coast for his beloved Venice. His glory wins him forgiveness, and he
enjoys a life of domestic happiness,--a home, a winter evening, a young
wife and charming children, who pray to San Marco under the care of an
old nurse. Yes, for three francs’ worth of opium he furnishes our empty
arsenal, he watches convoys of merchandise coming in, going to the four
quarters of the world. The forces of modern industry no longer reign in
London, but in his own Venice, where the hanging gardens of Semiramis,
the Temple of Jerusalem, the marvels of Rome, live once more. He adds
to the glories of the middle ages by the labors of steam, by new
masterpieces of art under the protection of Venice, who protected it of
old. Monuments and nations crowd into his little brain; there is room
for them all. Empires and cities and revolutions come and vanish in the
course of a few hours, while Venice alone expands and lives; for the
Venice of his dreams is the empress of the seas. She has two millions of
inhabitants, the sceptre of Italy, the mastery of the Mediterranean and
the Indies!”
“What an opera is the brain of man! What an unfathomed abyss!--even to
those who, like Gall, have mapped it out,” cried the physician.
“Dear Duchess,” said Vendramin, “do not omit the last service that my
elixir will do me. After hearing ravishing voices and imbibing music
through every pore, after experiencing the keenest pleasures and
the fiercest delights of Mahomet’s paradise, I see none but the most
terrible images. I have visions of my beloved Venice full of children’s
faces, distorted, like those of the dying; of women covered with
dreadful wounds, torn and wailing; of men mangled and crushed by the
copper sides of crashing vessels. I begin to see Venice as she is,
shrouded in crape, stripped, robbed, destitute. Pale phantoms wander
through her streets!
“Already the Austrian soldiers are grinning over me, already my
visionary life is drifting into real life; whereas six months ago real
life was the bad dream, and the life of opium held love and bliss,
important affairs and political interests. Alas! To my grief, I see the
dawn over my tomb, where truth and falsehood mingle in a dubious light,
which is neither day nor darkness, but partakes of both.”
“So you see that in this head there is too much patriotism,” said
the Prince, laying his hand on the thick black curls that fell on
Vendramin’s brow.
“Oh, if he loves us he will give up his dreadful opium!” said
Massimilla.
“I will cure your friend,” said the Frenchman.
“Achieve that, and we shall love you,” said the Duchess. “But if on
your return to France you do not calumniate us, we shall love you even
better. The hapless Italians are too much crushed by foreign dominion to
be fairly judged--for we have known yours,” she added, with a smile.
“It was more generous than Austria’s,” said the physician, eagerly.
“Austria squeezes and gives us nothing back, and you squeeze to enlarge
and beautify our towns; you stimulated us by giving us an army. You
thought you could keep Italy, and they expect to lose it--there lies the
difference.
“The Austrians provide us with a sort of ease that is as stultifying and
heavy as themselves, while you overwhelmed us by your devouring energy.
But whether we die of tonics or of narcotics, what does it matter? It is
death all the same, Monsieur le docteur.”
“Unhappy Italy! In my eyes she is like a beautiful woman whom France
ought to protect by making her his mistress,” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“But you could not love us as we wish to be loved,” said the Duchess,
smiling. “We want to be free. But the liberty I crave is not your
ignoble and middle-class liberalism, which would kill all art. I ask,”
said she, in a tone that thrilled through the box,--“that is to say, I
would ask,--that each Italian republic should be resuscitated, with its
nobles, its citizens, its special privileges for each caste. I would
have the old aristocratic republics once more with their intestine
warfare and rivalry that gave birth to the noblest works of art, that
created politics, that raised up the great princely houses. By extending
the action of one government over a vast expanse of country it is
frittered down. The Italian republics were the glory of Europe in
the middle ages. Why has Italy succumbed when the Swiss, who were her
porters, have triumphed?”
“The Swiss republics,” said the doctor, “were worthy housewives, busy
with their own little concerns, and neither having any cause for
envying another. Your republics were haughty queens, preferring to sell
themselves rather than bow to a neighbor; they fell too low ever to rise
again. The Guelphs are triumphant.”
“Do not pity us too much,” said the Duchess, in a voice that made the
two friends start. “We are still supreme. Even in the depths of her
misfortune Italy governs through the choicer spirits that abound in her
cities.
