When Donna Tullia received Saracinesca's note, explaining the existence
of a second Giovanni, his pedigree and present circumstances, she almost
fainted with disappointment. It seemed to her that she had compromised
herself before the world, that all Rome knew the ridiculous part she had
played in Del Ferice's comedy, and that her shame would never be
forgotten. Suddenly she saw how she had been led away by her hatred of
Giovanni into believing blindly in a foolish tale which ought not to have
deceived a child. So soon as she learned the existence of a second
Giovanni Saracinesca, it seemed to her that she must have been mad not to
foresee such an explanation from the first. She had been duped, she had
been made a cat's-paw, she had been abominably deceived by Del Ferice,
who had made use of this worthless bribe in order to extort from her a
promise of marriage. She felt very ill, as very vain people often do
when they feel that they have been made ridiculous. She lay upon the
sofa in her little boudoir, where everything was in the worst possible
taste--from the gaudy velvet carpet and satin furniture to the gilt clock
on the chimney-piece--and she turned red and pale and red again, and
wished she were dead, or in Paris, or anywhere save in Rome. If she went
out she might meet one of the Saracinesca at any turn of the street, or
even Corona herself. How they would bow and smile sweetly at her,
enjoying her discomfiture with the polite superiority of people who
cannot be hurt!
And she herself--she could not tell what she should do. She had announced
her engagement to Del Ferice, but she could not marry him. She had been
entrapped into making him a promise, into swearing a terrible oath;
but the Church did not consider such oaths binding. She would go to Padre
Filippo and ask his advice.
But then, if she went to Padre Filippo, she would have to confess all she
had done, and she was not prepared to do that. A few weeks would pass,
and that time would be sufficient to mellow and smooth the remembrance of
her revengeful projects into a less questionable shape. No--she could not
confess all that just yet. Surely such an oath was not binding; at all
events, she could not marry Del Fence, whether she broke her promise or
not. In the first place, she would send for him and vent her anger upon
him while it was hot.
Accordingly, in the space of three-quarters of an hour, Ugo appeared,
smiling, smooth and persuasive as usual. Donna Tullia assumed a fine
attitude of disdain as she heard his step outside the door. She intended
to impress him with a full and sudden view of her just anger. He did not
seem much moved, and came forward as usual to take her hand and kiss it.
But she folded her arms and stared at him with all the contempt she could
concentrate in the gaze of her blue eyes. It was a good comedy. Del
Ferice, who had noticed as soon as he entered the room that something was
wrong, and had already half guessed the cause, affected to spring back in
horror when she refused to give her hand. His pale face expressed
sufficiently well a mixture of indignation and sorrow at the harsh
treatment he received. Still Donna Tullia's cold eye rested upon him in a
fixed stare.
"What is this? What have I done?" asked Del Ferice in low tones.
"Can you ask? Wretch! Read that, and understand what you have done,"
answered Donna Tullia, making a step forward and thrusting Saracinesca's
letter in his face.
Del Ferice had already seen the handwriting, and knew what the contents
were likely to be. He took the letter in one hand, and without looking at
it, still faced the angry woman. His brows contracted into a heavy frown,
and his half-closed eyes gazed menacingly at her.
"It will be an evil day for any man who comes between you and me," he
said, in tragic tones.
Donna Tullia laughed harshly, and again drew herself up, watching his
face, and expecting to witness his utter confusion. But she was no match
for the actor whom she had promised to marry. Del Ferice began to read,
and as he read, his frown relaxed; gradually an ugly smile, intended to
represent fiendish cunning, stole over his features, and when he had
finished, he uttered a cry of triumph.
"Ha!" he said, "I guessed it! I hoped it--and it is true! He is found at
last! The very man--the real Saracinesca! It is only a matter of time--"
Donna Tullia now stared in unfeigned surprise. Instead of crushing him to
the ground as she had expected, the letter seemed to fill him with
boundless delight. He paced the room in wild excitement, chattering like
a madman. In spite of herself, however, her own spirits rose, and her
anger against Del Ferice softened. All was perhaps not lost--who could
fathom the intricacy of his great schemes? Surely he was not the man to
fall a victim to his own machinations.
