it had taken them to go to Sperlinga. The Piccinino could not travel
long without falling forward on his mule's neck, prostrated by fever.
Then they would halt in some cave or deserted ruin, and the monk was
obliged to give him wine to drink to keep up his strength, although he
realized that it increased the fever.
They had to follow steep and difficult roads, or rather to avoid every
sort of road, in order not to expose themselves to the risk of
inopportune encounters. Fra Angelo expected to find, halfway to Catania,
a poor family upon whom he could rely as upon himself, to shelter his
patient and nurse him; but he found only a deserted house, already half
in ruins. Poverty had driven the poor creatures from their home. They
could not pay the tax assessed on the house. Perhaps they were in
prison.
It was a serious disappointment to the monk and his companion. They had
purposely kept at a distance from the region overrun by the brigands,
because the absence of danger made the police less active in the
southern part of the island. But when they found the only place of
refuge upon which they could rely in that part of the mountains entirely
deserted, they were really alarmed. In vain did the Piccinino urge the
monk and Michel to leave him to his fate, declaring that, as soon as he
was alone, necessity would endow him with superhuman strength. They
refused, as the reader will imagine, and, having discussed all possible
expedients, they decided upon the safest and most certain of all,
although it seemed the boldest; it was to take Carmelo to the Palmarosa
palace and keep him in hiding there until he was in a condition to fly.
The princess would simply have to treat certain persons with the
faintest suggestion of deference to avert any possible suspicion of her
conduct; and in such an emergency, when Michel might be suspected of
having assisted in the rescue of the Piccinino, she would not hesitate
to deceive the court party as to her political sentiments.
This idea of the monk's would have been most repellent to Michel a few
days earlier; but each succeeding event made him more and more of a
Sicilian, by impressing upon him more strongly the necessity of cunning.
So he acquiesced, and they had nothing further to do except to smuggle
the wounded man into the palace unseen. That was the only important
point, for the seclusion in which Agatha lived, the small number and
blind devotion of her servants, the fidelity and prudence of her maid
Nunziata, who alone was allowed to enter certain rooms in the Casino, to
say nothing of a thousand other details of the princess's mysterious
existence, made that place of refuge as secure as could be desired.
Moreover, there was the Serra palace a few steps away, to which the
patient could be transported in case the Villa Palmarosa should become
untenable. It was decided that Michel should go ahead and steal into the
villa at nightfall; that he should warn his mother of the wounded man's
arrival, and assist her to make the necessary arrangements to receive
him and to admit him secretly a few hours later.
Agatha was in a state of anxiety impossible to describe when Nunziata
told her that some one was waiting for her in her oratory. She hastened
thither, and, catching sight of a monk's frock, nearly fainted, for she
thought that one of the brethren of Bel Passo had come to bring some
fatal news. But well disguised as Michel was, the mother's eye was not
deceived for long, and she embraced him passionately, bursting into
tears.
Michel said nothing of the dangers to which he had been exposed; she
would divine them soon enough when the news of the Piccinino's rescue
should spread through the country. He simply told her that he had been
to a wild, out-of-the-way spot in the mountains, where his brother lay
helpless and dying; that he had brought him to her to place him in her
care; and that his new hiding-place must be made ready for him.
In the middle of the night the wounded man arrived unhindered; but he
did not climb the stairs in the lava with the same haughty bearing as on
the last occasion. His strength was failing more and more. Fra Angelo
was obliged to carry him from the first stair to the last. He hardly
recognized Agatha, and for several days he hovered between life and
death.
Mila's anxiety was temporarily allayed when Michel told her that Magnani
had gone to Palermo to do him a service. But many days passed, and, as
Magnani did not return, his family was surprised and alarmed. Michel
pretended that he had had news. He had gone to Rome, still in his
service, and, later, he said that the important and secret business
which the Palmarosa family had entrusted to the young artisan required
him to go to Milan, Venice, Vienna--where you please. They kept him
travelling for several years, and, to allay the anxiety and grief of his
parents, read to them--for they did not know how to read--passages from
pretended letters, and gave them large sums of money which he was
supposed to send them.