“Unfortunately the greater number of her geniuses learn to understand
life so quickly that they lie sunk in poverty-stricken pleasure. As for
those who are willing to play the melancholy game for immortality, they
know how to get at your gold and to secure your praises. Ay, in
this land--pitied for its fallen state by traveled simpletons and
hypocritical poets, while its character is traduced by politicians--in
this land, which appears so languid, powerless, and ruinous, worn out
rather than old, there are puissant brains in every branch of life,
genius throwing out vigorous shoots as an old vine-stock throws out
canes productive of delicious fruit. This race of ancient rulers
still gives birth to kings--Lagrange, Volta, Rasori, Canova, Rossini,
Bartolini, Galvani, Vigano, Beccaria, Cicognara, Corvetto. These
Italians are masters of the scientific peaks on which they stand, or of
the arts to which they devote themselves. To say nothing of the singers
and executants who captivate Europe by their amazing perfections:
Taglioni, Paganini, and the rest. Italy still rules the world which will
always come to worship her.
“Go to Florian’s to-night; you will find in Capraja one of our cleverest
men, but in love with obscurity. No one but the Duke, my master,
understands music so thoroughly as he does; indeed he is known here as
_il Fanatico_.”
After sitting a few minutes listening to the eager war of words between
the physician and the Duchess, who showed much ingenious eloquence, the
Italians, one by one, took leave, and went off to tell the news in
every box, that la Cataneo, who was regarded as a woman of great wit and
spirit, had, on the question of Italy, defeated a famous French doctor.
This was the talk of the evening.
As soon as the Frenchman found himself alone with the Duchess and the
Prince, he understood that they were to be left together, and took
leave. Massimilla bowed with a bend of the neck that placed him at such
a distance that this salute might have secured her the man’s hatred, if
he could have ignored the charm of her eloquence and beauty.
Thus at the end of the opera, Emilio and Massimilla were alone, and
holding hands they listened together to the duet that finishes _Il
Barbiere_.
“There is nothing but music to express love,” said the Duchess, moved by
that song as of two rapturous nightingales.
A tear twinkled in Emilio’s eye; Massimilla, sublime in such beauty as
beams in Raphael’s Saint-Cecilia, pressed his hand, their knees touched,
there was, as it seemed, the blossom of a kiss on her lips. The Prince
saw on her blushing face a glow of joy like that which on a summer’s day
shines down on the golden harvest; his heart seemed bursting with
the tide of blood that rushed to it. He fancied that he could hear an
angelic chorus of voices, and he would have given his life to feel the
fire of passion which at this hour last night had filled him for the
odious Clarina; but he was at the moment hardly conscious of having a
body.
Massimilla, much distressed, ascribed this tear, in her guilelessness,
to the remark she had made as to Genovese’s cavatina.
“But, _carino_,” said she in Emilio’s ear, “are not you as far better
than every expression of love, as cause is superior to effect?”
After handing the Duchess to her gondola, Emilio waited for Vendramin to
go to Florian’s.
The Cafe Florian at Venice is a quite undefinable institution. Merchants
transact their business there, and lawyers meet to talk over their
most difficult cases. Florian’s is at once an Exchange, a green-room, a
newspaper office, a club, a confessional,--and it is so well adapted to
the needs of the place that some Venetian women never know what their
husband’s business may be, for, if they have a letter to write, they go
to write it there.
Spies, of course, abound at Florian’s; but their presence only sharpens
Venetian wits, which may here exercise the discretion once so famous.
A great many persons spend the whole day at Florian’s; in fact, to some
men Florian’s is so much a matter of necessity, that between the acts
of an opera they leave the ladies in their boxes and take a turn to hear
what is going on there.
While the two friends were walking in the narrow streets of the Merceria
they did not speak, for there were too many people; but as they turned
into the Piazzi di San Marco, the Prince said:
“Do not go at once to the cafe. Let us walk about; I want to talk to
you.”
He related his adventure with Clarina and explained his position. To
Vendramin Emilio’s despair seemed so nearly allied to madness that
he promised to cure him completely if only he would give him _carte
blanche_ to deal with Massimilla. This ray of hope came just in time
to save Emilio from drowning himself that night; for, indeed, as he
remembered the singer, he felt a horrible wish to go back to her.
