thoughts for which he need blush now upon searching his conscience. He
had believed that she loved him, and therein he was hardly in error! He
had been assailed by an ardent passion, and he felt that he loved
Agatha, now that she had become his mother, with no less warmth,
gratitude, even jealousy, than an hour earlier. He could understand now
why he had never seen her without feeling that his heart went out to her
with irresistible force, without an all-powerful attraction, a secret
thrill of pride which had its echo in himself. He remembered that, when
he first saw her, it seemed to him that her face had always been
familiar to him; and when he asked her to explain that miracle, she
replied: "Look in the mirror, and you will see that my features placed
your own image before you; this resemblance, which Pier-Angelo
constantly observed with delight, and which filled my heart with pride,
made me tremble for you. Luckily nobody has noticed it, unless possibly
the cardinal, who ordered his bearers to stop so that he could look at
you, on the day that you arrived in the neighborhood, and, as if guided
by an invisible hand, paused at the gate of your ancestor's palace. My
uncle was formerly the most suspicious and most keen-eyed of persecutors
and despots. Certainly, if he had seen you before he was stricken with
paralysis, he would have recognized you and have had you cast into
prison, then exiled--perhaps assassinated!--without putting a single
question to you. Enfeebled as he was ten days ago, he fastened upon you
a glance which aroused the suspicions of Abbé Ninfo, and his memory
revived so far as to lead him to inquire your age. Who knows what fatal
light might have found its way into his brain, if Providence had not
inspired you to answer that you were twenty-one years old instead of
eighteen!"
"I am eighteen," said Michel, "and you, mother? You seem to me as young
as I am."
"I am thirty-two," replied Agatha; "didn't you know?"
"No! if I had been told that you were my sister, I should have believed
it when I saw you. Oh! what good fortune that you are still so young and
so lovely! You will live as long as I do, won't you? I shall not have
the misfortune to lose you! Lose you!--Ah! now that my life is bound to
yours, the thought of death frightens me, I would like to die neither
before nor after you. But is this the first time that we have ever been
together? I am searching the vague memories of my infancy in the hope of
finding some trace of you."
"My poor child," said the princess, "I never saw you before the day
when, as I looked at you through a window of the gallery where you were
sleeping, I could not restrain a cry of love and of agonizing joy, which
woke you. Three months ago I did not even know of your existence. I
believed that you died on the day you were born. Otherwise, do you
suppose that I would not have come to Rome, in some disguise or other,
to take you in my arms and rescue you from the dangers of a solitary
life? On the day that Pier-Angelo told me that he had rescued you from
the hands of a villainous midwife, who was about to put you in a
hospital, by order of my parents, that he had fled with you to a foreign
country, and had brought you up as his son, I insisted upon starting for
Rome. I would have done it too, but for the prudence of Fra Angelo, who
pointed out to me that your life would be in danger as long as the
cardinal lived, and that it was better to await his death than to expose
us all to suspicions and investigations. Ah! my son, how horribly I
suffered while I lived alone with the ghastly memories of my youth!
Branded from my girlhood, maltreated, secluded and persecuted by my
family, because I would not disclose the name of the man whom I had
consented to marry as soon as the first symptoms of pregnancy appeared;
parted from my child, and cursed for the tears which his alleged death
caused me to shed; threatened with the horror of seeing him killed
before my eyes, when I yielded to the hope that they had deceived
me--the best years of my life passed amid tears of despair and shudders
of horror.
"I gave birth to you in this room, Michel on this very spot. It was then
a sort of garret, long unused, which had been transformed into a prison,
in order to conceal the shame of my condition. Nobody knew what had
happened to me! I could hardly have described it, I had hardly
understood it, I was so young and my imagination was so pure. I foresaw
that the truth would bring fresh disasters upon the child I was carrying
within me, and on his father. My governess had died on the day after our
catastrophe, without saying a word, whether because she could not or did
not choose to. No one could extort my secret from me, even during the
pains of childbirth; and when my father and my uncle, standing by my
bed, as pitiless as inquisitors, threatened me with death if I did not
confess what they called my sin, I replied simply that I was innocent
before God, and that it was for Him alone to punish or save the culprit.