The Magnani family grew rich, and marvelled at poor Antonio's good
fortune. They lived in sadness and hope. His old mother died, sorely
afflicted to have had no opportunity to embrace him, but bidding Michel
send him her blessing.
As for Mila, it would have been more difficult to deceive her, had not
the princess, in order to spare her a much greater sorrow, suggested a
catastrophe to which she could more readily become reconciled. She
hinted more and more definitely, and, finally, told her outright that
Magnani, torn between his former passion and his new love for her, had
feared that he could not make her happy, and so had gone away, resolved
not to return until he was completely cured of the past.
Mila looked upon this as a noble and honorable proceeding; but she was
piqued to find that she had not been able, unaided, to efface the memory
of so persistent a passion. She strove to cure herself, for she was told
that her lover's cure was not certain, and her unbounded pride came to
her aid. Magnani's prolonged absence made her stronger and braver day by
day. When he was supposed to have gone to Rome, she was told that he
could not triumph over the old affection, and that he renounced the new.
Mila did not weep; she prayed, without a shade of bitterness, for the
happiness of an ingrate, and gradually recovered her former serenity.
Michel suffered terribly, of course, when, as occasionally happened, he
heard her slighting references to the absent one, who deserved to be
enshrined forever in her memory. But he sacrificed everything to the
peace of mind of his adopted sister. He went secretly, with Fra Angelo,
to see his friend's grave. The peasant who had buried him conducted them
to the cemetery of a convent near by. Worthy monks, patriots like most
of the monks in Sicily, had borne the body thither by night, and had
inscribed these words in Latin on a stone which served as his monument,
among the white roses and flowering broom:
_Here reposes an unknown martyr._
The Piccinino's convalescence was longer than they had anticipated. The
wound healed quickly enough; but a nervous fever of some gravity
detained him three months in Agatha's boudoir, which was transformed
into his bedroom, and which was guarded with religious care.
A moral revolution was taking place in that headstrong and distrustful
young man. Michel's and the princess's solicitude, the extreme delicacy
of their consoling words, the innumerable joys of kindly treatment,
which he had lost with his mother and had never hoped to find again in
other hearts, gradually made an impression upon the pride and
indifference in which he had encased himself, as in a coat of mail. He
had always felt an ardent craving to be loved, although he was not
himself capable of being moved so powerfully and persistently by
affection as by hatred. At first he was, as it were, wounded and
humiliated by being compelled to be grateful. But it happened that
Agatha's heart, which had wrought a miracle upon Michel, did the same
for Carmelo. Agatha, although outwardly cold and fastidious in her
feelings, had such a vast and generous heart that she always ended by
loving those whom she pitied. There were many times still when the
patient's cold-blooded ideas horrified her; but pity gained the upper
hand when she realized how unhappy he was made by that determination to
harden his heart against everything. In his moments of physical
suffering and of nervous excitement, the Piccinino, after vaunting and
demonstrating his unerring keenness of vision in the matter of human
affections, deplored that unhappy faculty with a bitterness which made a
profound impression upon Agatha.
One evening, when she was talking about him with Michel, and he
confessed that he had no sympathetic feeling for his brother, she said
to him:
"Duty impels you to care for him, to incur danger for him, to overwhelm
him with favors and consideration. Very good; one must love one's duty,
and this brother of yours is a terrible trial. Duty would be easier if
you could love him. Try, Michel; perhaps, if you succeed, that warlike
heart of his will soften too, for he has the keen faculties of a sibyl.
It may be that he feels that you do not love him, and so he continues
cold to you. The instant that you have a feeling of sincere affection
for him, even though you do not manifest it, he will divine it and
perhaps will love you in his turn. I will try to set you the example. I
will strive to persuade myself that he is my son--a very different son
from you, Michel--and that his faults do not prevent my loving him."
