character. The doctors found a very pronounced tendency to enlargement
of the heart, and the very sharp pains which I felt about that organ and
the excessive rush of blood thither necessitated numerous bleedings. So
that I lost the rest of that season, and, as soon as I was convalescent,
I went for rest and balmy air to a beautiful villa of Count Nasi's, a
few leagues from Florence, near Cafaggiolo, at the foot of the
Apennines. He promised to join me there with Checchina as soon as the
performances for which she was engaged would allow her to leave Naples.
A few days of that delightful solitude benefited me so much that I was
allowed to take excursions of some length, sometimes in the saddle,
sometimes on foot, through the narrow gorges and picturesque ravines
which form a first step to the towering masses of the Apennines. In my
musing I called that region the _proscenium_ of the great range, and I
loved to seek out some amphitheatre of hills or some natural terrace
where, all alone and far from every eye, I could indulge in outbursts of
lyric declamation, which were answered by the resonant echoes or the
mysterious murmur of the streams flowing under the rocks.
One day I unexpectedly found myself on the Florence road. Like a
glistening white ribbon it ran through a verdant, gently undulating
country, strewn with beautiful gardens, wooded parks and handsome
villas. Seeking to learn my whereabouts, I stopped at the gate of one of
those charming abodes. The gate was open, and I could see an avenue of
old trees mysteriously intertwined. Beneath those dark, voluptuously
enlaced branches a woman was walking slowly--a woman of slender form and
a bearing so noble that I paused to gaze at her and follow her with my
eyes as long as possible. As she showed no inclination to turn, I was
seized with an irresistible longing to see her features, and I yielded
to it, heedless of the fact that I was violating the proprieties, and
might be subjected to a humiliating rebuff.
"Who can say," I said to myself, "women are so indulgent sometimes in
this mild climate of ours!"
Moreover, I reasoned that my face was too well known for me ever to be
taken for a robber; and, lastly, I relied to some extent on the
curiosity which the great majority of people feel to obtain a near view
of the features and manners of an artist of some celebrity.
So I ventured into the shady avenue, walking rapidly, and was just about
to overtake the solitary promenader, when I saw coming toward her a
young man dressed in the latest fashion, and with a pretty, insipid
face, who caught sight of me before I had time to jump in among the
trees. I was within three yards of the noble pair. The young man stopped
beside the lady, offered her his arm, and said to her, glancing at me
with the most surprised air of which a perfectly attired man is capable:
"My dear cousin, who is this man who is following you?"
The lady turned, and the sight of her gave me such a shock that for a
moment I was in danger of a relapse. My heart gave a sharp, nervous
throb as I recognized the young woman who stared at me in such a curious
way from her proscenium box at the time I was taken ill at Naples. Her
face flushed slightly, then lost its color. But no gesture, no
exclamation betrayed either surprise or anger. She eyed me from head to
foot with calm disdain, and replied with incredible audacity:
"I don't know him."
That extraordinary statement aroused my curiosity. It seemed to me that
I could detect in that girl such consummate dissimulation and such a
strange sort of pride that I suddenly felt irresistibly impelled to take
the risk of a mad adventure. We Bohemians do not allow ourselves to be
awed overmuch by the customs of society and the laws of propriety; we
have no great fear of being ejected from those private theatres where
society takes its turn at posing before us, and where we feel so
strongly the superiority of the artist; for there no one can arouse in
us the intense emotions which we have the art of arousing. Salons bore
us to death and chill our blood, in return for the warmth and life that
we carry thither. So I approached my noble hosts with a dignified air,
caring very little about the manner of their reception of me, and
determined to take the first convenient pretext for obtaining admission
to the house.
I bowed gravely and represented myself as a piano-tuner who had been
sent for to Florence from a country-house, the name of which I pretended
to remember imperfectly.
"This is not the place. You may quit this place," replied the signora,
coldly. But, like a true fiancé, the cousin came to my assistance.
"My dear cousin," he said, "your piano is terribly out of tune; if this
man could spare an hour, we might have some music this evening. I beg
you to let him tune it, won't you?"
The young Grimani had a wicked smile on her lips as she replied:
"As you please, cousin."
"Does she propose to amuse herself at my expense or his?" I thought.
