lovely, so happy in Emilio’s presence, that at this moment the Prince,
wide awake, experienced the sensations of the horrible dream that
torments persons of a lively imagination, in which after arriving in a
ballroom full of women in full dress, the dreamer is suddenly aware
that he is naked, without even a shirt; shame and terror possess him
by turns, and only waking can relieve him from his misery. Thus stood
Emilio’s soul in the presence of his mistress. Hitherto that soul had
known only the fairest flowers of feeling; a debauch had plunged it into
dishonor. This none knew but he, for the beautiful Florentine ascribed
so many virtues to her lover that the man she adored could not but be
incapable of any stain.
As Emilio had not taken her hand, the Duchess pushed her fingers through
his hair that the singer had kissed. Then she perceived that Emilio’s
hand was clammy and his brow moist.
“What ails you?” she asked, in a voice to which tenderness gave the
sweetness of a flute.
“Never till this moment have I known how much I love you,” he replied.
“Well, dear idol, what would you have?” said she.
“What have I done to make her ask that?” he wondered to himself.
“Emilio, what letter was that which you threw into the lagoon?”
“Vendramini’s. I had not read it to the end, or I should never have gone
to my palazzo, and there have met the Duke; for no doubt it told me all
about it.”
Massimilla turned pale, but a caress from Emilio reassured her.
“Stay with me all day; we will go to the opera together. We will not
set out for Friuli; your presence will no doubt enable me to endure
Cataneo’s,” said Massimilla.
Though this would be torment to her lover’s soul, he consented with
apparent joy.
If anything can give us a foretaste of what the damned will suffer on
finding themselves so unworthy of God, is it not the state of a young
man, as yet unpolluted, in the presence of a mistress he reveres, while
he still feels on his lips the taste of infidelity, and brings into
the sanctuary of the divinity he worships the tainted atmosphere of the
courtesan?
Baader, who in his lectures eliminated things divine by erotic imagery,
had no doubt observed, like some Catholic writers, the intimate
resemblance between human and heavenly love.
This distress of mind cast a hue of melancholy over the pleasure the
young Venetian felt in his mistress’ presence. A woman’s instinct has
amazing aptitude for harmony of feeling; it assumes the hue, it vibrates
to the note suggested by her lover. The pungent flavor of coquettish
spice is far indeed from spurring affection so much as this gentle
sympathy of tenderness. The smartness of a coquette too clearly marks
opposition; however transient it is displeasing; but this intimate
comprehension shows a perfect fusion of souls. The hapless Emilio was
touched by the unspoken divination which led the Duchess to pity a fault
unknown to her.
Massimilla, feeling that her strength lay in the absence of any sensual
side to her love, could allow herself to be expansive; she boldly and
confidently poured out her angelic spirit, she stripped it bare, just as
during that diabolical night, La Tinti had displayed the soft lines of
her body, and her firm, elastic flesh. In Emilio’s eyes there was as it
were a conflict between the saintly love of this white soul and that of
the vehement and muscular Sicilian.
The day was spent in long looks following on deep meditations. Each of
them gauged the depths of tender feeling, and found it bottomless; a
conviction that brought fond words to their lips. Modesty, the
goddess who in a moment of forgetfulness with Love, was the mother of
Coquettishness, need not have put her hand before her face as she looked
at these lovers. As a crowning joy, an orgy of happiness, Massimilla
pillowed Emilio’s head in her arms, and now and then ventured to press
her lips to his; but only as a bird dips its beak into the clear waters
of a spring, looking round lest it should be seen. Their fancy worked
upon this kiss, as a composer develops a subject by the endless
resources of music, and it produced in them such tumultuous and
vibrating echoes as fevered their blood.
The Idea must always be stronger than the Fact, otherwise desire would
be less perfect than satisfaction, and it is in fact the stronger,--it
gives birth to wit. And, indeed, they were perfectly happy; for
enjoyment must always take something off happiness. Married in heaven
alone, these two lovers admired each other in their purest aspect,--that
of two souls incandescent, and united in celestial light, radiant to
the eyes that faith has touched; and, above all, filled with the rapture
which the brush of a Raphael, a Titian, a Murillo, has depicted, and
which those who have ever known it, taste again as they gaze at those
paintings. Do not such peerless spirits scorn the coarser joys lavished
by the Sicilian singer--the material expression of that angelic union?
