of mercy which isn't tempered with justice. those who haven't already formed an opinion of the case are incompetent to act as intelligent jurors. those who could render a fair judgment are afraid." "you don't think there's any chance of an acquittal!" "hardly! and yet i hear the defense has called two hundred witnesses, so there's no telling what they will prove. you see, the prosecution is handicapped by a regard for the truth, something which doesn't trouble the other side in the least." "suppose they should be acquitted?" "it would mean the breakdown of our legal system." "and what would happen?" blake repeated the question, eyeing the mayor curiously. "exactly! what would happen? what ought to happen?" "why, nothing," said the other, nervously. "they'd go free, i suppose. but maruffi can't get off--he resisted an officer." "bah! he'd prove that johnson assaulted him and he acted in self-defense." "he'd have to answer for his attack upon you." norvin gave a peculiarly disagreeable laugh. "not at all. that's the least of his sins. if the law fails in the donnelly case i sha'n't ask it to help me." but his pessimism gave way to a more hopeful frame of mind when the jury was finally impaneled and sworn and the trial began. the whole city likewise heaved a sigh of relief. the people had been puzzled and disgusted by the delay, and now looked forward to the outcome with all the keener eagerness to see justice done. even before the hour for opening, the streets around the criminal court were thronged; the halls and lobbies were packed with a crowd which gave evidence of a breathless interest. no inch of space in the court-room was untenanted; an air of deep importance, a hush of strained expectancy lay over all. norvin found himself in a room with the other witnesses for the state, a goodly crowd of men and women, whites and blacks, many of whom he had been instrumental in ferreting out. from beyond came the murmur of a great assemblage, the shuffling of restless feet, the breathing of a densely packed audience. the wait grew tedious as witness after witness was summoned and did not return. at last he heard his own name called, and was escorted down a narrow aisle into an inclosure peopled with lawyers, reporters, and court officials, above which towered the dais of the judge, the throne of justice. he mounted the witness-stand, was sworn, and seated himself, then permitted his eyes to take in the scene. before him, stretching back to the distant walls, was a sea of faces; to his right was the jury, which he scanned with the quick appraisal of one skilled in human analysis. between him and his audience were the distinguished counsel, a dozen or more; and back of them eleven swarthy, dark-visaged sicilian men, seated in a row. at one end sat caesar maruffi, massive, calm, powerful; at the other end sat gino cressi, huddled beside his father, his pinched face bewildered and terror-stricken. a buzz of voices arose as the crowd caught its first full glimpse of the man who had so nearly lost his life through his efforts to bring these criminals to justice. upon maruffi's face was a look of such malignant hate that the witness stiffened in his chair. for one brief instant the sicilian laid bare his soul, as their eyes met, then his cunning returned; the fire died from his impenetrable eyes; he was again the handsome, solid merchant who had sat with donnelly at the red wing club. the man showed no effect of his imprisonment and betrayed no sign of fear. norvin told his story simply, clearly, with a positiveness which could not fail to impress the jury; he withstood a grilling cross-examination at the hands of a criminal lawyer whose reputation was more than state-wide; and when he finally descended from the stand, larubio, the cobbler, the senior cressi, and frank normando stood within the shadow of the gallows. normando he identified as the man in the rubber coat whose face he had clearly seen as the final shot was fired; he pointed out gino cressi as the picket who had given warning of the chief's approach, then told of his share in the lad's arrest and what gino had said. concerning the other three who had helped in the shooting he had no conclusive evidence to offer; nevertheless, it was plain that his testimony had dealt a damaging blow to the defense. yet maruffi's glance showed no concern, but rather a veiled and mocking insolence. as blake passed out, young cressi reached forth a timid hand and plucked at him, whispering: "signore, you said they would not hurt me." "don't be afraid. no one shall harm you," he told the boy, reassuringly. "you promise?" "yes." cressi snatched his son to his side and scowled upward, breathing a malediction upon the american. inasmuch as the assassination had been carefully planned and executed at a late hour on a deserted street, it was popularly believed that very little direct testimony would be brought out, and that a conviction, therefore, would rest mainly upon circumstantial evidence; but as the trial progressed the case against the prisoners developed unexpected strength. had donnelly fallen at the first volley, his assailants would, in all probability, never have been identified, but he had stood and returned their fire for a considerable time, thus allowing opportunity for those living near by to reach their windows or to run into the street in time to catch at least a glimpse of the tragedy. few saw more than a little, no one could identify all six of the assailants; but so thoroughly had the prosecution worked, so cunningly had it put these pieces together, that the whole scene was reproduced in the court-room. the murderers were singled out one by one and identified beyond a reasonable doubt. one witness had passed larubio's shop a few minutes before the shooting and had recognized the cobbler and his brother-in-law, gaspardo cressi. he also pointed out normando and paul rafiro, both of whom he knew by sight. from an upper window of a house near by another man who had been awakened by the noise saw normando and celso fabbri in the act of firing. a woman living opposite the cobbler's house peered out into the smoke and flare in time to see adriano dora kneeling in the middle of the street. he was facing her; the light was fairly good; there could be no mistake. various residents of the neighborhood had similar tales to tell, for, while no one had seen the beginning of the fight, a dozen pairs of eyes had looked out upon the finish, and many of these had recorded a definite picture of one or more of the actors. a gentleman returning from a lodge-meeting had even found himself on the edge of the battle, and had been so frightened that he ran straight home. he had learned, later, the significance of the fray, and had told nobody about his experience until norvin blake had traced him out and wrung the story from him. he feared the mafia with the fear of death; but descending from the stand he pointed out four of the assassins--normando, fabbri, rafiro, and dora. he had seen them in the very act of firing. a watchman on duty near by saw the boy gino running past a moment before the shooting began; then, as he hurried toward the disturbance, he met normando, dora, and rafiro coming toward him. the first of these carried a shotgun, which dropped into the gutter as he slipped and fell. the weapon and the suit of clothes normando had worn were produced and identified. it transpired that this witness knew paul rafiro well, and for that reason had refused to tell what he knew until norvin blake had come to him and forced the words from his lips. so it ran; the chain of evidence grew heavier with every hour. it seemed that some superhuman agency must have set the stage for the tragedy, posting witnesses at advantageous points. people marveled how so many eyes had gazed through the empty, rainy night; it was as if a mysterious hand had reached out of nowhere and brought together the onlookers, one by one, willing and unwilling, friend and enemy alike. a more conclusive case than the state advanced against the six hired murderers during the first few days would be hard to conceive, and the public began to look for equally conclusive proof against the master ruffian and his lieutenants; but through it all maruffi sat unperturbed, guiding the counsel with a word or a suggestion, in his bearing a calm self-assurance. then came a surprise which roused the whole city. from out of the parish prison appeared another italian, a counterfeiter, who had recently been arrested, and who proved to be a pinkerton detective "planted" among the mafiosi for a purpose. larubio had been a counterfeiter in sicily--it was in the government prison that he had learned his cobbler's trade; and out of the fullness of his heart he had talked--so the detective swore--concerning these foolish americans who sought to stay the hand of la mafia. nor had he been the only one to commit himself. di marco, garcia, and the other two lieutenants turned livid as the stool-pigeon confronted them with their own words. on the heels of this came the crowning dramatic moment of the trial. normando broke down and tried to confess in open court. he was a dull, ignorant man, with a bestial face and a coward's eye. this unexpected treachery, his own complete identification, had put an intolerable strain upon him. without warning, he rose to his feet in the crowded court-room and cried loudly in his own tongue: "madonna mia! i do not want to die! i confess! i confess!" norvin blake, who had been watching the proceedings from the audience, leaped from his seat as if electrified; other spectators followed, for even among those who could not understand the fellow's words it was seen that he was breaking. normando's ghastly pallor, his wet and twitching lips, his shaking hands, all told the story. confusion followed. amid the hubbub of startled voices, the stir of feet, the interruption of counsel, the wretch ran on, repeating his fear of death and his desire to confess, meanwhile beating his breast in hysterical frenzy. of all the americans present perhaps norvin alone understood exactly what the sicilian was saying and why consternation had fallen upon the other prisoners. larubio went white; a blind and savage fury leaped into maruffi's face; the other nine wilted or stiffened according to the effect fear had upon them. a death-like hush succeeded the first outbreak, and through normando's gabble came the judge's voice calling for an interpreter. there was no need for the crier to demand silence; every ear was strained for the disclosures that seemed imminent. blake was forcing himself forward to offer his services when the wretch's wavering eyes caught something in the audience and rested there. the death sign of the brotherhood was flashed at him; he halted. his tongue ran thickly for a moment; then he sank into his chair, and, burying his head in his hands, began to rock from side to side, sobbing and muttering. nor would he say more, even when a recess was declared and he was taken into the judge's chambers. thereafter he maintained a sullen, hopeless silence which nothing could break, glaring at his captors with the defiance of a beast at bay. but the episode had had its effect; it seemed that no one could now doubt the guilt of the prisoners. the assurance of conviction grew as it was proven that maruffi himself had rented larubio's shop and laid the trap for donnelly's destruction. step by step the plot was bared in all its hideous detail. the blood money was traced from the six hirelings up through the four superiors to caesar himself. then followed the effort to show a motive for the crime--not a difficult task, since every one knew of donnelly's work against the mafia. maruffi's domination of the society was harder to bring out; but when the state finally rested its case, even blake, who had been dubious from the start, confessed that american law and american courts had demonstrated their efficiency. during all this time his relations with vittoria remained unchanged. she and oliveta eagerly welcomed his reports of the trial; but she never permitted him to see her alone, and he felt that she was deliberately withdrawing from him. he met her only for brief interviews. of myra nell, meanwhile, he saw nothing, since, with characteristic abruptness, she had decided to visit some forgotten cousins in mobile. of all those who followed the famous mafia trial, detail by detail, perhaps no one did so with greater fixity of interest than bernie dreux. he reveled in it, he talked of nothing else, his waking hours were spent in the courtroom, his dreams were peopled with sicilian figures. he hung upon norvin, his hero, with a tenacity that was trying; he discussed the evidence bit by bit; he ran to him with every rumor, every fresh development. as the prosecution made its case his triumph became fierce and fearful to behold; then when the defense began its crafty efforts he grew furiously indignant, a mighty rage shook him, he swelled and choked with resentment. "what do you think?" he inquired, one day. "they're proving alibis, one by one! it's infamous!" "it will take considerable sicilian testimony to offset the effect of our witnesses," blake told him. but dreux looked upon the efforts of the opposing lawyers as a personal affront, and so declared himself. "why, they're trying to make you out a liar! that's what it amounts to. the law never intended that a gentleman's word should be disputed. if i were the judge i'd close the case right now and instruct the sheriff to hang all the prisoners, including their attorneys." "they'll never be acquitted." bernie shook his head morosely. "there's a rumor of jury-fixing. i hear one of the talesmen was approached with a bribe before the trial." "i can scarcely believe that." "i'll bet it's true just the same. if i'd known what they were up to i'd have got on the jury myself. i'd have taken their money, then i'd have fixed 'em!" "you'd have voted for eleven hemp neckties, eh?" "i'd have hung each man twice." although blake at first refused to credit the rumors of corruption, the following days served to verify them, for more than one juryman confessed to receiving offers. this caused a sensation which grew as the papers took up the matter and commented editorially. a leading witness for the state finally told of an effort to intimidate him, and men began to ask if this was destined to prove as rotten as other mafia cases in the past. a feeling of unrest, of impatience, began to manifest itself, vague threats were voiced, but the idea of a bribed or terrorized jury was so preposterous that few gave credence to it. nevertheless, the closing days of the trial were weighted heavily with suspense. not only the city, but the country at large, hung upon the outcome. so strongly had racial antipathy figured that italy took note of the case, and it assumed an international importance. biased accounts were cabled abroad which led to an uneasy stir in ministerial and consular quarters. during the exhaustive arguments at the close of the trial norvin and bernie sat together. when the opening attorneys for the prosecution had finished, dreux exclaimed, triumphantly: "we've got 'em! they can't escape after that." but when the defense in turn had closed, the little man revealed an indignant face to his companion, saying: "lord! they're as good as free! we'll never convict on evidence like that." once more he changed, under the spell of the masterly state's attorney, and declared with fierce exultance: "what did i tell you? they'll hang every mother's son of 'em. the jury won't be out an hour." the jury was out more than an hour, even though press and public declared the case to be clear. yet, knowing that the eyes of the world were upon her, new orleans went to sleep that night serene in the certainty that she had vindicated herself, had upheld her laws, and proved her ability to deal with that organized lawlessness which had so long been a blot upon her fair name. soon after court convened on the following morning the jury sent word that they had reached a verdict, and the court-room quickly filled. rumors of caesar maruffi's double identity had gone forth; it was hinted that he was none other than the dreaded belisario cardi, that genius of a thousand crimes who had held all sicily in fear. this report supplied the last touch of dramatic interest. blake and bernie were in their places before the prisoners arrived. every face in the room was tense and expectant; even the calloused attendants felt the hush and lowered their voices in deference. every eye was strained toward the door behind which the jury was concealed. there came the rumble of the prison van below, the tramp of feet upon the hollow stairs, and into the dingy, high-ceilinged hall of justice filed the accused, manacled and doubly guarded. maruffi led, his black head held high; normando brought up the rear, supported by two officers. he was racked with terror, his body hung like a sack, a moisture of foam and spittle lay upon his lips. when he reached the railing of the prisoners' box he clutched it and resisted loosely, sobbing in his throat; but he was thrust forward into a seat, where he collapsed. the judge and the attorneys were in their places when a deputy sheriff swung open the door to the jury-room and the "twelve good men and true" appeared. as if through the silence of a tomb they went to their stations while eleven pairs of black sicilian eyes searched their downcast features for a sign. larubio, the cobbler, was paper-white above his smoky beard; di marco's swarthy face was green, like that of a corpse; his companions were frozen in various attitudes of eager, dreadful waiting. the only sound through the scuff and tramp of the jurors' feet was normando's lunatic murmuring. as for the leader of the band, he sat as if graven in stone; but, despite his iron control, a pallor had crept up beneath his skin. blake heard bernie whisper: "look! they know they're lost." "gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?" came the voice of the judge. the foreman rose. "we have." he passed a document up to the bench, and silently the court examined it. the seconds were now creeping minutes. normando's ceaseless mumbling was like that of a man distraught by torture. a hand was used to silence him. the spectators were upon their feet and bent forward in attention; the cordon of officers closed in behind the accused as if to throttle any act of desperation. the judge passed the verdict down to the minute clerk, who read in a clear, distinct, monotonous tone: "celso fabbri, frank normando, mistrial. salvatore di marco, frank garcia, giordano bolla"--the list of names seemed interminable--"gaspardo cressi, lorenzo cardoni, caesar maruffi"--he paused for an instant while time halted--"not guilty." after the first moment of stunned stupefaction a murmur of angry disapproval ran through the crowd; it was not loud, but hushed, as if men doubted their senses and were seeking corroboration of their ears. from the street below, as the judgment was flashed to the waiting hundreds, came an echo, faint, unformed, like the first vague stir that runs ahead of a tempest. the shock of norvin blake's amazement in part blurred his memory of that dramatic tableau, but certain details stood out clearly afterwards. for one thing he heard bernie dreux giggling like an overwrought woman, while through his hysteria ran a stream of shocking curses he saw one of the jurors rise, yawn, and stretch himself, then rub his bullet head, smiling meanwhile at the cressi boy. he saw caesar maruffi turn full to the room behind him and search for his own face. when their eyes met, a light of devilish amusement lit the sicilian's visage; his lips parted and his white teeth gleamed, but it was no smile, rather the nervous, rippling twitch that bares a wolf's fangs. his color had come flooding back, too; victory suffused him with a ruddy, purple congestion, almost apoplectic. then heads came between them; friends of the prisoners crowded forward with noisy congratulations and outstretched palms; the rival attorneys were shaking hands. blake found himself borne along by the eddying stream which set out of the court-room and down into the sunlit street, where the curbs were lined with uplifted faces. dreux was close beside him, quite silent now. a similar silence brooded over the whole procession which emerged from the building like a funeral cortege. when the moments brought home the truth to its members they felt, indeed, as if they came from a house of death, for they had seen justice murdered, and the chill was in their hearts. but there was something sinister in the hush which gagged that multitude. many readers will doubtless recall, even now, the shock that went through this country at the conclusion of the famous new orleans mafia trial of twenty years ago. they will, perhaps, remember a general feeling of surprise that an american jury would dare, in the face of such popular feeling and such apparently overwhelming evidence, to render a verdict of "not guilty." in some quarters the farcical outcome of the trial was blamed upon louisiana's peculiar legal code. but the truth is our northern cities had not at that time felt the power of organized crime. new york, for instance, had not been shaken by an interminable succession of dynamite outrages nor terrorized by bands of latin-born apaches who live by violence and blackmail; therefore, the tremendous difficulty of securing convictions was not appreciated as it is to-day. there was a universal suspicion that the last word concerning the new orleans affair had not been written, so what followed was not entirely a surprise. xxiv at the feet of the statue two hours after the verdict there was a meeting of the committee of justice, and that night the evening papers carried the following notice: "mass-meeting" "all good citizens are invited to attend a mass-meeting to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock at clay statue, to take steps to remedy the failure of justice in the donnelly case. come prepared for action." it was signed by the fifty well-known men who had been appointed to represent the people. that incredible verdict had caused a great excitement; but this bold and threatening appeal brought the city up standing. it caused men who had been loudly cursing the jury to halt and measure the true depth of their indignation. there was no other topic of conversation that night; and when the same call appeared in the morning papers, together with a ringing column headed, "awake! arise!" it stirred a swift and mighty public sentiment. never, perhaps, in any public press had so sanguinary an appeal been issued. "citizens of new orleans," it read in part, "when murder overrides law and justice, when juries are bribed and suborners go unwhipped, it is time to resort to your own indefeasible right of self-preservation. alien bands of oath-bound assassins have set the blot of a martyr's blood upon your civilization. your laws, in the very temple of justice, have been bought, suborners have loosed upon your streets the midnight murderers of an officer in whose grave lies the majesty of american law. "rise in your might, people of new orleans! rise!" a similar note was struck by editorials, many of them couched in language even stronger and more suited to fan the public rage. the recent trial was called an outrageous travesty on justice; attention was directed to the damnable vagaries of recent juries which had been impaneled to try red-handed italian murderers. "our city is become the haven of blackmailers and assassins, the safe vantage-ground for sicilian stilletto bands who slay our legal officers, who buy jurors, and corrupt sworn witnesses under the hooded eyes of justice. how much longer will this outrage be permitted?" so read a heavily typed article in the leading journal. a wave of fierce determination ran through the whole community. margherita ginini was waiting at blake's place of business when he arrived, after a night of sleepless worry. she, too, showed evidence of a painful vigil; her hand was shaking as she held out a copy of the morning paper, inquiring: "what is the meaning of this?" "it means we're no longer in sicily," he said. "you intend to--kill those men?" "i fear something like that may occur. the question will be put up to the people, plainly." she clutched the edge of his desk, staring at him with wide, tragic eyes. "your name heads the list. did--you do this?" "i am the chairman of that committee. i did my part." "but the law declares them innocent," she gasped--"all but two, and they can be tried over again." "the law!" he smiled bitterly. "do you believe that?" "i believe they are guilty--who can doubt it? but this lawlessness--this mad cry for revenge--it is against all my beliefs, my religion. oh, my friend, can't you stop it? at least take no part in it--for my sake." his look was hard, yet regretful, "for your sake i would give my life gladly," he said, "but there are times when one must act his destined part. that verdict holds me up to the public as a perjurer; but that is a small matter. oh, i have had my scruples; i have questioned my conscience, and deep in my heart i see that there is only one way. i'd be a hypocrite if i denied it. i'm wrong, perhaps, but i can't be untrue to myself." "we know but a part of the truth," she urged, desperately. "god alone knows it all. you saw three men--there are others whom you did not see." "they were seen by other eyes quite as trustworthy as mine." she wrung her hands miserably, crying: "but wait! guilty or innocent, they have appeared in judgment, and the law has acquitted them. you urge upon the people now a crime greater than theirs. two wrongs do not make a right. who are you to raise yourself above that power which is supreme?" "there's a law higher than the courts." "yes, one; the law of god. if our means have failed, leave their punishment to him." he shook his head, no trace of yielding in his eyes. "one man was killed, and yet you contemplate the death of eleven!" "listen," he cried, "this cause belongs to the people who have seen their sacred institutions debauched. if i had the power to sway the citizens of new orleans from the course which i believe they contemplate, i doubt that i could bring myself to exercise it, for it is plain that the mafia must be exterminated. the good of the city, the safety of all of us, demands it." he regarded her curiously. "do you realize what maruffi's freedom would mean to you and oliveta?" "we are in god's hands." "it would require a miracle to save you. caesar would have my life, too; he told me as much with his eyes when that corrupted jury lifted the fear of death from his heart." "so!" cried the girl. "you fear him, therefore you take this means of destroying him! you goad the public and your friends into a red rage and send them to murder your enemy." her hysteria was not proof against the look which leaped into his eyes--the pallor that left him facing her with the visage of a sick man. "during the last five years," he said, slowly, "i've often tried to be a man, but never until last night have i succeeded fully. when i signed that call to arms i felt that i was writing maruffi's death-warrant. i hesitated for a time, then i put aside all thoughts of myself, and now i'm prepared to meet this accusation. i knew it would come. the world--my world--knows that maruffi's life or mine hinges on his liberty; if he dies by the mob to-day, that world will call me coward for my act; it will say that i roused the passions of the populace to save myself. nevertheless, i was chosen leader of that committee, and i did their will--as i shall do the will of the people." "the will of the people! you know very well that the people have no will. they do what their leaders tell them." "my name is written. i am sorry that i cannot do as you wish." "but surely you do not deceive yourself," she insisted. "this is wrong, oh, so inconceivably, so terribly wrong! you do not possess the divine power to bestow life. how then can you dare to take it? by what possible authority do you decree the destruction of your fellow-men whom the law has adjudged innocent?" "by the sovereign authority of the public good. by the inherited right of self-protection." "you would shoot them down, like caged animals?" "those eleven individuals have ceased to exist as men. they represent an infection, a diseased spot which must be cut out. they stand for disorder and violence; to free them would be a crime, to give them arms to defend themselves would be merely to increase their evil." "there is a child among them, too; would you have his death upon your conscience?" "i told gino he should come to no harm, and, god willing, he sha'n't." "how can you hope to stem the rage of a thousand madmen? a mob will stop at no half measures. there are two men among the prisoners who are entitled to another trial. do you think the people will spare them if they take the others?" he shrugged his shoulders doubtfully, and she shuddered. "you shall not have the death of those defenseless men upon your soul!" she cried. "your hands at least shall remain clean." "please don't urge me," he said. "but i do. i ask you to take no part in this barbarous uprising." "and i must refuse you." she looked at him wildly; her face was ashen as she continued: "you have said that you love me. can't you make this sacrifice for me? can't you make this concession to my fears, my conscience, my beliefs? i am only a woman, and i cannot face this grim and awful thing. i cannot think of your part in it." the look she gave him went to his heart. "margherita!" he cried, in torture; "don't you see i have no choice? i couldn't yield, even if the price were--you and your love. you wouldn't rob me of my manhood?" "i could never touch hands which were stained with the blood of defenseless men--not even in friendship, you--understand?" "i understand!" for a second time the color left his face. her glance wavered again, she swayed, then groped for the door, while he stood like stone in his tracks. "good-by!" he said, lifelessly. "good-by!" she answered, in the same tone. "i have done my part. you are a man, and you must do yours as you see it. but may god save you from bloodshed." long before the hour set for the gathering at clay statue the streets in that vicinity began to fill. men continued on past their places of business; shops and offices remained closed; the wide strip of neutral ground which divided the two sides of the city's leading thoroughfare began to pack. around the base of the monument groups of citizens congregated until the cars were forced to slow down and proceed with a clangor of gongs which served only as a tocsin to draw more recruits. vehicles came to a halt, were wedged dose to the curbs, and became coigns of vantage; office windows, store-fronts, balconies, and roof-tops began to cluster with a human freight. after a week of wind and rain the sun had risen in a sky that was cloudless, save for a few thin streaks of shining silver which resembled long polished rapiers or the gleaming spear-points of a host still hidden below the horizon. the fragrance of shrubs and flowers, long dormant, weighted the breeze. it was a glorious morning, fit for love and laughter and little children. nor did the rapidly swelling assemblage resemble in any measure a mob bent upon violence. it was composed mainly of law-abiding business men who greeted each other genially; in their grave, intelligent faces was no hint of savagery or brutality. all traffic finally ceased, the entire neighborhood was massed and clotted with waiting humanity; then, as the hour struck, a running salvo of applause came from the galleries and a cheer from the street when a handful of men was seen crowding its way up to the base of the statue. it was composed of a half-dozen prominent men who had been identified with the committee of justice; among them was norvin blake. a hush followed as one of them mounted the pedestal and began to speak. he was recognized as judge blackmar, a wealthy lawyer, and his well-trained voice filled the wide spaces from wall to wall; it went out over the sea of heads and up to the crowded roof-tops. he told of the reasons which had inspired this indignation meeting; he recounted the history of the mafia in new orleans, and recalled its many outrages culminating in the assassination of chief donnelly. "affairs have reached such a crisis," said he, "that we who live in an organized and civilized community find our laws ineffective and are forced to protect ourselves as best we may. when courts fail, the people must act. what protection is left us, when our highest police official is slain in our very midst by the mafia and his assassins turned loose upon us? this is not the first case of wilful murder and supine justice; our court records are full of similar ones. the time has come to say whether we shall tolerate these outrages further or whether we shall set aside the verdict of an infamous and perjured jury and cleanse our city of the ghouls which prey upon it. i ask you to consider this question fairly. you have been assembled, not behind closed doors, nor under the cloak of darkness, but in the heart of the city, in the broad light of day, to take such action as honest men must take to save their homes against a public enemy. what is your answer?" a roar broke from all sides; an incoherent, wordless growling rumbled down the street. those on the outskirts of the assemblage who had come merely from curiosity, or in doubt that anything would be accomplished, began to press closer. a restless murmur, broken by the cries of excitable men, arose when the second speaker took his place. then as he spoke the temper of the people began to manifest itself undeniably. the crowd swayed and cheered; certain demands were voiced insistently; a wave of intense excitement swept it as it heard its desires so boldly proclaimed. as the heaving sea is lashed to fury by the wind, the people's rage mounted higher with every sentence of the orator; every pause was greeted with howls. men stared into the faces around them, and, seeing their own emotions mirrored, they were swept by an ever-increasing agitation. there was a general impulse to advance at once upon the parish prison, and knots of stragglers were already making in that direction, while down from the telegraph-poles, from roofs and shed-tops men were descending. all that seemed lacking for a concerted movement was a leader, a bold figure, a ringing voice to set this army in motion. blake had been selected to make the third address and to put the issue squarely up to the people; but, as he wedged his way forward to enact his role, up to the feet of the statue squirmed and wriggled a figure which assumed the place just vacated by the second speaker. it was bernie dreux, but a different bernie from the man his amazed friends in the crowd thought they knew. he was pale, and his limbs shook under him, but his eyes blazed with a fire which brought a hush of attention to all within sight of him. up there against the heroic figure of henry clay he looked more diminutive, more insignificant than ever; but oddly enough he had attained a sudden dignity which made him seem intensely masterful and alive. for a moment he paused, erect and motionless, surveying that restless multitude which rocked and rumbled for the distance of a full city square in both directions; then he began. his voice, though high-pitched from emotion, was as clear and ringing as a trumpet; it pierced to the farthest limits of the giant audience and stirred it like a battle signal. the blood of his forefathers had awakened at last; and old general dreux, the man of iron and fire and passion, was speaking through his son. "people of new orleans," he cried, "i desire neither fame nor name nor glory; i am here not as one of the committee of public safety, but as a plain citizen. let me therefore speak for you; let mine be the lips which give your answer. fifty of our trusted townsmen were appointed to assist in bringing the murderers of chief donnelly to justice. they told us to wait upon the law. we waited, and the law failed. our court and our jury were debauched; our committee comes back to us now, the source from which it took its power, and acknowledges that it can do no more. it lays the matter in our hands and asks for our decision. let me deliver the message: justice must be done! dan donnelly must be avenged to-day!" the clamor which had greeted the words of the previous speakers was as nothing to the titanic bellow which burst forth acclaiming dreux's. "this is the hour for action, not for talk," he continued, when he had stilled them. "the anglo-saxon is slow to anger, and because of that the mafia has thrived among us; but once he is aroused, once his rights are invaded and his laws assailed, his rage is a thing to reckon with. our committee asks us if we are ready to take justice into our own hands, and i answer, yes!" a chaos of waving arms and of high-flung hats, a deafening crash of voices again answered. "then our speakers shall lead us. judge blackmar shall be the first in command; mr. slade, who spoke after him, shall be second, and i shall be the third in authority. arm yourselves quickly, gentlemen, and may god have mercy upon the souls of those eleven murderers." he leaped lightly down, and the great assemblage burst into motion, streaming out canal street like a storming army. it boiled into side streets and through every avenue which led in the direction of the prison. at each corner it gathered strength; every thoroughfare belched forth reinforcements; hundreds who had entertained no faintest notion of taking part fell in, were swallowed up in the seething tide, and went shouting to the very gates of the jail. once that tossing river of humanity had been given force and direction its character changed; it became a mailed dragon, it suddenly blossomed with steel. peaceful, middle-aged men who had stood beside the monument buttoned up in peculiarly bulky overcoats were now marching silently with weapons at their shoulders. strangest of all, perhaps, was the greeting this army received on every side. the flotsam and jetsam which swirled along in its eddies or followed in its wake cheered, howled, and danced deliriously; men, women, and children from doorways and galleries raised their voices lustily, and applauded as if at some favorite carnival parade. in notable contrast was the bearing of the armed men themselves; they marched through the echoing streets like a regiment of mutes. xxv the appeal on the iron balcony of a house in the vicinity of the parish prison the two sicilian girls were standing. across from them loomed the great decaying structure with its little iron-barred windows and its steel-ribbed doors behind which lay their countrymen. from inside came the echo of a great hammering, as if a gallows were being erected; but the square and the streets outside were quiet. "what time is it now?" oliveta had repeated this question already a dozen times. "it is after ten." "i hear nothing as yet, do you?" "nothing!" "we could hear if it were not for that dreadful pounding yonder in the jail." "hush! they are building barricades." the peasant girl gasped and seized the iron railing in front of her. "madonna mia! i am dying. do you think signore blake will yield to your appeal and turn the mob?" "i'm afraid not," said vittoria, faintly. "he can do more than any other, for he is powerful; they will listen to him. if caesar should escape! i am shamed through and through to have loved such a man, and yet to have him killed like a rat in a hole! i pray, and i know not what i pray for--my thoughts are whirling so. do you hear anything from the city?" "no, no!" there was a moment's pause. "those barricades will not allow them to enter, even if our friend does not persuade them to disperse." "i have heard there is sometimes shooting." vittoria shuddered. "it is terrible for men to become brutes." "the time is growing late," oliveta quavered. there was another period of silence while they strained their ears for the faintest sound, but the fresh breeze wafted nothing to them. on a neighboring gallery two housewives were gossiping; a child was playing on the walk beneath, and his piping laughter sounded strangely incongruous. from across the way rose that desultory pounding as spikes were driven home and beams were nailed in place. through a grated aperture in the prison wall an armed man peered down the street. "caesar is cunning," oliveta broke out. "he is not one to be easily caught. he is brave, too. ah, god! how i loved him and how i have hated him!" ever since maruffi's capture she had remained in a frame of mind scarcely rational, fluctuating between a silent, sullen mood of revenge and a sense of horror at her betrayal of the man who had once possessed her whole heart. "it can't be that you still care for him?" "no, i loathe him, and if he escapes he would surely kill me. yet sometimes i wish it." she began mumbling to herself. "look!" she cried, suddenly. "what is this?" a public hack came swinging into view, its horses at a gallop. it drew up before the main gate of the prison, a man leaped forth and began pounding for admittance. some one spoke to him through a grating. "what does he say?" queried the peasant girl. "i cannot hear. perhaps he comes to say there is no--mother of god! listen!" from somewhere toward the heart of the city came a faint murmur. "it is the rumble of a wagon on the next street," gasped oliveta. the sound died away. the girls stood frozen at attention with their senses strained. then it rose again, louder. soon there was no mistaking it. a whisper came upon the breeze, it mounted into a long-drawn humming, which in turn grew to a steady drone of voices broken by waves of cheering. it gathered volume rapidly, and straggling figures came running into view, followed by knots and groups of fleet-footed youths. the driver of the carriage rose on his box, looked over his shoulder, then whipped his horses into a gallop and fled. as he did so a slowly moving wagon laden with timbers turned in from a side street. it was driven by a somnolent negro, who finally halted his team and stared in dull lack of comprehension at what he saw approaching. by now the street beneath the girls was half filled with people; it echoed to a babble of voices, to the shuffle and tread of a coming multitude, and an instant later out of every thoroughfare which fronted upon the grim old prison structure streamed the people of new orleans. "see! they are unarmed!" oliveta's fingers sank into her sister's wrist. then through the press came a body of silent men, four abreast and shoulder to shoulder. the crowd opened to let them through, cheering frenziedly. they wore an air of sober responsibility; they carried guns, and looked to neither right nor left. directly beneath the waiting women they passed, and at their head marched norvin blake and bernie dreux together with two men unknown to the girls. vittoria leaned forward horror-stricken, and although she tried to call she did not hear her voice above the confusion; oliveta clutched her, murmuring distractedly. the avenues were jammed from curb to curb; telegraph-poles, lamp-posts, trees held a burden of human forms; windows and house-tops were filling in every direction; a continuous roar beat thunderously against the prison walls. the army of vigilantes drew up before the main gate, and a man smote it with the butt of his shotgun, demanding entrance. the crowd, anticipating a volley from within, surged back, leaving them isolated. a dozen bluecoats struggled to clear the sidewalks next the structure, but they might as well have tried to stem a rising tide with their naked hands; they were buffeted briefly, then swallowed up. in answer to a command, the armed men scattered, surrounding the building with a cordon of steel; then the main body renewed its assault. but the oaken barrier, stoutly reinforced, withstood them gallantly, and a brief colloquy occurred, after which they made their way to a small side door which directly faced the two women across the street. this was not so heavily constructed as the front gate and promised an easier entrance; but it was likewise locked and barred. then some one spied the wagon and its load of timbers, now hopelessly wedged into the press, and a rush was made toward it. a beam was raised upon willing shoulders, and with this as a battering-ram a breach was begun. every crash was the signal for a shout from the multitude, and when the door finally gave way a triumphant roar arose. the armed men swarmed into the opening and disappeared one by one, all but two who stood with backs to the door and faced the crowd warningly. it was evident that some sort of order prevailed among them, and that this was more than an unorganized assault. through the close-packed ranks, on and on around the massive pile, ran the word that the vigilantes were within; it was telegraphed from house-top to house-top. then a silence descended, the more sinister and ominous because of the pandemonium which had preceded it. thus far vittoria and her companion had seen and heard all that occurred, for their position commanded a view of both fronts of the building; but now they had only their ears to guide them. "come, let us leave now! we have seen enough." vittoria cried, and strove to drag oliveta from her post. but the girl would not yield, she did not seem to hear, her eyes were fixed with strained and fascinated horror upon that shattered aperture which showed like a gaping wound. her bloodless lips were whispering; her fingers, where they gripped the iron railing, were like claws. "quickly! quickly!" moaned vittoria. "we did not come to see this monstrous thing. oliveta, spare yourself!" in the silence her voice sounded so loudly and shrilly that people on the adjoining balcony turned curious, uncomprehending faces toward her. moment after moment that hush continued, then from within came a renewed hammering, hollow, measured; above it sounded the faint cries of terrified prisoners. this died away after a time, and some one said: "they're into the corridors at last. it won't be long now." a moment later a dull, unmistakable reverberation rolled forth like the smothered sound of a subterranean explosion; it was followed by another and another--gunshots fired within brick walls and flag-paved courtyards. it shattered that sickening, unending suspense which caused the pulse to flutter and the breath to lag; the crowd gave tongue in a howl of hoarse delight. then followed a peculiar shrilling chorus--that familiar signal known as the "dago whistle"--which was like the piercing cry of lost souls. "who killa da chief?" screamed the hoodlums, then puckered their lips and piped again that mocking signal. as the booming of the guns continued, now singly, now in volley, the maddened populace squeezed toward that narrow entrance through which the avengers had disappeared; but they were halted by the guards and forced to content themselves by greeting every shot with an exultant cry. the streets in all directions were tossing and billowing like the waves of the sea; men capered and flung their arms aloft, shrieking; women and children waved their aprons and kerchiefs, sobbing and spent with excitement. it was a wild and grotesque scene, unspeakably terrible, inhumanly ferocious. through it the two sicilian girls clung to each other, fainting, revolted, fascinated. when they could summon strength they descended to the street and fought their way out of the bedlam. norvin blake was not a willing participant in the lynching, although he had gone to the meeting at clay statue determined to do what he considered his duty. he had felt no doubt as to the outcome of the mass-meeting even before he saw its giant proportions, and even before it had sounded its approval of the first speaker's words, for he knew how deeply his townspeople were stirred by the astounding miscarriage of justice. at the rally of the committee on the afternoon previous it had been urged to proceed with the execution at once, and the counsel of the more conservative had barely prevailed. blake knew perhaps better than his companions to what lengths the rage of a mob will go, and he confessed to a secret fear of the result. therefore, although he marched in the vanguard of the storming party, it was more to exercise a restraining influence and to prevent violence against unoffending foreigners, than to take part in the demonstration. as for the actual shedding of blood, his instinct revolted from it, while his reason recognized its necessity and defended it. bernie dreux's amazing assumption of dictatorship had relieved him of the duty of heading the mob, a thing for which he was profoundly grateful. when the main body of vigilantes had armed itself, he fell in beside his friend with some notion of helping and protecting him. but the little man proved amply equal to the occasion. he was unwaveringly grim and determined it was he who faced the oaken gate and demanded entrance in the name of the people; it was he who suggested the use of the battering-ram; and it was he who first fought his way through the breach, at the risk of bullets from within. blake followed to find him with his fowling-piece at the head of the prison captain, and demanding the keys to the cells. the posse had gained a partial entrance, but another iron-ribbed door withheld them from the body of the prison, and there followed a delay while this was broken down. meanwhile, from within came the sound of turning locks and of clanging steel doors, also a shuffling of many feet and cries of mortal terror, which told that the prisoners had been freed to shift for themselves in this extremity. in truth, a scene was being enacted within more terrible than that outside, for as the deputies released the prisoners, commanding them to save themselves if they could, a frightful confusion ensued. not only did the eleven sicilians cry to god, but the other inmates of the place who feared their crimes had overtaken them joined in the appeal. men and women, negroes and whites, felons and minor evil-doers, rushed to and fro along the galleries and passageways, fighting with one another, tearing one another from places of refuge, seeking new and securer points of safety. they huddled in dark corners; they crept under beds, beneath stairways, and into barrels. they burrowed into rubbish piles only to be dragged out by the hair or the heels and to see their jealous companions seize upon these sanctuaries. terror is swiftly contagious; the whole place became a seething pit of dismay. some knelt and prayed, while others trampled upon them; they rose from their knees to beat with bleeding fists upon barred doors and blind partitions; but as their fear of death increased and the chorus of their despair mounted higher there came another pounding, nearer, louder--the sound of splitting wood and of rending metal. to escape was impossible; to remain was madness; of hiding-places there was a fearful scarcity. the regulators came rushing into the prison proper, with footsteps echoing loudly through the barren corridors. out into the open court they swarmed, then up the iron stairways to the galleries that ringed it about, peering into cells as they went, ousting the wretched inmates from remotest corners. but the chamber in which they knew their quarry had been housed was empty, so they paused undecided, while from all sides came the smothered sounds of terror like the mewling and squeaking of mice hidden in a wall. suddenly some one shouted, "there they are!" and pointed to the topmost gallery, which ran in front of the condemned cells. a rush began, but at the top of the winding stairs another grating barred the way. through this, however, could be seen salvatore di marco, giordano bolla, and the elder cressi. the three sicilians had fled to this last stronghold, slammed the steel door behind them, and now crouched in the shelter of a brick column. some one hammered at the lock, and the terrified prisoners started to their feet with an agonized appeal for mercy. as they exposed themselves to view a man fired through the bars. his aim was true; di marco flung his arms aloft and pitched forward on his face. crazed by this, his two companions rushed madly back and forth; but they were securely penned in, and appeal was futile. another shot boomed deafeningly in the close confines of the place, and cressi plunged to his death; then bolla followed, his bloody hands gripping the bars, his face upturned in a hideous grimace, and his eyes, which stared through at his slayers, glazing slowly. down the ringing stairs marched the grim-featured men who had set themselves this task, and among them bernie dreux strode, issuing orders. the weapon in his hand was hot, his shoulder was bruised, for he had long been unaccustomed to the use of firearms. then began a systematic search of the men's department of the prison; but no new victims were discovered, only the ordinary prisoners who were well-nigh speechless with fright. "where are the others?" went up the cry, and some one answered: "on the women's side." the band passed through to the adjoining portion of the double building, and, keys having been secured, the rapidity of their search increased. into the twin courtyard they filed; then while some investigated the cookhouse others climbed to the topmost tier of cells. as the quest narrowed, six of the sicilians, who had lain concealed in a compartment on the first floor, broke out in a desperate endeavor to escape, but they were caught between the opposing ranks, as in the jaws of a trap. the cell door clanged to behind them; they found themselves at bay in the open yard. resistance was useless; they sank to their knees and set up a cry for mercy. they shrieked, they sobbed, they groveled; but their enemies were open to no appeal, untouched by any sense of compunction. they were men wholly dominated by a single fixed idea, as merciless as machines. there followed a nightmare scene; a horrid, bellowing uproar of voices and detonations, of groans and prayers and curses. the armed men emptied their weapons blindly into that writhing tangle of forms, and as one finished he stepped back while another took his place. the prison rocked with the din of it; the wretches were shot to pieces, riddled, by that horizontal hail which mowed and mangled like an invisible scythe. now a figure struggled to its feet only to become the target for a fusillade; again one twisted in his agony only to be filled with missiles fired from so short a range that his garments were torn to rags. the pavement became wet and slippery; in one brief moment that section of the yard became a shambles. then men went up and poked among the bodies with the hot muzzles of their rifles, turning the corpses over for identification; and as each stark face was recognized a name went echoing out through the dingy corridors to the mob beyond. larubio, the cobbler, had attempted a daring ruse. the firing had ceased when up out of that limp and sodden heap he rose, his gray hair matted, his garments streaming. they thrust their rifles against his chest and killed him quickly. nine men had died by now, and only two remained, normando and maruffi. the former was found shortly, where he had squeezed himself into a dog-kennel which stood under the stairs; but the vigilantes, it seemed, had had enough of slaughter, so he was rushed into the street, where the crowd tore him to pieces as wolves rend a rabbit. even his garments were ripped to rags and distributed as ghastly souvenirs. norvin blake had been a witness to only a part of this brutality, but what he had seen had sickened him, and had increased his determination to find gino cressi. he shared not at all in the sanguinary exaltation which possessed his fellow-townsmen; instead he longed for the end and hoped he would be able to forget what he had seen. he would have fled but for his fear of what might happen to the cressi boy. corridor after corridor he searched, peering into cells, under cots, into corners and crannies, while through the cavernous old building the other hunters stormed. he was hard pressed to keep ahead of them, and when he finally found the lad they were dose at his heels. they came upon him with the lad clinging to his knees, and a shout went up. "here's the cressi kid. he gave the signal; let him have it!" but norvin turned upon them, saying: "you can't kill this boy." "step aside, blake," ordered a red-faced man, raising and cocking his weapon. norvin seized the rifle-barrel and turned it aside roughly. the two stared at each other with angry eyes. "he's only a baby, don't you understand? good god! you have children of your own." "i--i--" the fellow hesitated. "so he is. damnation! what has come over me?" he lowered his gun and turned against the others who were clamoring behind him. "this is--awful," he murmured, shakingly, when the crowd had passed on. "i've done all i intend to." he flung his rifle from him with a gesture of repugnance, and went out of the cell. norvin continued to stand guard over his charge while the search for maruffi went on, for he dared not trust these men who had gone mad. thus he did not learn that his arch enemy had been taken until he saw him rushed past in the hands of his captors. caesar had fought as best he could against overwhelming odds, and continued to resist now in a blind fury; but a rope was about his neck, at the end of which were a dozen running men; a dozen gun-butts hustled him on his way to the open air. blake closed the cell door upon gino cressi and followed, drawn by a magnetic force he could not resist. the main gate of the prison opened before the rush of that tangled, growling handful of men, and they swept straight out into the turmoil that filled the streets. an instant later maruffi was beset by five thousand maniacs; he was kicked, he was beaten, he was spat upon, he was overwhelmed by an avalanche of humanity. his progress to the gallows was a short but a terrible one, marked by a series of violent whirlpools which set through that river of people. the uproar was deafening; spectators screamed hoarsely, but did not hear their voices. from where blake paused beside the gate he traced the sicilian's progress plainly, marveling at the fellow's vitality, for it seemed impossible that any human being could withstand that onslaught. a coil of rope sailed upward, a negro perched in a tree passed it over a limb, and the next instant the head and shoulders of the capo-mafia rose above the dense level of standing forms. he was writhing horribly, but, seizing the rope with his hands, he drew himself upward; his blackened face glared down upon his executioners. the grinning negro kicked at the dark head beneath him, once, twice, three times, so violently that he lost his balance and fell, whereupon a bellowing shout of laughter arose more terrible than any sound heretofore. still the sicilian clung to the rope which was strangling him. then puffs of smoke curled up in the sunshine, and the crowd rolled back upon itself, leaving the gibbet ringed with armed men. maruffi's body was swayed and spun as if by invisible hands; his fingers slipped; he settled downward. blake turned and hid his face against the cold, damp walls, for he was very sick. xxvi at the dusk within two days the city had regained its customary calm. it had, in fact, settled down to a more placid mood than at any time since the murder of chief donnelly. immediately after the lynching the citizens had dispersed to their homes. no prisoners except the mafiosi had been harmed, and of those who had been sought not one had escaped. the damage to the parish prison did not amount to fifty dollars. through the community spread a feeling of satisfaction, which horror at the terrible details of the slaughter could not destroy. there was nowhere the slightest effort at dodging responsibility; those who had led in the assault were the best-known citizens and openly acknowledged their parts. it was realized now, even more fully than before the event, that the course pursued had been the only one compatible with public safety; and, while every one deplored the necessity of lynchings in general, there was no regret at this one, shocking as it had been. this state of mind was reflected by the local press, and, for that matter, by the press of all the southern cities where the gravity of the situation had become known, while to lend it further countenance, the cotton exchange, the board of trade, and the chamber of commerce promptly passed resolutions commending the action of the vigilance committee. there was some talk of legal proceedings; but no one took it seriously, except the police, who felt obliged to excuse their dereliction. of course, the stir was national--international, indeed, since italy demanded particulars; but, serene in the sense of an unpleasant duty thoroughly performed, new orleans did not trouble to explain, except by a bare recital of facts. in spite of the passive part he had played, blake was perhaps more deeply affected by the doings at the prison than any other member of the party, and during the interval that followed he did not trust himself to see vittoria. there was a double reason for this, for he not only recalled their last interview with consternation, but he still had a guilty feeling about myra nell. on the second afternoon after the lynching bernie dreux dropped in to tell him of his sister's return from mobile. "she read that i took a hand in the fuss," bernie explained, "but, of course, she has no idea i did so much actual shooting. when she told me she was going to see you this afternoon, i came to warn you not to expose me." "do you regret your part?" "not the least bit. i'm merely surprised at myself." "you surprised all your friends," blake said, with a smile. "you seem to have changed lately." in truth, the difference in dreux's bearing was noteworthy, and many had remarked upon it. the dignity and force which had enveloped the little beau for the first time when he stood before the assembled thousands still clung to him; his eyes were steady and bright and purposeful; he had lost his wavering, deprecatory manner. "yes, i've just come of age," he declared, with some satisfaction. "i realize that i'm free, white, and twenty-one, for the first time. i'm going to quit idling and do something." "what, for instance?" "well, i'm going to marry felicite, to begin with, then maybe some of my friends will give me a job." "i will," said blake. "thanks, but--i'd rather impose on somebody else at the start. i want to make good on my own merits, understand? i've lived off my relatives long enough. it's just as bad to let the deceased members of your family support you as to allow the live ones--" "bernie!" blake interrupted, gravely. "i'm afraid i won't marry myra nell." "you think she won't have you, eh? she has been acting queerly of late; but leave it to me." norvin was spared the necessity of further explanation by the arrival of the girl herself. miss warren seemed strangely lacking in her usual abundance of animal spirits; she was obviously ill at ease, and the sight of her brother did not lessen her embarrassment. during the brief interchange of pleasantries her eyes were fixed upon blake with a troubled gaze. "we--i just ran in for a moment," she said, and seemed upon the point of leaving after inquiring solicitously about his health. "my dear," said bernie, with elaborate unction, "norvin and i have just been discussing your engagement." miss warren gasped and turned pale; blake stammered. with a desperate effort the girl inquired: "d--do you love me, norvin?" "of course i do." "see!" bernie nodded his satisfaction. "oh, lordy!" said myra nell. "i--can't marry you, dear." "what?" blake knew that his expression was changing, and tried to stifle his relief. as for bernie, he flushed angrily, and his voice rang with his newly born determination. "don't be silly. didn't he just say he loved you? and, for heaven's sake, don't look so scared. we won't devour you." "i can't marry him," declared the girl, once more. "why?" "be-because i'm already married! there! jimmy! i've been trying to get that out for a month." dreux gasped. "myra nell! you're crazy!" she nodded, then turned to blake with a look of entreaty, "p-please don't kill yourself, dear? i couldn't help it." "why, you poor frightened little thing! i'm delighted! i am indeed," he told her, reassuringly. "don't you care? aren't you going to storm and--and raise the dickens?" she queried. "maybe this is your way of hiding your despair?" "not at all. i'm glad--so long as you're happy." "and you're not mad with anguish nor crushed with--why, the idea! i'm perfectly _furious!_ i ran away because i was afraid of you, and i haven't seen my husband once, not once, do you understand, since we were married. oh, you--_brute!_" by this time dreux had recovered his power of speech, and yelled in furious voice: "who is the reptile?" there came a timid rap, the office door opened, and lecompte rilleau inserted his head, saying gently: "me! i! i'm it!" blake rose so suddenly that his chair upset, whereupon rilleau, who saw in this abrupt movement a threat, propelled himself fully into view, crying with determination: "here! don't you touch her! she's mine! you take it out of me!" blake's answering laugh seemed so out of character that the bridegroom took it as merely a new phase of insanity, and edged in front of his wife protectingly. "i wanted to come in at first and break the news, but she wouldn't let me," he explained. "you have a weak heart. you--you mustn't fight!" implored myra nell; but lecompte only shrugged. [illustration: "p-please don't kill yourself, dear? i couldn't help it"] "that's all a bluff." then to norvin: "i'll admit it _was_ a mean trick, and i guess my heart really might have petered out if she'd married you; but i'm all right now, and you can have satisfaction." "i don't know whether to be angry or amused at you children," norvin told them. "understand, once for all, that our engagement wasn't serious. there have been a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings--that's all. now tell us how and when this all happened." "y-yes!" echoed bernie, who was still dazed. myra nell seemed more chagrined than relieved. "it was perfectly simple," she informed them. "it happened during the carnival. i--never heard a man talk the way he did, and i was really worried about his heart. i said no--for fifteen minutes, then we arranged to be married secretly. when it was all over, i was frightened and ran away. you're such a deep, desperate, unforgiving person, norvin. i--i think it was positively horrid of you." "good lord!" breathed her brother. "what a perverted sense of responsibility!" "are we forgiven?" "it's all right with me, if it is with norvin," said bernie, somewhat doubtfully. "forgiven?" blake took the youthful pair by the hands, and in his eyes was a brightness they had never seen. "of course you are, and let me tell you that you haven't cornered all the love in the world. i've never cared but for one woman. perhaps you will wish me as much happiness as i wish you both?" "then you have found your italian girl?" queried myra nell, with flashing eagerness. "vittoria!" "vittoria!" miss warren shrieked. "vittoria--a _countess!_ so, she's the one who spoiled everything?" "gee! you'll be a count," said rilleau. there followed a period of laughing, incoherent explanations, and then the beaming bridegroom tugged at myra nell's sleeve, saying: "now that it's all over, i'm mighty tired of being a widower." she flung her arms about his neck and lifted her blushing face to his, explaining to her half-brother, when she could: "i don't know what you'll do without some one to look after you, bernie, but--it's perfectly grand to elope." dreux rose with a grin and winked at norvin as he said: "oh, don't mind me. i'll get along all right." and seizing his hat he rushed out with his thin face all ablaze. when blake was finally alone, he closed his desk and with bounding heart set out for the foreign quarter. his day had dawned; he could hardly contain himself. but, as he neared his goal, strange doubts and indecisions arose in his mind; and when he had reached oliveta's house he passed on, lacking courage to enter. he decided it was too soon after the tragedy at the parish prison to press his suit; that to intrude himself now would be in offensively bad taste. then, too, he began to reason that if margherita had wished to see him she would have sent for him--all in all, the hour was decidedly unpropitious. he dared not risk his future happiness upon a blundering, ill-timed declaration; therefore he walked onward. but no sooner had he passed the house than a thousand voices urged him to return, in this the hour of the girl's loneliness, and lay his devotion at her feet. torn thus by hesitation and by the sense of his unworthiness, he walked the streets, hour after hour. at one moment he approached the house desperately determined; the next he fled, mastered by the fear of dismissal. so he continued his miserable wanderings on into the dusk. twilight was settling when margherita ginini finished her packing. the big living-room was stripped of its furnishings; trunks and cases stood about in a desolate confusion. there was no look of home or comfort remaining anywhere, and the whole house echoed dismally to her footsteps. from the rear came the sound of oliveta's listless preparations. pausing at an open window, margherita looked down upon the street which she had grown to love--the suggestion of darkness had softened it, mellowed it with a twilight beauty, like the face of an old friend seen in the glow of lamplight. the shouting of urchins at play floated upward, stirring the chords of motherhood in her breast and emphasizing her loneliness. with oliveta gone what would be left? nothing but an austere life compressed within drab walls; nothing but sickness and suffering on every side. she had begun to think a great deal about those walls of late and--the bells of a convent pealed out softly in the distance, bringing a tightness to her throat. in spite of herself she shuddered. those laughing children's voices mocked at her empty life. they seemed always to jeer at that hungry mother-love, but never quite so loudly as now. she remembered surprising norvin blake at play with these very children one day, and the half-abashed, half-defiant light in his eyes when he discovered her watching him. thinking of him, she recalled just such another twilight hour as this when, in a whirl of shamed emotion, she had been compelled to face the fact of her love. a sudden trembling weakness seized her at the memory, and she saw again those cold gray walls, which never echoed to the gleeful crowing of babes or the thrilling merriment of little voices. in that brief hour of her awakening life had opened gloriously, bewilderingly, only to close again, leaving her soul bruised and sore with rebellion. she crossed the floor listlessly in answer to a knock, for the repeated attentions of her neighbors, although sincere and touching, were intrusive; then she fell back at sight of the man who entered. the magic of this evening hour had brought him to her in spite of all his fears; but his heart was in his throat, and he could hardly manage a greeting. as he passed the threshold of the disordered room he looked round him in dismay. "what is this?" he asked. "oliveta is going home to sicily. it is our parting." "and you?" "to-morrow--i go to the sisters." "no, no!" he cried, in a voice which thrilled her. "i won't let you. for hours i've been trying to come here--dearest, don't answer until you know everything. sometimes i fear i was the one who was dreaming at that moment when you confessed you loved me, for it is all so unreal--but my love is not unreal. it has lived with me night and day since that first moment at terranova--i couldn't speak before, but all these years seem only hours, and i've been living in the gardens of sicily where you first smiled at me and awoke this love. you asked me to take no part--i had to refuse--i've tried to make a man of myself, not for my own sake, not for what the world would say, but for you--" in the tumult of feeling that his words aroused she held fast to one thought. "what--what about myra nell?" she gasped. "myra nell is married!" the curling lashes which had lain half closed during his headlong speech flew open to display a look of wonderment and dawning gladness. "yes," he reiterated. "she is married. she has been married ever since the carnival, and she's very happy. but i didn't know. i was tied by a miserable misunderstanding, so i couldn't come to you honestly until today. and now--i--i'm--afraid--" "what do you fear?" she heard herself say. the breathless delight of this moment was so intense that she toyed with it, fearing to lose the smallest part. she withheld the confession trembling upon her lips which he was too timid to take for granted, too blind to see. "can you take me, in spite of my wretched cowardice back there in sicily? i would understand, dear, if you couldn't forget it, but--i love you so--i tried so hard to make myself worthy--you'll never know how hard it was--i couldn't do what you asked me, the other day, but, thank god, my hands are clean." he held them out as if in evidence; then, to his great, his never-ending surprise, she came forward and placed her two palms in his. she stood looking gravely at him, her surrender plain in the curve of her tremulous lip, the droop of her faltering, silk-fringed lids. knowledge came to him with a blinding, suffocating suddenness which set his brain to reeling and wrung a rapturous cry from his throat. after a long time he felt her shudder in his arms. "what is it, heart of my life?" he whispered, without lifting his lips from her tawny cloud of hair. "those walls!" she said. "those cold, gray walls!" a sob rose, caught, then changed to a laugh of deep contentment, and she nestled closer. children's voices were wafted up to them through the fragrant, peaceful dusk, and the two fell silent again, until oliveta came and stood beside them with her face transfigured. "god be praised!" said the peasant girl, as she put her hands in theirs. "something told me i should not return to sicily alone." the end note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 20157-h.htm or 20157-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/5/20157/20157-h/20157-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/5/20157/20157-h.zip) transcriber's note: some minor changes have been made to correct typographical errors and inconsistencies. the call of the blood by robert hichens author of "the garden of allah" etc. illustrated by orson lowell [illustration: see p. 399 "he stood still, gazing at them as they prayed"] new york and london harper & brothers publishers mcmvi copyright, 1905, 1906, by harper & brothers. all rights reserved. published october, 1906. illustrations "he stood still, gazing at them as they prayed" _frontispiece_ "'space seems to liberate the soul,' she said" _facing p._ 38 "he ... looked down at the light shining in the house of the sirens" " 78 "her head was thrown back, as if she were drinking in the breeze" " 120 "'i am content without anything, signorino,' she said" " 280 "he kept his hand on hers and held it on the warm ground" " 302 "'but i soon learned to delight in--in my sicilian,' she said, tenderly" " 366 "she could see vaguely the shore by the caves where the fishermen had slept in the dawn" " 420 the call of the blood i on a dreary afternoon of november, when london was closely wrapped in a yellow fog, hermione lester was sitting by the fire in her house in eaton place reading a bundle of letters, which she had just taken out of her writing-table drawer. she was expecting a visit from the writer of the letters, emile artois, who had wired to her on the previous day that he was coming over from paris by the night train and boat. miss lester was a woman of thirty-four, five feet ten in height, flat, thin, but strongly built, with a large waist and limbs which, though vigorous, were rather unwieldy. her face was plain: rather square and harsh in outline, with blunt, almost coarse features, but a good complexion, clear and healthy, and large, interesting, and slightly prominent brown eyes, full of kindness, sympathy, and brightness, full, too, of eager intelligence and of energy, eyes of a woman who was intensely alive both in body and in mind. the look of swiftness, a look most attractive in either human being or in animal, was absent from her body but was present in her eyes, which showed forth the spirit in her with a glorious frankness and a keen intensity. nevertheless, despite these eyes and her thickly growing, warm-colored, and wavy brown hair, she was a plain, almost an ugly woman, whose attractive force issued from within, inviting inquiry and advance, as the flame of a fire does, playing on the blurred glass of a window with many flaws in it. hermione was, in fact, found very attractive by a great many people of varying temperaments and abilities, who were captured by her spirit and by her intellect, the soul of the woman and the brains, and who, while seeing clearly and acknowledging frankly the plainness of her face and the almost masculine ruggedness of her form, said, with a good deal of truth, that "somehow they didn't seem to matter in hermione." whether hermione herself was of this opinion not many knew. her general popularity, perhaps, made the world incurious about the subject. the room in which hermione was reading the letters of artois was small and crammed with books. there were books in cases uncovered by glass from floor to ceiling, some in beautiful bindings, but many in tattered paper covers, books that looked as if they had been very much read. on several tables, among photographs and vases of flowers, were more books and many magazines, both english and foreign. a large writing-table was littered with notes and letters. an upright grand-piano stood open, with a quantity of music upon it. on the thick persian carpet before the fire was stretched a very large st. bernard dog, with his muzzle resting on his paws and his eyes blinking drowsily in serene contentment. as hermione read the letters one by one her face showed a panorama of expressions, almost laughably indicative of her swiftly passing thoughts. sometimes she smiled. once or twice she laughed aloud, startling the dog, who lifted his massive head and gazed at her with profound inquiry. then she shook her head, looked grave, even sad, or earnest and full of sympathy, which seemed longing to express itself in a torrent of comforting words. presently she put the letters together, tied them up carelessly with a piece of twine, and put them back into the drawer from which she had taken them. just as she had finished doing this the door of the room, which was ajar, was pushed softly open, and a dark-eyed, eastern-looking boy dressed in livery appeared. "what is it, selim?" asked hermione, in french. "monsieur artois, madame." "emile!" cried hermione, getting up out of her chair with a sort of eager slowness. "where is he?" "he is here!" said a loud voice, also speaking french. selim stood gracefully aside, and a big man stepped into the room and took the two hands which hermione stretched out in his. "don't let any one else in, selim," said hermione to the boy. "especially the little townly," said artois, menacingly. "hush, emile! not even miss townly if she calls, selim." selim smiled with grave intelligence at the big man, said, "i understand, madame," and glided out. "why, in heaven's name, have you--you, pilgrim of the orient--insulted the east by putting selim into a coat with buttons and cloth trousers?" exclaimed artois, still holding hermione's hands. "it's an outrage, i know. but i had to. he was stared at and followed, and he actually minded it. as soon as i found out that, i trampled on all my artistic prejudices, and behold him--horrible but happy! thank you for coming--thank you." she let his hands go, and they stood for a moment looking at each other in the firelight. artois was a tall man of about forty-three, with large, almost herculean limbs, a handsome face, with regular but rather heavy features, and very big gray eyes, that always looked penetrating and often melancholy. his forehead was noble and markedly intellectual, and his well-shaped, massive head was covered with thick, short, mouse-colored hair. he wore a mustache and a magnificent beard. his barber, who was partly responsible for the latter, always said of it that it was the "most beautiful fan-shaped beard in paris," and regarded it with a pride which was probably shared by its owner. his hands and feet were good, capable-looking, but not clumsy, and his whole appearance gave an impression of power, both physical and intellectual, and of indomitable will combined with subtlety. he was well dressed, fashionably not artistically, yet he suggested an artist, not necessarily a painter. as he looked at hermione the smile which had played about his lips when he entered the little room died away. "i've come to hear about it all," he said, in his resonant voice--a voice which matched his appearance. "do you know"--and here his accent was grave, almost reproachful--"that in all your letters to me--i looked them over before i left paris--there is no allusion, not one, to this monsieur delarey." "why should there be?" she answered. she sat down, but artois continued to stand. "we seldom wrote of persons, i think. we wrote of events, ideas, of work, of conditions of life; of man, woman, child--yes--but not often of special men, women, children. i am almost sure--in fact, quite sure, for i've just been reading them--that in your letters to me there is very little discussion of our mutual friends, less of friends who weren't common to us both." as she spoke she stretched out a long, thin arm, and pulled open the drawer into which she had put the bundle tied with twine. "they're all in here." "you don't lock that drawer?" "never." he looked at her with a sort of severity. "i lock the door of the room, or, rather, it locks itself. you haven't noticed it?" "no." "it's the same as the outer door of a flat. i have a latch-key to it." he said nothing, but smiled. all the sudden grimness had gone out of his face. hermione withdrew her hand from the drawer holding the letters. "here they are!" "my complaints, my egoism, my ambitions, my views--mon dieu! hermione, what a good friend you've been!" "and some people say you're not modest!" "i--modest! what is modesty? i know my own value as compared with that of others, and that knowledge to others must often seem conceit." she began to untie the packet, but he stretched out his hand and stopped her. "no, i didn't come from paris to read my letters, or even to hear you read them! i came to hear about this monsieur delarey." selim stole in with tea and stole out silently, shutting the door this time. as soon as he had gone, artois drew a case from his pocket, took out of it a pipe, filled it, and lit it. meanwhile, hermione poured out tea, and, putting three lumps of sugar into one of the cups, handed it to artois. "i haven't come to protest. you know we both worship individual freedom. how often in those letters haven't we written it--our respect of the right of the individual to act for him or herself, without the interference of outsiders? no, i've come to hear about it all, to hear how you managed to get into the pleasant state of mania." on the last words his deep voice sounded sarcastic, almost patronizing. hermione fired up at once. "none of that from you, emile!" she exclaimed. artois stirred his tea rather more than was necessary, but did not begin to drink it. "you mustn't look down on me from a height," she continued. "i won't have it. we're all on a level when we're doing certain things, when we're truly living, simply, frankly, following our fates, and when we're dying. you feel that. drop the analyst, dear emile, drop the professional point of view. i see right through it into your warm old heart. i never was afraid of you, although i place you high, higher than your critics, higher than your public, higher than you place yourself. every woman ought to be able to love, and every man. there's nothing at all absurd in the fact, though there may be infinite absurdities in the manifestation of it. but those you haven't yet had an opportunity of seeing in me, so you've nothing yet to laugh at or label. now drink your tea." he laughed a loud, roaring laugh, drank some of his tea, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and said: "whom will you ever respect?" "every one who is sincere--myself included." "be sincere with me now, and i'll go back to paris to-morrow like a shorn lamb. be sincere about monsieur delarey." hermione sat quite still for a moment with the bundle of letters in her lap. at last she said: "it's difficult sometimes to tell the truth about a feeling, isn't it?" "ah, you don't know yourself what the truth is." "i'm not sure that i do. the history of the growth of a feeling may be almost more complicated than the history of france." artois, who was a novelist, nodded his head with the air of a man who knew all about that. "maurice--maurice delarey has cared for me, in that way, for a long time. i was very much surprised when i first found it out." "why, in the name of heaven?" "well, he's wonderfully good-looking." "no explanation of your astonishment." "isn't it? i think, though, it was that fact which astonished me, the fact of a very handsome man loving me." "now, what's your theory?" he bent down his head a little towards her, and fixed his great, gray eyes on her face. "theory! look here, emile, i dare say it's difficult for a man like you, genius, insight, and all, thoroughly to understand how an ugly woman regards beauty, an ugly woman like me, who's got intellect and passion and intense feeling for form, color, every manifestation of beauty. when i look at beauty i feel rather like a dirty little beggar staring at an angel. my intellect doesn't seem to help me at all. in me, perhaps, the sensation arises from an inward conviction that humanity was meant originally to be beautiful, and that the ugly ones among us are--well, like sins among virtues. you remember that book of yours which was and deserved to be your one artistic failure, because you hadn't put yourself really into it?" artois made a wry face. "eventually you paid a lot of money to prevent it from being published any more. you withdrew it from circulation. i sometimes feel that we ugly ones ought to be withdrawn from circulation. it's silly, perhaps, and i hope i never show it, but there the feeling is. so when the handsomest man i had ever seen loved me, i was simply amazed. it seemed to me ridiculous and impossible. and then, when i was convinced it was possible, very wonderful, and, i confess it to you, very splendid. it seemed to help to reconcile me with myself in a way in which i had never been reconciled before." "and that was the beginning?" "i dare say. there were other things, too. maurice delarey isn't at all stupid, but he's not nearly so intelligent as i am." "that doesn't surprise me." "the fact of this physical perfection being humble with me, looking up to me, seemed to mean a great deal. i think maurice feels about intellect rather as i do about beauty. he made me understand that he must. and that seemed to open my heart to him in an extraordinary way. can you understand?" "yes. give me some more tea, please." he held out his cup. she filled it, talking while she did so. she had become absorbed in what she was saying, and spoke without any self-consciousness. "i knew my gift, such as it is, the gift of brains, could do something for him, though his gift of beauty could do nothing for me--in the way of development. and that, too, seemed to lead me a step towards him. finally--well, one day i knew i wanted to marry him. and so, emile, i'm going to marry him. here!" she held out to him his cup full of tea. "there's no sugar," he said. "oh--the first time i've forgotten." "yes." the tone of his voice made her look up at him quickly and exclaim: "no, it won't make any difference!" "but it has. you've forgotten for the first time. cursed be the egotism of man." he sat down in an arm-chair on the other side of the tea-table. "it ought to make a difference. maurice delarey, if he is a man--and if you are going to marry him he must be--will not allow you to be the egeria of a fellow who has shocked even paris by telling it the naked truth." "yes, he will. i shall drop no friendship for him, and he knows it. there is not one that is not honest and innocent. thank god i can say that. if you care for it, emile, we can both add to the size of the letter bundles." he looked at her meditatively, even rather sadly. "you are capable of everything in the way of friendship, i believe," he said. "even of making the bundle bigger with a husband's consent. a husband's--i suppose the little townly's upset? but she always is." "when you're there. you don't know evelyn. you never will. she's at her worst with you because you terrify her. your talent frightens her, but your appearance frightens her even more." "i am as god made me." "with the help of the barber. it's your beard as much as anything else." "what does she say of this affair? what do all your innumerable adorers say?" "what should they say? why should anybody be surprised? it's surely the most natural thing in the world for a woman, even a very plain woman, to marry. i have always heard that marriage is woman's destiny, and though i don't altogether believe that, still i see no special reason why i should never marry if i wish to. and i do wish to." "that's what will surprise the little townly and the gaping crowd." "i shall begin to think i've seemed unwomanly all these years." "no. you're an extraordinary woman who astonishes because she is going to do a very important thing that is very ordinary." "it doesn't seem at all ordinary to me." emile artois began to stroke his beard. he was determined not to feel jealous. he had never wished to marry hermione, and did not wish to marry her now, but he had come over from paris secretly a man of wrath. "you needn't tell me that," he said. "of course it is the great event to you. otherwise you would never have thought of doing it." "exactly. are you astonished?" "i suppose i am. yes, i am." "i should have thought you were far too clever to be so." "exactly what i should have thought. but what living man is too clever to be an idiot? i never met the gentleman and never hope to." "you looked upon me as the eternal spinster?" "i looked upon you as hermione lester, a great creature, an extraordinary creature, free from the prejudices of your sex and from its pettinesses, unconventional, big brained, generous hearted, free as the wind in a world of monkey slaves, careless of all opinion save your own, but humbly obedient to the truth that is in you, human as very few human beings are, one who ought to have been an artist but who apparently preferred to be simply a woman." hermione laughed, winking away two tears. "well, emile dear, i'm being very simply a woman now, i assure you." "and why should i be surprised? you're right. what is it makes me surprised?" he sat considering. "perhaps it is that you are so unusual, so individual, that my imagination refuses to project the man on whom your choice could fall. i project the snuffy professor--impossible! i project the greek god--again my mind cries, 'impossible!' yet, behold, it is in very truth the greek god, the ideal of the ordinary woman." "you know nothing about it. you're shooting arrows into the air." "tell me more then. hold up a torch in the darkness." "i can't. you pretend to know a woman, and you ask her coldly to explain to you the attraction of the man she loves, to dissect it. i won't try to." "but," he said, with now a sort of joking persistence, which was only a mask for an almost irritable curiosity, "i want to know." "and you shall. maurice and i are dining to-night at caminiti's in peathill street, just off regent street. come and meet us there, and we'll all three spend the evening together. half-past eight, of course no evening dress, and the most delicious turkish coffee in london." "does monsieur delarey like turkish coffee?" "loves it." "intelligently?" "how do you mean?" "does he love it inherently, or because you do?" "you can find that out to-night." "i shall come." he got up, put his pipe into a case, and the case into his pocket, and said: "hermione, if the analyst may have a word--" "yes--now." "don't let monsieur delarey, whatever his character, see now, or in the future, the dirty little beggar staring at the angel. i use your own preposterously inflated phrase. men can't stand certain things and remain true to the good in their characters. humble adoration from a woman like you would be destructive of blessed virtues in antinous. think well of yourself, my friend, think well of your sphinxlike eyes. haven't they beauty? doesn't intellect shoot its fires from them? mon dieu! don't let me see any prostration to-night, or i shall put three grains of something i know--i always call it turkish delight--into the turkish coffee of monsieur delarey, and send him to sleep with his fathers." hermione got up and held out her hands to him impulsively. "bless you, emile!" she said. "you're a--" there was a gentle tap on the door. hermione went to it and opened it. selim stood outside with a pencil note on a salver. "ha! the little townly has been!" said artois. "yes, it's from her. you told her, selim, that i was with monsieur artois?" "yes, madame." "did she say anything?" "she said, 'very well,' madame, and then she wrote this. then she said again, 'very well,' and then she went away." "all right, selim." selim departed. "delicious!" said artois. "i can hear her speaking and see her drifting away consumed by jealousy, in the fog." "hush, emile, don't be so malicious." "p'f! i must be to-day, for i too am--" "nonsense. be good this evening, be very good." "i will try." he kissed her hand, bending his great form down with a slightly burlesque air, and strode out without another word. hermione sat down to read miss townly's note: "dearest, never mind. i know that i must now accustom myself to be nothing in your life. it is difficult at first, but what is existence but a struggle? i feel that i am going to have another of my neuralgic seizures. i wonder what it all means?--your, evelyn." hermione laid the note down, with a sigh and a little laugh. "i wonder what it all means? poor, dear evelyn! thank god, it sometimes means--" she did not finish the sentence, but knelt down on the carpet and took the st. bernard's great head in her hands. "you don't bother, do you, old boy, as long as you have your bone. ah, i'm a selfish wretch. but i am going to have my bone, and i can't help feeling happy--gloriously, supremely happy!" and she kissed the dog's cold nose and repeated: "supremely--supremely happy!" ii miss townly, gracefully turned away from hermione's door by selim, did, as artois had surmised, drift away in the fog to the house of her friend mrs. creswick, who lived in sloane street. she felt she must unburden herself to somebody, and mrs. creswick's tea, a blend of china tea with another whose origin was a closely guarded secret, was the most delicious in london. there are merciful dispensations of providence even for miss townlys, and mrs. creswick was at home with a blazing fire. when she saw miss townly coming sideways into the room with a slightly drooping head, she said, briskly: "comfort me with crumpets, for i am sick with love! cheer up, my dear evelyn. fogs will pass and even neuralgia has its limits. i don't ask you what is the matter, because i know perfectly well." miss townly went into a very large arm-chair and waveringly selected a crumpet. "what does it all mean?" she murmured, looking obliquely at her friend's parquet. "ask the baker, no. 5 allitch street. i always get them from there. and he's a remarkably well-informed man." "no, i mean life with its extraordinary changes, things you never expected, never dreamed of--and all coming so abruptly. i don't think i'm a stupid person, but i certainly never looked for this." "for what?" "this most extraordinary engagement of hermione's." mrs. creswick, who was a short woman who looked tall, with a briskly conceited but not unkind manner, and a decisive and very english nose, rejoined: "i don't know why we should call it extraordinary. everybody gets engaged at some time or other, and hermione's a woman like the rest of us and subject to aberration. but i confess i never thought she would marry maurice delarey. he never seemed to mean more to her than any one else, so far as i could see." "everybody seems to mean so much to hermione that it makes things difficult to outsiders," replied miss townly, plaintively. "she is so wide-minded and has so many interests that she dwarfs everybody else. i always feel quite squeezed when i compare my poor little life with hers. but then she has such physical endurance. she breaks the ice, you know, in her bath in the winter--of course i mean when there is ice." "it isn't only in her bath that she breaks the ice," said mrs. creswick. "i perfectly understand," miss townly said, vaguely. "you mean--yes, you're right. well, i prefer my bath warmed for me, but my circulation was never of the best." "hermione is extraordinary," said mrs. creswick, trying to look at her profile in the glass and making her face as roman as she could, "i know all london, but i never met another hermione. she can do things that other women can't dream of even, and nobody minds." "well, now she is going to do a thing we all dream of and a great many of us do. will it answer? he's ten years younger than she is. can it answer?" "one can never tell whether a union of two human mysteries will answer," said mrs. creswick, judicially. "maurice delarey is wonderfully good-looking." "yes, and hermione isn't." "that has never mattered in the least." "i know. i didn't say it had. but will it now?" "why should it?" "men care so much for looks. do you think hermione loves mr. delarey for his?" "she dives deep." "yes, as a rule." "why not now? she ought to have dived deeper than ever this time." "she ought, of course. i perfectly understand that. but it's very odd, i think we often marry the man we understand less than any one else in the world. mystery is so very attractive." miss townly sighed. she was emaciated, dark, and always dressed to look mysterious. "maurice delarey is scarcely my idea of a mystery," said mrs. creswick, taking joyously a marron glacã©. "in my opinion he's an ordinarily intelligent but an extraordinarily handsome man. hermione is exactly the reverse, extraordinarily intelligent and almost ugly." "oh no, not ugly!" said miss townly, with unexpected warmth. though of a tepid personality, she was a worshipper at hermione's shrine. "her eyes are beautiful," she added. "good eyes don't make a beauty," said mrs. creswick again, looking at her three-quarters face in the glass. "hermione is too large, and her face is too square, and--but as i said before, it doesn't matter the least. hermione's got a temperament that carries all before it." "i do wish i had a temperament," said miss townly. "i try to cultivate one." "you might as well try to cultivate a mustache," mrs. creswick rather brutally rejoined. "if it's there, it's there, but if it isn't one prays in vain." "i used to think hermione would do something," continued miss townly, finishing her second cup of tea with thirsty languor. "do something?" "something important, great, something that would make her famous, but of course now"--she paused--"now it's too late," she concluded. "marriage destroys, not creates talent. some celebrated man--i forget which--has said something like that." "perhaps he'd destroyed his wife's. i think hermione might be a great mother." miss townly blushed faintly. she did nearly everything faintly. that was partly why she admired hermione. "and a great mother is rare," continued mrs. creswick. "good mothers are, thank god, quite common even in london, whatever those foolish people who rail at the society they can't get into may say. but great mothers are seldom met with. i don't know one." "what do you mean by a great mother?" inquired miss townly. "a mother who makes seeds grow. hermione has a genius for friendship and a special gift for inspiring others. if she ever has a child, i can imagine that she will make of that child something wonderful." "do you mean an infant prodigy?" asked miss townly, innocently. "no, dear, i don't!" said mrs. creswick; "i mean nothing of the sort. never mind!" when mrs. creswick said "never mind!" miss townly usually got up to go. she got up to go now, and went forth into sloane street meditating, as she would have expressed it, "profoundly." meanwhile artois went back to the hans crescent hotel on foot. he walked slowly along the greasy pavement through the yellow november fog, trying to combat a sensation of dreariness which had floated round his spirit, as the fog floated round his body, directly he stepped into the street. he often felt depressed without a special cause, but this afternoon there was a special cause for his melancholy. hermione was going to be married. she often came to paris, where she had many friends, and some years ago they had met at a dinner given by a brilliant jewess, who delighted in clever people, not because she was stupid, but for the opposite reason. artois was already famous, though not loved, as a novelist. he had published two books; works of art, cruel, piercing, brutal, true. hermione had read them. her intellect had revelled in them, but they had set ice about her heart, and when madame enthoven told her who was going to take her in to dinner, she very nearly begged to be given another partner. she felt that her nature must be in opposition to this man's. artois was not eager for the honor of her company. he was a careful dissecter of women, and, therefore, understood how mysterious women are; but in his intimate life they counted for little. he regarded them there rather as the european traveller regards the mousmã©s of japan, as playthings, and insisted on one thing only--that they must be pretty. a frenchman, despite his unusual intellectual power, he was not wholly emancipated from the la petite femme tradition, which will never be outmoded in paris while paris hums with life, and, therefore, when he was informed that he was to take in to dinner the tall, solidly built, big-waisted, rugged-faced woman, whom he had been observing from a distance ever since he came into the drawing-room, he felt that he was being badly treated by his hostess. yet he had been observing this woman closely. something unusual, something vital in her had drawn his attention, fixed it, held it. he knew that, but said to himself that it was the attention of the novelist that had been grasped by an uncommon human specimen, and that the man of the world, the diner-out, did not want to eat in company with a specimen, but to throw off professional cares with a gay little chatterbox of the mousmã© type. therefore he came over to be presented to hermione with rather a bad grace. and that introduction was the beginning of the great friendship which was now troubling him in the fog. by the end of that evening hermione and he had entirely rid themselves of their preconceived notions of each other. she had ceased from imagining him a walking intellect devoid of sympathies, he from considering her a possibly interesting specimen, but not the type of woman who could be agreeable in a man's life. her naturalness amounted almost to genius. she was generally unable to be anything but natural, unable not to speak as she was feeling, unable to feel unsympathetic. she always showed keen interest when she felt it, and, with transparent sincerity, she at once began to show to artois how much interested she was in him. by doing so she captivated him at once. he would not, perhaps, have been captivated by the heart without the brains, but the two in combination took possession of him with an ease which, when the evening was over, but only then, caused him some astonishment. hermione had a divining-rod to discover the heart in another, and she found out at once that artois had a big heart as well as a fine intellect. he was deceptive because he was always ready to show the latter, and almost always determined to conceal the former. even to himself he was not quite frank about his heart, but often strove to minimize its influence upon him, if not to ignore totally its promptings and its utterances. why this was so he could not perhaps have explained even to himself. it was one of the mysteries of his temperament. from the first moment of their intercourse hermione showed to him her conviction that he had a warm heart, and that it could be relied upon without hesitation. this piqued but presently delighted, and also soothed artois, who was accustomed to be misunderstood, and had often thought he liked to be misunderstood, but who now found out how pleasant a brilliant woman's intuition may be, even at a parisian dinner. before the evening was over they knew that they were friends; and friends they had remained ever since. artois was a reserved man, but, like many reserved people, if once he showed himself as he really was, he could continue to be singularly frank. he was singularly frank with hermione. she became his confidante, often at a distance. he scarcely ever came to london, which he disliked exceedingly, but from paris or from the many lands in which he wandered--he was no pavement lounger, although he loved paris rather as a man may love a very chic cocotte--he wrote to hermione long letters, into which he put his mind and heart, his aspirations, struggles, failures, triumphs. they were human documents, and contained much of his secret history. it was of this history that he was now thinking, and of hermione's comments upon it, tied up with a ribbon in paris. the news of her approaching marriage with a man whom he had never seen had given him a rude shock, had awakened in him a strange feeling of jealousy. he had grown accustomed to the thought that hermione was in a certain sense his property. he realized thoroughly the egotism, the dog-in-the-manger spirit which was alive in him, and hated but could not banish it. as a friend he certainly loved hermione. she knew that. but he did not love her as a man loves the woman he wishes to make his wife. she must know that, too. he loved her but was not in love with her, and she loved but was not in love with him. why, then, should this marriage make a difference in their friendship? she said that it would not, but he felt that it must. he thought of her as a wife, then as a mother. the latter thought made his egotism shudder. she would be involved in the happy turmoil of a family existence, while he would remain without in that loneliness which is the artist's breath of life and martyrdom. yes, his egotism shuddered, and he was angry at the weakness. he chastised the frailties of others, but must be the victim of his own. a feeling of helplessness came to him, of being governed, lashed, driven. how unworthy was his sensation of hostility against delarey, his sensation that hermione was wronging him by entering into this alliance, and how powerless he was to rid himself of either sensation! there was good cause for his melancholy--his own folly. he must try to conquer it, and, if that were impossible, to rein it in before the evening. when he reached the hotel he went into his sitting-room and worked for an hour and a half, producing a short paragraph, which did not please him. then he took a hansom and drove to peathill street. hermione was already there, sitting at a small table in a corner with her back to him, opposite to one of the handsomest men he had ever seen. as artois came in, he fixed his eyes on this man with a scrutiny that was passionate, trying to determine at a glance whether he had any right to the success he had achieved, any fitness for the companionship that was to be his, companionship of an unusual intellect and a still more unusual spirit. he saw a man obviously much younger than hermione, not tall, athletic in build but also graceful, with the grace that is shed through a frame by perfectly developed, not over-developed muscles and accurately trained limbs, a man of the mercury rather than of the hercules type, with thick, low-growing black hair, vivid, enthusiastic black eyes, set rather wide apart under curved brows, and very perfectly proportioned, small, straight features, which were not undecided, yet which suggested the features of a boy. in the complexion there was a tinge of brown that denoted health and an out-door life--an out-door life in the south, artois thought. as artois, standing quite still, unconsciously, in the doorway of the restaurant, looked at this man, he felt for a moment as if he himself were a splendid specimen of a cart-horse faced by a splendid specimen of a race-horse. the comparison he was making was only one of physical endowments, but it pained him. thinking with an extraordinary rapidity, he asked himself why it was that this man struck him at once as very much handsomer than other men with equally good features and figures whom he had seen, and he found at once the answer to his question. it was the look of mercury in him that made him beautiful, a look of radiant readiness for swift movement that suggested the happy messenger poised for flight to the gods, his mission accomplished, the expression of an intensely vivid activity that could be exquisitely obedient. there was an extraordinary fascination in it. artois realized that, for he was fascinated even in this bitter moment that he told himself ought not to be bitter. while he gazed at delarey he was conscious of a feeling that had sometimes come upon him when he had watched sicilian peasant boys dancing the tarantella under the stars by the ionian sea, a feeling that one thing in creation ought to be immortal on earth, the passionate, leaping flame of joyous youth, physically careless, physically rapturous, unconscious of death and of decay. delarey seemed to him like a tarantella in repose, if such a thing could be. suddenly hermione turned round, as if conscious that he was there. when she did so he understood in the very depths of him why such a man as delarey attracted, must attract, such a woman as hermione. that which she had in the soul delarey seemed to express in the body--sympathy, enthusiasm, swiftness, courage. he was like a statue of her feelings, but a statue endowed with life. and the fact that her physique was a sort of contradiction of her inner self must make more powerful the charm of a delarey for her. as hermione looked round at him, turning her tall figure rather slowly in the chair, artois made up his mind that she had been captured by the physique of this man. he could not be surprised, but he still felt angry. hermione introduced delarey to him eagerly, not attempting to hide her anxiety for the two men to make friends at once. her desire was so transparent and so warm that for a moment artois felt touched, and inclined to trample upon his evil mood and leave no trace of it. he was also secretly too human to remain wholly unmoved by delarey's reception of him. delarey had a rare charm of manner whose source was a happy, but not foolishly shy, modesty, which made him eager to please, and convinced that in order to do so he must bestir himself and make an effort. but in this effort there was no labor. it was like the spurt of a willing horse, a fine racing pace of the nature that woke pleasure and admiration in those who watched it. artois felt at once that delarey had no hostility towards him, but was ready to admire and rejoice in him as hermione's greatest friend. he was met more than half-way. yet when he was beside delarey, almost touching him, the stubborn sensation of furtive dislike within artois increased, and he consciously determined not to yield to the charm of this younger man who was going to interfere in his life. artois did not speak much english, but fortunately delarey talked french fairly well, not with great fluency like hermione, but enough to take a modest share in conversation, which was apparently all the share that he desired. artois believed that he was no great talker. his eyes were more eager than was his tongue, and seemed to betoken a vivacity of spirit which he could not, perhaps, show forth in words. the conversation at first was mainly between hermione and artois, with an occasional word from delarey--generally interrogative--and was confined to generalities. but this could not continue long. hermione was an enthusiastic talker and seldom discussed banalities. from every circle where she found herself the inane was speedily banished; pale topics--the spectres that haunt the dull and are cherished by them--were whipped away to limbo, and some subject full-blooded, alive with either serious or comical possibilities, was very soon upon the carpet. by chance artois happened to speak of two people in paris, common friends of his and of hermione's, who had been very intimate, but who had now quarrelled, and every one said, irrevocably. the question arose whose fault was it. artois, who knew the facts of the case, and whose judgment was usually cool and well-balanced, said it was the woman's. "madame lagrande," he said, "has a fine nature, but in this instance it has failed her, it has been warped by jealousy; not the jealousy that often accompanies passion, for she and robert meunier were only great friends, linked together by similar sympathies, but by a much more subtle form of that mental disease. you know, hermione, that both of them are brilliant critics of literature?" "yes, yes." "they carried on a sort of happy, but keen rivalry in this walk of letters, each striving to be more unerring than the other in dividing the sheep from the goats. i am the guilty person who made discord where there had been harmony." "you, emile! how was that?" "one day i said, in a bitter mood, 'it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a creator. you two, now would you even dare to try to create?' they were nettled by my tone, and showed it. i said, 'i have a magnificent subject for a conte, no work de longue haleine, a conte. if you like i will give it you, and leave you to create--separately, not together--what you have so often written about, the perfect conte.' they accepted my challenge. i gave them my subject and a month to work it out. at the end of that time the two contes were to be submitted to a jury of competent literary men, friends of ours. it was all a sort of joke, but created great interest in our circle--you know it, hermione, that dines at rã©neau's on thursday nights?" "yes. well, what happened?" "madame lagrande made a failure of hers, but robert meunier astonished us all. he produced certainly one of the best contes that was ever written in the french language." "and madame lagrande?" "it is not too much to say that from that moment she has almost hated robert." "and you dare to say she has a noble nature?" "yes, a noble nature from which, under some apparently irresistible impulse, she has lapsed." "maurice," said hermione, leaning her long arms on the table and leaning forward to her fiancã©, "you're not in literature any more than i am, you're an outsider--bless you! what d'you say to that?" delarey hesitated and looked modestly at artois. "no, no," cried hermione, "none of that, maurice! you may be a better judge in this than emile is with all his knowledge of the human heart. you're the man in the street, and sometimes i'd give a hundred pounds for his opinion and not twopence for the big man's who's in the profession. would--could a noble nature yield to such an impulse?" "i should hardly have thought so," said delarey. "nor i," said hermione. "i simply don't believe it's possible. for a moment, yes, perhaps. but you say, emile, that there's an actual breach between them." "there is certainly. have you ever made any study of jealousy in its various forms?" "never. i don't know what jealousy is. i can't understand it." "yet you must be capable of it." "you think every one is?" "very few who are really alive in the spirit are not. and you, i am certain, are." hermione laughed, an honest, gay laugh, that rang out wholesomely in the narrow room. "i doubt it, emile. perhaps i'm too conceited. for instance, if i cared for some one and was cared for--" "and the caring of the other ceased, because he had only a certain, limited faculty of affection and transferred his affection elsewhere--what then?" "i've so much pride, proper or improper, that i believe my affection would die. my love subsists on sympathy--take that food from it and it would starve and cease to live. i give, but when giving i always ask. if i were to be refused i couldn't give any more. and without the love there could be no jealousy. but that isn't the point, emile." he smiled. "what is?" "the point is--can a noble nature lapse like that from its nobility?" "yes, it can." "then it changes, it ceases to be noble. you would not say that a brave man can show cowardice and remain a brave man." "i would say that a man whose real nature was brave, might, under certain circumstances, show fear, without being what is called a coward. human nature is full of extraordinary possibilities, good and evil, of extraordinary contradictions. but this point i will concede you, that it is like the boomerang, which flies forward, circles, and returns to the point from which it started. the inherently noble nature will, because it must, return eventually to its nobility. then comes the really tragic moment with the passion of remorse." he spoke quietly, almost coldly. hermione looked at him with shining eyes. she had quite forgotten madame lagrande and robert meunier, had lost the sense of the special in her love of the general. "that's a grand theory," she said. "that we must come back to the good that is in us in the end, that we must be true to that somehow, almost whether we will or no. i shall try to think of that when i am sinning." "you--sinning!" exclaimed delarey. "maurice, dear, you think too well of me." delarey flushed like a boy, and glanced quickly at artois, who did not return his gaze. "but if that's true, emile," hermione continued, "madame lagrande and robert meunier will be friends again." "some day i know she will hold out the olive-branch, but what if he refuses it?" "you literary people are dreadfully difficile." "true. our jealousies are ferocious, but so are the jealousies of thousands who can neither read nor write." "jealousy," she said, forgetting to eat in her keen interest in the subject. "i told you i didn't believe myself capable of it, but i don't know. the jealousy that is born of passion i might understand and suffer, perhaps, but jealousy of a talent greater than my own, or of one that i didn't possess--that seems to me inexplicable. i could never be jealous of a talent." "you mean that you could never hate a person for a talent in them?" "yes." "suppose that some one, by means of a talent which you had not, won from you a love which you had? talent is a weapon, you know." "you think it is a weapon to conquer the affections! ah, emile, after all you don't know us!" "you go too fast. i did not say a weapon to conquer the affection of a woman." "you're speaking of men?" "i know," delarey said, suddenly, forgetting to be modest for once, "you mean that a man might be won away from one woman by a talent in another. isn't that it?" "ah," said hermione, "a man--i see." she sat for a moment considering deeply, with her luminous eyes fixed on the food in her plate, food which she did not see. "what horrible ideas you sometimes have, emile," she said, at last. "you mean what horrible truths exist," he answered, quietly. "could a man be won so? yes, i suppose he might be if there were a combination." "exactly," said artois. "i see now. suppose a man had two strains in him, say: the adoration of beauty, of the physical; and the adoration of talent, of the mental. he might fall in love with a merely beautiful woman and transfer his affections if he came across an equally beautiful woman who had some great talent." "or he might fall in love with a plain, talented woman, and be taken from her by one in whom talent was allied with beauty. but in either case are you sure that the woman deserted could never be jealous, bitterly jealous, of the talent possessed by the other woman? i think talent often creates jealousy in your sex." "but beauty much oftener, oh, much! every woman, i feel sure, could more easily be jealous of physical beauty in another woman than of mental gifts. there's something so personal in beauty." "and is genius not equally personal?" "i suppose it is, but i doubt if it seems so." "i think you leave out of account the advance of civilization, which is greatly changing men and women in our day. the tragedies of the mind are increasing." "and the tragedies of the heart--are they diminishing in consequence? oh, emile!" and she laughed. "hermione--your food! you are not eating anything!" said delarey, gently, pointing to her plate. "and it's all getting cold." "thank you, maurice." she began to eat at once with an air of happy submission, which made artois understand a good deal about her feeling for delarey. "the heart will always rule the head, i dare say, in this world where the majority will always be thoughtless," said artois. "but the greatest jealousy, the jealousy which is most difficult to resist and to govern, is that in which both heart and brain are concerned. that is, indeed, a full-fledged monster." artois generally spoke with a good deal of authority, often without meaning to do so. he thought so clearly, knew so exactly what he was thinking and what he meant, that he felt very safe in conversation, and from this sense of safety sprang his air of masterfulness. it was an air that was always impressive, but to-night it specially struck hermione. now she laid down her knife and fork once more, to delarey's half-amused despair, and exclaimed: "i shall never forget the way you said that. even if it were nonsense one would have to believe it for the moment, and of course it's dreadfully true. intellect and heart suffering in combination must be far more terrible than the one suffering without the other. no, maurice, i've really finished. i don't want any more. let's have our coffee." "the turkish coffee," said artois, with a smile. "do you like turkish coffee, monsieur delarey?" "yes, monsieur. hermione has taught me to." "ah!" "at first it seemed to me too full of grounds," he explained. "perhaps a taste for it must be an acquired one among europeans. do we have it here?" "no, no," said hermione, "caminiti has taken my advice, and now there's a charming smoke-room behind this. come along." she got up and led the way out. the two men followed her, artois coming last. he noticed now more definitely the very great contrast between hermione and her future husband. delarey, when in movement, looked more than ever like a mercury. his footstep was light and elastic, and his whole body seemed to breathe out a gay activity, a fulness of the joy of life. again artois thought of sicilian boys dancing the tarantella, and when they were in the small smoke-room, which caminiti had fitted up in what he believed to be oriental style, and which, though scarcely accurate, was quite cosey, he was moved to inquire: "pardon me, monsieur, but are you entirely english?" "no, monsieur. my mother has sicilian blood in her veins. but i have never been in sicily or italy." "ah, emile," said hermione, "how clever of you to find that out. i notice it, too, sometimes, that touch of the blessed south. i shall take him there some day, and see if the southern blood doesn't wake up in his veins when he's in the rays of the real sun we never see in england." "she'll take you to italy, you fortunate, damned dog!" thought artois. "what luck for you to go there with such a companion!" they sat down and the two men began to smoke. hermione never smoked because she had tried smoking and knew she hated it. they were alone in the room, which was warm, but not too warm, and faintly lit by shaded lamps. artois began to feel more genial, he scarcely knew why. perhaps the good dinner had comforted him, or perhaps he was beginning to yield to the charm of delarey's gay and boyish modesty, which was untainted and unspoiled by any awkward shyness. artois did not know or seek to know, but he was aware that he was more ready to be happy with the flying moment than he had been, or had expected to be that evening. something almost paternal shone in his gray eyes as he stretched his large limbs on caminiti's notion of a turkish divan, and watched the first smoke-wreaths rise from his cigar, a light which made his face most pleasantly expressive to hermione. "he likes maurice," she thought, with a glow of pleasure, and with the thought came into her heart an even deeper love for maurice. for it was a triumph, indeed, if artois were captured speedily by any one. it seemed to her just then as if she had never known what perfect happiness was till now, when she sat between her best friend and her lover, and sensitively felt that in the room there were not three separate persons but a trinity. for a moment there was a comfortable silence. then an italian boy brought in the coffee. artois spoke to him in italian. his eyes lit up as he answered with the accent of naples, lit up still more when artois spoke to him again in his own dialect. when he had served the coffee he went out, glowing. "is your honeymoon to be italian?" asked artois. "whatever hermione likes," answered delarey. "i--it doesn't matter to me. wherever it is will be the same to me." "happiness makes every land an italy, eh?" said artois. "i expect that's profoundly true." "don't you--don't you know?" ventured delarey. "i! my friend, one cannot be proficient in every branch of knowledge." he spoke the words without bitterness, with a calm that had in it something more sad than bitterness. it struck both hermione and delarey as almost monstrous that anybody with whom they were connected should be feeling coldly unhappy at this moment. life presented itself to them in a glorious radiance of sunshine, in a passionate light, in a torrent of color. their knowledge of life's uncertainties was rocked asleep by their dual sensation of personal joy, and they felt as if every one ought to be as happy as they were, almost as if every one could be as happy as they were. "emile," said hermione, led by this feeling, "you can't mean to say that you have never known the happiness that makes of every place--clapham, lippe-detmold, a west african swamp, a siberian convict settlement--an italy? you have had a wonderful life. you have worked, you have wandered, had your ambition and your freedom--" "but my eyes have been always wide open," he interrupted, "wide open on life watching the manifestations of life." "haven't you ever been able to shut them for a minute to everything but your own happiness? oh, it's selfish, i know, but it does one good, emile, any amount of good, to be selfish like that now and then. it reconciles one so splendidly to existence. it's like a spring cleaning of the soul. and then, i think, when one opens one's eyes again one sees--one must see--everything more rightly, not dressed up in frippery, not horribly naked either, but truly, accurately, neither overlooking graces nor dwelling on distortions. d'you understand what i mean? perhaps i don't put it well, but--" "i do understand," he said. "there's truth in what you say." "yes, isn't there?" said delarey. his eyes were fixed on hermione with an intense eagerness of admiration and love. suddenly artois felt immensely old, as he sometimes felt when he saw children playing with frantic happiness at mud-pies or snowballing. a desire, which his true self condemned, came to him to use his intellectual powers cruelly, and he yielded to it, forgetting the benign spirit which had paid him a moment's visit and vanished almost ere it had arrived. "there's truth in what you say. but there's another truth, too, which you bring to my mind at this moment." "what's that, emile?" "the payment that is exacted from great happiness. these intense joys of which you speak--what are they followed by? haven't you observed that any violence in one direction is usually, almost, indeed, inevitably, followed by a violence in the opposite direction? humanity is treading a beaten track, the crowd of humanity, and keeps, as a crowd, to this highway. but individuals leave the crowd, searchers, those who need the great changes, the great fortunes that are dangerous. on one side of the track is a garden of paradise; on the other a deadly swamp. the man or woman who, leaving the highway, enters the garden of paradise is almost certain in the fulness of time to be struggling in the deadly swamp." "do you really mean that misery is born of happiness?" "of what other parent can it be the child? in my opinion those who are said to be 'born in misery' never know what real misery is. it is only those who have drunk deep of the cup of joy who can drink deep of the cup of sorrow." hermione was about to speak, but delarey suddenly burst in with the vehement exclamation: "where's the courage in keeping to the beaten track? where's the courage in avoiding the garden for fear of the swamp?" "that's exactly what i was going to say," said hermione, her whole face lighting up. "i never expected to hear a counsel of cowardice from you, emile." "or is it a counsel of prudence?" he looked at them both steadily, feeling still as if he were face to face with children. for a man he was unusually intuitive, and to-night suddenly, and after he had begun to yield to his desire to be cruel, to say something that would cloud this dual happiness in which he had no share, he felt a strange, an almost prophetic conviction that out of the joy he now contemplated would be born the gaunt offspring, misery, of which he had just spoken. with the coming of this conviction, which he did not even try to explain to himself or to combat, came an abrupt change in his feelings. bitterness gave place to an anxiety that was far more human, to a desire to afford some protection to these two people with whom he was sitting. but how? and against what? he did not know. his intuition stopped short when he strove to urge it on. "prudence," said hermione. "you think it prudent to avoid the joy life throws at your feet?" abruptly provoked by his own limitations, angry, too, with his erratic mental departure from the realm of reason into the realm of fantasy--for so he called the debatable land over which intuition held sway--artois hounded out his mood and turned upon himself. "don't listen to me," he said. "i am the professional analyst of life. as i sit over a sentence, examining, selecting, rejecting, replacing its words, so do i sit over the emotions of myself and others till i cease really to live, and could almost find it in my head to try to prevent them from living, too. live, live--enter into the garden of paradise and never mind what comes after." "i could not do anything else," said hermione. "it is unnatural to me to look forward. the 'now' nearly always has complete possession of me." "and i," said artois, lightly, "am always trying to peer round the corner to see what is coming. and you, monsieur delarey?" "i!" said delarey. he had not expected to be addressed just then, and for a moment looked confused. "i don't know if i can say," he answered, at last. "but i think if the present was happy i should try to live in that, and if it was sad i should have a shot at looking forward to something better." "that's one of the best philosophies i ever heard," said hermione, "and after my own heart. long live the philosophy of maurice delarey!" delarey blushed with pleasure like a boy. just then three men came in smoking cigars. hermione looked at her watch. "past eleven," she said. "i think i'd better go. emile, will you drive with me home?" "i!" he said, with an unusual diffidence. "may i?" he glanced at delarey. "i want to have a talk with you. maurice quite understands. he knows you go back to paris to-morrow." they all got up, and delarey at once held out his hand to artois. "i am glad to have been allowed to meet hermione's best friend," he said, simply. "i know how much you are to her, and i hope you'll let me be a friend, too, perhaps, some day." he wrung artois's hand warmly. "thank you, monsieur," replied artois. he strove hard to speak as cordially as delarey. two or three minutes later hermione and he were in a hansom driving down regent street. the fog had lifted, and it was possible to see to right and left of the greasy thoroughfare. "need we go straight back?" said hermione. "why not tell him to drive down to the embankment? it's quiet there at night, and open and fine--one of the few fine things in dreary old london. and i want to have a last talk with you, emile." artois pushed up the little door in the roof with his stick. "the embankment--thames," he said to the cabman, with a strong foreign accent. "right, sir," replied the man, in the purest cockney. as soon as the trap was shut down above her head hermione exclaimed: "emile, i'm so happy, so--so happy! i think you must understand why now. you don't wonder any more, do you?" "no, i don't wonder. but did i ever express any wonder?" "i think you felt some. but i knew when you saw him it would go. he's got one beautiful quality that's very rare in these days, i think--reverence. i love that in him. he really reverences everything that is fine, every one who has fine and noble aspirations and powers. he reverences you." "if that is the case he shows very little insight." "don't abuse yourself to me to-night. there's nothing the matter now, is there?" her intonation demanded a negative, but artois did not hasten to give it. instead he turned the conversation once more to delarey. "tell me something more about him," he said. "what sort of family does he come from?" "oh, a very ordinary family, well off, but not what is called specially well-born. his father has a large shipping business. he's a cultivated man, and went to eton and oxford, as maurice did. maurice's mother is very handsome, not at all intellectual, but fascinating. the southern blood comes from her side." "oh--how?" "her mother was a sicilian." "of the aristocracy, or of the people?" "she was a lovely contadina. but what does it matter? i am not marrying maurice's grandmother." "how do you know that?" "you mean that our ancestors live in us. well, i can't bother. if maurice were a crossing-sweeper, and his grandmother had been an evilly disposed charwoman, who could never get any one to trust her to char, i'd marry him to-morrow if he'd have me." "i'm quite sure you would." "besides, probably the grandmother was a delicious old dear. but didn't you like maurice, emile? i felt so sure you did." "i--yes, i liked him. i see his fascination. it is almost absurdly obvious, and yet it is quite natural. he is handsome and he is charming." "and he's good, too." "why not? he does not look evil. i thought of him as a mercury." "the messenger of the gods--yes, he is like that." she laid her hand on his arm, as if her happiness and longing for sympathy in it impelled her to draw very near to a human being. "a bearer of good tidings--that is what he has been to me. i want you to like and understand him so much, emile; you more, far more, than any one else." the cab was now in a steep and narrow street leading down from the strand to the thames embankment--a street that was obscure and that looked sad and evil by night. artois glanced out at it, and hermione, seeing that he did so, followed his eyes. they saw a man and a woman quarrelling under a gas-lamp. the woman was cursing and crying. the man put out his hand and pushed her roughly. she fell up against some railings, caught hold of them, turned her head and shrieked at the man, opening her mouth wide. "poor things!" hermione said. "poor things! if we could only all be good to each other! it seems as if it ought to be so simple." "it's too difficult for us, nevertheless." "not for some of us, thank god. many people have been good to me--you for one, you most of all my friends. ah, how blessed it is to be out here!" she leaned over the wooden apron of the cab, stretching out her hands instinctively as if to grasp the space, the airy darkness of the spreading night. "space seems to liberate the soul," she said. "it's wrong to live in cities, but we shall have to a good deal, i suppose. maurice needn't work, but i'm glad to say he does." "what does he do?" "i don't know exactly, but he's in his father's shipping business. i'm an awful idiot at understanding anything of that sort, but i understand maurice, and that's the important matter." [illustration: "'space seems to liberate the soul,' she said"] they were now on the thames embankment, driving slowly along the broad and almost deserted road. far off lights, green, red, and yellow, shone faintly upon the drifting and uneasy waters of the river on the one side; on the other gleamed the lights from the houses and hotels, in which people were supping after the theatres. artois, who, like most fine artists, was extremely susceptible to the influence of place and of the hour, with its gift of light or darkness, began to lose in this larger atmosphere of mystery and vaguely visible movement the hitherto dominating sense of himself, to regain the more valuable and more mystical sense of life and its strange and pathetic relation with nature and the spirit behind nature, which often floated upon him like a tide when he was creating, but which he was accustomed to hold sternly in leash. now he was not in the mood to rein it in. maurice delarey and his business, hermione, her understanding of him and happiness in him, artois himself in his sharply realized solitude of the third person, melted into the crowd of beings who made up life, whose background was the vast and infinitely various panorama of nature, and hermione's last words, "the important matter," seemed for the moment false to him. what was, what could be, important in the immensity and the baffling complexity of existence? "look at those lights," he said, pointing to those that gleamed across the water through the london haze that sometimes makes for a melancholy beauty, "and that movement of the river in the night, tremulous and cryptic like our thoughts. is anything important?" "almost everything, i think, certainly everything in us. if i didn't feel so, i could scarcely go on living. and you must really feel so, too. you do. i have your letters to prove it. why, how often have i written begging you not to lash yourself into fury over the follies of men!" "yes, my temperament betrays the citadel of my brain. that happens in many." "you trust too much to your brain and too little to your heart." "and you do the contrary, my friend. you are too easily carried away by your impulses." she was silent for a moment. the cabman was driving slowly. she watched a distant barge drifting, like a great shadow, at the mercy of the tide. then she turned a little, looked at artois's shadowy profile, and said: "don't ever be afraid to speak to me quite frankly--don't be afraid now. what is it?" he did not answer. "imagine you are in paris sitting down to write to me in your little red-and-yellow room, the morocco slipper of a room." "and if it were the sicilian grandmother?" he spoke half-lightly, as if he were inclined to laugh with her at himself if she began to laugh. but she said, gravely: "go on." "i have a feeling to-night that out of this happiness of yours misery will be born." "yes? what sort of misery?" "i don't know." "misery to myself or to the sharer of my happiness?" "to you." "that was why you spoke of the garden of paradise and the deadly swamp?" "i think it must have been." "well?" "i love the south. you know that. but i distrust what i love, and i see the south in him." "the grace, the charm, the enticement of the south." "all that, certainly. you said he had reverence. probably he has, but has he faithfulness?" "oh, emile!" "you told me to be frank." "and i wish you to be. go on, say everything." "i've only seen delarey once, and i'll confess that i came prepared to see faults as clearly as, perhaps more clearly than, virtues. i don't pretend to read character at a glance. only fools can do that--i am relying on their frequent assertion that they can. he strikes me as a man of great charm, with an unusual faculty of admiration for the gifts of others and a modest estimate of himself. i believe he's sincere." "he is, through and through." "i think so--now. but does he know his own blood? our blood governs us when the time comes. he is modest about his intellect. i think it quick, but i doubt its being strong enough to prove a good restraining influence." "against what?" "the possible call of the blood that he doesn't understand." "you speak almost as if he were a child," hermione said. "he's much younger than i am, but he's twenty-four." "he is very young looking, and you are at least twenty years ahead of him in all essentials. don't you feel it?" "i suppose--yes, i do." "mercury--he should be mercurial." "he is. that's partly why i love him, perhaps. he is full of swiftness." "so is the butterfly when it comes out into the sun." "emile, forgive me, but sometimes you seem to me deliberately to lie down and roll in pessimism rather as a horse--" "why not say an ass?" she laughed. "an ass, then, my dear, lies down sometimes and rolls in dust. i think you are doing it to-night. i think you were preparing to do it this afternoon. perhaps it is the effect of london upon you?" "london--by-the-way, where are you going for your honeymoon? i am sure you know, though monsieur delarey may not." "why are you sure?" "your face to-night when i asked if it was to be italian." she laid her hand again upon his arm and spoke eagerly, forgetting in a moment his pessimism and the little cloud it had brought across her happiness. "you're right; i've decided." "italy--and hotels?" "no, a thousand times no!" "where then?" "sicily, and my peasant's cottage." "the cottage on monte amato where you spent a summer four or five years ago contemplating etna?" "yes. i've not said a word to maurice, but i've taken it again. all the little furniture i had--beds, straw chairs, folding-tables--is stored in a big room in the village at the foot of the mountain. gaspare, the sicilian boy who was my servant, will superintend the carrying up of it on women's heads--his dear old grandmother takes the heaviest things, arm-chairs and so on--and it will all be got ready in no time. i'm having the house whitewashed again, and the shutters painted, and the stone vases on the terrace will be filled with scarlet geraniums, and--oh, emile, i shall hear the piping of the shepherds in the ravine at twilight again with him, and see the boys dance the tarantella under the moon again with him, and--and--" she stopped with a break in her voice. "put away your pessimism, dear emile," she continued, after a moment. "tell me you think we shall be happy in our garden of paradise--tell me that!" but he only said, even more gravely: "so you're taking him to the real south?" "yes, to the blue and the genuine gold, and the quivering heat, and the balmy nights when etna sends up its plume of ivory smoke to the moon. he's got the south in his blood. well, he shall see the south first with me, and he shall love it as i love it." he said nothing. no spark of her enthusiasm called forth a spark from him. and now she saw that, and said again: "london is making you horrible to-night. you are doing london and yourself an injustice, and maurice, too." "it's very possible," he replied. "but--i can say it to you--i have a certain gift of--shall i call it divination?--where men and women are concerned. it is not merely that i am observant of what is, but that i can often instinctively feel that which must be inevitably produced by what is. very few people can read the future in the present. i often can, almost as clearly as i can read the present. even pessimism, accentuated by the influence of the infernal city, may contain some grains of truth." "what do you see for us, emile? don't you think we shall be happy together, then? don't you think that we are suited to be happy together?" when she asked artois this direct question he was suddenly aware of a vagueness brooding in his mind, and knew that he had no definite answer to make. "i see nothing," he said, abruptly. "i know nothing. it may be london. it may be my own egoism." and then he suddenly explained himself to hermione with the extraordinary frankness of which he was only capable when he was with her, or was writing to her. "i am the dog in the manger," he concluded. "don't let my growling distress you. your happiness has made me envious." "i'll never believe it," she exclaimed. "you are too good a friend and too great a man for that. why can't you be happy, too? why can't you find some one?" "married life wouldn't suit me. i dislike loneliness yet i couldn't do without it. in it i find my liberty as an artist." "sometimes i think it must be a curse to be an artist, and yet i have often longed to be one." "why have you never tried to be one?" "i hardly know. perhaps in my inmost being i feel i never could be. i am too impulsive, too unrestrained, too shapeless in mind. if i wrote a book it might be interesting, human, heart-felt, true to life, i hope, not stupid, i believe; but it would be a chaos. you--how it would shock your critical mind! i could never select and prune and blend and graft. i should have to throw my mind and heart down on the paper and just leave them there." "if you did that you might produce a human document that would live almost as long as literature, that even just criticism would be powerless to destroy." "i shall never write that book, but i dare say i shall live it." "yes," he said. "you will live it, perhaps with monsieur delarey." and he smiled. "when is the wedding to be?" "in january, i think." "ah! when you are in your garden of paradise i shall not be very far off--just across your blue sea on the african shore." "why, where are you going, emile?" "i shall spend the spring at the sacred city of kairouan, among the pilgrims and the mosques, making some studies, taking some notes." "for a book? come over to sicily and see us." "i don't think you will want me there." the trap in the roof was opened, and a beery eye, with a luscious smile in it, peered down upon them. "'ad enough of the river, sir?" "comment?" said artois. "we'd better go home, i suppose," hermione said. she gave her address to the cabman, and they drove in silence to eaton place. iii lucrezia gabbi came out onto the terrace of the casa del prete on monte amato, shaded her eyes with her brown hands, and gazed down across the ravine over the olive-trees and the vines to the mountain-side opposite, along which, among rocks and barbary figs, wound a tiny track trodden by the few contadini whose stone cottages, some of them scarcely more than huts, were scattered here and there upon the surrounding heights that looked towards etna and the sea. lucrezia was dressed in her best. she wore a dark-stuff gown covered in the front by a long blue-and-white apron. although really happiest in her mind when her feet were bare, she had donned a pair of white stockings and low slippers, and over her thick, dark hair was tied a handkerchief gay with a pattern of brilliant yellow flowers on a white ground. this was a present from gaspare bought at the town of cattaro at the foot of the mountains, and worn now for the first time in honor of a great occasion. to-day lucrezia was in the service of distinguished forestieri, and she was gazing now across the ravine straining her eyes to see a procession winding up from the sea: donkeys laden with luggage, and her new padrone and padrona pioneered by the radiant gaspare towards their mountain home. it was a good day for their arrival. nobody could deny that. even lucrezia, who was accustomed to fine weather, having lived all her life in sicily, was struck to a certain blinking admiration as she stepped out on to the terrace, and murmured to herself and a cat which was basking on the stone seat that faced the cottage between broken columns, round which roses twined: "che tempo fa oggi! santa madonna, che bel tempo!" on this morning of february the clearness of the atmosphere was in truth almost african. under the cloudless sky every detail of the great view from the terrace stood out with a magical distinctness. the lines of the mountains were sharply defined against the profound blue. the forms of the gray rocks scattered upon their slopes, of the peasants' houses, of the olive and oak trees which grew thickly on the left flank of monte amato below the priest's house, showed themselves in the sunshine with the bold frankness which is part of the glory of all things in the south. the figures of stationary or moving goatherds and laborers, watching their flocks or toiling among the vineyards and the orchards, were relieved against the face of nature in the shimmer of the glad gold in this eden, with a mingling of delicacy and significance which had in it something ethereal and mysterious, a hint of fairy-land. far off, rising calmly in an immense slope, a slope that was classical in its dignity, profound in its sobriety, remote, yet neither cold nor sad, etna soared towards the heaven, sending from its summit, on which the snows still lingered, a steady plume of ivory smoke. in the nearer foreground, upon a jagged crest of beetling rock, the ruins of a saracenic castle dominated a huddled village, whose houses seemed to cling frantically to the cliff, as if each one were in fear of being separated from its brethren and tossed into the sea. and far below that sea spread forth its waveless, silent wonder to a horizon-line so distant that the eyes which looked upon it could scarcely distinguish sea from sky--a line which surely united not divided two shades of flawless blue, linking them in a brotherhood which should be everlasting. few sounds, and these but slight ones, stirred in the breast of the ardent silence; some little notes of birds, fragmentary and wandering, wayward as pilgrims who had forgotten to what shrine they bent their steps, some little notes of bells swinging beneath the tufted chins of goats, the wail of a woman's song, old in its quiet melancholy, oriental in its strange irregularity of rhythm, and the careless twitter of a tarantella, played upon a reed-flute by a secluded shepherd-boy beneath the bending silver green of tressy olives beside a tiny stream. lucrezia was accustomed to it all. she had been born beside that sea. etna had looked down upon her as she sucked and cried, toddled and played, grew to a lusty girlhood, and on into young womanhood with its gayety and unreason, its work and hopes and dreams. that oriental song--she had sung it often on the mountain-sides, as she set her bare, brown feet on the warm stones, and lifted her head with a native pride beneath its burdening pannier or its jar of water from the well. and she had many a time danced to the tarantella that the shepherd-boy was fluting, clapping her strong hands and swinging her broad hips, while the great rings in her ears shook to and fro, and her whole healthy body quivered to the spirit of the tune. she knew it all. it was and had always been part of her life. hermione's garden of paradise generally seemed homely enough to lucrezia. yet to-day, perhaps because she was dressed in her best on a day that was not a festa, and wore a silver chain with a coral charm on it, and had shoes on her feet, there seemed to her a newness, almost a strangeness in the wideness and the silence, in the sunshine and the music, something that made her breathe out a sigh, and stare with almost wondering eyes on etna and the sea. she soon lost her vague sensation that her life lay, perhaps, in a home of magic, however, when she looked again at the mule track which wound upward from the distant town, in which the train from messina must by this time have deposited her forestieri, and began to think more naturally of the days that lay before her, of her novel and important duties, and of the unusual sums of money that her activities were to earn her. gaspare, who, as major-domo, had chosen her imperiously for his assistant and underling in the house of the priest, had informed her that she was to receive twenty-five lire a month for her services, besides food and lodging, and plenty of the good, red wine of amato. to lucrezia such wages seemed prodigal. she had never yet earned more than the half of them. but it was not only this prospect of riches which now moved and excited her. she was to live in a splendidly furnished house with wealthy and distinguished people; she was to sleep in a room all to herself, in a bed that no one had a right to except herself. this was an experience that in her most sanguine moments she had never anticipated. all her life had been passed en famille in the village of marechiaro, which lay on a table-land at the foot of monte amato, half-way down to the sea. the gabbis were numerous, and they all lived in one room, to which cats, hens, and turkeys resorted with much freedom and in considerable numbers. lucrezia had never known, perhaps had never desired, a moment of privacy, but now she began to awake to the fact that privacy and daintiness and pretty furniture were very interesting, and even touching, as well as very phenomenal additions to a young woman's existence. what could the people who had the power to provide them be like? she scanned the mule-track with growing eagerness, but the procession did not appear. she saw only an old contadino in a long woollen cap riding slowly into the recesses of the hills on a donkey, and a small boy leading his goats to pasture. the train must have been late. she turned round from the view and examined her new home once more. already she knew it by heart, yet the wonder of it still encompassed her spirit. hermione's cottage, the eyrie to which she was bringing maurice delarey, was only a cottage, although to lucrezia it seemed almost a palace. it was whitewashed, with a sloping roof of tiles, and windows with green venetian shutters. although it now belonged to a contadino, it had originally been built by a priest, who had possessed vineyards on the mountain-side, and who wished to have a home to which he could escape from the town where he lived when the burning heats of the summer set in. above his vineyards, some hundreds of yards from the summit of the mountain, and close to a grove of oaks and olive-trees, which grew among a turmoil of mighty boulders, he had terraced out the slope and set his country home. at the edge of the rough path which led to the cottage from the ravine below was a ruined norman arch. this served as a portal of entrance. between it and the cottage was a well surrounded by crumbling walls, with stone seats built into them. passing that, one came at once to the terrace of earth, fronted by a low wall with narrow seats covered with white tiles, and divided by broken columns that edged the ravine and commanded the great view on which lucrezia had been gazing. on the wall of this terrace were stone vases, in which scarlet geraniums were growing. red roses twined around the columns, and, beneath, the steep side of the ravine was clothed with a tangle of vegetation, olive and peach, pear and apple trees. behind the cottage rose the bare mountain-side, covered with loose stones and rocks, among which in every available interstice the diligent peasants had sown corn and barley. here and there upon the mountains distant cottages were visible, but on monte amato hermione's was the last, the most intrepid. none other ventured to cling to the warm earth so high above the sea and in a place so solitary. that was why hermione loved it, because it was near the sky and very far away. now, after an earnest, ruminating glance at the cottage, lucrezia walked across the terrace and reverently entered it by a door which opened onto a flight of three steps leading down to the terrace. already she knew the interior by heart, but she had not lost her awe of it, her sense almost of being in a church when she stood among the furniture, the hangings, and the pictures which she had helped to arrange under gaspare's orders. the room she now stood in was the parlor of the cottage, serving as dining-room, drawing-room, boudoir, and den. although it must be put to so many purposes, it was only a small, square chamber, and very simply furnished. the walls, like all the walls of the cottage inside and out, were whitewashed. on the floor was a carpet that had been woven in kairouan, the sacred african town where artois was now staying and making notes for his new book. it was thick and rough, and many-colored almost as joseph's coat; brilliant but not garish, for the african has a strange art of making colors friends instead of enemies, of blending them into harmonies that are gay yet touched with peace. on the walls hung a few reproductions of fine pictures: an old woman of rembrandt, in whose wrinkled face and glittering dark eyes the past pleasures and past sorrows of life seemed tenderly, pensively united, mellowed by the years into a soft bloom, a quiet beauty; an allegory of watts, fierce with inspiration like fire mounting up to an opening heaven; a landscape of frederick walker's, the romance of harvest in an autumn land; burne-jones's "the mill," and a copy in oils of a knight of gustave moreau's, riding in armor over the summit of a hill into an unseen country of errantry, some fairy-land forlorn. there was, too, an old venetian mirror in a curiously twisted golden frame. at the two small windows on either side of the door, which was half glass, half white-painted wood, were thin curtains of pale gray-blue and white, bought in the bazaars of tunis. for furniture there were a folding-table of brown, polished wood, a large divan with many cushions, two deck-chairs of the telescope species, that can be made long or short at will, a writing-table, a cottage piano, and four round wicker chairs with arms. in one corner of the room stood a tall clock with a burnished copper face, and in another a cupboard containing glass and china. a door at the back, which led into the kitchen, was covered with an oriental portiã¨re. on the writing-table, and on some dwarf bookcases already filled with books left behind by hermione on her last visit to sicily, stood rough jars of blue, yellow, and white pottery, filled with roses and geraniums arranged by gaspare. to the left of the room, as lucrezia faced it, was a door leading into the bedroom, of the master and mistress. after a long moment of admiring contemplation, lucrezia went into this bedroom, in which she was specially interested, as it was to be her special care. all was white here, walls, ceiling, wooden beds, tables, the toilet service, the bookcases. for there were books here, too, books which lucrezia examined with an awful wonder, not knowing how to read. in the window-seat were white cushions. on the chest of drawers were more red roses and geraniums. it was a virginal room, into which the bright, golden sunbeams stole under the striped awning outside the low window with surely a hesitating modesty, as if afraid to find themselves intruders. the whiteness, the intense quietness of the room, through whose window could be seen a space of far-off sea, a space of mountain-flank, and, when one came near to it, and the awning was drawn up, the snowy cone of etna, struck now to the soul of lucrezia a sense of half-puzzled peace. her large eyes opened wider, and she laid her hands on her hips and fell into a sort of dream as she stood there, hearing only the faint and regular ticking of the clock in the sitting-room. she was well accustomed to the silence of the mountain world and never heeded it, but peace within four walls was almost unknown to her. here no hens fluttered, no turkeys went to and fro elongating their necks, no children played and squalled, no women argued and gossiped, quarrelled and worked, no men tramped in and out, grumbled and spat. a perfectly clean and perfectly peaceful room--it was marvellous, it was--she sighed again. what must it be like to be gentlefolk, to have the money to buy calm and cleanliness? suddenly she moved, took her hands from her hips, settled her yellow handkerchief, and smiled. the silence had been broken by a sound all true sicilians love, the buzz and the drowsy wail of the ceramella, the bagpipes which the shepherds play as they come down from the hills to the villages when the festival of the natale is approaching. it was as yet very faint and distant, coming from the mountain-side behind the cottage, but lucrezia knew the tune. it was part of her existence, part of etna, the olive groves, the vineyards, and the sea, part of that old, old sicily which dwells in the blood and shines in the eyes, and is alive in the songs and the dances of these children of the sun, and of legends and of mingled races from many lands. it was the "pastorale," and she knew who was playing it--sebastiano, the shepherd, who had lived with the brigands in the forests that look down upon the isles of lipari, who now kept his father's goats among the rocks, and knew every stone and every cave on etna, and who had a chest and arms of iron, and legs that no climbing could fatigue, and whose great, brown fingers, that could break a man's wrist, drew such delicate tones from the reed pipe that, when he played it, even the old man's thoughts were turned to dancing and the old woman's to love. but now he was being important, he was playing the ceramella, into which no shepherd could pour such a volume of breath as he, from which none could bring such a volume of warm and lusty music. it was sebastiano coming down from the top of monte amato to welcome the forestieri. the music grew louder, and presently a dog barked outside on the terrace. lucrezia ran to the window. a great white-and-yellow, blunt-faced, pale-eyed dog, his neck surrounded by a spiked collar, stood there sniffing and looking savage, his feathery tail cocked up pugnaciously over his back. "sebastiano!" called lucrezia, leaning out of the window under the awning--"sebastiano!" then she drew back laughing, and squatted down on the floor, concealed by the window-seat. the sound of the pipes increased till their rough drone seemed to be in the room, bidding a rustic defiance to its whiteness and its silence. still squatting on the floor, lucrezia called out once more: "sebastiano!" abruptly the tune ceased and the silence returned, emphasized by the vanished music. lucrezia scarcely breathed. her face was flushed, for she was struggling against an impulse to laugh, which almost overmastered her. after a minute she heard the dog's short bark again, then a man's foot shifting on the terrace, then suddenly a noise of breathing above her head close to her hair. with a little scream she shrank back and looked up. a man's face was gazing down at her. it was a very brown and very masculine face, roughened by wind and toughened by sun, with keen, steady, almost insolent eyes, black and shining, stiff, black hair, that looked as if it had been crimped, a mustache sprouting above a wide, slightly animal mouth full of splendid teeth, and a square, brutal, but very manly chin. on the head was a sicilian cap, long and hanging down at the left side. there were ear-rings in the man's large, well-shaped ears, and over the window-ledge protruded the swollen bladder, like a dead, bloated monster, from which he had been drawing his antique tune. he stared down at lucrezia with a half-contemptuous humor, and she up at him with a wide-eyed, unconcealed adoration. then he looked curiously round the room, with a sharp intelligence that took in every detail in a moment. "per dio!" he ejaculated. "per dio!" he looked at lucrezia, folded his brawny arms on the window-sill, and said: "they've got plenty of soldi." lucrezia nodded, not without personal pride. "gaspare says--" "oh, i know as much as gaspare," interrupted sebastiano, brusquely. "the signora is my friend. when she was here before i saw her many times. but for me she would never have taken the casa del prete." "why was that?" asked lucrezia, with reverence. "they told her in marechiaro that it was not safe for a lady to live up here alone, that when the night came no one could tell what would happen." "but, gaspare--" "does gaspare know every grotto on etna? has gaspare lived eight years with the briganti? and the mafia--has gaspare--" he paused, laughed, pulled his mustache, and added: "if the signora had not been assured of my protection she would never have come up here." "but now she has a husband." "yes." he glanced again round the room. "one can see that. per dio, it is like the snow on the top of etna." lucrezia got up actively from the floor and came close to sebastiano. "what is the padrona like, sebastiano?" she asked. "i have seen her, but i have never spoken to her." "she is simpatica--she will do you no harm." "and is she generous?" "ready to give soldi to every one who is in trouble. but if you once deceive her she will never look at you again." "then i will not deceive her," said lucrezia, knitting her brows. "better not. she is not like us. she thinks to tell a lie is a sin against the madonna, i believe." "but then what will the padrone do?" asked lucrezia, innocently. "tell his woman the truth, like all husbands," replied sebastiano, with a broadly satirical grin. "as your man will some day, lucrezia mia. all husbands are good and faithful. don't you know that?" "macchã¨!" she laughed loudly, with an incredulity quite free from bitterness. "men are not like us," she added. "they tell us whatever they please, and do always whatever they like. we must sit in the doorway and keep our back to the street for fear a man should smile at us, and they can stay out all night, and come back in the morning, and say they've been fishing at isola bella, or sleeping out to guard the vines, and we've got to say, 'si, salvatore!' or 'si, guido!' when we know very well--" "what, lucrezia?" she looked into his twinkling eyes and reddened slightly, sticking out her under lip. "i'm not going to tell you." "you have no business to know." "and how can i help--they're coming!" sebastiano's dog had barked again on the terrace. sebastiano lifted the ceramalla quickly from the window-sill and turned round, while lucrezia darted out through the door, across the sitting-room, and out onto the terrace. "are they there, sebastiano? are they there?" he stood by the terrace wall, shading his eyes with his hand. "ecco!" he said, pointing across the ravine. far off, winding up from the sea slowly among the rocks and the olive-trees, was a procession of donkeys, faintly relieved in the brilliant sunshine against the mountain-side. "one," counted sebastiano, "two, three, four--there are four. the signore is walking, the signora is riding. whose donkeys have they got? gaspare's father's, of course. i told gaspare to take ciccio's, and--it is too far to see, but i'll soon make them hear me. the signora loves the 'pastorale.' she says there is all sicily in it. she loves it more than the tarantella, for she is good, lucrezia--don't forget that--though she is not a catholic, and perhaps it makes her think of the coming of the bambino and of the madonna. ah! she will smile now and clap her hands when she hears." he put the pipe to his lips, puffed out his cheeks, and began to play the "pastorale" with all his might, while lucrezia listened, staring across the ravine at the creeping donkey, which was bearing hermione upward to her garden of paradise near the sky. iv "and then, signora, i said to lucrezia, 'the padrona loves zampaglione, and you must be sure to--'" "wait, gaspare! i thought i heard--yes, it is, it is! hush! maurice--listen!" hermione pulled up her donkey, which was the last of the little procession, laid her hand on her husband's arm, and held her breath, looking upward across the ravine to the opposite slope where, made tiny by distance, she saw the white line of the low terrace wall of the casa del prete, the black dots, which were the heads of sebastiano and lucrezia. the other donkeys tripped on among the stones and vanished, with their attendant boys, gaspare's friends, round the angle of a great rock, but gaspare stood still beside his padrona, with his brown hand on her donkey's neck, and maurice delarey, following her eyes, looked and listened like a statue of that mercury to which artois had compared him. "it's the 'pastorale,'" hermione whispered. "the 'pastorale'!" her lips parted. tears came into her eyes, those tears that come to a woman in a moment of supreme joy that seems to wipe out all the sorrows of the past. she felt as if she were in a great dream, one of those rare and exquisite dreams that sometimes bathe the human spirit, as a warm wave of the ionian sea bathes the sicilian shore in the shadow of an orange grove, murmuring peace. in that old tune of the "pastorale" all her thoughts of sicily, and her knowledge of sicily, and her imaginations, and her deep and passionately tender and even ecstatic love of sicily seemed folded and cherished like birds in a nest. she could never have explained, she could only feel how. in the melody, with its drone bass, the very history of the enchanted island was surely breathed out. ulysses stood to listen among the flocks of polyphemus. empedocles stayed his feet among the groves of etna to hear it. and persephone, wandering among the fields of asphodel, paused with her white hands out-stretched to catch its drowsy beauty; and arethusa, turned into a fountain, hushed her music to let it have its way. and hermione heard in it the voice of the bambino, the christ-child, to whose manger-cradle the shepherds followed the star, and the voice of the madonna, maria stella del mare, whom the peasants love in sicily as the child loves its mother. and those peasants were in it, too, people of the lava wastes and the lava terraces where the vines are green against the black, people of the hazel and the beech forests, where the little owl cries at eve, people of the plains where, beneath the yellow lemons, spring the yellow flowers that are like their joyous reflection in the grasses, people of the sea, that wonderful purple sea in whose depth of color eternity seems caught. the altars of the pagan world were in it, and the wayside shrines before which the little lamps are lit by night upon the lonely mountain-sides, the old faith and the new, and the love of a land that lives on from generation to generation in the pulsing breasts of men. and maurice was in it, too, and hermione and her love for him and his for her. gaspare did not move. he loved the "pastorale" almost without knowing that he loved it. it reminded him of the festa of natale, when, as a child, dressed in a long, white garment, he had carried a blazing torch of straw down the steps of the church of san pancrazio before the canopy that sheltered the bambino. it was a part of his life, as his mother was, and tito the donkey, and the vineyards, the sea, the sun. it pleased him to hear it, and to feel that his padrona from a far country loved it, and his isle, his "paese" in which it sounded. so, though he had been impatient to reach the casa del prete and enjoy the reward of praise which he considered was his due for his forethought and his labors, he stood very still by tito, with his great, brown eyes fixed, and the donkey switch drooping in the hand that hung at his side. and hermione for a moment gave herself entirely to her dream. she had carried out the plan which she had made. she and maurice delarey had been married quietly, early one morning in london, and had caught the boat-train at victoria, and travelled through to sicily without stopping on the way to rest. she wanted to plunge maurice in the south at once, not to lead him slowly, step by step, towards it. and so, after three nights in the train, they had opened their eyes to the quiet sea near reggio, to the clustering houses under the mountains of messina, to the high-prowed fishermen's boats painted blue and yellow, to the coast-line which wound away from the straits till it stole out to that almost phantasmal point where siracusa lies, to the slope of etna, to the orange gardens and the olives, and the great, dry water courses like giant highways leading up into the mountains. and from the train they had come up here into the recesses of the hills to hear their welcome of the "pastorale." it was a contrast to make a dream, the roar of ceaseless travel melting into this radiant silence, this inmost heart of peace. they had rushed through great cities to this old land of mountains and of legends, and up there on the height from which the droning music dropped to them through the sunshine was their home, the solitary house which was to shelter their true marriage. delarey was almost confused by it all. half dazed by the noise of the journey, he was now half dazed by the wonder of the quiet as he stood near gaspare and listened to sebastiano's music, and looked upward to the white terrace wall. hermione was to be his possession here, in this strange and far-off land, among these simple peasant people. so he thought of them, not versed yet in the complex sicilian character. he listened, and he looked at gaspare. he saw a boy of eighteen, short as are most sicilians, but straight as an arrow, well made, active as a cat, rather of the greek than of the arab type so often met with in sicily, with bold, well-cut features, wonderfully regular and wonderfully small, square, white teeth, thick, black eyebrows, and enormous brown eyes sheltered by the largest lashes he had ever seen. the very low forehead was edged by a mass of hair that had small gleams of bright gold here and there in the front, but that farther back on the head was of a brown so dark as to look nearly black. gaspare was dressed in a homely suit of light-colored linen with no collar and a shirt open at the throat, showing a section of chest tanned by the sun. stout mountain boots were on his feet, and a white linen hat was tipped carelessly to the back of his head, leaving his expressive, ardently audacious, but not unpleasantly impudent face exposed to the golden rays of which he had no fear. as delarey looked at him he felt oddly at home with him, almost as if he stood beside a young brother. yet he could scarcely speak gaspare's language, and knew nothing of his thoughts, his feelings, his hopes, his way of life. it was an odd sensation, a subtle sympathy not founded upon knowledge. it seemed to now into delarey's heart out of the heart of the sun, to steal into it with the music of the "pastorale." "i feel--i feel almost as if i belonged here," he whispered to hermione, at last. she turned her head and looked down on him from her donkey. the tears were still in her eyes. "i always knew you belonged to the blessed, blessed south," she said, in a low voice. "do you care for that?" she pointed towards the terrace. "that music?" "yes." "tremendously, but i don't know why. is it very beautiful?" "i sometimes think it is the most beautiful music i have ever heard. at any rate, i have always loved it more than all other music, and now--well, you can guess if i love it now." she dropped one hand against the donkey's warm shoulder. maurice took it in his warm hand. "all sicily, all the real, wild sicily seems to be in it. they play it in the churches on the night of the natale," she went on, after a moment. "i shall never forget hearing it for the first time. i felt as if it took hold of my very soul with hands like the hands of the bambino." she broke off. a tear had fallen down upon her cheek. "avanti gaspare!" she said. gaspare lifted his switch and gave tito a tap, calling out "ah!" in a loud, manly voice. the donkey moved on, tripping carefully among the stones. they mounted slowly up towards the "pastorale." presently hermione said to maurice, who kept beside her in spite of the narrowness of the path: "everything seems very strange to me to-day. can you guess why?" "i don't know. tell me," he answered. "it's this. i never expected to be perfectly happy. we all have our dreams, i suppose. we all think now and then, 'if only i could have this with that, this person in that place, i could be happy.' and perhaps we have sometimes a part of our dream turned into reality, though even that comes seldom. but to have the two, to have the two halves of our dream fitted together and made reality--isn't that rare? long ago, when i was a girl, i always used to think--'if i could ever be with the one i loved in the south--alone, quite alone, quite away from the world, i could be perfectly happy.' well, years after i thought that i came here. i knew at once i had found my ideal place. one-half of my dream was made real and was mine. that was much, wasn't it? but getting this part of what i longed for sometimes made me feel unutterably sad. i had never seen you then, but often when i sat on that little terrace up there i felt a passionate desire to have a human being whom i loved beside me. i loved no one then, but i wanted, i needed to love. do men ever feel that? women do, often, nearly always i think. the beauty made me want to love. sometimes, as i leaned over the wall, i heard a shepherd-boy below in the ravine play on his pipe, or i heard the goat-bells ringing under the olives. sometimes at night i saw distant lights, like fire-flies, lamps carried by peasants going to their homes in the mountains from a festa in honor of some saint, stealing upward through the darkness, or i saw the fishermen's lights burning in the boats far off upon the sea. then--then i knew that i had only half my dream, and i was ungrateful, maurice. i almost wished that i had never had this half, because it made me realize what it would be to have the whole. it made me realize the mutilation, the incompleteness of being in perfect beauty without love. and now--now i've actually got all i ever wanted, and much more, because i didn't know then at all what it would really mean to me to have it. and, besides, i never thought that god would select me for perfect happiness. why should he? what have i ever done to be worthy of such a gift?" "you've been yourself," he answered. at this moment the path narrowed and he had to fall behind, and they did not speak again till they had clambered up the last bit of the way, steep almost as the side of a house, passed through the old ruined arch, and came out upon the terrace before the casa del prete. sebastiano met them, still playing lustily upon his pipe, while the sweat dripped from his sunburned face; but lucrezia, suddenly overcome by shyness, had disappeared round the corner of the cottage to the kitchen. the donkey boys were resting on the stone seats in easy attitudes, waiting for gaspare's orders to unload, and looking forward to a drink of the monte amato wine. when they had had it they meant to carry out a plan devised by the radiant gaspare, to dance a tarantella for the forestieri while sebastiano played the flute. but no hint of this intention was to be given till the luggage had been taken down and carried into the house. their bright faces were all twinkling with the knowledge of their secret. when at length sebastiano had put down the ceramella and shaken hermione and maurice warmly by the hand, and gaspare had roughly, but with roars of laughter, dragged lucrezia into the light of day to be presented, hermione took her husband in to see their home. on the table in the sitting-room lay a letter. "a letter already!" she said. there was a sound almost of vexation in her voice. the little white thing lying there seemed to bring a breath of the world she wanted to forget into their solitude. "who can have written?" she took it up and felt contrition. "it's from emile!" she exclaimed. "how good of him to remember! this must be his welcome." "read it, hermione," said maurice. "i'll look after gaspare." she laughed. "better not. he's here to look after us. but you'll soon understand him, very soon, and he you. you speak different languages, but you both belong to the south. let him alone, maurice. we'll read this together. i'm sure it's for you as well as me." and while gaspare and the boys carried in the trunks she sat down by the table and opened emile's letter. it was very short, and was addressed from kairouan, where artois had established himself for the spring in an arab house. she began reading it aloud in french: "this is a word--perhaps unwelcome, for i think i understand, dear friend, something of what you are feeling and of what you desire just now--a word of welcome to your garden of paradise. may there never be an angel with a flaming sword to keep the gate against you. listen to the shepherds fluting, dream, or, better, live, as you are grandly capable of living, under the old olives of sicily. take your golden time boldly with both hands. life may seem to most of us who think in the main a melancholy, even a tortured thing, but when it is not so for a while to one who can think as you can think, the power of thought, of deep thought, intensifies its glory. you will never enjoy as might a pagan, perhaps never as might a saint. but you will enjoy as a generous-blooded woman with a heart that only your friends--i should like to dare to say only one friend--know in its rare entirety. there is an egoist here, in the shadow of the mosques, who turns his face towards mecca, and prays that you may never leave your garden. e. a." "does the sicilian grandmother respond to the magic of the south?" when she drew near to the end of this letter hermione hesitated. "he--there's something," she said, "that is too kind to me. i don't think i'll read it." "don't," said delarey. "but it can't be too kind." she saw the postscript and smiled. "and quite at the end there's an allusion to you." "is there?" "i must read that." and she read it. "he needn't be afraid of the grandmother's not responding, need he, maurice?" "no," he said, smiling too. "but is that it, do you think? why should it be? who wouldn't love this place?" and he went to the open door and looked out towards the sea. "who wouldn't?" he repeated. "oh, i have met an englishman who was angry with etna for being the shape it is." "what an ass!" "i thought so, too. but, seriously, i expect the grandmother has something to say in that matter of your feeling already, as if you belonged here." "perhaps." he was still looking towards the distant sea far down below them. "is that an island?" he asked. "where?" said hermione, getting up and coming towards him. "oh, that--no, it is a promontory, but it's almost surrounded by the sea. there is only a narrow ledge of rock, like a wall, connecting it with the main-land, and in the rock there's a sort of natural tunnel through which the sea flows. i've sometimes been to picnic there. on the plateau hidden among the trees there's a ruined house. i have spent many hours reading and writing in it. they call it, in marechiaro, casa delle sirene--the house of the sirens." "questo vino ã¨ bello e fino," cried gaspare's voice outside. "a brindisi!" said hermione. "gaspare's treating the boys. questo vino--oh, how glorious to be here in sicily!" she put her arm through delarey's, and drew him out onto the terrace. gaspare, lucrezia, sebastiano, and the three boys stood there with glasses of red wine in their hands raised high above their heads. "questo vino ã¨ bello e fino, ã� portato da castel perini, faccio brindisi alla signora ermini," continued gaspare, joyously, and with an obvious pride in his poetical powers. they all drank simultaneously, lucrezia spluttering a little out of shyness. "monte amato, gaspare, not castel perini. but that doesn't rhyme, eh? bravo! but we must drink, too." gaspare hastened to fill two more glasses. "now it's our turn," cried hermione. "questo vino ã¨ bello e fino, ã� portato da castello a mare, faccio brindisi al signor gaspare." the boys burst into a hearty laugh, and gaspare's eyes gleamed with pleasure while hermione and maurice drank. then sebastiano drew from the inner pocket of his old jacket a little flute, smiling with an air of intense and comic slyness which contorted his face. "ah," said hermione, "i know--it's the tarantella!" she clapped her hands. "it only wanted that," she said to maurice. "only that--the tarantella!" "guai lucrezia!" cried gaspare, tyrannically. lucrezia bounded to one side, bent her body inward, and giggled with all her heart. sebastiano leaned his back against a column and put the flute to his lips. "here, maurice, here!" said hermione. she made him sit down on one of the seats under the parlor window, facing the view, while the four boys took their places, one couple opposite to the other. then sebastiano began to twitter the tune familiar to the sicilians of marechiaro, in which all the careless pagan joy of life in the sun seems caught and flung out upon a laughing, dancing world. delarey laid his hands on the warm tiles of the seat, leaned forward, and watched with eager eyes. he had never seen the tarantella, yet now with his sensation of expectation there was blended another feeling. it seemed to him as if he were going to see something he had known once, perhaps very long ago, something that he had forgotten and that was now going to be recalled to his memory. some nerve in his body responded to sebastiano's lively tune. a desire of movement came to him as he saw the gay boys waiting on the terrace, their eyes already dancing, although their bodies were still. gaspare bent forward, lifted his hands above his head, and began to snap his fingers in time to the music. a look of joyous invitation had come into his eyes--an expression that was almost coquettish, like the expression of a child who has conceived some lively, innocent design of which he thinks that no one knows except himself. his young figure surely quivered with a passion of merry mischief which was communicated to his companions. in it there began to flame a spirit that suggested undying youth. even before they began to dance the boys were transformed. if they had ever known cares those cares had fled, for in the breasts of those who can really dance the tarantella there is no room for the smallest sorrow, in their hearts no place for the most minute regret, anxiety, or wonder, when the rapture of the measure is upon them. away goes everything but the pagan joy of life, the pagan ecstasy of swift movement, and the leaping blood that is quick as the motes in a sunray falling from a southern sky. delarey began to smile as he watched them, and their expression was reflected in his eyes. hermione glanced at him and thought what a boy he looked. his eyes made her feel almost as if she were sitting with a child. the mischief, the coquettish joy of the boys increased. they snapped their fingers more loudly, swayed their bodies, poised themselves first on one foot, then on the other, then abruptly, and with a wildness that was like the sudden crash of all the instruments in an orchestra breaking in upon the melody of a solitary flute, burst into the full frenzy of the dance. and in the dance each seemed to be sportively creative, ruled by his own sweet will. "that's why i love the tarantella more than any other dance," hermione murmured to her husband, "because it seems to be the invention of the moment, as if they were wild with joy and had to show it somehow, and showed it beautifully by dancing. look at gaspare now." with his hands held high above his head, and linked together, gaspare was springing into the air, as if propelled by one of those boards which are used by acrobats in circuses for leaping over horses. he had thrown off his hat, and his low-growing hair, which was rather long on the forehead, moved as he sprang upward, as if his excitement, penetrating through every nerve in his body, had filled it with electricity. while hermione watched him she almost expected to see its golden tufts give off sparks in response to the sparkling radiance that flashed from his laughing eyes. for in all the wild activity of his changing movements gaspare never lost his coquettish expression, the look of seductive mischief that seemed to invite the whole world to be merry and mad as he was. his ever-smiling lips and ever-smiling eyes defied fatigue, and his young body--grace made a living, pulsing, aspiring reality--suggested the tireless intensity of a flame. the other boys danced well, but gaspare outdid them all, for they only looked gay while he looked mad with joy. and to-day, at this moment, he felt exultant. he had a padrona to whom he was devoted with that peculiar sensitive devotion of the sicilian which, once it is fully aroused, is tremendous in its strength and jealous in its doggedness. he was in command of lucrezia, and was respectfully looked up to by all his boy friends of marechiaro as one who could dispense patronage, being a sort of purse-bearer and conductor of rich forestieri in a strange land. even sebastiano, a personage rather apt to be a little haughty in his physical strength, and, though no longer a brigand, no great respecter of others, showed him to-day a certain deference which elated his boyish spirit. and all his elation, all his joy in the present and hopes for the future, he let out in the dance. to dance the tarantella almost intoxicated him, even when he only danced it in the village among the contadini, but to-day the admiring eyes of his padrona were upon him. he knew how she loved the tarantella. he knew, too, that she wanted the padrone, her husband, to love it as she did. gaspare was very shrewd to read a woman's thoughts so long as her love ran in them. though but eighteen, he was a man in certain knowledge. he understood, almost unconsciously, a good deal of what hermione was feeling as she watched, and he put his whole soul into the effort to shine, to dazzle, to rouse gayety and wonder in the padrone, who saw him dance for the first time. he was untiring in his variety and his invention. sometimes, light-footed in his mountain boots, with an almost incredible swiftness and vim, he rushed from end to end of the terrace. his feet twinkled in steps so complicated and various that he made the eyes that watched him wink as at a play of sparks in a furnace, and his arms and hands were never still, yet never, even for a second, fell into a curve that was ungraceful. sometimes his head was bent whimsically forward as if in invitation. sometimes he threw his whole body backward, exposing his brown throat, and staring up at the sun like a sun worshipper dancing to his divinity. sometimes he crouched on his haunches, clapping his hands together rhythmically, and, with bent knees, shooting out his legs like some jovially grotesque dwarf promenading among a crowd of follies. and always the spirit of the dance seemed to increase within him, and the intoxication of it to take more hold upon him, and his eyes grew brighter and his face more radiant, and his body more active, more utterly untiring, till he was the living embodiment surely of all the youth and all the gladness of the world. hermione had kept artois's letter in her hand, and now, as she danced in spirit with gaspare, and rejoiced not only in her own joy, but in his, she thought suddenly of that sentence in it--"life may seem to most of us who think in the main a melancholy, even a tortured, thing." life a tortured thing! she was thinking now, exultantly thinking. her thoughts were leaping, spinning, crouching, whirling, rushing with gaspare in the sunshine. but life was a happy, a radiant reality. no dream, it was more beautiful than any dream, as the clear, when lovely, is more lovely than even that which is exquisite and vague. she had, of course, always known that in the world there is much joy. now she felt it, she felt all the joy of the world. she felt the joy of sunshine and of blue, the joy of love and of sympathy, the joy of health and of activity, the joy of sane passion that fights not against any law of god or man, the joy of liberty in a joyous land where the climate is kindly, and, despite poverty and toil, there are songs upon the lips of men, there are tarantellas in their sun-browned bodies, there are the fires of gayety in their bold, dark eyes. joy, joy twittered in the reed-flute of sebastiano, and the boys were joys made manifest. hermione's eyes had filled with tears of joy when among the olives she had heard the far-off drone of the "pastorale." now they shone with a joy that was different, less subtly sweet, perhaps, but more buoyant, more fearless, more careless. the glory of the pagan world was round about her, and for a moment her heart was like the heart of a nymph scattering roses in a bacchic triumph. maurice moved beside her, and she heard him breathing quickly. "what is it, maurice?" she asked. "you--do you--" "yes," he answered, understanding the question she had not fully asked. "it drives me almost mad to sit still and see those boys. gaspare's like a merry devil tempting one." as if gaspare had understood what maurice said, he suddenly spun round from his companions, and began to dance in front of maurice and hermione, provocatively, invitingly, bending his head towards them, and laughing almost in their faces, but without a trace of impertinence. he did not speak, though his lips were parted, showing two rows of even, tiny teeth, but his radiant eyes called to them, scolded them for their inactivity, chaffed them for it, wondered how long it would last, and seemed to deny that it could last forever. "what eyes!" said hermione. "did you ever see anything so expressive?" maurice did not answer. he was watching gaspare, fascinated, completely under the spell of the dance. the blood was beginning to boil in his veins, warm blood of the south that he had never before felt in his body. artois had spoken to hermione of "the call of the blood." maurice began to hear it now, to long to obey it. gaspare clapped his hands alternately in front of him and behind him, leaping from side to side, with a step in which one foot crossed over the other, and holding his body slightly curved inward. and all the time he kept his eyes on delarey, and the wily, merry invitation grew stronger in them. "venga!" he whispered, always dancing. "venga, signorino, venga--venga!" he spun round, clapped his hands furiously, snapped his fingers, and jumped back. then he held out his hands to delarey, with a gay authority that was irresistible. "venga, venga, signorino! venga, venga!" all the blood in delarey responded, chasing away something--was it a shyness, a self-consciousness of love--that till now had held him back from the gratification of his desire? he sprang up and he danced the tarantella, danced it almost as if he had danced it all his life, with a natural grace, a frolicsome abandon that no pure-blooded englishman could ever achieve, danced it as perhaps once the sicilian grandmother had danced it under the shadow of etna. whatever gaspare did he imitated, with a swiftness and a certainty that were amazing, and gaspare, intoxicated by having such a pupil, outdid himself in countless changing activities. it was like a game and like a duel, for gaspare presently began almost to fight for supremacy as he watched delarey's startling aptitude in the tarantella, which, till this moment, he had considered the possession of those born in sicily and of sicilian blood. he seemed to feel that this pupil might in time become the master, and to be put upon his mettle, and he put forth all his cunning to be too much for delarey. and hermione was left alone, watching, for lucrezia had disappeared, suddenly mindful of some household duty. when delarey sprang up she felt a thrill of responsive excitement, and when she watched his first steps, and noted the look of youth in him, the supple southern grace that rivalled the boyish grace of gaspare, she was filled with that warm, that almost yearning admiration which is the child of love. but another feeling followed--a feeling of melancholy. as she watched him dancing with the four boys, a gulf seemed to yawn between her and them. she was alone on her side of this gulf, quite alone. they were remote from her. she suddenly realized that delarey belonged to the south, and that she did not. despite all her understanding of the beauty of the south, all her sympathy for the spirit of the south, all her passionate love of the south, she was not of it. she came to it as a guest. but delarey was of it. she had never realized that absolutely till this moment. despite his english parentage and upbringing, the southern strain in his ancestry had been revived in him. the drop of southern blood in his veins was his master. she had not married an englishman. once again, and in all the glowing sunshine, with etna and the sea before her, and the sound of sebastiano's flute in her ears, she was on the thames embankment in the night with artois, and heard his deep voice speaking to her. "does he know his own blood?" said the voice. "our blood governs us when the time comes." and again the voice said: "the possible call of the blood that he doesn't understand." "the call of the blood." there was now something almost terrible to hermione in that phrase, something menacing and irresistible. were men, then, governed irrevocably, dominated by the blood that was in them? artois had certainly seemed to imply that they were, and he knew men as few knew them. his powerful intellect, like a search-light, illumined the hidden places, discovering the concealed things of the souls of men. but artois was not a religious man, and hermione had a strong sense of religion, though she did not cling, as many do, to any one creed. if the call of the blood were irresistible in a man, then man was only a slave. the criminal must not be condemned, nor the saint exalted. conduct was but obedience in one who had no choice but to obey. could she believe that? the dance grew wilder, swifter. sebastiano quickened the time till he was playing it prestissimo. one of the boys, giulio, dropped out exhausted. then another, alfio, fell against the terrace wall, laughing and wiping his streaming face. finally giuseppe gave in, too, obviously against his will. but gaspare and maurice still kept on. the game was certainly a duel now--a duel which would not cease till sebastiano put an end to it by laying down his flute. but he, too, was on his mettle and would not own fatigue. suddenly hermione felt that she could not bear the dance any more. it was, perhaps, absurd of her. her brain, fatigued by travel, was perhaps playing her tricks. but she felt as if maurice were escaping from her in this wild tarantella, like a man escaping through a fantastic grotto from some one who called to him near its entrance. a faint sensation of something that was surely jealousy, the first she had ever known, stirred in her heart--jealousy of a tarantella. "maurice!" she said. he did not hear her. "maurice!" she called. "sebastiano--gaspare--stop! you'll kill yourselves!" sebastiano caught her eye, finished the tune, and took the flute from his lips. in truth he was not sorry to be commanded to do the thing his pride of music forbade him to do of his own will. gaspare gave a wild, boyish shout, and flung himself down on giuseppe's knees, clasping him round the neck jokingly. and maurice--he stood still on the terrace for a moment looking dazed. then the hot blood surged up to his head, making it tingle under his hair, and he came over slowly, almost shamefacedly, and sat down by hermione. "this sun's made me mad, i think," he said, looking at her. "why, how pale you are, hermione!" "am i? no, it must be the shadow of the awning makes me look so. oh, maurice, you are indeed a southerner! do you know, i feel--i feel as if i had never really seen you till now, here on this terrace, as if i had never known you as you are till now, now that i've watched you dance the tarantella." "i can't dance it, of course. it was absurd of me to try." "ask gaspare! no, i'll ask him. gaspare, can the padrone dance the tarantella?" "eh--altro!" said gaspare, with admiring conviction. he got off giuseppe's knee, where he had been curled up almost like a big kitten, came and stood by hermione, and added: "per dio, signora, but the padrone is like one of us!" hermione laughed. now that the dance was over and the twittering flute was silent, her sense of loneliness and melancholy was departing. soon, no doubt, she would be able to look back upon it and laugh at it as one laughs at moods that have passed away. "this is his first day in sicily, gaspare." "there are forestieri who come here every year, and who stay for months, and who can talk our language--yes, and can even swear in dialetto as we can--but they are not like the padrone. not one of them could dance the tarantella like that. per dio!" a radiant look of pleasure came into maurice's face. "i'm glad you've brought me here," he said. "ah, when you chose this place for our honeymoon you understood me better than i understand myself, hermione." "did i?" she said, slowly. "but no, maurice, i think i chose a little selfishly. i was thinking of what i wanted. oh, the boys are going, and sebastiano." that evening, when they had finished supper--they did not wish to test lucrezia's powers too severely by dining the first day--they came out onto the terrace. lucrezia and gaspare were busily talking in the kitchen. tito, the donkey, was munching his hay under the low-pitched roof of the out-house. now and then they could faintly hear the sound of his moving jaws, lucrezia's laughter, or gaspare's eager voice. these fragmentary noises scarcely disturbed the great silence that lay about them, the night hush of the mountains and the sea. hermione sat down on the seat in the terrace wall looking over the ravine. it was a moonless night, but the sky was clear and spangled with stars. there was a cool breeze blowing from etna. here and there upon the mountains shone solitary lights, and one was moving slowly through the darkness along the crest of a hill opposite to them, a torch carried by some peasant going to his hidden cottage among the olive-trees. maurice lit his cigar and stood by hermione, who was sitting sideways and leaning her arms on the wall, and looking out into the wide dimness in which, somewhere, lay the ravine. he did not want to talk just then, and she kept silence. this was really their wedding night, and both of them were unusually conscious, but in different ways, of the mystery that lay about them, and that lay, too, within them. it was strange to be together up here, far up in the mountains, isolated in their love. below the wall, on the side of the ravine, the leaves of the olives rustled faintly as the wind passed by. and this whisper of the leaves seemed to be meant for them, to be addressed to them. they were surely being told something by the little voices of the night. "maurice," hermione said, at last, "does this silence of the mountains make you wish for anything?" "wish?" he said. "i don't know--no, i think not. i have got what i wanted. i have got you. why should i wish for anything more? and i feel at home here. it's extraordinary how i feel at home." "you! no, it isn't extraordinary at all." she looked up at him, still keeping her arms on the terrace wall. his physical beauty, which had always fascinated her, moved her more than ever in the south, seemed to her to become greater, to have more meaning in this setting of beauty and romance. she thought of the old pagan gods. he was, indeed, suited to be their happy messenger. at that moment something within her more than loved him, worshipped him, felt for him an idolatry that had something in it of pain. a number of thoughts ran through her mind swiftly. one was this: "can it be possible that he will die some day, that he will be dead?" and the awfulness, the unspeakable horror of the death of the body gripped her and shook her in the dark. "oh, maurice!" she said. "maurice!" "what is it?" she held out her hands to him. he took them and sat down by her. "what is it, hermione?" he said again. "if beauty were only deathless!" "but--but all this is, for us. it was here for the old greeks to see, and i suppose it will be here--" "i didn't mean that." "i've been stupid," he said, humbly. "no, my dearest--my dearest one. oh, how did you ever love me?" she had forgotten the warning of artois. the dirty little beggar was staring at the angel and wanted the angel to know it. "hermione! what do you mean?" he looked at her, and there was genuine surprise in his face and in his voice. "how can you love me? i'm so ugly. oh, i feel it here, i feel it horribly in the midst of--of all this loveliness, with you." she hid her face against his shoulder almost like one afraid. "but you are not ugly! what nonsense! hermione!" he put his hand under her face and raised it, and the touch of his hand against her cheek made her tremble. to-night she more than loved, she worshipped him. her intellect did not speak any more. its voice was silenced by the voice of the heart, by the voices of the senses. she felt as if she would like to go down on her knees to him and thank him for having loved her, for loving her. abasement would have been a joy to her just then, was almost a necessity, and yet there was pride in her, the decent pride of a pure-natured woman who has never let herself be soiled. "hermione," he said, looking into her face. "don't speak to me like that. it's all wrong. it puts me in the wrong place, i a fool and you--what you are. if that friend of yours could hear you--by jove!" there was something so boyish, so simple in his voice that hermione suddenly threw her arms round his neck and kissed him, as she might have kissed a delightful child. she began to laugh through tears. "thank god you're not conceited!" she exclaimed. "what about?" he asked. but she did not answer. presently they heard gaspare's step on the terrace. he came to them bareheaded, with shining eyes, to ask if they were satisfied with lucrezia. about himself he did not ask. he felt that he had done all things for his padrona as he alone could have done them, knowing her so well. "gaspare," hermione said, "everything is perfect. tell lucrezia." "better not, signora. i will say you are fairly satisfied, as it is only the first day. then she will try to do better to-morrow. i know lucrezia." and he gazed at them calmly with his enormous liquid eyes. "do not say too much, signora. it makes people proud." [illustration: "he ... looked down at the light shining in the house of the sirens"] she thought that she heard an odd sicilian echo of artois. the peasant lad's mind reflected the mind of the subtle novelist for a moment. "very well, gaspare," she said, submissively. he smiled at her with satisfaction. "i understand girls," he said. "you must keep them down or they will keep you down. every girl in marechiaro is like that. we keep them down therefore." he spoke calmly, evidently quite without thought that he was speaking to a woman. "may i go to bed, signora?" he added. "i got up at four this morning." "at four!" "to be sure all was ready for you and the signore." "gaspare! go at once. we will go to bed, too. shall we, maurice?" "yes. i'm ready." just as they were going up the steps into the house, he turned to take a last look at the night. far down below him over the terrace wall he saw a bright, steady light. "is that on the sea, hermione?" he asked, pointing to it. "do they fish there at night?" "oh yes. no doubt it is a fisherman." gaspare shook his head. "you understand?" said hermione to him in italian. "si, signora. that is the light in the casa delle sirene." "but no one lives there." "oh, it has been built up now, and salvatore buonavista lives there with maddalena. buon riposo, signora. buon riposo, signore." "buon riposo, gaspare." and maurice echoed it: "buon riposo." as gaspare went away round the angle of the cottage to his room near tito's stable, maurice added: "buon riposo. it's an awfully nice way of saying good-night. i feel as if i'd said it before, somehow." "your blood has said it without your knowing it, perhaps many times. are you coming, maurice?" he turned once more, looked down at the light shining in the house of the sirens, then followed hermione in through the open door. v that spring-time in sicily seemed to hermione touched with a glamour such as the imaginative dreamer connects with an earlier world--a world that never existed save in the souls of dreamers, who weave tissues of gold to hide naked realities, and call down the stars to sparkle upon the dust-heaps of the actual. hermione at first tried to make her husband see it with her eyes, live in it with her mind, enjoy it, or at least seem to enjoy it, with her heart. did he not love her? but he did more; he looked up to her with reverence. in her love for him there was a yearning of worship, such as one gifted with the sense of the ideal is conscious of when he stands before one of the masterpieces of art, a perfect bronze or a supreme creation in marble. something of what hermione had felt in past years when she looked at "the listening mercury," or at the statue of a youth from hadrian's villa in the capitoline museum at rome, she felt when she looked at maurice, but the breath of life in him increased, instead of diminishing, her passion of admiration. and this sometimes surprised her. for she had thought till now that the dead sculptors of greece and rome had in their works succeeded in transcending humanity, had shown what god might have created instead of what he had created, and had never expected, scarcely ever even desired, to be moved by a living being as she was moved by certain representations of life in a material. yet now she was so moved. there seemed to her in her husband's beauty something strange, something ideal, almost an other-worldliness, as if he had been before this age in which she loved him, had had an existence in the fabled world that the modern pagan loves to recall when he walks in a land where legend trembles in the flowers, and whispers in the trees, and is carried on the winds across the hill-sides, and lives again in the silver of the moon. often she thought of him listening in a green glade to the piping of pan, or feeding his flocks on mount latmos, like endymion, and falling asleep to receive the kisses of selene. or she imagined him visiting psyche in the hours of darkness, and fleeing, light-footed, before the coming of the dawn. he seemed to her ardent spirit to have stepped into her life from some attic frieze out of a "fairy legend of old greece," and the contact of daily companionship did not destroy in her the curious, almost mystical sensation roused in her by the peculiar, and essentially youthful charm which even artois had been struck by in a london restaurant. this charm increased in sicily. in london maurice delarey had seemed a handsome youth, with a delightfully fresh and almost woodland aspect that set him apart from the english people by whom he was surrounded. in sicily he seemed at once to be in his right setting. he had said when he arrived that he felt as if he belonged to sicily, and each day sicily and he seemed to hermione to be more dear to each other, more suited to each other. with a loving woman's fondness, which breeds fancies deliciously absurd, laughably touching, she thought of sicily as having wanted this son of hers who was not in her bosom, as sinking into a golden calm of satisfaction now that he was there, hearing her "pastorale," wandering upon her mountain-sides, filling his nostrils with the scent of her orange blossoms, swimming through the liquid silver of her cherishing seas. "i think sicily's very glad that you are here," she said to him on one morning of peculiar radiance, when there was a freshness as of the world's first day in the air, and the shining on the sea was as the shining that came in answer to the words--"let there be light!" in her worship, however, hermione was not wholly blind. because of the wakefulness of her powerful heart her powerful mind did not cease to be busy, but its work was supplementary to the work of her heart. she had realized in london that the man she loved was not a clever man, that there was nothing remarkable in his intellect. in sicily she did not cease from realizing this, but she felt about it differently. in sicily she actually loved and rejoiced in delarey's mental shortcomings because they seemed to make for freshness, for boyishness, to link him more closely with the spring in their eden. she adored in him something that was pagan, some spirit that seemed to shine on her from a dancing, playful, light-hearted world. and here in sicily she presently grew to know that she would be a little saddened were her husband to change, to grow more thoughtful, more like herself. she had spoken to artois of possible development in maurice, of what she might do for him, and at first, just at first, she had instinctively exerted her influence over him to bring him nearer to her subtle ways of thought. and he had eagerly striven to respond, stirred by his love for her, and his reverence--not a very clever, but certainly a very affectionate reverence--for her brilliant qualities of brain. in those very first days together, isolated in their eyrie of the mountains, hermione had let herself go--as she herself would have said. in her perfect happiness she felt that her mind was on fire because her heart was at peace. wakeful, but not anxious, love woke imagination. the stirring of spring in this delicious land stirred all her eager faculties, and almost as naturally as a bird pours forth its treasure of music she poured forth her treasure, not only of love but of thought. for in such a nature as hers love prompts thought, not stifles it. in their long mountain walks, in their rides on muleback to distant villages, hidden in the recesses, or perched upon the crests of the rocks, in their quiet hours under the oak-trees when the noon wrapped all things in its cloak of gold, or on the terrace when the stars came out, and the shepherds led their flocks down to the valleys with little happy tunes, hermione gave out all the sensitive thoughts, desires, aspirations, all the wonder, all the rest that beauty and solitude and nearness to nature in this isle of the south woke in her. she did not fear to be subtle, she did not fear to be trivial. everything she noticed she spoke of, everything that the things she noticed suggested to her, she related. the sound of the morning breeze in the olive-trees seemed to her different from the sound of the breeze of evening. she tried to make maurice hear, with her, the changing of the music, to make him listen, as she listened, to every sound, not only with the ears but with the imagination. the flush of the almond blossoms upon the lower slopes of the hills about marechiaro, a virginal tint of joy against gray walls, gray rocks, made her look into the soul of the spring as her first lover alone looks into the soul of a maiden. she asked maurice to look with her into that place of dreams, and to ponder with her over the mystery of the everlasting renewal of life. the sight of the sea took her away into a fairy-land of thought. far down below, seen over rocks and tree-tops and downward falling mountain flanks, it spread away towards africa in a plain that seemed to slope upward to a horizon-line immensely distant. often it was empty of ships, but when a sail came, like a feather on the blue, moving imperceptibly, growing clearer, then fading until taken softly by eternity--that was hermione's feeling--that sail was to her like a voice from the worlds we never know, but can imagine, some of us, worlds of mystery that is not sad, and of joys elusive but ineffable, sweet and strange as the cry of echo at twilight, when the first shadows clasp each other by the hand, and the horn of the little moon floats with a shy radiance out of its hiding-place in the bosom of the sky. she tried to take maurice with her whence the sail came, whither it went. she saw sicily perhaps as it was, but also as she was. she felt the spring in sicily, but not only as that spring, spring of one year, but as all the springs that have dawned on loving women, and laughed with green growing things about their feet. her passionate imagination now threw gossamers before, now drew gossamers away from a holy of holies that no man could ever enter. and she tried to make that holy of holies maurice's habitual sitting-room. it was a tender, glorious attempt to compass the impossible. all this was at first. but hermione was generally too clear-brained to be long tricked even by her own enthusiasms. she soon began to understand that though maurice might wish to see, to feel all things as she saw and felt them, his effort to do so was but a gallant attempt of love in a man who thought he had married his superior. really his outlook on sicily and the spring was naturally far more like gaspare's. she watched in a rapture of wonder, enjoyed with a passion of gratitude. but gaspare was in and was of all that she was wondering about, thanking god for, part of the phenomenon, a dancer in the exquisite tarantella. and maurice, too, on that first day had he not obeyed sebastiano's call? soon she knew that when she had sat alone on the terrace seat, and seen the dancers losing all thought of time and the hour in the joy of their moving bodies, while hers was still, the scene had been prophetic. in that moment maurice had instinctively taken his place in the mask of the spring and she hers. their bodies had uttered their minds. she was the passionate watcher, but he was the passionate performer. therefore she was his audience. she had travelled out to be in sicily, but he, without knowing it, had travelled out to be sicily. there was a great difference between them, but, having realized it thoroughly, hermione was able not to regret but to delight in it. she did not wish to change her lover, and she soon understood that were maurice to see with her eyes, hear with her ears, and understand with her heart, he would be completely changed, and into something not natural, like a performing dog or a child prodigy, something that rouses perhaps amazement, combined too often with a faint disgust. and ceasing to desire she ceased to endeavor. "i shall never develop maurice," she thought, remembering her conversation with artois. "and, thank god, i don't want to now." and then she set herself to watch her sicilian, as she loved to call him, enjoying the spring in sicily in his own way, dancing the tarantella with surely the spirit of eternal youth. he had, she thought, heard the call of the blood and responded to it fully and openly, fearless and unashamed. day by day, seeing his boyish happiness in this life of the mountains and the sea, she laughed at the creeping, momentary sense of apprehension that had been roused in her during her conversation with artois upon the thames embankment. artois had said that he distrusted what he loved. that was the flaw in an over-intellectual man. the mind was too alert, too restless, dogging the steps of the heart like a spy, troubling the heart with an eternal uneasiness. but she could trust where she loved. maurice was open as a boy in these early days in the garden of paradise. he danced the tarantella while she watched him, then threw himself down beside her, laughing, to rest. the strain of sicilian blood that was in him worked in him curiously, making her sometimes marvel at the mysterious power of race, at the stubborn and almost tyrannical domination some dead have over some living, those who are dust over those who are quick with animation and passion. everything that was connected with sicily and with sicilian life not only reached his senses and sank easily into his heart, but seemed also to rouse his mind to an activity that astonished her. in connection with sicily he showed a swiftness, almost a cleverness, she never noted in him when things sicilian were not in question. for instance, like most englishmen, maurice had no great talent for languages. he spoke french fairly well, having had a french nurse when he was a child, and his mother had taught him a little italian. but till now he had never had any desire to be proficient in any language except his own. hermione, on the other hand, was gifted as a linguist, loving languages and learning them easily. yet maurice picked up--in his case the expression, usually ridiculous, was absolutely applicable--sicilian with a readiness that seemed to hermione almost miraculous. he showed no delight in the musical beauty of italian. what he wanted, and what his mind--or was it rather what his ears and his tongue and his lips?