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 favourite 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 idealised, 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 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!"