These noble thoughts were in the Prince’s mind as he reposed in heavenly
calm on Massimilla’s cool, soft, white bosom, under the gentle radiance
of her eyes veiled by long, bright lashes; and he gave himself up to
this dream of an ideal orgy. At such a moment, Massimilla was as one of
the Virgin visions seen in dreams, which vanish at cock-crow, but whom
we recognize when we find them again in their realm of glory,--in the
works of some great painters of Heaven.
In the evening the lovers went to the theatre. This is the way of
Italian life: love in the morning; music in the evening; the night for
sleep. How far preferable is this existence to that of a country
where every one expends his lungs and strength in politics, without
contributing any more, single-minded, to the progress of affairs than a
grain of sand can make a cloud of dust. Liberty, in those strange lands,
consists in the right to squabble over public concerns, to take care of
oneself, to waste time in patriotic undertakings each more futile than
the last, inasmuch as they all weaken that noble, holy self-concern
which is the parent of all great human achievement. At Venice, on
the contrary, love and its myriad ties, the sweet business of real
happiness, fills up all the time.
In that country, love is so much a matter of course that the Duchess was
regarded as a wonder; for, in spite of her violent attachment to Emilio,
everybody was confident of her immaculate purity. And women gave their
sincere pity to the poor young man, who was regarded as a victim to the
virtue of his lady-love. At the same time, no one cared to blame the
Duchess, for in Italy religion is a power as much respected as love.
Evening after evening Massimilla’s box was the first object of every
opera-glass, and each woman would say to her lover, as she studied the
Duchess and her adorer:
“How far have they got?”
The lover would examine Emilio, seeking some evidence of success;
would find no expression but that of a pure and dejected passion. And
throughout the house, as they visited from box to box, the men would say
to the ladies:
“La Cataneo is not yet Emilio’s.”
“She is unwise,” said the old women. “She will tire him out.”
“_Forse!_” (Perhaps) the young wives would reply, with the solemn
accent that Italians can infuse into that great word--the answer to many
questions here below.
Some women were indignant, thought the whole thing ill-judged, and
declared that it was a misapprehension of religion to allow it to
smother love.
“My dear, love that poor Emilio,” said the Signora Vulpato to
Massimilla, as they met on the stairs in going out.
“I do love him with all my might,” replied the Duchess.
“Then why does not he look happy?”
Massimilla’s reply was a little shrug of her shoulders.
We in France--France as the growing mania for English proprieties has
made it--can form no idea of the serious interest taken in this affair
by Venetian society.
Vendramini alone knew Emilio’s secret, which was carefully kept between
two men who had, for private pleasure, combined their coats of arms with
the motto _Non amici, frates_.
The opening night of the opera season is an event at Venice, as in every
capital in Italy. The _Fenice_ was crowded.
The five hours of the night that are spent at the theatre fill so
important a place in Italian life that it is well to give an account of
the customs that have risen from this manner of spending time.
The boxes in Italy are unlike those of any other country, inasmuch as
that elsewhere the women go to be seen, and that Italian ladies do not
care to make a show of themselves. Each box is long and narrow, sloping
at an angle to the front and to the passage behind. On each side is a
sofa, and at the end stand two armchairs, one for the mistress of the
box, and the other for a lady friend when she brings one, which she
rarely does. Each lady is in fact too much engaged in her own box to
call on others, or to wish to see them; also no one cares to introduce
a rival. An Italian woman almost always reigns alone in her box; the
mothers are not the slaves of their daughters, the daughters have no
mother on their hands; thus there are no children, no relations to watch
and censure and bore, or cut into a conversation.
In front every box is draped in the same way, with the same silk: from
the cornice hang curtains, also all to match; and these remain drawn
when the family to whom the box belongs is in mourning. With very few
exceptions, and those only at Milan, there is no light inside the box;
they are illuminated only from the stage, and from a not very brilliant
hanging lustre which, in spite of protests, has been introduced into
the house in some towns; still, screened by the curtains, they are never
very light, and their arrangement leaves the back of the box so dark
that it is very difficult to see what is going on.