The two friends then went to an inner room at Florian’s, where they
listened to the conversation of some of the superior men of the town,
who discoursed the subjects of the day. The most interesting of these
were, in the first place, the eccentricities of Lord Byron, of whom the
Venetians made great sport; then Cataneo’s attachment for la Tinti, for
which no reason could be assigned after twenty different causes had been
suggested; then Genovese’s debut; finally, the tilting match between the
Duchess and the French doctor. Just as the discussion became vehemently
musical, Duke Cataneo made his appearance. He bowed very courteously to
Emilio, which seemed so natural that no one noticed it, and Emilio bowed
gravely in return. Cataneo looked round to see if there was anybody he
knew, recognized Vendramin and greeted him, bowed to his banker, a
rich patrician, and finally to the man who happened to be speaking,--a
celebrated musical fanatic, a friend of the Comtesse Albrizzi. Like
some others who frequented Florian’s, his mode of life was absolutely
unknown, so carefully did he conceal it. Nothing was known about him but
what he chose to tell.
This was Capraja, the nobleman whom the Duchess had mentioned to the
French doctor. This Venetian was one of a class of dreamers whose
powerful minds divine everything. He was an eccentric theorist, and
cared no more for celebrity than for a broken pipe.
His life was in accordance with his ideas. Capraja made his appearance
at about ten every morning under the _Procuratie_, without anyone
knowing whence he came. He lounged about Venice, smoking cigars. He
regularly went to the Fenice, sitting in the pit-stalls, and between the
acts went round to Florian’s, where he took three or four cups of coffee
a day; and he ended the evening at the cafe, never leaving it till about
two in the morning. Twelve hundred francs a year paid all his expenses;
he ate but one meal a day at an eating-house in the Merceria, where the
cook had his dinner ready for him at a fixed hour, on a little table at
the back of the shop; the pastry-cook’s daughter herself prepared his
stuffed oysters, provided him with cigars, and took care of his money.
By his advice, this girl, though she was very handsome, would never
countenance a lover, lived very steadily, and still wore the old
Venetian costume. This purely-bred Venetian girl was twelve years old
when Capraja first took an interest in her, and six-and-twenty when he
died. She was very fond of him, though he had never even kissed her hand
or her brow, and she knew nothing whatever of the poor old nobleman’s
intentions with regard to her. The girl had at last as complete control
of the old gentleman as a mother has of her child; she would tell him
when he wanted clean linen; next day he would come without a shirt, and
she would give him a clean one to put on in the morning.
He never looked at a woman either in the theatre or out walking. Though
he was the descendant of an old patrician family he never thought his
rank worth mentioning. But at night, after twelve, he awoke from his
apathy, talked, and showed that he had seen and heard everything. This
peaceful Diogenes, quite incapable of explaining his tenets, half a
Turk, half a Venetian, was thick-set, short, and fat; he had a Doge’s
sharp nose, an inquisitive, satirical eye, and a discreet though smiling
mouth.
When he died, it became known that he had lived in a little den near San
Benedetto. He had two million francs invested in the funds of various
countries of Europe, and had left the interest untouched ever since he
had first bought the securities in 1814, so the sum was now enormous,
alike from the increased value of the capital and the accumulated
interest. All this money was left to the pastry-cook’s daughter.
“Genovese,” he was saying, “will do wonders. Whether he really
understands the great end of music, or acts only on instinct, I know
not; but he is the first singer who ever satisfied me. I shall not die
without hearing a _cadenza_ executed as I have heard them in my dreams,
waking with a feeling as though the sounds were floating in the air. The
clear _cadenza_ is the highest achievement of art; it is the arabesque,
decorating the finest room in the house; a shade too little and it is
nothing, a touch too much and all is confusion. Its task is to awake in
the soul a thousand dormant ideas; it flies up and sweeps through space,
scattering seeds in the air to be taken in by our ears and blossom in
our heart. Believe me, in painting his Saint-Cecilia, Raphael gave the
preference to music over poetry. And he was right; music appeals to the
heart, whereas writing is addressed to the intellect; it communicates
ideas directly, like a perfume. The singer’s voice impinges not on the
mind, not on the memory of happiness, but on the first principle of
thought; it stirs the elements of sensation.