Whether or not they ever discovered that I was the wife of Castro-Reale,
I could never find out; his name was never mentioned to me, I was never
questioned concerning him. Nor do I know whether they procured his
assassination, or whether Abbé Ninfo assisted them to surprise him; but
unfortunately I do not think them incapable of it. I know only this,
that at the time of his death, when I had barely recovered from my
confinement, they tried to compel me to marry. Hitherto they had held up
before me as an everlasting punishment, the impossibility of finding a
husband. They took me from my prison, where I had been secluded so
carefully that everyone supposed that I was in the convent at Palermo,
and nothing had transpired out-of-doors. I was rich, fair, and of noble
birth. Twenty suitors came forward. I repelled with horror the idea of
deceiving an honest man, or of confessing my misfortune to a man who was
mean-spirited enough to accept me because of my wealth. My resistance
irritated my father to frenzy. He pretended to take me back to Palermo.
But he brought me back to this room at night, and kept me imprisoned
here for another whole year.
"It was a ghastly prison, as stifling as the leads of Venice; for the
sun beat down upon a thin covering of metal, this part of the palace
having never been finished and being roofed over temporarily. I endured
thirst, mosquitoes, neglect, solitude, and lack of the fresh air and
exercise which are so essential to the young. But I did not die, I
contracted no disease, the vital principle was so strong within me. My
father, unwilling to entrust the duty of guarding me to any other
person, fearing that the compassion of his servants would lessen my
sufferings, brought me my food himself; and when his political schemes
kept him away from home for days at a time, I underwent the tortures of
hunger. But I had acquired a stoical firmness of will, and I did not
stoop to complain. I also acquired a certain amount of courage and of
faith during that trial, and I do not rebuke God for having inflicted it
on me. Consciousness of duty and regard for justice are great blessings
for which one cannot pay too high a price!"
Agatha, as she spoke, was half reclining, and her voice, feeble at
first, gradually became animated. She raised herself on her elbow, and,
shaking her long black hair, and calling her son's attention with a
gesture to the luxurious apartment in which they were, she continued:
"Michel, I pray that material enjoyments and the pride of birth and
fortune may never dazzle you! I have paid dearly for those advantages;
and, in the horrible solitude of this chamber, so bright and cheerful
for us two to-day, I have passed many long sleepless hours, lying on a
wretched pallet, consumed by fever, and asking God why He had not caused
me to be born in a goatherd's cave or on a pirate's ship. I sighed for
liberty, and the lowest of beggars seemed to me more blessed than I. If
I had been poor and obscure, I should have received from my parents
consolation and sympathy in my misfortune; whereas the illustrious
Palmarosas heaped abuse upon their child and accused her of committing a
crime because she would not be compelled to lie, and because she refused
to bolster up the honor of her family by an imposture. I had no books in
my prison; I had received only the most superficial education, and I
utterly failed to understand the persecution of which I was the object.
But, during that tedious and cruel inaction, I reflected, and I
discovered for myself the emptiness of human pride. My moral being was
transformed, so to speak, and everything that gratifies and enhances the
vanity of men appeared to me, at my own expense, in its true light.
"But why should I say at my expense rather than to my advantage? What
are two years of torture compared with the blessing of truth? When I
returned to liberty and life, when I found that I readily recovered the
vigor of youth, and that I had the necessary time and means to benefit
by the ideas that had come to me, a great calmness overspread my heart,
and I voluntarily adopted the habit, theretofore forced upon me, of
self-denial and resolution.
"I renounced forever all idea of love and marriage. The thought of that
bliss was marred and sullied in my imagination; and as for the cravings
of the heart, there was no longer anything individual in mine. They had
extended beyond the circle of selfish passions; I had conceived in my
suffering one genuine passion, the object of which was not the enjoyment
and triumph of one human being standing apart from the general misery by
virtue of her own prosperity. That passion, which consumed me like a
fever, and I may say with feverish intensity, was the longing to fight
for the weak against their oppressors, and to be as lavish of
benefactions and consolation as my family had been of persecution and
dread. I had been brought up to respect and fear the court, to detest
and distrust my unhappy countrymen. Had it not been for my own
catastrophe I should probably have followed those precepts and examples
of hideous cruelty. My heedless nature, wherein I resembled the women of
my country, might never have conceived anything better than the
principles of my family, which was not one of those that were subjected
to persecution, and in which exile and suffering have inspired horror of
the foreign yoke and love of country. My kinsmen, being ardently devoted
to the ruling powers, had always been overwhelmed with favors, and the
renewed prosperity which we shall soon owe to the cardinal's inheritance
makes us a shameful exception among the many illustrious families whom I
have seen ground into the dust by exorbitant taxes and by outlawry.
