“To be immured there?”
“Truly,” he said, “to be immured in a paradise, amongst fountains and
flowers! It is not like the inside of a wall.”
“You are pleased to mock me, sir. But why am I brought so far?”
“Madam shall ask of her mirror,” he said, with a charming grin. “Shall
I so abuse my office as to admit that His Majesty is susceptible; and
that Madame the English Ambassadress--who, nevertheless, is of a
perfect honour--is jealous for her friend the queen, and, perhaps, for
her own pre-eminence in beauty? Certainly not. It is quite enough to
say that Madame Lavasse, being in some danger of assassination in
Naples, is removed to a distance for her own security; to a place, in
short, whence she can direct the lightning, without exciting suspicion
of collusion with Jupiter.”
He bent and looked into my face.
“I vow, madam,” he said, “that the last frost of discretion must melt
in the fire of such beauty. Take my word for it, that the Queen of
Olympus never of her will would have admitted Venus to be of her
court.”
This was very disarming, to be sure; and already, before we reached
Caserta, Signor de’ Medici was in possession of some preliminary
information that proved useful to him.
XXVII.
I KNOW HOW TO WAIT
Caserta Palace was a sort of Versailles to the Palazzo Reale. It was
a fine, long, rectangular building, lofty and imposing in the
eighteenth century style of grand architecture, with marble colonnades
and innumerable windows. The town it dominated, being a royal town
_par excellence_, was comparatively clean and reposeful; and the
palace gardens were as extensive and as beautiful as any in the world.
It was not, however, to a corner of this stately pile that I found
myself committed, but to rooms in the Casino of St. Lucius, which
stood in the park some two miles north of the main building, and
commanded a noble view, not only of the surrounding country, but of
the dark pruned alleys beset with white statues, and the terraces and
fountains and cascades of the gardens themselves--a lovely spot. And
here, for the moment secure and at peace, I resolved upon a life of
placid enchantment, treated like a queen’s hostage, and biding the
development of events.
I had my little sleepy, soft-footed household--an old groom, a pretty
maid or two, and a quite delectable cook. No restrictions were placed
upon me; I was free to wander as I listed, and, indeed, had no
inducement to venture without the cordon of sentries who were my best
protection. The month was April, the most lovely in all Naples; and,
save when Capri, showing near and blue, gave indications of the
scirocco, I spent all my days out of doors. So tranquil was it, so
remote from the centres of ferment, I could have thought myself in
Avalon, though all the while and around the clouds of a coming tempest
were gathering to burst. As I loitered by those empty corridors of
green, smiling back the smiles of the unruffled statues, listening to
the drowsy thunder of the waters, seeing only for all tokens of human
life the little marionnettes of place swarming, quite distant and
minute, about the steps of the palace, France was preparing to launch
her legions on Naples both by land and sea; scared refugee cardinals
were trotting by the dozen into the city; Nelson, off Toulon, was
shaping his course, by way of Aboukir, to the arms of Mrs. Hart;
Ferdinand was tremblingly fastening his warlike greaves on his fat
shins; and, finally, Maria Carolina was making her bloody tally for
the hangman. And only of the last was I actively cognisant, seeing
that it was there alone lay my concern with the outer world.
From time to time M. de’ Medici would visit me in this connection,
coming ingratiatory and quite lover-like to refresh his portfolio with
new names from my list, or to examine my correspondence, which was
entirely at his service. I had taken no half-measures. The spared
assassin comes to strike again, was my motto.
“Have I not proved myself a sincere convert?” I said to him once.
“Assuredly, most beautiful,” he answered; and fell to counting on his
fingers. “You have given us already certain proof of the guilty
complicity of--One: Signor Domenico Cirillo, professor of botany,
arborist, edenist, pupil of Jean Jacques, too delicate a flower for
this climate; two: Francesco Conforti, court theologian, a priest and
ambitious--nothing singular, but he will be beaten in the race for
power by a neck; three: Carlo Muscari; four: his excellency the
Marquis of Polvica, a lamentable case; five: Pasquale Baffi, professor
of dead languages, for which he will soon be literally qualified; six:
Gennaro Serra di Cassano, a very pretty young gentleman, late released
from confinement--but it is sometimes policy to spare the cub, if one
would learn the way to the dam; seven:--but, ’tis enough, madam: those
six will vindicate you.”
“You are welcome to them, monsieur,” I said, “if only you would
exchange against them all my dear, indispensable Gogo.”
At which, as usual, he shook his head, tightening his lips.
“A bond of sentiment. You are better apart.”
“At least you might acquaint me where he is?”
“As to that, he is very safe and well cared for.”
“In prison?”
“Nominally--nominally, _ma belle_. But, observe--so are you, you know.
What then? There are prisons and prisons.”
