THE CAVALIER
Nothing can be more striking, in common Italian life, than the contrast
between out-doors and in-doors. Without, all is fragrant and radiant;
within, mouldy, dark, and damp. Except in the well-kept palaces of
the great, houses in Italy are more like dens than habitations, and a
sight of them is a sufficient reason to the mind of any inquirer, why
their vivacious and handsome inhabitants spend their life principally
in the open air. Nothing could be more perfectly paradisiacal than
this evening at Sorrento. The sun had sunk, but left the air full
of diffused radiance, which trembled and vibrated over the thousand
many-colored waves of the sea. The moon was riding in a broad zone of
purple, low in the horizon, her silver forehead somewhat flushed in the
general rosiness that seemed to penetrate and suffuse every object.
The fishermen, who were drawing in their nets, gayly singing, seemed
to be floating on a violet-and-gold-colored flooring that broke into
a thousand gems at every dash of the oar or motion of the boat. The
old stone statue of Saint Antonio looked down in the rosy air, itself
tinged and brightened by the magical colors which floated round it.
And the girls and men of Sorrento gathered in gossiping knots on the
old Roman bridge that spanned the gorge, looked idly down into its
dusky shadows, talking the while, and playing the time-honored game of
flirtation which has gone on in all climes and languages since man and
woman began.
Conspicuous among them all was Giulietta, her blue-black hair recently
braided and polished to a glossy radiance, and all her costume arranged
to show her comely proportions to the best advantage,--her great pearl
ear-rings shaking as she tossed her head, and showing the flash of
the emerald in the middle of them. An Italian peasant-woman may trust
Providence for her gown, but ear-rings she attends to herself,--for
what is life without them? The great pearl ear-rings of the Sorrento
women are accumulated, pearl by pearl, as the price of years of labor.
Giulietta, however, had come into the world, so to speak, with a gold
spoon in her mouth,--since her grandmother, a thriving, stirring,
energetic body, had got together a pair of ear-rings of unmatched size,
which had descended as heirlooms to her, leaving her nothing to do but
display them, which she did with the freest good-will. At present she
was busily occupied in coquetting with a tall and jauntily-dressed
fellow, wearing a plumed hat and a red sash, who seemed to be
mesmerized by the power of her charms, his large dark eyes following
every movement, as she now talked with him gayly and freely, and now
pretended errands to this and that and the other person on the bridge,
stationing herself here and there, that she might have the pleasure of
seeing herself followed.
"Giulietta," at last said the young man, earnestly, when he found her
accidentally standing alone by the parapet, "I must be going to-morrow."
"Well, what is that to me?" said Giulietta, looking wickedly from under
her eyelashes.
"Cruel girl! you know"--
"Nonsense, Pietro! I don't know anything about you;" but as Giulietta
said this, her great, soft, dark eyes looked out furtively, and said
just the contrary.
"You will go with me?"
"Did I ever hear anything like it? One can't be civil to a fellow
but he asks her to go to the world's end. Pray, how far is it to your
dreadful old den?"
"Only two days' journey, Giulietta."
"Two days!"
"Yes, my life; and you shall ride."
"Thank you, sir,--I wasn't thinking of walking. But seriously, Pietro,
I am afraid it's no place for an honest girl to be in."
"There are lots of honest women there,--all our men have wives; and our
captain has put his eye on one, too, or I'm mistaken."
"What! little Agnes?" said Giulietta. "He will be bright that gets her.
That old dragon of a grandmother is as tight to her as her skin."
"Our captain is used to helping himself," said Pietro. "We might carry
them both off some night, and no one the wiser; but he seems to want to
win the girl to come to him of her own accord. At any rate, we are to
be sent back to the mountains while he lingers a day or two more round
here."
"I declare, Pietro, I think you all little better than Turks or
heathens, to talk in that way about carrying off women; and what if one
should be sick and die among you? What is to become of one's soul, I
wonder?"
"Pshaw! don't we have priests? Why, Giulietta, we are all very pious,
and never think of going out without saying our prayers. The Madonna is
a kind Mother, and will wink very hard on the sins of such good sons as
we are. There isn't a place in all Italy where she is kept better in
candles, and in rings and bracelets, and everything a woman could want.
We never come home without bringing her something; and then we have
lots left to dress all our women like princesses; and they have nothing
to do from morning till night but play the lady. Come now?"
At the moment this conversation was going on in the balmy, seductive
evening air at the bridge, another was transpiring in the Albergo della
Torre, one of those dark, musty dens of which we have been speaking.
In a damp, dirty chamber, whose brick floor seemed to have been
unsuspicious of even the existence of brooms for centuries, was sitting
the cavalier whom we have so often named in connection with Agnes. His
easy, high-bred air, his graceful, flexible form and handsome face
formed a singular contrast to the dark and mouldy apartment, at whose
single unglazed window he was sitting. The sight of this splendid man
gave an impression of strangeness, in the general bareness, much as if
some marvelous jewel had been unaccountably found lying on that dusty
brick floor.
He sat deep in thought, with his elbow resting on a rickety table, his
large, piercing dark eyes seeming intently to study the pavement.
The door opened, and a gray-headed old man entered, who approached him
respectfully.