"Will you please explain your extraordinary satisfaction at this news?"
said Madame Mayer. Between her late anger, her revived hopes, and her
newly roused curiosity, she was in a terrible state of suspense.
"Explain?" he cried. "Explain what, most adorable of women? Does it not
explain itself? Have we not found the Marchese di San Giacinto, the real
Saracinesca? Is not that enough?"
"I do not understand--"
Del Ferice was now by her side. He seemed hardly able to control himself
for joy. As a matter of fact he was acting, and acting a desperate part
too, suggested on the spur of the moment by the risk he ran of losing
this woman and her fortune on the very eve of marriage. Now he seized her
hand, and drawing her arm through his, led her quickly backwards and
forwards, talking fast and earnestly. It would not do to hesitate, for by
a moment's appearance of uncertainty all would be lost.
"No; of course you cannot understand the vast importance of this
discovery. I must explain. I must enter into historic details, and I am
so much overcome by this extraordinary turn of fortune that I can hardly
speak. Remove all doubt from your mind, my dear lady, for we have already
triumphed. This innkeeper, this Giovanni Saracinesca, this Marchese di
San Giacinto, is the lawful and right Prince Saracinesca, the head of the
house--"
"What!" screamed Donna Tullia, stopping short, and gripping his arm as in
a vice.
"Indeed he is. I suspected it when I first found the signature at Aquila;
but the man was gone, with his newly married wife, no one knew whither;
and I could not find him, search as I might. He is now returned, and
what is more, as this letter says, with all his papers proving his
identity. This is how the matter lies. Listen, Tullia _mia_. The old
Leone Saracinesca who last bore the title of Marquis--"
"The one mentioned here?" asked Donna Tullia, breathlessly.
"Yes--the one who took service under Murat, under Napoleon. Well, it is
perfectly well known that he laid claim to the Roman title, and with
perfect justice. Two generations before that, there had been an amicable
arrangement--amicable, but totally illegal--whereby the elder brother,
who was an unmarried invalid, transferred the Roman estates to his
younger brother, who was married and had children, and, in exchange, took
the Neapolitan estates and title, which had just fallen back to the main
branch by the death of a childless Marchese di San Giacinto. Late in life
this old recluse invalid married, contrary to all expectation--certainly
contrary to his own previous intentions. However, a child was born--a
boy. The old man found himself deprived by his own act of his
principality, and the succession turned from his son to the son of his
younger brother. He began a negotiation for again obtaining possession of
the Roman title--at least so the family tradition goes--but his brother,
who was firmly established in Rome, refused to listen to his demands. At
this juncture the old man died, being legally, observe, still the head of
the family of Saracinesca; his son should have succeeded him. But his
wife, the young daughter of an obscure Neapolitan nobleman, was not more
than eighteen years of age, and the child was only six months old. People
married young in those days. She entered some kind of protest, which,
however, was of no avail; and the boy grew up to be called the Marchese
di San Griacinto. He learned the story of his birth from his mother, and
protested in his turn. He ruined himself in trying to push his suit in
the Neapolitan courts; and finally, in the days of Napoleon's success, he
took service under Murat, receiving the solemn promise of the Emperor
that he should be reinstated in his title. But the Emperor forgot his
promise, or did not find it convenient to keep it, having perhaps reasons
of his own for not quarrelling with Pius the Seventh, who protected the
Roman Saracinesea Then came 1815, the downfall of the Empire, the
restoration of Ferdinand IV. in Naples, the confiscation of property from
all who had joined the Emperor, and the consequent complete ruin of San
Giacinto's hopes. He was supposed to have been killed, or to have made
away with himself. Saracinesea himself acknowledges that his grandson is
alive, and possesses all the family papers. Saracinesca himself has
discovered, seen, and conversed with the lawful head of his race, who, by
the blessing of heaven and the assistance of the courts, will before long
turn him out of house and home, and reign in his stead in all the glories
of the Palazzo Saracinesca, Prince of Rome, of the Holy Roman Empire,
grandee of Spain of the first class, and all the rest of it. Do you
wonder I rejoice, now that I am sure of putting an innkeeper over my
enemy's head? Fancy the humiliation of old Saracinesca, of Giovanni, who
will have to take his wife's title for the sake of respectability, of the
Astrardente herself, when she finds she has married the penniless son of
a penniless pretender!"