The boxes, large enough to accommodate eight or ten persons, are
decorated with handsome silks, the ceilings are painted and ornamented
in light and pleasing colors; the woodwork is gilt. Ices and sorbets are
served there, and sweetmeats; for only the plebeian classes ever have a
serious meal. Each box is freehold property, and of considerable value;
some are estimated at as much as thirty thousand lire; the Litta family
at Milan own three adjoining. These facts sufficiently indicate the
importance attributed to this incident of fashionable life.
Conversation reigns supreme in this little apartment, which Stendhal,
one of the most ingenious of modern writers, and a keen student of
Italian manners, has called a boudoir with a window opening on to a
pit. The music and the spectacle are in fact purely accessory; the
real interest of the evening is in the social meeting there, the
all-important trivialities of love that are discussed, the assignations
held, the anecdotes and gossip that creep in. The theatre is an
inexpensive meeting-place for a whole society which is content and
amused with studying itself.
The men who are admitted take their seats on one of the sofas, in
the order of their arrival. The first comer naturally is next to the
mistress of the box, but when both seats are full, if another visitor
comes in, the one who has sat longest rises, takes his leave and
departs. All move up one place, and so each in turn is next the
sovereign.
This futile gossip, or serious colloquy, these elegant trivialities of
Italian life, inevitably imply some general intimacy. The lady may be in
full dress or not, as she pleases. She is so completely at home that a
stranger who has been received in her box may call on her next day at
her residence. The foreign visitor cannot at first understand this life
of idle wit, this _dolce far niente_ on a background of music. Only long
custom and keen observation can ever reveal to a foreigner the meaning
of Italian life, which is like the free sky of the south, and where a
rich man will not endure a cloud. A man of rank cares little about
the management of his fortune; he leaves the details to his stewards
(ragionati), who rob and ruin him. He has no instinct for politics, and
they would presently bore him; he lives exclusively for passion, which
fills up all his time; hence the necessity felt by the lady and her
lover for being constantly together; for the great feature of such a
life is the lover, who for five hours is kept under the eye of a woman
who has had him at her feet all day. Thus Italian habits allow of
perpetual satisfaction, and necessitate a constant study of the means
fitted to insure it, though hidden under apparent light-heartedness.
It is a beautiful life, but a reckless one, and in no country in the
world are men so often found worn out.
The Duchess’ box was on the pit tier--_pepiano_, as it is called in
Venice; she always sat where the light from the stage fell on her face,
so that her handsome head, softly illuminated, stood out against the
dark background. The Florentine attracted every gaze by her broad, high
brow, as white as snow, crowned with plaits of black hair that gave her
a really royal look; by the refinement of her features, resembling the
noble features of Andrea del Sarto’s heads; by the outline of her face,
the setting of her eyes; and by those velvet eyes themselves, which
spoke of the rapture of a woman dreaming of happiness, still pure though
loving, at once attractive and dignified.
Instead of _Mose_, in which la Tinti was to have appeared with
Genovese, _Il Barbiere_ was given, and the tenor was to sing without the
celebrated prima donna. The manager announced that he had been obliged
to change the opera in consequence of la Tinti’s being ill; and the Duke
was not to be seen in the theatre.
Was this a clever trick on the part of the management, to secure two
full houses by bringing out Genovese and Tinti separately, or was
Clarina’s indisposition genuine? While this was open to discussion by
others, Emilio might be better informed; and though the announcement
caused him some remorse, as he remembered the singer’s beauty and
vehemence, her absence and the Duke’s put both the Prince and the
Duchess very much at their ease.
And Genovese sang in such a way as to drive out all memories of a night
of illicit love, and to prolong the heavenly joys of this blissful day.
Happy to be alone to receive the applause of the house, the tenor
did his best with the powers which have since achieved European fame.
Genovese, then but three-and-twenty, born at Bergamo, a pupil of
Veluti’s and devoted to his art, a fine man, good-looking, clever in
apprehending the spirit of a part, was already developing into the
great artist destined to win fame and fortune. He had a wild success,--a
phrase which is literally exact only in Italy, where the applause of the
house is absolutely frenzied when a singer procures it enjoyment.