--took, and held and revelled in, was the sicilian dialect spoken by lucrezia and gaspare when they were together, spoken by the peasants of marechiaro and of the mountains. to hermione gaspare had always talked italian, incorrect, but still italian, and she spoke no dialect, although she could often guess at what the sicilians meant when they addressed her in their vigorous but uncouth jargon, different from italian almost as gaelic is from english. but maurice very soon began to speak a few words of sicilian. hermione laughed at him and discouraged him jokingly, telling him that he must learn italian thoroughly, the language of love, the most melodious language in the world. "italian!" he said. "what's the use of it? i want to talk to the people. a grammar! i won't open it. gaspare's my professor. gaspare! gaspare!" gaspare came rushing bareheaded to them in the sun. "the signora says i'm to learn italian, but i say that i've sicilian blood in my veins and must talk as you do." "but i, signore, can speak italian!" said gaspare, with twinkling pride. "as a bear dances. no, professor, you and i, we'll be good patriots. we'll speak in our mother-tongue. you rascal, you know we've begun already." and looking mischievously at hermione, he began to sing in a loud, warm voice: "cu gabbi e jochi e parti e mascarati, si fa lu giubileu universali. tiripi-tã¹mpiti, tã¹mpiti, tã¹mpiti, milli cardã¹buli 'n culu ti pã¹ncinu!" gaspare burst into a roar of delighted laughter. "it's the tarantella over again," hermione said. "you're a hopeless sicilian. i give you up." that same day she said to him: "you love the peasants, don't you, maurice?" "yes. are you surprised?" "no; at least i'm not surprised at your loving them." "well, then, hermione?" "perhaps a little at the way you love them." "what way's that?" "almost as they love each other--that's to say, when they love each other at all. gaspare now! i believe you feel more as if he were a young brother of yours than as if he were your servant." "perhaps i do. gaspare is terrible, a regular donna[1] of a boy in spite of all his mischief and fun. you should hear him talk of you. he'd die for his padrona." [footnote: 1. the sicilians use the word "donna" to express the meaning we convey by the word "trump."] "i believe he would. in love, the love that means being in love, i think sicilians, though tremendously jealous, are very fickle, but if they take a devotion to any one, without being in love, they're rocks. it's a splendid quality." "if they've got faults, i love their faults," he said. "they're a lovable race." "praising yourself!" she said, laughing at him, but with tender eyes. "myself?" "never mind. what is it, gaspare?" gaspare had come upon the terrace, his eyes shining with happiness and a box under his arm. "the signore knows." "revolver practice," said maurice. "i promised him he should have a try to-day. we're going to a place close by on the mountain. he's warned off ciccio and his goats. got the paper, gaspare?" gaspare pointed to a bulging pocket. "enough to write a novel on. well--will you come, hermione?" "it's too hot in the sun, and i know you're going into the eye of the sun." "you see, it's the best place up at the top. there's that stone wall, and--" "i'll stay here and listen to your music." they went off together, climbing swiftly upward into the heart of the gold, and singing as they went: "ciao, ciao, ciao, morettina bella, ciao--" their voices died away, and with them the dry noise of stones falling downward from their feet on the sunbaked mountain-side. hermione sat still on the seat by the ravine. "ciao, ciao, ciao!" she thought of the young peasants going off to be soldiers, and singing that song to keep their hearts up. some day, perhaps, gaspare would have to go. he was the eldest of his family, and had brothers. maurice sang that song like a sicilian lad. she thought, she began to think, that even the timbre of his voice was sicilian. there was the warm, and yet plaintive, sometimes almost whining sound in it that she had often heard coming up from the vineyards and the olive groves. why was she always comparing him with the peasants? he was not of their rank. she had met many sicilians of the nobility in palermo--princes, senators, young men of fashion, who gambled and danced and drove in the giardino inglese. maurice did not remind her at all of them. no, it was of the sicilian peasants that he reminded her, and yet he was a gentleman. she wondered what maurice's grandmother had been like. she was long since dead. maurice had never seen her. yet how alive she, and perhaps brothers of hers, and their children, were in him, how almost miraculously alive! things that had doubtless stirred in them--instincts, desires, repugnances, joys--were stirring in him, dominating his english inheritance. it was like a new birth in the sun of sicily, and she was assisting at it. very, very strange it was. and strange, too, it was to be so near to one so different from herself, to be joined to him by the greatest of all links, the link that is forged by the free will of a man and a woman. again, in thought, she went back to her comparison of things in him with things in the peasants of sicily. she remembered that she had once heard a brilliant man, not a sicilian, say of them, "with all their faults, and they are many, every sicilian, even though he wear the long cap and live in a hut with the pigs, is a gentleman." so the peasant, if there were peasant in maurice, could never disturb, never offend her. and she loved the primitive man in him and in all men who had it. there was a good deal that was primitive in her. she never called herself democrat, socialist, radical, never christened herself with any name to describe her mental leanings, but she knew that, for a well-born woman--and she was that, child of an old english family of pure blood and high traditions--she was remarkably indifferent to rank, its claims, its pride. she felt absolutely "in her bones," as she would have said, that all men and women are just human beings, brothers and sisters of a great family. in judging of individuals she could never be influenced by anything except physical qualities, and qualities of the heart and mind, qualities that might belong to any man. she was affected by habits, manners--what woman of breeding is not?--but even these could scarcely warp her judgment if they covered anything fine. she could find gold beneath mud and forget the mud. maurice was like the peasants, not like the palermitan aristocracy. he was near to the breast of sicily, of that mother of many nations, who had come to conquer, and had fought, and bled, and died, or been expelled, but had left indefaceable traces behind them, traces of norman of greek of arab. he was no cosmopolitan with characteristics blurred; he was of the soil. well, she loved the soil dearly. the almond blossomed from it. the olive gave its fruit, and the vine its generous blood, and the orange its gold, at the word of the soil, the dear, warm earth of sicily. she thought of maurice's warm hands, brown now as gaspare's. how she loved his hands, and his eyes that shone with the lustre of the south! had not this soil, in very truth, given those hands and those eyes to her? she felt that it had. she loved it more for the gift. she had reaped and garnered in her blessed sicilian harvest. lucrezia came to her round the angle of the cottage, knowing she was alone. lucrezia was mending a hole in a sock for gaspare. now she sat down on the seat under the window, divided from hermione by the terrace, but able to see her, to feel companionship. had the padrone been there lucrezia would not have ventured to come. gaspare had often explained to her her very humble position in the household. but gaspare and the padrone were away on the mountain-top, and she could not resist being near to her padrona, for whom she already felt a very real affection and admiration. "is it a big hole, lucrezia?" said hermione, smiling at her. "si, signora." lucrezia put her thumb through it, holding it up on her fist. "gaspare's holes are always big." she spoke as if in praise. "gaspare is strong," she added. "but sebastiano is stronger." as she said the last words a dreamy look came into her round face, and she dropped the hand that held the stocking into her lap. "sebastiano is hard like the rocks, signora." "hard-hearted, lucrezia." lucrezia said nothing. "you like sebastiano, lucrezia?" lucrezia reddened under her brown skin. "si, signora." "so do i. he's always been a good friend of mine." lucrezia shifted along the seat until she was nearly opposite to where hermione was sitting. "how old is he?" "twenty-five, signora." "i suppose he will be marrying soon, won't he? the men all marry young round about marechiaro." lucrezia began to darn. "his father, chinetti urbano, wishes him to marry at once. it is better for a man." "you understand men, lucrezia?" "si, signora. they are all alike." "and what are they like?" "oh, signora, you know as well as i do. they must have their own way and we must not think to have ours. they must roam where they like, love where they choose, day or night, and we must sit in the doorway and get to bed at dark, and not bother where they've been or what they've done. they say we've no right, except one or two. there's francesco, to be sure. he's a lamb with maria. she can sit with her face to the street. but she wouldn't sit any other way, and he knows it. but the rest! eh, giã !" "you don't think much of men, lucrezia!" "oh, signora, they're just as god made them. they can't help it any more than we can help--" she stopped and pursed her lips suddenly, as if checking some words that were almost on them. "lucrezia, come here and sit by me." lucrezia looked up with a sort of doubtful pleasure and surprise. "signora?" "come here." lucrezia got up and came slowly to the seat by the ravine. hermione took her hand. "you like sebastiano very much, don't you?" lucrezia hung her head. "si, signora," she whispered. "do you think he'd be good to a woman if she loved him?" "i shouldn't care. bad or good, i'd--i'd--" suddenly, with a sort of childish violence, she put her two hands on hermione's arms. "i want sebastiano, signora; i want him!" she cried. "i've prayed to the madonna della rocca to give him to me; all last year i've prayed, and this. d'you think the madonna's going to do it? do you? do you?" heat came out of her two hands, and heat flashed in her eyes. her broad bosom heaved, and her lips, still parted when she had done speaking, seemed to interrogate hermione fiercely in the silence. before hermione could reply two sounds came to them: from below in the ravine the distant drone of the ceramella, from above on the mountain-top the dry crack of a pistol-shot. swiftly lucrezia turned and looked downward, but hermione looked upward towards the bare flank that rose behind the cottage. "it's sebastiano, signora." the ceramella droned on, moving slowly with its player on the hidden path beneath the olive-trees. a second pistol-shot rang out sharply. "go down and meet him, lucrezia." "may i--may i, really, signora?" "yes; go quickly." lucrezia bent down and kissed her padrona's hand. "bacio la mano, bacio la mano a lei!" then, bareheaded, she went out from the awning into the glare of the sunshine, passed through the ruined archway, and disappeared among the rocks. she had gone to her music. hermione stayed to listen to hers, the crack of the pistol up there near the blue sky. sebastiano was playing the tune she loved, the "pastorale," but to-day she did not heed it. indeed, now that she was left alone she was not conscious that she heard it. her heart was on the hill-top near the blue. again and again the shots rang out. it seemed to hermione that she knew which were fired by maurice and which by gaspare, and she whispered to herself "that's maurice!" when she fancied one was his. presently she was aware of some slight change and wondered what it was. something had ceased, and its cessation recalled her mind to her surroundings. she looked round her, then down to the ravine, and then at once she understood. there was no more music from the ceramella. lucrezia had met sebastiano under the olives. that was certain. hermione smiled. her woman's imagination pictured easily enough why the player had stopped. she hoped lucrezia was happy. her first words, still more her manner, had shown hermione the depth of her heart. there was fire there, fire that burned before a shrine when she prayed to the madonna della rocca. she was ready even to be badly treated if only she might have sebastiano. it seemed to be all one to her. she had no illusions, but her heart knew what it needed. crack went the pistol up on the mountain-top. "that's not maurice!" hermione thought. there was another report, then another. "that last one was maurice!" lucrezia did not seem even to expect a man to be true and faithful. perhaps she knew the sicilian character too well. hermione lifted her face up and looked towards the mountain. her mind had gone once more to the thames embankment. as once she had mentally put gaspare beside artois, so now she mentally put lucrezia. lucrezia distrusted the south, and she was of it. men must be as god had made them, she said, and evidently she thought that god had made them to run wild, careless of woman's feelings, careless of everything save their own vagrant desires. the tarantella--that was the dance of the soil here, the dance of the blood. and in the tarantella each of the dancers seemed governed by his own sweet will, possessed by a merry, mad devil, whose promptings he followed with a sort of gracious and charming violence, giving himself up joyously, eagerly, utterly--to what? to his whim. was the tarantella an allegory of life here? how strangely well maurice had danced it on that first day of their arrival. she felt again that sense of separation which brought with it a faint and creeping melancholy. "crack! crack!" she got up from the seat by the ravine. suddenly the sound of the firing was distressing to her, almost sinister, and she liked lucrezia's music better. for it suggested tenderness of the soil, and tenderness of faith, and a glory of antique things both pagan and christian. but the reiterated pistol-shots suggested violence, death, ugly things. "maurice!" she called, going out into the sun and gazing up towards the mountain-top. "maurice!" the pistol made reply. they had not heard her. they were too far or were too intent upon their sport to hear. "maurice!" she called again, in a louder voice, almost as a person calls for help. another pistol-shot answered her, mocking at her in the sun. then she heard a distant peal of laughter. it did not seem to her to be either maurice's or gaspare's laughter. it was like the laughter of something she could not personify, of some jeering spirit of the mountain. it died away at last, and she stood there, shivering in the sunshine. "signora! signora!" sebastiano's lusty voice came to her from below. she turned and saw him standing with lucrezia on the terrace, and his arm was round lucrezia's waist. he took off his cap and waved it, but he still kept one arm round lucrezia. hermione hesitated, looking once more towards the mountain-top. but something within her held her back from climbing up to the distant laughter, a feeling, an idiotic feeling she called it to herself afterwards. she had shivered in the sunshine, but it was not a feeling of fear. "am i wanted up there?" that was what something within her said. and the answer was made by her body. she turned and began to descend towards the terrace. and at that moment, for the first time in her life, she was conscious of a little stab of pain such as she had never known before. it was pain of the mind and of the heart, and yet it was like bodily pain, too. it made her angry with herself. it was like a betrayal, a betrayal of herself by her own intellect, she thought. she stopped once more on the mountain-side. "am i going to be ridiculous?" she said to herself. "am i going to be one of the women i despise?" just then she realized that love may become a tyrant, ministering to the soul with persecutions. vi sebastiano took his arm from lucrezia's waist as hermione came down to the terrace, and said: "buona sera, signora. is the signore coming down yet?" he flung out his arm towards the mountain. "i don't know, sebastiano. why?" "i've come with a message for him." "not for lucrezia?" sebastiano laughed boldly, but lucrezia, blushing red, disappeared into the kitchen. "don't play with her, sebastiano," said hermione. "she's a good girl." "i know that, signora." "she deserves to be well treated." sebastiano went over to the terrace wall, looked into the ravine, turned round, and came back. "who's treating lucrezia badly, signora?" "i did not say anybody was." "the girls in marechiaro can take care of themselves, signora. you don't know them as i do." "d'you think any woman can take care of herself, sebastiano?" he looked into her face and laughed, but said nothing. hermione sat down. she had a desire to-day, after lucrezia's conversation with her, to get at the sicilian man's point of view in regard to women. "don't you think women want to be protected?" she asked. "what from, signora?" there was still laughter in his eyes. "not from us, anyway," he added. "lucrezia there--she wants me for her husband. all marechiaro knows it." hermione felt that under the circumstances it was useless to blush for lucrezia, useless to meet blatant frankness with sensitive delicacy. "do you want lucrezia for your wife?" she said. "well, signora, i'm strong. a stick or a knife in my hand and no man can touch me. you've never seen me do the scherma con coltello? one day i'll show you with gaspare. and i can play better even than the men from bronte on the ceramella. you've heard me. lucrezia knows i can have any girl i like." there was a simplicity in his immense superiority to women that robbed it of offensiveness and almost made hermione laugh. in it, too, she felt the touch of the east. arabs had been in sicily and left their traces there, not only in the buildings of sicily, but in its people's songs, and in the treatment of the women by the men. "and are you going to choose lucrezia?" she asked, gravely. "signora, i wasn't sure. but yesterday, i had a letter from messina. they want me there. i've got a job that'll pay me well to go to the lipari islands with a cargo." "are you a sailor, too?" "signora, i can do anything." "and will you be long away?" "who knows, signora? but i told lucrezia to-day, and when she cried i told her something else. we are 'promised.'" "i am glad," hermione said, holding out her hand to him. he took it in an iron grip. "be very good to her when you're married, won't you?" "oh, she'll be all right with me," he answered, carelessly. "and i won't give her the slap in the face on the wedding-day." "hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!" there was a shrill cry from the mountain and maurice and gaspare came leaping down, scattering the stones, the revolvers still in their hands. "look, signora, look!" cried gaspare, pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket and holding it proudly up. "do you see the holes? one, two, three--" he began to count. "and i made five. didn't i, signore?" "you're a dead shot, gasparino. did you hear us, hermione?" "yes," she said. "but you didn't hear me." "you? did you call?" "yes." "why?" "sebastiano's got a message for you," hermione said. she could not tell him now the absurd impulse that had made her call him. "what's the message, sebastiano?" asked maurice, in his stumbling sicilian-italian that was very imperfect, but that nevertheless had already the true accent of the peasants about marechiaro. "signore, there will be a moon to-night." "giã . lo so." "are you sleepy, signorino?" he touched his eyes with his sinewy hands and made his face look drowsy. maurice laughed. "no." "are you afraid of being naked in the sea at night? but you need not enter it. are you afraid of sleeping at dawn in a cave upon the sands?" "what is it all?" asked maurice. "gaspare, i understand you best." "i know," said gaspare, joyously. "it's the fishing. nito has sent. i told him to. is it nito, sebastiano?" sebastiano nodded. gaspare turned eagerly to maurice. "oh, signore, you must come, you will come!" "where? in a boat?" "no. we go down to the shore, to isola bella. we take food, wine, red wine, and a net. between twenty-two and twenty-three o'clock is the time to begin. and the sea must be calm. is the sea calm to-day, sebastiano?" "like that." sebastiano moved his hand to and fro in the air, keeping it absolutely level. gaspare continued to explain with gathering excitement and persuasiveness, talking to his master as much by gesture as by the words that maurice could only partially understand. "the sea is calm. nito has the net, but he will not go into the sea. per dio, he is birbante. he will say he has the rheumatism, i know, and walk like that." (gaspare hobbled to and fro before them, making a face of acute suffering.) "he has asked for me. hasn't nito asked for me, sebastiano?" here gaspare made a grimace at sebastiano, who answered, calmly: "yes, he has asked for you to come with the padrone." "i knew it. then i shall undress. i shall take one end of the net while nito holds the other, and i shall go out into the sea. i shall go up to here." (he put his hands up to his chin, stretching his neck like one avoiding a rising wave.) "and i shall wade, you'll see!--and if i come to a hole i shall swim. i can swim for hours, all day if i choose." "and all night too?" said hermione, smiling at his excitement. "davvero! but at night i must drink wine to keep out the cold. i come out like this." (he shivered violently, making his teeth chatter.) "then i drink a glass and i am warm, and when they have taken the fish i go in again. we fish all along the shore from isola bella round by the point there, where there's the casa delle sirene, and to the caves beyond the caffã¨ berardi. and when we've got enough--many fish--at dawn we sleep on the sand. and when the sun is up carmela will take the fish and make a frittura, and we all eat it and drink more wine, and then--" "and then--you're ready for the campo santo?" said hermione. "no, signora. then we will dance the tarantella, and come home up the mountain singing, 'o sole mio!' and 'a mezzanotte a punto,' and the song of the mafioso, and--" hermione began to laugh unrestrainedly. gaspare, by his voice, his face, his gestures, had made them assist at a veritable orgie of labor, feasting, sleep, and mirth, all mingled together and chasing one another like performers in a revel. even his suggestion of slumber on the sands was violent, as if they were to sleep with a kind of fury of excitement and determination. "signora!" he cried, staring as if ready to be offended. then he looked at maurice, who was laughing, too, threw himself back against the wall, opened his mouth, and joined in with all his heart. but suddenly he stopped. his face changed, became very serious. "i may go, signora?" he asked. "no one can fish as i can. the others will not go in far, and they soon get cold and want to put on their clothes. and the padrone! i must take care of the padrone! guglielmo, the contadino, will sleep in the house, i know. shall i call him? guglielmo! guglielmo!" he vanished like a flash, they scarcely knew in what direction. "he's alive!" exclaimed maurice. "by jove, he's alive, that boy! glorious, glorious life! oh, there's something here that--" he broke off, looked down at the broad sea shimmering in the sun, then said: "the sun, the sea, the music, the people, the liberty--it goes to my head, it intoxicates me." "you'll go to-night?" she said. "d'you mind if i do?" "mind? no. i want you to go. i want you to revel in this happy time, this splendid, innocent, golden time. and to-morrow we'll watch for you, lucrezia and i, watch for you down there on the path. but--you'll bring us some of the fish, maurice? you won't forget us?" "forget you!" he said. "you shall have all--" "no, no. only the little fish, the babies that carmela rejects from the frittura." "i'll go into the sea with gaspare," said maurice. "i'm sure you will, and farther out even than he does." "ah, he'll never allow that. he'd swim to africa first!" that night, at twenty-one o'clock, hermione and lucrezia stood under the arch, and watched maurice and gaspare springing down the mountain-side as if in seven-leagued boots. soon they disappeared into the darkness of the ravine, but for some time their loud voices could be heard singing lustily: "ciao, ciao, ciao, morettina bella ciao, prima di partire un bacio ti voglio da'; un bacio al papã , un bacio alla mammã , cinquanta alla mia fidanzata, che vado a far solda'." "i wish i were a man, lucrezia," said hermione, when the voices at length died away towards the sea. "signora, we were made for the men. they weren't made for us. but i like being a girl." "to-night. i know why, lucrezia." and then the padrona and the cameriera sat down together on the terrace under the stars, and talked together about the man the cameriera loved, and his exceeding glory. meanwhile, maurice and gaspare were giving themselves joyously to the glory of the night. the glamour of the moon, which lay full upon the terrace where the two women sat, was softened, changed to a shadowy magic, in the ravine where the trees grew thickly, but the pilgrims did not lower their voices in obedience to the message of the twilight of the night. the joy of life which was leaping within them defied the subtle suggestions of mystery, was careless because it was triumphant, and all the way down to the sea they sang, gaspare changing the song when it suited his mood to do so; and maurice, as in the tarantella, imitating him with the swiftness that is born of sympathy. for to-night, despite their different ages, ranks, ways of life, their gayety linked them together, ruled out the differences, and made them closely akin, as they had been in hermione's eyes when they danced upon the terrace. they did not watch the night. they were living too strongly to be watchful. the spirit of the dancing faun was upon them, and guided them down among the rocks and the olive-trees, across the messina road, white under the moon, to the stony beach of isola bella, where nito was waiting for them with the net. nito was not alone. he had brought friends of his and of gaspare's, and a boy who staggered proudly beneath a pannier filled with bread and cheese, oranges and apples, and dark blocks of a mysterious dolce. the wine-bottles were not intrusted to him, but were in the care of giulio, one of the donkey-boys who had carried up the luggage from the station. gaspare and his padrone were welcomed with a lifting of hats, and for a moment there was a silence, while the little group regarded the "inglese" searchingly. had maurice felt any strangeness, any aloofness, the sharp and sensitive sicilians would have at once been conscious of it, and light-hearted gayety might have given way to gravity, though not to awkwardness. but he felt, and therefore showed, none. his soft hat cocked at an impudent angle over his sparkling, dark eyes, his laughing lips, his easy, eager manner, and his pleasant familiarity with gaspare at once reassured everybody, and when he cried out, "ciao, amici, ciao!" and waved a pair of bathing drawers towards the sea, indicating that he was prepared to be the first to go in with the net, there was a general laugh, and a babel of talk broke forth--talk which he did not fully understand, yet which did not make him feel even for a moment a stranger. gaspare at once took charge of the proceedings as one born to be a leader of fishermen. he began by ordering wine to be poured into the one glass provided, placed it in maurice's hand, and smiled proudly at his pupil's quick "alla vostra salute!" before tossing it off. then each one in turn, with an "alla sua salute!" to maurice, took a drink from the great, leather bottle; and nito, shaking out his long coil of net, declared that it was time to get to work. gaspare cast a sly glance at maurice, warning him to be prepared for a comedy, and maurice at once remembered the scene on the terrace when gaspare had described nito's "birbante" character, and looked out for rheumatics. "who goes into the sea, nito?" asked gaspare, very seriously. nito's wrinkled and weather-beaten face assumed an expression of surprise. "who goes into the sea!" he ejaculated. "why, don't we all know who likes wading, and can always tell the best places for the fish?" he paused, then as gaspare said nothing, and the others, who had received a warning sign from him, stood round with deliberately vacant faces, he added, clapping gaspare on the shoulder, and holding out one end of the net: "off with your clothes, compare, and we will soon have a fine frittura for carmela." but gaspare shook his head. "in summer i don't mind. but this is early in the year, and, besides--" "early in the year! who told me the signore distinto would--" "and besides, compare, i've got the stomach-ache." he deftly doubled himself up and writhed, while the lips of the others twitched with suppressed amusement. "comparedro, i don't believe it!" "haven't i, signorino?" cried gaspare, undoubling himself, pointing to his middleman, and staring hard at maurice. "si, si! ã� vero, ã¨ vero!" cried maurice. "i've been eating zampaglione, and i am full. if i go into the sea to-night i shall die." "mamma mia!" ejaculated nito, throwing up his hands towards the stars. he dared not give the lie to the "signore distinto," yet he had no trust in gaspare's word, and had gained no sort of conviction from his eloquent writhings. "you must go in, nito," said gaspare. "i--madonna!" "why not?" "why not?" cried nito, in a plaintive whine that was almost feminine. "i go into the sea with my rheumatism!" abruptly one of his legs gave way, and he stood before them in a crooked attitude. "signore," he said to maurice. "i would go into the sea, i would stay there all night, for i love it, but dr. marini has forbidden me to enter it. see how i walk!" and he began to hobble up and down exactly as gaspare had on the terrace, looking over his shoulder at maurice all the time to see whether his deception was working well. gaspare, seeing that nito's attention was for the moment concentrated, slipped away behind a boat that was drawn up on the beach; and maurice, guessing what he was doing, endeavored to make nito understand his sympathy. "molto forte--molto dolore?" he said. "si, signore!" and nito burst forth into a vehement account of his sufferings, accompanied by pantomime. "it takes me in the night, signore! madonna, it is like rats gnawing at my legs, and nothing will stop it. pancrazia--she is my wife, signore--pancrazia, she gets out of bed and she heats oil to rub it on, but she might as well put it on the top of etna for all the good it does me. and there i lie like a--" "hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!" a wild shriek rent the air, and gaspare, clad in a pair of bathing drawers, bounded out from behind the boat, gave nito a cuff on the cheek, executed some steps of the tarantella, whirled round, snatched up one end of the net, and cried: "al mare, al mare!" nito's rheumatism was no more. his bent leg straightened itself as if by magic, and he returned gaspare's cuff by an affectionate slap on his bare shoulder, exclaiming to maurice: "isn't he terribile, signore? isn't he terribile?" nito lifted up the other end of the net and they all went down to the shore. that night it seemed to delarey as if sicily drew him closer to her breast. he did not know why he had now for the first time the sensation that at last he was really in his natural place, was really one with the soil from which an ancestor of his had sprung, and with the people who had been her people. that hermione's absence had anything to do with his almost wild sense of freedom did not occur to him. all he knew was this, that alone among these sicilian fishermen in the night, not understanding much of what they said, guessing at their jokes, and sharing in their laughter, without always knowing what had provoked it, he was perfectly at home, perfectly happy. gaspare went into the sea, wading carefully through the silver waters, and maurice, from the shore, watched his slowly moving form, taking a lesson which would be useful to him later. the coast-line looked enchanted in the glory of the moon, in the warm silence of the night, but the little group of men upon the shore scarcely thought of its enchantment. they felt it, perhaps, sometimes faintly in their gayety, but they did not savor its wonder and its mystery as hermione would have savored them had she been there. the naked form of gaspare, as he waded far out in the shallow sea, was like the form of a dream creature rising out of waves of a dream. when he called to them across the silver surely something of the magic of the night was caught and echoed in his voice. when he lifted the net, and its black and dripping meshes slipped down from his ghostly hands into the ghostly movement that was flickering about him, and the circles tipped with light widened towards sea and shore, there was a miracle of delicate and fantastic beauty delivered up tenderly like a marvellous gift to the wanderers of the dark hours. but sicily scarcely wonders at sicily. gaspare was intent only on the catching of fish, and his companions smote the night with their jokes and their merry, almost riotous laughter. the night wore on. presently they left isola bella, crossed a stony spit of land, and came into a second and narrower bay, divided by a turmoil of jagged rocks and a bold promontory covered with stunted olive-trees, cactus, and seed-sown earth plots, from the wide sweep of coast that melted into the dimness towards messina. gathered together on the little stones of the beach, in the shadow of some drawn-up fishing-boats, they took stock of the fish that lay shining in the basket, and broke their fast on bread and cheese and more draughts from the generous wine-bottle. gaspare was dripping, and his thin body shook as he gulped down the wine. "basta gaspare!" maurice said to him. "you mustn't go in any more." "no, no, signore, non basta! i can fish all night. once the wine has warmed me, i can--" "but i want to try it." "oh, signore, what would the signora say? you are a stranger. you will take cold, and then the signora will blame me and say i did not take proper care of my padrone." but delarey was determined. he stripped off his clothes, put on his bathing drawers, took up the net, and, carefully directed by the admiring though protesting gaspare, he waded into the sea. for a moment he shuddered as the calm water rose round him. then, english fashion, he dipped under, with a splash that brought a roar of laughter to him from the shore. "meglio cosã¬!" he cried, coming up again in the moonlight. "adesso sto bene!" the plunge had made him suddenly feel tremendously young and triumphant, reckless with a happiness that thrilled with audacity. as he waded out he began to sing in a loud voice: "ciao, ciao, ciao, morettina bella ciao, prima di partire un bacio ti voglio da'." gaspare, who was hastily dressing by the boats, called out to him that his singing would frighten away the fish, and he was obediently silent. he imprisoned the song in his heart, but that went on singing bravely. as he waded farther he felt splendid, as if he were a lord of life and of the sea. the water, now warm to him, seemed to be embracing him as it crept upward towards his throat. nature was clasping him with amorous arms. nature was taking him for her own. "nature, nature!" he said to himself. "that's why i'm so gloriously happy here, because i'm being right down natural." his mind made an abrupt turn, like a coursed hare, and he suddenly found himself thinking of the night in london, when he had sat in the restaurant with hermione and artois and listened to their talk, reverently listened. now, as the net tugged at his hand, influenced by the resisting sea, that talk, as he remembered it, struck him as unnatural, as useless, and the thoughts which he had then admired and wondered at, as complicated and extraordinary. something in him said, "that's all unnatural." the touch of the water about his body, the light of the moon upon him, the breath of the air in his wet face drove out his reverence for what he called "intellectuality," and something savage got hold of his soul and shook it, as if to wake up the sleeping self within him, the self that was sicilian. as he waded in the water, coming ever nearer to the jagged rocks that shut out from his sight the wide sea and something else, he felt as if thinking and living were in opposition, as if the one were destructive of the other; and the desire to be clever, to be talented, which had often assailed him since he had known, and especially since he had loved, hermione, died out of him, and he found himself vaguely pitying artois, and almost despising the career and the fame of a writer. what did thinking matter? the great thing was to live, to live with your body, out-of-doors, close to nature, somewhat as the savages live. when he waded to shore for the first time, and saw, as the net was hauled in, the fish he had caught gleaming and leaping in the light, he could have shouted like a boy. he seized the net once more, but gaspare, now clothed, took hold of him by the arm with a familiarity that had in it nothing disrespectful. "signore, basta, basta! giulio will go in now." "si! si!" cried giulio, beginning to tug at his waistcoat buttons. "once more, gaspare!" said maurice. "only once!" "but if you take cold, signorino, the signora--" "i sha'n't catch cold. only once!" he broke away, laughing, from gaspare, and was swiftly in the sea. the sicilians looked at him with admiration. "e' veramente piã¹ siciliano di noi!" exclaimed nito. the others murmured their assent. gaspare glowed with pride in his pupil. "i shall make the signore one of us," he said, as he deftly let out the coils of the net. "but how long is he going to stay?" asked nito. "will he not soon be going back to his own country?" for a moment gaspare's countenance fell. "when the heat comes," he began, doubtfully. then he cheered up. "perhaps he will take me with him to england," he said. this time maurice waded with the net into the shadow of the rocks out of the light of the moon. the night was waning, and a slight chill began to creep into the air. a little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling its surface, died away, then softly came again. as he moved into the darkness maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received a slight check. the night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have become more mysterious. he began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. upon the shore he saw the forms of his companions, but they looked remote and phantom-like. he did not hear their voices. perhaps the slow approach of dawn was beginning to affect them, and the little wind that was springing up chilled their merriment and struck them to silence. before him the dense blackness of the rocks rose like a grotesque wall carved in diabolic shapes, and as he stared at these shapes he had an odd fancy that they were living things, and that they were watching him at his labor. he could not get this idea, that he was being watched, out of his head, and for a moment he forgot about the fish, and stood still, staring at the monsters, whose bulky forms reared themselves up into the moonlight from which they banished him. "signore! signorino!" there came to him a cry of protest from the shore. he started, moved forward with the net, and went under water. he had stepped into a deep hole. still holding fast to the net, he came up to the surface, shook his head, and struck out. as he did so he heard another cry, sharp yet musical. but this cry did not come from the beach where his companions were gathered. it rose from the blackness of the rocks close to him, and it sounded like the cry of a woman. he winked his eyes to get the water out of them, and swam for the rocks, heedless of his duty as a fisherman. but the net impeded him, and again there was a shout from the shore: "signorino! signorino! e' pazzo lei?" reluctantly he turned and swam back to the shallow water. but when his feet touched bottom he stood still. that cry of a woman from the mystery of the rocks had startled, had fascinated his ears. suddenly he remembered that he must be near to that casa delle sirene, whose little light he had seen from the terrace of the priest's house on his first evening in sicily. he longed to hear that woman's voice again. for a moment he thought of it as the voice of a siren, of one of those beings of enchantment who lure men on to their destruction, and he listened eagerly, almost passionately, while the ruffled water eddied softly about his breast. but no music stole to him from the blackness of the rocks, and at last he turned slowly and waded to the shore. he was met with merry protests. nito declared that the net had nearly been torn out of his hands. gaspare, half undressed to go to his rescue, anxiously inquired if he had come to any harm. the rocks were sharp as razors near the point, and he might have cut himself to pieces upon them. he apologized to nito and showed gaspare that he was uninjured. then, while the others began to count the fish, he went to the boats to put on his clothes, accompanied by gaspare. "why did you swim towards the rocks, signorino?" asked the boy, looking at him with a sharp curiosity. delarey hesitated for a moment. he was inclined, he scarcely knew why, to keep silence about the cry he had heard. yet he wanted to ask gaspare something. "gaspare," he said, at last, as they reached the boats, "was any one of you on the rocks over there just now?" he had forgotten to number his companions when he reached the shore. perhaps one was missing, and had wandered towards the point to watch him fishing. "no, signore. why do you ask?" again delarey hesitated. then he said: "i heard some one call out to me there." he began to rub his wet body with a towel. "call! what did they call?" "nothing; no words. some one cried out." "at this hour! who should be there, signore?" the action of the rough towel upon his body brought a glow of warmth to delarey, and the sense of mystery began to depart from his mind. "perhaps it was a fisherman," he said. "they do not fish from there, signore. it must have been me you heard. when you went under the water i cried out. drink some wine, signorino." he held a glass full of wine to delarey's lips. delarey drank. "but you've got a man's voice, gaspare!" he said, putting down the glass and beginning to get into his clothes. "per dio! would you have me squeak like a woman, signore?" delarey laughed and said no more. but he knew it was not gaspare's voice he had heard. the net was drawn up now for the last time, and as soon as delarey had dressed they set out to walk to the caves on the farther side of the rocks, where they meant to sleep till carmela was about and ready to make the frittura. to reach them they had to clamber up from the beach to the messina road, mount a hill, and descend to the caffã¨ berardi, a small, isolated shanty which stood close to the sea, and was used in summer-time by bathers who wanted refreshment. nito and the rest walked on in front, and delarey followed a few paces behind with gaspare. when they reached the summit of the hill a great sweep of open sea was disclosed to their view, stretching away to the straits of messina, and bounded in the far distance by the vague outlines of the calabrian mountains. here the wind met them more sharply, and below them on the pebbles by the caffã¨ they could see the foam of breaking waves. but to the right, and nearer to them, the sea was still as an inland pool, guarded by the tree-covered hump of land on which stood the house of the sirens. this hump, which would have been an islet but for the narrow wall of sheer rock which joined it to the main-land, ran out into the sea parallel to the road. on the height, delarey paused for a moment, as if to look at the wide view, dim and ethereal, under the dying moon. "is that calabria?" he asked. "si, signore. and there is the caffã¨. the caves are beyond it. you cannot see them from here. but you are not looking, signorino!" the boy's quick eyes had noticed that delarey was glancing towards the tangle of trees, among which was visible a small section of the gray wall of the house of the sirens. "how calm the sea is there!" delarey said, swiftly. "si, signore. that is where you can see the light in the window from our terrace." "there's no light now." "how should there be? they are asleep. andiamo?" they followed the others, who were now out of sight. when they reached the caves, nito and the boys had already flung themselves down upon the sand and were sleeping. gaspare scooped out a hollow for delarey, rolled up his jacket as a pillow for his padrone's head, murmured a "buon riposo!" lay down near him, buried his face in his arms, and almost directly began to breathe with a regularity that told its tale of youthful, happy slumber. it was dark in the cave and quite warm. the sand made a comfortable bed, and delarey was luxuriously tired after the long walk and the wading in the sea. when he lay down he thought that he, too, would be asleep in a moment, but sleep did not come to him, though he closed his eyes in anticipation of it. his mind was busy in his weary body, and that little cry of a woman still rang in his ears. he heard it like a song sung by a mysterious voice in a place of mystery by the sea. soon he opened his eyes. turning a little in the sand, away from his companions, he looked out from the cave, across the sloping beach and the foam of the waves, to the darkness of trees on the island. (so he called the place of the siren's house to himself now, and always hereafter.) from the cave he could not see the house, but only the trees, a formless, dim mass that grew about it. the monotonous sound of wave after wave did not still the cry in his ears, but mingled with it, as must have mingled with the song of the sirens to ulysses the murmur of breaking seas ever so long ago. and he thought of a siren in the night stealing to a hidden place in the rocks to watch him as he drew the net, breast high in the water. there was romance in his mind to-night, new-born and strange. sicily had put it there with the wild sense of youth and freedom that still possessed him. something seemed to call him away from this cave of sleep, to bid his tired body bestir itself once more. he looked at the dark forms of his comrades, stretched in various attitudes of repose, and suddenly he knew he could not sleep. he did not want to sleep. he wanted--what? he raised himself to a sitting posture, then softly stood up, and with infinite precaution stole out of the cave. the coldness of the coming dawn took hold on him on the shore, and he saw in the east a mysterious pallor that was not of the moon, and upon the foam of the waves a light that was ghastly and that suggested infinite weariness and sickness. but he did not say this to himself. he merely felt that the night was quickly departing, and that he must hasten on his errand before the day came. he was going to search for the woman who had cried out to him in the sea. and he felt as if she were a creature of the night, of the moon and of the shadows, and as if he could never hope to find her in the glory of the day. vii delarey stole along the beach, walking lightly despite his fatigue. he felt curiously excited, as if he were on the heels of some adventure. he passed the caffã¨ berardi almost like a thief in the night, and came to the narrow strip of pebbles that edged the still and lakelike water, protected by the sirens' isle. there he paused. he meant to gain that lonely land, but how? by the water lay two or three boats, but they were large and clumsy, impossible to move without aid. should he climb up to the messina road, traverse the spit of ground that led to the rocky wall, and try to make his way across it? the feat would be a difficult one, he thought. but it was not that which deterred him. he was impatient of delay, and the dã©tour would take time. between him and the islet was the waterway. already he had been in the sea. why not go in again? he stripped, packed his clothes into a bundle, tied roughly with a rope made of his handkerchief and bootlaces, and waded in. for a long way the water was shallow. only when he was near to the island did it rise to his breast, to his throat, higher at last. holding the bundle on his head with one hand, he struck out strongly and soon touched bottom again. he scrambled out, dressed on a flat rock, then looked for a path leading upward. the ground was very steep, almost precipitous, and thickly covered with trees and with undergrowth. this undergrowth concealed innumerable rocks and stones which shifted under his feet and rolled down as he began to ascend, grasping the bushes and the branches. he could find no path. what did it matter? all sense of fatigue had left him. with the activity of a cat he mounted. a tree struck him across the face. another swept off his hat. he felt that he had antagonists who wished to beat him back to the sea, and his blood rose against them. he tore down a branch that impeded him, broke it with his strong hands, and flung it away viciously. his teeth were set and his nerves tingled, and he was conscious of the almost angry joy of keen bodily exertion. the body--that was his god to-night. how he loved it, its health and strength, its willingness, its capacities! how he gloried in it! it had bounded down the mountain. it had gone into the sea and revelled there. it had fished and swum. now it mounted upward to discovery, defying the weapons that nature launched against it. splendid, splendid body! he fought with the trees and conquered them. his trampling feet sent the stones leaping downward to be drowned in the sea. his swift eyes found the likely places for a foothold. his sinewy hands forced his enemies to assist him in the enterprise they hated. he came out on to the plateau at the summit of the island and stood still, panting, beside the house that hid there. its blind, gray wall confronted him coldly in the dimness, one shuttered window, like a shut eye, concealing the interior, the soul of the house that lay inside its body. in this window must have been set the light he had seen from the terrace. he wished there were a light burning now. had he swum across the inlet and fought his way up through the wood only to see a gray wall, a shuttered window? that cry had come from the rocks, yet he had been driven by something within him to this house, connecting--he knew not why--the cry with it and with the far-off light that had been like a star caught in the sea. now he said to himself that he should have gone back to the rocks and sought the siren there. should he go now? he hesitated for a moment, leaning against the wall of the house. "maju torna, maju veni cu li belli soi ciureri; oh chi pompa chi nni fa; maju torna, maju ã¨ ccã ! "maju torna, maju vinni, duna isca a li disinni; vinni riccu e ricchi fa, maju viva! maju ã¨ ccã !" he heard a girl's voice singing near him, whether inside the house or among the trees he could not at first tell. it sang softly yet gayly, as if the sun were up and the world were awake, and when it died away delarey felt as if the singer must be in the dawn, though he stood still in the night. he put his ear to the shuttered window and listened. "l'haju; nun l'haju?" the voice was speaking now with a sort of whimsical and half-pathetic merriment, as if inclined to break into laughter at its own childish wistfulness. "m'ama; nun m'ama?" it broke off. he heard a little laugh. then the song began again: "maju viju, e maju cã²gghiu, bona sorti di diã¹ vã²gghiu; ciuri di maju cã²gghiu a la campã­a, diã¹, pinzã ticci vu a la sorti mia!" the voice was not in the house. delarey was sure of that now. he was almost sure, too, that it was the same voice which had cried out to him from the rocks. moving with precaution, he stole round the house to the farther side, which looked out upon the open sea, keeping among the trees, which grew thickly about the house on three sides, but which left it unprotected to the sea-winds on the fourth. a girl was standing in this open space, alone, looking seaward, with one arm out-stretched, one hand laid lightly, almost caressingly, upon the gnarled trunk of a solitary old olive-tree, the other arm hanging at her side. she was dressed in some dark, coarse stuff, with a short skirt, and a red handkerchief tied round her head, and seemed in the pale and almost ghastly light in which night and day were drawing near to each other to be tall and slim of waist. her head was thrown back, as if she were drinking in the breeze that heralded the dawn--drinking it in like a voluptuary. delarey stood and watched her. he could not see her face. she spoke some words in dialect in a clear voice. there was no one else visible. evidently she was talking to herself. presently she laughed again, and began to sing once more: "maju viju, e maju cã²gghiu, a la me'casa guaj nu' nni vã²gghiu; ciuri di maju cã²gghiu a la campã­a, oru ed argentu a la sacchetta mia!" there was an african sound in the girl's voice--a sound of mystery that suggested heat and a force that could be languorous and stretch itself at ease. she was singing the song the sicilian peasant girls join in on the first of may, when the ciuri di maju is in blossom, and the young countrywomen go forth in merry bands to pick the flower of may, and, turning their eyes to the wayside shrine, or, if there be none near, to the east and the rising sun, lift their hands full of the flowers above their heads, and, making the sign of the cross, murmur devoutly: "divina pruvidenza, pruvvidã¬timi; divina pruvidenza, cunsulã timi; divina pruvidenza ã¨ granni assai; cu' teni fidi a diã¹, 'un pirisci mai!" [illustration: "her head was thrown back, as if she were drinking in the breeze"] delarey knew neither song nor custom, but his ears were fascinated by the voice and the melody. both sounded remote and yet familiar to him, as if once, in some distant land--perhaps of dreams--he had heard them before. he wished the girl to go on singing, to sing on and on into the dawn while he listened in his hiding-place, but she suddenly turned round and stood looking towards him, as if something had told her that she was not alone. he kept quite still. he knew she could not see him, yet he felt as if she was aware that he was there, and instinctively he held his breath and leaned backward into deeper shadow. after a minute the girl took a step forward, and, still staring in his direction, called out: "padre?" then delarey knew that it was her voice that he had heard when he was in the sea, and he suddenly changed his desire. now he no longer wished to remain unseen, and without hesitation he came out from the trees. the girl stood where she was, watching him as he came. her attitude showed neither surprise nor alarm, and when he was close to her, and could at last see her face, he found that its expression was one of simple, bold questioning. it seemed to be saying to him quietly, "well, what do you want of me?" delarey was not acquainted with the arab type of face. had he been he would have at once been struck by the eastern look in the girl's long, black eyes, by the eastern cast of her regular, slightly aquiline features. above her eyes were thin, jet-black eyebrows that looked almost as if they were painted. her chin was full and her face oval in shape. she had hair like gaspare's, black-brown, immensely thick and wavy, with tiny feathers of gold about the temples. she was tall, and had the contours of a strong though graceful girl just blooming into womanhood. her hands were as brown as delarey's, well shaped, but the hands of a worker. she was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, and brimful of lusty life. after a minute of silence delarey's memory recalled some words of gaspare's, till then forgotten. "you are maddalena!" he said, in italian. the girl nodded. "si, signore." she uttered the words softly, then fell into silence again, staring at him with her lustrous eyes, that were like black jewels. "you live here with salvatore?" she nodded once more and began to smile, as if with pleasure at his knowledge of her. delarey smiled too, and made with his arms the motion of swimming. at that she laughed outright and broke into quick speech. she spoke vivaciously, moving her hands and her whole body. delarey could not understand much of what she said, but he caught the words mare and pescatore, and by her gestures knew that she was telling him she had been on the rocks and had seen his mishap. suddenly in the midst of her talk she uttered the little cry of surprise or alarm which he had heard as he came up above water, pointed to her lips to indicate that she had given vent to it, and laughed again with all her heart. delarey laughed too. he felt happy and at ease with his siren, and was secretly amused at his thought in the sea of the magical being full of enchantment who sang to lure men to their destruction. this girl was simply a pretty, but not specially uncommon, type of the sicilian contadina--young, gay, quite free from timidity, though gentle, full of the joy of life and of the nascent passion of womanhood, blossoming out carelessly in the sunshine of the season of flowers. she could sing, this island siren, but probably she could not read or write. she could dance, could perhaps innocently give and receive love. but there was in her face, in her manner, nothing deliberately provocative. indeed, she looked warmly pure, like a bright, eager young animal of the woods, full of a blithe readiness to enjoy, full of hope and of unself-conscious animation. delarey wondered why she was not sleeping, and strove to ask her, speaking carefully his best sicilian, and using eloquent gestures, which set her smiling, then laughing again. in reply to him she pointed towards the sea, then towards the house, then towards the sea once more. he guessed that some fisherman had risen early to go to his work, and that she had got up to see him off, and had been too wakeful to return to bed. "niente piã¹ sonno!" he said, opening wide his eyes. "niente! niente!" he feigned fatigue. she took his travesty seriously, and pointed to the house, inviting him by gesture to go in and rest there. evidently she believed that, being a stranger, he could not speak or understand much of her language. he did not even try to undeceive her. it amused him to watch her dumb show, for her face spoke eloquently and her pretty, brown hands knew a language that was delicious. he had no longer any thought of sleep, but he felt curious to see the interior of the cottage, and he nodded his head in response to her invitation. at once she became the hospitable peasant hostess. her eyes sparkled with eagerness and pleasure, and she went quickly by him to the door, which stood half open, pushed it back, and beckoned to him to enter. he obeyed her, went in, and found himself almost in darkness, for the big windows on either side of the door were shuttered, and only a tiny flame, like a spark, burned somewhere among the dense shadows of the interior at some distance from him. pretending to be alarmed at the obscurity, he put out his hand gropingly, and let it light on her arm, then slip down to her warm, strong young hand. "i am afraid!" he exclaimed. he heard her merry laugh and felt her trying to pull her hand away, but he held it fast, prolonging a joke that he found a pleasant one. in that moment he was almost as simple as she was, obeying his impulses carelessly, gayly, without a thought of wrong--indeed, almost without thought at all. his body was still tingling and damp with the sea-water. her face was fresh with the sea-wind. he had never felt more wholesome or as if life were a saner thing. she dragged her hand out of his at last; he heard a grating noise, and a faint light sputtered up, then grew steady as she moved away and set a match to a candle, shielding it from the breeze that entered through the open door with her body. "what a beautiful house!" he cried, looking curiously around. he saw such a dwelling as one may see in any part of sicily where the inhabitants are not sunk in the direst poverty and squalor, a modest home consisting of two fair-sized rooms, one opening into the other. in each room was a mighty bed, high and white, with fat pillows, and a counterpane of many colors. at the head of each was pinned a crucifix and a little picture of the virgin, maria addolorata, with a palm branch that had been blessed, and beneath the picture in the inner room a tiny light, rather like an english night-light near its end, was burning. it was this that delarey had seen like a spark in the distance. at the foot of each bed stood a big box of walnut wood, carved into arabesques and grotesque faces. there were a few straw chairs and kitchen utensils. an old gun stood in a corner with a bundle of wood. not far off was a pan of charcoal. there were also two or three common deal-tables, on one of which stood the remains of a meal, a big jar containing wine, a flat loaf of coarse brown bread, with a knife lying beside it, some green stuff in a plate, and a slab of hard, yellow cheese. delarey was less interested in these things than in the display of photographs, picture-cards, and figures of saints that adorned the walls, carefully arranged in patterns to show to the best advantage. here were colored reproductions of actresses in languid attitudes, of peasants dancing, of babies smiling, of elaborate young people with carefully dressed hair making love with "molti saluti!" "una stretta di mano!" "mando un bacio!" "amicizia eterna!" and other expressions of friendship and affection, scribbled in awkward handwritings across and around them. and mingled with them were representations of saints, such as are sold at the fairs and festivals of sicily, and are reverently treasured by the pious and superstitious contadine; san pancrazio, santa leocanda, the protector of child-bearing women; sant aloe, the patron saint of the beasts of burden; san biagio, santo vito, the patron saint of dogs; and many others, with the bambino, the immacolata, the madonna di loreto, the madonna della rocca. in the faint light cast by the flickering candle, the faces of saints and actresses, of smiling babies, of lovers and madonnas peered at delarey as if curious to know why at such an hour he ventured to intrude among them, why he thus dared to examine them when all the world was sleeping. he drew back from them at length and looked again at the great bed with its fat pillows that stood in the farther room secluded from the sea-breeze. suddenly he felt a longing to throw himself down and rest. the girl smiled at him with sympathy. "that is my bed," she said, simply. "lie down and sleep, signorino." delarey hesitated for a moment. he thought of his companions. if they should wake in the cave and miss him what would they think, what would they do? then he looked again at the bed. the longing to lie down on it was irresistible. he pointed to the open door. "when the sun comes will you wake me?" he said. he took hold of his arm with one hand, and made the motion of shaking himself. "sole," he said. "quando c'ã¨ il sole." the girl laughed and nodded. "si, signore--non dubiti!" delarey climbed up on to the mountainous bed. "buona notte, maddalena!" he said, smiling at her from the pillow like a boy. "buon riposo, signorino!" that was the last thing he heard. the last thing he saw was the dark, eager face of the girl lit up by the candle-flame watching him from the farther room. her slight figure was framed by the doorway, through which a faint, sad light was stealing with the soft wind from the sea. her lustrous eyes were looking towards him curiously, as if he were something of a phenomenon, as if she longed to understand his mystery. soon, very soon, he saw those eyes no more. he was asleep in the midst of the madonnas and the saints, with the blessed palm branch and the crucifix and maria addolorata above his head. the girl sat down on a chair just outside the door, and began to sing to herself once more in a low voice: "divina pruvidenza, pruvvidã¬timi; divina pruvidenza, consulã timi; divina pruvidenza ã¨ granni assai; cu' teni fidi a diã¹, 'un pirisci mai!" once, in his sleep, delarey must surely have heard her song, for he began to dream that he was ulysses sailing across the purple seas along the shores of an enchanted coast, and that he heard far off the sirens singing, and saw their shadowy forms sitting among the rocks and reclining upon the yellow sands. then he bade his mariners steer the bark towards the shore. but when he drew near the sirens changed into devout peasant women, and their alluring songs into prayers uttered to the bambino and the virgin. but one watched him with eyes that gleamed like black jewels, and her lips smiled while they uttered prayers, as if they could murmur love words and kiss the lips of men. "signorino! signorino!" delarey stirred on the great, white bed. a hand grasped him firmly, shook him ruthlessly. "signorino! c'ã¨ il sole!" he opened his eyes reluctantly. maddalena was leaning over him. he saw her bright face and curious young eyes, then the faces of the saints and the actresses upon the wall, and he wondered where he was and where hermione was. "hermione!" he said. "cosa?" said maddalena. she shook him again gently. he stretched himself, yawned, and began to smile. she smiled back at him. "c'ã¨ il sole!" now he remembered, lifted himself up, and looked towards the doorway. the first rays of the sun were filtering in and sparkling in the distance upon the sea. the east was barred with red. he slipped down from the bed. "the frittura!" he said, in english. "i must make haste!" maddalena laughed. she had never heard english before. "ditelo ancora!" she cried, eagerly. they went but together on to the plateau and stood looking seaward. "i--must--make--haste!" he said, speaking slowly and dividing the words. "hi--maust--maiki--'ai--isti!" she repeated, trying to imitate his accent. he burst out laughing. she pouted. then she laughed, too, peal upon peal, while the sunlight grew stronger about them. how fresh the wind was! it played with her hair, from which she had now removed the handkerchief, and ruffled the little feathers of gold upon her brow. it blew about her smooth, young face as if it loved to touch the soft cheeks, the innocent lips, the candid, unlined brow. the leaves of the olive-trees rustled and the brambles and the grasses swayed. everything was in movement, stirring gayly into life to greet the coming day. maurice opened his mouth and drew in the air to his lungs, expanding his chest. he felt inclined to dance, to sing, and very much inclined to eat. "addio, maddalena!" he said, holding out his hand. he looked into her eyes and added: "addio, maddalena mia!" she smiled and looked down, then up at him again. "a rivederci, signorino!" she took his hand warmly in hers. "yes, that's better. a rivederci!" he held her hand for a moment, looking into her long and laughing eyes, and thinking how like a young animal's they were in their unwinking candor. and yet they were not like an animal's. for now, when he gazed into them, they did not look away from him, but continued to regard him, and always with an eager shining of curiosity. that curiosity stirred his manhood, fired him. he longed to reply to it, to give a quick answer to its eager question, its "what are you?" he glanced round, saw only the trees, the sea all alight with sun-rays, the red east now changing slowly into gold. then he bent down, kissed the lips of maddalena with a laugh, turned and descended through the trees by the way he had come. he had no feeling that he had done any wrong to hermione, any wrong to maddalena. his spirits were high, and he sang as he leaped down, agile as a goat, to the sea. he meant to return as he had come, and at the water's edge he stripped off his clothes once more, tied them into a bundle, plunged into the sea, and struck out for the beach opposite. as he did so, as the cold, bracing water seized him, he heard far above him the musical cry of the siren of the night. he answered it with a loud, exultant call. that was her farewell and his--this rustic hero's good-bye to her leander. when he reached the caffã¨ berardi its door stood open, and a middle-aged woman was looking out seaward. beyond, by the caves, he saw figures moving. his companions were awake. he hastened towards them. his morning plunge in the sea had given him a wild appetite. "frittura! frittura!" he shouted, taking off his hat and waving it. gaspare came running towards him. "where have you been, signorino?" "for a walk along the shore." he still kept his hat in his hand. "why, your face is all wet, and so is your hair." "i washed them in the sea. mangiamo! mangiamo!" "you did not sleep?" gaspare spoke curiously, regarded him with inquisitive, searching eyes. "i couldn't. i'll sleep up there when we get home." he pointed to the mountain. his eyes were dancing with gayety. "the frittura, gasparino, the frittura! and then the tarantella, and then 'o sole mio'!" he looked towards the rising sun, and began to sing at the top of his voice: "o sole, o sole mio, sta 'n fronte a te, sta 'n fronte a te!" gaspare joined in lustily, and carmela in the doorway of the caffã¨ berardi waved a frying-pan at them in time to the music. "per dio, gaspare!" exclaimed maurice, as they raced towards the house, each striving to be first there--"per dio, i never knew what life was till i came to sicily! i never knew what happiness was till this morning!" "the frittura! the frittura!" shouted gaspare. "i'll be first!" neck and neck they reached the caffã¨ as nito poured the shining fish into madre carmela's frying-pan. viii "they are coming, signora, they are coming! don't you hear them?" lucrezia was by the terrace wall looking over into the ravine. she could not see any moving figures, but she heard far down among the olives and the fruit trees gaspare's voice singing "o sole mio!" and while she listened another voice joined in, the voice of the padrone: "dio mio, but they are merry!" she added, as the song was broken by a distant peal of laughter. hermione came out upon the steps. she had been in the sitting-room writing a letter to miss townly, who sent her long and tearful effusions from london almost every day. "have you got the frying-pan ready, lucrezia?" she asked. "the frying-pan, signora!" "yes, for the fish they are bringing us." lucrezia looked knowing. "oh, signora, they will bring no fish." "why not? they promised last night. didn't you hear?" "they promised, yes, but they won't remember. men promise at night and forget in the morning." hermione laughed. she had been feeling a little dull, but now the sound of the lusty voices and the laughter from the ravine filled her with a sudden cheerfulness, and sent a glow of anticipation into her heart. "lucrezia, you are a cynic." "what is a cinico, signora?" "a lucrezia. but you don't know your padrone. he won't forget us." lucrezia reddened. she feared she had perhaps said something that seemed disrespectful. "oh, signora, there is not another like the padrone. every one says so. ask gaspare and sebastiano. i only meant that--" "i know. well, to-day you will understand that all men are not forgetful, when you eat your fish." lucrezia still looked very doubtful, but she said nothing more. "there they are!" exclaimed hermione. she waved her hand and cried out. life suddenly seemed quite different to her. these moving figures peopled gloriously the desert waste, these ringing voices filled with music the brooding silence of it. she murmured to herself a verse of scripture, "sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh with the morning," and she realized for the first time how absurdly sad and deserted she had been feeling, how unreasonably forlorn. by her present joy she measured her past--not sorrow exactly; she could not call it that--her past dreariness, and she said to herself with a little shock almost of fear, "how terribly dependent i am!" "mamma mia!" cried lucrezia, as another shout of laughter came up from the ravine, "how merry and mad they are! they have had a good night's fishing." hermione heard the laughter, but now it sounded a little harsh in her ears. "i wonder," she thought, as she leaned upon the terrace wall--"i wonder if he has missed me at all? i wonder if men ever miss us as we miss them?" her call, it seemed, had not been heard, nor her gesture of welcome seen, but now maurice looked up, waved his cap, and shouted. gaspare, too, took off his linen hat with a stentorian cry of "buon giorno, signora." "signora!" said lucrezia. "yes?" "look! was not i right? are they carrying anything?" hermione looked eagerly, almost passionately, at the two figures now drawing near to the last ascent up the bare mountain flank. maurice had a stick in one hand, the other hung empty at his side. gaspare still waved his hat wildly, holding it with both hands as a sailor holds the signalling-flag. "perhaps," she said--"perhaps it wasn't a good night, and they've caught nothing." "oh, signora, the sea was calm. they must have taken--" "perhaps their pockets are full of fish. i am sure they are." she spoke with a cheerful assurance. "if they have caught any fish, i know your frying-pan will be wanted," she said. "chi lo sa?" said lucrezia, with rather perfunctory politeness. secretly she thought that the padrona had only one fault. she was a little obstinate sometimes, and disinclined to be told the truth. and certainly she did not know very much about men, although she had a husband. through the old norman arch came delarey and gaspare, with hot faces and gay, shining eyes, splendidly tired with their exertions and happy in the thought of rest. delarey took hermione's hand in his. he would have kissed her before lucrezia and gaspare, quite naturally, but he felt that her hand stiffened slightly in his as he leaned forward, and he forbore. she longed for his kiss, but to receive it there would have spoiled a joy. and kind and familiar though she was with those beneath her, she could not bear to show the deeps of her heart before them. to her his kiss after her lonely night would be an event. did he know that? she wondered. he still kept her hand in his as he began to tell her about their expedition. "did you enjoy it?" she asked, thinking what a boy he looked in his eager, physical happiness. "ask gaspare!" "i don't think i need. your eyes tell me." "i never enjoyed any night so much before, out there under the moon. why don't we always sleep out-of-doors?" "shall we try some night on the terrace?" "by jove, we will! what a lark!" "did you go into the sea?" "i should think so! ask gaspare if i didn't beat them all. i had to swim, too." "and the fish?" she said, trying to speak, carelessly. "they were stunning. we caught an awful lot, and mother carmela cooked them to a t. i had an appetite, i can tell you, hermione, after being in the sea." she was silent for a moment. her hand had dropped out of his. when she spoke again, she said: "and you slept in the caves?" "the others did." "and you?" "i couldn't sleep, so i went out on to the beach. but i'll tell you all that presently. you won't be shocked, hermione, if i take a siesta now? i'm pretty well done--grandly tired, don't you know. i think i could get a lovely nap before collazione." "come in, my dearest," she said. "collazione a little late, lucrezia, not till half-past one." "and the fish, signora?" asked lucrezia. "we've got quite enough without fish," said hermione, turning away. "oh, by jove!" delarey said, as they went into the cottage, putting his hand into his jacket-pocket, "i've got something for you, hermione." "fish!" she cried, eagerly, her whole face brightening. "lucre--" "fish in my coat!" he interrupted, still not remembering. "no, a letter. they gave it me from the village as we came up. here it is." he drew out a letter, gave it to her, and went into the bedroom, while hermione stood in the sitting-room by the dining-table with the letter in her hand. it was from artois, with the kairouan postmark. "it's from emile," she said. maurice was closing the shutters, to make the bedroom dark. "is he still in africa?" he asked, letting down the bar with a clatter. "yes," she said, opening the envelope. "go to bed like a good boy while i read it." she wanted his kiss so much that she did not go near to him, and spoke with a lightness that was almost like a feigned indifference. he thrust his gay face through the doorway into the sunshine, and she saw the beads of perspiration on his smooth brow above his laughing, yet half-sleepy eyes. "come and tuck me up afterwards!" he said, and vanished. hermione made a little movement as if to follow him, but checked it and unfolded the letter. "4, rue d'abdul kader, kairouan. my dear friend,--this will be one of my dreary notes, but you must forgive me. do you ever feel a heavy cloud of apprehension lowering over you, a sensation of approaching calamity, as if you heard the footsteps of a deadly enemy stealthily approaching you? do you know what it is to lose courage, to fear yourself, life, the future, to long to hear a word of sympathy from a friendly voice, to long to lay hold of a friendly hand? are you ever like a child in the dark, your intellect no weapon against the dread of formless things? the african sun is shining here as i sit under a palm-tree writing, with my servant, zerzour, squatting beside me. it is so clear that i can almost count the veins in the leaves of the palms, so warm that zerzour has thrown off his burnous and kept on only his linen shirt. and yet i am cold and seem to be in blackness. i write to you to gain some courage if i can. but i have gained none yet. i believe there must be a physical cause for my malaise, and that i am going to have some dreadful illness, and perhaps lay my bones here in the shadow of the mosques among the sons of islam. write to me. is the garden of paradise blooming with flowers? is the tree of knowledge of good weighed down with fruit, and do you pluck the fruit boldly and eat it every day? you told me in london to come over and see you. i am not coming. do not fear. but how i wish that i could now, at this instant, see your strong face, touch your courageous hand! there is a sensation of doom upon me. laugh at me as much as you like, but write to me. i feel cold--cold in the sun. emile." when she had finished reading this letter, hermione stood quite still with it in her hand, gazing at the white paper on which this cry from africa was traced. it seemed to her that--a cry from across the sea for help against some impending fate. she had often had melancholy letters from artois in the past, expressing pessimistic views about life and literature, anxiety about some book which he was writing and which he thought was going to be a failure, anger against the follies of men, the turn of french politics, or the degeneration of the arts in modern times. diatribes she was accustomed to, and a definite melancholy from one who had not a gay temperament. but this letter was different from all the others. she sat down and read it again. for the moment she had forgotten maurice, and did not hear his movements in the adjoining room. she was in africa under a palm-tree, looking into the face of a friend with keen anxiety, trying to read the immediate future for him there. "maurice!" she called, presently, without getting up from her seat, "i've had such a strange letter from emile. i'm afraid--i feel as if he were going to be dreadfully ill or have an accident." there was no reply. "maurice!" she called again. then she got up and looked into the bedroom. it was nearly dark, but she could see her husband's black head on the pillow and hear a sound of regular breathing. he was asleep already; she had not received his kiss or tucked him up. she felt absurdly unhappy, as if she had missed a pleasure that could never come to her again. that, she thought, is one of the penalties of a great love, the passionate regret it spends on the tiny things it has failed of. at this moment she fancied--no, she felt sure--that there would always be a shadow in her life. she had lost maurice's kiss after his return from his first absence since their marriage. and a kiss from his lips still seemed to her a wonderful, almost a sacred thing, not only a physical act, but an emblem of that which was mysterious and lay behind the physical. why had she not let him kiss her on the terrace? her sensitive reserve had made her loss. for a moment she thought she wished she had the careless mind of a peasant. lucrezia loved sebastiano with passion, but she would have let him kiss her in public and been proud of it. what was the use of delicacy, of sensitiveness, in the great, coarse thing called life? even maurice had not shared her feeling. he was open as a boy, almost as a peasant boy. she began to wonder about him. she often wondered about him now in sicily. in england she never had. she had thought there that she knew him as he, perhaps, could never know her. it seemed to her that she had been almost arrogant, filled with a pride of intellect. she was beginning to be humbler here, face to face with etna. let him sleep, mystery wrapped in the mystery of slumber! she sat down in the twilight, waiting till he should wake, watching the darkness of his hair upon the pillow. some time passed, and presently she heard a noise upon the terrace. she got up softly, went into the sitting-room, and looked out. lucrezia was laying the table for collazione. "is it half-past one already?" she asked. "si, signora." "but the padrone is still asleep!" "so is gaspare in the hay. come and see, signora." lucrezia took hermione by the hand and led her round the angle of the cottage. there, under the low roof of the out-house, dressed only in his shirt and trousers with his brown arms bare and his hair tumbled over his damp forehead, lay gaspare on a heap of hay close to tito, the donkey. some hens were tripping and pecking by his legs, and a black cat was curled up in the hollow of his left armpit. he looked infinitely young, healthy, and comfortable, like an embodied carelessness that had flung itself down to its need. "i wish i could sleep like that," said hermione. "signora!" said lucrezia, shocked. "you in the stable with that white dress! mamma mia! and the hens!" "hens, donkey, cat, hay, and all--i should love it. but i'm too old ever to sleep like that. don't wake him!" lucrezia was stepping over to gaspare. "and i won't wake the padrone. let them both sleep. they've been up all night. i'll eat alone. when they wake we'll manage something for them. perhaps they'll sleep till evening, till dinner-time." "gaspare will, signora. he can sleep the clock round when he's tired." "and the padrone too, i dare say. all the better." she spoke cheerfully, then went to sit down to her solitary meal. the letter of artois was her only company. she read it again as she ate, and again felt as if it had been written by a man over whom some real misfortune was impending. the thought of his isolation in that remote african city pained her warm heart. she compared it with her own momentary solitude, and chided herself for minding--and she did mind--the lonely meal. how much she had--everything almost! and artois, with his genius, his fame, his liberty--how little he had! an arab servant for his companion, while she for hers had maurice! her heart glowed with thankfulness, and, feeling how rich she was, she felt a longing to give to others--a longing to make every one happy, a longing specially to make emile happy. his letter was horribly sad. each time she looked at it she was made sad by it, even apprehensive. she remembered their long and close friendship, how she had sympathized with all his struggles, how she had been proud of possessing his confidence and of being asked to advise him on points connected with his work. the past returned to her, kindling fires in her heart, till she longed to be near him and to shed their warmth on him. the african sun shone upon him and left him cold, numb. how wonderful it was, she thought, that the touch of a true friend's hand, the smile of the eyes of a friend, could succeed where the sun failed. sometimes she thought of herself, of all human beings, as pygmies. now she felt that she came of a race of giants, whose powers were illimitable. if only she could be under that palm-tree for a moment beside emile, she would be able to test the power she knew was within her, the glorious power that the sun lacked, to shed light and heat through a human soul. with an instinctive gesture she stretched out her hand as if to give artois the touch he longed for. it encountered only the air and dropped to her side. she got up with a sigh. "poor old emile!" she said to herself. "if only i could do something for him!" the thought of maurice sleeping calmly close to her made her long to say "thank you" for her great happiness by performing some action of usefulness, some action that would help another--emile for choice--to happiness, or, at least, to calm. this longing was for a moment so keen in her that it was almost like an unconscious petition, like an unuttered prayer in the heart, "give me an opportunity to show my gratitude." she stood by the wall for a moment, looking over into the ravine and at the mountain flank opposite. etna was startlingly clear to-day. she fancied that if a fly were to settle upon the snow on its summit she would be able to see it. the sea was like a mirror in which lay the reflection of the unclouded sky. it was not far to africa. she watched a bird pass towards the sea. perhaps it was flying to kairouan, and would settle at last on one of the white cupolas of the great mosque there, the mosque of djama kebir. what could she do for emile? she could at least write to him. she could renew her invitation to him to come to sicily. "lucrezia!" she called, softly, lest she might waken maurice. "signora?" said lucrezia, appearing round the corner of the cottage. "please bring me out a pen and ink and writing-paper, will you?" "si, signora." lucrezia was standing beside hermione. now she turned to go into the house. as she did so she said: "ecco, antonino from the post-office!" "where?" asked hermione. lucrezia pointed to a little figure that was moving quickly along the mountain-path towards the cottage. "there, signora. but why should he come? it is not the hour for the post yet." "no. perhaps it is a telegram. yes, it must be a telegram." she glanced at the letter in her hand. "it's a telegram from africa," she said, as if she knew. and at that moment she felt that she did know. lucrezia regarded her with round-eyed amazement. "but, signora, how can you--" "there, antonino has disappeared under the trees! we shall see him in a minute among the rocks. i'll go to meet him." and she went quickly to the archway, and looked down the path where the lizards were darting to and fro in the sunshine. almost directly antonino reappeared, a small boy climbing steadily up the steep pathway, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder. "antonino!" she called to him. "is it a telegram?" "si, signora!" he cried out. he came up to her, panting, opened the bag, and gave her the folded paper. "go and get something to drink," she said. "to eat, too, if you're hungry." antonino ran off eagerly, while hermione tore open the paper and read these words in french: "monsieur artois dangerously ill; fear may not recover; he wished you to know. max berton, docteur mã©decin, kairouan." hermione dropped the telegram. she did not feel at all surprised. indeed, she felt that she had been expecting almost these very words, telling her of a tragedy at which the letter she still held in her hand had hinted. for a moment she stood there without being conscious of any special sensation. then she stooped, picked up the telegram, and read it again. this time it seemed like an answer to that unuttered prayer in her heart: "give me an opportunity to show my gratitude." she did not hesitate for a moment as to what she would do. she would go to kairouan, to close the eyes of her friend if he must die, if not to nurse him back to life. antonino was munching some bread and cheese and had one hand round a glass full of red wine. "i'm going to write an answer," she said to him, "and you must run with it." "si, signora." "was it from africa, signora?" asked lucrezia. "yes." lucrezia's jaw fell, and she stared in superstitious amazement. "i wonder," hermione thought, "if maurice--" she went gently to the bedroom. he was still sleeping calmly. his attitude of luxurious repose, the sound of his quiet breathing, seemed strange to her eyes and ears at this moment, strange and almost horrible. for an instant she thought of waking him in order to tell him her news and consult with him about the journey. it never occurred to her to ask him whether there should be a journey. but something held her back, as one is held back from disturbing the slumber of a tired child, and she returned to the sitting-room, wrote out the following telegram: "shall start for kairouan at once; wire me tunisia palace hotel, tunis, madame delarey." and sent antonino with it flying down the hill. then she got time-tables and a guide-book of tunisia, and sat down at her writing-table to make out the journey; while lucrezia, conscious that something unusual was afoot, watched her with solemn eyes. hermione found that she would gain nothing by starting that night. by leaving early the next morning she would arrive at trapani in time to catch a steamer which left at midnight for tunis, reaching africa at nine on the following morning. from tunis a day's journey by train would bring her to kairouan. if the steamer were punctual she might be able to catch a train immediately on her arrival at tunis. if not, she would have to spend one day there. already she felt as if she were travelling. all sense of peace had left her. she seemed to hear the shriek of engines, the roar of trains in tunnels and under bridges, to shake with the oscillation of the carriage, to sway with the dip and rise of the action of the steamer. swiftly, as one in haste, she wrote down times of departure and arrival: cattaro to messina, messina to palermo, palermo to trapani, trapani to tunis, tunis to kairouan, with the price of the ticket--a return ticket. when that was done and she had laid down her pen, she began for the first time to realize the change a morsel of paper had made in her life, to realize the fact of the closeness of her new knowledge of what was and what was coming to maurice's ignorance. the travelling sensation within her, an intense interior restlessness, made her long for action, for some ardent occupation in which the body could take part. she would have liked to begin at once to pack, but all her things were in the bedroom where maurice was sleeping. would he sleep forever? she longed for him to wake, but she would not wake him. everything could be packed in an hour. there was no reason to begin now. but how could she remain just sitting there in the great tranquillity of this afternoon of spring, looking at the long, calm line of etna rising from the sea, while emile, perhaps, lay dying? she got up, went once more to the terrace, and began to pace up and down under the awning. she had not told lucrezia that she was going on the morrow. maurice must know first. what would he say? how would he take it? and what would he do? even in the midst of her now growing sorrow--for at first she had hardly felt sorry, had hardly felt anything but that intense restlessness which still possessed her--she was preoccupied with that. she meant, when he woke, to give him the telegram, and say simply that she must go at once to artois. that was all. she would not ask, hint at anything else. she would just tell maurice that she could not leave her dearest friend to die alone in an african city, tended only by an arab, and a doctor who came to earn his fee. and maurice--what would he say? what would he--do? if only he would wake! there was something terrible to her in the contrast between his condition and hers at this moment. and what ought she to do if maurice--? she broke off short in her mental arrangement of possible happenings when maurice should wake. the afternoon waned and still he slept. as she watched the light changing on the sea, growing softer, more wistful, and the long outline of etna becoming darker against the sky, hermione felt a sort of unreasonable despair taking possession of her. so few hours of the day were left now, and on the morrow this sicilian life--a life that had been ideal--must come to an end for a time, and perhaps forever. the abruptness of the blow which had fallen had wakened in her sensitive heart a painful, almost an exaggerated sense of the uncertainty of the human fate. it seemed to her that the joy which had been hers in these tranquil sicilian days, a joy more perfect than any she had conceived of, was being broken off short, as if it could never be renewed. with her anxiety for her friend mingled another anxiety, more formless, but black and horrible in its vagueness. "if this should be our last day together in sicily!" she thought, as she watched the light softening among the hills and the shadows of the olive-trees lengthening upon the ground. "if this should be our last night together in the house of the priest!" it seemed to her that even with maurice in another place she could never know again such perfect peace and joy, and her heart ached at the thought of leaving it. "to-morrow!" she thought. "only a few hours and this will all be over!" it seemed almost incredible. she felt that she could not realize it thoroughly and yet that she realized it too much, as in a nightmare one seems to feel both less and more than in any tragedy of a wakeful hour. a few hours and it would all be over--and through those hours maurice slept. the twilight was falling when he stirred, muttered some broken words, and opened his eyes. he heard no sound, and thought it was early morning. "hermione!" he said, softly. then he lay still for a moment and remembered. "by jove! it must be long past time for dã©jeuner!" he thought. he sprang up and put his head into the sitting-room. "hermione!" he called. "yes," she answered, from the terrace. "what's the time?" "nearly dinner-time." he burst out laughing. "didn't you think i was going to sleep forever?" he said. "almost," her voice said. he wondered a little why she did not come to him, but only answered him from a distance. "i'll dress and be out in a moment," he called. "all right!" now that maurice was awake at last, hermione's grief at the lost afternoon became much more acute, but she was determined to conceal it. she remained where she was just then because she had been startled by the sound of her husband's voice, and was not sure of her power of self-control. when, a few minutes later, he came out upon the terrace with a half-amused, half-apologetic look on his face, she felt safer. she resolved to waste no time, but to tell him at once. "maurice," she said, "while you've been sleeping i've been living very fast and travelling very far." "how, hermione? what do you mean?" he asked, sitting down by the wall and looking at her with eyes that still held shadows of sleep. "something's happened to-day that's--that's going to alter everything." he looked astonished. "why, how grave you are! but what? what could happen here?" "this came." she gave him the doctor's telegram. he read it slowly aloud. "artois!" he said. "poor fellow! and out there in africa all alone!" he stopped speaking, looked at her, then leaned forward, put his arm round her shoulder, and kissed her gently. "i'm awfully sorry for you, hermione," he said. "awfully sorry, i know how you must be feeling. when did it come?" "some hours ago." "and i've been sleeping! i feel a brute." he kissed her again. "why didn't you wake me?" "just to share a grief? that would have been horrid of me, maurice!" he looked again at the telegram. "did you wire?" he asked. "yes." "of course. perhaps to-morrow, or in a day or two, we shall have better news, that he's turned the corner. he's a strong man, hermione; he ought to recover. i believe he'll recover." "maurice," she said. "i want to tell you something." "what, dear?" "i feel i must--i can't wait here for news." "but then--what will you do?" "while you've been sleeping i've been looking out trains." "trains! you don't mean--" "i must start for kairouan to-morrow morning. read this, too." and she gave him emile's letter. "doesn't that make you feel his loneliness?" she said, when he had finished it. "and think of it now--now when perhaps he knows that he is dying." "you are going away," he said--"going away from here!" his voice sounded as if he could not believe it. "to-morrow morning!" he added, more incredulously. "if i waited i might be too late." she was watching him with intent eyes, in which there seemed to flame a great anxiety. "you know what friends we've been," she continued. "don't you think i ought to go?" "i--perhaps--yes, i see how you feel. yes, i see. but"--he got up--"to leave here to-morrow! i felt as if--almost as if we'd been here always and should live here for the rest of our lives." "i wish to heaven we could!" she exclaimed, her voice changing. "oh, maurice, if you knew how dreadful it is to me to go!" "how far is kairouan?" "if i catch the train at tunis i can be there the day after to-morrow." "and you are going to nurse him, of course?" "yes, if--if i'm in time. now i ought to pack before dinner." "how beastly!" he said, just like a boy. "how utterly beastly! i don't feel as if i could believe it all. but you--what a trump you are, hermione! to leave this and travel all that way--not one woman in a hundred would do it." "wouldn't you for a friend?" "i!" he said, simply. "i don't know whether i understand friendship as you do. i've had lots of friends, of course, but one seemed to me very like another, as long as they were jolly." "how sicilian!" she thought. she had heard gaspare speak of his boy friends in much the same way. "emile is more to me than any one in the world but you," she said. her voice changed, faltered on the last word, and she walked along the terrace to the sitting-room window. "i must pack now," she said. "then we can have one more quiet time together after dinner." her last words seemed to strike him, for he followed her, and as she was going into the bedroom, he said: "perhaps--why shouldn't i--" but then he stopped. "yes, maurice!" she said, quickly. "where's gaspare?" he asked. "we'll make him help with the packing. but you won't take much, will you? it'll only be for a few days, i suppose." "who knows?" "gaspare! gaspare!" he called. "che vuole?" answered a sleepy voice. "come here." in a moment a languid figure appeared round the corner. maurice explained matters. instantly gaspare became a thing of quicksilver. he darted to help hermione. every nerve seemed quivering to be useful. "and the signore?" he said, presently, as he carried a trunk into the room. "the signore!" said hermione. "is he going, too?" "no, no!" said hermione, swiftly. she put her finger to her lips. delarey was just coming into the room. gaspare said no more, but he shot a curious glance from padrona to padrone as he knelt down to lay some things in the trunk. by dinner-time hermione's preparations were completed. the one trunk she meant to take was packed. how hateful it looked standing there in the white room with the label hanging from the handle! she washed her face and hands in cold water, and came out onto the terrace where the dinner-table was laid. it was a warm, still night, like the night of the fishing, and the moon hung low in a clear sky. "how exquisite it is here!" she said to maurice, as they sat down. "we are in the very heart of calm, majestic calm. look at that one star over etna, and the outlines of the hills and of that old castle--" she stopped. "it brings a lump into my throat," she said, after a little pause. "it's too beautiful and too still to-night." "i love being here," he said. they ate their dinner in silence for some time. presently maurice began to crumble his bread. "hermione," he said. "look here--" "yes, maurice." "i've been thinking--of course i scarcely know artois, and i could be of no earthly use, but i've been thinking whether it would not be better for me to come to kairouan with you." for a moment hermione's rugged face was lit up by a fire of joy that made her look beautiful. maurice went on crumbling his bread. "i didn't say anything at first," he continued, "because i--well, somehow i felt so fixed here, almost part of the place, and i had never thought of going till it got too hot, and especially not now, when the best time is only just beginning. and then it all came so suddenly. i was still more than half asleep, too, i believe," he added, with a little laugh, "when you told me. but now i've had time, and--why shouldn't i come, too, to look after you?" as he went on speaking the light in hermione's face flickered and died out. it was when he laughed that it vanished quite away. "thank you, maurice," she said, quietly. "thank you, dear. i should love to have you with me, but it would be a shame!" "why?" "why? why--the best time here is only just beginning, as you say. it would be selfish to drag you across the sea to a sick-bed, or perhaps to a death-bed." "but the journey?" "oh, i am accustomed to being a lonely woman. think how short a time we've been married! i've nearly always travelled alone." "yes, i know," he said. "of course there's no danger. i didn't mean that, only--" "only you were ready to be unselfish," she said. "bless you for it. but this time i want to be unselfish. you must stay here to keep house, and i'll come back the first moment i can--the very first. let's try to think of that--of the day when i come up the mountain again to my--to our garden of paradise. all the time i'm away i shall pray for the moment when i see these columns of the terrace above me, and the geraniums, and--and the white wall of our little--home." she stopped. then she added: "and you." "yes," he said. "but you won't see me on the terrace." "why not?" "because, of course, i shall come to the station to meet you. that day will be a festa." she said nothing more. her heart was very full, and of conflicting feelings and of voices that spoke in contradiction one of another. one or two of these voices she longed to hush to silence, but they were persistent. then she tried not to listen to what they were saying. but they were pitilessly distinct. dinner was soon over, and gaspare came to clear away. his face was very grave, even troubled. he did not like this abrupt departure of his padrona. "you will come back, signora?" he said, as he drew away the cloth and prepared to fold up the table and carry it in-doors. hermione managed to laugh. "why, of course, gaspare! did you think i was going away forever?" "africa is a long way off." "only nine hours from trapani. i may be back very soon. will you forget me?" "did i forget my padrona when she was in england?" the boy replied, his expressive face suddenly hardening and his great eyes glittering with sullen fires. hermione quickly laid her hand on his. "i was only laughing. you know your padrona trusts you to remember her as she remembers you." gaspare lifted up her hand quickly, kissed it, and hurried away, lifting his own hand to his eyes. "these sicilians know how to make one love them," said hermione, with a little catch in her voice. "i believe that boy would die for me if necessary." "i'm sure he would," said maurice. "but one doesn't find a padrona like you every day." "let us walk to the arch," she said. "i must take my last look at the mountains with you." beyond the archway there was a large, flat rock, a natural seat from which could be seen a range of mountains that was invisible from the terrace. hermione often sat on this rock alone, looking at the distant peaks, whose outlines stirred her imagination like a wild and barbarous music. now she drew down maurice beside her and kept his hand in hers. she was thinking of many things, among others of the little episode that had just taken place with gaspare. his outburst of feeling, like fire bursting up through a suddenly opened fissure in the crust of the earth, had touched her and something more. it had comforted her, and removed from her a shadowy figure that had been approaching her, the figure of a fear. she fixed her eyes on the mountains, dark under the silver of the moon. "maurice," she said. "do you often try to read people?" the pleasant look of almost deprecating modesty that artois had noticed on the night when they dined together in london came to delarey's face. "i don't know that i do, hermione," he said. "is it easy?" "i think--i'm thinking it especially to-night--that it is horribly difficult. one's imagination seizes hold of trifles, and magnifies them and distorts them. from little things, little natural things, one deduces--i mean one takes a midget and makes of it a monster. how one ought to pray to see clear in people one loves! it's very strange, but i think that sometimes, just because one loves, one is ready to be afraid, to doubt, to exaggerate, to think a thing is gone when it is there. in friendship one is more ready to give things their proper value--perhaps because everything is of less value. do you know that to-night i realize for the first time the enormous difference there is between the love one gives in love and the love one gives in friendship?" "why, hermione?" he asked, simply. he was looking a little puzzled, but still reverential. "i love emile as a friend. you know that." "yes. would you go to kairouan if you didn't?" "if he were to die it would be a great sorrow, a great loss to me. i pray that he may live. and yet--" suddenly she took his other hand in hers. "oh, maurice, i've been thinking to-day, i'm thinking now--suppose it were you who lay ill, perhaps dying! oh, the difference in my feeling, in my dread! if you were to be taken from me, the gap in my life! there would be nothing--nothing left." he put his arm round her, and was going to speak, but she went on: "and if you were to be taken from me how terrible it would be to feel that i'd ever had one unkind thought of you, that i'd ever misinterpreted one look or word or action of yours, that i'd ever, in my egoism or my greed, striven to thwart one natural impulse of yours, or to force you into travesty away from simplicity! don't--don't ever be unnatural or insincere with me, maurice, even for a moment, even for fear of hurting me. be always yourself, be the boy that you still are and that i love you for being." she put her head on his shoulder, and he felt her body trembling. "i think i'm always natural with you," he said. "you're as natural as gaspare. only once, and--and that was my fault, i know; but you mean so much to me, everything, and your honesty with me is like god walking with me." she lifted her head and stood up. "please god we'll have many more nights together here," she said--"many more blessed, blessed nights. the stillness of the hills is like all the truth of the world, sifted from the falsehood and made into one beautiful whole. oh, maurice, there is a heaven on earth--when two people love each other in the midst of such a silence as this." they went slowly back through the archway to the terrace. far below them the sea gleamed delicately, almost like a pearl. in the distance, towering above the sea, the snow of etna gleamed more coldly, with a bleaker purity, a suggestion of remote mysteries and of untrodden heights. above the snow of etna shone the star of evening. beside the sea shone the little light in the house of the sirens. and as they stood for a moment before the cottage in the deep silence of the night, hermione looked up at the star above the snow. but maurice looked down at the little light beside the sea. ix only when hermione was gone, when the train from which she waved her hand had vanished along the line that skirted the sea, and he saw gaspare winking away two tears that were about to fall on his brown cheeks, did maurice begin to realize the largeness of the change that fate had wrought in his sicilian life. he realized it more sharply when he had climbed the mountain and stood once more upon the terrace before the house of the priest. hermione's personality was so strong, so aboundingly vital, that its withdrawal made an impression such as that made by an intense silence suddenly succeeding a powerful burst of music. just at first maurice felt startled, almost puzzled like a child, inclined to knit his brows and stare with wide eyes and wonder what could be going to happen to him in a world that was altered. now he was conscious of being far away from the land where he had been born and brought up, conscious of it as he had not been before, even on his first day in sicily. he did not feel an alien. he had no sensation of exile. but he felt, as he had not felt when with hermione, the glory of this world of sea and mountains, of olive-trees and vineyards, the strangeness of its great welcome to him, the magic of his readiness to give himself to it. he had been like a dancing faun in the sunshine and the moonlight of sicily. now, for a moment, he stood still, very still, and watched and listened, and was grave, and was aware of himself, the figure in the foreground of a picture that was marvellous. the enthusiasm of hermione for sicily, the flood of understanding of it, and feeling for it that she had poured out in the past days of spring, instead of teaching maurice to see and to feel, seemed to have kept him back from the comprehension to which they had been meant to lead him. with hermione, the watcher, he had been but as a sicilian, another gaspare in a different rank of life. without hermione he was gaspare and something more. it was as if he still danced in the tarantella, but had now for the moment the power to stand and watch his performance and see that it was wonderful. this was just at first, in the silence that followed the music. he gazed at etna, and thought: "how extraordinary that i'm living up here on a mountain and looking at the smoke from etna, and that there's no english-speaking person here but me!" he looked at gaspare and at lucrezia, and thought: "what a queer trio of companions we are! how strange and picturesque those two would look in england, how different they are from the english, and yet how at home with them i feel! by jove, it's wonderful!" and then he was thrilled by a sense of romance, of adventure, that had never been his when his english wife was there beside him, calling his mind to walk with hers, his heart to beat with hers, calling with the great sincerity of a very perfect love. "the poor signora!" said gaspare. "i saw her beginning to cry when the train went away. she loves my country and cannot bear to leave it. she ought to live here always, as i do." "courage, gaspare!" said maurice, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder. "she'll come back very soon." gaspare lifted his hand to his eyes, then drew out a red-and-yellow handkerchief with "caro mio" embroidered on it and frankly wiped them. "the poor signora!" he repeated. "she did not like to leave us." "let's think of her return," said maurice. he turned away suddenly from the terrace and went into the house. when he was there, looking at the pictures and books, at the open piano with some music on it, at a piece of embroidery with a needle stuck through the half-finished petal of a flower, he began to feel deserted. the day was before him. what was he going to do? what was there for him to do? for a moment he felt what he would have called "stranded." he was immensely accustomed to hermione, and her splendid vitality of mind and body filled up the interstices of a day with such ease that one did not notice that interstices existed, or think they could exist. her physical health and her ardent mind worked hand-in-hand to create around her an atmosphere into which boredom could not come, yet from which bustle was excluded. maurice felt the silence within the house to be rather dreary than peaceful. he touched the piano, endeavoring to play with one finger the tune of "o sole mio!" he took up two or three books, pulled the needle out of hermione's embroidery, then stuck it in again. the feeling of loss began to grow upon him. oddly enough, he thought, he had not felt it very strongly at the station when the train ran out. nor had it been with him upon the terrace. there he had been rather conscious of change than of loss--of change that was not without excitement. but now--he began to think of the days ahead of him with a faint apprehension. "but i'll live out-of-doors," he said to himself. "it's only in the house that i feel bad like this. i'll live out-of-doors and take lots of exercise, and i shall be all right." he had again taken up a book, almost without knowing it, and now, holding it in his hand, he went to the head of the steps leading to the terrace and looked out. gaspare was sitting by the wall with a very dismal face. he stared silently at his master for a minute. then he said: "the signora should have taken us with her to africa. it would have been better." "it was impossible, gaspare," maurice said, rather hastily. "she is going to a poor signore who is ill." "i know." the boy paused for a moment. then he said: "is the signore her brother?" "her brother! no." "is he a relation?" "no." "is he very old?" "certainly not." gaspare repeated: "the signora should have taken us with her to africa." this time he spoke with a certain doggedness. maurice, he scarcely knew why, felt slightly uncomfortable and longed to create a diversion. he looked at the book he was holding in his hand and saw that it was _the thousand and one nights_, in italian. he wanted to do something definite, to distract his thoughts--more than ever now after his conversation with gaspare. an idea occurred to him. "come under the oak-trees, gaspare," he said, "and i'll read to you. it will be a lesson in accent. you shall be my professore." "si, signore." the response was listless, and gaspare followed his master with listless footsteps down the little path that led to the grove of oak-trees that grew among giant rocks, on which the lizards were basking. "there are stories of africa in this book," said maurice, opening it. gaspare looked more alert. "of where the signora will be?" "chi lo sa?" he lay down on the warm ground, set his back against a rock, opened the book at hazard, and began to read slowly and carefully, while gaspare, stretched on the grass, listened, with his chin in the palm of his hand. the story was of the fisherman and the genie who was confined in a casket, and soon gaspare was entirely absorbed by it. he kept his enormous brown eyes fixed upon maurice's face, and moved his lips, silently forming, after him, the words of the tale. when it was finished he said: "i should not like to be kept shut up like that, signore. if i could not be free i would kill myself. i will always be free." he stretched himself on the warm ground like a young animal, then added: "i shall not take a wife--ever." maurice shut the book and stretched himself, too, then moved away from the rock, and lay at full length with his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes, nearly shut, fixed upon the glimmer of the sea. "why not, gasparino?" "because if one has a wife one is not free." "hm!" "if i had a wife i should be like the mago africano when he was shut up in the box." "and i?" maurice said, suddenly sitting up. "what about me?" for the first time it seemed to occur to gaspare that he was speaking to a married man. he sat up, too. "oh, but you--you are a signore and rich. it is different. i am poor. i shall have many loves, first one and then another, but i shall never take a wife. my father wishes me to when i have finished the military service, but"--and he laughed at his own ingenious comparison--"i am like the mago africano when he was let out of the casket. i am free, and i will never let myself be stoppered-up as he did. per dio!" suddenly maurice frowned. "it isn't like--" he began. then he stopped. the lines in his forehead disappeared, and he laughed. "i am pretty free here, too," he said. "at least, i feel so." the dreariness that had come upon him inside the cottage had disappeared now that he was in the open air. as he looked down over the sloping mountain flank--dotted with trees near him, but farther away bare and sunbaked--to the sea with its magic coast-line, that seemed to promise enchantments to wilful travellers passing by upon the purple waters, as he turned his eyes to the distant plain with its lemon groves, its winding river, its little vague towns of narrow houses from which thin trails of smoke went up, and let them journey on to the great, smoking mountain lifting its snows into the blue, and its grave, not insolent, panache, he felt an immense sense of happy-go-lucky freedom with the empty days before him. his intellect was loose like a colt on a prairie. there was no one near to catch it, to lead it to any special object, to harness it and drive it onward in any fixed direction. he need no longer feel respect for a cleverness greater than his own, or try to understand subtleties of thought and sensation that were really outside of his capacities. he did not say this to himself, but whence sprang this new and dancing feeling of emancipation that was coming upon him? why did he remember the story he had just been reading, and think of himself for a moment as a genie emerging cloudily into the light of day from a narrow prison which had been sunk beneath the sea? why? for, till now, he had never had any consciousness of imprisonment. one only becomes conscious of some things when one is freed from them. maurice's happy efforts to walk on the heights with the enthusiasms of hermione had surely never tired him, but rather braced him. yet, left alone with peasants, with lucrezia and gaspare, there was something in him, some part of his nature, which began to frolic like a child let out of school. he felt more utterly at his ease than he had ever felt before. with these peasants he could let his mind be perfectly lazy. to them he seemed instructed, almost a god of knowledge. suddenly maurice laughed, showing his white teeth. he stretched up his arms to the blue heaven and the sun that sent its rays filtering down to him through the leaves of the oak-trees, and he laughed again gently. "what is it, signore?" "it is good to live, gaspare. it is good to be young out here on the mountain-side, and to send learning and problems and questions of conscience to the devil. after all, real life is simple enough if only you'll let it be. i believe the complications of life, half of them, and its miseries too, more than half of them, are the inventions of the brains of the men and women we call clever. they can't let anything alone. they bother about themselves and everybody else. by jove, if you knew how they talk about life in london! they'd make you think it was the most complicated, rotten, intriguing business imaginable; all misunderstandings and cross-purposes, and the lord knows what. but it isn't. it's jolly simple, or it can be. here we are, you and i, and we aren't at loggerheads, and we've got enough to eat and a pair of boots apiece, and the sun, and the sea, and old etna behaving nicely--and what more do we want?" "signore--" "well?" "i don't understand english." "mamma mia!" delarey roared with laughter. "and i've been talking english. well, gaspare, i can't say it in sicilian--can i? let's see." he thought a minute. then he said: "it's something like this. life is simple and splendid if you let it alone. but if you worry it--well, then, like a dog, it bites you." he imitated a dog biting. gaspare nodded seriously. "mi piace la vita," he remarked, calmly. "e anche mi piace a me," said maurice. "now i'll give you a lesson in english, and when the signora comes back you can talk to her." "si, signore." the afternoon had gone in a flash. evening came while they were still under the oak-trees, and the voice of lucrezia was heard calling from the terrace, with the peculiar baaing intonation that is characteristic of southern women of the lower classes. gaspare baaed ironically in reply. "it isn't dinner-time already?" said maurice, getting up reluctantly. "yes, meester sir, eef you pleesi," said gaspare, with conscious pride. "we go way." "bravo. well, i'm getting hungry." as maurice sat alone at dinner on the terrace, while gaspare and lucrezia ate and chattered in the kitchen, he saw presently far down below the shining of the light in the house of the sirens. it came out when the stars came out, this tiny star of the sea. he felt a little lonely as he sat there eating all by himself, and when the light was kindled near the water, that lay like a dream waiting to be sweetly disturbed by the moon, he was pleased as by the greeting of a friend. the light was company. he watched it while he ate. it was a friendly light, more friendly than the light of the stars to him. for he connected it with earthly things--things a man could understand. he imagined maddalena in the cottage where he had slept preparing the supper for salvatore, who was presently going off to sea to spear fish, or net them, or take them with lines for the market on the morrow. there was bread and cheese on the table, and the good red wine that could harm nobody, wine that had all the laughter of the sun-rays in it. and the cottage door was open to the sea. the breeze came in and made the little lamp that burned beneath the madonna flicker. he saw the big, white bed, and the faces of the saints, of the actresses, of the smiling babies that had watched him while he slept. and he saw the face of his peasant hostess, the face he had kissed in the dawn, ere he ran down among the olive-trees to plunge into the sea. he saw the eyes that were like black jewels, the little feathers of gold in the hair about her brow. she was a pretty, simple girl. he liked the look of curiosity in her eyes. to her he was something touched with wonder, a man from a far-off land. yet she was at ease with him and he with her. that drop of sicilian blood in his veins was worth something to him in this isle of the south. it made him one with so much, with the sunburned sons of the hills and of the sea-shore, with the sunburned daughters of the soil. it made him one with them--or more--one of them. he had had a kiss from sicily now--a kiss in the dawn by the sea, from lips fresh with the sea wind and warm with the life that is young. and what had it meant to him? he had taken it carelessly with a laugh. he had washed it from his lips in the sea. now he remembered it, and, in thought, he took the kiss again, but more slowly, more seriously. and he took it at evening, at the coming of night, instead of at dawn, at the coming of day--his kiss from sicily. he took it at evening. he had finished dinner now, and he pushed back his chair and drew a cigar from his pocket. then he struck a match. as he was putting it to the cigar he looked again towards the sea and saw the light. "damn!" "signore!" gaspare came running. "i didn't call, gaspare, i only said 'mamma mia!' because i burned my fingers." he struck another match and lit the cigar. "signore--" gaspare began, and stopped. "yes? what is it?" "signore, i--lucrezia, you know, has relatives at castel vecchio." castel vecchio was the nearest village, perched on the hill-top opposite, twenty minutes' walk from the cottage. "ebbene?" "ebbene, signorino, to-night there is a festa in their house. it is the festa of pancrazio, her cousin. sebastiano will be there to play, and they will dance, and--" "lucrezia wants to go?" "si, signore, but she is afraid to ask." "afraid! of course she can go, she must go. tell her. but at night can she come back alone?" "signore, i am invited, but i said--i did not like the first evening that the padrona is away--if you would come they would take it as a great honor." "go, gaspare, take lucrezia, and bring her back safely." "and you, signore?" "i would come, too, but i think a stranger would spoil the festa." "oh no, signore, on the contrary--" "i know--you think i shall be sad alone." "si, signore." "you are good to think of your padrone, but i shall be quite content. you go with lucrezia and come back as late as you like. tell lucrezia! off with you!" gaspare hesitated no longer. in a few minutes he had put on his best clothes and a soft hat, and stuck a large, red rose above each ear. he came to say good-bye with lucrezia on his arm. her head was wrapped in a brilliant yellow-and-white shawl with saffron-colored fringes. they went off together laughing and skipping down the stony path like two children. when their footsteps died away delarey, who had walked to the archway to see them off, returned slowly to the terrace and began to pace up and down, puffing at his cigar. the silence was profound. the rising moon cast its pale beams upon the white walls of the cottage, the white seats of the terrace. there was no wind. the leaves of the oaks and the olive-trees beneath the wall were motionless. nothing stirred. above the cottage the moonlight struck on the rocks, showed the nakedness of the mountain-side. a curious sense of solitude, such as he had never known before, took possession of delarey. it did not make him feel sad at first, but only emancipated, free as he had never yet felt free, like one free in a world that was curiously young, curiously unfettered by any chains of civilization, almost savagely, primitively free. so might an animal feel ranging to and fro in a land where man had not set foot. but he was an animal without its mate in the wonderful breathless night. and the moonlight grew about him as he walked, treading softly he scarce knew why, to and fro, to and fro. hermione was nearing the coast now. soon she would be on board the steamer and on her way across the sea to africa. she would be on her way to africa--and to artois. delarey recalled his conversation with gaspare, when the boy had asked him whether artois was hermione's brother, or a relation, or whether he was old. he remembered gaspare's intonation when he said, almost sternly, "the signora should have taken us with her to africa." evidently he was astonished. why? it must have been because he--delarey--had let his wife go to visit a man in a distant city alone. sicilians did not understand certain things. he had realized his own freedom--now he began to realize hermione's. how quickly she had made up her mind. while he was sleeping she had decided everything. she had even looked out the trains. it had never occurred to her to ask him what to do. and she had not asked him to go with her. did he wish she had? a new feeling began to stir within him, unreasonable, absurd. it had come to him with the night and his absolute solitude in the night. it was not anger as yet. it was a faint, dawning sense of injury, but so faint that it did not rouse, but only touched gently, almost furtively, some spirit drowsing within him, like a hand that touches, then withdraws itself, then steals forward to touch again. he began to walk a little faster up and down, always keeping along the terrace wall. he was primitive man to-night, and primitive feelings were astir in him. he had not known he possessed them, yet he--the secret soul of him--did not shrink from them in any surprise. to something in him, some part of him, they came as things not unfamiliar. suppose he had shown surprise at hermione's project? suppose he had asked her not to go? suppose he had told her not to go? what would she have said? what would she have done? he had never thought of objecting to this journey, but he might have objected. many a man would have objected. this was their honeymoon--hers and his. to many it would seem strange that a wife should leave her husband during their honeymoon, to travel across the sea to another man, a friend, even if he were ill, perhaps dying. he did not doubt hermione. no one who knew her as he did could doubt her, yet nevertheless, now that he was quite companionless in the night, he felt deserted, he felt as if every one else were linked with life, while he stood entirely alone. hermione was travelling to her friend. lucrezia and gaspare had gone to their festa, to dance, to sing, to joke, to make merry, to make love--who knew? down in the village the people were gossiping at one another's doors, were lounging together in the piazza, were playing cards in the caffã¨s, were singing and striking the guitars under the pepper-trees bathed in the rays of the moon. and he--what was there for him in this night that woke up desires for joy, for the sweetness of the life that sings in the passionate aisles of the south? he stood still by the wall. two or three lights twinkled on the height where castel vecchio perched clinging to its rock above the sea. sebastiano was there setting his lips to the ceramella, and shooting bold glances of tyrannical love at lucrezia out of his audacious eyes. the peasants, dressed in their gala clothes, were forming in a circle for the country dance. the master of the ceremonies was shouting out his commands in bastard french: "tournez!" "ã� votre place!" "prenez la donne!" "dansez toutes!" eyes were sparkling, cheeks were flushing, lips were parting as gay activity created warmth in bodies and hearts. then would come the tarantella, with gaspare spinning like a top and tripping like a folly in a veritable madness of movement. and as the night wore on the dance would become wilder, the laughter louder, the fire of jokes more fierce. healths would be drunk with clinking glasses, brindisi shouted, tricks played. cards would be got out. there would be a group intent on "scopa," another calling "mi staio!" "carta da vente!" throwing down the soldi and picking them up greedily in "sette e mezzo." stories would be told, bets given and taken. the smoke would curl up from the long, black cigars the sicilians love. dark-browed men and women, wild-haired boys, and girls in gay shawls, with great rings swinging from their ears, would give themselves up as only southerners can to the joy of the passing moment, forgetting poverty, hardship, and toil, grinding taxation, all the cares and the sorrows that encompass the peasant's life, forgetting the flight of the hours, forgetting everything in the passion of the festa, the dedication of all their powers to the laughing worship of fun. yes, the passing hour would be forgotten. that was certain. it would be dawn ere lucrezia and gaspare returned. delarey's cigar was burned to a stump. he took it from his lips and threw it with all his force over the wall towards the sea. then he put his hands on the wall and leaned over it, fixing his eyes on the sea. the sense of injury grew in him. he resented the joys of others in this beautiful night, and he felt as if all the world were at a festa, as if all the world were doing wonderful things in the wonderful night, while he was left solitary to eat out his heart beneath the moon. he did not reason against his feelings and tell himself they were absurd. the dancing faun does not reason in his moments of ennui. he rebels. delarey rebelled. he had been invited to the festa and he had refused to go--almost eagerly he had refused. why? there had been something secret in his mind which had prompted him. he had said--and even to himself--that he did not go lest his presence might bring a disturbing element into the peasants' gayety. but was that his reason? leaning over the wall he looked down upon the sea. the star that seemed caught in the sea smiled at him, summoned him. its gold was like the gold, the little feathers of gold in the dark hair of a sicilian girl singing the song of the may beside the sea: "maju torna, maju veni cu li belli soi ciureri--" he tried to hum the tune, but it had left his memory. he longed to hear it once more under the olive-trees of the sirens' isle. again his thought went to hermione. very soon she would be out there, far out on the silver of the sea. had she wanted him to go with her? he knew that she had. yet she had not asked him to go, had not hinted at his going. even she had refused to let him go. and he had not pressed it. something had held him back from insisting, something secret, and something secret had kept her from accepting his suggestion. she was going to her greatest friend, to the man she had known intimately, long before she had known him--delarey--and he was left alone. in england he had never had a passing moment of jealousy of artois; but now, to-night, mingled with his creeping resentment against the joys of the peasants, of those not far from him under the moon of sicily, there was a sensation of jealousy which came from the knowledge that his wife was travelling to her friend. that friend might be dead, or she might nurse him back to life. delarey thought of her by his bedside, ministering to him, performing the intimate offices of the attendant on a sick man, raising him up on his pillows, putting a cool hand on his burning forehead, sitting by him at night in the silence of a shadowy room, and quite alone. he thought of all this, and the sicilian that was in him grew suddenly hot with a burning sense of anger, a burning desire for action, preventive or revengeful. it was quite unreasonable, as unreasonable as the vagrant impulse of a child, but it was strong as the full-grown determination of a man. hermione had belonged to him. she was his. and the old sicilian blood in him protested against that which would be if artois were still alive when she reached africa. but it was too late now. he could do nothing. he could only look at the shining sea on which the ship would bear her that very night. his inaction and solitude began to torture him. if he went in he knew he could not sleep. the mere thought of the festa would prevent him from sleeping. again he looked at the lights of castel vecchio. he saw only one now, and imagined it set in the window of pancrazio's house. he even fancied that down the mountain-side and across the ravine there floated to him the faint wail of the ceramella playing a dance measure. suddenly he knew that he could not remain all night alone on the mountain-side. he went quickly into the cottage, got his soft hat, then went from room to room, closing the windows and barring the wooden shutters. when he had come out again upon the steps and locked the cottage door he stood for a moment hesitating with the large door-key in his hand. he said to himself that he was going to the festa at castel vecchio. of course he was going there, to dance the country dances and join in the songs of sicily. he slipped the key into his pocket and went down the steps to the terrace. but there he hesitated again. he took the key out of his pocket, looked at it as it lay in his hand, then put it down on the sill of the sitting-room window. "if any one comes, there isn't very much to steal," he thought. "and, perhaps--" again he looked at the lights of castel vecchio, then down towards the sea. the star of the sea shone steadily and seemed to summon him. he left the key on the window-sill, with a quick gesture pulled his hat-brim down farther over his eyes, hastened along the terrace, and, turning to the left beyond the archway, took the path that led through the olive-trees towards isola bella and the sea. through the wonderful silence of the night among the hills there came now a voice that was thrilling to his ears--the voice of youth by the sea calling to the youth that was in him. hermione was travelling to her friend. must he remain quite friendless? all the way down to the sea he heard the calling of the voice. x as dawn was breaking, lucrezia and gaspare climbed slowly up the mountain-side towards the cottage. lucrezia's eyes were red, for she had just bidden good-bye to sebastiano, who was sailing that day for the lipari isles, and she did not know how soon he would be back. sebastiano had not cried. he loved change, and was radiant at the prospect of his voyage. but lucrezia's heart was torn. she knew sebastiano, knew his wild and adventurous spirit, his reckless passion for life, and the gifts it scatters at the feet of lusty youth. there were maidens in the lipari isles. they might be beautiful. she had scarcely been jealous of sebastiano before her betrothal to him, for then she had had no rights over him, and she was filled with the spirit of humbleness that still dwells in the women of sicily, the spirit that whispers "man may do what he will." but now something had arisen within her to do battle with that spirit. she wanted sebastiano for her very own, and the thought of his freedom when away tormented her. gaspare comforted her in perfunctory fashion. "what does it matter?" he said. "when you are married you can keep him in the house, and make him spin the flax for you." and he laughed aloud. but when they drew near to the cottage he said: "zitta, lucrezia! the padrone is asleep. we must steal in softly and not waken him." on tiptoe they crept along the terrace. "he will have left the door open for us," whispered gaspare. "he has the revolver beside him and will not have been afraid." but when they stood before the steps the door was shut. gaspare tried it gently. it was locked. "phew!" he whistled. "we cannot get in, for we cannot wake him." lucrezia shivered. sorrow had made her feel cold. "mamma mia!" she began. but gaspare's sharp eyes had spied the key lying on the window-sill. he darted to it and picked it up. then he stared at the locked door and at lucrezia. "but where is the padrone?" he said. "oh, i know! he locked the door on the inside and then put the key out of the window. but why is the bedroom window shut? he always sleeps with it open!" quickly he thrust the key into the lock, opened the door, and entered the dark sitting-room. holding up a warning hand to keep lucrezia quiet, he tiptoed to the bedroom door, opened it without noise, and disappeared, leaving lucrezia outside. after a minute or two he came back. "it is all right. he is sleeping. go to bed." lucrezia turned to go. "and never mind getting up early to make the padrone's coffee," gaspare added. "i will do it. i am not sleepy. i shall take the gun and go out after the birds." lucrezia looked surprised. gaspare was not in the habit of relieving her of her duties. on the contrary, he was a strict taskmaster. but she was tired and preoccupied. so she made no remark and went off to her room behind the house, walking heavily and untying the handkerchief that was round her head. when she had gone, gaspare stood by the table, thinking deeply. he had lied to lucrezia. the padrone was not asleep. his bed had not been slept in. where had he gone? where was he now? the sicilian servant, if he cares for his padrone, feels as if he had a proprietor's interest in him. he belongs to his padrone and his padrone belongs to him. he will allow nobody to interfere with his possession. he is intensely jealous of any one who seeks to disturb the intimacy between his padrone and himself, or to enter into his padrone's life without frankly letting him know it and the reason for it. the departure of hermione had given an additional impetus to gaspare's always lively sense of proprietorship in maurice. he felt as if he had been left in charge of his padrone, and had an almost sacred responsibility to deliver him up to hermione happy and safe when she returned. this absence, therefore, startled and perturbed him--more--made him feel guilty of a lapse from his duty. perhaps he should not have gone to the festa. true, he had asked the padrone to accompany him. but still-he went out onto the terrace and looked around him. the dawn was faint and pale. wreaths of mist, like smoke trails, hung below him, obscuring the sea. the ghostly cone of etna loomed into the sky, extricating itself from swaddling bands of clouds which shrouded its lower flanks. the air was chilly upon this height, and the aspect of things was gray and desolate, without temptation, without enchantment, to lure men out from their dwellings. what could have kept the padrone from his sleep till this hour? gaspare shivered a little as he stared over the wall. he was thinking--thinking furiously. although scarcely educated at all, he was exceedingly sharp-witted, and could read character almost as swiftly and surely as an arab. at this moment he was busily recalling the book he had been reading for many weeks in sicily, the book of his padrone's character, written out for him in words, in glances, in gestures, in likes and dislikes, most clearly in actions. mentally he turned the leaves until he came to the night of the fishing, to the waning of the night, to the journey to the caves, to the dawn when he woke upon the sand and found that the padrone was not beside him. his brown hand tightened on the stick he held, his brown eyes stared with the glittering acuteness of a great bird's at the cloud trails hiding the sea below him--hiding the sea, and all that lay beside the sea. there was no one on the terrace. but there was a figure for a moment on the mountain-side, leaping downward. the ravine took it and hid it in a dark embrace. gaspare had found what he sought, a clew to guide him. his hesitation was gone. in his uneducated and intuitive mind there was no longer any room for a doubt. he knew that his padrone was where he had been in that other dawn, when he slipped away from the cave where his companions were sleeping. surefooted as a goat, and incited to abnormal activity by a driving spirit within him that throbbed with closely mingled curiosity, jealousy, and anger, gaspare made short work of the path in the ravine. in a few minutes he came out on to the road by isola bella. on the shore was a group of fishermen, all of them friends of his, getting ready their fishing-tackle, and hauling down the boats to the gray sea for the morning's work. some of them hailed him, but he took no notice, only pulled his soft hat down sideways over his cheek, and hurried on in the direction of messina, keeping to the left side of the road and away from the shore, till he gained the summit of the hill from which the caffã¨ berardi and the caves were visible. there he stopped for a moment and looked down. he saw no one upon the shore, but at some distance upon the sea there was a black dot, a fishing-boat. it was stationary. gaspare knew that its occupant must be hauling in his net. "salvatore is out then!" he muttered to himself, as he turned aside from the road onto the promontory, which was connected by the black wall of rock with the land where stood the house of the sirens. this wall, forbidding though it was, and descending sheer into the deep sea on either side, had no terrors for him. he dropped down to it with a sort of skilful carelessness, then squatted on a stone, and quickly unlaced his mountain boots, pulled his stockings off, slung them with the boots round his neck, and stood up on his bare feet. then, balancing himself with his out-stretched arms, he stepped boldly upon the wall. it was very narrow. the sea surged through it. there was not space on it to walk straight-footed, even with only one foot at a time upon the rock. gaspare was obliged to plant his feet sideways, the toes and heels pointing to the sea on either hand. but the length of the wall was short, and he went across it almost as quickly as if he had been walking upon the road. heights and depths had no terrors for him in his confident youth. and he had been bred up among the rocks, and was a familiar friend of the sea. a drop into it would have only meant a morning bath. having gained the farther side, he put on his stockings and boots, grasped his stick, and began to climb upward through the thickly growing trees towards the house of the sirens. his instinct had told him upon the terrace that the padrone was there. uneducated people have often marvellously retentive memories for the things of every-day life. gaspare remembered the padrone's question about the little light beside the sea, his answer to it, the way in which the padrone had looked towards the trees when, in the dawn, they stood upon the summit of the hill and he pointed out the caves where they were going to sleep. he remembered, too, from what direction the padrone came towards the caffã¨ when the sun was up--and he knew. as he drew near to the cottage he walked carefully, though still swiftly, but when he reached it he paused, bent forward his head, and listened. he was in the tangle of coarse grass that grew right up to the north wall of the cottage, and close to the angle which hid from him the sea-side and the cottage door. at first he heard nothing except the faint murmur of the sea upon the rocks. his stillness now was as complete as had been his previous activity, and in the one he was as assured as in the other. some five minutes passed. again and again, with a measured monotony, came to him the regular lisp of the waves. the grass rustled against his legs as the little wind of morning pushed its way through it gently, and a bird chirped above his head in the olive-trees and was answered by another bird. and just then, as if in reply to the voices of the birds, he heard the sound of human voices. they were distant and faint almost as the lisp of the sea, and were surely coming towards him from the sea. when gaspare realized that the speakers were not in the cottage he crept round the angle of the wall, slipped across the open space that fronted the cottage door, and, gaining the trees, stood still in almost exactly the place where maurice had stood when he watched maddalena in the dawn. the voices sounded again and nearer. there was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. after a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to sing a peasant song, "zampagnaro." at the end of the verse there was an imitation of the ceramella by the voice, humming, or rather whining, bouche fermã©e. as it ceased a man's voice said: "ancora! ancora!" the girl's voice began the imitation again, and the man's voice joined in grotesquely, exaggerating the imitation farcically and closing it with a boyish shout. in response, standing under the trees, gaspare shouted. he had meant to keep silence; but the twang of the guitar, with its suggestion of a festa, the singing voices, the youthful laughter, and the final exclamation ringing out in the dawn, overcame the angry and suspicious spirit that had hitherto dominated him. the boy's imp of fun was up and dancing within him. he could not drive it out or lay it to rest. "hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!" his voice died away, and was answered by a silence that seemed like a startled thing holding its breath. "hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!" he called again, lustily, leaped out from the trees, and went running across the open space to the edge of the plateau by the sea. a tiny path wound steeply down from here to the rocks below, and on it, just under the concealing crest of the land, stood the padrone with maddalena. their hands were linked together, as if they had caught at each other sharply for sympathy or help. their faces were tense and their lips parted. but as they saw gaspare's light figure leaping over the hill edge, his dancing eyes fixed shrewdly, with a sort of boyish scolding, upon them, their hands fell apart, their faces relaxed. "gasparino!" said maurice. "it was you who called!" "si, signore." he came up to them. maddalena's oval face had flushed, and she dropped the full lids over her black eyes as she said: "buon giorno, gaspare." "buon giorno, donna maddalena." then they stood there for a moment in silence. maurice was the first to speak again. "but why did you come here?" he said. "how did you know?" already the sparkle of merriment had dropped out of gaspare's face as the feeling of jealousy, of not having been completely trusted, returned to his mind. "did not the signore wish me to know?" he said, almost gruffly, with a sort of sullen violence. "i am sorry." maurice touched the back of his hand, giving it a gentle, half-humorous slap. "don't be an ass, gaspare. but how could you guess where i had gone?" "where did you go before, signore, when you could not sleep?" at this thrust maurice imitated maddalena and reddened slightly. it seemed to him as if he had been living under glass while he had fancied himself enclosed in rock that was impenetrable by human eyes. he tried to laugh away his slight confusion. "gaspare, you are the most birbante boy in sicily!" he said. "you are like a mago africano." "signorino, you should trust me," returned the boy, sullenly. his own words seemed to move him, as if their sound revealed to him the whole of the injury that had been inflicted upon his amour propre, and suddenly angry tears started into his eyes. "i thought i was a servant of confidence" (un servitore di confidenza), he added, bitterly. maurice was amazed at the depth of feeling thus abruptly shown to him. this was the first time he had been permitted to look for a moment deep down into that strange volcano, a young and passionate sicilian heart. as he looked, swift and short as was his glance, his amazement died away. narcissus saw himself in the stream. maurice saw, or believed he saw, his heart's image, trembling perhaps and indistinct, far down in the passion of gaspare. so could he have been with a padrone had fate made his situation in life a different one. so could he have felt had something been concealed from him. maurice said nothing in reply. maddalena was there. they walked in silence to the cottage door, and there, rather like a detected school-boy, he bade her good-bye, and set out through the trees with gaspare. "that's not the way, is it?" maurice said, presently, as the boy turned to the left. "how did you come, signore?" "i!" he hesitated. then he saw the uselessness of striving to keep up a master's pose with this servant of the sea and of the hills. "i came by water," he said, smiling. "i swam, gasparino." the boy answered the smile, and suddenly the tension between them was broken, and they were at their ease again. "i will show you another way, signore, if you are not afraid." maurice laughed out gayly. "the way of the rocks?" he said. "si, signore. but you must go barefooted and be as nimble as a goat." "do you doubt me, gasparino?" he looked at the boy hard, with a deliberately quizzing kindness, that was gay but asked forgiveness, too, and surely promised amendment. "i have never doubted my padrone." they said nothing more till they were at the wall of rock. then gaspare seemed struck by hesitation. "perhaps--" he began. "you are not accustomed to the rocks, signore, and--" "silenzio!" cried maurice, bending down and pulling off his boots and stockings. "do like this, signore!" gaspare slung his boots and stockings round his neck. maurice imitated him. "and now give me your hand--so--without pulling." "but you hadn't--" "give me your hand, signore!" it was an order. maurice obeyed it, feeling that in these matters gaspare had the right to command. "walk as i do, signore, and keep step with me." "bene!" "and look before you. don't look down at the sea." "va bene." a moment, and they were across. maurice blew out his breath. "by jove!" he said, in english. he sat down on the grass, put his hand on his knees, and looked back at the rock and at the precipices. "i'm glad i can do that!" he said. something within him was revelling, was dancing a tarantella as the sun came up, lifting its blood-red rim above the sea-line in the east. he looked over the trees. "maddalena saw us!" he cried. he had caught sight of her among the olive-trees watching them, with her two hands held flat against her breast. "addio, maddalena!" the girl started, waved her hand, drew back, and disappeared. "i'm glad she saw us." gaspare laughed, but said nothing. they put on their boots and stockings, and started briskly off towards monte amato. when they had crossed the road, and gained the winding path that led eventually into the ravine, maurice said: "well, gaspare?" "well, signorino?" "have you forgiven me?" "it is not for a servant to forgive his padrone, signorino," said the boy, but rather proudly. maurice feared that his sense of injury was returning, and continued, hastily: "it was like this, gaspare. when you and lucrezia had gone i felt so dull all alone, and i thought, 'every one is singing and dancing and laughing except me.'" "but i asked you to accompany us, signorino," gaspare exclaimed, reproachfully. "yes, i know, but--" "but you thought we did not want you. well, then, you do not know us!" "now, gaspare, don't be angry again. remember that the padrona has gone away and that i depend on you for everything." at the last words gaspare's face, which had been lowering, brightened up a little. but he was not yet entirely appeased. "you have maddalena," he said. "she is only a girl." "oh, girls are very nice." "don't be ridiculous, gaspare. i hardly know maddalena." gaspare laughed; not rudely, but as a boy laughs who is sure he knows the world from the outer shell to inner kernel. "oh, signore, why did you go down to the sea instead of coming to the festa?" maurice did not answer at once. he was asking himself gaspare's question. why had he gone to the sirens' isle? gaspare continued: "may i say what i think, signore? you know i am sicilian, and i know the sicilians." "what is it?" "strangers should be careful what they do in my country." "madonna! you call me a stranger?" it was maurice's turn to be angry. he spoke with sudden heat. the idea that he was a stranger--a straniero--in sicily seemed to him ridiculous--almost offensive. "well, signore, you have only been here a little while. i was born here and have never been anywhere else." "it is true. go on then." "the men of sicily are not like the english or the germans. they are jealous of their women. i have been told that in your country, on festa days, if a man likes a girl and she likes him he can take her for a walk. is it true?" "quite true." "he cannot walk with her here. he cannot even walk with her down the street of marechiaro alone. it would be a shame." "but there is no harm in it." "who knows? it is not our custom. we walk with our friends and the girls walk with their friends. if salvatore, the father of maddalena, knew--" he did not finish his sentence, but, with sudden and startling violence, made the gesture of drawing out a knife and thrusting it upward into the body of an adversary. maurice stopped on the path. he felt as if he had seen a murder. "ecco!" said gaspare, calmly, dropping his hand, and staring into maurice's face with his enormous eyes, which never fell before the gaze of another. "but--but--i mean no harm to maddalena." "it does not matter." "but she did not tell me. she is ready to talk with me." "she is a silly girl. she is flattered to see a stranger. she does not think. girls never think." he spoke with utter contempt: "have you seen salvatore, signore?" "no--yes." "you have seen him?" "not to speak to. when i came down the cottage was shut up. i waited--" "you hid, signore?" maurice's face flushed. an angry word rose to his lips, but he checked it and laughed, remembering that he had to deal with a boy, and that gaspare was devoted to him. "well, i waited among the trees--birbante!" "and you saw salvatore?" "he came out and went down to the fishing." "salvatore is a terrible man. he used to beat his wife teresa." "p'f! would you have me be afraid of him?" maurice's blood was up. even his sense of romance was excited. he felt that he was in the coils of an adventure, and his heart leaped, but not with fear. "fear is not for men. but the padrona has left you with me because she trusts me and because i know sicily." it seemed to maurice that he was with an inflexible chaperon, against whose dominion it would be difficult, if not useless, to struggle. they were walking on again, and had come into the ravine. water was slipping down among the rocks, between the twisted trunks of the olive-trees. its soft sound, and the cool dimness in this secret place, made maurice suddenly realize that he had passed the night without sleep, and that he would be glad to rest. it was not the moment for combat, and it was not unpleasant, after all--so he phrased it in his mind--to be looked after, thought for, educated in the etiquette of the enchanted isle by a son of its soil, with its wild passions and its firm repressions linked together in his heart. "gasparino," he said, meekly. "i want you to look after me. but don't be unkind to me. i'm older than you, i know, but i feel awfully young here, and i do want to have a little fun without doing any harm to anybody, or getting any harm myself. one thing i promise you, that i'll always trust you and tell you what i'm up to. there! have you quite forgiven me now?" gaspare's face became radiant. he felt that he had done his duty, and that he was now properly respected by one whom he looked up to and of whom he was not merely the servant, but also the lawful guardian. they went up to the cottage singing in the morning sunshine. xi "signorino! signorino!" maurice lifted his head lazily from the hands that served it as a pillow, and called out, sleepily: "che cosa c'ã©?" "where are you, signorino?" "down here under the oak-trees." he sank back again, and looked up at the section of deep-blue sky that was visible through the leaves. how he loved the blue, and gloried in the first strong heat that girdled sicily to-day, and whispered to his happy body that summer was near, the true and fearless summer that comes to southern lands. through all his veins there crept a subtle sense of well-being, as if every drop of his blood were drowsily rejoicing. three days had passed, had glided by, three radiant nights, warm, still, luxurious. and with each his sense of the south had increased, and with each his consciousness of being nearer to the breast of sicily. in those days and nights he had not looked into a book or glanced at a paper. what had he done? he scarcely knew. he had lived and felt about him the fingers of the sun touching him like a lover. and he had chattered idly to gaspare about sicilian things, always sicilian things; about the fairs and the festivals, capo d'anno and carnevale, martedã¬ grasso with its _tavulata_, the solemn family banquet at which all the relations assemble and eat in company, the feasts of the different saints, the peasant marriages and baptisms, the superstitions--gaspare did not call them so--that are alive in sicily, and that will surely live till sicily is no more; the fear of the evil-eye and of spells, and the best means of warding them off, the "guaj di lu linu," the interpretation of dreams, the power of the mafia, the legends of the brigands, and the vanished glory of musolino. gaspare talked without reserve to his padrone, as to another sicilian, and maurice was never weary of listening. all that was of sicily caught his mind and heart, was full of meaning to him, and of irresistible fascination. he had heard the call of the blood once for all and had once for all responded to it. but the nights he had loved best. for then he slept under the stars. when ten o'clock struck he and gaspare carried out one of the white beds onto the terrace, and he slipped into it and lay looking up at the clear sky, and at the dimness of the mountain flank, and at the still silhouettes of the trees, till sleep took him, while gaspare, rolled up in a rug of many colors, snuggled up on the seat by the wall with his head on a cushion brought for him by the respectful lucrezia. and they awoke at dawn to see the last star fade above the cone of etna, and the first spears of the sun thrust up out of the stillness of the sea. "signorino, ecco la posta!" and gaspare came running down from the terrace, the wide brim of his white linen hat flapping round his sun-browned face. "i don't want it, gaspare. i don't want anything." "but i think there's a letter from the signora!" "from africa?" maurice sat up and held out his hand. "yes, it is from kairouan. sit down, gaspare, and i'll tell you what the padrona says." gaspare squatted on his haunches like an oriental, not touching the ground with his body, and looked eagerly at the letter that had come across the sea. he adored his padrona, and was longing for news of her. already he had begun to send her picture post-cards, laboriously written over. "tanti saluti carissima signora pertruni, a rividici, e suno il suo servo fidelisimo per sempre--martucci gaspare. adio! adio! ciao! ciao!" what would she say? and what message would she send to him? his eyes sparkled with affectionate expectation. "hotel de france, kairouan. my dearest,--i cannot write very much, for all my moments ought to be given up to nursing emile. thank god, i arrived in time. oh, maurice, when i saw him i can't tell you how thankful i was that i had not hesitated to make the journey, that i had acted at once on my first impulse to come here. and how i blessed god for having given me an unselfish husband who trusted me completely, and who could understand what true friendship between man and woman means, and what one owes to a friend. you might so easily have misunderstood, and you are so blessedly understanding. thank you, dearest, for seeing that it was right of me to go, and for thinking of nothing but that. i feel so proud of you, and so proud to be your wife. well, i caught the train at tunis mercifully, and got here at evening. he is frightfully ill. i hardly recognized him. but his mind is quite clear, though he suffers terribly. he was poisoned by eating some tinned food, and peritonitis has set in. we can't tell yet whether he will live or die. when he saw me come in he gave me such a look of gratitude, although he was writhing with pain, that i couldn't help crying. it made me feel so ashamed of having had any hesitation in my heart about coming away from our home and our happiness. and it was difficult to give it all up, to come out of paradise. that last night i felt as if i simply couldn't leave you, my darling. but i'm glad and thankful i've done it. i have to do everything for him. the doctor's rather an ass, very french and excitable, but he does his best. but i have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice, and--poor fellow, he does suffer so, but he's awfully brave and determined to live. he says he will live if it's only to prove that i came in time to save him. and yet, when i look at him, i feel as if--but i won't give up hope. the heat here is terrible, and tries him very much now he is so desperately ill, and the flies--but i don't want to bother you with my troubles. they're not very great--only one. do you guess what that is? i scarcely dare to think of sicily. whenever i do i feel such a horrible ache in my heart. it seems to me as if i had not seen your face or touched your hand for centuries, and sometimes--and that's the worst of all--as if i never should again, as if our time together and our love were a beautiful dream, and god would never allow me to dream it again. that's a little morbid, i know, but i think it's always like that with a great happiness, a happiness that is quite complete. it seems almost a miracle to have had it even for a moment, and one can scarcely believe that one will be allowed to have it again. but, please god, we will. we'll sit on the terrace again together, and see the stars come out, and--the doctor's come and i must stop. i'll write again almost directly. good-night, my dearest. buon riposo. do you remember when you first heard that? somehow, since then i always connect the words with you. i won't send my love, because it's all in sicily with you. i'll send it instead to gaspare. tell him i feel happy that he is with the padrone, because i know how faithful and devoted he is. tanti saluti a lucrezia. oh, maurice, pray that i may soon be back. you do want me, don't you? hermione." maurice looked up from the letter and met gaspare's questioning eyes. "there's something for you," he said. and he read in italian hermione's message. gaspare beamed with pride and pleasure. "and the sick signore?" he asked. "is he better?" maurice explained how things were. "the signora is longing to come back to us," he said. "of course she is," said gaspare, calmly. then suddenly he jumped up. "signorino," he said. "i am going to write a letter to the signora. she will like to have a letter from me. she will think she is in sicily." "and when you have finished, i will write," said maurice. "si, signore." and gaspare ran off up the hill towards the cottage, leaving his master alone. maurice began to read the letter again, slowly. it made him feel almost as if he were with hermione. he seemed to see her as he read, and he smiled. how good she was and true, and how enthusiastic! when he had finished the second reading of the letter he laid it down, and put his hands behind his head again, and looked up at the quivering blue. then he thought of artois. he remembered his tall figure, his robust limbs, his handsome, powerful face. it was strange to think that he was desperately ill, perhaps dying. death--what must that be like? how deep the blue looked, as if there were thousands of miles of it, as if it stretched on and on forever! artois, perhaps, was dying, but he felt as if he could never die, never even be ill. he stretched his body on the warm ground. the blue seemed to deny the fact of death. he tried to imagine artois in bed in the heat of africa, with the flies buzzing round him. then he looked again at the letter, and reread that part in which hermione wrote of her duties as sick-nurse. "i have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice." he read those words again and again, and once more he was conscious of a stirring of anger, of revolt, such as he had felt on the night after hermione's departure when he was alone on the terrace. she was his wife, his woman. what right had she to be tending another man? his imagination began to work quickly now, and he frowned as he looked up at the blue. he forgot all the rest of hermione's letter, all her love of him and her longing to be back in sicily with him, and thought only of her friendship for artois, of her ministrations to artois. and something within him sickened at the thought of the intimacy between patient and nurse, raged against it, till he felt revengeful. the wild unreasonableness of his feeling did not occur to him now. he hated that his wife should be performing these offices for artois; he hated that she had chosen to go to him, that she had considered it to be her duty to go. had it been only a sense of duty that had called her to africa? when he asked himself this question he could not hesitate what answer to give. even this new jealousy, this jealousy of the sicilian within him, could not trick him into the belief that hermione had wanted to leave him. yet his feeling of bitterness, of being wronged, persisted and grew. when, after a very long time, gaspare came to show him a letter written in large, round hand, he was still hot with the sense of injury. and a new question was beginning to torment him. what must artois think? "aren't you going to write, signorino?" asked gaspare, when maurice had read his letter and approved it. "i?" he said. he saw an expression of surprise on gaspare's face. "yes, of course. i'll write now. help me up. i feel so lazy!" gaspare seized his hands and pulled, laughing. maurice stood up and stretched. "you are more lazy than i, signore," said gaspare. "shall i write for you, too?" "no, no." he spoke abstractedly. "don't you know what to say?" maurice looked at him swiftly. the boy had divined the truth. in his present mood it would be difficult for him to write to hermione. still, he must do it. he went up to the cottage and sat down at the writing-table with hermione's letter beside him. he read it again carefully, then began to write. now he was faintly aware of the unreason of his previous mood and quite resolved not to express it, but while he was writing of his every-day life in sicily a vision of the sick-room in africa came before him again. he saw his wife shut in with artois, tending him. it was night, warm and dark. the sick man was hot with fever, and hermione bent over him and laid her cool hand on his forehead. abruptly maurice finished his letter and thrust it into an envelope. "here, gaspare!" he said. "take the donkey and ride down with these to the post." "how quick you have been, signore! i believe my letter to the signora is longer than yours." "perhaps it is. i don't know. off with you!" when gaspare was gone, maurice felt restless, almost as he had felt on the night when he had been left alone on the terrace. then he had been companioned by a sensation of desertion, and had longed to break out into some new life, to take an ally against the secret enemy who was attacking him. he had wanted to have his emile artois as hermione had hers. that was the truth of the matter. and his want had led him down to the sea. and now again he looked towards the sea, and again there was a call from it that summoned him. he had not seen maddalena since gaspare came to seek him in the sirens' isle. he had scarcely wanted to see her. the days had glided by in the company of gaspare, and no moment of them had been heavy or had lagged upon its way. but now he heard again the call from the sea. hermione was with her friend. why should not he have his? but he did not go down the path to the ravine, for he thought of gaspare. he had tricked him once, while he slept in the cave, and once gaspare had tracked him to the sirens' house. they had spoken of the matter of maddalena. he knew gaspare. if he went off now to see maddalena the boy would think that the sending him to the post was a pretext, that he had been deliberately got out of the way. such a crime could never be forgiven. maurice knew enough about the sicilian character to be fully aware of that. and what had he to hide? nothing. he must wait for gaspare, and then he could set out for the sea. it seemed to him a long time before he saw tito, the donkey, tripping among the stones, and heard gaspare's voice hailing him from below. he was impatient to be off, and he shouted out: "presto, gaspare, presto!" he saw the boy's arm swing as he tapped tito behind with his switch, and the donkey's legs moving in a canter. "what is it, signorino? has anything happened?" "no. but--gaspare, i'm going down to the sea." "to bathe?" "i may bathe. i'm not sure. it depends upon how i go." "you are going to the casa delle sirene?" maurice nodded. "i didn't care to go off while you were away." "do you wish me to come with you, signorino?" the boy's great eyes were searching him, yet he did not feel uncomfortable, although he wished to stand well with gaspare. they were near akin, although different in rank and education. between their minds there was a freemasonry of the south. "do you want to come?" he said. "it's as you like, signore." he was silent for a moment; then he added: "salvatore might be there now. do you want him to see you?" "why not?" a project began to form in his mind. if he took gaspare with him they might go to the cottage more naturally. gaspare knew salvatore and could introduce him, could say--well, that he wanted sometimes to go out fishing and would take salvatore's boat. salvatore would see a prospect of money. and he--maurice--did want to go out fishing. suddenly he knew it. his spirits rose and he clapped gaspare on the back. "of course i do. i want to know salvatore. come along. we'll take his boat one day and go out fishing." gaspare's grave face relaxed in a sly smile. "signorino!" he said, shaking his hand to and fro close to his nose. "birbante!" there was a world of meaning in his voice. maurice laughed joyously. he began to feel like an ingenious school-boy who was going to have a lark. there was neither thought of evil nor even a secret stirring of desire for it in him. "a rivederci, lucrezia!" he cried. and they set off. when they were not far from the sea, gaspare said: "signorino, why do you like to come here? what is the good of it?" they had been walking in silence. evidently these questions were the result of a process of thought which had been going on in the boy's mind. "the good!" said maurice. "what is the harm?" "well, here in sicily, when a man goes to see a girl it is because he wants to love her." "in england it is different, gaspare. in england men and women can be friends. why not?" "you want just to be a friend of maddalena?" "of course. i like to talk to the people. i want to understand them. why shouldn't i be friends with maddalena as--as i am with lucrezia?" "oh, lucrezia is your servant." "it's all the same." "but perhaps maddalena doesn't know. we are sicilians here, signore." "what do you mean? that maddalena might--nonsense, gaspare!" there was a sound as of sudden pleasure, even sudden triumph, in his voice. "are you sure you understand our girls, signore?" "if maddalena does like me there's no harm in it. she knows who i am now. she knows i--she knows there is the signora." "si, signore. there is the signora. she is in africa, but she is coming back." "of course!" "when the sick signore gets well?" maurice said nothing. he felt sure gaspare was wondering again, wondering that hermione was in africa. "i cannot understand how it is in england," continued the boy. "here it is all quite different." again jealousy stirred in maurice and a sensation almost of shame. for a moment he felt like a sicilian husband at whom his neighbors point the two fingers of scorn, and he said something in his wrath which was unworthy. "you see how it is," he said. "if the signora can go to africa to see her friend, i can come down here to see mine. that is how it is with the english." he did not even try to keep the jealousy out of his voice, his manner. gaspare leaped to it. "you did not like the signora to go to africa!" "oh, she will come back. it's all right," maurice answered, hastily. "but, while she is there, it would be absurd if i might not speak to any one." gaspare's burden of doubt, perhaps laid on his young shoulders by his loyalty to his padrona, was evidently lightened. "i see, signore," he said. "you can each have a friend. but have you explained to maddalena?" "if you think it necessary, i will explain." "it would be better, because she is sicilian and she must think you love her." "gaspare!" the boy looked at him keenly and smiled. "you would like her to think that?" maurice denied it vigorously, but gaspare only shook his head and said: "i know, i know. girls are nicest when they think that, because they are pleased and they want us to go on. you think i see nothing, signorino, but i saw it all in maddalena's face. per dio!" and he laughed aloud, with the delight of a boy who has discovered something, and feels that he is clever and a man. and maurice laughed too, not without a pride that was joyous. the heart of his youth, the wild heart, bounded within him, and the glory of the sun, and the passionate blue of the sea seemed suddenly deeper, more intense, more sympathetic, as if they felt with him, as if they knew the rapture of youth, as if they were created to call it forth, to condone its carelessness, to urge it to some almost fierce fulfilment. "salvatore is there, signorino." "how do you know?" "i saw the smoke from his pipe. look, there it is again!" a tiny trail of smoke curled up; and faded in the blue. "i will go first because of maddalena. girls are silly. if i do this at her she will understand. if not she may show her father you have been here before." he closed one eye in a large and expressive wink. "birbante!" "it is good to be birbante sometimes." he went out from the trees and maurice heard his voice, then a man's, then maddalena's. he waited where he was till he heard gaspare say: "the padrone is just behind. signorino, where are you?" "here!" he answered, coming into the open with a careless air. before the cottage door in the sunshine a great fishing-net was drying, fastened to two wooden stakes. near it stood salvatore, dressed in a dark-blue jersey, with a soft black hat tilted over his left ear, above which was stuck a yellow flower. maddalena was in the doorway looking very demure. it was evident that the wink of gaspare had been seen and comprehended. she stole a glance at maurice but did not move. her father took off his hat with an almost wildly polite gesture, and said, in a loud voice: "buona sera, signore." "buona sera," replied maurice, holding out his hand. salvatore took it in a large grasp. "you are the signore who lives up on monte amato with the english lady?" "yes." "i know. she has gone to africa." he stared at maurice while he spoke, with small, twinkling eyes, round which was a minute and intricate web of wrinkles, and again maurice felt almost--or was it quite?