I DISAPPOINT MY FRIENDS
My forebodings were more than fulfilled. The next time, which was at a
week's interval, that I presented myself at the Villa San Giorgio, Donna
Aurelia, in full reception, turned her back upon me and left the room in
company of the Marchese Semifonte. I suffered the indignity as best I
might--I did not quit the company; nobody, I flatter myself, knew what
pangs of mortification I was feeling. I saw no more of Aurelia that
evening, and a conversation which I had with Donna Giulia made matters
no better. She spoke to me very plainly and with some warmth.
"Here you had, but a few days ago, your mistress in a most promising
humour," she said, "detesting her doctor, yet resolved to have him back
in order to give you a countenance. In Count Giraldi and myself you
have, I take leave to say, two of the most complaisant friends in
Europe; yet what are you doing? You maintain, for reasons best known to
yourself, a pretty girl in your lodgings, pranked out in silks and
furbelows--a runaway from a house of discipline--and (if it is all true
that they tell me) one who, if she belongs to anybody, dare not belong,
certainly, to you. Really, Don Francis, you are exorbitant. Pray, do you
propose to us to keep Aurelia here in order that she may listen to your
poetry, and then to return from your intellectual feast to the arms of
your little peasant? And Aurelia is to know it and acquiesce? Good
heavens! do you know that she is young, fresh, and charming, and of
Siena? I ask your pardon, Don Francis--but oh, my perverse young friend,
why on earth don't you take her?"
"Dearest lady!" I cried out, "what under Heaven am I to take? I adore
Aurelia; I ask nothing better than leave to serve her, to kneel at her
feet. If she is cruel to me, that is my pride. If she is kind, that is
my humiliation. If she were to kill me, that would be my topmost
reward."
"Very true indeed," she said. "And what if she were to do, as I should
certainly do, ignore you altogether?"
"I should not cease to love her. I should have nothing to complain of,"
I said.
She tossed her hands up in despair. "If this is what conies of reading
your Dante, I advise the 'Song of Solomon,'" she said. "I have never
opened the 'Divine Comedy'--still less the 'Vita Nova'; but I consider
the author a donkey, and am sure that was the opinion of his Donna
Beatrice."
Count Giraldi, for some reason which I could not then comprehend, did
not care to talk of my affair. He said nothing of Aurelia to me--and, so
far as I could see, avoided the lady herself as much as the discussion
of her position. He told me that he had been able to offer a judgeship
of the Court of Cassation to Dr. Lanfranchi, and that he was in great
hopes that he would take it. In that case he would, of course, reside in
Florence; and "The rest," said he, "I shall leave to you."
I told him that, if Donna Aurelia was reconciled to her husband through
his means, I should be eternally in his debt--and not less so though I
should be in Padua and with the mountains between us.
He frowned, he was puzzled. "You leave us?" he said; "you abandon Donna
Aurelia?" I told him that I could never cease to love her, but that love
for a lady seemed to me an extremely bad reason for bringing about her
ruin. I had gone so near to that already that nothing in the world would
induce me to risk it again.
He affected to misunderstand me, in his scoffing way. "Admirable!
Admirable!" he cried. "I see that you have recovered your spirits."
"I hope my spirit has never failed me yet when I have had need of it," I
said. "I shall thank God on my knees this night that my lady has been
saved alive. No lover in the world has ever begged for his mistress's
surrender so heartily as I shall pray for the return of mine to her
husband's arms."
He clapped me on the back. "You are a master of paradox indeed," he
said.
I assured him that I was serious. "Then," said he, "I admire while I do
not follow you. I ask you once more, do you wish me to understand that
you abandon Donna Aurelia? I have my reasons, mind you, and have no wish
to take you unawares."
"I cannot abandon what I do not pursue," I replied. "I can only repeat
that it would be a very curious proof of my love for a lady to urge her
to perdition on my account."
He looked at me oddly, fixedly, for a long time. Then he said, "It is
true that you are an Englishman. I had forgotten it." Suddenly he threw
up his hands. "What a nation! What a lover!" His hand came down and
rested upon my shoulders. "My friend," he said, "I am not so young as I
was, but I do believe that I can teach you something." With that he left
me.
Upon returning to my house, sadly out of countenance by the coldness of
Aurelia, I was met by Virginia, who reminded me that Scipione had
obtained leave of absence for the night in order to visit his wife. She
seemed excited and unlike herself, very careful to lock and bolt the
front door, and was continually at the window, looking over the Piazza.
Occupied as I was with my own troubles, I took no notice of her, and
she, with the intelligence peculiar to her, saw how the land lay. She
was not accustomed to pick her words with me--no Tuscan servants are--
and after a time of silence on my part and pretended business about the
room on hers, she asked leave to speak to me, and without getting it,
said, "Excuse me, Don Francis, for the liberty I take, but I see you
very miserable, and guess the reason. You have had words with your
mistress--and no wonder. Let me tell you that you have not the rudiments
of love in you."
"Enough of that, Virginia," I said; but she would not oblige me.