Some of the Prince’s friends came to congratulate him on coming into his
title, and to discuss the news. Only last evening la Tinti, taken by the
Duke to the Vulpatos’, had sung there, apparently in health as sound
as her voice was fine; hence her sudden disposition gave rise to
much comment. It was rumored at the Cafe Florian that Genovese was
desperately in love with Clarina; that she was only anxious to avoid his
declarations, and that the manager had tried in vain to induce her to
appear with him. The Austrian General, on the other hand, asserted that
it was the Duke who was ill, that the prima donna was nursing him, and
that Genovese had been commanded to make amends to the public.
The Duchess owed this visit from the Austrian General to the fact that a
French physician had come to Venice whom the General wished to introduce
to her. The Prince, seeing Vendramin wandering about the _parterre_,
went out for a few minutes of confidential talk with his friend, whom
he had not seen for three months; and as they walked round the gangway
which divides the seats in the pit from the lowest tier of boxes, he had
an opportunity of observing Massimilla’s reception of the foreigner.
“Who is that Frenchman?” asked the Prince.
“A physician sent for by Cataneo, who wants to know how long he is
likely to live,” said Vendramin. “The Frenchman is waiting for Malfatti,
with whom he is to hold a consultation.”
Like every Italian woman who is in love, the Duchess kept her eyes fixed
on Emilio; for in that land a woman is so wholly wrapped up in her lover
that it is difficult to detect an expressive glance directed at anybody
else.
“Caro,” said the Prince to his friend, “remember I slept at your house
last night.”
“Have you triumphed?” said Vendramin, putting his arm round Emilio’s
waist.
“No; but I hope I may some day be happy with Massimilla.”
“Well,” replied Marco, “then you will be the most envied man on earth.
The Duchess is the most perfect woman in Italy. To me, seeing things as
I do through the dazzling medium of opium, she seems the very highest
expression of art; for nature, without knowing it, has made her a
Raphael picture. Your passion gives no umbrage to Cataneo, who has
handed over to me a thousand crowns, which I am to give to you.”
“Well,” added Emilio, “whatever you may hear said, I sleep every night
at your house. Come, for every minute spent away from her, when I might
be with her, is torment.”
Emilio took his seat at the back of the box and remained there in
silence, listening to the Duchess, enchanted by her wit and beauty. It
was for him, and not out of vanity, that Massimilla lavished the charms
of her conversation bright with Italian wit, in which sarcasm lashed
things but not persons, laughter attacked nothing that was not
laughable, mere trifles were seasoned with Attic salt.
Anywhere else she might have been tiresome. The Italians, an eminently
intelligent race, have no fancy for displaying their talents where they
are not in demand; their chat is perfectly simple and effortless, it
never makes play, as in France, under the lead of a fencing master,
each one flourishing his foil, or, if he has nothing to say, sitting
humiliated.
Conversation sparkles with a delicate and subtle satire that plays
gracefully with familiar facts; and instead of a compromising epigram an
Italian has a glance or a smile of unutterable meaning. They think--and
they are right--that to be expected to understand ideas when they only
seek enjoyment, is a bore.
Indeed, la Vulpato had said to Massimilla:
“If you loved him you would not talk so well.”
Emilio took no part in the conversation; he listened and gazed. This
reserve might have led foreigners to suppose that the Prince was a man
of no intelligence,--their impression very commonly of an Italian
in love,--whereas he was simply a lover up to his ears in rapture.
Vendramin sat down by Emilio, opposite the Frenchman, who, as the
stranger, occupied the corner facing the Duchess.
“Is that gentleman drunk?” said the physician in an undertone to
Massimilla, after looking at Vendramin.
“Yes,” replied she, simply.
In that land of passion, each passion bears its excuse in itself, and
gracious indulgence is shown to every form of error. The Duchess sighed
deeply, and an expression of suppressed pain passed over her features.
“You will see strange things in our country, monsieur,” she went on.
“Vendramin lives on opium, as this one lives on love, and that one
buries himself in learning; most young men have a passion for a dancer,
as older men are miserly. We all create some happiness or some madness
for ourselves.”
