Two years had passed, and Leonora d'Orco had changed with everything
around her. Alliances had been formed and broken; great commanders had
won victories, and yielded to the stronger hand of Fate. Kings had
descended from the proud pitch of power and betaken themselves to the
humblest of beds; new combinations had been formed over the whole
earth; enemies had become friends, friends enemies; love was burning
soon to become cold; and there was coldness where the most ardent
passion had once been felt.
I must be pardoned if I pause in my simple tale to show how the
strange transforming-rod of time had affected Leonora d'Orco. Anguish,
disappointment, anger--yes, I may say anger--had produced for a time
those results which mental excitement almost of any kind fails not to
work on the human frame.
When a whole year had elapsed without tidings or explanation from
Lorenzo Visconti, her cheek might be seen to become paler and paler
every day. Her limbs and form could not lose their grace, but they
lost their beautiful contour. She became thin as well as pale; her
bright eyes, too, lost somewhat of their lustre. She was still a young
girl, and it was painful to see how her loveliness faded as her best
hopes faded. She sought solitude; she avoided all society; she shunned
especially that of men. Her father's was an exception. Parent and
child seemed drawn closer together by the events which had inflicted a
different kind of pain upon the heart of each. Often, after gazing at
her for a while, cold, stern, remorseless Ramiro d'Orco would suddenly
seek his cabinet, and, pressing his hands together till the fingers
grew white, would utter but one word--"revenge!"
This state of things lasted but a few months, however, when suddenly a
new change came over the beautiful girl. She had been studying hard
and diligently, and strange books fell into her hands. It seemed as if
from intellectual culture, new sources of happiness became opened to
her. It might, indeed, be that pride came to her aid--that she
resolved to cast away all thoughts of a man she deemed unworthy of
her. It might be that she sought to cheer and solace her father. And
yet there must have been something more, some stronger power at work
within, for she showed that she was not one of those "to love again
and be again deceived." Oh, no, she would not hear the very name of
love.
The gayest, the brightest, the noblest, the most handsome strove for
one smile, one token of her favour, but in vain. Yet she came forth
from her solitude--she became the star of her father's little court.
Amid admiring eyes and looks that seemed almost to worship her, she
moved in beauty, but as cold as ice. Colour came back to her cheek,
light to her eye, roundness and symmetry to every limb. The sweet,
arching lips regained all their redness, but the heart seemed to have
lost its warmth for ever.
The tenderness of the young girl, too, had apparently gone--the
timidity, the shyness of youth. Not that she was hard, unkind, or
harsh--oh, far from it. She was an angel of mercy in that city of
Imola. She pleaded for the prisoner, turned often aside the blow from
those appointed to die, solaced the sick and the needy. Her own great
wealth, left solely to her disposal, raised up many a drooping head,
cheered many a despairing heart. But now she dared to do what she
would have shrunk from in the years passed by. She would approach her
father, fearless, in his sternest moods, entreat, argue, remonstrate,
and often, by the power of her will, bend him from his most settled
purposes. Her beauty had acquired something of the character which her
mind now assumed, and it must have been now that those pictures we
have of her were taken. Though it was of the finest, the most
delicate, the most exquisitely engaging style both in line and
colouring, there was a dignity in the expression and in the whole air
which the canvas can but faintly convey; and yet who could gaze upon
her eyes, those wells of light, without seeing that there was some
marvellous self-sustaining power within.
Leonora became fond, too, of the decoration of her person. Jewels, and
cloth of gold, and rich embroidery decked those lovely hands and arms,
or were wreathed in the clustering masses of her jetty hair, or
arrayed those graceful limbs; and her tire-women had no longer reason
to complain that she forgot her station or neglected her apparel as
they had once done. To them she was gentleness itself; but the suitors
who still would ask her hand could not but feel that their dismissal
had something of the sting of scorn in it. She strove to soften it,
but she could not; and the beautiful lip would curl, however mild the
words might be, as if she thought it strange that any man could think
she would condescend to bestow herself on him.
It must be said, however, that no one had any right to complain of
having been led on to love merely to be refused. No approving smile
ever encouraged the first advance; and if the attentions were too
marked to be misunderstood, a sudden coldness gave the answer without
a word. Once only she showed her contempt plainly. It was when a
nobleman of pride and power declared he would appeal from her decision
to her father. She told him her father had no power to wed her to a
man whom she despised, and, if he ever had possessed it, he had given
her fate into her own hands long before.
"I have his promise," she said--"a promise that, for good or bad, has
not yet been broken to human being--that he will never, even by word,
urge me to wed mortal man. So now go, my lord, and appeal to whom you
will, but let me not see you any more. I am no man's slave, not even a
father's."
There were violent things done in Italy in those days; and I know not
whether it was some idle but threatening words, muttered by this bold
lover as he left her, or the rumour that Imola was soon to be visited
by Cæsar Borgia--the only being on earth she seemed to fear--that had
led her to a step which must be told.