Del Ferice knew enough of the Saracinesca's family history to know that
something like what he had so fluently detailed to Donna Tullia had
actually occurred, and he knew well enough that she would not remember
every detail of his rapidly told tale. Hating the family as he did, he
had diligently sought out all information about them which he could
obtain without gaining access to their private archives. His ready wit
helped him to string the whole into a singularly plausible story. So
plausible, indeed, that it entirely upset all Donna Tullia's
determination to be angry at Del Ferice, and filled her with something of
the enthusiasm he showed. For himself he hoped that there was enough in
his story to do some palpable injury to the Saracinesca; but his more
immediate object was not to lose Donna Tullia by letting her feel any
disappointment at the discovery recently made by the old Prince. Donna
Tullia listened with breathless interest until he had finished.
"What a man you are, Ugo! How you turn defeat into victory! Is it all
really true? Do you think we can do it?"
"If I were to die this instant," Del Ferice asseverated, solemnly raising
his hand, "it is all perfectly true, so help me God!"
He hoped, for many reasons, that he was not perjuring himself.
"What shall we do, then?" asked Madame Mayer.
"Let them marry first, and then we shall be sure of humiliating them
both," he answered. Unconsciously he repeated the very determination
which Giovanni had formed against him the night before. "Meanwhile,
you and I can consult the lawyers and see how this thing can best be
accomplished quickly and surely," he added.
"You will have to send for the innkeeper--"
"I will go and see him. It will not be hard to persuade him to claim his
lawful rights."
Del Ferice remained some time in conversation with Donna Tullia. The
magnitude of the scheme fascinated her, and instead of thinking of
breaking her promise to Ugo as she had intended doing, she so far fell
under his influence as to name the wedding-day,--Easter Monday, they
agreed, would exactly suit them and their plans. Indeed the idea of
refusing to fulfil her engagement had been but the result of a transitory
fit of anger; if she had had any fear of making a misalliance in marrying
Del Ferice, the way in which the world received the news of the
engagement removed all such apprehension from her mind. Del Ferice was
already treated with increased respect--the very servants began to call
him "Eccellenza," a distinction to which he neither had, nor could ever
have, any kind of claim, but which pleased Donna Tullia's vain soul. The
position which Ugo had obtained for himself by an assiduous attention to
the social claims and prejudices of social lights and oracles, was
suddenly assured to him, and rendered tenfold more brilliant by the news
of his alliance with Donna Tullia. He excited no jealousies either; for
Donna Tullia's peculiarities were of a kind which seemed to have
interfered from the first with her matrimonial projects. As a young girl,
a relation of the Saracinesca, whom she now so bitterly hated, she should
have been regarded as marriageable by any of the young Roman nobles, from
Valdarno down. But she had only a small dowry, and she was said to be
extravagant--two objections then not so easily overcome as now. Moreover,
she was considered to be somewhat flighty; and the social jury decided
that when she was married, she would be excellent company, but would make
a very poor wife. Almost before they had finished discussing her,
however, she had found a husband, in the shape of the wealthy foreign
contractor, Mayer, who wanted a wife from a good Roman house, and cared
not at all for money. She treated him very well, but was speedily
delivered from all her cares by his untimely death. Then, of all her
fellow-citizens, none was found save the eccentric old Saracinesca,
who believed that she would do for his son; wherein it appeared that
Giovanni's father was the man of all others who least understood
Giovanni's inclinations. But this match fell to the ground, owing to
Giovanni's attachment to Corona, and Madame Mayer was left with the
prospect of remaining a widow for the rest of her life, or of marrying
a poor man. She chose the latter alternative, and fate threw into her way
the cleverest poor man in Rome, as though desiring to compensate her for
not having married one of the greatest nobles, in the person of Giovanni.
