“Dogs and assassins!”
“Despoilers of churches and women!”
“Hordes of anti-Christ vomited from hell!”
“Scum and rabble of an infamous democracy!”
“Monsters of sacrilege!”
“Cowards curst of God!”
“Whom to slay is righteousness!”
“To whom to give quarter is deadly sin!”
“Subverters of all order and decency!”
“The devil hang the lot!” said Lady Hamilton.
The queen rose, quite refreshed and reinvigorated. Suddenly she was
holding me with a piercing look. Craft and villainy peeped out of her
little inflamed eyes.
“I come to put a question to you, madam,” she said. “There is a lady
of our retinue--the Signora de Fonseca Pimentel. Your correspondence
contains no proof of her disloyalty to us?”
“No, madam, or I should have informed M. de’ Medici,” I answered, in a
faint terror; but rallied immediately. “I know only that she is in
communication with the Signor Carafa since his escape.”
“Ha!”
The red eyes of the ferret closed a moment, then reopened to an
ineffable smile. She held out her hand to me to kiss.
“We find you an invaluable physician, Madame Lavasse. To have eased a
poor queen--it is something; but to cure this land of its headache”--
“Ah, madam!” I said, “there I yield to the hangman.”
Both ladies burst out laughing as they moved away. The queen turned
and waved her hand.
“You shall not be forgotten,” she cried; and I curtsied.
A few days later M. de’ Medici called upon me. He read out a little
indictment he had prepared for my behoof--
“Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, wife to Pasquale Tria de Solis,
Neapolitan officer, noble, now deceased: emotional; authoress of some
panegyrical sonnets to royalty and the age of gold; since suspect of
schemes for the education of the populace; shows a partiality for red;
advocates an appropriation of the Punch and Judy shows to the lessons
of national virtue; claims the liberty of the press to print her
halting rhapsodies;” (Monstrous!) “imputed sympathiser with Ettore
Carafa (son to the Duke of Andria, the king’s major-domo, and to the
duchess, Her Majesty’s mistress of the robes) in said Ettore’s late
conspiracy to print and distribute an Italian version of the ‘Rights
of Man,’ which conspiracy resulted in the execution of some companion
malignants, and the escape from Naples of said Ettore; finally,
convicted of corresponding with said fugitive, to the end of His
Majesty’s overthrow and the subversion of his government!”
“Not convicted, M. de’ Medici.”
“That is all one, most beautiful,” said the chief of police, folding
his paper. “Madame Lavasse’s word is as good as her bond.”
Within a week the Pimentel was lodged in the prison of the Vicaria.
That was in October; and thenceforward things moved fast, though
scarce quick enough for me, who was beginning to beat my wings against
the gilded bars of my cage. For what was all the national excitement
to me but a means to my personal vengeance? And I feared, feared that
while I lay aside for others’ use, my prey would find a means to
escape me.
On the 22nd of September I had heard the guns of the citadels down
below in the bay welcoming Nelson’s arrival. The sound shook every
nerve in my restless heart, so that I could hardly eat or sleep that
night; and I laughed myself into hysterics over my little maid
Martita’s description of how Madame l’Ambassadrice d’Angleterre had
flown up the side of the _Vanguard_, and cast herself upon the breast
of her hero, who was a very little man, and quite unable to support so
much emotion.
Still, thereafter, as day by day drums beat, and recruits were
gathered, and men hanged themselves to avoid serving, and the English
admiral was urging upon the poor fat, wind-blown king one of three
alternatives: To advance upon the French, and conquer; to die sword in
hand; or to remain and be kicked out--while all Naples was seething
and roaring in a vortex about my garden, the garden itself remained
silent and empty, an island in the midst of a whirlpool.
But at last His Majesty _did_ set out, and reaching actually as far as
Rome, while the republican general Championnet was falling back for a
spring, blustered naughtily for a little, killing a few Jews,
threatening the wounded enemy in the hospitals, committing to sack and
pillage the very sacred city he had come to relieve, and finally, upon
the approach of the concentrated French, deserting his demoralised
army, and pelting back, with all the might of his perspiring legs, to
where?--why, to Caserta.
It was evening of the 19th of December, and a thunderstorm, to terrify
one to death in that desolate park, had broken over the town. All the
imprisoned electricity of months past seemed to me, as I stood
fascinated at an upper window of the Casino, to have torn itself free,
and to be hunting in and out of the trees for fugitives from its fury.
Far away and below the thousand eyes of the palace shut sickly to each
blaze, and blinked and were staring frightened again in the crash that
followed. The hand of an incensed God bent the proud necks of the
trees, and His wrath drove a roar of leaves and twigs criss-cross
about the alleys. It was the anarchy beginning.
In the midst I saw two figures, cloaked and dusk, butt their way to
the door below; and a moment later Martita summoned me to receive
messengers from the palace. I went down, and found two officers, pale
and glaring, awaiting me in the parlour. The rain dripped from their
unbonneted locks; their hands were restless with their hats and
sword-hilts. I curtsied in wonder; and the elder, with a shaky,
conciliatory smile, addressed me.
“You will pardon this intrusion, madam. The occasion is our excuse.
You have in your possession some charm, some restorative, by which Her
Majesty the queen has already greatly benefited?”
“Assuredly, monsieur. It is in my pocket now.”