--ashamed. what were these sicilians thinking of him? "the signora will be back almost directly," he said. "is this your daughter?" "yes, maddalena. bring a chair for the signore, maddalena." maddalena obeyed. there was a slight flush on her face and she did not look at maurice. gaspare stood pulling gently at the stretched-out net, and smiling. that he enjoyed the mild deceit of the situation was evident. maurice, too, felt amused and quite at his ease now. his sensation of shame had fleeted away, leaving only a conviction that hermione's absence gave him a right to snatch all the pleasure he could from the hands of the passing hour. he drew out his cigar-case and offered it to salvatore. "one day i want to come fishing with you if you'll take me," he said. salvatore looked eager. a prospect of money floated before him: "i can show you fine sport, signore," he answered, taking one of the long havanas and examining it with almost voluptuous interest as he turned it round and round in his salty, brown fingers. "but you should come out at dawn, and it is far from the mountain to the sea." "couldn't i sleep here, so as to be ready?" he stole a glance at maddalena. she was looking at her feet, and twisting the front of her short dress, but her lips were twitching with a smile which she tried to repress. "couldn't i sleep here to-night?" he added, boldly. salvatore looked more eager. he loved money almost as an arab loves it, with anxious greed. doubtless arab blood ran in his veins. it was easy to see from whom maddalena had inherited her eastern appearance. she reproduced, on a diminished scale, her father's outline of face, but that which was gentle, mysterious, and alluring in her, in him was informed with a rugged wildness. there was something bird-like and predatory in his boldly curving nose with its narrow nostrils, in his hard-lipped mouth, full of splendid teeth, in his sharp and pushing chin. his whole body, wide-shouldered and deep-chested, as befitted a man of the sea, looked savage and fierce, but full of an intensity of manhood that was striking, and his gestures and movements, the glance of his penetrating eyes, the turn of his well-poised head, revealed a primitive and passionate nature, a nature with something of the dagger in it, steely, sharp, and deadly. "but, signore, our home is very poor. look, signore!" a turkey strutted out through the doorway, elongating its neck and looking nervously intent. "ps--sh--sh--sh!" he shooed it away, furiously waving his arms. "and what could you eat? there is only bread and wine." "and the yellow cheese!" said maurice. "the--?" salvatore looked sharply interrogative. "i mean, there is always cheese, isn't there, in sicily, cheese and macaroni? but if there isn't, it's all right. anything will do for me, and i'll buy all the fish we take from you, and maddalena here shall cook it for us when we come back from the sea. will you, maddalena?" "si, signore." the answer came in a very small voice. "the signore is too good." salvatore was looking openly voracious now. "i can sleep on the floor." "no, signore. we have beds, we have two fine beds. come in and see." with not a little pride he led maurice into the cottage, and showed him the bed on which he had already slept. "that will be for the signore, gaspare." "si--ã¨ molto bello." "maddalena and i--we will sleep in the outer room." "and i, salvatore?" demanded the boy. "you! do you stay too?" "of course. don't i stay, signore?" "yes, if lucrezia won't be frightened." "it does not matter if she is. when we do not come back she will keep guglielmo, the contadino." "of course you must stay. you can sleep with me. and to-night we'll play cards and sing and dance. have you got any cards, salvatore?" "si, signore. they are dirty, but--" "that's all right. and we'll sit outside and tell stories, stories of brigands and the sea. salvatore, when you know me, you'll know i'm a true sicilian." he grasped salvatore's hand, but he looked at maddalena. xii night had come to the sirens' isle--a night that was warm, gentle, and caressing. in the cottage two candles were lit, and the wick was burning in the glass before the madonna. outside the cottage door, on the flat bit of ground that faced the wide sea, salvatore and his daughter, maurice and gaspare, were seated round the table finishing their simple meal, for which salvatore had many times apologized. their merry voices, their hearty laughter rang out in the darkness, and below the sea made answer, murmuring against the rocks. at the same moment in an arab house hermione bent over a sick man, praying against death, whose footsteps she seemed already to hear coming into the room and approaching the bed on which he tossed, white with agony. and when he was quiet for a little and ceased from moving, she sat with her hand on his and thought of sicily, and pictured her husband alone under the stars upon the terrace before the priest's house, and imagined him thinking of her. the dry leaves of a palm-tree under the window of the room creaked in the light wind that blew over the flats, and she strove to hear the delicate rustling of the leaves of olive-trees. salvatore had little food to offer his guests, only bread, cheese, and small, black olives; but there was plenty of good red wine, and when the time of brindisi was come salvatore and gaspare called for health after health, and rivalled each other in wild poetic efforts, improvising extravagant compliments to maurice, to the absent signora, to maddalena, and even to themselves. and with each toast the wine went down till maurice called a halt. "i am a real sicilian," he said. "but if i drink any more i shall be under the table. get out the cards, salvatore. sette e mezzo, and i'll put down the stakes. no one to go above twenty-five centesimi, with fifty for the doubling. gaspare's sure to win. he always does. and i've just one cigar apiece. there's no wind. bring out the candles and let's play out here." gaspare ran for the candles while salvatore got the cards, well-thumbed and dirty. maddalena's long eyes were dancing. such a festa as this was rare in her life, for, dwelling far from the village, she seldom went to any dance or festivity. her blood was warm with the wine and with joy, and the youth in her seemed to flow like the sea in a flood-tide. scarcely ever before had she seen her harsh father so riotously gay, so easy with a stranger, and she knew in her heart that this was her festival. maurice's merry and ardent eyes told her that, and gaspare's smiling glances of boyish understanding. she felt excited, almost light-headed, childishly proud of herself. if only some of the girls of marechiaro could see, could know! when the cards were thrown upon the table, and maurice had dealt out a lira to each one of the players as stakes, and cried, "maddalena and i'll share against you, salvatore, and gaspare!" she felt that she had nothing more to wish for, that she was perfectly happy. but she was happier still when, after a series of games, maurice pushed back his chair and said: "i've had enough. salvatore, you are like gaspare, you have the devil's luck. together you can't be beaten. but now you play against each other and let's see who wins. i'll put down twenty-five lire. play till one of you's won every soldo of it. play all night if you like." and he counted out the little paper notes on the table, giving two to salvatore and two to gaspare, and putting one under a candlestick. "i'll keep the score," he added, pulling out a pencil and a sheet of paper. "no play higher than fifty, with a lira when one of you makes 'sette e mezzo' with under four cards." "per dio!" cried gaspare, flushed with excitement. "avanti, salvatore!" "avanti, avanti!" cried salvatore, in answer, pulling his chair close up to the table, and leaning forward, looking like a handsome bird of prey in the faint candlelight. they cut for deal and began to play, while maddalena and maurice watched. when sicilians gamble they forget everything but the game and the money which it brings to them or takes from them. salvatore and gaspare were at once passionately intent on their cards, and as the night drew on and fortune favored first one and then the other, they lost all thought of everything except the twenty-five lire which were at stake. when maddalena slipped away into the darkness they did not notice her departure, and when maurice laid down the paper on which he had tried to keep the score, and followed her, they were indifferent. they needed no score-keeper, for they had sicilian memories for money matters. over the table they leaned, the two candles, now burning low, illuminating their intense faces, their violent eyes, their brown hands that dealt and gathered up the cards, and held them warily, alert for the cheating that in sicily, when possible, is ever part of the game. "carta da cinquanta!" they had forgotten maurice's limit for the stakes. "carta da cento!" their voices died away from maurice's ears as he stole through the darkness seeking maddalena. where had she gone, and why? the last question he could surely answer, for as she stole past him silently, her long, mysterious eyes, that seemed to hold in their depths some enigma of the east, had rested on his with a glance that was an invitation. they had not boldly summoned him. they had lured him, as an echo might, pathetic in its thrilling frailty. and now, as he walked softly over the dry grass, he thought of those eyes as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn. then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. now surely they were changed. once they had asked a question. they delivered a summons to-night. what was in them to-night? the mystery of young maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its dreams, of the truth of its desires. when he was out of hearing of the card-players maurice stood still. he felt the breath of the sea on his face. he heard the murmur of the sea everywhere around him, a murmur that in its level monotony excited him, thrilled him, as the level monotony of desert music excites the african in the still places of the sand. his pulses were beating, and there was an almost savage light in his eyes. something in the atmosphere of the sea-bound retreat made him feel emancipated, as if he had stepped out of the prison of civilized life into a larger, more thoughtless existence, an existence for which his inner nature fitted him, for which he had surely been meant all these years that he had lived, unconscious of what he really was and of what he really needed. "how happy i could have been as a sicilian fisherman!" he thought. "how happy i could be now!" "st! st!" he looked round quickly. "st! st!" it must be maddalena, but where was she? he moved forward till he was at the edge of the land where the tiny path wound steeply downward to the sea. there she was standing with her face turned in his direction, and her lips opened to repeat the little summoning sound. "how did you know i was there?" he said, whispering, as he joined her. "did you hear me come?" "no, signore." "then--" "signorino, i felt that you were there." he smiled. it pleased him to think that he threw out something, some invisible thread, perhaps, that reached her and told her of his nearness. such communication made sympathy. he did not say it to himself, but his sensation to-night was that everything was in sympathy with him, the night with its stars, the sea with its airs and voices, maddalena with her long eyes and her brown hands, and her knowledge of his presence when she did not see or hear him. "let us go down to the sea," he said. he longed to be nearer to that low and level sound that moved and excited him in the night. "father's boat is there," she said. "it is so calm to-night that he did not bring it round into the bay." "if we go out in it for a minute, will he mind?" a sly look came into her face. "he will not know," she said. "with all that money gaspare and he will play till dawn. per dio, signore, you are birbante!" she gave a little low laugh. "so you think i--" he stopped. what need was there to go on? she had read him and was openly rejoicing in what she thought his slyness. "and my father," she added, "is a fox of the sea, signore. ask gaspare if there is another who is like him. you will see! when they stop playing at dawn the twenty-five lire will be in his pocket!" she spoke with pride. "but gaspare is so lucky," said maurice. "gaspare is only a boy. how can he cheat better than my father?" "they cheat, then!" "of course, when they can. why not, madonna!" maurice burst out laughing. "and you call me birbante!" he said. "to know what my father loves best! signorino! signorino!" she shook her out-stretched forefinger to and fro near her nose, smiling, with her head a little on one side like a crafty child. "but why, maddalena--why should i wish your father to play cards till the dawn. tell me that! why should not i wish him, all of us, to go to bed?" "you are not sleepy, signorino!" "i shall be in the morning when it's time to fish." "then perhaps you will not fish." "but i must. that is why i have stayed here to-night, to be ready to go to sea in the morning." she said nothing, only smiled again. he felt a longing to shake her in joke. she was such a child now. and yet a few minutes ago her dark eyes had lured him, and he had felt almost as if in seeking her he sought a mystery. "don't you believe me?" he asked. but she only answered, with her little gesture of smiling rebuke: "signorino! signorino!" he did not protest, for now they were down by the sea, and saw the fishing-boats swaying gently on the water. "get in maddalena. i will row." he untied the rope, while she stepped lightly in, then he pushed the boat off, jumping in himself from the rocks. "you are like a fisherman, signore," said maddalena. he smiled and drew the great bladed oars slowly through the calm water, leaning towards her with each stroke and looking into her eyes. "i wish i were really a fisherman," he said, "like your father!" "why, signore?" she asked, in astonishment. "because it's a free life, because it's a life i should love." she still looked at him with surprise. "but a fisherman has few soldi, signorino." "maddalena," he said, letting the oars drift in the water, "there's only one good thing in the world, and that is to be free in a life that is natural to one." he drew up his feet onto the wooden bench and clasped his hands round his knees, and sat thus, looking at her while she faced him in the stern of the boat. he had not turned the boat round. so maddalena had her face towards the land, while his was set towards the open sea. "it isn't having many soldi that makes happiness," he went on. "gaspare thinks it is, and lucrezia, and i dare say your father would--" "oh yes, signore! in sicily we all think so!" "and so they do in england. but it isn't true." "but if you have many soldi you can do anything." he shook his head. "no you can't. i have plenty of soldi, but i can't always live here, i can't always live as i do now. some day i shall have to go away from sicily--i shall have to go back and live in london." as he said the last words he seemed to see london rise up before him in the night, with shadowy domes and towers and chimneys; he seemed to hear through the exquisite silence of night upon the sea the mutter of its many voices. "it's beastly there! it's beastly!" and he set his teeth almost viciously. "why must you go, then, signorino?" "why? oh, i have work to do." "but if you are rich why must you work?" "well--i--i can't explain in italian. but my father expects me to." "to get more rich?" "yes, i suppose." "but if you are rich why cannot you live as you please?" "i don't know, maddalena. but the rich scarcely ever live really as they please, i think. their soldi won't let them, perhaps." "i don't understand, signore." "well, a man must do something, must get on, and if i lived always here i should do nothing but enjoy myself." he was silent for a minute. then he said: "and that's all i want to do, just to enjoy myself here in the sun." "are you happy here, signorino?" "yes, tremendously happy." "why?" "why--because it's sicily here! aren't you happy?" "i don't know, signorino." she said it with simplicity and looked at him almost as if she were inquiring of him whether she were happy or not. that look tempted him. "don't you know whether you are happy to-night?" he asked, putting an emphasis on the last word, and looking at her more steadily, almost cruelly. "oh, to-night--it is a festa." "a festa? why?" "why? because it is different from other nights. on other nights i am alone with my father." "and to-night you are alone with me. does that make it a festa?" she looked down. "i don't know, signorino." the childish merriment and slyness had gone out of her now, and there was a softness almost of sentimentality in her attitude, as she drooped her head and moved one hand to and fro on the gunwale of the boat, touching the wood, now here, now there, as if she were picking up something and dropping it gently into the sea. suddenly maurice wondered about maddalena. he wondered whether she had ever had a sicilian lover, whether she had one now. "you are not 'promised,' are you, maddalena?" he asked, leaning a little nearer to her. he saw the red come into her brown skin. she shook her head without looking up or speaking. "i wonder why," he said. "i think--i think there must be men who want you." she slightly raised her head. "oh yes, there are, signore. but--but i must wait till my father chooses one." "your father will choose the man who is to be your husband?" "of course, signore." "but perhaps you won't like him." "oh, i shall have to like him, signore." she did not speak with any bitterness or sarcasm, but with perfect simplicity. a feeling of pity that was certainly not sicilian but that came from the english blood in him stole into maurice's heart. maddalena looked so soft and young in the dim beauty of the night, so ready to be cherished, to be treated tenderly, or with the ardor that is the tender cruelty of passion, that her childlike submission to the sicilian code woke in him an almost hot pugnacity. she would be given, perhaps, to some hard brute of a fisherman who had scraped together more soldi than his fellows, or to some coarse, avaricious contadino who would make her toil till her beauty vanished, and she changed into a bowed, wrinkled withered, sun-dried hag, while she was yet young in years. "i wish," he said--"i wish, when you have to marry, i could choose your husband, maddalena." she lifted her head quite up and regarded him with wonder. "you, signorino! why?" "because i would choose a man who would be very good to you, who would love you and work for you and always think of you, and never look at another woman. that is how your husband should be." she looked more wondering. "are you like that, then, signore?" she asked. "with the signora?" maurice unclasped his hands from his knees, and dropped his feet down from the bench. "i!" he said, in a voice that had changed. "oh--yes--i don't know." he took the oars again and began to row farther out to sea. "i was talking about you," he said, almost roughly. "i have never seen your signora," said maddalena. "what is she like?" maurice saw hermione before him in the night, tall, flat, with her long arms, her rugged, intelligent face, her enthusiastic brown eyes. "is she pretty?" continued maddalena. "is she as young as i am?" "she is good, maddalena," maurice answered. "is she santa?" "i don't mean that. but she is good to every one." "but is she pretty, too?" she persisted. "and young?" "she is not at all old. some day you shall see--" he checked himself. he had been going to say, "some day you shall see her." "and she is very clever," he said, after a moment. "clever?" said maddalena, evidently not understanding what he meant. "she can understand many things and she has read many books." "but what is the good of that? why should a girl read many books?" "she is not a girl." "not a girl!" she looked at him with amazed eyes and her voice was full of amazement. "how old are you, signorino?" she asked. "how old do you think?" she considered him carefully for a long time. "old enough to make the visit," she said, at length. "the visit?" "yes." "what? oh, do you mean to be a soldier?" "si, signore." "that would be twenty, wouldn't it?" she nodded. "i am older than that. i am twenty-four." "truly?" "truly." "and is the signora twenty-four, too?" "maddalena!" maurice exclaimed, with a sudden impatience that was almost fierce. "why do you keep on talking about the signora to-night? this is your festa. the signora is in africa, a long way off--there--across the sea." he stretched out his arm, and pointed towards the wide waters above which the stars were watching. "when she comes back you can see her, if you wish--but now--" "when is she coming back?" asked the girl. there was an odd pertinacity in her character, almost an obstinacy, despite her young softness and gentleness. "i don't know," maurice said, with difficulty controlling his gathering impatience. "why did she go away?" "to nurse some one who is ill." "she went all alone across the sea?" "yes." maddalena turned and looked into the dimness of the sea with a sort of awe. "i should be afraid," she said, after a pause. and she shivered slightly. maurice had let go the oars again. he felt a longing to put his arm round her when he saw her shiver. the night created many longings in him, a confusion of longings, of which he was just becoming aware. "you are a child," he said, "and have never been away from your 'paese.'" "yes, i have." "where?" "i have been to the fair of san felice." he smiled. "oh--san felice! and did you go in the train?" "oh no, signore. i went on a donkey. it was last year, in june. it was beautiful. there were women there in blue silk dresses with ear-rings as long as that"--she measured their length in the air with her brown fingers--"and there was a boy from napoli, a real napolitano, who sang and danced as we do not dance here. i was very happy that day. and i was given an image of sant' abbondio." she looked at him with a sort of dignity, as if expecting him to be impressed. "carissima!" he whispered, almost under his breath. her little air of pride, as of a travelled person, enchanted him, even touched him, he scarcely knew why, as he had never been enchanted or touched by any london beauty. "i wish i had been at the fair with you. i would have given you--" "what, signorino?" she interrupted, eagerly. "a blue silk dress and a pair of ear-rings longer--much longer--than those women wore." "really, signorino? really?" "really and truly! do you doubt me?" "no." she sighed. "how i wish you had been there! but this year--" she stopped, hesitating. "yes--this year?" "in june there will be the fair again." he moved from his seat, softly and swiftly, turned the boat's prow towards the open sea, then went and sat down by her in the stern. "we will go there," he said, "you and i and gaspare--" "and my father." "all of us together." "and if the signora is back?" maurice was conscious of a desire that startled him like a sudden stab from something small and sharp--the desire that on that day hermione should not be with him in sicily. "i dare say the signora will not be back." "but if she is, will she come, too?" "do you think you would like it better if she came?" he was so close to her now that his shoulder touched hers. their faces were set seaward and were kissed by the breath of the sea. their eyes saw the same stars and were kissed by the light of the stars. and the subtle murmur of the tide spoke to them both as if they were one. "do you?" he repeated. "do you think so?" "chi lo sa?" she responded. he thought, when she said that, that her voice sounded less simple than before. "you do know!" he said. she shook her head. "you do!" he repeated. he stretched out his hand and took her hand. he had to take it. "why don't you tell me?" she had turned her head away from him, and now, speaking as if to the sea, she said: "perhaps if she was there you could not give me the blue silk dress and the--and the ear-rings. perhaps she would not like it." for a moment he thought he was disappointed by her answer. then he knew that he loved it, for its utter naturalness, its laughable naã¯vetã©. it seemed, too, to set him right in his own eyes, to sweep away a creeping feeling that had been beginning to trouble him. he was playing with a child. that was all. there was no harm in it. and when he had kissed her in the dawn he had been kissing a child, playfully, kindly, as a big brother might. and if he kissed her now it would mean nothing to her. and if it did mean something--just a little more--to him, that did not matter. "bambina mia!" he said. "i am not a bambina," she said, turning towards him again. "yes you are." "then you are a bambino." "why not? i feel like a boy to-night, like a naughty little boy." "naughty, signorino?" "yes, because i want to do something that i ought not to do." "what is it?" "this, maddalena." and he kissed her. it was the first time he had kissed her in darkness, for on his second visit to the sirens' house he had only taken her hand and held it, and that was nothing. the kiss in the dawn had been light, gay, a sort of laughing good-bye to a kind hostess who was of a class that, he supposed, thought little of kisses. but this kiss in the night, on the sea, was different. only when he had given it did he understand how different it was, how much more it meant to him. for maddalena returned it gently with her warm young lips, and her response stirred something at his heart that was surely the very essence of the life within him. he held her hands. "maddalena!" he said, and there was in his voice a startled sound. "maddalena!" again hermione had risen up before him in the night, almost as one who walked upon the sea. he was conscious of wrong-doing. the innocence of his relation with maddalena seemed suddenly to be tarnished, and the happiness of the starry night to be clouded. he felt like one who, in summer, becomes aware of a heaviness creeping into the atmosphere, the message of a coming tempest that will presently transform the face of nature. surely there was a mist before the faces of the stars. she said nothing, only looked at him as if she wanted to know many things which only he could tell her, which he had begun to tell her. that was her fascination for his leaping youth, his wild heart of youth--this ignorance and this desire to know. he had sat in spirit at the feet of hermione and loved her with a sort of boyish humbleness. now one sat at his feet. and the attitude woke up in him a desire that was fierce in its intensity--the desire to teach maddalena the great realities of love. "hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!" faintly there came to them a cry across the sea. "gaspare!" maurice said. he turned his head. in the darkness, high up, he saw a light, descending, ascending, then describing a wild circle. "hi--yi--yi--yi!" "row back, signorino! they have done playing, and my father will be angry." he moved, took the oars, and sent the boat towards the island. the physical exertion calmed him, restored him to himself. "after all," he thought, "there is no harm in it." and he laughed. "which has won, maddalena?" he said, looking back at her over his shoulder, for he was standing up and rowing with his face towards the land. "i hope it is my father, signorino. if he has got the money he will not be angry; but if gaspare has it--" "your father is a fox of the sea, and can cheat better than a boy. don't be frightened." when they reached the land, salvatore and gaspare met them. gaspare's face was glum, but salvatore's small eyes were sparkling. "i have won it all--all!" he said. "ecco!" and he held out his hand with the notes. "salvatore is birbante!" said gaspare, sullenly. "he did not win it fairly. i saw him--" "never mind, gaspare!" said maurice. he put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "to-morrow i'll give you the same," he whispered. "and now," he added, aloud, "let's go to bed. i've been rowing maddalena round the island and i'm tired. i shall sleep like a top." as they went up the steep path he took salvatore familiarly by the arm. "you are too clever, salvatore," he said. "you play too well for gaspare." salvatore chuckled and handled the five-lire notes voluptuously. "cci basu li manu!" he said. "cci basu li manu!" xiii maurice lay on the big bed in the inner room of the siren's house, under the tiny light that burned before maria addolorata. the door of the house was shut, and he heard no more the murmur of the sea. gaspare was curled up on the floor, on a bed made of some old sacking, with his head buried in his jacket, which he had taken off to use as a pillow. in the far room maddalena and her father were asleep. maurice could hear their breathing, maddalena's light and faint, salvatore's heavy and whistling, and degenerating now and then into a sort of stifled snore. but sleep did not come to maurice. his eyes were open, and his clasped hands supported his head. he was thinking, thinking almost angrily. he loved joy as few englishmen love it, but as many southerners love it. his nature needed joy, was made to be joyous. and such natures resent the intrusion into their existence of any complications which make for tragedy as northern natures seldom resent anything. to-night maurice had a grievance against fate, and he was considering it wrathfully and not without confusion. since he had kissed maddalena in the night he was disturbed, almost unhappy. and yet he was surely face to face with something that was more than happiness. the dancing faun was dimly aware that in his nature there was not only the capacity for gayety, for the performance of the tarantella, but also a capacity for violence which he had never been conscious of when he was in england. it had surely been developed within him by the sun, by the coming of the heat in this delicious land. it was like an intoxication of the blood, something that went to head as well as heart. he wondered what it meant, what it might lead him to. perhaps he had been faintly aware of its beginnings on that day when jealousy dawned within him as he thought of his wife, his woman, nursing her friend in africa. now it was gathering strength like a stream flooded by rains, but it was taking a different direction in its course. he turned upon the pillow so that he could see the light burning before the madonna. the face of the madonna was faintly visible--a long, meek face with downcast eyes. maddalena crossed herself often when she looked at that face. maurice put up his hand to make the sign, then dropped it with a heavy sigh. he was not a catholic. his religion--what was it? sunworship perhaps, the worship of the body, the worship of whim. he did not know or care much. he felt so full of life and energy that the far, far future after death scarcely interested him. the present was his concern, the present after that kiss in the night. he had loved hermione. surely he loved her now. he did love her now. and yet when he had kissed her he had never been shaken by the headstrong sensation that had hold of him to-night, the desire to run wild in love. he looked up to hermione. the feeling of reverence had been a governing factor in his love for her. now it seemed to him that a feeling of reverence was a barrier in the path of love, something to create awe, admiration, respect, but scarcely the passion that irresistibly draws man to woman. and yet he did love hermione. he was confused, horribly confused. for he knew that his longing was towards maddalena. he would like to rise up in the dawn, to take her in his arms, to carry her off in a boat upon the sea, or to set her on a mule and lead her up far away into the recesses of the mountains. by rocky paths he would lead her, beyond the olives and the vines, beyond the last cottage of the contadini, up to some eyrie from which they could look down upon the sunlit world. he wanted to be in wildness with her, inexorably divided from all the trammels of civilization. a desire of savagery had hold upon him to-night. he did not go into detail. he did not think of how they would pass their days. everything presented itself to him broadly, tumultuously, with a surging, onward movement of almost desperate advance. he wanted to teach those dark, inquiring young eyes all that they asked to know, to set in them the light of knowledge, to make them a woman's eyes. and that he could never do. his whole body was throbbing with heat, and tingling with a desire of movement, of activity. the knowledge that all this beating energy was doomed to uselessness, was born to do nothing, tortured him. he tried to think steadily of hermione, but he found the effort a difficult one. she was remote from his body, and that physical remoteness seemed to set her far from his spirit, too. in him, though he did not know it, was awake to-night the fickleness of the south, of the southern spirit that forgets so quickly what is no longer near to the southern body. the sun makes bodily men, makes very strong the chariot of the flesh. sight and touch are needful, the actions of the body, to keep the truly southern spirit true. maurice could neither touch nor see hermione. in her unselfishness she had committed the error of dividing herself from him. the natural consequences of that self-sacrifice were springing up now like the little yellow flowers in the grasses of the lemon groves. with all her keen intelligence she made the mistake of the enthusiast, that of reading into those whom she loved her own shining qualities, of seeing her own sincerities, her own faithfulness, her own strength, her own utter loyalty looking out on her from them. she would probably have denied that this was so, but so it was. at this very moment in africa, while she watched at the bedside of artois, she was thinking of her husband's love for her, loyalty to her, and silently blessing him for it; she was thanking god that she had drawn such a prize in the lottery of life. and had she been already separated from maurice for six months she would never have dreamed of doubting his perfect loyalty now that he had once loved her and taken her to be his. the "all in all or not at all" nature had been given to hermione. she must live, rejoice, suffer, die, according to that nature. she knew much, but she did not know how to hold herself back, how to be cautious where she loved, how to dissect the thing she delighted in. she would never know that, so she would never really know her husband, as artois might learn to know him, even had already known him. she would never fully understand the tremendous barriers set up between people by the different strains of blood in them, the stern dividing lines that are drawn between the different races of the earth. her nature told her that love can conquer all things. she was too enthusiastic to be always far-seeing. so now, while maurice lay beneath the tiny light in the house of the sirens and was shaken by the wildness of desire, and thought of a mountain pilgrimage far up towards the sun with maddalena in his arms, she sat by artois's bed and smiled to herself as she pictured the house of the priest, watched over by the stars of sicily, and by her many prayers. maurice was there, she knew, waiting for her return, longing for it as she longed for it. artois turned on his pillow wearily, saw her, and smiled. "you oughtn't to be here," he whispered. "but i am glad you are here." "and i am glad, i am thankful i am here!" she said, truly. "if there is a god," he said, "he will bless you for this!" "hush! you must try to sleep." she laid her hand in his. "god has blessed me," she thought, "for all my poor little attempts at goodness, how far, far more than i deserve!" and the gratitude within her was almost like an ache, like a beautiful pain of the heart. in the morning maurice put to sea with gaspare and salvatore. he knew the silvery calm of dawn on a day of sirocco. everything was very still, in a warm and heavy stillness of silver that made the sweat run down at the least movement or effort. masses of white, feathery vapors floated low in the sky above the sea, concealing the flanks of the mountains, but leaving their summits clear. and these vapors, hanging like veils with tattered edges, created a strange privacy upon the sea, an atmosphere of eternal mysteries. as the boat went out from the shore, urged by the powerful arms of salvatore, its occupants were silent. the merriment and the ardor of the night, the passion of cards and of desire, were gone, as if they had been sucked up into the smoky wonder of the clouds, or sucked down into the silver wonder of the sea. gaspare looked drowsy and less happy than usual. he had not yet recovered from his indignation at the success of salvatore's cheating, and maurice, who had not slept, felt the bounding life, the bounding fire of his youth held in check as by the action of a spell. the carelessness of excitement, of passion, was replaced by another carelessness--the carelessness of dream. it seemed to him now as if nothing mattered or ever could matter. on the calm silver of a hushed and breathless sea, beneath dense white vapors that hid the sky, he was going out slowly, almost noiselessly, to a fate of which he knew nothing, to a quiet emptiness, to a region which held no voices to call him this way or that, no hands to hold him, no eyes to regard him. his face was damp with sweat. he leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. it seemed to him unnaturally warm. he glanced up at the clouds. heaven was blotted out. was there a heaven? last night he had thought there must be--but that was long ago. was he sad? he scarcely knew. he was dull, as if the blood in him had run almost dry. he was like a sapless tree. hermione and maddalena--what were they? shadows rather than women. he looked steadily at the sea. was it the same element upon which he had been only a few hours ago under the stars with maddalena? he could scarcely believe that it was the same. sirocco had him fast, sirocco that leaves many sicilians unchanged, unaffected, but that binds the stranger with cords of cotton wool which keep him like a net of steel. gaspare lay down in the bottom of the boat, buried his face in his arms, and gave himself again to sleep. salvatore looked at him, and then at maurice, and smiled with a fine irony. "he thought he would win, signore." "cosa?" said maurice, startled by the sound of a voice. "he thought that he could play better than i, signore." salvatore closed one eye, and stuck his tongue a little out of the left side of his mouth, then drew it in with a clicking noise. "no one gets the better of me," he said. "they may try. many have tried, but in the end--" he shook his head, took his right hand from the oar and flapped it up and down, then brought it downward with force, as if beating some one, or something, to his feet. "i see," maurice said, dully. "i see." he thought to himself that he had been cleverer than salvatore the preceding night, but he felt no sense of triumph. he had divined the fisherman's passion and turned it to his purpose. but what of that? let the man rejoice, if he could, in this dream. let all men do what they wished to do so long as he could be undisturbed. he looked again at the sea, dropped his hand into it once more. "shall i let down a line, signore?" salvatore's keen eyes were upon him. he shook his head. "not yet. i--" he hesitated. the still silver of the sea drew him. he touched his forehead with his hand and felt the dampness on it. "i'm going in," he said. "can you swim, signore?" "yes, like a fish. don't follow me with the boat. just let me swim out and come back. if i want you i'll call. but don't follow me." salvatore nodded appreciatively. he liked a good swimmer, a real man of the sea. "and don't wake gaspare, or he'll be after me." "va bene!" maurice stripped off his clothes, all the time looking at the sea. then he sat down on the gunwale of the boat with his feet in the water. salvatore had stopped rowing. gaspare still slept. it was curious to be going to give one's self to this silent silver thing that waited so calmly for the gift. he felt a sort of dull voluptuousness stealing over him as he stared at the water. he wanted to get away from his companions, from the boat, to be quite alone with sirocco. "addio salvatore!" he said, in a low voice. "a rivederci, signore." he let himself down slowly into the water, feet foremost, and swam slowly away into the dream that lay before him. even now that he was in it the water felt strangely warm. he had not let his head go under, and the sweat was still on his face. the boat lay behind him. he did not think of it. he had forgotten it. he felt himself to be alone, utterly alone with the sea. he had always loved the sea, but in a boyish, wholly natural way, as a delightful element, health-giving, pleasure-giving, associating it with holiday times, with bathing, fishing, boating, with sails on moonlight nights, with yacht-races about the isle of wight in the company of gay comrades. this sea of sicily seemed different to him to-day from other seas, more mysterious and more fascinating, a sea of sirens about a sirens' isle. mechanically he swam through it, scarcely moving his arms, with his chin low in the water--out towards the horizon-line. he was swimming towards africa. presently that thought came into his mind, that he was swimming towards africa and hermione, and away from maddalena. it seemed to him, then, as if the two women on the opposite shores of this sea must know, hermione that he was coming to her, maddalena that he was abandoning her, and he began to think of them both as intent upon his journey, the one feeling him approach, the other feeling him recede. he swam more slowly. a curious melancholy had overtaken him, a deep depression of the spirit, such as often alternates in the sicilian character with the lively gayety that is sent down upon its children by the sun. this lonely progress in the sea was prophetic. he must leave maddalena. his friendship with her must come to an end, and soon. hermione would return, and then, in no long time, they would leave the casa del prete and go back to england. they would settle down somewhere, probably in london, and he would take up his work with his father, and the sicilian dream would be over. the vapors that hid the sky seemed to drop a little lower down towards the sea, as if they were going to enclose him. the sicilian dream would be over. was that possible? he felt as if the earth of sicily would not let him go, as if, should the earth resign him, the sea of sicily would keep him. he dwelt on this last fancy, this keeping of him by the sea. that would be strange, a quiet end to all things. never before had he consciously contemplated his own death. the deep melancholy poured into him by sirocco caused him to do so now. almost voluptuously he thought of death, a death in the sea of sicily near the rocks of the isle of the sirens. the light would be kindled in the sirens' house and his eyes would not see it. they would be closed by the cold fingers of the sea. and maddalena? the first time she had seen him she had seen him sinking in the sea. how strange if it should be so at the end, if the last time she saw him she saw him sinking in the sea. she had cried out. would she cry out again or would she keep silence? he wondered. for a moment he felt as if it were ordained that thus he should die, and he let his body sink in the water, throwing up his hands. he went down, very far down, but he felt that maddalena's eyes followed him and that in them he saw terrors enthroned. gaspare stirred in the boat, lifted his head from his arms and looked sleepily around him. he saw salvatore lighting a pipe, bending forward over a spluttering match which he held in a cage made of his joined hands. he glanced away from him still sleepily, seeking the padrone, but he saw only the empty seats of the boat, the oars, the coiled-up nets, and lines for the fish. "dove--?" he began. he sat up, stared wildly round. "dov'ã¨ il padrone?" he cried out, shrilly. salvatore started and dropped the match. gaspare sprang at him. "dov'ã¨ il padrone? dov'ã¨ il padrone?" "sangue di--" began salvatore. but the oath died upon his lips. his keen eyes had swept the sea and perceived that it was empty. from its silver the black dot which he had been admiringly watching had disappeared. gaspare had waked, had asked his fierce question just as maurice threw up his hands and sank down in his travesty of death. "he was there! madonna! he was there swimming a moment ago!" exclaimed salvatore. as he spoke he seized the oars, and with furious strokes propelled the boat in the direction maurice had taken. but gaspare would not wait. his instinct forbade him to remain inactive. "may the madonna turn her face from thee in the hour of thy death!" he yelled at salvatore. then, with all his clothes on, he went over the side into the sea. maurice was an accomplished swimmer, and had ardently practised swimming under water when he was a boy. he could hold his breath for an exceptionally long time, and now he strove to beat all his previous records. with a few strokes he came up from the depths of the sea towards the surface, then began swimming under water, swimming vigorously, though in what direction he knew not. at last he felt the imperative need of air, and, coming up into the light again, he gasped, shook his head, lifted his eyelids that were heavy with the pressure of the water, heard a shrill cry, and felt a hand grasp him fiercely. "signorino! signorino!" "gaspare!" he gulped. he had not fully drawn breath yet. "madonna! madonna!" the hand still held him. the fingers were dug into his flesh. then he heard a shout, and the boat came up with salvatore leaning over its side, glaring down at him with fierce anxiety. he grasped the gunwale with both hands. gaspare trod water, caught him by the legs, and violently assisted him upward. he tumbled over the side into the boat. gaspare came after him, sank down in the bottom of the boat, caught him by the arms, stared into his face, saw him smiling. "sta bene lei?" he cried. "sta bene?" "benissimo." the boy let go of him and, still staring at him, burst into a passion of tears that seemed almost angry. "gaspare! what is it? what's the matter?" he put out his hand to touch the boy's dripping clothes. "what has happened?" "niente! niente!" said gaspare, between violent sobs. "mamma mia! mamma mia!" he threw himself down in the bottom of the boat and wept stormily, without shame, without any attempt to check or conceal his emotion. as in the tarantella he had given himself up utterly to joy, so now he gave himself up utterly to something that seemed like despair. he cried loudly. his whole body shook. the sea-water ran down from his matted hair and mingled with the tears that rushed over his brown cheeks. "what is it?" maurice asked of salvatore. "he thought the sea had taken you, signore." "that was it? gaspare--" "let him alone. per dio, signore, you gave me a fright, too." "i was only swimming under water." he looked at gaspare. he longed to do something to comfort him, but he realized that such violence could not be checked by anything. it must wear itself out. "and he thought i was dead!" "per dio! and if you had been!" he wrinkled up his face and spat. "what do you mean?" "has he got a knife on him?" he threw out his hand towards gaspare. "i don't know to-day. he generally has." "i should have had it in me by now," said salvatore. and he smiled at the weeping boy almost sweetly, as if he could have found it in his heart to caress such a murderer. "row in to land," maurice said. he began to put on his clothes. salvatore turned the boat round and they drew near to the rocks. the vapors were lifting now, gathering themselves up to reveal the blue of the sky, but the sea was still gray and mysterious, and the land looked like a land in a dream. presently gaspare put his fists to his eyes, lifted his head, and sat up. he looked at his master gloomily, as if in rebuke, and under this glance maurice began to feel guilty, as if he had done something wrong in yielding to his strange impulses in the sea. "i was only swimming under water, gaspare," he said, apologetically. the boy said nothing. "i know now," continued maurice, "that i shall never come to any harm with you to look after me." still gaspare said nothing. he sat there on the floor of the boat with his dripping clothes clinging to his body, staring before him as if he were too deeply immersed in gloomy thoughts to hear what was being said to him. "gaspare!" maurice exclaimed, moved by a sudden impulse. "do you think you would be very unhappy away from your 'paese'?" gaspare shifted forward suddenly. a light gleamed in his eyes. "d'you think you could be happy with me in england?" he smiled. "si, signore!" "when we have to go away from sicily i shall ask the signora to let me take you with us." gaspare said nothing, but he looked at salvatore, and his wet face was like a song of pride and triumph. xiv that day, ere he started with gaspare for the house of the priest, maurice made a promise to maddalena. he pledged himself to go with her and her father to the great fair of san felice, which takes place annually in the early days of june, when the throng of tourists has departed, and the long heats of the summer have not yet fully set in. he gave this promise in the presence of salvatore and gaspare, and while he did so he was making up his mind to something. that day at the fair should be the day of his farewell to maddalena. hermione must surely be coming back in june. it was impossible that she could remain in kairouan later. the fury of the african summer would force her to leave the sacred city, her mission of salvation either accomplished or rendered forever futile by the death of her friend. and then, when hermione came, within a short time no doubt they would start for england, taking gaspare with them. for maurice really meant to keep the boy in their service. after the strange scene of the morning he felt as if gaspare were one of the family, a retainer with whose devoted protection he could never dispense. hermione, he was sure, would not object. hermione would not object. as he thought that, maurice was conscious of a feeling such as sometimes moves a child, upon whom a parent or guardian has laid a gently restraining hand, violently to shrug his shoulders and twist his body in the effort to get away and run wild in freedom. he knew how utterly unreasonable and contemptible his sensation was, yet he had it. the sun had bred in him not merely a passion for complete personal liberty, but for something more, for lawlessness. for a moment he envied gaspare, the peasant boy, whose ardent youth was burdened with so few duties to society, with so few obligations. what was expected of gaspare? only a willing service, well paid, which he could leave forever at any moment he pleased. to his family he must, no doubt, give some of his earnings, but in return he was looked up to by all, even by his father, as a little god. and in everything else was not he free, wonderfully free in this island of the south, able to be careless, unrestrained, wild as a young hawk, yet to remain uncondemned, unwondered at? and he--maurice? he thought of hermione's ardent and tenderly observant eyes with a sort of terror. if she could know or even suspect his feelings of the previous night, what a tragedy he would be at once involved in! the very splendor of hermione's nature, the generous nobility of her character, would make that tragedy the more poignant. she felt with such intensity, she thought she had so much. careless though his own nature was, doubly careless here in sicily, maurice almost sickened at the idea of her ever suspecting the truth, that he was capable of being strongly drawn towards a girl like maddalena, that he could feel as if a peasant who could neither read nor write caught at something within him that was like the essence of his life, like the core of that by which he enjoyed, suffered, desired. but, of course, she would never suspect. and he laughed at himself, and made the promise about the fair, and, having made it and his resolution in regard to it, almost violently resolved to take no thought for the morrow, but to live carelessly and with gayety the days that lay before him, the few more days of his utter freedom in sicily. after all, he was doing no wrong. he had lived and was going to live innocently. and now that he realized things, realized himself, he would be reasonable. he would be careless, gay--yes, but not reckless, not utterly reckless as he felt inclined to be. "what day of june is the fair?" he asked, looking at maddalena. "the 11th of june, signore," said salvatore. "there will be many donkeys there--good donkeys." gaspare began to look fierce. "i think of buying a donkey," added salvatore, carelessly, with his small, shrewd eyes fixed upon maurice's face. gaspare muttered something unintelligible. "how much do they cost?" said maurice. "for a hundred lire you can get a very good donkey. it would be useful to maddalena. she could go to the village sometimes then--she could go to marechiaro to gossip with the neighbors." "has maddalena broken her legs--madonna!" burst forth gaspare. "come along, gaspare!" said maurice, hastily. he bade good-bye to the fisherman and his daughter, and set off with gaspare through the trees. "be nice to salvatore," said maurice, as they went down towards the rocky wall. "but he wants to make you give him a donkey, signorino. you do not know him. when he is with you at the fair he will--" "never mind. i say, gaspare, i want--i want that day at the fair to be a real festa. don't let's have any row on that day." gaspare looked at him with surprised, inquiring eyes, as if struck by his serious voice, by the insisting pressure in it. "why that day specially, signorino?" he asked, after a pause. "oh, well--it will be my last day of--i mean that the signora will be coming back from africa by then, and we shall--" "si, signore?" "we sha'n't be able to run quite so wild as we do now, you see. and, besides, we shall be going to england very soon then." gaspare's face lighted up. "shall i see london, signorino?" "yes," said maurice. he felt a sickness at his heart. "i should like to live in london always," said gaspare, excitedly. "in london! you don't know it. in london you will scarcely ever see the sun." "aren't there theatres in london, signorino?" "theatres? yes, of course. but there is no sea, gaspare, there are no mountains." "are there many soldiers? are there beautiful women?" "oh, there are plenty of soldiers and women." "i should like always to live in london," repeated gaspare, firmly. "well--perhaps you will. but--remember--we are all to be happy at the fair of san felice." "si, signore. but be careful, or salvatore will make you buy him a donkey. he had a wine-shop once, long ago, in marechiaro, and the wine--per dio, it was always vino battezzato!" "what do you mean?" "salvatore always put water in it. he is cattivo--and when he is angry--" "i know. you told me. but it doesn't matter. we shall soon be going away, and then we sha'n't see him any more." "signorino?" "well?" "you--do you want to stay here always?" "i like being here." "why do you want to stay?" for once maurice felt as if he could not meet the boy's great, steady eyes frankly. he looked away. "i like the sun," he answered. "i love it! i should like to live in the sunshine forever." "and i should like to live always in london," reiterated gaspare. "you want to live here because you have always been in london, and i want to live in london because i have always been here. ecco!" maurice tried to laugh. "perhaps that is it. we wish for what we can't have. dio mio!" he threw out his arms. "but, anyhow, i've not done with sicily yet! come on, gaspare! now for the rocks! ciao! ciao! ciao! morettina bella ciao!" he burst out into a song, but his voice hardly rang true, and gaspare looked at him again with a keen inquiry. * * * * * artois was not yet destined to die. he said that hermione would not let him die, that with her by his side it was useless for death to approach him, to desire him, to claim him. perhaps her courage gave to him the will to struggle against his enemy. the french doctor, deeply, almost sentimentally interested in the ardent woman who spoke his language with perfection and carried out such instructions of his as she considered sensible, with delicate care and strong thoroughness, thought and said so. "but for madame," he said to artois, "you would have died, monsieur. and why? because till she came you had not the will to live. and it is the will to live that assists the doctor." "i cannot be so ungallant as to die now," artois replied, with a feeble but not sad smile. "were i to do so, madame would think me ungrateful. no, i shall live. i feel now that i am going to live." and, in fact, from the night of maurice's visit with gaspare to the house of the sirens he began to get better. the inflammation abated, the temperature fell till it was normal, the agony died away gradually from the tormented body, and slowly, very slowly, the strength that had ebbed began to return. one day, when the doctor said that there was no more danger of any relapse, artois called hermione and told her that now she must think no more of him, but of herself; that she must pack up her trunk and go back to her husband. "you have saved me, and i have killed your honeymoon," he said, rather sadly. "that will always be a regret in my life. but, now go, my dear friend, and try to assuage your husband's wrath against me. how he must hate me!" "why, emile?" "are you really a woman? yes, i know that. no man could have tended me as you have. yet, being a woman, how can you ask that question?" "maurice understands. he is blessedly understanding." "don't try his blessed comprehension of you and of me too far. you must go, indeed." "i will go." a shadow that he tried to keep back flitted across artois's pale face, over which the unkempt beard straggled in a way that would have appalled his parisian barber. hermione saw it. "i will go," she repeated, quietly, "when i can take you with me." "but--" "hush! you are not to argue. haven't you an utter contempt for those who do things by halves? well, i have. when you can travel we'll go together." "where?" "to sicily. it will be hot there, but after this it will seem cool as the garden of eden under those trees where--but you remember! and there is always the breeze from the sea. and then from there, very soon, you can get a ship from messina and go back to france, to marseilles. don't talk, emile. i am writing to-night to tell maurice." and she left the room with quick softness. artois did not protest. he told himself that he had not the strength to struggle against the tenderness that surrounded him, that made it sweet to return to life. but he wondered silently how maurice would receive him, how the dancing faun was bearing, would bear, this interference with his new happiness. "when i am in sicily i shall see at once, i shall know," he thought. "but till then--" and he gave up the faint attempt to analyze the possible feelings of another, and sank again into the curious peace of convalescence. and hermione wrote to her husband, telling him of her plan, calling upon him with the fearless enthusiasm that was characteristic of her to welcome it and to rejoice, with her, in artois's returning health and speedy presence in sicily. maurice read this letter on the terrace alone. gaspare had gone down on the donkey to marechiaro to buy a bottle of marsala, which lucrezia demanded for the making of a zampaglione, and lucrezia was upon the mountain-side spreading linen to dry in the sun. it was nearly the end of may now, and the trees in the ravine were thick with all their leaves. the stream that ran down through the shadows towards the sea was a tiny trickle of water, and the long, black snakes were coming boldly forth from their winter hiding-places to sun themselves among the bowlders that skirted the mountain tracks. "i can't tell for certain," hermione wrote, "how soon we shall arrive, but emile is picking up strength every day, and i think, i pray, it may not be long. i dare to hope that we shall be with you about the second week of june. oh, maurice, something in me is almost mad with joy, is like gaspare dancing the tarantella, when i think of coming up the mountain-side again with you as i came that first day, that first day of my real life. tell sebastiano he must play the 'pastorale' to welcome me. and you--but i seem to feel your dear welcome here, to feel your hands holding mine, to see your eyes looking at me like sicily. isn't it strange? i feel out here in africa as if you were sicily. but you are, indeed, for me. you are sicily, you are the sun, you are everything that means joy to me, that means music, that means hope and peace. buon riposo, my dearest one. can you feel--can you--how happy i am to-night?" the second week in june! maurice stood holding the letter in his hand. the fair of san felice would take place during the second week in june. that was what he was thinking, not of artois's convalescence, not of his coming to sicily. if hermione arrived before june 11th, could he go to the fair with maddalena? he might go, of course. he might tell hermione. she would say "go!" she believed in him and had never tried to curb his freedom. a less suspicious woman than she was had surely never lived. but if she were in sicily, if he knew that she was there in the house of the priest, waiting to welcome him at night when he came back from the fair, it would--it would--he laid the letter down. there was a burning heat of impatience, of anxiety, within him. now that he had received this letter he understood with what intensity he had been looking forward to this day at the fair, to this last festa of his sicilian life. "perhaps they will not come so soon!" he said to him self. "perhaps they will not be here." and then he began to think of artois, to realize the fact that he was coming with hermione, that he would be part of the final remnant of these sicilian days. his feeling towards artois in london had been sympathetic, even almost reverential. he had looked at him as if through hermione's eyes, had regarded him with a sort of boyish reverence. hermione had said that artois was a great man, and maurice had felt that he was a great man, had mentally sat at his feet. perhaps in london he would be ready to sit at his feet again. but was he ready to sit at his feet here in sicily? as he thought of artois's penetrating eyes and cool, intellectual face, of his air of authority, of his close intimacy with hermione, he felt almost afraid of him. he did not want artois to come here to sicily. he hated his coming. he almost dreaded it as the coming of a spy. the presence of artois would surely take away all the savor of this wild, free life, would import into it an element of the library, of the shut room, of that intellectual existence which maurice was learning to think of as almost hateful. and hermione called upon him to rejoice with her over the fact that artois would be able to accompany her. how she misunderstood him! good god! how she misunderstood him! it seemed really as if she believed that his mind was cast in precisely the same mould as her own, as if she thought that because she and he were married they must think and feel always alike. how absurd that was, and how impossible! a sense of being near a prison door came upon him. he threw hermione's letter onto the writing-table, and went out into the sun. when gaspare returned that evening maurice told him the news from africa. the boy's face lit up. "oh, then shall we go to london?" he said. "why not?" maurice exclaimed, almost violently. "it will all be different! yes, we had better go to london!" "signorino." "well, what is it, gaspare?" "you do not like that signore to come here." "i--why not? yes, i--" "no, signorino. i can see in your face that you do not like it. your face got quite black just now. but if you do not like it why do you let him come? you are the padrone here." "you don't understand. the signore is a friend of mine." "but you said he was the friend of the signora." "so he is. he is the friend of both of us." gaspare said nothing for a moment. his mind was working busily. at last he said: "then maddalena--when the signora comes will she be the friend of the signora, as well as your friend?" "maddalena--that has nothing to do with it." "but maddalena is your friend!" "that's quite different." "i do not understand how it is in england," gaspare said, gravely. "but"--and he nodded his head wisely and spread out his hands--"i understand many things, signorino, perhaps more than you think. you do not want the signore to come. you are angry at his coming." "he is a very kind signore," said maurice, hastily. "and he can speak dialetto." gaspare smiled and shook his head again. but he did not say anything more. for a moment maurice had an impulse to speak to him frankly, to admit him into the intimacy of a friend. he was a sicilian, although he was only a boy. he was sicilian and he would understand. "gaspare," he began. "si, signore." "as you understand so much--" "si, signore?" "perhaps you--" he checked himself, realizing that he was on the edge of doing an outrageous thing. "you must know that the friends of the signora are my friends and that i am always glad to welcome them." "va bene, signorino! va bene!" the boy began to look glum, understanding at once that he was being played with. "i must go to give tito his food." and he stuck his hands in his pockets and went away round the corner of the cottage, whistling the tune of the "canzone di marechiaro." maurice began to feel as if he were in the dark, but as if he were being watched there. he wondered how clearly gaspare read him, how much he knew. and artois? when he came, with his watchful eyes, there would be another observer of the sicilian change. he did not much mind gaspare, but he would hate artois. he grew hot at the mere thought of artois being there with him, observing, analyzing, playing the literary man's part in this out-door life of the mountains and of the sea. "i'm not a specimen," he said to himself, "and i'm damned if i'll be treated as one!" it did not occur to him that he was anticipating that which might never happen. he was as unreasonable as a boy who foresees possible interference with his pleasures. this decision of hermione to bring with her to sicily artois, and its communication to maurice, pushed him on to the recklessness which he had previously resolved to hold in check. had hermione been returning to him alone he would have felt that a gay and thoughtless holiday time was coming to an end, but he must have felt, too, that only tenderness and strong affection were crossing the sea from africa to bind him in chains that already he had worn with happiness and peace. but the knowledge that with hermione was coming artois gave to him a definite vision of something that was like a cage. without consciously saying it to himself, he had in london been vaguely aware of artois's coldness of feeling towards him. had any one spoken of it to him he would probably have denied that this was so. there are hidden things in a man that he himself does not say to himself that he knows of. but maurice's vision of a cage was conjured up by artois's mental attitude towards him in london, the attitude of the observer who might, in certain circumstances, be cruel, who was secretly ready to be cruel. and, anticipating the unpleasant probable, he threw himself with the greater violence into the enjoyment of his few more days of complete liberty. he wrote to hermione, expressing as naturally as he could his ready acquiescence in her project, and then gave himself up to the light-heartedness that came with the flying moments of these last days of emancipation in the sun. his mood was akin to the mood of the rich man, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." the music, he knew, must presently fail. the tarantella must come to an end. well, then he would dance with his whole soul. he would not husband his breath nor save his strength. he would be thoughtless because for a moment he had thought too much, too much for his nature of the dancing faun who had been given for a brief space of time his rightful heritage. each day now he went down to the sea. "how hot it is!" he would say to gaspare. "if i don't have a bath i shall be suffocated." "si, signore. at what time shall we go?" "after the siesta. it will be glorious in the sea to-day." "si, signore, it is good to be in the sea." the boy smiled, at last would sometimes laugh. he loved his padrona, but he was a male and a sicilian. and the signora had gone across the sea to her friend. these visits to the sea seemed to him very natural. he would have done the same as his padrone in similar circumstances with a light heart, with no sense of doing wrong. only sometimes he raised a warning voice. "signorino," he would say, "do not forget what i have told you." "what, gaspare?" "salvatore is birbante. you think he likes you." "why shouldn't he like me?" "you are a forestiere. to him you are as nothing. but he likes your money." "well, then? i don't care whether he likes me or not. what does it matter?" "be careful, signorino. the sicilian has a long hand. every one knows that. even the napoletano knows that. i have a friend who was a soldier at naples, and--" "come, now, gaspare! what reason will there ever be for salvatore to turn against me?" "va bene, signorino, va bene! but salvatore is a bad man when he thinks any one has tried to do him a wrong. he has blood in his eyes then, and when we sicilians see through blood we do not care what we do--no, not if all the world is looking at us." "i shall do no wrong to salvatore. what do you mean?" "niente, signorino, niente!" "stick the cloth on tito, and put something in the pannier. al mare! al mare!" the boy's warning rang in deaf ears. for maurice really meant what he said. he was reckless, perhaps, but he was going to wrong no one, neither salvatore, nor hermione, nor maddalena. the coming of artois drove him into the arms of pleasure, but it would never drive him into the arms of sin. for it was surely no sin to make a little love in this land of the sun, to touch a girl's hand, to snatch a kiss sometimes from the soft lips of a girl, from whom he would never ask anything more, whatever leaping desire might prompt him. and salvatore was always at hand. he seldom put to sea in these days unless maurice went with him in the boat. his greedy eyes shone with a light of satisfaction when he saw tito coming along the dusty white road from isola bella, and at night, when he crossed himself superstitiously before maria addolorata, he murmured a prayer that more strangers might be wafted to his "paese," many strangers with money in their pockets and folly in their hearts. then let the sea be empty of fish and the wind of the storm break up his boat--it would not matter. he would still live well. he might even at the last have money in the bank at marechiaro, houses in the village, a larger wine-shop than oreste in the corso. but he kept his small eyes wide open and seldom let maddalena be long alone with the forestiere, and this supervision began to irritate maurice, to make him at last feel hostile to salvatore. he remembered gaspare's words about the fisherman--"to him you are as nothing. but he likes your money"--and a longing to trick this fox of the sea, who wanted to take all and make no return, came to him. "why can one never be free in this world?" he thought, almost angrily. "why must there always be some one on the watch to see what one is doing, to interfere with one's pleasure?" he began presently almost to hate salvatore, who evidently thought that maurice was ready to wrong him, and who, nevertheless, grasped greedily at every soldo that came from the stranger's pocket, and touted perpetually for more. his attitude was hideous. maurice pretended not to notice it, and was careful to keep on the most friendly possible terms with him. but, while they acted their parts, the secret sense of enmity grew steadily in the two men, as things grow in the sun. when maurice saw the fisherman, with a smiling, bird's face, coming to meet him as he climbed up through the trees to the sirens' house, he sometimes longed to strike him. and when maurice went away with gaspare in the night towards the white road where tito, tied to a stake, was waiting to carry the empty pannier that had contained a supper up the mountain to the house of the priest, salvatore stood handling his money, and murmuring: "maledetto straniero! madonna! ma io sono piã¹ birbante di lei, mille volte piã¹ birbante, dio mio!" and he laughed as he went towards the sirens' house. it amused him to think that a stranger, an "inglese," fancied that he could play with a sicilian, who had never been "worsted," even by one of his own countrymen. xv maurice had begun to dread the arrival of the post. artois was rapidly recovering his strength, and in each of her letters hermione wrote with a more glowing certainty of her speedy return to sicily, bringing the invalid with her. would they come before june 11th, the day of the fair? that was the question which preoccupied maurice, which began to haunt him, and set a light of anxiety in his eyes when he saw antonino climbing up the mountain-side with the letter-bag slung over his shoulder. he felt as if he could not forego this last festa. when it was over, when the lights had gone out in the houses of san felice, and the music was silent, and the last rocket had burst in the sky, showering down its sparks towards the gaping faces of the peasants, he would be ready to give up this free, unintellectual life, this life in which his youth ran wild. he would resign himself to the inevitable, return to the existence in which, till now, he had found happiness, and try to find it there once more, try to forget the strange voices that had called him, the strange impulses that had prompted him. he would go back to his old self, and seek pleasure in the old paths, where he walked with those whom society would call his "equals," and did not spend his days with men who wrung their scant livelihood from the breast of the earth and from the breast of the sea, with women whose eyes, perhaps, were full of flickering fires, but who had never turned the leaves of a printed book, or traced a word upon paper. he would sit again at the feet of people who were cleverer and more full of knowledge than himself, and look up to them with reverence. but he must have his festa first. he counted upon that. he desired that so strongly, almost so fiercely, that he felt as if he could not bear to be thwarted, as if, should fate interfere between him and the fulfilment of this longing, he might do something almost desperate. he looked forward to the fair with something of the eagerness and the anticipation of a child expectant of strange marvels, of wonderful and mysterious happenings, and the name san felice rang in his ears with a music that was magical, suggesting curious joys. he often talked about the fair to gaspare, asking him many questions which the boy was nothing loath to answer. to gaspare the fair of san felice was the great event of the sicilian year. he had only been to it twice; the first time when he was but ten years old, and was taken by an uncle who had gone to seek his fortune in south america, and had come back for a year to his native land to spend some of the money he had earned as a cook, and afterwards as a restaurant proprietor, in buenos ayres; the second time when he was sixteen, and had succeeded in saving up a little of the money given to him by travellers whom he had accompanied as a guide on their excursions. and these two days had been red-letter days in his life. his eyes shone with excitement when he spoke of the festivities at san felice, of the bands of music--there were three "musics" in the village; of the village beauties who sauntered slowly up and down, dressed in brocades and adorned with jewels which had been hoarded in the family chests for generations, and were only taken out to be worn at the fair and at wedding-feasts; of the booths where all the desirable things of the world were exposed for sale--rings, watches, chains, looking-glasses, clocks that sang and chimed with bells like church towers, yellow shoes, and caps of all colors, handkerchiefs, and shawls with fringes that, when worn, drooped almost to the ground; ballads written by native poets, relating the life and the trial of musolino, the famous brigand, his noble address to his captors, and his despair when he was condemned to eternal confinement; and the adventures of giuseppe moroni, called "il niccheri" (illetterato), composed in eight-lined verses, and full of the most startling and passionate occurrences. there were donkeys, too--donkeys from all parts of sicily, mules from girgenti, decorated with red-and-yellow harness, with pyramids of plumes and bells upon their heads, painted carts with pictures of the miracles of the saints and the conquests of the saracens, turkeys and hens, and even cages containing yellow birds that came from islands far away and that sang with the sweetness of the angels. the ristoranti were crowded with people, playing cards and eating delicious food, and outside upon the pavements were dozens of little tables at which you could sit, drinking syrups of beautiful hues and watching at your ease the marvels of the show. here came boys from naples to sing and dance, peddlers with shining knives and elegant walking-sticks for sale, fortune-tellers with your fate already printed and neatly folded in an envelope, sometimes a pigeon-man with a high black hat, who made his doves hop from shoulder to shoulder along a row of school-children, or a man with a monkey that played antics to the sound of a grinding organ, and that was dressed up in a red worsted jacket and a pair of cloth trousers. and there were shooting-galleries and puppet-shows and dancing-rooms, and at night, when the darkness came, there were giuochi di fuoco which lit up the whole sky, till you could see etna quite plainly. "e' veramente un paradiso!" concluded gaspare. "a paradise!" echoed maurice. "a paradise! i say, gaspare, why can't we always live in paradise? why can't life be one long festa?" "non lo so, signore. and the signora? do you think she will be here for the fair?" "i don't know. but if she is here, i am not sure that she will come to see it." "why not, signorino? will she stay with the sick signore?" "perhaps. but i don't think she will be here. she does not say she will be here." "do you want her to be here, signorino?" gaspare asked, abruptly. "why do you ask such a question? of course i am happy, very happy, when the signora is here." as he said the words maurice remembered how happy he had been in the house of the priest alone with hermione. indeed, he had thought that he was perfectly happy, that he had nothing left to wish for. but that seemed long ago. he wondered if he could ever again feel that sense of perfect contentment. he could scarcely believe so. a certain feverishness had stolen into his sicilian life. he felt often like a man in suspense, uncertain of the future, almost apprehensive. he no longer danced the tarantella with the careless abandon of a boy. and yet he sometimes had a strange consciousness that he was near to something that might bring to him a joy such as he had never yet experienced. "i wish i knew what day hermione is arriving," he thought, almost fretfully. "i wish she wouldn't keep me hung up in this condition of uncertainty. she seems to think that i have nothing to do but just wait here upon the pleasure of artois." with that last thought the old sense of injury rose in him again. this friend of hermione's was spoiling everything, was being put before every one. it was really monstrous that even during their honeymoon this old friendship should intrude, should be allowed to govern their actions and disturb their serenity. now that artois was out of danger maurice began to forget how ill he had been, began sometimes to doubt whether he had ever been so ill as hermione supposed. perhaps artois was one of those men who liked to have a clever woman at his beck and call. these literary fellows were often terribly exigent, eaten up with the sense of their own importance. but he, maurice, was not going to allow himself to be made a cat's-paw of. he would make artois understand that he was not going to permit his life to be interfered with by any one. "i'll let him see that when he comes," he said to himself. "i'll take a strong line. a man must be the master of his own life if he's worth anything. these sicilians understand that." he began secretly to admire what before he had thought almost hateful, the strong arab characteristics that linger on in many sicilians, to think almost weak and unmanly the western attitude to woman. "i will be master," he said to himself again. "all these sicilians are wondering that i ever let hermione go to africa. perhaps they think i'm a muff to have given in about it. and now, when hermione comes back with a man, they'll suppose--god knows what they won't imagine!" he had begun so to identify himself with the sicilians about marechiaro that he cared what they thought, was becoming sensitive to their opinion of him as if he had been one of themselves. one day gaspare told him a story of a contadino who had bought a house in the village, but who, being unable to complete the payment, had been turned out into the street. "and now, signorino," gaspare concluded, "they are all laughing at him in marechiaro. he dare not show himself any more in the piazza. when a man cannot go any more into the piazza--madonna!" he shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture of contemptuous pity. "e' finito!" he exclaimed. "certo!" said maurice. he was resolved that he would never be in such a case. hermione, he felt now, did not understand the sicilians as he understood them. if she did she would not bring back artois from africa, she would not arrive openly with him. but surely she ought to understand that such an action would make people wonder, would be likely to make them think that artois was something more than her friend. and then maurice thought of the day of their arrival, of his own descent to the station, to wait upon the platform for the train. artois was not going to stay in the house of the priest. that was impossible, as there was no guest-room. he would put up at the hotel in marechiaro. but that would make little difference. he was to arrive with hermione. every one would know that she had spent all this time with him in africa. maurice grew hot as he thought of the smiles on the sicilian faces, of the looks of astonishment at the strange doings of the forestieri. hermione's enthusiastic kindness was bringing her husband almost to shame. it was a pity that people were sometimes thoughtless in their eager desire to be generous and sympathetic. one day, when maurice had been brooding over this matter of the sicilian's view of hermione's proceedings, the spirit moved him to go down on foot to marechiaro to see if there were any letters for him at the post. it was now june 7th. in four days would come the fair. as the time for it drew near, his anxiety lest anything should interfere to prevent his going to it with maddalena increased, and each day at post time he was filled with a fever of impatience to know whether there would be a letter from africa or not. antonino generally appeared about four o'clock, but the letters were in the village long before then, and this afternoon maurice felt that he could not wait for the boy's coming. he had a conviction that there was a letter, a decisive letter from hermione, fixing at last the date of her arrival with artois. he must have it in his hands at the first possible moment. if he went himself to the post he would know the truth at least an hour and a half sooner than if he waited in the house of the priest. he resolved, therefore, to go, got his hat and stick, and set out, after telling gaspare, who was watching for birds with his gun, that he was going for a stroll on the mountain-side and might be away for a couple of hours. it was a brilliant afternoon. the landscape looked hard in the fiery sunshine, the shapes of the mountains fierce and relentless, the dry watercourses almost bitter in their barrenness. already the devastation of the summer was beginning to be apparent. all tenderness had gone from the higher slopes of the mountains which, jocund in spring and in autumn with growing crops, were now bare and brown, and seamed like the hide of a tropical reptile gleaming with metallic hues. the lower slopes were still panoplied with the green of vines and of trees, but the ground beneath the trees was arid. the sun was coming into his dominion with pride and cruelty, like a conqueror who loots the land he takes to be his own. but maurice did not mind the change, which drove the tourists northward, and left sicily to its own people. he even rejoiced in it. as each day the heat increased he was conscious of an increasing exultation, such as surely the snakes and the lizards feel as they come out of their hiding-places into the golden light. he was filled with a glorious sense of expansion, as if his capabilities grew larger, as if they were developed by heat like certain plants. none of the miseries that afflict many people in the violent summers which govern southern lands were his. his skin did not peel, his eyes did not become inflamed, nor did his head ache under the action of the burning rays. they came to him like brothers and he rejoiced in their company. to-day, as he descended to marechiaro, he revelled in the sun. its ruthlessness made him feel ruthless. he was conscious of that. at this moment he was in absolutely perfect physical health. his body was lithe and supple, yet his legs and arms were hard with springing muscle. his warm blood sang through his veins like music through the pipes of an organ. his eyes shone with the superb animation of youth that is radiantly sound. for, despite his anxiety, his sometimes almost fretful irritation when he thought about the coming of artois and the passing of his own freedom, there were moments when he felt as if he could leap with the sheer joy of life, as if he could lift up his arms and burst forth into a wild song of praise to his divinity, the sun. and this grand condition of health made him feel ruthless, as the man who conquers and enters a city in triumph feels ruthless. as he trod down towards marechiaro to-day, thinking of the letter that perhaps awaited him, it seemed to him that it would be monstrous if anything, if any one, were to interfere with his day of joy, the day he was looking forward to with such eager anticipation. he felt inclined to trample over opposition. yet what could he do if, by some evil chance, hermione and artois arrived the day before the fair, or on the very day of the fair? he hurried his steps. he wanted to be in the village, to know whether there was a letter for him from africa. when he came into the village it was about half-past two o'clock, and the long, narrow main street was deserted. the owners of some of the antiquity shops had already put up their shutters for the summer. other shops, still open, showed gaping doorways, through which no travellers passed. inside, the proprietors were dozing among their red brocades, their pottery, their sicilian jewelry and obscure pictures thick with dust, guarded by squadrons of large, black flies, which droned on walls and ceilings, crept over the tiled floors, and clung to the draperies and laces which lay upon the cabinets. in the shady little rooms of the barbers small boys in linen jackets kept a drowsy vigil for the proprietors, who were sleeping in some dark corner of bedchamber or wine-shop. but no customer came to send them flying. the sun made the beards push on the brown sicilian faces, but no one wanted to be shaved before the evening fell. two or three lads lounged by on their way to the sea with towels and bathing-drawers over their arms. a few women were spinning flax on the door-lintels, or filling buckets of water from the fountain. a few children were trying to play mysterious games in the narrow alleys that led downward to the sea and upward to the mountains on the left and right of the street. a donkey brayed under an archway as if to summon its master from his siesta. a cat stole along the gutter, and vanished into a hole beneath a shut door. but the village was almost like a dead village, slain by the sun in his carelessness of pride. on his way to the post maurice passed through the piazza that was the glory of marechiaro and the place of assemblage for its people. here the music sounded on festa days before the stone steps that led up to the church of san giuseppe. here was the principal caffã¨, the caffã¨ nuovo, where granite and ices were to be had, delicious yellow cakes, and chocolate made up into shapes of crowing cocks, of pigs, of little men with hats, and of saints with flowing robes. here, too, was the club, with chairs and sofas now covered with white, and long tables adorned with illustrated journals and the papers of catania, of messina, and palermo. but at this hour the caffã¨ was closed and the club was empty. for the sun beat down with fury upon the open space with its tiled pavement, and the seats let into the wall that sheltered the piazza from the precipice that frowned above the sea were untenanted by loungers. as maurice went by he thought of gaspare's words, "when a man cannot go any more into the piazza--madonna, it is finished!" this was the place where the public opinion of marechiaro was formed, where fame was made and characters were taken away. he paused for an instant by the church, then went on under the clock tower and came to the post. "any letters for me, don paolo?" he asked of the postmaster. the old man saluted him languidly through the peep-hole. "si, signore, ce ne sono." he turned to seek for them while maurice waited. he heard the flies buzzing. their noise was loud in his ears. his heart beat strongly and he was gnawed by suspense. never before had he felt so anxious, so impatient to know anything as he was now to know if among the letters there was one from hermione. "ecco, signore!" "grazie!" maurice took the packet. "a rivederci!" "a rivederlo, signore." he went away down the street. but now he had his letters he did not look at them immediately. something held him back from looking at them until he had come again into the piazza. it was still deserted. he went over to the seat by the wall, and sat down sideways, so that he could look over the wall to the sea immediately below him. then, very slowly, he drew out his cigarette-case, selected a cigarette, lit it, and began to smoke like a man who was at ease and idle. he glanced over the wall. at the foot of the precipice by the sea was the station of cattaro, at which hermione and artois would arrive when they came. he could see the platform, some trucks of merchandise standing on the rails, the white road winding by towards san felice and etna. after a long look down he turned at last to the packet from the post which he had laid upon the hot stone at his side. the _times_, the "pink 'un," the _illustrated london news_, and three letters. the first was obviously a bill forwarded from london. the second was also from england. he recognized the handwriting of his mother. the third? he turned it over. yes, it was from hermione. his instinct had not deceived him. he was certain, too, that it did not deceive him now. he was certain that this was the letter that fixed the date of her coming with artois. he opened the two other letters and glanced over them, and then at last he tore the covering from hermione's. a swift, searching look was enough. the letter dropped from his hand to the seat. he had seen these words: "isn't it splendid? emile may leave at once. but there is no good boat till the tenth. we shall take that, and be at cattaro on the eleventh at five o'clock in the afternoon...." "isn't it splendid?" for a moment he sat quite still in the glare of the sun, mentally repeating to himself these words of his wife. so the inevitable had happened. for he felt it was inevitable. fate was against him. he was not to have his pleasure. "signorino! come sta lei? lei sta bene?" he started and looked up. he had heard no footstep. salvatore stood by him, smiling at him, salvatore with bare feet, and a fish-basket slung over his arm. "buon giorno, salvatore!" he answered, with an effort. salvatore looked at maurice's cigarette, put down the basket, and sat down on the seat by maurice's side. "i haven't smoked to-day, signore," he began. "dio mio! but it must be good to have plenty of soldi!" "ecco!" maurice held out his cigarette-case. "take two--three!" "grazie, signore, mille grazie!" he took them greedily. "and the fair, signorino--only four days now to the fair! i have been to order the donkeys for me and maddalena." "davvero?" maurice said, mechanically. "si, signore. from angelo of the mill. he wanted fifteen lire, but i laughed at him. i was with him a good hour and i got them for nine. per dio! fifteen lire and to a siciliano! for he didn't know you were coming. i took care not to tell him that." "oh, you took care not to tell him that i was coming!" maurice was looking over the wall at the platform of the station far down below. he seemed to see himself upon it, waiting for the train to glide in on the day of the fair, waiting among the smiling sicilian facchini. "si, signore. was not i right?" "quite right." "per dio, signore, these are good cigarettes. where do they come from?" "from cairo, in egypt." "egitto! they must cost a lot." he edged nearer to maurice. "you must be very happy, signorino." "i!" maurice laughed. "madonna! why?" "because you are so rich!" there was a fawning sound in the fisherman's voice, a fawning look in his small, screwed-up eyes. "to you it would be nothing to buy all the donkeys at the fair of san felice." maurice moved ever so little away from him. "ah, signorino, if i had been born you how happy i should be!" and he heaved a great sigh and puffed at the cigarette voluptuously. maurice said nothing. he was still looking at the railway platform. and now he seemed to see the train gliding in on the day of the fair of san felice. "signorino! signorino!" "well, what is it, salvatore?" "i have ordered the donkeys for ten o'clock. then we can go quietly. they will be at isola bella at ten o'clock. i shall bring maddalena round in the boat." "oh!" salvatore chuckled. "she has got a surprise for you, signore." "a surprise?" "per dio!" "what is it?" his voice was listless, but now he looked at salvatore. "i ought not to tell you, signore. but--if i do--you won't ever tell her?" "no." "a new gown, signorino, a beautiful new gown, made by maria compagni here in the corso. will you be at isola bella with gaspare by ten o'clock on the day, signorino?" "yes, salvatore!" maurice said, in a loud, firm, almost angry voice. "i will be there. don't doubt it. addio salvatore!" he got up. "a rivederci, signore. ma--" he got up, too, and bent to pick up his fish-basket. "no, don't come with me. i'm going up now, straight up by the castello." "in all this heat? but it's steep there, signore, and the path is all covered with stones. you'll never--" "that doesn't matter. i like the sun. addio!" "and this evening, signorino? you are coming to bathe this evening?" "i don't know. i don't think so. don't wait for me. go to sea if you want to!" "birbanti!" muttered the fisherman, as he watched maurice stride away across the piazza, and strike up the mountain-side by the tiny path that led to the castello. "you want to get me out of the way, do you? birbanti! ah, you fine strangers from england! you think to come here and find men that are babies, do you? men that--" he went off noiselessly on his bare feet, muttering to himself with the half-smoked cigarette in his lean, brown hand. meanwhile, maurice climbed rapidly up the steep track over the stones in the eye of the sun. he had not lied to salvatore. while the fisherman had been speaking to him he had come to a decision. a disgraceful decision he knew it to be, but he would keep to it. nothing should prevent him from keeping to it. he would be at isola bella on the day of the fair. he would go to san felice. he would stay there till the last rocket burst in the sky over etna, till the last song had been sung, the last toast shouted, the last tarantella danced, the last--kiss given--the last, the very last. he would ignore this message from africa. he would pretend he had never received it. he would lie about it. yes, he would lie--but he would have his pleasure. he was determined upon that, and nothing should shake him, no qualms of conscience, no voices within him, no memories of past days, no promptings of duty. he hurried up the stony path. he did not feel the sun upon him. the sweat poured down over his face, his body. he did not know it. his heart was set hard, and he felt villanous, but he felt quite sure what he was going to do, quite sure that he was going to the fair despite that letter. when he reached the priest's house he felt exhausted. without knowing it he had come up the mountain at a racing pace. but he was not tired merely because of that. he sank down in a chair in the sitting-room. lucrezia came and peeped at him. "where is gaspare?" he asked, putting his hand instinctively over the pocket in which were the letters. "he is still out after the birds, signore. he has shot five already." "poor little wretches! and he's still out?" "si, signore. he has gone on to don peppino's terreno now. there are many birds there. how hot you are, signorino! shall i--" "no, no. nothing, lucrezia! leave me alone!" she disappeared. then maurice drew the letters from his pocket and slowly spread out hermione's in his lap. he had not read it through yet. he had only glanced at it and seen what he had feared to see. now he read it word by word, very slowly and carefully. when he had come to the end he kept it on his knee and sat for some time quite still. in the letter hermione asked him to go to the hã´tel regina margherita at marechiaro, and engage two good rooms facing the sea for artois, a bedroom and a sitting-room. they were to be ready for the eleventh. she wrote with her usual splendid frankness. her soul was made of sincerity as a sovereign is made of gold. "i know"--these were her words--"i know you will try and make emile's coming to sicily a little festa. don't think i imagine you are personally delighted at his coming, though i am sure you are delighted at his recovery. he is my old friend, not yours, and i am not such a fool as to suppose that you can care for him at all as i do, who have known him intimately and proved his loyalty and his nobility of nature. but i think, i am certain, maurice, that you will make his coming a festa for my sake. he has suffered very much. he is as weak almost as a child still. there's something tremendously pathetic in the weakness of body of a man so brilliant in mind, so powerful of soul. it goes right to my heart as i think it would go to yours. let us make his return to life beautiful and blessed. sha'n't we? put flowers in the rooms for me, won't you? make them look homey. put some books about. but i needn't tell you. we are one, you and i, and i needn't tell you any more. it would be like telling things to myself--as unnecessary as teaching an organ-grinder how to turn the handle of his organ! oh, maurice, i can laugh to-day! i could almost--_i_--get up and dance the tarantella all alone here in my little, bare room with no books and scarcely any flowers. and at the station show emile he is welcome. he is a little diffident at coming. he fancies perhaps he will be in the way. but one look of yours, one grasp of your hand will drive it all out of him! god bless you, my dearest. how he has blessed me in giving you to me!" as maurice sat there, under his skin, burned deep brown by the sun, there rose a hot flush of red! yes, he reddened at the thought of what he was going to do, but still he meant to do it. he could not forego his pleasure. he could not. there was something wild and imperious within him that defied his better self at this moment. but the better self was not dead. it was even startlingly alive, enough alive to stand almost aghast at that which was going, it knew, to dominate it--to dominate it for a time, but only for a time. on that he was resolved, as he was resolved to have this one pleasure to which he had looked forward, to which he was looking forward now. men often mentally put a period to their sinning. maurice put a period to his sinning as he sat staring at the letter on his knees. and the period which he put was the day of the fair at san felice. after that day this book of his wild youth was to be closed forever. after the day of the fair he would live rightly, sincerely, meeting as it deserved to be met the utter sincerity of his wife. he would be, after that date, entirely straight with her. he loved her. as he looked at her letter he felt that he did love, must love, such love as hers. he was not a bad man, but he was a wilful man. the wild heart of youth in him was wilful. well, after san felice, he would control that wilfulness of his heart, he would discipline it. he would do more, he would forget that it existed. after san felice! with a sigh, like that of a burdened man, he got up, took the letter in his hand, and went out up the mountain-side. there he tore the letter and its envelope into fragments, and hid the fragments in a heap of stones hot with the sun. when gaspare came in that evening with a string of little birds in his hand and asked maurice if there were any letter from africa to say when the signora would arrive, maurice answered "no." "then the signora will not be here for the fair, signorino?" said the boy. "i don't suppose--no, gaspare, she will not be here for the fair." "she would have written by now if she were coming. "yes, if she were coming she would certainly have written by now." xvi "signorino! signorino! are you ready?" it was gaspare's voice shouting vivaciously from the sunny terrace, where tito and another donkey, gayly caparisoned and decorated with flowers and little streamers of colored ribbon, were waiting before the steps. "si, si! i'm coming in a moment!" replied maurice's voice from the bedroom. lucrezia stood by the wall looking very dismal. she longed to go to the fair, and that made her sad. but there was also another reason for her depression. sebastiano was still away, and for many days he had not written to her. this was bad enough. but there was something worse. news had come to marechiaro from a sailor of messina, a friend of sebastiano's, that sebastiano was lingering in the lipari isles because he had found a girl there, a pretty girl called teodora amalfi, to whom he was paying attentions. and although lucrezia laughed at the story, and pretended to disbelieve it, her heart was rent by jealousy and despair, and a longing to travel away, to cross the sea, to tear her lover from temptation, to--to speak for a few moments quietly--oh, very quietly--with this teodora. even now, while she stared at the donkeys, and at gaspare in his festa suit, with two large, pink roses above his ears, she put up her hands instinctively to her own ears, as if to pluck the ear-rings out of them, as the sicilian women of the lower classes do, deliberately, sternly, before they begin to fight their rivals, women who have taken their lovers or their husbands from them. ah, if she were only in the lipari isles she would speak with teodora amalfi, speak with her till the blood flowed! she set her teeth, and her face looked almost old in the sunshine. "coraggio, lucrezia!" laughed gaspare. "he will come back some day when--when he has sold enough to the people of the isles! but where is the padrone, dio mio? signorino! signorino!" maurice appeared at the sitting-room door and came slowly down the steps. gaspare stared. "eccomi!" "why, signorino, what is the matter? what has happened?" "happened? nothing!" "then why do you look so black?" "i! it's the shadow of the awning on my face." he smiled. he kept on smiling. "i say, gasparino, how splendid the donkeys are! and you, too!" he took hold of the boy by the shoulders and turned him round. "per bacco! we shall make a fine show at the fair! i've got money, lot's of money, to spend!" he showed his portfolio, full of dirty notes. gaspare's eyes began to sparkle. "wait, signorino!" he lifted his hands to maurice's striped flannel jacket and thrust two large bunches of flowers and ferns into the two button-holes, to right and left. "bravo! now, then." "no, no, signorino! wait!" "more flowers! but where--what, over my ears, too!" he began to laugh. "but--" "si, signore, si! to-day you must be a real siciliano!" "va bene!" he bent down his head to be decorated. "pouf! they tickle! there, then! now let's be off!" he leaped onto tito's back. gaspare sprang up on the other donkey. "addio, lucrezia!" maurice turned to her. "don't leave the house to-day." "no, signore," said poor lucrezia, in a deplorable voice. "mind, now! don't go down to marechiaro this afternoon." there was an odd sound, almost of pleading, in his voice. "no, signore." "i trust you to be here--remember." "va bene, signorino!" "ah--a--a--ah!" shouted gaspare. they were off. "signorino," said gaspare, presently, when they were in the shadow of the ravine, "why did you say all that to lucrezia?" "all what?" "all that about not leaving the house to-day?" "oh--why--it's better to have some one there." "si, signore. but why to-day specially?" "i don't know. there's no particular reason." "i thought there was." "no, of course not. how could there be?" "non lo so." "if lucrezia goes down to the village they'll be filling her ears with that stupid gossip about sebastiano and that girl--teodora." "it was for lucrezia then, signorino?" "yes, for lucrezia. she's miserable enough already. i don't want her to be a spectacle when--when the signora returns." "i wonder when she is coming? i wonder why she has not written all these days?" "oh, she'll soon come. we shall--we shall very soon have her here with us." he tried to speak naturally, but found the effort difficult, knowing what he knew, that in the evening of that day hermione would arrive at the house of the priest and find no preparations made for her return, no one to welcome her but lucrezia--if, indeed, lucrezia obeyed his orders and refrained from descending to the village on the chance of hearing some fresh news of her fickle lover. and artois! there were no rooms engaged for him at the hã´tel regina margherita. there were no flowers, no books. maurice tingled--his whole body tingled for a moment--and he felt like a man guilty of some mean crime and arraigned before all the world. then he struck tito with his switch, and began to gallop down the steep path at a breakneck pace, sticking his feet far out upon either side. he would forget. he would put away these thoughts that were tormenting him. he would enjoy this day of pleasure for which he had sacrificed so much, for which he had trampled down his self-respect in the dust. when they reached the road by isola bella, salvatore's boat was just coming round the point, vigorously propelled by the fisherman's strong arms over the radiant sea. it was a magnificent day, very hot but not sultry, free from sirocco. the sky was deep blue, a passionate, exciting blue that seemed vocal, as if it were saying thrilling things to the world that lay beneath it. the waveless sea was purple, a sea, indeed, of legend, a wine-dark, lustrous, silken sea. into it, just here along this magic coast, was surely gathered all the wonder of color of all the southern seas. they must be blanched to make this marvel of glory, this immense jewel of god. and the lemon groves were thick along the sea. and the orange-trees stood in their decorative squadrons drinking in the rays of the sun with an ecstatic submission. and etna, snowless etna, rose to heaven out of this morning world, with its base in the purple glory and its feather of smoke in the calling blue, child of the sea-god and of the god that looks down from the height, majestically calm in the riot of splendor that set the feet of june dancing in a great tarantella. as maurice saw the wonder of sea and sky, the boat coming in over the sea, with maddalena in the stern holding a bouquet of flowers, his heart leaped up and he forgot for a moment the shadow in himself, the shadow of his own unworthiness. he sprang off the donkey. "i'll go down to meet them!" he cried. "catch hold of tito, gaspare!" the railway line ran along the sea, between road and beach. he had to cross it. in doing so one of his feet struck the metal rail, which gave out a dry sound. he looked down, suddenly recalled to a reality other than the splendor of the morning, the rapture of this careless festa day. and again he was conscious of the shadow. along this line, in a few hours, would come the train bearing hermione and artois. hermione would be at the window, eagerly looking out, full of happy anticipation, leaning to catch the first sight of his face, to receive and return his smile of welcome. what would her face be like when--? but salvatore was hailing him from the sea. maddalena was waving her hand. the thing was done. the die was cast. he had chosen his lot. fiercely he put away from him the thought of hermione, lifted his voice in an answering hail, his hand in a salutation which he tried to make carelessly joyous. the boat glided in between the flat rocks. and then--then he was able to forget. for maddalena's long eyes were looking into his, with the joyousness of a child's, and yet with something of the expectation of a woman's, too. and her brown face was alive with a new and delicious self-consciousness, asking him to praise her for the surprise she had prepared, in his honor surely, specially for him, and not for her comrades and the public of the fair. "maddalena!" he exclaimed. he put out his hands to help her out. she stood on the gunwale of the boat and jumped lightly down, with a little laugh, onto the beach. "maddalena! per dio! ma che bellezza!" she laughed again, and stood there on the stones before him smiling and watching him, with her head a little on one side, and the hand that held the tight bouquet of roses and ferns, round as a ring and red as dawn, up to her lips, as if a sudden impulse prompted her now to conceal something of her pleasure. "le piace?" it came to him softly over the roses. maurice said nothing, but took her hand and looked at her. salvatore was fastening up the boat and putting the oars into their places, and getting his jacket and hat. what a transformation it was, making an almost new maddalena! this festival dress was really quite wonderful. he felt inclined to touch it here and there, to turn maddalena round for new aspects, as a child turns round a marvellous doll. maddalena wore a tudischina, a bodice of blue cotton velvet, ornamented with yellow silken fringes, and opening over the breast to show a section of snowy white edged with little buttons of sparkling steel. her petticoat--the sinava--was of pea-green silk and thread, and was partially covered by an apron, a real coquette of an apron, white and green, with little pockets and puckers, and a green rosette where the strings met round the supple waist. her sleeves were of white muslin, bound with yellow silk ribbons, and her stockings were blue, the color of the bodice. on her feet were shining shoes of black leather, neatly tied with small, black ribbons, and over her shoulders was a lovely shawl of blue and white with a pattern of flowers. she wore nothing on her head, but in her ears were heavy ear-rings, and round her neck was a thin silver chain with bright-blue stones threaded on it here and there. "maddalena!" maurice said, at last. "you are a queen to-day!" he stopped, then he added: "no, you are a siren to-day, the siren i once fancied you might be." "a siren, signorino? what is that?" "an enchantress of the sea with a voice that makes men--that makes men feel they cannot go, they cannot leave it." maddalena lifted the roses a little higher to hide her face, but maurice saw that her eyes were still smiling, and it seemed to him that she looked even more radiantly happy than when she had taken his hands to spring down to the beach. now salvatore came up in his glory of a dark-blue suit, with a gay shirt of pink-and-white striped cotton, fastened at the throat with long, pink strings that had tasselled ends, a scarlet bow-tie with a brass anchor and the italian flag thrust through it, yellow shoes, and a black hat, placed well over the left ear. upon the forefinger of his left hand he displayed a thick snake-ring of tarnished metal, and he had a large, overblown rose in his button-hole. his mustaches had been carefully waxed, his hair cropped, and his hawklike, subtle, and yet violent face well washed for the great occasion. with bold familiarity he seized maurice's hand. "buon giorno, signore. come sta lei?" "benissimo." "and maddalena, signore? what do you think of maddalena?" he looked at his girl with a certain pride, and then back at maurice searchingly. "maddalena is beautiful to-day," maurice answered, quickly. he did not want to discuss her with her father, whom he longed to be rid of, whom he meant to get rid of if possible at the fair. surely it would be easy to give him the slip there. he would be drinking with his companions, other fishermen and contadini, or playing cards, or--yes, that was an idea! "salvatore!" maurice exclaimed, catching hold of the fisherman's arm. "signore?" "there'll be donkeys at the fair, eh?" "donkeys--per dio! why, last year there were over sixty, and--" "and isn't there a donkey auction sometimes, towards the end of the day, when they go cheap?" "si, signore! si, signore!" the fisherman's greedy little eyes were fixed on maurice with keen interrogation. "don't let us forget that," maurice said, returning his gaze. "you're a good judge of a donkey?" salvatore laughed. "per bacco! there won't be a man at san felice that can beat me at that!" "then perhaps you can do something for me. perhaps you can buy me a donkey. didn't i speak of it before?" "si, signore. for the signora to ride when she comes back from africa?" he smiled. "for a lady to ride," maurice answered, looking at maddalena. salvatore made a clicking noise with his tongue, a noise that suggested eating. then he spat vigorously and took from his jacket-pocket a long, black cigar. this was evidently going to be a great day for him. "avanti, signorino! avanti!" gaspare was shouting and waving his hat frantically from the road. "come along, maddalena!" they left the beach and climbed the bank, maddalena walking carefully in the shining shoes, and holding her green skirt well away from the bushes with both hands. maurice hurried across the railway line without looking at it. he wanted to forget it. he was determined to forget it, and what it was bringing to cattaro that afternoon. they reached the group of four donkeys which were standing patiently in the dusty white road. "mamma mia!" ejaculated gaspare, as maddalena came full into his sight. "madre mia! but you are like a burgisa dressed for the wedding-day, donna maddalena!" he wagged his head at her till the big roses above his ears shook like flowers in a wind. "ora basta, ch' ã¨ tardu: jamu ad accumpagnari li zitti!" he continued, pronouncing the time-honored sentence which, at a rustic wedding, gives the signal to the musicians to stop their playing, and to the assembled company the hint that the moment has come to escort the bride to the new home which her bridegroom has prepared for her. maddalena laughed and blushed all over her face, and salvatore shouted out a verse of a marriage song in high favor at sicilian weddings: "e cu saluti a li zituzzi novi! chi bellu 'nguaggiamentu furtunatu! firma la menti, custanti lu cori, e si cci arriva a lu jornu biatu--" meanwhile, maurice helped maddalena onto her donkey, and paid and dismissed the boy who had brought it and salvatore's beast from marechiaro. then he took out his watch. "a quarter-past ten," he said. "off we go! now, gaspare--uno! due! tre!" they leaped simultaneously onto their donkeys, salvatore clambered up on his, and the little cavalcade started off on the long, white road that ran close along the sea, maddalena and maurice in the van, salvatore and gaspare behind. just at first they all kept close together, but sicilians are very careful of their festa clothes, and soon salvatore and gaspare dropped farther behind to avoid the clouds of dust stirred up by the tripping feet of the donkeys in front. their chattering voices died away, and when maurice looked back he saw them at a distance which rendered his privacy with maddalena more complete than anything he had dared to hope for so early in the day. yet now that they were thus alone he felt as if he had nothing to say to her. he did not feel exactly constrained, but it seemed to him that, to-day, he could not talk the familiar commonplaces to her, or pay her obvious compliments. they might, they would please her, but something in himself would resent them. this was to be such a great day. he had wanted it with such ardor, he had been so afraid of missing it, he had gained it at the cost of so much self-respect, that it ought to be extraordinary from dawn to dark, and he and maddalena to be unusual, intense--something, at least, more eager, more happy, more intimate than usual in it. and then, too, as he looked at her riding along by the sea, with her young head held rather high and a smile of innocent pride in her eyes, he remembered that this day was their good-bye. maddalena did not know that. probably she did not think about the future. but he knew it. they might meet again. they would doubtless meet again. but it would all be different. he would be a serious married man, who could no longer frolic as if he were still a boy like gaspare. this was the last day of his intimate friendship with maddalena. that seemed to him very strange. he had become accustomed to her society, to her naã¯ve curiosity, her girlish, simple gayety, so accustomed to it all that he could not imagine life without it, could scarcely realize what life had been before he knew maddalena. it seemed to him that he must have always known maddalena. and she--what did she feel about that? "maddalena!" he said. "si, signore." she turned her head and glanced at him, smiling, as if she were sure of hearing something pleasant. to-day, in her pretty festa dress, she looked intended for happiness. everything about her conveyed the suggestion that she was expectant of joy. the expression in her eyes was a summons to the world to be very kind and good to her, to give her only pleasant things, things that could not harm her. "maddalena, do you feel as if you had known me long?" she nodded her head. "si, signore." "how long?" she spread out one hand with the fingers held apart. "oh, signore--but always! i feel as if i had known you always." "and yet it's only a few days." "si, signore." she acquiesced calmly. the problem did not seem to puzzle her, the problem of this feeling so ill-founded. it was so. very well, then--so it was. "and," he went on, "do you feel as if you would always know me?" "si, signore. of course." "but i shall go away, i am going away." for a moment her face clouded. but the influence of joy was very strong upon her to-day, and the cloud passed. "but you will come back, signorino. you will always come back." "how do you know that?" a pretty slyness crept into her face, showed in the curve of the young lips, in the expression of the young eyes. "because you like to be here, because you like the siciliani. isn't it true?" "yes," he said, almost passionately. "it's true! ah, maddalena--" but at this moment a group of people from marechiaro suddenly appeared upon the road beside them, having descended from the village by a mountain-path. there were exclamations, salutations. maddalena's gown was carefully examined by the women of the party. the men exchanged compliments with maurice. then salvatore and gaspare, seeing friends, came galloping up, shouting, in a cloud of dust. a cavalcade was formed, and henceforth maurice was unable to exchange any more confidences with maddalena. he felt vexed at first, but the boisterous merriment of all these people, their glowing anticipation of pleasure, soon infected him. his heart was lightened of its burden and the spirit of the careless boy awoke in him. he would take no thought for the morrow, he would be able to take no thought so long as he was in this jocund company. as they trotted forward in a white mist along the shining sea maurice was one of the gayest among them. no laugh rang out more frequently than his, no voice chatted more vivaciously. the conscious effort which at first he had to make seemed to give him an impetus, to send him onward with a rush so that he outdistanced his companions. had any one observed him closely during that ride to the fair he might well have thought that here was a nature given over to happiness, a nature that was utterly sunny in the sun. they passed through the town of cattaro, where was the station for marechiaro. for a moment maurice felt a pang of self-contempt, and of something more, of something that was tender, pitiful even, as he thought of hermione's expectation disappointed. but it died away, or he thrust it away. the long street was full of people, either preparing to start for the fair themselves or standing at their doors to watch their friends start. donkeys were being saddled and decorated with flowers. tall, painted carts were being harnessed to mules. visions of men being lathered and shaved, of women having their hair dressed or their hair searched, sicilian fashion, of youths trying to curl upward scarcely born mustaches, of children being hastily attired in clothes which made them wriggle and squint, came to the eyes from houses in which privacy was not so much scorned as unthought of, utterly unknown. turkeys strolled in and out among the toilet-makers. pigs accompanied their mistresses from doorway to doorway as dogs accompany the women of other countries. and the cavalcade of the people of marechiaro was hailed from all sides with pleasantries and promises to meet at the fair, with broad jokes or respectful salutations. many a "benedicite!" or "c'ci basu li mano!" greeted maurice. many a berretto was lifted from heads that he had never seen to his knowledge before. he was made to feel by all that he was among friends, and as he returned the smiles and salutations he remembered the saying hermione had repeated: "every sicilian, even if he wears a long cap and sleeps in a hut with the pigs, is a gentleman," and he thought it very true. it seemed as if they would never get away from the street. at every moment they halted. one man begged them to wait a moment till his donkey was saddled, so that he might join them. another, a wine-shop keeper, insisted on maurice's testing his moscato, and thereupon maurice felt obliged to order glasses all round, to the great delight of gaspare, who always felt himself to be glorified by the generosity of his padrone, and who promptly took the proceedings in charge, measured out the wine in appropriate quantities, handed it about, and constituted himself master of the ceremony. already, at eleven o'clock, brindisi were invented, and maurice was called upon to "drop into poetry." then maddalena caught sight of some girl friends, and must needs show them all her finery. for this purpose she solemnly dismounted from her donkey to be closely examined on the pavement, turned about, shook forth her pea-green skirt, took off her chain for more minute inspection, and measured the silken fringes of her shawl in order to compare them with other shawls which were hastily brought out from a house near-by. but gaspare, always a little ruthless with women, soon tired of such vanities. "avanti! avanti!" he shouted. "dio mio! le donne sono pazze! andiamo! andiamo!" he hustled maddalena, who yielded, blushing and laughing, to his importunities, and at last they were really off again, and drowned in a sea of odor as they passed some buildings where lemons were being packed to be shipped away from sicily. this smell seemed to maurice to be the very breath of the island. he drank it in eagerly. lemons, lemons, and the sun! oranges, lemons, yellow flowers under the lemons, and the sun! always yellow, pale yellow, gold yellow, red-gold yellow, and white, and silver-white, the white of the roads, the silver-white of dusty olive leaves, and green, the dark, lustrous, polished green of orange leaves, and purple and blue, the purple of sea, the blue of sky. what a riot of talk it was, and what a riot of color! it made maurice feel almost drunk. it was heady, this island of the south--heady in the summer-time. it had a powerful influence, an influence that was surely an excuse for much. ah, the stay-at-homes, who condemned the far-off passions and violences of men! what did they know of the various truths of the world? how should one in clapham judge one at the fair of san felice? avanti! avanti! avanti along the blinding white road by the sea, to the village on which great etna looked down, not harshly for all its majesty. nature understood. and god, who made nature, who was behind nature--did not he understand? there is forgiveness surely in great hearts, though the small hearts have no space to hold it. something like this maurice thought for a moment, ere a large thoughtlessness swept over him, bred of the sun and the odors, the movement, the cries and laughter of his companions, the gay gown and the happy glances of maddalena, even of the white dust that whirled up from the feet of the cantering donkeys. and so, ever laughing, ever joking, gayly, almost tumultuously, they rushed upon the fair. san felice is a large village in the plain at the foot of etna. it lies near the sea between catania and messina, but beyond the black and forbidding lava land. its patron saint, protettore di san felice, is sant' onofrio, and this was his festival. in the large, old church in the square, which was the centre of the life of the fiera, his image, smothered in paint, sumptuously decorated with red and gold and bunches of artificial flowers, was exposed under a canopy with pillars; and thin squares of paper reproducing its formal charms--the oval face with large eyes and small, straight nose, the ample forehead, crowned with hair that was brought down to a point in the centre, the undulating, divided beard descending upon the breast, one hand holding a book, the other upraised in a blessing--were sold for a soldo to all who would buy them. the first thing the party from isola bella and from marechiaro did, when they had stabled their donkeys at don leontini's, in the via bocca di leone, was to pay the visit of etiquette to sant' onofrio. their laughter was stilled at the church doorway, through which women and men draped in shawls, lads and little children, were coming and going. their faces assumed expressions of superstitious reverence and devotion. and, going up one by one to the large image of the saint, they contemplated it with awe, touched its hand or the hem of its robe, made the sign of the cross, and retreated, feeling that they were blessed for the day. maddalena approached the saint with maurice and gaspare. she and gaspare touched the hand that held the book, made the sign of the cross, then stared at maurice to see why he did nothing. he quickly followed their example. maddalena, who was pulling some of the roses from her tight bouquet, whispered to him: "sant' onofrio will bring us good-fortune." "davvero?" he whispered back. "si! si!" said gaspare, nodding his head. while maddalena laid her flowers upon the lap of the saint, gaspare bought from a boy three sheets of paper containing sant' onofrio's reproduction, and three more showing the effigies of san filadelfo, sant' alfio, and san cirino. "ecco, donna maddalena! ecco, signorino!" he distributed his purchases, keeping two for himself. these last he very carefully and solemnly folded up and bestowed in the inner pocket of his jacket, which contained a leather portfolio, given to him by maurice to carry his money in. "ecco!" he said, once more, as he buttoned the flap of the pocket as a precaution against thieves. and with that final exclamation he dismissed all serious thoughts. "mangiamo, signorino!" he said. "ora basta!" and they went forth into the sunshine. salvatore was talking to some fishermen from catania upon the steps. they cast curious glances at maurice as he came out with maddalena, and, when salvatore went off with his daughter and the forestiere, they laughed among themselves and exchanged some remarks that were evidently merry. but maurice did not heed them. he was not a self-conscious man. and maddalena was far too happy to suppose that any one could be saying nasty things about her. "where are we going to eat?" asked maurice. "this way, this way, signorino!" replied gaspare, elbowing a passage through the crowd. "you must follow me. i know where to go. i have many friends here." the truth of this statement was speedily made manifest. almost every third person they met saluted gaspare, some kissing him upon both cheeks, others grasping his hand, others taking him familiarly by the arm. among the last was a tall boy with jet-black, curly hair and a long, pale face, whom gaspare promptly presented to his padrone, by the name of amedeo buccini. "amedeo is a parrucchiere, signorino," he said, "and my compare, and the best dancer in san felice. may he eat with us?" "of course." gaspare informed amedeo, who took off his hat, held it in his hand, and smiled all over his face with pleasure. "yes, gaspare is my compare, signore," he affirmed. "compare, compare, compareddu"--he glanced at gaspare, who joined in with him: "compare, compare, compareddu, io ti voglio molto bene, mangiamo sempre insieme- mangiamo carne e riso e andiamo in paradiso!" "carne e riso--si!" cried maurice, laughing. "but paradise! must you go to paradise directly afterwards, before the dancing and before the procession and before the fireworks?" "no, signore," said gaspare. "when we are very old, when we cannot dance any more--non ã¨ vero, amedeo?--then we will go to paradiso." "yes," agreed the tall boy, quite seriously, "then we will go to paradiso." "and i, too," said maurice; "and maddalena, but not till then." what a long time away that would be! "here is the ristorante!" they had reached a long room with doors open onto the square, opposite to the rows of booths which were set up under the shadow of the church. outside of it were many small tables and numbers of chairs on which people were sitting, contemplating the movement of the crowd of buyers and sellers, smoking, drinking syrups, gazzosa, and eating ices and flat biscuits. gaspare guided them through the throng to a long table set on a sanded floor. "ecco, signorino!" he installed maurice at the top of the table. "and you sit here, donna maddalena." he placed her at maurice's right hand, and was going to sit down himself on the left, when salvatore roughly pushed in before him, seized the chair, sat in it, and leaned his arms on the table with a loud laugh that sounded defiant. an ugly look came into gaspare's face. "macchã¨--" he began, angrily. but maurice silenced him with a quick look. "gaspare, you come here, by maddalena!" "ma--" "come along, gasparino, and tell us what we are to have. you must order everything. where's the cameriere? cameriere! cameriere!" he struck on his glass with a fork. a waiter came running. "don gaspare will order for us all," said maurice to him, pointing to gaspare. his diplomacy was successful. gaspare's face cleared, and in a moment he was immersed in an eager colloquy with the waiter, another friend of his from marechiaro. amedeo buccini took a place by gaspare, and all those from marechiaro, who evidently considered that they belonged to the inglese's party for the day, arranged themselves as they pleased and waited anxiously for the coming of the macaroni. a certain formality now reigned over the assembly. the movement of the road in the outside world by the sea had stirred the blood, had loosened tongues and quickened spirits. but a meal in a restaurant, with a rich english signore presiding at the head of the table, was an unaccustomed ceremony. dark faces that had been lit up with laughter now looked almost ludicrously discreet. brown hands which had been in constant activity, talking as plainly, and more expressively, than voices, now lay limply upon the white cloth or were placed upon knees motionless as the knees of statues. and all eyes were turned towards the giver of the feast, mutely demanding of him a signal of conduct to guide his inquiring guests. but maurice, too, felt for the moment tongue-tied. he was very sensitive to influences, and his present position, between maddalena and her father, created within him a certain confusion of feelings, an odd sensation of being between two conflicting elements. he was conscious of affection and of enmity, both close to him, both strong, the one ready to show itself, the other determined to remain in hiding. he glanced at salvatore, and met the fisherman's keen gaze. behind the instant smile in the glittering eyes he divined, rather than saw, the shadow of his hatred. and for a moment he wondered. why should salvatore hate him? it was reasonable to hate a man for a wrong done, even for a wrong deliberately contemplated with intention--the intention of committing it. but he had done no real wrong to salvatore. nor had he any evil intention with regard to him or his. so far he had only brought pleasure into their lives, his life and maddalena's--pleasure and money. if there had been any secret pain engendered by their mutual intercourse it was his. and this day was the last of their intimacy, though salvatore and maddalena did not know it. suddenly a desire, an almost weak desire, came to him to banish salvatore's distrust of him, a distrust which he was more conscious of at this moment than ever before. he did not know of the muttered comments of the fishermen from catania as he and maddalena passed down the steps of the church of sant' onofrio. but salvatore's sharp ears had caught them and the laughter that followed them, and his hot blood was on fire. the words, the laughter had touched his sensitive sicilian pride--the pride of the man who means never to be banished from the piazza--as a knife touches a raw wound. and as maurice had set a limit to his sinning--his insincerity to hermione, his betrayal of her complete trust in him, nothing more--so salvatore now, while he sat at meat with the inglese, mentally put a limit to his own complaisance, a complaisance which had been born of his intense avarice. to-day he would get all he could out of the inglese--money, food, wine, a donkey--who knew what? and then--good-bye to soft speeches. those fishermen, his friends, his comrades, his world, in fact, should have their mouths shut once for all. he knew how to look after his girl, and they should know that he knew, they and all marechiaro, and all san felice, and all cattaro. his limit, like maurice's, was that day of the fair, and it was nearly reached. for the hours were hurrying towards the night and farewells. moved by his abrupt desire to stand well with everybody during this last festa, maurice began to speak to salvatore of the donkey auction. when would it begin? "chi lo sa?" no one knew. in sicily all feasts are movable. even mass may begin an hour too late or an hour too early. one thought the donkey auction would start at fourteen, another at sixteen o'clock. gaspare was imperiously certain, over the macaroni, which had now made its appearance, that the hour was seventeen. there were to be other auctions, auctions of wonderful things. a clock that played music--the "marcia reale" and the "tre colori"--was to be put up; suits of clothes, too; boots, hats, a chair that rocked like a boat on the sea, a revolver ornamented with ivory. already--no one knew when, for no one had missed him--he had been to view these treasures. as he spoke of them tongues were loosed and eyes shone with excitement. money was in the air. prices were passionately discussed, values debated. all down the table went the words "soldi," "lire," "lire sterline," "biglietti da cinque," "biglietti da dieci." salvatore's hatred died away, suffocated for the moment under the weight of his avarice. a donkey--yes, he meant to get a donkey with the stranger's money. but why stop there? why not have the clock and the rocking-chair and the revolver? his sharpness of the sicilian, a sharpness almost as keen and sure as that of the arab, divined the intensity, the recklessness alive in the englishman to-day, bred of that limit, "my last day of the careless life," to which his own limit was twin-brother, but of which he knew nothing. and as maurice was intense to-day, because there were so few hours left to him for intensity, so was salvatore intense in a different way, but for a similar reason. they were walking in step without being aware of it. or were they not rather racing neck to neck, like passionate opponents? there was little time. then they must use what there was to the full. they must not let one single moment find them lazy, indifferent. [illustration: "'i am content without anything, signorino,' she said"] under the cover of the flood of talk maurice turned to maddalena. she was taking no part in it, but was eating her macaroni gently, as if it were a new and wonderful food. so maurice thought as he looked at her. to-day there was something strange, almost pathetic, to him in maddalena, a softness, an innocent refinement that made him imagine her in another life than hers, and with other companions, in a life as free but less hard, with companions as natural but less ruthless to women. "maddalena," he said to her. "they all want to buy things at the auction." "si, signore." "and you?" "i, signorino?" "yes, don't you want to buy something?" he was testing her, testing her memory. she looked at him above her fork, from which the macaroni streamed down. "i am content without anything, signorino," she said. "without the blue dress and the ear-rings, longer than that?" he measured imaginary ear-rings in the air. "have you forgotten, maddalena?" she blushed and bent over her plate. she had not forgotten. all the day since she rose at dawn she had been thinking of maurice's old promise. but she did not know that he remembered it, and his remembrance of it came to her now as a lovely surprise. he bent his head down nearer to her. "when they are all at the auction, we will go to buy the blue dress and the ear-rings," he almost whispered. "we will go by ourselves. shall we?" "si, signore." her voice was very small and her cheeks still held their flush. she glanced, with eyes that were unusually conscious, to right and left of her, to see if the neighbors had noticed their colloquy. and that look of consciousness made maurice suddenly understand that this limit which he had put to his sinning--so he had called it with a sort of angry mental sincerity, summoned, perhaps, to match the tremendous sincerity of his wife which he was meeting with a lie to-day--his sinning against hermione was also a limit to something else. had he not sinned against maddalena, sinned when he had kissed her, when he had shown her that he delighted to be with her? was he not sinning now when he promised to buy for her the most beautiful things of the fair? for a moment he thought to himself that his fault against maddalena was more grave, more unforgivable than his fault against hermione. but then a sudden anger that was like a storm, against his own condemnation of himself, swept through him. he had come out to-day to be recklessly happy, and here he was giving himself up to gloom, to absurd self-torture. where was his natural careless temperament? to-day his soul was full of shadows, like the soul of a man going to meet a doom. "where's the wine?" he called to gaspare. "wine, cameriere, wine!" "you must not drink wine with the pasta, signorino!" cried gaspare. "only afterwards, with the vitello." "have you ordered vitello? capital! but i've finished my pasta and i'm thirsty. well, what do you want to buy at the auction, gaspare, and you, amedeo, and you salvatore?" he plunged into the talk and made salvatore show his keen desires, encouraging and playing with his avarice, now holding it off for a moment, then coaxing it as one coaxes an animal, stroking it, tempting it to a forward movement. the wine went round now, for the vitello was on the table, and the talk grew more noisy, the laughter louder. outside, too, the movement and the tumult of the fair were increasing. cries of men selling their wares rose up, the hard melodies of a piano-organ, and a strange and ecclesiastical chant sung by three voices that, repeated again and again, at last attracted maurice's attention. "what's that?" he asked of gaspare. "are those priests chanting?" "priests! no, signore. those are the romani." "romans here! what are they doing?" "they have a cart decorated with flags, signorino, and they are selling lemon-water and ices. all the people say that they are romans and that is how they sing in rome." the long and lugubrious chant of the ice-venders rose up again, strident and melancholy as a song chanted over a corpse. "it's funny to sing like that to sell ices," maurice said. "it sounds like men at a funeral." "oh, they are very good ices, signorino. the romans make splendid ices." turkey followed the vitello. maurice's guests were now completely at ease and perfectly happy. the consciousness that all this was going to be paid for, that they would not have to put their hands in their pockets for a soldo, warmed their hearts as the wine warmed their bodies. amedeo's long, white face was becoming radiant, and even salvatore softened towards the inglese. a sort of respect, almost furtive, came to him for the wealth that could carelessly entertain this crowd of people, that could buy clocks, chairs, donkeys at pleasure, and scarcely know that soldi were gone, scarcely miss them. as he attacked his share of the turkey vigorously, picking up the bones with his fingers and tearing the flesh away with his white teeth, he tried to realize what such wealth must mean to the possessor of it, an effort continually made by the sharp-witted, very poor man. and this wealth--for the moment some of it was at his command! to ask to-day would be to have. instinctively he knew that, and felt like one with money in the bank. if only it might be so to-morrow and for many days! he began to regret the limit, almost to forget the sound of the laughter of the catania fishermen upon the steps of the church of sant' onofrio. his pride was going to sleep, and his avarice was opening its eyes wider. when the meal was over they went out onto the pavement to take coffee in the open air. the throng was much greater than it had been when they entered, for people were continually arriving from the more distant villages, and two trains had come in from messina and catania. it was difficult to find a table. indeed, it might have been impossible had not gaspare ruthlessly dislodged a party of acquaintances who were comfortably established around one in a prominent position. "i must have a table for my padrone," he said. "go along with you!" and they meekly went, smiling, and without ill-will--indeed, almost as if they had received a compliment. "but, gaspare," began maurice, "i can't--" "here is a chair for you, signorino. take it quickly." "at any rate, let us offer them something." "much better spare your soldi now, signorino, and buy something at the auction. that clock plays the 'tre colori' just like a band." "buy it. here is some money." he thrust some notes into the boy's ready hand. "grazie, signorino. ecco la musica!" in the distance there rose the blare of a processional march from "aã¯da," and round the corner of the via di polifemo came a throng of men and boys in dark uniforms, with epaulets and cocked hats with flying plumes, blowing with all their might into wind instruments of enormous size. "that is the musica of the cittã , signore," explained amedeo. "afterwards there will be the musica mascagni and the musica leoncavallo." "mamma mia! and will they all play together?" "no, signore. they have quarrelled. at pasqua we had no music, and the archpriest was hooted by all in the piazza." "why?" "non lo so. i think he had forbidden the musica mascagni to play at madre lucia's funeral, and the musica mascagni went to fight with the musica della cittã . to-day they will all play, because it is the festa of the santo patrono, but even for him they will not play together." the bandsmen had now taken their places upon a wooden dais exactly opposite to the restaurant, and were indulging in a military rendering of "celeste aã¯da," which struck most of the sicilians at the small tables to a reverent silence. maddalena's eyes had become almost round with pleasure, gaspare was singing the air frankly with amedeo, and even salvatore seemed soothed and humanized, as he sipped his coffee, puffed at a thin cigar, and eyed the women who were slowly sauntering up and down to show their finery. at the windows of most of the neighboring houses appeared parties of dignified gazers, important personages of the town, who owned small balconies commanding the piazza, and who now stepped forth upon these coigns of vantage, and leaned upon the rails that they might see and be seen by the less favored ones below. amedeo and gaspare began to name these potentates. the stout man with a gray mustache, white trousers, and a plaid shawl over his shoulders was signor torloni, the syndic of san felice. the tall, angry-looking gentleman, with bulging, black eyes and wrinkled cheeks, was signor carata, the avvocato; and the lady in black and a yellow shawl was his wife, who was the daughter of the syndic. close by was signorina maria sacchetti, the beauty of san felice, already more than plump, but with a good complexion, and hair so thick that it stood out from her satisfied face as if it were trained over a trellis. she wore white, and long, thread gloves which went above her elbows. maddalena regarded her with awe when amedeo mentioned a rumor that she was going to be "promised" to dr. marinelli, who was to be seen at her side, wearing a gibus hat and curling a pair of gigantic black mustaches. maurice listened to the music and the chatter which, silenced by the arrival of the music, had now burst forth again, with rather indifferent ears. he wanted to get away somewhere and to be alone with maddalena. the day was passing on. soon night would be falling. the fair would be at an end. then would come the ride back, and then----but he did not care to look forward into that future. he had not done so yet. he would not do so now. it would be better, when the time came, to rush upon it blindly. preparation, forethought, would only render him unnatural. and he must seem natural, utterly natural, in his insincere surprise, in his insincere regret. "pay for the coffee, gaspare," he said, giving the boy some money. "now i want to walk about and see everything. where are the donkeys?" he glanced at salvatore. "oh, signore," said gaspare, "they are outside the town in the watercourse that runs under the bridge--you know, that broke down this spring where the line is? they have only just finished mending it." "i remember your telling me." "and you were so glad the signora was travelling the other way." "yes, yes." he spoke hastily. salvatore was on his feet. "what hour have we?" maurice looked at his watch. "half-past two already! i say, salvatore, you mustn't forget the donkeys." salvatore came close up to him. "signore," he began, in a low voice, "what do you wish me to do?" "bid for a good donkey." "si, signore." "for the best donkey they put up for sale." salvatore began to look passionately eager. "si, signore. and if i get it?" "come to me and i will give you the money to pay." "si, signore. how high shall i go?" gaspare was listening intently, with a hard face and sullen eyes. his whole body seemed to be disapproving what maurice was doing. but he said nothing. perhaps he felt that to-day it would be useless to try to govern the actions of his padrone. "how high? well"--maurice felt that, before gaspare, he must put a limit to his price, though he did not care what it was--"say a hundred. here, i'll give it you now." he put his hand into his pocket and drew out his portfolio. "there's the hundred." salvatore took it eagerly, spread it over his hand, stared at it, then folded it with fingers that seemed for the moment almost delicate, and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. he meant to go presently and show it to the fishermen of catania, who had laughed upon the steps of the church, and explain matters to them a little. they thought him a fool. well, he would soon make them understand who was the fool. "grazie, signore!" he said it through his teeth. maurice turned to gaspare. he felt the boy's stern disapproval of what he had done, and wanted, if possible, to make amends. "gaspare," he said, "here is a hundred lire for you. i want you to go to the auction and to bid for anything you think worth having. buy something for your mother and father, for the house, some nice things!" "grazie, signore." he took the note, but without alacrity, and his face was still lowering. "and you, signore?" he asked. "i?" "yes. are you not coming with me to the auction? it will be better for you to be there to choose the things." for an instant maurice felt irritated. was he never to be allowed a moment alone with maddalena? "oh, but i'm no good at----" he began. then he stopped. to-day he must be birbante--on his guard. once the auction was in full swing--so he thought--salvatore and gaspare would be as they were when they gambled beside the sea. they would forget everything. it would be easy to escape. but till that moment came he must be cautious. "of course i'll come," he exclaimed, heartily. "but you must do the bidding, gaspare." the boy looked less sullen. "va bene, signorino. i shall know best what the things are worth. and salvatore"--he glanced viciously at the fisherman--"can go to the donkeys. i have seen them. they are poor donkeys this year." salvatore returned his vicious glance and said something in dialect which maurice did not understand. gaspare's face flushed, and he was about to burst into an angry reply when maurice touched his arm. "come along, gaspare!" as they got up, he whispered: "remember what i said about to-day!" "macchã¨----" maurice closed his fingers tightly on gaspare's arm. "gaspare, you must remember! afterwards what you like, but not to-day. andiamo!" they all got up. the musica della cittã  was now playing a violent jig, undoubtedly composed by bellini, who was considered almost as a child of san felice, having been born close by at catania. "where are the women in the wonderful blue dresses?" maurice asked, as they stepped into the road; "and the ear-rings? i haven't seen them yet." "they will come towards evening, signorino," replied gaspare, "when it gets cool. they do not care to be in the sun dressed like that. it might spoil their things." evidently the promenade of these proud beauties was an important function. "we must not miss them," maurice said to maddalena. she looked conscious. "no, signore." "they will all be here this evening, signore," said amedeo, "for the giuochi di fuoco." "the giuochi di fuoco--they will be at the end?" "si, signore. after the giuochi di fuoco it is all finished." maurice stifled a sigh. "it is all finished," amedeo had said. but for him? for him there would be the ride home up the mountain, the arrival upon the terrace before the house of the priest. at what hour would he be there? it would be very late, perhaps nearly at dawn, in the cold, still, sad hour when vitality is at its lowest. and hermione? would she be sleeping? how would they meet? how would he----? "andiamo! andiamo!" he cried out almost angrily. "which is the way?" "all the auctions are held outside the town, signore," said amedeo. "follow me." proudly he took the lead, glad to be useful and important after the benefits that had been bestowed upon him, and hoping secretly that perhaps the rich inglese would give him something to spend, too, since money was so plentiful for donkeys and clocks. "they are in the fiume, near the sea and the railway line." the railway line! when he heard that maurice had a moment's absurd sensation of reluctance, a desire to hold back, such as comes to a man who is unexpectedly asked to confront some danger. it seemed to him that if he went to the watercourse he might be seen by hermione and artois as they passed by on their way to marechiaro. but of course they were coming from messina! what a fool he was to-day! his recklessness seemed to have deserted him just when he wanted it most. to-day he was not himself. he was a coward. what it was that made him a coward he did not tell himself. "then we can all go together," he said. "salvatore and all." "si, signore." salvatore's voice was close at his ear, and he knew by the sound of it that the fisherman was smiling. "we can all keep together, signore; then we shall be more gay." they threaded their way through the throng. the violent jig of bellini died away gradually, till it was faint in the distance. at the end of the narrow street maurice saw the large bulk of etna. on this clear afternoon it looked quite close, almost as if, when they got out of the street, they would be at its very foot, and would have to begin to climb. maurice remembered his wild longing to carry maddalena off upon the sea, or to some eyrie in the mountains, to be alone with her in some savage place. why not give all these people the slip now--somehow--when the fun of the fair was at its height, mount the donkeys and ride straight for the huge mountain? there were caverns there and desolate lava wastes; there were almost impenetrable beech forests. sebastiano had told him tales of them, those mighty forests that climbed up to green lawns looking down upon the lipari isles. he thought of their silence and their shadows, their beds made of the drifted leaves of the autumn. there, would be no disturbance, no clashing of wills and of interests, but calm and silence and the time to love. he glanced at maddalena. he could hardly help imagining that she knew what he was thinking of. salvatore had dropped behind for a moment. maurice did not know it, but the fisherman had caught sight of his comrades of catania drinking in a roadside wine-shop, and had stopped to show them the note for a hundred francs, and to make them understand the position of affairs between him and the forestiere. gaspare was talking eagerly to amedeo about the things that were likely to be put up for sale at the auction. "maddalena," maurice said to the girl, in a low voice, "can you guess what i am thinking about?" she shook her head. "no, signore." "you see the mountain!" he pointed to the end of the little street. "si, signore." "i am thinking that i should like to go there now with you." "ma, signorino--the fiera!" her voice sounded plaintive with surprise and she glanced at her pea-green skirt. "and this, signorino!"--she touched it carefully with her slim fingers. "how could i go in this?" "when the fair is over, then, and you are in your every-day gown, maddalena, i should like to carry you off to etna." "they say there are briganti there." "brigands--would you be afraid of them with me?" "i don't know, signore. but what should we do there on etna far away from the sea and from marechiaro?" "we should"--he whispered in her ear, seizing this chance almost angrily, almost defiantly, with the thought of salvatore in his mind--"we should love each other, maddalena. it is quiet in the beech forests on etna. no one would come to disturb us, and----" a chuckle close to his ear made him start. salvatore's hand was on his arm, and salvatore's face, looking wily and triumphant, was close to his. "gaspare was wrong, there are splendid donkeys here. i have been talking to some friends who have seen them." there was a tramp of heavy boots on the stones behind them. the fishermen from catania were coming to see the fun. salvatore was in glory. to get all and give nothing was, in his opinion, to accomplish the legitimate aim of a man's life. and his friends, those who had dared to sneer and to whisper, and to imagine that he was selling his daughter for money, now knew the truth and were here to witness his ingenuity. intoxicated by his triumph, he began to show off his power over the inglese for the benefit of the tramplers behind. he talked to maurice with a loud familiarity, kept laying his hand on maurice's arm as they walked, and even called him, with a half-jocose intonation, "compare." maurice sickened at his impertinence, but was obliged to endure it with patience, and this act of patience brought to the birth within him a sudden, fierce longing for revenge, a longing to pay salvatore out for his grossness, his greed, his sly and leering affectation of playing the slave when he was really indicating to his compatriots that he considered himself the master. again maurice heard the call of the sicilian blood within him, but this time it did not call him to the tarantella or to love. it called him to strike a blow. but this blow could only be struck through maddalena, could only be struck if he were traitor to hermione. for a moment he saw everything red. again salvatore called him "compare." suddenly maurice could not bear it. "don't say that!" he said. "don't call me that!" he had almost hissed the words out. salvatore started, and for an instant, as they walked side by side, the two men looked at each other with eyes that told the truth. then salvatore, without asking for any explanation of maurice's sudden outburst, said: "va bene, signore, va bene! i thought for to-day we were all compares. scusi, scusi." there was a bitterness of irony in his voice. as he finished he swept off his soft hat and then replaced it more over his left ear than ever. maurice knew at once that he had done the unforgivable thing, that he had stabbed a sicilian's amour propre in the presence of witnesses of his own blood. the fishermen from catania had heard. he knew it from salvatore's manner, and an odd sensation came to him that salvatore had passed sentence upon him. in silence, and mechanically, he walked on to the end of the street. he felt like one who, having done something swiftly, thoughtlessly, is suddenly confronted with the irreparable, abruptly sees the future spread out before him bathed in a flash of crude light, the future transformed in a second by that act of his as a landscape is transformed by an earthquake or a calm sea by a hurricane. and when the watercourse came in sight, with its crowd, its voices, and its multitude of beasts, he looked at it dully for a moment, hardly realizing it. in sicily the animal fairs are often held in the great watercourses that stretch down from the foot of the mountains to the sea, and that resemble huge highroads in the making, roads upon which the stones have been dumped ready for the steam-roller. in winter there is sometimes a torrent of water rushing through them, but in summer they are dry, and look like wounds gashed in the thickly growing lemon and orange groves. the trampling feet of beasts can do no harm to the stones, and these watercourses in the summer season are of no use to anybody. they are, therefore, often utilized at fair time. cattle, donkeys, mules are driven down to them in squadrons. painted sicilian carts are ranged upon their banks, with sets of harness, and the auctioneers, whose business it is to sell miscellaneous articles, household furniture, stuffs, clocks, ornaments, frequently descend into them, and mount a heap of stones to gain command of their gaping audience of contadini and the shrewder buyers from the towns. the watercourse of san felice was traversed at its mouth by the railway line from catania to messina, which crossed it on a long bridge supported by stone pillars and buttresses, the bridge which, as gaspare had said, had recently collapsed and was now nearly built up again. it was already in use, but the trains were obliged to crawl over it at a snail's pace in order not to shake the unfinished masonry, and men were stationed at each end to signal to the driver whether he was to stop or whether he might venture to go on. beyond the watercourse, upon the side opposite to the town of san felice, was a series of dense lemon groves, gained by a sloping bank of bare, crumbling earth, on the top of which, close to the line and exactly where it came to the bridge, was a group of four old olive-trees with gnarled, twisted trunks. these trees cast a patch of pleasant shade, from which all the bustle of the fair was visible, but at a distance, and as maurice and his party came out of the village on the opposite bank, he whispered to maddalena: "maddalena!" "si, signore?" "let's get away presently, you and i; let's go and sit under those trees. i want to talk to you quietly." "si, signore?" her voice was lower even than his own. "ecco, signore! ecco!" salvatore was pointing to a crowd of donkeys. "signorino! signorino!" "what is it, gaspare?" "that is the man who is going to sell the clock!" the boy's face was intent. his eyes were shining, and his glum manner had vanished, under the influence of a keen excitement. maurice realized that very soon he would be free. once his friends were in the crowd of buyers and sellers everything but the chance of a bargain would be forgotten. his own blood quickened but for a different reason. "what beautiful carts!" he said. "we have no such carts in england!" "if you would like to buy a cart, signore----" began salvatore. but gaspare interrupted with violence. "macchã¨! what is the use of a cart to the signorino? he is going away to england. how can he take a cart with him in the train?" "he can leave the cart with me," said salvatore, with open impudence. "i can take care of it for the signore as well as the donkey." "macchã¨!" cried gaspare, furiously. maurice took him by the arm. "help me down the bank! come on!" he began to run, pulling gaspare with him. when they got to the bottom, he said: "it's all right, gaspare. i'm not going to be such a fool as to buy a cart. now, then, which way are we going?" "signore, do you want to buy a very good donkey, a very strong donkey, strong enough to carry three germans to the top of etna? come and see my donkey. he is very cheap. i make a special price because the signore is simpatico. all the english are simpatici. come this way, signore! gaspare knows me. gaspare knows that i am not birbante." "signorino! signorino! look at this clock! it plays the 'tre colori.' it is worth twenty-five lire, but i will make a special price for you because you love sicily and are like a siciliano. gaspare will tell you----" but gaspare elbowed away his acquaintances roughly. "let my padrone alone. he is not here to buy. he is only here to see the fair. come on, signorino! do not answer them. do not take any notice. you must not buy anything or you will be cheated. let me make the prices." "yes, you make the prices. per bacco, how hot it is!" maurice pulled his hat down over his eyes. "maddalena, you'll get a sunstroke!" he said. "oh no, signore. i am accustomed to the sun." "but to-day it's terrific!" indeed, the masses of stones in the watercourse seemed to draw and to concentrate the sun-rays. the air was alive with minute and dancing specks of light, and in the distance, seen under the railway bridge, the sea looked hot, a fiery blue that was surely sweating in the glare of the afternoon. the crowd of donkeys, of cattle, of pigs--there were many pigs on sale--looked both dull and angry in the heat, and the swarms of sicilians who moved slowly about among them, examining them critically, appraising their qualities and noting their defects, perspired in their festa clothes, which were mostly heavy and ill-adapted to summer-time. a small boy passed by, bearing in his arms a struggling turkey. he caught his foot in some stones, fell, bruised his forehead, and burst out crying, while the indignant and terrified bird broke away, leaving some feathers, and made off violently towards etna. there was a roar of laughter from the people near. some ran to catch the turkey, others picked up the boy. salvatore had stopped to see this adventure, and was now at a little distance surrounded by the catanesi, who were evidently determined to assist at his bidding for a donkey. the sight of the note for a hundred lire had greatly increased their respect for salvatore, and with the sicilian instinct to go, and to stay, where money is, they now kept close to their comrade, eying him almost with awe as one in possession of a fortune. maurice saw them presently examining a group of donkeys. salvatore, with an autocratic air, and the wild gestures peculiar to him, was evidently laying down the law as to what each animal was worth. the fishermen stood by, listening attentively. the fact of salvatore's purchasing power gave him the right to pronounce an opinion. he was in glory. maurice thanked heaven for that. the man in glory is often the forgetful man. salvatore, he thought, would not bother about his daughter and his banker for a little while. but how to get rid of gaspare and amedeo! it seemed to him that they would never leave his side. there were many wooden stands covered with goods for sale in the watercourse, with bales of stuff for suits and dresses, with hats and caps, shirts, cravats, boots and shoes, walking-sticks, shawls, household utensils, crockery, everything the contadino needs and loves. gaspare, having money to lay out, considered it his serious duty to examine everything that was to be bought with slow minuteness. it did not matter whether the goods were suited to a masculine taste or not. he went into the mysteries of feminine attire with almost as much assiduity as a mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, and insisted upon maurice sharing his interest and caution. all sense of humor, all boyish sprightliness vanished from him in this important epoch of his life. the suspicion, the intensity of the bargaining contadino came to the surface. his usually bright face was quite altered. he looked elderly, subtle, and almost jewish as he slowly passed from stall to stall, testing, weighing, measuring, appraising. it seemed to maurice that this progress would never end. presently they reached a stand covered with women's shawls and with aprons. "shall i buy an apron for my mother, signorino?" asked gaspare. "yes, certainly." maurice did not know what else to say. the result of his consent was terrible. for a full half-hour they stood in the glaring sun, while gaspare and amedeo solemnly tried on aprons over their suits in the midst of a concourse of attentive contadini. in vain did maurice say: "that's a pretty one. i should take that one." some defect was always discoverable. the distant mother's taste was evidently peculiar and not to be easily suited, and maurice, not being familiar with it, was unable to combat such assertions of gaspare as that she objected to pink spots, or that she could never be expected to put on an apron before the neighbors if the stripes upon it were of different colors and there was no stitching round the hem. for the first time since he was in sicily the heat began to affect him unpleasantly. his head felt as if it were compressed in an iron band, and the vision of gaspare, eagerly bargaining, looking jewish, and revolving slowly in aprons of different colors, shapes, and sizes, began to dance before his eyes. he felt desperate, and suddenly resolved to be frank. "macchã¨!" gaspare was exclaiming, with indignant gestures of protest to the elderly couple who were in charge of the aprons; "it is not worth two soldi! it is not fit to be thrown to the pigs, and you ask me----" "gaspare!" "two lire--madonna! sangue di san pancrazio, they ask me two lire! macchã¨!" (he flung down the apron passionately upon the stall.) "go and find lipari people to buy your dirt; don't come to one from marechiaro." he took up another apron. "gaspare!" "one lira fifty? madre mia, do you think i was born in a grotto on etna and have never----" "gaspare, listen to me!" "scusi, signorino! i----" "i'm going over there to sit down in the shade for a minute. after that wine i drank at dinner i'm a bit sleepy." "si, signore. shall i come with you?" for once there was reluctance in his voice, and he looked down at the blue-and-white apron he had on with wistful eyes. it was a new joy to him to be bargaining in the midst of an attentive throng of his compatriots. "no, no. you stay here and spend the money. bid for the clock when the auction comes on." "oh, signore, but you must be here, too, then." "all right. come and fetch me if you like. i shall be over there under the trees." he waved his hand vaguely towards the lemon groves. "now, choose a good apron. don't let them cheat you." "macchã¨!" the boy laughed loudly, and turned eagerly to the stall again. "come, maddalena!" maurice drew her quickly, anxiously, out of the crowd, and they began to walk across the watercourse towards the farther bank and the group of olive-trees. salvatore had forgotten them. so had gaspare. both father and servant were taken by the fascination of the fair. at last! but how late it must be! how many hours had already fled away! maurice scarcely dared to look at his watch. he feared to see the time. while they walked he said nothing to maddalena, but when they reached the bank he took her arm and helped her up it, and when they were at the top he drew a long breath. "are you tired, signorino?" "tired--yes, of all those people. come and sit down, maddalena, under the olive-trees." he took her by the hand. her hand was warm and dry, pleasant to touch, to hold. as he felt it in his the desire to strike at salvatore revived within him. salvatore was laughing at him, was triumphing over him, triumphing in the get-all and give-nothing policy which he thought he was pursuing with such complete success. would it be very difficult to turn that success into failure? maurice wondered for a moment, then ceased to wonder. something in the touch of maddalena's hand told him that, if he chose, he could have his revenge upon salvatore, and he was assailed by a double temptation. both anger and love tempted him. if he stooped to do evil he could gratify two of the strongest desires in humanity, the desire to conquer in love and the desire to triumph in hate. salvatore thought him such a fool, held him in such contempt! something within him was burning to-day as a cheek burns with shame, something within him that was like the kernel of him, like the soul of his manhood, which the fisherman was sneering at. he did not say to himself strongly that he did not care what such men thought of him. he could not, for his nature was both reckless and sensitive. he did care, as if he had been a sicilian half doubtful whether he dared to show his face in the piazza. and he had another feeling, too, which had come to him when salvatore had answered his exclamation of irresistible anger at being called "compare," the feeling that, whether he sinned against the fisherman or not, the fisherman meant to do him harm. the sensation might be absurd, would have seemed to him probably absurd in england. here, in sicily, it sprang up and he had just to accept it, as a man accepts an instinct which guides him, prompts him. salvatore had turned down his thumb that day. maurice was not afraid of him. physically, he was quite fearless. but this sensation of having been secretly condemned made him feel hard, cruel, ready, perhaps, to do a thing not natural to him, to sacrifice another who had never done him wrong. at that moment it seemed to him that it would be more manly to triumph over salvatore by a double betrayal than to "run straight," conquer himself and let men not of his code think of him as they would. not of his code! but what was his code? was it that of england or that of sicily? which strain of blood was governing him to-day? which strain would govern him finally? artois would have had an interesting specimen under his observant eyes had he been at the fair of san felice. maddalena willingly obeyed maurice's suggestion. "get well into the shade," he said. "there's just enough to hold us, if we sit close together. you don't mind that, do you?" "no, signore." "put your back against the trunk--there." he kept his hat off. over the railway line from the hot-looking sea there came a little breeze that just moved his short hair and the feathers of gold about maddalena's brow. in the watercourse, but at some distance, they saw the black crowd of men and women and beasts swarming over the hot stones. "how can they?" maurice muttered, as he looked down. "cosa?" he laughed. "i was thinking out loud. i meant how can they bargain and bother hour after hour in all that sun!" "but, signorino, you would not have them pay too much!" she said, very seriously. "it is dreadful to waste soldi." "i suppose--yes, of course it is. oh, but there are so many things worth more than soldi. dio mio! let's forget all that!" he waved his hand towards the crowd, but he saw that maddalena was preoccupied. she glanced towards the watercourse rather wistfully. "what is it, maddalena? ah, i know! the blue dress and the ear-rings! per bacco!" "no, signore--no, signore!" she disclaimed quickly, reddening. "yes, it is. i had forgotten. but we can't go now. maddalena, we will buy them this evening. directly it gets cool we'll go, directly we've rested a little. but don't think of them now. i've promised, and i always keep a promise. now, don't think of that any more!" he spoke with a sort of desperation. the fair seemed to be his enemy, and he had thought that it would be his friend. it was like a personage with a stronger influence than his, an influence that could take away that which he wished to retain, to fix upon himself. "no, signore," maddalena said, meekly, but still wistfully. "do you care for a blue dress and a pair of ear-rings more than you do for me?" cried maurice, with sudden roughness. "are you like your father? do you only care for me for what you can get out of me? i believe you do!" maddalena looked startled, almost terrified, by his outburst. her lips trembled, but she gazed at him steadily. "non ã¨ vero." the words sounded almost stern. "i do--" he said. "i do want to be cared for a little--just for myself." [illustration: "he kept his hand on hers and held it on the warm ground"] at that moment he had a sensation of loneliness like that of an utterly unloved man. and yet at that moment a great love was travelling to him--a love that was complete and flawless. but he did not think of it. he only thought that perhaps all this time he had been deceived, that maddalena, like her father, was merely pleased to see him because he had money and could spend it. he sickened. "non ã¨ vero!" maddalena repeated. her lips still trembled. maurice looked at her doubtfully, yet with a sudden tenderness. always when she looked troubled, even for an instant, there came to him the swift desire to protect her, to shield her. "but why should you care for me?" he said. "it is better not. for i am going away, and probably you will never see me again." tears came into maddalena's eyes. he did not know whether they were summoned by his previous roughness or his present pathos. he wanted to know. "probably i shall never come back to sicily again," he said, with pressure. she said nothing. "it will be better not," he added. "much better." now he was speaking for himself. "there's something here, something that i love and that's bad for me. i'm quite changed here. i'm like another man." he saw a sort of childish surprise creeping into her face. "why, signorino?" she murmured. he kept his hand on hers and held it on the warm ground. "perhaps it is the sun," he said. "i lose my head here, and i--lose my heart!" she still looked rather surprised, and again her ignorance fascinated him. he thought that it was far more attractive than any knowledge could have been. "i'm horribly happy here, but i oughtn't to be happy." "why, signorino? it is better to be happy." "per dio!" he exclaimed. now a deep desire to have his revenge upon salvatore came to him, but not at all because it would hurt salvatore. the cruelty had gone out of him. maddalena's eyes of a child had driven it away. he wanted his revenge only because it would be an intense happiness to him to have it. he wanted it because it would satisfy an imperious desire of tender passion, not because it would infuriate a man who hated him. he forgot the father in the daughter. "suppose i were quite poor, maddalena!" he said. "but you are very rich, signorino." "but suppose i were poor, like gaspare, for instance. suppose i were as i am, just the same, only a contadino, or a fisherman, as your father is. and suppose--suppose"--he hesitated--"suppose that i were not married!" she said nothing. she was listening with deep but still surprised attention. "then i could--i could go to your father and ask him----" he stopped. "what could you ask him, signorino?" "can't you guess?" "no, signore." "i might ask him to let me marry you. i should--if it were like that--i should ask him to let me marry you." "davvero?" an expression of intense pleasure, and of something more--of pride--had come into her face. she could not divest herself imaginatively of her conception of him as a rich forestiere, and she saw herself placed high above "the other girls," turned into a lady. "magari!" she murmured, drawing in her breath, then breathing out. "you would be happy if i did that?" "magari!" she said again. he did not know what the word meant, but he thought it sounded like the most complete expression of satisfaction he had ever heard. "i wish," he said, pressing her hand--"i wish i were a sicilian of marechiaro." at this moment, while he was speaking, he heard in the distance the shrill whistle of an engine. it ceased. then it rose again, piercing, prolonged, fierce surely with inquiry. he put his hands to his ears. "how beastly that is!" he exclaimed. he hated it, not only for itself, but for the knowledge it sharply recalled to his mind, the knowledge of exactly what he was doing, and of the facts of his life, the facts that the very near future held. "why do they do that?" he added, with intense irritation. "because of the bridge, signorino. they want to know if they can come upon the bridge. look! there is the man waving a flag. now they can come. it is the train from palermo." "palermo!" he said, sharply. "si, signore." "but the train from palermo comes the other way, by messina!" "si, signore. but there are two, one by messina and one by catania. ecco!" from the lemon groves came the rattle of the approaching train. "but--but----" he caught at his watch, pulled it out. five o'clock! he had taken his hand from maddalena's, and now he made a movement as if to get up. but he did not get up. instead, he pressed back against the olive-tree, upon whose trunk he was leaning, as if he wished to force himself into the gnarled wood of it. he had an instinct to hide. the train came on very slowly. during the two or three minutes that elapsed before it was in his view maurice lived very rapidly. he felt sure that hermione and artois were in the train. hermione had said that they would arrive at cattaro at five-thirty. she had not said which way they were coming. maurice had assumed that they would come from messina because hermione had gone away by that route. it was a natural error. but now? if they were at the carriage window! if they saw him! and surely they must see him. the olive-trees were close to the line and on a level with it. he could not get away. if he got up he would be more easily seen. hermione would call out to him. if he pretended not to hear she might, she probably would, get out of the train at the san felice station and come into the fair. she was impulsive. it was just the sort of thing she might do. she would do it. he was sure she would do it. he looked at the watercourse hard. the crowd of people was not very far off. he thought he detected the form of gaspare. yes, it was gaspare. he and amedeo were on the outskirts of the crowd near the railway bridge. as he gazed, the train whistled once more, and he saw gaspare turn round and look towards the sea. he held his breath. "ecco, signorino. viene!" maddalena touched his arm, kept her hand upon it. she was deeply interested in this event, the traversing by the train of the unfinished bridge. maurice was thankful for that. at least she did not notice his violent perturbation. "look, signorino! look!" in despite of himself, maurice obeyed her. he wanted not to look, but he could not help looking. the engine, still whistling, crept out from the embrace of the lemon-trees, with the dingy line of carriages behind it. at most of the windows there were heads of people looking out. third class--he saw soldiers, contadini. second class--no one. now the first-class carriages were coming. they were close to him. "ah!" he had seen hermione. she was standing up, with her two hands resting on the door-frame and her head and shoulders outside of the carriage. maurice sat absolutely still and stared at her, stared at her almost as if she were a stranger passing by. she was looking at the watercourse, at the crowd, eagerly. her face, much browner than when she had left sicily, was alight with excitement, with happiness. she was radiant. yet he thought she looked old, older at least than he had remembered. suddenly, as the train came very slowly upon the bridge, she drew in to speak to some one behind her, and he saw vaguely artois, pale, with a long beard. he was seated, and he, too, was gazing out at the fair. he looked ill, but he, too, looked happy, much happier than he had in london. he put up a thin hand and stroked his beard, and maurice saw wrinkles coming round his eyes as he smiled at something hermione said to him. the train came to the middle of the bridge and stopped. "ecco!" murmured maddalena. "the man at the other end has signalled!" maurice looked again at the watercourse. gaspare was beyond the crowd now, and was staring at the train with interest, like maddalena. would it never go on? maurice set his teeth and cursed it silently. and his soul said; "go on! go on!" again and again. "go on! go on!" now hermione was once more leaning out. surely she must see gaspare. a man waved a flag. the train jerked back, jangled, crept forward once more, this time a little faster. in a moment they would begone. thank god! but what was hermione doing? she started. she leaned further forward, staring into the watercourse. maurice saw her face changing. a look of intense surprise, of intense inquiry, came into it. she took one hand swiftly from the door, put it behind her--ah, she had a pair of opera-glasses at her eyes now! the train went on faster. it was nearly off the bridge. but she was waving her hand. she was calling. she had seen gaspare. and he? maurice saw him start forward as if to run to the bridge. but the train was gone. the boy stopped, hesitated, then dashed away across the stones. "signorino! signorino!" maurice said nothing. "signorino!" repeated maddalena. "look at gaspare! is he mad? look! how he is running!" gaspare reached the bank, darted up it, and disappeared into the village. "signorino, what is the matter?" maddalena pulled his sleeve. she was looking almost alarmed. "matter? nothing." maurice got up. he could not remain still. it was all over now. the fair was at an end for him. gaspare would reach the station before the train went on, would explain matters. hermione would get out. already maurice seemed to see her coming down to the watercourse, walking with her characteristic slow vigor. it did not occur to him at first that hermione might refuse to leave artois. something in him knew that she was coming. fate had interfered now imperiously. once he had cheated fate. that was when he came to the fair despite hermione's letter. now fate was going to have her revenge upon him. he looked at maddalena. was fate working for her, to protect her? would his loss be her gain? he did not know, for he did not know what would have been the course of his own conduct if fate had not interfered. he had been trifling, letting the current take him. it might have taken him far, but--now hermione was coming. it was all over and the sun was still up, still shining upon the sea. "let us go into the fair. it is cooler now." he tried to speak lightly. "si, signore." maddalena shook out her skirt and began to smile. she was thinking of the blue dress and the ear-rings. they went down into the watercourse. "signorino, what can have been the matter with gaspare?" "i don't know." "he was looking at the train." "was he? perhaps he saw a friend in it. yes, that must have been it. he saw a friend in the train." he stared across the watercourse towards the village, seeking two figures, and he was conscious now of two feelings that fought within him, of two desires: a desire that hermione should not come, and a desire that she should come. he wanted, he even longed, to have his evening with maddalena. yet he wanted hermione to get out of the train when gaspare told her that he--maurice--was at san felice. if she did not get out she would be putting artois before him. the pale face at the window, the eyes that smiled when hermione turned familiarly round to speak, had stirred within him the jealousy of which he had already been conscious more than once. but now actual vision had made it fiercer. the woman who had leaned out looking at the fair belonged to him. he felt intensely that she was his property. maddalena spoke to him again, two or three times. he did not hear her. he was seeing the wrinkles that came round the eyes of artois when he smiled. "where are we going, signorino? are we going back to the town?" instinctively, maurice was following in the direction taken by gaspare. he wanted to meet fate half-way, to still, by action, the tumult of feeling within him. "aren't the best things to be bought there?" he replied. "by the church where all those booths are? i think so." maddalena began to walk a little faster. the moment had come. already she felt the blue dress rustling about her limbs, the ear-rings swinging in her ears. maurice did not try to hold her back. nor did it occur to him that it would be wise to meet hermione without maddalena. he had done no actual wrong, and the pale face of artois had made him defiant. hermione came to him with her friend. he would come to her with his. he did not think of maddalena as a weapon exactly, but he did feel as if, without her, he would be at a disadvantage when he and hermione met. they were in the first street now. people were beginning to flow back from the watercourse towards the centre of the fair. they walked in a crowd and could not see far before them. but maurice thought he would know when hermione was near him, that he would feel her approach. the crowd went on slowly, retarding them, but at last they were near to the church of sant' onofrio and could hear the sound of music. the "intermezzo" from "cavalleria rusticana" was being played by the musica mascagni. suddenly, maurice started. he had felt a pull at his arm. "signorino! signorino!" gaspare was by his side, streaming with perspiration and looking violently excited. "gaspare!" he stopped, cast a swift look round. gaspare was alone. "signorino"--the boy was breathing hard--"the signora"--he gulped--"the signora has come back." the time had come for acting. maurice feigned surprise. "the signora! what are you saying? the signora is in africa." "no, signore! she is here!" "here in san felice!" "no, signore! but she was in the train. i saw her at the window. she waved her hand to me and called out--when the train was on the bridge. i ran to the station; i ran fast, but when i got there the train had just gone. the signora has come back, and we are not there to meet her!" his eyes were tragic. evidently he felt that their absence was a matter of immense importance, was a catastrophe. "the signora here!" maurice repeated, trying to make his voice amazed. "but why did she not tell us? why did not she say that she was coming?" he looked at gaspare, but only for an instant. he felt afraid to meet his great, searching eyes. "non lo so." maddalena stood by in silence. the bright look of anticipation had gone out of her face, and was replaced by a confused and slightly anxious expression. "i can't understand it," maurice said, heavily. "i can't--was the signora alone, or did you see some one with her?" "the sick signore? i did not see him. i saw only the signora standing at the window, waving her hand--cosã¬!" he waved his hand. "madonna!" maurice said, mechanically. "what are we to do, signorino?" "do! what can we do? the train has gone!" "si, signore. but shall i fetch the donkeys?" maurice stole a glance at maddalena. she was looking frankly piteous. "have you got the clock yet?" he asked gaspare. "no, signore." gaspare began to look rather miserable, too. "it has not been put up. perhaps they are putting it up now." "gaspare," maurice said, hastily, "we can't be back to meet the signora now. even if we went at once we should be hours late--and the donkeys are tired, perhaps. they will go slowly unless they have a proper rest. it is a dreadful pity, but i think if the signora knew she would wish us to stay now till the fair is over. she would not wish to spoil your pleasure. do you think she would?" "no, signore. the signora always wishes people to be happy." "even if we went at once it would be night before we got back." "si, signore." "i think we had better stay--at any rate till the auction is finished and we have had something to eat. then we will go." "va bene." the boy sounded doubtful. "la povera signora!" he said. "how disappointed she will be! she did want to speak to me. her face was all red; she was so excited when she saw me, and her mouth was wide open like that!" he made a grimace, with earnest, heart-felt sincerity. "it cannot be helped. to-night we will explain everything and make the signora quite happy. look here! buy something for her. buy her a present at the auction!" "signorino!" gaspare cried. "i will give her the clock that plays the 'tre colori'! then she will be happy again. shall i?" "si, si. and meet me in the market-place. then we will eat something and we will start for home." the boy darted away towards the watercourse. his heart was light again. he had something to do for the signora, something that would make her very happy. ah, when she heard the clock playing the "tre colori"! mamma mia! he tore towards the watercourse in an agony lest he should be too late. * * * * * night was falling over the fair. the blue dress and the ear-rings had been chosen and paid for. the promenade of the beauties in the famous inherited brocades had taken place with ã©clat before the church of sant' onofrio. salvatore had acquired a donkey of strange beauty and wondrous strength, and gaspare had reappeared in the piazza accompanied by amedeo, both laden with purchases and shining with excitement and happiness. gaspare's pockets were bulging, and he walked carefully, carrying in his hands a tortured-looking parcel. "dov'ã¨ il mio padrone?" he asked, as he and amedeo pushed through the dense throng. "dov'ã¨ il mio padrone?" he spied maurice and maddalena sitting before the ristorante listening to the performance of a small neapolitan boy with a cropped head, who was singing street songs in a powerful bass voice, and occasionally doing a few steps of a melancholy dance upon the pavement. the crowd billowed round them. a little way off the "musica della cittã ," surrounded by a circle of colored lamps, was playing a selection from the "puritani." the strange ecclesiastical chant of the roman ice venders rose up against the music as if in protest. and these three definite and fighting melodies--of the neapolitan, the band, and the ice venders--detached themselves from a foundation of ceaseless sound, contributed by the hundreds of sicilians who swarmed about the ancient church, infested the narrow side streets of the village, looked down from the small balconies and the windows of the houses, and gathered in mobs in the wine-shops and the trattorie. "signorino! signorino! look!" gaspare had reached maurice, and now stood by the little table at which his padrone and maddalena were sitting, and placed the tortured parcel tenderly upon it. "is that the clock?" gaspare did not reply in words, but his brown fingers deftly removed the string and paper and undressed his treasure. "ecco!" he exclaimed. the clock was revealed, a great circle of blue and white standing upon short, brass legs, and ticking loudly, "speranza mia, non piangere, e il marinar fedele, vedrai tornar dall' africa tra un anno queste vele----" bawled the little boy from naples. gaspare seized the clock, turned a handle, lifted his hand in a reverent gesture bespeaking attention; there was a faint whirr, and then, sure enough, the tune of the "tre colori" was tinkled blithely forth. "ecco!" repeated gaspare, triumphantly. "mamma mia!" murmured maddalena, almost exhausted with the magic of the fair. "it's wonderful!" said maurice. he, too, was a little tired, but not in body. gaspare wound the clock again, and again the tune was trilled forth, competing sturdily with the giant noises of the fair, a little voice that made itself audible by its clearness and precision. "ecco!" repeated gaspare. "will not the signora be happy when she sees what i have brought her from the fair?" he sighed from sheer delight in his possession and the thought of his padrona's joy and wonder in it. "mangiamo?" he added, descending from heavenly delights to earthly necessities. "yes, it is getting late," said maurice. "the fireworks will soon be beginning, i suppose." "not till ten, signorino. i have asked. there will be dancing first. but--are we going to stay?" maurice hesitated, but only for a second. "yes," he said. "even if we went now the signora would be in bed and asleep long before we got home. we will stay to the end, the very end." "then we can say 'good-morning' to the signora when we get home," said gaspare. he was quite happy now that he had this marvellous present to take back with him. he felt that it would make all things right, would sweep away all lingering disappointment at their absence and the want of welcome. salvatore did not appear at the meal. he had gone off to stable his new purchase with the other donkeys, and now, having got a further sum of money out of the inglese, was drinking and playing cards with the fishermen of catania. but he knew where his girl and maurice were, and that gaspare and amedeo were with them. and he knew, too, that the inglese's signora had come back. he told the news to the fishermen. "to-night, when he gets home, his 'cristiana' will be waiting for him. per dio! it is over for him now. we shall see little more of him." "and get little more from him!" said one of the fishermen, who was jealous of salvatore's good-fortune. salvatore laughed loudly. he had drunk a good deal of wine and he had had a great deal of money given to him. "i shall find another english fool, perhaps!" he said. "chi lo sa?" "and his cristiana?" asked another fisherman. "what is she like?" "like!" cried salvatore, pouring out another glass of wine and spitting on the discolored floor, over which hens were running; "what is any cristiana like?" and he repeated the contadino's proverb: "'la mugghieri ã¨ comu la gatta: si l'accarizzi, idda ti gratta!'" "perhaps the inglese will get scratched to-night," said the first fisherman. "i don't mind," rejoined salvatore. "get us a fresh pack of cards, fortunato. i'll pay for 'em." and he flung down a lira on the wine-stained table. gaspare, now quite relieved in his mind, gave himself up with all his heart to the enjoyment of the last hours of the fair, and was unwearied in calling on his padrone to do the same. when the evening meal was over he led the party forth into the crowd that was gathered about the music; he took them to the shooting-tent, and made them try their luck at the little figures which calmly presented grotesquely painted profiles to the eager aim of the contadini; he made them eat ices which they bought at the beflagged cart of the ecclesiastical romans, whose eternally chanting voices made upon maurice a sinister impression, suggesting to his mind--he knew not why--the thought of death. finally, prompted by amedeo, he drew maurice into a room where there was dancing. it was crowded with men and women, was rather dark and very hot. in a corner there was a grinding organ, whose handle was turned by a perspiring man in a long, woollen cap. beside him, hunched up on a window-sill, was a shepherd boy who accompanied the organ upon a flute of reed. round the walls stood a throng of gazers, and in the middle of the floor the dancers performed vigorously, dancing now a polka, now a waltz, now a mazurka, now an elaborate country dance in which sixteen or twenty people took part, now a tarantella, called by many of the contadini "la fasola." no sooner had they entered the room than gaspare gently but firmly placed his arm round his padrone's waist, took his left hand and began to turn him about in a slow waltz, while amedeo followed the example given with maddalena. round and round they went among the other couples. the organ in the corner ground out a wheezy tune. the reed-flute of the shepherd boy twittered, as perhaps, long ago, on the great mountain that looked down in the night above the village, a similar flute twittered from the woods to empedocles climbing upward for the last time towards the plume of smoke that floated from the volcano. and then amedeo and gaspare danced together and maurice's arm was about the waist of maddalena. it was the first time that he had danced with her, and the mutual act seemed to him to increase their intimacy, to carry them a step forward in this short and curious friendship which was now, surely, very close to its end. they did not speak as they danced. maddalena's face was very solemn, like the face of one taking part in an important ceremonial. and maurice, too, felt serious, even sad. the darkness and heat of the room, the melancholy with which all the tunes of a grinding organ seem impregnated, the complicated sounds from the fair outside, from which now and again the voices of the roman ice-venders detached themselves, even the tapping of the heavy boots of the dancers upon the floor of brick--all things in this hour moved him to a certain dreariness of the spirit which was touched with sentimentality. this fair day was coming to an end. he felt as if everything were coming to an end. every dog has his day. the old saying came to his mind. "every dog has his day--and mine is over." he saw in the dimness of the room the face of hermione at the railway carriage window. it was the face of one on the edge of some great beginning. but she did not know. hermione did not know. the dance was over. another was formed, a country dance. again maurice was maddalena's partner. then came "la fasola," in which amedeo proudly showed forth his well-known genius and gaspare rivalled him. but maurice thought it was not like the tarantella upon the terrace before the house of the priest. the brilliancy, the gayety of that rapture in the sun were not present here among farewells. a longing to be in the open air under the stars came to him, and when at last the grinding organ stopped he said to gaspare: "i'm going outside. you'll find me there when you've finished dancing." "va bene, signorino. in a quarter of an hour the fireworks will be beginning." "and then we must start off at once." "si, signore." the organ struck up again and amedeo took hold of gaspare by the waist. "maddalena, come out with me." she followed him. she was tired. festivals were few in her life, and the many excitements of this long day had told upon her, but her fatigue was the fatigue of happiness. they sat down on a wooden bench set against the outer wall of the house. no one else was sitting there, but many people were passing to and fro, and they could see the lamps round the "musica leoncavallo," and hear it fighting and conquering the twitter of the shepherd boy's flute and the weary wheezing of the organ within the house. a great, looming darkness rising towards the stars dominated the humming village. etna was watching over the last glories of the fair. "have you been happy to-day, maddalena?" maurice asked. "si, signore, very happy. and you?" he did not answer. "it will all be very different to-morrow," he said. he was trying to realize to-morrow, but he could not. "we need not think of to-morrow," maddalena said. she arranged her skirt with her hands, and crossed one foot over the other. "do you always live for the day?" maurice asked her. she did not understand him. "i do not want to think of to-morrow," she said. "there will be no fair then." "and you would like always to be at the fair?" "si, signore, always." there was a great conviction in her simple statement. "and you, signorino?" she was curious about him to-night. "i don't know what i should like," he said. he looked up at the great darkness of etna, and again a longing came to him to climb up, far up, into those beech forests that looked towards the isles of lipari. he wanted greater freedom. even the fair was prison. "but i think," he said, after a pause--"i think i should like to carry you off, maddalena, up there, far up on etna." he remembered his feeling when he had put his arms round her in the dance. it had been like putting his arms round ignorance that wanted to be knowledge. who would be maddalena's teacher? not he. and yet he had almost intended to have his revenge upon salvatore. "shall we go now?" he said. "shall we go off to etna, maddalena?" "signorino!" she gave a little laugh. "we must go home after the fireworks." "why should we? why should we not take the donkeys now? gaspare is dancing. your father is playing cards. no one would notice. shall we? shall we go now and get the donkeys, maddalena?" but she replied: "a girl can only go like that with a man when she is married." "that's not true," he said. "she can go like that with a man she loves." "but then she is wicked, and the madonna will not hear her when she prays, signorino." "wouldn't you do anything for a man you really loved? wouldn't you forget everything? wouldn't you forget even the madonna?" she looked at him. "non lo so." it seemed to him that he was answered. "wouldn't you forget the madonna for me?" he whispered, leaning towards her. there was a loud report close to them, a whizzing noise, a deep murmur from the crowd, and in the clear sky above etna the first rocket burst, showering down a cataract of golden stars, which streamed towards the earth, leaving trails of fire behind them. the sound of the grinding organ and of the shepherd boy's flute ceased in the dancing-room, and the crowd within rushed out into the market-place. "signorino! signorino! come with me! we cannot see properly here! i know where to go. there will be wheels of fire, and masses of flowers, and a picture of the regina margherita. presto! presto!" gaspare had hold of maurice by the arm. "e' finito!" maurice murmured. it seemed to him that the last day of his wild youth was at an end. "e' finito!" he repeated. but there was still an hour. and who can tell what an hour will bring forth? xvii it was nearly two o'clock in the morning when maurice and gaspare said good-bye to maddalena and her father on the road by isola bella. salvatore had left the three donkeys at cattaro, and had come the rest of the way on foot, while maddalena rode gaspare's beast. "the donkey you bought is for maddalena," maurice had said to him. and the fisherman had burst into effusive thanks. but already he had his eye on a possible customer in cattaro. as soon as the inglese had gone back to his own country the donkey would be resold at a good price. what did a fisherman want with donkeys, and how was an animal to be stabled on the sirens' isle? as soon as the inglese was gone, salvatore meant to put a fine sum of money into his pocket. "addio, signorino!" he said, sweeping off his hat with the wild, half-impudent gesture that was peculiar to him. "i kiss your hand and i kiss the hand of your signora." he bent down his head as if he were going to translate the formal phrase into an action, but maurice drew back. "addio, salvatore," he said. his voice was low. "addio, maddalena!" he added. she murmured something in reply. salvatore looked keenly from one to the other. "are you tired, maddalena?" he asked, with a sort of rough suspicion. "si," she answered. she followed him slowly across the railway line towards the sea, while maurice and gaspare turned their donkeys' heads towards the mountain. they rode upward in silence. gaspare was sleepy. his head nodded loosely as he rode, but his hands never let go their careful hold of the clock. round about him his many purchases were carefully disposed, fastened elaborately to the big saddle. the roses, faded now, were still above his ears. maurice rode behind. he was not sleepy. he felt as if he would never sleep again. as they drew nearer to the house of the priest, gaspare pulled himself together with an effort, half-turned on his donkey, and looked round at his padrone. "signorino!" "si." "do you think the signora will be asleep?" "i don't know. i suppose so." the boy looked wise. "i do not think so," he said, firmly. "what--at three o'clock in the morning!" "i think the signora will be on the terrace watching for us." maurice's lips twitched. "chi lo sa?" he replied. he tried to speak carelessly, but where was his habitual carelessness of spirit, his carelessness of a boy now? he felt that he had lost it forever, lost it in that last hour of the fair. "signorino!" "well?" "where were you and maddalena when i was helping with the fireworks?" "close by." "did you see them all? did you see the regina margherita?" "si." "i looked round for you, but i could not see you." "there was such a crowd and it was dark." "yes. then you were there, where i left you?" "we may have moved a little, but we were not far off." "i cannot think why i could not find you when the fireworks were over." "it was the crowd. i thought it best to go to the stable without searching for you. i knew you and salvatore would be there." the boy was silent for a moment. then he said: "salvatore was very angry when he saw me come into the stable without you." "why?" "he said i ought not to have left my padrone." "and what did you say?" "i told him i would not be spoken to by him. if you had not come in just then i think there would have been a baruffa. salvatore is a bad man, and always ready with his knife. and he had been drinking." "he was quiet enough coming home." "i do not like his being so quiet." "what does it matter?" again there was a pause. then gaspare said: "now that the signora has come back we shall not go any more to the casa delle sirene, shall we?" "no, i don't suppose we shall go any more." "it is better like that, signorino. it is much better that we do not go." maurice said nothing. "we have been there too often," added gaspare. "i am glad the signora has come back. i am sorry she ever went away." "it was not our fault that she went," maurice said, in a hard voice like that of a man trying to justify something, to defend himself against some accusation. "we did not want the signora to go." "no, signore." gaspare's voice sounded almost apologetic. he was a little startled by his padrone's tone. "it was a pity she went," he continued. "the poor signora----" "why is it such a pity?" maurice interrupted, almost roughly, almost suspiciously. "why do you say 'the poor signora'?" gaspare stared at him with open surprise. "i only meant----" "the signora wished to go to africa. she decided for herself. there is no reason to call her the poor signora." "no, signore." the boy's voice recalled maurice to prudence. "it was very good of her to go," he said, more quietly. "perhaps she has saved the life of the sick signore by going." "si, signore." gaspare said no more, but as they rode up, drawing ever nearer to the bare mountain-side and the house of the priest, maurice's heart reiterated the thought of the boy. why had hermione ever gone? what a madness it had all been, her going, his staying! he knew it now for a madness, a madness of the summer, of the hot, the burning south. in this terrible quiet of the mountains, without the sun, without the laughter and the voices and the movement of men, he understood that he had been mad, that there had been something in him, not all himself, which had run wild, despising restraint. and he had known that it was running wild, and he had thought to let it go just so far and no farther. he had set a limit of time to his wildness and its deeds. and he had set another limit. surely he had. he had not ever meant to go too far. and then, just when he had said to himself "e' finito!" the irrevocable was at hand, the moment of delirium in which all things that should have been remembered were forgotten. what had led him? what spirit of evil? or had he been led at all? had not he rather deliberately forced his way to the tragic goal whither, through all these sunlit days, these starry nights, his feet had been tending? he looked upon himself as a man looks upon a stranger whom he has seen commit a crime which he could never have committed. mentally he took himself into custody, he tried, he condemned himself. in this hour of acute reaction the cool justice of the englishman judged the passionate impulse of the sicilian, even marvelled at it, and the heart of the dancing faun cried: "what am i--what am i really?" and did not find the answer. "signorino?" "yes, gaspare." "when we get to that rock we shall see the house." "i know." how eagerly he had looked upward to the little white house on the mountain on that first day in sicily, with what joy of anticipation, with what an exquisite sense of liberty and of peace! the drowsy wail of the "pastorale" had come floating down to him over the olive-trees almost like a melody that stole from paradise. but now he dreaded the turn of the path. he dreaded to see the terrace wall, the snowy building it protected. and he felt as if he were drawing near to a terror, and as if he could not face it, did not know how to face it. "signorino, there is no light! look!" "the signora and lucrezia must be asleep at this hour." "if they are, what are we to do? shall we wake them?" "no, no." he spoke quickly, in hope of a respite. "we will wait--we will not disturb them." gaspare looked down at the parcel he was holding with such anxious care. "i would like to play the 'tre colori,'" he said. "i would like the first thing the signora hears when she wakes to be the 'tre colori.'" "hush! we must be very quiet." the noise made on the path by the tripping feet of the donkeys was almost intolerable to him. it must surely wake the deepest sleeper. they were now on the last ascent where the mountain-side was bare. some stones rattled downward, causing a sharp, continuous sound. it was answered by another sound, which made both gaspare and maurice draw rein and pull up. as on that first day in sicily maurice had been welcomed by the "pastorale," so he was welcomed by it now. what an irony that was to him! for an instant his lips curved in a bitter smile. but the smile died away as he realized things, and a strange sadness took hold of his heart. for it was not the ceramella that he heard in this still hour, but a piano played softly, monotonously, with a dreamy tenderness that made it surely one with the tenderness of the deep night. and he knew that hermione had been watching, that she had heard him coming, that this was her welcome, a welcome from the depths of her pure, true heart. how much the music told him! how clearly it spoke to him! and how its caress flagellated his bare soul! hermione had returned expectant of welcome and had found nothing, and instead of coming out upon the terrace, instead of showing surprise, vexation, jealous curiosity, of assuming the injured air that even a good woman can scarcely resist displaying in a moment of acute disappointment, she sent forth this delicate salutation to him from afar, the sweetest that she knew, the one she herself loved best. tears came into his eyes as he listened. then he shut his eyes and said to himself, shuddering: "oh, you beast! you beast!" "it is the signora!" said gaspare, turning round on his donkey. "she does not know we are here, and she is playing to keep herself awake." he looked down at his clock, and his eyes began to shine. "i am glad the signora is awake!" he said. "signorino, let us get off the donkeys and leave them at the arch, and let us go in without any noise." "but perhaps the signora knows that we are here," maurice said. directly he had heard the music he had known that hermione was aware of their approach. "no, no, signore. i am sure she does not, or she would have come out to meet us. let us leave the donkeys!" he sprang off softly. mechanically, maurice followed his example. "now, signore!" the boy took him by the hand and led him on tiptoe to the terrace, making him crouch down close to the open french window. the "pastorale" was louder here. it never ceased, but returned again and again with the delicious monotony that made it memorable and wove a spell round those who loved it. as he listened to it, maurice fancied he could hear the breathing of the player, and he felt that she was listening, too, listening tensely for footsteps on the terrace. gaspare looked up at him with bright eyes. the boy's whole face was alive with a gay and mischievous happiness, as he turned the handle at the back of his clock slowly, slowly, till at last it would turn no more. then there tinkled forth to join the "pastorale" the clear, trilling melody of the "tre colori." the music in the room ceased abruptly. there was a rustling sound as the player moved. then hermione's voice, with something trembling through it that was half a sob, half a little burst of happy laughter, called out: "gaspare, how dare you interrupt my concert?" "signora! signora!" cried gaspare, and, springing up, he darted into the sitting-room. but maurice, though he lifted himself up quickly, stood where he was with his hand set hard against the wall of the house. he heard gaspare kiss hermione's hand. then he heard her say: "but, but, gaspare----" he took his hand from the wall with an effort. his feet seemed glued to the ground, but at last he was in the room. "hermione!" he said. "maurice!" he felt her strong hands, strong and yet soft like all the woman, on his. "cento di questi giorni!" she said. "ah, but it is better than all the birthdays in the world!" he wanted to kiss her--not to please her, but for himself he wanted to kiss her--but he dared not. he felt that if his lips were to touch hers--she must know. to excuse his avoidance of the natural greeting he looked at gaspare. "i know!" she whispered. "you haven't forgotten!" she was alluding to that morning on the terrace when he came up from the fishing. they loosed their hands. gaspare set the clock playing again. "what a beauty!" hermione said, glad to hide her emotion for a moment till she and maurice could be alone. "what a marvel! where did you find it, gaspare--at the fair?" "si, signora!" solemnly he handed it, still playing brightly, to his padrona, just a little reluctantly, perhaps, but very gallantly. "it is for you, signora." "a present--oh, gaspare!" again her voice was veiled. she put out her hand and touched the boy's hand. "grazie! how sweetly it plays! you thought of me!" there was a silence till the tune was finished. then maurice said: "hermione, i don't know what to say. that we should be at the fair the day you arrived! why--why didn't you tell me? why didn't you write?" "you didn't know, then!" the words came very quickly, very eagerly. "know! didn't lucrezia tell you that we had no idea?" "poor lucrezia! she's in a dreadful condition. i found her in the village." "no!" maurice cried, thankful to turn the conversation from himself, though only for an instant. "i specially told her to stay here. i specially----" "well, but, poor thing, as you weren't expecting me! but i wrote, maurice, i wrote a letter telling you everything, the hour we were coming--" "it's don paolo!" exclaimed gaspare, angrily. "he hides away the letters. he lets them lie sometimes in his office for months. to-morrow i will go and tell him what i think; i will turn out every drawer." "it is too bad!" maurice said. "then you never had it?" "hermione"--he stared at the open door--"you think we should have gone to the fair if----" "no, no, i never thought so. i only wondered. it all seemed so strange." "it is too horrible!" maurice said, with heavy emphasis. "and artois--no rooms ready for him! what can he have thought?" "as i did, that there had been a mistake. what does it matter now? just at the moment i was dreadfully--oh, dreadfully disappointed. i saw gaspare at the fair. and you saw me, gaspare?" "si, signora. i ran all the way to the station, but the train had gone." "but i didn't see you, maurice. where were you?" gaspare opened his lips to speak, but maurice did not give him time. "i was there, too, in the fair." "but of course you weren't looking at the train?" "of course not. and when gaspare told me, it was too late to do anything. we couldn't get back in time, and the donkeys were tired, and so----" "oh, i'm glad you didn't hurry back. what good would it have done then?" there was a touch of constraint in her voice. "you must have thought i should be in bed." "yes, we did." "and so i ought to be now. i believe i am tremendously tired, but--but i'm so tremendously something else that i hardly know." the constraint had gone. "the signora is happy because she is back in my country," gaspare remarked, with pride and an air of shrewdness. he nodded his head. the faded roses shook above his ears. hermione smiled at him. "he knows all about it," she said. "well, if we are ever to go to bed----" gaspare looked from her to his padrone. "buona notte, signora," he said, gravely. "buona notte, signorino. buon riposo!" "buon riposo!" echoed hermione. "it is blessed to hear that again. i do love the clock, gaspare." the boy beamed at her and went reluctantly away to find the donkeys. at that moment maurice would have given almost anything to keep him. he dreaded unspeakably to be alone with hermione. but it had to be. he must face it. he must seem natural, happy. "shall i put the clock down?" he asked. he went to her, took the clock, carried it to the writing-table, and put it down. "gaspare was so happy to bring it to you." he turned. he felt desperate. he came to hermione and put out his hands. "i feel so bad that we weren't here," he said. "that is it!" there was a sound of deep relief in her voice. then she had been puzzled by his demeanor! he must be natural; but how? it seemed to him as if never in all his life could he have felt innocent, careless, brave. now he was made of cowardice. he was like a dog that crawls with its belly to the floor. he got hold of hermione's hands. "i feel--i feel horribly, horribly bad!" speaking the absolute truth, his voice was absolutely sincere, and he deceived her utterly. "maurice," she said, "i believe it's upset you so much that--that you are shy of me." she laughed happily. "shy--of me!" he tried to laugh, too, and kissed her abruptly, awkwardly. all his natural grace was gone from him. but when he kissed her she did not know it; her lips clung to his with a tender passion, a fealty that terrified him. "she must know!" he thought. "she must feel the truth. my lips must tell it to her." and when at last they drew away from each other his eyes asked her furiously a question, asked it of her eyes. "what is it, maurice?" he said nothing. she dropped her eyes and reddened slowly, till she looked much younger than usual, strangely like a girl. "you haven't--you haven't----" there was a sound of reserve in her voice, and yet a sound of triumph, too. she looked up at him again. "do you guess that i have something to tell you?" she said, slowly. "something to tell me?" he repeated, dully. he was so intent on himself, on his own evil-doing, that it seemed to him as if everything must have some connection with it. "ah," she said, quickly; "no, i see you weren't." "what is it?" he asked, but without real interest. "i can't tell you now," she said. gaspare went by the window leading the donkeys. "buona notte, signora!" it was a very happy voice. "buona notte, gaspare. sleep well." maurice caught at the last words. "we must sleep," he said. "to-morrow we'll--we'll----" "tell each other everything. yes, to-morrow!" she put her arm through his. "maurice, if you knew how i feel!" "yes?" he said, trying to make his voice eager, buoyant. "yes?" "if you knew how i've been longing to be back! and so often i've thought that i never should be here with you again, just in the way we were!" he cleared his throat. "why?" "it is so difficult to repeat a great, an intense happiness, i think. but we will, we are repeating it, aren't we?" "yes." "when i got to the station to-day, and--and you weren't there, i had a dreadful foreboding. it was foolish. the explanation of your not being there was so simple. of course i might have guessed it." "of course." "but in the first moment i felt as if you weren't there because i had lost you forever, because you had been taken away from me forever. it was such an intense feeling that it frightened me--it frightened me horribly. put your arm round me, maurice. let me feel what an idiot i have been!" he obeyed her and put his arm round her, and he felt as if his arm must tell her what she had not learned from his lips. and she thought that now he must know the truth she had not told him. "don't think of dreadful things," he said. "i won't any more. i don't think i could with you. to me you always mean the sun, light, and life, and all that is brave and beautiful!" he took his arm away from her. "come, we must sleep, hermione!" he said. "it's nearly dawn. i can almost see the smoke on etna." he shut the french window and drew the bolt. she had gone into the bedroom and was standing by the dressing-table. she did not know why, but a great shyness had come upon her. it was like a cloud enveloping her. never before had she felt like this with maurice, not even when they were first married. she had loved him too utterly to be shy with him. maurice was still in the sitting-room, fastening the shutters of the window. she heard the creak of wood, the clatter of the iron bar falling into the fastener. now he would come. but he did not come. he was moving about in the room. she heard papers rustling, then the lid of the piano shut down. he was putting everything in order. this orderliness was so unusual in maurice that it made a disagreeable impression upon her. she began to feel as if he did not want to come into the bedroom, as if he were trying to put off the moment of coming. she remembered that he had seemed shy of her. what had come to them both to-night? her instinct moved her to break through this painful, this absurd constraint. "maurice!" she called. "yes." his voice sounded odd to her, almost like the voice of some other man, some stranger. "aren't you coming?" "yes. hermione." but still he did not come. after a moment, he said: "it's awfully hot to-night!" "after africa it seems quite cool to me." "does it? i've been--since you've been away i've been sleeping nearly always out-of-doors on the terrace." now he came to the doorway and stood there. he looked at the white room, at hermione. she had on a white tea-gown. it seemed to him that everything here was white, everything but his soul. he felt as if he could not come into this room, could not sleep here to-night, as if it would be a desecration. when he stood in the doorway the painful shyness returned to her. "have you?" she said. "yes." "do you--would you rather sleep there to-night?" she did not mean to say it. it was the last thing she wished to say. yet she said it. it seemed to her that she was forced to say it. "well, it's much cooler there." she was silent. "i could just put one or two rugs and cushions on the seat by the wall," he said. "i shall sleep like a top. i'm awfully tired!" "but--but the sun will soon be up, won't it?" "oh--then i can come in." "all right." "i'll take the rugs from the sitting-room. i say--how's artois?" "much better, but he's still weak." "poor chap!" "he'll ride up to-morrow on a donkey." "good! i'm--i'm most awfully sorry about his rooms." "what does it matter? i've made them quite nice already. he's perfectly comfortable." "i'm glad. it's all--it's all been such a pity--about to-day, i mean." "don't let's think of it! don't let's think of it any more." a passionate sound had stolen into her voice. she moved a step towards him. a sudden idea had come to her, an idea that stirred within her a great happiness, that made a flame of joy spring up in her heart. "maurice, you--you----" "what is it?" he asked. "you aren't vexed at my staying away so long? you aren't vexed at my bringing emile back with me?" "no, of course not," he said. "but--but i wish you hadn't gone away." and then he disappeared into the sitting-room, collected the rugs and cushions, opened the french window, and went out upon the terrace. presently he called out: "i shall sleep as i am, hermione, without undressing. i'm awfully done. good-night." "good-night!" she called. there was a quiver in her voice. and yet that flame of happiness had not quite died down. she said to herself: "he doesn't want me to know. he's too proud. but he has been a little jealous, perhaps." she remembered how sicilian he was. "but i'll make him forget it all," she thought, eagerly. "to-morrow--to-morrow it will be all right. he's missed me, he's missed me!" that thought was very sweet to her. it seemed to explain all things; this constraint of her husband, which had reacted upon her, this action of his in preferring to sleep outside--everything. he had always been like a boy. he was like a boy now. he could not conceal his feelings. he did not doubt her. she knew that. but he had been a little jealous about her friendship for emile. she undressed. when she was ready for bed she hesitated a moment. then she put a white shawl round her shoulders and stole quickly out of the room. she came upon the terrace. the stars were waning. the gray of the dawn was in the sky towards the east. maurice, stretched upon the rugs, with his face turned towards the terrace wall, was lying still. she went to him, bent down, and kissed him. "i love you," she whispered--"oh, so much!" she did not wait, but went away at once. when she was gone he put up his hand to his face. on his cheek there was a tear. "god forgive me!" he said to himself. "god forgive me!" his body was shaken by a sob. xviii when the sun came up over the rim of the sea maurice ceased from his pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and looked over the ravine to the rocks of the sirens' isle. the name seemed to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in sicily fatal. surely there had been a malign spirit at work. in this early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. something had met him when he first set foot in sicily--so he thought now--had met him with a fixed and evil purpose. and that purpose had never been abandoned. old superstitions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. he did not laugh at his idea, as a pure-blooded englishman would have laughed. he pondered it. he cherished it. on his very first evening in sicily the spirit had led him to the wall, had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. he remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps to gaze down on it once more. then he had not known why he gazed. now he knew. the spirit that had met him by the sea in sicily had whispered to him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise. he dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been obliged to obey. it was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred of himself. the fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon him and comforted him a little. he had not been a free agent. he had had to do as he had done. everything had been arranged so that he might sin. the night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair. if hermione had stayed--but of course she had not stayed. the spirit that had kept him in sicily had sent her across the sea to africa. in the full flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. newly married, he had been abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. still, he had been abandoned--to himself and the keeping of that spirit. was it any wonder that he had fallen? he strove to think that it was not. in the night he had cowered before hermione and had been cruel with himself. now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. he strove to find excuses for himself. if he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the day, face hermione in sunlight. and now that the spirit had led him thus far, surely its work was done, surely it would leave him alone. he tried to believe that. then he thought of maddalena. she was there, down there where the rising sun glittered on the sea. she surely was awake, as he was awake. she was thinking, wondering--perhaps weeping. he got up. he could not look at the sea any more. the name "house of the sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought of maddalena perhaps weeping by the sea. he had his revenge upon salvatore, but at what a cost! salvatore! the fisherman's face rose up before him. if he ever knew! maurice remembered his sensation that already, before he had done the fisherman any wrong, the fisherman had condemned him. now there was a reason for condemnation. he had no physical fear of salvatore. he was not a man to be physically afraid of another man. but if salvatore ever knew he might tell. he might tell hermione. that thought brought with it to maurice a cold as of winter. the malign spirit might still have a purpose in connection with him, might still be near him full of intention. he felt afraid of the sicily he had loved. he longed to leave it. he thought of it as an isle of fear, where terrors walked in the midst of the glory of the sunshine, where fatality lurked beside the purple sea. "maurice!" he started. hermione was on the steps of the sitting-room. "you're not sleeping!" he said. he felt as if she had been there reading all his thoughts. "and you!" she answered. "the sun woke me." he lied instinctively. all his life with her would be a lie now, could never be anything else--unless---he looked at her hard and long in the eyes for the first time since they had met after her return. suppose he were to tell her, now, at once, in the stillness, the wonderful innocence and clearness of the dawn! for a moment he felt that it would be an exquisite relief, a casting down of an intolerable burden. she had such a splendid nature. she loved sincerity as she loved god. to her it was the one great essential quality, whose presence or absence made or marred the beauty of a human soul. he knew that. "why do you look at me like that?" she said, coming down to him with the look of slow strength that was always characteristic of her. he dropped his eyes. "i don't know. how do you mean?" "as if you had something to tell me." "perhaps--perhaps i have," he answered. he was on the verge, the very verge of confession. she put her arm through his. when she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not die utterly away. "tell it me," she said. "i love to hear everything you tell me. i don't think you could ever tell me anything that i should not understand." "are you--are you sure?" "i think so." "but"--he suddenly remembered some words of hers that, till then, he had forgotten--"but you had something to tell me." "yes." "i want to hear it." he could not speak yet. perhaps presently he would be able to. "let us go up to the top of the mountain," she answered. "i feel as if we could see the whole island from there. and up there we shall get all the wind of the morning." they turned towards the steep, bare slope and climbed it, while the sun rose higher, as if attending them. at the summit there was a heap of stones. "let us sit here," hermione said. "we can see everything from here, all the glories of the dawn." "yes." he was so intensely preoccupied by the debate within him that he did not remember that it was here, among these stones where they were sitting, that he had hidden the fragments of hermione's letter from africa telling him of her return on the day of the fair. they sat down with their faces towards the sea. the air up here was exquisitely cool. in the pellucid clearness of dawn the coast-line looked enchanted, fairy-like and full of delicate mystery. and its fading, in the far distance, was like a calling voice. behind them the ranges of mountains held a few filmy white clouds, like laces, about their rugged peaks. the sea was a pale blue stillness, shot with soft grays and mauves and pinks, and dotted here and there with black specks that were the boats of fishermen. hermione sat with her hands clasped round her knees. her face, browned by the african sun, was intense with feeling. "yes," she said, at last, "i can tell you here." she looked at the sea, the coast-line, then turned her head and gazed at the mountains. "we looked at them together," she continued--"that last evening before i went away. do you remember, maurice?" "yes." "from the arch. it is better up here. always, when i am very happy or very sad, my instinct would be to seek a mountain-top. the sight of great spaces seen from a height teaches one, i think." "what?" "not to be an egoist in one's joy; not to be a craven in one's sorrow. you see, a great view suggests the world, the vastness of things, the multiplicity of life. i think that must be it. and of course it reminds one, too, that one will soon be going away." "going away?" "yes. 