Agatha kept her word, and Michel tried to second her. The Piccinino was
conscious of a genuine interest in his mental suffering amid all the
tender care bestowed upon his physical ills; he softened little by
little, and one day put Agatha's hand to his lips for the first time,
saying to her:
"You are good, like my mother. Oh! why am I not your son? Then I would
love Michel, because the same womb would have borne us both. Men are
really brothers only through the mother. She alone can make us
understand what is called the voice of blood, the cry of nature."
Another day he said to Michel: "I do not love you, because you are my
father's son. A man who mingled his pure blood with that of so many
women of diverse ranks and natures, must have had an unstable,
complicated character, lacking unity; so that his sons are as different
from one another as day is from night. If I should ever love you, whom I
already esteem and admire, it will be because you have a mother whom I
love, and who, I sometimes persuade myself, is my mother too."
When the Piccinino was in condition to resume his adventurous life,
which he had regretted so bitterly during the languorous days of his
illness, he was suddenly appalled at the idea of putting an end to an
existence which had become so sweet to him. He tried to assume a
careless air, and refused the offers of a happier lot which Agatha and
Michel made him; but it was evident that he was consumed by dismay and
regret.
"My dear boy," said the marquis, "you should accept the means of
increasing the scope and effectiveness of the mission to which you have
devoted yourself. It has never occurred to us to introduce you in a
puerile and cowardly way into the society which you despise and for
which you are not adapted. But, without submitting to any constraint,
without changing in any way your independent principles, you can make a
veritable alliance, over the heads of established laws, with veritable
humanity. Hitherto you have gone astray because you have forced yourself
to hate your fellowmen. It is their false and mischievous institutions
against which you protest. In the bottom of your heart, you love your
fellows, for you suffer by reason of their aversion and your own
isolation. So change your notion of your functions as _justicier
d'aventure_. Hitherto your aversion has usurped that title, for you have
used it only for your personal vengeance and for the gratification of
your instincts. What you have lacked for playing a nobler part and
serving our country more effectively is a larger stage and resources
proportioned to your ambition. Your brother offers you these resources;
he is ready to share his income with you; and such a division will make
you more powerful for your chosen work, without binding you to society
in any way. You could not, to be sure, become a noble and a landed
proprietor without entering into engagements to be sanctioned by law;
but, by accepting secretly, from brotherly affection, the strength which
you must have, you will remain a stranger to the world we live in, while
you will become capable of working to correct its vices. You will be
able to leave this unhappy island, where your efforts are too cramped to
have their due effect. You can seek elsewhere companions and neophytes,
enter into relations with the enemies of the public misery, work for the
cause of slaves everywhere, study the means of putting an end to
slavery, and return to us with knowledge and reinforcements which will
accomplish more in one year than expeditions against wretched _campieri_
would do in your whole life. Your faculties place you far above the
trade of brigand. Your penetration, your prudence, your varied and
extensive knowledge--everything even to the beauty of your face and the
charm of your speech--stamps you as a typical man of action, prudent as
well as daring, adroit as well as fearless. Yes, you are a born
conspirator. The hazard of birth started you upon that path, and your
character fits you to cut a most brilliant figure therein. But there are
great conspiracies which, even when they prove abortive in one part of
the world, forward the cause of universal liberty: and there are paltry
ones which come to an end on a scaffold, with the unknown hero who
organizes them. If you fall to-morrow in an ambuscade, your band is
scattered, and national independence breathes its last in your breast.
But conspire in the bright sunlight of humanity, instead of lurking in
the shadow of our precipices, and some day you may be the liberator of
our brothers instead of the terror of our old women."
These words were at once harsh and flattering to the Piccinino's
sensitive self-love. The criticism of his past life cut him to the
quick, but the favorable judgment concerning his capacity for usefulness
in the future healed the wound. He blushed, turned pale, reflected and
understood. He was too intelligent to contend against the truth. Agatha
and Michel affectionately took his hands, and begged him on their knees
to accept half of a fortune the whole of which they owed to him. Tears
of pride, hope, joy, and perhaps of gratitude as well, started from his
glistening eyes, and he accepted.