"Perhaps both."
I bowed slightly to signify my consent. Thereupon the cousin, with
careless courtesy, pointed out to me a glass door at the end of the
avenue, where the branches, drooping lower and lower until they formed a
sort of arbor, concealed the front of the villa.
"At the end of the large salon, signor," he said, "you will find a
study. The piano is there. I shall have the honor to see you again when
you have finished. Shall we walk as far as the pond?" he added, turning
to his cousin.
I saw her smile again, almost imperceptibly, but with the keenest
delight at the mortification that I felt, while she let me go in one
direction and continued her stroll in the other, leaning on the arm of
her elegant and aristocratic cousin.
It is not a very difficult matter to put a piano _almost_ in tune, and
although I had never tried before, I succeeded very well; but I spent
much more time about it than an experienced hand would have required,
and I watched with some impatience the sun sinking behind the treetops;
for I had no other pretext for another interview with my singular
heroine than to hear her try the piano when it was in tune. So I worked
away awkwardly enough, and was in the midst of a monotonous drumming
with which I was almost deafening myself, when I raised my head and saw
the signora before me, half turned toward the fireplace, but watching me
in the mirror with malicious intentness. To meet her sidelong glance and
turn my eyes away was a matter of a second. I continued my work with the
utmost coolness, resolved to watch the enemy and see what she was
driving at.
La Grimani--I continued to give her that name in my mind, knowing no
other--made a pretence of arranging some flowers in the vases on the
mantel with great care; then she moved a chair, moved it back to the
place where it was before, dropped her fan, picked it up with a great
rustling of her skirts, opened a window, and instantly closed it again,
then, seeing that I was determined not to notice anything, she adopted
the extreme course of dropping a stool on her pretty little foot and
uttering a cry of pain. I was stupid enough to drop the key on the
metallic strings, which emitted a piteous wail. The signora started,
shrugged her shoulders, and, suddenly recovering all her
self-possession, as if we were acting a scene in a burlesque, she looked
me in the face and said:
"_Cosa, signore?_"
"I thought that your ladyship spoke to me," I replied, with no less
tranquillity, and resumed my work. She remained standing in the middle
of the room as if petrified by amazement in the face of such audacity,
or as if brought to a standstill by a sudden doubt as to my identity
with the person whom she had thought that she recognized. At last she
lost patience, and asked me, almost roughly, if I had nearly finished.
"Oh! bless my soul, no! signora," I replied; "here is a broken string,
you see." As I spoke I gave the key a sharp twist on the pin I was
turning, and broke the string.
"It seems to me," said she, "that this piano is giving you a great deal
of trouble."
"A great deal," I rejoined, "the strings keep breaking." And I snapped a
second one.
"That is very extraordinary," she exclaimed.
"Yes, it is indeed extraordinary," I replied.
The cousin entered at that moment, and I snapped a third string by way
of salute. It was one of the lower bass strings, and it made a terrible
report. The cousin, who was not expecting it, stepped back, and the
signora laughed aloud. That laugh had a strange sound to me. It was not
in harmony with her face or her manner; it was harsh and spasmodic, and
disconcerted the cousin so that I almost pitied him.
"I am very much afraid," she said, when that nervous paroxysm came to an
end and she was able to speak, "I am very much afraid that we cannot
have any music to-night. This poor old _cembalo_ is bewitched, all the
strings are breaking. It is really supernatural, I assure you, Hector;
if you so much as look at them they twist and snap with a horrible
noise."
With that she began to laugh again, peal upon peal, without the
slightest trace of merriment on her face. The cousin laughed because she
did, but was abruptly checked by these words from her:
"For heaven's sake, cousin, don't laugh; you haven't the slightest
inclination to."
The cousin seemed to me to be well used to being laughed at and teased.
But he was hurt, no doubt, to be treated so in my presence; for he said
in an irritated tone:
"Why shouldn't I be inclined to laugh as well as you, cousin?"
"Because I say that you are not," she replied. "But tell me, Hector,"
she added, abruptly changing the subject, "were you at San Carlo last
year?"
"No, cousin."
"In that case you did not hear the famous Lelio?"