'the mountains will endure'--but we--!" "oh, you mean death." "yes. what is it makes one think most of death when--when life, new life, is very near?" she had been gazing at the mountains and the sea, but now she turned and looked into his face. "don't you understand what i have to tell you?" she asked. he shook his head. he was still wondering whether he would dare to tell her of his sin. and he did not know. at one moment he thought that he could do it, at another that he would rather throw himself over the precipice of the mountain than do it. "i don't understand it at all." there was a lack of interest in his voice, but she did not notice it. she was full of the wonder of the morning, the wonder of being again with him, and the wonder of what she had to tell him. "maurice"--she put her hand on his--"the night i was crossing the sea to africa i knew. all these days i have kept this secret from you because i could not write it. it seemed to me too sacred. i felt i must be with you when i told it. that night upon the sea i was very sad. i could not sleep. i was on deck looking always back, towards sicily and you. and just when the dawn was coming i--i knew that a child was coming, too, a child of mine and yours." she was silent. her hand pressed his, and now she was again looking towards the sea. and it seemed to him that her face was new, that it was already the face of a mother. he said nothing and he did not move. he looked down at the heap of stones by which they were sitting, and his eyes rested on a piece of paper covered with writing. it was a fragment of hermione's letter to him. as he saw it something sharp and cold like a weapon made of ice, seemed to be plunged into him. he got up, pulling hard at her hand. she obeyed his hand. "what is it?" she said, as they stood together. "you look----" he had become pale. he knew it. "hermione!" he said. he was actually panting as if he had been running. he moved a few steps towards the edge of the summit. she followed him. "you are angry that i didn't tell you! but--i wanted to say it. i wanted to--to----" she lifted his hands to her lips. "thank you for giving me a child," she said. then tears came into his eyes and ran down over his cheeks. that he should be thanked by her--that scourged the genuine good in him till surely blood started under the strokes. "don't thank me!" he said. "don't do that! i won't have it!" his voice sounded angry. "i won't ever let you thank me for anything," he went on. "you must understand that." he was on the edge of some violent, some almost hysterical outburst. he thought of gaspare casting himself down in the boat that morning when he had feared that his padrone was drowned. so he longed to cast himself down and cry. but he had the strength to check his impulse. only, the checking of it seemed to turn him for a moment into something made not of flesh and blood but of iron. and this thing of iron was voiceless. she knew that he was feeling intensely and respected his silence. but at last it began almost to frighten her. the boyish look she loved had gone out of his face. a stern man stood beside her, a man she had never seen before. "maurice," she said, at length. "what is it? i think you are suffering." "yes," he said. "but--but aren't you glad? surely you are glad?" to her the word seemed mean, poverty-stricken. she changed it. "surely you are thankful?" "i don't know," he answered, at last. "i am thinking that i don't know that i am worthy to be a father." he himself had fixed a limit. now, god was putting a period to his wild youth. and the heart--was that changed within him? too much was happening. the cup was being filled too full. a great longing came to him to get away, far away, and be alone. if it had been any other day he would have gone off into the mountains, by himself, have stayed out till night came, have walked, climbed, till he was exhausted. but to-day he could not do that. and soon artois would be coming. he felt as if something must snap in brain or heart. and he had not slept. how he wished that he could sleep for a little while and forget everything. in sleep one knows nothing. he longed to be able to sleep. "i understand that," she said. "but you are worthy, my dear one." when she said that he knew that he could never tell her. "i must try," he muttered. "i'll try--from to-day." she did not talk to him any more. her instinct told her not to. almost directly they were walking down to the priest's house. she did not know which of them had moved first. when they got there they found lucrezia up. her eyes were red, but she smiled at hermione. then she looked at the padrone with alarm. she expected him to blame her for having disobeyed his orders of the day before. but he had forgotten all about that. "get breakfast, lucrezia," hermione said. "we'll have it on the terrace. and presently we must have a talk. the sick signore is coming up to-day for collazione. we must have a very nice collazione, but something wholesome." "si, signora." lucrezia went away to the kitchen thankfully. she had heard bad news of sebastiano yesterday in the village. he was openly in love with the girl in the lipari isles. her heart was almost breaking, but the return of the padrona comforted her a little. now she had some one to whom she could tell her trouble, some one who would sympathize. "i'll go and take a bath, hermione," maurice said. and he, too, disappeared. hermione went to talk to gaspare and tell him what to get in marechiaro. when breakfast was ready maurice came back looking less pale, but still unboyish. all the bright sparkle to which hermione was accustomed had gone out of him. she wondered why. she had expected the change in him to be a passing thing, but it persisted. at breakfast it was obviously difficult for him to talk. she sought a reason for his strangeness. presently she thought again of artois. could he be the reason? or was maurice now merely preoccupied by that great, new knowledge that there would soon be a third life mingled with theirs? she wondered exactly what he felt about that. he was really such a boy at heart despite his set face of to-day. perhaps he dreaded the idea of responsibility. his agitation upon the mountain-top had been intense. perhaps he was rendered unhappy by the thought of fatherhood. or was it emile? when breakfast was over, and he was smoking, she said to him: "maurice, i want to ask you something." a startled look came into his eyes. "what?" he said, quickly. he threw his cigarette away and turned towards her, with a sort of tenseness that suggested to her a man bracing himself for some ordeal. "only about emile." "oh!" he said. he took another cigarette, and his attitude at once looked easier. she wondered why. "you don't mind about emile being here, do you?" maurice was nearly answering quickly that he was delighted to welcome him. but a suddenly born shrewdness prevented him. to-day, like a guilty man, he was painfully conscious, painfully alert. he knew that hermione was wondering about him, and realized that her question afforded him an opportunity to be deceptive and yet to seem quite natural and truthful. he could not be as he had been, to-day. the effort was far too difficult for him. hermione's question showed him a plausible excuse for his peculiarity of demeanor and conduct. he seized it. "i think it was very natural for you to bring him," he answered. he lit the cigarette. his hand was trembling slightly. "but--but you had rather i hadn't brought him?" as maurice began to act a part an old feeling returned to him, and almost turned his lie into truth. "you could hardly expect me to wish to have artois with us here, could you, hermione?" he said, slowly. she scarcely knew whether she were most pained or pleased. she was pained that anything she had done had clouded his happiness, but she was intensely glad to think he loved to be quite alone with her. "no, i felt that. but i felt, too, as if it would be cruel to stop short, unworthy in us." "in us?" "yes. you let me go to africa. you might have asked me, you might even have told me, not to go. i did not think of it at the time. everything went so quickly. but i have thought of it since. and, knowing that, realizing it, i feel that you had your part, a great part, in emile's rescue. for i do believe, maurice, that if i had not gone he would have died." "then i am glad you went." he spoke perfunctorily, almost formally. hermione felt chilled. "it seemed to me that, having begun to do a good work, it would be finer, stronger, to carry it quite through, to put aside our own desires and think of another who had passed through a great ordeal. was i wrong, maurice? emile is still very weak, very dependent. ought i to have said, 'now i see you're not going to die, i'll leave you at once.' wouldn't it have been rather selfish, even rather brutal?" his reply startled her. "have you--have you ever thought of where we are?" he said. "where we are!" "of the people we are living among?" "i don't think i understand." he cleared his throat. "they're sicilians. they don't see things as the english do," he said. there was a silence. hermione felt a heat rush over her, over all her body and face. she did not speak, because, if she had, she might have said something vehement, even headstrong, such as she had never said, surely never would say, to maurice. "of course i understand. it's not that," he added. "no, it couldn't be that," she said. "you needn't tell me." the hot feeling stayed with her. she tried to control it. "you surely can't mind what ignorant people out here think of an utterly innocent action!" she said, at last, very quietly. but even as she spoke she remembered the sicilian blood in him. "you have minded it!" she said. "you do mind now." and suddenly she felt very tender over him, as she might have felt over a child. in his face she could not see the boy to-day, but his words set the boy, the inmost nature of the boy that he still surely was, before her. the sense of humor in her seemed to be laughing and wiping away a tear at the same time. she moved her chair close to his. "maurice," she said. "do you know that sometimes you make me feel horribly old and motherly?" "do i?" he said. "you do to-day, and yet--do you know that i have been thinking since i came back that you are looking older, much older than when i went away?" "is that artois?" he said, looking over the wall to the mountain-side beyond the ravine. hermione got up, leaned upon the wall, and followed his eyes. "i think it must be. i told gaspare to go to the hotel when he fetched the provisions in marechiaro and tell emile it would be best to come up in the cool. yes, it is he, and gaspare is with him! maurice, you don't mind so very much?" she put her arm through his. "these people can't talk when they see how ill he looks. and if they do--oh, maurice, what does it matter? surely there's only one thing in the world that matters, and that is whether one can look one's own conscience in the face and say, 'i've nothing to be ashamed of!'" maurice longed to get away from the touch of her arm. he remembered the fragment of paper he had seen among the stones on the mountain-side. he must go up there alone directly he had a moment of freedom. but now--artois! he stared at the distant donkeys. his brain felt dry and shrivelled, his body both feverish and tired. how could he support this long day's necessities? it seemed to him that he had not the strength and resolution to endure them. and artois was so brilliant! maurice thought of him at that moment as a sort of monster of intellectuality, terrifying and repellent. "don't you think so?" hermione said. "i dare say," he answered. "but i dare say, i suppose--very few of us can do that. we can't expect to be perfect, and other people oughtn't to expect it of us." his voice had changed. before, it had been almost an accusing voice and insincere. now it was surely a voice that pleaded, and it was absolutely sincere. hermione remembered how in london long ago the humility of maurice had touched her. he had stood out from the mass of conceited men because of his beauty and his simple readiness to sit at the feet of others. and surely the simplicity, the humility, still persisted beautifully in him. "i don't think i should ever expect anything of you that you wouldn't give me," she said to him. "anything of loyalty, of straightness, or of manhood. often you seem to me a boy, and yet, i know, if a danger came to me, or a trouble, i could lean on you and you would never fail me. that's what a woman loves to feel when she has given herself to a man, that he knows how to take care of her, and that he cares to take care of her." her body was touching his. he felt himself stiffen. the mental pain he suffered under the lash of her words affected his body, and his knowledge of the necessity to hide all that was in his mind caused his body to long for isolation, to shrink from any contact with another. "i hope," he said, trying to make his voice natural and simple----"i hope you'll never be in trouble or in danger, hermione." "i don't think i could mind very much if you were there, if i could just touch your hand." "here they come!" he said. "i hope artois isn't very tired with the ride. we ought to have had sebastiano here to play the 'pastorale' for him." "ah! sebastiano!" said hermione. "he's playing it for some one else in the lipari islands. poor lucrezia! maurice, i love sicily and all things sicilian. you know how much! but--but i'm glad you've got some drops of english blood in your veins. i'm glad you aren't all sicilian." "come," he said. "let us go to the arch and meet him." xix "so this is your garden of paradise?" artois said. he got off his donkey slowly at the archway, and stood for a moment, after shaking them both by the hand, looking at the narrow terrace, bathed in sunshine despite the shelter of the awning, at the columns, at the towering rocks which dominated the grove of oak-trees, and at the low, white-walled cottage. "the garden from which you came to save my life," he added. he turned to maurice. "i am grateful and i am ashamed," he said. "i was not your friend, monsieur, but you have treated me with more than friendship. i thank you in words now, but my hope is that some day i shall be given the opportunity to thank you with an act." he held out his hand again to maurice. there had been a certain formality in his speech, but there was a warmth in his manner that was not formal. as maurice held his hand the eyes of the two men met, and each took swift note of the change in the other. artois's appearance was softened by his illness. in health he looked authoritative, leonine, very sure of himself, piercingly observant, sometimes melancholy, but not anxious. his manner, never blustering or offensive, was usually dominating, the manner of one who had the right to rule in the things of the intellect. now he seemed much gentler, less intellectual, more emotional. one received, at a first meeting with him, the sensation rather of coming into contact with a man of heart than with a man of brains. maurice felt the change at once, and was surprised by it. outwardly the novelist was greatly altered. his tall frame was shrunken and slightly bent. the face was pale and drawn, the eyes were sunken, the large-boned body was frightfully thin and looked uncertain when it moved. as maurice gazed he realized that this man had been to the door of death, almost over the threshold of the door. and artois? he saw a change in the mercury whom he had last seen at the door of the london restaurant, a change that startled him. "come into our garden of paradise and rest," said hermione. "lean on my arm, emile." "may i?" artois asked of maurice, with a faint smile that was almost pathetic. "please do. you must be tired!" hermione and artois walked slowly forward to the terrace, arm linked in arm. maurice was about to follow them when he felt a hand catch hold of him, a hand that was hot and imperative. "gaspare! what is it?" "signorino, signorino, i must speak to you!" startled, maurice looked into the boy's flushed face. the great eyes searched him fiercely. "put the donkeys in the stable," maurice said. "i'll come." "come behind the house, signorino. ah, madonna!" the last exclamation was breathed out with an intensity that was like the intensity of despair. the boy's look and manner were tragic. "gaspare," maurice said, "what----?" he saw hermione turning towards him. "i'll come in a minute, gaspare." "madonna!" repeated the boy. "madonna!" he held up his hands and let them drop to his sides. then he muttered something--a long sentence--in dialect. his voice sounded like a miserable old man's. "ah--ah!" he called to the donkeys and drove them forward to the out-house. maurice followed. what had happened? gaspare had the manner, the look, of one confronted by a terror from which there was no escape. his eyes had surely at the same time rebuked and furiously pitied his master. what did they mean? "this is our garden of paradise!" hermione was saying as maurice came up to her and artois. "do you wonder that we love it?" "i wonder that you left it." artois replied. he was sunk in a deep straw chair, a chaise longue piled up with cushions, facing the great and radiant view. after he had spoken he sighed. "i don't think," he said, "that either of you really know that this is eden. that knowledge has been reserved for the interloper, for me." hermione sat down close to him. maurice was standing by the wall, listening furtively to the noises from the out-house, where gaspare was unsaddling the donkeys. artois glanced at him, and was more sharply conscious of change in him. to artois this place, after the long journey, which had sorely tried his feeble body, seemed an enchanted place of peace, a veritable elysian field in which the saddest, the most driven man must surely forget his pain and learn how to rest and to be joyful in repose. but he felt that his host, the man who had been living in paradise, who ought surely to have been learning its blessed lessons through sunlit days and starry nights, was restless like a man in a city, was anxious, was intensely ill at ease. once, watching this man, artois had thought of the messenger, poised on winged feet, radiantly ready for movement that would be exquisite because it would be obedient. this man still looked ready for flight, but for a flight how different! as artois was thinking this maurice moved. "excuse me just for an instant!" he said. "i want to speak to gaspare." he saw now that gaspare was taking into the cottage the provisions that had been carried up by the donkey from marechiaro. "i--i told him to do something for me in the village," he added, "and i want just to know--" he looked at them, almost defiantly, as if he challenged them not to believe what he had said. then, without finishing his sentence, he went quickly into the cottage. "you have chosen your garden well," artois said to hermione directly they were alone. "no other sea has ever given to me such an impression of tenderness and magical space as this; no other sea has surely ever had a horizon-line so distant from those who look as this." he went on talking about the beauty, leading her with him. he feared lest she might begin to speak about her husband. meanwhile, maurice had reached the mountain-side behind the house and was waiting there for gaspare. he heard the boy's voice in the kitchen speaking to lucrezia, angrily it seemed by the sound. then the voice ceased and gaspare appeared for an instant at the kitchen door, making violent motions with his arms towards the mountain. he disappeared. what did he want? what did he mean? the gestures had been imperative. maurice looked round. a little way up the mountain there was a large, closed building, like a barn, built of stones. it belonged to a contadino, but maurice had never seen it open, or seen any one going to or coming from it. as he stared at it an idea occurred to him. perhaps gaspare meant him to go and wait there, behind the barn, so that lucrezia should not see or hear their colloquy. he resolved to do this, and went swiftly up the hill-side. when he was in the shadow of the building he waited. he did not know what was the matter, what gaspare wanted, but he realized that something had occurred which had stirred the boy to the depths. this something must have occurred while he was at marechiaro. before he had time mentally to make a list of possible events in marechiaro, maurice heard light feet running swiftly up the mountain, and gaspare came round the corner, still with the look of tragedy, a wild, almost terrible look in his eyes. "signorino," he began at once, in a low voice that was full of the pressure of an intense excitement. "tell me! where were you last night when we were making the fireworks go off?" maurice felt the blood mount to his face. "close to where you left me," he answered. "oh, signore! oh, signore!" it was almost a cry. the sweat was pouring down the boy's face. "ma non ã¨ mia colpa! non ã¨ mia colpa!" he exclaimed. "what do you mean? what has happened, gaspare?" "i have seen salvatore." his voice was more quiet now. he fixed his eyes almost sternly on his padrone, as if in the effort to read his very soul. "well? well, gaspare?" maurice was almost stammering now. he guessed--he knew what was coming. "salvatore came up to me just before i got to the village. i heard him calling, 'stop!' i stood still. we were on the path not far from the fountain. there was a broken branch on the ground, a branch of olive. salvatore said: 'suppose that is your padrone, that branch there!' and he spat on it. he spat on it, signore, he spat--and he spat." maurice knew now. "go on!" he said. and this time there was no uncertainty in his voice. gaspare was breathing hard. his breast rose and fell. "i was going to strike him in the face, but he caught my hand, and then--signorino, signorino, what have you done?" his voice rose. he began to look uncontrolled, distracted, wild, as if he might do some frantic thing. "gaspare! gaspare!" maurice had him by the arms. "why did you?" panted the boy. "why did you?" "then salvatore knows?" maurice saw that any denial was useless. "he knows! he knows!" if maurice had not held gaspare tightly the boy would have flung himself down headlong on the ground, to burst into one of those storms of weeping which swept upon him when he was fiercely wrought up. but maurice would not let him have this relief. "gaspare! listen to me! what is he going to do? what is salvatore going to do?" "santa madonna! santa madonna!" the boy rocked himself to and fro. he began to invoke the madonna and the saints. he was beside himself, was almost like one mad. "gaspare--in the name of god----!" "h'sh!" suddenly the boy kept still. his face changed, hardened. his body became tense. with his hand still held up in a warning gesture, he crept to the edge of the barn and looked round it. "what is it?" maurice whispered. gaspare stole back. "it is only lucrezia. she is spreading the linen. i thought----" "what is salvatore going to do?" "unless you go down to the sea to meet him this evening, signorino, he is coming up here to-night to tell everything to the signora." maurice went white. "i shall go," he said. "i shall go down to the sea." "madonna! madonna!" "he won't come now? he won't come this morning?" maurice spoke almost breathlessly, with his hands on the boy's hands which streamed with sweat. gaspare shook his head. "i told him if he came up i would meet him in the path and kill him." the boy had out a knife. maurice put his arm round gaspare's shoulder. at that moment he really loved the boy. "will he come?" "only if you do not go." "i shall go." "i will come with you, signorino." "no. i must go alone." "i will come with you!" a dogged obstinacy hardened his whole face, made even his shining eyes look cold, like stones. "gaspare, you are to stay with the signora. i may miss salvatore going down. while i am gone he may come up here. the signora is not to speak with him. he is not to come to her." gaspare hesitated. he was torn in two by his dual affection, his dual sense of the watchful fidelity he owed to his padrone and to his padrona. "va bene," he said, at last, in a half whisper. he hung down his head like one exhausted. "how will it finish?" he murmured, as if to himself. "how will it finish?" "i must go," maurice said. "i must go now. gaspare!" "si, signore?" "we must be careful, you and i, to-day. we must not let the signora, lucrezia, any one suspect that--that we are not just as usual. do you see?" "si, signore." the boy nodded. his eyes now looked tired. "and try to keep a lookout, when you can, without drawing the attention of the signora. salvatore might change his mind and come up. the signora is not to know. she is never to know. do you think"--he hesitated--"do you think salvatore has told any one?" "non lo so." the boy was silent. then he lifted his hands again and said: "signorino! signorino!" and maurice seemed to hear at that moment the voice of an accusing angel. "gaspare," he said, "i was mad. we men--we are mad sometimes. but now i must be sane. i must do what i can to--i must do what i can--and you must help me." he held out his hand. gaspare took it. the grasp of it was strong, that of a man. it seemed to reassure the boy. "i will always help my padrone," he said. then they went down the mountain-side. it was perhaps very strange--maurice thought it was--but he felt now less tired, less confused, more master of himself than he had before he had spoken with gaspare. he even felt less miserable. face to face with an immediate and very threatening danger, courage leaped up in him, a certain violence of resolve which cleared away clouds and braced his whole being. he had to fight. there was no way out. well, then, he would fight. he had played the villain, perhaps, but he would not play the poltroon. he did not know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he must act, and act decisively. his wild youth responded to this call made upon it. there was a new light in his eyes as he went down to the cottage, as he came upon the terrace. artois noticed it at once, was aware at once that in this marvellous peace to which hermione had brought him there were elements which had nothing to do with peace. "what hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me." these words from the bible came into his mind as he looked into the eyes of his host, and he felt that hermione and he were surely near to some drama of which they knew nothing, of which hermione, perhaps, suspected nothing. maurice acted his part. the tonic of near danger gave him strength, even gave him at first a certain subtlety. from the terrace he could see far over the mountain flanks. as one on a tower he watched for the approach of his enemy from the sea, but he did not neglect his two companions. for he was fighting already. when he seemed natural in his cordiality to his guest, when he spoke and laughed, when he apologized for the misfortune of the previous day, he was fighting. the battle with circumstances was joined. he must bear himself bravely in it. he must not allow himself to be overwhelmed. nevertheless, there came presently a moment which brought with it a sense of fear. hermione got up to go into the house. "i must see what lucrezia is doing," she said. "your collazione must not be a fiasco, emile." "nothing could be a fiasco here, i think," he answered. she laughed happily. "but poor lucrezia is not in paradise," she said. "ah, why can't every one be happy when one is happy one's self? i always think of that when i----" she did not finish her sentence in words. her look at the two men concluded it. then she turned and went into the house. "what is the matter with lucrezia?" asked artois. "oh, she--she's in love with a shepherd called sebastiano." "and he's treating her badly?" "i'm afraid so. he went to the lipari isles, and he doesn't come back." "a girl there keeps him captive?" "it seems so." "faithful women must not expect to have a perfect time in sicily," artois said. as he spoke he noticed that a change came in his companion's face. it was fleeting, but it was marked. it made artois think: "this man understands sicilian faithlessness in love." it made him, too, remember sharply some words of his own said long ago in london: "i love the south, but i distrust what i love, and i see the south in him." there was a silence between the two men. heat was growing in the long summer day, heat that lapped them in the influence of the south. africa had been hotter, but this seemed the breast of the south, full of glory and of languor, and of that strange and subtle influence which inclines the heart of man to passion and the body of man to yield to its desires. it was glorious, this wonderful magic of the south, but was it wholesome for northern men? was it not full of danger? as he looked at the great, shining waste of the sea, purple and gold, dark and intense and jewelled, at the outline of etna, at the barbaric ruin of the saracenic castle on the cliff opposite, like a cry from the dead ages echoing out of the quivering blue, at the man before him leaning against the blinding white wall above the steep bank of the ravine, artois said to himself that the south was dangerous to young, full-blooded men, was dangerous, to such a man as delarey. and he asked himself the question, "what has this man been doing here in this glorious loneliness of the south, while his wife has been saving my life in africa?" and a sense of reproach, almost of alarm, smote him. for he had called hermione away. in the terrible solitude that comes near to the soul with the footfalls of death he had not been strong enough to be silent. he had cried out, and his friend had heard and had answered. and delarey had been left alone with the sun. "i'm afraid you must feel as if i were your enemy," he said. and as he spoke he was thinking, "have i been this man's enemy?" "oh no. why?" "i deprived you of your wife. you've been all alone here." "i made friends of the sicilians." maurice spoke lightly, but through his mind ran the thought, "what an enemy this man has been to me, without knowing it!" "they are easy to get on with," said artois. "when i was in sicily i learned to love them." "oh, love!" said maurice, hastily. he checked himself. "that's rather a strong word, but i like them. they're a delightful race." "have you found out their faults?" both men were trying to hide themselves in their words. "what are their faults, do you think?" maurice said. he looked over the wall and saw, far off on the path by the ravine, a black speck moving. "treachery when they do not trust; sensuality, violence, if they think themselves wronged." "are--are those faults? i understand them. they seem almost to belong to the sun." artois had not been looking at maurice. the sound of maurice's voice now made him aware that the speaker had turned away from him. he glanced up and saw his companion staring over the wall across the ravine. what was he gazing at? artois wondered. "yes, the sun is perhaps partly responsible for them. then you have become such a sun-worshipper that----" "no, no, i don't say that," maurice interrupted. he looked round and met artois's observant eyes. he had dreaded having those eyes fixed upon him. "but i think--i think things done in such a place, such an island as this, shouldn't be judged too severely, shouldn't be judged, i mean, quite as we might judge them, say, in england." he looked embarrassed as he ended, and shifted his gaze from his companion. "i agree with you," artois said. maurice looked at him again, almost eagerly. an odd feeling came to him that this man, who unwittingly had done him a deadly harm, would be able to understand what perhaps no woman could ever understand, the tyranny of the senses in a man, their fierce tyranny in the sunlit lands. had he been so wicked? would artois think so? and the punishment that was perhaps coming--did he deserve that it should be terrible? he wondered, almost like a boy. but hermione was not with them. when she was there he did not wonder. he felt that he deserved lashes unnumbered. and artois--he began to feel almost clairvoyant. the new softness that had come to him with the pain of the body, that had been developed by the blessed rest from pain that was convalescence, had not stricken his faculty of seeing clear in others, but it had changed, at any rate for a time, the sentiments that followed upon the exercise of that faculty. scorn and contempt were less near to him than they had been. pity was nearer. he felt now almost sure that delarey had fallen into some trouble while hermione was in africa, that he was oppressed at this moment by some great uneasiness or even fear, that he was secretly cursing some imprudence, and that his last words were a sort of surreptitious plea for forgiveness, thrown out to the powers of the air, to the spirits of the void, to whatever shadowy presences are about the guilty man ready to condemn his sin. he felt, too, that he owed much to delarey. in a sense it might be said that he owed to him his life. for delarey had allowed hermione to come to africa, and if hermione had not come the end for him, artois, might well have been death. "i should like to say something to you, monsieur," he said. "it is rather difficult to say, because i do not wish it to seem formal, when the feeling that prompts it is not formal." maurice was again looking over the wall, watching with intensity the black speck that was slowly approaching on the little path. "what is it, monsieur?" he asked, quickly. "i owe you a debt--indeed i do. you must not deny it. through your magnanimous action in permitting your wife to leave you, you, perhaps indirectly, saved my life. for, without her aid, i do not think i could have recovered. of her nobility and devotion i will not, because i cannot adequately, speak. but i wish to say to you that if ever i can do you a service of any kind i will do it." as he finished maurice, who was looking at him now, saw a veil over his big eyes. could it--could it possibly be a veil of tears! "thank you," he answered. he tried to speak warmly, cordially. but his heart said to him: "you can do nothing for me now. it is all too late!" yet the words and the emotion of artois were some slight relief to him. he was able to feel that in this man he had no secret enemy, but, if need be, a friend. "you have a nice fellow as servant," artois said, to change the conversation. "gaspare--yes. he's loyal. i intend to ask hermione to let me take him to england with us." he paused, then added, with an anxious curiosity: "did you talk to him much as you came up?" he wondered whether the novelist had noticed gaspare's agitation or whether the boy had been subtle enough to conceal it. "not very much. the path is narrow, and i rode in front. he sang most of the time, those melancholy songs of sicily that came surely long ago across the sea from africa." "they nearly always sing on the mountains when they are with the donkeys." "dirges of the sun. there is a sadness of the sun as well as a joy." "yes." as maurice answered, he thought, "how well i know that now!" and as he looked at the black figure drawing nearer in the sunshine it seemed to him that there was a terror in that gold which he had often worshipped. if that figure should be salvatore! he strained his eyes. at one moment he fancied that he recognized the wild, free, rather strutting walk of the fisherman. at another he believed that his fear had played him a trick, that the movements of the figure were those of an old man, some plodding contadino of the hills. artois wondered increasingly what he was looking at. a silence fell between them. artois lay back in the chaise longue and gazed up at the blue, then at the section of distant sea which was visible above the rim of the wall though the intervening mountain land was hidden. it was a paradise up here. and to have it with the great love of a woman, what an experience that must be for any man! it seemed to him strange that such an experience had been the gift of the gods to their messenger, their mercury. what had it meant to him? what did it mean to him now? something had changed him. was it that? in the man by the wall artois did not see any longer the bright youth he remembered. yet the youth was still there, the supple grace, the beauty, bronzed now by the long heats of the sun. it was the expression that had changed. in cities one sees anxious-looking men everywhere. in london delarey had stood out from the crowd not only because of his beauty of the south, but because of his light-hearted expression, the spirit of youth in his eyes. and now here, in this reality that seemed almost like a dream in its perfection, in this reality of the south, there was a look of strain in his eyes and in his whole body. the man had contradicted his surroundings in london--now he contradicted his surroundings here. while artois was thinking this maurice's expression suddenly changed, his attitude became easier. he turned round from the wall, and artois saw that the keen anxiety had gone out of his eyes. gaspare was below with his gun pretending to look for birds, and had made a sign that the approaching figure was not that of salvatore. maurice's momentary sense of relief was so great that it threw him off his guard. "what can have been happening beyond the wall?" artois thought. he felt as if a drama had been played out there and the dã©nouement had been happy. hermione came back at this moment. "poor lucrezia!" she said. "she's plucky, but sebastiano is making her suffer horribly." "here!" said artois, almost involuntarily. "it does seem almost impossible, i know." she sat down again near him and smiled at her husband. "you are coming back to health, emile. and maurice and i--well, we are in our garden. it seems wrong, terribly wrong, that any one should suffer here. but lucrezia loves like a sicilian. what violence there is in these people!" "england must not judge them." he looked at maurice. "what's that?" asked hermione. "something you two were talking about when i was in the kitchen?" maurice looked uneasy. "i was only saying that i think the sun--the south has an influence," he said, "and that----" "an influence!" exclaimed hermione. "of course it has! emile, you would have seen that influence at work if you had been with us on our first day in sicily. your tarantella, maurice!" she smiled again happily, but her husband did not answer her smile. "what was that?" said artois. "you never told me in africa." "the boys danced a tarantella here on the terrace to welcome us, and it drove maurice so mad that he sprang up and danced too. and the strange thing was that he danced as well as any of them. his blood called him, and he obeyed the call." she looked at artois to remind him of his words. "it's good when the blood calls one to the tarantella, isn't it?" she asked him. "i think it's the most wildly innocent expression of extreme joy in the world. and yet"--her expressive face changed, and into her prominent brown eyes there stole a half-whimsical, half-earnest look--"at the end--maurice, do you know that i was almost frightened that day at the end?" "frightened! why?" he said. he got up from the terrace-seat and sat down in a straw chair. [illustration: "'but i soon learned to delight in--in my sicilian,' she said, tenderly"] "why?" he repeated, crossing one leg over the other and laying his brown hands on the arms of the chair. "i had a feeling that you were escaping from me in the tarantella. wasn't it absurd?" he looked slightly puzzled. she turned to artois. "can you imagine what i felt, emile? he danced so well that i seemed to see before me a pure-blooded sicilian. it almost frightened me!" she laughed. "but i soon learned to delight in--in my sicilian," she said, tenderly. she felt so happy, so at ease, and she was so completely natural, that it did not occur to her that though she was with her husband and her most intimate friend the two men were really strangers to each other. "you'll find that i'm quite english, when we are back in london," maurice said. there was a cold sound of determination in his voice. "oh, but i don't want you to lose what you have gained here," hermione protested, half laughingly, half tenderly. "gained!" maurice said, still in the prosaic voice. "i don't think a sicilian would be much good in england. we--we don't want romance there. we want cool-headed, practical men who can work, and who've no nonsense about them." "maurice!" she said, amazed. "what a cold douche! and from you! why, what has happened to you while i've been away?" "happened to me?" he said, quickly. "nothing. what should happen to me here?" "do you--are you beginning to long for england and english ways?" "i think it's time i began to do something," he said, resolutely. "i think i've had a long enough holiday." he was trying to put the past behind him. he was trying to rush into the new life, the life in which there would be no more wildness, no more yielding to the hot impulses that were surely showered down out of the sun. mentally he was leaving the enchanted island already. it was fading away, sinking into its purple sea, sinking out of his sight with his wild heart of youth, while he, cold, calm, resolute man, was facing the steady life befitting an englishman, the life of work, of social duties, of husband and father, with a money-making ambition and a stake in his country. "perhaps you're right," hermione said. but there was a sound of disappointment in her voice. till now maurice had always shared her sicilian enthusiasms, had even run before them, lighter-footed than she in the race towards the sunshine. it was difficult to accommodate herself to this abrupt change. "but don't let us think of going to-day," she added. "remember--i have only just come back." "and i!" said artois. "be merciful to an invalid, monsieur delarey!" he spoke lightly, but he felt fully conscious now that his suspicion was well founded. maurice was uneasy, unhappy. he wanted to get away from this peace that held no peace for him. he wanted to put something behind him. to a man like artois, maurice was a boy. he might try to be subtle, he might even be subtle--for him. but to this acute and trained observer of the human comedy he could not for long be deceptive. during his severe illness the mind of artois had often been clouded, had been dispossessed of its throne by the clamor of the body's pain. and afterwards, when the agony passed and the fever abated, the mind had been lulled, charmed into a stagnant state that was delicious. but now it began to go again to its business. it began to work with the old rapidity that had for a time been lost. and as this power came back and was felt thoroughly, very consciously by this very conscious man, he took alarm. what affected or threatened delarey must affect, threaten hermione. whether he were one with her or not she was one with him. the feeling of artois towards the woman who had shown him such noble, such unusual friendship was exquisitely delicate and intensely strong. unmingled with any bodily passion, it was, or so it seemed to him, the more delicate and strong on that account. he was a man who had an instinctive hatred of heroics. his taste revolted from them as it revolted from violence in literature. they seemed to him a coarseness, a crudity of the soul, and almost inevitably linked with secret falseness. but he was conscious that to protect from sorrow or shame the woman who had protected him in his dark hour he would be willing to make any sacrifice. there would be no limit to what he would be ready to do now, in this moment, for hermione. he knew that, and he took the alarm. till now he had been feeling curiosity about the change in delarey. now he felt the touch of fear. something had happened to change maurice while hermione had been in africa. he had heard, perhaps, the call of the blood. all that he had said, and all that he had felt, on the night when he had met maurice for the first time in london, came back to artois. he had prophesied, vaguely perhaps. had his prophecy already been fulfilled? in this great and shining peace of nature maurice was not at peace. and now all sense of peace deserted artois. again, and fiercely now, he felt the danger of the south, and he added to his light words some words that were not light. "but i am really no longer an invalid," he said. "and i must be getting northward very soon. i need the bracing air, the spartan touch of the cold that the sybarite in me dreads. perhaps we all need them." "if you go on like this, you two," hermione exclaimed, "you will make me feel as if it were degraded to wish to live anywhere except at clapham junction or the north pole. let us be happy as we are, where we are, to-day and--yes, call me weak if you like--and to-morrow!" maurice made no answer to this challenge, but artois covered his silence, and kept the talk going on safe topics till gaspare came to the terrace to lay the cloth for collazione. it was past noon now, and the heat was brimming up like a flood over the land. flies buzzed about the terrace, buzzed against the white walls and ceilings of the cottage, winding their tiny, sultry horns ceaselessly, musicians of the sun. the red geraniums in the stone pots beneath the broken columns drooped their dry heads. the lizards darted and stopped, darted and stopped upon the wall and the white seats where the tiles were burning to the touch. there was no moving figure on the baked mountains, no moving vessel on the shining sea. no smoke came from the snowless lips of etna. it was as if the fires of the sun had beaten down and slain the fires of the earth. gaspare moved to and fro slowly, spreading the cloth, arranging the pots of flowers, the glasses, forks, and knives upon it. in his face there was little vivacity. but now and then his great eyes searched the hot world that lay beneath them, and artois thought he saw in them the watchfulness, the strained anxiety that had been in maurice's eyes. "some one must be coming," he thought. "or they must be expecting some one to come, these two." "do you ever have visitors here?" he asked, carelessly. "visitors! emile, why are we here? do you anticipate a knock and 'if you please, ma'am, mrs. and the misses watson'? good heavens--visitors on monte amato!" he smiled, but he persisted. "never a contadino, or a shepherd, or"--he looked down at the sea--"or a fisherman with his basket of sarde?" maurice moved in his chair, and gaspare, hearing a word he knew, looked hard at the speaker. "oh, we sometimes have the people of the hills to see us," said hermione. "but we don't call them 'visitors.' as to fishermen--here they are!" she pointed to her husband and gaspare. "but they eat all the fish they catch, and we never see the fin of even one at the cottage." collazione was ready now. hermione helped artois up from his chaise longue, and they went to the table under the awning. "you must sit facing the view, emile," hermione said. "what a dining-room!" artois exclaimed. now he could see over the wall. his gaze wandered over the mountain-sides, travelled down to the land that lay along the edge of the sea. "have you been fishing much since i've been away, maurice?" hermione asked, as they began to eat. "oh yes. i went several times. what wine do you like, monsieur artois?" he tried to change the conversation, but hermione, quite innocently, returned to the subject. "they fish at night, you know, emile, all along that coast by isola bella and on to the point there that looks like an island, where the house of the sirens is." a tortured look went across maurice's face. he had begun to eat, but now he stopped for a moment like a man suddenly paralyzed. "the house of the sirens!" said artois. "then there are sirens here? i could well believe it. have you seen them, monsieur maurice, at night, when you have been fishing?" he had been gazing at the coast, but now he turned towards his host. maurice began hastily to eat again. "i'm afraid not. but we didn't look out for them. we were prosaic and thought of nothing but the fish." "and is there really a house down there?" said artois. "yes," said hermione. "it used to be a ruin, but now it's built up and occupied. gaspare"--she spoke to him as he was taking a dish from the table--"who is it lives in the casa delle sirene now? you told me, but i've forgotten." a heavy, obstinate look came into the boy's face, transforming it. the question startled him, and he had not understood a word of the conversation which had led up to it. what had they been talking about? he glanced furtively at his master. maurice did not look at him. "salvatore and maddalena, signora," he answered, after a pause. then he took the dish and went into the house. "what's the matter with gaspare?" said hermione. "i never saw him look like that before--quite ugly. doesn't he like these people?" "oh yes," replied maurice. "why--why, they're quite friends of ours. we saw them at the fair only yesterday." "well, then, why should gaspare look like that?" "oh," said artois, who saw the discomfort of his host, "perhaps there is some family feud that you know nothing of. when i was in sicily i found the people singularly subtle. they can gossip terribly, but they can keep a secret when they choose. if i had won the real friendship of a sicilian, i would rather trust him with my secret than a man of any other race. they are not only loyal--that is not enough--but they are also very intelligent." "yes, they are both--the good ones," said hermione. "i would trust gaspare through thick and thin. if they were only as stanch in love as they can be in friendship!" gaspare came out again with another course. the ugly expression had gone from his face, but he still looked unusually grave. "ah, when the senses are roused they are changed beings," artois said. "they hate and resent governance from outside, but their blood governs them." "our blood governs us when the time comes--do you remember?" hermione had said the words before she remembered the circumstances in which they had been spoken and of whom they were said. directly she had uttered them she remembered. "what was that?" maurice asked, before artois could reply. he had seen a suddenly conscious look in hermione's face, and instantly he was aware of a feeling of jealousy within him. "what was that?" he repeated, looking quickly from one to the other. "something i remember saying to your wife," artois answered. "we were talking about human nature--a small subject, monsieur, isn't it?--and i think i expressed the view of a fatalist. at any rate, i did say that--that our blood governs us when the time comes." "the time?" maurice asked. his feeling of jealousy died away, and was replaced by a keen personal interest unmingled with suspicions of another. "well, i confess it sometimes seems to me as if, when a certain hour strikes, a certain deed must be committed by a certain man or woman. it is perhaps their hour of madness. they may repent it to the day of their death. but can they in that hour avoid that deed? sometimes, when i witness the tragic scenes that occur abruptly, unexpectedly, in the comedy of life, i am moved to wonder." "then you should be very forgiving, emile," hermione said. "and you?" he asked. "are you, or would you be, forgiving?" maurice leaned forward on the table and looked at his wife with intensity. "i hope so, but i don't think it would be for that--i mean because i thought the deed might not have been avoided. i think i should forgive because i pitied so, because i know how desperately unhappy i should be myself if i were to do a hateful thing, a thing that was exceptional, that was not natural to my nature as i had generally known it. when one really does love cleanliness, to have thrown one's self down deliberately in the mud, to see, to feel, that one is soiled from head to foot--that must be terrible. i think i should forgive because i pitied so. what do you say, maurice?" it was like a return to their talk in london at caminiti's restaurant, when hermione and artois discussed topics that interested them, and maurice listened until hermione appealed to him for his opinion. but now he was more deeply interested than his companions. "i don't know," he said. "i don't know about pitying and forgiving, but i expect you're right, hermione." "how?" "in what you say about--about the person who's done the wrong thing feeling awful afterwards. and i think monsieur artois is right, too--about the hour of madness. i'm sure he is right. sometimes an hour comes and one seems to forget everything in it. one seems not to be really one's self in it, but somebody else, and--and--" suddenly he seemed to become aware that, whereas hermione and artois had been considering a subject impersonally, he was introducing the personal element into the conversation. he stopped short, looked quickly from hermione to artois, and said: "what i mean is that i imagine it's so, and that i've known fellows--in london, you know--who've done such odd things that i can only explain it like that. they must have--well, they must have gone practically mad for the moment. you--you see what i mean, hermione?" the question was uneasy. "yes, but i think we can control ourselves. if we couldn't, remorse would lose half its meaning. i could never feel remorse because i had been mad--horror, perhaps, but not remorse. it seems to me that remorse is our sorrow for our own weakness, the heart's cry of 'i need not have done the hateful thing, and i did it, i chose to do it!' but i could pity, i could pity, and forgive because of my pity." gaspare came out with coffee. "and then, emile, you must have a siesta," said hermione. "this is a tiring day for you. maurice and i will leave you quite alone in the sitting-room." "i don't think i could sleep," said artois. he was feeling oddly excited, and attributed the sensation to his weak state of health. for so long he had been shut up, isolated from the world, that even this coming out was an event. he was accustomed to examine his feelings calmly, critically, to track them to their sources. he tried to do so now. "i must beware of my own extra sensitiveness," he said to himself. "i'm still weak. i am not normal. i may see things distorted. i may exaggerate, turn the small into the great. at least half of what i think and feel to-day may come from my peculiar state." thus he tried to raise up barriers against his feeling that delarey had got into some terrible trouble during the absence of hermione, that he was now stricken with remorse, and that he was also in active dread of something, perhaps of some nemesis. "all this may be imagination," artois thought, as he sipped his coffee. but he said again: "i don't think i could sleep. i feel abnormally alive to-day. do you know the sensation, as if one were too quick, as if all the nerves were standing at attention?" "then our peace here does not soothe you?" hermione said. "if i must be truthful--no," he answered. he met maurice's restless glance. "i think i've had enough coffee," he added. "coffee stimulates the nerves too much at certain times." maurice finished his and asked for another cup. "he isn't afraid of being overstimulated," said hermione. "but, emile, you ought to sleep. you'll be dead tired this evening when you ride down." "this evening," hermione had said. maurice wondered suddenly how late artois was going to stay at the cottage. "oh no, it will be cool," artois said. "yes," maurice said. "towards five we get a little wind from the sea nearly always, even sooner sometimes. i--i usually go down to bathe about that time." "i must begin to bathe, too," hermione said. "what--to-day!" maurice said, quickly. "oh no. emile is here to-day." then artois did not mean to go till late. but he--maurice--must go down to the sea before nightfall. "unless i bathe," he said, trying to speak naturally--"unless i bathe i feel the heat too much at night. a dip in the sea does wonders for me." "and in such a sea!" said artois. "you must have your dip to-day. i shall go directly that little wind you speak of comes. i told a boy to come up from the village at four to lead the donkey down." he smiled deprecatingly. "dreadful to be such a weakling, isn't it?" he said. "hush. don't talk, like that. it's all going away. strength is coming. you'll soon be your old self. but you've got to look forward all the time." hermione spoke with a warmth, an energy that braced. she spoke to artois, but maurice, eager to grasp at any comfort, strove to take the words to himself. this evening the climax of his sicilian tragedy must come. and then? beyond, might there not be the calm, the happiness of a sane life? he must look forward, he would look forward. but when he looked, there stood maddalena weeping. he hated himself. he loved happiness, he longed for it, but he knew he had lost his right to it, if any man ever has such a right. he had created suffering. how dared he expect, how dared he even wish, to escape from suffering? "now, emile," hermione said, "you have really got to go in and lie down whether you feel sleepy or not. don't protest. maurice and i have hardly seen anything of each other yet. we want to get rid of you." she spoke laughingly, and laughingly he obeyed her. when she had settled him comfortably in the sitting-room she came out again to the terrace where her husband was standing, looking towards the sea. she had a rug over her arm and was holding two cushions. "i thought you and i might go down and take our siesta under the oak-trees, maurice. would you like that?" he was longing to get away, to go up to the heap of stones on the mountain-top and set a match to the fragments of hermione's letter, which the dangerous wind might disturb, might bring out into the light of day. but he acquiesced at once. he would go later--if not this afternoon, then at night when he came back from the sea. they went down and spread the rug under the shadow of the oaks. "i used to read to gaspare here," he said. "when you were away in africa." "what did you read?" "the _arabian nights_." she stretched herself on the rug. "to lie here and read the _arabian nights_! and you want to go away, maurice?" "i think it's time to go. if i stayed too long here i should become fit for nothing." "yes, that's true, i dare say. but--maurice, it's so strange--i have a feeling as if you would always be in sicily. i know it's absurd, and yet i have it. i feel as if you belonged to sicily, and sicily did not mean to part from you." "that can't be. how could i stay here always?" "i know." "unless," he said, as if some new thought had started suddenly into his mind--"unless i were--" he stopped. he had remembered his sensation in the sea that gray morning of sirocco. he had remembered how he had played at dying. "what?" she looked at him and understood. "maurice--don't! i--i can't bear that!" "not one of us can know," he answered. "i--i thought of that once," she said--"long ago, on the first night that we were here. i don't know why--but perhaps it was because i was so happy. i think it must have been that. i suppose, in this world, there must aways be dread in one's happiness, the thought it may stop soon, it may end. but why should it? is god cruel? i think he wants us to be happy." "if he wants us--" "and that we prevent ourselves from being happy. but we won't do that, maurice--you and i--will we?" he did not answer. "this world--nature--is so wonderfully beautiful, so happily beautiful. surely we can learn to be happy, to keep happy in it. look at that sky, that sea! look at the plain over there by the foot of etna, and the coast-line fading away, and etna. the god who created it all must have meant men to be happy in such a world. it isn't my brain tells me that, maurice, it's my heart, my whole heart that you have made whole. and i know it tells the truth." her words were terrible to him. the sound of a step, a figure standing before her, a few sicilian words--and all this world in which she gloried would be changed for her. but she must not know. he felt that he would be willing to die to keep her ignorant of the truth forever. "now we must try to sleep," he said, to prevent her from speaking any more of the words that were torturing him. "we must have our siesta. i had very little sleep last night." "and i had none at all. but now--we're together." he arranged the cushion for her. they lay in soft shadow and could see the shining world. the distant gleams upon the sea spoke to her. she fancied them voices rising out of the dream of the waters, voices from the breast of nature that was the breast of god, saying that she was not in error, that god did mean men to be happy, that they could be happy if they would learn of him. she watched those gleams until she fell asleep. xx when hermione woke it was four o'clock. she sat up on the rug, looked down over the mountain flank to the sea, then turned and saw her husband. he was lying with his face half buried in his folded arms. "maurice!" she said, softly. "yes," he answered, lifting his face. "then you weren't asleep!" "no." "have you been asleep?" "no." she looked at her watch. "all this time! it's four. what a disgraceful siesta! but i was really tired after the long journey and the night." she stood up. he followed her example and threw the rug over his arm. "emile will think we've deserted him and aren't going to give him any tea." "yes." they began to walk up the track towards the terrace. "maurice," hermione said, presently, more thoroughly wide-awake now. "did you get up while i was asleep? did you begin to move away from me, and did i stop you, or was it a dream? i have a kind of vague recollection--or is it only imagination?--of stretching out my hand and saying, 'don't leave me alone--don't leave me alone!'" "i moved a little," he answered, after a slight pause. "and you did stretch out your hand and murmur something." "it was that--'don't leave me alone.'" "perhaps. i couldn't hear. it was such a murmur." "and you only moved a little? how stupid of me to think you were getting up to go away!" "when one is half asleep one has odd ideas often." he did not tell her that he had been getting up softly, hoping to steal away to the mountain-top and destroy the fragments of her letter, hidden there, while she slept. "you won't mind," he added, "if i go down to bathe this evening. i sha'n't sleep properly to-night unless i do." "of course--go. but won't it be rather late after tea?" "oh no. i've often been in at sunset." "how delicious the water must look then! maurice!" "yes?" "shall i come with you? shall i bathe, too? it would be lovely, refreshing, after this heat! it would wash away all the dust of the train!" her face was glowing with the anticipation of pleasure. every little thing done with him was an enchantment after the weeks of separation. "oh, i don't think you'd better, hermione," he answered, hastily. "i--you--there might be people. i--i must rig you up something first, a tent of some kind. gaspare and i will do it. i can't have my wife--" "all right," she said. she tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "how lucky you men are! you can do anything. and there's no fuss. ah, there's poor emile, patiently waiting!" artois was already established once more in the chaise longue. he greeted them with a smile that was gentle, almost tender. those evil feelings to which he had been a prey in london had died away. he loved now to see the happiness in hermione's face. his illness had swept out his selfishness, and in it he had proved her affection. he did not think that he could ever be jealous of her again. "sleeping all this time?" he said. "i was. i'm ashamed of myself. my hair is full of mountain-side, but you must forgive me, emile. ah, there's lucrezia! is tea ready, lucrezia?" "si, signora." "then ask gaspare to bring it." "gaspare--he isn't here, signora. but i'll bring it." she went away. "where's gaspare, i wonder?" said hermione. "have you seen him, emile?" "no." "perhaps he's sleeping, too. he sleeps generally among the hens." she looked round the corner into the out-house. "no, he isn't there. have you sent him anywhere, maurice?" "i? no. where should i--" "i only thought you looked as if you knew where he was." "no. but he may have gone out after birds and forgotten the time. here's tea!" these few words had renewed in maurice the fever of impatience to get away and meet his enemy. this waiting, this acting of a part, this suspense, were almost unbearable. all the time that hermione slept he had been thinking, turning over again and again in his mind the coming scene, trying to imagine how it would be, how violent or how deadly, trying to decide exactly what line of conduct he should pursue. what would salvatore demand? what would he say or do? and where would they meet? if salvatore waited for his coming they would meet at the house of the sirens. and maddalena? she would be there. his heart sickened. he was ready to face a man--but not maddalena. he thought of gaspare's story of the fallen olive-branch upon which salvatore had spat. it was strange to be here in this calm place with these two happy people, wife and friend, and to wonder what was waiting for him down there by the sea. how lonely our souls are!--something like that he thought. circumstances were turning him away from his thoughtless youth. he had imagined it sinking down out of his sight into the purple sea, with the magic island in which it had danced the tarantella and heard the voice of the siren. but was it not leaving him, vanishing from him while still his feet trod the island and his eyes saw her legendary mountains? gaspare, he knew, was on the watch. that was why he was absent from his duties. but the hour was at hand when he would be relieved. the evening was coming. maurice was glad. he was ready to face even violence, but he felt that he could not for much longer endure suspense and play the quiet host and husband. tea was over and gaspare had not returned. the clock he had bought at the fair struck five. "i ought to be going," artois said. there was reluctance in his voice. hermione noticed it and knew what he was feeling. "you must come up again very soon," she said. "yes, monsieur, come to-morrow, won't you?" maurice seconded her. the thought of what was going to happen before to-morrow made it seem to him a very long way off. hermione looked pleased. "i must not be a bore," artois answered. "i must not remind you and myself of limpets. there are rocks in your garden which might suggest the comparison. i think to-morrow i ought to stay quietly in marechiaro." "no, no," said maurice. "do come to-morrow." "thank you very much. i can't pretend that i do not wish to come. and, now that donkey-boy--has he climbed up, i wonder?" "i'll go and see," said maurice. he was feverishly impatient to get rid of artois. he hurried to the arch. a long way off, near the path that led up from the ravine, he saw a figure with a gun. he was not sure, but he was almost sure that it was gaspare. it must be he. the gun made him look, indeed, a sentinel. if salvatore came the boy would stop him, stop him, if need be, at the cost of his own life. maurice felt sure of that, and realized the danger of setting such faithfulness and violence to be sentinel. he stood for a moment looking at the figure. yes, he knew it now for gaspare. the boy had forgotten tea-time, had forgotten everything, in his desire to carry out his padrone's instructions. the signora was not to know. she was never to know. and salvatore might come. very well, then, he was there in the sun--ready. "we'll never part from gaspare," maurice thought, as he looked and understood. he saw no other figure. the donkey-boy had perhaps forgotten his mission or had started late. maurice chafed bitterly at the delay. but he could not well leave his guest on this first day of his coming to monte amato, more especially after the events of the preceding day. to do so would seem discourteous. he returned to the terrace ill at ease, but strove to disguise his restlessness. it was nearly six o'clock when the boy at last appeared. artois at once bade hermione and maurice good-bye and mounted his donkey. "you will come to-morrow, then?" maurice said to him at parting. "i haven't the courage to refuse," artois replied. "good-bye." he had already shaken maurice's hand, but now he extended his hand again. "it is good of you to make me so welcome," he said. he paused, holding maurice's hand in his. both hermione and maurice thought he was going to say something more, but he glanced at her, dropped his host's hand, lifted his soft hat, and signed to the boy to lead the donkey away. hermione and maurice followed to the arch, and from there watched him riding slowly down till he was out of sight. maurice looked for gaspare, but did not see him. he must have moved into the shadow of the ravine. "dear old emile!" hermione said. "he's been happy to-day. you've made him very happy, maurice. bless you for it!" maurice said nothing. now the moment had arrived when he could go he felt a strange reluctance to say good-bye to hermione, even for a short time. so much might--must--happen before he saw her again that evening. "and you?" she said, at last, as he was silent. "are you really going down to bathe? isn't it too late?" "oh no. i must have a dip. it will do me all the good in the world." he tried to speak buoyantly, but the words seemed to himself to come heavily from his tongue. "will you take tito?" "i--no, i think i'll walk. i shall get down quicker, and i like going into the sea when i'm hot. i'll just fetch my bathing things." they walked back together to the house. maurice wondered what had suddenly come to him. he felt horribly sad now--yet he wished to get the scene that awaited him over. he was longing to have it over. he went into the house, got his bathing-dress and towels, and came out again onto the terrace. "i shall be a little late back, i suppose," he said. "yes. it's six o'clock now. shall we dine at half-past eight--or better say nine? that will give you plenty of time to come up quietly." "yes. let's say nine." still he did not move to go. "have you been happy to-day, hermione?" he asked. "yes, very--since this morning." "since?" "yes. this morning i--" she stopped. "i was a little puzzled," she said, after a minute, with her usual frankness. "tell me, maurice--you weren't made unhappy by--by what i told you?" "about--about the child?" "yes." he did not answer with words, but he put his arms about her and kissed her, as he had not kissed her since she went away to africa. she shut her eyes. presently she felt the pressure of his arms relax. "i'm perfectly happy now," she said. "perfectly happy." he moved away a step or two. his face was flushed, and she thought that he looked younger, that the boyish expression she loved had come back to him. "good-bye, hermione," he said. still he did not go. she thought that he had something more to say but did not know how to say it. she felt so certain of this that she said: "what is it, maurice?" "we shall come back to sicily, i suppose, sha'n't we, some time or other?" "surely. many times, i hope." "suppose--one can never tell what will happen--suppose one of us were to die here?" "yes," she said, soberly. "don't you think it would be good to lie there where we lay this afternoon, under the oak-trees, in sight of etna and the sea? i think it would. good-bye, hermione." he swung the bathing-dress and the towels up over his shoulder and went away through the arch. she followed and watched him springing down the mountain-side. just before he reached the ravine he turned and waved his hand to her. his movements, that last gesture, were brimful of energy and of life. he acted better then than he had that day upon the terrace. but the sense of progress, the feeling that he was going to meet fate in the person of salvatore, quickened the blood within him. at last the suspense would be over. at last he would be obliged to play not the actor but the man. he longed to be down by the sea. the youth in him rose up at the thought of action, and his last farewell to hermione, looking down to him from the arch, was bold and almost careless. scarcely had he got into the ravine before he met gaspare. he stopped. the boy's face was aflame with expression as he stood, holding his gun, in front of his padrone. "gaspare!" maurice said to him. he held out his hand and grasped the boy's hot hand. "i sha'n't forget your faithful service," he said. "thank you, gaspare." he wanted to say more, to find other and far different words. but he could not. "let me come with you, signorino." the boy's voice was intensely, almost savagely, earnest. "no. you must stay with the signora." "i want to come with you." his great eyes were fastened on his padrone's face. "i have always been with you." "but you were with the signora first. you were her servant. you must stay with her now. remember one thing, gaspare--the signora is never to know." the boy nodded. his eyes still held maurice. they glittered as if with leaping fires. that deep and passionate spirit of sicilian loyalty, which is almost savage in its intensity and heedless of danger, which is ready to go to hell with, or for, a friend or a master who is beloved and believed in, was awake in gaspare, illuminated him at this moment. the peasant boy looked noble. "mayn't i come with you, signorino?" "gaspare," maurice said, "i must leave some one with the padrona. salvatore might come still. i may miss him going down. whom can i trust to stop salvatore, if he comes, but you? you see?" "va bene, signorino." the boy seemed convinced, but he suffered and did not try to conceal it. "now i must go," maurice said. he shook gaspare's hand. "have you got the revolver, signorino?" said the boy. "no. i am not going to fight with salvatore." "how do you know what salvatore will do?" maurice looked down upon the stones that lay on the narrow path. "my revolver can have nothing to do with maddalena's father," he said. he sighed. "that's how it is, gaspare. addio!" "addio, signorino." maurice went on down the path into the shadow of the trees. presently he turned. gaspare stood quite still, looking after him. "signorino!" he called. "may i not come? i want to come with you." maurice waved his hand towards the mountain-side. "go to the signora," he called back. "and look out for me to-night. addio, gaspare!" the boy's "addio!" came to him sadly through the gathering shadows of the evening. presently hermione, who was sitting alone on the terrace with a book in her lap which she was not reading, saw gaspare walking listlessly through the archway holding his gun. he came slowly towards her, lifted his hat, and was going on without a word, but she stopped him. "why, gaspare," she said, lightly, "you forgot us to-day. how was that?" "signora?" again she saw the curious, almost ugly, look of obstinacy, which she had already noticed, come into his face. "you didn't remember about tea-time!" "signora," he answered, "i am sorry." he looked at her fixedly while he spoke. "i am sorry," he said again. "never mind," hermione said, unable to blame him on this first day of her return. "i dare say you have got out of regular habits while i've been away. what have you been doing all the time?" he shrugged his shoulders. "niente." again she wondered what was the matter with the boy to-day. where were his life and gayety? where was his sense of fun? he used to be always joking, singing. but now he was serious, almost heavy in demeanor. "gaspare," she said, jokingly, "i think you've all become very solemn without me. i am the old person of the party, but i begin to believe that it is i who keep you lively. i mustn't go away again." "no, signora," he answered, earnestly; "you must never go away from us again. you should never have gone away from us." the deep solemnity of his great eyes startled her. he put on his hat and went away round the angle of the cottage. "what can be the matter with him?" she thought. she remained sitting there on the terrace, wondering. now she thought over things quietly, it struck her as strange the fact that she had left behind her in the priest's house three light-hearted people, and had come back to find lucrezia drowned in sorrow, gaspare solemn, even mysterious in his manner, and her husband--but here her thoughts paused, not labelling maurice. at first he had puzzled her the most. but she thought she had found reasons for the change--a passing one, she felt sure--in him. he had secretly resented her absence, and, though utterly free from any ignoble suspicion of her, he had felt boyishly jealous of her friendship with emile. that was very natural. for this was their honeymoon. she considered it their honeymoon prolonged, delightfully prolonged, beyond any fashionable limit. lucrezia's depression was easily comprehensible. the change in her husband she accounted for; but now here was gaspare looking dismal! "i must cheer them all up," she thought to herself. "this beautiful time mustn't end dismally." and then she thought of the inevitable departure. was maurice looking forward to it, desiring it? he had spoken that day as if he wished to be off. in london she had been able to imagine him in the south, in the highway of the sun. but now that she was here in sicily she could not imagine him in london. "he is not in his right place there," she thought. yet they must go, and soon. she knew that they were going, and yet she could not feel that they were going. what she had said under the oak-trees was true. in the spring her tender imagination had played softly with the idea of sicily's joy in the possession of her son, of maurice. would sicily part from him without an effort to retain him? would sicily let him go? she smiled to herself at her fancies. but if sicily kept him, how would she keep him? the smile left her lips and her eyes as she thought of maurice's suggestion. that would be too horrible. god would not allow that. and yet what tragedies he allowed to come into the lives of others. she faced certain facts, as she sat there, facts permitted, or deliberately brought about by the divine will. the scourge of war--that sowed sorrows over a land as the sower in the field scatters seeds. she, like others, had sat at home and read of battles in which thousands of men had been killed, and she had grieved--or had she really grieved, grieved with her heart? she began to wonder, thinking of maurice's veiled allusion to the possibility of his death. he was the spirit of youth to her. and all the boys slain in battle! had not each one of them represented the spirit of youth to some one, to some woman--mother, sister, wife, lover? what were those women's feelings towards god? she wondered. she wondered exceedingly. and presently a terrible thought came into her mind. it was this. how can one forgive god if he snatches away the spirit of youth that one loves? under the shadow of the oak-trees she had lain that day and looked out upon the shining world--upon the waters, upon the plains, upon the mountains, upon the calling coast-line and the deep passion of the blue. and she had felt the infinite love of god. when she had thought of god, she had thought of him as the great provider of happiness, as one who desired, with a heart too large and generous for the mere accurate conception of man, the joy of man. but maurice was beside her then. those whose lives had been ruined by great tragedies, when they looked out upon the shining world what must they think, feel? she strove to imagine. their conception of god must surely be very different from hers. once she had been almost unable to believe that god could choose her to be the recipient of a supreme happiness. but we accustom ourselves with a wonderful readiness to a happy fate. she had come back--she had been allowed to return to the garden of paradise. and this fact had given to her a confidence in life which was almost audacious. so now, even while she imagined the sorrows of others, half strove to imagine what her own sorrows might be, her inner feeling was still one of confidence. she looked out on the shining world, and in her heart was the shining world. she looked out on the glory of the blue, and in her heart was the glory of the blue. the world shone for her because she had maurice. she knew that. but there was light in it. there would always be light whatever happened to any human creature. there would always be the sun, the great symbol of joy. it rose even upon the battle-field where the heaps of the dead were lying. she could not realize sorrow to-day. she must see the sunlight even in the deliberate visions conjured up by her imagination. gaspare did not reappear. for a long time she was alone. she watched the changing of the light, the softening of the great landscape as the evening approached. sometimes she thought of maurice's last words about being laid to rest some day in the shadows of the oak-trees, in sight of etna and the sea. when the years had gone, perhaps they would lie together in sicily, wrapped in the final siesta of the body. perhaps the unborn child, of whose beginning she was mystically conscious, would lay them to rest there. "buon riposo." she loved the sicilian good-night. better than any text she would love to have those simple words written above her sleeping-place and his. "buon riposo!"--she murmured the words to herself as she looked at the quiet of the hills, at the quiet of the sea. the glory of the world was inspiring, but the peace of the world was almost more uplifting, she thought. far off, in the plain, she discerned tiny trails of smoke from sicilian houses among the orange-trees beside the sea. the gold was fading. the color of the waters was growing paler, gentler, the color of the sky less passionate. the last point of the coast-line was only a shadow now, scarcely that. somewhere was the sunset, its wonder unseen by her, but realized because of this growing tenderness, that was like a benediction falling upon her from a distant love, intent to shield her and her little home from sorrow and from danger. nature was whispering her "buon riposo!" her hushed voice spoke withdrawn among the mountains, withdrawn upon the spaces of the sea. the heat of the golden day was blessed, but after it how blessed was the cool of the dim night! again she thought that the god who had placed man in the magnificent scheme of the world must have intended and wished him to be always happy there. nature seemed to be telling her this, and her heart was convinced by nature, though the story of the old testament had sometimes left her smiling or left her wondering. men had written a bible. god had written a bible, too. and here she read its pages and was made strong by it. "signora!" hermione started and turned her head. "lucrezia! what is it?" "what time is it, signora?" hermione looked at her watch. "nearly eight o'clock. an hour still before supper." "i've got everything ready." "to-night we've only cold things, haven't we? you made us a very nice collazione. the french signore praised your cooking, and he's very particular, as french people generally are. so you ought to be proud of yourself." lucrezia smiled, but only for an instant. then she stood with an anxious face, twisting her apron. "signora!" "yes? what is it?" "would you mind--may i--" she stopped. "why, lucrezia, are you afraid of me? i've certainly been away too long!" "no, no, signora, but--" tears hung in her eyes. "will you let me go away if i promise to be back by nine?" "but you can't go to marechiaro in--" "no, signora. i only want to go to the mountain over there under castel vecchio. i want to go to the madonna." hermione took one of the girl's hands. "to the madonna della rocca?" "si, signora." "i understand." "i have a candle to burn to the madonna. if i go now i can be back before nine." she stood gazing pathetically, like a big child, at her padrona. "lucrezia," hermione said, moved to a great pity by her own great happiness, "would you mind if i came, too? i think i should like to say a prayer for you to-night. i am not a catholic, but my prayer cannot hurt you." lucrezia suddenly forgot distinctions, threw her arms round hermione, and began to sob. "hush, you must be brave!" she smoothed the girl's dark hair gently. "have you got your candle?" "si." she showed it. "let us go quickly, then. where's gaspare?" "close to the house, signora, on the mountain. one cannot speak with him to-day." "why not?" "non lo so. but he is terrible to-day!" so lucrezia had noticed gaspare's strangeness, too, even in the midst of her sorrow! "gaspare!" hermione called. there was no answer. "gaspare!" she called louder. "si, signora!" the voice came from somewhere behind the house. "i am going for a walk with lucrezia. we shall be back at nine. tell the padrone if he comes." "si, signora." the two women set out without seeing gaspare. they walked in silence down the mountain-path. lucrezia held her candle carefully, like one in a procession. she was not sobbing now. there were no tears in her eyes. the companionship and the sympathy of her padrona had given her some courage, some hope, had taken away from her the desolate feeling, the sensation of abandonment which had been torturing her. and then she had an almost blind faith in the madonna della rocca. and the padrona was going to pray, too. she was not a catholic, but she was a lady and she was good. the madonna della rocca must surely be influenced by her petition. so lucrezia plucked up a little courage. the activity of the walk helped her. she knew the solace of movement. and perhaps, without being conscious of it, she was influenced by the soft beauty of the evening, by the peace of the hills. but as they crossed the ravine they heard the tinkle of bells, and a procession of goats tripped by them, following a boy who was twittering upon a flute. he was playing the tune of the tarantella, that tune which hermione associated with careless joy in the sun. he passed down into the shadows of the trees, and gradually the airy rapture of his fluting and the tinkle of the goat-bells died away towards marechiaro. then hermione saw tears rolling down over lucrezia's brown cheeks. "he can't play it like sebastiano, signora!" she said. the little tune had brought back all her sorrow. "perhaps we shall soon hear sebastiano play it again," said hermione. they began to climb upward on the far side of the ravine towards the fierce silhouette of the saracenic castle on the height. beneath the great crag on which it was perched was the shrine of the madonna della rocca. night was coming now, and the little lamp before the shrine shone gently, throwing a ray of light upon the stones of the path. when they reached it, lucrezia crossed herself, and they stood together for a moment looking at the faded painting of the madonna, almost effaced against its rocky background. within the glass that sheltered it stood vases of artificial flowers, and on the ledge outside the glass were two or three bunches of real flowers, placed there by peasants returning to their homes in castel vecchio from their labors in the vineyards and the orchards. there were also two branches with clustering, red-gold oranges lying among the flowers. it was a strange, wild place. the precipice of rock, which the castello dominated, leaned slightly forward above the head of the madonna, as if it meditated overwhelming her. but she smiled gently, as if she had no fear of it, bending down her pale eyes to the child who lay upon her girlish knees. among the bowlders, the wild cactus showed its spiked leaves, and in the daytime the long black snakes sunned themselves upon the stones. to hermione this lonely and faded madonna, smiling calmly beneath the savagely frowning rock upon which dead men had built long years ago a barbarous fastness, was touching in her solitude. there was something appealing in her frailness, in her thin, anã¦mic calm. how long had she been here? how long would she remain? she was fading away, as things fade in the night. yet she had probably endured for years, would still be here for years to come, would be here to receive the wild flowers of peasant children, the prayers of peasant lovers, the adoration of the poor, who, having very little here, put their faith in far-off worlds, where they will have harvests surely without reaping in the heat of the sun, where they will have good wine without laboring in the vineyards, where they will be able to rest without the thought coming to them, "if to-day i rest, to-morrow i shall starve." as hermione looked at the painting lit by the little lamp, at the gifts of the flowers and the fruit, she began to feel as if indeed a woman dwelt there, in that niche of the crag, as if a heart were there, a soul to pity, an ear to listen. lucrezia knelt down quietly, lit her candle, turned it upside down till the hot wax dripped onto the rock and made a foundation for it, then stuck it upright, crossed herself silently, and began to pray. her lips moved quickly. the candle-flame flickered for a moment, then burned steadily, sending its thin fire up towards the evening star. after a moment hermione knelt down beside her. she had never before prayed at a shrine. it was curious to be kneeling under this savage wall of rock above which the evening star showed itself in the clear heaven of night. she looked at the star and at the madonna, then at the little bunches of flowers, and at lucrezia's candle. these gifts of the poor moved her heart. poverty giving is beautiful. she thought that, and was almost ashamed of the comfort of her life. she wished she had brought a candle, too. then she bent her head and began to pray that sebastiano might remember lucrezia and return to her. to make her prayer more earnest, she tried to realize lucrezia's sorrow by putting herself in lucrezia's place, and maurice in sebastiano's. it was such a natural effort as people make every day, every hour. if maurice had forgotten her in absence, had given his love to another, had not cared to return to her! if she were alone now in sicily while he was somewhere else, happy with some one else! suddenly the wildness of this place where she knelt became terrible to her. she felt the horror of solitude, of approaching darkness. the outlines of the rocks and of the ruined castle looked threatening, alarming. the pale light of the lamp before the shrine and of lucrezia's votive candle drew to them not only the fluttering night-moths, but the spirits of desolation and of hollow grief that dwell among the waste places and among the hills. night seemed no more beneficent, but dreary as a spectre that came to rob the world of all that made it beautiful. the loneliness of deserted women encompassed her. was there any other loneliness comparable to it? she felt sure that there was not, and she found herself praying not only for lucrezia, but for all women who were sad because they loved, for all women who were deserted by those whom they loved, or who had lost those whom they loved. at first she believed that she was addressing her prayer to the madonna della rocca, the blessed virgin of the rocks, whose pale image was before her. but presently she knew that her words, the words of her lips and the more passionate words of her heart, were going out to a being before whom the sun burned as a lamp and the moon as a votive taper. she was thinking of women, she was praying for women, but she was no longer praying to a woman. it seemed to her as if she was so ardent a suitor that she pushed past the holy mother of god into the presence of god himself. he had created women. he had created the love of women. to him she would, she must, appeal. often she had prayed before, but never as now, never with such passion, with such a sensation of personally pleading. the effort of her heart was like the effort of womanhood. it seemed to her--and she had no feeling that this was blasphemous--as if god knew, understood, everything of the world he had created except perhaps this--the inmost agony some women suffer, as if she, perhaps, could make him understand this by her prayer. and she strove to recount this agony, to make it clear to god. was it a presumptuous effort? she did not feel that it was. and now she felt selfless. she was no more thinking of herself, was no longer obliged to concentrate her thoughts and her imagination upon herself and the one she loved best. she had passed beyond that, as she had passed beyond the madonna della rocca. she was the voice and the heart not of a woman, but of woman praying in the night to the god who had made woman and the night. from behind a rock gaspare watched the two praying women. he had not forgotten his padrone's words, and when hermione and lucrezia set off from the cottage he had followed them, faithful to his trust. intent upon their errand, they had not seen him. his step was light among the stones, and he had kept at a distance. now he stood still, gazing at them as they prayed. gaspare did not believe in priests. very few sicilians do. an uncle of his was a priest's son, and he had other reasons, quite sufficient to his mind, for being incredulous of the sanctity of those who celebrated the mass to which he seldom went. but he believed in god, and he believed superstitiously in the efficacy of the madonna and in the powers of the saints. once his little brother had fallen dangerously ill on the festa of san giorgio, the santo patrono of castel vecchio. he had gone to the festa, and had given all his money, five lire, to the saint to heal his brother. next day the child was well. in misfortune he would probably utter a prayer, or burn a candle, himself. that lucrezia might think that she had reason to pray he understood, though he doubted whether the madonna and all the saints could do much for the reclamation of his friend sebastiano. but why should the padrona kneel there out-of-doors sending up such earnest petitions? she was not a catholic. he had never seen her pray before. he looked on with wonder, presently with discomfort, almost with anger. to-night he was what he would himself have called "nervoso," and anything that irritated his already strung-up nerves roused his temper. he was in anxiety about his padrone, and he wanted to be back at the priest's house, he wanted to see his padrone again at the earliest possible moment. the sight of his padrona committing an unusual action alarmed him. was she, then, afraid as he was afraid? did she know, suspect anything? his experience of women was that whenever they were in trouble they went for comfort and advice to the madonna and the saints. he grew more and more uneasy. presently he drew softly a little nearer. it was getting late. night had fallen. he must know the result of the padrone's interview with salvatore, and he could not leave the padrona. well, then--! he crept nearer and nearer till at last he was close to the shrine and could see the madonna smiling. then he crossed himself and said, softly: "signora!" hermione did not hear him. she was wrapped in the passion of her prayer. "signora!" he bent forward and touched her on the shoulder. she started, turned her head, and rose to her feet. "gaspare!" she looked startled. this abrupt recall to the world confused her for a moment. "gaspare! what is it? the padrone?" he took off his cap. "signora, do you know how late it is?" "has the padrone come back?" lucrezia was on her feet, too. the tears were in her eyes. "scusi, signora!" said gaspare. hermione began to look more natural. "has the padrone come back and sent you for us?" "he did not send me, signora. it was getting dark. i thought it best to come. but i expect he is back. i expect he is waiting for us now." "you came to guard me?" she smiled. she liked his watchfulness. "what's the time?" she looked at her watch. "why, it is nine already! we must hurry. come, lucrezia!" they went quickly down the path. they did not talk as they went. gaspare led the way. it was obvious that he was in great haste. sometimes he forgot that the padrona was not so light-footed as he was, and sprang on so swiftly that she called to him to wait. when at last they came in sight of the arch hermione and lucrezia were panting. "the padrone will--forgive us--when--he--sees how we have--hurried," said hermione, laughing at her own fatigue. "go on, gaspare!" she stood for a moment leaning against the arch. "and you go quickly, lucrezia, and get the supper. the padrone--will be--hungry after his bath." "si, signora." lucrezia went off to the back of the house. then hermione drew a long breath, recovered herself, and walked to the terrace. gaspare met her with flaming eyes. "the padrone is not here, signora. the padrone has not come back!" he stood and stared at her. it was not yet very dark. they stood in a sort of soft obscurity in which all objects could be seen, not with sharp clearness, but distinctly. "are you sure, gaspare?" "si, signora! the padrone has not come back. he is not here." the boy's voice sounded angry, hermione thought. it startled her. and the way he looked at her startled her too. "you have looked in the house? maurice!" she called. "maurice!" "i say the padrone is not here, signora!" never before had gaspare spoken to hermione like this, in a tone almost that she ought to have resented. she did not resent it, but it filled her with a creeping uneasiness. "what time is it? nearly half-past nine. he ought to be here by now." the boy nodded, keeping his flaming eyes on her. "i said nine to give him lots of time to get cool, and change his clothes, and--it's very odd." "i will go down to the sea, signora. a rivederci." he swung round to go, but hermione caught his arm. "no; don't go. wait a moment, gaspare. don't leave me like this!" she detained him. "why, what's the matter? what--what are you afraid of?" instantly there came into his face the ugly, obstinate look she had already noticed, and wondered at, that day. "what are you afraid of, gaspare?" she repeated. her voice vibrated with a strength of feeling that as yet she herself scarcely understood. "niente!" the boy replied, doggedly. "well, but then"--she laughed--"why shouldn't the padrone be a few minutes late? it would be absurd to go down. you might miss him on the way." gaspare said nothing. he stood there with his arms hanging and the ugly look still on his face. "mightn't you? mightn't you, gaspare, if he came up by marechiaro?" "si, signora." "well, then--" they stood there in silence for a minute. hermione broke it. "he--you know how splendidly the padrone swims," she said. "don't you, gaspare?" the boy said nothing. "gaspare, why don't you answer when i speak to you?" "because i've got nothing to say, signora." his tone was almost rude. at that moment he nearly hated hermione for holding him by the arm. if she had been a man he would have struck her off and gone. "gaspare!" she said, but not angrily. her instinct told her that he was obliged to be utterly natural just then under the spell of some violent feeling. she knew he loved his padrone. the feeling must be one of anxiety. but it was absurd to be so anxious. it was ridiculous, hysterical. she said to herself that it was gaspare's excitement that was affecting her. she was catching his mood. "my dear gaspare," she said, "we must just wait. the padrone will be here in a minute. perhaps he has come up by marechiaro. very likely he has looked in at the hotel to see how the sick signore is after his day up here. that is it, i feel sure." she looked at him for agreement and met his stern and flaming eyes, utterly unmoved by what she had said, utterly unconvinced. at this moment she could not deny that this untrained, untutored nature had power over hers. she let go his arm and sat down by the wall. "let us wait out here for a minute," she said. "va bene, signora." he stood there quite still, but she felt as if in this unnatural stillness there was violent movement, and she looked away from him. it was fully night now. she gazed down at the ravine. by that way maurice would come, unless he really had gone to marechiaro to see artois. she had suggested to gaspare that this might be the reason of maurice's delay, but she knew that she did not think it was. yet what other reason could there be? he swam splendidly. she said that to herself. she kept on saying it. why? slowly the minutes crept by. the silence around them was intense, yet she felt no calm, no peace in it. like the stillness of gaspare it seemed to be violent. it began to frighten her. she began to wish for movement, for sound. presently a light shone in the cottage. "signora! signora!" lucrezia's voice was calling. "what is it?" she said. "supper is quite ready, signora." "the signore has not come back yet. he is a little late." lucrezia came to the top of the steps. "where can the signore be, signora?" she said. "it only takes--" her voice died suddenly away. hermione looked quickly at gaspare, and saw that he was gazing ferociously at lucrezia as if to bid her be silent. "gaspare!" hermione said, suddenly getting up. "signora?" "i--it's odd the signore's not coming." the boy answered nothing. "perhaps--perhaps there really has been an--an accident." she tried to speak lightly. "i don't think he would keep me waiting like this if--" "i will go down to the sea," the boy said. "signora, let me go down to the sea!" there was a fury of pleading in his voice. hermione hesitated, but only for a moment. then she answered: "yes, you shall go. stop, gaspare!" he had moved towards the arch. "i'm coming with you." "you, signora?" "yes." "you cannot come! you are not to come!" he was actually commanding her--his padrona. "you are not to come, signora!" he repeated, violently. "but i am coming," she said. they stood facing each other. it was like a battle, gaspare's manner, his words, the tone in which they were spoken--all made her understand that there was some sinister terror in his soul. she did not ask what it was. she did not dare to ask. but she said again: "i am coming with you, gaspare." he stared at her and knew that from that decision there was no appeal. if he went she would accompany him. "let us wait here, signora," he said. "the padrone will be coming presently. we had better wait here." but now she was as determined on activity as before she had been--or seemed--anxious for patience. "i am going," she answered. "if you like to let me go alone you can." she spoke very quietly, but there was a thrill in her voice. the boy saw it was useless just then to pit his will against hers. he dropped his head, and the ugly look came back to his face, but he made no reply. "we shall be back very soon, lucrezia. we are going a little way down to meet the padrone. come, gaspare!" she spoke to him gently, kindly, almost pleadingly. he made an odd sound. it was not a word, nor was it a sob. she had never heard anything like it before. it seemed to her to be like a smothered outcry of a heart torn by some acute emotion. "gaspare!" she said. "we shall meet him. we shall meet him in the ravine!" then they set out. as she was going, hermione cast a look down towards the sea. always at this hour, when night had come, a light shone there, the light in the siren's house. to-night that little spark was not kindled. she saw only the darkness. she stopped. "why," she said, "there's no light!" "signora?" she pointed over the wall. "there's no light!" she repeated. this little fact--she did not know why--frightened her. "signora, i am going!" "gaspare!" she said. "give me your hand to help me down the path. it's so dark. isn't it?" she put out her hand. the boy's hand was cold. they set out towards the sea. xxi they did not talk as they went down the steep mountain-side, but when they reached the entrance of the ravine gaspare stopped abruptly and took his cold hand away from his padrona's hand. "signora," he said, almost in a whisper. "let me go alone!" they were under the shade of the trees here and it was much darker than upon the mountain-side. hermione could not see the boy's face plainly. she came close up to him. "why do you want to go alone?" she asked. without knowing it, she, too, spoke in an under-voice. "what is it you are afraid of?" she added. "i am not afraid." "yes," she said, "you are. your hand is quite cold." "let me go alone, signora." "no, gaspare. there is nothing to be afraid of, i believe. but if--if there should have been an accident, i ought to be there. the padrone is my husband, remember." she went on and he followed her. hermione had spoken firmly, even almost cheerfully, to comfort the boy, whose uneasiness was surely greater than the occasion called for. so many little things may happen to delay a man. and maurice might really have made the dã©tour to marechiaro on his way home. if he had, then they would miss him by taking this path through the ravine. hermione knew that, but she did not hesitate to take it. she could not remain inactive to-night. patience was out of her reach. it was only by making a strong effort that she had succeeded in waiting that short time on the terrace. now she could wait no longer. she was driven. although she had not yet sincerely acknowledged it to herself, fear was gradually taking possession of her, a fear such as she had never yet known or even imagined. she had never yet known or imagined such a fear. that she felt. but she had another feeling, contradictory, surely. it began to seem to her as if this fear, which was now coming upon her, had been near her for a long time, ever since the night when she knew that she was going to africa. had she not even expressed it to maurice? those beautiful days and nights of perfect happiness--can they ever come again? had she not thought that many times? was it not the voice of this fear which had whispered those words, and others like them, to her mind? and had there not been omens? had there not been omens? she heard gaspare's feet behind her in the ravine, and it seemed to her that she could tell by the sound of them upon the many little loose stones that he was wild with impatience, that he was secretly cursing her for obliging him to go so slowly. had he been alone he would have sped down with a rapidity almost like that of travelling light. she was strong, active. she was going fast. instinctively she went fast. but she was a woman, not a boy. "i can't help it, gaspare!" she was saying that mentally, saying it again and again, as she hurried onward. had there not been omens? that last letter of hers, whose loss had prevented maurice from meeting her on her return, from welcoming her! when she had reached the station of cattaro, and had not seen him upon the platform, she had felt "i have lost him." afterwards, directly almost, she had laughed at the feeling as absurd. but she had had it. and then, when at last he had come, she had been moved to suggest that he might like to sleep outside upon the terrace. and he had agreed to the suggestion. they had not resumed their old, sweet relation of husband and wife. had there not been omens? and only an hour ago, scarcely that, not that, she had knelt before the madonna della rocca and she had prayed, she had prayed passionately for deserted women, for women who loved and who had lost those whom they loved. the fear was upon her fully now, and she fully knew that it was. why had she prayed for lonely, deserted women? what had moved her to such a prayer? "was i praying for myself?" at that thought a physical weakness came to her, and she felt as if she could not go on. by the side of the path, growing among pointed rocks, there was a gnarled olive-tree, whose branches projected towards her. before she knew what she was doing she had caught hold of one and stood still. so suddenly she had stopped that gaspare, unprepared, came up against her in the dark. "signora! what is the matter?" his voice was surely angry. for a moment she thought of telling him to go on alone, quickly. "what is it, signora?" "nothing--only--i've walked so fast. wait one minute!" she felt the agony of his impatience, and it seemed to her that she was treating him very cruelly to-night. "you know, gaspare," she said, "it's not easy for women--this rough walking, i mean. we've got our skirts." she laughed. how unnatural, how horrible her laugh sounded in the darkness! he did not say any more. she knew he was wondering why she had laughed like that. after a moment she let go the branch. but her legs were trembling, and she stumbled when she began to walk on. "signora, you are tired already. you had better let me go alone." for the first time she told him a lie. "i should be afraid to wait here all by myself in the night," she said. "i couldn't do that." "who would come?" "i should be frightened." she thought she saw him look at her incredulously in the dark, but was not sure. "be kind to me to-night, gaspare!" she said. she felt a sudden passionate need of gentleness, of support, a woman's need of sympathy. "won't you?" she added. "signora!" he said. his voice sounded shocked, she thought; but in a moment, when they came to an awkward bit of the path, he put his hand under her arm, and very carefully, almost tenderly, helped her over it. tears rushed into her eyes. for such a small thing she was crying! she turned her head so that gaspare should not see, and tried to control her emotion. that terrible question kept on returning to her heart. "was i praying for myself when i prayed at the shrine of the madonna della rocca?" hermione was gifted, or cursed, with imagination, and as she never made use of her imaginative faculty in any of the arts, it was, perhaps, too much at the service of her own life. in happiness it was a beautiful handmaid, helping her to greater joy, but in unhappy, or in only anxious moments, it was, as it usually is, a cursed thing. it stood at her elbow, then, like a demon full of suggestions that were terrible. with an inventiveness that was diabolic it brought vividly before her scenes to shake the stoutest courage. it painted the future black. it showed her the world as a void. and in that void she was as something falling, falling, yet reaching nothing. now it was with her in the ravine, and as she asked questions, terrible questions, it gave her terrible answers. and it reminded her of other omens--it told her these facts were really omens--which till now she had not thought of. why had both she and maurice been led to think and to speak of death to-day? upon the mountain-top the thought of death had come to her when she looked at the glory of the dawn. she had said to maurice, "'the mountains will endure'--but we!" of course it was a truism, such a thing as she might say at any time when she was confronted by the profound stability of nature. thousands of people had said much the same thing on thousands of occasions. yet now the demon at her elbow whispered to her that the remark had had a peculiar significance. she had even said, "what is it makes one think most of death when--when life, new life, is very near?" existence is made up of loss and gain. new beings rush into life day by day and hour by hour. birth is about us, but death is about us too. and when we are given something, how often is something also taken from us! was that to be her fate? and maurice--he had been led to speak of death, afterwards, just as he was going away to the sea. she recalled his words, or the demon whispered them over to her: "'one can never tell what will happen--suppose one of us were to die here? don't you think it would be good to lie there where we lay this afternoon, under the oak-trees, in sight of etna and the sea? i think it would." they were his very last words, his who was so full of life, who scarcely ever seemed to realize the possibility of death. all through the day death had surely been in the air about them. she remembered her dream, or quasi-dream. in it she had spoken. she had muttered an appeal, "don't leave me alone!" and at another time she had tried to realize maurice in england and had failed. she had felt as if sicily would never let him go. and when she had spoken her thought he had hinted that sicily could only keep him by holding him in arms of earth, holding him in those arms that keep the body of man forever. perhaps it was ordained that her sicilian should never leave the island that he loved. in all their sicilian days how seldom had she thought of their future life together in england! always she had seen herself with maurice in the south. he had seemed to belong to the south, and she had brought him to the south. and now--would the south let him go? the thought of the sirens of legend flitted through her mind. they called men to destruction. she imagined them sitting among the rocks near the casa della sirene, calling--calling to her sicilian. long ago, when she first knew him well and loved his beauty, she had sometimes thought of him as a being of legend. she had let her fancy play about him tenderly, happily. he had been mercury, endymion, a dancing faun, cupid vanishing from psyche as the dawn came. and now she let a cruel fancy have its will for a moment. she imagined the sirens calling among the rocks, and maurice listening to their summons, and going to his destruction. the darkness of the ravine helped the demon who hurried with her down the narrow path, whispering in her ears. but though she yielded for a time to the nightmare spell, common-sense had not utterly deserted her, and presently it made its voice heard. she began to say to herself that in giving way to such fantastic fears she was being unworthy of herself, almost contemptible. in former times she had never been a foolish woman or weak. she had, on the contrary, been strong and sensible, although unconventional and enthusiastic. many people had leaned upon her, even strong people. artois was one. and she had never yet failed any one. "i must not fail myself," she suddenly thought. "i must not be a fool because i love." she loved very much, and she had been separated from her lover very soon. her eagerness to return to him had been so intense that it had made her afraid. yet she had returned, been with him again. her fear in africa that they would perhaps never be together again in their sicilian home had been groundless. she remembered how it had often tormented her, especially at night in the dark. she had passed agonizing hours, for no reason. her imagination had persecuted her. now it was trying to persecute her more cruelly. suddenly she resolved not to let it have its way. why was she so frightened at a delay that might be explained in a moment and in the simplest manner? why was she frightened at all? gaspare's foot struck a stone and sent it flying down the path past her. ah! it had been gaspare. his face, his manner, had startled her, had first inclined her to fear. "gaspare!" she said. "si, signora?" "come up beside me. there's room now." the boy joined her. "gaspare," she continued, "do you know that when we meet the padrone, you and i, we shall look like two fools?" "meet the padrone?" he repeated, sullenly. "yes. he'll laugh at us for rushing down like this. he'll think we've gone quite mad." silence was the only response she had. "won't he?" she asked. "non lo so." "oh, gaspare!" she exclaimed. "don't--don't be like this to-night. do you know that you are frightening me?" he did not answer. "what is the matter with you? what has been the matter with you all day?" "niente." his voice was hard, and he fell behind again. hermione knew that he was concealing something from her. she wondered what it was. it must be something surely in connection with his anxiety. her mind worked rapidly. maurice--the sea--bathing--gaspare's fear--maurice and gaspare had bathed together often while she had been in africa. "gaspare," she said. "walk beside me--i wish it." he came up reluctantly. "you've bathed with the padrone lately?" "si, signora." "many times?" "si, signora." "have you ever noticed that he was tired in the sea, or afterwards, or that bathing seemed to make him ill in any way?" "tired, signora?" "you know there's a thing, in english we call it cramp. sometimes it seizes the best swimmers. it's a dreadful pain, i believe, and the limbs refuse to move. you've never--when he's been swimming with you, the padrone has never had anything of that kind, has he? it wasn't that which made you frightened this evening when he didn't come?" she had unwittingly given the boy the chance to save her from any worse suspicion. with sicilian sharpness he seized it. till now he had been in a dilemma, and it was that which had made him sullen, almost rude. his position was a difficult one. he had to keep his padrone's confidence. yet he could not--physically he could not--stay on the mountain when he knew that some tragedy was probably being enacted, or had already been enacted by the sea. he was devoured by an anxiety which he could not share and ought not to show because it was caused by the knowledge which he was solemnly pledged to conceal. this remark of hermione gave him a chance of shifting it from the shoulders of the truth to the shoulders of a lie. he remembered the morning of sirocco, his fear, his passion of tears in the boat. the memory seemed almost to make the lie he was going to tell the truth. "si, signora. it was that." his voice was no longer sullen. "the padrone had an attack like that?" again the terrible fear came back to her. "signora, it was one morning." "used you to bathe in the morning?" a hot flush came in gaspare's face, but hermione did not see it in the darkness. "once we did, signora. we had been fishing." "go on. tell me!" then gaspare related the incident of his padrone's sinking in the sea. only he made maurice's travesty appear a real catastrophe. hermione listened with painful attention. so maurice had nearly died, had been into the jaws of death, while she had been in africa! her fears there had been less ill-founded than she had thought. a horror came upon her as she heard gaspare's story. "and then, signora, i cried," he ended. "i cried." "you cried?" "i thought i never could stop crying again." how different from an english boy's reticence was this frank confession! and yet what english boy was ever more manly than this mountain lad? "why--but then you saved the padrone's life! god bless you!" hermione had stopped, and she now put her hand on gaspare's arm. "oh, signora, there were two of us. we had the boat." "but"--another thought came to her--"but, gaspare, after such a thing as that, how could you let the padrone go down to bathe alone?" gaspare, a moment before credited with a faithful action, was now to be blamed for a faithless one. for neither was he responsible, if strict truth were to be regarded. but he had insisted on saving his padrone from the sea when it was not necessary. and he knew his own faithfulness and was secretly proud of it, as a good woman knows and is proud of her honor. he had borne the praise therefore. but one thing he could not bear, and that was an imputation of faithlessness in his stewardship. "it was not my fault, signora!" he cried, hotly. "i wanted to go. i begged to go, but the padrone would not let me." "why not?" hermione, peering in the darkness, thought she saw the ugly look come again into the boy's face. "why not, signora?" "yes, why not?" "he wished me to stay with you. he said: 'stay with the padrona, gaspare. she will be all alone.'" "did he? well, gaspare, it is not your fault. but i never thought it was. you know that." she had heard in his voice that he was hurt. "come! we must go on!" her fear was now tangible. it had a definite form, and with every moment it grew greater in the night, towering over her, encompassing her about. for she had hoped to meet maurice coming up the ravine, and, with each moment that went by, her hope of hearing his footstep decreased, her conviction that something untoward must have occurred grew more solid. only once was her terror abated. when they were not far from the mouth of the ravine gaspare suddenly seized her arm from behind. "gaspare! what is it?" she said, startled. he held up one hand. "zitta!" he whispered. hermione listened, holding her breath. it was a silent night, windless and calm. the trees had no voices, the watercourse was dry, no longer musical with the falling stream. even the sea was dumb, or, if it were not, murmured so softly that these two could not hear it where they stood. and now, in this dark silence, they heard a faint sound. it was surely a foot-fall upon stones. yes, it was. by the fierce joy that burst up in her heart hermione measured her previous fear. "it's he! it's the padrone!" she put her face close to gaspare's and whispered the words. he nodded. his eyes were shining. "andiamo!" he whispered back. with a boy's impetuosity he wished to rush on and meet the truant pilgrim from the sea, but hermione held him back. she could not bear to lose that sweet sound, the foot-fall on the stones, coming nearer every moment. "no. let's wait for him here! let's give him a surprise." "va bene!" his body was quivering with suppressed movement. but they waited. the step was slow, or so it seemed to hermione as she listened again, like the step of a tired man. maurice seldom walked like that, she thought. he was light-footed, swift. his actions were ardent as were his eyes. but it must be he! of course it was he! he was languid after a long swim, and was walking slowly for fear of getting hot. that must be it. the walker drew nearer, the crunch of the stones was louder under his feet. "it isn't the padrone!" gaspare had spoken. all the light had gone out of his eyes. "si! si! it is he!" hermione contradicted him. "no, signora. it is a contadino." her joy was failing. although she contradicted gaspare, she began to feel that he was right. this step was heavy, weary, an old man's step. it could not be her mercury coming up to his home on the mountain. but still she waited. presently there detached itself from the darkness a faint figure, bent, crowned with a long sicilian cap. "andiamo!" this time she did not keep gaspare back. without a word they went on. as they came to the figure it stopped. she did not even glance at it, but as she went by it she heard an old, croaky voice say: "benedicite!" never before had the sicilian greeting sounded horrible in her ears. she did not reply to it. she could not. and gaspare said nothing. they hastened on in silence till they reached the high-road by isola bella, the road where maurice had met maddalena on the morning of the fair. it was deserted. the thick white dust upon it looked ghastly at their feet. now they could hear the faint and regular murmur of the oily sea by which the fishermen's boats were drawn up, and discern, far away on the right, the serpentine lights of cattaro. "where do you go to bathe?" hermione asked, always speaking in a hushed voice. "here, by isola bella?" she looked down at the rocks of the tiny island, at the dimness of the spreading sea. till now she had always gloried in its beauty, but to-night it looked to her mysterious and cruel. "no, signora." "where then?" "farther on--a little. i will go." his voice was full of hesitation. he did not know what to do. "please, signora, stay here. sit on the bank by the line. i will go and be back in a moment. i can run. it is better. if you come we shall take much longer." "go, gaspare!" she said. "but--stop--where do you bathe exactly?" "quite near, signora." "in that little bay underneath the promontory where the casa delle sirene is?" "sometimes there and sometimes farther on by the caves. a rivederla!" the white dust flew up from the road as he disappeared. hermione did not sit down on the bank. she had never meant to wait by isola bella, but she let him go because what he had said was true, and she did not wish to delay him. if anything serious had occurred every moment might be valuable. after a short pause she followed him. as she walked she looked continually at the sea. presently the road mounted and she came in sight of the sheltered bay in which maurice had heard maddalena's cry when he was fishing. a stone wall skirted the road here. some twenty feet below was the railway line laid on a bank which sloped abruptly to the curving beach. she leaned her hands upon the wall and looked down, thinking she might see gaspare. but he was not there. the dark, still sea, protected by the two promontories, and by an islet of rock in the middle of the bay, made no sound here. it lay motionless as a pool in a forest under the stars. to the left the jutting land, with its turmoil of jagged rocks, was a black mystery. as she stood by the wall, hermione felt horribly lonely, horribly deserted. she wished she had not let gaspare go. yet she dreaded his return. what might he have to tell her? now that she was here by the sea she felt how impossible it was for maurice to have been delayed upon the shore. for there was no one here. the fishermen were up in the village. the contadini had long since left their work. no one passed upon the road. there was nothing, there could have been nothing to keep a man here. she felt as if it were already midnight, the deepest hour of darkness and of silence. as she took her hands from the wall, and turned to go on up the hill to the point which commanded the open sea and the beginning of the straits of messina, she was terrified. suspicion was hardening into certainty. something dreadful must have happened to maurice. her legs had begun to tremble again. all her body felt weak and incapable, like the body of an old person whose life was drawing to an end. the hill, not very steep, faced her like a precipice, and it seemed to her that she would not be able to mount it. in the road the deep dust surely clung to her feet, refusing to let her lift them. and she felt sick and contemptible, no longer her own mistress either physically or mentally. the voices within her that strove to whisper commonplaces of consolation, saying that maurice had gone to marechiaro, or that he had taken another path home, not the path from isola bella, brought her no comfort. the thing within her soul that knew what she, the human being containing it, did not know, told her that her terror had its reason, that she was not suffering in this way without cause. it said, "your terror is justified." [illustration: "she could see vaguely the shore by the caves where the fishermen had slept in the dawn"] at last she was at the top of the hill, and could see vaguely the shore by the caves where the fishermen had slept in the dawn. to her right was the path which led to the wall of rock connecting the sirens' isle with the main-land. she glanced at it, but did not think of following it. gaspare must have followed the descending road. he must be down there on that beach searching, calling his padrone's name, perhaps. she began to descend slowly, still physically distressed. true to her fixed idea that if there had been a disaster it must be connected with the sea, she walked always close to the wall, and looked always down to the sea. within a short time, two or three minutes, she came in sight of the lakelike inlet, a miniature fiord which lay at the feet of the woods where hid the casa delle sirene. the water here looked black like ebony. she stared down at it and saw a boat lying on the shore. then she gazed for a moment at the trees opposite from which always, till to-night, had shone the lamp which she and maurice had seen from the terrace. all was dark. the thickly growing trees did not move. secret and impenetrable seemed to her the hiding-place they made. she could scarcely imagine that any one lived among them. yet doubtless the inhabitants of the casa delle sirene were sleeping quietly there while she wandered on the white road accompanied by her terror. she had stopped for a minute, and was just going to walk on, when she heard a sound that, though faint and distant, was sharp and imperative. it seemed to her to be a violent beating on wood, and it was followed by the calling of a voice. she waited. the sound died away. she listened, straining her ears. in this absolutely still night sound travelled far. at first she had no idea from what direction came this noise which had startled her. but almost immediately it was repeated, and she knew that it must be some one striking violently and repeatedly upon wood--probably a wooden door. then again the call rang out. this time she recognized, or thought she recognized, gaspare's voice raised angrily, fiercely, in a summons to someone. she looked across the ebon water at the ebon mass of the trees on its farther side, and realized swiftly that gaspare must be there. he had gone to the only house between the two bathing-places to ask if its inhabitants had seen anything of the padrone. this seemed to her to be a very natural and intelligent action, and she waited eagerly and watched, hoping to see a light shine out as salvatore--yes, that had been the name told to her by gaspare--as salvatore got up from sleep and came to open. he might know something, know at least at what hour maurice had left the sea. again came the knocking and the call, again--four, five times. then there was a long silence. always the darkness reigned, unbroken by the earth-bound star, the light she looked for. the silence began to seem to her interminable. at first she thought that perhaps gaspare was having a colloquy with the owner of the house, was learning something of maurice. but presently she began to believe that there could be no one in the house, and that he had realized this. if so, he would have to return either to the road or the beach. she could see no boat moored to the shore opposite. he would come by the wall of rock, then, unless he swam the inlet. she went back a little way to a point from which dimly she saw the wall, and waited there a few minutes. surely it would be dangerous to traverse that wall on such a dark night! now, to her other fear was added fear for gaspare. if an accident were to happen to him! suddenly she hastened back to the path which led from the high-road along the spit of cultivated land to the wall, turned from the road, traversed the spit, and went down till she stood at the edge of the wall. she looked at the black rock, the black sea that lay motionless far down on either side of it. surely gaspare would not venture to come this way. it seemed to her that to do so would mean death, or, if not that, a dangerous fall into the sea--and probably there were rocks below, hidden under the surface of the water. but gaspare was daring. she knew that. he was as active as a cat and did not know the meaning of fear for his own safety. he might-out of the darkness on the land beyond the wall, something came, the form of some one hurrying. "gaspare!" the form stopped. "gaspare!" "signora! what are you doing here? madonna!" "gaspare, don't come this way! you are not to come this way." "why are you here, signora? i told you to wait for me by isola bella." the startled voice was hard. "you are not to cross the wall. i won't have it." "the wall--it is nothing, signora. i have crossed it many times. it is nothing for a man." "in the day, perhaps, but at night--don't, gaspare--d'you hear me?--you are not--" she stopped, holding her breath, for she saw him coming lightly, poised on bare feet, straight as an arrow, and balancing himself with his out-stretched arms. "ah!" she had shrieked out. just as he was midway gaspare had looked down at the sea--the open sea on the far side of the wall. instantly his foot slipped, he lost his balance and fell. she thought he had gone, but he caught the wall with his hands, hung for a moment suspended above the sea, then raised himself, as a gymnast does on a parallel bar, slowly till his body was above the wall. then--hermione did not know how--he was beside her. she caught hold of him with both hands. she felt furiously angry. "how dare you disobey me?" she said, panting and trembling. "how dare you--" but his eyes silenced her. she broke off, staring at him. all the healthy color had left his face. there was a leaden hue upon it. "gaspare--are you--you aren't hurt--you--" "let me go, signora! let me go!" she let him go instantly. "what is it? where are you going?" he pointed to the beach. "to the boat. there's--down there in the water--there's something in the water!" "something?" she said. "wait in the road." he rushed away from her, and she heard him saying: "madonna! madonna! madonna!"--crying it out as he ran. something in the water! she felt as if her heart stood still for a century, then at last beat again somewhere up in her throat, choking her. something--could gaspare have seen what? she moved on a step. one of her feet was on the wall, the other still on the firm earth. she leaned down and tried to look over into the sea beyond, the sea close to the wall. but her head swam. had she not moved back hastily, obedient to an imperious instinct of self-preservation, she would have fallen. she sat down, there where she had been standing, and dropped her face into her hands close to her knees, and kept quite still. she felt as if she were in a train going through a tunnel. her ears were full of a roaring clamor. how long she sat and heard tumult she did not know. when she looked up the night seemed to her to be much darker than before, intensely dark. yet all the stars were there in the sky. no clouds had come to hide them. she tried to get up quickly, but there was surely something wrong with her body. it would not obey her will at first. presently she lay down, turned over on her side, put both hands on the ground, and with an effort, awkward as that of a cripple, hoisted herself up and stood on her feet. gaspare had said, "wait in the road." she must find the road. that was what she must do. "wait in the road--wait in the road." she kept on saying that to herself. but she could not remember for a moment where the road was. she could only think of rock, of water black like ebony. the road was white. she must look for something white. and when she found it she must wait. presently, while she thought she was looking, she found that she was walking in the dust. it flew up into her nostrils, dry and acrid. then she began to recover herself and to realize more clearly what she was doing. she did not know yet. she knew nothing yet. the night was dark, the sea was dark. gaspare had only cast one swift glance down before his foot had slipped. it was impossible that he could have seen what it was that was there in the water. and she was always inclined to let her imagination run riot. god isn't cruel. she had said that under the oak-trees, and it was true. it must be true. "i've never done god any harm," she was saying to herself now. "i've never meant to. i've always tried to do the right thing. god knows that! god wouldn't be cruel to me." in this moment all the subtlety of her mind deserted her, all that in her might have been called "cleverness." she was reduced to an extraordinary simplicity like that of a child, or a very instinctive, uneducated person. "i don't think i'm bad," she thought. "and god--he isn't bad. he wouldn't wish to hurt me. he wouldn't wish to kill me." she was walking on mechanically while she thought this, but presently she remembered again that gaspare had told her to wait in the road. she looked over the wall down to the narrow strip of beach that edged the inlet between the main-land and the sirens' isle. the boat which she had seen there was gone. gaspare had taken it. she stood staring at the place where the boat had been. then she sought a means of descending to that strip of beach. she would wait there. a little lower down the road some of the masonry of the wall had been broken away, perhaps by a winter flood, and at this point there was a faint track, trodden by fishermen's feet, leading down to the line. hermione got over the wall at this point and was soon on the beach, standing almost on the spot where maurice had stripped off his clothes in the night to seek the voice that had cried out to him in the darkness. she waited here. gaspare would presently come back. his arms were strong. he could row fast. she would only have to wait a few minutes. in a few minutes she would know. she strained her eyes to catch sight of the boat rounding the promontory as it returned from the open sea. at first she stood, but presently, as the minutes went by and the boat did not come, her sense of physical weakness returned and she sat down on the stones with her feet almost touching the water. "gaspare knows now," she thought. "i don't know, but gaspare knows." that seemed to her strange, that any one should know the truth of this thing before she did. for what did it matter to any one but her? maurice was hers--was so absolutely hers that she felt as if no one else had any concern in him. he was gaspare's padrone. gaspare loved him as a sicilian may love his padrone. others in england, too, loved him--his mother, his father. but what was any love compared with the love of the one woman to whom he belonged. his mother had her husband. gaspare--he was a boy. he would love some girl presently; he would marry. no, she was right. the truth about that "something in the water" only concerned her. god's dealing with this creature of his to-night only really mattered to her. as she waited, pressing her hands on the stones and looking always at the point of the dark land round which the boat must come, a strange and terrible feeling came to her, a feeling that she knew she ought to drive out of her soul, but that she was powerless to expel. she felt as if at this moment god were on his trial before her--before a poor woman who loved. "if god has taken maurice from me," she thought, "he is cruel, frightfully cruel, and i cannot love him. if he has not taken maurice from me, he is the god who is love, the god i can, i must worship!" which god was he? the vast scheme of the world narrowed; the wide horizons vanished. there was nothing beyond the limit of her heart. she felt, as almost all believing human beings feel in such moments, that god's attention was entirely concentrated upon her life, that no other claimed his care, begged for his pity, demanded his tenderness because hers was so intense. did god wish to lose her love? surely not! then he could not commit this frightful act which she feared. he had not committed it. a sort of relief crept through her as she thought this. her agony of apprehension was suddenly lessened, was almost driven out. god wants to be loved by the beings he has created. then he would not deliberately, arbitrarily destroy a love already existing in the heart of one of them--a love thankful to him, enthusiastically grateful for happiness bestowed by him. beyond the darkness of the point there came out of the dimness of the night that brooded above the open sea a moving darkness, and hermione heard the splash of oars in the calm water. she got up quickly. now her body was trembling again. she stared at the boat as if she would force it to yield its secret to her eyes. but that was only for an instant. then her ears seemed to be seeking the truth, seeking it from the sound of the oars in the water! there was no rhythmic regularity in the music they made, no steadiness, no--no-she listened passionately, instinctively bending down her head sideways. it seemed to her that she was listening to a drunken man rowing. now there was a quick beating of the oars in the water, then silence, then a heavy splash as if one of the oars had escaped from an uncertain hand, then some uneven strokes, one oar striking the water after the other. "but gaspare is a contadino," she said to herself, "not a fisherman. gaspare is a contadino and--" "gaspare!" she called out. "gaspare!" the boat stopped midway in the mouth of the inlet. "gaspare! is it you?" she saw a dark figure standing up in the boat. "gaspare, is it you?" she cried, more loudly. "si." was it gaspare's voice? she did not recognize it. yet the voice had answered "yes." the boat still remained motionless on the water midway between shore and shore. she did not speak again; she was afraid to speak. she stood and stared at the boat and at the motionless figure standing up in it. why did not he row in to land? what was he doing there? she stared at the boat and at the figure standing in it till she could see nothing. then she shut her eyes. "gaspare!" she called, keeping her eyes shut. "what are you doing? gaspare!" there was no reply. she opened her eyes, and now she could see the boat again and the rower. "gaspare!" she cried, with all her strength, to the black figure. "why don't you row to the shore? why don't you come to me?" "vengo!" loudly the word came to her, loudly and sullenly as if the boy were angry with her, almost hated her. it was followed by a fierce splash of oars. the boat shot forward, coming straight towards her. then suddenly the oars ceased from moving, the dark figure of the rower fell down in a heap, and she heard cries, like cries of despair, and broken exclamations, and then a long sound of furious weeping. "gaspare! gaspare!" her voice was strangled in her throat and died away. "and then, signora, i cried--i cried!" when had gaspare said that to her? and why had he cried? "gaspare!" it came from her lips in a whisper almost inaudible to herself. then she rushed forward into the dark water. xxii late that night dr. marini, the doctor of the commune of marechiaro, was roused from sleep in his house in the corso by a violent knocking on his street door. he turned over in his bed, muttered a curse, then lay still for a moment and listened. the knocking was renewed more violently. evidently the person who stood without was determined to gain admission. there was no help for it. the good doctor, who was no longer young, dropped his weary legs to the floor, walked across to the open window, and thrust his head out of it. a man was standing below. "what is it? what do you want?" said the doctor, in a grumbling voice. "is it another baby? upon my word, these--" "signor dottore, come down, come down instantly! the signore of monte amato, the signore of the casa del prete has had an accident. you must come at once. i will go to fetch a donkey." the doctor leaned farther out of the window. "an accident! what--?" but the man, a fisherman of marechiaro, was already gone, and the doctor saw only the narrow, deserted street, black with the shadows of the tall houses. he drew in quickly and began to dress himself with some expedition. an accident, and to a forestiere! there would be money in this case. he regretted his lost sleep less now and cursed no more, though he thought of the ride up into the mountains with a good deal of self-pity. it was no joke to be a badly paid sicilian doctor, he thought, as he tugged at his trousers buttons, and fastened the white front that covered the breast of his flannel shirt, and adjusted the cuffs which he took out of a small drawer. without lighting a candle he went down-stairs, fumbled about, and found his case of instruments. then he opened the street door and waited, yawning on the stone pavement. in two or three minutes he heard the tripping tip-tap of a donkey's hoofs, and the fisherman came up leading a donkey apparently as disinclined for a nocturnal flitting as the doctor. "ah, giuseppe, it's you, is it?" "si, signor dottore!" "what's this accident?" the fisherman looked grave and crossed himself. "oh, signore, it is terrible! they say the poor signore is dead!" "dead!" exclaimed the doctor, startled. "you said is was an accident. dead you say now?" "signore, he is dead beyond a doubt. i was going to the fishing when i heard dreadful cries in the water by the inlet--you know, by salvatore's terreno!" "in the water?" "si, signore. i went down quickly and i found gaspare, the signore's--" "i know--i know!" "gaspare in a boat with the padrone lying at the bottom, and the signora standing up to her middle in the sea." "z't! z't!" exclaimed the doctor, "the signora in the sea! is she mad?" "signor dottore, how do i know? i brought the boat to shore. gaspare was like one crazed. then we lifted the signore out upon the stones. oh, he is dead, signor dottore; dead beyond a doubt. they had found him in the sea--" "they?" "gaspare--under the rocks between salvatore's terreno and the main-land. he had all his clothes on. he must have been there in the dark--" "why should he go in the dark?" "how do i know, signor dottore?--and have fallen, and struck his head against the rocks. for there was a wound and--" "the body should not have been moved from where it lay till the pretore had seen it. gaspare should have left the body." "but perhaps the povero signore is not really dead, after all! madonna! how--" "come! come! we must not delay! one minute! i will get some lint and--" he disappeared into the house. almost directly he came out again with a package under his arm and a long, black cigar lighted in his mouth. "take these, giuseppe! carry them carefully. now then!" he hoisted himself onto the donkey. "a-ah! a-ah!" they set off, the fisherman walking on naked feet beside the donkey. "then we have to go down to the sea?" "no, signor dottore. there were others on the road, antonio and--" "the rest of you going to the boats--i know. well?" "and the signora would have him carried up to monte amato." "she could give directions?" "si, signore. she ordered everything. when she came out of the sea she was all wet, the poor signora, but she was calm. i called the others. when they saw the signore they all cried out. they knew him. some of them had been to the fishing with him. oh, they were sorry! they all began to speak and to try to--" "diavolo! they could only make things worse! if the breath of life was in the signore's body they would drive it out. per dio!" "but the signora stopped them. she told them to be silent and to carry the signore up to the casa del prete. signore, she--the povera signora--she took his head in her hands. she held his head and she never cried, not a tear!" the man brushed his hand across his eyes. "povera signora! povera signora!" murmured the doctor. "and she comforted gaspare, too!" giuseppe added. "she put her arm round him and told him to be brave, and help her. she made him walk by her and put his hand under the padrone's shoulder. madonna!" they turned away from the village into a narrow path that led into the hills. "and i came to fetch you, signor dottore. perhaps the povero signore is not really dead. perhaps you can save him, signor dottore!" "chi lo sa?" replied the doctor. he had let his cigar go out and did not know it. "chi lo sa?" he repeated, mechanically. then they went on in silence--till they reached the shoulder of the mountain under castel vecchio. from here they could see across the ravine to the steep slope of monte amato. upon it, high up, a light shone, and presently a second light detached itself from the first, moved a little way, and then was stationary. giuseppe pointed. "ecco, signor dottore! they have carried the poor signore up." the second light moved waveringly back towards the first. "they are carrying him into the house, signor dottore. madonna! and all this to happen in the night!" the doctor nodded without speaking. he was watching the lights up there in that lonely place. he was not a man of strong imagination, and was accustomed to look on misery, the misery of the poor. but to-night he felt a certain solemnity descend upon him as he rode by these dark by-paths up into the bosom of the hills. perhaps part of this feeling came from the fact that his mission had to do with strangers, with rich people from a distant country who had come to his island for pleasure, and who were now suddenly involved in tragedy in the midst of their amusement. but also he had a certain sense of personal sympathy. he had known hermione on her former visit to sicily and had liked her; and though this time he had seen scarcely anything of her he had seen enough to be aware that she was very happy with her young husband. maurice, too, he had seen, full of the joy of youth and of bounding health. and now all that was put out, if giuseppe's account were true. it was a pity, a sad pity. the donkey crossed the mouth of the ravine, and picked its way upward carefully amid the loose stones. in the ravine a little owl hooted twice. "giuseppe!" said the doctor. "signore?" "the signora has been away, hasn't she?" "si signore. in africa." "nursing that sick stranger. and now directly she comes back here's this happening to her! per dio!" he shook his head. "somebody must have looked on the povera signora with the evil-eye, signor dottore." giuseppe crossed himself. "it seems so," the doctor replied, gravely. he was almost as superstitious as the contadini among whom he labored. "ecco, signor dottore!" the doctor looked up. at the arch stood a figure holding a little lamp. almost immediately, two more figures appeared behind it. "il dottore! ecco il dottore!" there was a murmur of voices in the dark. as the donkey came up the excited fishermen crowded round, all speaking at once. "he is dead, signor dottore. the povero signore is dead!" "let the signor dottore come to him, beppe! what do you know? let the--" "sure enough he is dead! why, he must have been in the water a good hour. he is all swollen with the water and--" "it is his head, signor dottore! if it had not been for his coming against the rocks he would not have been hurt. per dio, he can swim like a fish, the povero signorino. i have seen him swim. why, even peppino--" "the signora wants us all to go away, signor dottore. she begs us to go and leave her alone with the povero signore!" "gaspare is in such a state! you would not know him. and the povera signora, she is all dripping wet. she has been into the sea, and now she has carried the head of the povero signore all the way up the mountain. she would not let any one--" a succession of cries came out of the darkness, hysterical cries that ended in prolonged sobbing. "that is lucrezia!" cried one of the fishermen. "madonna! that is lucrezia!" "mamma mia! mamma mia!" their voices were loud in the night. the doctor pushed his way between the men and came onto the terrace in front of the steps that led into the sitting-room. gaspare was standing there alone. his face was almost unrecognizable. it looked battered, puffy, and inflamed, as if he had been drinking and fighting. there were no tears in his eyes now, but long, violent sobs shook his body from time to time, and his blistered lips opened and shut mechanically with each sob. he stared dully at the doctor, but did not say a word, or move to get out of the way. "gaspare!" said the doctor. "where is the padrona?" the boy sobbed and sobbed, always in the same dry and terribly mechanical way. "gaspare!" repeated the doctor, touching him. "gaspare!" "e' morto!" the boy suddenly cried out, in a loud voice. and he flung himself down on the ground. the doctor felt a thrill of cold in his veins. he went up the steps into the little sitting-room. as he did so hermione came to the door of the bedroom. her dripping skirts clung about her. she looked quite calm. without greeting the doctor she said, quietly: "you heard what gaspare said?" "si, signora, ma--" the doctor stopped, staring at her. he began to feel almost dazed. the fishermen had followed him and stood crowding together on the steps and staring into the room. "he is dead. i am sorry you came all this way." they stood there facing one another. from the kitchen came the sound of lucrezia's cries. hermione put her hands up to her ears. "please--please--oh, there should be a little silence here now!" she said. for the first time there was a sound of something like despair in her voice. "let me come in, signora!" stammered the doctor. "let me come in and examine him." "he is dead." "well, but let me. i must!" "please come in," she said. the doctor turned round to the fishermen. "go, one of you, and make that girl keep quiet," he said, angrily. "take her away out of the house--directly! do you hear? and the rest of you stay outside, and don't make a sound." the fishermen slunk a little way back into the darkness, while giuseppe, walking on the toes of his bare feet, and glancing nervously at the furniture and the pictures upon the walls, crossed the room and disappeared into the kitchen. then the doctor laid down his cigar on a table and went into the bedroom whither hermione had preceded him. there was a lighted candle on the white chest of drawers. the window and the shutters of the room were closed against the glances of the fishermen. on one of the two beds--hermione's--lay the body of a man dripping with water. the doctor took the candle in his hand, went to this bed and leaned down, then set down the candle at the bedhead and made a brief examination. he found at once that gaspare had spoken the truth. this man had been dead for some time. nevertheless, something--he scarcely knew what--kept the doctor there by the bed for some moments before he pronounced his verdict. never before had he felt so great a reluctance to speak the simple words that would convey a great truth. he fingered his shirt-front uneasily, and stared at the body on the bed and at the wet sheets and pillows. meanwhile, hermione had sat down on a chair near the door that opened into what had been maurice's dressing-room, and folded her hands in her lap. the doctor did not look towards her, but he felt her presence painfully. lucrezia's cries had died away, and there was complete silence for a brief space of time. the body on the bed was swollen, but not very much, the face was sodden, the hair plastered to the head, and on the left temple there was a large wound, evidently, as the doctor had seen, caused by the forehead striking violently against a hard, resisting substance. it was not the sea alone which had killed this man. it was the sea and the rock in the sea. he had fallen, been stunned and then drowned. the doctor knew the place where he had been found. the explanation of the tragedy was very simple--very simple. while the doctor was thinking this, and fingering his shirt-front mechanically, and bracing himself to turn towards the quiet woman in the chair, he heard a loud, dry noise in the sitting-room, then in the bedroom. gaspare had come in, and was standing at the foot of the bed, sobbing and staring at the doctor with hopeless eyes, that yet asked a last question, begged desperately for a lie. "gaspare!" the woman in the chair whispered to him. he took no notice. "gaspare!" she got up and crossed over to the boy, and took one of his hands. "it's no use," she said. "perhaps he is happy." then the boy began to cry passionately. tears poured out of his eyes while he held his padrona's hand. the doctor got up. "he is dead, signora," he said. "we knew it," hermione replied. she looked at the doctor for a minute. then she said: "hush, gaspare!" the doctor stood by the bed. "scusi, signora," he said, "but--but will you take him into the next room?" he pointed to gaspare, who shivered as he wept. "i must make a further examination." "why? you see that he is dead." "yes, but--there are certain formalities." he stopped. "formalities!" she said. "he is dead." "yes. but--but the authorities will have to be informed. i am very sorry. i should wish to leave everything undisturbed." "what do you mean? gaspare! gaspare!" "but--according to the law, our law, the body should never have been moved. it should have been left where it was found until--" "we could not leave him in the sea." she still spoke quite quietly, but the doctor felt as if he could not go on. "since it is done--" he began. he pulled himself together with an effort. "there will have to be an inquiry, signora--the cause of death will have to be ascertained." "you see it. he was coming from the island. he fell and was drowned. it is very simple." "yes, no doubt. still, there must be an inquiry. gaspare will have to explain--" he looked at the weeping boy, then at the woman who stood there holding the boy's hand in hers. "but that will be for to-morrow," he muttered, fingering his shirt-front and looking down. "that will be for to-morrow." as he went out he added: "signora, do not remain in your wet clothes." "i--oh, thank you. they do not matter." she did not follow him into the next room. as he went down the steps to the terrace the sound of gaspare's passionate weeping followed him into the night. when the doctor was on the donkey and was riding out through the arch, after a brief colloquy with the fishermen and with giuseppe, whom he had told to remain at the cottage for the rest of the night, he suddenly remembered the cigar which he had left upon the table, and he pulled up. "what is it, signor dottore?" said one of the fishermen. "i've left something, but--never mind. it does not matter." he rode on again. "it does not matter," he repeated. he was thinking of the english signora standing beside the bed in her wet skirts and holding the hand of the weeping boy. it was the first time in his life that he had ever sacrificed a good cigar. he wondered why he did so now, but he did not care to return just then to the casa del prete. xxiii hermione longed for quiet, for absolute silence. it seemed strange to her that she still longed for anything--strange and almost horrible, almost inhuman. but she did long for that, to be able to sit beside her dead husband and to be undisturbed, to hear no voice speaking, no human movement, to see no one. if it had been possible she would have closed the cottage against every one, even against gaspare and lucrezia. but it was not possible. destiny did not choose that she should have this calm, this silence. it had seemed to her, when fear first came upon her, as if no one but herself had any real concern with maurice, as if her love conferred upon her a monopoly. this monopoly had been one of joy. now it should be one of sorrow. but now it did not exist. she was not weeping for maurice. but others were. she had no one to go to. but others came to her, clung to her. she could not rid herself of the human burden. she might have been selfish, determined, she might have driven the mourners out. but--and that was strange, too--she found herself pitying them, trying to use her intellect to soothe them. lucrezia was terrified, almost like one assailed suddenly by robbers, terrified and half incredulous. when her hysteria subsided she was at first unbelieving. "he cannot be really dead, signora!" she sobbed to hermione. "the povero signorino. he was so gay! he was so--" she talked and talked, as sicilians do when face to face with tragedy. she recalled maurice's characteristics, his kindness, his love of climbing, fishing, bathing, his love of the sun--all his love of life. hermione had to listen to the story with that body lying on her bed. gaspare's grief was speechless, but needed comfort more. there was an element in it of fury which hermione realized without rightly understanding. she supposed it was the fury of a boy from whom something is taken by one whom he cannot attack. for god is beyond our reach. she could not understand the conflict going on in the boy's heart and mind. he knew that this death was probably no natural death, but a murder. neither maddalena nor her father had been in the casa delle sirene when he knocked upon the door in the night. salvatore had sent maddalena to spend the night with relations in marechiaro, on the pretext that he was going to sail to messina on some business. and he had actually sailed before gaspare's arrival on the island. but gaspare knew that there had been a meeting, and he knew what the sicilian is when he is wronged. the words "vengeance is mine!" are taken in sicily by each wronged man into his own mouth, and salvatore was notoriously savage and passionate. as the first shock of horror and despair passed away from gaspare he was devoured, as by teeth, devoured by the desire to spring upon salvatore and revenge the death of his padrone. but the padrone had laid a solemn injunction upon him. solemn, indeed, it seemed to the boy now that the lips which had spoken were sealed forever. the padrona was never to know. if he obeyed his impulse, if he declared the vendetta against salvatore, the padrona would know. the knife that spilled the murderer's blood would give the secret to the world--and to the padrona. tremendous that night was the conflict in the boy's soul. he would not leave hermione. he was like the dog that creeps to lie at the feet of his sorrowing mistress. but he was more than that. for he had his own sorrow and his own fury. and he had the battle with his own instincts. what was he going to do? as he began to think, really to think, and to realize things, he knew that after such a death the authorities of marechiaro, the pretore and the cancelliere, would proceed to hold a careful examination into the causes of death. he would be questioned. that was certain. the opportunity would be given him to denounce salvatore. and was he to keep silence? was he to act for salvatore, to save salvatore from justice? he would not have minded doing that, he would have wished to do it, if afterwards he could have sprung upon salvatore and buried his knife in the murderer of his padrone. but--the padrona? she was not to know. she was never to know. and she had been the first in his life. she had found him, a poor, ragged little boy working among the vines, and she had given him new clothes and had taken him into her home and into her confidence. she had trusted him. she had remembered him in england. she had written to him from far away, telling him to prepare everything for her and the padrone when they were coming. he began to sob violently again, thinking of it all, of how he had ordered the donkeys to fetch the luggage from the station, of how-"hush, gaspare!" hermione again put her hand on his. she was sitting near the bed on which the body was lying between dry sheets. for she had changed them with gaspare's assistance. maurice still wore the clothes which had been on him in the sea. giuseppe, the fisherman, had explained to hermione that she must not interfere with the body till it had been visited by the authorities, and she had obeyed him. but she had changed the sheets. she scarcely knew why. now the clothes had almost dried on the body, and she did not see any more the stains of water. one sheet was drawn up over the body, to the chin. the matted dark hair was visible against the pillow, and had made her think several times vaguely of that day after the fishing when she had watched maurice taking his siesta. she had longed for him to wake then, for she had known that she was going to africa, that they had only a few hours together before she started. it had seemed almost terrible to her, his sleeping through any of those hours. and now he was sleeping forever. she was sitting there waiting for nothing, but she could not realize that yet. she felt as if she must be waiting for something, that something must presently occur, a movement in the bed, a--she scarcely knew what. presently the clock gaspare had brought from the fair chimed, then played the "tre colori." lucrezia had set it to play that evening when she was waiting for the padrone to return from the sea. when he heard the tinkling tune gaspare lifted his head and listened till it was over. it recalled to him all the glories of the fair. he saw his padrone before him. he remembered how he had decorated maurice with flowers, and he felt as if his heart would break. "the povero signorino! the povero signorino!" he cried, in a choked voice. "and i put roses above his ears! si, signora, i did! i said he should be a real siciliano!" he began to rock himself to and fro. his whole body shook, and his face had a frantic expression that suggested violence. "i put roses above his ears!" he repeated. "that day he was a real siciliano!" "gaspare--gaspare--hush! don't! don't!" she held his hand and went on speaking softly. "we must be quiet in here. we must remember to be quiet. it isn't our fault, gaspare. we did all we could to make him happy. we ought to be glad of that. you did everything you could, and he loved you for it. he was happy with us. i think he was. i think he was happy till the very end. and that is something to be glad of. don't you think he was very happy here?" "si, signora!" the boy whispered, with twitching lips. "i'm glad i came back in time," hermione said, looking at the dark hair on the pillow. "it might have happened before, while i was away. i'm glad we had one more day together." suddenly, as she said that, something in the mere sound of the words seemed to reveal more clearly to her heart what had befallen her, and for the first time she began to cry and to remember. she remembered all maurice's tenderness for her, all his little acts of kindness. they seemed to pass rapidly in procession through her mind on their way to her heart. not one surely was absent. how kind to her he had always been! and he could never be kind to her again. and she could never be kind to him--never again. her tears went on falling quietly. she did not sob like gaspare. but she felt that now she had begun to cry she would never be able to stop again; that she would go on crying till she, too, died. gaspare looked up at her. "signora!" he said. "signora!" suddenly he got up, as if to go out of the room, out of the house. the sight of his padrona's tears had driven him nearly mad with the desire to wreak vengeance upon salvatore. for a moment his body seemed to get beyond his control. his eyes saw blood, and his hand darted down to his belt, and caught at the knife that was there, and drew it out. when hermione saw the knife she thought the boy was going to kill himself with it. she sprang up, went swiftly to gaspare, and put her hand on it over his hand. "gaspare, what are you doing?" she said. for a moment his face was horrible in its savagery. he opened his mouth, still keeping his grasp on the knife, which she tried to wrest from him. "lasci andare! lasci andare!" he said, beginning to struggle with her. "no, gaspare." "allora--" he paused with his mouth open. at that moment he was on the very verge of a revelation of the truth. he was on the point of telling hermione that he was sure that the padrone had been murdered, and that he meant to avenge the murder. hermione believed that for the moment he was mad, and was determined to destroy himself in her presence. it was useless to pit her strength against his. in a physical struggle she must be overcome. her only chance was to subdue him by other means. "gaspare," she said, quickly, breathlessly, pointing to the bed. "don't you think the padrone would have wished you to take care of me now? he trusted you. i think he would. i think he would rather you were with me than any one else in the whole world. you must take care of me. you must take care of me. you must never leave me!" the boy looked at her. his face changed, grew softer. "i've got nobody now," she added. "nobody but you." the knife fell on the floor. in that moment gaspare's resolve was taken. the battle within him was over. he must protect the padrona. the padrone would have wished it. then he must let salvatore go. he bent down and kissed hermione's hand. "lei non piange!" he muttered. "forse dio la aiuterã ." in the morning, early, hermione left the body for the first time, went into the dressing-room, changed her clothes, then came back and said to gaspare: "i am going a little way up the mountain, gaspare. i shall not be long. no, don't come with me. stay with him. are you dreadfully tired?" "no, signora." "we shall be able to rest presently," she said. she was thinking of the time when they would take maurice from her. she left gaspare sitting near the bed, and went out onto the terrace. lucrezia and gaspare, both thoroughly tired out, were sleeping soundly. she was thankful for that. soon, she knew, she would have to be with people, to talk, to make arrangements. but now she had a short spell of solitude. she went slowly up the mountain-side till she was near the top. then she sat down on a rock and looked out towards the sea. the world was not awake yet, although the sun was coming. etna was like a great phantom, the waters at its foot were pale in their tranquillity. the air was fresh, but there was no wind to rustle the leaves of the oak-trees, upon whose crested heads hermione gazed down with quiet, tearless eyes. she had a strange feeling of being out of the world, as if she had left it, but still had the power to see it. she wondered if maurice felt like that. he had said it would be good to lie beneath those oak-trees in sight of etna and the sea. how she wished that she could lay his body there, alone, away from all other dead. but that was impossible, she supposed. she remembered the doctor's words. what were they going to do? she did not know anything about italian procedure in such an event. would they take him away? she had no intention of trying to resist anything, of offering any opposition. it would be useless, and besides he had gone away. already he was far off. she did not feel, as many women do, that so long as they are with the body of their dead they are also with the soul. she would like to keep the dear body, to have it always near to her, to live close to the spot where it was committed to the earth. but maurice was gone. her mercury had winged his way from her, obedient to a summons that she had not heard. always she had thought of him as swift, and swiftly, without warning, he had left her. he had died young. was that wonderful? she thought not. no; age could have nothing to say to him, could hold no commerce with him. he had been born to be young and never to be anything else. it seemed to her now strange that she had not felt this, foreseen that it must be so. and yet, only yesterday, she had imagined a far future, and their child laying them in the ground of sicily, side by side, and murmuring "buon riposo" above their mutual sleep. their child! a life had been taken from her. soon a life would be given to her. was that what is called compensation? perhaps so. many strange thoughts, come she could not tell why, were passing through her mind as she sat upon this height in the dawn. the thought of compensation recalled to her the book of job. everything was taken from job; not only his flocks and his herds, but his sons and his daughters. and then at the last he was compensated. he was given new flocks and herds and new sons and daughters. and it was supposed to be well with job. if it was well with job, then job had been a man without a heart. never could she be compensated for this loss, which she was trying to realize, but which she would not be able to realize until the days went by, and the nights, the days and the nights of the ordinary life, when tragedy was supposed to be over and done with, and people would say, and no doubt sincerely believe, that she was "getting accustomed" to her loss. thinking of job led her on to think of god's dealings with his creatures. hermione was a woman who clung to no special religion, but she had always, all her life, had a very strong personal consciousness of a directing power in the world, had always had an innate conviction that this directing power followed with deep interest the life of each individual in the scheme of his creation. she had always felt, she felt now, that god knew everything about her and her life, was aware of all her feelings, was constantly intent upon her. he was intent. but was he kindly or was he cruelly intent? surely he had been dreadfully cruel to her! only yesterday she had been wondering what bereaved women felt about god. now she was one of these women. "was maurice dead?" she thought--"was he already dead when i was praying before the shrine of the madonna della rocca?" she longed to know. yet she scarcely knew why she longed. it was like a strange, almost unnatural curiosity which she could not at first explain to herself. but presently her mind grew clearer and she connected this question with that other question--of god and what he really was, what he really felt towards his creatures, towards her. had god allowed her to pray like that, with all her heart and soul, and then immediately afterwards deliberately delivered her over to the fate of desolate women, or had maurice been already dead? if that were so, and it must surely have been so, for when she prayed it was already night, she had been led to pray for herself ignorantly, and god had taken away her joy before he had heard her prayer. if he had heard it first he surely could not have dealt so cruelly with her--so cruelly! no human being could have, she thought, even the most hard-hearted. but perhaps god was not all-powerful. she remembered that once in london she had asked a clever and good clergyman if, looking around upon the state of things in the world, he was able to believe without difficulty that the world was governed by an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful god. and his reply to her had been, "i sometimes wonder whether god is all-powerful--yet." she had not pursued the subject, but she had not forgotten this answer; and she thought of it now. was there a conflict in the regions beyond the world which was the only one she knew? had an enemy done this thing, an enemy not only of hers, but of god's, an enemy who had power over god? that thought was almost more terrible than the thought that god had been cruel to her. she sat for a long time wondering, thinking, but not praying. she did not feel as if she could ever pray any more. the world was lighted up by the sun. the sea began to gleam, the coast-line to grow more distinct, the outlines of the mountains and of the saracenic castle on the height opposite to her more hard and more barbaric against the deepening blue. she saw smoke coming from the mouth of etna, sideways, as if blown towards the sea. a shepherd boy piped somewhere below her. and still the tune was the tarantella. she listened to it--the tarantella. so short a time ago maurice had danced with the boys upon the terrace! how can such life be so easily extinguished? how can such joy be not merely clouded but utterly destroyed? a moment, and from the body everything is expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the limbs, joy, passion from the heart. how can such a thing be? the little shepherd boy played on and on. he was nearer now. he was ascending the slope of the mountain, coming up towards heaven with his little happy tune. she heard him presently among the oak-trees immediately below her, passing almost at her feet. to hermione the thin sound of the reed-flute always had suggested arcady. even now it suggested arcady--the arcady of the imagination: wide soft airs, blue skies and seas, eternal sunshine and delicious shade, and happiness where is a sweet noise of waters and of birds, a sweet and deep breathing of kind and bounteous nature. and that little boy with the flute would die. his foot might slip now as he came upward, and no more could he play souls into arcady! the tune wound away to her left, like a gay and careless living thing that was travelling ever upward, then once more came towards her. but now it was above her. she turned her head and she saw the little player against the blue. he was on a rock, and for a moment he stood still. on his head was a long woollen cap, hanging over at one side. it made hermione think of the woollen cap she had seen come out of the darkness of the ravine as she waited with gaspare for the padrone. against the blue, standing on the gray and sunlit rock, with the flute at his lips, and his tiny, deep-brown fingers moving swiftly, he looked at one with the mountain and yet almost unearthly, almost as if the blue had given birth to him for a moment, and in a moment would draw him back again into the womb of its wonder. his goats were all around him, treading delicately among the rocks. as hermione watched he turned and went away into the blue, and the tarantella went away into the blue with him. her sicilian and his tarantella, the tarantella of his joy in sicily--they had gone away into the blue. she looked at it, deep, quivering, passionate, intense; thousands and thousands of miles of blue! and she listened as she looked; listened for some far-off tarantella, for some echo of a fainting tarantella, that might be a message to her, a message left on the sweet air of the enchanted island, telling her where the winged feet of her beloved one mounted towards the sun. xxiv giuseppe came to fetch hermione from the mountain. he had a note in his hand and also a message to give. the authorities were already at the cottage; the pretore of marechiaro with his cancelliere, dr. marini and the maresciallo of the carabinieri. "they have come already?" hermione said. "so soon?" she took the note. it was from artois. "there is a boy waiting, signora," said giuseppe. "gaspare is with the signor pretore." she opened emile's note. "i cannot write anything except this--do you wish me to come?--e." "do i wish him to come?" she thought. she repeated the words mentally several times, while the fisherman stood by her, staring at her with sympathy. then she went down to the cottage. dr. marini met her on the terrace. he looked embarrassed. he was expecting a terrible scene. "signora," he said, "i am very sorry, but--but i am obliged to perform my duty." "yes," she said. "of course. what is it?" "as there is a hospital in marechiaro--" he stopped. "yes?" she said. "the autopsy of the body must take place there. otherwise i could have--" "you have come to take him away," she said. "i understand. very well." but they could not take him away, these people. for he was gone; he had gone away into the blue. the doctor looked relieved, though surprised, at her apparent nonchalance. "i am very sorry, signora," he said--"very sorry." "must i see the pretore?" she said. "i am afraid so, signora. they will want to ask you a few questions. the body ought not to have been moved from the place where--" "we could not leave him in the sea," she said, as she had said in the night. "no, no. you will only just have to say--" "i will tell them what i know. he went down to bathe." "yes. but the pretore will want to know why he went to salvatore's terreno." "i suppose he bathed from there. he knew the people in the casa delle sirene, i believe." she spoke indifferently. it seemed to her so utterly useless, this inquiry by strangers into the cause of her sorrow. "i must just write something," she added. she went up the steps into the sitting-room. gaspare was there with three men--the pretore, the cancelliere and the maresciallo. as she came in the strangers turned and saluted her with grave politeness, all looking earnestly at her with their dark eyes. but gaspare did not look at her. he had the ugly expression on his face that hermione had noticed the day before. "will you please allow me to write a line to a friend?" hermione said. "then i shall be ready to answer your questions." "certainly, signora," said the pretore; "we are very sorry to disturb you, but it is our duty." he had gray hair and a dark mustache, and his black eyes looked as if they had been varnished. hermione went to the writing-table, while the men stood in silence filling up the little room. "what shall i say?" she thought. she heard the boots of the cancelliere creak as he shifted his feet upon the floor. the maresciallo cleared his throat. there was a moment of hesitation. then he went to the steps and spat upon the terrace. "don't come yet," she wrote, slowly. then she turned round. "how long will your inquiry take, do you think, signore?" she asked of the pretore. "when will--when can the funeral take place?" "signora, i trust to-morrow. i hope--i do not suppose there will be any reason to suspect, after what dr. marini has told us and we have seen, that the death was anything but an accident--an accident which we all most deeply grieve for." "it was an accident." she stood by the table with the pen in her hand. "i suppose--i suppose he must be buried in the campo santo?" she said. "do you wish to convey the body to england, signora?" "oh no. he loved sicily. he wished to stay always here, i think, although--" she broke off. "i could never take him away from sicily. but there is a place here--under the oak-trees. he was very fond of it." gaspare began to sob, then controlled himself with a desperate effort, turned round and stood with his face to the wall. "i suppose, if i could buy a piece of land there, it could not be permitted--?" she looked at the pretore. "i am very sorry, signora, such a thing could not possibly be allowed. if the body is buried here it must be in the campo santo." "thank you." she turned to the table and wrote after "don't come yet": "they are taking him away now to the hospital in the village. i shall come down. i think the funeral will be to-morrow. they tell me he must be buried in the campo santo. i should have liked him to lie here under the oak-trees. hermione." when artois read this note tears came into his eyes. no event in his life had shocked him so much as the death of delarey. it had shocked both his intellect and his heart. and yet his intellect could hardly accept it as a fact. when, early that morning, one of the servants of the hã´tel regina margherita had rushed into his room to tell him, he had refused to believe it. but then he had seen the fishermen, and finally dr. marini. and he had been obliged to believe. his natural impulse was to go to his friend in her trouble as she had come to him in his. but he checked it. his agony had been physical. hers was of the affections, and how far greater than his had ever been! he could not bear to think of it. a great and generous indignation seized him, an indignation against the catastrophes of life. that this should be hermione's reward for her noble unselfishness roused in him something that was like fury; and then there followed a more torturing fury against himself. he had deprived her of days and weeks of happiness. such a short span of joy had been allotted to her, and he had not allowed her to have even that. he had called her away. he dared not trust himself to write any word of sympathy. it seemed to him that to do so would be a hideous irony, and he sent the line in pencil which she had received. and then he walked up and down in his little sitting-room, raging against himself, hating himself. in his now bitterly acute consideration of his friendship with hermione he realized that he had always been selfish, always the egoist claiming rather than the generous donor. he had taken his burdens to her, not weakly, for he was not a weak man, but with a desire to be eased of some of their weight. he had always been calling upon her for sympathy, and she had always been lavishly responding, scattering upon him the wealth of her great heart. and now he had deprived her of nearly all the golden time that had been stored up for her by the decree of the gods, of god, of fate, of--whatever it was that ruled, that gave and that deprived. a bitterness of shame gripped him. he felt like a criminal. he said to himself that the selfish man is a criminal. "she will hate me," he said to himself. "she must. she can't help it." again the egoist was awake and speaking within him. he realized that immediately and felt almost a fear of this persistence of character. what is the use of cleverness, of clear sight into others, even of genius, when the self of a man declines to change, declines to be what is not despicable? "mon dieu!" he thought, passionately. "and even now i must be thinking of my cursed self!" he was beset by an intensity of desire to do something for hermione. for once in his life his heart, the heart she believed in and he was inclined to doubt or to despise, drove him as it might have driven a boy, even such a one as maurice. it seemed to him that unless he could do something to make atonement he could never be with hermione again, could never bear to be with her again. but what could he do? "at least," he thought, "i may be able to spare her something to-day. i may be able to arrange with these people about the funeral, about all the practical things that are so frightful a burden to the living who have loved the dead, in the last moments before the dead are given to the custody of the earth." and then he thought of the inquiry, of the autopsy. could he not help her, spare her perhaps, in connection with them? despite his weakness of body he felt feverishly active, feverishly desirous to be of practical use. if he could do something he would think less, too; and there were thoughts which seemed furtively trying to press themselves forward in the chambers of his mind, but which, as yet, he was, also furtively, pushing back, striving to keep in the dark place from which they desired to emerge. artois knew sicily well, and he knew that such a death as this would demand an inquiry, might raise suspicions in the minds of the authorities of marechiaro. and in his own mind? he was a mentally courageous man, but he longed now to leave marechiaro, to leave sicily at once, carrying hermione with him. a great dread was not actually with him, but was very near to him. presently something, he did not know what, drew him to the window of his bedroom which looked out towards the main street of the village. as he came to it he heard a dull murmur of voices, and saw the sicilians crowding to their doors and windows, and coming out upon their balconies. the body of maurice was being borne to the hospital which was at the far end of the town. as soon as he realized that, artois closed his window. he could not look with the curious on that procession. he went back into his sitting-room, which faced the sea. but he felt the procession going past, and was enveloped in the black wonder of death. that he should be alive and delarey dead! how extraordinary that was! for he had been close to death, so close that it would have seemed quite natural to him to die. had not hermione come to him, he thought, he would almost, at the crucial stage in his illness, have preferred to die. it would have been a far easier, far simpler act than the return to health and his former powers. and now he stood here alive, looking at the sea, and delarey's dead body was being carried to the hospital. was the fact that he was alive the cause of the fact that delarey was dead? abruptly one of those furtive thoughts had leaped forward out of its dark place and challenged him boldly, even with a horrible brutality. too late now to try to force it back. it must be faced, be dealt with. again, and much more strongly than on the previous day, artois felt that in hermione's absence the sicilian life of the dead man had not run smoothly, that there had been some episode of which she knew nothing, that he, artois, had been right in his suspicions at the cottage. delarey had been in fear of something, had been on the watch. when he had sat by the wall he had been tortured by some tremendous anxiety. he had gone down to the sea to bathe. that was natural enough. and he had been found dead under a precipice of rock in the sea. the place was a dangerous one, they said. a man might easily fall from the rock in the night. yes; but why should he be there? that thought now recurred again and again to the mind of artois. why had delarey been at the place where he had met his death? the authorities of marechiaro were going to inquire into that, were probably down at the sea now. suppose there had been some tragic episode? suppose they should find out what it was? he saw hermione in the midst of her grief the central figure of some dreadful scandal, and his heart sickened. but then he told himself that perhaps he was being led by his imagination. he had thought that possible yesterday. to-day, after what had occurred, he thought it less likely. this sudden death seemed to tell him that his mind had been walking in the right track. left alone in sicily, delarey might have run wild. he might have gone too far. this death might be a vengeance. artois was deeply interested in all human happenings, but he was not a vulgarly curious man. he was not curious now, he was only afraid for hermione. he longed to protect her from any further grief. if there were a dreadful truth to know, and if, by knowing it, he could guard her more efficiently, he wished to know it. but his instinct was to get her away from sicily at once, directly the funeral was over and the necessary arrangements could be made. for himself, he would rather go in ignorance. he did not wish to add to the heavy burden of his remorse. there came at this moment a knock at his door. "avanti!" he said. the waiter of the hotel came in. "signore," he said. "the poor signora is here." "in the hotel?" "si, signore. they have taken the body of the signore to the hospital. everybody was in the street to see it pass. and now the poor signora has come here. she has taken the rooms above you on the little terrace." "the signora is going to stay here?" "si, signore. they say, if the signor pretore allows after the inquiry is over, the funeral will be to-morrow." artois looked at the man closely. he was a young fellow, handsome and gentler-looking than are most sicilians. artois wondered what the people of marechiaro were saying. he knew how they must be gossiping on such an occasion. and then it was summer, when they have little or nothing to do, no forestieri to divide their attentions and to call their ever-ready suspicions in various directions. the minds of the whole community must undoubtedly be fixed upon this tragic episode and its cause. "if the pretore allows?" artois said. "but surely there can be no difficulty? the poor signore fell from the rock and was drowned." "si, signore." the man stood there. evidently he was anxious to talk. "the signor pretore has gone down to the place now, signore, with the cancelliere and the maresciallo. they have taken gaspare with them." "gaspare!" artois thought of this boy, maurice's companion during hermione's absence. "si, signore. gaspare has to show them the exact place where he found the poor signore." "i suppose the inquiry will soon be over?" "chi lo sa?" "well, but what is there to do? whom can they inquire of? it was a lonely place, wasn't it? no one was there." "chi lo sa?" "if there had been any one, surely the signore would have been rescued at once? did not every one here love the signore? he was like one of you, wasn't he, one of the sicilians?" "si, signore. maddalena has been crying about the signore." "maddalena?" "si, signore, the daughter of salvatore, the fisherman, who lives at the casa delle sirene." "oh!" artois paused; then he said: "were she and her--salvatore is her father, you say?" "her father, signore." "were they at the casa delle sirene yesterday?" artois spoke quietly, almost carelessly, as if merely to say something, but without special intention. "maddalena was here in the town with her relations. and they say salvatore is at messina. this morning maddalena went home. she was crying. every one saw her crying for the signore." "that is very natural if she knew him." "oh yes, signore, she knew him. why, they were all at the fair of san felice together only the day before." "then, of course, she would cry." "si, signore." the man put his hand on the door. "if the signora wishes to see me at any time i am here," said artois. "but, of course, i shall not disturb her. but if i can do anything to help her--about the funeral, for instance--" "the signora is giving all the directions now. the poor signore is to be buried in the high part of the campo santo by the wall. those who are not catholics are buried there, and the poor signore was not a catholic. what a pity!" "thank you, ferdinando." the man went out slowly, as if he were reluctant to stop the conversation. so the villagers were beginning to gossip already! ferdinando had not said so, but artois knew his sicily well enough to read the silences that had made significant his words. maddalena had been crying for the signore. everybody had seen maddalena crying for the signore. that was enough. by this time the village would be in a ferment, every woman at her door talking it over with her next-door neighbor, every man in the piazza, or in one of the wine-shops. maddalena--a sicilian girl--weeping, and delarey's body found among the rocks at night in a lonely place close to her cottage. artois divined something of the truth and hated himself the more. the blood, the sicilian blood in delarey, had called to him in the sunshine when he was left alone, and he had, no doubt, obeyed the call. how far had he gone? how strongly had he been governed? probably artois would never know. long ago he had prophesied, vaguely perhaps, still he had prophesied. and now had he not engineered perhaps the fulfilment of his own prophecy? but at all costs hermione must be spared any knowledge of that fulfilment. he longed to go to her and to guard her door against the sicilians. but surely in such a moment they would not speak to her of any suspicions, of any certainties, even if they had them. she would surely be the last person to hear anything, unless--he thought of the "authorities"--of the pretore, the cancelliere, the maresciallo, and suddenly it occurred to him to ride down to the sea. if the inquiry had yielded any terrible result he might do something to protect hermione. if not, he might be able to prepare her. she must not receive any coarse shock from these strangers in the midst of her agony. he got his hat, opened his door, and went quietly down-stairs. he did not wish to see hermione before he went. perhaps he would return with his mind relieved of its heaviest burden, and then at least he could meet her eyes without a furtive guilt in his. at the foot of the stairs he met ferdinando. "can you get me a donkey, ferdinando?" he said. "si, signore." "i don't want a boy. just get me a donkey, and i shall go for a short ride. you say the signora has not asked for me?" "no, signore." "if she does, explain to her that i have gone out, as i did not like to disturb her." hermione might think him heartless to go out riding at such a time. he would risk that. he would risk anything to spare her the last, the nameless agony that would be hers if what he suspected were true, and she were to learn of it, to know that all these people round her knew it. that hermione should be outraged, that the sacredness of her despair should be profaned, and the holiness of her memories utterly polluted--artois felt he would give his life willingly to prevent that. when the donkey came he set off at once. he had drawn his broad-brimmed hat down low over his pale face, and he looked neither to right nor left, as he was carried down the long and narrow street, followed by the searching glances of the inhabitants, who, as he had surmised, were all out, engaged in eager conversation, and anxiously waiting for the return of the pretore and his assistants, and the announcement of the result of the autopsy. his appearance gave them a fresh topic to discuss. they fell upon it like starveling dogs on a piece of offal found in the gutter. once out of the village, artois felt a little safer, a little easier; but he longed to be in the train with hermione, carrying her far from the chance of that most cruel fate in life--the fate of disillusion, of the loss of holy belief in the truth of one beloved. when presently he reached the high-road by isola bella he encountered the fisherman, giuseppe, who had spent the night at the casa del prete. "are you going to see the place where the poor signore was found, signore?" asked the man. "si," said artois. "i was his friend. i wish to see the pretore, to hear how it happened. can i? are they there, he and the others?" "they are in the casa delle sirene, signore. they are waiting to see if salvatore comes back this morning from messina." "and his daughter? is she there?" "si, signore. but she knows nothing. she was in the village. she can only cry. she is crying for the poor signore." again that statement. it was becoming a refrain in the ears of artois. "gaspare is angry with her," added the fisherman. "i believe he would like to kill her." "it makes him sad to see her crying, perhaps," said artois. "gaspare loved the signore." he saluted the fisherman and rode on. but the man followed and kept by his side. "i will take you across in a boat, signore," he said. "grazie." artois struck the donkey and made it trot on in the dust. giuseppe rowed him across the inlet and to the far side of the sirens' isle, from which the little path wound upward to the cottage. here, among the rocks, a boat was moored. "ecco, signore!" cried giuseppe. "salvatore has come back from messina! here is his boat!" artois felt a pang of anxiety, of regret. he wished he had been there before the fisherman had returned. as he got out of the boat he said: "did salvatore know the signore well?" "si, signore. the poor signore used to go out fishing with salvatore. they say in the village that he gave salvatore much money." "the signore was generous to every one." "si, signore. but he did not give donkeys to every one." "donkeys? what do you mean, giuseppe?" "he gave salvatore a donkey, a fine donkey. he bought it at the fair of san felice." artois said no more. slowly, for he was still very weak, and the heat was becoming fierce as the morning wore on, he walked up the steep path and came to the plateau before the casa delle sirene. a group of people stood there: the pretore, the cancelliere, the maresciallo, gaspare, and salvatore. they seemed to be in strong conversation, but directly artois appeared there was a silence, and they all turned and stared at him as if in wonder. then gaspare came forward and took off his hat. the boy looked haggard with grief, and angry and obstinate, desperately obstinate. "signore," he said. "you know my padrone! tell them--" but the pretore interrupted him with an air of importance. "it is my duty to make an inquiry," he said. "who is this signore?" artois explained that he was an intimate friend of the signora and had known her husband before his marriage. "i have come to hear if you are satisfied, as no doubt you are, signor pretore," he said, "that this terrible death was caused by an accident. the poor signora naturally wishes that this necessary business should be finished as soon as possible. it is unavoidable, i know, but it can only add to her unhappiness. i am sure, signore, that you will do your best to conclude the inquiry without delay. forgive me for saying this. but i know sicily, and know that i can always rely on the chivalry of sicilian gentlemen where an unhappy lady is concerned." he spoke intentionally with a certain pomp, and held his hat in his hand while he was speaking. the pretore looked pleased and flattered. "certainly, signor barone," he said. "certainly. we all grieve for the poor signora." "you will allow me to stay?" said artois. "i see no objection," said the pretore. he glanced at the cancelliere, a small, pale man, with restless eyes and a pointed chin that looked like a weapon. "niente, niente!" said the cancelliere, obsequiously. he was reading artois with intense sharpness. the maresciallo, a broad, heavily built man, with an enormous mustache, uttered a deep "buon giorno, signor barone," and stood calmly staring. he looked like a magnificent bull, with his short, strong brown neck, and low-growing hair that seemed to have been freshly crimped. gaspare stood close to artois, as if he felt that they were allies and must keep together. salvatore was a few paces off. artois glanced at him now with a carefully concealed curiosity. instantly the fisherman said: "povero signorino! povero signorino! mamma mia! and only two days ago we were all at the fair together! and he was so generous, signor barone." he moved a little nearer, but artois saw him glance swiftly at gaspare, like a man fearful of violence and ready to repel it. "he paid for everything. we could all keep our soldi in our pockets. and he gave maddalena a beautiful blue dress, and he gave me a donkey. dio mio! we have lost a benefactor. if the poor signorino had lived he would have given me a new boat. he had promised me a boat. for he would come fishing with me nearly every day. he was like a compare--" salvatore stopped abruptly. his eyes were again on gaspare. "and you say," began the pretore, with a certain heavy pomposity, "that you did not see the signore at all yesterday?" "no, signore. i suppose he came down after i had started for messina." "what did you go to messina for?" "signore, i went to see my nephew, guido, who is in the hospital. he has--" "non fa niente! non fa niente!" interrupted the cancelliere. "non fa niente! what time did you start?" said the pretore. the maresciallo cleared his throat with great elaboration, and spat with power twice. "signor pretore, i do not know. i did not look at the clock. but it was before sunset--it was well before sunset." "and the signore only came down from the casa del prete very late," interposed artois, quietly. "i was there and kept him. it was quite evening before he started." an expression of surprise went over salvatore's face and vanished. he had realized that for some reason this stranger was his ally. "had you any reason to suppose the signore was coming to fish with you yesterday?" asked the pretore of salvatore. "no, signore. i thought as the signora was back the poor signore would stay with her at the house." "naturally, naturally!" said the cancelliere. "naturally! it seems the signore had several times passed across the rocks, from which he appears to have fallen, without any difficulty," remarked the pretore. "si, signore," said gaspare. he looked at salvatore, seemed to make a great effort, then added: "but never when it was dark, signore. and i was always with him. he used to take my hand." his chest began to heave. "corragio, gaspare!" said artois to him, in a low voice. his strong intuition enabled him to understand something of the conflict that was raging in the boy. he had seen his glances at salvatore, and felt that he was longing to fly at the fisherman, that he only restrained himself with agony from some ferocious violence. the pretore remained silent for a moment. it was evident that he was at a loss. he wished to appear acute, but the inquiry yielded nothing for the exercise of his talents. at last he said: "did any one see you going to messina? is there any corroboration of your statement that you started before the signore came down here?" "do you think i am not speaking the truth, signor pretore?" said salvatore, proudly. "why should i lie? the poor signore was my benefactor. if i had known he was coming i should have been here to receive him. why, he has eaten in my house! he has slept in my house. i tell you we were as brothers." "si, si," said the cancelliere. gaspare set his teeth, walked away to the edge of the plateau, and stood looking out to sea. "then no one saw you?" persisted the pretore. "non lo so," said salvatore. "i did not think of such things. i wanted to go to messina, so i sent maddalena to pass the night in the village, and i took the boat. what else should i do?" "va bene! va bene!" said the cancelliere. the maresciallo cleared his throat again. that, and the ceremony which invariably followed, were his only contributions to this official proceeding. the pretore, receiving no assistance from his colleagues, seemed doubtful what more to do. it was evident to artois that he was faintly suspicious, that he was not thoroughly satisfied about the cause of this death. "your daughter seems very upset about all this," he said to salvatore. "mamma mia! and how should she not? why, signor pretore, we loved the poor signore. we would have thrown ourselves into the sea for him. when we saw him coming down from the mountain to us it was as if we saw god coming down from heaven." "certo! certo!" said the cancelliere. "i think every one who knew the signore at all grew to be very fond of him," said artois, quietly. "he was greatly beloved here by every one." his manner to the pretore was very civil, even respectful. evidently it had its effect upon that personage. every one here seemed to be assured that this death was merely an accident, could only have been an accident. he did not know what more to do. "va bene!" he said at last, with some reluctance. "we shall see what the doctors say when the autopsy is concluded. let us hope that nothing will be discovered. i do not wish to distress the poor signora. at the same time i must do my duty. that is evident." "it seems to me you have done it with admirable thoroughness," said artois. "grazie, signor barone, grazie!" "grazie, grazie, signor barone!" added the cancelliere. "grazie, signor barone!" said the deep voice of the maresciallo. the authorities now slowly prepared to take their departure. "you are coming with us, signor barone?" said the pretore. artois was about to say yes, when he saw pass across the aperture of the doorway of the cottage the figure of a girl with bent head. it disappeared immediately. "that must be maddalena!" he thought. "scusi, signore," he said, "but i have been seriously ill. the ride down here has tired me, and i should be glad to rest for a few minutes longer, if--" he looked at salvatore. "i will fetch a chair for the signore!" said the fisherman, quickly. he did not know what this stranger wanted, but he felt instinctively that it was nothing that would be harmful to him. the pretore and his companions, after polite inquiries as to the illness of artois, took their leave with many salutations. only gaspare remained on the edge of the plateau staring at the sea. as salvatore went to fetch the chair artois went over to the boy. "gaspare!" he said. "si!" said the boy. "i want you to go up with the pretore. go to the signora. tell her the inquiry is finished. it will relieve her to know." "you will come with me, signore?" "no." the boy turned and looked him full in the face. "why do you stay?" for a moment artois did not speak. he was considering rapidly what to say, how to treat gaspare. he was now sure that there had been a tragedy, with which the people of the sirens' house were, somehow, connected. he was sure that gaspare either knew or suspected what had happened, yet meant to conceal his knowledge despite his obvious hatred for the fisherman. was the boy's reason for this strange caution, this strange secretiveness, akin to his--artois's--desire? was the boy trying to protect his padrona or the memory of his padrone? artois wondered. then he said: "gaspare, i shall only stay a few minutes. we must have no gossip that can get to the padrona's ears. we understand each other, i think, you and i. we want the same thing. men can keep silence, but girls talk. i wish to see maddalena for a minute." "ma--" gaspare stared at him almost fiercely. but something in the face of artois inspired him with confidence. suddenly his reserve disappeared. he put his hand on artois's arm. "tell maddalena to be silent and not to go on crying, signore," he said, violently. "tell her that if she does not stop crying i will come down here in the night and kill her." "go, gaspare! the pretore is wondering--go!" gaspare went down over the edge of the land and disappeared towards the sea. "ecco, signore!" salvatore reappeared from the cottage carrying a chair which he set down under an olive-tree, the same tree by which maddalena had stood when maurice first saw her in the dawn. "grazie." artois sat down. he was very tired, but he scarcely knew it. the fisherman stood by him, looking at him with a sort of shifty expectation, and artois, as he noticed the hard arab type of the man's face, the glitter of the small, cunning eyes, the nervous alertness of the thin, sensitive hands, understood a great deal about salvatore. he knew arabs well. he had slept under their tents, had seen them in joy and in anger, had witnessed scenes displaying fully their innate carelessness of human life. this fisherman was almost as much arab as sicilian. the blend scarcely made for gentleness. if such a man were wronged, he would be quick and subtle in revenge. nothing would stay him. but had maurice wronged him? artois meant to assume knowledge and to act upon his assumption. his instinct advised him that in doing so he would be doing the best thing possible for the protection of hermione. "can you make much money here?" he said, sharply yet carelessly. the fisherman moved as if startled. "signore!" "they tell me sicily's a poor land for the poor. isn't that so?" salvatore recovered himself. "si, signore, si, signore, one earns nothing. it is a hard life, per dio!" he stopped and stared hard at the stranger with his hands on his hips. his eyes, his whole expression and attitude said, "what are you up to?" "america is the country for a sharp-witted man to make his fortune in," said artois, returning his gaze. "si, signore. many go from here. i know many who are working in america. but one must have money to pay the ticket." "yes. this terreno belongs to you?" "only the bit where the house stands, signore. and it is all rocks. it is no use to any one. and in winter the winds come over it. why, it would take years of work to turn it into anything. and i am not a contadino. once i had a wine-shop, but i am a man of the sea." "but you are a man with sharp wits. i should think you would do well in america. others do, and why not you?" they looked at each other hard for a full minute. then salvatore said, slowly: "signore, i will tell you the truth. it is the truth. i would swear it with sea-water on my lips. if i had the money i would go to america. i would take the first ship." "and your daughter, maddalena? you couldn't leave her behind you?" "signore, if i were ever to go to america you may be sure i should take maddalena with me." "i think you would," artois said, still looking at the man full in the eyes. "i think it would be wiser to take maddalena with you." salvatore looked away. "if i had the money, signore, i would buy the tickets to-morrow. here i can make nothing, and it is a hard life, always on the sea. and in america you get good pay. a man can earn eight lire a day there, they tell me." "i have not seen your daughter yet," artois said, abruptly. "no, signore, she is not well to-day. and the signor pretore frightened her. she will stay in the house to-day." "but i should like to see her for a moment." "signore, i am very sorry, but--" artois turned round in the chair and looked towards the house. the door, which had been open, was now shut. "maddalena is praying, signore. she is praying to the madonna for the soul of the dead signore." for the first time artois noticed in the hard, bird-like face of the fisherman a sign of emotion, almost of softness. "we must not disturb her, signore." artois got up and went a few steps nearer to the cottage. "can one see the place where the signore's body was found?" he asked. "si, signore, from the other side, among the trees." "i will come back in a moment," said artois. he walked away from the fisherman and entered the wood, circling the cottage. the fisherman did not come with him. artois's instinct had told him that the man would not care to come on such an errand. as artois passed at the back of the cottage he noticed an open window, and paused near it in the long grass. from within there came the sound of a woman's voice, murmuring. it was frequently interrupted by sobs. after a moment artois went close to the window, and said, but without showing himself: "maddalena!" the murmuring voice stopped. "maddalena!" there was silence. "maddalena!" artois said. "are you listening?" he heard a faint movement as if the woman within came nearer to the casement. "if you loved the dead signore, if you care for his memory, do not talk of your grief for him to others. pray for him, and be silent for him. if you are silent the holy mother will hear your prayers." as he said the last words artois made his deep voice sound mysterious, mystical. then he went away softly among the thickly growing trees. when he saw salvatore again, still standing upon the plateau, he beckoned to him without coming into the open. "bring the boat round to the inlet," he said. "i will cross from there." "si, signore." "and as we cross we can speak a little more about america." the fisherman stared at him, with a faint smile that showed a gleam of sharp, white teeth. "si, signore--a little more about america." xxv a night and a day had passed, and still artois had not seen hermione. the autopsy had been finished, and had revealed nothing to change the theory of dr. marini as to the determining cause of death. the english stranger had been crossing the dangerous wall of rock, probably in darkness, had fallen, been stunned upon the rocks in the sea beneath, and drowned before he recovered consciousness. gaspare said nothing. salvatore held his peace and began his preparations for america. and maddalena, if she wept, wept now in secret; if she prayed, prayed in the lonely house of the sirens, near the window which had so often given a star to the eyes that looked down from the terrace of the casa del prete. there was gossip in marechiaro, and the pretore still preserved his air of faint suspicion. but that would probably soon vanish under the influence of the cancelliere, with whom artois had had some private conversation. the burial had been allowed, and very early in the morning of the day following that of hermione's arrival at the hotel it took place from the hospital. few people knew the hour, and most were still asleep when the coffin was carried down the street, followed only by hermione, and by gaspare in a black, ready-made suit that had been bought in the village of cattaro. hermione would not allow any one else to follow her dead, and as maurice had been a protestant there was no service. this shocked gaspare, and added to his grief, till hermione explained that her husband had been of a different religion from that of sicily, a religion with different rites. "but we can pray for him, gaspare," she said. "he loved us, and perhaps he will know what we are doing." the thought seemed to soothe the boy. he kneeled down by his padrona under the wall of the campo santo by which protestants were buried, and whispered a petition for the repose of the soul of his padrone. into the gap of earth, where now the coffin lay, he had thrown roses from his father's little terreno near the village. his tears fell fast, and his prayer was scarcely more than a broken murmur of "povero signorino--povero signorino--dio ci mandi buon riposo in paradiso." hermione could not pray although she was in the attitude of supplication; but when she heard the words of gaspare she murmured them too. "buon riposo!" the sweet sicilian good-night--she said it now in the stillness of the lonely dawn. and her tears fell fast with those of the boy who had loved and served his master. when the funeral was over she walked up the mountain with gaspare to the casa del prete, and from there, on the following day, she sent a message to artois, asking him if he would come to see her. "i don't ask you to forgive me for not seeing you before," she wrote. "we understand each other and do not need explanations. i wanted to see nobody. come at any hour when you feel that you would like to. hermione." artois rode up in the cool of the day, towards evening. he was met upon the terrace by gaspare. "the signora is on the mountain, signore," he said. "if you go up you will find her, the povero signora. she is all alone upon the mountain." "i will go, gaspare. i have told maddalena. i think she will be silent." the boy dropped his eyes. his unreserve of the island had not endured. it had been a momentary impulse, and now the impulse had died away. "va bene, signore," he muttered. he had evidently nothing more to say, yet artois did not leave him immediately. "gaspare," he said, "the signora will not stay here through the great heat, will she?" "non lo so, signore." "she ought to go away. it will be better if she goes away." "si, signore. but perhaps she will not like to leave the povero signorino." tears came into the boy's eyes. he turned away and went to the wall, and looked over into the ravine, and thought of many things: of readings under the oak-trees, of the tarantella, of how he and the padrone had come up from the fishing singing in the sunshine. his heart was full, and he felt dazed. he was so accustomed to being always with his padrone that he did not know how he was to go on without him. he did not remember his former life, before the padrone came. everything seemed to have begun for him on that morning when the train with the padrone and the padrona in it ran into the station of cattaro. and now everything seemed to have finished. artois did not say any more to him, but walked slowly up the mountain leaning on his stick. close to the top, by a heap of stones that was something like a cairn, he saw, presently, a woman sitting. as he came nearer she turned her head and saw him. she did not move. the soft rays of the evening sun fell on her, and showed him that her square and rugged face was pale and grave and, he thought, empty-looking, as if something had deprived it of its former possession, the ardent vitality, the generous enthusiasm, the look of swiftness he had loved. when he came up to her he could only say: "hermione, my friend--" the loneliness of this mountain summit was a fit setting for her loneliness, and these two solitudes, of nature and of this woman's soul, took hold of artois and made him feel as if he were infinitely small, as if he could not matter to either. he loved nature, and he loved this woman. and of what use were he and his love to them? she stretched up her hand to him, and he bent down and took it and held it. "you said some day i should leave my garden of paradise, emile." "don't hurt me with my own words," he said. "sit by me." he sat down on the warm ground close to the heap of stones. "you said i should leave the garden, but i don't think you meant like this. did you?" "no," he said. "i think you thought we should be unhappy together. well, we were never that. we were always very happy. i like to think of that. i come up here to think of that; of our happiness, and that we were always kind and tender to each other. emile, if we hadn't been, if we had ever had even one quarrel, even once said cruel things to each other, i don't think i could bear it now. but we never did. god did watch us then, i think. god was with me so long as maurice was with me. but i feel as if god had gone away from me with maurice, as if they had gone together. do you think any other woman has ever felt like that?" "i don't think i am worthy to know how some women feel," he said, almost falteringly. "i thought perhaps god would have stayed with me to help me, but i feel as if he hadn't. i feel as if he had only been able to love me so long as maurice was with me." "that feeling will pass away." "perhaps when my child comes," she said, very simply. artois had not known about the coming of the child, but hermione did not remember that now. "your child!" he said. "i am glad i came back in time to tell him about the child," she said. "i think at first he was almost frightened. he was such a boy, you see. he was the very spirit of youth, wasn't he? and perhaps that--but at the end he seemed happy. he kissed me as if he loved not only me. do you understand, emile? he seemed to kiss me the last time--for us both. some day i shall tell my baby that." she was silent for a little while. she looked out over the great view, now falling into a strange repose. this was the land he had loved, the land he had belonged to. "i should like to hear the 'pastorale' now," she said, presently. "but sebastiano--" a new thought seemed to strike her. "i wonder how some women can bear their sorrows," she said. "don't you, emile?" "what sorrows do you mean?" he asked. "such a sorrow as poor lucrezia has to bear. maurice always loved me. lucrezia knows that sebastiano loves some one else. i ought to be trying to comfort lucrezia. i did try. i did go to pray with her. but that was before. i can't pray now, because i can't feel sure of almost anything. i sometimes think that this happened without god's meaning it to happen." "god!" artois said, moved by an irresistible impulse. "and the gods, the old pagan gods?" "ah!" she said, understanding. "we called him mercury. yes, it is as if he had gone to them, as if they had recalled their messenger. in the spring, before i went to africa, i often used to think of legends, and put him--my sicilian--" she did not go on. yet her voice had not faltered. there was no contortion of sorrow in her face. there was a sort of soft calmness about her almost akin to the calmness of the evening. it was the more remarkable in her because she was not usually a tranquil woman. artois had never known her before in deep grief. but he had known her in joy, and then she had been rather enthusiastic than serene. something of her eager humanity had left her now. she made upon him a strange impression, almost as of some one he had never previously had any intercourse with. and yet she was being wonderfully natural with him, as natural as if she were alone. "what are you going to do, my friend?" he said, after a long silence. "nothing. i have no wish to do anything. i shall just wait--for our child." "but where will you wait? you cannot wait here. the heat would weaken you. in your condition it would be dangerous." "he spoke of going. it hurt me for a moment, i remember. i had a wish to stay here forever then. it seemed to me that this little bit of earth and rock was the happiest place in all the world. yes, i will go, emile, but i shall come back. i shall bring our child here." he did not combat this intention then, for he was too thankful to have gained her assent to the departure for which he longed. the further future must take care of itself. "i will take you to italy, to switzerland, wherever you wish to go." "i have no wish for any other place. but i will go somewhere in italy. wherever it is cool and silent will do. but i must be far away from people; and when you have taken me there, dear emile, you must leave me there." "quite alone?" "gaspare will be with me. i shall always keep gaspare. maurice and he were like two brothers in their happiness. i know they loved each other, and i know gaspare loves me." artois only said: "i trust the boy." the word "trust" seemed to wake hermione into a stronger life. "ah, emile," she said, "once you distrusted the south. i remember your very words. you said, 'i love the south, but i distrust what i love, and i see the south in him.' i want to tell you, i want you to know, how perfect he was always to me. he loved joy, but his joy was always innocent. there was always something of the child in him. he was unconscious of himself. he never understood his own beauty. he never realized that he was worthy of worship. his thought was to reverence and to worship others. he loved life and the sun--oh, how he loved them! i don't think any one can ever have loved life and the sun as he did, ever will love them as he did. but he was never selfish. he was just quite natural. he was the deathless boy. emile, have you noticed anything about me--since?" "what, hermione?" "how much older i look now. he was like my youth, and my youth has gone with him." "will it not revive--when--?" "no, never. i don't wish it to. gaspare gathered roses, all the best roses from his father's little bit of land, to throw into the grave. and i want my youth to lie there with my sicilian under gaspare's roses. i feel as if that would be a tender companionship. i gave everything to him when he was alive, and i don't want to keep anything back now. i would like the sun to be with him under gaspare's roses. and yet i know he's elsewhere. i can't explain. but two days ago at dawn i heard a child playing the tarantella, and it seemed to me as if my sicilian had been taken away by the blue, by the blue of sicily. i shall often come back to the blue. i shall often sit here again. for it was here that i heard the beating of the heart of youth. and there's no other music like that. is there, emile?" "no," he said. had the music been wild? he suspected that the harmony she worshipped had passed on into the hideous crash of discords. and whose had been the fault? who creates human nature as it is? in what workshop, of what brain, are forged the mad impulses of the wild heart of youth, are mixed together subtly the divine aspirations which leap like the winged mercury to the heights, and the powerful appetites which lead the body into the dark places of the earth? and why is the giver of the divine the permitter of those tremendous passions, which are not without their glory, but which wreck so many human lives? perhaps a reason may be found in the sacredness of pity. evil and agony are the manure from which spring some of the whitest lilies that have ever bloomed beneath that enigmatic blue which roofs the terror and the triumph of the world. and while human beings know how to pity, human beings will always believe in a merciful god. a strange thought to come into such a mind as artois's! yet it came in the twilight, and with it a sense of tears such as he had never felt before. with the twilight had come a little wind from etna. it made something near him flutter, something white, a morsel of paper among the stones by which he was sitting. he looked down and saw writing, and bent to pick the paper up. "emile may leave at once. but there is no good boat till the 10th. we shall take that...." hermione's writing! artois understood at once. maurice had had hermione's letter. he had known they were coming from africa, and he had gone to the fair despite that knowledge. he had gone with the girl who wept and prayed beside the sea. his hand closed over the paper. "what is it, emile? what have you picked up?" "only a little bit of paper." he spoke quietly, tore it into tiny fragments and let them go upon the wind. "when will you come with me, hermione? when shall we go to italy?" "i am saying 'a rivederci' now"--she dropped her voice--"and buon riposo." the white fragments blew away into the gathering night, separated from one another by the careful wind. * * * * * three days later hermione and artois left sicily, and gaspare, leaning out of the window of the train, looked his last on the isle of the sirens. a fisherman on the beach by the inlet, not salvatore, recognized the boy and waved a friendly hand. but gaspare did not see him. there they had fished! there they had bathed! there they had drunk the good red wine of amato and called for brindisi! there they had lain on the warm sand of the caves! there they had raced together to madre carmela and her frying-pan! there they had shouted "o sole mio!" there--there they had been young together! the shining sea was blotted out from the boy's eyes by tears. "povero signorino!" he whispered. "povero signorino!" and then, as his "paese" vanished, he added for the last time the words which he had whispered in the dawn by the grave of his padrone, "dio ci mandi buon riposo in paradiso." corleone the novels of f. marion crawford. _new uniform edition. crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each._ mr. isaacs: a tale of modern india. doctor claudius: a true story. roman singer. zoroaster. tale of a lonely parish. khaled: a tale of arabia. witch of prague. three fates. marion darche: a story without comment. children of the king. katherine lauderdale. marzio's crucifix. paul patoff. with the immortals. greifenstein. sant' ilario. cigarette-maker's romance. pietro ghisleri. don orsino. ralstons. casa braccio. adam johnstone's son. rose of yesterday. taquisara. a novel. corleone. via crucis. a romance of the second crusade. crown 8vo. 6s. in the palace of the king. crown 8vo. 6s. marietta: a maid of venice. crown 8vo. 6s. whosoever shall offend. crown 8vo. 6s. the heart of rome: a tale of the "lost water." crown 8vo. 6s. cecilia: a story of modern rome. crown 8vo. 6s. love in idleness. a bar harbour tale. fcap. 8vo. 2s. macmillan and co., ltd., london. corleone a tale of sicily by f. marion crawford london macmillan and co., limited new york: the macmillan company 1905 _all rights reserved_ copyright 1896 by f. marion crawford _first edition (2 vols. globe 8vo) 1897_ _second edition (crown 8vo) 1898_ _reprinted 1902, 1905_ chapter i 'if you never mean to marry, you might as well turn priest, too,' said ippolito saracinesca to his elder brother, orsino, with a laugh. 