We must not forget to say that another miracle had taken place, unknown
to all, in that strange man's heart. Love, true love, had vanquished
him. Mila had been his nurse, and Mila had chained the tiger. She was
proud of it, with good reason, and she was naturally very proud. The
love of Captain Piccinino relieved her in her own eyes from the blemish
upon her pride due to Magnani's desertion. She was brave too. She felt
that she was born for a more difficult and more brilliant destiny than
spinning silk. Her heroic and poetic instincts were exceedingly well
adapted to a life full of danger and excitement. Carmelo, who had
expressed his regret at their first interview that she was not a boy,
whom, like Lara, he could take for his page, changed his mind, saying to
himself that the beauty of a woman and the brave heart of a heroine
added immensely to the charm of the young comrade of whom he had
dreamed.
He did not obtain Mila at once, however. She voluntarily made herself
the pledge and reward of his docility in following the advice of the
princess and the marquis. I fancy that the day for the redemption of the
pledge will soon come, if it has not come already.--But here ends the
novel, which might last much longer, if I chose; for I persist in saying
that no novel can end.
THE LAST OF THE ALDINIS
INTRODUCTION
Novels are always works of the fancy to some extent, and some of the
fanciful conceits of the imagination are like clouds that pass over our
heads. Whence come the clouds, and whither do they go?
Walking through the forest of Fontainebleau one day, with my son, I
dreamed about something very different from this book, which I wrote
that same evening in a tavern, and forgot the next morning, to think
only of flowers and butterflies. I could describe minutely all our walks
and all our amusements, but it is impossible for me to say why my mind
flitted to Venice that evening. I might look about for a good reason,
but it is more honest to confess that I remember nothing about it. It
was some fifteen or sixteen years ago.
GEORGE SAND
Nohant, August 23, 1853
_To SIGNORA CARLOTTA MARLIANI_
CONSULESSA DI SPAGNA
The sailors of the Adriatic do not launch a new vessel until it is
embellished with the image of the Virgin. May your name, written upon
this page, O my dear and lovely friend, be like the effigy of the divine
patron saint, which protects a fragile bark abandoned to the capricious
waves.
GEORGE SAND
FIRST PART
At the time of this story, Signor Lelio was no longer in the first bloom
of youth; whether because his lungs, by dint of performing their duty
with generous zeal, had developed in such a way as to distend the
muscles of his chest, or because of the great care with which singers
look after the preservation of the organ of melody, his body, which he
jocosely called the _casket_ of his voice, had acquired a reasonable
degree of embonpoint. His leg, however, had retained all the elegance of
its shape, and the habitual grace of all his movements made him still
what the ladies, under the empire, called a _beau cavalier_.
But if Lelio was still able to fill the post of _leading man_ on the
boards of La Fenice and La Scala, without offending good taste or the
probabilities; if his still beautiful voice and his great talent
maintained him in the first rank of Italian artists; if his abundant
locks, of a beautiful pearl-gray, and his great black eye, still full of
fire, continued to attract the glances of the gentler sex, in salons as
well as upon the stage, it is none the less true that Lelio was a
prudent man, most reserved and grave on occasion. A fact that will seem
strange to us is that, with all the charms which heaven had bestowed
upon him, with the brilliant triumphs of his honorable career, he was
not and had never been a libertine. He had, it was said, inspired great
passions; but whether because he had never shared them, or because he
had buried his romantic experiences in the oblivion of a generous
conscience, no one could say what the result had been of any of those
mysterious episodes in his life. The fact was that he had never
compromised any woman. The wealthiest and most illustrious houses of
Italy and Germany welcomed him cordially; he had never introduced
scandal or discord into any one of them. Everywhere he enjoyed the
reputation of a loyal, good-hearted man, whose virtue was beyond
reproach.
