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 sat Mrs. Riccabocca at work. In the
belvidere, Riccabocca himself was conversing with his favourite servant.
But the casements and the door of the belvidere were open; and where they
sat, 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 towards 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 sketchbook, 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 commune 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 everywhere the Picturesque.
Something in her mind seemed to reject all that was mean and commonplace,
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 valour
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 honoured and happy, had
courted from his seclusion the English signore, 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 towards the defile in the
Apennines, and, when the emissaries of a perfidious enemy, hot in the
chase, came near, had 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 on the glorious 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 honours, 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
drearhs 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 expressions
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 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, timeworn 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!"