“It is a grievous thing that the populace should have compelled
musicians to adapt their expression to words, to factitious emotions;
but then they were not otherwise intelligible to the vulgar. Thus
the _cadenza_ is the only thing left to the lovers of pure music,
the devotees of unfettered art. To-night, as I listened to that last
_cavatina_, I felt as if I were beckoned by a fair creature whose look
alone had made me young again. The enchantress placed a crown on
my brow, and led me to the ivory door through which we pass to the
mysterious land of day-dreams. I owe it to Genovese that I escaped for
a few minutes from this old husk--minutes, short no doubt by the clock,
but very long by the record of sensation. For a brief spring-time,
scented with roses, I was young again--and beloved!”
“But you are mistaken, _caro_ Capraja,” said the Duke. “There is in
music an effect yet more magical than that of the _cadenza_.”
“What is that?” asked Capraja.
“The unison of two voices, or of a voice and a violin,--the instrument
which has tones most nearly resembling those of the human voice,”
replied Cataneo. “This perfect concord bears us on to the very heart of
life, on the tide of elements which can resuscitate rapture and carry
man up to the centre of the luminous sphere where his mind can command
the whole universe. You still need a _thema_, Capraja, but the pure
element is enough for me. You need that the current should flow through
the myriad canals of the machine to fall in dazzling cascades, while
I am content with the pure tranquil pool. My eye gazes across a lake
without a ripple. I can embrace the infinite.”
“Speak no more, Cataneo,” said Capraja, haughtily. “What! Do you fail to
see the fairy, who, in her swift rush through the sparkling atmosphere,
collects and binds with the golden thread of harmony, the gems of melody
she smilingly sheds on us? Have you ever felt the touch of her wand, as
she says to Curiosity, ‘Awake!’ The divinity rises up radiant from the
depths of the brain; she flies to her store of wonders and fingers them
lightly as an organist touches the keys. Suddenly, up starts Memory,
bringing us the roses of the past, divinely preserved and still fresh.
The mistress of our youth revives, and strokes the young man’s hair. Our
heart, too full, overflows; we see the flowery banks of the torrent of
love. Every burning bush we ever knew blazes afresh, and repeats the
heavenly words we once heard and understood. The voice rolls on; it
embraces in its rapid turns those fugitive horizons, and they shrink
away; they vanish, eclipsed by newer and deeper joys--those of an
unrevealed future, to which the fairy points as she returns to the blue
heaven.”
“And you,” retorted Cataneo, “have you never seen the direct ray of a
star opening the vistas above; have you never mounted on that beam which
guides you to the sky, to the heart of the first causes which move the
worlds?”
To their hearers, the Duke and Capraja were playing a game of which the
premises were unknown.
“Genovese’s voice thrills through every fibre,” said Capraja.
“And la Tinti’s fires the blood,” replied the Duke.
“What a paraphrase of happy love is that _cavatina_!” Capraja went on.
“Ah! Rossini was young when he wrote that interpretation of effervescent
ecstasy. My heart filled with renewed blood, a thousand cravings tingled
in my veins. Never have sounds more angelic delivered me more completely
from my earthly bonds! Never did the fairy wave more beautiful arms,
smile more invitingly, lift her tunic more cunningly to display an
ankle, raising the curtain that hides my other life!”
“To-morrow, my old friend,” replied Cataneo, “you shall ride on the back
of a dazzling, white swan, who will show you the loveliest land there
is; you shall see the spring-time as children see it. Your heart shall
open to the radiance of a new sun; you shall sleep on crimson silk,
under the gaze of a Madonna; you shall feel like a happy lover gently
kissed by a nymph whose bare feet you still may see, but who is about to
vanish. That swan will be the voice of Genovese, if he can unite it to
its Leda, the voice of Clarina. To-morrow night we are to hear _Mose_,
the grandest opera produced by Italy’s greatest genius.”
All present left the conversation to the Duke and Capraja, not wishing
to be the victims of mystification. Only Vendramin and the French doctor
listened to them for a few minutes. The opium-smoker understood these
poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two sensuous
imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried to understand, and
he understood, for he was one of the Pleiades of genius belonging to the
Paris school of medicine, from which a true physician comes out as much
a metaphysician as an accomplished analyst.