To us artists, too, his friends and companions, he was the best and most
lovable of men. But that serene cheerfulness, that kindly charm which
characterized him in his intercourse with society, did not altogether
conceal from us a background of melancholy and the existence of a secret
sorrow of long standing. One evening, after supper, as we were smoking
under our fragrant arbor at Sainte-Marguerite, Abbé Panorio talked to
us of himself, and described the poetic impulses and heroic combats of
his own heart with a touching candor worthy of all respect. Lelio, led
on by his example and infected by the generally effusive spirit of the
party, pressed also in some degree by the abbé's questions and Beppa's
glances, confessed to us at last that his art was not the only noble
passion he had known.
"_Ed io anchè_!" he exclaimed, with a sigh; "I too have loved, and
fought, and triumphed!"
"Had you taken a vow of chastity, pray, as he had?" queried Beppa, with
a smile, touching the abbé's arm with the end of her black fan.
"I never took any vow," replied Lelio; "but I have always been
irresistibly guided by a natural feeling of justice and truth. I have
never understood how one could be truly happy for a single day while
compromising another person's future. I will tell you, if you please,
the story of two periods of my life in which love played the leading
rôle, and you will understand that it cost me a little something to be,
I do not say a hero, but a man."
"That is a very solemn beginning," said Beppa, "and I fear that your
story will resemble a French sonata! You require a musical introduction,
so wait a moment! Does this key suit you?"
As she spoke she struck a chord or two on her lute, and played the first
measures of an _andante maestoso_ by Dusseck.
"That is not the thing," said Lelio, stifling the notes of the lute with
Beppa's fan. "Play me rather one of those German waltzes in which Joy
and Sorrow, in a voluptuous embrace, seem to turn slowly round and
round, and to display in turn a pale tear-stained face and a radiant
brow crowned with flowers."
"Very good!" said Beppa. "Meanwhile Cupid plays the kit, and marks time
falsely, exactly like a master of the ballet; Joy impatiently stamps her
foot to incite the torpid musician who restrains her impetuosity;
Sorrow, utterly exhausted, turns her moist eyes upon the pitiless
fiddler to urge him to slacken that incessant whirling about, and the
audience, uncertain whether to laugh or cry, concludes to go to sleep."
And Beppa began the _ritornello_ of a sentimental waltz, playing the
measures fast and slow alternately, making the expression of her
charming face, now glistening with joy, now doleful beyond words,
conform to that ironical mode of execution, and putting forth in that
musical mockery all the energy of her artistic patriotism.
"You are a narrow-minded creature!" said Lelio, passing his fingers over
the strings, whose vibration died away in a shrill, ear-piercing wail.
"No German organ!" cried the fair Venetian, laughing heartily and
abandoning the instrument to him.
"The artist's fatherland," said Lelio, "is the whole world, the great
_Bohemia_, as we say. _Per Dio_! make war if you please on Austrian
despotism, but let us respect the German waltz! Weber's waltzes, O my
friends! Beethoven's waltzes and Schubert's! Oh! listen, listen to this
poem, this drama, this scene of despair, of passion and delirious joy!"
As he spoke, the artist touched the chords of the lute, and began to
sing with all the force of his voice and soul Beethoven's sublime
_Desire_; then, abruptly breaking off and throwing the still vibrating
instrument on the grass, he said:
"No song ever stirred my heart like that one. We may as well confess
that our Italian music appeals only to the senses or to the over-heated
imagination; that music speaks to the heart, to the most profound and
most exquisite sentiments. I was once like you, Beppa. I resisted the
power of German genius; for a long time I closed my bodily ears and the
ears of my intelligence to these Northern melodies, which I neither
could nor would understand. But the time has come when divine
inspiration is no longer called upon to halt on the frontiers of states
by reason of the color of its uniform or the pattern of its standards.
There are in the air I know not what angels or sylphs, invisible
messengers of progress, who bring us melody and poetic thoughts from all
points of the compass. Let us not bury ourselves under our own ruins;
but let our genius spread its wings and open its arms to espouse all the
contemporaneous geniuses beyond the Alps."
"Listen to him! how he raves!" cried Beppa, wiping her lute which was
already wet with dew; "and I took him for a reasonable man!"