'why?' asked orsino, without a smile. 'it would be as sensible to say that a man who had never seen some particular thing, about which he has heard much, might as well put out his eyes.' the young priest laughed again, took up the cigar he had laid upon the edge of the piano, puffed at it till it burned freely, and then struck two or three chords of a modulation. a sheet of ruled paper on which several staves of music were roughly jotted down in pencil stood on the rack of the instrument. orsino stretched out his long legs, leaned back in his low chair, and stared at the old gilded rosettes in the square divisions of the carved ceiling. he was a discontented man, and knew it, which made his discontent a matter for self-reproach, especially as it was quite clear to him that the cause of it lay in himself. he had made two great mistakes at the beginning of life, when barely of age, and though neither of them had ultimately produced any serious material consequences, they had affected his naturally melancholic temper and had brought out his inherited hardness of disposition. at the time of the great building speculations in rome, several years earlier, he had foolishly involved himself with his father's old enemy, ugo del ferice, and had found himself at last altogether in the latter's power, though not in reality his debtor. at the same time, he had fallen very much in love with a young widow, who, loving him very sincerely in her turn, but believing, for many reasons, that if she married him she would be doing him an irreparable injury, had sacrificed herself by marrying del ferice instead, selling herself to the banker for orsino's release, without the latter's knowledge. when it was all over, orsino had found himself a disappointed man at an age when most young fellows are little more than inexperienced boys, and the serious disposition which he inherited from his mother made it impossible for him to throw off the impression received, and claim the youth, so to speak, which was still his. since that time, he had been attracted by women, but never charmed; and those that attracted him were for the most part not marriageable, any more than the few things which sometimes interested and amused him were in any sense profitable. he spent a good deal of money in a careless way, for his father was generous; but his rather bitter experience when he had attempted to occupy himself with business had made him cool and clear-headed, so that he never did anything at all ruinous. the hot temper which he had inherited from his father and grandfather now rarely, if ever, showed itself, and it seemed as though nothing could break through the quiet indifference which had become a second outward nature to him. he had travelled much, of late years, and when he made an effort his conversation was not uninteresting, though the habit of looking at both sides of every question made it cold and unenthusiastic. perhaps it was a hopeful sign that he generally had a definite opinion as to which of two views he preferred, though he would not take any trouble to convince others that he was right. in his own family, he liked the company of ippolito best. the latter was about two years younger than he, and very different from him in almost every way. orsino was tall, strongly built, extremely dark; ippolito was of medium height, delicately made, and almost fair by comparison. orsino had lean brown hands, well knit at the base, and broad at the knuckles; ippolito's were slender and white, and rather nervous, with blue veins at the joints, the tips of the fingers pointed, the thumb unusually delicate and long, the nails naturally polished. the elder brother's face, with its large and energetic lines, its gravely indifferent expression and dusky olive hue, contrasted at every point with the features of the young priest, soft in outline, modelled in wax rather than chiselled in bronze, pale and a little transparent, instead of swarthy,--feminine, perhaps, in the best sense of the word, as it can be applied to a man. ippolito had the clear, soft brown eyes which very gifted people so often have, especially musicians and painters of more talent than power. but about the fine, even, and rather pale lips there was the unmistakable stamp of the ascetic temperament, together with an equally sure indication of a witty humour which could be keen, but would rather be gentle. ippolito was said to resemble his mother's mother, and was notably different in appearance and manner from the rest of the numerous family to which he belonged. he was a priest by vocation rather than by choice. had he chosen deliberately a profession congenial to his gifts, he would certainly have devoted himself altogether to music, though he would probably never have become famous as a composer; for he lacked the rough creative power which hews out great conceptions, though he possessed in a high degree the taste and skill which can lightly and lovingly and wisely impart fine detail to the broad beauty of a well-planned whole. but by vocation he was a priest, and the strength of the conviction of his conscience left the gifts of his artistic intelligence no power to choose. he was a churchman with all his soul, and a musician with all his heart. between the two brothers there was that sort of close friendship which sometimes exists between persons who are too wholly different to understand each other, but whose non-understanding is a constant stimulant of interest on both sides. in the midst of the large and peaceable patriarchal establishment in which they lived, and in which each member made for himself or herself an existence which had in it a certain subdued individuality, orsino and ippolito were particularly associated, and the priest, when he was at home, was generally to be found in his elder brother's sitting-room, and kept a good many of his possessions there. it was a big room, with an old carved and gilded ceiling, three tall windows opening to the floor, two doors, a marble fireplace, a thick old carpet, and a great deal of furniture of many old and new designs, arranged with no regard to anything except usefulness, since orsino was not afflicted with artistic tastes, nor with any undue appreciation of useless objects. ippolito's short grand piano occupied a prominent position near the middle window, and not far from it was orsino's deep chair, beside which stood a low table covered with books and reviews. for, like most discontented and disappointed people who have no real object in life, orsino saracinesca read a good deal, and hankered after interest in fiction because he found none in reality. ippolito, on the contrary, read little, and thought much. after orsino had answered his remark about marriage, the priest busied himself for some time with his music, while his brother stared at the ceiling in silence, listening to the modulations and the fragments of tentative melody and experimental harmony, without in the least understanding what the younger man was trying to express. he was fond of any musical sound, in an undefined way, as most italians are, and he knew by experience that if he let ippolito alone something pleasant to hear would before long be evolved. but ippolito stopped suddenly and turned half round on the piano stool, with a quick movement habitual to him. he leaned forward towards orsino, tapping the ends of his fingers lightly against one another, as his wrists rested on his knees. 'it is absurd to suppose that in all rome, or in all europe, for that matter, there is nobody whom you would be willing to marry.' 'quite absurd, i suppose,' answered orsino, not looking at his brother. 'then you have not really looked about you for a wife. that is clear.' 'perfectly clear. i do not argue the point. why should i? there is plenty of time, and besides, there is no reason in the world why i should ever marry at all, any more than you. there are our two younger brothers. let them take wives and continue the name.' 'most people think that marriage may be regarded as a means of happiness,' observed ippolito. 'most people are imbeciles,' answered orsino gloomily. ippolito laughed, watching his brother's face, but he said nothing in reply. 'as a general rule,' orsino continued presently, 'talking is a question of height and not of intelligence. the shorter men and women are, the more they talk; the taller they are, the more silent they are, in nine cases out of ten. of course there are exceptions, but you can generally tell at a glance whether any particular person is a great talker. brains are certainly not measurable by inches. therefore conversation has nothing to do with brains. therefore most people are fools.' 'do you call that an argument?' asked the priest, still smiling. 'no. it is an observation.' 'and what do you deduce from it?' 'from it, and from a great many other things, i deduce and conclude that what we call society is a degrading farce. it encourages talking, when no one has anything to say. it encourages marriage, without love. it sets up fashion against taste, taste against sense, and sense against heart. it is a machinery for promoting emotion among the unfeeling. it is a--' orsino stopped, hesitating. 'is it anything else?' asked ippolito mildly. 'it is a hell on earth.' 'that is exactly what most of the prophets and saints have said since david,' remarked the priest, moving again in order to find his half-smoked cigar, and then carefully relighting it. 'since that is your opinion, why not take orders? you might become a prophet or a saint, you know. the first step towards sanctity is to despise the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. you seem to have taken the first step at a jump, with both feet. and it is the first step that costs the most, they say. courage! you may go far.' 'i am thinking of going further before long,' said orsino gravely, as though his brother had spoken in earnest. 'at all events, i mean to get away from all this,' he added, as though correcting himself. 'do you mean to travel again?' inquired ippolito. 'i mean to find something to do. provided it is respectable, i do not care what it is. if i had talent, like you, i would be a musician, but i would not be an amateur, or i would be an artist, or a literary man. but i have no talent for anything except building tenement houses, and i shall not try that again. i would even be an actor, if i had the gift. perhaps i should make a good farmer, but our father will not trust me now, for he is afraid that i should make ruinous experiments if he gave me the management of an estate. this is certainly not the time for experiments. half the people we know are ruined, and the country is almost bankrupt. i do not wish to try experiments. i would work, and they tell me to marry. you cannot understand. you are only an amateur yourself, after all, ippolito.' 'an amateur musician--yes.' 'no. you are an amateur priest. you support your sensitive soul on a sort of religious ambrosia, with a good deal of musical nectar. your ideal is to be cardinal-protector of the arts. you are clever and astonishingly good by nature, and you deserve no credit for either. that is probably why i like you. i hate people who deserve credit, because i deserve none myself. but you do not take your clerical profession seriously, and you are an amateur, a dilettante of the altar. if you do not have distractions about the vestments you wear when you are saying mass, it is because you have an intimate, unconscious artistic conviction that they are beautiful and becoming to you. but if the choir responded a flat "amen" to your "per omnia sæcula sæculorum," it would set your teeth on edge and upset your devout intention at the beginning of the preface. do you think that a professional musician would be disturbed in conducting a great orchestra by the fact that his coat collar did not fit?' ippolito smiled good humouredly, but did not answer. 'very well,' continued orsino at once, 'you are only an amateur priest. it does not matter, since you are happy. you get through life very well. you do not even pretend that you do any real work. your vocation, as you call it, was a liking for the state of priesthood, not for the work of a priest. now i do not care about any state in particular, but i want work of some sort, at any cost. i was never happy but once, during that time when i worked with contini and got into trouble. i preferred it to this existence, even when we got into del ferice's clutches. anything rather than this.' 'i thought you had grown indifferent,' said ippolito. 'indifferent? yes, i am indifferent--as a machine is indifferent when the fire is out and there is no steam. but if the thing could think, it would want work, as i do. it would not be satisfied to rust to pieces. you ought to know a little theology. are we put into the world with a purpose, or not? is there an intention in our existence, or is there not? am i to live through another forty or fifty years of total inactivity because i happen to be born rich, and in a position--well, a position which is really about as enviable as that of a fly in a pot of honey? we are stuck in our traditions, just as the fly is in the honey--' 'i like them,' said ippolito quietly. 'i know you do. so does our father. they suit you both. our father is really a very intelligent man, but too much happiness and too much money have paralysed him. his existence seems to have been a condition of perpetual adoration of our mother.' 'he has made her happy. that is worth something.' 'she has made him happy. they have made each other happy. they have devoured a lifetime of happiness together in secret, as though it were their lawful prey. as they never wanted anything else, they never found out that the honey of traditions is sticky, and that they could not move if they would.' 'they are fond of us--' 'of course. we have none of us done anything very bad. we are a part of their happiness. we are also a part of their dulness; for they are dull, and their happiness makes us dull too.' 'what an idea!' 'it is true. what have we accomplished, any of us four brothers? what shall we ever accomplish? we are ornaments on the architecture of our father's and mother's happiness. it is rather a negative mission in life, you must admit. i am glad that they are happy, but i should like to be something more than a gargoyle on their temple.' 'then marry, and have a temple of your own!' laughed ippolito. 'and gargoyles of your own, too.' 'but i do not want that sort of happiness. marriage is not a profession. it is not a career. 'no. at least you might not turn a dilettante husband, as you say that i am an amateur priest.' ippolito laughed again. orsino laughed dryly, but did not answer, not being in a humour for jesting. he leaned back in his chair again, and looked at the carved ceiling and thought of what it meant, for it was one of those ceilings which are only to be found in old roman palaces, and belong intimately to the existence which those old dwellings suggest. orsino thought of the grim dark walls outside, of the forbidding gateway, of the heavily barred windows on the lower story, of the dark street at the back of the palace, and the mediævalism of it all was as repugnant to him as the atmosphere of a prison. he had never understood his father nor his grandfather, who both seemed born for such an existence, and who certainly thrived in it; for the old prince was over ninety years of age, and his son, sant' ilario, though now between fifty and sixty, was to all intents and purposes still a young man. orsino was perhaps as strong as either of them. but he did not believe that he could last as long. in the midst of an enforced idleness he felt the movement of the age about him, and he said to himself that he was in the race of which they were only spectators, and that he was born in times when it was impossible to stand still. it is true that, like many young men of to-day, he took movement for progress and change for improvement, and he had no very profound understanding of the condition of his own or of other countries. but the movement and the change are facts from which no one can escape who has had a modern education. giovanni saracinesca, orsino's father, known as prince of sant' ilario, since the old prince saracinesca was still living, had not had a modern education, and his mother had died when he was a mere child. brought up by men, among men, he had reached manhood early, in close daily association with his father and with a strong natural admiration for him, though with an equally strong sense of personal independence. orsino's youth had been different. he was not an only son as sant' ilario had been, but the eldest of four brothers, and he had been brought up by his mother as well as by his father and grandfather. there had been less room for his character to develop freely, since the great old house had been gradually filled by a large family. at the same time there had also been less room for old-fashioned prejudices and traditions than formerly, and a good deal less respect for them, as there had been, too, a much more lively consciousness of the outer world's movements. the taking of rome in 1870 was the death-blow of mediævalism; and the passing away of king victor emmanuel and of pope pius the ninth was the end of italian romanticism, if one may use the expression to designate all that concatenation of big and little events which make up the thrilling story of the struggle for italian unity. after the struggle for unity, began the struggle for life,--more desperate, more dangerous, but immeasurably less romantic. there is all the difference which lies between banking and fighting. and orsino was aware of qualities and feelings and opinions in his father and mother which he did not possess, but which excited in him a sort of envy of what he regarded as their simplicity. each seemed to have wanted but one thing in life since he could remember them, and that was the other's love, in possessing which each was satisfied and happy. times might change as they would, popes might die, kings might be crowned, parties might wrangle in political strife, and the whole country might live through its perilous joys of sudden prosperity and turn sour again in the ferment that follows failure,--it was all the same to giovanni and corona. as orsino had told his brother, they had devoured a lifetime of happiness together in secret. he would have added that they had left none for others, and in a sense it might have been true. but he preferred not to say it, even to ippolito; for it would have sounded bitter, whereas orsino believed himself to be only indifferent. proud men and women hide their griefs and sufferings, when they have any. but there are some who are so very proud that they will hide their happiness also, as though it might lose some of its strength if anyone else could see it, or as if it could be spoiled by the light like a photograph not yet fixed. people sometimes call that instinct the selfishness of love, but it is more like a sort of respect for love itself which is certainly not vulgar, as all selfishness is. it was not probable that either giovanni or corona should change in this respect, nor, indeed, in any other, for they had never been changeable or capricious people, and time had made solid their lives. to each other they were as they had always been, but to others giovanni was a man advanced in middle life and the beautiful corona saracinesca was a rose of yesterday. she could never be anything but beautiful, even if she should live to extreme old age; but those who had known her in her youth had begun to shake their heads sadly, lamenting the glory departed, and seeing only in recollection a vision of it, while they could not see the value of what remained nor appreciate something which had come with years. strangers who came to rome and saw the princess of sant' ilario for the first time, gazed in silent surprise at the woman who for nearly a quarter of a century had been the most beautiful in europe, and they wondered whether, even now, anyone could be compared with her. the degeneration of age had not taken hold upon her. the perfect features were as calm and regular as fate, the dark skin had still its clear, warm, olive tint, which very rarely changed at all perceptibly; her splendid eyes were truthful and direct still, beneath the strong black eyebrows. there were silver threads in the magnificent hair, but they were like the lights on a raven's wing. she was straight and strong and graceful still, she had been compared to velvet and steel--slighter perhaps than in her full perfection, for she had in her some of that good saracen blood of the south, which seems to nourish only the stronger and the finer tissues, consuming in time all that is useless; wearing away the velvet, but leaving the steel intact almost to the very last. there could be but one such woman in one race, and it seemed in some way natural that she should have been sisterless, and should have borne only sons. but as though nature would not be altogether defeated and stayed out of balance, the delicate feminine element had come to the surface in one of the saracinesca men. it was too fine to be womanish, too high to be effeminate, as it showed itself in ippolito, the priest-musician. but it was unmistakably something which was neither in the old prince, nor in giovanni, nor in any of the other three brothers, and it made between him and his mother a bond especially their own, which the rest acknowledged without understanding, and respected without feeling that ippolito was preferred before them. for it was not a preference, but a stronger mutual attraction, in which there was no implied unfairness to the rest. it is one of the hardest things in the world to explain, and yet almost everyone understands it, for it has nothing to do with language, and everything to do with feeling. we human beings need language most to explain what is most remote from our humanity, and those who talk the most of feeling are often those that feel the least. for conveying a direct impression, what is the sharpened conciseness of euclid, or the polished eloquence of demosthenes, what is the sledgehammer word blow of æschylus, or the lightning thrust of dante's two-edged tongue, compared with a kiss, or a girl's blush, or the touch of a mother's hand--or the silent certainty of two-fold thought in one, which needs neither blush, nor touch, nor kiss to say that love is all, and all is love? and that bond which is sometimes between mother and son is of this kind. it is not strange, either, that the father who looks on should misunderstand it, since it is the most especially human feeling which is often the least comprehensible to those who do not feel it, for the very reason that language cannot convey the impression of it to others. nothing is less ridiculous than love, except death. yet a man in love is very frequently ridiculous in the eyes of his friends and of the world, the more so in proportion as he shows the more plainly what he feels. yet most of those who laugh at him have probably been in love themselves. a cynic would say that the humour of it lies in the grim certainty which others feel that it cannot last. fear is terribly real to him who feels it, but a man who is frightened without cause is always laughable and generally contemptible. it is true that whereas we are all human and feel humanly, humanity is very hard to understand--because understanding is not feeling, any more than the knowledge of evil is temptation, or than the knowledge of good is virtue. the best description of a sunset cannot convey much to a man born blind, though it may awaken longings in him, and sharpen the edge of his old suffering upon the roughness of a new regret. and yet a description means very much more to most people than an explanation. sant' ilario had long ago accepted the fact that his wife was in some mysterious way drawn to her second son, more than to the others. it would be saying too much, perhaps, to assert that corona was glad when ippolito took orders and the vow of celibacy. she was not an imaginative woman, nor nervous, nor in any way not normal. nor were the saracinesca by any means an excessively devout family, nor connected with the history of the church, as many roman families are. on the contrary, they had in former times generally opposed the popes when they had not been strong enough to make one of their own, and the absence of any womanly element in the great house, between the untimely death of the old prince's wife, and giovanni saracinesca's marriage with the duchessa d'astrardente nearly thirty years later, had certainly not favoured a tendency to devotional practices. when young ippolito made up his mind to be a priest, the aged head of the family growled out a few not very edifying remarks in his long white beard. even ten years earlier, he might have gone into a rage about it, which might have endangered his life, for he had a terrible temper; but he was near the end, now, and it would have taken more than that to rouse him. as for giovanni, he was not especially pleased either, for he had never been fond of priests, and he assuredly did not care to have any in the family. yet, in spite of this prejudice, there seemed to him to be a certain fitness in the event, against which it would be useless to argue, and after a little discussion with his wife, he accepted it as more or less inevitable. but corona was satisfied, if not glad, and what she felt was very like gladness, for, without reasoning at all, she knew that she should be jealous of any woman who came between her and ippolito. she had never been able to think of a possible wife for him--as she often thought of wives for her other sons--without a sharp thrust of pain which could not be anything but jealousy. it was not exactly like what she should have felt, or fancied that she should have felt, if giovanni had been momentarily attracted by some other woman. but it was not at all like anything else in the world. she did not know how far ippolito was aware of this, but she knew beyond doubt that he was instinctively drawn to her, as she was to him. she had that intuitive certainty, which women know so well, that in a moment of danger he would think first of her, precisely as her husband would. such instincts are, perhaps, but shadowy inklings of the gray primeval past, when women and children knew to whom they must look for protection against man and beast; but they are known to us all in connection with those we love best, though they may never cross our thoughts when we are alone. there was between her and ippolito a sort of constant mutual echoing of thought and feeling; that sort of sympathy which, between people of sensitive and unhealthy organisation, leads to those things, not easily explained, to which the name of telepathy has lately been attached as a tentative definition. but these two were not unhealthy, nor morbidly sensitive, nor otherwise different from normal human beings. corona had never been ill in her life, and if ippolito had been thought delicate in his boyhood, it was by contrast with the rest of a family remarkable for most uncommon health and strength. all this has seemed necessary in order to explain the events which at this time took place in the saracinesca household. nothing unusual had occurred in the family for many years, excepting orsino's rather foolish and most unlucky attempt to occupy himself in business at the time of the great building speculation, and his first love affair, to which reference was made in the beginning of this somewhat explanatory chapter. chapter ii when the notorious prince of corleone died without much ceremony in a small second-class hotel in nice, and was buried with no ceremony at all worth mentioning, at the expense of the hotel keeper, his titles and what was left of his lands and other belongings went to his brother's children, since his brother was dead also. the corleone people were never long-lived, nor had their alliances as a rule conduced to long life in others, who had been their wives and husbands. superstitious persons said that there was upon the whole family the curse of a priest whom they had caused to be shot as a spy in order to save themselves during the wars of napoleon in italy. it was even said that they saw, or thought they saw, this priest when they were about to die. but as priests are plentiful in the south of italy, it might very well be that their vision was not a vision at all, but simply some quite harmless living ecclesiastic who chanced to be passing at the time. it is true that they were said to notice always a small red hole in his forehead and another in his left cheek, but this also might have been only an effect of imagination. nevertheless they were unfortunate, as a race, and several of them had come to violent or otherwise untimely ends within the century. the name, corleone, was only a title, and the town from which it was taken had long ago passed into other hands. the family name was pagliuca d'oriani. as often happens in italy, they went by whichever one of the three names happened to be most familiar to the speaker who mentioned them. at the time of the prince's death there were living his brother's widow and four children, consisting of three sons and one daughter; and there was another branch of the family, calling themselves pagliuca di bauso, with whom this history is not at present concerned. the widowed lady was known in sicily as donna maria carolina pagliuca. her eldest son was tebaldo, to whom came from his uncle the title, prince of corleone; and his two brothers were named francesco and ferdinando. their sister, a girl seventeen years of age, was vittoria, and was the youngest. in the ordinary course of events, being of the south, the three sons as well as their father and mother would have each borne a distinctive title. corleone, however, had begun life by quarrelling with his younger brother; and when the latter had died, and the property had been divided according to the code introduced after the annexation of naples and sicily, he had absolutely refused to allow his brother any title whatsoever. he could not prevent the division of the lands, of which, however, he had by far the larger share; but he could keep the titles, with which the law of succession does not concern itself, and he did so out of spite. moreover, he injured and defrauded his brother by every means in his power, which was at that time considerable; and the result was that the said brother and his family became very poor indeed, and retired to live in a somewhat barbarous region of sicily, very much in the manner of farmers and very little in the style of gentlefolks. he died of the cholera when his eldest son, tebaldo, was barely of age, and vittoria was a little girl at a convent in palermo. the three young men lived almost in the surroundings of sicilian peasants, but with the pride and more than the ordinary vanity of a race of nobles. there might not have been much difference had their uncle been generous to them, instead of at once transferring and continuing to them his hatred of their father. but as they were placed, and with their characters, the result was inevitable. they grew up to be at once idle and vindictive, grasping and improvident, half cunning and half fierce, physically brave and morally mean. the many faults and the few virtues were not evenly distributed among them, it is true, for each had some greater or less share of them all. tebaldo was the most cunning, francesco the most licentious, ferdinando was the boldest and the most rash of them all,--perhaps the best, or, at all events, the least bad. the house which remained to them, with a little land around it, was known as camaldoli to the peasants and the people of the neighbourhood, though its original name had been torre del druso--the tower of the druse, or of the fiend, as one chooses to interpret it. it was a good-sized, rambling, half-fortified old monastery, looking down from a gentle elevation in the high valley on one side, and having a deep gorge at the back, through which a torrent tumbled along over dark stones during three-quarters of the year. there was a sort of rampart above this chasm, and at one end rose a square tower with ruined crenellations, built of almost black tufo. it was evidently this tower which had given the place its more ancient name, before the monks had built their white plastered building against it and the rampart, with the little church in the inner court. the village of santa vittoria was about three-quarters of a mile distant, hidden by the spur of the hill, and separated from camaldoli by a barren stretch of burnt lava and scoriæ, which had descended long ago from some lower crater of the volcano. far above all, etna's enormous cone rose against the dark blue eastern sky like a monstrous, streaked sugar loaf. on each side of the great burnt strip between santa vittoria and camaldoli, the woods and fields stretched north and south towards messina and catania, and westwards beyond the valley rose a great range of mountains covered high with forests of chestnut trees. no houses were visible from camaldoli, nor any shed nor hut which could have served for a human habitation, for it was a wild and lonely country. the three brothers lived with their mother at camaldoli, and were served in a rough fashion by three men and four women, almost all of whom were expected to do almost anything, from stable work to cooking and waiting at table. there was a sort of slovenly abundance of coarse food and drink, but there was little else, and many a well-to-do peasant lived better than the sister-in-law and the nephews of prince corleone. donna maria carolina scarcely ever left the house in winter or summer. she had been married from a convent, a mere child, had enjoyed a brief taste of luxury and something of happiness at the beginning of life, and had spent the years of subsequent poverty between spasmodic attempts to make gentlemen of her wild sons, bitter outbursts of regret for her marriage, and an apathetic indifference such as only comes upon women of southern races when placed in such hopeless situations as hers. she was a thin, dark woman, with traces of beauty, dressed generally in shabby black, but strangely fond of cheap and tasteless ornaments, which contrasted horribly with her worn-out mourning. as her sons grew up they acquired the habit of contradicting everything she said. sometimes she argued her point, whatever it might be, and generally in total ignorance of the subject. her arguments frequently ended in a passionate appeal to the justice of heaven, and the right feeling of the saints, though the matter under discussion might not be more important than the planting of a cabbage, or the dressing of a dish of greens. or else, as sometimes happened, she silently bent her brows, while her once handsome mouth curled scornfully, and from her scarcely parted lips one word came in an injured and dramatic tone. 'villani!' she would exclaim. the word may be translated 'boors,' and the three boys did not like it, for it is an outrageous insult from a man to a man. but it is worth noting that such rudeness to their mother did not go beyond flat contradiction in argument, and when she called her sons boors, they bore it in silence, and generally went away without a retort. there are no italians without some traces of manners and of that submission to parents which belonged to the old patriarchal system of the romans. it must be remembered, too, so far as this and the rest of their behaviour may be concerned, that although their father died when they were young, he had lived long enough to give them something, though not much, in the way of education, chiefly by the help of the parish priest of santa vittoria, and to teach them the rudimentary outward manners of young gentlemen. and these they were quite able to assume when they pleased. he had succeeded in having them taught at least enough to pass the very easy examination which entitles young men to serve but a year and a few weeks in the army, instead of the regular term; and he had taken first tebaldo, then tebaldo and francesco, and then all three in successive years to messina and palermo for a fortnight at a time, so that they were not wholly ignorant of the world beyond camaldoli, santa vittoria, and the one or two larger towns which lay within a day's ride of their remote abode. it must not be forgotten, either, in order to understand how the brothers were able afterwards to make a tolerably decent appearance in rome, that italians have great powers of social adaptation; and, secondly, that the line between the nobility and the people is very clearly drawn in most parts of the country, especially in the matter of manners and speech, so that what little the young men learned from their father and mother belonged distinctively to their own class and to no other. even had they been outwardly less polished than they really knew how to appear, their name alone would have admitted them to society, though society might have treated them coolly after a nearer acquaintance. vittoria, their sister, remained at the convent in palermo after their father's death. he, poor man, seeing that his house did not promise to be a very fit place for a young girl, and especially not for one delicately organised as his daughter seemed to be, had placed her with the nuns while still a young child; and under the circumstances this was by far the wisest thing he could do. the nuns were ladies, and the convent was relatively rich. possibly these facts had too much weight with pagliuca, or perhaps he honestly believed that he should be able to pay regularly for vittoria's education and living. indeed, so long as he lived he managed to send small sums of money from time to time, and even after his death donna maria carolina twice remitted a little money to the nuns. but after that nothing more was sent for a long time. fortunately for herself, vittoria was extremely unlike her turbulent brothers and her disappointed mother, and by the time she was ten years old she was the idol of the religious household in which she had been placed. even had she been very different, of low birth, and of bad temper, the nuns would have kept her, and would have treated her as kindly as they could, and would have done their best by her, though they would very justly have required her to do something towards earning her living under their roof when she grew older. but apart from the child's rare charm and lovable disposition, being of an old and noble name, they would have considered her unfit for menial work, though cast adrift and helpless, and they would have thought her quite as worthy of their sympathy as though she had belonged to the family of one among themselves. all this, however, was quite forgotten in their almost exaggerated affection for the child. they showed their love for her as only such women could; for though there were a dozen other daughters of nobles under their care, of ranging ages, the nuns let no one know that vittoria was brought up by their charity after her father's death. they gave her all she needed of the best, and they even gave her little presents which she might think had been sent from home. they told her that 'her mother desired her to have' a book of hours, or a writing-case, or a silk handkerchief, or any such trifles. her mother, poor lady, doubtless did desire it, though she never said so. it was a pious and a gentle fraud, and it prevented the other girls from looking down upon her as a charity scholar, as one or two of them might have done. in dress there was no difference, of course, for they all dressed alike, and vittoria supposed that her parents paid for her things. she was a very lovely girl as she grew up, and exquisite in all ways, and gentle as she was exquisite. she was not dark as her brothers were, nor as her mother. it is commonly said that all the region about palermo is saracen, but that the ancient greek blood survives from messina to catania; and the girl certainly seemed to be of a type that differed from that of her family, which had originally come from the other side of the island. vittoria had soft brown hair and clear brown eyes of precisely the same colour as the delicate, arched eyebrows above them, a matching which always helps the harmony of any face. there was a luminous clearness, too, in the skin, which both held and gave back the light like the sheen of fine satin in shadow. there was about all her face the dream-like softness of well-defined outline which one occasionally sees in the best cut gems of the greeks, when the precious stone itself has a golden tinge. the features were not faultless by any standard of beauty which we call perfect, but one would not have changed the faults that were there to suit rule and canon. such as they were, they will appear more clearly hereafter. it is enough to say now that vittoria d'oriani had grace and charm and gentleness, and, withal, a share of beauty by no means small. and she was well educated and well cared for, as has been seen, and was brought up very differently from her brothers. the existence of the pagliuca at camaldoli was not only tolerably wild and rough, as has been seen; it was, in a measure, equivocal; and it may be doubted whether all the doings of the three brothers, as they grew up, could have borne the scrutiny of the law. sicily is not like other countries in this respect, and, at the risk of wearying the reader, it is better that something should be said at the outset concerning outlawry and brigandage, in order that what follows may be more clearly understood. brigandage in sicily has a sort of intermittent permanence which foreigners cannot easily explain. the mere question which is so often asked--whether it cannot be stamped out of existence--shows a total ignorance of its nature. you may knock off a lizard's tail in winter with a switch, as most people know, but you cannot prevent the tail from growing again in the spring and summer unless you kill the lizard outright. brigandage is not a profession, as most people suppose. a man does not choose it as a career. it is the occasional but inevitable result of the national character under certain conditions which are sure to renew themselves from time to time. no one can change national character. the success of brigandage, whenever it manifests itself, depends primarily upon the almost inaccessible nature of some parts of the island, and, secondly, upon the helplessness of the peasants to defend themselves in remote places. it is manifestly impossible to arm a whole population, especially with weapons fit to cope with the first-rate repeating rifles and army revolvers which brigands almost invariably carry. it is equally impossible to picket troops all over the country, at distances not exceeding half a mile from station to station, in every direction, like cabbages in a field. no army would suffice. therefore when a band is known to have formed, a large force is sent temporarily to the neighbourhood to hunt it down; and this is all that any government could do. the 'band,' as it is always called, may be very small. one man has terrorised a large district before now, and the famous leone, when at last surrounded, slew nearly a score of men before he himself was killed, though he was quite alone. almost every band begins with a single individual, and he, as a rule, has turned outlaw to escape the consequences of a murder done in hot blood, and is, in all probability, a man of respectable birth and some property. it is part of the national character to proceed instantly to bloodshed in case of a quarrel, and quarrels are, unfortunately, common enough. the peasants break one another's heads and bones with their hoes and spades, and occasionally stab each other with inefficient knives, but rarely kill, because the carabineers are constantly making search for weapons, even in the labourers' pockets, and confiscate them without question when found. but the man of some property rarely goes abroad without a shot-gun, or a revolver, or both, and generally knows how to use them. he may go through life without a serious quarrel, but should he find himself involved in one, he usually kills his man at once, or is killed. if there are witnesses present to prove beyond doubt that he has killed in self-defence, he may give himself up to the nearest station of carabineers, and he is sure of acquittal. otherwise, if he can get away, his only course is to escape to the woods without delay. this seems to be the simple explanation of the fact that such a large proportion of brigands are by no means of the lowest class, but have often been farmers and men of property, who can not only afford good weapons, but are able to get licenses to carry them. brigands are certainly not, as a rule, from the so-called criminal classes, as foreigners suppose, though when a band becomes very large, a few common criminals may be found in the whole number; but the brigands despise and distrust them. these things also account for the still more notable fact that the important bands have always had friends among the well-to-do landed proprietors. indeed, they have not only friends, but often near relations, who will make great sacrifices and run considerable risks to save them from the law. and when any considerable number of brigands are caught, they have generally been betrayed into an ambush by these friends or relations. sometimes they are massacred by them for the sake of a large reward. but to the honour of the sicilian character, it must be said that such cases are rare, though a very notable one occurred in the year 1894, when a rich man and his two sons deliberately drugged six brigands at a sort of feast of friendship, and shot them all in their sleep, a massacre which, however, has by no means ended the existence of that particular band. as for the practices of the bandits, they have three main objects in view: namely, personal safety, provisions wherewith to support life, and then, if possible, money in large sums, which, when obtained, may afford them the means of leaving the country secretly and for ever. with regard to the first of these ends, they are mostly young men, or men still in the prime of strength, good walkers, good riders, good shots, and not rendered conspicuous marks at a distance by a uniform. as for their provisions, when their friends do not supply them, they take what they need wherever they find it, chiefly by intimidating the peasants. in the third matter they have large views. an ordinary person is usually quite safe from them, especially if armed, for they will not risk their lives for anything so mean as highway robbery. it is their object to get possession of the persons of the richest nobles and gentlemen, from whom they can extort a really large ransom. and if they once catch such a personage they generally get the money, for the practice of sending an ear or a piece of nose as a reminder to relations is not extinct. few sicilian gentlemen who have lands in the interior dare visit their estates without a military escort when a 'band' is known to be in existence, as happens to be the case at the present time of writing. it chanced that such a band was gathered together, though not a large one, within a few years of pagliuca's death, and was leading a precarious and nomadic life for a time not far from santa vittoria. it was said that the pagliuca men were on good terms with these brigands, though of course their mother knew nothing about it. in the neighbourhood no one thought much the worse of the brothers for this. when brigands were about every man had to do the best he could for himself. the corleone, as many of the peasants called them, were well armed it is true, but they were few, and could not have resisted any depredations of the brigands by force. on the other hand, they had the reputation of being brave and very reckless young men, and even against odds might send a bullet through anyone who tried to carry off a couple of their sheep, or one of their mules. they knew the country well, too, and might be valuable allies to the carabineers, which meant that they could be useful friends to the outlaws if they chose. everyone knew that they were poor, and that it would not be worth while to take one of them in the hope of a ransom, and no one was surprised when it was hinted that they sold provisions to the brigands for cash when they could get it, and for credit when the brigands had no money, a credit which was perfectly good until the outlaws should be taken. there was very little direct proof of this alliance, and the pagliuca denied it in terms which did not invite further questioning. to make a brilliant show of their perfect innocence, they led a dozen carabineers about for two days through a labyrinth of forest paths and hill passes, and brought them three times in forty-eight hours to places where a fire was still smouldering, and remains of half-cooked meat were scattered about, as though the brigands had fled suddenly at an alarm. it was very well done, and they received the officer's thanks for their efforts, with sincere expressions of regret that they should have been unsuccessful. in one of the camps they even found the skin of a sheep which they identified as one of their own, with many loud-spoken curses, by the brand on the back. it was all very well done, and the result of it was that the carabineers often applied for news of the brigands at camaldoli, a proceeding which of course kept the d'oriani well informed as to the whereabouts of the carabineers themselves. it was certainly as well in the end that vittoria should have stayed at the convent in palermo during those years, until the death of the old corleone suddenly changed the existence of her mother and brothers. he died, as has been said, without much ceremony in a small hotel at nice. he died childless and intestate, as well as ruined, so far as he knew at the time of his death. the news reached camaldoli in the shape of a demand for money in payment of one of his just debts, from a money-lender in palermo who was aware of the existence of the three pagliuca brothers, and knew that they were the prince's heirs-at-law. it took a whole year to unravel the ruin of the dead man's estate. what he had not sold was mortgaged, and the mortgages had changed hands repeatedly during the tremendous financial crisis which began in 1888. there were debts of all kinds, just and unjust, and creditors by the hundred. the steward of the principal estate absconded with such cash as he happened to have in hand as soon as he heard of corleone's death. an obscure individual shot himself because the steward owed him money, and this also was talked of in the newspapers, and a good deal of printed abuse was heaped upon the dead rake. but one day ferdinando pagliuca entered the office of one of the papers in palermo, struck the editor in the face, forced him into a duel, and ran him through the lungs the next morning. the editor ultimately recovered, but the pagliuca had asserted themselves, and there was no more scurrilous talk in the press about poor dead corleone. things turned out to be not quite so bad as he had imagined. here and there a little property had escaped, perhaps because he hardly knew of its existence. there was a small house in rome, in the new quarter, which he had bought for a young person in whom he had been temporarily interested, and which, by some miracle, was not mortgaged. the mortgages on some of the principal estates in sicily had found their way to the capacious desk of the marchese di san giacinto, whose name was giovanni saracinesca, and who represented a branch of that family. san giacinto was enormously rich, and was a singular combination of old blood and modern instincts; a man of honour, but of terrible will and a good enemy; a man of very large views and of many great projects, some of which were already successfully carried out, some in course of execution, some as yet only planned. in the great crisis, he had neither lost much nor profited immediately by the disasters of others. no one called him grasping, and yet everything worth having that came within his long reach came sooner or later into his possession. when land and houses lost value, and everything in the way of business was dull and dead, san giacinto was steadily buying. when all had been excitement and mad speculation, he had quietly saved his money and waited. and in the course of his investments he had picked up the best of the corleone mortgages, without troubling himself much as to whether the interest were very regularly paid or not. before long he knew very well that it would not be paid at all, and that the lands would fall to him when corleone should have completely ruined himself. the pagliuca family moved to rome before the settlement of the inheritance was finished, and vittoria was at last taken from the convent and accompanied her mother. ferdinando alone remained at camaldoli. the family established themselves in an apartment in the new quarter, and began to live well, if not extravagantly, on what was still a very uncertain income. tebaldo, who managed all the business himself, succeeded in selling the house in rome advantageously. through san giacinto he made acquaintance with a few romans, who treated him courteously and regarded him with curiosity as the nephew of the notorious prince corleone. as for the title, san giacinto advised him not to assume it at once, as it would not be of any especial advantage to him. san giacinto was on excellent terms with all his saracinesca relations, and very naturally spoke to them about the d'oriani. in his heart he did not like and did not trust tebaldo, and thought his brother francesco little better; but, in spite of this, he could not help feeling a sort of pity for the two young men, whose story reminded him of his own romantic beginnings. san giacinto was a giant in strength and stature, and it is undoubtedly true that in all giants a tendency to good-nature and kindliness will sooner or later assert itself. he was advancing in years now, and the initial hardness of his rough nature had been tempered by years of success and of almost phenomenal domestic felicity. he was strong still in body and mind, and not easily deceived; but he had grown kind. he pitied the pagliuca tribe, and took his wife to see donna maria carolina. he persuaded the princess of sant' ilario to receive her and make acquaintance, and the marchesa di san giacinto brought her to the palace one afternoon with vittoria. corona thought the mother pretentious, and guessed that she was at once bad-tempered and foolish; but she saw at a glance that the young girl was of a very different type, and a few kindly questions, while donna maria carolina talked with the marchesa, explained to corona the mystery. vittoria had never been at home, even for a visit, during the ten years which had elapsed since she had been placed at the convent, and her mother was almost a stranger to her. she was not exactly timid, as corona could see, but her young grace was delicately nurtured, and shrank and froze in the presence of her mother's coarse-grained self-assertion. 'shall we marry her in rome, do you think, princess?' asked donna maria carolina, nodding her head indicatively towards her daughter, while her eyes looked at corona, and she smiled with much significance. vittoria's soft brown eyes grew suddenly bright and hard, and the blood sprang up in her face as though she had been struck, and her small hands tightened quietly on her parasol; but she said nothing, and looked down. 'i hope that your daughter may marry very happily,' said corona, with a kind intonation, for she saw the girl's embarrassment and understood it. the marchesa di san giacinto laughed quite frankly. her laughter was good-humoured, not noisy, and distinctly aristocratic, it is true; but vittoria resented it, because she knew that it was elicited by her mother's remark, which had been in bad taste. corona saw this also. 'you always laugh at the mention of marriage, flavia,' said the princess, 'and yet you are the most happily married woman i know.' 'oh, that is true!' answered the marchesa. 'my giant is good to me, even now that my hair is gray.' it was true that there were many silver threads in the thick and waving hair that grew low over her forehead, but her face had lost none of its freshness, and her eyes had all their old vivacity. she was of the type of women who generally live to a great age. donna maria carolina rose to go. in saying good-bye, corona took vittoria's hand. 'i am sorry that it is so late in the season, my dear,' she said. 'you will have little to amuse you until next year. but you must come to dinner with your mother. will you come, and bring her?' she asked, turning to donna maria carolina. the marchesa di san giacinto stared in well-bred surprise, for corona was not in the habit of asking people to dinner at first sight. of course her invitation was accepted. chapter iii san giacinto and his wife came to the dinner, and two or three others, and the d'oriani made a sort of formal entry into roman society under the best possible auspices. in spite of corona's good taste and womanly influence, festivities at the palazzo saracinesca always had an impressive and almost solemn character. perhaps there were too many men in the family, and they were all too dark and grave, from the aged prince to his youngest grandson, who was barely of age, and whose black eyebrows met over his roman nose and seemed to shade his eyes too much. ippolito, the exception in his family, as vittoria d'oriani was in hers, did not appear at table, but came into the drawing-room in the evening. the prince himself sat at the head of the table, and rarely spoke. corona could see that he was not pleased with the pagliuca tribe, and she did her best to help on conversation and to make flavia san giacinto talk, as she could when she chose. from time to time, she looked at orsino, whose face that evening expressed nothing, but whose eyes were almost constantly turned towards vittoria. it had happened naturally enough that he sat next to her, and it was an unusual experience for him. of course, in the round of society, he occasionally found himself placed next to a young girl at dinner, and he generally was thoroughly bored on such occasions. it was either intentional or accidental on the part of his hosts, whoever they might be. if it was intentional, he had been made to sit next to some particularly desirable damsel of great birth and fortune in the hope that he might fall in love with her and make her the future princess saracinesca. and he resented in gloomy silence every such attempt to capture him. if, on the other hand, he chanced to be accidentally set down beside a young girl, it happened according to the laws of precedence; and it was ten to one that the young lady had nothing to recommend her, either in the way of face, fortune, or conversation. but neither case occurred often. the present occasion was altogether exceptional. vittoria d'oriani had never been to a dinner-party before, and everything was new to her. it was quite her first appearance in society, and orsino saracinesca was the first man who could be called young, except her brothers, with whom she had ever exchanged a dozen words. it was scarcely two months since she had left the convent, and during that time her mind had been constantly crowded with new impressions, and as constantly irritated by her mother's manner and conversation. her education was undoubtedly very limited, though in this respect it only differed in a small degree from that of many young girls whom orsino had met; but it was liberal as compared with her mother's, as her ideas upon religion were broad in comparison with donna maria carolina's complicated system of superstition. vittoria's brown eyes were very wide open, as she sat quietly in her place, listening to what was said, and tasting a number of things which she had never seen before. she looked often at corona, and wished that she might be like her some day, which was quite impossible. and she glanced at orsino from time to time, and answered his remarks briefly and simply. she could not help seeing that he was watching her, and now and then the blood rose softly in her cheeks. on her other side sat gianbattista pietrasanta, whose wife was a frangipani, and who was especially amused and interested by vittoria's mother, his other neighbour, but paid little attention to the young girl herself. a great writer has very truly said that psychological analysis, in a book, can never be more than a series of statements on the part of the author, telling what he himself fancies that he might have felt, could he have been placed in the position of the particular person whom he is analysing. it is extremely doubtful whether any male writer can, by the greatest effort of imagination, clothe himself in the ingenuous purity of thought and intention which is the whole being of such a young girl as vittoria d'oriani when she first enters the world, after having spent ten years in a religious community of refined women. the creature we imagine, when we try to understand such maiden innocence, is colourless and dull. her mind and heart are white as snow, but blankly white, as the snow on a boundless plain, without so much as a fence or a tree to relieve the utter monotony. there is no beauty in such whiteness in nature, except when it blushes at dawn and sunset. alone on snow, and with nothing but snow in sight, men often go mad; for snow-madness is a known and recognised form of insanity. evidently our imagination fails to evoke a true image in such a case. we are aware that maiden innocence is a state, and not a form of character. the difficulty lies in representing to ourselves a definite character in just that state. for to the word innocence we attach no narrow meaning; it extends to every question that touches humanity, to every motive in all dealings, and to every purpose which, in that blank state, a girl attributes to all human beings, living and dead. it is a magic window through which all good things appear clearly, though not often truly, and all bad things are either completely invisible, or seen in a dull, neutral, and totally uninteresting shadow of uniform misunderstanding. we judge that it must be so, from our observation. this is not analysis, but inspection. behind the blank lies, in the first place, the temperament, then the character, then the mind, and then that great, uncertain element of heredity, monstrous or god-like, which animates and moves all three in the gestation of unborn fate, and which is fate itself in later life, so far as there is any such thing as fatality. behind the blank there may be turbulent and passionate blood, there may be a character of iron and a man-ruling mind. but the blank is a blank, for all that. catherine of russia was once an innocent and quiet little german girl, with empty, wondering eyes, and school-girl sentimentalities. goethe might have taken her for werther's charlotte. good, bad, or indifferent, the future woman is at the magic window, and all that she is to be is within her already. vittoria d'oriani was certainly not to be a catherine, but there was no lack of conflicting heredities beneath her innocence. orsino had thought more than most young men of his age, and he was aware of the fact, as he looked at her and talked with her, and carried on one of those apparently empty conversations, of which the recollection sometimes remains throughout a lifetime, while he quietly studied her face, and tried to find out the secret of its rare charm. he began by treating her almost as a foreigner. he remembered long afterwards how he smiled as he asked her the first familiar question, as though she had been an english girl, or miss lizzie slayback, the heiress from nevada. 'how do you like rome?' 'it is a great city,' answered vittoria. 'but you do not like it? you do not think it is beautiful?' 'of course, it is not palermo,' said the young girl, quite naturally. 'it has not the sea; it has not the mountains--' 'no mountains?' interrupted orsino smiling. 'but there are mountains all round rome.' 'not like palermo,' replied vittoria, soberly. 'and then it has not the beautiful streets.' 'poor rome!' orsino laughed a little. 'not even fine streets! have you seen nothing that pleases you here!' 'oh yes,--there are fine houses, and i have seen the tiber, and the queen, and--' she stopped short. 'and what else?' inquired orsino, very much amused. vittoria turned her brown eyes full upon him, and paused a moment before she answered. 'you are making me say things which seem foolish to you, though they seem sensible to me,' she said quietly. 'they seem original, not foolish. it is quite true that palermo is a beautiful city, but we romans forget it. and if you have never seen another river, the tiber is interesting, i suppose. that is what you mean. no, it is quite reasonable.' vittoria blushed a little, and looked down, only half reassured. it was her first attempt at conversation, and she had said what she thought, naturally and simply. she was not sure whether the great dark young man, who had eyes exactly like his mother's, was laughing at her or not. but he did not know that she had never been to a party in her life. 'is the society in palermo amusing?' he inquired carelessly. 'i do not know,' she answered, again blushing, for she was a little ashamed of being so very young. 'i left the convent on the day we started to come to rome. and my mother did not live in palermo,' she added. 'no--i had forgotten that.' orsino relapsed into silence for a while. he would willingly have given up the attempt at conversation, so far as concerned any hope of making it interesting. but he liked the sound of vittoria's voice, and he wished she would speak again. on his right hand was tebaldo, who, as the head of a family, and not a roman, sat next to corona. he seemed to be making her rather bold compliments. orsino caught a phrase. 'you are certainly the most beautiful woman in italy, princess,' the sicilian was saying. orsino raised his head, and turned slowly towards the speaker. as he did so, he saw his mother's look. her brows were a little contracted, which was unusual, but she was just turning away to speak to san giacinto on her other side, with an otherwise perfectly indifferent expression. orsino laughed. 'my mother has been the most beautiful woman in europe since before i was born,' he said, addressing tebaldo rather pointedly, for the latter's remark had been perfectly audible to him. tebaldo had a thin face, with a square, narrow forehead, and heavy jaws that came to an overpointed chin. his upper lip was very short, and his moustache was unusually small, black and glossy, and turned up at the ends in aggressive points. his upper teeth were sharp, long, and regular, and he showed them when he smiled. the smile did not extend upwards above the nostrils, and there was something almost sinister in the still black eyes. in the front view the lower part of the face was triangular, and the low forehead made the upper portion seem square. he was a man of bilious constitution, of an even, yellow-brown complexion, rather lank and bony in frame, but of a type which is often very enduring. such men sometimes have violent and uncontrolled tempers, combined with great cunning, quickness of intelligence, and an extraordinary power of taking advantage of circumstances. tebaldo smiled at orsino's remark, not at all acknowledging that it might be intended as a rebuke. 'it is hard to believe that she can be your mother,' he said quietly, and with such frankness as completely disarmed resentment. but orsino in his thoughts contrasted tebaldo's present tone with the sound of his voice when speaking to the princess an instant earlier, and he forthwith disliked the man, and believed him to be false and double. corona either had not heard, or pretended not to hear, and talked indifferently with san giacinto, whose vast, lean frame seemed to fill two places at the table, while his energetic gray head towered high above everyone else. orsino turned to vittoria again. 'should you be pleased if someone told you that you were the most beautiful young lady in italy?' he enquired. vittoria looked at him wonderingly. 'no,' she answered. 'it would not be true. how should i be pleased?' 'but suppose, for the sake of argument, that it were true. i am imagining a case. should you be pleased?' 'i do not know--i think--' she hesitated and paused. 'i am very curious to know what you think,' said orsino, pressing her for an answer. 'i think it would depend upon whether i liked the person who told me so.' again the blood rose softly in her face. 'that is exactly what i should think,' answered orsino gravely. 'were you sorry to leave the convent?' 'yes, i cried a great deal. it was my home for so many years, and i was so happy there.' the girl's eyes grew dreamy as she looked absently across the table at guendalina pietrasanta. she was evidently lost in her recollections of her life with the nuns. orsino was almost amused at his own failure. 'should you have liked to stay and be a nun yourself?' he inquired, with a smile. 'yes, indeed! at least--when i came away i wished to stay.' 'but you have changed your mind since? you find the world pleasanter than you expected? it is not a bad place, i daresay.' 'they told me that it was very bad,' said vittoria seriously. 'of course they must know, but i do not quite understand what they mean. can you tell me something about it, and why it is bad, and what all the wickedness is?' orsino looked at her quietly for a moment, realising very clearly the whiteness of her life's unwritten page. 'your nuns may be right,' he said at last. 'i am not in love with the world, but i do not believe that it is so very wicked. at least, there are many good people in it, and one can find them if one chooses. no doubt, we are all miserable sinners in a theological sense, but i am not a theologian. i have a brother who is a priest, and you will see him after dinner; but though he is a very good man, he does not give one the impression of believing that the world is absolutely bad. it is true that he is rather a dilettante priest.' vittoria was evidently shocked, for her face grew extraordinarily grave and a shade paler. she looked at orsino in a startled way and then at her plate. 'what is the matter?' he asked quickly. 'have i shocked you?' 'yes,' she answered, almost in a whisper and still looking down. 'that is,' she added with hesitation, 'perhaps i did not quite understand you.' 'no, you did not, if you are shocked. i merely meant that although my brother is a very good man, and a very religious man, and believes that he has a vocation, and does his best to be a good priest, he has other interests in life for which i am sure that he cares more, though he may not know it.' 'what other interests?' asked vittoria, rather timidly. 'well, only one, perhaps--music. he is a musician first, and a priest afterwards.' the young girl's face brightened instantly. she had expected something very terrible, perhaps, though quite undefined. 'he says mass in the morning,' continued orsino, 'and it may take him an hour or so to read his breviary conscientiously in the afternoon. the rest of his time he spends over the piano.' 'but it is not profane music?' asked vittoria, growing anxious again. 'oh no!' orsino smiled. 'he composes masses and symphonies and motetts.' 'well, there is no harm in that,' said vittoria, indifferently, being again reassured. 'certainly not. i wish i had the talent and the interest in it to do it myself. i believe that the chief real wickedness is doing nothing at all.' 'sloth is one of the capital sins,' observed vittoria, who knew the names of all seven. 'it is also the most tiresome sin imaginable, especially when one is condemned to it for life, as i am.' the young girl looked at him anxiously, and there was a little pause. 'what do you mean?' she asked. 'no one is obliged to be idle.' 'will you find me an occupation?' orsino asked in his turn, and with some bitterness. 'i shall be gratified.' 'is not doing good an occupation? i am sure that there must be plenty of opportunities for that.' she felt more sure of herself when upon such ground. orsino did not smile. 'yes. it might take up a man's whole life, but it is not a career--' 'it was the career of many of the saints!' interrupted vittoria, cheerfully, for she was beginning to feel at her ease at last. 'saint francis of assisi--saint clare--saint--' 'pray for us!' exclaimed orsino, as though he were responding in a litany. vittoria's face fell instantly, and he regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them. she was like a sensitive plant, he thought; and yet she had none of the appearance of an over-impressionable, nervous girl. it was doubtless her education. 'i have shocked you again,' he said gravely. 'i am sorry, but i am afraid that you will often be shocked, at first. yes; i have no doubt that to the saints doing good was a career, and that a saint might make a career of it nowadays. but you see i am not one. what i should like would be to have a profession of some sort, and to work at it with all my might.' 'what a strange idea!' vittoria looked at him in surprise; for though her three brothers had been almost beggars for ten years, it had never struck them that they could possibly have a profession. 'but you are a noble,' she added thoughtfully. 'you will be the prince saracinesca some day.' orsino laughed. 'we do not think so much of those things as we did once,' he answered. 'i would be a doctor, if i could, or a lawyer, or a man of business. i do not think that i should like to be a shopkeeper, though it is only a matter of prejudice--' 'i should think not!' cried vittoria, startled again. 'it would be much more interesting than the life i lead. almost any life would be, for that matter. of course, if i had my choice--' he stopped. vittoria waited, her eyes fixed earnestly on his face, but she said nothing. somehow she was suddenly anxious to know what his choice would be. he felt that she was watching him, and turned towards her. their eyes met in silence, and he smiled, but her face remained grave. he was thinking that this must certainly be one of the most absurd conversations in which he had ever been engaged, but that somehow it did not appear absurd to himself, and he wondered why. 'if i had my choice--' he paused again. 'i would be a leader,' he added suddenly. he was still young, and there was ambition in him. his dark eyes flashed like his mother's, a warmer colour rose for one instant under his olive skin; the fine, firm mouth set itself. 'i think you could be,' said vittoria, almost under her breath and half unconsciously. then, all at once, she blushed scarlet, and turned her face away to hide her colour. if there is one thing in woman which more than any other attracts a misunderstood man, it is the conviction that she believes him capable of great deeds; and if there is one thing beyond others which leads a woman to love a man, it is her own certainty that he is really superior to those around him, and really needs woman's sympathy. youth, beauty, charm, eloquence, are all second to these in their power to implant genuine love, or to maintain it, if they continue to exist as conditions. it mattered little to vittoria that she had as yet no means whatever of judging whether orsino saracinesca had any such extraordinary powers as might some day make him a leader among men. she had been hardly conscious of the strong impression she had received, and which had made her speak, and she was far too young and simple to argue with herself about it. and he, on his part, with a good deal of experience behind him and the memory of one older woman's absolute devotion and sacrifice, felt a keen and unexpected pleasure, quite different from anything he remembered to have felt before now. nor did he reason about it at first, for he was not a great reasoner and his pleasures in life were really very few. a moment or two after vittoria had spoken, and when she had already turned away her face, orsino shook his head almost imperceptibly, as though trying to throw something off which annoyed him. it was near the end of dinner before the two spoke to each other again, though vittoria half turned towards him twice in the mean time, as though expecting him to speak, and then, disappointed, looked at her plate again. 'are you going to stay in rome, or shall you go back to sicily?' he asked suddenly, not looking at her, but at the small white hand that touched the edge of the table beside him. vittoria started perceptibly at the sound of his voice, as though she had been in a reverie, and her hand disappeared at the same instant. orsino found himself staring at the tablecloth, at the spot where it had lain. 'i think--i hope we shall stay in rome,' she answered. 'my brother has a great deal of business here.' 'yes. i know. he sees my cousin san giacinto about it almost every day.' 'yes.' her face grew thoughtful again, but not dreamily so as before, and she seemed to hesitate, as though she had more to say. 'what is it?' asked orsino, encouraging her to go on. 'perhaps i ought not to tell you. the marchese wishes to buy camaldoli of us.' 'what is camaldoli?' 'it is the old country house where my mother and my brothers lived so long, while i was in the convent, after my father died. there is a little land. it was all we had until now.' 'shall you be glad if it is sold, or sorry?' asked orsino, thoughtfully, and watching her face. 'i shall be glad, i suppose,' she answered. 'it would have to be divided among us, they say. and it is half in ruins, and the land is worth nothing, and there are always brigands.' orsino laughed. 'yes. i should think you might be very glad to get rid of it. there is no difficulty about it, is there?' 'only--i have another brother. he likes it and has remained there. his name is ferdinando. no one knows why he is so fond of the place. they need his consent, in order to sell it, and he will not agree.' 'i understand. what sort of a man is your brother ferdinando?' 'i have not seen him for ten years. they are afraid of--i mean, he is afraid of nothing.' there was something odd, orsino thought, about the way the young girl shut her lips when she checked herself in the middle of the sentence, but he had no idea what she had been about to say. just then corona nodded slightly to the aged prince at the other end of the table, and dinner was over. 'i should think it would be necessary for san giacinto to see this other brother of yours,' observed orsino, finishing the conversation as he rose and stood ready to take vittoria out. the little ungloved hand lay like a white butterfly on his black sleeve, and she had to raise her arm a little to take his, though she was not short. just before them went san giacinto, darkening the way like a figure of fate. vittoria looked up at him, almost awe-struck at his mere size. 'how tall he is!' she exclaimed in a very low voice. 'how very tall he is!' she said again. 'we are used to him,' answered orsino, with a short laugh. 'but he has a big heart, though he looks so grim.' half an hour later, when the men were smoking in a room by themselves, san giacinto came and sat down by orsino in the remote corner where the latter had established himself, with a cigarette. the giant, as ever of old, had a villainous-looking black cigar between his teeth. 'do you want something to do?' he asked bluntly. 'yes.' 'do you care to live in sicily for a time?' 'anywhere--japan, if you like.' 'you are easily pleased. that means that you are not in love just at present, i suppose.' san giacinto looked hard at his young cousin for some time, in silence. orsino met his glance quietly, but with some curiosity. 'do you ever go to see the countess del ferice?' asked the big man at last. orsino straightened himself in his chair and frowned a little, and then looked away as he answered by a cross-question, knocking the ash off his cigarette upon a little rock crystal dish at his elbow. 'why do you ask me that?' he inquired rather sternly. 'because you were very much attracted by her once, and i wished to know whether you had kept up the acquaintance since her marriage.' 'i have kept up the acquaintance--and no more,' answered orsino, meeting his cousin's eyes again. 'i go to see the countess from time to time. i believe we are on very good terms.' 'will you go to sicily with me if i need you, and stay there, and get an estate in order for me?' 'with pleasure. when?' 'i do not know yet. it may be in a week, or it may be in a month. it will be hot there, and you will have troublesome things to do.' 'so much the better.' 'there are brigands in the neighbourhood just now.' 'that will be very amusing. i never saw one.' 'you may tell ippolito if you like, but please do not mention it to anyone else until we are ready to go. you know that your mother will be anxious about you, and your father is a conservative--and your grandfather is a firebrand, if he dislikes an idea. one would think that at his age his temper should have subsided.' 'not in the least!' orsino smiled, for he loved the old man, and was proud of his great age. 'but you may tell ippolito if you like, and if you warn him to be discreet. ippolito would let himself be torn in pieces rather than betray a secret. he is by far the most discreet of you all.' 'yes. you are right, as usual. you have a good eye for a good man. what do you think of all these pagliuca people, or corleone, or d'oriani--or whatever they call themselves?' orsino looked keenly at his cousin as he asked the question. 'did you ever meet corleone? i mean the one who married norba's daughter,--the uncle of these boys.' 'i met him once. from all accounts, he must have been a particularly disreputable personage.' 'he was worse than that, i think. i never blamed his wife. well--these boys are his nephews. i do not see that any comment is necessary.' san giacinto smiled thoughtfully. 'this young girl is also his niece,' observed orsino rather sharply. 'who knows what tebaldo pagliuca might have been if he had spent ten years amongst devout old women in a convent?' the big man's smile developed into an incredulous laugh, in which orsino joined. 'there has certainly been a difference of education,' he admitted. 'i like her.' 'you would confer a great benefit upon a distressed family, by falling in love with her,' said san giacinto. 'that worthy mother of hers was watching you two behind pietrasanta's head, during dinner.' 'another good reason for going to sicily,' answered orsino. 'the young lady is communicative. she told me, this evening, that you were trying to buy some place of theirs,--i forget the name,--and that one of her brothers objects.' 'that is exactly the place i want you to manage. the name is camaldoli.' 'then there is no secret about it,' observed orsino. 'if she has told me, she may tell the next man she meets.' 'certainly. and mysteries are useless, as a rule. i do not wish to make any with you, at all events. here are the facts. i am going to build a light railway connecting all those places; and i am anxious to get the land into my possession, without much talk. do you understand? this place of the corleone is directly in my line, and is one of the most important, because it is at a point through which i must pass, to make the railway at all, short of an expensive tunnel. your management will simply consist in keeping things in order until the railway makes the land valuable. then i shall sell it, of course.' 'i see. very well. could you not give my old architect something to do? andrea contini is his name. the houses we built for del ferice have all turned out well, you know.' orsino laughed rather bitterly. 'remind me of him at the proper time,' said san giacinto. 'tell him to learn something about building small railway stations. there will be between fifteen and twenty, altogether.' 'i will. but--do you expect that a railway in sicily will ever pay you?' 'no. i am not an idiot.' 'then why do you build one, if that is not an indiscreet question?' 'the rise in the value of all the land i buy will make it worth while, several times over. it is quite simple.' 'it must take an enormous capital,' said orsino, thoughtfully. 'it needs a large sum of ready money. but the lands are generally mortgaged for long periods, and almost to two-thirds of their selling value. the holders of the mortgages do not care who owns the land. so i pay about one-third in cash.' 'what becomes of the value of a whole country, when all the land is mortgaged for two-thirds of what it is worth?' asked orsino, carelessly, and half laughing. but san giacinto did not laugh. 'i have thought about that,' he answered gravely. 'when the yield of the land is not enough to pay the interest on the mortgages, the taxes to the government, and some income to the owners, they starve outright, or emigrate. there is a good deal of starvation nowadays, and a good deal of emigration in search of bread.' 'and yet they say that the value of land is increasing almost all over the country,' objected orsino. 'you count on it yourself.' 'the value rises wherever railways and roads are built.' 'and what pays for the railways?' 'the taxes.' 'and the people pay the taxes.' 'exactly. and the taxes are enormous. the people in places remote from the projected railway are ruined by them, but the people who own land where the railways pass are indirectly very much enriched by the result. sometimes a private individual like myself builds a light road. i think that is a source of wealth, in the end, to everyone. but the building of the government roads, like the one down the west coast of calabria, seems to destroy the balance of wealth and increase emigration. it is a necessary evil.' 'there are a good many necessary evils in our country,' said orsino. 'there are too many.' '_per aspera ad astra._ i never knew much latin, but i believe that means something. there are also unnecessary evils, such as brigandage in sicily, for instance. you can amuse yourself by fighting that one, if you please; though i have no doubt that the brigands will often travel by my railway--and they will certainly go in the first class.' the big man laughed and rose, leaving orsino to meditate upon the prospect of occupation which was opened to him. chapter iv orsino remained in his corner a few minutes, after san giacinto had left him, and then rose to go into the drawing-room. as he went he passed the other men, who were seated and standing, all near together and not far from the empty fireplace, listening to tebaldo pagliuca, who was talking about sicily with a very strong sicilian accent. orsino paused a moment to hear what he was saying. he was telling the story of a frightful murder committed in the outskirts of palermo not many weeks earlier, and about which there had been much talk. but tebaldo was on his own ground and knew much more about it than had appeared in the newspapers. his voice was not unpleasant. it was smooth, though his words were broken here and there by gutturals which he had certainly not learned on his own side of the island. there was a sort of reserve in the tones which contrasted with the vividness of the language. orsino watched him and looked at him more keenly than he had done as yet. he was struck by the stillness of the deep eyes, which were slightly bloodshot, like those of some arabs, and at the same time by the mobility and changing expression of the lower part of the face. tebaldo made gestures, too, which had a singular directness. yet the whole impression given was that he was a good actor rather than a man of continued, honest action, and that he could have performed any other part as well. near him stood his brother francesco. there was doubtless a family resemblance between the two, but the difference of constitution was apparent to the most unpractised eye. the younger man was stouter, more sanguine, less nervous. the red blood glowed with strong health under his brown skin, his lips were scarlet and full, his dark moustache was soft and silky like his short, smooth hair, and his eyes were soft, too, and moistly bright, very long, with heavy drooping lids that were whiter than the skin of the rest of the face. francesco was no more like his sister than was tebaldo. orsino found himself by his father as he paused in passing, and he suddenly realised how immeasurably nearer he was to this strong, iron-gray, middle-sized, silent man beside him, than to any other one of all the men in the room, including his own brothers. sant' ilario had perhaps never understood his eldest son; or perhaps there was between them the insurmountable barrier of his own solid happiness. for it is sorrow that draws men together. happiness needs no sympathy; happiness is not easily disturbed; happiness that is solidly founded is itself a most negative source of the most all-pervading virtue, without the least charity for unhappiness' sins; happiness suffices to itself; happiness is a lantern to its own feet; it is all things to one man and nothing to all the rest; it is an impenetrable wall between him who has it and mankind. and sant' ilario had been happy for nearly thirty years. in appearance, as was to be anticipated, he had turned out to be like his father, as the latter had been at the same age. in temper, he was different, as the conditions of his life had been of another sort. the ancient head of the house had lost his spanish wife when very young, and had lived many years alone with his only son. giovanni had met with no such misfortune. his wife was alive and still beautiful at an age when many women have forgotten the taste of flattery; and his four sons were all grown men, straight and tall, so that he looked up to their faces when they stood beside him. strong, peaceable, honest, rather hard-faced young men, they were, excepting ippolito, the second of them, who had talent and a lovable disposition in place of strength and hardness of character. they were fond of their father, no doubt, and there was great solidarity in the family. but what they felt for sant' ilario was perhaps more like an allegiance than an affection, and they looked to him as the principal person of importance in the family, because their grandfather was such a very old man. they were accustomed to take it for granted that he was infallible when he expressed himself definitely in a family matter, whereas they had no very high opinion of his judgment in topics and questions of the day; for they had received a modern education, and were to some extent imbued with those modern prejudices compared with which the views of our fathers hardly deserved the name of a passing caprice. orsino thought that there was something at once cunning and ferocious about tebaldo's way of telling the story. he had a fine smile of appreciation for the secrecy and patience of the two young men who had sought occasion against their sister's lover, and there was a squaring of the angular jaws and a quick forward movement of the head, as of a snake when striking, to accompany his description of the death-blow. orsino listened to the end and then went quietly out and returned to the drawing-room. vittoria d'oriani was seated near corona, who was talking to her in a low tone. the other ladies were standing together before a famous old picture. the marchesa di san giacinto was smoking a cigarette. orsino sat down by his mother, who looked at him quietly and smiled, and then went on speaking. the young girl glanced at orsino. she was leaning forward, one elbow on her knee, and her chin supported in her hand, her lips a little parted as she listened with deep interest to what the elder woman said. corona was telling her of rome many years earlier, of the life in those days, of pius the ninth, and of the coming of the italians. 'how can you remember things that happened when you were so young!' exclaimed vittoria, watching the calm and beautiful face. 'i was older than you even then,' answered corona, with a smile. 'and i married very young,' she added thoughtfully. 'i was married at your age, i think. how old are you, my dear?' 'i am eighteen--just eighteen,' replied vittoria. 'i was married when i was scarcely seventeen. it was too young.' 'but you have always been so happy. why do you say that?' 'what makes you think that i have always been happy?' asked the princess. 'your face, i think. one or two of the nuns were very happy, too. but it was different. they had quite another look on their faces.' 'i daresay,' answered corona, and she smiled again, and looked proudly at orsino. she rose and crossed the room, feeling that she was neglecting her older guests for the young girl, who was thus left with orsino again. he did not see donna maria carolina's quick glance as she discovered the fact, and made sure of it, looking again and again at the two while she joined a little in the conversation which was going on around her. she was very happy, just then, poor lady, and almost forgot to struggle against the accumulated provincialisms of twenty years, or to be anxious lest her new friends should discover that her pearls were false. for the passion for ornament, false or real, had not diminished with the improvement in her fortunes. but orsino was not at all interested in vittoria's mother, and he had seen too much to care whether women wore real jewelry or not. he had almost forgotten the young girl after dinner when he had sat down in a corner of the smoking-room, but san giacinto's remark had vividly recalled her face to his memory, with a strong desire to see her again at once. nothing was easier than to satisfy such a wish, and he found himself by her side. once there, he did not trouble himself to speak to her for several moments. vittoria showed considerable outward self-possession, though it was something of an ordeal to sit in silence, almost touching him and not daring to speak, while he was apparently making up his mind what to say. it had been much easier during dinner, she thought, because she had been put in her place without being consulted, and was expected to be there, without the least idea of attracting attention. now, she felt a little dizzy for a moment, as though the room were swaying; and she was afraid that she was going to blush, which would have been ridiculous. now, he was looking at her, while she looked down at her little white fan that lay on the white stuff of her frock, quite straight, between her two small, white-gloved hands. the nuns had not told her what to do in any such situation. still orsino did not speak. two minutes had crawled by, like two hours, and she felt a fluttering in her throat. it was absurd, she thought. there was no reason for being so miserable. very probably, he was not thinking of her at all. but it was of no use to tell herself such things, for her embarrassment grew apace, till she felt that she must spring from her seat and run from the room without looking at him. the fluttering became almost convulsive, and her hands pressed the little fan on each side, clenching themselves tightly. still he did not speak. in utter despair she began to recite inwardly the litany of the saints, biting her lips lest they should move and he should guess what she was doing. in her suppressed excitement the holy personages raced and tumbled over each other at a most unseemly rate, till the procession was violently checked by the gravely indifferent tones of orsino's voice. her hands relaxed, and she turned a little pale. 'have you been to saint peter's?' he enquired calmly. he was certainly not embarrassed, but he could think of nothing better to say to a young girl. on the first occasion, at dinner, he had asked her how she liked rome. at all events it had opened the conversation. he remembered well enough the half dozen earnest words they had exchanged; and there was something more than mere memory, for he knew that he half wished they might reach the same point again. perhaps, if the wish had been stronger and if vittoria had been a little older, it might have been easier. 'yes,' she said. 'my mother took me as soon as we came. she was very anxious that we should pay our devotion to the patron saint.' orsino smiled a little. 'saint peter is not the patron of rome,' he observed. 'our protector is san filippo neri.' vittoria looked up in genuine surprise. 'saint peter is not the patron saint of rome!' she exclaimed. 'but--i always thought--' 'naturally enough. all sorts of things in rome seem to be what they are not. we seem to be alive for instance. we are not. six or seven years ago we were all in a frantic state of excitement over our greatness. we have turned out to be nothing but a set of embalmed specimens in glass cases. do not look so much surprised, signorina--or shocked--which is it?' he laughed a little. 'i cannot help it,' answered vittoria simply, her brown eyes still fixed on him in wonder. 'it is--it is all so different from what i expected--the things people say--' she hesitated and stopped short, turning her eyes from him. the light was strong in the room, for the aged prince hated the modern fashion of shading lamps almost to a dusk. orsino watched vittoria's profile, and the graceful turn of her young throat as she looked away, and the fine growth of silky hair from the temples and behind the curving little ear. the room was warm, and he sat silently watching her for a moment. she was no longer embarrassed, for she was not thinking of herself, and she did not know how he was thinking of her just then. 'i wonder what you expected us to be like,' he said at last. 'and what you expected us to say,' he added as an afterthought. it crossed his mind that if she had been a married woman three or four years older he might have found her very amusing in conversation. he could certainly not have been talking in detached and almost idiotic phrases, as he was actually doing. but if she had been a young married woman, her charm would have been different, and of a kind not new to him. there was a novelty about vittoria, and it attracted him strongly. there was real freshness and untried youth in her; she had that sort of delicacy which some flowers have, and which is not fragility, the bloom of a precious thing fresh broken from the mould and not yet breathed upon. he wondered whether all young girls had this inexpressible something, and if so, why he had never noticed it. 'i am not quite sure,' answered vittoria, blushing a little at the thought that she could have had a preconceived idea of orsino saracinesca. the reply left everything to be desired in the way of brilliancy, but the voice was soft and expectant, as some women's voices are, that seem just upon the point of vibrating to a harmonic while yielding the fundamental tone in all its roundness. there are rare voices that seem to possess a distinct living individuality, apart from the women to whom they belong, a sort of extra-natural musical life, of which the woman herself cannot control nor calculate the power. it is not the 'golden voice' which some great actresses have. one recognises that at the first hearing; one admits its beauty; one hears it three or four times, and one knows it by heart. it will pronounce certain phrases in a certain way, inevitably; it will soften and swell and ring with mathematical precision at the same verse, at the identical word, night after night, year after year, while it lasts. vittoria's voice was not like that. it had the spontaneity of independent life which a passion itself has when it takes possession of a man or a woman. orsino felt it, and was conscious of a new sensitiveness in himself. on the whole, to make a very wide statement of a general truth, italian men are moved by sense and italian women are stirred by passion. between passion and sense there is all the difference that exists between the object and the idea. sense appreciates, passion idealises; sense desires all things, passion hungers for one; sense is material, though ever so æsthetised and refined, but passion clothes fact with unearthly attributes; sense is singly selfish, passion would make a single self of two. the sensual man says, 'to have seen much and to have little is to have rich eyes and poor hands'; the passionate man or woman will 'put it to the test, to win or lose it all,' like montrose. sense is vulgar when it is not monstrous in strength, or hysterical to madness. passion is always noble, even in its sins and crimes. sense can be satisfied, and its satisfaction is a low sort of happiness; but passion's finer strings can quiver with immortal pain, and ring with the transcendent harmony that wakes the hero even in a coward's heart. vittoria first touched orsino by her outward charm, by her voice, by her grace. but it was his personality, or her spontaneous imagination of it, which made an indelible impression upon her mind before the first evening of their acquaintance was over. the woman who falls in love with a man for his looks alone is not of a very high type, but the best and bravest men that ever lived have fallen victims to mere beauty, often without much intelligence, or faith, or honour. orsino was probably not aware that he was falling in love at first sight. very few men are, and yet very many people certainly begin to fall in love at a first meeting, who would scout the idea as an absurdity. for love's beginnings are most exceedingly small in the greatest number of instances. were they greater, a man might guard himself more easily against his fate. chapter v at that time a young sicilian singer had lately made her first appearance in rome and had been received with great favour. she was probably not destined ever to become one of the chief artists of the age, but she possessed exactly the qualifications necessary to fascinate a roman audience. she was very young, she was undeniably beautiful, and she had what romans called a 'sympathetic' voice. they think more of that latter quality in italy than elsewhere. it is what in english we might call charm, and to have it is to have the certainty of success with an italian public. aliandra basili was the daughter of a respectable notary in the ancient town of randazzo, which lies on the western slope of mount etna, on the high road from piedimonte to bronte and catania, within two hours' ride of camaldoli, the corleone place. it is a solemn old walled town, built of almost black tufo, though many of the houses on the main street have now been stuccoed and painted; and it has a very beautiful saracen-norman cathedral. aliandra's life had been very like that of any other provincial girl of the middle class. she had been educated in a small convent, while her excellent father, whose wife was dead, laboured to accumulate a little dowry for his only child. at fifteen years of age, she had returned to live with him, and he had entertained good hopes of marrying her off before she was seventeen. in fact, he thought that he had only to choose among a number of young men, of whom any one would be delighted to become her husband. then, one day, tebaldo and francesco pagliuca came riding down from camaldoli, and stopped at the notary's house to get a small lease drawn up; and while they were there, in the dusty office, doing their best to be sure of what old basili's legal language meant, they heard aliandra singing to herself upstairs. after that they came to randazzo again, both separately and together, and at last they persuaded old basili that his daughter had a fortune in her voice and should be allowed to become a singer. he consented after a long struggle, and sent her to messina to live with a widowed sister of his, and to be taught by an old master of great reputation who had taken up his abode there. very possibly basili agreed to this step with a view to removing the girl to a distance from the two brothers, who made small secret of their admiration for her, or about their jealousy of each other; and he reflected that she could be better watched and guarded by his sister, who would have nothing else to do, than by himself. for he was a busy man, and obliged to spend his days either in his office, or in visits to distant clients, so that the motherless girl was thrown far too much upon her own resources. tebaldo, on the other hand, realised that so long as she lived in randazzo, he should have but a small chance of seeing her alone. he could not come and spend a week at a time in the town, but he could find an excuse for being longer than that in messina, and he trusted to his ingenuity to elude the vigilance of the aunt with whom she was to live. in messina, too, he should not have his brother at his elbow, trying to outdo him at every turn, and evidently attracting the young girl to a certain extent. to tell the truth, aliandra's head was turned by the attentions of the two young noblemen, though her father never lost an opportunity of telling her that they were a pair of penniless good-for-nothings and otherwise dangerous characters, supposed to be on good terms with the brigands of the interior, and typical 'maffeusi' through and through. but such warnings were much more calculated to excite the girl's interest than to frighten her. she had an artist's nature and instincts, and the two young gentlemen were very romantic characters in her eyes, when they rode down from their dilapidated stronghold, on their compact little horses, their beautiful winchester rifles slung over their shoulders, their velvet coats catching the sunlight, their spurs gleaming, and their broad hats shading their dark eyes. had there been but one of them, her mind would soon have been made up to make him marry her, and she might have succeeded without much difficulty. but she found it hard to decide between the two. they were too different for comparison, and yet too much alike for preference. tebaldo was a born tyrant, and francesco a born coward. she was dominated by the one and she ruled the other, but she was not in love with either, and she could not make up her mind whether it would on the whole be more agreeable to love her master or her slave. meanwhile she made rapid progress in her singing, appeared at the opera in palermo, and almost immediately obtained an engagement in rome. to her father, the sum offered her appeared enormous, and her aunt was delighted by the prospect of going to rome with her during the winter. aliandra had been successful from the first, and she seemed to be on the high road to fame. the young idlers of rich palermo intrigued to be introduced to her and threw enormous nosegays to her at the end of every act. she found that there were scores of men far handsomer and richer than the pagliuca brothers, ready to fall in love with her, and she began to reflect seriously upon her position. artist though she was, by one side of her nature, there was in her a touch of her father's sensible legal instinct, together with that extraordinary self-preserving force which usually distinguishes the young girl of southern italy. she soon understood that no one of her new admirers would ever think of asking her to be his wife, whereas she was convinced that she could marry either tebaldo or francesco, at her choice and pleasure. they were poor, indeed, but of as good nobility as any of the rich young noblemen of palermo, and she was beginning to find out what fortunes were sometimes made by great singers. she dreamed of buying back the old corleone estates and of being some day the princess of corleone herself. that meant that she must choose tebaldo, since he was to get the title. and here she hesitated again. she did not realise that francesco was actually a physical coward and rather a contemptible character altogether; to her he merely seemed gentle and winning, and she thought him much ill used by his despotic elder brother. as for the third brother, ferdinando, of whom mention has been made, she had rarely seen him. he was probably the best of the family, which was not saying much, and he was also by far the least civilised. he was undoubtedly in close communication with the brigands, and when he was occasionally absent from home, he was not spending his time in messina or randazzo. time went on, and in the late autumn aliandra and her aunt went to rome for the season. as has been seen, it pleased fortune that the pagliuca brothers should be there also, with their mother and sister, ferdinando remaining in sicily. when the question of selling camaldoli to san giacinto arose, ferdinando at first flatly refused to give his consent. thereupon tebaldo wrote him a singularly temperate and logical letter, in which he very quietly proposed to inform the government of ferdinando's complicity with the brigands, unless he at once agreed to the sale. ferdinando might have laughed at the threat had it come from anyone else, but he knew that tebaldo's thorough acquaintance with the country and with the outlaws' habits would give him a terrible advantage. tebaldo, if he gave information, could of course never return to sicily, for his life would not be safe, even in broad daylight, in the macqueda of palermo, and it was quite possible that the mafia might reach him even in rome. but he was undoubtedly able to help the government in a raid in which many of ferdinando's friends must perish or be taken prisoners. for their sakes ferdinando signed his consent to the sale, before old basili in randazzo, and sent the paper to rome; but that night he swore that no roman should ever get possession of camaldoli while he was alive, and half a dozen of the boldest among the outlaws swore that they would stand by him in his resolution. aliandra knew nothing of all this, for tebaldo was far too wise to tell anyone how he had forced his brother's consent. she would certainly have been disgusted with him, had she known the truth, for she was morally as far superior to him and to francesco as an innocent girl brought up by honest folks can be better than a pair of exceedingly corrupt young adventurers. but they both had in a high degree the power of keeping up appearances and of imposing upon their surroundings. tebaldo was indeed subject to rare fits of anger in which he completely lost control of himself, and when he was capable of going to any length of violence; but these were very unusual, and as a general rule he was reticent in the extreme. francesco possessed the skill and gentle duplicity of a born coward and a born ladies' man. they both deceived aliandra, in spite of her father's early warning and her old aunt's anxious advice. aliandra was successful beyond anyone's expectations during her first engagement in rome, and she was wise enough to gain herself the reputation of being unapproachable to her many admirers. only tebaldo and francesco, whom she now considered as old friends of her family, were ever admitted to her room at the theatre, or received at the quiet apartment where she lived with her aunt. on the night of the dinner-party at the palazzo saracinesca, aliandra was to sing in lucia for the first time in rome. both the brothers had wished that they could have been at the theatre to hear her, instead of spending the evening in the society of those very stiff and mighty romans, and both made up their minds separately that they would see her before she left the argentina that night. tebaldo, as usual, took the lead of events, and peremptorily ordered francesco to go home with their mother and sister in the carriage. when the corleone party left the palace, therefore, francesco got into the carriage, but tebaldo said that he preferred to walk, and went out alone from under the great gate. he was not yet very familiar with the streets of rome, but he believed that he knew the exact situation of the palace, and could easily find his way from it to the argentina theatre, which was not very far distant. the old part of the city puzzled him, however. he found himself threading unfamiliar ways, dark lanes, and winding streets which emerged suddenly upon small squares from which three or four other streets led in different directions. instinctively he looked behind him from time to time, and felt in his pocket for the pistol which, like a true provincial, he thought it as necessary to carry in rome as in his sicilian home. presently he looked at his watch, saw that it was eleven o'clock, and made up his mind to find a cab if he could. but that was not an easy matter either, in that part of the city, and it was twenty minutes past eleven when he at last drew up to the stage entrance at the back of the argentina. a weary, gray, unshaven, and very dirty old man admitted him, looked at his face, took the flimsy currency note which tebaldo held out, and let him pass without a word. the young man knew his way much better within the building than out in the streets. in a few moments he stopped before a dingy little door, the last on the left in a narrow corridor dimly lit by a single flame of gas, which was turned low for economy's sake. he knocked sharply and opened the door without waiting for an answer. there were three persons in the small, low dressing-room, and all three faced tebaldo rather anxiously. aliandra basili, the young sicilian prima donna who had lately made her appearance in rome, was seated before a dim mirror which stood on a low table covered with appliances for theatrical dressing. her maid was arranging a white veil on her head, and beside her, very near to her, and drawing back from her as tebaldo entered sat francesco. tebaldo's lips moved uneasily, as he stood still for a moment, gazing at the little group, his hand on the door. then he closed it quickly behind him, and came forward with a smile. 'good evening,' he said. 'i lost my way in the streets and am a little late. i thought the curtain would be up for the last act.' 'they have called me once,' answered aliandra. 'i said that i was not ready, for i knew you would come.' she was really very handsome and very young, but the mask of paint and powder changed her face and expression almost beyond recognition. even her bright, gold-brown eyes were made to look black and exaggerated by the deep shadows painted with antimony below them, and on the lids. the young hand she held out to tebaldo was whitened with a chalky mixture to the tips of the fingers. she was dressed in the flowing white robe which lucia wears in the mad scene, and the flaring gaslights on each side of the mirror made her face and wig look terribly artificial. tebaldo thought so as he looked at her, and remembered the calm simplicity of corona saracinesca's mature beauty. but he had known aliandra long, and his imagination saw her own face through her paint. 'it was good of you to wait for me,' he said. 'i daresay my brother helped the time to pass pleasantly.' 'i have only just come,' said francesco, quickly. 'i took our mother home--it is far.' 'i did not know that you were coming at all,' replied tebaldo, coldly. 'how is it going?' he asked, sitting down by aliandra. 'another ovation?' 'no. they are waiting for the mad scene, of course--and my voice is as heavy as lead to-night. i shall not please anyone--and it is the first time i have sung lucia in rome. my nerves are in a state--' 'you are not frightened? you--of all people?' 'i am half dead with fright. i am white under my rouge. i can feel it.' 'poor child!' exclaimed francesco, softly, and his eyes lightened as he watched her. 'bah!' tebaldo shrugged his shoulders and smiled. 'she always says that!' 'and sometimes it is true,' answered aliandra, with a sharp sigh. a double rap at the door interrupted the conversation. 'signorina basili! are you ready?' asked a gruff voice outside. 'yes!' replied the young girl, rising with an effort. francesco seized her left hand and kissed it. tebaldo said nothing, but folded his arms and stood aside. he saw on his brother's dark moustache a few grains of the chalky dust which whitened aliandra's fingers. 'do not wait for me when it is over,' she said. 'my aunt is in the house, and will take me home. good night.' 'goodbye,' said tebaldo, looking intently into her face as he opened the door. she started in surprise, and perhaps her face would have betrayed her pain, but the terribly artificial rouge and powder hid the change. 'come and see me to-morrow,' she said to tebaldo, in a low voice, when she was already in the doorway. he did not answer, but kept his eyes steadily on her face. 'signorina basili! you will miss your cue!' cried the gruff voice in the corridor. aliandra hesitated an instant, glancing out and then looking again at tebaldo. 'to-morrow,' she said suddenly, stepping out into the passage. 'to-morrow,' she repeated, as she went swiftly towards the stage. she looked back just before she disappeared, but there was little light, and tebaldo could no longer see her eyes. he stood still by the door. then his brother passed him. 'i am going to hear this act,' said francesco, quietly, as though unaware that anything unusual had happened. before he was out of the door, he felt tebaldo's hand on his shoulder, gripping him hard and shaking him a little. he turned his head, and his face was suddenly pale. tebaldo kept his hand on his brother's shoulder and pushed him back against the wall of the passage, under the solitary gaslight. 'what do you mean by coming here?' he asked. 'how do you dare?' francesco was badly frightened, for he knew tebaldo's ungovernable temper. 'why not?' he tried to ask. 'i have often been here--' 'because i warned you not to come again. because i am in earnest. because i will do you some harm, if you thrust yourself into my way with her.' 'i shall call for help now, unless you let me go,' answered francesco, with white lips. tebaldo laughed savagely. 'what a coward you are!' he cried, giving his brother a final shake and then letting him go. 'and what a fool i am to care?' he added, laughing again. 'brute!' exclaimed francesco, adjusting his collar and smoothing his coat. 'i warned you,' retorted tebaldo, watching him. 'and now i have warned you again,' he added. 'this is the second time. are there no women in the world besides aliandra basili?' 'i knew her first,' objected the younger man, beginning to recover some courage. 'you knew her first? when she was a mere child in randazzo,--when we went to her father about a lease, we both heard her singing,--but what has that to do with it? that was six years ago, and you have hardly seen her since.' 'how do you know?' asked francesco, scornfully. he had gradually edged past tebaldo towards the open end of the passage. 'how do you know that i did not often see her alone before she went to messina, and since then, too?' he smiled as he renewed the question. 'i do not know,' said tebaldo, calmly. 'you are a coward. you are also a most accomplished liar. it is impossible to believe a word you say, good or bad. i should not believe you if you were dying, and if you swore upon the holy sacraments that you were telling me the truth.' 'thank you,' answered francesco, apparently unmoved by the insult. 'but you would probably believe aliandra, would you not?' 'why should i? she is only a woman.' tebaldo turned angrily as he spoke, and his eyelids drooped at the corners, like a vulture's. 'you two are not made to be believed,' he said, growing more cold, 'i sometimes forget, but you soon remind me of the fact again. you said distinctly this evening that you would go home with our mother--' 'so i did,' interrupted francesco. 'i did not promise to stay there--' 'i will not argue with you--' 'no. it would be useless, as you are in the wrong. i am going to hear the act. good night.' francesco walked quickly down the passage. he did not turn to look behind him, but it was not until he was at the back of the stage, groping his way amidst lumber and dust towards the other side, that he felt safe from any further violence. tebaldo had no intention of following. he stood quite still under the gaslight for a few seconds, and then opened the door of the dressing-room again. he knew that the maid was there alone. 'how long was my brother here before i came?' he asked sharply. the woman was setting things in order, packing the tinsel-trimmed gown which the singer had worn in the previous scene. she looked up nervously, for she was afraid of tebaldo. 'a moment, only a moment,' she answered, not pausing in her work, and speaking in a scared tone. tebaldo looked at her and saw that she was frightened. he was not in the humour to believe anyone just then, and after a moment's silence, he turned on his heel and went out. chapter vi 'what strange people there are in the world,' said corona saracinesca to her husband, on the morning after the dinner at which the corleone family had been present. giovanni was reading a newspaper, leaning back in his own especial chair in his wife's morning room. it was raining, and she was looking out of the window. there are not many half-unconscious actions which betray so much of the general character and momentary temper, as an idle pause before closed window panes, and a careless glance down into the street or up at the sky. the fact has not been noticed, but deserves to be. many a man or woman, at an anxious crisis, turns to the window, with the sensation of being alone for a moment, away from the complications created by the other person or persons in the room, free, for an instant, to let the features relax, the eye darken, or the lips smile, as the case may be--off the stage, indeed, as a comedian in the side scenes. or again, when there is no anxiety, one goes from one's work, to take a look at the outside world, not caring to see it, but glad to be away from the task and to give the mind a breathing space. and then, also, the expression of the features changes, and if one stops to think of it, one is aware that the face is momentarily rested. another, who has forgotten trouble and pain for a while, in conversation or in pleasant reading, goes to the window. and the grief, or the pain, or the fear, comes back with a rush and clouds the eyes and bends the brow, till he who suffers turns with something like fear from the contemplation of the outer world and takes up his book, or his talk, or his work, or anything which can help him to forget. with almost all people, there is a sudden change of sensation in first looking out of the window. one drums impatiently on the panes, another bites his lip, a third grows very still and grave, and one, perhaps, smiles suddenly, and then glances back to the room, fearing lest his inward lightness of heart may have betrayed itself. corona had nothing to conceal from giovanni nor from herself. she had realised the rarest and highest form of lasting human happiness, which is to live unparted from the single being loved, with no screen of secret to cast a shadow on either side. such a life can have but few emotions, yet the possibility of the very deepest emotion is always present in it, as the ocean is not rigid when it is quiet, as the strong man asleep is not past waking, nor the singer mute when silent. corona had been moving quietly about the room, giving life to it by her touch, where mechanical hands had done their daily work of dull neatness. she loosened the flowers in a vase, moved the books on the table, pulled the long lace curtains a little out from under the heavy ones, turned a chair here and a knickknack there, set the little calendar on the writing-table, and moved the curtains again. then at last she paused before the window. her lids drooped thoughtfully and her mouth relaxed, as she made the remark which caused giovanni to look up from his paper. 'what strange people there are in the world!' she exclaimed. 'it is fortunate that they are not all like us,' answered giovanni. 'why?' 'the world would stop, i fancy. people would all be happy, as we are, and would shut themselves up, and there would be universal peace, the millennium, and a general cessation of business. then would come the end of all things. of whom are you thinking?' 'of those people who came to dinner last night, and of our boys.' 'of orsino, i suppose. yes--i know--' he paused. 'yes,' said corona, thoughtfully. both were silent for a moment. they thought together, having long been unaccustomed to think apart. at last giovanni laughed quietly. 'our children cannot be exactly like us,' he said. 'they must live their own lives, as we live ours. one cannot make lives for other people, you know.' 'orsino is so apathetic,' said corona. 'he opens his eyes for a moment and looks at things as though he were going to be interested. then he closes them again, and does not care what happens. he has no enthusiasm like ippolito. nothing interests him, nothing amuses him. he is not happy, and he is not unhappy. you could not surprise him. i sometimes think that you could not hurt him, either. he is young, yet he acts like a man who has seen everything, done everything, heard everything, and tasted everything. he does not even fall in love.' corona smiled as she spoke the last words, but her eyes were thoughtful. in her heart, no thoroughly feminine woman can understand that a young man may not be in love for a long time, and may yet be normally sensible. 'i was older than he when you and i met,' observed giovanni. 'yes--but you were different. orsino is not at all like you.' 'nor ippolito either.' 'there is more of you in him than you think, giovanni, though he is so gentle and quiet, and fond of music.' 'the artistic temperament, my dear,--very little like me.' 'there is a curious tenacity under all that.' 'no one has ever thwarted him,' objected giovanni. 'or, rather, he has never thwarted anybody. that is a better way of putting it.' 'i believe he has more strength of character than the other three together. of course, you will say that he is my favourite.' 'no, dear. you are very just. but you are more drawn to him.' 'yes--strangely more--and for something in him which no one sees. it is his likeness to you, i think.' 'together with a certain feminility.' giovanni did not speak contemptuously, but he had always resented ippolito's gentle grace a little. he himself and his other three sons had the strongly masculine temperament of the saracinesca family. he often thought that ippolito should have been a girl. 'do not say that, giovanni,' answered his wife. 'he is not rugged, but he is strong-hearted. the artistic temperament has a certain feminine quality on the surface, by which it feels; but the crude creative force by which it acts is purely masculine.' 'that sounds clever,' laughed giovanni. 'well, there is dear old guache, whom we have known all our lives. he is an instance. you used to think he had a certain feminility, too.' 'so he had.' 'but he fought like a man at mentana; and he thinks like a man, and he certainly paints like a man.' 'yes; that is true. only we never had any artists in the family. it seems odd that our son should have such tendencies. none of the family were ever particularly clever in any way.' 'you are not stupid, at all events.' corona smiled at her husband. for all the world, she would not have had him at all different from his present self. 'besides,' she added, 'you need not think of him as an artist. you can look upon him as a priest.' 'yes, i know,' answered giovanni, without much enthusiasm. 'we never were a priest-breeding family either. we have done better at farming than at praying or playing the piano. ippolito does not know a plough from a harrow, nor a thoroughbred colt from a cart-horse. for my part i do not see the strength you find in him, though i daresay you are right, my dear. you generally are. at all events, he helps the harmony of the family, for he worships orsino, and the two younger ones always pair together.' 'i suppose he will never be put into any position which can show his real character,' said corona, 'but i know i am right.' they were silent for a few minutes. presently giovanni took up his paper again, and corona sat down at her table to write a note. the rain pattered against the window, cheerfully, as it does outside a room in which two happy people are together. 'that d'oriani girl is charming,' said corona, after writing a line or two, but not looking round. 'perhaps orsino will fall in love with her,' observed her husband, his eyes on the newspaper. 'i hope not!' exclaimed corona, turning in her chair, and speaking with far more energy than she had yet shown. 'it is bad blood, giovanni--as bad as any blood in italy, and though the girl is charming, those brothers--well, you saw them.' 'bad faces, both of them. and rather doubtful manners.' 'never mind their manners! but their faces! they are nephews of poor bianca corleone's husband, are they not?' 'yes. they are his brother's children. and they are their grandfather's grandchildren.' 'what did he do?' 'he was chiefly concerned in the betrayal of gaeta--and took money for the deed, too. they have always been traitors. there was a pagliuca who received all sorts of offices and honours from joaquin murat and then advised king ferdinand to have him shot when he was caught at pizzo in calabria. there was a pagliuca who betrayed his brother to save his own life in the last century. it is a promising stock.' 'what an inheritance! i have often heard of them, but i have never met any of them excepting bianca's husband, whom we all hated for her sake.' 'he was not the worst of them, by any means. but i never blamed her much, poor child--and pietro ghisleri knew how to turn any woman's head in those days.' 'why did we ask those people to dinner, after all?' enquired corona, thoughtfully. 'because san giacinto wished it, i suppose. we shall probably know why in two or three years. he never does anything without a reason.' 'and he keeps his reasons to himself.' 'it is a strange thing,' said giovanni. 'that man is the most reticent human being i ever knew, and one of the deepest. yet we are all sure that he is absolutely honest and honourable. we know that he is always scheming, and yet we feel that he is never plotting. there is a difference.' 'of course there is--the difference between strategy and treachery. but i am sorry that his plans should have involved bringing the corleone family into our house. they are not nice people, excepting the girl.' 'my father remarked that the elder of those brothers was like an old engraving he has of cæsar borgia.' 'that is a promising resemblance! fortunately, the times, at least, are changed.' 'in sicily, everything is possible.' the remark was characteristic of giovanni, of a roman, and of modern times. but there was, and is, some truth in it. many things are possible to-day in sicily which have not been possible anywhere else in europe for at least two centuries, and the few foreigners who know the island well can tell tales of sicilians which the world at large could hardly accept even as fiction. chapter vii during the ensuing weeks orsino saw vittoria d'oriani repeatedly, at first by accident, and afterwards because he was attracted by her, and took pains to learn where she and her mother were going, in order to meet her. it was spring. easter had come very early, and as happens in such cases, there was a revival of gaiety after lent. there were garden parties, a recent importation in rome, there were great picnics to the hills, and there were races out at the capannelle; moreover, there were dances at which the windows were kept open all night, until the daylight began to steal in and tell tales of unpleasant truth, so that even fair women drew lace things over their tired faces as they hurried into their carriages in the cold dawn, glad to remember that they had still looked passably well in the candle-light. at one of these balls, late in the season, orsino knew that he should meet vittoria. it was in a vast old palace, from the back of which two graceful bridges crossed the street below to a garden beyond, where there were fountains, and palms, and statues, and walks hedged with box in the old italian manner. there were no very magnificent preparations for the dance, which was rather a small and intimate affair, but there was the magnificent luxury of well-proportioned space, which belonged to an older age, there was the gentle light of several hundred wax candles instead of the cold glare of electricity or the pestilent flame of gas, and all night long there was april moonlight outside, in the old garden, whence the smell of the box, and the myrtle, and of violets, was borne in fitfully through the open windows with each breath of moving air. there was also, that night, a general feeling of being at home and in a measure free from the oppression of social tyranny, and from the disturbing presence of the rich social recruit, who was sown in wealth, so to say, in the middle of the century, and who is now plentifully reaped in vulgarity. 'it is more like the old times than anything i remember for years,' said corona to gianforte campodonico, as they walked slowly through the rooms together. 'it must be the wax candles and the smell of the flowers from the garden,' he answered, not exactly comprehending, for he was not a sensitive man, and was, moreover, considerably younger than corona. but corona was silent, and wished that she were walking with her husband, or sitting alone with him in some quiet corner, for something in the air reminded her of a ball in the frangipani palace, many years ago, when giovanni had spoken to her in a conservatory, and many things had happened in consequence. the wax-candles and the smell of open-air flowers, and the glimpses of moonlight through vast windows may have had something to do with it; but surely there are times and hours, when love is in the air, when every sound is tuneful, and all silence is softly alive, when young voices seek each the other's tone caressingly, and the stealing hand steals nearer to the hand that waits. there was no one to prevent orsino saracinesca from persuading vittoria to go and sit down in one of the less frequented rooms, if he could do so. her mother would be delighted, her brothers were not at the ball, and orsino was responsible to no one for his actions. she had learned many things since she had come to rome, but she did not understand more than half of them, and what she understood least of all was the absolute power which orsino exerted over her when he was present. he haunted her thoughts at other times, too, and she had acquired a sort of conviction that she could not escape from him, which was greatly strengthened by the fact that she did not wish to be free. on his part, his mind was less easy, for he was well aware that he was making love to the girl with her mother's consent, whereas he was not by any means inclined to think that he wished to marry her. such a position might not seem strange to a youth of anglo-saxon traditions; for there is a sort of tacit understanding among the english-speaking races to the effect that young people are never to count on each other till each has got the other up the steps of the altar, that there is nothing disgraceful in breaking an engagement, and that love-making at large, without any intention of marriage, is a harmless pastime especially designed for the very young. the italian view is very different, however, and orsino was well aware that unless he meant to make vittoria d'oriani his wife, he was doing wrong in his own eyes, and in the eyes of the world, in doing his best to be often with her. one result of his conduct was that he frightened away other men. they took it for granted that he wished to marry her, dowerless as she was, and they kept out of his way. the girl was not neglected, however. san giacinto had his own reasons for wishing to be on good terms with her brothers, and he made his wife introduce partners to vittoria at dances, and send men to talk to her at parties. but as soon as orsino came upon the scene, vittoria's companion disappeared, whoever he happened to be at the time. the italian, even when very young, has a good deal of social philosophy when he is not under the influence of an emotion from which he cannot escape. he will avoid falling in love with the wrong person if he can. 'for what?' he asks. 'in order to be unhappy? why?' and he systematically keeps out of the way of temptation, well knowing his own weakness in love matters. but orsino was attracted by the girl and yielded to the attraction, though his manner of yielding was a domination over her whenever they met. his only actual experience of real love had been in his affair with the countess del ferice, before her second marriage. she was a mature woman of strong character and devoted nature, who had resisted him and had sacrificed herself for him, not to him. he had been accustomed to find that resistance in her. but vittoria offered none at all, a fact which gave his rather despotic nature a sudden development, while the absence of opposition made him look upon his disinclination to decide the question of marriage as something he ought to have been ashamed of. at the same time, there was the fact that he had grown somewhat cynical and cold of late years, and if not positively selfish, at least negatively careless of others, when anything pleased him, which was not often. it is bad to have strength and not to use it, to possess power and not to exert it, to know that one is a personage without caring much what sort of a person one may be. that had been orsino's position for years, and it had not improved his character. on this particular evening he was conscious of something much more like emotion than he had felt for a long time. san giacinto had lain in wait for him near the door, and had told him that matters were settled at last and that they were to leave rome within the week to take possession of the corleone lands. the deeds had been signed and the money had been paid. there were no further formalities, and it was time to go to work. orsino nodded, said he was ready, and went off to find vittoria in the ballroom. but there was a little more colour than usual under his dark skin, and his eyes were restless and hungry. he was passing his mother without seeing her, when she touched him on the sleeve, and dropped campodonico's arm. he started a little impatiently, and then stood still, waiting for her to speak. 'has anything happened?' she asked rather anxiously. 'no, mother, nothing--that is--' he hesitated, glancing at campodonico. 'i am going to sicily with san giacinto,' he added in a low voice. corona could not have explained what she felt just then, but she might have described it as a disagreeable chilliness creeping over her strong frame from head to foot. an hour later she remembered it, and the next day, and for many days afterwards, and she tried to account for it by telling herself that the journey was to make a great change in her son's life, or by arguing that she had half unconsciously supposed him about to engage himself to vittoria. but neither explanation was at all satisfactory. she was not imaginative to that extent, as she well knew, and she at last made up her mind that it was an idle coincidence of the kind which some people call a warning, and remember afterwards when anything especial happens, though if nothing particular follows, they forget it altogether. 'why are you going? has it anything to do with the corleone?' she asked, and she was surprised at the unsteadiness of her own voice. 'yes. i will tell you some other time.' 'will you?' 'yes, certainly.' she looked into his eyes a moment, and then took campodonico's arm again. orsino moved on quickly and disappeared in the ballroom they had left, wondering inwardly at his mother's manner as much as she was then wondering herself, and attributing it to her anxiety about his position with regard to vittoria. thinking of that, he stopped short in his walk just as he caught sight of the young girl in the distance, standing beside her mother. a man was before her evidently just asking her to dance. orsino watched them while he tried to get hold of himself and decide what he ought to do. vittoria came forward and swept out with her partner into the middle of the room. orsino slipped back a little behind a group of people, so that she should not easily see him, but he watched her face keenly. her eyes were restless, and she was evidently looking for him, and not thinking of her partner at all. as they came round to his side, orsino felt the blood rise in his throat, and felt that his face was warm; and then, as they swung off to the other side of the big ballroom, he grew cool again, and asked himself what he should do, repeating the question rather helplessly. she came round once more, and just as he felt the same heat of the blood again, he saw that her eyes had caught his. in a flash her expression changed, and the colour blushed in her face. a moment later she stopped, and remained standing with her partner so that orsino could see the back of her head. she half turned towards him two or three times, instinctively; but she would not turn quite round so as to look at him. she knew that she must finish the dance before he could come to her. but he, deeply stirred, and, at the same time, profoundly discontented with himself, suddenly left the room and went on till he stood all alone, out on one of the bridges which crossed the street to the garden at the back of the palace. the bridge was in the shadow, but the white moonlight fell full upon the fountain and the walks beyond; and moonlight has an extraordinary effect on people who do not habitually live in camps, or out of doors, at night. the sun shows us what is, but the moon makes us see what might be. orsino leaned against the stone parapet in the shadow, and made one of those attempts at self-examination which every honourable man has made at least once in his life, and which, with nine men out of ten, lead to no result, because, at such times the mind is in no state to examine anything, least of all itself. indeed, no healthy-minded man resorts to that sort of introspection unless he is in a most complicated situation, since such a man is normally always perfectly conscious of what is honourable and right, without any self-analysis, or picking to pieces of his own conscience. but orsino saracinesca was in great difficulty. he did not question the fact that he was very much in love with vittoria, and that this love for a young girl was something which he had never felt before. that was plain enough, by this time. the real question was, whether he should marry her, or whether he should go away to sicily with san giacinto and try to avoid her in future until he should have more or less forgotten her. he was old enough and sensible enough to foresee the probable consequences of marrying into such a family, and they were such as to check him at the outset. he knew all about the pagliuca people, as his father did, and the phrase 'the worst blood in italy' was familiar to his thoughts. vittoria's mother was, indeed, a harmless soul, provincial and of unusual manners, but not vulgar in the ordinary sense of the word. vittoria's father was said to have been a very good kind of man, who had been outrageously treated by his elder brother. but the strain was bad. there were hideous stories of treachery, such as giovanni had quoted to his wife, which were alone enough to make orsino hesitate. and then, there were vittoria's brothers, for whom he felt the strongest repulsion and distrust. in many ways it would have been wiser for him to marry a girl of the people, a child of trastevere, rather than vittoria d'oriani. he did not believe that any of the taint was on herself, that in her character there was the smallest shade of deceit or unfaithfulness. he found it hard to believe that she was really a corleone at all. his arguments began from a premiss which assumed her practically perfect. had he been alone in the world, he would not have hesitated long, for he could have married her and taken her away for ever--he was enough in love for that. but such a marriage meant that he should bring her brothers intimately into his father's house; that he and his own family must accept tebaldo and francesco pagliuca, and possibly the third brother, whom he did not know, as near relations, to be called, by himself at least, 'thee' and 'thou,' and by their baptismal names. lastly, it meant that vittoria's mother and his own should come into close terms of intimacy, for maria carolina would make the most of the connection with the saracinesca. that thought was the most repugnant of all to the young man, who looked upon his mother as a being apart from the ordinary world and entitled to a sort of veneration. maria carolina would not venerate anybody, he thought. on the other side, there was his honour. he did not care what the young men might think, but he had certainly led the girl herself to believe that he meant to marry her. and he was in love. compared with giving up vittoria, and with doing something which seemed dishonourable, the accumulated wickedness of generations of the corleone shrank into insignificance. there was a sort of shock in his mind as he brought up this side of the question. had there been any difficulty to be overcome in winning vittoria's own consent, it would have been easier to decide. but he knew that he had but a word to say, and his future would be sealed irrevocably in a promise which he never would break. and in a day or two he was to leave rome for a long time. it was clear that he ought to decide at once, this very night. his nature rejected the idea of taking advice, and, generally, of confiding in anyone. otherwise, he might have laid the matter before his mother, in the certainty that her counsel would be good and honourable. or he might have told his favourite brother the whole story, and ippolito would assuredly have told him what was right. but orsino was not of those who get help from the judgment or the conscience of another. it seemed to him that he stayed a long time on the bridge, thinking of all these things, for the necessity of finally weighing them had come upon him suddenly, since san giacinto had given him warning to get ready for the journey. but presently he was aware that the distant music had changed, that the waltz during which he had watched vittoria was over, and that a square dance had begun. he smiled rather grimly to himself as he reflected that he might stand there till morning, without getting any nearer to a conclusion. he turned his back on the moonlight impatiently and went back into the palace. in the distance, through an open door, he saw faces familiar to him all his life, moving to and fro rapidly in a quadrille. he watched them as he walked straight on towards the ballroom, through the rather dimly lighted chamber with which the bridge communicated. he was startled by the sound of vittoria d'oriani's voice, close beside him, calling him softly but rather anxiously. 'don orsino! don orsino!' she was all alone, pale, and standing half hidden by the heavy curtain on one side of the door opening to the ballroom. orsino stood still a moment, in great surprise at seeing her thus left to herself in an empty room. then he went close to her, holding out his hand. 'what is the matter?' he asked in a low voice, for several men were standing about on the other side of the open door, watching the dance. 'nothing--nothing,' she repeated nervously, as he drew her aside. 'who left you here alone?' asked orsino, in displeasure at some unknown person. 'i--i came here--' she faltered. 'i slipped out--it was hot, in there.' orsino laughed softly. 'you must not get isolated in this way,' he said. 'it is not done here, you know. people would think it strange. you are always supposed to be with someone--your partner, or your mother. but i am glad, since i have found you.' 'yes, i have found you,' she said softly, repeating his words. 'i mean--' she corrected herself hurriedly--'i mean you have found me.' orsino looked down to her averted face, and in the dim light he saw the blush at her mistake--too great a mistake in speech not to have come from a strong impulse within. yet he could hardly believe that she had seen him go out that way alone, and had followed in the hope of finding him. they sat down together, not far from the door opening upon the bridge. the colour had faded again from vittoria's face, and she was pale. during some moments neither spoke, and the music of the quadrille irritated orsino as he listened to it. seeing that he was silent, vittoria looked up sideways and met his eyes. 'it was really very warm in the ballroom,' she said, to say something. 'yes,' he answered absently, his eyes fixed on hers. 'yes--i daresay it was.' again there was a pause. 'what is the matter?' asked vittoria at last, and her tone sank with each word. 'i am going away,' said orsino, slowly, with fixed eyes. she did not start nor show any surprise, but the colour began to leave her lips. the irritating quadrille went pounding on in the distance, through the hackneyed turns of the familiar figures, accompanied by the sound of many voices talking and of broken laughter now and then. 'you knew it?' asked orsino. 'how?' 'no one told me; but i knew it--i guessed it.' orsino looked away, and then turned to her again, his glance drawn back to her by something he could not resist. 'vittoria,' he began in a very low tone. he had never called her by that name before. the quadrille was very noisy, and she did not understand. she leaned forward anxiously towards him when she spoke. 'what did you say? i did not hear. the music makes such a noise!' the man was more than ever irritated at the sound; and as she bent over to him, he could almost feel her breath on his cheek. the blood rose in him, and he sprang to his feet impatiently. 'come!' he said. 'come outside! we cannot even hear each other here.' vittoria rose, too, without a word, and went with him, walking close beside him, and glancing at his face. she was excessively pale now; and all the golden light seemed to have faded at once, even from her hair and eyes, till she looked delicate and almost fragile beside the big dark man. 'out of doors?' she asked timidly, at the threshold. 'yes--it is very warm,' answered orsino, in a voice that was a little hoarse. once out on the bridge, in the shadow, over the dark street, he stopped, and instantly his hand found hers and closed all round it, covering it altogether. vittoria could not have spoken just then, for she was trembling from head to foot. the air was full of strange sounds, and the trees were whirling round one another like mad black ghosts in the moonlight. when she looked up, she could see orsino's eyes, bright in the shadow. she turned away, and came back to them more than once; then their glances did not part any more, and his face came nearer to hers. 'we love each other,' he said; and his voice was warm and alive again. she felt that she saw his soul in his face, but she could not speak. her eyes looking up to his, she slowly bent her little head twice, while her lips parted like an opening flower, and faintly smiled at the sweetness of an unspoken word. he bent nearer still, and she did not draw back. his blood was hot and singing in his ears. then, all at once, something in her appealed to him, her young delicacy, her dawn-like purity, her exquisite fresh maidenhood. it seemed a crime to touch her lips as though she had been a mature woman. he dropped her hand, and his long arms brought her tenderly and softly up to his breast; and as her head fell back, and her lids drooped, he kissed her eyes with infinite gentleness, first the one and then the other, again and again, till she smiled in the dark, and hid her face against his coat, and he found only her silky hair to kiss again. 'i love you--say it, too,' he whispered in her ear. 'ah, yes! so much, so dearly!' came her low answer. then he took her hand again, and brought it up to his lips close to her face; and his lips pressed the small fingers passionately, almost roughly, very longingly. 'come,' he said. 'we must be alone--come into the garden.' he led her across the bridge, and suddenly they were in the clear moonlight; but he went on quickly, lest they should be noticed through the open door from within. the air was warm and still and dry, as it often is in spring after the evening chill has passed. 'we could not go back into the ballroom, could we?' he asked, as he drew her away along a gravel walk between high box hedges. 'no. how could we--now?' her hand tightened a little on his arm. they stopped before a statue at the end of the walk, full in the light, a statue that had perhaps been a daphne, injured ages ago, and stone-gray where it was not very white, with flying draperies broken off short in the folds, and a small, frightened face that seemed between laughing and crying. one fingerless hand pointed at the moon. orsino leaned back against the pedestal, and lovingly held vittoria before him, and looked at her, and she smiled, her lips parting again, and just glistening darkly in the light as a dewy rose does in moonlight. the music was very far away now, but the plashing of the fountain was near. 'i love you!' said orsino once more, as though no other words would do. a deep sigh of happiness said more than the words could, and the stillness that followed meant most of all, while vittoria gently took his two hands and nestled closer to him, fearlessly, like a child or a young animal. 'but you will not go away--now?' she asked pleadingly. orsino's face changed a little, as he remembered the rest of his life, and all he had undertaken to do. he had dreamily hoped that he might forget it. 'we will not talk of that,' he answered. 'how can i help it, if it is true? you will not go--say you will not go!' 'i have promised. but there is time--or, at least, i shall soon come back. it is not so far to sicily--' 'sicily? you are going to sicily?' she seemed surprised. 'i thought you knew where i was going--' he began. 'no--i guessed; i was not sure. tell me! why must you go?' 'i must go because i have promised. san giacinto would think it very strange if i changed my mind.' 'it is stranger that you should go--and with him! yes--i see--you are going to take possession of our old place--' her voice suddenly expressed the utmost anxiety, as she sprang from one conclusion to another without a mistake. she pressed his hands tightly, and her face grew pale again with fear for him. 'oh please, please, stay here!' she cried. 'if it were anywhere else--if it were to do anything else--' 'why?' he asked, in surprise. 'i thought you did not care much for the old place. if i had known that it would hurt you--' 'me? no! it is not that--it is for you! they will kill you. oh, do not go! do not go!' she spoke in the greatest distress. orsino was suddenly inclined to laugh, but he saw how much in earnest she was. 'who will kill me?' he asked, as though humouring her. 'what do you mean?' vittoria was more than in earnest; she was almost in terror for him. her small hands clung to his arm nervously, catching him and then loosing their hold. but she said nothing, though she seemed to be hesitating in some sort of struggle. though she loved him with all the whole-hearted impulses of her nature, it was not easy to tell him what she meant. the sicilian blood revolted at the thought of betraying her wild brother, who had joined the outlaws, and would be in waiting for orsino and his cousin when they should try to take possession of the lands. 'you must not go!' she cried, suddenly throwing her arms round his neck as though she could keep him by force. 'you shall not go--oh, no, no, no!' 'vittoria--you have got some mad idea in your head--it is absurd--who should try to kill me? why? i have no enemies. as for the brigands, everyone laughs at that sort of thing nowadays. they belong to the comic opera!' he let himself laugh a little at last, for the idea really amused him. but vittoria straightened herself beside him and grew calmer, for she was sensible and saw that he thought her foolishly afraid. 'in rome the outlaws belong to the comic opera--yes,' she answered gravely. 'but in sicily they are a reality. i am a sicilian, and i know. people are killed by them almost every day, and the mafia protects them. they are better armed than the soldiers, for they carry winchester rifles--' 'what do you know about winchester rifles?' asked orsino, smiling. 'my brothers have them,' she said quietly. 'and the outlaws almost all have them.' 'i daresay. but why should they wish to kill me? they do not know me.' vittoria was silent a moment, making up her mind what she should tell him. she was not positively sure of anything, but she had heard francesco say lately that camaldoli was a place easier to buy than to hold while ferdinando was alive, and she knew what that meant, when coupled with the occasional comments upon ferdinando's mode of life, which escaped in francesco's incautious conversation at home. to a sicilian, the meaning of the whole situation was not hard to guess. at the same time vittoria was both desperately anxious for orsino and afraid that he might laugh at her fears, as he had done already. 'this is it,' she said at last in a low and earnest voice. 'it has nothing to do with you or your cousin, personally, nor with your taking possession of camaldoli, so far as i am concerned. but it is a wild and desolate place, and all through this year a large band of outlaws have been in the forests on the other side of the valley. they would never have hurt my brothers, who are sicilians and poor, and who did not trouble them either. but you and your cousin are great people, and rich, and not sicilians, and the mafia will be against you, and will support the brigands if they prevent you from taking possession of camaldoli. you would be opposed to the mafia; you would bring soldiers there to fight the outlaws. therefore they will kill you. it is certain. no one ever escapes them. do you understand? now you will not go, of course, since i have explained it all.' orsino was somewhat puzzled, though it all seemed so clear to her. 'this mafia--what is it?' he asked. 'we hear it spoken of, but we do not any of us really know who is the head of it, nor what it can do.' 'it has no head,' answered the young girl. 'perhaps it is hard to explain, because you are not a sicilian. the mafia is not a band, nor anything of that sort. it is the resistance which the whole sicilian people opposes to all kinds of government and authority. it is, how shall i say? a sentiment, a feeling, a sort of wild love of our country, that is a secret, and will do anything. with us, everybody knows what it is, and evil comes to everyone who opposes it--generally death.' 'we are not much afraid of it, since we have the law on our side,' said orsino, rather incredulously. 'you are not afraid because you do not understand,' answered vittoria, her voice beginning to express her anxiety again. 'if you knew what it is, as we know, you would be very much afraid.' she spoke so simply and naturally that it did not occur to orsino to be offended at the slight upon his courage. 'we shall take an escort of soldiers to please you,' he said, smiling, and drawing her to him again, as though the discussion were over. but her terror for him broke out again. she had not told him all she knew, still less all she suspected. 'but i am in earnest!' she cried, holding herself back from him so that he could see her eyes. 'it is true earnest, deadly earnest. they mean to kill you--in the end, they will! oh, tell me that you will not go!' 'san giacinto has bought the place----' 'let him go, and be killed, then, and perhaps they will be satisfied! what do i care for anyone but you? is it nothing, that i love you so? that we have told each other? that you say you love me? is it all nothing but words, mere words, empty words?' 'no, it is my whole life, dear----' 'then your life is mine, and you have no right to throw it away, just to please your cousin. let him get a regiment of soldiers sent there by the government to live in santa vittoria. then after three or four years the brigands will be all gone.' 'three or four years!' orsino laughed, in spite of himself. 'ah, you do not know!' exclaimed vittoria, sadly. 'you do not know our country, nor our people. you think it is like rome, all shopkeepers and policemen, and sixty noble families, with no mafia! you laugh now--but when they have killed you i shall not live to laugh again. am i your life? then you are mine. what will there be without you, when they have killed you? and the winchester rifles shoot so far, and the outlaws aim so straight! how can you be saved? do you think it is nothing that i should know that you are going to your death?' 'it is an exaggeration,' said orsino, trying to soothe her. 'such things are not done in a civilised country in the nineteenth century.' 'such things? ah, and worse, far worse! last year they buried a man up to his neck in the earth, alive, and left him there to die, in the woods not far from camaldoli, because they thought he was a spy! and one betrayed some of the band last summer, and they did not kill him at once, but caught him and tortured him, so that it took him three days to die. you do not know. you laugh, but you do not know what people there are in sicily, nor what sicilians will do when they are roused. promise me that you will not go!' 'even if all you tell me were true, i should go,' answered orsino. 'will nothing keep you from going?' asked the girl, piteously. 'you will laugh at all this when i come back to you. you will wonder how you could have tried to frighten me with such tales.' she looked at him a long time in silence, and then her lip quivered, so that she quickly raised one hand to her mouth to hide it. 'it would have been better if i had never left the convent,' she said in a broken voice. 'when they have killed you, i shall go back and die there.' 'when i come back, we shall be married, love--' 'oh, no--not if you go to camaldoli--we shall never be married in this world.' the slight and graceful girl shook all over for a moment, and then seemed to grow smaller, as though something crushed her. but there were no tears in her eyes, though she pressed her fingers on her lips as though to force back a sob. 'let us go back,' she said. 'i want to go home--i can pray for you, if i cannot save you. god will hear me, though you do not, and god knows that it will be your death.' he put his arm about her and tried to comfort her, but she would not again lift her face, and he kissed her hair once more, when they were again in the shadow on the bridge. then they waited till no one was passing through the small room, and went in silently to find her mother. she stopped him at the door of the ballroom. 'promise me that you will not speak to my mother nor my brothers about--about us,' she said in a low voice. 'very well. not till i come back, if you wish it,' he answered. and they went in amongst the people unnoticed. chapter viii vittoria realised that it was beyond her power to keep orsino in rome, and she was in great trouble. she had begged him not to speak of their betrothal, scarcely knowing why she made the request, but she was afterwards very glad that she had done so. to her, he was a condemned man, and her betrothal was a solemn binding of herself to keep faith with a beloved being who must soon be dead. she did not believe that she could really outlive him, but if heaven should be so unkind to her, she had already made up her mind to return to the convent where she had been educated, and to end her days as a nun. the acute melancholy which belongs to the people of the far south, as well as of the far north, of norway and of sicily or egypt alike, at once asserted itself and took possession of her. the next time orsino saw her he was amazed at the change. the colour was all gone from her face, her lips were tightly set, and her brown eyes followed him with a perpetual, mute anxiety. her radiance was veiled, and her beauty was grievously diminished. it was at a garden party, in a great, old villa beyond the walls, two days after the dance. orsino had not been able to see her in the meantime, and had wisely abstained from visiting her mother, lest, in any way, he should betray their joint secret. she was already in the garden when he arrived with corona, who caught sight of vittoria from a distance and noted the change in her face. 'vittoria d'oriani looks ill,' said the princess, and she went towards her at once. she was too tactful to ask the girl what was the matter, but she saw how vittoria's eyes could not keep from orsino, and she half guessed the truth, though her son's face was impenetrable just then. an old friend came up and spoke to her, and she left the two alone. they quietly moved away from the more crowded part of the garden, walking silently side by side, till they came to a long walk covered by the interlacing branches of ilex trees. another couple was walking at some distance before them. orsino glanced down at vittoria, and tried to say something, but it was not easy. he had not realised how the mere sight of her stirred him, until he found himself speechless when he wished to say many things. 'you are suffering,' he said softly, at last. 'what is it?' 'you know,' she answered. 'what is the use of talking about it? i have said all--but tell me only when you are going.' 'to-morrow morning. i shall be back in a fortnight.' 'you will never come back,' said vittoria, in a dull and hopeless tone. she spoke with such conviction that orsino was silent for a moment. he had not the smallest belief in any danger, but he did not know how to argue with her. 'i have thought it all over,' she went on. 'if you try to live there, you will certainly be killed. but if you only go once, there is a chance--a poor, miserable, little chance. let them think that you are coming up from piedimonte, by way of randazzo. it is above randazzo that the black lands begin, all lava and ashes, with deep furrows in which a man can lie hidden to shoot. that is where they will try to kill you. go the other way, round by catania. it is longer, but they will not expect you, and you can get a guide. they may not find out that you have changed your plan. if they should know it, they could kill you even more easily on that side, in the narrow valley; but they need not know it.' 'nothing will happen to me on either side,' said orsino carelessly. vittoria bent her head and walked on in silence beside him. 'i did not wish to talk about all that,' he continued. 'there are much more important things. when i come back we must be married soon--' 'we shall never be married if you go to sicily,' answered vittoria in the same dull voice. it was a fixed idea, and orsino felt the hopelessness of trying to influence her, together with a pardonable impatience. the couple ahead of them reached the end of the walk, turned, met them, and passed them with a greeting, for they were acquaintances. where the little avenue ended there was a great fountain of travertine stone, behind which, in the wide arch of the opening trees, they could see the campagna and the sabine mountains to the eastward. vittoria stopped when they reached the other side of the basin, which was moss-grown but full of clear water that trickled down an almost shapeless stone triton. the statue and the fountain hid them from any one who might be coming up the walk, and at their feet lay the broad green campagna. they were quite alone. the young girl raised her eyes, and she looked already as though she had been in an illness. 'we cannot stay more than a moment,' she said. 'if people see us going off together, they will guess. i want it to be all my secret. i want to say goodbye to you--for the last time. i shall remember you always as you are now, with the light on your face.' she looked at him long, and her eyes slowly filled with tears, which did not break nor run over, but little by little subsided again, taking her grief back to her heart. orsino's brows frowned with pain, for he saw how profoundly she believed that she was never to see him again, and it hurt him that for him she should be so hurt, most of all because he was convinced that there was no cause. 'we go to-morrow,' he said. 'we shall be in messina the next day. on the day after that go and see my mother, and she will tell you that she has had news of our safe arrival. what more can i say? i am sure of it.' but vittoria only looked long and earnestly into his face. 'i want to remember,' she said in a low voice. 'for a fortnight?' orsino smiled lovingly, and took her hand. 'for ever,' she answered very gravely, and her fingers clutched his suddenly and hard. he still smiled, for he could find nothing to say against such possession of presentiment. common sense never has anything effectual to oppose to conviction. 'goodbye,' she said softly. 'goodbye, orsino.' she had not called him by his name yet, and it sounded like an enchantment to him, though it was a rough name in itself. the breeze stirred the ilex leaves overhead in the spring afternoon, and the water trickled down, with a pleasant murmur, into the big basin. it was all lovely and peaceful and soft, except the look in her despairing eyes. that disturbed him as he met it and saw no change in it, but always the same hopeless pain. 'come,' he said quietly, 'this is not sensible. do i look like a man who is going to be killed like a dog in the street, without doing something to help myself?' her eyes filled again. 'oh, pray--please--do not speak like that! say goodbye to me--i cannot bear it any longer--and yet it kills me to let you go!' she turned from him and covered her eyes with her hands for a moment, while he put his arm round her reassuringly. then, all at once, she looked up. 'i will be brave--goodbye!' she said quickly. it was a silent leave-taking after that, for he could not say much. his only answer to her must be his safe return, but as they went back along the walk she felt that she was with him for the last time. it was like going with him to execution. orsino walked back to the city alone, thinking over her words and her face, and wondering whether there could be anything in presentiments of evil. he had never had any himself, that he could remember, and he had never seen anybody so thoroughly under the influence of one as vittoria seemed to be. before dinner he went to see san giacinto, whom he found alone in his big study, sitting in his huge chair before his enormous table. he was so large that he had his own private furniture made to suit his own dimensions. the table was covered with note-books and papers, very neatly arranged, and the gray-haired giant was writing a letter. he looked up as orsino entered and uttered a sort of inarticulate exclamation of satisfaction. then he went on writing, while orsino sat down and watched him. 'do you happen to have a gun license?' asked san giacinto, without looking up. 'of course.' 'put it in your pocket for the journey,' was the answer, as the pen went on steadily. 'is there any game about camaldoli?' enquired orsino, after a pause. 'brigands,' replied san giacinto, laconically, and still writing. he would have said 'woodcock' in the same tone, being a plain man and not given to dramatic emphasis. orsino laughed a little incredulously, but said nothing as he sat waiting for his kinsman to finish his letter. his eyes wandered about the room, and presently they fell on a stout sole-leather bag which stood by a chair near the window. on the chair itself lay two leathern gun-cases obviously containing modern rifles, as their shape and size showed. with a man's natural instinct for arms, orsino rose and took one of the weapons out of its case, and examined it. 'winchesters,' said san giacinto, still driving his pen. 'i see,' answered orsino, feeling the weight, and raising the rifle to his shoulder as though to try the length of the stock. 'most people prefer them in sicily,' observed san giacinto, who had signed his name and was folding his note carefully. 'what do you want them for?' asked the younger man, still incredulous. 'it is the custom of the country to carry them down there,' said the other. 'besides, there are brigands about. i told you so just now.' san giacinto did not like to repeat explanations. 'i thought you were joking,' remarked orsino. 'i never did that. i suppose we shall not have the luck to fall in with any of those fellows, but there has been a good deal of trouble lately, and we shall not be particularly popular as romans going to take possession of sicilian lands. we should be worth a ransom too, and by this time the whole country knows that we are coming.' 'then we may really have some excitement,' said orsino, more surprised than he would show at his cousin's confirmation of much that vittoria had said. 'how about the mafia?' he asked by way of leading san giacinto into conversation. 'how will it look at us?' 'the mafia is not a man,' answered san giacinto, bluntly. 'the mafia is the sicilian character--sicilian honour, sicilian principles. it is an idea, not an institution. it is what makes it impossible to govern sicily.' 'or to live there,' suggested orsino. 'except with considerable tact. you will find out something about it very soon, if you try to manage that place. but if you are nervous you had better not try.' 'i am not nervous, i believe.' 'no, it is of no use to be. it is better to be a fatalist. fatalism gives you your own soul, and leaves your body to the chemistry of the universe, where it belongs. if your body comes into contact with something that does not agree with it, you die. that is all.' there was an admirable directness in san giacinto's philosophy, as orsino knew. they made a final agreement about meeting at the station on the following morning, and orsino went home a good deal less inclined to treat vittoria's presentiments lightly. it had been characteristic of san giacinto that he had hitherto simply forgotten to mention that there might be real danger in the expedition to camaldoli, and it was equally in accordance with orsino's character to take the prospect of it simply and gravely. there was a strong resemblance between the two kinsmen, and orsino understood his cousin better than his father or any of his brothers. he had already explained to his mother what he was going to do, and she had been glad to learn that he had found something to interest him. both corona and sant' ilario had the prevailing impression that the sicilian difficulties were more or less imaginary. that is what most romans think, and the conviction is general in the north of italy. as orsino said nothing about his conversation with san giacinto on that last evening, his father and mother had not the slightest idea that there was danger before him, and as they had both noticed his liking for vittoria, they were very glad that he should go away just then, and forget her. the old prince bade him goodbye that night. 'whatever you do, my boy,' he said, shaking his snowy old head energetically, 'do not marry a sicilian girl.' the piece of advice was so unexpected that orsino started slightly, and then laughed, as he took his grandfather's hand. it was oddly smooth, as the hands of very old men are, but it was warm still, and not so feeble as might have been expected. 'and if you should get into trouble down there,' said the head of the house, who had known sicily seventy years earlier, 'shoot first. never wait to be shot at.' 'it is not likely that there will be much shooting nowadays,' laughed sant' ilario. 'that does not make my advice bad, does it?' asked old saracinesca, turning upon his son, for the least approach to contradiction still roused his anger instantly. 'oh no!' answered giovanni. 'it is very good advice.' 'of course it is,' growled the old gentleman, discontentedly. 'i never gave anyone bad advice in my life. but you boys are always contradicting me.' giovanni smiled rather sadly. it was not in the nature of things that men over ninety years old should live much longer, but he felt what a break in the household's life the old man's death must one day make, when the vast vitality should be at last worn out. chapter ix orsino travelled down to naples with san giacinto in that peculiar state of mind in which an unsentimental but passionate man finds himself when he is leaving the woman he loves in order to go and do something which he knows must be done, which he wishes to do, and which involves danger and difficulty. san giacinto did not say much more about brigands, or the mafia, but he talked freely of the steps to be taken on arriving in messina, in order to get a proper escort of soldiers from piedimonte to camaldoli, and it was perfectly clear that he anticipated trouble. orsino was surprised to find that he expected to have four or five carabineers permanently quartered at camaldoli, by way of protection, and that he had already applied in the proper quarter to have the men sent to meet him. then he began to talk of the projected railway and of the questions of engineering involved. orsino felt lonely in his society, and it was a sensation to which he was not accustomed. it was long since he had known what it was to miss a woman's eyes and a woman's voice, and he had not thought that he should know it again. as the train ran on, hour after hour, he grew more silent, not wondering at himself, but accepting quite simply the fact that it hurt him to leave vittoria far behind, and that he longed for her presence more and more. he could not help thinking how easy it would be for him to refuse to go on, and to take the next train back from naples to rome, and to see her to-morrow. he would not have done such a thing for the world, but he could not escape from the rather contemptible pleasure of thinking about it. late in the afternoon the steamer that was to take them to messina got under way--an old-fashioned, uncomfortable boat, crowded with people of all kinds, for the vessel was to go on to malta on the next day. at the bad dinner in the dim cabin the tables were full, and many of the people were talking in the maltese dialect, which is an astonishing compound of italian and arabic, perfectly incomprehensible both to arabs and italians. they stared at san giacinto because he was a giant, and evidently talked about him in their own language, which irritated orsino, though the big man seemed perfectly indifferent. neither cared to speak, and they got through their abominable dinner in silence and went up to smoke on deck. orsino leaned upon the rail and gazed longingly at the looming mountains, behind which the full moon was rising. he was not sentimental, for italian men rarely are, but like all his fellow-countrymen he was alive to the sensuous suggestions of nature at certain times, and the shadowy land, the rising moon, the gleaming ripple of the water, and the evening breeze on his face, brought vittoria more vividly than ever to his mind. he looked up at san giacinto, and even the latter's massive and gloomy features seemed to be softened by the gentle light and the enchantment of the southern sea. unconsciously he was more closely drawn to the man of his own blood, after being jostled in the crowd of doubtful passengers who filled the steamer. it was not in his nature to make confidences, but he wished that his friend and kinsman knew that he was in love with vittoria and meant to marry her. it would have made the journey less desolate and lonely. he was still young, as san giacinto would have told him, with grim indifference, if orsino had unburdened his heart at that moment. but he did not mean to do that. he leaned over the rail and smoked in silence, looking from the moon to the rippling water and back again, and wishing that the night were not before him, but that he were already in messina with something active to do. to be doing the thing would be to get nearer to vittoria, since he could return with a clear conscience as soon as it should be done. at last he spoke, in a careless tone. 'my grandfather gave me some advice last night,' he said. 'never to marry a sicilian girl, and always to shoot first if there were any shooting to be done.' 'provided that you do not marry the corleone girl, i do not see why you should not take a sicilian wife if you please,' answered san giacinto, calmly. 'why should a man not marry vittoria d'oriani?' enquired orsino, startled to find himself so suddenly speaking of what filled him. 'i did not say 'a man' in general. i meant you. it would be a bad match. it would draw you into relationship with the worst blood in the country, and that is a great objection to it. then she is a niece, and her brothers are nephews, of that old villain corleone who married one of the campodonico women. she died of unhappiness, i believe, and i do not wonder. have you noticed that none of the campodonico will have anything to do with them? even old donna francesca--you know?--the saint who lives in the palazzetto borgia--she told your mother that she hoped never to know a corleone by sight again. they are disliked in rome. but you would never be such an arrant fool as to go and fall in love with the girl, i suppose, though she is charming, and i can see that you admire her. not very clever, i fancy,--brought up by a museum of old sicilian ladies in a palermo convent,--but very charming.' it was an unexpectedly long speech, on an unexpected theme, and it was fortunate that it contained nothing which could wound orsino's feelings through vittoria; for, in that case, he would have quarrelled with his cousin forthwith, not being of a patient disposition. as it was, the young man glanced up sharply from time to time, looking out for some depreciatory expression. he was glad when san giacinto had finished speaking. 'if i wished to marry her,' said orsino, 'i should not care who her relations might be.' 'you would find yourself caring a great deal afterwards, if they made trouble with your own people. but i admit that the girl has charm and some beauty, and it is only fools who need clever wives to think for them. good night. we may have a long day to-morrow, and we shall land about seven in the morning. i am going to bed.' orsino watched the huge figure as it bent low and disappeared down the companion, and he was glad that san giacinto had taken himself off without talking any more about vittoria. he stayed on deck another hour, watching the light on the water, and then went below. he and his cousin had a cabin together, and he found the old giant asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a cloak, with his long legs resting on a portmanteau and extending half across the available space, while he had widened the transom for his vast shoulders by the help of a camp stool. he slept soundly, almost solemnly, under the small swinging oil-lamp, and there was something grand and soldier-like about his perfect indifference to discomfort. in a corner of the cabin, among a quantity of traps, the two rifles stood upright in their leathern cases. it was long before orsino fell asleep. he was glad when they got ashore at last in the early morning. messina has the reputation of being the dirtiest city in all italy, and it has the disagreeable peculiarity of not possessing a decent inn of any sort. san giacinto and orsino sat down in a shabby and dirty room to drink certain vile coffee which was brought up to them on little brass trays from a café at the corner of the street. san giacinto produced a silver flask and poured a dose of spirits into his cup, and offered orsino some; but the younger man had not been bred in the country and had never acquired the common italian habit of strengthening bad coffee with alcohol. so he consoled his taste with cigarettes. san giacinto found that it would be impossible to proceed to camaldoli till the following day, and the two men spent the morning and most of the afternoon in making the necessary arrangements. it was indispensable to see the officer in command of the carabineers and the prefect of the province, and san giacinto knew that it would be wiser to send certain supplies up from messina. 'i suppose that someone is there to hand the place over?' said orsino. 'tebaldo pagliuca said that we should make enquiries of an old notary called basili, in randazzo, as his brother, being displeased with the sale, would probably refuse to meet us. basili is to have the keys and will send a man with us. we shall have to rough it for a day or two.' 'do you mean to say that they have locked the place up and left it without even a servant in charge?' asked orsino. 'apparently. we shall know when we get there. i daresay that we may have to make our own coffee and cook our own food. it is rather a lonely neighbourhood, and the people whom ferdinando pagliuca employed have probably all left.' 'it sounds a little vague,' observed orsino. 'i suppose we shall find horses to take us up?' 'that is all arranged. we shall go up in a carriage, with four or five mounted carabineers, who will stay with us till they are relieved by others. they will all be waiting at the town of piedimonte, above the station. i daresay that ruffian has carried off the furniture, too, and we may have to sleep on the floor in our cloaks.' 'it would have been sensible to have brought a servant with us.' 'no. servants get into the way when there is trouble.' orsino lighted another cigarette and said nothing. he was beginning to think that the whole thing sounded like an expedition into an enemy's country. they were dining in a queer little restaurant built over the water, at the end of the town towards the faro. it was evidently the fashionable resort at that time of the year, and orsino studied the faces of the guests at the other tables. he thought that many of them were like tebaldo pagliuca, though with less malignity in their faces; but now and then he heard words spoken with the unmistakable neapolitan accent, showing that all were not sicilians. 'they killed a carabineer close to camaldoli last week,' said san giacinto, thoughtfully dividing a large slice of swordfish, which is the local delicacy. 'one of them put on the dead soldier's uniform, passed himself off for a carabineer, and arrested the bailiff of the duca di fornasco that night, and marched him out of the village. they carried him off to the woods, and he has not been heard of since. he had given some information against them in the winter, so they will probably take some pains to kill him slowly, and send his head back to his relations in a basket of tomatoes in a day or two.' 'are those things positively true?' asked orsino, incredulous even now. 'the story was in the paper this morning, and i asked the prefect. he said it was quite exact. you see the rifles may be useful, after all, and the carabineers are rather more indispensable than food and drink.' again orsino thought of all vittoria had told him, and he realised that whether the wild tales were literally true or not, she was not the only person who believed them. just then a long fishing-boat ran past the little pier, close to the place where he was sitting at table. six men were sending her along with her sharp stern foremost, as they generally do, standing to their long oars and throwing their whole strength into the work, for they were late, and the current would turn against them when the moon rose, as everyone knows who lives in messina. orsino did not remember that he had ever seen just such types of men, bare-headed, dark as arabs, square-jawed, sinewy, fierce-eyed, with grave, thin lips, every one of them a fighting match for three or four neapolitans. they were probably the first genuine sicilians of the people whom he had ever seen, and they were not like any other italians. san giacinto watched them too, and he smiled a little, as though the sight gave him satisfaction. 'that is the reason why there is no salt-tax in sicily,' he said. 'that is also the reason why italy is ruled by a single sicilian, by crispi. good or bad, he is a man, at all events--and those fellows are men. i would rather have one of those fisherman at my elbow in danger, than twenty bragging piedmontese, or a hundred civilised tuscans.' 'but they are treacherous,' observed orsino. 'no, they are not,' answered the older man thoughtfully. 'they hate authority and rebel against it, and the mafia idea keeps them together like one man. successful revolution is always called patriotism, and unsuccessful rebellion is always branded as treachery or treason. i have heard that somewhere, and it is true. but what we want in italy is men, not ideas; action, not talk; honesty, not policy.' 'we shall never get those things,' said orsino, who was naturally pessimistic. 'italian unity has come too late for a renascence, and too soon for a new birth.' san giacinto smiled rather contemptuously. 'you are an aristocrat, my dear boy,' he answered. 'you want the clear wine without the filthy, fermenting must.' 'i think we have the same name, you and i,' observed orsino. 'yes, but i should be what i am, if i had been called moscetti.' 'and i?' inquired orsino, his eyes kindling a little at the implied contrast of powers. 'if you had been plain signor moscetti, you would have been a very different kind of man. you would have worked hard at architecture, i suppose, and you would have acquired an individuality. as it is, you have not much more than the individuality of your class, and very little of your own. you are a product, whereas i was forced to become a producer when i was very young--a worker, in other words. socially, i am a saracinesca, like you; morally and actually, i have been a man of the people all my life, because i began among the people. i have made myself what i am. you were made what you are by somebody who lived in the twelfth century. i do not blame you, and i do not boast about myself. we like each other, but we are fundamentally different, and we emphatically do not like the same things. we are different kinds of animals that happen to be called by the same name.' 'i tried to work once,' said orsino, thoughtfully. 'a man cannot do that sort of work against the odds of sixty-four quarterings and an unlimited fortune. but you had the instinct, just as i have it. you and i have more in common with those fishermen who just went by, than we have with most of our friends in rome. we are men, at all events, as i said of crispi.' orsino was silent, for he was not in the humour to argue about anything, and he saw the truth of much that his cousin had said, and felt a hopelessness about doing anything in the world with which he had long been familiar. the sun had gone down, leaving a deep glow on the calabrian mountains, on the other side of the straits, and the water rippled with the current like purple silk. to the left, the heights above scilla were soft and dreamy in a wine-coloured haze, and the great lighthouse shot out its white ray through the gathering dusk. to the right, the royal yards and top-gallant rigging of the vessels in the harbour made a dark lace against the high, white houses that caught the departing twilight. it was near moonrise, and the breeze had almost died away. the lights of the city began to shine out, one by one, then quickly, by scores, and under the little jetty, where the two men sat, the swirling water was all at once black and gleaming as flowing ink. far off, a boat was moving, and the oars swung against the single tholes with an even, monotonous knocking that was pleasant to hear. orsino poured out another glass of the strong black wine and drank it, for the air was growing chilly. san giacinto did the same and lighted a cigar. they sat almost an hour in silence, and then went slowly back to their squalid hotel on the quay. chapter x on the following day orsino and san giacinto descended from the train at the little station of piedimonte d'etna, 'the foot of mount etna,' as it would be translated. it is a small, well-kept station near the sea, surrounded by gardens of oranges and lemons, and orchards of fruit trees, and gay with vines and flowers, penetrated by the intense southern light. the sky was perfectly cloudless, the sea of a gem-like blue, the peach blossoms were out by thousands, and the red pomegranate flowers had lately burst out of the bud, in splendid contrast with the deep, sheeny green of the smooth orange leaves. the trees had an air of belonging to pleasure gardens rather than to business-like orchards, and the whole colouring was almost artificially magnificent. it was late spring in the far south, and orsino had never seen it. he had been on the riviera, and in sorrento, when the orange blossoms were all out, scenting the sea more than a mile from land, and he had seen the spring in england, which, once in every four or five years, is worth seeing; but he had not dreamt of such dazzling glories of colour as filled the earth and sky and sea of sicily. it was not tropical, for there was nothing uncultivated nor unfruitful in sight; it seemed as though the little belt of gardens he saw around him must be the richest in the whole world, and as though neither man nor beast nor flower nor fruit could die in the fluid life of the fragrant air. it was very unexpected. san giacinto was not the kind of man to give enthusiastic descriptions of views, and the conversation on the previous evening had prepared orsino's mind for the wild hill country above, but not for the belt of glory which sicily wears like a jewelled baldric round her breast hidden here and there as it were, or obliterated, by great crags running far out into the sea, but coming into sight again instantly as each point is passed. in the heap of traps and belongings that lay at his feet on the little platform, the two repeating rifles in their leathern cases were very good reminders of what the two men had before them on that day and for days and weeks afterwards. 'winchesters,' observed the porter who took the things to the carriage behind the station. 'how did you know that?' asked orsino, surprised at the man's remark. 'as if they were the first i have carried!' exclaimed the man with a grin. 'almost all the signori have them nowadays. people say they will kill at half a kilometre.' 'put them inside,' said san giacinto, as they were arranging the things. 'put them on the back seat with that case.' 'yes, the cartridges,' said the porter knowingly, as he felt the weight of the package. 'and god send you no need of them!' exclaimed the coachman, a big dark man with a stubbly chin, a broad hat, and a shabby velvet jacket. 'amen!' ejaculated the porter. 'are you going with us all the way?' asked san giacinto of the coachman, looking at him keenly. 'no, signore. the master will drive you up from piedimonte. he is known up there, but i am of messina. it is always better to be known--or else it is much worse. but the master is a much-respected man.' 'since he has come back,' put in the porter, his shaven mouth stretching itself in a grim smile. 'has he been in america?' asked orsino, idly, knowing how many of the people made the journey to work, earn money, and return within a few years. 'he has been to the other america, which they call ponza,' answered the man. the coachman scowled at him, and poked him in the back with the stock of his whip, but san giacinto laughed. ponza is a small island off the roman coast, used as a penitentiary and penal settlement. 'did he kill his man?' inquired san giacinto coolly. 'no, signore,' said the coachman, quickly. 'he only gave him a salutation with the knife. it was a bad knife,' he added, anxious for his employer's reputation. 'but for that--the master is a good man! he only got the knife a little way into the other's throat--so much--' he marked the second joint of his middle finger with the end of his whip--'and then it would not cut,' he concluded, with an apologetic air. 'the romans always stab upwards under the ribs,' said san giacinto. 'one knows that!' answered the man. 'so do we, of course. but it was only a pocket knife and would not have gone through the clothes, and the man was fat. that is why the master put it into his throat.' orsino laughed, and san giacinto smiled. then they got into the carriage and settled themselves for the long drive. in twenty minutes they had left behind them the beautiful garden down by the sea, and the lumbering vehicle drawn by three skinny horses was crawling up a steep but well-built road, on which the yellow dust lay two inches thick. the coachman cracked his long whip of twisted cord with a noise like a quick succession of pistol shots, the lean animals kicked themselves uphill, as it were, the bells jingling spasmodically at each effort, and the dust rose in thick puffs in the windless air, under the blazing sun, uniting in a long low cloud over the road behind. san giacinto smoked in silence, and orsino kept his mouth shut and his eyes half closed against the suffocating dust. after the first half-mile, the horses settled down to a straining walk, and the coachman stopped cracking his whip, sinking into himself, round-shouldered, as southern coachmen do when it is hot and a hill is steep. from time to time he swore at the skinny beasts in a sort of patient, half-contemptuous way. 'may they slay you!' he said. 'may your vitals be torn out! may you be blinded! curse you! curse your fathers and mothers, and whoever made you! curse the souls of your dead, your double-dead and your extra-dead, and the souls of all the horses that are yet to be born!' there was a long pause between each imprecation, not as though the man were thinking over the next, but as if to give the poor beasts time to understand what he said. it was a kind of litany of southern abuse, but uttered in a perfunctory and indifferent manner, as many litanies are. 'do you think your horses are christians, that you revile them in that way?' asked orsino, speaking from the back of the carriage, without moving. the man's head turned upon his slouching shoulders, and he eyed orsino with curiosity. 