"Cour de Parme," Parma.
Dearest Kitty,--So varied have been my emotions of late, and with such
whirlwind rapidity have they succeeded each other in my distracted
brain, that I am really at a loss to know where I left off in my last
epistle to you, and at what particular crisis in our adventures I closed
my narrative. Forgive me, dearest, if I impose on you the tiresome task
of listening twice to the same tale, or the almost equally unpleasant
duty of trying to follow me through gaps of unexplained events.
Have I told you of the Countess's departure,--that most mysterious
flight, which has thrown poor James into, I fear, a hopeless melancholy,
and made shipwreck of his heart forever? I feel as if I had revealed it
to my dearest Kitty; my soul whispers to me that she bears her share in
my sorrows, and mingles her tears with mine. Yes, dearest, she is gone!
Some indiscreet revelations papa made to mamma in his room would
appear to have disclosed more of our private affairs than ought to have
obtained publicity, were overheard by her, and she immediately gave
orders to her servants to pack up, leaving a very vague note behind
her, plainly intimating, however, that papa might, if he pleased,
satisfactorily account for the step she had taken. This, and a few
almost flippant acknowledgments of our attentions, concluded an epistle
that fell in the midst of us like a rocket.
If I feel deeply wounded at the slight thus shown us, and the still
heavier injury inflicted on poor dear James, yet am I constrained to
confess that Josephine was quite justified in what she did. Born in
the very highest class, all her habits, her ways, her very instincts
aristocratic, the bare thought of an alliance with a family struggling
with dubious circumstances must have been too shocking! I did not ever
believe that she returned James's affection; she liked him, perhaps,
well enough,--that is, well enough to marry! She deemed him her equal in
rank and fortune, and in that respect regarded the match as a fair one.
To learn that we were neither titled nor rich, neither great by station
nor rolling in wealth, was of course to feel that she had been deceived
and imposed upon, and might reasonably warrant even the half-sarcastic
spirit of her farewell note.
To tell what misery this has cost us all is quite beyond me; scorned
affection,--blasted hopes,--ambitions scattered to the winds,--a
glorious future annihilated! Conceive all of these that you can,
and then couple them with meaner and more vulgar regrets, as to what
enormous extravagance the pursuit has involved us in, the expense of a
style of living that even a prince could scarcely have maintained, and
all at a little secluded capital where nobody comes, nobody lives; so
that we do not reap even the secondary advantage of that notoriety for
which we have to pay so dearly. Mamma and I, who think precisely alike
on these subjects, are overwhelmed with misery as we reflect over what
the money thus squandered would have done at Rome, Florence, or Vienna!
James is distracted, and papa sits poring all day long over papers and
accounts, by way of arranging his affairs before his death. Cary alone
maintains her equanimity, for which she may thank the heartlessness of a
nature insensible to all feeling.
Imagine a family circle of such ingredients! Think of us as you saw
us last, even in all the darkness of Dodsborough, and you will find it
difficult to believe we are the same! Yet, dearest, it might all have
been different,--how different! But papa--there is no use trying to
conceal it--has a talent for ruining the prospects of his family, that
no individual advantages, no combination of events, however felicitous,
can avail against! An absurd and most preposterous notion of being what
he calls "honest and aboveboard" leads him to excesses of every kind,
and condemns us to daily sorrows and humiliations. It is in vain that
we tell him nobody parades his debts no more than his infirmities; that
people wear their best faces for the world, and that credit is the same
principle in morals as in mercantile affairs. His reply is, "No. I 'm
tired of all that. I never perform a great part without longing for the
time when I shall be Kenny Dodd again!"
This one confession will explain to you the hopelessness of all our
efforts to rise in life, and our last resource is in the prospect of his
going back to Ireland. Mamma has already proposed to accept a thousand
a year for herself and me; while Cary should return with papa to
Dodsborough. It is possible that this arrangement might have been
concluded ere this, but that papa has got a relapse of his gout, and
been laid up for the last eight days. He refuses to see any doctor,
saying that they all drive the malady in by depletion, and has taken to
drinking port wine all day long, by way of confining the attack to his
foot. What is to be the success of this treatment has yet to be seen,
but up to this time its only palpable effect has been to make him like
a chained tiger. He roars and shouts fearfully, and has smashed all the
more portable articles of furniture in the room,--throwing them at the
waiters. He insists, besides, on having his bill made up every night,
so that instead of one grand engagement once a week, we have now a smart
skirmish every evening, which usually lasts till bedtime.
For economy, too, we have gone up to the second story, and come down to
a very meagre dinner. No carriage,--no saddle-horses,--no theatre. The
courier dismissed, and a strict order at the bar against all "extras."