Though she was always a centre of attraction, no one of those she most
attracted wanted to marry her, and all expressed their unqualified
approval of her ultimate choice. One said she was very generous to marry
a penniless gentleman; another remarked that she showed wisdom in
choosing a man who was in the way of making himself a good position under
the Italian Government; a third observed that he was delighted, because
he could enjoy her society without being suspected of wanting to marry
her; and all agreed in praising her, and in treating Del Ferice with the
respect due to a man highly favored by fortune.
Donna Tullia named the wedding-day, and her affianced husband departed in
high spirits with himself, with her, and with his scheme. He felt still a
little excited, and wanted to be alone. He hardly realised the magnitude
of the plot he had undertaken, and needed time to reflect upon it; but
with the true instinct of an intriguing genius he recognised at once that
his new plan was the thing he had sought for long and ardently, and that
it was worth all his other plans put together. Accordingly he went home,
and proceeded to devote himself to the study of the question, sending a
note to a friend of his--a young lawyer of doubtful reputation, but of
brilliant parts, whom he at once selected as his chief counsellor in the
important affair he had undertaken.
Before long he heard that the marriage of Don Giovanni Saracinesca to the
Duchessa d'Astrardente was to take place the next week, in the chapel of
the Palazzo Saracinesca. At least popular report said that the ceremony
was to take place there; and that it was to be performed with great
privacy was sufficiently evident from the fact that no invitations
appeared to have been issued. Society did not fail to comment upon such
exclusiveness, and it commented unfavourably, for it felt that it was
being deprived of a long-anticipated spectacle. This state of things
lasted for two days, when, upon the Sunday morning precisely a week
before the wedding, all Rome was surprised by receiving an imposing
invitation, setting forth that the marriage would be solemnised in the
Basilica of the Santi Apostoli, and that it would be followed by a state
reception at the Palazzo Saracinesca. It was soon known that the ceremony
would be performed by the Cardinal Archpriest of St Peter's, that the
united choirs of St Peter's and of the Sixtine Chapel would sing the High
Mass, and that the whole occasion would be one of unprecedented solemnity
and magnificence. This was the programme published by the 'Osservatore
Romano,' and that newspaper proceeded to pronounce a eulogy of some
length and considerable eloquence upon the happy pair. Rome was fairly
taken off its feet; and although some malcontents were found, who said it
was improper that Corona's marriage should be celebrated with such pomp
so soon after her husband's death, the general verdict was that the whole
proceeding was eminently proper and becoming to so important an event. So
soon as every one had been invited, no one seemed to think it remarkable
that the invitations should have been issued so late. It was not
generally known that in the short time which elapsed between the naming
of the day and the issuing of the cards, there had been several
interviews between old Saracinesca and Cardinal Antonelli; that the
former had explained Corona's natural wish that the marriage should be
private, and that the latter had urged many reasons why so great an event
ought to be public; that Saracinesca had said he did not care at all,
and was only expressing the views of his son and of the bride; that the
Cardinal had repeatedly asseverated that he wished to please everybody;
that Corona had refused to be pleased by a public ceremony; and that,
finally, the Cardinal, seeing himself hard pressed, had persuaded his
Holiness himself to express a wish that the marriage should take place in
the most solemn and public manner; wherefore Corona had reluctantly
yielded the point, and the matter was arranged. The fact was that the
Cardinal wished to make a sort of demonstration of the solidarity of the
Roman nobility: it suited his aims to enter into every detail which could
add to the importance of the Roman Court, and which could help to impress
upon the foreign Ministers the belief that in all matters the Romans as
one man would stand by each other and by the Vatican. No one knew better
than he how the spectacle of a religious solemnity, at which the whole
nobility would attend in a body, must strike the mind of a stranger in
Rome; for in Roman ceremonies of that day there was a pomp and
magnificence surpassing that found in any other Court of Europe. The
whole marriage would become an event of which he could make an impressive
use, and he was determined not to forego any advantages which might arise
from it; for he was a man who of all men well understood the value of
details in maintaining prestige.