“Because you all want to divert your minds from some fixed idea, for
which a revolution would be a radical cure,” replied the physician. “The
Genoese regrets his republic, the Milanese pines for his independence,
the Piemontese longs for a constitutional government, the Romagna cries
for liberty--”
“Of which it knows nothing,” interrupted the Duchess. “Alas! there
are men in Italy so stupid as to long for your idiotic Charter, which
destroys the influence of woman. Most of my fellow-countrywomen must
need read your French books--useless rhodomontade--”
“Useless!” cried the Frenchman.
“Why, monsieur,” the Duchess went on, “what can you find in a book that
is better than what we have in our hearts? Italy is mad.”
“I cannot see that a people is mad because it wishes to be its own
master,” said the physician.
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed the Duchess, eagerly, “does not that mean
paying with a great deal of bloodshed for the right of quarreling, as
you do, over crazy ideas?”
“Then you approve of despotism?” said the physician.
“Why should I not approve of a system of government which, by depriving
us of books and odious politics, leaves men entirely to us?”
“I had thought that the Italians were more patriotic,” said the
Frenchman.
Massimilla laughed so slyly that her interlocutor could not distinguish
mockery from serious meaning, nor her real opinion from ironical
criticism.
“Then you are not a liberal?” said he.
“Heaven preserve me!” said she. “I can imagine nothing in worse taste
than such opinions in a woman. Could you love a woman whose heart was
occupied by all mankind?”
“Those who love are naturally aristocrats,” the Austrian General
observed, with a smile.
“As I came into the theatre,” the Frenchman observed, “you were the
first person I saw; and I remarked to his Excellency that if there was a
woman who could personify a nation it was you. But I grieve to
discover that, though you represent its divine beauty, you have not the
constitutional spirit.”
“Are you not bound,” said the Duchess, pointing to the ballet now being
danced, “to find all our dancers detestable and our singers atrocious?
Paris and London rob us of all our leading stars. Paris passes judgment
on them, and London pays them. Genovese and la Tinti will not be left to
us for six months--”
At this juncture, the Austrian left the box. Vendramin, the Prince, and
the other two Italians exchanged a look and a smile, glancing at the
French physician. He, for a moment, felt doubtful of himself,--a
rare thing in a Frenchman,--fancying he had said or done something
incongruous; but the riddle was immediately solved.
“Do you thing it would be judicious,” said Emilio, “if we spoke our mind
in the presence of our masters?”
“You are in a land of slaves,” said the Duchess, in a tone and with
a droop of the head which gave her at once the look for which the
physician had sought in vain. “Vendramin,” she went on, speaking so that
only the stranger could hear her, “took to smoking opium, a villainous
idea suggested to him by an Englishman who, for other reasons of his,
craved an easy death--not death as men see it in the form of a skeleton,
but death draped with the frippery you in France call a flag--a
maiden form crowned with flowers or laurels; she appears in a cloud of
gunpowder borne on the flight of a cannon-ball--or else stretched on a
bed between two courtesans; or again, she rises in the steam of a bowl
of punch, or the dazzling vapor of a diamond--but a diamond in the form
of carbon.
“Whenever Vendramin chooses, for three Austrian lire, he can be a
Venetian Captain, he can sail in the galleys of the Republic, and
conquer the gilded domes of Constantinople. Then he can lounge on the
divans in the Seraglio among the Sultan’s wives, while the Grand Signor
himself is the slave of the Venetian conqueror. He returns to restore
his palazzo with the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. He can quit the women
of the East for the doubly masked intrigues of his beloved Venetians,
and fancy that he dreads the jealousy which has ceased to exist.
“For three zwanziger he can transport himself into the Council of Ten,
can wield there terrible power, and leave the Doges’ Palace to sleep
under the watch of a pair of flashing eyes, or to climb a balcony from
which a fair hand has hung a silken ladder. He can love a woman to whom
opium lends such poetic grace as we women of flesh and blood could never
show.
“Presently he turns over, and he is face to face with the dreadful frown
of the senator, who holds a dagger. He hears the blade plunged into his
mistress’ heart. She dies smiling on him; for she has saved him.
“And she is a happy woman!” added the Duchess, looking at Emilio.