James lies all day abed; Cary plays nurse to papa; mamma and I sit
moping beside a little miserable stove till evening, when we receive our
one solitary visitor,--a certain Father M'Grail, an Irish priest, who
has been resident here for thirty years, and is known as the Padre
Giacomo! He is a spare, thin, pock-marked little man, with a pair of
downcast, I was going to say dishonest-looking, eyes, who talks with an
accent as rich as though he only left Kilrush yesterday. We have only
known him ten days, but he has already got an immense influence over
mamma, and induced her to read innumerable little books, and to practise
a variety of small penances besides. I suspect he is rather afraid
of _me_,--at least we maintain towards each other a kind of armed
neutrality; but mamma will not suffer me to breathe a word against him.
It is not unlikely that he owes much of the esteem mamma feels for him
to his own deprecatory estimate of papa, whom he pronounces to be, in
many respects, almost as infamous as a Protestant. Cary he only alludes
to by throwing up hands and eyes, and seeming to infer that she is
irrecoverably lost.
I own to you, Kitty, I don't like him,--I scarcely trust him,--but it
is, after all, such a resource to have any one to talk to, anything to
break the dull monotony of this dreary life, that I hail his coming with
pleasure, and am actually working a rochet, or an alb, or a something
else for him to wear on Saint Nicolo of Treviso's "festa,"--an occasion
on which the little man desires to appear with extraordinary splendor.
Mamma, too, is making a canopy to hold over his honored head; and I
sincerely hope that our _oeuvres meritoires_ will redound to our future
advantage! I am half afraid that I have shocked you with an apparent
irreverence in speaking of these things, but I must confess to you,
dearest Kitty, that I am occasionally provoked beyond all bounds by the
degree of influence this small saint exercises in our family, and by no
means devoid of apprehension lest his dominion should become absolute.
Even already he has persuaded mamma that papa's illness will resist
all medical skill to the end of time, and will only yield to the
intervention of a certain Saint Agatha of Orsaro, a newly discovered
miracle-worker, of whose fame you will doubtless hear much erelong.
To my infinite astonishment, papa is quite converted to this opinion,
and Cary tells me is most impatient to set out for Orsaro, a little
village at the foot of the mountain of that name, and about thirty miles
from this. As the only approach is by a bridle-path, we are to travel on
mules or asses; and I look forward to the excursion, if not exactly with
pleasure, with some interest. Father Giacomo--I can't call him anything
else--has already written to secure rooms for us at the little inn; and
we are meanwhile basely employed in the manufacture of certain pilgrim
costumes, which are indispensable to all frequenting the holy shrine.
The dress is far from unbecoming, I assure you; a loose robe of white
stuff--ours are Cashmere--with wide sleeves, and a large hood lined
with sky-blue; a cord of the same color round the waist; no shoes or
stockings, but light sandals, which show the foot to perfection. An
amber rosary is the only ornament permitted; but the whole is charming.
Saint Agatha of Orsaro will unquestionably make a great noise in the
world; and it will therefore be interesting to you to know something
of her history,--or, what Fra Giacomo more properly calls, her
manifestation--which was in this wise: The priest of Orsaro--a very
devout and excellent man--had occasion to go into the church late at
night on the eve of Saint Agatha's festival. He was anxious, I believe,
to see that all the decorations to do honor to the day were in proper
order, and, taking a lamp from the sacristy, he walked down the aisle
till he came to the shrine, where the saint's image stood. He knelt
for a moment to address her in prayer, when, with a sudden sneeze, she
extinguished his light, and left him fainting and in darkness on the
floor of the church. In this fashion was he discovered the following
morning, when, after coming to himself, he made the revelation I have
just given you. Since that she has been known to sneeze three times,
and on each occasion a miracle has followed. The fame of this wonderful
occurrence has now traversed Italy, and will doubtless soon extend to
the faithful in every part of Europe. Orsaro is becoming crowded with
penitents; among whom I am gratified to see the names of many of the
English aristocracy; and it has become quite a fashionable thing to pass
a week or ten days there.
Now, dearest Kitty, from you, with whom I have no concealments, I will
not disguise the confession that I look forward to this excursion
with considerable hope and expectation. You cannot but have perceived
latterly how our faith, instead of being, as it once was, the symbol
of low birth and ignoble connections, has become the very bond of
aristocratic society. The church has become the _salon_ wherein we make
our most valued acquaintances; and devout observances are equivalent to
letters of introduction. If I wanted a proof of this, I'd give it in
the number of those who have become converts to our religion, from
the manifest social benefits the change of faith has conferred. How
otherwise would third and fourth-rate Protestants obtain access to
Princely _soirees_ and Ducal receptions? By what other road could
they arrive at recognition in the society of Rome and Naples, frequent
Cardinals' levees, and be even seen lounging in the ante-chambers of the
Vatican!