“Well, if he is as well off as I?” I sighed. And, indeed, the
assurance was a wonderful comfort to me.
As a matter of course he kept me constantly informed--though I never
questioned him--as to the career of the Pissanis, the head and front
of all offending.
“Signor Nicola is our bell-wether,” he would say. “We have hung a
little invisible cymbal about his neck, which has the strange quality
of sounding only to us. O, we police are the latter-day fairies,
believe me! All unconsciously to himself, he calls the flock about
him; and we--we have nothing to do but keep count of them, till the
season of the butcher arrives. Then we shall see. I shall want,
perhaps, all the fingers of my own hands, and of yours too--my God, a
dainty tally! And madam, you ask--though your lips do not move? It is
very laughable, take my word. At once, since her marriage, the dear
little frog emulates the bull. O, fie, fie! Madam misreads me. Such a
scandal! I would say only that it has inoculated her with her
husband’s ambition; that she is become an enthusiast in the cause,
attending meetings, distributing tracts, haranguing multitudes in her
sweet round voice, that is like pelting giants with sugar-plums. Yes,
as madam implies, it is marvellous. What will not love do? But for me,
I am susceptible: I adore all beauty. I could wish the poor child
another embrace than the hangman’s.”
“Well, sir,” I answered, “you will have occasion, perhaps, to offer
her the alternative.”
“O, fie!” he said. “Is not my heart engaged immutably? Otherwise--who
knows? It is a sad world.”
It was a very dark and bitter one to me from the moment of his
revelations. So, she could be independent of me, and happy in her
independence! What a world of hypocrisy and double-dealing was exposed
in this her easy repudiation of my claims upon her! During all these
years that I had counted her my slave, she had been nursing her
schemes of treachery--been manœuvring, probably, to make me the
instrument of her conveyance to her lover’s arms. And now, no doubt,
they were laughing over their outwitting of me. Well, who laughs last
laughs best.
One day I had a notable visit. Two ladies, walking through the
grounds, came upon me where I was seated in a grove of myrtle. One was
Lady Hamilton, very great and gorgeous in a shell-shaped hat _de
sparterie_, trimmed with butterflies and a violet ribbon knotted under
one ear; while the other, whom I did not know, a dowdy, ignoble old
figure with watery eyes, wore a plain _fichu-chemise_, and an immense
bonnet with a veil thrown back over it. They both stopped upon seeing
me, and Lady Hamilton beckoned. I rose, advanced, and curtsied.
“Here, your Majesty,” said my friend, “is the very person herself.”
Her Majesty! I paled and trembled; then ventured a glance from under
my lashes. Sure I was not to blame for my remissness. I vow I could
have thought my lady had brought her monthly nurse with her for an
airing in the country. The poor woman looked steeped in caudle, flocky
with child-beds, and no wonder. In some two dozen years out of her
forty-five or so she had borne near as many children. She had prayed
for an heir, and Heaven had sent her a tempest. The eternal lyings-in
had soured her temper, which was not further improved by neuralgia and
opium. Nursing, as she did, outside her litter, a perpetual ambition
to wear the breeches of government, it had been characteristically
mean of her husband to adopt this method to correct it. Yet, in spite
of all she had borne both from and to her lord, her vigour remained
unquenchable. Indeed, in a kingdom which annually abandoned some
twenty-five thousand babies to the foundlings, a child was the
cheapest present one could make to one’s favourite of the moment. Yet,
as I saw her now, she was the farthest from imposing or attractive.
Her legs were short, and her upper lip so long that her nose stood
nearer her forehead than her chin, on the former of which she wore a
single fat curl like a clock-spring. She put a hand to it two or three
times, before she addressed me, very quick and hoarse, in French.
“_Maria! Mais elle fait une bonne mine à mauvais jeu!_ Come hither,
child. So this is our redoubtable little _moucharde_? We have need of
her in these days of the devil’s advocacy.”
Her eyes looked injected; her flabby face puckered at the temples like
yellow milk skin. As I approached, she turned away in evident pain.
Lady Hamilton was all effusive attentions at once. She waved me to
stop, and supported her friend to the seat I had just occupied,
commiserating, explaining, and fondling in one.
“O, my darling queen! It is the neuralgia that worries my sweet like a
dog. Lean on your Emma. Have you nothing, child--no salts, no drops?”
I fetched a certain vinaigrette from my pocket, and bending before the
royal knees, snapped the stopper once or twice under the royal nose.
The effect was instantaneous. An expression of maudlin relief
succeeded to the strain. She lay breathing peacefully, with a smile on
her lips, until, after some minutes, she aroused herself with a sigh.
“What was it, then? It is a Circe, with her witch’s face and her
potions!”
But this was to trespass on the other’s domain.
“Give it to me, if you please,” said Mrs. Hart coldly. “Her Majesty
would prefer to take it from my hand.”