'we speak to them in this manner,' he said. 'they understand. in your country, how do you speak to them?' 'we feed them better, and they go faster.' 'every country has its customs,' returned the man, stolidly. 'it is true that these beasts are not mine. i should feed them better, if i had the money. but these animals consist of a little straw and water. this they eat, and this they are. how can they draw a heavy carriage uphill? it is a miracle. the madonna attends to it. if i beat them, what do i beat? bones and air. why should i fatigue myself? there are their souls, so i speak to them, and they understand. do you see? now that i talk with you, they stop.' he turned as the carriage stood still, and addressed the spider-like animals again, in a dull, monotonous tone, that had something business-like in it. 'ugly beasts! may you have apoplexy! may you be eaten alive!' and he went on with a whole string of similar expressions, till the unhappy brutes strained and threw themselves forward and back to kick themselves uphill again spasmodically, as before. it seemed very long before they reached the town, dusty and white under the broad clear sun, and decidedly clean; spotless, indeed, compared with a neapolitan or calabrian village. here and there among the whitewashed houses there were others built of almost black tufo, and some with old bits of effective carving in a bastard style of norman-saracen ornament. the equine spiders entered the town at a jog-trot. orsino fancied that but for the noise of the bells and the wheels he could have heard their bones rattle as their skeleton legs swung under them. they turned two or three corners and stopped suddenly before their stable. 'this is the master,' said the coachman as he got down, indicating a square-built, bony man of medium height who stood before the door, dressed in a clean white shirt and a decent brown velveteen jacket. he had a dark red carnation in his button-hole and wore his soft black hat a little on one side. in the shadow of the street near the door stood five carabineers in their oddly old-fashioned yet oddly imposing uniforms and cocked hats, each with a big army revolver and a cartridge case at his belt, and a heavy cavalry sabre by his side. they were tall, quiet-eyed, sober-looking men, and they saluted san giacinto and orsino gravely, while one, who was the sergeant, came forward, holding out a note, which san giacinto read, and put into his pocket. 'i am san giacinto,' he said, 'and this gentleman is my cousin, don orsino saracinesca, who goes with us.' 'shall we saddle at once, signor marchese?' asked the sergeant, and as san giacinto assented, he turned to his men and gave the necessary order in a low voice. the phantom horses were taken out of the carriage, and the two gentlemen got out to stretch their legs while the others were put in. the carabineers had all disappeared, their quarters and stables being close by; so near, indeed, that the clattering of their big chargers' hoofs and the clanking of accoutrements could be plainly heard. 'the master is to drive us up to camaldoli,' observed orsino, lighting a cigarette. 'yes,' replied his companion. 'he is a smart-looking fellow, but for my part i prefer the other man's face. stupidity is always a necessary quality in servants. the master looks to me like a type of a "maffeuso."' 'with five carabineers at our heels, i imagine that we are pretty safe.' 'for to-day, of course. i was thinking of our future relations. this is the only man who can furnish carriages between camaldoli and the station. one is in his power.' 'why should we not have carriages and horses of our own?' asked orsino. 'it is a useless expense at present,' answered san giacinto, who never wasted money, though he never spared it. 'we shall see. in a day or two we shall find out whether you can have them at all. if it turns out to be possible, it will be because you find yourself on good terms with the people of the neighbourhood.' 'and turn "maffeuso" myself,' suggested orsino, with a laugh. 'not exactly, but the people may tolerate you. that is the most you can expect, and it is much.' 'and if not, i am never to move without a squad of carabineers to take care of me, i suppose.' 'you had better go armed, at all events,' said san giacinto, quietly. 'have your revolver always in your pocket and take a rifle when you go out of the house. the sight of firearms has a salutary effect upon all these people.' the fresh horses had been put in, very different from the wretched creatures that had dragged the carriage up from the station, for they were lean indeed, but young and active. san giacinto looked at them and remarked upon the fact as he got in. 'of course!' answered the philosophical coachman; 'the road is long and you must drive up as high as paradise. those old pianos could never get any higher than purgatory.' 'pianos?' 'eh--they have but three legs each, and they are of wood, like a piano,' answered the man, without a smile. 'you also heard the music they made with their bones as we came along.' the master mounted to his seat, and at the same moment the carabineers came round the corner, already in the saddle, each with his canvas bread-bag over his shoulder and his rifle slung by his stirrup. they were mounted on powerful black chargers, well-fed, good-tempered animals, extremely well kept, and evidently accustomed to long marches. the carabineers, foot and horse, are by far the finest corps in the italian army, and are, indeed, one of the finest and best equipped bodies of men in the world. they are selected with the greatest care, and every man has to prove that neither he nor his father has ever been in jail, even for the slightest misdemeanour. the troopers and the men of the foot corps rank as corporals of the regular army, and many of them have been sergeants. in the same way each degree of rank is reckoned as equal to the next higher in the army, and the whole corps is commanded by a colonel. there are now about twenty-five thousand in the whole country, quartered in every town and village in squads from four or five, to twenty or thirty strong. the whole of italy is patrolled by them, day and night, both by high roads and bridle-paths, and on the mainland they have effectually stamped out brigandage and highway robbery. but in sicily they are pitted against very different odds. the road rises rapidly beyond piedimonte, winding up through endless vinelands to the enormous yoke which unites etna with the inland mountains. orsino leaned back silently in his place, gazing at the snow-covered dome of the volcano, from the summit of which rose a thin wreath of perfectly white smoke. from time to time san giacinto pointed out to his companion the proposed direction of his light railway, which was to follow the same general direction as the carriage road. the country, though still cultivated, was lonely, and the barren heights of etna, visible always, gave the landscape a singular character. to the westward rose the wooded hills, stretching far away inland, dark and mysterious. they halted again in the high street of a long, clean village, called linguaglossa, and some of the carabineers dismounted and drank from a fountain, being half choked with the dust. the master of the vehicle got down and dived into a quiet-looking house, returning presently with a big, painted earthenware jug full of wine, and a couple of solid glasses, which he filled and held out, without a word, to san giacinto and orsino. the wine was almost black, very heavy and strong. they quenched their thirst, and then the man swallowed two glasses in succession. san giacinto held out some small change to him to pay for the drink. but he laughed a little. 'one does not pay for wine in our country,' he said. 'they sell a pitcher like this for three sous at the wineshops, but this is the house of a very rich signore, who makes at least a thousand barrels every year. what should one pay? one sou? that is as much as it is worth. a man can get drunk for five sous here.' 'i should think so! it is as strong as spirits,' said orsino. 'but the people are very sober,' answered san giacinto. 'they have strong heads, too.' they were soon off again, along the endless road. gradually, the vinelands began to be broken by patches of arid ground, where dark stone cropped up, and the dry soil seemed to produce nothing but the poisonous yellow spurge. it was long past noon when the dark walls and the cathedral spire of randazzo came into sight. they found basili's house, and the notary, whose daughter was already famous in rome, was at work in his dingy study, with a sheet of governmental stamped paper before him. he was a curious compound of a provincial and a man of law, with regular features and extremely black eyebrows, the rest of his hair being white. orsino thought that he must have been handsome in his youth. everything was prepared according to the orders san giacinto had written. basili handed over a big bunch of keys, most of which were rusty, while two of them were bright, as though they had been recently much used. he hardly spoke at all, but looked at his visitors attentively, and with evident curiosity. he called a man who was in readiness to go with them. 'shall we find anybody at the house?' enquired orsino. 'not unless someone has been locked in,' was the answer. 'nevertheless, it might be safer not to go straight to the door, but to get under the wall, and come up to it in that way. one never knows what may be behind a door until it is open.' san giacinto laughed rather dryly, and orsino looked hard at basili to discover a smile. 'but, indeed,' continued the notary, 'there are too many bushes about the house. if i might be so bold as to offer my advice, i should say that you had better cut down the bushes at once. you will have time to begin this evening, for the days are long.' 'are they unhealthy?' enquired orsino, not understanding in the least. 'unhealthy? oh, no. but they are convenient for hiding, and there are people of bad intentions everywhere. i do not speak of don ferdinando pagliuca, believe me. but there are persons of no conscience, who do not esteem life as anything. but i do not mean to signify don ferdinando pagliuca, i assure you. gentlemen, i wish you a pleasant journey, and every satisfaction, and the fulfilment of your desires.' he bowed them out, being evidently not inclined to continue the conversation, and they drove on again, the man whom he had sent with them being beside the padrone on the box. he had a long old-fashioned gun slung over his shoulder, evidently loaded, for there was a percussion cap on the nipple of the lock. orsino thought randazzo a grim and gloomy town in spite of its beautiful carved stone balconies and gates, and its saracen-norman cathedral, and he was glad when they were out in the country again, winding up through the beginning of the black lands. san giacinto looked about him, and then began to get out one of the winchesters, without making any remark, orsino watched him as he dropped the cartridges one by one into the repeater and then examined the action again, to see that all was in working order. 'you understand them, i suppose?' he asked of orsino. 'yes, of course.' 'then you had better load the other,' said the big man quietly. 'as you please,' answered orsino, evidently considering the precaution superfluous, and he got out the other rifle with great deliberation. they were going slowly up a steep hill, and the carabineers were riding close behind them at a foot pace. the two gentlemen could, of course, not see the road in front. the padrone and basili's man were talking in a low tone in the sicilian dialect. suddenly, with a clanging and clattering, two of the troopers passed the carriage at a full gallop up the hill. the sergeant trotted up to san giacinto's side, looking sharply ahead of him. basili's man slipped the sling of his gun over his head in an instant, and laid the weapon across his knees, and orsino distinctly heard him cock the old-fashioned hammer. san giacinto still had his rifle in his hand, and he leaned out over the carriage to see what was ahead. there was nothing to be seen but the two carabineers charging up the steep road at a gallop. 'there was a man on horseback waiting at the crest of the hill,' said the sergeant. 'as soon as he saw us he wheeled and galloped on. he is out of sight now. they will not catch him, for he had a good horse.' 'have you had much trouble lately?' asked san giacinto. 'they killed one of my men last week and used his uniform for a disguise,' answered the soldier, gravely. 'that fellow was waiting there to warn somebody that we were coming.' the troopers halted when they reached the top of the hill, looked about, and made a sign to the sergeant, signifying that they could not catch the man. the sergeant answered by a gesture which bade them wait. 'touch your horses, tatò,' he said to the padrone, who had neither moved nor looked round during the excitement, but who immediately obeyed. the carriage moved quickly up the hill, till it overtook the carabineers. then san giacinto saw that the road descended rapidly by a sharp curve to the left, following a spur of the mountain. no one was in sight, nor was there any sound of hoofs in the distance. to the right, below the road, the land was much broken, and there was shelter from sight for a man and his horse almost anywhere for a mile ahead. when orsino had finished loading the rifle, he looked about him, and saw for the first time the black lands of which vittoria had spoken, realising the truth of what she had said about the possibility of a man hiding himself in the fissures of the lava, to fire upon a traveller in perfect security. with such an escort he and his companion were perfectly safe, of course, but he began to understand what was meant by the common practice of carrying firearms. it is impossible to imagine anything more hideously desolate and sombrely wild than the high ground behind mount etna. the huge eruptions of former and recent times have for ages sent down rivers of liquid stone and immeasurable clouds of fine black ashes, which have all hardened roughly into a conformation which is rugged but not wholly irregular, for the fissures mostly follow the downward direction of the slope, westward from the volcano. all over the broad black surface the spurge grows in patches during the spring, and somehow the vivid yellow of the flowers makes the dark stone and hardened ash look still darker and more desolate. here and there, every two or three miles, there are groups of deserted huts built of black tufo, doorless and windowless, and almost always on the edge of some bit of arable land that stretches westward between two old lava beds. the distances are so great that the peasants move out in a body to cultivate these outlying fields at certain times of the year, and sleep in the improvised villages until the work is done, when they go back to the towns, leaving the crops to take care of themselves until harvest time. in the guerilla warfare which breaks out periodically between the carabineers and the outlaws, the stone huts are important points of vantage, and once or twice have been the scene of hard-fought battles. being of stone, though roughly built, and being pierced with mere holes for windows, they are easily defended from within by men armed with repeaters and plentiful ammunition. after the little excitement caused by the pursuit of the unknown rider, two of the troopers rode before the carriage, and three followed it, while all got their rifles across their saddle-bows, ready for action. they knew well enough that as long as they kept together, even a large band of brigands would not attack them on the open road, but there were plenty of narrow places where the earth was high on each side, and where a single well-directed volley might easily have killed many of the party. since the outlaws' latest invention of shooting the carabineers in order to disguise themselves in their uniforms, the troopers were more than ever cautious and on the alert against a surprise. but nothing happened. the single horseman had disappeared altogether, having probably taken to the broken land for greater safety, and the carriage jogged steadily on across the high land, towards its destination, with a regular jingling of harness bells, and an equally rhythmic clanking of sabres. 'a little quicker, tatò,' said the sergeant to the padrone, from time to time, but no one else said anything. both san giacinto and orsino were weary of the long drive when, at an abrupt curve of the road, the horses slackened speed, to turn out of the highway, to the right. 'there is camaldoli,' said tatò, turning round to speak to them for the first time since they had started. 'you can see the druse's tower above the trees, and the river is below.' so far as the two gentlemen could see there was not another habitation in sight, though it was no very great distance to the village of santa vittoria, beyond the next spur of etna. the ancient building, of which only the top of one square black tower appeared, was concealed by a dense mass of foliage of every kind. below, to the right and towards the mountain stream which tatò called a river, the land was covered with wild pear trees, their white blossoms all out and reflecting the lowering sun. nearer the building, the pink bloom of the flowering peaches formed a low cloud of exquisite colour, and the fresh green of the taller trees of all kinds made a feathery screen above and a compact mass of dark shadow lower down. the narrow drive was thickly hedged with quantities of sweetbrier and sweet hawthorn, which increased as the road descended, till it filled everything up to a man's height and higher. the way was so narrow that when the carabineers tried to ride on each side of the carriage, they found it impossible to do so without being driven into the tangle of thorns at every step. the whole party moved forward at a quick trot, and orsino understood what basili the notary had said about the bushes, so that even he laid his rifle across his knees and peered into the brambles from time to time, half expecting to see the muzzle of a gun sticking through the green leaves and white flowers. the avenue seemed to be about half a mile long. in the middle of it the trees were so thick as to make it almost gloomy, even in the broad afternoon daylight. the road was rough and stony. suddenly the horse of one of the carabineers ahead stumbled and fell heavily, and the other trooper threw his horse back on its haunches with an exclamation. almost at the same instant, the sharp crack of a rifle rang through the trees on the right; and the bullet, singing overhead, cut through the branches just above the carriage, so that a twig with its leaves dropped upon orsino's knees. another shot, fired very low down, struck a spoke of one of the carriage wheels, and sent the splinters flying, burying itself somewhere in the body of the vehicle. another and another followed, all fired either far too high or much too low to strike any of the party. as the shots all came from the same side, however, the sergeant of carabineers sprang to the ground and plunged into the brush on that side, his rifle in his hand, calling to his men to follow him. san giacinto stood up and knelt on the cushion of the carriage, though he knew that he could not fire in the direction taken by the carabineers, lest he should hit one of them by accident. 'keep a lookout on your side, too!' he cried to orsino. 'shoot anybody you see, and do not miss. they may be on both sides, but i think not.' strangely enough, from the moment the soldiers entered the brush, not another shot was fired. clearly the assailants were beating a hasty retreat. at that moment something black stirred in the bushes on orsino's side. instantly his rifle was at his shoulder, and he fired. san giacinto started and turned round, bringing up his own weapon at the same time. 'i believe i heard something fall,' said orsino, opening the door of the carriage. tatò had disappeared. basili's man had followed the soldiers into the brush. in an instant both the gentlemen were in the thicket, orsino leading, as he followed the direction of his shot. chapter xi orsino's gloved hand trembled violently as he pushed aside the tangle of sweetbrier, trying to reach the place where the man upon whom he had fired had fallen. 'let me go first,' said san giacinto. 'i am bigger and my gloves are thicker.' but orsino pushed on, his heart beating so hard that he felt the pulse in his throat and his eyes. he had been cool enough when the bullets had been flying across the carriage, and his hand had been quite steady when he had aimed at the black something moving stealthily in the bushes. but the sensation of having killed a man, and in such a way, was horrible to him. he pushed on, scratching his face and his wrists above his gloves, in the sharp thorns. the bushes were more than breast high, even to his tall figure, but san giacinto could see over his head. 'there!' exclaimed the giant, suddenly. 'there he is--to your right--i can see him!' orsino pushed on, and in another moment his foot struck something hard that moved a little, but was not a stone. it was the dead man's foot in a heavy shooting-boot. they found him quite dead, not fallen to the ground, but half sitting and half lying in the thorns. he had fallen straight backwards, shot through the temples. the eyes were wide open, but without light, the handsome face perfectly colourless, and the silky, brown moustache hid the relaxed mouth. his rifle stood upright in the bush as it had fallen from his hand. his soft hat was still firmly planted on the back of his head. orsino was stupefied with horror and stood quite still, gazing at the dead man's face. san giacinto looked down over his shoulders. 'he looks like a gentleman,' he said in a low voice. the chill of a terrible presentiment froze about orsino's heart. as he looked, the handsome features became familiar, all at once, as though he had often seen them before. 'we had better get him out to the road,' said san giacinto. 'the carabineers may identify him. the sooner, the better, though you were perfectly justified in shooting him.' he laid his hand upon orsino's shoulder to make him move a little, and the young man started. then he bit his trembling lip and stooped to try and lift the body. as he touched the velveteen coat, the head fell suddenly to one side, and orsino uttered an involuntary exclamation. he had never moved a dead man before. 'it is nothing,' said san giacinto, quietly. 'he is quite dead. take his feet.' he pushed past orsino and lifted the head and shoulders, beginning to move towards the road at once, walking backwards and breaking down the bushes with his big shoulders. they got him out upon the road. the carriage horses were standing quite still, with their heads hanging down as though nothing had happened. they had plunged a little at first. in the road before them stood the trooper who had been thrown, holding his own and another charger by the bridle. the cause of the accident was clear enough. a pit had been treacherously dug across the road and covered with sticks and wood, so as to be invisible. fortunately the horse had escaped injury. the others were tethered by their bridles to the back of the carriage. in the brush, far to the right, the tall bushes were moving, showing where the other four carabineers were searching for the outlaws who had fired, if, indeed there had been more than one. they laid the dead man in the middle of the road, on the other side of the ditch, out of reach of the horses' feet, and the trooper watched them without speaking, though with a satisfied look of approval. 'do you know him?' asked san giacinto, addressing the soldier. 'no, signor marchese. but i have not been long on this station. the brigadiere will know him, and will be glad. i came to take the place of the man they killed last week.' orsino looked curiously at the young carabineer, who took matters so quietly, when he himself was struggling hard to seem calm. he would not have believed that he could ever have felt such inward weakness and horror as filled him, and he could not trust himself to speak, yet he had no reason to doubt that he had saved his own life or san giacinto's by firing in time. 'i see why the other ones fired so wildly,' said san giacinto. 'they were afraid of hitting their friend, who was to do the real work alone, while they led the carabineers off on a false scent on the other side. this fellow felt quite safe. he thought he could creep up to the carriage and make sure of us at close quarters. he did not expect that one of us would be on the lookout.' 'that is a common trick,' said the soldier. 'i have seen it done at noto. it must have been a single person that fired, and this man was also alone. if he had been with a companion, the gentleman's shot would have been answered and one of you would have been killed.' 'then it was the other man who was waiting on horseback in the road to warn this one of our coming?' 'evidently, signor marchese.' still orsino stood quite still, gazing down into the dead man's face, and feeling very unsteady. just then nothing else seemed to have any existence for him, and he was unaware of all outward things excepting that one thing that lay there, limp and helpless, killed by his hand in the flash of an instant. and as he gazed, he fancied that the young features in their death pallor grew more and more familiar, and at his own heart there was a freezing and a stiffening, as though he were turning into ice from within. the sergeant and the troopers came back, covered with brambles, hot and grim, and empty-handed. 'did any of you fire that other shot?' he asked, as soon as he was in the road. 'i did,' said orsino. 'i killed this man.' the sergeant sprang forward, and his men pressed after him to see. the sergeant bent down and examined the dead face attentively. then he looked up. 'you have killed rather an important person,' he said gravely. 'this is ferdinando pagliuca. we knew that he was on good terms with the outlaws, but we could not prove it against him.' 'oh, yes,' said tatò, the padrone, suddenly appearing again. 'that is don ferdinando. i know him very well, for i have often driven him. who would have thought it?' orsino had heard nothing after the sergeant had pronounced the name. he almost reeled against san giacinto, and gripped the latter's arm desperately, his face almost as white as the dead man's. even san giacinto started in surprise. then orsino made a great effort and straightened himself, and walked away a few paces. 'this is a bad business,' said san giacinto in a preoccupied tone. 'we shall have the whole mafia against us for this. has the other man escaped?' 'clean gone,' said the sergeant. 'you had better luck than we, for we never saw him. he must have fired his shots from his horse and bolted instantly. we could not have got through the brush with our horses.' orsino went and leaned against the carriage, shading his eyes with his hands, while san giacinto and the soldiers talked over what had happened. the sergeant set a couple of men to work on the brambles with their sabres, to cut a way for the carriage on one side of the pitfall that covered the road. 'put the body into the carriage,' said san giacinto. 'we can walk. it is not far.' he roused orsino, who seemed to be half stunned. 'come, my boy!' he said, drawing him away from the carriage as the soldiers were about to lay the body in it. 'of course it is not pleasant, but it cannot be helped, and you have rendered the government a service, though you have got us into an awkward position with the corleone.' 'awkward!' orsino's voice was hoarse and broken. 'you do not know!' he added. san giacinto did not understand, but made him fall back behind the carriage, which jolted horribly with its dead occupant, as tatò forced his horses to drag it round the end of the ditch. the carabineers, still distrustful of the thick trees and the underbush, carried their rifles and led their horses, and the whole party proceeded slowly along the drive towards the ancient house. it might have been a quarter of a mile distant. orsino walked the whole way in silence with bent head and set lips. they emerged upon a wide open space, overgrown with grass, wild flowers, and rank weeds, through which a narrow path led straight up to the main door. there had been a carriage road once, following a wide curve, but it had long been disused, and even the path was not much trodden, and the grass was beginning to grow in it. the front of the house presented a broad, rough-plastered surface, broken by but few windows, all of which were high above the ground. the tower was not visible from this side. from the back, the sound of water came up with a steady, low roar. the door was, in fact, a great oak gate, studded with big rusty nails, paintless, gray, and weather-beaten. regardless of old basili's advice, san giacinto walked straight up to it, followed by the notary's man with the bunch of keys. the loneliness of it all was beyond description, and was, if possible, enhanced by the roar of the water. the air was damp, too, from the torrent bed, and near one end of the house there were great patches of moss. at the other side, towards the sun, the remains of what had been a vegetable garden were visible, rank broccoli and cabbages thrusting up their bunches of pale green leaves, broken trellises of cane, half fallen in, and overgrown with tomato vines and wild creeping plants. a breath of air brought a smell of rotting vegetables and damp earth to san giacinto's nostrils, as he tried one key after another in the lock. they got in at last, and entered under a gloomy archway, beyond which there was a broad courtyard, where the grass grew between the flagstones. in the middle was an ancient well, on the right a magnificently carved doorway led into the old chapel of the monastery. on the left, opposite the chapel, a long row of windows, with closed shutters in fairly good condition, showed the position of the habitable rooms. 'is that a church?' asked san giacinto of basili's man. 'take the dead man in and leave him there,' he added, as the man nodded and began to look for the key on the bunch. they took ferdinando pagliuca's body from the carriage, which stood in the middle of the courtyard, and carried it in and laid it down on the uppermost step of one of the side altars, of which there were three. orsino followed them. it was a very dilapidated place. there had once been a few frescoes, which were falling from the walls with age and dampness. high up, through the open windows from which the glass had long since disappeared, the swallows shot in and out, bringing a dark gleam of sunshine on their sharp, black wings. although the outer air had free access, there was a heavy, death-like smell of mould in the place. the altars were dismantled and the gray dust lay thick upon them, with fragments of plaster here and there. only on the high altar a half-broken wooden candlestick, once silvered, stood bending over, and a little glazed frame still contained a mouldering printed copy of the canon of the mass. in the middle of the floor a round slab of marble, with two greenish bolts of brass, bore the inscription, 'ossa r. r. p. p.' covering the pit wherein lay the bones of the departed monks who had once dwelt in the monastery. the troopers laid ferdinando's body upon the stone steps in silence, and then went away, for there was much to be done. orsino stayed behind, alone, for his cousin had not even entered the church. he knelt down for a few moments on the lowest step. it seemed a sort of act of reverence to the man whom he had killed. mechanically he said a prayer for the dead. but his thoughts were of the living. the man who lay there was vittoria d'oriani's brother, the brother of his future wife, of the being he held most dear in the world. between him and her there was her own blood, shed by his hand. the shot had done more than kill ferdinando pagliuca; it had mortally wounded his own life. he asked himself whether vittoria, or any woman, could marry the man who had killed her brother. in time, she might forgive, indeed, but she could not forget. no one could. and there were her other brothers, and her mother, and they were sicilians, revengeful and long pursuing in their revenge. never, under any imaginable circumstances, would they give their consent to his marriage with vittoria, even supposing that she herself, in the course of years, could blot out the memory of the dead. he might as well make up his mind that she was lost to him. but that was hard to do, for the roots of growing love had struck deep and burrowed themselves in under his heart almost unawares, from week to week since he had known her, and to tear them up was to tear out the heart itself. he went to the other side of the dim chapel and rested his dark forehead against the mouldering wall. it was as though he were going mad then and there. he drew himself up and said, almost aloud, that he was a man and must act like a man. no one had ever accused him of being unmanly, and he could not tamely bear the accusation from himself. all the old hackneyed phrases of cynical people he had known came back to him. 'only one woman, and the world was full of them'--and much to that same effect. and all the time he knew that such words could never fit his lips, and that though the world was full of women, there was only one for him, and between her and him lay the barrier of her own brother's blood. he turned as he stood, and saw the straight, dark figure, with its folded hands, lying on the steps of the altar opposite--the outward fact, as his love for vittoria was the inward truth. the horror of it all came over him again like a surging wave, roaring in his ears and deafening him. it could have been but one degree worse if vittoria's brother had been his friend, instead of his enemy, and if he had killed him in anger. he remembered that he had expected to send his mother a long and reassuring telegram on this day, and that he had told vittoria that she should go to the palazzo saracinesca and hear news of him. there was a telegraph station at santa vittoria, three-quarters of a mile from camaldoli, but he was confronted by the difficulty of sending any clear message which should not contain an allusion to ferdinando pagliuca's death, since the carabineers would be obliged to report the fact at once, and it would be in the roman papers on the following morning. that was a new and terrible thought. there would be the short telegraphic account of how don orsino saracinesca had been attacked by brigands in a narrow road and had shot one of the number, who turned out to be ferdinando corleone. her mother, who always read the papers, would read that too. then her brothers--then vittoria. and his own mother would see it--his head seemed bursting. and there lay the fact, the source of these inevitable things, cold and calm, with the death smile already stealing over its white face. san giacinto stalked in, looking about him, and the sound of his tread roused orsino. 'come,' he said, rather sternly. 'there is much to be done. i could not find you. the man is dead; you did right in killing him, and we must think of our own safety.' 'what do you mean?' asked orsino, in a dull voice. 'we are safe enough, it seems to me.' 'the sergeant does not seem to think so,' answered san giacinto. 'before night it will be known that ferdinando pagliuca is dead, and we may have half the population of santa vittoria about our ears. fortunately this place will stand a siege. two of the troopers have gone to the village to try and get a reinforcement, and to bring the doctor to report the death, so that we can bury the man. come--come with me! we will shut the church up till the doctor comes, and think no more about it.' he saw that orsino was strangely moved by what had happened, and he drew him out into the air. the carriage was being unloaded by tatò and the notary's man, and the horses had all disappeared. the sergeant and the two remaining troopers were busy clearing out a big room which opened upon the court, with the intention of turning it into a guardroom. orsino looked at them indifferently. a renewed danger would have roused him, but nothing else could. san giacinto led him away to show him the buildings. 'your nerves have been shaken,' said the older man. 'but you will soon get over that. i remember once upon a time being a good deal upset myself, when a man whom i had caught in mischief suddenly killed himself almost in my hands.' 'i shall get over it, as you say,' answered orsino. 'give me one of those strong cigars of yours, will you?' he would have given a good deal to have been able to confide in san giacinto and tell him the real trouble. had he been sure that any immediate good could come of it, he would have spoken; but it seemed to him, on the contrary, that to speak of vittoria might make matters worse. they wandered over the dark old place for half an hour. at the back, over the torrent, there was one long wall with a rampart, terminating in the evil-looking druse's tower. the trees grew thick over the stream, and there was only one opening in the wall, closed by double low doors with heavy bolts. the whole building was, in reality, a tolerably strong fortress, built round the four sides of a single great courtyard, to which there was but one entrance,--besides the little postern over the river. 'i should like to send a telegram to rome,' said orsino, suddenly. 'it is not too late for them to get it to-night.' 'you can send it to santa vittoria by the doctor, when he goes back.' orsino went down into the court and got a writing-case out of his bag. it seemed convenient to write on the seat of the carriage, but just as he was going to place his writing things there, he saw that there were dark wet spots on the cushions. he shuddered, and turned away in disgust, and wrote his message, leaning on the stone brink of the well. he telegraphed that san giacinto and he had arrived and were well, that they had met with an attack, and that he himself had killed a man. but he did not write ferdinando's name. that seemed useless. the doctor arrived, and the carabineers brought a couple of men of the foot brigade to strengthen the little garrison. as they entered, san giacinto saw that four rough-looking peasants were standing outside the gate, conversing and looking up to the windows; grim, clean-shaven, black-browed men of the poorer class, for they had no guns and wore battered hats and threadbare blue cloaks. san giacinto handed the doctor over to the sergeant and went outside at once. the men stared in silence at the gigantic figure that faced them. in his rough dark clothes and big soft hat, san giacinto looked more vast than ever, and his bold and sombre features and stern black eyes completed the impression he made on the hill men. he looked as though he might have been the chief of all the outlaws in sicily. 'listen!' he said, stepping up to them. 'this place is mine now, for i have bought it and paid for it, and i mean to keep it. your friend ferdinando pagliuca is dead. after consenting to the sale, he dug a pitfall in the carriage road to stop us, and he and a friend of his attacked us. we shot him, and you can go and look at his body in the chapel, in there, if you have curiosity about him. there are eleven men of us here, seven being carabineers, and we have plenty of ammunition, so that it will not be well for anyone who troubles us. tell your friends so. this is going to be a barrack, and there will be a company of infantry here before long, and there will be a railway before two years. tell your friends that also. i suppose you are men from the camaldoli farms.' two of the peasants nodded, but said nothing. 'if you want work, begin and clear away those bushes. you will know where there are tools. here is money, if you will begin at once. if you do not want money, say what you do want. but if you want nothing, go, or i shall shoot you.' he suddenly had a big army revolver in one hand, and he pulled out a loose bank note with the other. 'but i prefer that we should be good friends,' he concluded, 'for i have much work for everybody, and plenty of money to pay for it.' the men were not cowards, but they were taken unawares by san giacinto's singular speech. they looked at each other, and at the bushes. one of them threw his head back a little, thrusting out his chin, which signifies a negation. the shortest of the four, a broad-shouldered, tough-looking fellow stepped before the rest. 'we will work for you, but we will not cut down the bushes. we will do any other work than that. you will not find anybody here who will cut down the bushes.' 'why not?' asked san giacinto. 'eh--it is so,' said the man, with a peculiar expression. the other three shrugged their shoulders and nodded silently, but kept their eyes on san giacinto's revolver. 'we are good people,' continued the man. 'we wish to be friends with every one, and since you have bought the estate, and own the land on which we live, we shall pay our rent, when we have anything wherewith to pay, and when we have not, god will provide. but as for the bushes, we cannot cut them down. we wish to be friends with every one. but as for that, signore, if you have no axes nor hedging knives, we have them. we will bring them, and then we will go away and do any other work for you. thus we shall not cut down the bushes, but perhaps the bushes will be cut down.' san giacinto laughed a little, and the big revolver went back into his pocket. 'i see that we shall be friends, then,' he said. 'when you have brought the hatchets, then you can come inside and help to clean the house. then i will give you this money for your work this evening and to-morrow.' the men spoke rapidly together in dialect, so that san giacinto could not understand them. then the spokesman addressed him again. 'signore,' he said, 'we will bring the hatchets to the door, but it is late to clean the house this evening. we do not want the money to-night. we will return in the morning and work for you.' 'there are three hours of daylight yet,' observed san giacinto. 'you could do something in that time, i should think.' 'an hour and a half,' replied the man. 'it is late,' he added. 'it is very late.' the other three nodded. san giacinto understood perfectly that there was some other reason, but did not insist. he fancied that they were suspicious of his own intentions with regard to them, and he let them go without further words. as he turned back, the village doctor appeared under the arch, leading his mule. he was a pale young fellow from messina, who had been three or four years at santa vittoria. san giacinto offered him an escort back to the village, but he refused. 'if i could not go about alone, my usefulness would be over,' he said. 'it is quite safe now. they will probably kill me the next time there is a cholera season.' 'why?' 'they are convinced that the government sends them the cholera through the doctors, to thin the population,' answered the young man, with a dreary smile. 'what a country! it is worse than naples.' 'in some ways, far worse. in others, much better.' 'in what way is it better?' asked san giacinto, with some curiosity. 'they are terrible enemies,' said the doctor, 'but they can be very devoted friends, too.' 'oh--we have had a taste of their enmity first. i hope we may see something of their friendship before long.' 'i doubt it, signor marchese. you will have the people against you from first to last, and your position is dangerous. ferdinando corleone was popular, and he had the outlaws on his side. i have no doubt that many of the band have been hidden here. it is a lonely and desolate house, full of queer hiding-places. by the bye, are you going to bury that poor man here? shall i send people down from santa vittoria with a coffin, to carry him up to the cemetery?' 'you know the country. what should you advise me to do? we must give him christian burial, i suppose.' 'i should be inclined to lift up the slab in the church and quietly drop him down among the monks,' said the doctor. 'that would be christian burial enough for him. but you had better consult the sergeant about it. if he is taken up to santa vittoria, there will be a great public funeral, and all the population will follow, as though he were a martyr. if you bury him without a priest, they will say that you not only murdered him treacherously, but got rid of his body by stealth. consult the sergeant, signor marchese. that is best.' the doctor mounted his mule and rode away. san giacinto closed and barred the great gate himself before he went back into the court. he found orsino in the midst of a discussion with the sergeant, regarding the same question of the disposal of the body. 'i know his family,' orsino was saying. 'some of them are friends of mine. he must be decently buried by a priest. i insist upon it.' the sergeant repeated what the doctor had said, namely, that a public funeral would produce something like a popular demonstration. 'i should not care if it produced a revolution,' answered orsino. 'i killed the man like a dog, not knowing who he was, but i will not have him buried like one. if you are afraid of the village, let them send their priest down here, dig a grave under the floor of the church, and bury him there. but he shall not be dropped into a hole like a dead rat without a blessing. besides, it is not legal--there are all sorts of severe regulations--' 'there is one against burying any one within a church,' observed the sergeant. 'but the worst that could happen would be that you might have to pay a fine. it shall be as you please, signore. in the morning we will get a priest and a coffin, and bury him under the church. i have the doctor's certificate in my pocket.' orsino was satisfied, and went away to be alone again, not caring where. but san giacinto and the carabineers proceeded to turn the great court into something like a camp. there were all sorts of offices, kitchens, bake-houses, oil-presses, and storerooms, which opened directly upon the paved space. the men collected old wood and kindling stuff to make a fire, and prepared to cook some of the provisions which san giacinto had brought for the night, while he and the sergeant determined on the best positions for sentries. orsino wandered about the great rooms upstairs. they were half dismantled and much dilapidated, but not altogether unfurnished. ferdinando had retired some days previously to the village and had taken what he needed for his own use, but had left the rest. there was a tolerably furnished room immediately above the great gate. orsino opened the window wide, and leaned out, breathing the outer air with a certain sense of relief from oppression. watching the swallows that darted down from under the eaves to the weed-grown lawn, and up again with meteor speed, and catching in his face the last reflections of the sun, which was sinking fast between two distant hills, he could almost believe that it had all been a bad dream. he could at least try to believe it for a little while. but the sun went down quickly, though it still blazed full on the enormous snowy dome of etna, opposite the window; and the chill of evening came on while it was yet day, and with it came back the memory of the coldly smiling, handsome face of dead ferdinando pagliuca, and the terrible suggestion of a likeness to vittoria, which had struck at orsino's heart when he had found him in the bushes, shot through the head. it all came back with a sudden, drowning rush that was overwhelming. he turned from the window, and, to occupy himself, he went and got his belongings and tried to make the room habitable. he knew that it was in a good position for the night, since it was not likely that he should sleep much, and he could watch the gate from the window, for his share of the defence. chapter xii as was perhaps to be expected, considering the precautions taken, the friends of ferdinando pagliuca gave no sign during the night. the carabineers, when they are actually present anywhere, impose respect, though their existence is forgotten as soon as they are obliged to move on. orsino lay down upon a dusty mattress in the room he had chosen. he had been down to the court again, where san giacinto ate his supper from the soldier's improvised kitchen, by the light of a fire of brush and scraps of broken wood, which one of the men replenished from time to time. but orsino was not hungry, and presently he had gone upstairs again. about the middle of the night, san giacinto, carrying a lantern, opened his door, and found him reading by the light of a solitary candle. 'has all been quiet on this side?' asked the big man. 'all quiet,' answered orsino. san giacinto nodded, shut the door, and went off, knowing that the young man would rather be alone. an hour later, orsino's book dropped from his hand, and he dozed a little, in a broken way. outside, the waning moon had risen high above the shoulders of etna, not a breath was stirring, and only the distant roar of the water came steadily up from the other side of the old monastery. orsino dreamed strange, shapeless dreams of vast desolateness and empty darkness, in which he had no perception by sight, and heard only the unbroken rush of water far away. then, in the extreme blackness of nothing, a dead face appeared, with wide and sightless eyes that stared at him, and he woke and turned upon his side with a shudder, to doze again and dream again, and wake again. it was a horrible night. towards morning the dream changed. in the darkness, together with the sub-bass of the torrent, a voice came to him, in a low, long-drawn lamentation. it was vittoria's voice, and yet unlike hers. he could hear the words: 'me l'hanno ammazzato! me l'hanno ammazzato!' it was vittoria d'oriani wailing over her brother's body. orsino heard the words and the voice distinctly. she was outside his door. she had dragged the corpse up from the church in the dark, all the long, winding way, to bring it to him and reproach him, and to weep over it. he refused to allow himself to awake, as one sometimes can in a dream, for he knew, somehow, that he was not altogether dreaming. there was an element of reality in the two sounds of the river and the voice, interfering with each other, and the voice came irregularly, always repeating the same words, but the river roared on without a break. then there was a sound of moaning without words, and then the words began again, always the same. orsino started and sat up, wide awake. he was sure that he was awake now, for he could see that the light outside the window was gray. the dawn was beginning to drink the moonlight out of the air. he heard the voice distinctly. 'me l'hanno ammazzato!' it moaned, but much less loudly than he had heard it in his dream. 'they have killed him for me,' is the meaning of the words. orsino sprang from the bed, and opened the door, which was opposite the window. the long corridor was dark and quiet, and he turned back and opened the casement, and looked out. the words were half spoken again, but suddenly ceased as he threw the window open. in the dim gray dawn he saw a muffled figure crouching on the stones by the gate, slowly swaying forwards and backwards. the wail began again, very soft and low, and as though the woman half feared to be heard and yet could not control herself. orsino watched her intently for a few moments, and then understood. it was some woman who had loved ferdinando pagliuca, and who came in the simple old way to mourn at the door of the house wherein he lay dead. her head was covered with a black shawl, and her skirts were black, too, but her hands were clasped about her knees, and visible, and looked white in the dawn. the young man drew back softly from the window, and sat down upon the edge of the bed. he, of all men, had no right to silence the woman. she did no harm, wailing for the dead man out there in the cold dawn. she was not the only one who was to mourn him on that day. in a few hours his sister would know, his mother, his brothers, and all the world besides, though the rest of the world mattered little enough to orsino. but this woman's grief was a sort of foretaste of vittoria's. she was but a peasant woman, perhaps, or at most a girl of the small farmers' class, but she had loved him, and would hate for ever the man who had killed him. how much more should the slayer be hated by the dead man's own flesh and blood! the light grew less gray by quick degrees, and there were heavy footsteps in the corridor. then came a knock at the door, and a trooper appeared in his forage cap. 'we have made the coffee, signore,' he said, on the threshold. he held out a bright tin pannikin from which the steam rose in fragrant clouds. the physical impression of the aromatic smell was the first pleasant sensation which orsino had experienced since he had pulled the trigger of his rifle on the previous afternoon. if we could but look at things as they are, we should see that there is neither love nor hate, neither joy nor grief, nor hope nor fear, that will not at last efface itself for a moment before hunger and thirst; so effectually can this dying body mask and screen the undying essence. orsino drank the hot coffee with keen physical delight, though the woman's wailing came up to his ears through the open window, and though he had known a moment earlier that the stealing dawn was the beginning of a day which might end in a broken heart. but the trooper heard the voice, and went to the window and looked out, while orsino drank. 'ho, there!' he cried roughly. 'will you go or not?' he turned to orsino. 'she has been there since two o'clock,' he explained. 'we heard her through the closed gate.' 'let her alone,' said orsino authoritatively. 'she is only a woman, and can do no harm; and she has a right to her mourning, god knows.' 'there will be a hundred before the sun has been up an hour, signore,' answered the soldier. 'the people will collect about her, for they will come out of curiosity, from many miles away. it will be better to get rid of them as fast as they come.' 'you might let that poor woman in,' suggested orsino. 'after all, i have killed her lover--she has a right to see his body.' 'as you wish, signore,' answered the trooper, taking the empty pannikin. orsino got up and looked out again, as the man went away. the girl had risen to her feet, and stood looking up to the window. her shawl had fallen back upon her shoulders, and disclosed a young and dishevelled but beautiful head, of the greek type, though the eyes were somewhat long and almond-shaped. there was no colour in the olive-pale cheeks, and little in the parted lips; and the hand that gathered the shawl to the bosom was singularly white. the regular features were set in a tragic mask of grief, such as one very rarely sees in the modern world. when she saw orsino, she suddenly raised both hands to him, like a suppliant of old. 'they have killed him!' she cried. 'they have killed my bridegroom! let me see him! let me kiss him! are they christians, and will not let me see him?' 'you shall see him,' answered orsino. 'i will let you in myself.' 'god will render it to you, signore. and god will render also to his murderer a bad death.' she sat down upon the stones, thinking, perhaps, that it would be long before the gate was opened; and she began her low moan again. 'they have killed him! they have murdered him!' but orsino had already left the window and the room. he had understood clearly from her words and face that she was no light creature, for whom ferdinando had conceived a passing fancy. he had meant to marry her, perhaps within a few days. there was in her face the high stamp of innocence, and her voice rang fearless and true. ferdinando had never been like his brothers. he had meant to marry this girl, doubtless a small farmer's daughter, from her dress; and he would have lived happily with her, sinking, perhaps, to a lower social level, but morally rising far higher than his scheming brothers. orsino had guessed from his dead face, and from what he had heard, that ferdinando had been the best of the family; and in a semi-barbarous country like the interior of sicily, the young roman did not blame him overmuch for having tried to resist the new owners of his father's house when they came to take possession. san giacinto and the sergeant objected on principle to admitting the girl, but orsino insisted, and at last opened the gate himself. she had covered her head and face again, and followed him swiftly and noiselessly across the court to the door of the church. as though by instinct she turned directly to her lover's body, where it lay before the side altar, and with a low wail like a wounded animal, she fell beside it, with clasped hands. orsino left her there alone, closing the door softly, and came out into the court, where it was almost broad daylight. the men had drunk their coffee and were grooming their black chargers tethered to rusty rings in the wall. the old stables were between the court and the rampart. the two foot-carabineers were despatched to santa vittoria to get a coffin for the dead man and a priest to come and bury him. from the church came every now and then the piteous echo of the girl's lamentations. then there was a knocking at the gate, and someone called from without. one of the troopers looked out through the narrow slit in the stone, made just wide enough to let the barrel of a gun pass. half a dozen peasants were outside, and the soldiers could see two more coming down the drive towards the house. he asked what they wanted. 'we wish to speak with the master,' said one, and two or three repeated the words. they were the men who had brought the tools on the previous evening, with a number of others, the small tenants of the little estate. san giacinto went and spoke with them, assuring them that he would be a better landlord than they had ever had, if they would treat him well, but that if he met with any treachery, he would send every man of them to the galleys for life. it was his way of making acquaintance, and they seemed to understand it. while he was speaking a number of men and women appeared in the drive, headed by the two soldiers who had gone to the village. close behind them, swaying with the walk of the woman who carried the load upon her head, a white deal coffin caught the morning light. then more people, and always more, came in sight, up the drive. amongst them walked a young priest in his short white 'cotta' over his shabby cassock, and beside him came a big boy bearing a silver basin with holy water, and the little broom for sprinkling it. the two trudged along in a business-like way, and all the people were talking loudly. it seemed to san giacinto that half the population of the village must have turned out. he stepped back and called to the troopers to keep the gate, and prevent the crowd from entering. then he waited outside. the people became silent as they came near, and he looked at them, scrutinising their faces. some of the men had their guns slung over their shoulders, but many were only labourers and had none. many scowling glances were turned on san giacinto as the crowd came up to the gate, and he began to anticipate trouble of some sort. the troopers had their rifles in their hands as they formed up behind him. the tenants of camaldoli mixed with the crowd, evidently not wishing to identify themselves with their new landlord. 'what do you want?' asked san giacinto, in a harsh, commanding voice. the priest came close to him, and bowed and smiled, as though the occasion of meeting were a pleasant one. then he stood aside a little, and a strapping woman who carried the coffin on her head marched in under the gate between the soldiers, who made way for her. and behind her came her husband, a crooked little carpenter, carrying a leathern bag from which protruded the worn and blackened handle of a big hammer. the third comer was stopped by the sergeant. he was a ghastly pale old man, with a three-days' beard on his pointed chin, and he was dressed in dingy black. 'who are you?' asked the sergeant sharply. 'i am one without whom people are not buried,' answered the old man, in a cracked voice. 'you have a carpenter and a priest, but there is a third--i am he, the servant of the dead, who give no orders.' the sergeant understood that the man was the parish undertaker, and let him pass also. meanwhile san giacinto repeated his question. 'what do you all want?' he asked in a thundering tone, for he was annoyed. 'if it please you, signor marchese,' said the priest, 'these, my parishioners, desire the body of don ferdinando corleone, in order to bury it in holy ground, for he was beloved of many. pray do not be angry, excellency, for they come in peace, having heard that don ferdinando had been killed by an accident. grant their request, which is a proper one, and they shall depart quickly. i answer for them.' as he spoke the last words in a tone which all could hear, he turned to the crowd, as though for their assent. 'he answers for us,' said many of them, in a breath. 'good, don niccola! you answer for us. we are christians. we wish to bury don ferdinando properly.' 'i have not the slightest objection,' said san giacinto. 'on the contrary, i respect your wish, and i only regret that i have not the means of doing more honour to your friend. you must attend to that. be kind enough to wait here while the priest blesses the body.' the priest and the boy with the holy water passed in, and the gate closed upon the crowd. while they had been talking, the carpenter and his wife had entered the court. basili's man led them to the door of the church and opened it. the woman marched in with her swinging stride, and one hand on her hips, while the other steadied the deal coffin. 'where is he?' she asked in a loud, good-natured voice, for the church seemed very dark after the morning light outside. she was answered by a low cry from the steps of the side altar, where the unhappy girl lay half across her lover's body, looking round towards the door, in a new horror. the woman uttered an exclamation of surprise, and then slowly swung her burden round so that she could see her husband. 'help me, ciccio,' she said, in a matter-of-fact way. 'they are always inconvenient things.' the man held up his hands and took the foot, while his wife raised her hands also and shifted the weight towards him little by little, until she got hold of the head. the loose lid rattled as they set the thing down on the floor. then the woman took the rolled towel on which she had carried the weight, from her head, undid it, wiped her brow with it, and looked at the girl in some perplexity. 'it is the apothecary's concetta,' she said, suddenly recognising the white features in the gloom. 'oh, poor child! poor child!' she cried, going forward quickly, while her husband took the lid from the coffin and began to fumble in his leathern bag for his nails. as the woman approached the step, concetta threw her arms wildly over her head, stiffened her limbs straight out, and rolled over and over upon the damp pavement, in one of those strange fainting fits which sometimes seize women in moments of intense grief. the carpenter's wife tried to lift her, and to bend her arms, so as to get hold of her; but the girl was as rigid as though she were in a cataleptic trance. 'poor child! poor concetta!' exclaimed the carpenter's wife, softly. then, bending her broad back, she raised the girl up by main strength, getting first one arm round her and then the other, till she got her weight up and could carry her. her crooked little husband paid no attention to her. women were women's business at such times. the big woman got the girl out into the morning sunshine in the court, meeting the eccentric undertaker and the priest, who were talking together outside. san giacinto came forward instantly, followed by orsino, who had been wandering about the rampart over the river when the crowd had come. san giacinto took the unconscious girl's body from the woman, with ease. 'come,' he said, carrying her before him on his arms. 'get some water.' he entered the room where the men had slept on some straw and laid concetta down, her arms still stiffened above her head. one of the troopers brought water in a pannikin. san giacinto dashed the cold drops upon the white face, and the features quivered nervously. 'take care of her,' he said to the woman. 'who is she?' 'she is concetta, the daughter of don atanasio, the apothecary. she was to marry don ferdinando next week. but now that they have killed him, she will marry someone else.' 'poor girl!' exclaimed san giacinto compassionately, and he turned and went out. orsino was standing by the door, looking in, and he had heard what the woman had said. it confirmed what he had guessed from the girl's own words. he wondered how it was possible that the action of one second could really cause such terrible trouble in the world. from the open door of the church came the sound of the regular blows of a hammer. the work had been quickly done and the carpenter was nailing down the lid of the coffin. the priest, who had stayed in the early sunshine for warmth, hung a shabby little stole round his neck, and took the holy water basin and the little broom from the boy, and entered the church to bless the body before it was taken away. as it was not advisable to let in the crowd, the six soldiers lifted the coffin and bore it out of the gate. then the peasants laid it on a bier which had been brought after them and covered it with a rusty black pall. the priest walked before it, and began to recite the psalms for the dead. the women covered their heads, and some of the men uncovered theirs, and a few joined in the priest's monotonous recitations. a quarter of an hour later, san giacinto, watching from the gate, saw the last of the people disappear up the drive. but the carpenter's wife had stayed with concetta. 'it is a bad business,' said the old giant to himself, as he turned and went in. chapter xiii the taking possession of camaldoli had turned out much more difficult and dangerous than even san giacinto had anticipated, for the catastrophe of ferdinando pagliuca's death had at once aroused the anger and revengeful resentment of the whole neighbourhood. he made up his mind that it would be necessary for himself or orsino to return to rome at once, both in order to see the minister of the interior, with a view to obtaining special protection from the government, and to see the pagliuca family, in the hope of pacifying them. the latter mission would not be an easy nor an agreeable one, and san giacinto would gladly have undertaken it himself. on the other hand, he did not trust orsino's wisdom in managing matters in sicily. the young man was courageous and determined, but he had not the knowledge of the southern character which was indispensable. moreover, he was not the real owner of the lands, and would not feel that he had authority to act independently in all cases. it was, therefore, decided that orsino should go back to rome at once, while san giacinto remained at camaldoli to get matters into a better shape. it was a dreary journey for orsino. he telegraphed that he was coming, found that there was no steamer from messina, crossed to reggio, and travelled all night and all the next day by the railway, reaching rome at night, jaded and worn. he found, as he had expected, that all rome was talking of his adventure with the brigands, and of the death of ferdinando pagliuca, and of the probable consequences. but he learned to his surprise how tebaldo had been heard to say at the club on the previous afternoon that ferdinando was no relation of his, and that it was a mere coincidence of names. 'nevertheless,' said sant' ilario, 'we all believe that you have killed his brother. tebaldo pagliuca has no mind to have it said that his brother was a brigand and died like a dog. he says he is not in sicily, but left some time ago. as no one in rome ever saw him, most people will accept the statement for the girl's sake, if not for the rest of the family.' orsino looked down thoughtfully while his father was speaking. he understood at once that the story being passably discreditable to the d'oriani, he had better seem to fall in with their view of the case, by holding his peace when he could. his father and mother, as well as the old prince, insisted upon hearing a detailed account of the affair in the woods, however, and he was obliged to tell them all that had happened, though he said nothing about the fancied resemblance of ferdinando to vittoria, and as little as possible about the way in which the people had carried off the man's body with a public demonstration of sorrow. after all, no one had told him that ferdinando was the brother of tebaldo. he had taken it for granted, and it was barely possible that he might have been mistaken. 'there may be others of the name,' he said, as he concluded his story. his mother looked at him keenly. half an hour later he was alone with her in her own sitting-room. 'why did you say that there might be others of the name?' she asked gravely. 'why did you wish to imply that the unfortunate man may not have been the brother of don tebaldo and donna vittoria?' orsino was silent for a moment. there was reproach in corona's tone, for she herself had not the slightest doubt in the matter. he came and stood before her, for he was a truthful man. 'it seemed to me,' he said, 'that i might let him have the benefit of any doubt there may be, though i have none myself. the story will be a terrible injury to the family.' 'you are certainly not called upon to tell it to everyone,' said corona. 'i only wished to know what you really thought.' 'i am sorry to say that i feel sure of the man's identity, mother. and i want you to help me,' he added suddenly. 'i wish to see donna vittoria alone. you can manage it.' corona did not answer at once, but looked long and earnestly at her eldest son. 'what is it, mother?' he asked, at last. 'it is a very terrible thing,' she answered slowly. 'you love the girl, you wish to marry her, and you have killed her brother. is not that the truth?' 'yes, that is the truth,' said orsino. 'help me to see her. no one else can.' 'does anyone know? did you speak about it to her mother, or her brothers, before you left? does ippolito know?' 'no one knows. will you help me, mother?' 'i will do my best,' said corona thoughtfully. 'not that i wish you to marry into that family,' she added. 'they have a bad name.' 'but she is not like them. it is not her fault.' 'no, it is not her fault, and she has not their faults. but for her brothers--well, we need not talk of that. for the sake of what there has been between you two, already, you have a sort of right to see vittoria.' 'i must see her.' 'i went there yesterday, after we read the news in the papers,' said corona. 'her mother was ill. later your father came in and said he had seen don tebaldo at the club. you heard what he said. they mean to deny the relationship. in fact, they have done so. i can therefore propose to take vittoria to drive to-morrow afternoon, and i can bring her here to tea, in my own sitting-room. then you may come here and see her, and i will leave you alone for a little while. yes--you have a right to see her and to defend yourself to her, and explain to her how you killed that poor man, not knowing who he was.' 'thank you--you are very good to me. mother--' he hesitated a moment--'if my father had killed your brother by accident, would you have married him?' he fixed his eyes on corona's. she was silent for a moment. 'yes,' she answered presently. 'the love of an honest woman for an honest man can go farther than that.' she turned her beautiful face from orsino as she spoke, and her splendid eyes grew dreamy and soft, as she leaned back in her chair beside her writing-table. he watched her, and a wave of hope rose slowly to his heart. but all women were not like his mother. early on the following morning she wrote a note to vittoria. the answer came back after a long time, and the man sent up word that he had been kept waiting three-quarters of an hour for it. it was written in a tremulous hand, and badly worded, but it said that vittoria would be ready at the appointed time. her mother, she added, was ill, but wished her to accept the princess's invitation. vittoria had grown thin and pale, and there was a sort of haunted look in her young eyes as she sat beside corona in the big carriage. corona herself hesitated as to what she should say, for the girl was evidently in a condition to faint, or break down with tears, at any sudden shock. yet it was necessary to tell her that orsino was waiting for her, and it might be necessary also to use some persuasion in inducing her to meet him. 'my dear,' said corona, after a little while, 'i want you to come home with me when we have had a little drive. do you mind? we will have tea together in my little room.' 'yes--of course--i should like it very much,' answered vittoria. 'we shall not be quite alone,' corona continued. 'i hope you will not mind.' corona saracinesca had many good qualities, but she was not remarkably clever, and when she wished to be tactful she often found herself in conflict with the singular directness of her own character. at the same time, she feared to let the girl at her side see how much she knew. vittoria looked so pale and nervous that she might faint. corona had never fainted. the girl naturally supposed that orsino was still in sicily. they were near the porta salaria, and there was a long stretch of lonely road between high walls, just beyond it. corona waited till they had passed the gate. 'my dear,' she began again, taking vittoria's hand kindly, 'do not be surprised at what i am going to tell you. my son orsino--' vittoria started, and her hand shook in her companion's hold. 'yes--my son orsino has come back unexpectedly and wishes very much to see you.' vittoria leaned back suddenly and closed her eyes. corona thought that the fainting fit had certainly come, and tried to put her arm round the slight young figure. but as she looked into vittoria's face, she saw that the soft colour was suddenly blushing in her cheeks. in a moment her eyes opened again, and there was light in them for a moment. 'i did not know how you would take it,' said corona, simply, 'but i see that you are glad.' 'for him--that he is safe,' answered the young girl, in a low voice. 'but--' she stopped, and gradually the colour sank away from her face again, and her eyes grew heavy once more. the trouble was greater than the gladness. 'will you see him, in my own room?' asked the elder woman, after a pause. 'oh, yes--yes! indeed i will--i must see him. how kind you are!' corona leaned forward and spoke to the footman at once, and the carriage turned back towards the city. she knew well enough how desperately hard it would be for vittoria to wait for the meeting. she knew also, not by instinct of tact, but by a woman's inborn charity, that it would be kind of her to speak of other things now that she had said what was necessary, and not to force upon vittoria the fact that orsino had revealed his secret, still less to ask her any questions about her true relationship to ferdinando pagliuca, which might put her in the awkward position of contradicting tebaldo's public statement. but as they swept down the crowded streets, amongst the many carriages, vittoria looked round into corona's face almost shyly, for she was very grateful. 'how good you are to me!' she exclaimed softly. 'i shall not forget it.' corona smiled, but said nothing, and ten minutes later the carriage thundered under the archway of the gate. corona took vittoria through the state apartments, where they were sure of meeting no one at that time, and into her bedroom by a door she seldom used. then she pointed to another at the other side. 'that is the way to my sitting-room, my dear,' she said. 'orsino is there alone.' with a sudden impulse she kissed her on both cheeks and pushed her towards the door. chapter xiv orsino heard the door of his mother's bedroom open, and rose to his feet, expecting to see corona. he started as vittoria entered, and he touched the writing-table with his hand as though he were unsteady. the young girl came forward towards him quickly, and the colour rose visibly in her face while she crossed the little room. orsino was white and did not hold out his hand, not knowing what to expect, for it was the hand that had killed her brother but two days ago. vittoria had not thought of what she should do or say, for it had been impossible to think. but as she came near, both her hands went out instinctively to touch him. almost instinctively, too, he drew back from her touch a little. but she did not see the movement, and her eyes sought his as she laid her fingers lightly upon his shoulders and looked up to him. then the sadness in his face, that had been almost like fear of her, relaxed toward a change, and his eyes opened wide in a sort of hesitating surprise. two words, low and earnest, trembled upon vittoria's lips. 'thank god!' in an instant he knew that she loved him in spite of all. yet, arguing against his senses that it was impossible, he would not take her at her word. he took both her hands from his shoulders and held them, so that they crossed. 'was he really your brother?' he asked slowly. 'yes,' she answered faintly, and looked down. perhaps it seemed to her that she should be ashamed of forgiving, before he had said one word of defence or uttered one expression of sorrow for what he had done. but she loved him, and since she had been a little child she had not seen her brother ferdinando half a dozen times. it was true that when she had seen him she had been drawn to him, as she was not drawn to the two that were left, for he had not been like the others. she knew that she should have trusted ferdinando if she had known him better. orsino began his defence. 'we were fired upon several times,' he said. her hands started in his as she thought of his danger. 'i saw a man's coat moving in the brush,' he continued, 'and i aimed at it. i never saw the man's face till we found him lying dead. it was not an accident, for bullets cut the trees overhead and struck the carriage.' again her hands quivered. 'it was a fight, and i meant to kill the man. but i could not see his face.' she did not speak for a moment. then, for the first time, she shrank a little, and withdrew her hands from his. 'i know--yes--it is terrible,' she said in broken tones; and she glanced at him, and looked down again. 'do not speak of it,' she added suddenly, and she was surprised at her own words. it was the woman's impulse to dissociate the man she loved from the deed, for which she could not but feel horror. she would have given the world to sit down beside him and talk of other things. but he wished the situation to be cleared for ever, as any courageous man would. 'i must speak of it,' he answered. 'perhaps we shall never have the chance again--' 'never? what do you mean?' she asked quickly. 'why not?' 'you may forgive me,' he answered earnestly. 'you know that i would have let him shoot me ten times over rather than have hurt you--' 'orsino--' she touched his arm nervously, trying to stop him. 'yes--i wish i were in his grave to-day! you may forgive, but you cannot forget--how can you?' 'how? if--if you still love me, i can forget--' orsino's eyes were suddenly moist. it seemed as though something broke, and let in the light. 'i shall always love you,' he said simply; as men sometimes do when they are very much in earnest. 'and i--' she did not finish the sentence in words, but her hand and face said the rest. 'sit down,' she said, after a little silence. they went to a little sofa and sat down together, opposite the window. 'do you think that anything you could do could make me not love you?' she asked, looking into his face. 'are you surprised? did you think that i should turn upon you and accuse you of my brother's death, and say that i hated you? you should not have judged me so--it was unkind!' 'it has all been so horrible that i did not know what to expect,' he said. 'i have not been able to think sensibly until now. and even now--no, i have not judged you, as you call it, dear. but i expected that you would judge me, as god knows you have the right.' 'why should i judge you?' asked vittoria, softly and lovingly. 'if you had lain in wait for him and killed him treacherously, as he meant to kill you, it would have been different. if he had killed you, as he was there to kill you--as he might have killed you if you had not been first--i--well, i am only a girl, but even these little hands would have had some strength! but as it is, god willed it. whom shall i judge? god? that would be wrong. god protected you, and my brother died in his treachery. do you think that if i had been there, and had been a man, and the guns firing, and the bullets flying, i should not have done as you did, and shot my own brother? it would have been much more horrible even than it is, but of course i should have done it. then why are you in such distress? why did you think that i should not love you any more?' 'i did not dare to think it,' answered orsino. 'you see, as i said, god willed it--not you. you were but the instrument, unconscious and innocent. it is only a little child that will strike the senseless thing that hurts it.' 'you are eloquent, darling. you will make me think as you do.' 'i wish you would, indeed i wish you would! i am sorry, i am grieved, i shall mourn poor ferdinando, though i scarcely knew him. but you--i shall love you always, and for me, as i see it, you were no more the willing cause of his death than the senseless gun you held in your hand. do you believe me?' she took his hand again, as though to feel that he understood. and understanding, he drew her close to him and kissed her young eyes, as he had done that first time, out on the bridge over the street. 'you have my life,' he said tenderly. 'i give you my life and soul, dear.' she put up her face suddenly, and kissed his cheek, and instantly the colour filled her own, and she shrank back, and spoke in a different tone. 'we will put away that dreadful thing,' she said, drawing a little towards her own end of the sofa. 'we will never speak of it again, for you understand.' 'but your mother, your brothers,' answered orsino. 'what of them? i hear that they do not acknowledge--' he stopped, puzzled as to how he should speak. 'my mother is ill with grief, for ferdinando was her favourite. but tebaldo and francesco have determined that they will act as though he were no relation of ours. they say that it would ruin us all to have it said that our brother had been with the brigands. that is true, is it not?' 'it would be a great injury to you,' answered orsino. 'yes. that is what they say. and tebaldo will not let us wear mourning, for fear that people should not believe what he says. this morning when the princess's note came, tebaldo insisted that i should accept, but my mother said that i should not come to the house. they had a long discussion, and she submitted at last. what can she do? he rules everybody--and he is bad, bad in his heart, bad in his soul! francesco is only weak, but tebaldo is bad. beware of him, for though he says that ferdinando was not his brother, he will not forgive you. but you will not go back to sicily?' 'yes, i must go. i cannot leave san giacinto alone, since i have created so much trouble.' 'since poor ferdinando is dead, you will be safer--i mean--' she hesitated. 'orsino!' she suddenly exclaimed, 'i knew that he would try to kill you--that is why i wanted to keep you here. i did not dare tell you--but i begged so hard--i thought that for my sake, perhaps, you would not go. tebaldo would kill me if he knew that i were telling you the truth now. he knew that ferdinando had friends among the outlaws, and that he sometimes lived with them for weeks. and ferdinando wrote to tebaldo, and warned him that although he had signed the deed, no one should ever enter the gate of camaldoli while he was alive. and no one did, for he died. but the romans would think that he was a common brigand; and i suppose that tebaldo is right, for it would injure us very much. but between you and me there must be nothing but the truth, so i have told you all. and now beware of tebaldo; for, in spite of what he says, he will some day try to avenge his brother.' 'i understand it all much better now,' said orsino, thoughtfully. 'i am glad you have told me. but the question is, whether your mother and your brothers will ever consent to our marriage, vittoria. that is what i want to know.' 'my mother--never! tebaldo might, for interest. he is very scheming. but my mother will never consent. she will never see you again, if she can help it.' 'what are we to do?' asked orsino, speaking rather to himself than to vittoria. 'i do not know,' she answered, in a tone of perplexity. 'we must wait, i suppose. perhaps she will change, and see it all differently. we can afford to wait--we are young. we love each other, and we can meet. is it so hard to wait awhile before being married?' 'yes,' said orsino. 'it is hard to wait for you.' 'i will do anything you like,' answered vittoria. 'only wait a little while, and see whether my mother does not change. only a little while!' 'we must, i suppose,' said orsino, reluctantly. 'but i do not see why your mother should not always think of me as she does to-day. i can do nothing to improve matters.' 'let us be satisfied with to-day,' replied vittoria, rather anxiously, and as though to break off the conversation. 'i was miserably unhappy this evening, and i thought you were in sicily; and instead, we have met. it is enough for one day--it is a thousand times more than i had hoped.' 'or i,' said orsino, bending down and kissing her hand more than once. the handle of corona's door turned very audibly just then, and a moment later the princess entered the room. without seeming to scrutinise the faces of the two, she understood at a glance that vittoria had accepted the tragic situation, as she herself would have done; and that if there had been any discussion, it was over. vittoria coloured a little, when she met corona's eyes, realising how the older woman had, as it were, arranged a lovers' meeting for her. but corona herself did not know whether to be glad or sorry for what had happened. nor was it easy for anyone to foresee the consequences of the present situation. it was only too clear that the young people loved each other with all their hearts; and corona herself was very fond of vittoria, and believed her to be quite unlike her family. yet at best she was an exception in a race that had a bad name; and corona knew how her husband and his father would oppose the marriage, even though she herself should consent to it. she guessed, too, that vittoria's mother would refuse to hear of it. altogether orsino had fallen in love very unfortunately, and corona could see no possible happy termination to the affair. therefore, against her own nature and her affection for her son, she was conscious of a certain disappointment when she saw that the love between the two was undiminished, even by the terrible catastrophe of ferdinando's death. it would have been so much simpler if vittoria had bidden goodbye for ever to the man who had killed her brother. chapter xv ippolito saracinesca was, perhaps, of all the household the most glad to see his favourite brother at home again so soon. he missed the companionship which had always been a large element in his life. 'i shall go with you when you return,' he said, sitting on the edge of orsino's table, and swinging his priestly legs in an undignified fashion. 'are you in earnest?' asked orsino, with a laugh. 'yes. why not? you say that there is a church on the place, or a chapel. i will say mass there for the household on sundays, and keep you company on week-days. you will be lonely when san giacinto comes back. besides, after what has happened, i hate to think that you are down there alone among strangers.' 'have you nothing to keep you in rome?' asked orsino, much tempted by the offer. 'nothing in the world.' 'there will be no piano at camaldoli.' 'i suppose there is an organ in your church, is there not?' 'no. there is probably one in the church of santa vittoria. you could go and play on it.' 'how far is it?' 'three-quarters of a mile, i was told.' 'as far as from the piazza di venezia to the piazza del popolo.' 'less. that is a mile, they always used to say, when the loose horses ran the race in carnival.' 'it would be just a pleasant walk, then,' said ippolito, already planning his future occupations at camaldoli. 'i could go over in the afternoon, when the church is closed, and play on the organ an hour or two whenever i pleased.' 'i have no idea what sort of thing the santa vittoria organ will turn out to be,' answered orsino. 'it is probably falling to pieces, and has not been tuned since the beginning of the century.' 'i will mend it and tune it,' said ippolito, confidently. 'you?' orsino looked at his brother's delicate hands and laughed. 'of course. every musician knows something about the instruments he plays. i know how an organ is tuned, and i understand the mechanism. the old-fashioned ones are simple things enough. when a note goes wrong you can generally mend the tracker with a bit of wire, or a stick, as the case may be--or if it is the wind chest--' 'it is not of the slightest use to talk to me about that sort of thing,' interrupted orsino, 'for i understand nothing about organs, nor about music either, for that matter.' 'i will take some tools with me, and some kid, and a supply of fine glue,' said ippolito, still full of his idea. 'how about the rooms? is there any decent furniture?' orsino gave him a general idea of the state of camaldoli, not calculated to encourage him in his intention, but the young priest was both very fond of his brother, and he was in love with the novelty of his idea. 'i daresay that they have not too many priests in that part of the country,' he said. 'i may be of some use.' 'we got one without difficulty to bury that poor man,' answered orsino. 'but you may be right. you may be the means of redeeming sicily.' he laughed. he was, indeed, inclined to laugh rather unexpectedly, since his interview with vittoria. he was far too manly and strong to be saddened for any length of time by the fact of having taken the life of a man who had, undoubtedly, attempted to murder him by stealth. he had been oppressed by the certainty that the deed had raised an insurmountable barrier between vittoria and himself. since he had found that he had been mistaken, he was frankly glad that he had killed ferdinando pagliuca, for the very plain reason that if he had not done so, ferdinando pagliuca would have certainly killed him, or san giacinto, or both. he had no more mawkish sentiment about the horror of shedding human blood than had embarrassed his own forefathers in wilder times. if men turned brigands and dug pitfalls, and tried to murder honest folk by treachery, they deserved to be killed; and though the first impression he had received, when he had been sure that he had killed his man, had been painful, because he was young and inexperienced in actual fighting, he now realised that but for the relationship of the dead man, it had not only been excusable, but wise, to shoot him like a wild beast. his own people thought so too. it was natural, therefore, that his spirits should rise after his interview with vittoria. on that day he had already been busy in carrying out san giacinto's directions, and on the following morning he went to work with increased energy. corona watched him when they met, and the presentiment of evil which had seized her when he had first spoken of going to sicily became more oppressive. she told herself that the worst had happened which could happen, but she answered herself with old tales of sicilian revenge after long-nourished hatred. she was shocked when ippolito announced his intention of accompanying his brother. ippolito was almost indispensable to her. the old prince used to tell her that her priest son answered the purpose of a daughter with none of the latter's disadvantages, at which ippolito himself was the first to laugh good-naturedly, being well aware that he had as good stuff in him as his rough-cast brothers. but corona really loved him more as a daughter than a son, and because he was less strong than the others, she was not so easily persuaded that he was safe when he was away from her, and she half resented the old gentleman's jest. she especially dreaded anything like physical exposure or physical danger for him. she was a brave and strong woman in almost every way, and would have sent her other three sons out to fight for their country or their honour without fear or hesitation. but ippolito was different. orsino might face the brigands if he chose. she could be momentarily anxious about him, but the belief prevailed with her that he could help himself and would come back safe and sound. one of the reasons, an unacknowledged one, why she had been so ready to let ippolito follow his inclination for the church, was that priests are less exposed to all sorts of danger than other men. san giacinto's sicilian schemes suddenly seemed to her quite mad since ippolito wished to accompany his brother and share in any danger which might present itself. but ippolito was one of those gently obstinate persons whom it is hard to move and almost impossible to stop when they are moving. he had made up his mind that he would go to camaldoli, and he met his mother's objections with gentle but quite unanswerable arguments. had there ever been an instance of a priest being attacked by brigands? corona was obliged to admit that she could remember none. was he, ippolito, accomplishing anything in the world, so long as he stayed quietly in rome? might he not do some good in the half-civilised country about camaldoli and santa vittoria? he could at least try, and would. there was no answer to this either. was not orsino, who was melancholic by nature, sure to be wretchedly lonely down there after san giacinto left? this was undoubtedly true. 'but the malaria,' corona objected at last. 'there is fever there, all summer, i am sure. you are not so strong as orsino. you will catch it.' 'i am much stronger than anybody supposes,' answered ippolito. 'and if i were not, it is not always the strong people that escape the fever. besides, there can be none before june or july, and orsino does not expect to stay all summer.' he had his way, of course, and made his preparations. orsino was glad for his own sake, and he also believed that the change of existence would do his brother good. he himself was not present when these discussions took place. ippolito told him about them. orsino wished to see vittoria again before leaving rome, but corona refused to help him any further. 'i cannot,' she said. 'you had a right to see her that once. at least, i thought so. it seemed to be a sort of moral right. but i cannot arrange meetings for you. i cannot put myself in such a position towards that family. one may do in a desperate situation what one would absolutely refuse to do every day and in ordinary circumstances.' 'going away, not knowing when i may come back, does not strike me as an ordinary circumstance,' said orsino, discontentedly. 'you must see that for me to cheat vittoria's mother and brothers by bringing her here to see you secretly, is to sacrifice all idea of dignity,' answered corona. 'i had not looked at it in that light, nor called it by that name.' 'but i had, and i do. i am perfectly frank with you, and i always have been. i like the girl very much, but i do not wish you to marry her on account of her family. it is one thing to object to a marriage on the score of birth or fortune. you know that i should not, though i hope you will marry in your own class. happiness is, perhaps, independent of the details of taste which make up daily life, but it runs on them, as a train runs on rails--and if a bad jolting is not unhappiness, it is certainly discomfort.' 'you are wise, mother. i never doubted that. but this is different--' 'very different. that is what i meant to say. there would, perhaps, be no question of that sort of moral discomfort with vittoria; she has been well brought up in a convent of ladies, like most of the young girls you meet in the world, like me, like all the rest of us. it is different. it is her family--they are impossible, not socially, for they are as good as anybody in the way of descent. bianca campodonico married vittoria's uncle, and no one thought it a bad match until it turned out badly. but that is just it. they are all people who turn out badly. tebaldo pagliuca has the face of a criminal, and his brother makes one think of a satyr. their mother is a nonentity and does not count. vittoria is charming. i suppose she is like someone on her mother's side, for she has not the smallest resemblance to any of the others. but all the charm in the world will not compensate you for the rest of them. and now you have had the frightful misfortune to kill their brother. did you never hear of a vendetta? the southern people are revengeful. the corleone will never acknowledge to the world that ferdinando was one of them, but they will not forget it, against you and yours, and your children. i meet those young men in the street, and they bow as though nothing had happened, but i know well enough that if they could destroy every one of us, they would. can i put myself in the position of cheating such people by bringing vittoria here to see you secretly? it is impossible. you must see it yourself.' 'yes,' answered orsino. 'i suppose i must admit it. it would be undignified.' 'yes, very. the word is not strong enough. you must help yourself. i do not propose any solution of the difficulty. you love the girl. heaven forbid that i should stand in the way of honest love between honest man and woman. but frankly, i wish that you did not love her, and that she did not love you. and i cannot help you any more, because i will not humiliate myself to deceive people who hate me, and you, and all of us, even to our name.' 'do you think they do? would they not be glad to see vittoria married to me? after all, i am a great match for a ruined family's only daughter, and if tebaldo pagliuca is anything, he is grasping, i am sure.' 'yes, but he is more revengeful than grasping, and more cunning than revengeful--a dangerous enemy. that is why i hate to see ippolito go with you to the south. some harm will come to him, i am sure. the corleone have the whole country with them.' 'i will answer for him,' said orsino, smiling. 'nothing shall happen to him.' 'how can you answer for him? how can you pledge yourself that he shall be safe? it is impossible. you cannot spend your life in protecting him.' 'i can provide people who will,' answered the young man. 'but you are wrong to be so timid about him. no one ever touches a priest, in the first place, and before he has been there a fortnight, all the people will like him, as everybody always does. it is impossible not to like ippolito. besides, tebaldo pagliuca has no reason for going to sicily now that the place is sold. why in the world should he go? little by little we shall gain influence there, and before long we shall be much more popular than the corleone ever were. san giacinto has written to me already. he says that everything is perfectly quiet already,--that was twenty-four hours after i left,--that he had twenty men from the village at work on the house, making repairs, and that they worked cheerfully and seemed to like his way of doing things. since ferdinando is dead there is no one to lead an opposition. they are all very poor and very glad to earn money.' 'it may be as you say,' said corona, only partially reassured. 'i do not understand the condition of life there, of course, and i know that when you promise to answer for ippolito you are in earnest, and will keep your word. but i am anxious--very anxious.' 'i am sorry, mother,' replied orsino. 'i am very sorry. but you will soon see that you have no reason to be anxious. that is all i can say. i will answer for him with my life.' 'that is a mere phrase, orsino,' said corona, gravely, 'like a great many things one says when one is very much in earnest. if anything happened to him, your life would be still more precious to me than it is, if that were possible. you all think that because i am often anxious about him, he is my favourite. you do not understand me, any of you. i love you all equally, but i am not equally anxious about you all, and my love shows itself most for the one who seems the least strong and able to fight the world.' 'for that matter, mother, ippolito is as able to fight his own battles as the strongest of us. he is obstinate to a degree hardly anyone can understand. he has the quiet, sound, uncompromising obstinacy of the christian martyrs. people who have that sort of character are not weak, and they are generally very well able to take care of themselves.' 'yes, i know he is obstinate. that is, when he insists upon going with you.' corona was very far from being satisfied, and orsino felt that in spite of what she had said she was in reality laying upon him the responsibility for his brother's safety. he himself felt no anxiety on that score, however. in rome, many hundreds of miles away from camaldoli, even the things which had really happened during his brief stay in sicily got an air of improbability and distance which made further complications of the same sort seem almost impossible. besides, he had the promise of the minister of the interior that a company of infantry should shortly be quartered at santa vittoria, which would materially increase the safety of the whole neighbourhood. orsino's principal preoccupation was to see vittoria again, alone, before he left. in the hope of meeting her he went to a garden party, and in the evening to two houses where she had gone frequently during the winter with her mother. but she did not appear. her mother was ill, and vittoria stayed at home with her. her brothers, on the contrary, were everywhere, always smiling and apparently well satisfied with the world. it was said that tebaldo was trying to marry an american heiress, and orsino twice saw him talking with the young stranger, who was reported to have untold millions, and was travelling with an aunt, who seemed to have as many more of her own. he looked at the girl without much curiosity, for the type has become familiar in europe of late years. miss lizzie slayback--for that was her name--was undeniably pretty, though emphatically not beautiful. she was refined in appearance, too, but not distinguished. one could not have said that she was 'nobody,' as the phrase goes, yet no one would have said, at first sight, that she was 'somebody.' yet she had an individuality of her own, which was particularly apparent in her present surroundings, a sort of national individuality, which contrasted with the extremely denationalised appearance and manner of roman society. for the romans of the great houses have for generations intermarried with foreigners from all parts of europe, until such strongly latin types as the saracinesca are rare. miss slayback was neither tall nor short, and she had that sort of generally satisfactory figure which has no particular faults and which is extremely easy to dress well. her feet were exquisite, her hands small, but not pretty. she had beautiful teeth, but all her features lacked modelling, though they were all in very good proportion. her head was of a good shape, and her hair was of a glossy brown, and either waved naturally or was made to wave by some very skilful hand. she had dark blue eyes with strong dark lashes, which atoned in a measure for a certain uninteresting flatness and absence of character about the brows and temples, and especially below the eyes themselves and at the angles, where lies a principal seat of facial expression. she spoke french fluently, but with a limited and uninteresting vocabulary, so that she often made exactly the same remarks about very different subjects. yet her point of view being quite different from that of romans, they listened to what she said with surprise, and sometimes with interest. her aunt was not really her aunt, but her uncle's wife, mrs. benjamin slayback, whose maiden name had been charlotte lauderdale--a fact which meant a great deal in new york and nothing at all in rome. she was an ambitious woman, well born and well educated, and her husband had been a member of congress, and was now a senator for nevada. he was fabulously rich, and his wife, who had married him for his money, having been brought up poor, had lately inherited a vast fortune of her own. miss lizzie slayback was the only daughter of senator slayback's elder brother. orsino was told a great many of these facts, and they did not interest him in the least, for he had never thought of marrying a foreign heiress. but he was quite sure from the first that tebaldo had made up his mind to get the girl if he could. the slaybacks had been in rome about a month, but orsino had not chanced to see them, and did not know how long tebaldo might have known them. it was said that they did not mean to stay much longer, and tebaldo was doing his best to make good his running in the short time that remained. it chanced that the first time orsino came face to face with tebaldo was when the latter had just been talking with miss slayback and was flattering himself that he had made an unusually good impression upon her. he was, therefore, in a singularly good humour, for a man whose temper was rarely good and was often very bad indeed. the two men met in a crowded room. without hesitation tebaldo held out his hand cordially to orsino. 'i am very glad to see you safely back,' he said, with a great appearance of frankness. 'you are the hero of the hour, you know.' for a moment even orsino was confused by the man's easy manner. even the eyes did not betray resentment. he said something by way of greeting. 'i have had some difficulty in making out who the brigand was whom you shot,' continued tebaldo. 'it is an odd coincidence. we think it must have been one of the pagliuca di bauso. there is a distant branch of the family--rather down in the world, i believe--it must have been one of them.' 'i am glad it was no nearer relation,' answered orsino, not knowing what to say. 'no near relative of mine would have been likely to be in such company,' answered the sicilian, rather stiffly, for he was a good actor when not angry. 'no--of course not--i did not mean to suggest such a thing. it was an odd coincidence, of course.' orsino tried not to look incredulous. tebaldo was about to pass on, when an idea presented itself to orsino's mind, of which he had not thought before now. slow men sometimes make up their minds suddenly, and not having the experience of habitually acting upon impulses, they are much more apt to make mistakes, on the rare occasions when they are carried away by an idea, and do so. it seemed to him that if he were ever to speak to either of vittoria's brothers about marrying her, this was the moment to do so. it would be impossible for tebaldo, in an instant, to deny what he had just now said, and it would be hard for him to find a pretext for refusing to give his sister to such a man. the whole thing might be carried through by a surprise, and orsino would take the consequences afterwards, and laugh at them, if he were once safely married. tebaldo had already turned away to speak to someone else, and orsino went after him and called him back. 'there is a matter about which i should like to speak to you, don tebaldo,' he said. 'can we get out of this crowd?' tebaldo looked at him quickly and sharply, before he answered by a nod. the two men moved away together to the outer rooms, of which there were three or four, stiffly furnished with pier tables and high-backed gilt chairs, as in most old roman houses. when they were alone, orsino stopped. 'it is an important matter,' he said slowly. 'i wish to speak with you, as being the head of your family.' 'yes,' answered tebaldo, and the lids drooped, vulture-like, at the corners of his eyes, as he met orsino's look steadily. 'by all means. we shall not be interrupted here. i am at your service.' 'i wish to marry your sister, and i desire your consent,' said orsino. 'that is the whole matter.' it would have been impossible to guess from the sicilian's face whether he had ever anticipated such a proposition or not. there was absolutely no change in his expression. 'my sister is a very charming and desirable young girl,' he said rather formally. 'as there seems to be a good deal of liberty allowed to young girls in rome, as compared with sicily, you will certainly pardon me if i ask whether you have good reason to suppose that she prefers you in any way.' 'i have good reason for supposing so,' answered orsino, but he felt the blood rising to his face as he spoke, for he did not like to answer such a question. 'i congratulate you,' said tebaldo, smiling a little, but not pleasantly. 'personally, i should also congratulate myself on the prospect of having such a brother-in-law. i presume you are aware that my sister has no dowry. we were ruined by my uncle corleone.' 'it is a matter of perfect indifference,' replied orsino. 'you are generous. i presume that you have inherited some private fortune of your own, have you not?' 'no, i am dependent on my father.' 'then--pardon my practical way of looking at the affair,' said tebaldo, accentuating his smile a little, 'but, as a mere formality, i think that there must be some proposal from the head of your house. you see, you and vittoria will be dependent on an allowance from your father, who, again, is doubtless dependent on your grandfather, prince saracinesca. as my poor sister has nothing, there must necessarily be some understanding about such an allowance.' 'it is just,' answered orsino, but he bit his lip. 'my father has an independent estate,' he added, by way of correction. 'and my mother has all the astrardente property.' 'there is no lack of fortune on your side, my dear don orsino. you are, of course, sure of your father's consent, so that an interview with him will be a mere formality. for myself, i give you my hand heartily and wish you well. i shall be happy to meet the prince of sant' ilario at any time which may be agreeable to him.' orsino felt that the man had got the better of him, but he had to take the proffered hand. mentally he wondered what strange monster this tebaldo pagliuca could be within himself, to grasp the hand that had killed his brother less than a week ago, welcoming its owner as his brother-in-law. but he saw that the very simple and natural request for an interview with his father would probably prove a source of almost insurmountable difficulty. 'i had hoped,' he said, 'to have had the pleasure of seeing donna vittoria here this evening. i shall be obliged to return to sicily in a day or two. may i see her at your house before i go?' tebaldo hesitated a moment. 'you will find her at home with my mother to-morrow afternoon,' he answered almost immediately. 'i see no reason why you should not call.' 'but your mother--' orsino stopped short. 'what were you going to say?' enquired tebaldo, blandly. 'you will be kind enough to tell her that i am coming, will you not?' orsino saw that he was getting into a terribly difficult situation. 'oh yes,' tebaldo answered. 'i shall take great pleasure in announcing you. she is better, i am glad to say, and i have no doubt that this good news will completely restore her.' orsino felt a vague danger circling about his heart, as a hawk sails in huge curves that narrow one by one until he strikes his prey. the man was subtle and ready to take advantage of the smallest circumstance with unerring foresight while wholly concealing his real intention. 'come at three o'clock, if it is convenient,' concluded tebaldo. 'and now--' he looked at his watch--'you will forgive me if i leave you. i have an engagement which i must keep.' he shook hands again with great cordiality, and they parted. tebaldo went out directly, without returning to the inner rooms, but orsino went back to stay half an hour longer. out of curiosity he got a friend to introduce him to miss lizzie slayback. the girl looked up with a bright smile when she heard the great name. 'i have so much wanted to meet you,' she said quickly. 'you are the man who killed the brigand, are you not? do tell me all about it!' he was annoyed, for he could not escape, but he resigned himself and told the story in the fewest possible words. 'how interesting!' exclaimed miss slayback. 'and we all thought he was the brother of don tebaldo. you know don tebaldo, of course? i think he is a perfect beauty, and so kind.' orsino had never thought of tebaldo pagliuca as either kind or beautiful, and he said something that meant nothing in reply. 'oh, you are jealous of him!' cried the girl, laughing. 'of course! all the men are.' orsino got away as soon as he could. as a necessary formality he was introduced to mrs. slayback. he asked her an idle question about how she liked rome, such as all romans ask all foreigners about whom they know nothing. 'how late is it safe to stay here?' she asked, with singular directness, by way of an answer. 'rome becomes unhealthy in august,' said orsino. 'the first rains bring the fever. until then it is perfectly safe, and one can return in october without danger. the bad time lasts for six weeks to two months at most.' 'thank you,' answered mrs. slayback with a little laugh. 'we shall not stay till august, i think. it would be too hot. i suppose that it is hot in june.' 'yes,' said orsino, absently. 'i suppose that you would find it hot in june.' he wanted to be alone, and he left her as soon as he could. he walked home in the warm night and reviewed his position, which had suddenly become complicated. it was clear that he must now speak to his father, since he had committed the folly of making his proposal to tebaldo. it was almost certain that his father would refuse to hear of the marriage on any consideration, and he knew that his mother disapproved of it. it was clear also that he could not avoid going to call upon vittoria and her mother on the following afternoon, but he could not understand why tebaldo had pretended to be so sure that he should be received, when he himself was tolerably certain that maria carolina would refuse to see him. that, however, was a simple matter. he should ask for her, and on being told that she could not receive, he should leave his card and go away. but that would not help him to see vittoria, and it was in order to see her alone before he left that he had suddenly determined to make his proposal to tebaldo. he had got himself into a rather serious scrape, and he was not gifted with more tact than the rest of his bold but tactless race. he therefore decided upon the only course which is open to such a man, which was to take his difficulties, one by one, in their natural order and deal with each as best he could. he had nothing more to hope from his mother's intervention. he knew her unchangeable nature and was well aware that she would now hold her position to the last. she would not oppose his wishes, and that was a great deal gained, but she would not help him either. early on the following morning he went to sant' ilario's own room, feeling that he had a struggle before him in which he was sure to be defeated, but which he could not possibly avoid. his father was reading the paper over his coffee by the open window, a square, iron-grey figure clad in a loose grey jacket. the room smelt of coffee and cigarettes. sant' ilario's perfect contentment and happiness in his surroundings made him a particularly difficult person to approach suddenly with a crucial question. his serene felicity made a sort of resisting shell around him, through which it was necessary to break before he himself could be reached. he looked up and nodded as orsino entered. such visits from his sons were of daily occurrence, and he expected nothing unusual. it was of no use to beat about the bush, and orsino attacked the main question at once. 'i wish to speak to you about a serious matter, father,' he said, sitting down opposite sant' ilario. 'i wish sicily were in china, and san giacinto in peru,' was the answer. 'it has nothing to do with san giacinto,' said orsino. 'i want to be married.' sant' ilario looked up sharply, in surprise. his eldest son's marriage was certainly a serious matter. 'to whom?' he enquired. 'to vittoria d'oriani,' said orsino, squaring his naturally square jaw, in anticipation of trouble. sant' ilario dropped the paper, took his cigarette from his lips, and crossed one leg over the other angrily. 'i was afraid so,' he said. 'you are a fool. go back to sicily and do not talk nonsense.' the saracinesca men had never minced matters in telling each other what they thought. 'i expected that you would say something like that,' answered orsino. 'then why the devil did you come to me at all?' enquired his father, his grey hair bristling and his eyebrows meeting. but orsino was not like him, being colder and slower in every way, and less inclined to anger. 'i came to you because i had no choice but to come,' he answered quietly. 'i love her, she loves me, and we are engaged to be married. it was absolutely necessary that i should speak to you.' 'i do not see the necessity, since you knew very well that i should not consent.' 'you must consent in the end, father--' 'i will not. that ends it. it is the worst blood in italy, and some of the worst blood in europe. corleone was a scoundrel, his father was a traitor--' 'that does not affect donna vittoria so far as i can see,' said orsino, stubbornly. 'it affects the whole family. besides, if they are decent people, they will not consent either. it is not a week since you killed ferdinando pagliuca--vittoria's brother--' 'they deny it.' 'they lie, i believe.' 'that is their affair,' said orsino. 'the fact does not beautify their family character, either,' retorted sant' ilario. 'with the whole of europe to choose from, excepting a dozen royalties, you must needs fall in love with the sister of a brigand, the niece of a scoundrel, the grand-daughter of--' 'yes--you have said all that. but i have promised to marry her, and that is a side of the question of which you cannot get rid so easily.' 'you did not promise her my consent, i suppose. i will not give it. if you choose to marry without it, i cannot hinder you. you can take her and live on her dowry, if she has one.' 'she has nothing.' 'then you may live by your wits. you shall have nothing more from me.' 'if the wits of the family had ever been worth mentioning, i should ask nothing more,' observed orsino, coldly. 'unfortunately they are not a sufficient provision. you are forcing me into the position of breaking my word to a woman.' 'if neither her parents nor yours will consent to your marriage, you are not breaking your engagement. they will not give her to you if you cannot support her. of course you can wait until i die. judging from my father, and from my own state of health at present, it will be a long engagement.' orsino was silent for a moment. he did not lose his temper even now, but he tried to devise some means of moving sant' ilario. 'i spoke to tebaldo pagliuca last night,' he said, after a pause. 'in spite of what you seem to expect, he accepted my proposition, so far as he could.' 'then he is an even greater villain than i had supposed him to be,' returned sant' ilario. 'that is no reason why you should force me to humiliate myself to him--' 'send him to me, if you are afraid to face him. i will explain the situation--i will--' 'you will simply quarrel with him, father. you would insult him in the first three words you spoke.' 'that is very probable,' said sant' ilario. 'i should like to. he has been scheming to catch you for his sister ever since the evening they first dined here. but i did not think you were such a childish idiot as to be caught so easily.' 'no one has caught me, as you call it. i love vittoria d'oriani, and she loves me. you have no right to keep us apart because you did not approve of her grandfather and uncle.' 'no right? i have no right, you say? then who has?' 'no one,' answered orsino, simply. 'i have the power, at all events,' retorted his father. 'i would not have you marry her--would not? i will not. it is materially impossible for you to marry with no money at all, and you shall have none. talk no more about it, or i shall positively lose my temper.' it occurred to orsino that it was positively lost already, but as he kept his own, he did not say so. he rose from his seat and calmly lighted a cigarette. 'then there is nothing more to be said, i suppose,' he observed. 'nothing more on that subject,' answered sant' ilario. 'not that i have the least objection to saying over again all i have said,' he added. 'at all events, you do not pretend that you have any objection to donna vittoria herself, do you?' 'no--except that she has made a fool of you. most women make fools of men, sooner or later.' 'perhaps, but you should be the last person to say so, i think.' 'i married with my father's consent,' replied sant' ilario, as though the fact were an unanswerable argument. 'if i had made to him such a proposition as you are making to me, he would have answered in a very different way, my boy, i can tell you!' 'in what way?' asked orsino. 'in what way? why, he would have been furiously angry! he would have called me a fool and an idiot, and would have told me to go to the devil.' orsino laughed in spite of himself. 'what are you laughing at?' enquired sant' ilario, sharply, growing hot again in a moment. 'those are exactly the words you have been saying to me,' answered orsino. 'i? have i? well--that only proves that i am like my father, then. and a very good thing, too. it is a pity that you are not more like me than you are. we should understand each other better.' 'we may yet understand each other,' said orsino, lingering in the vain hope of finding some new argument. 'no doubt. but not about this matter.' seeing that it was useless to prolong the discussion, orsino went away to think matters over. he had been quite sure of his father's answer, of course, but that did not improve the situation at all. it had been a necessity of conscience and honour to go to him, after speaking to tebaldo on the previous evening, because it was not possible to take his answer for granted. but now it became equally a duty of honour and self-respect to communicate to tebaldo what sant' ilario had said, and to do so was a most unpleasant humiliation. he cared nothing for the fact that his father's refusal might almost seem like an insult to tebaldo pagliuca, though he could not quite see how he could make the communication without giving offence. the real trouble was that he should be practically obliged to take back what he had said, and to say that after all, in the face of his family's objections, he could not marry vittoria at present, and saw no prospect of being able to marry her in the future. at the same time he wondered how much tebaldo had told his mother. she also, according to vittoria's statement, would oppose their marriage with all her power. yet tebaldo had professed himself quite certain that she would receive orsino when he called. there was something mysterious about that. orsino made up his mind that he would ask for tebaldo a quarter of an hour before the time named by the latter, and get over the disagreeable interview before making an attempt to have a word with vittoria alone. chapter xvi orsino reached the corleone's house before three o'clock on that afternoon. they lived on the second floor of a large new building in the via venti settembre, 'twentieth of september street,' as it would be in english, so named to commemorate the taking of rome on that day in 1870. a porter in livery asked orsino whom he wished to see, rang an electric bell, spoke through a speaking-tube, took off his cocked hat in order to listen for the answer, and finally told orsino that he would be received. there is always something mysterious to the looker-on about any such means of communication at a distance, when he does not hear the voice speaking from the other end. it would not have surprised orsino, if he had heard, as the porter did, that the answer came back in tebaldo pagliuca's voice; but he would then not have been so much surprised, either, at being admitted so readily. tebaldo, in fact, had told the porter to send the visitor up, for he had been waiting for the porter's bell; but he then told his servant that a gentleman was coming upstairs to see him, who was to be shown into the drawing-room at once, whither tebaldo himself would presently come. tebaldo had been quite sure that his mother and sister would be at home at that hour, since the former was not yet well enough to go out; he had been equally sure that his mother would refuse to receive orsino; he had, therefore, so arranged matters that orsino should be ushered into her presence unexpectedly, and to accomplish this he had lain in wait in the neighbourhood of the speaking-tube, which came up into the hall of his apartment just inside the door opening upon the stairs. so far the explanation of what happened is quite simple. it would be a different thing to unravel the complicated and passionate workings of tebaldo's intricate thoughts. in the first place, in spite of his behaviour in public, he hated orsino with all his heart for having unwittingly killed his brother, and, important as the advantages would be if vittoria married the heir of the great house, they by no means outweighed his desire for revenge. tebaldo was not an inhuman monster, though a specialist might have said that he had a strong tendency to criminality. he was capable of affection in a certain degree, apart from mere passion. he was unscrupulous, treacherous, tortuous in his reasonings; but he was above all tenacious, and he was endowed with much boldness and daring, of the kind which cast a romantic glamour over crimes of violence. it had been one thing to threaten ferdinando with the law, if he refused to sign the deed by which camaldoli was to be sold. it was quite another matter to give his sister to the man who had shot ferdinando like a wild animal. there the man's humanity had revolted, though orsino had not guessed it, when they had met and talked together at the party on the previous evening. on the other hand, his cunning bade him not to put himself in the position of refusing orsino's request, seeing that he denied his own relationship with his dead brother. it was easy enough for him to bring orsino and his mother unexpectedly face to face, and to let the young man hear from her lips what she thought of such a union, if indeed the interview should ever get so far as that. tebaldo could then calmly intrench himself behind his mother's refusal, and yet maintain outward relations with orsino, while waiting for an opportunity to avenge his brother, which was sure to present itself sooner or later. orsino mounted the stairs resolutely, squaring himself to meet tebaldo and tell him of sant' ilario's refusal as briefly and courteously as he could. at the same time he was half painfully and half happily conscious of vittoria's presence in the house. the pain and the pleasure were intermittent and uncertain. a servant was waiting and holding the door ajar. 'don tebaldo said that he would see me,' said orsino, mechanically. the man bowed in silence, shut the door upon the landing, and then led the way through the little hall and the antechamber beyond, opened a door, and stood aside to let orsino pass. as the door closed behind him, he heard a short and sharp cry in the room, like the warning note of certain fierce wild animals. it was followed instantly by an exclamation of terror in another voice. at the same instant he was aware that there were two women in the room,--maria carolina d'oriani and her daughter. the mother had been lying on a couch, and on seeing him had started up, supporting herself on her hand. the room was half darkened by the partly closed blinds. maria carolina was dressed in a loose black gown with wide sleeves that showed her thin, bare arms, for the weather was warm. her white face was thin and ghastly, and her dark eyes gleamed as they caught a little of the light from the window. orsino stood still two paces from the door. 'assassin!' the one word--a word of the people, hissed from her dry lips with such horror and hatred as orsino had never heard. there was silence then. vittoria, as white as her mother, and in an agony of terror, had risen, shrinking and convulsed, grasping with one hand the heavy inner curtain of the window. slowly the lean, dark woman left her seat, raising one thin arm, and pointing straight at orsino's face, her head thrown back, her parched lips parted and showing her teeth. 'murderer!' she cried. 'you dare to show me your face--you dare to show me the hands that killed my son! you dare to stand there before god and me--to hear god's curse on you and mine--to answer for blood--' her lips and throat were dry, so that she could not speak, but choked, and swallowed convulsively, and her eyes grew visibly red. orsino was riveted to the spot and speechless. for a moment he did not even think of vittoria, cowering back against the curtain. the woman's worn face was changed in her immense wrath, and he could not take his eyes from her. she found her voice again, painfully, fighting against the fiery dryness that choked her. 'with his innocent blood on your hands, you come here--you come to face his very mother in her sacred grief--to see my tears, to tear out the last shreds of my heart, to revile my mother's soul--to poison the air that breathes sorrow! but you think that i am weak, that i am only a woman. you think, perhaps, that i shall lose my senses and faint. it would be no shame, but i am not of such women.' her voice gathered fulness but sank in tone as she went on. still orsino said nothing, for it was impossible to interrupt her. she must say her say, and curse her curse out, and he must listen, for he would not turn and go. 'you have come,' she said, speaking quickly and with still rising fury. 'i am here to meet you. i am here to demand blood of you for blood. i am here to curse you, and your name, and your race, your soul and their souls, dead and living, in the name of god, who made my son, of christ, who died for him, of the holy saints, who could not save him from the devil you are--in the name of god, and of man, and of the whole world, i curse you! may your life be a century of cruel deaths, and when you die at last with a hundred years of agony in you, may your immortal soul be damned everlastingly a thousand-fold! may you pray and not be heard, may you repent and not be forgiven, may you receive the holy sacraments to your damnation and the last unction with fire in hell! may every living creature that bears your name come to an evil before your eyes, your father--your mother--the men and women of your house, and your unborn children! blood--i would have blood! may your blood pay for mine, and your soul for my son's soul, who died unconfessed in his sins! go, assassin! go, murderer of the innocent! go out into the world with my mother's curse on you, and may every evil thing in earth and hell be everlastingly with you and yours, living and dead! blood!--blood!--blood!' her voice was suddenly and horribly extinguished in the last word, as an instrument that is strained too far cracks in a last discordant note and is silent. she stood one moment more, with outstretched hand and fingers that would still make the sign of one more unspoken curse, and then, without warning, she fell back in a heap towards the couch. simultaneously, vittoria and orsino sprang forward to catch her, but even before vittoria could reach her she lay motionless on the floor, her head on the edge of the sofa, her hands stretched out on each side of her, her thin fingers twitching desperately at the carpet. a moment later, they were still too, and she was unconscious, as the two began to lift her up. for an instant neither looked at the other, but as orsino laid the fainting woman upon the couch, he raised his eyes to vittoria's. the girl was still overcome with fear at the whole situation, and trembling with horror at her mother's frightful outbreak of rage and hate. she shook her head in a frightened, hopeless way, as she bent down again and arranged a cushion for maria carolina. 'why did you come--why did you come?' she almost moaned. 'i told you--' orsino saw that if there was to be any explanation, he must seize the opportunity at once. 'i felt that i must see you before leaving,' he answered. 'last night i told your brother tebaldo that we were engaged to each other. he asked me to come at three o'clock, and said that your mother would receive me--i sent up word to ask--i was told to come up.' 'we knew nothing of your coming. it must have been the servant's fault.' she did not suspect her brother of having purposely brought about the meeting. 'now go!' she added quickly. 'go, before she comes to herself. do not let her see you again. go--please go!' 'yes--i had better go,' he answered. 'can i not see you again? vittoria--i cannot go away like this--' as he realised that it might be long before he saw her again, his voice trembled a little, and there was a pleading accent in his words which she had never heard. 'yes--no--how can i see you?' she faltered. 'there is no way--no place--when must you leave?' maria carolina stirred, and seemed about to open her eyes. 'go--please go!' repeated vittoria, desperately. 'she will open her eyes and see you, and it will begin again! oh, for heaven's sake--' orsino kissed her suddenly while she was speaking, once, sharply, with all his heart breaking. then he swiftly left the room without looking back, almost trying not to think of what he was doing. he closed the door behind him. as he turned to look for the way out, in his confusion of mind, the door opposite, which was ajar, opened wide, and he was confronted by tebaldo, who smiled sadly and apologetically. orsino stared at him. 'i am afraid you have had an unpleasant scene,' said the sicilian, quickly. 'it was a most unfortunate accident--a mistake of the servant, who took you for the doctor. the fact is, my mother seems to be out of her mind, and she will not be persuaded that ferdinando is alive and well, till she sees him. she was so violent an hour ago that i sent for a doctor--a specialist for insanity. i am afraid i forgot that you were coming, in my anxiety about her. i hope you will forgive me. of course, you have seen for yourself how she feels towards you at present, and in any case--at such a time--' he had spoken so rapidly and plausibly that orsino had not been able to put in a word. now he paused as if expecting an answer. 'i regret to have been the cause of further disturbing your mother, who indeed seems to be very ill,' said orsino, gravely. 'i hope that she will soon recover.' he moved towards the outer hall, and tebaldo accompanied him to the door of the apartment. 'you will, of course, understand that at such a time it will be wiser not to broach so serious a matter as my sister's marriage,' said tebaldo. 'pray accept again my excuses for having accidentally brought you into so unpleasant a situation.' he timed his words so that he uttered the last when he was already holding the door open with one hand and stretching out the other to orsino, who had no choice but to take it, as he said goodbye. tebaldo closed the door and stood still a moment in thought before he went back. as he turned to go in, vittoria came quickly towards him. 'how did it happen that don orsino was brought into the drawing-room?' she asked, still very pale and excited. 'i suppose the servant took him for the doctor,' said tebaldo, coolly, for he knew she would not stoop to ask questions of the footman. 'i am very sorry,' he added. he was going to pass on, but she stopped him. 'tebaldo--i must speak to you--it will do as well here as anywhere. the nurse is with her,' she said, looking towards the drawing-room. 'she fainted. don orsino told me in two words, before he went away, that he had spoken to you last night, and that you had told him to come here to-day.' 'that is perfectly exact, my dear. i have no doubt you have found out that your admirer, our brother's assassin, is a strictly truthful person. he insisted upon seeing you; it was impossible to talk at ease at a party, and i told him to come here, intending to see him myself. i told him to come at three o'clock--i daresay you know that, too?' 'yes--he said it was to be at three o'clock.' tebaldo took out his watch and looked at it. 'it is now only four minutes to three,' he observed, 'and he is already gone. he came a good deal before his time, or i should have been in the antechamber to receive him and take him into my room, out of harm's way, where i could have explained matters to him. as it is, i was obliged to show him out with some apology for the mistake.' 'how false you are!' exclaimed vittoria, her nostrils quivering. 'because i refuse to ruin you, and our own future position here? i think i am wise, not false. yes, i myself assured him last night that he did not kill our brother, but one of the pagliuca di bauso. i took the hand that did it, and shook it--to save your position in roman society. you seem to forget that poor ferdinando had turned himself into an outlaw--in plain language, he was a brigand.' 'he was worth a score of his brothers,' said vittoria, who was not afraid of him. 'you talk of saving my position. it is far more in order to save your own chance of marrying the american girl with her fortune.' 'oh yes,' answered tebaldo, with perfect calm. 'i include that in the general advantages to be got by what i say. i do not see that it is so very false. on the one hand, ferdinando was my brother. i shall not forget that. on the other, to speak plainly, he was a criminal. you see i am perfectly logical. no one is obliged to acknowledge that he is related to a criminal--' 'no one is obliged to lie publicly, as you do,' broke in vittoria, rather irrelevantly. 'as you make me lie--rather than let people know what kind of men my surviving brothers are.' 'you are not obliged to say anything. you do not go out into the world just now, because you have to stay with our mother. i will wager that you have not once told the lie you think so degrading.' 'no--i have not, so far. no one has forced me to.' 'you need only hold your tongue, and leave the rest to me.' 'you make me act a lie--even in not wearing mourning--' 'of course, if you make morality and honesty depend upon the colour of your clothes,' said tebaldo, scornfully, 'i have nothing more to say about it. but it is a great pity that you have fallen in love with that black saracinesca, the assassin. it will be a source of considerable annoyance and even suffering to you, i daresay. it even annoyed me. it would have been hard to refuse so advantageous an offer without accusing him of ferdinando's death, which is precisely what i will not do, for the sake of all of us. but you shall certainly not marry him, though you are inhuman enough to love him--a murderer--stained with your own blood.' 'he is not a murderer, for it was an accident--and you know it. i am not ashamed of loving him--though i cared for ferdinando more than any of you. and if you talk in that way--if you come between us--' she stopped. 'what will you do?' he asked contemptuously. 'i will tell the truth about ferdinando,' she said, fixing her eyes upon him. 'to whom, pray?' 'to miss slayback and her aunt,' answered victoria, her gentle face growing fierce. 'look here, vittoria,' said tebaldo, more suavely. 'do you know that orsino saracinesca is going back to camaldoli? yes. and you know that ferdinando had many friends there, and i have some in the neighbourhood. a letter from me may have a good deal to do with his safety or danger, as the case may be. it would be very thoughtless of you to irritate me by interfering with my plans. it might bring your own to a sudden and rather sad conclusion.' vittoria turned pale again, for she believed him. he was playing on her fears for orsino and on her ignorance of the real state of things at camaldoli. but for the moment his words had the effect he desired. he instantly followed up his advantage. 'you can never marry him,' he said. 'but if you will not interfere with my own prospects of marriage, nothing shall happen to saracinesca. otherwise--' he stopped and waited significantly. exaggerating his power, she believed that it extended to giving warrant of death or safety for orsino, and her imagination left her little choice. at all events, she would not have dared to risk her lover's life by crossing tebaldo's schemes for himself. 'i am sorry for the american girl,' she said. 'i like her for her own sake, and i would gladly save her from being married to such a man as you. but if you threaten to murder don orsino if i tell her the truth, you have me in your power on that side.' 'on all sides,' said tebaldo, scornfully, as he saw how deep an impression he had made on the girl. 'i hold his life in my hand, so long as he is at camaldoli, and while he is there you will obey me. after that, we shall see.' vittoria met his eyes fiercely for an instant, and then, thinking of orsino, she bent her head and went away, going back to her mother. she found her conscious again, but exhausted, lying down on the couch and tended by the nurse, who had been in the house since the news of her son's death had prostrated maria carolina. she looked at vittoria with a vague stare, not exactly recollecting whether the girl had been in the room during her outburst of rage against orsino or not. vittoria had been behind her all the time. 'is he gone?' asked maria carolina, in a faint and hollow voice. 'i am sorry--i could have cursed him much more----' 'mother!' exclaimed vittoria, softly and imploringly, and she glanced at the nurse. 'you may go now,' she said to the latter, fearing a fresh outburst. 'i will stay with my mother.' the nurse left the room, and the mother and daughter were alone together. they were almost strangers, as has been explained, vittoria having been left for years at the convent in palermo, unvisited by any of her family, until her uncle's death had changed their fortunes. it was impossible that there should be much sympathy between them. there was, on the other hand, a sort of natural feeling of alliance between the two women of the household as against the two men. maria carolina was mentally degraded by many years of a semi-barbarous life at camaldoli, which had destroyed some of her finer instincts altogether, and had almost effaced the effect of early education. she looked up to vittoria as to a superior being, brought up by noble ladies, in considerable simplicity of life, but in the most extreme refinement of feeling on all essential points, and in an atmosphere of general cultivation and artistic taste, which had not been dreamed of in her mother's youth, though it might seem old-fashioned in some more modern countries. the girl had received an education which had been good of its kind, and very complete, and she was therefore intellectually her mother's superior by many degrees. she knew it, too, and would have despised her mother if she had been like her brothers. as it was, she pitied her, and suffered keenly when maria carolina did or said anything in public which showed more than usual ignorance or provinciality. they had one chief characteristic in common, and ferdinando had possessed it also. they were naturally as frank and outspoken as the other two brothers were deceitful and treacherous. as often happens, two of the brothers had inherited more of their character from their father, while the third had been most like his mother. she, poor woman, felt that her daughter was the only one of the family whom she could trust, and looking up to her as she did, she constantly turned to her for help and comfort at home, and for advice as to her conduct in the world. but since ferdinando's death her mind, though not affected to the extent described by tebaldo in speaking with orsino, had been unbalanced. nothing which vittoria could say could make her understand how the catastrophe had happened, and though she had formerly liked orsino, she was now persuaded that he had lain in wait for her son and had treacherously murdered him. vittoria had soon found that the only possible means of keeping her quiet was to avoid the subject altogether, and to lead her away from it whenever she approached it. it would be harder than ever to accomplish this since she had seen orsino. she lay on her couch, moaning softly to herself, and now and then speaking articulate words. 'my son, my son! my handsome boy!' she cried, in a low voice. 'who will give him back to me? who will find me one like him?' her lamentations were like the mourning of a woman of the people. vittoria tried to soothe her. suddenly she sat up and grasped the girl's arm, staring into her face. 'to think that we once thought he might marry you!' she cried wildly. 'curse him, vittoria! let me hear you curse him, too! curse him for your soul's sake! that will do me good.' 'mother! mother!' cried the girl, softly pressing the hand that gripped her arm so roughly. 'what is the matter with you?' asked the half-mad creature fiercely, as her strength came back. 'why will you not curse him? go down on your knees and pray that all the saints will curse him as i do!' 'for heaven's sake, mother! do not begin again!' 'begin! ah, i have not ended--i shall not end when i die, but always while he is alive my soul shall pursue him, day and night, and i will--' she broke off. 'but you, too--you must wish him evil--you, all of us--then the evil will go with him always, if many of us cast it on him!' she was like a terrible witch, with her pale face and dishevelled hair, and gaunt arms that made violent gestures. 'speak, child!' she cried again. 'curse him for your dead brother!' 'no. i will never do that,' said vittoria. a new light came into the raving woman's eyes. 'you love him!' she exclaimed, half choking. 'i know you love him--' with a violent movement she pushed vittoria away from her, almost throwing her to the ground. then she fell back on the couch, and slowly turned her face away, covering her eyes with both her hands. her whole body quivered, and then was still, then shook more violently, and then, all at once, she broke into a terrible sobbing, that went on and on as though it would never stop while she had breath and tears left. vittoria came back to her seat and waited patiently, for there was nothing else to be done. and the sound of the woman's weeping was so monotonous and regular that the girl did not always hear it, but looked across at the half-closed blinds of the window and thought of her own life, and wondered at all its tragedy, being herself half stunned and dazed. it was bad enough, as it appeared to her, but could she have known it all as it was to be, and all that she did not yet know of her brother tebaldo's evil nature, she might, perhaps, have done like her mother, and covered her eyes with her hands, and sobbed aloud in terror and pain. that might be said of very many lives, perhaps. and yet men do their best to tear the veil of the future, and to look through it into the darkened theatre which is each to-morrow. and many, if they knew the price and the struggle, would give up the prize beyond; but not knowing, and being in the fight, they go on to the end. and some of them win. chapter xvii tebaldo's own affairs were by no means simple. he had made up his mind to get miss lizzie slayback for his wife, and her fortune for himself; but he could not make up his mind to forget the beautiful aliandra basili. the consequence was that he was in constant fear lest either should hear of his devotion to the other, seeing that his brother francesco was quite as much in love with the singer as he was himself, and but for native cowardice, as ready for any act of treachery which could secure his own ends. by that weakness tebaldo held him, for the present, in actual bodily fear, which is more often an element even in modern life than is generally supposed. but how long that might be possible tebaldo could not foresee. at any moment, by a turn of events, francesco might get out of his power. aliandra's season in rome had been a great success, and her career seemed secured, though she had not succeeded in obtaining an immediate engagement for the london season, which had been the height of her ambition. she had made her appearance too late for that, but the possibility of such a piece of good fortune was quite within her reach for the ensuing year. being in reality a sensible and conscientious artist, therefore, and having at the same time always before her the rather vague hope of marrying one of the brothers, she had made up her mind to stay in rome until july to study certain new parts with an excellent master she had found there. she therefore remained where she was, after giving a few performances in the short season after lent, and she continued to live very quietly with her old aunt in the little apartment they had hired. a certain number of singers and other musicians, with whom she had been brought into more or less close acquaintance in her profession, came to see her constantly, but she absolutely refused to know any of the young men of society who had admired her and sent her flowers during the opera season. with all her beauty and youth and talent, she possessed a very fair share of her father's profound common sense. of the two, she very much preferred francesco, who was gentler, gayer, and altogether a more pleasant companion; but she clearly saw the advantage of marrying the elder brother, who had a very genuine old title, for which she could provide a fortune by her voice. there were two or three instances of such marriages which had turned out admirably, though several others had been failures. she saw no reason why she should not succeed as well as anyone. tebaldo, on his part, had never had the smallest intention of marrying her, though he had hinted to her more than once, in moments of passion, that he might do so. aliandra was as obstinate as he, and, as has been said, possessed the tenacious instinct of self-preservation and the keen appreciation of danger which especially characterise the young girl of the south. she was by no means a piece of perfection in all ways, and was quite capable of setting aside most scruples in the accomplishment of her end. but that desired end was marriage, and there was no probability at all that she should ever lose her head and commit an irrevocable mistake for either of the brothers. she saw clearly that tebaldo was in love with her, as he understood love. she could see how his eyes lighted up and how the warm blood mantled under his sallow brown skin when he was with her, and how his hand moved nervously when it held hers. she could not have mistaken those signs, even if her aunt, the excellent signora barbuzzi, had not taken a lively interest in the prospects of her niece's marriage, watching tebaldo's face as an old sailor ashore watches the signs of the weather and names the strength of the wind, from a studding-sail breeze to a gale. what most disturbed aliandra's hopes was that tebaldo was cautious even in his passion, and seemed as well able to keep his head as she herself. his brother often told her that tebaldo sometimes, though rarely, altogether lost control of himself for a moment, and became like a dangerous wild animal. but she did not believe the younger man, who was always doing his best to influence her against tebaldo, and whom she rightly guessed to be a far more dangerous person where a woman was concerned. francesco had once frightened her, and she was really afraid to be alone with him. there was sometimes an expression which she dreaded in his satyr-like eyes and a smile on his red lips that chilled her. once, and she could never forget it, he had managed to find her alone in her room at the theatre, and without warning he had seized her rudely and kissed her so cruelly while she struggled in his arms that her lips had been swollen and had hurt her all the next day. her maid had opened the door suddenly, and he had disappeared at once without another word. she had never told tebaldo of that. since then she had been very careful. yet in reality she liked him better, for he could be very gentle and sympathetic, and he understood her moods and wishes as tebaldo never did, for he was a woman's man, while tebaldo was eminently what is called a man's man. aliandra was, as yet, in ignorance of miss slayback's existence, but she saw well enough that tebaldo was concealing something from her. a woman's faculty for finding out that a man has a secret of some sort is generally far beyond her capacity for discovering what that secret is. he appeared to have engagements at unusual times, and there was a slight shade of preoccupation in his face when she least expected it. on the other hand, he seemed even more anxious to please her than formerly, when he was with her, and she even fancied that his manner expressed a sort of relief when he knew that he could spend an hour in her company uninterrupted. when she questioned him, he said that he was in some anxiety about his affairs, and his engagements, according to his own account, were with men of business. but he never told what he was really doing. he had not even thought it necessary to inform her of the sale of camaldoli. though she was a native of the country, he told her precisely what he told everyone in regard to ferdinando pagliuca's death. 'eh--you say so,' she answered. 'but as for me, i do not believe you. there never was but one ferdinando pagliuca, he was your brother, and he was a friend of all the brigands in sicily. you may tell these romans about the pagliuca di bauso, but i know better. do you take me for a roman? we of randazzo know what a brigand is!' 'you should, at all events,' answered tebaldo, laughing, 'for you are all related. it is one family. if you knew how many brigands have been called basili, like you!' 'then you and i are also related!' she laughed, too, though she watched his face. 'but as for your brother, may the lord have him in peace! he is dead, and saracinesca killed him.' tebaldo shrugged his shoulders, but showed no annoyance. 'as much as you please,' he answered. 'but my brother ferdinando is alive and well in palermo.' 'so much the better, my dear friend. you need not wear mourning for him, as so many people are doing at santa vittoria.' 'what do you mean?' asked tebaldo, uneasily. 'did you ever hear of concetta, the beautiful daughter of don atanasio, the apothecary?' asked aliandra, quietly smiling. tebaldo affected surprise and ignorance. 'it is strange,' continued the singer, 'for you admire beauty, and she is called everywhere the fata del' etna--the fairy of etna--and she is one of the most beautiful girls in the whole world. my father knows her father a little--of course, he is only an apothecary--' she shrugged her shoulders apologetically--'but in the country one knows everybody. so i have seen her sometimes, as at the fair of randazzo, when she and her father have had a biscuit and a glass of wine at our house. but we could not ask them to dinner, because the mayor and his wife were coming, and the lieutenant of carabineers--an apothecary! you understand?' 'i understand nothing beyond what you say,' said tebaldo. 'you did not consider the apothecary of santa vittoria good enough to be asked to meet the mayor of randazzo. how does that affect me?' 'oh, not at all!' laughed aliandra. 'but everything is known, sooner or later. ferdinando, your brother, was at the fair, too--i remember what a beautiful black horse he had, as he rode by our house. but he did not come in, for he did not know us. now, when don atanasio and concetta went out, he was waiting a little way down the street, standing and holding his horse's bridle. i saw, for i looked through the chinks of the blinds to see which way concetta and her father would go. and your brother bowed to the ground when they came near him. fancy! to an apothecary's daughter! just as i have seen you bow to the princess of sant' ilario in the villa borghese. she is saracinesca's mother, is she not? very well. i tell you the truth when i tell you that don ferdinando took the two to dine with him in the best room at the inn. they say he thought nothing good enough for the apothecary's daughter, though he was of the blood of princes! but now concetta wears mourning. perhaps it is not for him? eh?' aliandra had learned italian very well when a child, and was even taking lessons in french, in order to be able to sing in paris. but as she talked with tebaldo she fell back into her natural dialect, which was as familiar to him as to herself. he loved the sound of it, though he took the greatest pains to overcome his own sicilian accent in order not to seem provincial in rome. but it was pleasant to hear it now and then in the midst of a life of which the restraints were all disagreeable to him, while many of them were almost intolerably irksome. 'how much better our language is than this stilted roman!' he exclaimed, by way of suddenly turning the conversation. 'i often wish you could sing your operas in sicilian.' 'i often sing you sicilian songs,' she answered. 'but it is strange that concetta should wear mourning, is it not?' 'leave concetta alone, and talk to me about yourself. i have never seen her--' 'do not say such things!' laughed aliandra. 'i do not believe much that you say, but you will soon not let me believe anything at all. everyone has seen concetta. they sing songs about her even in palermo--la fata del' etna--' 'oh, i have heard of her, of course, by that name, but i never remember seeing her. at all events, you are ten times more beautiful than she--' 'i wish i were!' exclaimed the artist, simply. 'but if you think so, that is much.' 'it would be just the same if you were ugly,' said tebaldo, magnanimously. 'i should love you just as i do--to distraction.' 'to distraction?' she laughed again. 'you know it,' he answered, with an air of conviction. 'i love you, and everything that belongs to you--your lovely face, your angelic voice, your words, your silence--too much.' 'why too much?' 'because i suffer.' 'there is a remedy for that, my dear tebaldo.' 'tell me!' 'marry me. it is simple enough! why should you suffer?' her laughter was musical and sunny, but there was a little irony in its readiness to follow the words. 'you know that we have often spoken of that,' he answered, being taken unawares. 'there are difficulties.' 'so you always say. but then it would be wiser of you not to love me any more, but to marry where you do not find those difficulties. surely it should be easy!' she spoke now with a little scorn, while watching him; and as she saw the vulture-like droop of his eyelids she knew that she had touched him, though she could not quite tell how. she had never spoken so frankly to him before. 'not so easy as you think,' he replied, with a rather artificial laugh. 'then you have tried?' she asked. 'i had thought so! and you have failed? my condolences!' 'i? tried to marry?' he cried, realising how far she was leading him. 'what are you making me say?' 'i am trying to make you tell the truth,' she answered, with a change of tone. 'but it is not easy, for you are clever at deceiving me, and i wonder that you cannot deceive the woman you wish to marry.' 'i do not wish to marry anyone,' he protested. 'no--not even me. me, least of all, because i am not good enough to marry you, though you are good enough to pursue me with what you call your love. i am only an artist, and you must have a princess, of course. i have only my voice, and you want a solid fortune. i have only my honour, but you want honours through your wife for yourself, and you would tear mine to rags if i yielded a hair's-breadth. you make a mistake, don tebaldo pagliuca. i am a sicilian girl and i came of honest people. you may suffer as much as you please, but unless you will marry me, you may go on suffering, for you shall not ruin me.' she spoke strongly, with a strange mixture of theatrical and commonplace expressions; but she was in earnest, and he knew it, and in her momentary anger she was particularly fascinating to him. yet her speech made no real impression upon his mind. he tried to take her hand, but she drew it away sharply. 'no,' she said. 'i have had enough of this love-making, this hand-taking, and this faith-breaking. you sometimes speak of marrying me, and then you bring up those terrible, unknown difficulties, which you never define. yes, you are a prince--but there are hundreds of them in our italy. yes, i am only an artist, but some people say that i am a great artist--and there are very few in italy, or anywhere else. if it is beneath your dignity to marry a singer, signor principe di corleone, then go and take a wife of your own class. if you love me, tebaldo pagliuca, as an honest man loves an honest woman--and god knows i am that--then marry me, and i, with my voice, will make you a fortune and buy back your estates, besides being a faithful wife to you. but if you will not do that, go. you shall not harm my good name by being perpetually about me, and you shall not touch the tips of my fingers with your lips until you are my lawful husband. there, i have spoken. you shall know that a sicilian girl is as good as a roman lady--better, perhaps.' tebaldo looked at her in some surprise, and his mind worked rapidly, remembering all she had said during the preceding quarter of an hour. she spoke with a good deal of natural dignity and force, and he was ready to admit that she was altogether in earnest. but his quick senses missed a certain note which should have been in her tones if this had been a perfectly spontaneous outburst. it was clear, as it always had been, that she wished to marry him. it was not at all clear that she loved him in the least. it struck him instantly that she must have heard something of his attention to the foreign heiress, and that she had planned this scene in order to bring matters to a crisis. he was too sensible not to understand that he himself was absurdly in love with her, in his own way, and that she knew it, as women generally do, and could exasperate him, perhaps, into some folly of which he might repent, by simply treating him coldly, as she threatened. during the silence which followed, she sat with folded arms and half-closed eyes, looking at him defiantly from under her lids. 'you do me a great injustice,' he said. 'i am sorry,' she answered. 'i have no choice. i value my good name as a woman, besides my reputation as an artist. you do not justify yourself in the only way in your power by explaining clearly what the insuperable difficulties are in the way of our marriage.' the notary's daughter did not lack logic. 'i never said that they were insuperable--' 'then overcome them, if you want me,' answered aliandra implacably. 'i said that there were difficulties, and there are great ones. you speak of making a fortune by your voice, my dear aliandra,' he continued, his tones sweetening. 'but you must understand that a man who is a gentleman does not like to be dependent on his wife's profession for his support.' 'i do not see that it is more dignified to depend on his wife's money because she had not earned it by hard work,' retorted the singer scornfully. 'it is honestly earned.' 'the honour is entirely yours,' said tebaldo. 'the world would grant me no share in it. then there are my mother's objections, which are strong ones,' he went on quickly. 'she has, of course, a right to be consulted, and she does not even know you.' 'it is in your power to introduce me to your mother whenever you please.' 'she is too ill to see anyone--' 'she has not always been ill. you have either been afraid to bring an artist to your mother's house, which is not flattering to me, or else you never had the slightest intention of marrying me, in spite of much that you have said. though i have heard you call your brother francesco a coward, i think he is braver than you, for he would marry me to-morrow, if i would have him.' 'and live on what you earn,' retorted tebaldo, with ready scorn. 'he has as much as you have,' observed aliandra. 'your uncle left no will, and you all shared the property equally--' 'you are not a notary's daughter for nothing,' laughed tebaldo. 'that is true. but there was very little to share. do you know what was left when the debts were paid? a bit of land here in rome--that was all, besides camaldoli. both have been sold advantageously, and we have just enough to live decently all together. we should be paupers if we tried to separate.' 'you are nothing if not plausible. but you will forgive me if i say that this difficulty has the air of being really insuperable. you absolutely refuse to share what i earn, and you are absolutely incapable of earning anything yourself. that being the case, the sooner you go away the better, for you can never marry me, on your own showing, and you are injuring my reputation in the meantime.' 'i am engaged in speculations, in which i hope to make money,' said tebaldo. 'i often tell you that i have appointments with men of business--' 'yes, you often tell me so,' interrupted aliandra, incredulously. 'you are cold, and you are calculating,' retorted tebaldo, with a sudden change of manner, as though taking offence at last. 'it is fortunate for me that i am not hot-headed and foolish,' replied aliandra, coolly. they parted on these terms. she believed that her coldness would bring him to her feet if anything could; but he was persuaded that his brother had betrayed him and had told her about the american heiress. chapter xviii orsino made his preparations for returning to sicily with a heavy heart. his situation was desperate at present, for he had exhausted his ingenuity in trying to discover some means of seeing vittoria a last time. to leave san giacinto to do what he could with camaldoli and refuse to go back at all, for the present, which seemed to be his only chance of a meeting with vittoria, was a course against which his manliness revolted. even if there had been no danger connected with the administration of the new estate, he would not have abandoned his cousin at such a time, after promising to help him, and indeed to undertake all work connected with the place. san giacinto was a busy man, to whom any sacrifice of time might suddenly mean a corresponding loss of money, for which orsino would hold himself responsible if he brought about the delay. but as it was, since the position he had promised to fill was a dangerous one, nothing could have induced him to withdraw from the undertaking. it would have seemed like running away from a fight. it was a consolation to have his brother's company, as far as anything could console him, though he could not make up his mind for some time to confide in ippolito, who had always laughed at him for not marrying, and who could probably not understand why he had now allowed himself to fall in love with one of the very few young women in the world whom he might be prevented from marrying. he was grave and silent as he put together a few books in his own room, vaguely wondering whether he should ever read them. ippolito was collecting a number of loose sheets of music that lay on the piano, on a chair beside it, on the table among orsino's things, and even on the floor under the instrument. he had taken off his cassock, because it was warm, and he wore a grey silk jacket which contrasted oddly with his black silk stockings and clerical stock. from time to time, without taking his cigar from his lips, he hummed a few notes of a melody in the thin but tuneful voice which seems to belong to so many musicians and composers, interrupting himself presently and blowing a cloud of smoke into the air. now and then he looked at orsino as though expecting him to speak. at last, having got his manuscript music into some sort of order, he sat down at the piano to rest himself by expressing an idea he had in his head. 'how glad you will be not to hear a piano at camaldoli,' he said, stopping as suddenly as he had begun. 'it is a horrible instrument,' orsino said, 'but it never disturbs me, and it seems to amuse you.' ippolito laughed. 'that is what you always say, but i know you will be glad to be rid of it, and it will do me good to play the organ at santa vittoria for a change. as that is three-quarters of a mile away, it will not disturb you.' 'nothing disturbs me,' replied orsino, rather sadly. ippolito made up his mind to speak at last. 'orsino,' be began quietly, 'i know all about you and donna vittoria. as we are going to be so much together, it is better that i should tell you so. i hate secrets, and i would rather not make a secret of knowing yours--if it is one.' orsino had looked round sharply when the priest had first spoken, but had then gone back to what he was doing. 'i am glad you know,' he said, 'though i would not have told you. i have spoken to our father and mother about it. the one calls me a fool, and the other thinks me one. they are not very encouraging. as for her family, her mother curses me for having killed her favourite son, and her brothers pretend that she is mad and then intrench themselves behind her to say that it is impossible. i do not blame them much--heaven knows, i do not blame her at all. all the same, vittoria and i love each other. it is an impossible situation. i cannot even see her to say goodbye. i wish i could find a way out of it!' he laughed bitterly. 'i wish i could,' echoed his brother. 'but i am only a priest, and you call me a dilettante churchman, at that. let us see. let us argue the case as though we were in the theological school. no--i am serious--you need not frown. how many things can happen? three, i think. there are three conceivable terminations. either you part for ever and forget each other--' 'you may eliminate that,' observed orsino. 'very well. or else you continue to love each other, in which event you must either succeed in getting married, or not, and those are the other two cases.' 'one does not need to be a theologian to see that. similarly a man must either live or die, and a door must be either open or shut, on pain of not being a door at all.' 'i have not finished,' objected ippolito. 'in fact, i have only begun. for the sake of argument, we will assume first that you continue to love each other, but cannot get married.' 'that is the present position.' 'it is not a position which usually lasts long. at the end of a certain time you will naturally cease to love each other, and we obtain a second time the case which you at first eliminated.' 'eliminate it again,' said orsino gravely. 'very well. there remains only one possible issue, after your eliminations. you must be married. on any other assumption you will forget each other. now in such cases as yours, how do people act? you are a layman, and it is your business to know.' 'when both are of age they "respectfully require" their respective parents to give their consent. if it is refused, they marry and the law protects them.' 'so does the church,' said the priest. 'but it does not provide them with an income afterwards, nor in any way guarantee them against the consequences of family quarrels. those are subdivisions of the case which you can neither modify nor eliminate.' 'well,' said orsino wearily, 'what do you conclude for all this?' ippolito's gentle face grew suddenly grave, and seemed squarer and more like his brother's. 'from what i know of the world,' he answered, 'i conclude that men who mean to do things, do them, and let the consequences take care of themselves. if you mean to marry vittoria d'oriani, you will marry her, without any help and without anyone's advice. if you do not mean to marry her, you will not, because, under the circumstances, she can assuredly not marry you, as women have been known to marry husbands almost against their will.' 'you have a singularly direct way of putting things,' observed orsino, thoughtfully. 'that is simply the result of your eliminations,' answered the priest. 'if you do not love her enough to take her in spite of everything and everybody, you must restore into the list of possibilities the certainty that before long you will not love her at all. for i conceive that half a love is no better as a basis of warfare than half a faith. i do not mean to breed war with our father and mother. that is a serious matter. i am only pursuing the matter to its logical conclusion and end, in words, as you will have to do in your acts, sooner or later.' 'meanwhile i am doing nothing,' said orsino. 'and i am horribly conscious that i am doing nothing.' 'you are going away,' remarked ippolito. 'that is not inaction.' 'it is worse than inaction--it is far worse than doing nothing at all.' 'i am not so sure of that. it is sometimes a good thing to force an interval between events. in the first place, i often hear it said that a separation strengthens a great passion, but destroys a small one. all passions seem great when the object is present, but distance brings out the truth. by the time you have been a month at camaldoli you will know whether it is essential to your happiness to marry vittoria d'oriani, or not.' 'and suppose that it is? we come back to the same situation again.' 'yes--we come back to the eternal situation of force against force.' 'and you mean that i should use force? that is--that i should marry her and take all the consequences, no matter what they may be?' 'i do not mean that you should. i distinguish. i mean that you will, that is all. i am not considering the moral ground of the action, but the human source of it. your marriage may be the cause of great difficulties and complications, but if you are persuaded that it is quite necessary to your life to marry that young lady, you will marry her. it is by no means an impossible thing to accomplish, nor even a very difficult one.' 'you do not tell me how far it is a matter of conscience to consider the consequences.' 'it is of no use to tell courageous men that sort of thing,' said the priest. 'they take the consequences, that is all. no man who ever wanted a thing with his whole heart ever stopped to consider how his getting it would affect other people, unless the point of honour was involved.' 'and there is no point of honour here, is there?' asked orsino, as a man asks a question to which he knows the answer. 'you know what you have said to donna vittoria,' answered ippolito. 'i do not.' 'i have asked her to marry me, and she has consented.' orsino laughed a little drily. 'that is the way one puts it, i believe,' he added. 'then i should say that unless she, of her own accord, releases you from your word, the point of honour lies in not withdrawing it,' replied the priest. 'if you did, it would mean that you were not willing to take the risks involved in keeping it, would it not?' 'of course it would. i wish you could make our father see that.' 'people of the previous generation never see what happens in ours. they only infer what ought to happen if all their own prejudices had been canonical law for fifty years.' 'that is sedition,' laughed orsino, whose spirits had risen suddenly. 'no, it is criticism, and criticism is only called sedition under despotic governments. there is no reason why grown men, like you and me, should not criticise their fathers and mothers up to a certain point, within limits of respect. we honour them, but they are not gods, that we should worship them. when we were little boys we supposed that our father knew everything about everything. we are aware, now, that we understand many things which have grown up in our day much better than he does. to go on supposing that he knew everything, in spite of evidence, would be a gross form of superstition. superstition, i suppose, means a survival, to wit, the survival of some obsolete belief. that is exactly what it would be in us to artificially maintain the belief of our childhood in our parents' omniscience. has your love for donna vittoria anything to do with the actual amount of her knowledge at any moment? no. but love appears to be made up of passion and affection. therefore affection is independent of any such knowledge in its object. therefore we love our parents quite independently of what they know or do not know about life, or mathematics, and we may, consequently, criticise such knowledge in them on its own merits, without in the least detracting from our affection for themselves.' 'you are a very satisfactory brother,' said orsino, smiling at his brother's speech. 'but i am not sure that you are a strictly orthodox priest on the question of family relations.' 'i give you a theory of such relations,' answered ippolito. 'in actual practice i believe that our mother is one of the wisest women living, without being in the smallest degree intellectual. it is true that my experience of women is limited, but i hear a great deal of talk about them. she is fond of donna vittoria, i am sure.' 'yes--very. but she sees fifty reasons why i had better not marry her.' 'so do i,' said ippolito, calmly. 'you? why, you have been urging me to marry her in spite of everything!' 'oh no. i have only proved to you that if you love her enough, you will marry her in spite of everything. that is a very different thing.' 'priest!' laughed orsino. 'sophist!' 'anything you like,' answered ippolito, swinging round on the piano-stool and striking a chord. 'all the same, i hope you may marry her, and have no bad consequences to deal with, and i will help you if i can.' 'thank you,' said orsino; but his voice was drowned by a burst of loud and intricate music, as ippolito's white fingers flew over the piano while he stared at the ceiling, his head thrown back, his cigar sticking up from between his teeth, he himself apparently unaware of what his hands were doing, and merely listening to the music. orsino was momentarily cheered and encouraged by all his brother had said, but the situation was not materially improved thereby. it was, indeed, almost as bad as it could be, and an older and wiser man than orsino would have expected that something must occur before long, either to improve it, or to cut it short at once and for ever, for the simple reason that it could neither last, as it stood, nor be made more difficult by anything which could happen. chapter xix when orsino and ippolito reached camaldoli everything seemed to be quiet, and san giacinto himself was greatly encouraged by the turn matters had taken. during the first day or two after orsino's departure there had still been considerable curiosity among the people of santa vittoria, and more than once san giacinto had made little speeches, in his direct manner, to the peasants and villagers who hung about in the neighbourhood of the big old house. but after that he had not been disturbed, and everything appeared to be progressing favourably. the year was one of abundance, the orange crop, which in sicily is all gathered before may, had turned out well, the grapes promised an abundant vintage, and even the olives had blossomed plentifully, though it was still too early to make accurate predictions about the oil. on the whole the prospects for the year were unusually satisfactory, and san giacinto congratulated himself on having chanced to buy the place in a good year. in an agricultural country like that part of sicily, the temper of the people is profoundly affected by the harvest. the outlaws had not been heard of in the neighbourhood since ferdinando pagliuca's death. they were said to be in the region about noto, at some distance from camaldoli, towards the south-west. san giacinto was surprised at not having even received an anonymous letter from one of ferdinando's friends. he did not suppose that the present pacific state of things could last for ever, but he had been prepared to meet with a great deal more opposition in what he did. on the other hand, he was hindered at every step by small difficulties which always seemed to be perfectly natural. if he wished to build a bit of wall, he found it impossible to obtain stone or quicklime, though there were plenty of masons professing themselves ready to work. he pointed to a quantity of slaked lime drying in a deep tank near the gate of santa vittoria. 'eh,' said the head mason, shaking his head, 'that belongs to the mayor, and he will not sell it.' and, in fact, the mayor flatly refused to part with a single hodful of the lime, saying that he himself was going to repair his house. the masons said that by and by it could be got from the lime-burners, who had sold their last burning to a man in randazzo. stone was to be had for the quarrying, in the black lands above camaldoli, but there were no quarrymen in santa vittoria, and the gang of them that lived higher up etna had taken a large contract. 'patience,' said the head mason, gravely. 'in time you will have all you want.' as the bit of wall was not a very important matter, san giacinto did not care to go to the expense of bringing material from a great distance, and decided to wait. meanwhile he hired certain men from bronte to come and clear out all the bush and scrub from among the trees. they came without tools. he gave them tools that belonged to the tenants of camaldoli, the same which the latter had lent him on the first day to make a clearing close to the house. the bronte men worked for two hours and then came out of the brush and sat down quietly in the sun. 'the tools are not good for anything,' they said gravely. 'we cannot work with them.' 'what is the matter with them?' asked san giacinto. 'they are dull. they would not cut strings.' 'take them away and have them ground,' said san giacinto. 'are there knife-grinders in this country?' asked the men. 'where are they? no. they come, they stay a day, perhaps two days, and they go away.' san giacinto looked at the men thoughtfully a moment, then turned on his heel and left them to their own devices. he began to understand. the men neither wished to refuse to work for him, nor dared to do the work they undertook, when its execution would in any way improve the defensive conditions of camaldoli. san giacinto came back when the men were gone, with two or three of the soldiers, took a hatchet himself, and leading the way proceeded to cut away the thorns and brambles, systematically clearing the ground so as to leave no cover under which an armed man could approach the house unnoticed. he regularly devoted a part of each day to the work, until it was finished. as soon as ferdinando's body had been removed, there had been no difficulty in getting men to work indoors, and by the time orsino arrived, considerable improvements had been effected. but the men would not have begun work in a house where an unburied dead person was still lying. the three saracinesca strolled up to santa vittoria late in the afternoon, san giacinto and orsino carrying their rifles, while ippolito walked along with his hands behind him, just catching up his little silk mantle, staring hard at all the new sights of the road, and mentally wondering what sort of instrument he should find in the little church. the place was a mere village without any mediæval wall, though there was a sort of archway at the principal entrance which was generally called the gate. just beyond the shoulder of the mountain, away from camaldoli, and about fifty yards from this gateway of the village, was a little white church with a tiled roof. it had a modern look, as though it had been lately restored. then the village straggled down the rough descent towards the shallow valley beyond, having its own church in the little market-place. it was distinctly clean, having decently-paved streets and solid stone houses with massive mullions, and iron balconies painted red. there were a few small shops of the kind always seen in italian villages. the apothecary's was in the market-place, the general shop was in the main street, opposite a wine-seller's, the telegraph office--a very recent innovation--was over against the chemist's and was worked by the postmaster, and in what had once been a small convent, further on, at the outskirts of the town, the carabineers were lodged. at san giacinto's request, fifty men of the line infantry had been quartered in the village within the last few days, the order having been telegraphed from rome on orsino's representations to the minister of the interior. the people treated the men and their two young officers civilly, but secretly resented their presence. nowadays, every italian village has a walled cemetery at some distance from it. the burial-ground of santa vittoria overlooked camaldoli; being situated a quarter of a mile from the little white church and on the other side of the hill, so that it was out of sight of the village. it was a grimly bare place. four walls, six feet high, of rough tufo and unplastered, enclosed four or five acres of land. a painted iron gate opened upon the road, and against the opposite wall, inside, was built a small mortuary chapel. the cemetery had not been long in use, and there were not more than a score of black crosses sticking in the earth to mark as many graves. there was no pretence at cultivation. the clods were heaped up symmetrically at each grave, and a little rough grass grew on some of them. there was not a tree, nor a flower, nor a creeper to relieve the dusty dreariness of it, and the road itself was not more dry and arid. the little grass that grew had pushed itself up just in the gateway, where few feet ever passed, and everyone knows what a desolate look a grass-grown entrance gives to any place, even to a churchyard. there were low, round curbstones on each side of the gate. the three gentlemen strolled slowly up the hill in the warm afternoon sunshine, talking as they came. ippolito was a little ahead of the others, for he was light on his feet, and walked easily. 'that is the cemetery,' observed san giacinto to orsino, pointing at the hill. 'that is where they buried your friend ferdinando corleone on the day you left. i suppose they will put up a monument to him.' 'his brothers will not,' answered orsino. 'they disown all connexion with him.' 'amiable race!' laughed san giacinto. 'there is a figure like a monument sitting outside the gate,' he added. 'do you see it?' 'it is a woman in black,' said orsino. 'she is sitting on something by the roadside.' they were still a long way off, but both had good eyes. 'she is probably resting and sitting on her bundle,' observed san giacinto. 'she is sitting on a stone,--on one of the curbstones,' said ippolito. 'she has her head bent down.' 'he sees better than either of us,' said orsino, with a laugh. 'i wonder why nobody ever expects a priest to do anything particularly well except pray? ippolito can walk as well as we can, he sees better, he could probably beat either of us with a pistol or a rifle if he tried, and i am sure he is far more clever in fifty ways than i am. yet everyone in the family takes it for granted that he is no better than a girl at anything that men do. he was quite right about the woman. she is bending over--her face must be almost touching her knees. it is a strange attitude.' 'probably some woman who has a relation buried in the cemetery--her child perhaps,' suggested ippolito. 'she stops at the gate to say a prayer when she goes by.' 'then she would kneel, i should think,' answered orsino. almost unconsciously they all three quickened their pace a little, though the hill grew steeper just there. as they drew near, the outline of the woman in black became distinct against the dark tufo wall behind her, for the sunlight fell full upon her where she sat. it was a beautiful outline, too, full of expression and simple tragedy. she sat very low, on the round curbstone, one small foot thrust forward and leading the folds of the loose black skirt, both white hands clasped about the higher knee, towards which the covered head bent low, so that the face could not be seen at all. not a line nor fold stirred as the three men came up to her. orsino recognised concetta, though he could not see her features. her exceptional grace betrayed itself unmistakably, and he should have known anywhere the white hands that had been lifted up to him when he had stood at the window in the grey dawn. but he said nothing about it to san giacinto, for he understood her grief, and he could not have spoken of her without being heard by her just then. but ippolito went up to her, before his brother could hinder him. she was a lonely and unhappy creature, and he was one of those really charitable people who cannot pass by any suffering without trying to help it. he stood still beside her. 'what is your trouble?' he asked gently. 'can anyone help you?' she did not move at first, but a voice of pain came with slow accents from under the black shawl that fell over her face, almost to her knee. 'god alone can help the dead,' it answered. 'but you are alive, my child,' said ippolito, bending down a little. the covered head moved slowly from side to side, denying. 'who are you, that speak of life?' asked the sorrowful young voice. 'are you the angel of the resurrection? go in peace, with our lady, for i am dead.' ippolito thought that she must be mad, and that it might be better to leave her alone. his brother and cousin had gone on, up the road, and were waiting for him at a little distance. 'may you find peace and comfort,' said the young priest, quietly, and he moved away. but he turned to look back at her, for she seemed the saddest woman he had ever seen, and her voice was the saddest he had ever heard. something in his own speech had stirred her a little, for when he looked again she had raised her head, and was lifting the black shawl so that she could see him. she was about to speak, and he stopped where he was, two paces from her, surprised by her extraordinary beauty and unnatural pallor. 'who are you?' she asked slowly. 'you are a stranger.' 'i am ippolito saracinesca, a priest,' answered the young man. at the name, she started, and her sad eyes opened wide. then she saw the other two men standing in the road a little way off. slowly, and with perfect grace, she rose from her low seat. 'and those two--there--who are they?' she asked. 'they are also saracinesca,' said ippolito. 'the one is my brother, the other is my cousin. we are three of the same name.' he answered her question quite naturally, but he felt sure that she was mad. by this time san giacinto was growing impatient, and he began to move a few steps nearer to call ippolito. but the latter found it hard to turn away from the deep eyes and the pale face before him. 'then there were three of you,' said concetta, in a tone in which scorn sharpened grief. 'it is no wonder that you killed him between you.' 'whom?' asked ippolito, very much surprised at the new turn of her speech. 'whom?' all at once there was something wild in her rising inflexion. 'you ask of me who it was whom you killed down there in the woods? of me, concetta? of me, his betrothed? of me, who prayed to your brother, there, that i might be let in, to wash my love's face with my tears? but if i had known to whom i was praying, there would have been two dead men lying there in the chapel of camaldoli--there would have been two black crosses in there, behind the gate--do you see? there it is! the last on the left. no one has died since, but if god were just, the next should be one of you, and the next another, and then another--ah, god! if i had something in these hands--' she had pointed at ferdinando's grave, throwing her arms backwards, while she kept her eyes on ippolito. now, with a gesture of the people, as she longed for a weapon, she thrust out her small white fists, tightly clenched, towards the priest's heart, then opened them suddenly, in a despairing way, and let her arms fall to her sides. 'saracinesca, saracinesca,' she repeated slowly, her voice sinking; 'three saracinesca have made one widow! but one widow may yet make many widows, and many mourning mothers, and the justice of heaven is not the justice of man.' san giacinto and orsino had gradually approached ippolito, and now stood beside him, facing the beautiful, wild girl, in her desolation. grave and thoughtful, the three kinsmen stood side by side. there was nothing theatrical or unreal in the situation. one of themselves had killed the girl's betrothed husband, whom she had loved with all her soul. that was the plain fact, and orsino had never ceased to realise it. unhesitatingly, and in honourable self-defence, he had done a deed by which many were suffering greatly, and he was brought face to face with them in their grief. somehow, it seemed unjust to him that the girl should accuse his brother and his cousin of ferdinando's death. as she paused, facing them, breathless with the wave of returning pain, rather than from speaking, orsino moved forward a little in front of ippolito. 'i killed ferdinando corleone,' he said, gravely. 'do not accuse us all three, nor curse us all three.' she turned her great eyes to his face, but her expression did not change. possibly she did not believe him. 'the dead see,' she answered slowly. 'they know--they know--they see both you and me. and the dead do not forget.' a flying cloud passed over the sun, and the desolate land was suddenly all black and grey and stony, with the solemn vastness of the mountain behind. concetta drew her shawl up over her head, as though she were cold, and turned from the three men with a simple dignity, and knelt down on the rough, broken stones, where the blades of coarse grass shot up between, close to the gate, and she clasped her hands together round one of the dusty, painted iron rails. 'let us go,' said san giacinto's deep voice. 'it is better to leave her, poor girl.' she did not look back at them as they walked quietly up the road. her eyes were fixed on one point and her lips moved quickly, forming whispered words. 'maria santissima, let there be three black crosses! mother of god, three black crosses! mother of sorrows, three black crosses!' and over and over again, she repeated the terrible little prayer. chapter xx the three men entered the village and walked through the main street. the low afternoon sun was shining brightly again, and only the people who lived on the shady side of the street had opened their windows. many of them had little iron balconies in which quantities of magnificent dark carnations were blooming, planted in long, earthenware, trough-like pots, and hanging down by their long stalks that thrust themselves between the railings. outside the windows of the poorer houses, too, great bunches of herbs were hung up to dry in the sun, and strings of scarlet peppers had already begun to appear, though it was early for them yet. later, towards the autumn, the people hang up the canteloup melons of the south, in their rough green and grey rinds, by neatly-made slings of twisted grass, but it was not time for them yet. in some of the houses the people were packing the last of the oranges to be sent down to piedimonte and thence to messina for england and america, passing each orange through a wooden ring to measure it, and rejecting those that were much too small or much too large, then wrapping each one separately in tissue paper, while other women packed them neatly in thin deal boxes. the air smelt of them and of the carnations in the balconies, for santa vittoria was a clean and sweet village. the cleanliness of the thoroughbred oriental, a very different being from the filthy levantine, begins in sicily, and distinguishes the sicilians of the hills from the calabrians and from the sicilians of such seaport towns as messina. moreover there are no beggars in the hill towns. san giacinto had his pocket full of letters for the post office, and wished to see the lieutenant in command of the soldiers; but orsino had nothing to do, and ippolito had made up his mind not to return to camaldoli without having seen the organ in the church. the two brothers went off in search of the sacristan, for the church was closed. they found him, after some enquiry, helping to pack oranges in a great vaulted room that opened upon the street. he was a fat man, cross-eyed, with a sort of clerical expression. 'you wish to see the organ,' he said, coming out into the street. 'truly you will see a fine thing! if you only do not hear it! it makes boom, boom, and wee, wee--and that is all it makes. i wager that not even ten cats could make a noise like our organ. do you know that it is very aged? surely, it remembers the ark of noah, and saint paul must have brought it with him. but then, you shall see; and if you wish to hear it, i take no responsibility.' ippolito was not greatly encouraged by such a prospect. 'but when you have a festival, what do you do?' he enquired. 'we help it, of course. how should one do? don atanasio, the apothecary, plays the clarinet. he is a professor! him, indeed, you should hear when he plays at the elevation. you would think you heard the little angels whistling in paradise! i, to serve you, play the double bass a little, and don ciccio, the carpenter, plays the drum. being used to the hammer, he does it not badly. and all the time the organ makes boom, boom, and wee, wee. it is a fine concert, but there is much sentiment of devotion, and the women sing. it seems that thus it pleases the saints.' 'do not the men sing too?' asked orsino, idly. 'men? how could men sing in church? a man can sing a 'cantilena' in the fields, but in church it is the women who sing. they know all the words. god has made them so. there is that girl of the notary in randazzo, for instance--you should hear her sing!' 'i have heard her in rome,' said orsino. but she sings in a theatre.' 'a theatre? who knows how a theatre is made? see how many things men have invented!' they reached the door of the church. 'signori, do you really wish to see this organ?' asked the sacristan. 'there is a much better one in the little church outside the gate. but the day is hot, and if you only wish to see an organ, this one is nearer.' 'let me see the good one, by all means,' said ippolito. 'i wish to play on it--not to see it! i have seen hundreds of organs.' 'hundreds of organs!' exclaimed the man to himself. 'capers! this stranger has travelled much! but if it is indeed not too hot for you,' he said, addressing ippolito, 'we will go to santa vittoria.' 'it is not hot at this hour,' laughed orsino. 'we have walked up from camaldoli.' 'on foot!' the fat sacristan either was, or pretended to be, amazed. 'great signori like you to come all that distance on foot!' 'what is there surprising in that?' enquired ippolito. 'we have legs.' 'birds also have legs,' observed the man. 'but they fly. it is only the chickens that walk, like poor people. i say that money is wings. if i were a great signore, like you, i would not even walk upstairs. i would be carried. why should i walk? in order to be tired? it would be a folly, if i were rich. i, if you ask me, i like to eat well, to drink well, and then to sleep well. a man who could do these three things should be always happy. but the poor are always in thought.' 'so are the rich,' observed ippolito. 'yes, signore, for their souls, for we are all sinners; but not for their bodies, because they have always something to eat. what do i say? they eat meat every day, and so they are strong and have no thought for their bodies. but one of us, what does he eat? a little bread, a little salad, an onion, and with this in our bodies we have to move the earth. the world is thus made. patience!' thus philosophising, the fat man rolled unwieldily along beside the two gentlemen, swinging his keys in his hand. 'if i had made the world, it should be another thing,' he continued, for he was a loquacious man. 'in the first place, i would have made wine clear, like water, and i would have made water black, like wine. thus if the wine-seller put water into his wine, we should all see it. another thing i would have done. i would have made corn grow on trees, like olives. in that way, we should have planted it once in two hundred years, as we do the olive trees, and there would have been less fatigue. is not that a good thought?' 'very original,' said orsino. 'it had never struck me.' 'i would also have made men so that their hair should stand on end when they are telling lies, as the donkey lifts his tail when he brays. that would also have been good. but the creator did not think of it in time. patience! they say it will be different in paradise. hope costs little, but you cannot cook it.' 'you are a philosopher,' observed ippolito. 'no, signore,' answered the sacristan. 'you have been misinformed. i am a grocer, or, to say it better, i am the brother of the grocer. when it is the season, after santa teresa's day, i kill the pigs and salt the hams and make the sausages. i am also the sacristan, but that yields me little; for although there is much devotion in our town at festivals, there is little of it among private persons. sometimes an old woman brings a candle to the madonna, and she gives a soldo to have it lighted. what is that? can one live with a soldo now and then? but my brother, thanks be to heaven, is well-to-do, and a widower. he makes me live with him. he had a son once, but, health to you, christ and the sea took the boy when he was not yet twenty. therefore i live with him, to divert him a little, and i kill the pigs, speaking with respect of your face.' 'and what do you do during the rest of the year?' enquired orsino, as they neared the gate. 'eh, i live so. according to the season, i pack oranges, i trim vines, i make the wine for my brother, and the oil, i take the honey and the wax from the bees, i graft good fruit upon the wild pear trees--what should i do? a little of everything, in order of eat.' 'but your brother seems to be rich. have you nothing?' 'signore, to me money comes like a freshet in spring and runs away, and immediately i am dry. but to my brother it comes like water into a well, and it stays there. men are thus made. the one gives, the other takes; the one shuts his hand, the other opens his. my mother, blessed soul, used to say to me, "take care, my son, for when you are old, you will go in rags!" but thanks be to heaven, i have my brother, and i am as you see me.' they came to the little church with its freshly whitewashed walls and tiled roof. 'this is the chapel of santa vittoria,' said the fat sacristan. 'the church in the town is dedicated to our lady of victories, but this is the chapel of the saint, and there is more devotion here, though it is small, and at the great feast of santa vittoria the procession starts from here and goes to the church, and returns here.' 'it looks new,' observed ippolito. 'eh, if all things were what they seem!' the man chuckled as he turned the key in the lock. 'you shall see inside whether it is new. it is older than saint peter's in rome.' and so it was, by two or three centuries. it was a dark little building, of the norman period, with low arches and solid little pillars terminating in curiously-carved capitals. it had a little nave with intercommunicating side chapels, like aisles. over the door was a small loft containing the organ, the object of ippolito's visit. in the uneven floor there were slabs with deep-cut but much-worn figures of knights and prelates in stiff armour or long and equally stiff-looking robes, their heads surrounded by almost illegible inscriptions. over the principal altar there was a bad painting of saint vittoria, half covered with ex-voto offerings of silver hearts, while on each side of the picture were hung up scores of hollow wax models of arms, legs, and other parts of the human body, realistically coloured, all remembrances of recoveries from illness, accident, and disease, attributed to the beneficent intervention of the saint. but above, in the little vault of the apse, there were some very ancient and well-preserved mosaics, magnificently rich in tone. there was, of course, no dome, and the dim light came in through low windows high up in the nave, above the lower side chapels. the church was clean and well kept, and on each side there were half a dozen benches painted with a vivid sky-blue colour. the two brothers looked about, with some curiosity, while the fat sacristan slowly jingled his bunch of keys against his leg. 'here the dead walk at night,' he observed, cheerfully, as the two young men came up to him. 'what do you mean?' asked orsino, who had been much amused by the man's conversation. 'the old pagliuca walk. i have seen their souls running about the floor in the dark, like little candle flames. a little more, and i should have seen their bodies too, but i ran away. soul of my mother! i was frightened. it was on the eve of santa vittoria, five years ago. the candles for the festival had not come, though we had waited all day for the carrier from piedimonte. then he came at dark, for he had met a friend in linguaglossa, and he was a drunkard, and the wine was new, so he slept on his cart all the way, and it was by the grace of the madonna that he did not roll off into the ditch. but i considered that it was late, and that the office began early in the morning, and that many strangers came from bronte and the hill village to our festa, and that it would be a scandal if they found us still dressing the church in the morning. so i took the box of candles on my back and came here, not thinking to bring a lantern, because there is always the lamp before the altar where the saint's bones are. do you understand?' 'perfectly. but what about the pagliuca?' 'my brother said, "you will see the pagliuca"--for everyone says it. but i had a laugh at him, for i thought that a dead man in his grave must be as quiet as a handkerchief in a drawer. so i came, and i unlocked the door, thinking about the festival, and i came in, meaning to take a candle from the box and light it at the altar lamp, so that i might see well to stick the others into the candlesticks. but there was the flame of a candle burning on the floor. it ran away from me as i came in, and others ran after it, and round and round it. then i knew that i saw the souls of the old pagliuca, and i said to myself that presently i should see also their bodies--an evil thing, for they have been long dead. then i made a movement--who knows how i did? i dropped the box and i heard it break, and all the candles rolled out upon the floor as though the dead pagliuca were rattling their bones. but i counted neither one nor two, but jumped out into the road with one jump. santa vittoria helped me; and it was a bright moonlight night, but as i shut the door, i could see the souls of the pagliuca jumping up and down on the pavement. i said within me, when the dead dance, the living go home. and my face was white. when i came home, my brother said, "you have seen the pagliuca." and i said, "i have seen them." then he gave me some rum, and i lay in a cold sweat till morning. from that time i will not come here at night. but in the daytime it is different.' orsino and ippolito knew well enough that in old italian churches, where many dead are buried under the pavement, it is not an uncommon thing to see a will-o'-the-wisp at night. but in the dim little church, with the dead pagliuca lying under their feet, there was something gruesome about the man's graphic story, and they did not laugh. 'let us hope that we may not see any ghosts,' said orsino. 'amen,' answered the sacristan, devoutly. 'that is the organ,' he said, pointing to the loft. he led the way. on one side of the entrance a small arched door gave access to a narrow winding staircase in the thickness of the wall, lighted by narrow slits opening to the air. though the loft had not appeared to be very high above the pavement, the staircase seemed very long. at last the three emerged upon the boarded floor, at the back of the instrument, where four greasy, knotted ropes hung out of worn holes in the cracked wood. the rose window over the door of the church threw a bright light into the little forest of dusty wooden and metal pipes above. the ropes were for working the old-fashioned bellows. ippolito went round and took the thin deal cover from the keyboard. he was surprised to find a double bank of keys, and an octave and a half of pedals, which is very uncommon in country organs. he was further unprepared to see the name of a once famous maker in naples just above the keys, but when he looked up he understood, for on a gilded scroll, supported by two rickety cherubs above his head, he read the name of the donor. 'ferdinandus paliuca princeps corleonis comes sanctae victoriae siculus donavit a.d. mdcccxxi.' the instrument was, therefore, the gift of a ferdinando pagliuca, prince of corleone, count of santa vittoria, probably of one of those pagliuca whose souls the fat sacristan believed he had seen 'jumping up and down the pavement.' the sacristan tugged at the ropes that moved the bellows. ippolito dusted the bench over which he had leaned to uncover the keys, slipped in, swinging his feet over the pedals, pulled out two or three stops, and struck a chord. the tone was not bad, and had in it some of that richness which only old organs are supposed to possess, like old violins. he began to prelude softly, and then, one by one, he tried the other stops. some were fair, but some were badly out of tune. the cornopean brayed hideously, and the hautboy made curious buzzing sounds. ippolito promised himself that he would set the whole instrument in order in the course of a fortnight, and was delighted with his discovery. when he had finished, the fat sacristan came out from behind, mopping his forehead with a blue cotton handkerchief. 'capers!' he exclaimed. 'you are a professor. if don giacomo hears you, he will die of envy.' 'who is don giacomo?' 'eh, don giacomo? he is the postmaster and the telegrapher, and he plays the old organ in the big church on sundays. but when there is a festival here, a professor comes to play this one, from catania. but he cannot play as you do.' orsino had gone down again into the church while ippolito had been playing. they found him bending very low over an inscription on a slab near the altar steps. 'there is a curious inscription here,' he said, without looking up. 'i cannot quite read it, but it seems to me that i see our name in it. it would be strange if one of our family had chanced to die and be buried here, ages ago.' ippolito bent down, too, till his head touched his brother's. 'it is not latin,' he said presently. 'it looks like italian.' the fat sacristan jingled his keys rather impatiently, for it was growing late. 'without troubling yourselves to read it, you may know what it is,' he said. 'it is the old prophecy about the pagliuca. when the dead walk here at night they read it. it says, 'esca pagliuca pesca saracen.' but it goes round a circle like a disc, so that you can read it, 'saracen esca pagliuca pesca'--either, let pagliuca go out, the saracen is fishing, or, let the saracen go out, pagliuca is fishing.' '"or saracinesca pagliuca pesca"--saracinesca fishes for pagliuca,' said ippolito to orsino, with a laugh at his own ingenuity. 'who knows what it means!' exclaimed the sacristan. 