"I was no sooner mistress of my actions and my property than I devoted
my life to the relief of the unfortunate. As a woman I was debarred from
taking an interest in politics, the social sciences or philosophy. And
indeed what man can possibly do it under the yoke that is crushing us?
But what I could do was to assist the victims of tyranny, to whatever
class they might belong. I soon found that their number was so great
that my income would not suffice, even if I deprived myself of the
necessaries of life. Thereupon my mind was soon made up. I had
determined not to marry. I was ignorant of your existence, and I looked
upon myself as alone in the world. I caused an exact statement of my
fortune to be prepared--a precaution which the wealthy patricians of our
province very rarely take; their indifference keeps them from visiting
their estates when they are in the interior of the island, and many have
never set foot upon them. I investigated my property and made myself
familiar with it; first of all, I sold a part in small lots, intending
to supply the poor people of these regions with a little land at a very
low price, in a majority of cases for nothing. That was unsuccessful. A
people that has fallen into the lowest stage of poverty and slavery
cannot be saved with a stroke of the pen. I tried other methods which I
will describe to you in detail at another time. They failed. Everything
is bound to fail when the laws of a country have decreed its ruin. I had
no sooner made a family happy, than the taxes, increasing with its
prosperity, made a poverty-stricken family of it. How can order and
stability be secured when the state seizes sixty per cent of the income
of the humble workingman as well as of the idle rich man?
"Thus I learned, with profound sorrow, that in conquered and downtrodden
countries there is no resource but almsgiving, and I devoted my life to
that. It required much more activity and perseverance than gifts
outright and sacrifices of capital. This life of small benefactions and
constant sacrifices is a task without respite, without limits and
without recompense; for almsgiving affords only a momentary remedy; it
creates the necessity of being repeated and extended ad infinitum, and
one never sees the result of the toil one imposes upon oneself. Oh! how
cruel it is to live and love when one dresses every hour a wound that
cannot be healed, when one unceasingly casts one's heart and strength
into a pit which can no more be filled than the crater of Ætna!
"I accepted this task, and I devote all my time to it; I realize its
inefficiency, and I am not discouraged. I no longer cry out against
sloth, debauchery and all the vices that poverty engenders; or, if I do,
my anger is no longer against those who acquire these vices but against
those who impose them and perpetuate them. I do not quite understand
what is meant by discernment in almsgiving. That is all very well for
free countries, where a reprimand may serve some purpose, and where the
precepts of practical morality are for the use of all men. Among us,
alas! misery is so widespread that good and evil are to many persons of
mature years words devoid of sense; and to preach orderliness, honesty
and prudence, amid suffering and hunger, is almost ferocious pedantry.
"My income has not always been sufficient to meet so many calls, Michel,
and you will find your mother's fortune secretly undermined by
excavations of such depth that it may perhaps crumble on my grave. Were
it not for the cardinal's inheritance, I should regret to-day that I had
not saved for you sufficient means to serve your country as you will;
but to-morrow you will be richer than I have ever been, and you will
administer your fortune according to your principles and the dictates of
your heart. I shall impose no task upon you. To-morrow you will enter
into possession of this great power, and I shall not be at all disturbed
as to the use you may make of it. I am sure of you. You have been
brought up in a good school, my son--the school of poverty and toil! I
know how you repair trivial faults; I know of what sacrifices your heart
is capable when it is at odds with a consciousness of duty. Prepare,
therefore, to bear the burden of your misfortune--to be a prince in fact
as well as in name. Within three days you have embarked upon what seem
to be strange adventures; you have received more than one valuable
lesson. Fra Angelo, the Marquis della Serra, Magnani--even Mila, the
sweet child--have spoken to you in a language which has made a profound
impression on you, I know. I saw it in your conduct, in your
determination to remain an artisan; and from that moment I promised
myself that I would disclose to you the secret of your destiny, even
though the cardinal should live on and compel us to take extraordinary
precautions."