“It is much needed at the moment. You will vouchsafe us the loan?”
“You must forgive me, monsieur. Its virtue is incommunicable save by
the possessor.”
“That is so? Then will madam, perhaps, administer it in person?”
“To whom, monsieur? Monsieur will consider the night.”
“Alas, madam! But to assure that this night shall not be endless--that
the sun of our hopes be not extinguished for ever?”
“Pray, sir, have mercy on me. To whom do you allude?”
“To His Majesty--no less.”
“The king?”
“He has but now ridden--been driven, would be truer--from Albano. For
the moment everything seems lost. Ferdinand is at the last extreme of
exhaustion and agitation. Madam will come to quiet him?”
“I will come, monsieur.”
“Ah! _Dio mercè! Questo benefizio è una grande grazia._”
We set out without delay. My companions took each an arm of me,
laughing very gallant scorn of the lightning and my fright thereat.
Between them, however, they bruised my poor shoulders horribly, in
their instinctive efforts to come together and clutch one another
whenever the thunder slammed.
I was so dazed with the rain and uproar that I had little wit left me
to note my surroundings as they hurried me, blown and breathless, up a
flight of steps into a great hall, blazing with lights, thronged with
confusion. Courtiers, nobles, mud-stained soldiers; weeping women,
frightened maids--here they stood in gabbling, gesticulating groups,
which were constantly detaching and discharging units into other
groups, the whole contributing to a sum of frenzy which swayed the
candle-flames. And throughout, threading the frantic maze, went scared
pages and lackeys; all, from captain to scullion, looking for orders,
and receiving none.
There were a few whispers, a few who observed and remarked upon me, as
my conductors forced me through the press, crying a passage to the
royal closet.
“It is the beautiful English witch! _O, quanti vezzi!_ They are going
to try to cure him like King David!”
The opening and swinging-to of a door; as instant a muffling of the
tumult; the peace of a lofty anteroom, padded with thick carpets; a
muttered challenge, a muttered answer; the passage of a further
portal--and I was in the royal presence.
Now, all my life I have had to battle with a fatal sense of humour. I
will simply undertake to relate the test to which it was here put.
The room, shut away from all disturbance, was brilliantly lighted. In
the midst, at a gorgeous escritoire, sat a secretary in black, biting
a pen. Hard by stood a staff officer--in a glittering uniform, but
sopped and mud-splashed--who incessantly, with a white, nervous hand,
turned down and bit at his moustache, making a motion with his lips as
if he were talking to himself. The two all the time followed with
their eyes the movements of a third figure, the only other in the
room, which went to and fro, up and down, in a sort of tripping dance,
gabbling an eternal accompaniment the while to its own _chassé_, and
at odd moments ringing a little gilt bell which it carried in its
hand. This in itself, to be sure, was sufficiently remarkable; but O,
my friend, for the appearance of this eccentric, who indeed was no
other than the monarch himself. Cocked on the top of his large head
was a little tie-wig, which, for the last touch to disguise, he had
borrowed during his flight from the Duke of Ascoli, after exchanging
clothes with that peer, who was a much smaller man. The effect may be
imagined. His Majesty’s breeches’ ends were half-way up his thighs;
his waistcoat was a mere rope under his arm-pits; his coat-tails stuck
apart from the small of his back like ill-fitting wing-cases. Add to
this that he was pinned all over with holy pictures, and hung with
reliquaries and medals like a mountebank at a fair, and the picture is
complete.
The lightning penetrated the ruddy blinds with no more than the silent
flicker of a ghost; but no glass could muffle the shattering reports
of the thunder, at every clap of which His Majesty whinnied and
crossed himself--
“O Lord, spare Thine anointed! Beloved saints, be particular to point
out to Him where I am!” (ring). “This, you must know, is not my usual
cabinet; but I will withdraw to my own, if you desire it, though it is
in the hands of the decorators. There!--O!--San Gennaro, protect me!
Caution our Master of the risk of striking among the chimneys, lest
the levin brand, following a wrong course, enter this room instead of
another, and destroy me in mistake for a lesser man” (ring). “_Dio non
vóglia!_ O, saints! I believe I am struck! No, it is my breeches
splitting. But they are Ascoli’s. Make no mistake, Lord. I am not
Ascoli. Take the breeches, but spare the king!”
He shut his ears distracted to a louder boom, and immediately was off
again at a tangent--
“O Lady of Loretto, plead for thy servant!” (crash). “_Mea maxima
culpa_--I will confess--if your Majesty will condescend to keep it to
yourself--I am really a stupid man” (loud ring)--“well meaning, holy
mother; well meaning, San Gennaro, but dull, as kings go, and
surrounded by greater fools than myself. I have been seventeen times a
father” (ring)--“at least” (loud ring), “and only once a husband”
(groan). “Fool though I be, I have propagated my race for the glory of
Holy Mother Church--and the confusion of the learned, her enemies. For
the sake of my family, Madonna, succour me!”
He chattered so loud, racing up and down all the time, that I could
hear his every word where I stood, awaiting events, by the door. Once,
in a lull of the storm, he swooped round my way, and, suddenly
becoming aware of me, stopped as if petrified, then rattled out, in a
thick, gulping voice--
“Do you know who I am, madam? Do you know who I am?”