"Let me tell your honour," said she, "that your sex has had the monopoly
of mine since this world was first put in order. If you want your
Aurelia, as I told you before, you must take her. Your proposals towards
her are very Christian, but I have noticed that it is not the Christians
who have the prettiest women at their disposition, but the Turks, of
whom there are more in the world than you think for. Your doctor, for
example, was a Turk of the Turks; and what did your Aurelia do but
grovel for his rod until you came along, and she said, 'Hey, here is one
who is Turchissimo, the grandest of grand Turks, with a longer and
sharper rod'? You had a great chance then, Don Francis--what under
Heaven possessed you to break the rod in her presence, or rather to put
it into her hands, saying, 'Behold, madam, the rod. It is yours, not
mine; use it. I kneel to receive it'? Why, Lord of Mercies, is this
madness? Let me remind you of what I told you at Prato not so long ago,
that to pray at a lady's feet when you ought to have her in your arms is
to prepare misery for the pair of you. The whole trouble about that
precious fault of yours was--not that you committed it, Dio mio, but
that you did not commit it again. There, sir, that is my opinion--make
what you will of it."
I was too profoundly dejected to be angry as I ought to have been; I
believe I made no reply. Emboldened, or piqued, by that, she came nearer
and spoke with great passion. "I'll tell you another thing," she said.
"I am in your way, and am quite aware of it. Donna Aurelia and all your
fine friends believe that I am with you--as--as I am not. Well, now, Don
Francis, you may be rid of me whenever you please. Fra Palamone is here,
and the Marchese Semifonte also. I have seen them both--in this very
Piazza--this afternoon. Once they were together, and once Palamone was
here alone. That means something. Now, if you choose to hand me over to
those two you will do a fine stroke of business. Your Count Giraldi has
a fancy for Donna Aurelia, I can see that plainly. It suits him very
well that I should be here. Get rid of me, and where is the count? Do
you not see?"
I turned upon her then and reproved her. "You hurt yourself more than
me, Virginia," I said, "by talking in this strain. Your word 'fancy' is
a word of the market. Grooms FANCY a horse at the fair, housewives fancy
a leg of lamb, leering ploughboys in a tavern FANCY the wench who cleans
the pots. Gentlemen do not so use to beautiful and wise ladies. You use
horrible words, my poor child, but non omnia possumus omnes."
She listened at first with lowering brows, and eyes which watched me
guardedly. But as I went on, more scornfully than perhaps I thought, a
change came over her. She let fall her arms, she drooped, became
distressed. I saw a tear fall, but I believed that I did well to be
angry.
"Be sure of this," I said sharply, "that I will suffer no word in
disparagement of Donna Aurelia to be said in my presence. Your word
'fancy,' as applied to her, is horrible to me. You will take care not to
repeat it. If you choose to whisper to your friends that I have a
'fancy' for you, or that the marchese has purchased Fra Palamone to
indulge a similar 'fancy' on his account, I have nothing to say. No term
of the sort is by this time too hard for me to bear; and the marchese,
no doubt, can take care of himself. But Donna Aurelia, once and for all,
is to be left out of your dictionary if you can only couple her name
with a degrading qualification. Enough of that. I am about to return to
Padua, and shall take you with me as far as Condoglia." This was indeed
my intention, for I was hurt more than I cared to own by Donna Aurelia's
reception of me, and yet knew all the time that I deserved nothing more.
Virginia listened with head hung down and clenched hands; when I had
done she would have rushed headlong into speech--but she checked herself
by biting her lip forcibly. She curtseyed to me, and went quickly out of
the room. I spent a great part of the night in the destruction of
papers, collection of objects which I wished to take with me, and in
committing to the flame certain others which I now knew I must do
without. Treasured memories of Aurelia went with them. She was still in
my heart, and must ever remain there, patroness of my honest intention.
Daylight was creeping over the Piazza and putting my candles to shame
before I discovered how tired I was. I blew them out, opened windows and
shutters, and leaned into the sweet air. St. Mary's church stared hard,
an unearthly black and white; the Piazza, perfectly empty, looked of
enormous size. In it the dawn-wind blew up little spirals of dust; and
it was so quiet, that when a scrap of paper was whirled into the air, I
heard the littering noise it made before it started on its flight. The
sky was of exquisite purity, pale as milk, with a very faint flush of
rose behind the church. In a few minutes the sun would be up from behind
Vallombrosa, and all the glory of the Italian day would roll over
Florence in a flood. I felt mortally and suddenly tired, too languid to
face the richness of life to come, poor and famished as I must now be.
As I was turning from the window I saw the figures of two men come out
of the sharp angle of St. Mary's and walk towards the town. Both were
tall, both in cloaks; but one wore his hat and the other carried it. By
this, as well as his drooping, deferential shoulders, I knew this latter
to be the servant, the former his patron. Midway towards the Via de'
Benci they stopped, while he of the bare head explained at length,
pointing this way and that with his hat, then counting on his fingers. I
was now expert enough to be able to read an Italian conversation more
quickly than I could gather it in talk. There was no doubt what was
meant. "I shall go to such and such place, come back to such and such
place; the carriage will stay here; in eight hours from now your
lordship shall be satisfied." The man of position nodded his agreement,
acknowledged with another nod a low bow from his inferior, and walked
into Florence. As he entered the Via de' Benci I saw him plainly. It was
the Marchese Semifonte. I saw his pale, wandering eyes, his moth-white
face. So then I knew who was the other, standing out in the Piazza by
himself, looking up towards my room.