'but they say that when it comes true, the last corleone shall die and the pagliuca d'oriani shall end. but whether they end or not, they will walk here till the last judgment. signori, the twilight descends. if you do not wish to see the pagliuca, let us go. but if you wish to see them, here are the keys. you are the masters, but i go home. this is an evil place at night.' the man was growing nervous, and moved away towards the door. the two brothers followed him. 'the place is consecrated,' said ippolito, as they reached the entrance. 'what should you be afraid of?' 'santa vittoria is all alone here,' answered the man, 'and the pagliuca are more than fifty, when they come out and walk. what should a poor christian do? he is better at home with a pipe of tobacco.' the sun had set when they all came out upon the road, and the afterglow was purple on the snow of etna. chapter xxi vittoria d'oriani had very few companions. corona saracinesca really liked her, for her own sake, and was sorry for her because she belonged to the family which was so often described as the worst blood in italy. corona and san giacinto's wife had together presented the corleone tribe in roman society, but they were both women of middle age, without daughters who might have been friends for vittoria. on the other hand, though the romans had accepted the family on the endorsement, as it were, of the whole saracinesca family, there was a certain general disinclination to become intimate with them, due to the posthumous influence of their dead uncle, corleone of evil fame. the campodonico people were unwilling to have anything to do with them, even to the gentle and charitable donna francesca, who had been a braccio, and might therefore, perhaps, have been expected to condone a great many shortcomings in other families. pietro ghisleri, who generally spent the winter in rome, refused to know the d'oriani, for poor dead bianca corleone's sake; and his english wife, who knew the old story, thought he was right. the great majority of the romans received them, however, very much as they would have received foreigners who had what is called a right to be in society, with civility, but not with enthusiasm. vittoria had, therefore, met many roman girls of her own age during the spring, but had not become intimate with any of them. it was natural that when her brother made the acquaintance of mrs. and miss slayback, and when the young american took what is usually described in appalling english as a violent fancy to vittoria, the latter should feel that sort of gratitude which sometimes expands into friendship. they saw much of each other. it is needless to say that they had not an idea in common, and it would have been very surprising if they had. but on the other hand they had that sort of community of feeling which is a better foundation for intimacy than a similarity of ideas. miss lizzie slayback was not profound, but she was genuine. she had no inherited tendency to feel profound emotions nor to get into tragic situations, but she was full of innocent sentiment. like many persons who do not lead romantic lives, she was in love with romance, and she believed that romance had a sort of perpetual existence somewhere, so that by taking some pains one could really find it and live in it. her fortune would be useful in the search, although it was unromantic to be rich. she had not read 'montecristo,' because she was told that dumas was old-fashioned. she was not very gifted, but she was very clever in detail. she did not understand tebaldo in the least, for she was no judge of human nature, but she knew perfectly well how to keep him at arm's length until she had decided to marry him. she was absolutely innocent, yet she had also the most absolute assurance, and bore herself in society with the independence of a married woman of thirty. 'it is our custom in my country,' she said to vittoria, who was sometimes startled by her friend's indifference to the smaller conventionalities. the two young girls spoke french together, and understood each other, though a third person might not at first have known that they were speaking the same language. vittoria spoke the french of an italian convent, old-fashioned, stilted, pronounced with the rolling southern accent which only her beautiful voice could make bearable, and more or less wild as to gender. lizzie slayback, as has been said, spoke fluently and often said the same things because she had a small choice of language. occasionally she used phrases that would have made a frenchman's hair feel uneasy on his head, and her innocent use of which inspired disquieting doubts as to the previous existence of the person who had taught her. 'we think,' she said, 'that it is better to enjoy yourself while you are young, and be good when you grow old, but in europe it seems to be the other way.' 'no one can be good all the time,' answered vittoria. 'one is good a little and one is bad a little, by turns, just as one can.' 'that makes a variety,' said miss slayback. 'that is why you italians are so romantic.' 'i never can understand what you mean by romantic,' observed vittoria. 'oh--everything you do is romantic, my dear. your brother is the most romantic man i ever saw. that is why i think i shall marry him,' she added, as though contemplating a new hat with a view to buying it, and almost sure that it would suit her. 'i do not think you will be happy with him,' said vittoria, rather timidly. 'because he is romantic, and i am not? well, i am not sure.' 'there! you use the word again! what in the world do you mean by it?' miss slayback was at a loss to furnish the required definition, especially in french. 'your brother is romantic,' she said, repeating herself. 'i am sure he looks like cæsar borgia.' 'i hope not!' exclaimed vittoria. 'surely you would not marry--' she stopped. 'cæsar borgia?' enquired lizzie slayback, calmly. 'of all people, i should have liked to marry him! he was nice and wicked. he would never have been dull, even nowadays, when everybody is so proper, you know.' 'no,' laughed the italian girl, 'i do not think anybody would have called him dull. he generally murdered his friends before they were bored by his company.' miss lizzie laughed, for vittoria seemed witty to her. 'if i had said that at a party,' she answered, 'everybody would have told me that i was so clever! i wish i had thought of it. may i say it, as if it were mine? shall you not mind?' 'why should i? i should certainly not say it myself, before people.' 'why not?' 'it would not be thought exactly--oh--what shall i say? we young girls are never expected to say anything like that. we look down, and hold our tongues.' 'and think of all the sharp things you will say when you are married! that is just the difference. now, in the west, where i come from, if a girl has anything clever to say, she says it, even if she is only ten years old. i must say, it seems to me much more sensible.' 'yes--but there are other things, besides being sensible,' objected vittoria. 'then they must be senseless,' retorted miss lizzie. 'it follows.' 'there are all sorts of customs and traditions in society that have not very much sense perhaps, but we are all used to them, and should feel uncomfortable without them. when the nuns taught me to do this, or that, to say certain things, and not to say certain other things, it was because all the other young girls i should meet would be sure to act in just the same way, and if i did not act as they do, i should make myself conspicuous.' 'i never could see the harm in being conspicuous,' said miss slayback. 'provided one is not vulgar,' she added, by way of limitation. 'do you not feel uncomfortable, when you feel that everyone is looking at you?' 'no, of course not, unless i am doing something ridiculous. i rather like to have people look at me. that makes me feel satisfied with myself.' 'it always makes me feel dreadfully uncomfortable,' said vittoria. 'it should not, for you are beautiful, my dear. you really are. i only think i am, when i have good clothes and am not sunburnt or anything like that--i never really believe it, you know. but when people admire me, it helps the illusion. i wish i were beautiful, like you, vittoria.' 'i am not beautiful,' said the sicilian girl, colouring a little shyly. 'but i wish i had your calmness. i am always blushing--it is so uncomfortable--or else i am very pale, and then i feel cold, as though my heart were going to stop beating. i think i should faint if i were to do the things you sometimes do.' 'what, for instance?' laughed the american girl. 'oh--i have seen you cross a ballroom alone, and drive alone in an open carriage--' 'what could happen to me in a carriage?' 'it is not that--it is--i hardly know! it is like a married woman.' 'i shall be married some day, so i may as well get into the habit of it,' observed miss lizzie, smiling and showing her beautiful teeth. in spite of such inconclusive conversations, the two girls were really fond of each other. when mrs. slayback looked at tebaldo's sharp features, her heart hardened; but when she looked at vittoria, it softened again. she was a very intelligent woman, in her way, and, having originally married for his money a man whom she considered beneath her in social standing and cultivation, she wished to improve his family in her own and her friends' eyes by making a brilliant foreign marriage for his niece. 'princess of corleone' sounded a good deal better than 'miss lizzie slayback,' and there was no denying the antiquity and validity of the title. there were few to be had as good as that, for the girl's religion was a terrible obstacle to her marrying the heir of any great house in europe in which money was not a paramount necessity. but tebaldo assured her that he attached no importance whatever to such matters. lizzie was in love with him, and he took pains to seem to be in love with her. mrs. slayback did not give more weight to her niece's inclinations and fancies than tebaldo gave to his religious scruples. the girl was highly impressionable to a very small depth, skin deep, in fact, and below the shallow gauge of her impressions she suddenly became hard and obstinate like her uncle. she had an unfortunate way of liking people very much at first sight if she chanced to meet them when she was in a good humour, and quite regardless of what they might really be. she had said to herself that tebaldo was 'romantic,' and as his life hitherto might certainly have been well described by some such word, he had no difficulty in keeping up the illusion for her. he saw that she listened with wonder and delight to his tales of wild doings in sicily, and he had not the slightest difficulty in finding as many of them to tell her as suited his purpose. he had been more intimately connected with one or two of his stories than he chose to tell her; but he was ready at turning a difficulty of that sort, and when he introduced himself he treated his own personality and actions with that artistic modesty which leaves vague beauties to the imagination. never having had any actual experience of the rude deeds of unbridled humanity, miss lizzie liked revengeful people because they were 'romantic.' she liked to think of a man who could carry off his enemy's bride in the grey dawn of her wedding day, escape with her on board a ship, and be out of sight of land before night--because such deeds were 'romantic.' she liked to know that a band of thirty desperate men could bid defiance to the government and the army for months, and she loved to hear of leone, the outlaw chief, who had killed a dozen soldiers with his own hand in twenty minutes, before he fell with twenty-seven bullets in him--that was indeed 'romantic.' and tebaldo had seen leone himself, many years ago, and remembered him and described him; and he had seen most of the people whose extraordinary adventures he detailed to the girl, and had known them and spoken with them, had shot with them for wagers, had drunk old wine of etna at their weddings, and had followed some of them to their graves when they had been killed. a good many of his acquaintances had been killed in various 'romantic' affairs. everything he told her appealed strongly to lizzie slayback's imagination, and he had the advantage, if it were one, of being really a great deal like the people he described, daring, unscrupulous, physically brave and revengeful, very much the type which is so often spoken of in calabria with bated breath, as 'a desperate man of sicily.' for the italian of the mainland is apt both to dread and respect the stronger man of the islands. in addition to his accomplishments as a story-teller, tebaldo possessed the power of seeming to be very much in love, without ever saying much about it. he flattered the girl, telling her that she was beautiful and witty and charming, and everything else which she wished to be; and when his eyelids were not drooping at the corners as they did when he was angry, he had a way of gazing with intense and meaning directness into lizzie slayback's dark blue eyes, so that vittoria would no longer have envied her, for she blushed and looked away, half pleased and half disturbed. aliandra basili thought francesco much more ready and apt to anticipate her small wishes and to understand her thoughts than his brother. but when he chose to take the trouble, with cool calculation, tebaldo knew well enough how to make a woman believe that he was taking care of her, which is what many women most wish to feel. with aliandra, whom he loved as much as he was capable of loving anyone, tebaldo felt himself almost too much at his ease to disguise his own selfishness. but he gave himself endless trouble for miss slayback, and she was sometimes touched by little acts of his which showed how constantly she was in his mind--as indeed she was, much more than she knew. in her moments of solitude, which were few, for she hated to be alone, she reflected more than once that her money must seem a great inducement to a poor italian nobleman; but she was too much in love with the 'romantic' to believe that tebaldo wished to marry her solely for her fortune. it was too hard to believe, when she looked at her own face in the mirror and saw how young, and pretty, and smiling she really was. her dark lashes gave her blue eyes so much expression that she could not think herself not loved, a mere encumbrance to be taken with a fortune, but not without, in exchange for a title. she was fond of her refined but not very remarkable self, and it would have been hard to convince her that tebaldo's silent looks and ever-ready service meant nothing but greed of money. very possibly, she admitted, he could not have thought of marrying her if she had been poor, but she believed it equally certain that if she had been an ugly, rich, middle-aged old maid, he would never have thought of it either. besides, tebaldo had watched with great satisfaction the growing intimacy between her and his sister, and he took care to play his comedy before vittoria as carefully as before miss slayback herself. vittoria, as he knew, was very truthful, and if her friend asked questions about him, she would repeat accurately what he had said in her presence, if she gave any information at all. to his face, vittoria accused him of wishing to marry for money, but so long as he affirmed that he loved miss slayback, vittoria would never accuse him behind his back, nor tell tales about his character which might injure his prospects. though he knew that she rarely believed him and never trusted him, he knew that he could trust her. that fact alone might have sufficiently defined their respective characters. chapter xxii tebaldo had not been at all willing to believe that aliandra basili really meant to treat him differently after the meeting in which she had defined her position so clearly, but he soon discovered that she was in earnest. she was not a person to change her mind easily, and she had decided that it was time to end the situation in one way or the other. tebaldo must either marry her, or cease to persecute her with his attentions. in the latter case she intended to marry francesco. like most successful singers, and, indeed, like most people who succeed remarkably in any career, she possessed the extraordinary energy which ultimately makes the difference between success and failure in all struggles for pre-eminence. many have the necessary talent and the other necessary gifts; few have, besides these things, the restless, untiring force to use them at all times to the extreme limit of possibility. people who have the requisite facility but not the indispensable energy find it so hard to realise this fact that they have inverted our modern use of the word 'genius' to account for their own failures. the ancients, and even the mediævals, when beaten in a fair fight by men more enduring than themselves, were always ready to account for their defeat on the ground of a supernatural intervention against them. similarly the people who are clever enough to succeed, nowadays, but not strong enough, nor patient enough, attribute to the man who surpasses them some sort of supernatural inspiration, which they call genius, and against which they tell themselves that it is useless to strive. socrates called his acute sense of right and wrong his familiar spirit, his dæmon; but in those days of the supremacy of the greatest art the world has ever seen, or ever will see, at a time when most people still believed in oracles, no one ever attributed any such familiar spirit to sophocles, to praxiteles, nor to zeuxis, nor to any other poets, sculptors, or painters. the muses had become mere names even then, and the stories about them were but superstitious fables. that restless energy was part of the sicilian singer's nature. whether her other gifts were great enough for greatness remained to be seen, and the question had nothing to do with tebaldo pagliuca. her singing gave him pleasure, but it was not what chiefly attracted him. he was in love with her in a commonplace and by no means elevated way, and artistic satisfaction did not enter into his passion as a component factor. there was nothing so elevated about it. aliandra's very womanly nature made her vaguely aware of this, and she had a physical suspicion, so to say, that if tebaldo ever lost his head, he would be much more violent than his brother, who had frightened her so badly one evening at the theatre. she was inclined to think that it would not be safe to irritate tebaldo too much; yet she was sure that it was of no use to prolong the present ambiguous situation, in which she was practically accepting and authorising the love of a man who would not marry her if he could help it. after she had finally told him what she meant to do, nothing could move her, and she entirely refused to see him alone. hitherto she had used her privilege as an artist in this respect, and had often sent away her worthy aunt, the signora barbuzzi, during his visits. but now, when he came, the black-browed, grey-haired, thin-lipped old woman kept her place beside her niece on the little green sofa of the little hired drawing-room, her withered fingers steadily knitting black silk stockings. this was her only accomplishment, but it was an unusual one, and she was very proud of it, and of her wonderful eyes, which never needed glasses, and could count the minute black stitches even when the light was beginning to fail on a winter's afternoon. then tebaldo sat uneasily on his chair, and wished the old woman might fall dead in an apoplexy, and that he had the evil eye, and by mere wishing could bring her to destruction. and aliandra leaned back in the other corner of the sofa, behind her aunt, and smiled coolly at what tebaldo said, and answered indifferently, and looked at her nails critically but wearily when he said nothing, as if she wished he would go away. and he generally went at the end of half an hour, unable to bear the situation much longer than that, after he had discovered that the signora barbuzzi was in future always to sit through his visits. 'and now, my daughter,' said the aunt one day when he had just gone, 'the other will come in a quarter of an hour. the sun sets, the moon rises, as we say.' which invariably happened. francesco did not like being caught with aliandra by his brother, as has been already seen. he had, therefore, hit upon the simple plan of spying upon him, following him at a distance until he entered aliandra's house, and then sitting in a little third-rate café opposite until he came out. tebaldo, who was extremely particular about the places he frequented, because he wished to behave altogether like a roman gentleman, would never have entered any such place as francesco made use of for his own purposes. francesco knew that, and felt perfectly safe as he sat at his little marble table, with a glass of syrup and soda water, his eyes fixed on the big front door which he could see through the window from the place he regularly occupied. he was also quite sure that, as tebaldo had always just left the house when he himself came, there was no danger of his elder brother's sudden appearance. the signora barbuzzi was decidedly much more civilised than her brother, the notary of randazzo, for she had been married to a notary of messina, which meant that she had lived in much higher social surroundings. that, at least, was her opinion, and aliandra was too wise to dispute with her. she had given the deceased barbuzzi no children, and in return for her discretion he had left her a comfortable little income. notaries are apt to marry the sisters and daughters of other notaries, and to associate with men of their own profession, for they generally have but little confidence in persons of other occupations. the signora barbuzzi might have been a notary herself, for she had the avidity of mind, the distrustfulness, the caution about details, and the supernormal acuteness about the intentions of other people which are the old-fashioned italian notary's predominant characteristics. she looked like one, too. 'for my part, my daughter,' she said to her niece, shaking her head twice towards the same side, as some old women frequently do when they are knitting a stocking, 'for my part, i should send them both away for the present. they will not marry, for they have no money. who marries without money? i see that you earn a great deal, but not a fortune. if you should marry tebaldo or francesco, and if you should not earn the fortune you expect, you would find yourself badly off. but if you can earn ten times, twenty times what you have earned this winter during the next four or five years, then you can marry either of them, because they will want your money as well as yourself.' aliandra said nothing for some minutes, for she saw the truth of her aunt's advice. on the other hand, she was young and felt quite sure of success, and she did not feel sure that some unexpected turn of fortune might not suddenly bring about an advantageous marriage for one of the two men. 'i am not the patti,' she said thoughtfully. 'i am not the melba. i am only the little basili yet, but i have a remarkable voice and i can work--' 'voices are treacherous,' observed the cautious old woman. 'they sometimes break down. then you will only be the daughter of basili the notary again.' 'my voice will not break down,' answered aliandra, confidently. 'it is a natural voice, and i never make any effort. my master says it is the voices which are incomplete at first and have to be developed to equalise them, which break down sometimes.' 'you may have an illness,' suggested the signora barbuzzi. 'then you may lose your voice.' 'why should i have an illness? i am strong.' the handsome girl leaned back on the sofa and raising her arms clasped her hands behind her head, resting them against the wall--a splendidly vital figure. 'we are mortal,' observed the old woman, sententiously. 'when god pleases to send us a fever, goodbye voice!' 'have i some sin on my soul that heaven should send me a fever?' asked aliandra, rather indignantly. 'what have i done?' 'nothing, nothing, my daughter! who accuses you? you are an angel, you are a crystal, you are a little saint. i have said nothing. but a fever is a fever for saints and sinners.' 'i am not going to have a fever, and i am not going to lose my voice. i shall make a great reputation and earn a great deal of money.' 'heaven send it you thus!' answered the signora barbuzzi, devoutly. 'but i shall make tebaldo jealous of francesco, so that he will not be able to see out of his eyes for jealousy. then he will marry me. but if not, i will marry the other, whom i like better.' 'indeed, jealousy is a weapon, my dear. a bad mule needs a good stick, as they say. but for my part, i am a notary's daughter, the widow of a notary--may the lord preserve him in glory!--and the sister of a notary. i am out of place as the aunt of an artist. with us we have always said, who leaves the old road to take the new, knows what he leaves but not what he shall find. that is a good proverb. but your life is on a new road. you may find fortune, but no one knows. at least, you have bread, if you fail, and you risk nothing, if you remain a good girl.' 'so far as that goes!' aliandra laughed scornfully. 'my head will not turn easily.' 'thank heaven, no. there is the other one,' added the old woman, as she heard the door-bell ring. 'shall i leave you alone with him, my daughter?' 'why should you?' asked aliandra, indifferently. 'what have i to say to him?' she was perhaps not quite as indifferent as she seemed, for francesco attracted her. on the other hand, she did not wish to be attracted by him so long as there was a chance of marrying the other brother, and her aunt's presence was a sort of precaution against an improbable but vaguely possible folly which she distinguished in the future. on his part, francesco always did his best to make a favourable impression on the signora barbuzzi, considering her friendship indispensable. he fancied that it must be a comparatively easy thing to please an old chaperon who got little attention from anyone, and he used to bring her bunches of violets from time to time, which he presented with a well-turned speech. he might as well have offered a nosegay to the deceased barbuzzi himself, for all the impression he produced by his civilities to the hard-headed, masculine old woman. he was not discouraged, however, and though he wished her anywhere but where she was, he bore her presence with equanimity and made himself as agreeable as he could. he was far too sharp-sighted himself not to see what aliandra was doing, but he had no means of acting upon her feelings as she was trying to act upon tebaldo's, and he had the low sort of philosophy which often belongs to sensual people, and which is perhaps not much higher than the patience of the cat that crouches before the mouse's hole, waiting for its victim to run into danger. he was no match, however, for the two women, and he very much overestimated the attraction he exercised upon aliandra. it was, in a manner, a sort of disturbing influence rather than an attraction, and aliandra avoided it until she was forced to feel it, and when she felt it, she feared it. yet she liked him, and was surprised at the contradiction, and distrusted herself in a general way. she was not much given to self-examination, and would probably not have understood what the word meant; but, like a young wild animal, she was at once aware of the presence of danger, and was tempted towards the cause of it, while her keen natural instinct of self-preservation made her draw back cautiously whenever the temptation to advance was particularly strong. this was the situation of aliandra with regard to the two brothers respectively. her interest lay with the one, her inclination, so far as it was one, with the other, and she distrusted both in different ways, fearing the one that was a coward, but distrusting more the one who was the braver and more manly of the two, but also incomparably the more deceitful. they, on their part, were both in love with her, and not in very different ways; but though tebaldo was the bolder in character, he was the one more able to be cautious where a woman was concerned, while he was also capable of jealousy to a degree inconceivable to francesco. chapter xxiii the world would go very well, but for the unforeseen. the fate of everyone in this story might have been very different if gesualda, old basili's maid of all work, had not stopped to eat an orange surreptitiously while she was sweeping down the stone stairs early in the morning, before the notary was dressed. she was an ugly girl, and had not many pleasures in life; basili was old and stingy and fault-finding, and she had to do all the work of the house,--the scrubbing, the cooking, the serving, the washing, and the mending. she did it very well; in the first place because she was strong, secondly because she was willing and sufficiently skilful, and lastly because she was very unusually ugly, and therefore had no distractions in the shape of love-making. she was also scrupulously honest and extremely careful not to waste things in the kitchen. but fruit was her weakness, and, being a sicilian, she might have been capable of committing a crime for the sake of an orange, or a bunch of grapes, or a dozen little figs, if they had not been so plentiful that one could always have what one could eat for the mere asking. her only shortcoming, therefore, was that she could not confine herself to eating her oranges in the kitchen. she always had one in her pocket. a cynical old lady once said that the only way to deal with temptation was to yield to it at once, and save oneself all further annoyance. gesualda yielded to the temptation to eat the orange she had in her pocket, when she had resisted it just long enough to make the yielding a positive delight. she felt the orange through her skirt, she imagined how it looked, she thought how delicious it would be, and her lips were dry for it, and her soul longed for it. there was always a quiet corner at hand, for the notary lived alone. in an instant the orange was in her hands, her coarse fingers took the peel off in four pieces with astonishing skill, the said peel disappeared temporarily into the pocket again, and a moment later she was happy. her whole part in this history consisted in the eating of a single orange on the dark stone stairs, yet it was an important one, for out of all the thousands of oranges she had eaten during her life, that particular one was destined to be the first link in a long and tragic chain of circumstances. whether the orange was not quite ripe, so that the peel did not come away as easily as usual, or whether she was made a little nervous by the fact that her master might be expected to appear at any moment, a fact which enhanced the delight of the misdeed, neither she herself nor anyone else will ever know. as usual, she ran her sharp, strong thumb-nail twice round the fruit, crosswise, dug her fingers into the crossing cuts thus made, and stripped the peel off in a twinkling, thrusting the four dry pieces into her pocket. and as usual, in another moment, she was perfectly, blissfully happy, for it was a blood-orange, and particularly sweet and juicy, having no pips, for it had grown on a very old tree, and those are the best, as everyone knows in the orange country of the south. but fate tore off a tiny fragment of the peel, a mere corner of one strip, thick, and the shiny side upwards, all slippery with its aromatic oil, and placed it cunningly just on the edge of one of the worn old stone steps, above her in the dark turning. then fate went away, and waited quietly to see what should happen, and gesualda also went away, down to her kitchen, to begin and prepare the vegetables which she had bought at daybreak of the vendor, a little way down the street. the bit of peel lay quite quietly in the dark, doing as fate had bidden it, and waiting likewise. now, fate had reckoned exactly how many paces basili the notary would take from his room to the head of the stairs, in order to know with which foot he would take the first step downwards, and hence to calculate whether the bit of peel should be a little to the right or a little to the left. and it lay a little to the left: for the left foot, as fate is aware, is the unlucky foot, except for left-handed people. basili was a right-handed man; and as he came downstairs in his great, flapping leathern slippers, he put the smoothest spot of the old sole exactly upon the shiny bit of peel. all of which shows the astonishing accuracy which fate can bring to bear at important moments. this was the beginning of the end of this history. basili fell, of course, and, as it seemed to him, he fell backwards, forwards, sideways, and upside down, all in a moment; and when he came to the bottom of the stairs, he had a broken leg. it was not a bad break, though any broken leg is bad, and the government surgeon was at home, because it was early in the morning, and came and set it very well, and basili lay in a sunny room, with pots of carnations in the window, drinking syrup of tamarind with water, to cool his blood, and very much disturbed in his mind. gesualda sat on the steps all the morning, moaning and beating her breast, for she had found the little piece of orange-peel, groping in the dark, and she knew that it had all been her fault. for penitence, she made a vow, at first, not to eat an orange till the master was recovered. later in the day, she went to confession, in order to ease her soul of its burden, and she told her confessor that she could not possibly keep the vow, and that she had already twice undergone horrible temptation since the accident, at the mere sight of an orange. thereupon the confessor, who was a wise little old man, commuted her self-imposed penance to abstinence from cheese, which she scrupulously practised for a whole month afterwards, until the notary was on his feet for the first time. but by that time a great many things had happened. basili lay in his sunny room, finding it difficult to understand exactly what had happened to him. he had never been ill in his life, excepting once when he had taken a little fever, as a mere boy. he was a tough man, not so old as he looked, and he had never thought it possible that he could be laid on his back and made perfectly helpless for a whole month. he had ground his teeth while they had been setting his leg, but in spite of the pain he had been thinking chiefly of the check to his business which must be the inevitable result of such a long confinement. he had a shabby little clerk who copied for him, and was not altogether stupid, but he trusted no one with the affairs of his clients, and he was a very important person in randazzo. moreover, a young notary from catania had recently established himself in opposition to him, and he feared the competition. he was very lonely, too, for the clerk, after presenting his condolences, had seized the opportunity of taking a holiday, and there was nobody but gesualda in the house. in the afternoon she got her mother to take her place while she went to confession. basili was very lonely indeed, for the doctor would not let him receive his clients who came on business, fearing fever for his patient. the day seemed very long. he called for paper and pen, and in spite of the surgeon's prohibition, he had himself propped up in bed, and wrote a letter to his daughter. he told her of his accident, and begged her to come to him, if she could do so without injuring the course of study she had undertaken. time was precious to aliandra, for her master generally left rome at the end of june, and she had only learned about half of aida, the opera she had undertaken to study, and which was a necessary one for her future career. but she made up her mind at once to go to her father, for a fortnight, after which time, in the ordinary course of things, he would probably be able to spare her. she was very fond of him, for her mother had died when she had been very young, and basili had loved the child with the grim tenderness peculiar to certain stern characters; and afterwards, when once persuaded that she had both voice and talent for the stage, he had generously helped her in every way he could. he had missed her terribly, for she had not been in sicily since the previous autumn, and it was natural that he should send for her to keep him company during his recovery. she, on her part, looked forward with pleasure to a taste of the old simple existence in which she had been so happy as a child. she left her maid in rome, and her aunt stopped in messina, intending to come up to randazzo a few days later and pay her brother a visit. before leaving rome aliandra told both tebaldo and francesco where she was going, and that she intended to return in a fortnight in order to study with her teacher until he should leave rome. she maintained her attitude of coldness towards tebaldo to the last. he complained of it. for once, the signora barbuzzi had left the room unbidden, judging, no doubt, that before going away for some time aliandra might wish to see tebaldo alone, and possibly have some further explanation with him. 'look here,' he said roughly, 'you have treated me in this way long enough, and i have borne it quietly. be reasonable--' 'that is exactly what i am,' answered aliandra. 'it is you who are unreasonable.' 'because i love you, you say that i am unreasonable!' he retorted, his patience giving way suddenly. 'because you burn me--bah! find words! i cannot. give me your hand!' 'only in one way. i have told you--' 'give me your hand.' he came quite close to her. she held her hands behind her and looked at him defiantly, her head high, her eyes cold. 'if you want my hand--you must keep it,' she said. she was very handsome just then, and his heart beat faster. there was a tremor in his voice when he spoke again, and his fingers shook as he laid them lightly on her shoulder, barely touching her. there is a most tender vibration in any genuine passion under control, just before it breaks out. aliandra saw it, but she distrusted him, and believed that he might be acting. 'i cannot bear this much longer,' he said. 'it is killing me.' 'there is no reason why it should,' she answered coldly. 'you know what you have to do. i will marry you whenever you please.' he was silent. the vision of miss lizzie slayback with her millions, and with all his own future, rose before him. he seemed to see it all behind the handsome head, on the ugly flowered paper of the wall. that stake was too heavy, and he could not afford to risk it. yet, as he met aliandra's hard eyes and cruelly set mouth, her resistance roused him as nothing ever had before. 'you hesitate still,' she said scornfully. 'i do not think your love will kill you.' 'yours for me will not hurt you, at all events,' he answered rudely. 'mine? oh--you may think of that as you please.' she shrugged her shoulders like a woman of the people, and turned from him indifferently; leaving him standing near the door, growing pale by quick degrees, till his face was a faint yellow and his eyes were red. 'i believe you love my brother,' he said hoarsely, as she moved away. she stopped and turned her head, as she answered. 'his is by far the more lovable character,' she said in a tone of contempt. 'i should not blame any woman for preferring him to you.' 'it will be better for him that you should not prefer him.' his face was livid now. aliandra laughed, and turned so that she could see him. 'bah! i believe you are a coward after all. he need not fear you, i fancy.' 'do you really think me a coward?' asked tebaldo, in a low voice, and his eyes began to frighten her. 'you behave like one,' she answered. 'you are afraid of the mere opinion of society. that is the reason why you hesitate. you say you love me, but you really love only that you call your position.' 'no,' he answered, not moving. 'there are other reasons. and you are mistaken about me. i am not a coward. do not say it again. do you understand?' again she shrugged her shoulders, as though to say that it mattered little to her whether he were a coward or not. but she did not like the look in his eyes, though she did not believe that he would hurt her. she had heard of his occasional terrible outbreaks of anger, but had never seen him in one of them. he was beginning to look dangerous now, she thought. she wondered whether she had gone too far, but reflected that, after all, if she meant to exasperate him into a promise of marriage, she must risk something. 'do not make me say it,' she replied, more gently than she had spoken yet. few feminine retorts are more irritating than that one, of which most women know the full value, but in some way it acted upon tebaldo as a counter-irritant to his real anger. 'no,' said tebaldo, and his eyelids suddenly drooped, 'you shall say something else. as you are just going away, this is hardly the moment to fix a day for our marriage.' she started slightly at the words, and looked at him. his eyes were less red, and the natural brown colour was coming back in his cheeks. she thought the moment of danger past. 'i shall be back in a fortnight,' she answered. 'there will be time enough when you come back,' he said in his usual tone of voice. 'provided that you do not change your mind in the meantime,' he added, with a tolerably easy smile. 'do not forget that you love francesco.' he laughed, for he was really a good actor. she laughed too, but uneasily, more to quiet herself than to make him think that she was in a good-humour again. 'i never forget the people i love,' she said lightly. then with a quick gesture and movement, as though wholly forgiving him, she kissed her fingers to him, laughed again, and was out of the room in a moment, leaving him where he was. he stood still for three or four seconds, looking at the door through which she had disappeared, longing for her--like a fool, as he said to himself. then he went out. it had been a singular parting, he thought, and if he had not been at her mercy by one side of his nature, he said to himself that he would never have spoken to such a woman again. there was a frankly cynical determination on her part to marry him, which might have repelled any man, and which, he admitted, precluded all idea of love on her side. in spite of it all, his hand trembled when he had touched her sleeve at her shoulder, and he had not been quite able to control his voice. in spite of it all, too, he hated his brother with all his heart, far more bitterly than ever before, for what aliandra had said of him. something more would have happened on that day if he had known that francesco was sitting in the little third-rate café opposite aliandra's house, waiting to see him come out. he would, however, have been momentarily reassured had he further known that the signora barbuzzi, for diplomatic reasons, returned to the sitting-room and was present during the whole of francesco's visit. aliandra left rome the next morning. she did not care to tire herself by travelling very fast, so she slept in naples, and did not reach randazzo until the third day, a week after her father's accident. chapter xxiv tebaldo felt a sort of relief when aliandra was gone. he missed her, and he longed for her, and yet, every time that he thought of lizzie slayback, he was glad that aliandra was in sicily. he felt more free. it was easier to bear a separation from her than to be ever in fear of her crossing the heiress's path. that, indeed, might have seemed a remote danger, considering the difference that lay between the lives of the american girl and the singer. but miss slayback was restless and inquisitive; she liked of all things to meet people who were 'somebody' in any department of art; she had heard of aliandra basili and of the sensation her appearance had created during the winter, and she was quite capable of taking a fancy to know her. miss lizzie generally began her acquaintance with any one by ascertaining who the acquaintance's acquaintances might be, as tebaldo well knew, and if at any moment she chose to know the artist, it was probable that his secret would be out in a quarter of an hour. then, too, he saw that he must precipitate matters, for spring was advancing into summer, and if his engagement were suddenly announced while aliandra was in rome, he believed that she would very probably go straight to miss slayback and tell her own story, being, as he could see, determined to marry him at any cost. he was therefore very glad that she was gone. but when the hour came round at which he had been accustomed to go and see her every day he missed her horribly, and went and shut himself up in his room. it was not a sentimentality, for he was incapable of that weak but delicate infusion of sentiment and water from which the anglo-saxon race derives such keen delight. it was more like a sort of physical possession, from which he could not escape, and during which he would have found it hard to be decently civil to miss slayback, or indeed to any other woman. at that time his whole mind and senses were filled with aliandra, as though she had been bodily present in the room, and her handsome head and vital figure rose distinctly in his eyes, till his pulse beat fast in his throat and his lips were dry. two days after aliandra's departure, tebaldo was in this state, pacing up and down in his room and really struggling against the intense desire to drive instantly to the railway station and follow aliandra to sicily. without a knock the door opened, and francesco entered. 'what do you want?' asked tebaldo, almost brutally, as he stopped in his walk. 'what is the matter with you?' enquired the other in some surprise at his brother's tone. 'what do you want, i say?' tebaldo tapped the floor impatiently with his foot. 'why do you come here?' 'really, you seem to be in an extraordinary frame of mind,' observed francesco. 'i had no intention of disturbing you. i often come to your room--' 'no. you do not come often. again--what do you want? money? you generally want that. take it--there on the table!' he pointed to a little package of the small italian notes. francesco took two or three and put them carefully into his pocket-book. tebaldo watched him, hating him more than usual for having come at that moment. he hated the back of his neck as francesco bent down; it looked so smooth and the short hair was so curly just above his collar. he wondered whether aliandra liked to look at the back of francesco's neck, and his eyes grew red. 'so aliandra has gone,' observed francesco, carelessly, as he returned the purse to his pocket and turned to his brother. 'have you come here to tell me so?' asked tebaldo, growing rapidly angry. 'oh no! you must have known it before i did. i merely made a remark--why are you so angry? she will come back. she will probably come just when you are ready to marry miss slayback.' 'will you leave my affairs to me, and go?' tebaldo made a step forward. 'my dear tebaldo, i wish you would not be so furious about nothing. i come in peace, and you receive me like a wild animal. i am anxious about your marriage. it will be the salvation of our family, and the sooner you can conclude the matter, the better it will be for all of us.' 'i do not see what advantage you are likely to gain by my marriage.' 'think of the position! it is a great advantage to be the brother of a rich man.' 'in order to borrow money of him. i see.' 'not necessarily. it will change our position very much. the danger is that your friend aliandra may spoil everything if she hears of miss slayback.' 'either go, or speak plainly,' said tebaldo, beginning to walk up and down in order to control the impulse that was driving him to strike his brother. francesco sat down upon the edge of the writing-table and lighted a cigarette. 'it is a pity that we should be always quarrelling,' he said. 'if you had not come here, we should not have quarrelled now,' observed tebaldo, thrusting his hands into his pockets, lest they should do francesco some harm. 'we should have quarrelled the next time we met,' continued the latter. 'we always do. i wish to propose a peace, a compromise that may settle matters for ever.' 'what matters? there are no matters to settle. let me alone, and i will let you alone.' 'of course, you really mean to marry miss slayback? do you, or do you not?' 'what an absurd question! if i do not mean to marry her, why do you suppose i waste my time with her? do you imagine that i am in love with her?' he laughed harshly. 'exactly,' answered francesco, as though his brother's question seemed perfectly natural to him. 'the only explanation of your conduct is that you wish to marry the girl and get her money. it is very wise. we are all delighted. vittoria likes her for her own sake, and our mother will be very happy. it will console her for ferdinando's death, which has been a great blow to her.' 'well? are you satisfied? is that all you wish to know?' tebaldo stopped before him. 'no. not by any means. you marry miss slayback, and you get your share. i want mine.' 'and what do you consider your share, as you call it?' enquired tebaldo, with some curiosity, in spite of his ill temper. 'it does not seem likely that you mean to marry them both,' said francesco, swinging one leg slowly and blowing the smoke towards the window. 'both--whom?' 'both the american and aliandra. of course, you could marry aliandra in church and the american by a civil marriage, and they might both be satisfied, if you could keep them apart--' 'what an infernal scoundrel you are,' observed tebaldo, slowly. 'you are certainly not the proper person to point out my moral shortcomings,' retorted francesco, coolly. 'but i did not suppose that you meant to marry them both, and as you have very wisely decided to take the american girl, i really think you might leave aliandra to me. if you marry the one, i do not see why i should not marry the other.' 'if i ever find you making love to aliandra basili,' said tebaldo, with slow emphasis, 'i will break every bone in your body.' but he still kept his hands in his pockets. francesco laughed, for he did not believe that he was in present bodily danger. it was not the first time that tebaldo had spoken in that way. 'you are ready to quarrel again! i am sure i am perfectly reasonable. i wish to marry aliandra basili. i have kept out of your way in that direction for a long time. i should not mention the matter now, unless i were sure that you had made up your mind.' 'and--' tebaldo came near to him, but hesitated. 'and--excuse me--but what reason have you for supposing that aliandra will marry you?' 'that is my affair,' answered francesco, but he shrank a little and slipped from his seat on the table to his feet, when he saw his brother's face. 'how do you mean that it is your affair?' asked tebaldo, roughly. 'how do you know that she will marry you? have you asked her? has she told you that she loves you?' francesco hesitated a moment. the temptation to say that he was loved by aliandra, merely for the sake of giving his brother pain, was very great. but so was the danger, and that was upon him already, for tebaldo mistook the meaning of his hesitation, and finally lost his temper. his sinewy hands went right at his brother's throat, half strangling him in an instant, and then swinging him from side to side on his feet as a terrier shakes a rat. if francesco had carried even a pocket knife, he would have had it out in an instant, and would have used it. but he had no weapon, and he was no match for tebaldo in a fury. he struck out fiercely enough with his fists, but the other's hands were above his own, and he could do nothing. he could not even cry out, for he was half choked, and tebaldo was quite silent in his rage. there would have been murder, had there been weapons within the reach of either. when tebaldo finally threw him off, francesco fell heavily upon one knee against the door, but caught the handle with one hand, and regained his feet instantly. 'you shall pay me yet,' he said in a low voice, his throat purple, but his face suddenly white. 'yes. this is only something on account,' said tebaldo, with a sneer. 'you shall have the rest of the payment some other time.' but francesco was gone before the last words had passed his brother's lips. the door closed behind him, and tebaldo heard his quick footsteps outside as he went off in the direction of his own room. the angry man grew calmer when he was alone, but now and then, as he walked up and down, and backwards and forwards, he clenched his hands spasmodically, wishing that he still had his brother in his grip. yet, when he reflected, as he began to do before long, upon what had really happened, he realised that he had not, after all, had much reason for taking his brother by the throat. it was the hesitation that had made his temper break out. but then, it might have meant so much. in his present state, the thought that perhaps aliandra loved francesco was like the bite of a horse-fly in a raw wound, and he quivered under it. he could not get away from it. he fancied he saw francesco kissing aliandra's handsome mouth, and that her eyes smiled, and then her eyelids drooped with pleasure. his anger subsided a little, but his jealousy grew monstrously minute by minute, and his wrath smouldered beneath it. he remembered past days and meetings, and glances aliandra had given his brother, such as she had never bestowed upon himself. she did not love him, though she wished to marry him, and was determined to do so, if it were possible. but it flashed upon him that she loved francesco, and had loved him from the first. that was not quite the truth, though it was near it, and he saw a hundred things in the past to prove that it was the truth altogether. he was human enough to feel the wound to his vanity, and the slight cast upon him by a comparison in which francesco was preferred to him, as well as the hurt at his heart which came with it. he did not know of francesco's daily visits, but he suspected them and exaggerated all he guessed. doubtless francesco had seen her again and again alone, quite lately, while tebaldo had been made to endure day after day the presence of aliandra's aunt in the room. again the red-lipped vision of a kiss flashed in the shadow of the room, a living picture, and once more his eyes grew red, and his hands clenched themselves spasmodically, closing on nothing. she had said that she preferred francesco. she had almost admitted that she loved him, and he could remember how cold her eyes had been while she had been saying it. there had been another light in them for his brother, and she had not held her hands behind her back when francesco had held out his. or else she had, laughingly. and then she had put up her face, instead, for him to kiss. tebaldo ground his teeth. his jealousy got hold of him in the vitals and gnawed cruelly. everything in his own room made him think of aliandra, though there was not one object in a score that could possibly have any association with her, nor any right to remind him of her, as he tried to tell himself. but his watch, lying on the toilet table, made him think of her watch, a pretty little one he had given her. his gloves made him think of her gloves, his books recalled hers, his very chairs, as they chanced to stand about the room, revived the memory of how other chairs had stood when he had parted from her. the infinite pettiness of the details that irritated him did not shock his reason as would have happened at any other time. on the contrary, the more of them sprang up, the more they stung him. instead of one gadfly, there were hundreds. and all the time there was the almost irresistible physical longing to go to her, and throw over everything else. he went out, for he could not bear his room any longer. it was still hot in the streets in the early afternoon, and there was a fierce glare all through the new part of the city where there were many white houses in straight rows along smoothly-paved streets. tebaldo walked in the shade, and once or twice he took off his hat for a moment and let the dry, hot breeze blow upon his forehead. the strong light was somehow a relief as he grew accustomed to it, and his southern nature regained its balance in the penetrating warmth. he walked quickly, not heeding his direction, as he followed the line of broad shade and passed quickly through the blazing sunshine that filled the crossing of each side street. he regained his normal state, and presently, being quite calm, he stopped and quietly lighted a cigar. like many men of ardent and choleric temperament, he neither smoked nor drank much, but there were times, like the present, when smoking helped him to think quietly. before the cigar was half finished he was at the door of the hotel at which miss slayback and her aunt were staying. he was glad that he had decided to see her on that afternoon, and he attributed the good sense, as he would have called it, which had ultimately brought him to her door, to the soothing influence of the tobacco. miss slayback was alone in the sitting-room. the blinds were closed, but the windows were open, and the warm breeze stirred the white curtains. it was an ordinary hotel sitting-room, like hundreds of others, but miss lizzie had not been satisfied with such mediocrity of surroundings, and had taken much pains to give the room an inhabited look. she had, of course, bought several hundred objects of no particular value, as rich women who visit rome for the first time invariably do, and most of them were in sight in her sitting-room. there were photographs by the score, pinned to the walls and standing on tables, and heaped together in a corner. the photograph is the unresistible temptation to women. there were three or four clever water-colour studies of men and women in costume, such as one sees everywhere in rome; there were half-a-dozen bronzes copied, in the unfinished, wholesale manner, from the antique; there was the inevitable old choir book of the psalms, with the old musical notation that is still used for plain chaunt, written on parchment and opened at the page which presented the best illuminated capital letter; there were three or four pieces of old embroidered vestments, draped over the backs of chairs, and there were several vases containing fresh flowers and dry wild grasses from the campagna. and there was miss lizzie slayback. she was exceedingly pretty in a sort of nondescript dress, between a tea-gown and something else; for though it was adorned with ribbons and laces, after the manner of tea-gowns, it was short-skirted when she stood up. in fact, it was 'a little creation' of her own, as her dressmaker would have said, thereby disclaiming all responsibility for its eccentricity. but it was distinctly becoming, and miss lizzie knew it. there is a great difference, morally, between being vain and being æsthetically aware of one's advantages and good points. vanity is even more blind than love, but there is something really and healthily artistic in judicious and successful self-adornment. vanity paints its eyes, and rouges its cheeks, and dyes its hair, and laces its waist till its ribs crack. good taste cuts its clothes according to its figure and its age, instead of pinching its body to fit its clothes. vanity is full of affectation; good taste presents the best it has to view, so far as it can, and hides what is less good, without attempting to distort it, because what is not good cannot be made to look good, by torture, to eyes that understand. the vain woman interprets the statement that she is clay, in a literal sense, and tries to violently model her clay into the venus of her dreams. the woman of taste accepts the fact that she is not a goddess and makes the best of her mortality as she has received it. miss slayback was very pretty, and even tebaldo pagliuca admitted the fact, though he was not in the least in love with her. she smiled and looked ten times prettier than before, as he entered the room. 'my aunt is supposed to be out,' she said, as he sat down. 'but she is in the next room. so it is quite proper.' she laughed a little at her own speech, for she was still amused by european ideas of propriety, and she would have been surprised if anyone had been shocked by her receiving tebaldo alone, when mrs. slayback was really asleep in the next room, during the heat of the afternoon. tebaldo smiled courteously, leaned back a little in his small, low armchair, and fixed his eyes upon her face in silence. his expression might have deceived an older and a wiser woman. 'i am very glad to find you alone,' he said softly, after an emphatic pause of admiration. 'your aunt is one of the most charming women in the world, of course, but--' 'but she is not always necessary,' interrupted miss slayback. 'do you want to see my new embroidery? i bought it this morning--' 'no. i do not care about your embroideries. i came to see you, not vestments.' 'it is not a vestment. it is an altar cloth--' 'it is not you, at all events,' said tebaldo, fixing his eyes upon her again. 'i want you and only you--to-day, to-morrow, and for ever.' his voice was well modulated. miss lizzie looked down, thoughtfully, but she did not blush. tebaldo leaned forward a little, gazing earnestly into her face. but she looked down and said nothing, for she wished him to say more. it was pleasant to hear, and though her eyes were bent upon the carpet, she could really see his face quite distinctly. 'i think you see and understand that i love you devotedly,' he said in soft tones. it was not easy for him, with his ideas, to make the statement in cold blood, so to say. but that was evidently what she expected, and he did his best. 'you must have seen it,' he continued. 'you must have understood it. i have tried to express it to you with the most profound respect, with that respect which i have felt for you from the first, and shall always feel, and wish to feel, for my wife.' possibly miss lizzie, not being a latin, would have been willing to hear less about respect and more about love. but he managed to make his tone convey something of that also. she looked up, slowly raising her long black lashes, till her dark blue eyes met his. 'you know,' she said, with an odd mixture of gentleness and wilfulness, 'if i marry you, you must always let me do exactly as i please.' tebaldo had known her long enough to be past the stage in which she could surprise him. the conception of american life which he had formed from her conversation was somewhat fantastic. 'you would not be so frank if you meant to misuse your liberty,' he answered wisely. 'do not be so sure!' laughed miss lizzie, gaily. but tebaldo wanted a more binding reply to his proposal. 'please do not laugh,' he said. 'your answer--your consent will transport me to paradise.' 'i hope not,' answered the girl, still laughing a little. 'i prefer you on earth, if i am to marry you.' 'you are adorable!' exclaimed tebaldo, understanding that he must accept her jesting humour. 'yes? am i?' she smiled. 'but you see that i adore you, worship you--love you! everyone does--' 'i do not want everyone--' 'but me? that is the question. do you--' 'oh yes! i want you,' she answered, interrupting him. 'please let me think a moment. i am making up my mind.' thereupon miss lizzie got up from her seat. tebaldo rose also, wondering what she might be going to do to help her mind in making itself up. he rather expected that she meant to go into the next room to consult her aunt before giving her final answer. but she had no intention of doing that. she went to the window, and looked through the slats of the closed blinds, into the hot glare outside. tebaldo remained standing close to the chair in which he had been sitting. as has been said, she could no longer surprise him, but he watched the ways and manners of the american young girl with interest, even while he grew nervous as he thought of the magnitude of the stake he hoped to win. miss lizzie stayed some time at the window, without moving. when she suddenly turned back into the room, and came straight up to tebaldo, her face was a little paler than usual; but he could not see it, for the light was behind her. her manner had quite changed now, and she spoke very gravely. 'i have not known you very long, and you are asking me to put my whole life in your hands,' she said. 'i like you very much. i care for you so much that i am going to trust you, though i know you so little. i am going to say yes.' she laid her hands in his trustfully, and looked up into his face. his lids half veiled his eyes, for the triumph in his look was not the triumph of love, and he knew it. no sane man is without some good impulse, be he ever so bad. 'i thank you with all my heart,' he said, wisely choosing simple words now; and he pressed her hands gently. 'i shall try to make you happy,' he added. it all seemed very strange to her. possibly something warned her even then that he was very false, more false than she could have understood. she had expected, shyly and with a little not quite unpleasant trepidation, that he would suddenly catch her in his arms and kiss her a score of times, quickly, as no one had ever kissed her. yet there he stood, quite calm, just pressing the tips of her fingers, as though he were afraid of hurting her, and saying that he meant to make her happy. she was disappointed, though she would not have admitted that she was. she little guessed that the bad man had just then chanced to feel one of the few good impulses that ever disturbed him. at that moment it would have seemed considerably worse to him to act as she really expected that he would than it would have seemed to cut francesco's throat in his sleep. explain those things who can. there is good in human nature, even at its worst; and it comes to the surface unexpectedly. francesco, whose character was on the whole far less evil and malevolent, would have had no such scruple. to him a woman was a woman, and nothing more. but tebaldo either loved or did not love, and the woman he did not love was not a woman at all in his eyes. and since in this case she chanced to be an innocent girl, his manliness--for he was manly and physically brave--revolted at the idea of offending her innocence. an old-fashioned theologian might say that a man who has no good in him is not properly fit to be damned. such a man would have no free-will, and could not, therefore, logically be punished for anything he did. that was not tebaldo pagliuca's case, at all events. miss lizzie stood still a moment, looking up to his face, after he had spoken; then she drew away her hands, and sat down again, feeling rather shy, for the first time since she had been a child. it seemed strange that it should all be over, and that she was to be married. tebaldo began a little speech. 'you have made me very happy,' he said; and he formed a number of fairly well-turned phrases, in which to express his satisfaction, which was genuine, and his affection, which was not. she did not hear him, for her own thoughts seemed louder than his smoothly-spoken words. she was happy, and yet she was uncomfortable, in an undefined way, and did not know what was the matter. he did not seem to expect any response just then, and she let him talk on. then she was aware that he was repeating a question. 'may i announce our engagement?' he was asking, for the second time. 'of course!' she exclaimed, suddenly realising the sense of his words. 'it is not a thing to be concealed. i will tell my aunt at once. you must come and see her this evening--no, we are going somewhere--i forget where! come to-morrow, please.' 'and when--?' he purposely left the sentence incomplete, filling the question with one of the long looks he had employed so often, with such success. 'when what? oh! you mean, when shall we be married? let me see. it is may now. i shall have to go to paris, of course. you will come, will you not?' 'could we not be married first, and go to paris afterwards?' enquired tebaldo. but miss lizzie had no intention of being hurried to the altar without having got the full amount of enjoyment out of buying beautiful clothes, and tebaldo was obliged to content himself with a promise that the wedding should take place early in the autumn. she wished to be married in rome by an archbishop, if not by a cardinal. tebaldo agreed to the whole college of cardinals, if necessary. when he went away, he walked more slowly. the sun was very low, and the air was growing cooler. he sauntered down towards the corso, well pleased with his own prospects and thinking out the details of his future with intense satisfaction. tebaldo was no spendthrift fool to waste his wife's fortune on absurd frivolities, or to gamble it away in mad speculations. he meant to build up the corleone once more, and make his family far greater than it had ever been. he did not know exactly how rich miss slayback was, but his guessing was, if anything, under the truth, and he had seen enough of her to know that she desired to be a personage, and was attracted by the idea of rank. he knew that she and her aunt had taken pains to enquire into the validity of his titles. he smiled when he remembered how cheaply he had held them in the old days at camaldoli, when he would have sold his birthright for a new rifle, and a title or two for a supply of ammunition; and he admired in himself the transformation from the rough country gentleman, hardly one step above the tenant farmer of the sicilian hills, to the fashionable young nobleman, engaged to be married to a great heiress, and already on the point of restoring to his family all its ancient magnificence. he walked the length of the corso and back before he went home. he had hardly entered his room when there was a light knock at the door. vittoria entered, looking pale and frightened. 'what was the matter between you and francesco?' she asked as soon as she had shut the door behind her. 'the matter?' tebaldo looked at her curiously, wondering whether she knew anything about aliandra basili. 'we quarrelled, as usual,' he said briefly. 'it must have been worse than usual,' said vittoria, in a low voice. 'he is gone.' 'gone? where? gone out to dinner?' tebaldo affected to laugh carelessly. 'no. i think he is gone to sicily,' answered the young girl. tebaldo uttered an exclamation of surprise, and his expression changed as he looked at his sister. 'yes,' she continued. 'he made a terrible scene with me and our mother--not exactly a scene, perhaps--it was all about you. he said that he was going, that he could not live in the house any longer, that he should never come back again. he said--' she hesitated. 'what more did he say?' 'he was half mad, i think. he said it was better to be an outlaw than live under such a brother as you, and that he would pay you for what you had done to him in the way you least expected.' 'what makes you think that he is gone to sicily?' asked tebaldo, very quietly, while his lids drooped at the corners. 'he looked for the trains in the newspaper, and i heard him say 'reggio' and 'messina.' we tried to quiet him--we did what we could. but he packed a quantity of things in a hurry, and went off in a cab, looking at his watch, and saying that he had barely time. mother fell into one of those terrible fits of crying that she has sometimes, and she is ill again. i thought it best to tell you.' 'certainly,' said tebaldo, thoughtfully. 'and now that you have told me, please go away, for i must dress.' she was already turning, for she was used to his peremptory ways, but he stopped her. 'i may as well tell you, vittoria,' he said; 'i am engaged to be married to your friend miss slayback. i hope that, as the marriage will be so advantageous to our family, you will not criticise me to her too much. i am not quite so bad as you sometimes think.' vittoria looked at him in silence for three or four seconds before she spoke. 'i shall say nothing to injure you with her,' she said slowly, and at once left the room. chapter xxv aliandra was received in randazzo with that sort of ovation which only italians accord to a successful artist; and her father's house was filled for a whole day with the respectable townsmen and their wives and daughters, who came to greet her and congratulate her. for the newspapers had informed them of her successes in rome, and the sicilian papers had exaggerated the original reports tenfold. the mayor and his wife, the municipal officers, the grey-haired lieutenant of carabineers with his pretty daughter, the rector, the curate, the young emigration agent of the big steamship company with his betrothed bride and her mother, the principal shopkeeper with his wife and children, the innkeeper--in short, all that represented the highest fashion in randazzo, including don tolomeo bellini, the most important tenant farmer on the great fornasco estate as well as a small freeholder, whose ancestors had been privileged to bear arms, and who, therefore, ranked as a gentleman and stamped the cheeses from his dairy with a little five-pointed coronet. basili had formerly hoped to get him for a son-in-law, and he would have been considered a very good match for the notary's daughter. all randazzo talked of the singer's return, and the poor people crowded the street to get a look at her. the mayor said she was an honour to the province and to sicily, and the rector, who had baptized her, expressed his hope that she might be always as good as she was famous, for he distrusted the name of art, but wished the girl well for her father's sake and her own. don atanasio, the apothecary of santa vittoria, tried to persuade his daughter to go with him down to randazzo and pay aliandra a visit. 'it will divert you a little from your sorrow, my daughter,' he said, shaking his head. concetta's dark eyes turned slowly towards her father with a wondering look, as though she were amazed at his audacity and yet pitied his inability to measure her grief. 'the dead need no amusements,' she said, gravely. 'they are very quiet. they wait.' 'eh--but the living,' objected don atanasio. 'we are alive, you know.' concetta did not heed what he said. 'the dead are very quiet. they wait for the judgment and the resurrection--the judgment of blood, and the resurrection of the innocent. then they will be alive again.' don atanasio sighed, for his unhappy daughter was no longer like other women. she was of those simple beings for whom life has but one purpose after love has taken possession, and from whom the loved one, dying, takes all purpose away for ever. the old man sighed and looked sideways at her, and a tear ran down his thin, straight nose, and fell upon the plaster he was spreading on the marble slab before him; but his daughter's dark eyes were dry. she was sitting on a little low stool behind one end of the counter, where she could not be seen by any one who might chance to come into the shop. her head was screened by the great old-fashioned marble mortar. don atanasio laid down the broad mixing-knife he was using, pushed back the black broadcloth cap which concetta had once embroidered with a design of green leaves, wiped his spectacles, turned away to blow his nose with a large coloured handkerchief, and turned back again to take a long look at the girl. he laid his hand gently on her head, pressing her forehead back until she looked up into his face. 'you wish to make me die also,' he said slowly. 'what have i done that you wish to make me die?' she looked at him very sadly, and then quickly got hold of his other hand and kissed it with a sort of devotion. she was very fond of him. he patted the back of her head affectionately. 'in truth, my dear,' he said gently, 'if i see you always thus, i shall not live long, for i have only you in the world, and the rest does not matter. but it is not that, since i would die to make you happy. what should it be for me? i am old. i am of no use. they will have another apothecary in santa vittoria. that is nothing. my thoughts are for you.' 'do not think for me,' answered the girl. 'i sit here quietly. i do no harm. and then, when it is later, i go to see my dead one every day.' 'but it is not good to do this always,' objected don atanasio, coaxingly. 'that is why i say come down with me to randazzo to-morrow, and let us go and see the notary basili, who has broken his leg, and his daughter, the great singer, who has come back from rome to visit him. she is a good girl, and you can make a little conversation with her. it will be a diversion, a sober diversion, and the air will do you good, and the movement.' she kissed his hand again, then dropped it, and drew up her black shawl over her head, for she heard a step on the threshold. don atanasio heard it too, and immediately took up his mixing-knife and went to work again at the plaster. the newcomer was the lieutenant who commanded the infantry men quartered in santa vittoria. he asked for six grains of quinine in three doses. he was a quiet young fellow, scrupulously neat in his close-fitting tunic with its turned-down velvet collar, his small red moustache, carefully trimmed, and his red hair parted behind and well brushed below his cap. he had singularly bright blue eyes with rough red eyebrows and a bright and healthy but much-freckled complexion. don atanasio proceeded to weigh out the little doses of the valuable drug, and the officer watched him as he cut the clean white paper into smaller sizes and neatly folded each package. 'do you know all those pagliuca brothers?' he asked suddenly. the apothecary stopped in his work and looked at him keenly. the officer was a piedmontese, and was, therefore, unpopular in the south. 'eh!' ejaculated the apothecary. 'they formerly lived here. i have seen them.' concetta did not stir in her hiding-place at the end of the counter, behind the marble mortar. the officer was silent for a moment, and the apothecary hastily folded the last package, slipping one end of the doubled paper into the other, as chemists do, and taking up another sheet of paper in which to wrap the three doses together. 'one of them has suddenly returned here,' said the officer. 'he is in the neighbourhood, and is not here for any good purpose. most probably he has come to do some injury to the gentleman who killed his brother, the brigand.' in spite of herself concetta drew a sharp breath between her teeth. the officer's eyes turned inquisitively towards the corner where she sat. 'it is the cat,' said don atanasio, calmly. 'one lira and fifty centimes, signor lieutenant,' he added, handing the officer the package across the counter. 'they say that it is francesco pagliuca who has come back, and that he was seen this morning in randazzo,' said the young man, while he counted out the money in big coppers; for, as usual in the south, there was a scarcity even of the flimsy little paper notes. 'we do not know him by sight, you see,' he continued, 'and i should be very glad of any information, if you should see him in the village. one thirty--forty--fifty--there it is.' he laid the last copper on the marble slab. 'a thousand thanks, signor lieutenant,' said don atanasio, collecting the coins. 'and you will let us know if you see the young man?' asked the officer. 'you shall be served,' replied the apothecary, gravely. the officer thanked him, nodded, and went out, with a little clattering of his light sabre. when he was gone, don atanasio's grave face relaxed in a smile. 'and those are the men who expect to rule us sicilians,' he said in a low voice, more to himself than to his daughter. 'they wish to catch a man. what do they do? they warn his friends by asking questions. what can such people catch? a crab, as we say, that will bite their own fingers. then they complain. they are like children. they do not even know what the mafia is, and they come to sicily.' concetta sat quite still in her corner, thinking. it seemed to her sure that francesco pagliuca had come to kill orsino saracinesca, for his brother's sake. that was what the officer thought, and all the soldiers would be looking out for francesco, and on the smallest excuse he would be arrested on mere suspicion. it did not strike her that he could possibly have come for any other purpose, and her one desire was that orsino should be killed. that was man's work, that killing, and she would leave it to the men. but if none of them would do it, she would some day take her father's gun and wait for orsino at the cemetery, for he often passed that way. she was not afraid to kill him, but she considered it to be the duty and business of the corleone men. they had prior rights, and, besides, they were men. a woman should not do any killing so long as there were men to do it, except in self-defence. it was clearly her duty, she thought, to warn francesco that the soldiers were aware of his presence in the neighbourhood. it would be much wiser of him, she reflected, to communicate with the outlaws who were about noto, and get half a dozen resolute fellows to help him. she had no knowledge of his character, though she had often met him, and she supposed him to be like his brothers, bold and determined. so she wished to warn him, in order that he might safely accomplish what she supposed must be his purpose. the difficulty lay in finding him. her father might help her, perhaps, but it was doubtful. it was quite certain that he could not say or do anything which could thwart francesco's plans, but, on the other hand, she knew that he would be careful not to seem to help him, for he had to keep on good terms with the authorities, for the simple reason that he held a government license as apothecary, which could easily be taken from him. 'did you know that francesco pagliuca had come back?' she asked, after a long silence, during which the plaster had been finished, folded up, and laid aside ready to be called for. 'i knew,' answered don atanasio, but he did not seem inclined to say anything more. 'why did you not tell me, father?' asked the girl. 'it might have given you pain, my child. and then, one does not say everything one knows. one forgets many things. he slept at the house of don taddeo, the grocer.' 'where is he now? is he still here?' 'who shall say where he is? heaven knows where he is. i cannot know everything.' he answered with a little irritation, for he understood that concetta wished to see her dead lover's brother, and he could not understand how any good could come of the meeting. concetta rose slowly to her feet and came out from behind the counter. she had grown very thin, but she was not less beautiful. she drew her black shawl together under her chin, and it fell over her forehead to her eyes. there was no disguise in it, for everyone knew her, but she felt that it gave her some privacy in her grief, even in broad day and in the street. 'i go to breathe the air,' she said quietly, moving towards the door. 'go, my daughter, you need it,' answered the apothecary. he watched her sadly, and as she went out he moved to the entrance of the shop and looked after her. tall, sad, and black, and graceful, she walked smoothly along the shady side of the street, which was deserted in the blazing noon. don atanasio did not go in again till she had turned the corner and was out of sight. she found the grocer's brother, the fat and cross-eyed sacristan, eating dark brown beans out of an earthen bowl with an iron fork, in the open shop. no one else was there. it was a cool, vaulted place, with a floor of beaten cement and volcanic ashes, and a number of big presses in a row behind a long walnut counter, black and polished with age. hams and sides of bacon hung from the ceiling, and the air smelt of salt pork, cereals, and candles. the fat man sat on a bench, in his shirt sleeves, eating his beans with a sort of slow voracity. he looked up as concetta's shadow darkened the door. 'will you accept?' he asked, lifting his earthen bowl a little as he spoke. 'thank you, and good appetite,' answered the girl. 'how are you?' 'always to serve you, most gentle concetta,' said the man. 'what do you need?' 'eat,' replied concetta, sitting down upon a rush-bottom chair. 'i do not come to disturb you. are you all alone?' she peered into the shadows at the back of the shop. 'eh, you know how it is? taddeo eats and then goes to sleep, and while he sleeps i keep the shop. in truth, it needs no great merchant to do that, for no one comes at this hour.' 'and you and your brother do not eat together?' 'generally we do, but to-day, who knows how it was? he ate first and went to sleep. then i brought my beans here for company. this is our conversation. i open my mouth, and before i can speak the beans answer me. this i call, indeed, conversation.' 'and francesco pagliuca, with whom does he converse upstairs?' asked concetta, lowering her voice. the man looked up quickly, with his mouth full, as though to see whether she were in earnest and knew the truth. a glance convinced him that she did. 'he went to randazzo at dawn,' he said, almost in a whisper. 'he makes love with the notary's daughter there.' concetta did not believe that this could be the only reason for francesco's return. 'why does he not stay at randazzo, then?' she enquired. 'why should he come here at all? it is a long way.' 'perhaps he is afraid of basili's friends,' suggested the fat man. 'or he prefers to sleep here because the air is better. he will certainly not tell us why he comes.' 'is he coming back this evening?' 'i think so, for he has a box here with his clothes, and other things. but for charity's sake, tell no one.' 'i?' concetta laughed in a cold way, without a smile. 'i wish to warn him that the soldiers know he was in randazzo yesterday, and are looking out for him.' she told the man of the lieutenant's visit to her father's shop, and he listened attentively. 'i could wait for him in the road,' he said. 'he thought that the soldiers would not know him here, because they are all new men. but they have seen him in randazzo and have sent word. they think that he has come on account of the saracinesca, but he has followed the notary's daughter from rome. they cannot touch him so long as he does no harm.' 'they may prevent him from doing it,' said concetta, looking steadily at the man. 'that would be a pity,' he answered gravely. 'i will wait for him in the road.' 'but if he comes by the bridle-path over the hills, you will miss him.' 'i do not think he will do that, for it is a bad road, and he had my brother's best horse to ride.' 'go and wait in the bridle-path,' said concetta. 'i will wait in the road, towards camaldoli.' 'he will not come before sunset,' observed the sacristan. 'that crazy priest of the saracinesca, don ippolito, comes to play the organ in santa vittoria every day, and pays me to blow the bellows, and he never goes away till twenty-three o'clock.' twenty-three of the clock is half an hour before the sun sets, at all times of the year, by the old reckoning, which is still in use in the south. 'you can send a boy to blow the bellows,' suggested concetta. 'you cannot trust anyone to warn francesco pagliuca.' they both supposed that since enquiry was being made for him, he would be in imminent danger of arrest, with or without any legal grounds, an opinion sufficiently indicative of the state of the country. the man stared blankly at the wall for a few seconds after concetta had last spoken, then nodded, and began to eat again. the girl rose from her chair, and moved towards the door with her graceful, slowly-cadenced step. she had done what she had come to do and was quite sure of the man, as indeed she had reason to be, for the mafia protects its own, and generally has its own way in the end, in spite of governments and soldiers. if concetta and the fat sacristan asked no one to help them, it was because it was such a very simple matter to warn francesco of danger, that they needed no assistance. but as they needed none, they told no one what they were going to do. concetta came home again to the quiet little shop, and don atanasio bolted the glass door, and they both went upstairs to dinner. the girl ate a little better than usual, and sipped half a glass of strong, black wine. 'the air did you good,' observed her father, looking at her. 'eh, this human body! what is it? who shall ever understand it? you go out every afternoon, when it is cool, for two hours, and it does you no good, and you eat no more than a bee takes from a flower. and to-day you go out for half an hour into a heat that would burn up paving-stones, and you come back with an appetite. so much the better. it is not i that should complain, if you ate the house and the walls, poor child.' 'when the heart is thirsty for blood, the body is not hungry for meat,' said the beautiful, white-faced girl, in her clear, low voice. chapter xxvi ippolito and orsino had already acquired certain fixed habits in their several occupations, so that they rarely failed to meet at the same regular hours and then separate again, each doing the same or similar things day after day. such regularity becomes a second nature in remote places where there is little chance that anything unexpected should happen. orsino had really not enough to do, after he had once familiarised himself with his surroundings. so long as san giacinto had remained, it had been different, for he had great plans, and had spent much time in riding about the country with an engineer from palermo who was to build the light railway round etna. san giacinto had now gone back to rome, however, leaving his cousin in charge of camaldoli, with directions to manage things with an easy hand, so as not to prejudice the people against the work of the railway when it should be begun. to do this meant, practically, to leave the tenants to their own devices, unless it were possible to help them in any way to which they should not object. at the same time, there were certain defensive measures which were always necessary, for no one knew when the brigands might grow weary of noto and appear on the slopes of etna again to avenge their friend ferdinando pagliuca. orsino used to ride about a good deal, more for the sake of exercise than for anything he could accomplish, and he carried his rifle now as a matter of habit, but rarely took one or two of the carabineers with him. he began to believe that there were not really any outlaws at all, and that ferdinando's unknown friend had left that part of the country. ippolito, as a priest, went about unarmed, and, being naturally fearless, he rambled about as he pleased. almost every day he walked to santa vittoria and spent an hour at the organ. orsino accompanied him, when there was any reason for going to the village, but it did not amuse him to hear his brother's music. in fact, it was rather a relief to him not to hear the piano constantly at his elbow, as he heard it when ippolito played in their joint sitting-room in rome. on the afternoon of the day on which concetta had walked to the grocer's shop, ippolito strolled up to the small church as usual. there was a little lame boy who had discovered the priest's habits, and used to hang about in the afternoon in the hope of earning a penny by calling the fat sacristan to come and blow the organ. he was not strong enough to blow it himself, and was content and glad to get a copper or two for limping into the village with his message. ippolito now had a key of his own to the church, and went inside while the man was coming. each day, during the twenty minutes or so which generally elapsed, he worked at the back of the instrument, repairing with bits of wire a number of trackers that ran from the pedals to a wooden stop set up on one side of the organ. at some former time the connexions had been repaired with waxed string, which the hungry church mice had gnawed to pieces. it was a troublesome job, requiring patience and some mechanical skill, as well as two or three simple tools which ippolito had brought from rome and now left in the organ until the work should be finished. instead of the sacristan, a big boy appeared on this particular day, the same who had carried the holy water for the priest who had come down to camaldoli when ferdinando had been killed. he explained that the sacristan had been sent on an errand to bronte by his brother, the grocer, and had left him, the boy, to do duty at the bellows if needed. ippolito thought nothing of the matter, and sat down to make music, as usual. the days were growing very long, and he generally regulated his stay in the church by the sun rather than by his watch. sometimes the fat sacristan came round from behind, perspiring, and declaring that his brother needed him at home. meanwhile concetta had gone down the road to the cemetery just beyond the shoulder of the hill, out of sight of the village and the little church in which ippolito was playing the organ. it was her hour, and he had grown used to seeing her sitting on the curbstone by the churchyard gate every day when he went home just before sunset. when she passed the church and heard the music through the door that was left ajar, she knew also who was there, and her eyes darkened as she went by, and she drew her shawl more closely about her head. and she recognised the priest's light step when he came by the cemetery gate an hour later, and she always turned her face away that she might not see him. the people knew her, too, and most of them pitied her, and all respected her sorrow. some of the labourers who came down from the hill farm, by the paths that turned into the main road just at the end of the churchyard, used to touch their hats when they passed her, and, when she chanced to be looking, she nodded gravely acknowledging their greeting. they knew she was half mad, but the madness of a great sorrow has always been respected by simple folks who feel seldom, but keenly, and think little. the peasants generally passed about sunset on their way into the village. to-day concetta came to the gate as usual, and when she reached it francesco was no longer uppermost in her thoughts. at the sight of the black cross that marked the last grave on the left, the whole world vanished again, and her sorrow came down like a darkness between her and all life. she stood with dry eyes and compressed lips, grasping the iron rails that were hot with the level sun, and out of the long, low mound rose the face and figure of the well-loved man. there can be nothing intellectual in the spasm of a great sorrow, in the blind grasping upon emptiness for what is not, in the heart-famine that no living thing can satisfy. such grief brings no thoughts, for it is the very contrary of thinking. it is only when each returning convulsion has subsided that thought comes back, and then it comes uncertainly like the sense of touching a small object through a heavy pall. concetta had no consciousness of the passing of time, as she stood at the gate, nor for a long while afterwards, when she had sat down upon the curbstone in her accustomed attitude, with her shawl drawn down over her face, shielding it from the low rays of the sinking sun, and from the sight of the world that was so desolate for her. as spring warmed to summer, no one passed that way who could help it, for the road was dusty and hot. two of the foot-carabineers passed her, returning to santa vittoria from their regular patrol of the high-road, their carbines slung over their shoulders and their pipeclayed cross-belts gleaming white in the sun. they knew her, too, and barely glanced at her as they went by. she did not even raise her head, though she remembered, now, that she had come to wait for francesco pagliuca, and she was glad that the patrol had marched up again, for he must be following them, and could thus not be met by them. she knew that he would come on horseback. as she strained her ears to catch the distant sound of hoofs, the savage longing for revenge began to burn again in her heart. surely he must have come for that, and not really for love of aliandra basili. if he reached the cemetery in time, he could kill ippolito, the priest, as he came down from the church. she would show him just where to stand with his gun, at the corner of the wall, and she would stand beside him; and then, if he were quick, he could get down half-way to camadoli, near the cross-roads and kill orsino too, when he came up hastily to see his dead brother. the vision of much blood reddened before her aching eyes, as she listened for the horse's hoofs. if only he could come before ippolito, she thought, and she listened also for the priest's light step behind her. francesco came first. she saw him far down the road before the first sound reached her. he was riding leisurely up the steep way, a broad hat drawn over his eyes, against the level sun, that gleamed like fire on the barrel of his rifle. she could see that from time to time he looked behind him quickly. he was warned already, she thought. so much the better. if only he would quicken his speed a little. ippolito almost always passed the graveyard before the sun was quite down. her heart beat very fast as she heard the clink of the horse's iron shoes against the stones, and then the rattle of the tiny pebbles that flew up and fell to right and left at every step. she rose when he was within fifty yards of her, and threw the black shawl back from her splendid black hair. he knew her face and would stop when he recognised her. she remembered the sound of his voice, and how he had said in her hearing that she was very beautiful, and once when she had been alone in her father's shop, he had come in and had talked strangely, and she had been a little frightened, but ferdinando had entered just then. she remembered it all distinctly. it did not matter, now, for he had come to avenge ferdinando. the bullets that should do justice were already in the winchester that gleamed so red in the setting sun. she stood upright, with her head thrown back, that he might recognise her. he stopped beside her. 'concetta!' he exclaimed, smiling, as he smiled at every pretty woman. 'what brings you here? what are you doing out here in the road alone?' she hardly saw that he smiled, in her own earnestness. 'that brings me here,' she said, pointing through the iron gate. 'do you see? it is the last one on the left, with the black cross.' francesco looked. 'i see a grave,' he said indifferently. 'it is your brother's grave,' said the girl. 'ferdinando lies there.' 'oh--i understand.' the young man glanced up and down the road, and dismounted from his horse, passing his arm through the bridle. he advanced close to the gate, and looked through it in silence for several seconds. 'poor fellow!' he exclaimed, turning away again, but without any very strong feeling in his tone. concetta grasped his arm roughly, to draw him after her, and spoke rapidly into his ear. 'the priest saracinesca will be coming down the road from the village at any moment. come quickly, come with me. behind the corner of the wall. you can shoot him from there, and i will hold your horse.' she dragged him along and the horse followed, led by his arm. 'no one will come. when he is dead, mount quickly and ride down to the cross roads above camaldoli, by the fields, and wait behind the shrine. i will run all the way and tell the other saracinesca that his brother is dead in the road. he will run out,--from behind the shrine you can kill him easily. then ride for the woods of noto. the brigands are there, and you will be safe.' almost before he knew where she was leading him, he found himself behind the corner of the cemetery, on the side away from the village. in digging the foundations of the wall, the dark tufo had been broken out of the earth and piled high up at a short distance, so that there was a sort of deep trench between the wall and the heap of stones, out of which the poisonous yellow spurge grew in great bunches. it would have been impossible to select a better spot for an ambush in what was really an open country. with the unconscious ease of a country-bred woman, concetta, taking the bridle, backed the horse into the trench so as to leave room in front of him for herself and francesco to be under cover of the wall. she had scarcely done speaking when they were already in position. 'get your rifle ready!' she said in a whisper, at the same time taking hold of the leathern belt by which the winchester was slung. 'he may be here at any moment. be quick!' 'but i do not wish to kill anybody,' said francesco, at last, with an uneasy laugh. concetta started and stared at him, too much astonished to despise him yet. 'you do not wish to kill the saracinesca!' her face expressed blank amazement. 'but then, why have you come?' 'not to murder anyone, at all events. you are quite mad.' 'mad? i? mad? is not the body of your murdered brother lying there, on the other side of that wall? does not his blood cry out for the blood of those who killed him? have you not come to do justice? have i not brought you to a safe place? and you call me mad!' 'quite mad,' reiterated francesco, coolly. she stared at him a moment longer, and an immense contempt rose in her eyes. 'give me your rifle,' she said in a different tone. 'i will kill him, since you are afraid.' 'i am not in the least afraid,' answered francesco, with the too ready resentment against a woman's accusation of cowardice, which a real coward always shows. 'not that i see why i should risk being sent to penal servitude because my brother got himself killed in a foolish affair--' 'foolish?' concetta's black eyes blazed suddenly from contempt to anger. 'foolish, yes! ferdinando--i am sorry for him, of course--but he was a fool.' the back of one little white hand had struck him across the mouth, almost before the word was out. 'infame!' she cried, using the strongest word in her language. he did not care for the light blow, still less for the word. she was matchlessly beautiful in her anger, as the blood rose a little in her white cheeks, and her nostrils dilated with wrath. the shawl had fallen almost to the ground, and revealed her perfect throat and exquisitely graceful figure as she faced him. the colour rose in his face, and his lips reddened, and his eyes sparkled badly. almost before the hand that had struck him had fallen to her side, he had caught her in his arms, and his lips were on hers, smothering her, hurting her, and he was forcing her backwards against the heap of stones--not twenty yards from his brother's grave. she was lithe and strong, but she was no match for him. yet, defending herself as she could, like a wild animal, she bit his lip half through, and as he started under the pain she wrenched her head aside and screamed with all her might, once, before he got one of his hands over her mouth. but her scream had been heard. she had judged rightly that ippolito saracinesca would be coming along the road in a few moments, to meet his death, as she had hoped. instead, he saved her, for at her cry, being but a few yards from the corner of the wall, he sprang forward, saw a woman struggling against a man, recognising neither, leapt into the trench and had francesco by the back of the collar in a moment, twisting the tough starched linen with all the might of his by no means weak white hands. as orsino had always said, ippolito was more of a man than anybody suspected, and there was the good blood of his good race in him, and all the fearlessness. in an instant he had dragged francesco backwards, half strangled, up the little declivity of the trench, and out into the middle of the road. so far he had done nothing more, perhaps, than was necessary to save the girl. but having got him out, the man's instinct against the wretch that does violence to a woman took possession of him, and holding francesco by the back of the collar in front of him with his right hand, he struck him half a dozen times quickly and violently on the side of the head with his left fist, till francesco, stunned and choked, suddenly fell in a heap in the road. concetta had struggled to her feet at once, and stood leaning against the corner of the wall. with a mad horror she saw that she had been saved by the man she had wished to kill. the horse leisurely picked its way up through the stones and stood waiting in the road. at that moment, four peasants coming home from the hill farm came down into the road from behind the other end of the long wall of the cemetery. they naturally glanced downwards before going up towards the village, and seeing the priest standing over a fallen man, they hurried to the spot. francesco was already beginning to get to his feet. ippolito drew back a little to be ready if he should be attacked, as he naturally expected. but a moment later the peasants had recognised francesco, had helped him up, and were dusting his clothes, while they scowled at ippolito. 'it is well that you come, friends,' said concetta's clear, low voice. 'a moment later and another saracinesca would have killed another pagliuca.' ippolito stared at her, dumbfounded by her speech, and then looked at the grim and angry faces of the lean brown men who surrounded francesco. he could not conceive that a woman whom he had saved from worse than death but a moment earlier should turn upon him instantly, as she was doing. but she could not help it, for she was half mad, and the idea of injuring the saracinesca was always uppermost in her unsettled brain. she had come to warn francesco of danger, because she had loved his brother, and loved the name; and she had done her best to make him do a murder then and there. 'help don francesco to his horse,' she said to the peasants. 'take him round to the back of don taddeo's house--not through the village--you will meet the carabineers, and he is bleeding. they would see; there would be questions. go quickly--the patrol passed half an hour ago; the next will come out in half an hour more.' she foresaw everything. in a moment the men had helped francesco to the saddle, and they were moving away. he had not uttered a word, surprised, bruised, and terrified as he was, and his lip was bleeding where concetta had bitten it. his face was white with fear, and he held a handkerchief to his mouth, as he slowly rode away, leaving concetta and ippolito standing in the road together. ippolito faced the girl quietly enough, but he meant to ask for an explanation of some sort. 'did you think that i should accuse him, though he is--what he is?' she asked, speaking first. 'you saved me from that infamous beast--yes. i thank you, though you are my enemy. but do not think that i value myself higher than the blood of my bridegroom whom you killed. i would rather lose body and soul together than not hurt a saracinesca if i could, kill you, if i could, give your bodies to dogs, if i could, send you unconfessed to hell, if i could. and you thought that i would turn and accuse a corleone when i could accuse a saracinesca? you do not know us.' she turned from him scornfully before he could answer a word. she had found her little shawl, and she drew it about her face as she moved away. he stood still a moment, looking after her in mute surprise. then he shook his head and turned towards camaldoli, not yet understanding that the beautiful girl was not quite sane, but speculating upon women in general, as good priests sometimes do in total ignorance of the subject. orsino looked grave when ippolito told him at supper what had happened. 'the girl is mad,' he said sadly, for he was himself the cause of her madness. 'and she is a sicilian. we understand these people very little, after all. i sometimes think we never shall.' 'nobody could possibly understand that kind of woman,' observed ippolito. 'no. put such a scene as that on the stage, if it were possible, and the audience would hiss it, as a monstrous improbability. they would say that the girl would fall at the feet of her preserver, forget her hatred for ever, or possibly turn it all against the man from whom she had been saved. unfortunately things are different in real life. poor concetta will hate us all the more because one of us has helped her in danger. it is true that she is mad. all the people say so.' 'because she sits half the day outside the cemetery? it is not a month since ferdinando died. one need not be mad to feel a great sorrow for a whole month.' 'no. perhaps not. i should like to know what that fellow is here for. it means no good to anyone. i have no doubt that he is in communication with the outlaws, and she is quite capable of trying to help them to catch us.' 'then you really believe in the existence of the brigands, after all,' said ippolito, with a laugh, for orsino did not often speak of the outlaws seriously. 'we all know that they exist. but we have trouble in realising that they do. we know the names of many of them. everybody does. but of course, with so many soldiers about, we feel safe. i wish you would carry a weapon, ippolito.' 'i? i am a priest. nobody will touch me.' 'do not be too sure. there are even priests who wear a revolver under their cassocks down here.' 'i could hardly carry a rifle,' remarked ippolito, laughing again. 'and imagine carrying a knife in these days--one of us! it sounds like the last century.' 'a knife is a very good weapon, nevertheless. the peasants say that a knife has more shots in it than a revolver, and does not miss fire.' 'i hate the idea of carrying a weapon.' 'yes, no doubt. but suppose that matters had turned out a little differently to-day, and that francesco pagliuca, instead of being an abject coward, had turned upon you and fought you for his life. what could you have done with your hands?' 'a priest has no business to be fighting,' said ippolito. 'when he fights he must take the consequences.' 'but you could not escape it to-day. the cause was just and urgent. as a man, you could not have done otherwise.' 'certainly not. i admit that, and the fellow was scared. he had a winchester rifle across his back. it got into the way when i twisted his collar, i remember. do you know that i never struck anyone before? it was rather a curious sensation.' 'you have struck me often enough,' laughed orsino. 'you used to fight like a wildcat when we were little boys. it is a pity that you turned priest.' 'i am very glad i did,' said ippolito. 'besides, i do not like fighting. it was different when we were children and pummelled each other.' 'look here,' said orsino. 'i shall feel anxious about you after this affair. unless you will carry some weapon, i shall have you escorted to santa vittoria and back by a carabineer.' 'how absurd!' 'i will, i assure you. if you were like that miserable francesco pagliuca, i should send four men with you. but i know that you could make a pretty good defence alone, if you had anything to fight with.' 'of course if you insist in that way, i must. i utterly refuse to be followed about by soldiers. it is too ridiculous. have you got a knife? something that is easy to carry--' 'two or three,' answered orsino. 'there is a very nice bowie knife--one of those american things made in england. it is convenient, for it has a cross-hilt and a leathern sheath.' he rose from the table and opened a drawer in an old-fashioned press, from which he produced the weapon in question. 'there is a saddler in rome who gets these things,' he observed, showing it to his brother. 'you see it is really a dagger, for there is no spring. it is made solid and straight and would go through anything, i should think. look at the thickness of the back of the blade, will you? and the point is extremely fine. you could engrave with it, and yet it is as strong as the rest.' ippolito turned the knife over and over. 'at all events it will be useful in cutting up the bits of leather i use for mending the old organ,' he observed. 'my pocket knife is of hardly any use.' he sheathed the knife-blade and dropped it into the deep side pocket of his cassock. 'imagine me carrying a bowie knife!' he exclaimed, still inclined to laugh. 'imagine the feelings of francesco pagliuca this afternoon, if he had thought you had one in your pocket, when you were behind him and twisting his collar.' orsino smiled grimly. 'my hands were good enough for such a beast,' answered ippolito in a tone of disgust. thus it was that ippolito began to go armed, much against his will, for he took his profession as a priest and a man of peace seriously. orsino was not even then half satisfied, and intended before long to try and persuade him to carry a revolver instead of a knife. but up at santa vittoria there was much talk of another sort on that evening. as generally happens in such cases in sicily, the carabineers and the soldiers, though on the lookout for francesco pagliuca, were in profound ignorance of the fact that he was now lodging for the second night at the house of taddeo the grocer, though there was now hardly a man in the village who did not know it. the soldiers in sicily are matched as one to a thousand against a whole population of the most reticent people in the world, bound together by that singular but half-defined force, which is the mafia. knowing the country perfectly and well acquainted with the unchanging hours of the regular patrols in the neighbourhood, francesco might have stayed ten days in santa vittoria in spite of the soldiers, even if he had been guilty of the crimes which he did not at all mean to commit. not a human being would have informed against him, and if anyone had betrayed him, the betrayer's own life would not have been worth much. they did not think any the better of him, nor any the worse, because he was innocent of any misdeed. he was a part of the idea of the mafia, a born sicilian, who, somehow, had been obliged to give up his birthright to romans, who were as much foreigners to the people of santa vittoria as englishmen could have been. it was their duty, to a man, for sicily's sake and their own, to stand by him as a sicilian against all authority whatever. besides, they knew him, the romans had killed his brother, whom they had also known, and both he and his had always helped the outlaws against the government. the peasants remembered and told their children how the corleone brothers had once led a dozen carabineers about the hills for two days in search of the brigands, taking good care not to catch them. it was not probable that the soldiers should ever get any information against such popular persons, except by stratagem or accident. and now francesco sat in a long upper room at the back of taddeo's house, bathing his sore face with vinegar and water and telling his story to the grocer and his brother, in his own way. and in many humble little houses, the men were talking in low tones, telling each other how the 'priest of the saracinesca' had fallen upon francesco pagliuca, after they had quarrelled over ferdinando's grave, and had treacherously twisted his collar and beaten him before he could get his gun into his hand. and they discussed the matter in whispers. and one man, who had loved ferdinando, said nothing, but went out quietly from his house and walked down over the black lands and set fire to three haystacks on the camaldoli estate, because the corn was not yet harvested, and there was nothing else to burn at that time of year. in the morning everyone heard of it and was glad, but no one ever knew who had set fire to the hay, for the man who did it did not tell his wife. but neither did concetta tell her father truly what had happened to her. she had been at the cemetery, she said, and the two gentlemen had met, the priest and the layman, and had quarrelled, she knew not about what, and the priest of the saracinesca had caught francesco pagliuca unawares by the neck. so her story corresponded with that of the peasants and with that of francesco. for two reasons she could not tell her father the truth. if he had known it, he would never have allowed her to leave the village alone again. and he would most certainly have risen from the table, and would have gone straight to taddeo's house, where francesco was, to kill him at once, though don atanasio was an old man, having married very late in life. it was true that since it was all over, and she had cast the blame upon ippolito, the hatred of her offended maidenhood for her cowardly assailant was slowly and surely waking; and her white cheeks blushed scarlet as though they had been struck, when she thought of it all. but it was better that her father should not know, and she held her peace. it was hardest of all to feel that she had almost had francesco's rifle in her hands, and that if he had not assailed her, there might by this time have been one saracinesca less in the world. it would have done her good to see the haystacks flaming down in the valley, and it would have brought a smile of satisfaction to her tragic face to have heard what the peasants were whispering to one another in all the little houses of the village that night. no one said that it was a shame for an armed man to have been beaten by an unarmed priest. they felt personally injured by what they called the treachery of the latter in choking his antagonist, and they softly cursed the romans, and vowed to hurt them if they could. generations of their fathers had known generations of the corleone, had been ground and rack-rented by them, and had resisted their extortions with a cunning that had often been successful. but now that the pagliuca had lost their birthright, that was all forgotten in the fact that they were sicilians, injured by romans. no one said in defence of the saracinesca that san giacinto had paid the pagliuca more than twice the actual value of camaldoli. in the eyes of the peasants their old masters had been ignominiously ejected from their home by romans, and ferdinando had done a brave and honourable deed in trying to resist them. it was the duty of every good sicilian to stand by the pagliuca against the romans and against the authorities, come what might. if this young roman priest had the overbearing courage to beat a pagliuca on the high-road in broad daylight, what might not his tall, black-browed brother be expected to do, or what deed of violence might not follow at the hands of the grey-haired giant who had been at camaldoli, and who had momentarily terrorised everyone? no one's life or property was safe while the saracinesca remained in the country. and they meant to remain. they had cut down the brush around the house so that no one could creep up with a rifle under safe cover, and they had strengthened the gate and were restoring the tower. they had turned the monastery into a barrack for the carabineers, and had quartered a company of infantry in the village. their power and their evident influence in rome, since they had obtained troops for their protection, made them ten times more hateful to men who hated all authority. they wished that ippolito had wounded francesco slightly with some weapon. then he might have been arrested, and there was not a man in the village who would have said a word in his favour. many would have perjured themselves to testify against him, in the hope that he might really be sent to prison. the fact that he was a priest went for nothing. he was not their own priest, and more than one churchman had been in trouble in sicily, before now. chapter xxvii francesco was no more able to understand concetta's conduct than ippolito himself. he had expected a very different termination to the affair, for he knew well enough that if the four peasants had caught him as ippolito had, they would very probably have torn him limb from limb, in the most literal and barbarous sense of the word, in spite of any sympathy they might have felt for his family until then. he vaguely understood that concetta had saved him for his dead brother's sake, and out of hatred for the saracinesca; but there was a sort of reckless self-sacrifice in her act which it was beyond his cowardice and selfishness to comprehend. he rarely addressed the saints, but he inwardly thanked them for his safety as he rode round the outskirts of the village and the back of taddeo's house. he was still in a tremor of fear, but he knew that he could easily twist and exaggerate the story of the ignominious beating he had received, and thereby account for his pallor and his nervousness. he knew that anything would be believed against the saracinesca. it would be hard to give a single reason for his having chosen to come up to santa vittoria to find a lodging, when he had left rome in order to see aliandra in randazzo. his timidity might have had something to do with his decision, making him prefer the village where he was sure of finding friends, whatever he might do, to the large town where there was no one upon whom he could count. he had also told basili, when he had been to see him, that he had business in santa vittoria. vaguely, too, he guessed that tebaldo might know where he was and follow him. but he had not the slightest intention of doing any harm to the saracinesca, of whom, in his heart, he had always been afraid. as soon as concetta had spoken, he had known that he was safe, though it was long before the effect of his fright had passed off. after what she had said, he knew that no one in santa vittoria would believe any statement which ippolito might make about the encounter, and he set himself to enlarge upon the impression she had given so as to show himself in the most advantageous light possible. he was not injured, and his bruises, though painful, had not disfigured him, for ippolito had struck him on the side of the head. as for his lip, he told taddeo that ippolito had at first picked up a stone and wounded him in the mouth with it. taddeo was ready to believe anything, and so was his brother, the fat sacristan, who had waited for francesco in the bridle-path until a late hour, and grievously lamented having missed the fight, for in spite of his fat and his odd smile and the cast in his eye, he was fond of fighting for its own sake, and no coward, except in the presence of what he believed to be supernatural and therefore irresistible. having eaten his supper and refreshed his spirits and nerves with some of taddeo's strongest wine, francesco went to sleep in the great, old-fashioned trestle bed, in sheets that smelt of lavender, though they were of coarse linen. and early in the morning he got up, feeling almost quite himself, and rode down to randazzo in the early dawn. an uncomfortable sensation assailed him as he passed the wall of the cemetery, but he looked away and rode on, thinking of aliandra basili, and concocting the story he should tell her to account for his wounded lip. of all things, he desired to make a good impression on her and her father, for he had come from rome with the determination to marry her if he could. it did not seem impossible, with tebaldo out of the way, for she liked him, and basili himself would think it a good thing for his daughter to marry a pagliuca. francesco's native cowardice had kept him out of the sort of daring mischief which gives a man a bad character. he did not gamble, he did not drink, and he could have a title, of course, according to the southern custom of distributing that sort of social distinction through all the members of a family. aliandra might do far worse, basili thought; and though he knew that she had made up her mind to get tebaldo if she could, he also knew tebaldo well enough to judge that, as the head of his family, he would try to make an ambitious and rich marriage. he frankly told francesco that he had little influence with his daughter, but that so far as he himself was concerned, he approved of the marriage. francesco had an equal share of the small family fortune with his brother and sister, and it had been increased by the addition of ferdinando's, since the latter had left no will. in former times basili had warned his daughter against the brothers, but their existence had changed since then. they now had a social position, and friends in rome, and were altogether much more deserving of consideration. francesco found the notary's broken leg a distinct advantage in his courtship; for basili was, of course, helpless to move, in his room upstairs, and when the young man had paid him a visit, he and aliandra had the house to themselves without fear of interruption. then the two could stay as long as they pleased in the sitting-room below, with the blinds half closed and hooked together, and it was a cool and quiet place just so high above the street that people could not look in as they passed along outside. aliandra had been flattered by the young man's pursuit, as was natural, but she had by no means given up the idea of marrying tebaldo. she would have preferred that francesco should not come all the way down from santa vittoria every day, but she could not refuse to see him when he came. she had temporarily returned, with a good deal of pleasure and amusement, to the primitive social state in which she had been brought up, and she was no longer able to tell a servant to say that she was not at home. gesualda, the maid of all work, would not have understood any such order. besides, francesco always made a pretence of having come to see how basili was doing, and invariably went upstairs to the latter's room, as soon as he entered the house. in the middle of the day he went to the inn for his dinner, because aliandra dined with her father, but an hour later he returned and stayed until it was time for him to ride away in order to reach santa vittoria before dark. it was a long ride, and as he rode the same horse every day he saved his animal's strength as much as possible. to-day, everything happened as usual. at the accustomed hour he appeared, put up his horse in basili's stable beside the notary's brown mare, flicked the dust from his boots and gaiters, and went in to see aliandra and her father. the stable was in a little yard on one side of the house, entered by a wooden gate from the street, and accessible also from the house itself by a side door which led down three or four steps. the notary was in a good humour, for the doctor said that he was doing well, and hoped to get him on his feet again in a shorter time than had at first been expected. he was beginning to like francesco because the young man took some pains to amuse him, having an object to gain, and treated him with even more deference than the principal notary of a provincial town had a right to expect. it was amusing to be told about rome, and to hear a great many things explained which had always been more or less a mystery to one who had never left the island. it was pleasant, too, to hear of his daughter's triumphs from one who had assisted at them all, and who now spoke with the authority of a man of the world, representing the opinion of the roman aristocracy. now and then, when francesco spoke of some especial passage in an opera by which aliandra had raised a storm of enthusiasm, basili would ask her what the music was like; and then, without effort or affectation, as though it was a pleasure to her, her splendid voice burst out, true and clear and fresh, and sang what the old man wished to hear. then the peasants and people passing through the street would stop to listen, and even the ugly gesualda, peeling potatoes or shelling peas in the kitchen, paused in her work and had a vision of something beautiful and far above her poor comprehension. on this morning, francesco did his best to be agreeable, though his head ached and his lip was swollen. he refused to say much about the latter. aliandra was sure to hear, in a day or two, the story which the peasants would tell each other about the affair, and which would certainly redound to his credit. he said that he had met with a slight accident in going home, and when aliandra pressed him for an account of it, he said that it was nothing worth mentioning and turned the subject quickly. he did not wish to let her know that he had been worsted by a saracinesca. the peasants would be sure to concoct a story of treachery, much more to his own glory than anything he could put together, and which would probably contain a number of details that might not agree with those of his own invention. aliandra did not ask any more questions about it, even after they had gone downstairs and sat talking in the front room as usual. her feeling for him had not changed at all. she was not in love with him any more than before she had left rome, but he still attracted her in the same rather unaccountable way, and she never felt quite sure of what he might do or say when they were alone together. yet she felt safer in being with him in her father's house than she had felt in rome, even under the protection of the signora barbuzzi. he pressed her to marry him, at every meeting. sometimes she laughed at him, sometimes she gave reasons why she could not accept him, sometimes she refused to listen altogether, and told him that he must go away if he could not talk more reasonably. but he was not easily discouraged; he knew how to make love better than tebaldo, and after all she liked him. tebaldo, when with her, was apt to be either cross-tempered, or over-elated, and almost too much at his ease, for he was far too much moved by her mere presence, and by the atmosphere that surrounded her, to have control of his words and his looks, as he had when he was with miss slayback. he was often abrupt with aliandra, and there are few outward faults which a woman dislikes more in a possible husband than abruptness. yet aliandra perpetually did her best to please tebaldo. francesco, on the other hand, used every means in his power to please her. it was no wonder that she liked him better than his brother. he had many of the ways which appeal to all women, and he was clever at hiding those weaknesses which they despise quite as heartily as men can. a born coward not only fears danger, but fears, above all things, to show that he is afraid, and is keenly aware of anything, even in conversation, which can show him in his true light. if he is skilful, as well as cowardly, he will often succeed in deceiving brave men, who are the least suspicious, into the belief that he is as fearless as they. he finds it far easier to deceive women, who always attach much more importance to mere words than men do. it was a warm and sultry afternoon, for the wind was from the south-east and had in it something of the suffocating fumes of the volcano over which it blew. the blinds were drawn together and hooked, in the italian way, so as to let in plenty of air and little light. aliandra had established herself on the stiff, old-fashioned sofa, putting up her feet, to be more at her ease, and francesco sat beside her, close to the window, smoking and talking to her. it was very quiet. now and then footsteps passed along the street outside, and sometimes the sound of peasants' voices was heard, discussing prices or some bit of local gossip. francesco had eaten his dinner at the inn and had come back, basili was dozing upstairs on his couch, and gesualda, the maid of all work, was probably eating oranges in the kitchen, or asleep in her chair, with the cat on her knees. there is nothing so peaceful in the whole world as the calm that descends on all things in the far south after the midday meal. 'this is better than rome,' observed francesco, looking at aliandra's handsome profile. 'for a change--yes,' answered the singer, idly. 'i should not care for it always.' 'i can imagine that it might be dull, if i were alone.' aliandra turned her head slowly and looked at him gravely for a moment. then she smiled. 'if you were alone here,' she said, 'you would not have the excitement of taking care of a father with a broken leg, as i have.' 'excitement!' francesco laughed. 'yes. i imagined what your existence would be like, so i came all the way from rome to help you pass the time.' 'how merciful! but i am grateful, for though i love my father dearly, a broken leg as a subject of conversation, morning, noon, and night, leaves something to be desired.' 'i suppose the old gentleman is anxious about himself and talks about his leg all the time.' 'when you are not there, he generally does. you do him good, i am sure.' 'and so you are grateful to me for coming? really?' 'yes. what did you expect?' 'i would rather have less gratitude and more--what shall i say?' 'anything you like--within certain limits!' aliandra laughed softly. 'i might say too much, and that might offend you. or too little, and that would certainly bore you.' 'could you not say just enough? sometimes you say it very well. you can be tactful when you like.' 'if i say that i should like more love, you will think it too much. if i say affection, it is too little, and must seem ridiculous.' aliandra looked away from him, and rested her head against the hard back of the sofa for a moment. 'why do you wish to marry me?' she asked suddenly, without turning to him. 'you could do much better, i am sure.' 'a man cannot do better than marry the woman he loves,' said francesco, softly. 'he can marry a woman who loves him,' suggested aliandra, laughing again. 'you cannot be serious very long,' he retorted. 'that is one reason why i love you. i hate serious people.' 'i know you do, and that makes me doubt whether you can ever possibly be serious yourself. now, to marry a man who is not serious--' 'or a woman who is not,' interrupted the young man. 'is folly,' said aliandra, completing her sentence. 'then neither you nor i should ever marry at all. that is the conclusion, evidently. but you began by asking me why i wish to marry you. i answered you. it is simple. i love you, and i have loved you almost since you were a child. you know something about my life in rome, do you not? have you ever heard that i cared for any other woman?' 'how should i hear? i am not of your world, and though you know how i live, i know nothing of what you do when you are not with me. how should i? have i allowed any of the men in society to make my acquaintance? you speak as though i had friends who might be friends of yours, yet you know that i have none. what you say may be quite true, but i have no means of knowing.' 'there is tebaldo,' said francesco. 'he knows all about me, and would not be likely to attribute to me any virtue which i do not possess. has he ever told you that i was making love to anyone else?' 'no,' answered aliandra, thoughtfully. 'that is true.' 'and he hates me,' observed francesco. 'he would not lose a chance of abusing me, i am sure.' aliandra made no answer at first, for what he said was quite true, though she did not care to admit it. 'you two are antipathetic to each other,' she said at last, using the phrase because it was vague and implied no fault on either side. 'you will never agree. i am sorry.' 'why should you care, whether we agree or not?' 'because i like you both. i should wish you to be good friends.' 'i am glad you include us both in one category,' said francesco. 'you say that you like us both.' 'well--what of that?' 'there is a beautiful indifference about the expression. if tebaldo is satisfied, i suppose that i should be. but i am not. i am made of different stuff. i cannot say, "i love you" in one breath, and "i will not marry you" in the next.' aliandra started perceptibly and looked at him. he had a well-affected air of righteous contempt. 'i am in earnest,' he continued, as she said nothing. 'i do not know whether i could do better for myself, as you say, or not. i suppose you mean that i might marry the daughter of some roman prince, with a dowry and sixteen quarterings. perhaps i might, for i have a good name of my own and an equal share of the property. i do not know and i do not care, and i shall certainly never try to make any such marriage, because i will either marry you or no one. i will not, i could not--nothing could induce me, neither fortune, nor position, nor anything else in the world.' he had a very convincing way of speaking when he chose, and for the first time, perhaps, aliandra hesitated and thought that she might do worse than accept him for a husband. she thought him handsome as he sat beside her, leaning forward a little and speaking earnestly, and she mistook his masculine vitality for real manliness, which is a common mistake with young women of little experience. besides, he made no reservations, and tebaldo made many. yet it was hard to give up her dream of being a real princess, the wife of the head of an old family, for she was very ambitious in more ways than one. francesco had said very much the same things before now, it was true, so that there was no novelty in them for her. but his importunity was beginning to make an impression upon her, as contrasted with his brother's determined avoidance of the question of marriage. still she said nothing, but her face betrayed her hesitation. he bent nearer to her, and spoke still more earnestly. there was no affectation in his speech now, for though his passions were evanescent, they had all the heat of his vital temperament as long as they lasted. the fact that he had carefully weighed the advantage to be got by marrying an artist who had youth, beauty, honesty, a small but solid inheritance to expect, and very possibly fame and fortune in the near future, did not make him cold nor calculating when he was close beside that beauty and youth which had at first attracted him. her eyes softened dreamily from time to time as he spoke, and she made no attempt to withdraw the hand of which he had taken possession. he spoke quickly, warmly, eloquently, and without reserve, for he had nothing to conceal, and nothing to fear but her refusal. the words were not carefully chosen, nor the phrases very carefully turned, but they had the accent of sincerity, for his whole being was moved as he spoke. they had also the merit of not being too few nor too short; for that is often a merit in women's eyes. a woman loves to hear the whole tale of love, from the beginning to the end, and feels herself somehow cheated by the short and broken sentences which are often all that a strong man can command, though his hand trembles and his lips are white with emotion which the weak never feel. in the tender shadow of the half-darkened room, his eyes filled hers till she could not look away, and his speech grew softer and was broken by little silences. aliandra was falling under the spell of his voice, of the hour, of her own warm youth, and of his abundant vitality. the blinds, hooked together against the bars, shook a little, perhaps with the sultry afternoon breeze, and all at once there was less light in the room. aliandra moved a little, realising that she was falling under the man's influence. 'but tebaldo!' she exclaimed. 'tebaldo!' she repeated, still clinging to her long-cherished hope, as though she owed it a sort of allegiance for its own sake. francesco laughed softly, and pressed the hand he held. 'tebaldo is going to marry the american girl with the great fortune,' he said quietly. 'you need not think of tebaldo any more.' again the blind creaked a little on its hinges. but aliandra started at what francesco said, and did not hear the window. she sat upright on the sofa. 'what american girl?' she asked. 'i never heard of her. has this been going on a long time?' 'about two months--' the blind creaked a third time as he spoke. 'there is someone under the window!' cried aliandra, lowering her voice and looking round. 'it is the wind,' said francesco, indifferently. 'the south-east wind blows up the street and shakes the blinds.' aliandra leaned back again, and he took her hand once more. 'it is quite well known in rome,' he continued. 'the engagement is not actually announced, but it will be very soon. they say she has many millions, and she is very pretty--insignificant, fair with blue eyes, but pretty. he has done very well for himself.' aliandra was silent. the news meant the absolute destruction of a project she had long hoped to realise, and with which she had grown familiar. but she knew, as it fell to pieces before her eyes, that she had never firmly believed in its success, and there was a sort of relief in feeling that she was freed from the task set her by her own ambition, while at the same time she was hurt by the disappointment of failure, and a sudden keen resentment against tebaldo prompted her to yield to francesco's entreaties on his own behalf. he held her hand and waited for her to speak. the silence lasted long, for the notary's daughter was afraid of herself and of making up her mind hastily. the blind creaked again, more loudly than before, and she turned her head nervously. 'i am sure there is someone under the window!' she said. 'i wish you would look!' 'i assure you it is only the wind,' answered francesco, as before. 'i know, but please look. i am nervous. the scirocco always makes me nervous.' 'it is not the weather, aliandra,' he said softly, and smiling, with his eyes in hers. 'you are not nervous, either. it is--it is--' he bent nearer to her face. 'do you know what it is?' though he was so near, forcing her with his eyes, he had no power over her now. she could not help looking anxiously over his shoulder at the hooked blinds. she was not listening to him. 'it is love,' he said, and his red lips gave the word a sensuous sound, as they came nearer to her face. she did not hear him. the rich colour in her face faded all at once, and then with a sharp cry she stood upright, pushing him away from her. 'i saw a hand on the window sill!' she exclaimed. 'it is gone again.' francesco rose also. he was annoyed at the untoward interruption, for he fancied that the hand must have belonged to some boy in the street, playing outside and climbing up a little way to jump down again, as boys do. 'it is ridiculous!' he said in a tone of irritation, and going to the window. he looked down between the blinds that were ajar, expecting to see a peasant boy. instead, there was tebaldo pagliuca's face, yellow in the sun, as though he had a fever, and tebaldo's bloodshot eyes looking up to his, and the thin, twisted lips smiling dangerously. 'come outside,' said tebaldo, in an odd voice. 'i want to speak with you.' but francesco only heard the first words. his abject terror of his brother overcame him in an instant, and he almost ran into aliandra's arms as he sprang back. 'it is tebaldo!' he whispered. 'let him in. keep him here, while i go away through the stable-yard!' and before she could answer or realise exactly what he meant, he had left her standing alone in the middle of the room. in ten seconds he had made sure that the gate of the stable-yard was fast inside, and he was saddling his horse. it was done in less than a minute somehow. then he listened, coming close to the gate. he heard aliandra speaking with tebaldo at the open window, a moment later he heard the street door open and close, and he knew that tebaldo was in the house. very softly and quickly he unbolted the yard gate. he swung it wide, reckless of the noise it made, and in an instant he was in the saddle and galloping for his life up the deserted street. it was well that he had known the house thoroughly, and that aliandra had obeyed him and admitted tebaldo at once. she was braver than francesco, by many degrees, though she was no heroine; but she was scared by the look in the man's face, as he entered without a word, and looked round the room slowly for his brother. 'where is he?' he asked. before aliandra could find any answer, the loud noise of clattering hoofs filled the room. tebaldo was at the window almost before the sound had passed, and the thrust of his open hand smashed the fastenings so that the blinds flew wide open. he looked out and saw his brother galloping away. he knew the house too, for he had been in it many times, and he knew also that basili's brown mare was a good beast, for the notary was a heavy man and often had to ride far. without even glancing at aliandra he turned to the door. but she was there before him, and held it closed, though she was frightened now. 'you shall not go,' she tried to say. 'shall not?' he laughed harshly, as his hands caught her. he did not hurt her, for he loved her in his way, but a moment later she found herself turned round like a leaf in a storm, and the door had closed behind him. it seemed to her but a second more, and she had not been able to think what she should do, when the sound of flying hoofs passed the window again. she ran to look out, and she saw the brown mare already far up the street. tebaldo could ride, and he had not wasted time in saddling. bareback he rode the mare with her halter for a bridle, as he had found her. aliandra realised that he had no rifle. at all events he would have to overtake his brother in order to kill him, and francesco had the start of him by several minutes. he knew it, but he guessed what tebaldo would do, and he kept his horse at full speed as the road began to wind upward to the black lands. he glanced behind him just before each turning, expecting to see his pursuer. but a clear start of four minutes meant a mile, at the pace he had ridden out of the town. he kept the horse to it, for he was riding for the wager of his life. but the animal had been put to it too suddenly after his feed, without as much as a preliminary walk or trot to the foot of the hill, and even in his terror francesco saw that it would be impossible to keep the pace much longer. but he could save distance, if he must slacken speed, if he followed the footpath by which the peasants had made short cuts between each bend of the road and the next. they were hard and safe in the heat, and his horse could trot along them fairly well, and even canter here and there. and then, when he was forced to take the high-road for a few hundred yards, he could break once more into a stretching gallop. if he could but reach that turn, just beyond the high hill, where ferdinando's friend had once waited for san giacinto, he believed that he could elude tebaldo in the black lands. it was a terrible half-hour, and he gasped and sweated with fear, as he urged his horse up that last long stretch of the road which could not be avoided. his heart beat with the hoof-falls, and the sweat ran down upon his velvet coat, while he felt his hands so cold that it was an effort not to drop the reins. but the beast had got his wind at last, and galloped steadily up the hill. it was growing suddenly dark, and there was a feverish yellow light in the hot air. a vast thunderstorm was rolling over etna, and another had risen to meet it from the west, hiding the lowering sun. only overhead the air was calm and clear. the first clap of the thunder broke in the distance, and went rolling and echoing away from the volcano to the inland mountains. as he reached the top of the hill, francesco felt the big drops of rain in his face like a refreshment, though they were warm. the thunder pealed out again from the mountain's side with a deafening explosion. he turned in his saddle and looked back. the road was straight and long, and he could see far. tebaldo was in sight at last, almost lying on the mare's bare back as she breasted the hills, his hand along her neck, his voice near her ear while she stretched her long brown body out at every stride. francesco's teeth chattered as he spurred his horse for another wild effort. he could break from the road now, just before the wide curve it made to the left, and he knew the bridle-paths and all the short cuts and byways through the black lands, as few men knew them except that one man, his brother, who was behind him. in his haste to escape he had left his rifle in basili's hall. it was so much the less weight for his horse to carry, but it left him defenceless, and he knew that tebaldo must be armed. the storm broke and the rain came down in torrents. his horse almost slipped in jumping the ditch to get off the main road, but recovered himself cleverly, and long before tebaldo had reached the top of the hill francesco was out of sight. he might have felt safe then, from almost any other pursuer. but he knew tebaldo, and now and then his teeth chattered. he told himself that he was chilled by the drenching rain, but in his heart he knew it was fear. death was behind him, gaining on him, overtaking him, and he felt a terrible weakness in all his bones, as though they were softened and limp like a skeleton made of ropes. it was hard to think, and yet he had to ease his mind. tebaldo was lighter than he, and he rode without saddle or bridle. to take the shortest way through the black lands was to be surely overtaken in the long run. it might be best to take the longest, and perhaps tebaldo might get before him, and give him a chance to turn back to randazzo. but as he looked down at the path his heart sank. the heavy rain had already softened the ground in places and his horse's hoofs made fresh tracks. there was no mistaking them. there was only one way, then, and it must be a race, for only speed could save him. whichever way he might turn in and out of the fissures and little hollows, he must leave a trail in the wet, black ashes, which anyone could follow. don taddeo's best horse was one of the best horses in that part of the country, as francesco knew, and more than a match for the notary's brown mare, had other things been alike. but there was the difference of weight against him, and, moreover, tebaldo was the better rider. there was less than three-quarters of a mile between them now, but if he could keep the pace, that would do. he followed the shortest path, which was also the best, because it was naturally the one most used by travellers. the rain fell in torrents, and the air was dusky and lurid. again and again the great forked lightnings flashed down the side of the mountain, and almost at the instant the terrible thunder crashed through the hissing rain. francesco felt as though each peal struck him bodily in the back, between the shoulders, and his knees shook with terror as he tried to press them to the saddle, and he bent down as if to avoid a shot or a blow, while his ears strained unnaturally for the dreaded sound of hoofs behind. yet he scarcely dared to turn and look back, lest while he looked his horse might hesitate, or turn aside to another path through the black wilderness. under the lurid light the yellow spurge had a horribly vivid glow, growing everywhere in big bunches among the black stones and out of the blacker soil. it almost dazzled him, as he rode on, always watching the path lest he should make a mistake and be lost. then the wind changed in a moment and came up behind him in gusts, and brought to his ears the sound of terror, the irregular beat of a horse's hoofs, cantering, pacing, trotting, according to the ground. it was fearfully near, he thought. he had just then his choice of taking to the road again for half a mile or more, or of following the bridle-path that turned off amongst the spurge and the stones. there was a broad, deep ditch, and the rain had made the edges slippery and there was a drop of several feet, and little space to take off. it was a dangerous leap, but the greater fear devoured the less, and francesco did not hesitate, but put the good horse at it. it would be a relief to get a stretching gallop along the road again. the horse cleared it well, and thundered up the highway, as glad as his rider to be out of the intricate paths again. francesco breathed more freely, and presently turned in his saddle as he galloped, and looked back. he could see nothing, but every now and then a gust of wind brought the sound of hoofs to him. just as he neared the end of the half-mile stretch he distinctly saw tebaldo come up to the leap. the rain had ceased for a moment, and in the grey air he could see tolerably well how the brown mare took off. for an instant he gazed, absolutely breathless. horse and rider disappeared into the ditch together, for the mare had not cleared it. she might be injured, she might be killed, and tebaldo with her. with a wild welling up of hope francesco galloped along the road, already half sure that the race was won and that he could reach a safe place in time. the highway was level now for two or three miles over the high yoke, below which, on the other side, camaldoli lay among the trees. he settled down once more to a long and steady gallop, and the going was fairly good, for the volcanic stuff used in making the road drank up the rain thirstily and was just softened by it without turning to mud. his terror was subsiding a little. but all at once from far behind came the regular galloping, tramping tread of the horse his brother was riding. he turned as though he had been struck, and there, a mile behind him, was a dark moving thing on the road. they had not been injured, they had not been killed, they were up and after him again. and again his teeth chattered and his hands grew cold on the reins. the entrance to the avenue of camaldoli was in sight, and he set his teeth to keep them still in his head. it was half a mile from the entrance to the house, and little more than that to santa vittoria. but if he turned into the entrance tebaldo would cut across the fields and might catch him under the trees, caring little who might be there to see. it was safer to make for santa vittoria. he passed the turn of the road at a round pace, and the good horse breasted the hill bravely. but on the smooth highway the difference in weight began to tell very soon. tebaldo was clearly in sight again now, stretching himself along the mare's body, his head on her neck, his voice close to her ear, riding like vengeance in a whirlwind, gaining at every stride. francesco's horse was almost spent, and he knew it. he had spurs and used them cruelly, and the poor beast struggled to gallop still, while the lean brown mare gained on him. the sun was low among the lurid clouds, and sent a pale level glare across the desolate land. before the cemetery gate, her black clothes and her black shawl drenched with the thunderstorm and clinging to her, concetta sat in her accustomed place, bent low. francesco scarcely saw her as he rode up the last stretch for his life. but, as he passed her, his horse stumbled a little. francesco thought he shied at the black figure, but it was not that. four, five, six strides more, and the brave beast stumbled again, staggered as francesco sprang to the ground, and then rolled over, stone dead, in the middle of the road. francesco did not glance at him as he lay there, but ran like a deer up the last few yards of the hill. the little church was just on the other side, and it might be open. tebaldo was not two hundred yards behind him, and had seen all and was ready, and the lean mare came tearing on. she took the dead horse's body in her desperate stride, just as francesco burst into the church. with all his strength he tried to force the bolt of the lock across the door inside, for the key was outside where ippolito had left it when he had entered. he could not move it, and he heard the thunder of hoofs without. if tebaldo had not seen him enter, the mare would gallop past the closed door to the gate of the town. in wild fear he waited the ten seconds that seemed an age. the clattering ceased suddenly, and some one was forcing the door in behind him. francesco's lips moved, but he could not cry out. he ran from the door up the aisle. when tebaldo had killed him, on the steps of the altar, he sheathed the big knife, with which he had done the deed at one blow, and instantly dropped it through the old gilded grating under the altar itself, behind which the bones of the saint lay in a glass casket. no one would ever look for it there. as though the fever that had burned him were suddenly quenched in the terrible satisfaction of murder, the natural colour returned to his face for a moment, and he grew cold. then all at once he realised what he had done, and he knew that he must escape from the church before any one surprised him. he turned away from the altar and found himself face to face with ippolito saracinesca, who had been at work at the back of the organ, while he was waiting for the fat sacristan as usual, and had come down the winding stairs as soon as he had heard the noise of running feet, without even going to the front of the loft to see who was there. tebaldo stood stock-still, facing the priest while one might have counted a score. he knew him well and was known to ippolito. but ippolito could not see who it was that lay dead across the steps, for the face was downwards. tebaldo looked at the churchman's calm and fearless eyes and knew that he was lost, if he could not silence him. before ippolito spoke, for he was too much surprised and horror-struck to find anything to say, and was rather thinking of what he ought to do, the sicilian was on his knees, grasping his sleeve with one hand and crossing himself with the other. he began the words of the confession. a moment more and he was confessing to ippolito as to a priest, and under the sacred seal of silence, the crime of having slain his brother. ippolito could not stop him, for he had a scruple. he could not know that the man did not at once truly repent of what he had done, and in that case, as a priest, he was bound to hear and to keep silence for ever. tebaldo knew that, and went to the end, and said the last latin words even while getting on his feet again. 'i cannot give you absolution,' said the young priest. 'the case is too grave for that. but your confession is safe with me.' tebaldo nodded, and turned away. he walked firmly and quickly to the door, went out and closed it behind him. he had already made up his mind what to do. he met the fat sacristan less than twenty paces from the church. he had known him all his life, and he stopped him, asking him where he was going. the man explained. 'don ippolito will not need you to blow the organ to-day,' said tebaldo, gravely. 'he has just killed my brother in the church. i have turned the key on him, and am going to fetch the carabineers.' the fearful lie was spoken with perfect directness and clearness. the man started, stared at tebaldo, and grew pale with excitement, but he could not believe his ears till tebaldo had repeated the words. then he spoke. 'we thought he had killed him yesterday afternoon by the cemetery,' he said. 'and now he has really done it! madonna! madonna! and another of them killed don ferdinando!' 'what is that about the cemetery?' asked tebaldo. 'tell me as we go, for i am in a hurry.' 'it is better that i stay,' said the man. 'he knows the lock and he may be able to slip the bolt from the inside, for he is very strong. he almost killed don francesco last night with his hands and only a stone he picked up.' he told tebaldo in a few words the story which the peasants had already invented. 'i am glad you have told me,' said tebaldo. 'it explains this horrible murder. i will go for the carabineers at once. there is no more time to be lost. stay here and watch the door.' he knew he could trust the man to do his worst against a roman, and he walked rapidly into the town. ippolito watched tebaldo until the door closed behind him. he was a very honourable as well as a very good man, and though as a priest he felt that he must give the murderer the benefit of a doubt, he felt as a man that the doubt could not really exist, and that tebaldo had intentionally put him under the seal of confession in order to destroy his power of testifying in the case. the clever treachery was revolting to him. he turned to look at the dead man, suddenly hoping that there might be some life left in him after all. he went and knelt beside him on the step of the altar and turned his body over so that it lay on its back. he felt the sort of pitying repulsion for anything dead which every sensitively organised man or woman feels, but he told himself that it was his duty to make sure that francesco was not alive. there was no doubt about that. even he, in his inexperience, could not mistake the look in the wide-open, sightless eyes. he shuddered when he remembered how only twenty-four hours ago he had struck the poor dead head again and again with all his might, and he thanked heaven that he had not struck harder and more often. he looked for the wound. it was on the left side low down in the breast, and must have gone to the heart at once. there was blood on both his hands, but very little had run down upon the steps. he got his handkerchief from the side pocket of his cassock, and started as he felt there the sheathed knife which orsino had made him carry. there was no water in the church, except a little holy water, and he could not defile that, so he wiped his hands as well as he could on his handkerchief, and put the latter back into his pocket. suddenly he realised that he ought to be doing something, and he stood up, and looked about in hesitation. he asked himself how far the secret of confession bound him, and whether it could be regarded as a betrayal to call the authorities at once. someone might have seen tebaldo leave the church, and to give the alarm at once might be to fasten suspicion upon him. the rule about the secrecy of confession is very strict. the sacristan might be expected to appear at any moment, too. ippolito looked at his watch and wondered why the man had not come already. he was in great difficulty, for the case was urgent. being alone, too, he did not like to shut up the church, leaving the dead man there alone. but he was sure that the sacristan would come in a few moments. it was more than half an hour since he had sent the lame boy to find him. it was wiser to wait for him and send him for the doctor and the carabineers. he paced up and down before the altar rail rather nervously, glancing every now and then at the dead man. but the sacristan did not come. he thought it would be charitable to straighten out the lifeless limbs and cross the hands upon the breast, and he went up the steps and did so. when it was finished, he found more blood on his hands, and again rubbed away as much as he could with his handkerchief. once more he paced the stone floor. then he remembered that in his excitement he had not even said a prayer, and he knelt awhile by the rail, repeating some of the psalms for the dead in a low voice. he rose and walked again, and his eyes fell on the queer words in worn, raised letters on the slab in the floor--'esca pagliuca pesca saracen'--and again he was struck by the way in which his own name, or something very like it, could be made out of the letters. he walked down the church, intending to look out and see whether the sacristan were coming. he was surprised to find the door locked. then, all at once, he heard the sound of many voices, speaking loudly and coming nearer. he could distinguish his own name, spoken again and again in angry tones by someone with a loud voice. chapter xxviii ippolito moved a step backwards when he heard the key turned in the lock, for the door opened inwards. it swung wide, a moment later, and he faced a multitude of angry eyes. there was tebaldo pointing to him with an evil smile on his thin lips, and his lids falling at the angles like those of a vulture that scents death. there was the young red-haired lieutenant of infantry, gazing sharply at him; there was a corporal, with three or four of the foot-carabineers in their forage-caps. these represented the law. but pressing upon them, around them, and past them, was also a throng of angry men, and with them half a dozen women, and some children, even little ones, and the lame boy who waited every day to call the sacristan, and the fat sacristan himself, with the disturbing cast in his eye. in the background, just within the door when all had entered, and leaning against the doorpost, stood concetta, her shawl falling back from her head, her splendid eyes gleaming with insanity. 'take him,' said tebaldo, harshly. 'there lies my brother, before the altar, and his blood is on this man's hands.' then came a discordant chorus of cries and curses from the crowd. 'take the priest of the saracinesca! handcuff him! put him in chains! curses on his soul, and on the souls of his dead!' 'he tried to kill him with a stone yesterday!' 'he has done it to-day, the assassin!' 'let us burn him alive! let us tear him to pieces! death to the roman!' 'let me get my hands upon his face!' screamed a dishevelled woman. and a child, that stood near, spat at him. ippolito had stepped backwards before them and faced them, pale and staring in amazement and horror. he could not understand, at first. the hideous treachery was altogether beyond his belief. yet tebaldo's outstretched hand pointed at him, and it was tebaldo's voice that was bidding the soldiers take him. their faces were impenetrable. only the young piedmontese officer, used to another world in the civilised north, betrayed in his expression the sort of curiosity one sees in the looks of people who are watching wild beasts in a cage. 'you had better clear the church,' he said to the carabineers. 'this confusion is unseemly.' he was not their officer, but they at once began to obey him. the crowd resisted a little, when the big men pushed them back with outstretched arms, as one gathers canes in the brake, to bind them together before cutting them off at the roots. 'they will let him go, like his brother,' growled an old man, fiercely. 'they will send him to rome, and then let him go free, because he is a roman,' said the crooked little carpenter. and the little boy spat at ippolito again, and dodged the hand of one of the soldiers and ran out. with protesting cries, and with many curses and many evil threats, the people allowed themselves to be pushed out without any violence. 'i am the sacristan,' said the fat man, objecting; and they let him stay. 'i am concetta,' said the dark girl, gravely. 'let her stay,' advised the sacristan. 'she saw the priest beat him yesterday.' ippolito had not spoken a word. he had folded his arms, and stood waiting for the confusion to end. he was fearless, but he could not realise, at first, that he might be seriously accused of the murder, and he believed that he should be set free very soon. he understood the treachery now, however, and his clear eyes fixed themselves on tebaldo's face. when the church was cleared, and the door fastened, the corporal stepped up to him. two of his men had gone to examine the body, and to search for the weapon. 'you are accused of having killed that gentleman,' said the corporal, quietly. 'he is quite dead, and you are in the church with him. there is blood on both your hands. what have you to say?' 'i did not kill him,' said ippolito, simply. 'when i saw that he was lying before the altar, i examined him, to see if he were dead. that is how i soiled my hands.' the two men came back from the altar. they had ascertained that francesco had been killed by a knife-thrust, but had not found the knife. 'i regret that i must search you,' said the corporal, in his quiet, determined voice. 'you will find a knife in my pocket,' answered ippolito, very pale, for he saw how all evidence must go against him. the corporal looked up sharply, for he himself was surprised. ippolito emptied his pockets, not wishing to submit to the indignity of being searched. he at once produced the sheathed bowie knife and the handkerchief, which was deeply dyed with blood and not yet dry. some of it had stained the yellow leathern sheath in several places. the corporal drew out the weapon, which was bright and spotless, returned it to its sheath, and then held up the handkerchief by two corners. it is very easy to wipe blood from burnished steel, provided it is done instantly, and the corporal had a wide experience of such matters. he concluded that ippolito might have cleaned the knife with the pocket handkerchief. he handed both objects to one of his men. tebaldo's lids had quivered and his lips had moved a little as he looked on. it seemed as though some supernatural power were conspiring in his favour against his enemy. but he said nothing. the young officer opened his blue eyes very wide, and thoughtfully twisted his small, red moustache. ippolito emptied the other pocket of his cassock, and produced a small volume of the breviary, containing the offices for the spring, a little flexible morocco pocket-book, containing a few bank-notes, and an ivory-handled penknife. 'it is enough,' said the corporal. 'these things do not interest us. your name,' he added, taking out his note-book and pencil. 'ippolito saracinesca.' 'son of whom?' 'of don giovanni saracinesca, prince of sant' ilario, of rome.' 'age?' 'twenty-seven years.' 'your occupation?' 'a priest.' 'present residence?' 'rome. i am staying with my brother at camaldoli.' the corporal noted the answers rapidly in his book, and returned it to his pocket, buttoning his tunic again. then he was silent for a moment. 'you have already given your account of the affair,' he said presently to tebaldo. 'it is not necessary to repeat it. but this girl--what has she to say?' he turned to concetta. gravely, but with gleaming eyes, the pale and beautiful girl came forward and faced ippolito. 'yesterday at sunset i was at the gate of the cemetery,' she said. 'this man's brother, who lives at camaldoli, shot this don tebaldo's brother, to whom i was betrothed, and he is buried in the cemetery. therefore, i go every day to the gate, to visit him. yesterday don francesco came up the road and was speaking to me. he who lies there dead was talking with me but yesterday. god give his soul peace and rest. then this priest, coming down from santa vittoria, fell upon him from behind treacherously, and choked him by the collar, and beat him upon the head, so that he fell down fainting. but certain peasants came by that way and lifted him up and took him into our village, but the priest went down to camaldoli. this i saw, and this i tell you. and now two saracinesca have killed two pagliuca.' she ceased speaking, and her white hands drew her shawl over her head, for she was in church, where a woman's head should be covered. 'do you admit the truth of what this girl says?' asked the corporal, turning to ippolito. 'it is true that i beat francesco pagliuca with my hands yesterday afternoon.' 'do you not admit also that you killed him to-day, in this church, with that knife? don tebaldo testifies that he saw you do it.' the young priest drew himself up to his height, and his clear gaze riveted itself on tebaldo's half-veiled eyes. the good man faced the bad silently for many seconds. 'did you testify that you saw me kill your brother?' asked ippolito, at last. 'i did, and i shall repeat my testimony at the proper time,' answered tebaldo, steadily. but under the clear, high innocence that silently gave him the lie, his eyelids dropped more and more, till he looked down. 'do you admit that you killed him?' asked the corporal again. 'i did not kill him.' 'but you must necessarily know who did, if you did not,' said the soldier. 'the sacristan says that you sent a boy for him some time ago. the man is only just dead, as my men have seen. you must have been in the church when he was killed, and you must have seen the man who did it.' ippolito had not seen the deed done, but he had seen the murderer. it would be hard to answer on the one point and not on the other, and by the very smallest slip he might unintentionally say something which might end in the betrayal of the secret told him in confession. he therefore kept silent. 'you say nothing? you insist in saying nothing?' asked the corporal. 'i say nothing beyond what i have said. i did not do it.' 'and you,' continued the soldier, addressing tebaldo, 'you testify that you saw this man do it?' 'i do. those things would bear evidence without me.' added tebaldo, pointing to the knife and the bloody handkerchief, which latter one of the soldiers held by a single corner in order not to soil his fingers. 'those things, and the man's hands,' he added. 'moreover, his brother killed my other brother, as everyone knows, and he himself admits that he assaulted francesco only last night. you can hardly hesitate about arresting him, corporal. the fact that he is a roman and that we are sicilians is hardly a sufficient defence, i think.' the corporal understood that he had no choice. he was a very sensible man and had seen much service in sicily, and whenever there was bloodshed he was inclined to attribute the crime to a sicilian rather than to an italian. he liked ippolito's face and innocent eyes and would have given much to feel that he had a right to leave him at liberty. but he had to admit that the evidence was overpoweringly strong against the accused. at first sight, indeed, it seemed perfectly absurd to suppose that a young churchman of a sensitive organisation and educated in a high state of civilisation should suddenly, wilfully, and violently stab to death such a man as the carabineer believed francesco pagliuca to have been; a man against whom the authorities had been warned, as being likely on the contrary to do the saracinesca some injury, if he could; a man who had grown up in a wild part of sicily, imbued with the lawless ideas of the mafia; a man, in fact, who though a nobleman by birth was looked upon as a 'maffeuso,' and whose brother had certainly had friendly relations with outlaws. it was not to be denied that the carabineers and the soldiers were all strongly prejudiced in favour of the saracinesca, as against the corleone. at the same time, the evidence was overwhelming, and was the more so because ippolito was so obstinately silent and would say nothing in self-defence beyond making a general denial of the charge. in his difficulty the corporal turned to the officer of the line, both as his military superior and as a man of higher education than himself. he wanted support. he begged the lieutenant to speak with him in private for a moment, and they moved away together to one of the side chapels. ippolito folded his arms and paced up and down before the carabineers, in profound and distressing perplexity. tebaldo leaned against a pillar and watched him with evil satisfaction. concetta went and knelt down, facing the altar, by a pillar on the opposite side, and the fat sacristan stood still in the background, watching everybody. the lieutenant shook his head from time to time while the corporal went over the case. 'for my part,' said the officer at last, 'i will wager my honour as a soldier that the priest did not kill him. but you will have to arrest him, not because of the feeling in the village, but simply because the evidence appears to be so strong. there is something here which we do not understand. but soldiers are not called upon to understand. it is always our duty to act to the best of our ability on what we can see. understanding such things belongs to the law. i advise you to take him to your quarters and get him away from here to-night. he will make no resistance, of course.' the corporal was satisfied, though he did not like the duty, and he came back to ippolito. 'it is my duty to arrest you,' he said, in a tone which expressed some respect and much annoyance. ippolito had stopped in his walk and turned when he heard the soldier's footsteps behind him. 'you must do what you think right,' he said calmly. 'i am ready.' the corporal gave an order to his men, and requested ippolito to walk between them. then he himself opened the door of the church. a multitude of people had assembled outside, and there were now at least three times as many as had at first followed tebaldo and the carabineers. many more were hurrying down from the gate, and there was the confused sound of many voices, talking angrily. but when ippolito appeared there was silence for a moment. then, from far back in the crowd, came a single cry, loud, high, derisive, and full of hatred. 'assassin!' the word rang out, and was immediately taken up and repeated by a hundred men and women, with a sort of concentrated fury that hissed out the syllables, as though each were a curse. ippolito faced the people calmly enough, walking between the four carabineers, who marched two and two on each side of him, and the evening light shone full upon his clear-cut features and his innocent, brave eyes. he needed courage as well as innocence to bear him through the ordeal, for he knew that but for the handful of soldiers, the crowd would have made short work of tearing him to pieces in their fury. for once, the soldiers were on their side against the hated italians of the mainland. the people applauded them and their corporal, and the infantry officer, as they went by. the children ran before, crying out to the people who were still coming down from the village. 'here comes the priest of the saracinesca!' they shouted. 'here comes the assassin!' 'assassin! assassin!' ippolito heard the word a thousand times in five minutes. and some of the people spoke to the soldiers and the corporal. 'give him to us, uncle carabineer!' cried the crooked carpenter. 'what has the law to do with him? give him to us! we will serve him half roasted and half boiled!' all the people who heard laughed at this and jeered at ippolito. 'see the blood on his hands!' screamed the carpenter's big wife, suddenly catching sight of the red stains. 'see the blood of sicily on the priest's hands!' a yell rose from all the multitude, for a hundred had heard the woman's high, shrill voice, and the rest took up the cry, so that the children who went before ran back to see what was the matter. one was the woman's child. she caught him in her strong arms and raised him up to see, as she marched along. 'see the good sicilian blood!' she cried into the boy's ear. 'curses upon the souls of his dead!' yelled the child, half mad with excitement. all the people surged along together, running and jostling one another to keep the priest in sight. and the children whistled and made cat-calls and strange noises, and the women screamed, and the men cursed him in their hard voices. bareheaded he walked between the soldiers, looking far ahead and not seeing or not wishing to see the people, nor to understand what they said. he had but one thought--not to break the faith of his priestly order by betraying the confession. had he known that death was before him, he would not have yielded. suddenly something struck him on the shoulder, and he started, and his face changed. someone had thrown a rotten orange at him, well aimed, and as it smashed upon his shoulder, some of the yellow juice spurted upon his cheek. for one moment the calm look was gone, and the clear features set themselves sternly, and the eyes flashed with human anger at the indignity of the insult. the crowd screamed with delight, and pushed the soldiers upon each other. 'halt!' cried the carabineer corporal. in a moment his great army revolver was in his hand, and all his men, watching him, had theirs ready. 'we are acting in the name of the law,' he said, in a loud voice. 'if anything more is thrown at us, we shall disperse you, and you must take the consequences.' 'the orange was not thrown at you,' cried the carpenter's wife. 'i have warned you,' said the corporal. 'stand off, there! fall back! make way!' and he kept his revolver in his hand, as the people slunk away to right and left, cowed by the sight of the weapon. after that there was less noise for a while, though he did not pretend to control that, nor to hinder them from saying what they pleased. and presently they began again, and the hissing words filled the air, and pierced the young priest's ears. but he said nothing, and his face was cold and pale again, as he walked on, fearless and innocent, keeping the real murderer's secret for the sake of his own churchman's vow, and holding his head high amidst the insults and the jeers of the multitude. it was a long way, for they had to march through the whole town to reach the quarters of the carabineers in the old convent on the other side. ippolito would have marched a whole day's journey without wincing, if it had fallen to his lot, but he was glad when the wooden gates of the yard were loudly shut behind him, and he was at last free from his enemies. he looked round, and tebaldo was gone, and concetta, and the sacristan, as well as all the rest, except the carabineers. the officer of the line had gone home to write a despatch to his colonel, and ippolito was alone with the carabineers. meanwhile the little lame boy whom ippolito employed, and who had a sort of half-grateful, half-expectant attachment for the kind priest, had done a brave thing, considering his infirmity. seeing what was happening at the church and hearing what all the people said, he quietly slipped away and limped down to camaldoli to warn orsino saracinesca. it took him a long time to get there, for he was very lame, having one leg quite crooked from the knee, besides some natural deformity of the hip. but he got to the gate at last, and it chanced that orsino had just come in from riding and was standing there, his rifle slung behind him, when the little boy came down. at first orsino could not understand, and when he partly understood, he could not at first believe, the story. the boy's account, however, was circumstantial, and could not possibly have been invented. then, when he felt sure that his brother was accused of francesco's murder, orsino's face darkened, and he called for his horse again and mounted quickly. the little lame boy looked up to him wistfully, beginning to limp along, and orsino bent over in his saddle and picked him up with one hand by his clothes, and set him before him, though he was a dirty little fellow. then he galloped off up the hill. but the boy begged to be let down to the ground at the cemetery, for he said that his mother would kill him if she knew that he had warned orsino. the crowd was still lingering in the streets as the big man on his big horse came thundering along the paved way, his rifle at his back and the holsters on his saddle, his face stern and set. it was as well that he did not meet tebaldo pagliuca just then. it was one thing to throw an orange at an unarmed priest, and to scream out curses at him; it was quite another to stand in the way of orsino saracinesca, with nearly thirty shots to dispose of, mounted on his strong horse, and in a bad temper. the people shrank aside in silence, and looked after the hated roman as he galloped by towards the carabineers' quarters. he struck the gate with his heavy boot by way of knocking, without dismounting. a man on duty inside asked who he was, for there were orders to keep the gate shut on account of the crowd. 'saracinesca!' answered orsino. the gate swung back, and he rode in and asked for the corporal, dismounted, threw the bridle to the soldier, and went into the house. the corporal met him in the corridor. 'what is the meaning of this?' asked orsino. 'is it true that you have arrested my brother?' 'i was obliged to do so,' answered the corporal, quietly enough. 'i consulted the lieutenant and he also advised it. i am sorry, but it was evidently my duty.' 'release him at once,' said orsino, in a tone of authority. the corporal shook his head. 'i cannot do that,' he answered. 'you are at liberty to see him, but he is a prisoner.' 'you are the best judge of your own conduct. you know what you are doing. i shall telegraph to the ministry in rome at once.' 'the ministry will not order don ippolito's release,' answered the corporal, with conviction. orsino stared at him, and laughed rather roughly. 'you are mad,' he replied. 'you will lose your stripes for this, if nothing worse happens to you. i advise you to let my brother out at once.' 'signor don orsino,' said the corporal, gravely, 'i am an old soldier. i am specially instructed to protect you and your interests here. yet, in the execution of my duty, i have been absolutely obliged to arrest your brother, the reverend don ippolito, for killing don francesco pagliuca, in the church of santa vittoria, this afternoon. the evidence was such that i should have risked degradation and punishment, if i had refused to arrest him. it is not for me to judge of his possible guilt, which to me, personally, seems impossible. i could only act as a non-commissioned officer of carabineers is obliged to act by the terms of our general orders. i say this to you personally, but i am answerable for the act to my superiors, and they do not often overlook mistakes. if you will come with me into my private room, i will tell you all the details of the case, and show you the knife and the bloodstained handkerchief which we found in don ippolito's pocket. i and my men will do all in our power to serve you, as we are instructed to do; but to release don ippolito without further proceedings is absolutely out of the question.' orsino's expression changed while the man was speaking, for he judged him to be what he was, an honourable soldier with a vast amount of common sense. he followed him into the little room which had been the parlour of the convent, and sat down beside the plain deal table on which lay several day-books and a heap of large ruled paper with printed headings over the columns, half filled with neat writing. a little lamp with a green shade was already burning. orsino sat down and listened patiently to all the corporal had to say. when the latter had finished, he had said more than enough to prove to any sane person that he had done his duty. there was the fact of the quarrel on the previous day. it mattered little that orsino knew the true cause of the scuffle in the road, and that the corporal had not known it till orsino told him. the fact of violence remained. there was the singularly continuous chain of circumstantial evidence got in the church. and there was ippolito's obstinate silence. 'i see,' said orsino, gravely. 'i beg your pardon. you have done right. that francesco pagliuca was killed by his brother tebaldo, i am convinced.' 'by his own brother?' exclaimed the carabineer, incredulously. 'that is what i believe; but i have no evidence. i should like to see don ippolito, if you please.' 'i am glad that you understand me,' said the corporal, who was used to being misjudged. he led the way to a door in the corridor, and opened it. it was not locked, and he simply closed it by the latch, after admitting orsino. the room was a large one, overlooking the ample courtyard, but the two windows were heavily barred, as indeed were all those on the lower floor of the old convent. on one side, against the wall, stood a low trestle bed, covered with one of the soldiers' brown blankets. there was a deal table that had been painted green, an iron washstand, and half a dozen rush-bottomed chairs. on the table stood a small lamp, with a shade precisely like the corporal's own, and beside it there was a big jug of wine and a heavy glass tumbler into which nothing had as yet been poured. the corporal had brought the wine himself, supposing that ippolito would need it. it was the soldier's idea of comfort and refreshment. ippolito sat by the other side of the table, and started to his feet as orsino entered. he smiled rather sadly, for he knew that he was in a very terrible and dangerous situation. so far as he could see, he might be sent to penal servitude for tebaldo's crime, for nothing could have induced him to break his vow and betray the secret. orsino grasped his outstretched hand. 'i knew you would come,' said ippolito, with a glad intonation. 'who called you? they all hate us here. you should have heard how they cursed me and all of us, in the street. somebody threw a rotten orange at me, and hit my shoulder, but the carabineers kept them in order after that.' orsino said something under his breath, and looked steadily into his brother's eyes. at last he spoke, and asked one question, quietly, coaxingly, as though only half hoping for an answer: 'did tebaldo kill him, or did he not?' ippolito's eyelids quivered at the suddenness of the question. his soul abhorred a lie, and most of all one to proclaim the innocence of such a man. to answer the truth was to betray the confession and to break his solemn vow before god, as a priest. silence, perhaps, was equivalent to casting suspicion on the murderer. but he kept silent, for he could do nothing else. chapter xxix ippolito was silent, and he turned away from his brother, half fearing lest even his eyes should assent to the accusation against tebaldo. he went towards the window, through which the afterglow of the sunset was still faintly visible, and then, as though changing his mind, he came back to the table and sat down, keeping his face from the lamp as much as possible. orsino took another chair. 'it is not right to accuse anyone of such a crime without evidence,' said ippolito, slowly. orsino did not answer at once. he took two cigars from his pocket and silently offered one to his brother, and both began to smoke, without speaking. they were so much in sympathy, as a rule, that there would have been nothing surprising in their silence on any ordinary occasion. but the elder man now felt that there was a mystery of which ippolito was making a secret; he knew his brother's extraordinary but perfectly quiet tenacity when he chose not to speak of anything, and he turned the whole situation over in his mind. he was in possession of all the details known to the carabineers, and of another piece of information which had not reached them, but which he was keeping to himself until it might be of use. for one of his men had seen from a long way off how a man riding bareback had chased a man on a saddled horse up the long straight hill to the cemetery, and he had told orsino of the fact before the lame boy had arrived, though he admitted that he had not been able to recognise the riders. orsino himself had found taddeo's horse lying dead in the road just beyond the gate of the graveyard, and his own horse had shied at it. he recognised the dead beast, which was well known as one of the best horses in the country, and he had seen in a flash that it was not injured, and had not been shot, whereat he had concluded that it had probably been ridden to death in the race his man had described. ippolito had told him, after the scuffle on the previous evening, that concetta had directed the peasants to take francesco to taddeo's house. distrusting tebaldo altogether, as orsino did, it was not extraordinary that he should hit on something very near the truth, by a single guess founded on what he knew. he was in total ignorance of aliandra's connexion with the story, and he had no idea why the one brother should have been chasing the other. but he had often heard of tebaldo's fits of ungovernable fury. vittoria herself had told orsino that, at such times, tebaldo was more dangerous than a wild beast, and she had also told him that her brothers often quarrelled. orsino guessed that such a quarrel had taken place to-day, somewhere on the road, and that it had ended in francesco's killing his horse, reaching the church on foot, and being overtaken by his brother and stabbed a few seconds later, as had really happened. orsino was not very clever in the ordinary sense of the word, but his mind was direct and logical, when he exerted it. he went a step farther in his guessing, and concluded that ippolito had not seen the murder, nor perhaps tebaldo himself, but that tebaldo had seen him. the priest had come down from the organ loft, had found the body lying on the steps, and had moved it, while tebaldo had conceived the idea of accusing him of the deed. he explained ippolito's silence by attributing to him, as a very conscientious man, the most extreme fear of bringing an accusation for which he had no ocular evidence. though the train of thought is not easily expressed in words, it was a sufficiently reasonable one. when had followed it out, he knocked the ashes from his cigar, and looked at his brother. 'i am going to tell you what i think,' he said, 'for you are making a mystery of the truth out of some scruple of conscience.' ippolito shaded his eyes with his hand, resting his elbow on the table. he felt his brow moisten suddenly with anxiety, lest orsino should somehow have guessed the secret, and his fears increased as his brother told him of the race, of the dead horse, and of the conclusions he had drawn. in his painful position the young priest might have been forgiven for wishing that, altogether without his agency, orsino might find out the truth. but he did not. as orsino had once said of him, he had in him the stuff that sent martyrs to the stake in old days. he honestly hoped, with all his heart, that orsino might not hit on the true story, and he was relieved when he heard the end of his brother's deductions. as a man, he was most anxious for his own immediate release, and he was willing that the murderer should be brought to justice. but as a priest, he felt horror at the thought that he, who had received the confession, might in anyway whatever help to bring about such a result. at that moment he wished that orsino would go away, since he had not, at the first attempt, fathomed the secret. he might succeed the second time. 'i partly understand why you are silent,' said orsino. 'it is not good to accuse a man who may be innocent. neither you nor i should care to do that. but i am not the attorney-general. you can surely speak freely to me. you know that anything you say is safe with me, and it is not as though you should be suggesting to me a suspicion which i had not already formed by myself. do you not trust me? it is hardly even a case of trust! what could i say? that you, the accused, have the same impression which i have. but i will not even say that. the point is this: you were on the spot, in the church. your guess at the truth must be incomparably more valuable than mine. that is what i am trying to make you understand.' he gently patted the table with his hand, emphasising the last words, while he leaned forward to see his brother's face. but the latter turned away and smoked towards the window. 'is that all true, or not?' orsino asked, in a tone of insistence. 'what?' asked ippolito, fearing to commit himself. 'that you can trust me not to put you in the position of accusing an innocent man.' 'yes; of course it is true.' orsino looked at him thoughtfully for a few seconds. 'when you asked me what was true, just now, before you answered me, you asked the question because you were afraid that your answer might include my guess as to what happened. i suppose my guess was not altogether right, since you were afraid of assenting to it. i wish you would look at me, ippolito! what is all this? is there to be no more confidence between us, because a mere look might mean that you suspect tebaldo pagliuca?' ippolito faced him, and smiled affectionately. 'if you, or our father, or any man like us, were in my position, you would act exactly as i am acting,' he said slowly. 'you are perfectly innocent, and yet you act like a man who is afraid of incriminating himself?' said orsino, growing impatient at last. 'i am perfectly innocent, at all events,' answered ippolito, with something like a laugh. 'i am glad that you are so light-hearted about it all. i am not. if we cannot catch the man who really killed francesco before to-morrow morning, you will be taken down to messina and imprisoned until we can bail you out, if bail is accepted at all, which i doubt. you run a good chance of being tried for murder. do you realise that?' 'i cannot help it, if it comes to that,' said ippolito, quietly puffing at his cigar. 'you can at all events say something to help me in proving your innocence--' 'i am sorry to say that i cannot.' orsino made an impatient movement, uncrossing and recrossing one knee over the other. 'you could if you chose,' he said. 'but there is no more terrible obstacle to common sense than a morbidly scrupulous conscience. what do you suppose our people will think, in rome?' 'they will not think me guilty, at all events,' answered the priest. his manner changed. 'i tell you frankly, orsino,' he said, his face growing square, as it sometimes did, 'if i knew that i was to be sent to penal servitude for this, i would not say one word more than i have said already. it is quite useless to question me. do your best to save me,--i know you will,--but do not count on me for one word more. consider me to be a lay figure, deaf and dumb, if you please, mad, if you choose, an idiot, if it serves to save me, but do not expect me to say anything. i will not.' orsino knew his brother well, and knew the manner and the tone. there was unchangeable resolution in every distinct syllable and in every quiet intonation. his own irritation disappeared, for he realised that ippolito must have some great and honourable reason for keeping silence. 'so long as you are here, unless we find the murderer to-night, you will be shut up in this room,' said orsino, after a pause. 'no preliminary examination can take place here, where there is not even an office of the prefecture. they would naturally take you to randazzo, but messina would be better. we should have more chance of getting you out on bail at once if we went to headquarters.' 'randazzo is a cooler place,' observed ippolito thoughtfully. 'what in the world has that to do with it?' asked orsino, in surprise. 'only that if i am to be kept in prison all summer, i should prefer a cool climate.' 'really--' orsino almost laughed at his calmness. 'that is absurd,' he said. 'we shall certainly have the power to get you out provisionally.' 'i hope so. let them take me to messina, if you think it best.' 'i will make the corporal telegraph for authority at once. it would be well if we could get off before morning and avoid the rabble in the street. have you had supper?' 'no. they brought me some wine. there it is--but i do not want anything. shall you telegraph to our people? it would be better. they might see it in the papers.' 'of course. i shall send them a full account, and shall send the same telegram to the minister of justice. i know him very well, and so does our father.' 'send me up some clothes and my dressing things by a trooper, will you?' said ippolito. they made a few more arrangements, but orsino abstained from asking any more questions, and presently he left his brother alone, and after speaking with the corporal he mounted his horse and rode slowly out of the court into the street, towards the telegraph office. half an hour later he was on his way down to camaldoli. the people of the village had mostly gone into their houses, and the streets were almost deserted, for the short twilight was over, and it was already night. he tried to see ahead of him in the gloom as he came near the cemetery, for he expected to find the grocer's horse still lying in the road. but it had been taken away already. he had hesitated, at first, as to whether he should seek out tebaldo and try to force the truth from him by sheer violence, but he had given up the idea at once as being absurd. if he failed, as he might fail,--for tebaldo was desperately brave,--he should simply be creating fresh evidence of the hatred which existed between the two families, not to mention the fact that any such encounter might easily end in more bloodshed. even to his unimaginative mind there seemed to be a strange fatality in the whole story. he had killed one brother in self-defence, or in what the law considered to be that, and now ippolito was accused of murdering another of the brothers. it was wiser to leave the third alone, and to trust to the law to prove ippolito's innocence. orsino was not a man who instinctively loved violence and fighting, as some men do. he felt that if san giacinto had been present he would somehow have managed to set ippolito free and get tebaldo imprisoned in his place, by sheer strength and the power of terror which he exerted over so many people, but which, to do him justice, he did not abuse. the giant was an extraordinary man, mentally and physically, and always put action before logic, and logic before sentiment. orsino, on the contrary, generally wished to think out every matter to the end before acting, though he was neither slow nor timid when he had ultimately made up his mind. so far as he could do so, he had decided and acted; and his thoughts reverted to the situation itself, and most directly, now, to his love for vittoria. he had been looking forward to seeing her before long, for he had begun to understand that his presence in camaldoli was not often necessary for many days at a time; and of late, during his lonely rides, he had given himself up to planning some means of meeting her during his next visit to rome. she was the principal and central being in his whole daily life. the separation was not one of distance only, for there were other and almost insuperable obstacles to his marriage. after ferdinando's death, after maria carolina d'oriani's terrible imprecations, after his own father's absolute refusal to listen to the proposal, it seemed almost impossible that he should ever really marry vittoria. and now, as though to crush the last possibility out of existence, this new and terrible disaster had fallen like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. orsino was not very easily roused, but persistent opposition had the effect of slowly increasing the tension of his nature. events had this effect upon him in a cumulative way. and his moral force slowly rose, as water in a huge embanked reservoir, into which, being empty, the little stream trickles idly, as though it had no force at all; but ever quietly flowing in from the source, it covers the bottom little by little, and still flows in, day by day, week by week; and the water rises slowly and very surely, gathering its terrible, incompressible weight into itself from the streamlet, till the body of it is deep and broad, and its weight is millions of tons, calm and still and ever rising; and then, one day, the freshet comes hissing down the bed of the stream, and the last rise in the reservoir is sudden and awful. the huge embankment quivers and rocks, and bursts at last; and the pent-up strength of the water is let loose in one moment, and sweeps howling and roaring down the valley, carrying death in its bosom and leaving utter desolation behind. as he rode down through the silent night, the man wondered when he thought of the emptiness in which his life had once moved, of how little he had cared for anything, of the imperturbable indifference with which he had thought of all the world. for he was beginning to feel his strength in him, matched against the resistance of events. a girl had wrought the change; and even in his great perplexity and trouble, his face softened in the dark as he thought of her. yet he knew, as grown men do, that only half the secret was in her, and that the other half was in himself. for the strength of love is that it is the source of all existing life, and is a law which men and women obey, as atoms are subject to gravitation. that is the strength of it. but the beauty of love, and the happiness, and the nobility, are of a higher and finer essence, not suddenly to be seen, grasped, and taken, but distilled in life's alembic of that which was before life, and shall be afterwards, for ever. orsino was not imaginative, and his nature was not of that kind which is commonly called spiritual, which is given to contemplation, and delights in the beautiful traceries of the soul's guesswork. he vaguely understood that there was more between his father and mother and in their happiness than he would have called love, though there was nothing for which he might not hope. at present his love was that great natural law, from which, if one comes within the sphere of its attraction, there is no more escape than there is from hunger and thirst. he dignified it in his own person, by his inheritance of high manliness and honour. it did not dignify him. vittoria lent it, by her being, the purity and loveliness of something half divine while wholly human, but it gave her nothing in return. love can be coarse, brutal, violent, and yet still be love. according to the being it moves, we say that it is ennobled or debased. orsino saw the monster of impossibility rising between him and vittoria, and though he said nothing to himself and formed no resolutions, he felt something within him rising to meet the impossible, and put it down. and beyond the obstacles he saw vittoria's face clearly, with the light on it, watching him, and her eyes expecting him, and her lips moving to form words that should bid him come. he rode slowly on through the blackness, for the road descended rapidly, and it was not safe to urge his horse. a deep, resentful melancholy settled upon him in the damp night air. there was nothing hopeless in it, for it was really the sensation of a new strength; and as the greeks knew long ago, all great strength is grave and melancholic as melancholia herself. he thought of his brother sitting alone in the room where he was confined. he thought of francesco's body lying in the little church, waiting to be buried, as ferdinando's had lain, barely a month ago. he thought of the widowed mother, twice bereaved, half crazed with suffering already, destined to waken on the morrow to meet another death-wound. he thought of vittoria, alone with that mother, cut off from himself as he was cut off from her, mourning with horror, if not with grief, for the brother who had been nothing to her while he lived. then he was glad that he had not sought out tebaldo and tried to force the truth from him. things were bad enough, without more violence to make them worse. but most of all he wondered at ippolito's silence, and afterwards when he had tasted his lonely supper he sat long in his place, staring at the empty chair opposite, and trying to force his intelligence to penetrate the mystery by sheer determination. chapter xxx tebaldo felt safe that night when he set his thirsty lips to a big jug of thin wine and water and drained the whole contents at a draught, while the fat sacristan stood waiting at the door of the room in the grocer's house. he had been giving the man directions about the disposal of the funeral. it was the room francesco had occupied, and his things lay about in disorder, as he had left them early in the morning when he had ridden down to randazzo for the last time. the man who had killed him had been under a terrible physical and mental strain, ever since he had left rome, in the insanity of his jealousy. now that all was over, he fancied that he should be able to think connectedly and reason about the future. he sent the man away with the empty jug and sat down, feeling in his pocket for a cigar. he had none, and he rose again, and began to look among his brother's belongings for something to smoke. a strange sensation came over him, all at once. it seemed as though francesco could not be dead after all. his things seemed to have his life in them. the leathern valise lay open on the floor, one side filled with fresh linen that had been disturbed in pulling something out, a heap of half-unfolded clothes in the other side keeping up the flap that divided the two. a pair of black silk braces had fallen out upon the floor; a coat lay upon the chair close by; there was a clean handkerchief on the table, a smart note-book with a silver clasp, a small bottle of eau de lubin, a new novel in a paper cover, a crumpled newspaper two days old, and a pink pasteboard box of egyptian cigarettes, open and less than half empty. tebaldo took one and lighted it mechanically at the flame of the candle, wondering how it could be that francesco would never want his cigarettes again. surely he would come in, presently, and take one, and then would begin the old bickering and quarrelling that had gone on for years. now that it was all over, tebaldo's first feeling among all these objects was that he missed his brother, whom he had always so utterly despised and whom he had bitterly hated with all his heart. he had not the sort of real timidity under a superficial recklessness which begins to feel the terror of remorse almost as soon as the irrevocable deed is done. but, little by little, as he turned over the things and puffed at the cigarette, a kind of stealing horror surrounded him, and would not leave him. it had nothing to do with any suspicion of the supernatural, and he intended to lie down and try to sleep in the bed in which francesco had slept on the previous night. it had nothing to do with fear of discovery, for he felt safe and was outwardly brave to recklessness. it was rather the horror of having done, almost unwittingly, what no power could undo, and of having utterly destroyed, at a blow, something to which he had been accustomed all his life. and this strangely piercing regret clashed continually with the expectation, arising out of long habit, of suddenly seeing francesco appear in person where all his belongings were lying about, in the room he had last inhabited. he was reckless, unscrupulous, choleric, almost utterly bad, but he was human, as all but madmen are. he felt safe, but just then he would have risked any danger for the sake of seeing francesco open the door and walk in. he threw away his cigarette and sat down to think. his eyes fixed themselves, as his chin rested on his hand and his elbow on the table, and a long time passed before he moved. but when he got up, he had taken hold of himself again and was ready to begin his life once more. his weaknesses did not last long. francesco was dead. if it had been to do over again, he would not have done it. he could not have done it at all, in cold blood,--perhaps no man could,--and there had been much to rouse him. but since it was done, francesco could never again make love to aliandra, and there was the evil satisfaction of having successfully thrown the guilt upon a saracinesca, of all people, and so cleverly that the accused man would, in all probability, be condemned. he had made up his mind at the instant as to what he should say, and he had said it all to the corporal of carabineers. he and his brother had met in randazzo at basili's house, and intending to come up to santa vittoria, had laid a wager, the one who first entered the little church to be the winner, and tebaldo had agreed to ride bareback and allow his brother a start of five minutes. francesco had killed his horse and had run for the church on foot, and tebaldo had entered two or three minutes late. doubtless, he had said, francesco, in his haste to win the bet, had run against ippolito, and in a moment the quarrel of the previous day had been renewed more violently. francesco was unarmed, and the priest had stabbed him instantly, just as tebaldo came in. the wager had been a reckless and foolish one, no doubt, but there was nothing impossible in the story, which perfectly accounted for the wild riding, in case, as had really happened, anyone had seen the two men on the road. no one but aliandra basili knew how they had left her father's house, and she, for her own sake, and certainly for francesco's, would not tell what she knew. she was sure to say that tebaldo had borrowed the horse, and she would not let her father know that the brothers were quarrelling about her. nevertheless, she knew that much, and would guess the rest, and being a woman, there was a possibility that she might volunteer her evidence when she should hear that the innocent priest was upon his trial. it was necessary to see aliandra at once. the crude cynicism which was at the root of the man's strange character came to the surface again, as he followed out his train of thought and discovered, at the end of it, where the weak point of his safety lay. he slept little that night, though he was weary from the mad ride and shaken by the strain under which he had lately lived. again and again he dreamed that he was doing the deed, and awoke each time with a start in the dark. and the familiar perfume of francesco's dressing things disturbed him, even through the stale smoke of the cigarette he had smoked. yet one of his chief characteristics was that he was always ready and not easily surprised. waking, he realised each time where he was, who he was, what he had done, and the fact that he must be up early in the morning, and each time he laid his head upon the pillow again with the determination to sleep and get the rest he needed. apart from the elements of fear and honour, and in so far as the mere act of killing is concerned, there is but a difference of degree between the homicide who has stabbed a man in anger, and the soldier who has killed one enemy, or ten, in battle. in most cases the homicide is pursued by a fear of consequences to which the soldier is not subject. tebaldo felt himself safe. he had lost no time in so fully indemnifying taddeo, the grocer, for the death of his horse, that the excellent 'maffeuso' had no difficulty in providing him with another in the morning. he rode up to the carabineers' quarters and gave notice of his movements before going down to randazzo, for he did not wish to appear to leave santa vittoria without informing the authorities. he was told that ippolito had been taken to messina before dawn, and that orsino had accompanied him. he had decided that his brother should be buried on the following day, and meanwhile the coffin lay in the little church surrounded by many burning candles, and preparations were being made for a solemn requiem. many of the people went in, on their way to their work, and knelt a moment to say a prayer for the soul of francesco pagliuca, and a short but heartfelt one for the destruction of all the saracinesca in this world and the next. this seemed to them but simple justice, though the more devout of them were aware that it was sinful to wish death to anyone. tebaldo dismounted at the door of the church, and bade a loiterer hold his horse while he went in. he knew that the whole population would think it strange and unnatural if he should pass by, on his business, without stopping, after giving such elaborate orders for the funeral. for his own part, he would gladly have escaped the ugly necessity, not because the hypocrisy of it was in the least repugnant to him, but because he had the natural animal dislike of revisiting a place where something terrible had happened. it was so strong that he grew pale as he went in under the door and walked up the aisle to the catafalque. but the whole place seemed changed. he had no realisation of the fact that his brother's body lay in the angular thing under the black pall. there was a strong smell of incense and many lights were burning. he felt that he was observed, and his nerves were singularly good. he knelt some time with bent head at the foot of the coffin, then crossed himself, rose, and went out. the people about the door made way for him respectfully. there were two or three of the very poor among them. no one begs in that part of sicily, but tebaldo gave them the copper coins he had loose in his pocket, and passed on. 