"For you are nearly the same age, and he is a nice steady boy like
yourself."
She sent immediately for Don Ottavio, and I was presented to a tall,
pale young man, whose downcast, melancholy eyes seemed already conscious
of his hypocrisy.
Without giving him time to speak, the Marquise offered me in his name
the most ready services. He assented by bowing low at all his mother's
suggestions, and it was arranged that he should take me to see the
sights of the town on the following day and bring me back to dinner _en
famille_ at the Aldobrandi palace.
I had hardly gone twenty steps down the road when an imperious voice
exclaimed behind me--
"Where are you going alone at this hour, Don Ottavio?"
I turned round and saw a fat priest, who looked me up and down from
head to foot with his eyes wide open.
"I am not Don Ottavio," I said.
The priest bowed down to the ground, profuse in apologies, and a moment
after I saw him go into the Aldobrandi palace. I continued on my way,
not much flattered at being taken for a budding Monsignor.
In spite of the Marquise's warnings, perhaps even because of them, my
next most pressing concern was to find out the lodging of a painter I
knew, and I spent an hour with him at his studio talking over the
legitimate or dubious ways of enjoying oneself that Rome could provide.
I led him to the subject of the Aldobrandi.
The Marquise, he said, after being excessively frivolous became highly
devotional when she recognised that she was too old for further
conquests. Her eldest son was a fool, who spent his time hunting and
receiving the rents of the farms on his vast estates. They were going
the right way to make an idiot of the second son, Don Ottavio; he was to
be a cardinal some day. Until then he was given up to the Jesuits. He
never went out alone; he was forbidden to look at a woman, or to take a
single step without a priest at his heels, who had educated him for
God's service, and who, after having been the Marquise's last _amico_,
now ruled her house with almost despotic authority.
The next day Don Ottavio, followed by the Abbé Negroni, he who had taken
me for his pupil the previous evening, came to take me out in a carriage
and to offer his services as cicerone.
The first public building we stopped at was a church. Following his
priest's example, Don Ottavio knelt down, beat his breast, and made
endless signs of the cross. After he had got up he showed me the
frescoes and statues, and talked like a man of sense and taste. This was
an agreeable surprise to me; we began to talk, and his conversation
pleased me. For some time we conversed in Italian, but suddenly he said
to me in French--
"My director does not understand a word of your language; let us talk
French, and we shall feel freer."
It might be said that change of idiom transformed the young man. There
was nothing that smacked of the priest in his talk. I could have
imagined him one of our own liberal-minded men. I noticed that he said
everything in an even, monotonous tone of voice, which often contrasted
strangely with the vivacity of his sentiments. It was, apparently, a
ruse to put Negroni off the scent, who from time to time asked us to
explain what we were talking about. I need hardly say that our
translation was extremely free.
A young man in violet stockings passed us.
"That is one of our modern patricians," said Don Ottavio. "Wretched
livery! and it will be mine in a few months! What happiness," he added
after a moment's silence--"what happiness to live in a country like
yours! If I were French I might perhaps one day have become a deputy."
This high ambition made me feel strongly inclined to laugh, and as the
Abbé noticed it, I had to explain that we were talking of the error of
an archaeologist who mistook a statue by Bernini for an antique.
We dined at the Aldobrandi palace. Directly after the coffee the
Marquise asked me to excuse her son, who was obliged to retire to his
room to fulfil certain pious duties. I remained alone with her, and the
Abbé Negroni leant back in his chair and slept the sleep of the just.
In the meantime the Marquise interrogated me minutely about my father,
about Paris, as to my past life, and on my future plans. She seemed to
me a good and amiable woman, but rather too inquisitive and over-much
concerned about my salvation. But she spoke Italian perfectly, and I
took a lesson in pronunciation from her which I promised myself I would
repeat.
I often came to see her. Nearly every morning I visited the antiquities
with her son and the ever-present Negroni, and in the evenings I dined
with them at the Aldobrandi palace. The Marquise entertained very
rarely, and then nearly always ecclesiastics.
Once, however, she introduced me to a German lady, who was a recent
convert and her intimate friend. She was a certain Madam de
Strahlenheim, a very handsome woman who had lived a long while in Rome.
Whilst these ladies talked together about a celebrated preacher, I
studied, by the lamp-light, the portrait of Lucrezia, until I felt it my
duty to put in a word.
"What eyes!" I exclaimed; "her eyelids almost seem to move!"
At this somewhat pretentious figure of speech which I ventured on to
show myself to Madam Strahlenheim in the light of a connoisseur, she
trembled with fear and hid her face in her handkerchief.
"What is the matter, my dear?" said the Marquise.
"Oh! nothing but what Monsieur said just now!..."
We pressed her with questions, and when she said that my phrase had
recalled a horrible story we compelled her to relate it.