She said these last words with significant emphasis; but she had not the
impudence to look me in the face immediately, and I had time to recover
from the emotion caused me by that blow full in the face.
"I neither heard him nor saw him," said the guileless cousin, "but I
heard a great dea! about him. He's a great artist, so I understand."
"Very great," replied La Grimani, "a full head taller than you. See! he
is about this gentleman's height.--Do you know him, signor?" she added,
turning to me.
"I know him very well, signora," I replied tartly; "he is a very
handsome fellow, a very great actor, an admirable singer, a very clever
talker, a bold and spirited adventurer, and, furthermore, a fearless
duellist, which is not amiss."
The signora looked at her cousin, then glanced at me, with an
indifferent air, as if to say: "It's of little consequence to me." Then
she went off into another paroxysm of inextinguishable laughter, which
was altogether unnatural, and in which neither her cousin nor myself
joined. I returned to my pursuit of the dominant chord on the keyboard,
and Signor Ettore moved about impatiently, making his new boots squeak
on the floor, as if he were utterly disgusted with the conversation
being carried on between a mere workman like myself and his noble
fiancée.
"Look you, cousin, you mustn't believe what he says about Lelio,"
observed the signora, abruptly ceasing her convulsive laughter. "So far
as the man's great beauty is concerned, I cannot contradict him for I
didn't look at him; and, besides, an actor can always appear young and
handsome with his paint and his false hair and moustaches. But as to his
being an admirable singer and a good actor, that I deny. In the first
place he sings false, in the second place he acts detestably. His
declamation is too loud, his gestures commonplace, the expression of his
features stiff and conventional. When he weeps, he makes wry faces; when
he threatens, he roars; when he is majestic, he is tedious; and, in his
best moments, when he holds himself back and doesn't speak, one might
apply to him the refrain of the ballad:
"'_Brutto è quanto stupido._'
I am sorry to disagree with this gentleman; but my opinion is the
opinion of the public! It isn't my fault that Lelio didn't have the
slightest success at San Carlo, and I don't advise you to take the
journey to Naples to see him, cousin."
Having received this stinging lesson, for a moment I was on the verge of
losing my head and picking a quarrel with the cousin to punish the
signora; but the excellent youth did not give me time.
"That is just like a woman," he cried, "and above all things just like
one of your inconceivable whims, cousin! Not more than three days ago,
you told me that Lelio was the finest actor and the most incomparable
singer in all Italy. I have no doubt that you will say to-morrow just
the opposite of what you say to-day, with the privilege of taking it all
back again the next day."
"To-morrow and the day after to-morrow and every day of my life, my dear
cousin," the signora hurriedly interposed, "I will tell you that you are
a fool and Lelio an idiot."
"Brava, signora," rejoined the cousin in an undertone, offering her his
arm to leave the salon; "he who loves you is a fool, and he who
displeases you an idiot."
"Before your lordship and ladyship retire," I said, without the
slightest symptom of emotion, "I will call your attention to the fact
that this piano is in such a bad condition that I cannot possibly repair
it properly in one day. I am obliged to go now; but if such is your
wish, I will return to-morrow."
"Certainly, signor," replied the cousin, with patronizing politeness,
half turning toward me; "you will oblige me if you will return
to-morrow."
La Grimani, stopping him with a sudden and energetic motion of her head,
forced him to turn wholly around, and as she stood in the doorway,
leaning on his arm and eyeing me with an air of defiance, she said, as
she saw me close the piano and take my hat:
"Will the signor come again to-morrow?"
"Most certainly I shall not fail to do so," I replied, bowing to the
ground.
She continued to detain her cousin in the doorway, so that I was obliged
to pass in front of them in order to go out; and, as I did so, I bowed
again and looked my Bradamante in the eye with an assurance befitting
the combat upon which we had entered. A gleam of undaunted courage
flashed from her eyes. Therein I read distinctly that my boldness did
not displease her, and that the lists were not closed to me.
So I was at my post before noon the next day, and found my heroine at
hers, seated at the piano and touching the silent or jangling keys with
admirable indifference, as if she desired to prove to me by those
diabolical discords her detestation and contempt for music.
