Violante was seated in her own little room, and looking from the window
on the terrace that stretched below. The day was warm for the time of
year. The orange-trees had been removed under shelter for the approach
of winter; but where they had stood sate Mrs. Riccabocca at work. In
the Belvidere, Riccabocca himself was conversing with his favorite
servant. But the casements and the door of the Belvidere were open; and
where they sate, both wife and daughter could see the Padrone leaning
against the wall, with his arms folded, and his eyes fixed on the floor;
while Jackeymo, with one finger on his master's arm, was talking to him
with visible earnestness. And the daughter from the window, and the wife
from her work, directed tender, anxious eyes toward the still thoughtful
form so dear to both. For the last day or two, Riccabocca had been
peculiarly abstracted, even to gloom. Each felt there was something
stirring at his heart--neither as yet knew what.
Violante's room silently revealed the nature of the education by which
her character had been formed. Save a sketch book which lay open on a
desk at hand, and which showed talent exquisitely taught (for in this
Riccabocca had been her teacher), there was nothing that spoke of the
ordinary female accomplishments. No piano stood open, no harp occupied
yon nook, which seemed made for one; no broidery frame, nor implements
of work, betrayed the usual and graceful resources of a girl; but ranged
on shelves against the wall were the best writers in English, Italian,
and French; and these betokened an extent of reading, that he who wishes
for a companion to his mind in the sweet company of woman, which softens
and refines all it gives and takes in interchange, will never condemn as
masculine. You had but to look into Violante's face to see how noble was
the intelligence that brought soul to those lovely features. Nothing
hard, nothing dry and stern was there. Even as you detected knowledge,
it was lost in the gentleness of grace. In fact, whatever she gained in
the graver kinds of information, became transmuted, through her heart
and her fancy, into spiritual golden stores. Give her some tedious and
arid history, her imagination seized upon beauties other readers had
passed by, and, like the eye of the artist, detected every where the
Picturesque. Something in her mind seemed to reject all that was mean
and common-place, and to bring out all that was rare and elevated in
whatever it received. Living so apart from all companions of her age,
she scarcely belonged to the Present time. She dwelt in the Past, as
Sabrina in her crystal well. Images of chivalry--of the Beautiful and
the Heroic--such as, in reading the silvery line of Tasso, rise before
us, softening force and valor into love and song--haunted the reveries
of the fair Italian maid.
Tell us not that the Past, examined by cold Philosophy, was no better
and no loftier than the Present; it is not thus seen by pure and
generous eyes. Let the Past perish, when it ceases to reflect on its
magic mirror the beautiful Romance which is its noblest reality, though
perchance but the shadow of Delusion.
Yet Violante was not merely the dreamer. In her, life was so
puissant and rich, that action seemed necessary to its glorious
development--action, but still in the woman's sphere--action to bless
and to refine and to exalt all around her, and to pour whatever else of
ambition was left unsatisfied into sympathy with the aspirations of man.
Despite her father's fears of the bleak air of England, in that air she
had strengthened the delicate health of her childhood. Her elastic
step--her eyes full of sweetness and light--her bloom, at once soft and
luxuriant--all spoke of the vital powers fit to sustain a mind of such
exquisite mould, and the emotions of a heart that, once aroused, could
ennoble the passions of the South with the purity and devotion of the
North.
Solitude makes some natures more timid, some more bold. Violante was
fearless. When she spoke, her eyes frankly met your own; and she was so
ignorant of evil, that as yet she seemed nearly unacquainted with shame.
From this courage, combined with affluence of idea, came a delightful
flow of happy converse. Though possessing so imperfectly the
accomplishments ordinarily taught to young women, and which may be
cultured to the utmost, and yet leave the thoughts so barren, and the
talk so vapid--she had that accomplishment which most pleases the taste,
and commands the love of the man of talent; especially if his talent be
not so actively employed as to make him desire only relaxation where he
seeks companionship--the accomplishment of facility in intellectual
interchange--the charm that clothes in musical words beautiful womanly
ideas.
"I hear him sigh at this distance," said Violante softly, as she still
watched her father; "and methinks this is a new grief, and not for his
country. He spoke twice yesterday of that dear English friend, and
wished that he were here."
As she said this, unconsciously the virgin blushed, her hands drooped on
her knee, and she fell herself into thought as profound as her father's,
but less gloomy. From her arrival in England, Violante had been taught a
grateful interest in the name of Harley L'Estrange. Her father,
preserving a silence, that seemed disdain, of all his old Italian
intimates, had been pleased to converse with open heart of the
Englishman who had saved where countrymen had betrayed. He spoke of the
soldier, then in the full bloom of youth, who, unconsoled by fame, had
nursed the memory of some hidden sorrow amidst the pine-trees that cast
their shadow over the sunny Italian lake; how Riccabocca, then honored
and happy, had courted from his seclusion the English Signor, then the
mourner and the voluntary exile; how they had grown friends amidst the
landscapes in which her eyes had opened to the day; how Harley had
vainly warned him from the rash schemes in which he had sought to
reconstruct in an hour the ruins of weary ages; how, when abandoned,
deserted, proscribed, pursued, he had fled for life--the infant Violante
clasped to his bosom--the English soldier had given him refuge, baffled
the pursuers, armed his servants, accompanied the fugitive at night
toward the defile in the Apennines, and, when the emissaries of a
perfidious enemy, hot in the chase, came near, he said, "You have your
child to save! Fly on! Another league, and you are beyond the borders.
We will delay the foes with parley; they will not harm us." And not till
escape was gained did the father know that the English friend had
delayed the foe, not by parley, but by the sword, holding the pass
against numbers, with a breast as dauntless as Bayard's in the immortal
bridge.
And since then, the same Englishman had never ceased to vindicate his
name, to urge his cause, and if hope yet remained of restoration to land
and honors, it was in that untiring zeal.
Hence, naturally and insensibly this secluded and musing girl had
associated all that she read in tales of romance and chivalry with the
image of the brave and loyal stranger. He it was who animated her dreams
of the Past, and seemed born to be, in the destined hour, the deliverer
of the Future. Around this image grouped all the charms that the fancy
of virgin woman can raise from the enchanted lore of old Heroic Fable.
Once in her early girlhood, her father (to satisfy her curiosity, eager
for general description) had drawn from memory a sketch of the features
of the Englishman--drawn Harley, as he was in that first youth,
flattered and idealized, no doubt, by art and by partial gratitude--but
still resembling him as he was then; while the deep mournfulness of
recent sorrow yet shadowed and concentrated all the varying expression
of his countenance; and to look on him was to say--"So sad, yet so
young!" Never did Violante pause to remember that the same years which
ripened herself from infancy into woman, were passing less gently over
that smooth cheek and dreamy brow--that the world might be altering the
nature, as time did the aspect. To her, the hero of the Ideal remained
immortal in bloom and youth. Bright illusion, common to us all, where
Poetry once hallows the human form! Who ever thinks of Petrarch as the
old time-worn man? Who does not see him as when he first gazed on
Laura?--
"Ogni altra cosa ogni pensier va fore;
E sol ivi con voi rimansi Amore!"