But to the two principal actors in the day's doings the affair was an
unmitigated annoyance, and even their own great and true happiness could
not lighten the excessive fatigue of the pompous ceremony and of the
still more pompous reception which followed it. To describe that day
would be to make out a catalogue of gorgeous equipages, gorgeous
costumes, gorgeous decorations. Many pages would not suffice to enumerate
the cardinals, the dignitaries, the ambassadors, the great nobles, whose
magnificent coaches drove up in long file through the Piazza dei Santi
Apostoli to the door of the Basilica. The columns of the 'Osservatore
Romano' were full of it for a week afterwards. There was no end to the
descriptions of the costumes, from the white satin and diamonds of
the bride to the festal uniforms of the Cardinal Arch-priest's retinue.
Not a personage of importance was overlooked in the newspaper account,
not a diplomatist, not an officer of Zouaves. And society read the praise
of itself, and found it much more interesting than the praise of the
bride and bridegroom; and only one or two people were offended because
the paper had made a mistake in naming the colours of the hammer-cloths
upon their coaches: so that the affair was a great success.
But when at last the sun was low and the guests had departed from the
Palazzo Saracinesca, Corona and Giovanni got into their travelling
carriage under the great dark archway, and sighed a sigh of infinite
relief. The old Prince put his arms tenderly around his new daughter and
kissed her; and for the second time in the course of this history, it is
to be recorded that two tears stole silently down his brown cheeks to his
grey beard. Then he embraced Giovanni, whose face was pale and earnest.
"This is not the end of our living together, _padre mio,_" he said. "We
shall expect you before long at Saracinesca."
"Yes, my boy," returned the old man; "I will come and see you after
Easter. But do not stay if it is too cold; I have a little business to
attend to in Rome before I join you," he added, with a grim smile.
"I know," replied Giovanni, a savage light in his black eyes. "If you
need help, send to me, or come yourself."
"No fear of that, Giovannino; I have got a terrible helper. Now, be off.
The guards are growing impatient."
"Good-bye. God bless you, _padre mio!_"
"God bless you both!" So they drove off, and left old Saracinesca
standing bareheaded and alone under the dim archway of his ancestral
palace. The great carriage rolled out, and the guard of mounted
gendarmes, which the Cardinal had insisted upon sending with the young
couple, half out of compliment, half for safety, fell in behind, and
trotted down the narrow street, with a deafening clatter of hoofs and
clang of scabbards.
But Giovanni held Corona's hand in his, and both were silent for a time.
Then they rolled under the low vault of the Porta San Lorenzo and out
into the evening sunlight of the Campagna beyond.
"God be praised that it has come at last!" said Giovanni.
"Yes, it has come," answered Corona, her strong white fingers closing
upon his brown hand almost convulsively; "and, come what may, you are
mine, Giovanni, until we die!"
There was something fierce in the way those two loved each other; for
they had fought many fights before they were united, and had overcome
themselves, each alone, before they had overcome other obstacles
together.
Relays of horses awaited them on their way, and relays of mounted guards.
Late that night they reached Saracinesca, all ablaze with torches and
lanterns; and the young men took the horses from the coach and yoked
themselves to it with ropes, and dragged the cumbrous carriage up the
last hill with furious speed, shouting and singing like madmen in the
cool mountain air. Up the steep they rushed, and under the grand old
gateway, made as bright as day with flaming torches; and then there
went up a shout that struck the old vaults like a wild chord of fierce
music, and Corona knew that her journey was ended.
So it was that Giovanni Saracinesca brought home his bride.