There was a monastery of Cistercian monks upon a hill some five miles
distant from Imola, and, in the early morning of a summer's day, a
gallant cavalcade of some eight horsemen and three women, with Leonora
at their head, stopped at the gates. She dismounted, and, bidding the
attendants wait, went in alone. She asked the porter to call Father
Angelo to her; but the old man, when he came, evidently knew her not.
He was a servile-looking, shrewd-eyed man, and her air, as well as her
attire, impressed him. "What is it, daughter?" he said. "Can I give
you any spiritual aid?"
Leonora fixed her lustrous eyes upon him, and seemed to look into his
very heart. "No, father," she answered; "I have my own confessor, and
a holy and good man he is. It is aid of another kind I seek from you.
I have heard that you have cultivated much the natural sciences, know
all the secret virtues of herbs and minerals, and have prepared drugs
which will remove from earth a dangerous friend or a potent enemy."
"But, daughter," said the monk, interrupting her, "these drugs are not
to be intrusted to girls and children, and----"
"Hear me out," she said; "I seek none of these. What I demand, and
what I must have, is for my own defence. One I loved very well was
once injured by a poisoned weapon, and it took much skill and deep
knowledge to save his life. It struck me then, and it has often
occurred to my mind since, that a weapon so anointed were no poor
defence, even in a woman's feeble hand. Nay, more, that if placed
beyond all hope of safety, she might preserve herself from wrong by a
slight scratch, when her coward hand might fail to plunge the weapon
in her own heart. Once such a means might have been needful to me,
but, thank Heaven, another mode of escape was found. See here. I have
bought this dagger against time of need. The groove, you see, is
perfect, but I want that which makes it efficacious. That you must
give--sell me, I should have said, for you shall have gold enough; and
if any scruple linger in your mind, I promise you, by all I hold most
sacred, never to use it but in my own defence."
"Well, there may be truth in what you say," replied the monk. "Rome is
not far off, and there are strange things, they tell me, taking place
in Rome. But you are a strange lady, and approach boldly matters that
even men treat with some circumlocution."
"I do so because my purposes are holy," replied Leonora. "I have
nothing to conceal, because I have nothing to fear, good father. But
let us not waste time. Will a hundred ducats satisfy you?"
"It should be a hundred and fifty," said the monk. "Such things are
dangerous, and our good father the pope has strictly forbidden the
sale of these drugs to anybody out of his own family."
"Well, take the hundred and fifty," said Leonora. "Bring the poison
quickly, for my attendants will grow impatient."
"But I must mark the phial 'Poison,'" he replied; "then, if you misuse
it, the fault is yours."
"Mark it what you please," she answered. "Here is the money in this
purse when you bring the drug; but be speedy."
The old man gazed into her eyes for a moment as if to read her real
purposes; then bidding her remain beneath the arch, he hurried away.
In a few minutes he returned with a small vial containing a white
powder, and not only gave it to her, but showed her how to apply it to
the blade of the dagger so that the slightest scratch would prove
fatal. "Mix it with water," he said, "and then a drop not bigger than
a drop of dew will do; and remember, daughter, this is no common drug,
such as vulgar, unlearned assassins use. Its effects are instant,
either taken by the lips or infused into the veins. Be cautious,
therefore; and mind, when you apply it, use a thick gauntlet."
"There--there--there is the money," said Leonora, taking the vial
eagerly; and then she added, speaking to herself, "Now, man, I defy
you. I have my safety in my own hands," and, paying the monk the
money, she remounted her horse and rode down the hill.
The old monk, while he counted the money carefully, gazed after her,
muttering to himself, "Now that is for some fair rival, belike, or
else for some faithless lover. Mayhap her husband has played her
false. Ay, Heaven help us! we have always some good excuse for
covering over our real intentions from the eyes of others. To save her
honour at the expense of her life! That is a likely tale indeed! We
have no Lucretias now-a-days except the pope's daughter, and she is a
Lucretia of another sort."
Whatever the old man in his hardened nature might think, Leonora
d'Orco had no purpose but the one she stated. She had long felt the
necessity of the means of self-defence. She had long known that the
only dread she ever experienced now, would vanish if she possessed the
immediate power of life or death over an assailant or over herself.
The dagger she had bought in Florence some weeks after the burning of
the Villa Morelli, but she doubted her strength--not her courage--to
use it with effect. But when the least wound would prove fatal, the
weapon had a higher value. "One scratch upon my arm or upon his hand,"
she said to herself, "and I am safe from worse than death."
It must have been a terrible state of society which led a young girl
to contemplate such a resource as a blessing. I cannot venture to give
anything like a picture of that state. Suffice it that the fears of
Leonora d'Orco were not superfluous, nor her precautions without
cause.