"Well, Paolo?" said the cavalier, suddenly starting.
"My Lord, the men are all going back to-night."
"Let them go, then," said the cavalier, with an impatient movement. "I
can follow in a day or two."
"Ah, my Lord, if I might make so bold, why should you expose your
person by staying longer? You may be recognized and"--
"No danger," said the other, hastily.
"My Lord, you must forgive me, but I promised my dear lady, your
mother, on her death-bed"--
"To be a constant plague to me," said the cavalier, with a vexed smile
and an impatient movement; "but speak on, Paolo,--for when you once get
anything on your mind, one may as well hear it first as last."
"Well, then, my Lord, this girl,--I have made inquiries, and every one
reports her most modest and pious,--the only grandchild of a poor old
woman. Is it worthy of a great lord of an ancient house to bring her to
shame?"
"Who thinks of bringing her to shame? 'Lord of an ancient house!'"
added the cavalier, laughing bitterly,--"a landless beggar, cast out of
everything,--titles, estates, all! Am I, then, fallen so low that my
wooing would disgrace a peasant-girl?"
"My Lord, you cannot mean to woo a peasant-girl in any other way than
one that would disgrace her,--one of the House of Sarelli, that goes
back to the days of the old Roman Empire!"
"And what of the 'House of Sarelli that goes back to the days of the
old Roman Empire'? It is lying like weeds' roots uppermost in the
burning sun. What is left to me but the mountains and my sword? No, I
tell you, Paolo, Agostino Sarelli, cavalier of fortune, is not thinking
of bringing disgrace on a pious and modest maiden, unless it would
disgrace her to be his wife."
"Now may the saints above help us! Why, my Lord, our house in days past
has been allied to royal blood. I could tell you how Joachim VI."--
"Come, come, my good Paolo, spare me one of your chapters of genealogy.
The fact is, my old boy, the world is all topsy-turvy, and the bottom
is the top, and it isn't much matter what comes next. Here are shoals
of noble families uprooted and lying round like those aloes that the
gardener used to throw over the wall in springtime; and there is that
great boar of a Cæsar Borgia turned in to batten and riot over our
pleasant places."
"Oh, my Lord," said the old serving-man, with a distressful movement,
"we have fallen on evil times, to be sure, and they say his Holiness
has excommunicated us. Anselmo heard that in Naples yesterday."
"Excommunicated!" said the young man,--every feature of his fine face,
and every nerve of his graceful form seeming to quiver with the effort
to express supreme contempt. "Excommunicated! I should hope so! One
would hope through Our Lady's grace to act so that Alexander, and his
adulterous, incestuous, filthy, false-swearing, perjured, murderous
crew, would excommunicate us! In these times, one's only hope of
paradise lies in being excommunicated."
"Oh, my dear master," said the old man, falling on his knees, "what is
to become of us? That I should live to hear you talk like an infidel
and unbeliever!"
"Why, hear you, poor old fool! Did you never hear in Dante of the Popes
that are burning in hell? Wasn't Dante a Christian, I beg to know?"
"Oh, my Lord, my Lord! a religion got out of poetry, books, and
romances won't do to die by. We have no business with the affairs of
the Head of the Church,--it's the Lord's appointment. We have only to
shut our eyes and obey. It may all do well enough to talk so when you
are young and fresh; but when sickness and death come, then we _must_
have religion,--and if we have gone out of the only true Roman Catholic
Apostolic Church, what becomes of our souls? Ah, I misdoubted about
your taking so much to poetry, though my poor mistress was so proud of
it; but these poets are all heretics, my Lord,--that's my firm belief.
But, my Lord, if you do go to hell, I'm going there with you; I'm sure
I never could show my face among the saints, and you not there."
"Well, come, then, my poor Paolo," said the cavalier, stretching out
his hand to his serving-man, "don't take it to heart so. Many a better
man than I has been excommunicated and cursed from toe to crown, and
been never a whit the worse for it. There's Jerome Savonarola there in
Florence--a most holy man, they say, who has had revelations straight
from heaven--has been excommunicated; but he preaches and gives the
sacraments all the same, and nobody minds it."
"Well, it's all a maze to me," said the old serving-man, shaking his
white head. "I can't see into it. I don't dare to open my eyes for fear
I should get to be a heretic; it seems to me that everything is getting
mixed up together. But one must hold on to one's religion; because,
after we have lost everything in this world, it would be too bad to
burn in hell forever at the end of that."
"Why, Paolo, I am a good Christian. I believe, with all my heart, in
the Christian religion, like the fellow in Boccaccio,--because I think
it must be from God, or else the Popes and Cardinals would have had it
out of the world long ago. Nothing but the Lord Himself could have kept
it against them."
"There you are, my dear master, with your romances. Well, well, well! I
don't know how it'll end. I say my prayers, and try not to inquire into
what's too high for me. But now, dear master, will you stay lingering
after this girl till some of our enemies hear where you are and pounce
down upon us? Besides, the troop are never so well affected when you
are away; there are quarrels and divisions."
"Well, well," said the cavalier, with an impatient movement,--"one day
longer. I must get a chance to speak with her once more. I must see
her."