I entered calmly and saluted her with as much respectful indifference as
if I were in reality a piano-tuner. I placed my hat carelessly on a
chair, I laboriously drew off my gloves, imitating the awkwardness of a
man unused to wearing them. I took from my pocket a wooden box filled
with spools of wire, and began to unwind enough for one string--all with
the utmost gravity and without affectation. The signora continued to
pound the hapless piano in unmerciful fashion, although the sounds she
produced were of a nature to put to flight the most hardened savages. I
at once saw that she was amusing herself by destroying its tone and
breaking it more and more, in order to provide work for me, and I
detected more coquetry than cruelty in that devilment; for she seemed
disposed to remain with me.
Thereupon I said to her with a perfectly serious face: "Does your
ladyship think that the piano begins to be in tune?"
"The harmony is satisfactory to me," she said, biting her lips to keep
from laughing, "and the sounds it gives forth are extremely pleasant to
the ear."
"It is a fine instrument," said I.
"And in very good condition," she rejoined.
"Your ladyship is a very talented performer."
"As you see."
"That is a charming waltz, and exceedingly well executed."
"Is it not? How could one help playing well on an instrument in such
perfect tune? You love music, signor?"
"A little, signora; but your playing goes to my heart."
"In that case I will continue." And she proceeded, with a fiendish
smile, to murder one of the _bravura_ airs she had heard me sing with
the greatest applause on the stage.
"Is his lordship your cousin well?" I said, when she had finished.
"He is hunting."
"Is your ladyship fond of game?"
"I am immoderately fond of it. And you, signor?"
"I am sincerely and deeply partial to it."
"Which do you like best, game or music?"
"I like music at table, but at this moment I should like some game
better."
She rose and rang. A servant appeared instantly, as if he were a piece
of machinery set in motion by the bell-rope.
"Bring the game-pie that I saw in the pantry this morning," said the
signora; and two minutes later the servant reappeared with an enormous
pie, which he majestically placed on the piano at a sign from his
mistress. A large salver, covered with dishes and all the accessories
necessary for the refreshment of civilized beings, appeared as if by
magic on the other side of the instrument, and the signora, with a
strong but light touch, broke through the rampart of appetizing crust
and made a large breach in the fortress.
[Illustration: _THE STRANGE LUNCHEON._
"_This is a conquest in which our lords and masters
the French shall have no share," she said, taking
possession of a partridge which she placed on a
Japanese plate; and she went with it to the other
end of the room, where she squatted upon a velvet
hassock with gold tassels, and proceeded to devour it._]
"This is a conquest in which our lords and masters the French shall have
no share," she said, taking possession of a partridge which she placed
on a Japanese plate; and she went with it to the other end of the room,
where she squatted upon a velvet hassock with gold tassels, and
proceeded to devour it.
I gazed at her in amazement, uncertain whether she was mad or was trying
to mystify me.
"You are not eating?" she said, without moving.
"Your ladyship has not ordered me to do so," I replied.
"Oh! don't stand on ceremony," said she, continuing to eat with great
zest.
The pie had such an alluring look and such a delicious odor that I
listened to the philosophical arguments of common sense. I placed
another partridge on another Japanese plate, which I rested on the
keyboard of the piano, and began to eat with as much gusto as the
signora.
"If this is not the castle of the Sleeping Beauty," I thought, "and if
this cruel fairy is not the only living being in it, we shall soon see
an uncle or a father or an aunt or a governess, or somebody who is
supposed, in the eyes of honest folk, to serve as chaperon to this
untamed creature. In case of any such apparition, I should like to know
just how far this eccentric fashion of breakfasting on a piano,
tête-à-tête with the young lady of the house, will be considered
seemly. It matters little after all; I must find out just where these
extravagant whims are likely to carry me, and if there is a woman's
spite behind them, I will have my turn if I have to wait ten years."
As I reflected thus I watched my fair hostess over the piano. She was
eating with superhuman appetite, and seemed to be in no wise possessed
by the idiotic mania which young ladies have of eating only in secret,
and pressing their lips together at table with a sentimental air, as if
they were of a nature superior to ours. Lord Byron had not yet
introduced the fashion of lack of appetite among the fair sex. So that
my capricious signora abandoned herself with all her heart to the
enjoyment of feasting, and in a few moments she returned to me and took
a fillet of hare and a pheasant's wing from the dismantled pie. She
looked at me without a smile, and said sententiously: "This east wind
gives me an appetite."