"O mother, how noble you are! and how little people know you when they
think that you are a mere devotee, apathetic or eccentric? Your life is
the life of a saint or martyr: nothing for yourself, everything for
others!"
"Do not give me so much credit, my child," replied Agatha. "Innocent as
I was, I had no claim to share in the general happiness. I was borne
down by a fatality which all my efforts had succeeded only in making
more burdensome. By denying myself love, I was simply fulfilling the
plainest duty that honor imposes upon a woman. So, too, in becoming a
sister of charity I obeyed the imperative outcry of my conscience. I had
been unfortunate; I knew unhappiness by personal experience; I was no
longer one of those who can refuse to credit the sufferings of others
because they have never suffered themselves. I may, perhaps, have done
good without judgment; at all events, I have done it without remission
and with the utmost zeal. But, in my eyes, to do good does not amount to
so much as is generally supposed. To do good in this way is simply not
to do evil; not to be selfish means simply that one is not blind nor
detestable. I have such unbounded pity for those who are vain of their
good works, that I have hidden mine almost as sedulously as I kept the
secret of my marriage and your birth. My character has never been
understood. I did not wish that it should be. So that I have no right to
complain of having been misjudged."
"Ah! but I know you," said Michel, "and my heart will repay you a
hundredfold for all the happiness of which you have been deprived."
"I know it," she replied. "Your tears prove it, and I feel it; for,
since you have been with me, I should have forgotten that I had ever
been unhappy, if I had not had my story to tell you."
"Thank you, mother, but do not say that you leave me at liberty to do as
I please. I am only a child, and I feel so insignificant beside you that
I never desire to see anything except through your eyes, or to act
except by your orders. I will help you to carry the burden of wealth and
of almsgiving, but I will be your man of business--nothing more. I, a
rich man and a prince! I, endowed with any sort of authority when you
are here! when I am your son!"
"My child, you must be a man. I have not had the happiness of bringing
you up; I could have done it no better than worthy Pier-Angelo. It is my
business now to love you--nothing more--and that is enough. To justify
my love, you will not need to have your ancestors' portraits say to you:
'_I am not pleased with you_.'--You will so conduct yourself that your
mother will always say to you: '_I am pleased with you_.' But listen,
Michel! the bells are tolling; all the bells in the city are tolling the
knell of a dying man, and it must be some great personage. It is your
kinsman--your enemy--Cardinal Palmarosa, who is about to be called to
account by God for his crimes. It is daylight, and we must part. Go and
pray to God to be merciful to him. I go to receive his last breath!"
XLVI
GLADNESS OF HEART
While the princess rang for her maid and ordered her horses, that she
might go and pay her last respects to the moribund cardinal, Michel went
down into the park from the flower garden by the staircase cut in the
lava; but, when he was only halfway down, he spied Master Barbagallo,
who was already on his feet and beginning his conscientious day's work,
very far from believing, the excellent man, that that splendid palace
and those beautiful gardens were no longer aught save the deceptive
symbol and the vain simulacrum of a handsome fortune. In his eyes to
expend one's income in almsgiving was a lordly and estimable custom. He
seconded the princess zealously in her charitable work. But to encroach
upon one's capital was a heinous sin, inconsistent with the hereditary
dignity of a great name; and, if Agatha had enlightened him or consulted
him in that respect, all his genealogical learning would have been none
too much to prove to her that no Palmarosa had ever committed that crime
of lèse-nobility, unless at the bidding of his king. What! deprive
oneself of the real source of one's power for the benefit of miserable
wretches! Fie! unless it were a question of founding a hospital or a
monastery, monuments which endure, and which transmit the renown and
virtue of the founder to posterity, and impart new glory to a name
instead of dimming its lustre.