“Do you understand them?” said Emilio to Vendramin as they left the cafe
at two in the morning.
“Yes, my dear boy,” said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him. “Those
two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is given here
below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can fly on the
shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue empyrean where the
sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual life; they, by the power
of art, can soar whither your immense love carries you, whither opium
transports me. Then none can understand them but those who are like
them.
“I, who can inspire my soul by such base means, who can pack a hundred
years of life into a single night, I can understand those lofty spirits
when they talk of that glorious land, deemed a realm of chimeras by
some who think themselves wise; but the realm of reality to us whom
they think mad. Well, the Duke and Capraja, who were acquainted at
Naples,--where Cataneo was born,--are mad about music.”
“But what is that strange system that Capraja was eager to explain to
the Duke? Did you understand?”
“Yes,” replied Vendramin. “Capraja’s great friend is a musician from
Cremona, lodging in the Capello palace, who has a theory that sounds
meet with an element in man, analogous to that which produces ideas.
According to him, man has within him keys acted on by sound, and
corresponding to his nerve-centres, where ideas and sensations take
their rise. Capraja, who regards the arts as an assemblage of means by
which he can harmonize, in himself, all external nature with another
mysterious nature that he calls the inner life, shares all ideas of this
instrument-maker, who at this moment is composing an opera.
“Conceive of a sublime creation, wherein the marvels of the visible
universe are reproduced with immeasurable grandeur, lightness,
swiftness, and extension; wherein sensation is infinite, and whither
certain privileged natures, possessed of divine powers, are able to
penetrate, and you will have some notion of the ecstatic joys of which
Cataneo and Capraja were speaking; both poets, each for himself alone.
Only, in matters of the intellect, as soon as a man can rise above the
sphere where plastic art is produced by a process of imitation, and
enter into that transcendental sphere of abstractions where everything
is understood as an elementary principle, and seen in the omnipotence of
results, that man is no longer intelligible to ordinary minds.”
“You have thus explained my love for Massimilla,” said Emilio. “There
is in me, my friend, a force which awakes under the fire of her look, at
her lightest touch, and wafts me to a world of light where effects are
produced of which I dare not speak. It has seemed to me often that the
delicate tissue of her skin has stamped flowers on mine as her hand
lies on my hand. Her words play on those inner keys in me, of which you
spoke. Desire excites my brain, stirring that invisible world, instead
of exciting my passive flesh; the air seems red and sparkling, unknown
perfumes of indescribable strength relax my sinews, roses wreathe my
temples, and I feel as though my blood were escaping through opened
arteries, so complete is my inanition.”
“That is the effect on me of smoking opium,” replied Vendramin.
“Then do you wish to die?” cried Emilio, in alarm.
“With Venice!” said Vendramin, waving his hand in the direction of San
Marco. “Can you see a single pinnacle or spire that stands straight? Do
you not perceive that the sea is claiming its prey?”
The Prince bent his head; he dared no more speak to his friend of love.
To know what a free country means, you must have traveled in a conquered
land.
When they reached the Palazzo Vendramin, they saw a gondola moored at
the water-gate. The Prince put his arm round Vendramin and clasped him
affectionately, saying:
“Good-night to you, my dear fellow!”
“What! a woman? for me, whose only love is Venice?” exclaimed Marco.
At this instant the gondolier, who was leaning against a column,
recognizing the man he was to look out for, murmured in Emilio’s ear:
“The Duchess, monseigneur.”
Emilio sprang into the gondola, where he was seized in a pair of soft
arms--an embrace of iron--and dragged down on to the cushions, where
he felt the heaving bosom of an ardent woman. And then he was no
more Emilio, but Clarina’s lover; for his ideas and feelings were so
bewildering that he yielded as if stupefied by her first kiss.
“Forgive this trick, my beloved,” said the Sicilian. “I shall die if you
do not come with me.”
And the gondola flew over the secret water.
At half-past seven on the following evening, the spectators were again
in their places in the theatre, excepting that those in the pit always
took their chances of where they might sit. Old Capraja was in Cataneo’s
box.
Before the overture the Duke paid a call on the Duchess; he made a point
of standing behind her and leaving the front seat to Emilio next the
Duchess. He made a few trivial remarks, without sarcasm or bitterness,
and with as polite a manner as if he were visiting a stranger.