"It seems that your ladyship is blessed with an excellent digestive
apparatus," I observed.
"If one had not a good stomach at fifteen," she replied, "it would be as
well to throw up the sponge."
"Fifteen!" I cried, looking at her closely and dropping my fork.
"Fifteen years and two months," she replied, returning to her hassock
with her freshly-filled plate; "my mother is not yet thirty-two, and she
married again last year. Tell me, isn't it strange that a mother should
marry before her daughter? To be sure, if my darling little mother had
chosen to wait for me to be married, she would have had to wait a long
while. Who would ever marry a girl who, although she is beautiful, is
_stupid_ beyond anything one can imagine?"
There was so much merriment and good-humor in the serious air with which
she made fun of me; she was such a pretty _loustig_, that tall girl with
the black eyes and the long curls falling over a neck as white as
alabaster; her manner of sitting on her cushion was so graceful yet so
chaste in its perfect naturalness, that all my suspicion and all my evil
designs vanished. I had determined to empty the decanter of wine in
order to put my scruples to sleep. I pushed the decanter away, and,
having satisfied my appetite, rested my elbow on the piano and began to
study her anew, and under a new aspect. That revelation as to her age
had thrown all my ideas into confusion. When I have desired to form an
opinion concerning a person, especially one of the fair sex, I have
always considered it a matter of the utmost importance to ascertain that
person's age as nearly as possible. Subtlety increases so rapidly in
women that six months more or less often make the difference between the
innocence which is deviltry and the deviltry which is innocence. Until
then I had imagined that La Grimani was at least twenty years old. She
was so tall and strong and dark, and there was so much self-assurance in
her glance, in her bearing, in her every movement, that everybody made
the same mistake at first sight. But on examining her more closely I
realized my error. Her shoulders were broad and powerful, but her breast
was still undeveloped. Although her whole attitude was womanly there
were certain little ways and certain expressions of the face which
revealed the child. Nothing more was needed than that hearty appetite,
that total absence of coquetry, and the audacious impropriety of the
tête-à-tête she had arranged to have with me, to make it clear to my
eyes that I had to do, not as I had supposed at first, with a proud and
crafty woman of the world, but with a mischievous boarding-school girl,
and I thrust aside with horror the idea of abusing her imprudence.
I remained for a long while absorbed in this scrutiny, forgetting to
reply to the significant challenge I had received. She looked at me
earnestly, and I no longer thought of avoiding her glance, but of
analyzing it. She had the loveliest eyes in the world, flush with her
face, and very wide open; their glance was always sharp and direct, and
grasped its object instantly. It was imperious but not overbearing, a
very rare thing in a woman. It was the revelation and the expression of
a fearless, proud, and sincere mind. It questioned all things with an
air of authority, and seemed to say: "Conceal nothing from me: for I
have nothing to conceal from anybody."
When she saw that I did not shrink from her gaze, she was startled but
not frightened; and, rising abruptly, she invited the explanation which
I desired to propose.
"Signor Lelio," she said, "if you have finished your breakfast, you will
kindly tell me why you came here."
"I will obey you, signora," I replied, picking up her plate and glass,
which she had left on the floor, and carrying them back to the piano;
"but I beg your ladyship to tell me whether the piano-tuner shall answer
you sitting at the instrument, or whether the actor Lelio shall stand
before you, hat in hand, ready to retire after he has had the honor to
talk with you."
"Signor Lelio will kindly sit in this chair," she said, pointing to one
on the right hand of the fire-place, "and I in this," she added, taking
her seat on the left side, facing me and about ten feet away.
"Signora," I said, as I sat down, "in order to obey you I must go back a
little. About two months ago I was playing in _Romeo and Juliet_ at San
Carlo. There was in one of the proscenium boxes----"
"I can refresh your memory," interposed La Grimani. "There was in one of
the proscenium boxes on the right of the stage a young woman whom you
considered beautiful; but on looking at her more closely, it seemed to
you that her face was so devoid of expression that you shouted to one of
the ladies on the stage, loud enough to be overheard by the young woman
in question----"