'god will render it to you,' said the poor people, kissing the backs of their own fingers towards him as a way of kissing his hand by proxy. 'god bless you! the madonna accompany you!' as he mounted, one old woman touched his knee and then kissed the hand with which she had touched it. he nodded gravely and rode away, glad to turn his back on the church at last and get out upon the high-road. the news of francesco's death had already reached randazzo by a wine-carrier who had come down with a load in the night. tebaldo expected that this would be the case, and he considered that his interview with aliandra would be facilitated thereby. he went to the inn and put up his horse. the people treated him with a grave and sympathising respect. he had arrived there on the previous day with a few belongings, but in the suddenness of events the landlord did not consider it strange that he should not have returned during the night. tebaldo did not volunteer any explanations, but went to his room, refreshed himself, changed his clothes, and then told the landlord that he was going to see basili, the notary. this, also, seemed quite natural, in such a case, as basili had always been the corleone's man of business. gesualda opened the door, and he at once saw, by the gravity in her ugly face as she greeted him, that she knew what had happened. she ushered him into the front room downstairs and went up to call aliandra, for tebaldo said that he wished to see her before visiting her father. he stood waiting for the young girl, and going to the window he saw that the fastenings of the blinds were broken, and he remembered that he must have broken them when he forced them to look out after francesco. the fact brought the whole scene vividly to his memory again, with all its details, and he remembered, by the connexion of little events, much that he had forgotten. notably he recalled distinctly the very few words he had spoken to aliandra during a meeting which had scarcely lasted two minutes, but which, by the operation of his anger, had hitherto seemed almost a blank in his recollection. aliandra entered the room and spoke to him first. to his own surprise, he started nervously at the sound of her voice, as though she were in some way connected with francesco, and should have been dead with him, or he alive with her. for since his brother's sudden departure from rome, the two had been constantly linked in his mind by his desperate jealousy. aliandra wore a loose black silk morning gown, and she was pale. she did not come up to tebaldo, after she had closed the door, but seemed to hesitate and laid her hand upon the back of a chair, looking at him earnestly. his face was grave, for he knew his risk. 'i have just heard,' she said in a low voice. 'yes,' he said after a short pause. 'i thought that you must know. i wished to see you at once, so i came, though he is not buried yet.' 'i am glad,' she answered, 'for i do not understand. it all seems so strange and terrible.' 'it is. sit down beside me, and i will try to tell you. it will not be so hard as it was to tell the authorities up in santa vittoria yesterday. i love you, aliandra. that is why i came to you.' it was true that he loved her, but that was not the reason of his coming. yet he spoke simply and sincerely, and she said nothing, but sat down at a little distance from him and folded her bands, waiting for him to tell his story. 'i love you,' he repeated slowly and thoughtfully. 'when he left rome, i knew that he must come to you, and as soon as i could get away, i followed him, sure that i should find him here, for i was jealous of him, jealous to madness. people laugh at jealousy. they do not know what it is.' he paused. 'no,' she answered gravely, for she remembered how he had looked when he had entered the house on the previous afternoon. 'no. people do not understand what it is. go on, please.' 'it is a hell in soul and body. when i came here yesterday, i meant to come in at once. as i passed under the window i heard your voices distinctly. there was no one in the street, and i leaned against the wall and heard what you said. i touched the blinds once or twice, moving them a little, so as to hear better. then i heard him tell you that falsehood about my engagement to miss slayback, and i put my hand on the sill, to draw myself up and deny it. but i struck my head under the blinds that were pushed out. then i heard him come to the window, and i asked him to come outside. you know how he fled, while i was here, and i took your father's mare, without saddle or bridle, and chased him.' 'yes, you frightened me,' said aliandra, as he paused again. 'i had to tell my father that you had borrowed the mare. she came back of her own accord and was standing outside the stable gate this morning, waiting to be let in, all covered with mud. please go on quickly.' 'it rained. there was a terrible thunderstorm. i overtook him two or three miles on, where the road winds, for he saw that it was senseless to run away as though i wished to injure him.' 'you looked as though you did,' said aliandra, thoughtfully. 'i do not wonder that he fled.' 'i do not say that if i had found him here, i might not have handled him roughly,' said tebaldo, wisely. 'but the gallop cooled us both, i suppose. and you know that when he chose he had a gentle, good-natured way of speaking that disarmed one. yes--we quarrelled about you at first for a while, and then, being cooler, as i said, we rode quietly along together, though we did not say much. on the more level part of the road higher up, he began to talk of the horse he was riding, which belonged to taddeo, the grocer, and was a good beast, but i said that your father's mare was the fleeter, and he denied it. at last he proposed that we should settle the question by racing up to the town. the one who got into the little church of santa vittoria outside the gate was to win. i gave him four minutes' start by my watch, because i was lighter and was riding bareback. do you understand?' he looked at her keenly and expectantly, for the story sounded very plausible to him. she nodded slowly, in answer, with a little contraction of the eyelids, as though she were weighing the possibilities. 'i had him in sight, and then i fell with the mare at a jump, for i had no bridle and could not lift her properly. but we were not hurt, and i got on again. i saw him again before me on the long, straight stretch up to the cemetery. taddeo's horse must have had an aneurism, i should think, for just beyond the gate it rolled over stone dead. i saw francesco jump off as the beast staggered, for he knew what was the matter. but he meant to win the bet and be in the church first. he ran up the last bit like a deer, and disappeared over the shoulder of the hill. it all happened in a moment, and i had still a quarter of a mile to make. seeing that he must win, i did not hurry the mare, but she took fright at the dead horse and bolted up the last bit. at the church i got off and hitched the halter to a stake that had been driven into the ground for a banner at the last festa. i did it carelessly, i suppose, for the mare got loose. i do not know. when i entered the church i saw my brother wrestling with ippolito saracinesca on the steps of the altar, and the priest had a big knife in his hand and struck him before i was half-way up the church.' tebaldo was now excessively pale, and there was a nervous tremor in his voice. aliandra was almost as pale as he, but still her lips were a little drawn in, and she kept her eyes on him. 'you have heard the rest,' said tebaldo, and his mouth was so dry that he could hardly speak. 'i locked the priest into the church, which has no other door, and i went for the carabineers. they took him down to messina early this morning, before the people were about in the streets, and he will be committed for trial without doubt. his hands were covered with blood, and he had the knife in his pocket. he had cleaned the blade carefully on his pocket handkerchief, like a fool, instead of throwing it away into a corner. as for the reason of the murder, francesco and he had come to blows on the day before yesterday in the road. the priest admitted the fact. heaven only knows what they were quarrelling about, but it must have begun again in the church. at all events, that is what happened, and my poor brother is dead. god rest his soul.' 'amen,' said aliandra, mechanically. tebaldo wiped the moisture from his pale forehead, glad that he had told his story and told it so well. it was, indeed, a marvellously lucid narrative, in which he had taken full advantage of every available fragment of truth to strengthen and colour the general falsehood. aliandra, like any reasonable person, would have found it hard to believe that a man supposed to have the manners and civilisation of a modern gentleman could do what tebaldo had really done. but, on the other hand, it was even harder to see how the deed could have been done by one who was not only just as civilised, but a churchman besides. she had been terribly shocked by the news of francesco's death, which had reached her only a few minutes before tebaldo had appeared. she remembered the latter's face, and the terror of the former on the previous afternoon, she remembered that the other brother had been a brigand, or little better, and she knew many stories of the pagliuca's wild doings before they had gone to rome. it would have surprised her far less if gesualda, who had heard the story from the carter himself, had told her that one brother had killed the other, than it did to be told that the guilty man was a roman, a priest, and a saracinesca. but tebaldo's story was plausible, and she had to admit that it was as she thought it over. he had evidently been under a strong emotion while telling it, too, and the fact was in his favour, in her eyes, for she had been fond of francesco. 'have you told me the whole truth?' she asked suddenly, after a long silence. 'of course i have told you the truth,' he answered, with a half-startled, nervous intonation. 'you have not always done so,' said she, leaning back in her chair. 'but i do not see why you should conceal anything from me now.' 'you will see it all in the account of the trial.' 'it is terrible!' she exclaimed, realising once more what it all meant. 'terrible, terrible,' she repeated, passing her hand over her eyes. 'only yesterday he was here, sitting beside me, telling me--' she stopped short. 'yes, i heard what he told you,' said tebaldo, in an altered voice. 'it is of no use to go over it.' 'i was fond of him,' she answered. 'i was very fond of him. i have often told you so. it is dreadful to think that we shall never see him again--never hear his voice--' her eyes filled with tears, for beyond the first horror of his death there was the sadness. he had been so young, so full of life and vitality. she could hardly understand that he was gone. the tears welled over slowly and rolled down her smooth cheeks, unheeded for a few moments. 'i wish i knew the truth,' she said, rousing herself, and drying her eyes. 'but i have told you the truth,' answered tebaldo, with a return of nervous impatience. 'yes, i know. but there must be more. what was there between him and the priest? why did they fight in the road? it all seems so improbable, so mysterious. i wish i knew.' 'you know all that i know, all that the law knows. i cannot invent an explanation.' 'it is a mystery to you, too, then? you do not understand?' 'i do not understand. no one knows all the truth but ippolito saracinesca. he will probably tell it in self-defence. if he could prove that my brother attacked him first, it would make a great difference. he will try to make out that he killed him in self-defence.' 'it is very mysterious,' repeated aliandra. they talked in the same way for some time. gradually her distrust of him disappeared, because he did not try to prove too much, and his own story, as he went over the points, seemed to her more and more lucid. he took advantage of little questions she put to him, from time to time, in order to show her how very complete the account was, and how utterly beyond his own comprehension he thought the fight at the cemetery on the day before the murder. he was amazingly quick at using whatever presented itself. her doubts did not really leave her, and they would return again after he was gone, but they sank out of her reach as she listened to him. then she made him go upstairs with her and tell the whole story to her father. tebaldo submitted, but the strain on him was becoming very great, and the perspiration stood in great drops on his brows, as he went over it all for basili. he knew that the notary was a man not easily deceived, and was well aware that his opinion would be received with respect by the principal people in randazzo. he was, therefore, more careful than ever to state each point clearly and accurately. he saw, moreover, that aliandra was listening as attentively as before. possibly, now that he was no longer speaking directly to her, her doubts were coming to the surface again. but tebaldo's nerves were good, and he went to the end without a fault. the notary only asked three or four simple and natural questions, and he did not seem surprised that tebaldo should not know the cause of the disagreement between his brother and ippolito. aliandra went downstairs with tebaldo. she seemed to expect that he should go away, for she stood still in the hall at the foot of the stone staircase. 'when are you going back to rome?' he asked, for he wished to see her again. 'as soon as my father can spare me,' she answered. 'i shall have to go down to messina to give my evidence,' he said. 'when the funeral is over, to-morrow morning, i shall come here, and go on to messina the next day. may i see you to-morrow afternoon?' to his surprise, she hesitated. she herself scarcely knew why she did not at once assent naturally. 'yes,' she said, after a pause. 'i suppose so, if you wish to.' 'i do wish to see you,' he answered. 'you have no reason to doubt that, at all events.' 'you speak as though i had reason to doubt other things you have said.' she watched him keenly, for the one incautious little speech had weakened the effect he had produced with such skill. 'you pretended to doubt,' he answered boldly. 'you asked me if i was telling you the truth about my brother. that was doubting, was it not? you always do. i think you do not even believe that i love you.' 'i only half believe it. are you going over the discussion we had in rome, again?' 'no. it would be useless.' 'i think so too,' she said, and her grey eyes grew suddenly cold. he sighed and turned from her, towards the door. it was the first perfectly natural expression of feeling that had escaped him, and it was little enough. but it touched her unexpectedly, and she felt a sort of pity for him which was hard to bear. that one audibly-drawn breath of pain did more to persuade her that he really loved her than all the words he had ever spoken. she called him back when his hand was already on the door. 'tebaldo--wait a moment!' her voice was suddenly kind. he turned in surprise, and a softer look came over his drawn and tired features. 'i shall be very glad to see you when you come,' she said gently. 'i do not know why i hesitated--i did not mean to. come whenever you like.' she held out her hand, and he took it. 'you may think the worst you will of me, aliandra,' he said. 'but do not think that i do not love you.' 'i believe you do,' she answered in the same gentle tone, and she pressed his hand a little. just as he was about to open the door, her eyes fell upon the rifle francesco had left standing in the corner. take your brother's gun,' she said. 'i do not like to see it here. i am sad enough already.' he slipped the sling over his shoulder without speaking, for the odd sensation that francesco was not dead, after all, came over him as on the previous evening, and with it the insane longing to see his brother alive. he felt that his face might betray him, and he went out hastily into the noon-day glare. the heat restored the balance of his nerves, as it generally did, and when he reached the inn he was calm and collected. aliandra went upstairs to her father's room, and sat down beside his couch, in silence. the sunlight filtered through the green blinds, and brought the warm scent of the carnations from without. the notary lay back, with half-closed eyes, apparently studying the queer outline of his splinted leg as it appeared through the thin, flowered chintz coverlet. 'for my part,' he said, without moving, and as though concluding a train of thought which he had been following for a long time, 'i do not believe one word of the story, from beginning to end.' 'you do not believe don tebaldo's story?' asked aliandra, more startled than surprised. 'not one word, not one half word, not one syllable,' replied the notary, emphatically. 'we can say it between ourselves, my daughter. if my sister were here, i should not say it, for she is not discreet. it is a beautiful story, well composed, logical, studied, everything you like that is perfect. it must have taken much thought to put it together so nicely, and it is not intelligence that tebaldo pagliuca lacks. but no one will make me believe that a quiet little roman priest could have killed one of those corleone in that way. it is too improbable. it is a thing to laugh at. but it is not a thing to believe.' 'i do not know what to say,' answered aliandra, all her doubts springing up again. 'we are not called upon to say anything. the law will take its course, and if it condemns an innocent italian--well, it has condemned many innocent sicilians. the one will pay for the other, i suppose. but as for the facts, that is a different matter. i daresay the priest had a knife of his own in his pocket, but it was not the knife that killed pagliuca. now, i do not wish to imply that don tebaldo killed him--' 'that is impossible!' exclaimed aliandra. 'he could not come here and talk about it so calmly. the mere idea makes me shiver. what i think is that someone else killed him,--a brigand, perhaps, for some old quarrel, and that tebaldo has thrown the blame on the priest, just because he is a saracinesca.' 'perhaps. anything is possible, except that the priest killed him. but as we know nothing, it is better to say nothing. it might be thought that we favoured the romans.' 'it is strange,' said aliandra. 'when he is speaking, i believe all he says, but now that he is gone, i feel as you do about it he said he should come back to-morrow.' 'it is of no use for you to see him again. why does he come here? i do not wish to be involved in this affair. make an excuse, if he comes, and do not see him.' 'yes,' answered aliandra. 'i will manage not to see him. it is of no use, as you say.' tebaldo rode back to santa vittoria to bury his brother. almost the whole population followed the funeral from the church to the cemetery, and it was easy to see how the people looked at the matter. tebaldo received a summons to appear and give his evidence in two days, and he left the village early in order to have time to spend in randazzo with aliandra before taking the afternoon train from piedimonte to messina. one thing only he had left undone which he had intended to do, for it had been impossible to accomplish it without attracting attention. he had meant to get into the little church alone and recover the knife he had dropped through the grating that stood before the glass casket in which the bones of the saint were preserved. as the details of those short and terrible moments came back to him, he remembered that the thing had not dropped far. he had heard it strike the stone inside immediately, and though it was improbable that the grating should be opened for a long time, yet the weapon was there, waiting for someone to find it, and possibly for some to recognise it, for he had possessed it several years. the first requiem mass for francesco had been sung in the parish church, for the curate had said that santa vittoria must be reconsecrated by the bishop before mass could be celebrated there again, the crime committed being a desecration. tebaldo thought it just possible that at the bishop's visit the grating might be opened in order to show him the casket. but this was by no means certain. on the whole he believed himself safe, for there was no name on the sheath of the knife, and he did not remember that he had ever shown it to anyone who could identify it as belonging to him. he had sent for a carriage and drove down to randazzo, stopping at the inn, as usual. he knocked at the door of the notary's house a few minutes later, expecting to be admitted by gesualda. to his surprise, no one came to let him in. he knocked twice again with the same result, and was about to go away, when basili's man, the same who had accompanied san giacinto and orsino to camaldoli, opened the stable gate and came up to him. 'there is the notary,' he said. 'no one else is at home. the signorina aliandra has taken gesualda and is gone out to visit friends in the country. they will not come back before to-morrow. the notary sleeps.' tebaldo was very much surprised and disconcerted. he remembered how kindly and gently aliandra had spoken when he had parted from her, and he could not understand. she had left no message, and it was clear enough that she had gone away in order to avoid him. he went back to the inn, a good deal disturbed, for if she wished to avoid him, it must be because she had some suspicion. that was the only conclusion which he could reach as he thought the matter over. it was by no means absolutely logical, being suggested by the state of his conscience rather than by the operation of his reason. he was disturbed and nervous, and he realised with a vague trepidation that instead of forgetting what he had done, and becoming hardened to the consciousness of it, he was suffering from it more and more as the hours and days went by. little things came back to their lost places in his memory, which might have been noticed by other people, and might betray him. to himself, knowing the truth, the story he had invented looked far less probable than it appeared to those who had heard it from him. he thought of writing to aliandra, for he was bitterly disappointed at not seeing her; but when he considered what he could say in a letter, he saw that he could only tell her of his disappointment. what he unconsciously longed for, was the liberty to speak out plainly to someone, and tell the whole truth, with perfect safety to himself. but that desire was still vague and unformulated. there was no possibility of waiting till the next day to see aliandra when she returned. he was expected to appear on the following morning in messina, to give his evidence, and he had no choice but to go at once. he left randazzo with a heavy heart, and a feverish sensation in his head. chapter xxxi ippolito was committed for trial on the charge of having killed francesco pagliuca in the church of santa vittoria, and tebaldo pagliuca was the principal witness against him. that was the result of the preliminary examination in messina. no one believed that ippolito had committed the crime, neither the judge nor the prefect of the province, nor the carabineers who had arrested him and brought him down. yet the evidence was such that it was impossible to acquit him, and his obstinate silence, after a simple denial of the charge, puzzled the authorities. it was the expressed opinion of the judge that, in any case, and supposing that the priest were guilty, it was not a murder, but a homicide committed in a struggle, which had been the result of a quarrel entirely unaccounted for. taking tebaldo's own story as true, it was clear that francesco's appearance in the church had been too sudden and unexpected to allow of the smallest premeditation on ippolito's part. tebaldo said that he had come in and seen the two fighting. the judge observed that, if a struggle had taken place, it was more than probable that francesco, coming suddenly upon ippolito, had sprung upon him to avenge himself for having been maltreated by the priest on the previous day. here orsino rose and told the story of that first quarrel, as he had heard it from his brother immediately after it had occurred. on being questioned, ippolito admitted the perfect truth of the story, and the judge ordered that concetta's evidence should be taken at santa vittoria by a deputy of the court. tebaldo had been in complete ignorance of the truth about concetta, but he saw that it would be best to take the judge's view. for all he knew, he said, his brother might have attacked ippolito on entering the church. ippolito was at liberty to say so, if he chose, observed tebaldo. the fact did not militate against his own story, in the least. on the contrary, it accounted for the struggle. francesco was unarmed, however. tebaldo was prepared to swear to that, and did. ippolito did not know it, and, being attacked suddenly, might have drawn his knife and defended himself. the worst of all this was that it lent a faint air of probability to the accusation, of which tebaldo, with his usual quickness, took advantage at once. but the judge, in his heart, was no more inclined to believe ippolito guilty than before, though he saw no way of acquitting him. the young priest stood calm and self-possessed between the carabineers throughout the whole examination, and his quiet eyes made tebaldo uncomfortable. san giacinto arrived from rome before the hearing was finished, and entered the court-room when tebaldo was speaking. there was something so gloomily ominous about the grey old giant's eyes that even tebaldo's voice changed a little as he spoke. san giacinto had twice, in serious affairs, been the means of clearing matters up suddenly and completely, and as orsino grasped his huge hand, he felt that all would be well. the judge admitted ippolito to bail, and san giacinto offered himself and was accepted as surety, being a large landowner in sicily and a person well known throughout the country. the trial would probably not take place before the autumn, but there is a great latitude allowed in italy, in the matter of bail, except when the prisoner is charged with premeditated murder. 'i think,' said san giacinto to the judge, when the proceedings were officially closed, 'that it would be worth your while to visit santa vittoria in person.' tebaldo heard and listened, and he thought of the knife under the altar. if the judge should go to the church and insist upon examining everything thoroughly, it might be found. 'the second hearing will not come before me,' observed the judge. 'nevertheless--' he hesitated a moment and then spoke in a lower tone. 'the case interests me very much,' he said. 'i should like to see the place where it happened. i might take that country girl's evidence myself, and visit the church at the same time. yes, i think i shall accept the suggestion.' though he had lowered his voice, tebaldo had heard most of what he had said, and more than enough to increase the fear of discovery, which was rapidly growing up in the place of the cynical certainty of safety which he had at first felt. nor had the examination gone so absolutely against ippolito as he had hoped. the judge and the officials were evidently in sympathy with the accused man, and tebaldo had been heard with a sort of cold reserve which suggested a doubt in his hearers. like aliandra and her father, they all felt the utter improbability of the story, as they compared the accused with the accuser, though they had been obliged to admit just so much as they had no means of denying. the view taken by the law on the strength of the whole evidence can be summed up in a few words. francesco pagliuca had assaulted a young country girl on the high-road. she had screamed for help. ippolito saracinesca had been near and had saved her and soundly beaten her assailant. on the very next occasion of meeting him by accident, francesco had rushed at the priest to repay his score of blows, and the priest, taken unawares, had defended himself with a knife he had about him, and which his brother had insisted that he should carry, for the very reason that he might, at any moment, be assaulted by francesco. it was not justifiable homicide, assuredly, but there were a great many extenuating circumstances. that was as much as the men of the law could say for ippolito, on the evidence; but not one of them believed that he had killed francesco. the three saracinesca men left the court together and drove away in a closed carriage. they decided that orsino and ippolito should return to rome at once and quiet the family by their appearance, while san giacinto went up to camaldoli, to keep matters in order as far as he could. orsino offered to go back alone, if san giacinto would accompany his brother, but the big man preferred to take matters into his own hands, as he usually did when there was a crisis of any sort. when the two brothers were alone in their compartment in the train that left reggio that evening. orsino drew a long breath. the sunset glow was over the hills, and the rushing breeze that blew in through the open window was sweet and clean to the taste after the foul air of filthy messina and the almost more poisonous atmosphere of the court-room. orsino looked out in silence for a few moments, too glad to speak to ippolito. when he looked round at last, he saw that his brother was leaning back in the opposite corner, with closed eyes, one hand thrust into the bosom of his cassock, the other lying upon the seat behind him. orsino watched him, expecting that presently he would open his eyes and begin to talk. but ippolito had fallen asleep almost instantly in his corner, exhausted by the long strain of days and nights spent in terrible anxiety. no one ever knew what he had suffered during that time. though of a fibre different from his father and his brothers, he was strong and healthy, but in those few days he had become thin and white, so that he looked positively delicate now, as he leaned back in his corner. his anxiety had not been all for himself. it was a fearful thing, indeed, to be accused of murder, and be led like a murderer through a yelling rabble, to be lodged in a prison, to be thrust forward to the bar of a crowded court-room to answer for a great crime. but it was worse to be accused by the real murderer and to be bound by one of the most solemn of all vows to keep that murderer's secret and bear his accusation without giving one hint of the truth. it was no wonder that at the first relief from such a tension, he should fall asleep at last, and orsino was glad when he saw and partly understood. he had slept little himself since the night of francesco's death, but he could not have rested now, for he still had much anxiety and many things to disturb his peace. he was in profound ignorance of what had happened to vittoria and her mother, though he had been almost hourly in communication with his own family. corona's first impulse had been to leave rome instantly and join her sons, and it had been with the greatest difficulty that giovanni had persuaded her to await the result of the preliminary hearing. he himself was afraid to leave her, and he had perfect confidence in san giacinto. he was in reality most preoccupied about his wife; for he, like everyone else, was struck from the first by the outrageous improbability of the accusation. he hardly ate or slept, himself, it was true, but he was all along perfectly certain that ippolito must be at liberty in a few days, and that the whole truth must be known before long. corona said little after she had consented to remain at home, but she suffered intensely. the beautiful high features were like a white marble mask, and when she spoke at all, her words were brief, nervous, almost hard. her eyes were like black steel, and her figure grew slighter, and seemed to grow taller, too. giovanni thought that the little, soft, grey streaks in her intensely black hair were suddenly growing broad and silvery. he was almost more anxious for her than for ippolito. but she never broke down in any way. she showed herself to the world, in her carriage, as if nothing had happened, though she received no one during those days. she knew how to bear suffering, for she had borne much in early life, and giovanni needed not to fear for her. he hardly left her. they so belonged to each other that it was easier to bear trouble together. possibly, though he did not know it, he looked to her in his anxiety quite as much as she looked to him. it would have been hard to say; for where there is such sympathy, such trust, and such love, there is also a sort of community of courage and of strength and of endurance for a joint suffering. when the news of the decision in messina came, however, giovanni considered the trouble to be at an end. corona only smiled faintly as they read the telegram together. 'at liberty on bail,' she said slowly. 'that is not an acquittal. he is still accused of the murder.' 'long before the trial we shall have discovered the truth,' answered giovanni, confidently. 'until we do, he is still accused of the murder,' repeated corona, with slow insistence. she had not believed it possible that he could be held for trial. but the gladness of a near meeting with him stole upon her anxiety. as soon as the first greetings were over, he went with her to her own sitting-room, and they remained alone together. for a long time she held his hands and looked into his eyes, while he spoke to her. 'do not ask me any questions, mother dear,' he said, smiling at her. 'you know that i did not kill the poor man, and no one believes that i did. do not let them torment me with all sorts of questions. if i could answer them, i should have answered them at once. i cannot.' still she did not speak, for orsino had written and telegraphed every detail, and had again and again spoken of ippolito's inexplicable silence. 'mother, trust me, and do not ask me questions,' said the young priest, earnestly. 'yes,' she said at last. 'i trust you, and i always have. i was not hesitating, my dear, and i shall never ask you anything about it, nor allow anyone else to do so, if i can prevent it. but it has dawned on me--the truth i wanted. i believe i understand.' a startled look came into ippolito's eyes, and his hands closed suddenly upon hers. he opened his lips to speak, but could not find wise words, for he believed that she had guessed the truth, by some extraordinary and supernormal process of intuition. 'no,' she said reassuringly, 'do not be afraid. i shall not even tell you what i think, and i shall certainly not tell anyone else. but--' she stopped suddenly. 'but what?' he asked, in the utmost anxiety, searching her eyes. 'nothing that i need say, my dear boy,' she answered quietly. 'it is better to say nothing about such things when one is not sure. sit down beside me, and let us be together as we used to be before all this happened.' he sat down, and they remained long together. there was but one opinion in rome. everyone said that tebaldo pagliuca knew more about his brother's death than he chose to tell, and had managed to cast the burden of evidence against ippolito. hundreds of people called at the palazzo saracinesca, and ippolito had scores of notes from friends, congratulating him on having regained his liberty. old donna francesca campodonico came to see corona, a saintly, shadowy woman, who lived alone in a beautiful old palace near the tiber. 'a corleone, my dear!' she said. 'what do you expect? we are told to love our enemies, it is true, but we are at liberty to love them as enemies, and not as friends. in order to do that it is necessary to distinguish them, and the more clearly we draw the line, the better.' 'it is refreshing to hear you speak of anyone as an enemy,' answered corona, with a smile. 'my dear,' said donna francesca, 'i am very human, i assure you. never have anything to do with a corleone or a braccio. there is very little to choose between us. we are hereditary sinners!' she was a braccio herself, and corona laughed, though she knew there was truth in the saying. the braccio people had many friends, but so far as the corleone were concerned, all rome agreed with donna francesca, and congratulated the saracinesca, quite regardless of the fact that ippolito was not really acquitted. but corona was not as she had been before, and her eyes followed ippolito about, when he was within sight, with a sort of wondering, anxious expression that showed how perpetually her thoughts were occupied with him. chapter xxxii orsino made an attempt to see vittoria on the day after his return. the liveried porter put his ear to the speaking-tube as of old, and then, shaking his head, told orsino that the ladies could see no one. he volunteered the information that donna maria carolina was very ill, and that her servants believed her to be out of her mind, since the death of her second son. the young lady did not go out every day, he said. when she did, he always heard her tell the coachman to drive to the hotel bristol. there were two sisters of the french order of the bon secours who took turns as nurses, with her mother. the doctor came twice daily, and sometimes three times. the porter had asked the doctor about donna maria carolina, and he had answered that she was in no danger of her life. that was all. the porter, as has been said, volunteered the information; but if he did so, it was because he knew orsino and had read in the newspaper a full account of francesco's death, and of the hearing at messina. being a good roman, he felt personally outraged at the idea that any member of a great old roman house should be accused of killing a sicilian gentleman. he might kill him, if he chose, the porter thought, but it was an abominable insult to accuse him of it. the man had never liked francesco, who had been stingy and self-indulgent, spending money on himself, but never giving a present to a servant if he could help it, and generally ready to find fault with everything. tebaldo was not mean. orsino, when he gave at all, gave lavishly, and he gave whenever he happened to think of it, as he did to-day. the porter bowed low, as much to the bank-note as to the heir of all the saracinesca, and orsino went away. he wondered why vittoria went to the hotel bristol whenever she went out. he remembered having once or twice left cards there on foreigners, but he could not remember their names. he might recognise them, however, if he saw them, and he drove to the hotel at once. looking down the list of the guests, he immediately came upon the names of mrs. and miss slayback, and he remembered how it had been said of late that the young american girl was to marry tebaldo pagliuca. it was tolerably clear that these were the people whom vittoria visited when she went out at all. orsino remembered that he had been introduced to them at some party. without the smallest hesitation he sent up his card to mrs. slayback, and in a very short time was requested to go upstairs. mrs. slayback received him with cool interest, and showed no surprise at his visit. 'i have been in sicily most of the time since i had the pleasure of being introduced, or i should have done myself the honour of calling sooner,' said orsino, rather formally. 'of course,' answered mrs. slayback. 'i quite understood.' she was silent, as though expecting him to open the conversation. that, at least, was what he thought. 'you are staying in rome very late,' he began. 'of course it is cool here compared with sicily, and june is really one of our best months, but, as a rule, foreigners are afraid of the heat.' but she had not wanted that sort of conversation, and had only been making up her mind how she should speak, being taken at short notice by his visit. he was a good deal surprised at what she said. 'please do not talk about the weather, don orsino,' she began. 'i am very glad that you have come to see me, for i am in great perplexity. i know that you will tell me the truth, and you may help me. will you?' 'certainly,' answered orsino, becoming grave at once. 'anything that i could do--' he waited. 'my niece is engaged to be married to don tebaldo pagliuca. she is an orphan, a niece of my husband's, and is--well--rich, to say the least of it. she has fallen in love with this young sicilian and insists upon marrying him. the romans say that it is a family of brigands. you shot one of them in self-defence not long ago, and now the papers say that your brother has killed don francesco, whom we knew. it is rather an awful double tragedy for civilised modern life, you know. such things happen with us in the west, though not so often as formerly, but they do not happen to people who live in new york, for instance.' 'i hope not,' said orsino, gravely. 'sicily is a good deal less civilised than your west, i fancy. but i assure you that my brother did not kill francesco pagliuca, though i believe he knows who did kill him. he only tells me that he did not, and i am willing to give my word for him, on the strength of his.' 'but don tebaldo gave evidence on oath that he saw your brother do it,' objected mrs. slayback. 'and don tebaldo is engaged to marry your niece,' answered orsino. 'you will allow me to say that the fact silences me.' 'i hope not,' said mrs. slayback, 'for i do not wish my niece to marry him. i come to you for an argument against the marriage. i do not wish to silence you, as you call it.' 'you know don tebaldo very well,' replied orsino. 'you have probably formed an opinion about his character. i am in a very difficult position with regard to him, myself.' he wondered whether vittoria, growing intimate with the american girl, had spoken of him. 'your position cannot be half so hard as mine.' mrs. slayback spoke with a conviction which reassured him, and he merely bent his head a little, as though assenting to what she said. 'it is clear,' she continued, 'that since you know that don tebaldo has sworn to this evidence, while you yourself, on your brother's word, are willing to swear to the contrary, you believe that don tebaldo is deliberately perjuring himself. that is perfectly clear, is it not?' orsino said nothing, but he could hardly keep from smiling a little at her directness. 'very well,' she went on; 'should you allow your niece, or your sister, or anyone belonging to you, to marry a man who has deliberately perjured himself?' 'you are perfectly logical,' said orsino. 'oh, perfectly! i always was thought so, in my family. and now that you have helped me so far, for which i am really very grateful, can you tell me whether don tebaldo is coming back to rome at once?' 'i am sorry, but i know nothing of his movements. i believe you know his sister, donna vittoria, very well, do you not? i should think she might be able to tell you. his mother is very ill, poor lady.' he had taken the first possible opportunity of introducing vittoria's name. 'vittoria comes to see lizzie whenever she can get out for an hour,' answered mrs. slayback. 'but yesterday, when she was here, she did not know anything about her brother. i think she does not like to talk of him, for some reason or other. have you seen her lately?' she asked the question very naturally and easily. 'no,' said orsino. 'her mother is ill, and she has no one else with her. she could not receive me, of course.' 'i suppose not. she could in america. she is sure to come to-morrow afternoon about five o'clock, i should think, unless her mother is much worse. we shall be very glad to see you if you like to come in for a cup of tea.' 'you are very kind--very kind, indeed, and i will come with pleasure,' orsino answered, surprised and delighted by the unexpected invitation. 'that is,' said mrs. slayback, as though correcting herself, and not heeding his answer, 'that is, you know, if you have no objection to meeting donna vittoria after all this dreadful business. if you have, come in the next day, and we shall be alone, i daresay.' again orsino found it hard not to smile, though he was very far indeed from anything like mirth. 'it would be more likely that donna vittoria might object to seeing me,' he said. 'oh no!' replied mrs. slayback, with alacrity. 'i think she likes you, by the way she sometimes speaks of you, and she does not believe her brother any more than you or i do, i can see, though she does not quite say so. indeed, i hardly understand her. she wears black, of course, and they see no one since that poor man's death, but she comes here just the same. as for being sad, she was always sad, ever since i knew her.' 'she has had enough to sadden her,' said orsino, gravely. 'none of us who have been concerned in this dreadful affair can be anything but sad just now.' when he went away he could not make up his mind as to whether mrs. slayback knew anything of his love for vittoria or not. foreigners, and especially americans, were unlike other people, he thought. it never would have occurred to any roman lady, a mere acquaintance, to ask him to come for a cup of tea and meet two young girls. an intimate friend might have done it, in order to do him a service, but not a mere acquaintance. but foreigners were different, as he knew. he pondered the question all night, and the next day seemed very long until it was time to go up to the hotel bristol at five o'clock. he thought the correct swiss porter's face relaxed a little when he saw the card orsino gave, as if he had been told to expect him. this was the more apparent when orsino was ushered upstairs at once. he heard an exclamation in vittoria's voice as he entered the drawing-room, and then for a moment he seemed to himself to lose consciousness, as he advanced. he had not known what it would be to be brought face to face with her after all that had happened. neither she nor miss slayback saw anything unusual in his face as he came forward, and the latter certainly had no idea how disturbed he was, as she smilingly held out her hand to him. vittoria had uttered the one little cry of surprise, and then she felt very cold and frightened for a moment, after which she apparently regained her composure. 'my aunt is lying down in the next room, so it is perfectly proper,' said miss slayback, in the very words she had used to tebaldo. her voice brought orsino back to lively consciousness at once, and as he sat down nearly opposite to the two young girls, he glanced from the one to the other quickly, before looking long at vittoria. miss lizzie seemed worn and harassed, he thought, and much less pretty than when he had last seen her. there was a nervous restlessness about her, and she was unable to sit still for a moment without moving her hands, or her head, or her shoulders, to look round, when there was nothing to look at. vittoria's gentle young face was undeniably sad. she did not look weary like her friend, for she was not naturally nervous; but there was something shadowy and half ethereal about her eyes and features that moved orsino strangely. he made a civil remark to miss slayback, in order not to be silent, and she answered him in short, broken little sentences. somehow the whole position seemed odd to him. all at once miss lizzie rose to her feet. 'i knew i had forgotten something!' she said. 'it is the day for letters to catch the french steamer, and i have not written to uncle ben. i always write him a line once a week. do you mind amusing don orsino, vittoria? just a moment, you know--i can write a letter in ten minutes.' and before vittoria could answer, she was gone, talking as she went, and not looking back. as the door closed after her, orsino was beside vittoria, with both her hands hidden in his and looking into her face. she met his eyes for a moment, and her head sank on his breast, as though she were very tired. 'it is not meant to be, love,' she said, and he could but just hear the words. 'it shall be, whether it is meant or not,' he answered, bending down to her little ear. 'it is all too terrible!' she shook her head against his coat, hiding her face. 'nothing but death, death, everywhere--my poor brothers--one after the other.' she roused herself and laid her hands upon his shoulders, looking up suddenly into his face with wide, searching eyes. 'tell me that ippolito did not kill him!' she begged. 'tell me that it is not true! i shall believe you. i cannot believe myself, when i say it.' 'it is not true,' answered orsino, earnestly. 'i will pledge you what you will for my brother, my word of honour--everything. it is not true,' he repeated the words slowly and emphatically. 'i know it is not, when you say it.' her head sank upon his shoulder. 'but it is all so terrible, so horrible! tebaldo killed him. i know it. i knew he would, when i saw his face that night, after they had quarrelled. tebaldo has put it upon your brother--i know it, though i do not know how it was.' he kissed her hair, for he could not see her face. 'it is a worse crime than if ippolito had killed him to defend himself,' she said. 'i feel--i do not know--but i love you so--and yet--oh, orsino, orsino! how will it all end?' she rocked herself a little, to and fro, her forehead against his coat, and her hand twisted painfully upon his, but there were no tears in her voice, for she had shed all she had in the lonely nights since she had seen him last. 'it shall end in our way,' said orsino, in the low tone that means most with a man. 'you and i? married?' again she shook her head. 'oh no! it will be different--the end! i am not cowardly, but this is killing me. my mother--' she lowered her voice still more, and hesitated. 'my mother is going mad, they say.' orsino wondered how fate could do more than it had done upon the corleone. 'nothing shall take you from me,' he said, his arms going round her and folding her to him. 'nothing, neither death, nor madness, nor sorrow.' she was silent for a moment, and the mirage of happiness rose in the mist of tears. 'but it is not possible,' she said, as the brief vision faded. 'you know it is not possible. ippolito did not do it--i know. there is not that to separate us. but you could not take the sister of such brothers as mine have been to be your wife. how could you? and your father, your mother--all that great family of yours--they would not have me, they would not--oh, it is impossible! do not talk to me of it, love. it will make it harder to die.' 'to die? you?' his voice rang with life. suddenly, and for the first time since he had loved her, he pressed her head gently backwards, and his lips met hers. she started, and a little shiver ran to her small hands, and her eyelids dropped till they closed, and still he kissed her, long and passionately. and the colour rose slowly in her cheeks when her pulse beat again, for it had stopped a moment, and then she hid the scarlet blush against his coat, and heard the heavy, mysterious beating of his heart through flesh and bone and cloth,--the strong, deep sound which no woman forgets who has heard it, and has known that it was for her. 'you can make me live,' she said softly. 'but not without you,' she added, drawing a deep breath between. 'together,' he answered. 'always together, to the very end.' then, by degrees, as the great wave of passion subsided, they talked more quietly, he with perfect confidence in the future, and she more hopefully, and they forgot miss lizzie and her letter, till they heard her move the handle of the door. they both started. 'does she know?' asked orsino, quickly. 'i never told her,' vittoria had time to answer, before miss slayback could hear. 'i have written such a nice long letter to uncle ben,' said the young girl, airily. 'i hope you have not bored yourselves! not that i am very amusing myself,' she added, pausing before a mirror, on her way along the side of the room. 'and i am a perfect fright! just look at my eyes. oh, well, it does not matter! don orsino does not mind, and i am sure you do not, vittoria, do you?' it was the girl's way of trying to jest at what was a real pain, if it was not a very great sorrow. it was not very successful, and her worn little face betrayed her, as well as the dark lines under her eyes. she had believed herself very much in love with tebaldo, and, to tell the truth, she was in love with him still, so far as she had yet any idea of what it meant to be in love. but she had just made up her mind that she could never marry him. it was not possible to marry into such a family, where everybody was always killing everybody else, as mrs. slayback expressed it. the friends of the saracinesca had found a great deal to say about the previous history of the whole tribe of pagliuca d'oriani, including the corleone of old, during the last four days, and much of it had got into the roman papers, which all took part against the sicilians. romance was very well, up to a certain point, miss lizzie thought, but it was necessary to draw the line somewhere, and she had drawn it now. yet her heart ached for the fierce-eyed sicilian, all the same, and her small face was weary and careworn. chapter xxxiii tebaldo's nerves were beginning to give way. it was of no use for him to argue with himself, and tell himself that the knife would not be found. he knew that the possibility existed. no one in santa vittoria would look for it, but there was the bishop, who would shortly reconsecrate the church, and there was the judge, who had told san giacinto that he might go up to visit the scene of the murder. the bishop might order the grating to be opened in order to see the bones of the saint; and the judge, accustomed to the ways of criminals, might insist upon a search, seeing that the murder had taken place within arm's length of the altar. in his broken dreams, the judge and the bishop appeared separately and together and turned into each other, and invariably found the knife, and then tebaldo was suddenly in the court-room, at the bar, where ippolito had stood, instead of on the witness stand, and he heard all the people yell and curse his name, as the villagers of santa vittoria had cursed the young priest. as in the old days of torture a man was drawn up by his hands to the high vault of the prison, and then dropped all at once with a hideous wrenching and tearing of the joints till his feet were but a foot from the floor, so tebaldo's sudden waking was but a sudden change of agony renewed each time and each time more unendurable, till the fear of dreaming was outdone by the dread of returning to consciousness. when he was awake he imagined impossible schemes for getting possession of the knife unobserved. it might have seemed simple enough to go up to santa vittoria, call the sacristan, and have the church opened for him. then he could have invented an excuse for sending the fat man away while he quietly reached down through the grating and felt for the knife. in his ordinary state of mind and health he would have done that, and there were ninety-nine chances in a hundred that he would have succeeded. but it looked differently to him now. in the first place, a sheer physical horror of going back to the village at all had taken the place of the cynical indifference which had at first left his cunning and his coolness free to act. everyone who has dealt with humanity under the influence of pain or fear knows that the effect of either is cumulative, and that in each individual there seems to be a limit beyond which the nerves will resist no more, and the will-power altogether ceases. a man may bear a certain grievous pain on the first day without a sign; on the second day he will grind his teeth; on the third he will wince; later he will groan, writhe, and at last break down, like a mere child, under one-tenth of the suffering he bore manfully and silently at first. and it is the same with any given fear. in a smaller degree it is so also in the matter of losing one's temper under constantly-renewed irritation of the same kind. even in another direction, but in one which equally concerns the nerves, this thing is true. often, in a farce on the stage, an indifferent action passes unnoticed; it recurs and excites attention; again it comes, and the audience smile; once more, and they laugh, and cannot control their laughter each time the action is repeated, until a certain capacity for being moved to mirth again and again in one direction, which varies in each individual, is momentarily paralysed. people afterwards realise with surprise, and sometimes with a little shame, the emptiness of the absurdities at which they have laughed so heartily; as many a man has despised himself for having been angry at a trifle, and wondered at his own weakness in having winced under an insignificant pain. but the trifle is only the drop that overfills the cup at last. so tebaldo had almost reached the limit of endurance, and the mere idea of going back to the village and the church was intolerable to him. it seemed to him that even if he could make up his mind to the attempt, he should be sure to fail. the sacristan would come back unexpectedly and find him with his hand through the grating, groping after the knife; or the lame boy, who always hung about the gate, would look in and see him. yet he could not have locked himself into the church, for that also would have excited suspicion. the idea that he might get some one else to recover the weapon for him took hold of him by degrees. at first it appeared to be madness to trust any one with his secret, and his keen sense rejected the plan with scorn. but it suggested itself again and again with increasing persistence, because the mere thought that he might get the thing back without going to santa vittoria in person was an inexpressible relief, and he began to try and think of some person whom he could trust to be prompt and secret. at first he thought of asking someone in santa vittoria. the fat sacristan, whom he had known for years, could do it easily. but tebaldo recognised at once that he had no hold upon the man, who might betray him at any moment. money would tempt the fellow, but no sum could silence him afterwards, if he should demand more, as was very probable. besides, it would be necessary to write to him, and the man might lose the letter, even if he were able to read it well enough to understand, which was doubtful. there was don atanasio, the apothecary. he would do much out of hatred for the saracinesca, as his daughter had done already. but he was a cautious old man, dependent, in a large measure, upon the government, and would not be inclined to endanger his position to oblige tebaldo. it would not do to risk a refusal. then it occurred to the wretched man that women had more than once saved men who loved them from desperate danger, and that, after all, he might do worse than to tell aliandra the truth. if she were willing, she could go up to santa vittoria on a pretext and visit the little church, and get rid of the sacristan. then, if she wore a wide cloak, she could kneel down on pretence of looking through the grating, and her slim woman's arm could run through it in a moment, and her hand could not fail to find the knife. he could remember, now, exactly at how many inches from the left he had dropped it through. the details came back to him with vivid clearness, though at first he had almost quite forgotten them. he almost made up his mind to go to aliandra for assistance, and the half-decision was a sudden and immense relief. he could eat and drink, and he felt that he should sleep. immediately his mind outran this first plan, and he saw himself in rome again, in three or four days at the most, engaged to marry the great heiress, resuming his regular life of wise courtship, and discussing with his future wife the details of a brilliant existence. he drove away the subconsciousness that the thing was not yet done, and revelled in visions in which there was no fear. but that did not last long, for he could not sleep, after all; and the knowledge that he must act quickly grew constantly more disturbing, till he rose in the night and sat by the open window, working out his plan. he must go to randazzo again and see aliandra; then he must wait at the inn, while she went up to santa vittoria. the hours of waiting would be hard to bear, but at the end of them there would be freedom. she would come back, and he should see her pass. he should go to her father's house. she would meet him at the door and draw him into the familiar sitting-room, and a moment later the weapon would be in his hand. after all, if he once had it, she could have no proof against him, beyond her mere assertion, if she should ever turn against him. for the sake of his love for her, she would never do that, he thought. he telegraphed to tatò at dawn to meet him at the piedimonte station. it was a thursday, and he felt sure that the judge would not be at leisure to go up to santa vittoria before sunday. it was most probable, too, that the bishop would choose the sunday to reconsecrate the church, and it occurred to tebaldo that it would be strange if the two should meet as they were always meeting in his dreams. but there was plenty of time before that, and all would come right. aliandra would not refuse to do him this service. tatò met him at piedimonte in person, instead of sending down his man, and in obedience to tebaldo's telegram he had brought a light conveyance in which the two sat side by side, with tebaldo's little valise at their feet, and his rifle between them. they were old acquaintances, for tatò had driven the corleone family for years himself, and by deputy, as it were, while he had been serving his time in ponza. he had a profound respect for tebaldo, for he knew how the latter with his brothers had long ago led the soldiers astray when pursuing the brigands in the neighbourhood of camaldoli there was probably no man in that part of the country who knew as much about people of all sorts and conditions, and about their movements, as the smart-looking owner of the stable at piedimonte, nor anyone who could keep his own counsel better. he was a thorough type of the 'maffeuso,' at all points, as san giacinto had at first observed to orsino. san giacinto had always believed that the man had known of ferdinando's intended attack, and of the pitfall in the avenue. tatò told tebaldo that he had driven san giacinto alone up to camaldoli on the previous evening, returning during the night. 'what courage!' he exclaimed, with some genuine admiration, as he spoke of the big man. 'after all that has happened! he is a man of iron, full of courage and blood.' 'there was no particular danger in driving up to camaldoli,' observed tebaldo, indifferently. tatò looked at him curiously for a moment, to see whether he were in earnest. 'then you do not know?' he enquired. 'they are in the woods above maniace.' 'they' means the outlaws, or the carabineers, as the sense requires. tebaldo looked quickly at tatò in his turn. 'how many?' he asked. 'a dozen or fifteen,' said tatò. 'there is mauro, and leoncino, and the one they call schiantaceci--he was a gentleman of palermo, but no one knows his real name, and the moscio--eh, there are many! who knows all their names? but mauro is with them.' 'leoncino is a good man,' observed tebaldo, quite naturally. 'souls of his dead! you have spoken the truth. it was he that wore the carabineer's uniform when they took the duca di fornasco's bailiff. he has a face like a stone. yet mauro himself is the best of them, though he is often ill with his liver. you know the life they lead. the food is sometimes good, but sometimes it is badly cooked, and they eat in a hurry, and then that poor mauro's liver troubles him.' 'why have they come over from noto? do you know?' 'for a change of air, i suppose,' answered tatò, imperturbably. 'but they say that the fornasco is coming from naples. perhaps they would like to try for the saracinesca. who knows what they want?' 'do the carabineers know that they are near maniace?' 'how should they know? mauro and the leoncino rode into santa vittoria yesterday afternoon to see--good health to you--to see where don francesco died. they asked the little lieutenant of infantry to tell them the way to the church, as though they were strangers. do you think he has their photographs in his pocket? he took them for two farmers going from catania to randazzo.' 'they might have caught san giacinto last night when you drove him up,' said tebaldo. 'if everyone knew where to look for money, there would be no poor men,' returned tatò. 'they did not know about the saracinesca, and the carabineers do not know about them. thus the world goes. each man turns his back on his fortune and chases flies. should you not like to see the moscio, don tebaldo? you know that it was he who helped that angel of paradise, don ferdinando. he goes everywhere, for he is not known.' 'yes. i should like to see him. but i do not care to go up to the maniace woods, for i am known, though he is not. how can i see him? i should like to ask him about my brother.' 'where shall you stay to-night?' enquired tatò. 'at the inn at randazzo. i am not going to santa vittoria. i have business with basili.' 'i will arrange it,' answered tatò. 'leave it to me.' tebaldo assented and remained silent for some time. as they drove on, nearer and nearer to randazzo, the folly of his present plan became clear to him, and in the place of aliandra, as an agent for getting back the knife, the possibility of employing the young outlaw known as the moscio presented itself, and the possibility of confiding freely in a man whose position was ten times more desperate than his own, and whose evidence could never be of any value in the eyes of the law. mauro himself was under obligations to tebaldo, who could have betrayed him to the authorities on more than one occasion, less than a year earlier. again and again both mauro and the moscio, as well as three or four others of the band, had been at camaldoli, and the corleone had given them food and drink and ammunition at a time when a great effort had been made to catch them. 'are you quite sure of being able to send a message to the moscio?' asked tebaldo. 'leave it to me,' said tatò, again. 'i have a little bundle for him in the back of the waggon. how do i know what is in it? it feels like new clothes from the tailor in messina. the moscio is fond of good clothes. he writes to his tailor, who sends the things when he can, by a sure hand. you know how they live, as well as i do. they always wear new clothes, and give their old things to the peasants, because they can only carry little with them. and then, they are well brought up and are accustomed to be clean. but i speak as though you were a roman. you know how they live. the moscio will have his bundle this afternoon, and this evening he will come down and have supper with you at randazzo, at the inn. i know this, therefore i asked if you wished to see him, and not another.' before randazzo was in sight, tebaldo had quite made up his mind to confide in the outlaw, and he could hardly have believed that he had left messina that morning with the firm intention of imploring aliandra to help him. but he looked forward to seeing her and to spending most of the afternoon with her. he was disappointed. everything happened exactly as at his last visit. basili's man appeared at the door of the house, instead of from the stable, and gave precisely the same message. aliandra had taken gesualda to the country to visit some friends, and had not come back. no one knew when she meant to come. 'tell me something else,' said tebaldo, offering the man money, for he knew that the story could not be true. the man threw back his head in refusal. 'you might give me also peru,' he answered 'this is the truth, and this i have told you.' 'i should like to see signor basili,' said tebaldo, thinking that he might get into the house. 'the notary sleeps,' answered the man, stolidly, and he began to shut the door. to force an entrance seemed out of the question, and tebaldo went away angry and disappointed. he could see that it would be of no use to try again, for the same answer would be given to his enquiries. it was enraging to know that the woman he loved was within a few yards of him, and able to keep him away from her. but his anger was a relief from the perpetual anxiety about the knife, which was wearing out his nerves, day and night. in the afternoon he shut himself up in the room he had taken and tried to write to aliandra, but he was in no condition for composing love-letters. he could find nothing but reproaches for her unkindness in refusing to admit him; and as soon as he had expressed them, he felt that his own words exhibited him in an absurdly undignified position. besides, he was really waiting in the unconscious hope of explaining her conduct to himself, when he knew that it was as yet inexplicable. meanwhile he tore up the pages he had covered, and threw the whole blame upon basili, unwilling to admit that the woman he loved could turn against him. in the hot hours of the afternoon he shut the windows and dozed restlessly on a hard sofa, and his evil dreams came upon him once more and tormented him, waking him again and again just when the sweetness of rest was within reach. at last, his body being very weary, the dreams could no longer wake him, and tortured him at their will while he lay in a heavy sleep. it was already dark when he awoke with a start. the door had opened, and a youth was standing beside him holding a candle in a brass candlestick, shading the flame a little with the other hand and looking down into his face. 'i regret that i disturb you,' said the young man, in a gentle, girlish voice. 'i hope you have slept well?' tebaldo was already sitting up on the sofa, and had recognised the moscio. the outlaw could not have been more than twenty-two years old, and looked a mere boy. he was of medium height, delicately made, very carefully shaved, and dressed with a sort of careless good taste, wearing a black velvet jacket, immaculate linen, riding-trousers with gaiters, patent leather shoes, and silver-plated spurs. he was hatless, and his short, soft brown hair curled all over his head, close and fine, like curly astrachan fur. there was a tender, youthful freshness in his skin, and he had beautiful teeth. he had studied for the bar and had been driven to outlawry because, failing to pass his final examination, he had shot his teacher through the head at the first opportunity. but he had killed a number of men since then and had almost forgotten the incident. tebaldo rose to his feet and greeted him. 'a friend told me you were here and wished to see me,' said the moscio. 'i am at your service, though to tell the truth i am somewhat ashamed to meet you, after that unfortunate affair at camaldoli.' 'why?' asked tebaldo. 'i do not see----' 'it was i that fired over the carriage to draw away the escort,' replied the other. 'your poor brother was too enthusiastic. i was afraid that something would happen to him, for the plan did not seem to be very well thought out. in a manner i feel responsible for his misfortune, for i should not have consented to what he proposed. i hope, however, that there need be no bad blood between you and me on that account.' 'ferdinando was always foolish,' answered tebaldo. 'it was certainly not your fault.' 'and now you have had another misfortune in the family,' said the youth, sadly. 'i take the first opportunity of offering you my most sincere condolence.' tebaldo knew that with such a man it was better to be frank, or to say nothing. he bowed gravely, and proposed that they should have supper. the moscio answered with equal gravity, and made a little bow on his side, by way of acknowledgment. 'i was about to ask you to be my guest,' he said. 'i supped with you at camaldoli the last time we met. we might have supper here in your room,' he suggested. 'but i fear to inconvenience you--' 'not at all,' replied tebaldo. 'i prefer it also. we shall be more at liberty to talk.' 'for that matter,' said the brigand, 'the conversation in the public room is often amusing and sometimes instructive. the lieutenant of carabineers sat at the table next to me the last time i spent the evening here. he was very friendly and asked my opinion about catching the moscio.' 'if you prefer to have supper downstairs, let us go down,' said tebaldo, laughing a little. 'but the fact is that i wished to consult you on a little matter of my own.' 'in that case, it is different. but it was i that proposed your room.' while the waiter came and went, preparing the table, the two men talked a little, continuing to exchange small civilities. the waiter knew them both perfectly well, and they knew him. in twenty minutes they sat down opposite each other, as proper and quiet a pair to see as one could have found in that part of the country. the moscio had good manners, of a slightly provincial sort, and a little too elaborate. he watched tebaldo quietly, with a view to profiting by the example of a gentleman who had lately been much in the capital. he ate sparingly, moreover, and mixed his black wine with a large proportion of water. tebaldo watched the girlish face, the bright, quiet eyes, and the child-like complexion of the man who had done half a dozen murders, and envied him his evident peace of mind. he knew, however, that his guest would not stay long, and that it was necessary to tell him the story. the moscio gave him an opportunity of doing so, almost as soon as the waiter had gone away. 'it was with the deepest regret that i heard of don francesco's accident,' he said, looking up at tebaldo. 'for that matter,' answered tebaldo, boldly, 'i killed him myself.' 'i always supposed so,' replied the outlaw, quite unmoved. 'are you going to join us, if you are found out? it would be a pleasure to have you among us, i need not assure you. but, of course, so long as there is no suspicion, you will remain in the world. i should, in your place. poor ferdinando, whom we all loved as a brother, liked the life for its own sake. poor man! if he had ever made an enemy, he would have killed him, but having none, his hands were clean as a child's. and in his very first affair, he was shot like a quail by a roman. heaven is very unjust, sometimes. yes, we all thought that you must have sent francesco to paradise yourself and put the blame on the priest. it was well done. the priest will go to the galleys for it, i daresay.' the youth's manner was as quiet as though he were speaking of the most ordinary occurrences. the knowledge of what he really was, and of what desperate deeds of daring he had done, somehow acted soothingly upon tebaldo's nerves, for he needed just such an ally. 'yes,' he said. 'it was done well enough. but i made a little mistake which i hope you will help me to rectify for the sake of any service i may have done you all before i sold camaldoli.' 'willingly,' answered the moscio, with courteous alacrity. 'but if it is for to-night, i hope you can lend me half a dozen winchester cartridges, for i am a little short.' tebaldo explained briefly what he wanted. the moscio smiled quietly. 'nothing could be easier,' he said, when tebaldo had finished. 'i will ride into the village to-morrow morning and get your knife. but, for another time, i should advise you to keep your weapon about you when you have used it. if you are caught, it is because you are suspected already on some good ground, and the weapon makes little difference. but if you get away quietly, you leave no evidence behind you.' 'that is true,' answered tebaldo, thoughtfully. 'but there is no name on the knife.' 'nevertheless, someone might recognise it as yours, if anyone had ever seen it.' 'no one ever saw it, excepting my brothers and, perhaps, my sister, when it lay on my table. but your advice is good. i might have saved myself much disquiet if i had brought it away.' the moscio made tebaldo explain very exactly to him where the knife lay. he knew the village and the position of the little church well enough. they talked over the details of the matter for a while, speaking in low tones. 'i suppose you do not want the thing when i have recovered it,' observed the outlaw, with a smile. 'i should like to see it,' answered tebaldo. 'then i should throw it away, i suppose.' 'again?' the moscio smiled in a rather pitying way. 'then you might wish to get it back a second time. it has no name on it, you say. if it is a good knife, i shall put it into my own pocket, with your permission, as a remembrance of this very pleasant meeting.' 'i should like to see it once,' repeated tebaldo. 'you do not trust me? after trusting me with the story? that is not right.' 'i have proved that i trust you,' replied tebaldo. 'but the thing makes me dream; i shall not get a good night's rest till i have seen it. then keep it, by all means.' 'i see!' the brigand laughed a little in genuine amusement. 'i understand! forgive me for thinking that i was not trusted. you have nerves--you do not sleep. we have a friend with us who is troubled in the same way. do you remember the man we call schiantaceci? he killed his sweetheart for jealousy, and began in that way. that was five years ago, in palermo. if you will believe it, he dreams of her still, and often cannot sleep for thinking of her. some men are so strangely organised! now there is our captain mauro himself. whenever he has killed anybody, he gets a gold twenty-franc piece and puts it into a little leathern purse he carries for that purpose.' 'why?' asked tebaldo, with some curiosity. 'for two reasons. in the first place, he knows at any time how many he has killed. and secondly, he says that they are intended to pay for masses for his soul when he is killed himself. one tells him that someone will get the gold, if he is killed. he answers that heaven will respect his intention of having the masses said, even if it is not carried out when he is dead. that man has a genius for theology. but i must be going, don tebaldo, for i do not wish to tire my horse too much, and i have far to ride.' 'i will not keep you. but how shall i see the knife? you cannot come down again to-morrow.' 'we should be glad to see you in the forest, if you can find us. mauro would be delighted. i have no doubt you will be able to find your way, for you know the woods as well as we do. i cannot tell you where we are, for we have a rule against that, but i daresay you can guess.' 'i will come,' answered tebaldo. 'if you come alone, you will be safe,' said the moscio. 'safer than you are here, perhaps, while your knife is lying under the altar of santa vittoria. but it will not be there any longer, to-morrow night.' the moscio protested courteously, when tebaldo thanked him, and he took leave of his entertainer. his coolness was perfectly unaffected, and was the more remarkable as he was certainly a rather striking young man on account of his good looks, his extremely youthful appearance, his perfectly new clothes, and a certain gentleman-like ease in all he did. he was known by sight to hundreds of people in various parts of the island, but he did not believe that any of them would betray him, and he passed the open door of the guest-room, where the lieutenant of carabineers was playing dominoes with the deputy prefect, with perfect indifference, though there was a large reward on his head, and he was well known to the landlord and the waiter. to tell the truth, he was utterly fearless, and would never have allowed himself to be taken alive. but, on their side, if they were ever tempted by the reward, they knew how short and how terrible their own lives would be if they betrayed him to his death. the man who betrayed leone still lives, indeed. he is a blind beggar now, without feet or hands, in the streets of naples. he left sicily with his life, such as the outlaws left it to him, to be an example and a terror to the enemies of the mafia. nor did the waiter show by any sign or word that he knew anything about the guest who had gone, when he came to clear the little table in tebaldo's room. he did his work silently and neatly and went away. tebaldo sat a long time by the open window, thinking over what he had done, and he congratulated himself on having acted wisely in an extremity from which there had been no other escape. it all looked easy and simple now. to-morrow night, he thought, he should be sure of his safety. then he would return to rome again. his thoughts reverted more easily now to the dreams which rome suggested, and he fell asleep with a sense of present relief mingled with large hopes for the immediate future. the moscio, on his part, would not perhaps have responded so promptly to tebaldo's message, nor have undertaken so readily to carry out tebaldo's wishes, if there had been nothing for the outlaws to gain thereby. but the alliance of such a man was not to be neglected at any time. he had served them in the past, and he could be of considerable service to them now. mauro had made up his mind to take one of the saracinesca, if the capture were possible, and to extort an enormous ransom, sufficient to allow him to leave the country with what he should consider a fortune. he was well informed, and he recognised that a family which had such power as the saracinesca had shown in getting ippolito's case heard and disposed of in a few days, and, previously, in persuading the authorities to move a body of troops to santa vittoria, must be able to dispose of a very large sum of money. moreover, as the moscio had frankly admitted, the outlaws had all believed that tebaldo had killed his brother, and, consequently, that he could be completely dominated by any one who had proof of the fact. the moscio had taken advantage of this instantly, as has been seen. tebaldo, though now on bad terms with the saracinesca, was well acquainted with their habits and characters, and knew, also, the bypaths about camaldoli, as none of the brigands themselves did. he could be of the greatest use in an undertaking which must require all the skill and courage of the band. for it was no light thing to carry off such a man as san giacinto or orsino, protected as they were by a force of carabineers in their own dwelling, and by the fifty soldiers of the line who were quartered in santa vittoria. when tatò's message had arrived, mauro had not only advised the moscio to go down at once, but had instructed him to use every means in his power, even to threatening tebaldo with a revelation of his former services, in order to get from him the truth about francesco's death, as a means of controlling him in the future. it had been an easy task, as has been seen, and when the moscio returned to the band that night, his account of the meeting was heard with profound attention and interest. mauro, who had a curious taste for churches, would have gone himself to santa vittoria, had he not been there on the previous day. a second visit might have roused suspicion, whereas, since the murder, no one was surprised if a stranger asked to see the place where it had happened. the moscio was, therefore, directed to go himself, as he had intended. the outlaws were encamped at that time in certain abandoned huts which the duca di fornasco had built as a safe retreat for some of his people during the cholera season of 1884. they were so completely hidden by underbrush and sweet hawthorn that it required a perfect knowledge of their locality to find them at all; but having been built on an eminence in the hills, in order to obtain the purest air, it was easy to keep a lookout from them by climbing into the big trees which surrounded them on all sides. a spring, situated on the eastern slope, at a distance of three hundred yards, supplied the outlaws with water for themselves and their horses. tebaldo, in former days, had led the carabineers to this spring, in their search for the band, but though the soldiers fancied that they had then quartered the hill in all directions, tebaldo had skilfully prevented them from coming upon the disused huts in the brush, wisely judging that it could be of no use to betray such a hiding-place, which might be useful to his friends in the future. the moscio knew that tebaldo would probably make first for the spot when he came to keep his engagement on the following day. chapter xxxiv the moscio slung saddle-bags over his saddle, as though he were travelling some distance, and led his horse down from the huts by bypaths in the woods till he came to a place where the trees descended almost to the road, so that he could reach the latter without crossing any open country. before emerging from cover he looked long and carefully up and down the valley to be sure that no carabineers were in sight, who might be surprised at seeing a well-dressed man come out of the forest. a few peasants were visible, straggling along the road, and far away a light waggon was ascending the hill. the moscio led his horse carefully across the ditch, and then mounted in leisurely fashion and rode slowly away towards santa vittoria. the outlaw, who may at any moment need his horse's greatest powers, spares him whenever he can, and when not obliged to escape some danger will hardly ever put him to a canter. it was a full hour before the village was in sight. once on the highway, the moscio felt perfectly at his ease, and barely took the trouble to glance behind him at a turn of the road. he had excellent papers of various descriptions about him, including a united states passport of recent date, in which he appeared as an american citizen, and a proper discharge as corporal from the military service, together with a highly commendatory letter from the captain of the troop in which the unlucky individual to whom the paper had belonged had served his time in milan. he also possessed a gun-license in the same man's name, and the description of him which accompanied it suited him very well. some of the papers he had bought at a good price, and some he had taken without much ceremony, because they suited him. to-day he did not even carry a gun and was, in reality, altogether unarmed, though he would naturally have been supposed to have a pistol or a knife about him, like other people in sicily. if anyone had asked his name, he would have said that he was angelo laria of caltanissetta, a small farmer. the name corresponded with the papers of the soldier, and as he was unarmed it would have been hard to find any excuse for arresting him on a mere suspicion. if a man carries so-called forbidden weapons, on the other hand, the carabineers can arrest him for that offence alone, if they find it out, and can hold him till he can prove his identity. a knife, such as one can stab with, is forbidden, and the special license, which is required to carry a pistol, is not often granted except to very well known persons, though a vast number of people really carry revolvers without any license at all. the moscio dismounted at the gate, walked up the street with his horse, enquired for the sacristan, and brought him back to the little church with the keys. 'have the goodness to hold my horse' he said to the fat man. 'i only wish to look at the church for curiosity, and i will go in alone.' the sacristan did not know him by sight, but with a true sicilian's instinct recognised the 'maffeuso' in his manner. he proposed, however, to tether the horse to an old stake that was driven into the ground near the door, in order to go in with the stranger and explain how the priest had murdered francesco. he had got the account off very glibly by this time. 'my friend' said the moscio, 'in those saddle-bags i have important papers and a quantity of valuable things, the property of an aunt of mine who is dead, and may the lord preserve her in glory! i am taking these things myself; for greater safety, to my cousin, her son, who lives in taormina. now the reason why i begged you to hold my horse is not that i fear for him, though he is a good animal, but because some evilly-disposed person might steal the property of my poor aunt. you understand, and you will have the goodness to hold the horse while i go in.' the sacristan looked at him and smiled. the moscio smiled very sweetly in answer, pushed the door open and went in, closing it behind him and leaving the keys on the outside. but when he was in the church, he took from his pocket a small wedge of soft pine wood, gently slipped it in under the door and jammed it noiselessly. it would have been rather difficult to open the door from the outside after that. then he walked leisurely up the church, his spurs ringing loudly so that the sacristan might hear through the door that he was in no hurry. he went up the altar steps, and smiled as he noticed a few round, dark spots on the marble, and one irregular stain. that was the very place where it had happened. he knelt down and tried to put his arm through the grating, but the space was too narrow. with the same leisurely certainty he slipped off his velvet jacket and laid it on the altar, rolled up his sleeves, and tried again, with his bare arm. no one, seeing him in his coat, and glancing at his small hands, would have suspected the solid muscles above. even now the grating was too close. it was of light iron, however, and twisted in a decorative design. he easily forced a scroll in one direction, a winding stem in another, and got his hand down to the bottom of the depression in which the glass casket was placed. he withdrew the knife, and slipped it into the pocket of his riding-breeches; then he readjusted the iron ornaments, buttoned his shirt-sleeve, and put on his jacket. as he walked down the church again he took the weapon out. the broad blade was stuck in its black leathern sheath, and it required all his strength to loosen it. when he got it out, he saw that the steel was covered with dark rust. it was a pity, he thought, as he dropped it into his pocket again, for it had evidently been a good knife. he would clean it with sand and a brick, and sharpen it on a stone, during the evenings, not because he could not have got a better one easily enough, but because it was an agreeable and interesting remembrance. he drew the wedge from under the door without making any noise and went out into the open air. the fat sacristan had lit a clay pipe with a wild cherrywood stem, and was slowly walking the horse up and down in the shade. the moscio took a small note from a neat pocketbook. even when notes are scarce, in the wild finances of modern italy, the outlaws manage to have them because they are easily carried. 'do you wish me to change it for you?' enquired the sacristan, holding the flimsy bit of paper between his thumb and finger. 'keep it for yourself, my friend, with a thousand thanks,' replied the moscio. but the sacristan refused, and held the note out to him, returning it. 'we are not of that kind,' he said, with dignity. 'we do not wish to be paid for courtesy.' 'there are doubtless many poor persons in the village,' answered the moscio, smiling, and beginning to mount. 'you will do me a favour by giving the money to those who need it, requesting them to pray for the soul of my poor aunt.' 'in that case it is different,' replied the fat man, gravely. 'i thank you in the name of our poor people. as for me, i am always here to serve you and your friends.' the moscio glanced at the man's face as the last words were spoken. tebaldo had told him who the sacristan was, and had described him accurately. 'a greeting to your brother, don taddeo the grocer,' said the outlaw, settling himself in the saddle. the sacristan looked up sharply. being cross-eyed, it was almost impossible to know with which eye he was looking at one. but the expression did not change as he answered. 'thank you. you shall be obeyed. our service to your friends.' they understood each other perfectly well, and the moscio rode slowly away into the brilliant light, leaving the fat man to lock up the church and go home. the outlaw had made a friend of him, but had not thought fit to ask him any questions about the state of the village or the movements of the saracinesca. it was of no use to go any further than necessary at a first meeting, and the band had plenty of good sources of information. tebaldo spent the morning in a sort of feverish anxiety against which he struggled in vain. he went out for a stroll and passed twice before basili's house. the weather was beginning to be hot, and the blinds were as tightly closed as though the house were not inhabited. as he passed for the second time he fancied he heard aliandra's voice singing softly in the distance. he could hardly have been mistaken, for it had the quality and carrying power, even when least loud, which distinguish the great voices of the world, the half a dozen in a century that leave undying echoes behind them when they are still. his blood rushed up in his throat at the sound and almost choked him, so that he pulled at his collar with his finger, as if it were too tight. he had not intended to try to see her again, but the fascination of the light and distant song was more than he could resist he knocked and waited on the little steps outside the door. he was sure that he heard someone moving upstairs and approaching a window, and he guessed that he could be seen through the slats of the blinds. a long time passed and he heard no sound. then, as usual, the stable-man came to the door, with his faithful, stolid face. he began to give the customary answer. 'the signorina aliandra has gone to the country with--' 'let me come in,' said tebaldo, interrupting the man roughly. he was active, strong, and in a bad temper, and before the man could hinder him, tebaldo had pushed himself into the house and was shutting the door behind him. 'and the notary is asleep,' said the man, concluding the formula, in a tone of surprise and protest, but attempting no further resistance. 'wake him, then!' cried tebaldo, his naturally smooth voice rising to a high and almost brassy tone. 'and the devil take you, your mother, and both your souls!' he added, relapsing into dialect in his anger. he must have been heard to the top of the house, and by gesualda in her kitchen. immediately there came a sound of footsteps from above. but tebaldo was already mounting the stairs. aliandra was coming down to meet him, her face flushed with annoyance and her eyes sparkling. 'what is this, don tebaldo?' she asked, as soon as she caught sight of him. 'by what right do you--' he interrupted her. 'because i mean to see you,' he answered. 'when you are in the country with gesualda visiting your friends, one ought not to hear you singing in randazzo as one passes your house.' aliandra was not really very angry that he should have got in, for she was beginning to find her father's company a little dull. but she made a movement of annoyance as though displeased at having betrayed herself by her singing. 'well--go down to the sitting-room,' she said. 'i cannot turn you out, since you have got in.' they descended, and she sent away the stable-man, and made tebaldo go into the front room, leaving the door open, however, as she followed him. his anger disappeared when her manner changed. he took her hand and tried to make her sit down, but she smiled and shook her head. 'i cannot stay,' she said. 'but as for your having been kept out, that is really my father's doing. i suppose he is right, but i am glad to see you for a moment. i was afraid you had gone back to rome.' 'not without seeing you. but what absurd idea possesses your father--' 'hush! not so loud! the doors are open upstairs, too, and one hears everything.' 'then i will shut the door--' 'no, no! please do not! he would scold, for he would certainly know. besides, you must go.' 'i do not understand you at all,' said tebaldo, lowering his voice. 'the last time i saw you, you were just like yourself again, and now--i do not understand. you are quite changed.' 'no. i am always the same, tebaldo.' her voice was suddenly kind. 'i told you the whole truth in rome, once for all. why must i say it over again? is it of any use?' 'it never was of any use to say it at all,' answered tebaldo. you do not believe that i love you--' 'you are wrong. i do believe it--as much as you do yourself!' she laughed rather irrelevantly. 'why do you laugh?' he asked. 'such love is a laughing matter, my dear tebaldo. i am not a child. it is better that love should end in laughter than in tears.' 'why should it end at all?' 'because you are engaged to marry another woman, dear friend. a very good reason--for me.' she laughed again. 'you have only a dead man's word for it,' said tebaldo, grimly. 'unfortunately he is where he cannot take it back. but i can for him. it is not true.' he set his eyes, as it were, while he looked at her, in order to make her believe that he was telling the truth. but she knew him well, for she had known him long, and she doubted him still. she shook her head. 'it may not be literally true,' she said. 'but practically it is the fact. you mean to marry the american. that is why neither my father nor i wish you to come to the house. you injure my reputation here, in my own town, as you do in rome. if you loved me, you would not wish to do that. i have held my head high at the beginning, and that is the hardest. i did not mean to say it over again, but you force me to. do you want me? marry me. if you were a rich man, i suppose i should be ashamed to speak as i do. but we are both poor, you for a nobleman and i for an artist. so there is no question of interest, is there? i have not seen your american heiress. she may be handsomer than i, for i am not the most beautiful woman in the world. she is rich. that is her advantage. she may be a good girl, but she is no better than i, the singer, the notary's daughter, who have nothing in my whole life to blush for. look at me, now, as i am. you know me. choose between us, and let this end. i am willing to marry you if you want me, but i am not willing to sacrifice my good name to you, nor to any man in europe, king, prince, or gentleman. here i stand, and you may look at me for the last time, compare me with your foreign young lady, and make up your mind definitely. if it is to be marriage, i will marry you at once. if not, i will not see you again, if i can possibly help it, either here or in rome.' as she finished her long speech she crossed her arms behind her and faced him rather proudly, drawing herself up to her full height, smiling a little, but with an earnest look in her eyes. she had never looked so handsome. the few days of country life had completely rested her young face. 'you are frank, at all events,' said tebaldo, half mechanically, for he was thinking more of her than of her words. 'and it is time that you should be frank, too,' she answered. 'you must make your choice, and abide by it aliandra basili or the american girl.' he was silent, for he was in a dilemma and was, besides, too nervous from all he had been through to like being driven to a sudden decision. on the other hand, her beauty stirred him now, as it had not done before, and the idea of giving her up was unbearable. she looked at him steadily for several seconds. more than once his lips parted, as though he were going to speak, but no words came. gradually her mouth grew scornful and her eyes hard. all at once she laughed a little harshly and turned towards the door. 'you have chosen,' she said. 'good-bye.' but the passionate longing that had assailed him outside, in the street, at the sound of her voice, had doubled and trebled now. as she turned, the folds of her gown followed her figure in a way that drove him mad. 'aliandra!' he cried, overtaking her in an instant, and catching her in his arms. she struggled a little as he forced her head backwards upon his shoulder. 'you!' he kissed the word upon her lips again and again. 'you! you!' he repeated. 'i cannot live without you, and you know it! yes--i will marry you--before god, i will--' and many passionate, broken words and solemn vows mingled with his kisses as he stood there pressing her to him. it was not a noble love, but it was genuine and fierce, as all the man's passions were, whether for love, or hatred, or revenge. it was when he had let them drive him to reckless deeds that his other nature asserted itself, calm and treacherous and self-contained. as for aliandra herself; she had saved her self-respect, though few people might respect her for what she had done. she was not a very romantic or sentimental young woman, but according to her lights she was a good girl. she had been taught to consider that all men were originally and derivatively bad, and that every woman had a genuine right to make the most advantageous marriage she could. she did not in the least expect that tebaldo would be faithful to her, but she firmly intended to be an honest wife, on general principles. what she most wanted was his name, for which she meant to earn a fortune by her art. she had never been in love and, therefore, did not believe that love had any real existence, a view not uncommon with very young people who have no particular sentimentality in their composition. and so rigid were her ideas in one direction that she resented the demonstrative way in which tebaldo expressed his decision. he was almost beside himself, for his nerves had been already unstrung, and her beauty completely dominated him for the time being, so that he forgot even miss slayback's millions, his own evil deeds, and his meeting with the outlaw. there was nothing which he was not ready to do. basili should draw up the marriage-contract at once, and on the following morning they would be formally betrothed. only the fact that he could not with propriety be married within less than three months of his brother's death recalled him to himself. the afternoon was already advancing when he left the house and went back to the inn, half dazed and almost forgetful alike of past and future, as he walked up the street. before he had gone a hundred yards, however, he had regained enough composure to think of what he had to do, and when he reached the inn, no one would have supposed that anything unusual had happened to him. as he rode out of the town half an hour later, he vaguely wondered at himself for what he had done, and wondered, also, how he could get out of his present difficult position. he looked at his watch, and saw that it was growing late. he had far to ride, and had intended to start much earlier in the afternoon. he had the innkeeper's best horse, but it was rather a slow animal, not to be compared with basili's brown mare. he quickened his pace as well as he could, however and cantered along the more level stretches of the high-road. at the first opportunity he struck off into a bridle-path to the right which led westward towards the heights above maniace. he had ridden several miles, in and out among the little undulations of the upper valley, when he came out upon a broad bit of meadow, such as one occasionally finds in that region, just beyond the black lands. he put his horse at a gallop, taking advantage of the chance to gain a little time, and riding diagonally for a point at the opposite side from which the bridle-path led up to the hills, as he well knew. he was less than half-way across the grass when he heard the heavy tread of horses galloping after him, with the clanking of arms and a sound of deep voices calling out to him. he looked round, but he knew already that he was followed by mounted carabineers, and that they could overtake him easily enough. after a moment's hesitation he drew rein and waited quietly for the troopers to come up. he wished that he had carried his rifle across his saddle-bow instead of at his back, for he at first believed that there was some information against him from santa vittoria, and that they meant to arrest him. on the other hand, to have unslung his rifle, after seeing that they were carabineers, would have been to acknowledge that he feared them. his mind worked quickly as he sat still in his saddle, waiting for them. but when they were fifty yards away one of them spoke, and reined in his charger. 'it is don tebaldo pagliuca!' he exclaimed in a tone of surprise, and in the desolate stillness of the lonely field, tebaldo heard the words and understood that he had been mistaken for someone else. the other trooper laughed a little, and they both trotted up to tebaldo, saluting when they were near him. 'i beg your pardon,' said the older soldier. 'we took you for a stranger. it is a lonely place, and we have news that the brigands are somewhere in the neighbourhood. i trust we have not annoyed you, signore. accept our excuses.' tebaldo smiled easily. 'you took me for an outlaw,' he said 'it is natural enough, i am sure. do you know your way? can i be of any service to you?' the elder trooper asked one or two questions about the directions in which the bridle-paths led. he evidently knew the country tolerably well, and tebaldo was wise enough not to deceive him. after a few moments' conversation, he offered the men a couple of cigars, which they gratefully accepted and hid in the inner pockets of their tunics, after which they saluted again and rode away in the direction whence they had come. in disturbed times such patrols are to be met with occasionally on almost every practicable bridle-path, and the foot-carabineers scramble up and down through the country in pairs, even where there are no paths at all. as he rode on alone tebaldo was aware that his heart was beating faster than usual. he had been startled by the unexpected meeting, and for one moment had expected to be arrested. he now reflected that he had no real cause to fear any such catastrophe, since, by this time, the moscio had certainly recovered the knife, which represented the only possible evidence against him. but the physical impression remained, and it was very like fear. he had rarely been afraid of anything in his life, and the sensation was disturbing, for it warned him that the strain on his whole nature was beginning to weaken him. he pressed on, urging his lazy horse whenever the ground permitted, and cutting across through the woods, from one bridle-path to another, as often as he could, shortening the way to gain time. he was near the foot of the hill on which the outlaws were camping and was just about to cross the streamlet which ran down from the spring, when a man in tweed clothes, that had an english look, quietly stepped out from behind a bush and stood in his way, at the water's edge, holding a rifle in his hand. tebaldo's horse stopped of his own accord. 'your name, if you please,' said the outlaw, civilly. 'tebaldo pagliuca. i come by appointment to visit one of your friends.' 'name him, if you please.' 'the moscio,' said tebaldo, knowing that if the names had not agreed with those given to the sentinel as a pass, the man would probably have killed him instantly as a spy. 'i will show you the way,' said the brigand, slinging his rifle on his shoulder. 'i know the way perfectly,' answered tebaldo. 'pray do not trouble yourself.' 'it is a pleasure,' returned the other, and he cleared the little stream at a bound. tebaldo guessed that he was not altogether trusted even now. as the man walked up the hill he whistled softly, and in a few moments, emerging from the brush into a little clearing, tebaldo saw the moscio waiting for him. it was dusky under the trees, but tebaldo could see the pleasant smile on the girlish face. the moscio had his rifle under his arm, and was smoking a cigarette. the man who had led tebaldo to the spot disappeared into the brush, returning to his post by the stream. tebaldo dismounted. 'have you met anyone?' enquired the outlaw shaking hands. 'no,' answered tebaldo, 'not since i left the high-road.' he had reflected that he had done unwisely in not turning back with the carabineers and riding with them as far as the road, in order to disarm any possible suspicions, and he knew that the moscio would think so too. he should, if necessary, have even waited till the next day before coming up to the camp, but his anxiety to see the knife safe in the moscio's possession had outweighed everything else. 'so much the better,' answered the outlaw, unsuspiciously. 'by the bye, here is your knife. is this it?' he held it out to tebaldo, who took it eagerly, his fingers closing round the sheath, as though he were afraid of dropping it. he breathed hard between his teeth once or twice, as he looked at it in sheer satisfaction. 'it is yours, i suppose?' observed the moscio, interrogatively, for tebaldo had forgotten to speak. 'there was no other.' 'yes. i thank you. i am very grateful to you.' the words were as sincere as any the man had ever uttered, and he handed the knife back. 'not at all,' answered the outlaw. 'it was interesting to see the place. i am glad to have served you. since you have taken the trouble to come so far, will you accept our hospitality this evening? you can hardly get back to randazzo to-night. mauro is in a very good humour this evening, and the weather is pleasant. you will not suffer much inconvenience. the huts are quite dry. we will try and make you some return for your former hospitality.' tebaldo accepted readily enough, and they began to ascend the hill at once. it was some distance to the top. the moscio turned to the right at a big, old chestnut tree. 'that is not the best way,' remarked tebaldo. 'keep on another ten yards and then turn to the left. there is an old bridle-path on the other side of the hawthorn bushes.' the moscio laughed softly. 'it is a pity that you are not with us,' he said. 'you know the paths better than we do.' 'i was born near here,' answered tebaldo. 'i have known these woods since i was a boy.' 'i wish i had. i sometimes lose my way in this part of sicily.' the path began exactly where tebaldo had said that it did, the entrance being hidden by hawthorn and blackberry bushes. he went on a few steps, doubled behind the brambles, and led the moscio along a much better way than the outlaws had discovered for themselves. the outlaw appreciated the advantage, and reflected that tebaldo could help the band in a thousand ways if he chose. without passing by the spring, they suddenly found themselves at the top of the hill. the path stopped abruptly against the back of one of the wooden huts, having formerly crossed the summit at this point. 'let me go first,' said the moscio, and he passed tebaldo and his horse and went round the corner of what was really little more than a shed, roughly enclosed with half-rotten planks. various exclamations of surprise greeted their appearance from an unexpected quarter. 'our friend, don tebaldo pagliuca,' said the moscio, addressing a number of men who were sitting and lying about on the dry ground. 'he knows the woods better than we, and has shown me a new path from the big chestnut tree.' 'he is welcome,' said mauro, in a dull and muffled voice, but with some cordiality. he and most of the others rose and greeted tebaldo warmly. some had known him already, and almost all had known ferdinando well. they were a strange-looking set of men. most of them were well dressed, and so far as their clothes were concerned might have been taken for a party of southern country gentlemen and rich young farmers, camping during a day's shooting. mauro, who was by far the oldest, might have been seven or eight and thirty years of age, but not more, and most of the others were evidently under thirty. they were all strong-looking, with the toughened appearance of men accustomed to live in the open air and to take exertion as a matter of course. the moscio alone had preserved his marvellous, child-like freshness of complexion. the 'moscio' means the 'soft,' being similar to our english word 'mush,' and the youth's looks accounted for the name, while his remarkable strength and utter fearlessness contrasted rather comically with the epithet. the peculiarities in the appearance of his companions were chiefly in their faces and expressions. most of them had the oddly sinister, unchanging smile with something contemptuous in it which so often characterises adventurers, both within the pale of society and beyond its bounds. such men do not laugh easily. in their eyes, too, there was the look one sees in those of some red indians and of dangerous wild animals aware of pursuit and always inclined to turn at bay rather than escape. tebaldo felt, rather than saw, the glances that were turned upon him as he stood in their midst, still holding his horse by the bridle. mauro himself was dark, clean shaven, close cropped, and already bald on the top of his head. he had often disguised himself successfully as a priest, for he had been educated in a seminary, had turned atheist, had been a journalist, and had finally got into trouble by shooting his editor in consequence of a quarrel which had apparently begun about a question of grammar, but had in reality been connected with politics, so that the deed had been regarded as an act of justice and patriotism by the mafia. there had been a reward of twenty thousand francs on mauro's head, dead or alive, for several years, and photographs of the famous brigand were sold everywhere in palermo, messina, and catania, but there was not a carabineer in the island who could boast of having seen the man himself. he was taciturn and reticent, too, though he could be fluent enough when he pleased; and although he put a gold piece into his purse for everyone he killed, as the moscio had said, he could never be induced to tell how many there were in the little leathern bag. he never did anything unnecessarily, but was capable of the most blood-curdling cruelty when any end was to be gained, and was merciless to informers when they fell into his hands, not exactly out of love for inflicting pain, but in order to inspire a salutary terror. he was extremely temperate in his habits and simple in his clothes, though his weapons were always of the best and of the newest device, and he had a large account with the leading bank of palermo. he intended to emigrate, he said, when he should be rich enough, but those who knew him did not believe that he could be satisfied to settle down as a well-to-do proprietor in the argentine republic. the moscio always said that mauro would yet repent of his ways, enter a monastery, mortify the flesh, and die in the odour of sanctity. whereat mauro generally nodded thoughtfully, as though he himself regarded such a termination to his career as quite within the bounds of possibility. as for the rest of the band, none of them were in any way so remarkable as their leader. the man known as leoncino was believed to be a son of the famous leone, and boasted of it. he had stabbed a rival in a village love affair, after having been brought up rather mysteriously in the house of a rich farmer. schiantaceci was undoubtedly a gentleman by birth, a sad young fellow, with a drooping brown moustache, fiery eyes, and a very sweet voice in which he often sang softly on a summer's evening when it was not dangerous to make a noise in the camp. no one knew his real name. in a fight he always behaved as though he wished to be killed, which is generally the surest way of killing others. among the rest there were men of all classes. there was a man who had been mayor of his village, there was a butcher, there were three or four deserters from the army, who had each killed a comrade, and one who had attacked his lieutenant but had not killed him. there was a chemist's apprentice who had poisoned his master, and an actor who had strangled his manager's wife in a love quarrel. there were also two anarchists who had escaped imprisonment under crispi's rule. but there was not one in the number who had done less than two murders at the time when tebaldo went up to the camp. one of the outlaws led his horse away, and he sat down by mauro a little apart from the rest. in the middle of the open space a fire was burning down to a bed of coals. it had been very carefully built and slowly fed so as to produce the smallest possible amount of smoke. a well-cleaned gridiron was stuck upright in the earth by the handle, and at the entrance to one of the huts the man who was a butcher was cutting a huge piece of fresh meat into steaks. after the first greetings, the men relapsed into silence, and paid little attention to tebaldo. mauro talked with him in low tones. the chief seemed, indeed, unable to speak loud. he asked many questions about the saracinesca, but he would have considered it a breach of civility to refer to the truth about francesco's death. 'these saracinesca are naturally antipathetic to you,' he observed, 'and i daresay you would not be sorry if one of them put his ears in pawn at my bank.' 'they are a powerful family,' answered tebaldo, cautiously. 'if one of them were taken by you, there would be reinforcements of carabineers throughout sicily.' 'these carabineers are much like flies,' said mauro, thoughtfully. 'they come in swarms, they buzz, and they fly away again, leaving nobody much the worse. it means a little more caution for a month or two. that is all. but the saracinesca would pay a good sum to keep the young heir's nose on his face, and san giacinto would probably write a cheque at my dictation before he were half roasted.' he spoke quietly and in a reflective tone. 'for my part,' replied tebaldo, 'i wish them no good, as you may imagine. but the younger saracinesca is in rome. san giacinto came back last night, it is true, but he is safe at camaldoli.' 'safe is a relative term when we are in the neighbourhood,' remarked mauro. 'especially if you will give us your assistance,' he added. 'on the whole, it would be more convenient to take san giacinto. he could write the cheque, and i could cash it almost before there were any alarm, holding him until we got the money. if we took the young one, we should have to communicate with the family. that is always disagreeable.' 'you might have difficulty in cashing the cheque,' suggested tebaldo. 'none whatever,' replied mauro. 'you are quite mistaken. that is always easy, though of course money in cash is preferable. a cash transaction is always better, as a mere matter of business.' tebaldo had not by any means anticipated that he was to be called in as an ally in such an affair, and did not like the prospect at all. he promised himself that he would return to rome as soon as possible. for the present he put aside the extremely complicated position in which he was placed by having given two promises of marriage. he felt uncomfortable, too, and chilly. he shivered a little, and mauro noticed it, and called for a cup of wine. tebaldo swallowed it eagerly and felt better. 'it will be necessary for you to help us,' said mauro, presently, and in a tone of quiet decision. 'no one knows the land about camaldoli as well as you do, and the approaches to the house.' 'i would rather not be involved in the capture,' answered tebaldo. 'i am sure you will not refuse,' replied mauro, smiling at him. 'it will be a little return for the service the moscio has done you. he was very glad to help you, of course, but you must not forget that you are one of us now, and that we always help each other when we can. i am sure you will not refuse.' tebaldo glanced sideways at the quiet, priest-faced man who had been the terror of sicily for years. he realised that the outlaw had spoken the truth, and that he might at any moment have to turn outlaw himself, if the secret of the knife were known. he knew the brigands and their ways. they would keep faith with him, even at the risk of their own lives, but he must submit to their conditions. they had him in their power, and he must help them if they required him to do so. if he refused, information would be in the hands of the carabineers in twelve hours, which would drive him into outlawry, if he escaped at all. but if he helped them, they would stand by him. he had not foreseen such a situation. 'what is it that you wish me to do?' he enquired after a short pause. 'i will tell you,' answered mauro. 'there are now only four carabineers quartered at camaldoli, and as they ride on patrol duty like the rest, there are never more than two in the house at a time. there is san giacinto himself, so that there are three men to deal with. the rest of the people are sicilians, and will give no trouble.' 'san giacinto is equal to two or three ordinary men,' observed tebaldo. 'is he?' mauro spoke indifferently. 'one man is very like another, at the end of a rifle-barrel,' he continued, 'and if one pulls the trigger, they are all exactly alike. the point is this. we intend to surprise camaldoli to-morrow night. you must lead us by the ways you know to the low rampart at the back, behind the stables and over the river. there is a way up on that side, but we do not know it. we shall find a ladder resting against the wall on that side. a friend will place it there.' 'why do you not get him to show you the way?' asked tebaldo. 'he lives in the house,' answered mauro. 'the gates are shut at ave maria, and there is a roll-call of the servants and men. san giacinto, or whichever of the saracinesca is there, locks the gate himself and keeps the keys in his own room. they all go to bed early, and the house is always quiet between midnight and two o'clock. there is no moon just now, and if we can get round to the back without rousing the dogs, or attracting attention in any way, we can get possession of the place in five minutes. the carabineers sleep in a room on the court. they have to sleep sometimes, like other people. barefooted we shall make no noise on the stones. leave the rest to us.' 'and have they no sentinels at night?' enquired tebaldo. 'do they keep no watch?' 'no. the house would be hard to enter without a ladder at the one weak point. one would be sure to rouse everybody before one got in. but once in the court, we can silence the two carabineers in a moment, and then we shall be fifteen to one against san giacinto. i would not give much for his safety, then. the main thing is to reach the ladder quietly and all together. the paths are difficult, there is water in the stream still, and we must know where to ford it in the dark, for we could not safely approach from the other side. your help is absolutely necessary to this enterprise. as i said, i am quite sure that you will give it--quite sure.' he emphasised the last words a little, and tebaldo knew what he meant. there was no choice. 'i will do as you wish,' he said reluctantly. 'i will come here before sunset, and when it is time i will lead you by the shortest way.' the moscio's eyes were watching him and met his own as he looked up. chapter xxxv the two carabineers who had met tebaldo in the field had treated him with the greatest civility, but when he was out of hearing they discussed the rather singular meeting. the more they thought of it, the more strange it seemed to them that he should have been riding alone, without so much as a portmanteau, by way of luggage, towards the maniace woods, and at such an hour. it must be remembered that before francesco's death, and since ferdinando's, the authorities had everywhere been warned against the corleone family, in the expectation of some outrage against the saracinesca or their property; and the impression was universal that ippolito had not killed francesco, while many who had known the brothers since they had been wild boys at camaldoli believed that tebaldo had done the deed, or that he had caused it to be done, and had cleverly managed to throw the guilt upon the priest. the carabineers quartered in the neighbourhood all believed this and scouted tebaldo's story of a race. they had no more opinion of the law's wisdom than the outlaws whom they were continually hunting, for their experience had shown them how easily the law could be defeated in a country where the whole population was banded together to defy it. the troopers discussed the question as they rode down to randazzo. they had seen nothing else worth mentioning, on their patrol, and when they reported themselves to the sergeant at quarters, they told him exactly what had passed. the sergeant was the one who had at first accompanied the saracinesca to camaldoli. he dismissed the troopers to their supper, thought the matter over, and went to the inn to find the lieutenant. the latter was playing dominoes, as usual, with the deputy prefect, before going home to supper. he was a grey-haired man of forty, prematurely aged by hard service and constant anxiety, a tall, spare figure, the perfection of military neatness in his dress, with a grave manner and a rare but kindly smile. for the rest, he was brave, honourable, and energetic, and, like the men under him, he was not much inclined to believe in the law on its own recommendation. he was as firmly persuaded as they that tebaldo was a bad character, and had quietly watched him on the several occasions on which he had lately appeared at the inn. he went outside with the sergeant and listened to his story attentively. 'the brigands are in the maniace woods,' he said at last. 'they left noto some days ago. but one might as well try to find pins in a ploughed field, on a dark night. it would take at least five hundred men to beat the woods through and surround the fellows.' 'a thousand, sir,' suggested the sergeant, by way of comment. 'it took a regiment to catch leone alone, in the old days.' the lieutenant broke off the end of a black cigar thoughtfully, but seemed to forget to light it, becoming suddenly absorbed in his own reflections. the sergeant stood patiently at attention. 'have we any information this evening?' asked the officer, suddenly, as though he were looking for something. 'no, sir.' 'any arrests to-day? any suspicious characters?' 'no, sir.' the lieutenant seemed dissatisfied, and looked a long time at his unlighted, black cigar, in deep thought. 'very well. good-night, sergeant.' he nodded and turned away, but looked round before he had made two steps. 'have two men ready all night, in case i should need them,' he added. 'yes, sir.' the sergeant saluted again, and went back to his quarters. the officer returned to his game of dominoes. he made one or two moves and then called the servant. 'don tebaldo pagliuca is staying in the house, is he not?' he enquired. 'present my compliments and ask if he will not come down and play a game.' 'the signore is out, signor lieutenant,' answered the servant. 'indeed? i am sorry. i suppose he is strolling in the town. it is cooler in the streets.' 'i do not know,' the man replied, though he knew very well that tebaldo had the innkeeper's horse. the officer nodded, as though satisfied, and went on with his game. the deputy prefect looked at him enquiringly, but he vouchsafed no information. the official representative of the government was a rather foolish man, very much afraid of the sicilians and of doing anything to attract the ill-will of the mafia. the lieutenant sat over the game later than usual. the windows of the public room, which was at once the dining-room and the café of the clean little inn, looked upon the main street and were open, for the air was hot. it would have been impossible not to hear tebaldo's horse if he came back. but he had not come when the officer went home. the latter's own lodging was also on the main street, towards the upper gate, and tebaldo would have to pass it to reach the inn. the lieutenant sat up very late, but still tebaldo did not come. 'they have either taken him,' reasoned the officer, 'and in that case he will not come back at all. or else he is on good terms with them and is spending the night with them, and will return in the morning.' but at seven o'clock in the morning, being about to show himself at his window, the lieutenant heard the tread of a shod saddle horse in the street. it was tebaldo, looking pale and weary, leaning a little forward and dangling his feet out of the stirrups, as though he had ridden far and wished to rest himself. he had the unmistakable look of a man who has worn his clothes twenty-four hours, and the soldier's sharp eyes, looking after him when he had passed the window, saw little bits of bramble and leaf clinging to his coat. the lieutenant shaved himself carefully and thoughtfully and dressed with his usual scrupulous care. when he had buckled on his heavy cavalry sabre, he opened a drawer in an old sicilian cabinet and took out two little derringer pistols, examined them to see that they were properly loaded, and slipped one into each pocket of his trousers. the tight swallow-tailed tunic of his uniform made it impossible to carry a revolver concealed. he might be going to risk his life as well as his reputation on that morning. when he left his lodging, he went first to the quarters of the carabineers and gave the sergeant an order. then he went straight to the inn, and asked to be shown to tebaldo pagliuca's room. an hour had passed since the latter had come back. the servant looked up in surprise, for though the officer and tebaldo were on terms of civility, the man knew that they were not well acquainted. he had to obey, however, and led the way up one flight of stairs, and knocked at a door on the landing. 'come in,' answered tebaldo's voice, indifferently, for he supposed it was the servant. the officer entered at once, taking off his cap. 'good morning, don tebaldo,' he said courteously, before the other could speak. 'pray forgive my intrusion, but could you lend me your revolver for a few hours? i suppose you have one? my only one is out of order, and i prefer to carry one for what i have to do. i should be extremely obliged.' 'certainly,' answered tebaldo, rather coldly, but a good deal surprised by the request. he crossed the room and took the weapon from a table, with its leathern case. 'i should be glad if you could return it by two o'clock,' he said, 'as i am going away.' 'certainly,' replied the officer, quietly taking the revolver out of its case. 'it is loaded, i see. thank you. now don tebaldo, will you kindly sit down for a few moments? i wish to speak to you.' he held the revolver in his right hand, and his quiet gray eyes looked gravely at the man he had caught. tebaldo started at the sudden change of tone, and faced him, in renewed surprise. 'i borrowed your revolver in order to speak with you,' said the lieutenant, 'for i have heard that you have a sudden and violent temper. but i wish to speak in a quiet and friendly way. shall we sit down?' he took a chair with his left hand. 'i am at a loss to understand you,' answered tebaldo, with rising anger. 'what do you want?' 'i will explain. i am aware that you have spent the night with the brigands, who are friends of yours. you will either lead me to them, or you will go to prison. i have a couple of men downstairs, waiting. now choose.' 'this is outrageous!' tebaldo's voice rang high, as he sprang forward. but the sight of the revolver's muzzle close to his face stopped him, though his eyes blazed with fury. 'it is of no use to be angry,' said the officer, who was perfectly cool. 'choose, if you please.' 'it is outrageous! you cannot prove anything against me!' 'you are mistaken,' answered the other, boldly. 'i can prove many things.' 'what? what can you prove?' 'i do not intend to provide you with the means of defending your case by telling you what i know. but i give you your choice. i have full power to do so. lead me and my men to a place where we can catch mauro, and i give you my word of honour that no accusation shall be brought against you. refuse to do so, and i give you my word that you will be handcuffed in five minutes and taken to messina this afternoon. you know, of course, that complicity with a band of outlaws entails penal servitude.' he saw plainly enough that he had not risked his reputation for nothing. tebaldo was brave still, though he was unstrung and broken, but his face now showed the perplexity he could only feel if he were really in the situation the officer had prepared for him. 'i deny the whole charge,' he said, after a moment's thought. 'this is an outrage for which you will have to answer. be good enough to stop threatening me and leave my room.' the lieutenant drew a nickel whistle from the bosom of his tunic with his left hand. 'if i whistle for my troopers,' he said, 'you will be in handcuffs in five minutes. i will count twenty while you make your choice. one, two, three--' and he continued to count. tebaldo grew pale by quick degrees, as he listened, and his heart beat violently with excitement. the officer reached twenty in his counting, and raised the big whistle to his lips. 'stop!' exclaimed tebaldo, hardly able to speak. 'well?' asked the officer, holding the whistle ready near his mouth. 'you give me your word of honour that no accusation whatever shall be brought against me?' 'none on the ground of complicity with the brigands,' answered the lieutenant. 'i give you my word as an officer.' 'there is no other to bring.' tebaldo was white. 'none that concerns me,' replied the other, coolly. 'there is a good deal of diversity of opinion about your brother's death, as you must know.' 'this is an insult--' 'oh no! i do not accuse you at all. i only wish to limit my own promise to the matter in hand. i have done so, and i understand that you agree, do you not?' 'by force, for i suppose i must,' replied tebaldo, in a sullen tone. 'you must further engage to protect me from the mafia, when you have caught the fellows,' he added. 'you shall have an escort wherever you go and as long as you please to remain in the country.' 'that will not be long,' said tebaldo, almost to himself. 'so much the better. and now, if you please, at what time shall we start this evening?' tebaldo inwardly cursed himself for having trusted the moscio in the first instance, but he quickly reflected that he might still improve his position in the eyes of the officer and thereby, perhaps, have less to fear in the future. 'look here, lieutenant,' he said, changing his tone and sitting down. 'i have been forced into this, from first to last. i was riding by myself yesterday afternoon, in the country i know so well, and i had not the slightest idea that the outlaws were in the neighbourhood. i met a couple of your men, who at first took me for one of the brigands myself, and then recognised me and apologised, telling me that the band was in the neighbourhood. they rode off, and i took a short cut through the woods. i came upon the encampment unexpectedly.' the officer listened attentively and gravely. tebaldo proceeded. 'in former years, even a year ago, when we lived at camaldoli before selling the place, we were obliged, as a matter of personal safety, to put up with a great deal from these men, and if we had informed against them, we should have been murdered. that is how it happened that my brother ferdinando knew some of them. you know the conditions of the country as well as i do.' 'i wish i did!' exclaimed the soldier, devoutly. 'you know them well enough, at all events. poor gentlefolk, as we were then, cannot always help themselves. yesterday afternoon i found myself suddenly surrounded by the whole band. there are fifteen of them. one of them recognised me, and a long discussion began. they wish to get into camaldoli to-night and carry off the marchese di san giacinto.' 'fifteen armed men might do it,' observed the officer. 'there are only two troopers there at night.' 'yes. but the brigands do not know the way to the weak point at the back. i will explain.' tebaldo told the whole truth now, for he saw that his best chance of safety lay in that direction. then he proceeded to exculpate himself. 'they also gave me my choice, something in your manner,' he went on. 'they offered, by way of alternative, to roast me alive, if i refused to show them the way to-night, and they assured me of what i knew perfectly well, namely, that if i did not keep the appointment they could murder me wherever i might be. this was because i insisted on coming here again before to-night. it was not easy, but they yielded at last. however, it was very late by the time we had come to an agreement, and i could not have got back to randazzo, for there was no moon, and the woods are dark and full of pitfalls. i got back this morning, and intended to go down to messina and catch the train at reggio to-night, and take my chance of safety in rome. they never could get up to the back of camaldoli without me. there you have the whole story in a nutshell.' 'i see,' answered the officer, who only believed half of the plausible story. 'you were in a most difficult position. but it is now in your power to do the country a great service. all that is necessary is that you should lead the band to the foot of the wall, as you promised. i will take care of the rest. in the woods it is impossible to catch them. but it is important that we should recognise you, in order not to kill you by mistake if there is any fighting, as there probably will be, though i hope to take most of them alive. the wisest thing would be that you should be the first to mount the ladder, by agreement, on the ground that you can lead them inside, whereas they might lose their way.' 'yes--that is best. it is a very complicated place, like a labyrinth, between the rampart and the court.' 'you will pardon me for reverting to the conditions,' said the lieutenant, suavely. 'you realise, of course, that in case you should not wish to carry out your part of them, you are always in the power of the law, unless you turn outlaw yourself, which, in your position, you would hardly like to do.' 'i understand my position perfectly,' answered tebaldo, coldly. 'i shall lead the band to the foot of the ladder at about one o'clock, i fancy.' 'thank you,' said the officer. 'i am much obliged for the loan of your revolver, which i return to you, as you may need it this evening.' he laid it on the table, bowed civilly, and went out, leaving the betrayer to his own reflections. chapter xxxvi tebaldo would have given half his life and all his soul to undo the work of the past twenty-four hours. but it was now absolutely impossible for him to draw back. his only chance of future safety lay in serving the government, though he did not like to think what his fate might be if he should fall into the hands of any friend of the outlaws after betraying them. yet, short of joining them outright, he could not possibly escape arrest if he did not carry out the conditions of his agreement with the lieutenant; and, if once arrested, the latter would only need to tell exactly what had happened in order to convict him of complicity with brigands and send him to penal servitude. he was literally caught in a vice and could not move without ruining himself. it was early in the afternoon when he set out to ride to the maniace woods again. in spite of everything, he had been to basili's house and had seen aliandra again. though what he was going to do was not noble, it was dangerous, and the sight of the woman he loved cheered him in his need. he looked ill, and said that he had a touch of the fever, and aliandra believed him, and was very kind and gentle with him. he was really too naturally courageous, with all his hideous faults, not to enjoy the passing moment to the full. his marriage with miss slayback looked less and less possible, as aliandra's influence gained the ascendant, and he formally bound himself to marry the sicilian girl. it was like a pleasant dream between two spells of torture, and as he rode up towards the woods it faded again into an improbability, and the ugly present truth rose in its place. even to him, the idea of such a deliberate betrayal as he contemplated was revolting. he was far too much a sicilian to think otherwise. apart from any apprehension for his own subsequent safety, he honestly detested the thought of leading men who trusted him to certain destruction, no matter how bad they might be. even the fact that they had forced him to be their guide, against his will, had little weight. he knew instinctively that if there were any worldly honour concerned in so dishonourable a matter, it should have bidden him either refuse to serve the law and let the law do its worst against him, or turn outlaw and warn the band they were in danger. ten days earlier he might have had the boldness to do either the one or the other, but he lacked it now. his character was momentarily and perhaps permanently broken, and though he still had the physical courage to face violent danger, he grasped at any means of returning to a peaceful existence, like the veriest coward. all through the long ride in the desolate lands and the lonely forest, and throughout the evening that followed, his mind laboured painfully against the secret and overwhelming shame of what he meant to do, and as he sat resting among the outlaws he hardly spoke, except in answer to a question from mauro or the moscio, and made a bare pretence of eating a little for the sake of appearances. again and again he felt impelled to open his lips and warn his companions of their danger, and once his resolution almost broke down. but as he glanced at mauro's quietly superior smile, a sort of sullen resentment got hold of him against the man who had forced him into his present position, and he held his peace. once or twice he thought of the knife which the moscio had in his pocket, but he knew that a brigand's evidence would be worth nothing in law, and would be regarded as a mere attempt at vengeance for having been betrayed. it had been very different so long as the knife had lain under the altar, where anyone might find it. there were hundreds of knives like this one in italy, and there could be nothing surprising in the fact that one belonging to a brigand should be rusty with blood. the bare assertion of the moscio would not be worth much. it was mauro's intention to kill the carabineers in their sleep, if possible, to bind and gag san giacinto and get him out through the postern gate, and to bind in the same way all the sicilian servants in the house, so that they could neither free themselves nor make a noise. they would themselves prefer this, and would submit patiently, as they generally did in such affairs, because if they were not made fast they would afterwards be blamed for not immediately giving an alarm, whereas if they roused the village they would expose themselves to mauro's vengeance as informers. it must be admitted that the position of the servants was not precisely enviable. the postern of camaldoli would then be locked again by means of the keys found in san giacinto's room, and the keys would be thrown into the river. san giacinto, bound on a horse, would be conveyed to a safe hiding-place before morning, and all would be over. the brigands would be many miles away by that time, scattering over the country as they usually did, while three or four of the strongest and most desperate remained with mauro to guard san giacinto until he should see fit to ransom himself by writing a cheque. it was all very well planned. tebaldo was instructed to disappear from the scene as soon as he had led the band to the foot of the wall. 'i had better go up the ladder first,' he suggested. 'you will lose your way in the narrow passages between the rampart and the stables. the place is like a labyrinth on that side.' 'of course,' said mauro, 'if you will help us further, we shall be greatly obliged, but that was not in the agreement, so i did not venture to hope--' he stopped, smiling politely. 'it will be better that i lead you into the court,' answered tebaldo. 'if the carabineers are lodged there, as you say, they can only be in one room, for there is only one that would be at all suitable. it has a very small window, and in this weather they will leave the door open for coolness.' the night was clear, but there was no moon. under the trees it was very dark, but the starlight made each opening and clearing faintly visible ahead, between the stems, as tebaldo led the way down the hill, with the unerring certainty of a true path-finder. again and again mauro, who followed him closely, thought that he was taking a wrong turning, but tebaldo never made a mistake as he swiftly and surely walked along, giving warning of any slight obstacle in a low monotonous voice, and now and then turning his head a little to listen for those behind. they led six horses among them, tebaldo's and five others, of which one was for san giacinto, one for mauro himself, and three others for the moscio, leoncino, and schiantaceci. the remaining outlaws were to return at once to the huts in the woods and get their horses there. it was characteristic of mauro and his companions that they trusted tebaldo's knowledge of the country, and followed him blindly after he had left the paths familiar to them. in and out he led them, always as far as possible under cover of trees and bushes, now and then over a stretch of dewy grass, then down into a little ravine, across a fork of a rough road, through more than one rivulet, ankle-deep, and always by a way which the horses could safely follow, since that was essential. at last he halted and looked at his watch by the starlight, for he had good eyes. 'it is a little early,' he said to mauro, in a whisper. 'we are near. you can hear the water at the rapids where we must ford the river. it is not midnight yet, and we can reach the rampart in a quarter of an hour. are you going to leave anyone with the horses? this would be the best place, for there are few trees between this and the water.' he felt cold. his feet were wet, and a cool night breeze blew down the valley. he turned up the collar of his coat and shivered audibly. mauro offered him a silver flask, and he swallowed a few drops of liquor. 'we will do as you think best,' said the chief. 'if you think this is a good place, we will tether the horses here, and give them their nosebags to keep them quiet.' in a few minutes the horses were tied up to separate trees by their halters, each out of reach of the other, and each had his nose in a small bag of corn. one had been brought especially for tebaldo's, as the precaution was an important one to hinder any of the animals from neighing. 'we may as well go on,' said mauro. 'they have been in bed an hour by this time, and a man in his first sleep is not so easily waked.' tebaldo's heart was beating hard as he once more led the way. it had troubled him often of late. he felt ill, too, and his bones ached. but he did not stumble nor hesitate, as he led the fifteen men down to the ford. he shivered again as he glanced at the grey, rushing water that sparkled here and there in the starlight, at the eddies. mauro was already taking off his boots, and all the rest silently followed his example. on the other side of the rapids the brambles grew low down to the water's edge, and the tall eucalyptus trees made black shadows. higher up, wild olive trees and wild figs grew out of the tangled mass of vegetation that covered the fifty or sixty feet of the precipitous ascent, all indistinguishable in the dim light. high above all, to the right, the outline of the gloomy druse's tower was sharp and dark against the sky, and the straight line of the rampart was drawn like a black band over the more uncertain shadows below. tebaldo whispered to mauro to follow him carefully through the water, and the whispered word went back from mouth to mouth along the line till it reached the moscio, who brought up the rear. from step to step, knee-deep in the cold stream, tebaldo felt for his footing in the familiar ford. he had known every inch of it since he had been a child, but the freshets often changed the bed, bringing great stones down in the winter rains, which sometimes lodged on the solid rock that came to the surface at that point and produced the ford. and tebaldo felt his way cautiously with his bare feet. reaching the other side, he followed the edge of the water down stream for a little way, till all the men had got out of the water and were following him, barefooted, over the stones. then he touched mauro to warn him that the ascent was about to begin, and each man touched the other in warning, from first to last. with their rifles on their backs and their revolvers slung in front to be ready, the fifteen men followed their guide slowly and silently upwards. here and there the rock jutted out among the bushes, affording a firm foothold to naked feet and hands. again, they had to climb up by the gnarled roots of a twisted fig tree, each man trying the wood with his hands before trusting to it. even if a bough or dry stick had cracked, the sound could not have been heard above the steadily monotonous roar of the stream below. they moved like mountaineers, without haste, but without a pause. the rampart was not more than twenty feet high above the final ledge, a rough wall of hewn stones, pierced all along the top by little slits for defence from the gallery inside. tebaldo glanced to the right and left, and saw the ladder in its place. it was one of those very long ones used by the peasants for gathering olives, made of two light and half-trimmed poles, sharpened at the lower ends to stick into the moist ground and thus obtain a hold from below without throwing too much weight on the branches above, and with rungs nearly two feet apart. tebaldo went to the foot of the ladder and listened, though the river would have prevented him from hearing any but a very loud sound from within. his heart beat in his ears like a strong muffled drum. mauro was close behind him, and touched him on the shoulder and pointed upwards to hasten his movements. but he felt as though he were paralysed. mauro was impatient to get to work, and pushed him quietly aside. it was so dark that those behind could not see what happened. mauro stepped upon the ladder first, the next man pressed after him, and the rest followed his companions, while tebaldo stood in the shadow, dazed and shaking with excitement. but as the last man silently ascended, his wits returned, and he thought of his own safety. peering up at the sky, he saw the man's dark figure disappear over the top of the wall. with one strong effort he loosened the ladder, and in an instant sent it flying down, end foremost, through the bushes. three steps he took under the shadow of the wall, and he plunged desperately down through the tangle, escaping for his life. he was swinging himself from a crooked root to a rock when an unearthly scream pierced the darkness, so loud and terrible that it might have been uttered close to his ear. he dropped ten feet in the dark, and before he touched the ground, even while he was still in mid-air, the quick fire of repeating rifles half deafened him. he rolled down, scrambled to his feet, jumped again, caught the bough of a tree, and swung himself out over the water, and still the rifle-shots cracked through the roar of the river. he plunged on, for he was below the ford, almost sank, found bottom, saved himself, and fled like a grey wolf in the starlight, right across the open, barefooted as he was. the firing had not ceased when he was in the saddle, on mauro's horse, galloping madly along the broken ground up the valley, towards the high-road to santa vittoria. still he heard shots, and glancing back he saw the dim flash of the next, above the wall. then he rode for his life, standing with his bare feet in the stirrups, his heart beating with the furious gallop, and terror behind him,--the terror he had never felt before, and which even now was not common bodily fear. he had given way at the last to a horror of shame at the thought of leading those men to destruction, to pass unhurt himself through the waiting soldiers, to be face to face with the officer who had cowed him into such a betrayal, to meet san giacinto's gloomy scorn, to be thanked by him with the contempt he deserved, for having served the law he had so often defied. he rode for his life from the thing he had done, rather than from the fear of any pursuit. the fight had been short and deadly. mauro had reached the top and had dropped to the pavement of the gallery within the rampart. it was deserted, and all was quite still. he counted his men, till he saw the head of the last appearing at the top of the ladder. then with his rifle slung ready, with his knife in his right hand and his revolver in his left, he crept noiselessly along the stones to the entrance of a passage leading inwards. it was quite light in the starlight by comparison with the darkness in the tangle under the trees. he went on a few paces ahead of his men and turned again. suddenly there was a tall man in front of him, who whispered as he came up. 'are they come? pass me, and you are safe!' that was all, for he had been taken for tebaldo in the gloom. in a flash he understood, and with a single movement drove his knife straight to the man's heart. the trooper groaned as he died. then, in a moment, the passage was full of soldiers, before, behind, everywhere. mauro yelled to his men to escape, his muffled voice breaking into the wild scream tebaldo had heard. at the same moment he fired. the men saw each other in the flashes of their rifles, till the flashes only lighted up thick clouds of smoke and they groped their way to kill each other. for the outlaws died hard, and their aim was cool and true when they could see, and when they could not, they felt for flesh with the muzzles of their winchesters and fired when they struck anything soft, alive or dead. but they knew each other by their chief's name. 'mauro, mauro!' they repeated, as they jostled each other in the smoke. but mauro was dead in the dark already with a dozen bullets in him, and though five soldiers of the line lay in a heap around him and under him, the gold pieces that should have counted them were never to be slipped into the little soft leathern bag. still a few shots were fired, here and there, for some of the men had managed to get upon the roof of the low buildings between the stables and the rampart, and the more active of the soldiers pursued them. when all was quiet save the sound of many distant voices, and only now and then an awful groan came up out of the thick smoke, one man, who had thrown away his empty rifle and pistol, felt his way among the dead, with a knife in his hand, groping before him with the other for any living thing that might come in his way. but by some miracle he crept on and found no one, and was suddenly at the rampart and alone. he glanced quickly to right and left for the ladder, and saw that it was gone. 'judas iscariot!' he said in a low voice, as he thought of tebaldo. then, leaving his tale of dead behind him, he unhesitatingly got over the wall, turned his face to it, and let himself down, feeling for crevices in the stones with his naked feet. and his small, strong fingers found impossibly small holding, but it sufficed for a while, and when he could hold no more, he pushed himself backwards with a little spring and dropped ten feet to the ledge. no one had fought more desperately for himself and his comrades than the moscio, but fate had saved him once more, and he made his way quickly down to the stream, forded it almost without wetting himself, coolly found his boots among the many that waited for those who should never need them again, shod himself, picked out his own horse, and rode away towards the maniace woods. he had found time to notice that mauro's horse was gone, and he knew that tebaldo had taken it because it was the best. 'judas iscariot!' he repeated quietly, as he rode away, without a scratch, from that hideous carnage, man enough to wish, perhaps, that he had found his death where so many had fallen. for it had been a terrible fight, at close quarters. since the famous leone had been killed, there had been no such bloody encounter between outlaws and troops. the trap had been well laid, but even the brave old officer of carabineers had not counted on having to deal with such desperate men. of the outlaws, five only were alive and all more or less badly wounded. the moscio had got away unhurt, and nine were stone dead. there had been no chance of even offering quarter, for they had fired instantly as soon as they had seen themselves surrounded, and their winchesters had done fearful work in a few moments. four carabineers and seventeen of the line were carried out into the court, one by one, and were laid side by side on the stones, under the stars. a dozen or fifteen more were wounded, among whom were both the officer of the carabineers and the young red-haired lieutenant of foot. as for san giacinto, a bullet had taken off the top of his ear and had just scored the grey hair above it. a thin line of blood ran down the side of his dark face as he bent to examine mauro's body, with a lantern in his hand. something told him that the priest-faced man had been the famous chief, and one of the surviving outlaws confirmed the fact, being brought up handcuffed to recognise the dead men one by one. san giacinto coldly wished that he might find tebaldo pagliuca among the slain, and said so. 'never fear,' said the wounded outlaw, with an ugly smile. 'traitors die slowly in sicily,--but they always die.' he refused to answer any questions, of course, like the others who were taken, beyond identifying the dead, and they all swore that no one had escaped, and that tebaldo had been mistaken in saying that there had been fifteen instead of fourteen. 'but the famous moscio?' asked san giacinto, who had heard of the youth. 'where is he?' 'the moscio?' the outlaw repeated the name with a blank look. 'i never heard the name,' he added gravely. chapter xxxvii tebaldo slackened his speed at last and attempted to concentrate his thoughts. exhausted as he was by exertion and by the ever-increasing strain on his faculties, it was not easy to think at all. but his bare feet, chilled in the cold stirrups, drew his attention to the present necessity of being shod as soon as possible. he could reach randazzo long before dawn and get into the inn by knocking and rousing the man who slept on the ground-floor. he could invent some story to explain why he had ridden home on another horse. in the dark, with only a taper or a lantern, the man would not notice his bare feet, and he could get to his room in safety. after that, he did not know what he should do. he felt that if he could not get rest soon, he must fall ill. as a matter of fact, he was ill already, with the dangerous fever of the south, as the sudden chills he had lately felt would have told him at any other time. he made up his mind that he must reach the inn; he put his horse to a canter again and got to randazzo just as the first pallor of the dawn threw the dark outline of etna into stronger relief against the sky. everything happened as he had hoped. the sleepy man-servant gave him the key of the stable, and he hitched his horse in a stall, came back, entered the house, and reached his room in safety, the man not having noticed that he was barefoot. he locked the door and almost staggered to his bed, falling upon it as he was, in his wet clothes. a moment later he was asleep. it seemed but a moment more and he was waked by a loud knocking. he started up in one of those hideous dreams of fear, of which the whole length takes but an instant of time. the knocking was the sound of rifle-shots, and he was once more plunging down through the tangle below camaldoli. then he saw that it was broad daylight outside, and he heard the voice of the officer of carabineers speaking to him from without in a friendly tone. forgetting or not caring how he looked, he opened the door. the grey-haired lieutenant entered. he was already shaved and dressed with his usual scrupulous neatness, but he was extremely pale, and his arm was in a black sling. 'i am sorry to disturb you,' he said, 'though, as it is nearly twelve o'clock, i had expected to find you up. the fact is, i should be very much obliged to you if you could make it convenient to go to rome--or paris, if you please. one of the brigands escaped us last night.' 'only one?' asked tebaldo, mechanically. 'only one. we suppose that it must have been the famous moscio.' 'the moscio?' 'we suppose so. whoever it was, he has lost no time in telling what has happened, and your share in the business. you are not safe even in the town of randazzo, unless you will consent to go about between a couple of carabineers like a prisoner. i am sorry to say that you had better go at once. the population is roused against you. you know what they are.' 'yes. i know.' tebaldo leaned against the table. 'i can protect you with soldiers,' continued the officer, his own voice weak from loss of blood. 'but your position will be a very unpleasant one. i have sent for a carriage for you and will give you a strong escort, but for your own safety, as well as for the quiet of the country, i must beg you to start as soon as you can dress and get your things together. to-day you may get away quietly. to-morrow your appearance might cause something like a riot.' 'i knew how it would end,' said tebaldo, faintly. 'very well. i will get ready.' the lieutenant was in reality exaggerating the danger of the man's position, though quite unintentionally. he would certainly not have been safe in such a place as santa vittoria, but it was extremely unlikely that he should be attacked in randazzo, though he might very probably have been insulted in the streets. the moscio had in reality seen but one man with whom he had spoken before dawn, but he was the woodcutter who had chiefly supplied the outlaws with provisions during their stay in the forest of maniace, and he had come up as usual to know if they wanted anything on that day, being as yet ignorant of the fight at camaldoli. but as he came down, the man had met an acquaintance and had repeated the story without telling how he had learned it. before noon the facts were known far and wide from santa vittoria to randazzo, substantially as the moscio knew that they had happened. the feeling against tebaldo was at once infinitely stronger than that against the carabineers and soldiers. to a certain extent the brigands always terrorised the country, and many of the better sort of people were heartily glad to know that the band of mauro had been finally destroyed, though they did not say so, lest some survivor should wreak vengeance on them. but there was no difference of opinion in regard to tebaldo. it was not exactly treachery to carry people off by force and extort a ransom from them, as the outlaws did. but to lead men who trusted him into a trap prepared for them by the troops was a betrayal which no sicilian could forgive tebaldo, even though it might have had some good results, and the name of judas, which the moscio had spoken alone in the solitude, was on every tongue. it is of no use to waste words in trying to explain this feeling, which most people will understand. the fact was that the whole population shared it, as tebaldo knew that they must, since the story had become known. he recognised at once that he ought to accept the officer's advice and get away as soon as he could. he would write to aliandra from messina, but he was sure that she must despise him now, like everyone else. to all intents and purposes he was a fugitive, as he drove out of the town, half an hour later, in a closed carriage with the ragged shades drawn down. possibly he remembered, as he shivered in his corner beside the carabineer, how the light had fallen on ippolito saracinesca's face in the street of santa vittoria scarcely ten days earlier, how the people had cursed the innocent man, and had thrown things at him, trying to bruise him from a distance. another carabineer sat opposite in the carriage, and one was on the box beside the driver. tebaldo vaguely understood that even the soldiers despised him, but he was almost past caring what they thought. the fever was slowly gaining on him, and his nerves were utterly broken. his face was like a yellow mask, and he hung his head so that his chin rested on his breast. he reached messina in a dream and went to the wretched hotel there. he was not able to go on to rome that night, and a doctor who was sent for said that he had the 'perniciosa' fever. on the following morning, in randazzo, aliandra was sitting alone in her room. she had heard of all that had happened. twenty people had been to see the notary on the previous day, and the story had been repeated again and again, till she knew every word of it by heart. she was ashamed of ever having wished to marry such a man. that was her first sensation, and it had not left her yet. though she was strong and sensible, she had shut herself up in her own room and had cried for hours, not for tebaldo, but with shame and anger at herself. she hated him now, far more than she had ever cared for anyone in her short life, and she was glad when she heard that he was gone, for she never wished to see him again. it was a perfectly simple state of mind. the man was a despicable traitor, in her view, and she hated herself for having ever believed in him. her shame at the whole thing was not her own secret. that made it worse. her father's friends knew very well that tebaldo often came to the house and was in love with her, and had not been rebuffed. the lieutenant of carabineers himself generally came once a week to pay a visit, for he liked basili. all the townsfolk knew it. it was a reproach, and a public one, it was a blot on her good name, and she felt it all the more painfully because she had never done anything to be ashamed of. again and again, through the night and in the morning, the burning tears of anger at herself ran over and scalded her cheeks, and then dried as her anger rose against tebaldo. this morning she had just been through one of these storms of tears in the solitude of her room, when gesualda knocked at the door. poor, ugly gesualda, whose innocent little sin of eating an orange on the stairs one day had started the avalanche of fate that ended in the destruction of mauro's band, the death of francesco pagliuca, and the ruin of tebaldo, would have died of horror had she known that all these things were the direct consequences of basili's broken leg, which had brought aliandra to randazzo, followed by the two brothers. she entered quietly and stupidly enough. 'signorina,' she said, 'dry your eyes, for there is one who would speak with you downstairs.' 'who is it?' asked aliandra, impatiently. 'will they ever let me alone? what does he want?' 'do not be angry, signorina,' answered the woman. 'it is a young gentleman from messina, who has a parcel for you in his hands and begs that you will kindly receive it yourself.' 'a parcel from messina? well--' aliandra hesitated, but her curiosity was roused. 'tell him that i will come down immediately,' she concluded. a few minutes later she descended the stairs, having plunged her face into cold water and done her best to remove the traces of her tears. she entered the front room and met a girlish-looking youth with close and curling brown hair, and extremely well dressed in light grey. a rather delicate hand held out a parcel to her, as he bowed respectfully. 'i was commissioned to hand you this parcel, signorina,' said the moscio. 'it is from one of your greatest admirers.' 'from whom is it?' she asked quickly, as she took the heavy little package. 'that is your friend's secret. he only begs that you will open it when you are alone. it contains a little surprise for you. i thank you for your kindness in receiving me, signorina. good morning.' he bowed and moved quickly towards the door. 'but you, signore--what is your name? i am infinitely obliged--' 'my name is angelo laria, signorina. good morning.' before she could stop him, he had left the room, and she heard the front door shut immediately afterwards. she looked out through the closed blinds, and there was no one within sight. it was as though she had dreamed of the visitor. then she felt the package, shook it, weighed it, began to undo it, changed her mind, and went swiftly up the stairs to her own room. it might be an ornament or a jewel, she thought, sent to the celebrated singer by an unknown admirer--possibly the well-dressed young gentleman who had brought it was himself the giver, in spite of what he said. at all events she would look at it in private. she bolted the door of her room, sat down near the window in order to have plenty of light, and opened the parcel carefully. it contained a letter sealed, addressed to her, and folded round the black leathern sheath of tebaldo's knife. she took the letter in one hand and the knife in the other, turning over the latter curiously. but she was too much a sicilian not to have heard of such messages, and she guessed that the letter contained either a threat or a warning. she tore open the envelope and read the contents eagerly. there were two large sheets, tolerably closely written in excellent handwriting, and beginning as follows:-'signorina,--we, who are beyond laws, do not betray even our enemies to the law, much less our friends. we have little, but we have honour. the man to whom this knife belonged has neither, and against him, and such as he, we warn women like yourself, who are young, beautiful, and honest. these words are not written to the incomparable artist, the matchless singer, the wonder of sicily, and the pride of the nation. they are addressed to you--simply as aliandra basili, an honourable sicilian maiden, the daughter of an honest sicilian notary. it is known to us all that you have put your faith and trust in tebaldo pagliuca. consider what is here written, your own honour and your father's name, and do not marry one who has betrayed his friends to death and captivity, and who, moreover, murdered his own brother with the weapon i now place in your hands. judas was an honourable man compared with your betrothed husband, tebaldo pagliuca.' aliandra stopped at this point, read the last sentences again, and glanced at the knife she still held in one hand. with a movement of horror and disgust she threw it from her. then she hesitated, rose, picked it up, and hid it in a drawer before she continued reading. the letter went on to tell the story of the last four days in detail, from the time when tebaldo had sent for the moscio to sup with him at the inn, till tebaldo's departure from randazzo. aliandra did not pause till she reached the last sentences, but there was the bright red flush of anger and shame in her cheeks. there is perhaps no such cruel shame in human nature as that a woman feels at the disgrace of the man she has accepted as husband or lover. she paused, bit her lips, and then read to the end. 'this is not an anonymous letter, signorina. i who write to you am known as the moscio, but many people call me angelo laria. i am he who by a miracle escaped from the massacre the night before last, when all my friends were dead or taken and i had not a shot left to fire. when i leave you i am going to the inn where tebaldo pagliuca stayed, for i will not send such a letter as this and then slink away like a thief. it is in your power, if you have read this at once, to inform the authorities and have me taken. i am not even armed. we, who have no law, do not betray our friends, but we warn our women against such men as tebaldo pagliuca, and we know that they will not betray us treacherously as he did.' there was no signature, for none was necessary. there were few in sicily who had not heard the name of the moscio, and many strangely romantic stories were told of him. some may think that, considering what the man was, aliandra should have delivered him up forthwith to justice. she would as soon have stabbed her father in the back. but gradually, as she leaned back in her chair, staring at the wall, the angry flush subsided from her cheeks and a dreamy look came into her face. 'this outlaw is at least a man and a brave one,' she said to herself, as she thought of him. the moscio was quite safe, so far as she was concerned. she folded the letter carefully, returning it to its envelope, and then, taking the stout paper in which it had been wrapped, she opened the drawer, took the knife and rolled it up with the letter again, tying it, as she had received it. after that she took sealing-wax and sealed it with the little emblem of sicily which she carried on a thin chain with other trinkets--the three legs growing out of a human head, for the three capes of the triangular island. tebaldo had disappeared without a word, and she naturally believed that he had gone to rome to escape the vengeance of the moscio and of any friends the latter might have. aliandra was sure he must know that she would never see him again, for though many of the details written by the outlaw were new to her, besides the main fact of francesco's murder, the fact of the betrayal of the band by tebaldo was public property. he had gone to rome without so much as attempting to defend himself. and now she had in her hands the proofs that tebaldo had killed his brother, or what she believed to be proofs, though the law might have thought differently. she had, at least, the certainty, for it did not enter her head that the moscio could be trying to deceive her. yet she would not take these proofs to the deputy prefect, nor show them to her father. she was not a detective. the idea of giving the murderer up was repugnant to her, though in a less degree than the thought of informing against the moscio himself. she wondered what tebaldo would do next. thinking it over, she came to the rather unexpected conclusion that he had gone to rome in order to marry the american heiress at once. at first this seemed wild, but she grew accustomed to the thought in a few moments, and it impressed her. there would be much in favour of the plan, if he could carry it out. once married to miss slayback and her millions, tebaldo could leave italy for ever and spend the rest of his life as he pleased. the mafia could not pursue him to a foreign country. even in rome he would be comparatively safe, for rome, she thought, was a very civilised capital, and one man could not easily wait for another in the villa borghese as he could at the turning of a lonely sicilian road. the more she thought of it, the more certain she felt that he meant to marry miss slayback. all the details of her last interview with francesco came back vividly. knowing, now, that tebaldo had killed him, she was more willing than before to believe everything francesco had said. tebaldo had loved her, in a fierce and brutal way, but he had never meant to marry her at all. he had meant something else. her cheeks burned once more, and her eyes flashed dangerously. he should not marry miss slayback, either, she thought. then she reflected a little more calmly on her own position, and she decided to leave randazzo at once. after what had happened, she could not stay in her native town, ashamed to show her face in the streets. even the outlaw had known that she was engaged to marry tebaldo pagliuca. the very children would point at her. her father was much better, and she communicated her decision to him. he was very grim and silent about it all, but he thought she was wise. he should soon be on his legs again; at all events, she had helped him to get over the most tiresome part of his recovery from the accident, and he now attended to his business regularly with his clerk and received his clients in his room. aliandra made her preparations and left on the following day, in the very carriage which had taken tebaldo to the station of piedimonte. and she, too, had the old carriage closed and drew down the ragged blinds. the boys in the street did not know who was inside, but they had heard how tebaldo had driven away, and seeing the blinds down, they ran along by the door, yelling in derision. 'another betrayer! another judas! curses on the souls of his dead!' they cried. the coachman lashed at them with his whip, and they fell behind, but aliandra had understood, and her eyes flashed and the burning blush came back. she had telegraphed to her aunt, and the signora barbuzzi met her at the station in messina. they reached rome on the second day, a little less than a fortnight after they had left, and early in the afternoon. chapter xxxviii maria carolina was not exactly insane, but she was entirely unbalanced, and seemed to have no sane judgment in ordinary matters. her first outbursts of grief had subsided into a profound religious melancholy, and she insisted upon being taken to a convent in which she might end her days in peace. she seemed utterly regardless of the fact that her daughter would be left alone until her surviving brother came back, if he ever returned at all, and that such a man, even as she knew him, was no fit guardian for a young girl. the doctors said that in all probability, if she were not allowed to do what she wished, she would really go mad, in her present state. they suggested that she should retire to one of the convents where ladies were received who wished to go into a religious retreat, and that one of the sisters of the bon secours should obtain permission to live with vittoria for a few days until her brother arrived. vittoria, worn out with anxiety and sorrow, did not know how to face this new difficulty. miss lizzie slayback insisted that she should come and stay with her and her aunt at the hotel. after a little hesitation, she accepted, for it seemed the only solution of the difficulty. the american girl had become sincerely attached to her italian friend, and felt herself drawn to vittoria for the sake of having been on the point of marrying tebaldo, a state of mind which is natural to some characters and utterly unnatural to others. it was a generous impulse, at all events. vittoria went with her mother to the convent and helped her to install herself, and on the same afternoon she moved with her maid to the hotel bristol. she was like a lovely shadow. 'i am so tired,' she said, when she sat down at last beside miss lizzie. 'rest, dear, rest,' answered the american girl, drawing the weary head down to her shoulder. as the hours went by, and she felt the freedom of not being obliged to go back to the sadness of her mother's society, vittoria revived a little. but her life was almost more than she could bear. the papers had been full of the capture of mauro's band, and of her brother's share in it, for the story had spread like wildfire over sicily. even the roman papers made scathing allusions to tebaldo's possible relations with the brigands, and while congratulating the government on its victory, made sarcastic enquiries into the state of the betrayer's conscience. it was indeed hard for vittoria to bear. she had no news of tebaldo himself, who seemed to have disappeared mysteriously. her mother had practically abandoned her in her selfish and half-insane sorrow. she felt herself utterly alone in the world. orsino gravely read the articles in the papers, and wished that he could silence them for vittoria's sake. had there ever been so much as a mention of her name, or even of her mother's, he would have taken active measures to do so. but the editors were careful never to allude to tebaldo's family, and it was out of the question to hinder them from speaking of him as they chose. so far as orsino knew, the man was quite able to defend himself. sant' ilario read the accounts aloud to his father and to corona. sometimes ippolito listened, but orsino always made an excuse for leaving the room, preferring to read the news for himself. there was a perpetual subdued anxiety in the great household, on ippolito's account, with an eager expectation that in the course of the present events the mystery of francesco's death should be cleared up. their friends looked upon the affair very much as though it had taken place in africa or the south seas, for sicily seems very remote to roman society. they laughed at the idea that ippolito could really ever be brought to trial. even the minister of justice, who was a friend of sant' ilario's, smiled and said that the law had means of putting off the trial for a long time in order that satisfactory evidence might be obtained. but no such evidence was forthcoming. the judge who had heard the case in messina had been to santa vittoria, but had met with the most complete substantiation of tebaldo's own story. he had not even thought of causing the grating under the altar to be opened. nothing new transpired, and ippolito resolutely held his tongue. in order to avoid being questioned by his many acquaintances, he saw as few people as he could, and spent much time over his music in orsino's room. the two brothers were as fond of each other as ever, but when they were together they were much more silent than formerly. the secret preoccupation of each conflicted with that of the other, and the peace between them depended upon silence for its security. nor did anyone in the household know that orsino had seen vittoria several times at mrs. slayback's, still less that the american lady and her niece always managed to leave the two alone together for a while on such occasions. orsino was determined that nothing should come between him and vittoria, but at the present juncture it was impossible for him to insist upon his family's consent to his marriage. vittoria, on her side, had given up all hope, though her love gained upon her sorrows in the struggle for her soul. she was too lonely not to love her love for its companionship, too weary not to love orsino for his strength, and yet too desolate to believe that happiness could wait for her while the cruel hours and days crawled slowly on. it had seemed easy long ago--a month or a little more, at most--when orsino had first gone to sicily. it had seemed possible when he had come back that first time, even though he had killed her own brother in self-defence. but there was no more possibility now. she felt that this was the end of her race. some fearful thing must happen to tebaldo, and she should be left alone, the last of the long and evil line of the corleone. it would be better for her, too, to go back to the convent, to the dear old nuns who knew her and had loved her and would take her back as a sister, now, to end her days in peace and innocence and devotion. her name should be forgotten, and while she lived she could pray that the evil of it might be forgiven and the remembrance of it blotted out among men. once or twice she had spoken in this way to orsino, but he had stopped her suddenly and almost roughly. come what might, he meant to marry her, and he would. that was all he said, but he meant it, and she had moments of belief when she heard the words and saw his face. he admitted, when she pressed him, that neither his father nor his mother would at present give their consent, and that there was little to choose between them, and that they were people whose minds being once made up, would not easily change. and vittoria sadly answered that they were right, and that she should feel and act as corona did, were she in corona's place. yet still orsino smiled gravely and said that they should not hinder him at the last, for that he, too, had made up his mind, and that he was their son and like them, and could be as stubborn as they. vittoria could not say that orsino had once wavered in his determination since that night when he had kissed her on the bridge outside the ballroom. he was always the same, and it was small wonder that her weariness should find rest in his strength. but when he was gone, her courage sank again. she was seated alone one afternoon in mrs. slayback's drawing-room. the two ladies were out, but vittoria would not drive with them in their big open carriage, to meet her old acquaintances and to feel that she was pointed out as the sister of tebaldo pagliuca, who had betrayed mauro and his band. she went for little walks in the morning with miss lizzie, before it was hot, and sometimes in the afternoon she took a closed cab and drove to the convent to see her mother. to-day she was at home, and she had come into the drawing-room and established herself in the corner of a sofa, with a book, trying to read. but she could not care for what the book said, and the volume dropped upon her lap, while her head fell back and the low sunlight filtered through the blinds and gilded her brown hair, leaving her sad young face all in the shadow. suddenly the door opened wide, and one of the servants of the hotel announced a visitor, in a pompous tone. 'the signorina basili!' he said, waited for aliandra to enter, and he closed the door. aliandra came in swiftly and stood before vittoria, who half rose from her seat, startled by the singer's sudden appearance. aliandra held something in her hand. she had never seen vittoria, and the sunlight made the girl's hair look fair. she had ordered the servant to show her to miss slayback's drawing-room without announcing her, and she naturally took vittoria for miss lizzie. her handsome face was faintly flushed with anger and excitement, and her dark eyes gleamed. 'i have brought you this,' she said, holding out the moscio's parcel, 'from the man who has deceived us both, who wished to marry you and ruin me, who has come back to marry you now--' 'who? what?' asked vittoria, half frightened, but mechanically taking the parcel. 'tebaldo pagliuca,' answered aliandra, too much excited to notice that vittoria spoke in italian with an italian's accent. 'tebaldo pagliuca, who betrayed his friends the outlaws to death, tebaldo pagliuca, who is trying to marry you for your fortune, tebaldo pagliuca, who killed his own brother francesco on the steps of the altar with the knife that is in that package--' 'merciful god!' the young girl's voice rang breaking through the room, as she sank back. 'tebaldo pagliuca, who confessed the crime to the priest,' continued aliandra, working herself into a fury, 'who accused the priest of the murder, knowing that he would die with the secret rather than betray a confession--tebaldo pagliuca, the traitor, the betrayer, the false accuser, the murderer! the story is there, with the knife, in the paper--read it, and give him his answer when he comes to-day to kiss your hands--' 'mercy of heaven! mercy of god!' moaned vittoria, still too strong to faint or not to hear and understand every word. aliandra believed that she had done what she had come to do. she had foiled tebaldo effectually and for ever in any attempt he might make to marry the american heiress. with a glance at the girl's bent head, and at the soft, brown hair that looked so fair in the flecks of sunshine, she turned and left the room as quickly as she had entered it. vittoria started as she heard the door close, looked up, and then glanced at the package in her hand. she did not quite remember what she did after that, till she found herself locked into her own room, breaking the violet seals from the brown paper, cutting the string with her nail scissors, tearing the stout paper to pieces with her little hands, her heart beating with horror and her eyes already frightened by the expectation of the knife they were to see. she saw it, a moment later, and then her heart stood still, for she had seen it many times in tebaldo's room, during that winter, and once she had borrowed it of him to cut a strong cord from a parcel. then came the letter, and the long and painful reading of the hideous tale. she spent a terrible half-hour, and then she sat still for a long time, and her face was almost restful. at last she rose, quite calm and decided, and began to dress herself to go out. in a quarter of an hour she was ready, and she went downstairs alone and told the porter to get her a cab. 'palazzo saracinesca,' she said to the cabman, 'and drive under the gate!' she went up the great staircase and asked for corona. the footman hesitated to say whether the princess would receive or not. vittoria fixed her eyes on him and spoke quietly in a tone he understood. 'be good enough to take me to the princess's room,' she said. 'the matter is urgent.' she followed the man through the long succession of state drawing-rooms till he knocked at a side door, and immediately opened it inwards. corona was at her table writing a note. she looked up quickly, bending her brows, and rose rather formally. she had always liked vittoria for herself, but she had good cause to hate her name, and she had avoided the possibility of meeting the lonely girl of late. vittoria went forward and spoke first. 'i should not have come to you for a small matter,' she said. 'but i have come to make a reparation.' 'there is none to make,' answered corona. 'you have done nothing--' she paused, not understanding. 'you shall see. will you sit down? it may take some time to explain--or, rather, to read. there is only one question which i must ask you first. has don ippolito been acquitted or not?' corona's face darkened. 'he has not,' she answered. 'he is at liberty on san giacinto's security.' 'here are the proofs of his innocence,' said vittoria, simply, as she produced her package and laid it on corona's lap. corona opened her eyes in surprise, and her expression changed. 'my brother tebaldo did it,' continued vittoria. 'he forced your son, as a priest, to hear his confession, because don ippolito surprised him in the church. then he accused him of the murder, knowing that he would keep the secret.' corona stared, realised what the girl meant, and suddenly grasped her wrist, looking into her face. she saw the truth there, but vittoria understood the doubt. 'when you have read, you will understand better,' said the young girl, pointing to the package. corona said nothing, but her fingers were quick to find the letter. vittoria rose softly and went to the window and looked out. her hands rested on the cold stone sill and twitched nervously from time to time, but she would not turn round. she knew that what was shame and horror to her, was the joy of heaven to the mother of the accused man. corona read in silence, intently, quickly, almost desperately. she was a generous woman. when she had finished, and the weight had fallen from her heart at last, she rose and went to vittoria. the girl heard her step and turned. corona was holding out both hands. 'what shall i do to make you know how grateful i am?' she asked. 'what should you do?' asked vittoria, sadly. 'it was justice, so i came at once. the great singer--the basili--came into the room an hour ago. i was alone. she took me for miss slayback, with whom i am staying, and before i could speak she had told the truth and given me the package and was gone. so i brought it to you. i trust you to spare my poor brother if you can. keep the secret, if you can, now that you know the truth. perhaps something else may prove don ippolito innocent long before the trial. but if nothing else will do--why then, you have his innocence in your hands.' 'where is he?' asked corona. 'where is your brother?' 'i do not know. it is several days since he has telegraphed. he never writes. the basili spoke as though he were in rome, but i do not think he is. i will go home, please. i am a little tired. you will keep the secret if you can, will you not?' 'yes. no one shall know it unless it is necessary. but you, child--' she put her arm round vittoria, for the girl looked shadowy and faint as she leaned against the table by the window. vittoria straightened herself, and opened and shut her eyes once or twice as though waking. 'there is nothing the matter,' she said rather proudly. 'i am very well. i am glad that you are happy.' 'you have given me back my life,' answered corona. 'some day--but there are no thanks for such things.' vittoria began to go towards the door. she wanted no thanks, yet somehow she had hoped that corona would speak differently, remembering how she had once been left by her with orsino in that very room. the princess walked with her to the hall. 'i shall not forget this, my dear,' she said, almost solemnly, as she pressed the passive little hand. 'i shall come and see you soon.' as vittoria drove back to the piazza barberini, she felt as though the very desolation of loneliness were beside her in the shabby little cab. but corona had never been a woman of many words, and she meant more than she said when she told vittoria that she should not forget. chapter xxxix corona regretted the promise of secrecy which vittoria had obtained from her, as soon as she found herself alone and able to think over the situation calmly. she had no secrets from her husband, and few of any kind, and it was hard to keep silence when giovanni discussed ippolito's position and the possibilities of obtaining the evidence necessary to clear ippolito. she had, indeed, the sort of satisfaction which a woman feels all the more keenly when she feels it alone, with the certainty that everyone else will soon know what she knows, for she saw that ippolito had behaved with almost heroic constancy. but she would soon begin to long for the moment when others would see that he was a hero. being naturally a calm woman, and somewhat reserved, even with her own family, her face did not betray her at first. yet she hardly dared to look at ippolito that evening, lest her happiness should break like light from her eyes. her difficulty was a considerable one, however, and puzzled her at first. in her own room she read and re-read the moscio's letter, and her maturer judgment told her what neither aliandra nor vittoria had understood in their impetuosity. the law would look upon this so-called evidence as a piece of vengeance on the part of a brigand, and would attach little value to it. why, the law would ask, since the brigand professed to hold proofs that could ruin his enemy, had he not sent them to the carabineers? the answer must take the very unsatisfactory form of a dissertation on sicilian character in general, and on that of the moscio in particular; whereas, while he was still at large, his character could be but an unknown quantity. it might be proved, of course, that the knife had belonged to tebaldo. but it would be hard to show how the moscio had come by it. to demonstrate ippolito's innocence something more was necessary. corona made up her mind that she would see tebaldo himself and force him to a confession of his crime. it did not occur to her to fear such a meeting, or even to hesitate, after she had once made up her mind. the difficulty lay in finding the man immediately. she did not believe that vittoria had deceived her in saying that she did not know where her brother might be, but she supposed that he would soon come to rome, and decided to wait for him. she sent frequently to enquire at the house where the corleone had lived. the servants knew nothing. she wrote a note to vittoria at mrs. slayback's, but vittoria had no news. corona wrote to the minister of justice. she knew him very well, and told him that in the matter of the accusation against her son she wished to communicate with don tebaldo pagliuca, but could not find out where he was. to her surprise the minister's answer gave her the information she wished. tebaldo, said the note, was dangerously ill in messina at a certain hotel. owing to the strong feeling which existed against him in sicily, it had been thought necessary to protect him, and the government was, therefore, kept constantly apprised of his condition through the office of the prefect of messina. he was very ill indeed, and was not expected to recover. the information was clear, but the thought that tebaldo might die without having cleared ippolito was anything but reassuring. corona's instinct was to start at once, but she remembered her promise to vittoria, and did not see how she could make such a journey without informing her husband and giving some explanation of her conduct. she went to his room as soon as she knew what she must do. 'giovanni,' she said, 'i wish you to go to sicily with me at once. i must go to messina.' giovanni looked at her sharply in surprise. 'are you ill, my dear?' he enquired. 'is it for a change? is anything the matter?' corona laughed, for she had never been ill in her life. the mere idea seemed ludicrous to her. 'can you imagine me ill?' she asked. 'no. i will tell you what i can. someone has told me something, making me promise not to tell anyone else--' 'your informant is a woman, dear,' observed giovanni, smiling. 'never mind who it was. but from what was told me i know that if i can go to messina i can get evidence which will clear ippolito completely. so i came to you.' 'are you positively sure?' asked sant' ilario. 'it is a long journey.' 'we shall travel together,' answered corona, as though that answered every objection. 'i should like it very much. do you wish to start to-day?' 'yes. the man is said to be dying at a hotel in messina.' it amused them both to make a mystery of going away together, though it was not the first time that they had done such a thing, and sant' ilario's presence lightened the anxiety which corona still felt as to the result of the journey. they reached messina at evening and drove to the wretched hotel where tebaldo lay dying, for there was no other in the city, in which they could have lodged at all. half an hour later corona entered the sick man's room. the sister who was nursing him rose in surprise as the princess entered, and laid her finger on her lips. tebaldo appeared to be asleep. 'is he better?' whispered corona. but the sister shook her head and pointed to his face. it was like a yellow shadow on the white pillow, in the soft light of the single candle, before which the nurse had set a book upright on the table, as a shade. corona stood still by the side of the bed and looked down at what remained of the man who had done such terrible deeds during the last month. the colourless lips were parted and displayed the sharp, white teeth, and the half-grown beard gave something wolfish to the face. the lids were not quite closed and showed the whites of the eyes. corona felt suddenly that he was going to die in his unconsciousness without speaking. even if he revived for a moment, he might not understand her. the candle flickered, and she thought the lids quivered. 'he is dying,' she said in a low voice. 'but he must speak to me before he dies.' 'are you his mother, madam?' asked the sister, in a whisper. 'no!' corona's great eyes blazed upon the nun's face. then she spoke gently again. 'i am the mother of the priest he falsely accused. before he dies he must tell the truth.' a faint smile moved the wasted lips, and the lids slowly opened. then he spoke, almost naturally. 'you have come to see me die. i understand.' 'no,' said corona, speaking clearly and distinctly. 'i have come to hear the truth about my son, from your own lips, as i know it from others--' the yellow face shivered and the eyes stared. there was a convulsive effort of the head to rise from the pillow. 'who told you?' the question gurgled in the throat. 'your sister told me--' 'i have no sister.' the head fell back again, and the twisting smile took possession of the lips. 'vittoria is your sister. you are tebaldo pagliuca.' corona bent down towards him anxiously, for she feared that he was wandering, and that the truth must escape her at last. 'oh no! vittoria is not my sister. i remember when she was brought to camaldoli by the outlaws when i was a boy.' corona bent lower still and stared into the open eyes. their expression was quite natural and quiet, though the voice was faint now. 'it is better that someone should know,' it said. 'i know, because i saw her brought. the brigands stole her from her nurse's arms. vittoria is the daughter of fornasco. they frightened my father and mother--they brought the child at night--in trying to get a ransom they were all taken, but none of them would tell--there is a paper of my father's, sealed--in rome, among my things. he always said that we might be accused, though they managed to make people believe it was my mother's child, for fear of the brigands--i cannot tell you all that. you will find it in the papers.' the eyelids closed again, but the lips still moved. corona bent down. 'water,' said the parched whisper. they gave him drink quickly, but he could hardly swallow it. he was going fast. 'call the doctor,' said corona to the nurse. 'he is dying. has he seen a priest? call my husband!' 'i had sent for a priest,' answered the nurse, leaving the room hastily. for many minutes tebaldo gasped painfully for breath. in his suffering corona raised the pillow with his head upon it, tenderly and carefully. 'you are dying,' she said softly. 'commend your soul--pray for forgiveness!' it was horrible to her belief to see him dying unconfessed in his many sins. 'quickly--lose no time!' she urged. 'think of god--think of one prayer! it may be too late in a moment--' 'too late?' he cried suddenly, with a revival of strength. 'too late? but i shall catch him on the hill! gallop, mare, gallop--there, there! so! we shall do it yet. i am lighter than old basili! one more stretch! there he is! gallop, mare, gallop, for i shall catch him on the hill!' one hand grasped the sheet like a bridle, the other patted it encouragingly. corona stared and listened breathlessly, half in horror, half in expectation. she did not hear the door open, as someone came in. the dying man raved on. 'what? down? he has killed his horse? it shied at the woman in black! he will try the church door--on, mare, gallop! we shall catch him there!' a hideous glare of rage and hatred was in the burning eyes. the twisted and discoloured lips set themselves like blue steel. the right hand struck out wildly. then the eyes fixed themselves upon the young priest who stood beside corona, and whom she had not seen till then. tebaldo sat up as though raised by a spring, suddenly. he grasped the priest's ready hands and looked up into his face, seeing only him, though the doctor and the nurse were close by. 'i confess to almighty god,' he began-and word for word, as he had confessed to ippolito alone in the little church, he went through the whole confession, quickly, clearly, in a loud voice, holding the priest's hands. who should say that it was not a true confession now? that at the last, the dream of terror did not change to the reality of remorse? the priest's voice spoke the words of forgiveness, and he bent down above corona's kneeling figure, that the dying man might hear. but before the last merciful word was spoken, the last of the corleone lay stone dead on his pillow. he was buried beside his two brothers in the little cemetery of santa vittoria, for the sister had promised him that, when he knew that he was dying. and outside the gate, when it was all over, a figure in black came and knelt down upon the rough, broken stones, and two white hands grasped the painted iron rails, and a low voice came from beneath the little black shawl. 'mother of god, three black crosses! mother of god, three black crosses!' and there were three black crosses, side by side. chapter xl it might have been a long and difficult matter to establish vittoria's identity, if maria carolina had been really insane, as it had been feared that she might be. she was beyond further suffering, perhaps, when the third of her sons was dead, but her mind was clear enough under the intense religious melancholy that had settled upon her in her grief. the fact of her having been willing and anxious to leave vittoria at such a time now explained itself. the girl was not her daughter, and in the intensity of her sorrow the bereaved mother felt that she was a stranger, if not a burden. yet she kept the secret, out of a sort of fear that even after eighteen years the revelation of it might bring about some unimaginably dreadful consequence to herself, and as though the duca di fornasco could still accuse her of having helped to steal his child, by receiving her from the brigands. the fact was that the outlaws had terrified the corleone at the time, threatening them with total destruction if they refused to conceal the infant. they were poor and lived in an isolated neighbourhood, more or less in fear of their lives, at a time when brigandage was the rule, and when the many bands that existed in the island were under the general direction of the terrible leone. they had yielded and had kept the secret with sicilian reticence. tebaldo alone had been old enough to partly understand the truth, but his father had told him the whole story before dying, and had left him a clearly-written account of it, in case of any future difficulty. but maria carolina was alive still, and sane, and she told the truth clearly and connectedly to a lawyer, for she was glad to sever her last tie with the world, and glad, perhaps, that the stolen child should go back to her own people after all. among her possessions were the clothes and tiny ornaments the infant had worn. vittoria's first sensation when she knew the truth was that of a captive led into the open air after years of confinement in a poisonous air. she had been the daughter of a race of ill fame, fatherless, and all but motherless. her three brothers had come to evil ends, one by one. she had been left alone in the world, the last representative of what so many called 'the worst blood in italy.' she had been divided from the man she loved by a twofold bloodshed and by all the horror of her last surviving brother's crimes. many and many a time she had stared into her mirror for an hour at night, not pleased by her own delicate loveliness, but asking herself, with heart-broken wonder, how it was possible that she could be the daughter of such a mother, the sister of such brothers, the grandchild of traitors and betrayers to generations of wickedness, back into the dim past. she had never been like them, nor felt like them, nor acted as they did, yet it had seemed mad, if not wicked, to doubt that she was one of them. and each morning, meeting them all again and living with them, there had come the shock of opposition between her inheritance of honour and their inborn disposition to treachery and crime. and now, it was not true. there was not one drop of their blood in her veins. there was not in her one taint of all that line of wickedness. it had all been a mistake and a dream and an illusion of fate, and she awoke in the morning and was free--free to face the world, to face corona saracinesca, to marry orsino, without so much as a day of mourning for those who had been called her brothers. the fresh young blood came blushing back to the delicate cheeks, and the radiance of life's spring played on the fair young head. 'how beautiful you are!' exclaimed miss lizzie, throwing her arms round her. and vittoria blushed again, and her eyes glistened with sheer, unbounded happiness. 'but i shall never know what to call you,' laughed miss lizzie. 'i am vittoria still,' answered the other. 'but i am vittoria spinelli--and i come of very respectable people!' she laughed happily. 'i am related to all kinds of respectable people! there is my father, first. he is on his way to see me--and i have a brother--a real brother, to be proud of. and i am the cousin of taquisara of guardia--but i am vittoria still!' rome went half mad over the story, for the romans had all been inclined to like vittoria for her own sake while distrusting those who had composed her family. the instinct of an old and conservative society is very rarely wrong in such matters. the happy ending of the tragedy of the corleone was a sincere relief to every one; and many who had known the duca di fornasco in the days when his infant daughter had been carried off and had seen how his whole life had been saddened during eighteen years by the cruel loss, rejoiced in the vast joy of his later years. for he had many friends, and was a man honoured and loved by those who knew him. 'i have always believed that i should find you, my dear child,' he said, when his eyes had cleared and he could see vittoria through the dazzling happiness of the first meeting. 'but i have often feared to find you, and i never dared to hope that i should find you what you are.' it seemed to her that the very tone of his voice was like her own, as his brown eyes were like hers. and later, he took orsino's hand and laid it in his daughter's and pressed the two together. 'you loved more wisely than you knew,' he said. 'but i know how bravely you loved, when you would not give her up, nor yield to anyone. your father will not refuse to take my daughter from my hands, i think.' 'he will be as proud to take her as i am,' said orsino. 'or as i am to give her to such a man as you.' so orsino was married at last, and this tale comes to its happy end. for he was happy, and his people took his wife to themselves as one of them, and loved her for her own sake as well as for his; and they loved her, too, for the many troubles she had so bravely borne, under the disgrace of a name not her own. but neither were her sorrows hers, any more. 'such things can only happen in italy,' said mrs. slayback, after the wedding. 'i am glad that nothing worse happened,' answered her niece, thoughtfully. 'to think that i might have married that man! to think that i cared for him! but i always felt that vittoria was not his sister. if i ever marry, i shall marry an american.' she laughed, though there was a little ache left in her heart. but she knew that it would not last long, for she had not been very desperately in earnest, after all. the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. 