Hence it is clear that the true faith has its benefits in _this_ world
also, and that piety is a passport to high places even on earth. I have
no doubt, if we manage properly, our sojourn at Orsaro may be made very
profitable, and that, even without miracles, the excursion may pay us
well.
I have been interrupted by a message to attend mamma in her own room,--a
summons I rightly guessed to imply something of importance. Only fancy,
Kitty, it was a letter which had arrived addressed to papa,--but
of course not given to him to read in his present highly agitated
state,--from Captain Morris, with a proposal for Caroline!
He very properly sets out by acknowledging the great difference of age
between them, but he might certainly have added something as to the
discrepancy between their stations. He talks, too, of his small means,
"sufficient for those who can limit their ambitions and wants within a
narrow circle,"--I wonder who they are?--and professes a deal of that
cold kind of respectful love which all old men affect to think a woman
ought to feel flattered by. In fact, the whole reads far more like a
law paper than a love-letter, and is rather a rough draft of an Act of
Parliament against celibacy than a proposal for a pretty girl!
Mamma had shown the letter to Fra Giacomo before I entered, and I had
very little trouble to guess the effect produced by his counsels. The
Captain, as a heretic, was at once denounced by him; and the little
man grew actually enthusiastic in inveighing against the insulting
presumption of the offer. He insisted on a peremptory, flat rejection
of the proposal, without any reference whatever to papa. He said that to
hesitate in such a question was in itself a sin; and he even hinted that
he was n't quite sure what reception Saint Agatha might vouchsafe us
after so much of intercourse with an outcast and a disbeliever.
This last argument was decisive, and I accordingly sat down and wrote,
in mamma's name, a very stiff acknowledgment of the receipt of his
letter, and an equally cold refusal of the honor it tendered for our
acceptance. We all agreed that Cary should hear nothing whatever of the
matter, but, as Fra Giacomo said, "we 'd keep the disgrace for our own
hearts."
I own to you, Kitty, that if the religious question could be got over,
I do not think the thing so inadmissible. Cary is evidently not destined
to advance our family interests; had she even the capacity, she lacks
the ambition. Her tastes are humble, commonplace, and--shall I say
it?--vulgar.
It gives her no pleasure to move in high society, and she esteems the
stupid humdrum of domestic life as the very supreme of happiness. With
such tastes this old Captain--he is five-and-thirty at least--would
perhaps have suited her perfectly, and his intolerable mother been quite
a companion. Their small fortune, too, would have consigned them to some
cheap, out-of-the-way place, where we should not have met; and, in fact,
the arrangement might have combined a very fair share of advantage. Fra
G., however, had decided the matter on higher grounds, and there is no
more to be said about it.
There is another letter come by this post, too, from Lord George,
dearest! He is to arrive to-night, if he can get horses. He is full of
some wonderful tournament about to be held at Genoa,--a spectacle to
be given by the city to the King, which is to attract all the world
thither; and Lord G. writes to say that we have n't a moment to lose in
securing accommodation at the hotel. Little suspecting the frame of mind
his communication is to find us in, and that, in place of doughty
deeds and chivalrous exploits, our thoughts are turned to fastings,
mortifications, and whipcord! Oh, how I shudder at the ridicule with
which he will assail us, and tremble for my own constancy under the
raillery he will shower on us! I never dreaded his coming before, and
would give worlds now that anything could prevent his arrival.
How reconcile his presence with that of Fra Giacomo? How protect the
priest from the overt quizzings of my Lord? and how rescue his Lordship
from the secret machinations of the "father?"? are difficulties that I
know not how to face. Mamma, besides, is now so totally under priestly
guidance that she would sacrifice the whole peerage for a shaving of
a saint's shin-bone! There will not be even time left me to concert
measures with Lord G. The moment he enters the house he'll see the
"altered temper of our ways" in a thousand instances. Relics, missals,
beads, and rosaries have replaced Gavarni's etchings,--"Punch," and the
"Illustration." Charms and amulets blessed by popes occupy the places
of cigar-holders, pipe-sticks, and gutta-percha drolleries. The "Stabat
Mater" has usurped the seat of "Casta Diva" on the piano, and a number
of other unmistakable signs point to our reformed condition.
I hear post-horses approaching--they come nearer and nearer! Yes,
Kitty, it must be--it is he! James has met him--they are already on the
stairs--how they laugh! James must be telling him everything. I knew he
would. Another burst of that unfeeling laughter! They are at the door.
Good-bye!