Michel, when he saw the majordomo innocently blocking his path--for
Barbagallo was gazing fixedly at an East India shrub which he had
planted with his own hands at the foot of the staircase--determined to
lower his head and pass rapidly on without any explanation. A few hours
later, he would have no motive for concealment, but, for propriety's
sake, it would be much better to await the princess's public
declaration.
But the majordomo seemed to be planted beside his shrub. He was
surprised that the climate of Catania, which, according to him, was the
most salubrious climate in the world, did not agree with that rare plant
better than the climate of the tropics; which fact proves that he
understood the cultivation of genealogical trees better than that of
real trees. He was stooping--almost lying oh the ground--to see if some
destructive worm had not attacked the roots of the languishing plant.
Michel, having reached the lowest stair, decided to leap over Master
Barbagallo, who uttered a loud yell, thinking perhaps that it was the
beginning of a volcanic eruption, and that a stone vomited forth by some
near-by crater had fallen beside him.
His exclamation had such a comical, rancous sound that Michel laughed
heartily.
"_Cristo_!" cried the majordomo, as he recognized the young artist, whom
the princess had ordered him to treat with great consideration, but whom
he was very far from believing to be Agatha's son or lover.
But, when his first fright had passed, he tried to collect his thoughts,
while Michel walked swiftly across the park. He awoke to the fact that
Pier-Angelo's son had come from the flower garden before sunrise; from
the princess's flower garden! that private, fortified sanctuary, to
which none but a favored lover could gain an entrance at night!
"Princess Agatha have a lover! and such a lover! when the Marquis della
Serra, who is hardly worthy to aspire to the honor of winning her favor,
never goes in or out except by the principal door of the palace!"
That was an impossible supposition. So Master Barbagallo, having no
means of denying so palpable a fact, and not presuming to comment upon
it, limited himself to a frequent repetition of the word _Cristo_! And,
after standing like a statue for some moments, he concluded to attend to
his duties as usual, and to forbid himself to think upon any subject
whatsoever until further orders.
Michel was hardly less surprised by his own situation than the majordomo
by what he had seen. Of all the dreams he had dreamed in the last three
days, the most unexpected, the most prodigious, beyond any question, was
this one that had crowned and elucidated the others. He walked straight
ahead, and the instinct born of habit guided him toward his father's
house in the suburb, although he had no idea where he was going. Every
object upon which his eyes rested seemed new and strange to him. The
magnificence of the palaces and the squalor of the houses of the common
people presented a contrast which hitherto had saddened him only as a
condition by which he himself had to suffer, and which he had accepted
as an inevitable law of society. Now that he felt that he was a free and
powerful member of that society, compassion and kindliness poured into
his heart, broader and less selfish than before. He felt that he was a
better man since he had been numbered among the fortunate few, and the
consciousness of the duty resting upon him vibrated in his breast under
the impulsion of his mother's generous breath. He felt that he had
increased in size among his fellowmen since he had been charged with
ameliorating their lot instead of being oppressed by them. In a word, he
felt himself every inch a prince, and was no longer surprised that he
had always been ambitious. But his ambition had assumed a nobler shape
in his mind on the day that he had put it into words in answer to
Magnani's criticisms; and now that it was gratified, far from debasing
him, it exalted him and raised him above himself. There are men--and,
unfortunately, they are in the majority--whom prosperity degrades and
perverts; but a truly noble mind sees in the power of wealth only a
means of doing good, and eighteen years is an age at which the ideals
are pure and the mind open to grand and worthy aspirations.
As he entered the suburb, he saw a poor woman begging, with one child in
her arms and three others clinging to her ragged skirts. Tears came to
his eyes, and he put both hands in the pockets of his jacket, for on the
day before he had assumed the livery of the common people, resolved to
continue to wear it a long time--always if he must. But he found that
his pockets were empty, and he remembered that as yet he possessed
nothing.
"Forgive me, my poor woman," he said, "to-morrow I will give you
something. Be here to-morrow, I will come again."
The poor creature thought that he was making sport of her, and said to
him in a solemn tone, drawing herself up in her rags with the majesty of
the southern peoples: "You must not make sport of the poor, my boy; it
brings bad luck."
"Yes, yes!" said Michel, as he walked away; "I believe it, I am sure of
it! that shall never happen to me."