As Don Ippolito passed down the long narrow _calle_ or footway leading
from the Campo San Stefano to the Grand Canal in Venice, he peered
anxiously about him: now turning for a backward look up the calle,
where there was no living thing in sight but a cat on a garden gate; now
running a quick eye along the palace walls that rose vast on either
hand and notched the slender strip of blue sky visible overhead with
the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; and now
glancing toward the canal, where he could see the noiseless black
boats meeting and passing. There was no sound in the calle save his own
footfalls and the harsh scream of a parrot that hung in the sunshine in
one of the loftiest windows; but the note of a peasant crying pots of
pinks and roses in the campo came softened to Don Ippolito’s sense, and
he heard the gondoliers as they hoarsely jested together and gossiped,
with the canal between them, at the next gondola station.
The first tenderness of spring was in the air though down in that calle
there was yet enough of the wintry rawness to chill the tip of
Don Ippolito’s sensitive nose, which he rubbed for comfort with a
handkerchief of dark blue calico, and polished for ornament with a
handkerchief of white linen. He restored each to a different pocket in
the sides of the ecclesiastical _talare_, or gown, reaching almost to
his ankles, and then clutched the pocket in which he had replaced the
linen handkerchief, as if to make sure that something he prized was safe
within. He paused abruptly, and, looking at the doors he had passed,
went back a few paces and stood before one over which hung, slightly
tilted forward, an oval sign painted with the effigy of an eagle, a
bundle of arrows, and certain thunderbolts, and bearing the legend,
CONSULATE OF THE UNITED STATES, in neat characters. Don Ippolito gave a
quick sigh, hesitated a moment, and then seized the bell-pull and
jerked it so sharply that it seemed to thrust out, like a part of the
mechanism, the head of an old serving-woman at the window above him.
“Who is there?” demanded this head.
“Friends,” answered Don Ippolito in a rich, sad voice.
“And what do you command?” further asked the old woman.
Don Ippolito paused, apparently searching for his voice, before he
inquired, “Is it here that the Consul of America lives?”
“Precisely.”
“Is he perhaps at home?”
“I don’t know. I will go ask him.”
“Do me that pleasure, dear,” said Don Ippolito, and remained knotting
his fingers before the closed door. Presently the old woman returned,
and looking out long enough to say, “The consul is at home,” drew some
inner bolt by a wire running to the lock, that let the door start open;
then, waiting to hear Don Ippolito close it again, she called out from
her height, “Favor me above.” He climbed the dim stairway to the point
where she stood, and followed her to a door, which she flung open into
an apartment so brightly lit by a window looking on the sunny canal,
that he blinked as he entered. “Signor Console,” said the old woman,
“behold the gentleman who desired to see you;” and at the same time
Don Ippolito, having removed his broad, stiff, three-cornered hat,
came forward and made a beautiful bow. He had lost for the moment the
trepidation which had marked his approach to the consulate, and bore
himself with graceful dignity.
It was in the first year of the war, and from a motive of patriotism
common at that time, Mr. Ferris (one of my many predecessors in office
at Venice) had just been crossing his two silken gondola flags above the
consular bookcase, where with their gilt lance-headed staves, and their
vivid stars and stripes, they made a very pretty effect. He filliped a
little dust from his coat, and begged Don Ippolito to be seated, with
the air of putting even a Venetian priest on a footing of equality with
other men under the folds of the national banner. Mr. Ferris had the
prejudice of all Italian sympathizers against the priests; but for this
he could hardly have found anything in Don Ippolito to alarm dislike.
His face was a little thin, and the chin was delicate; the nose had a
fine, Dantesque curve, but its final droop gave a melancholy cast to
a countenance expressive of a gentle and kindly spirit; the eyes were
large and dark and full of a dreamy warmth. Don Ippolito’s prevailing
tint was that transparent blueishness which comes from much shaving of a
heavy black beard; his forehead and temples were marble white; he had
a tonsure the size of a dollar. He sat silent for a little space, and
softly questioned the consul’s face with his dreamy eyes. Apparently he
could not gather courage to speak of his business at once, for he
turned his gaze upon the window and said, “A beautiful position, Signor
Console.”
“Yes, it’s a pretty place,” answered Mr. Ferris, warily.
“So much pleasanter here on the Canalazzo than on the campos or the
little canals.”
“Oh, without doubt.”
“Here there must be constant amusement in watching the boats: great
stir, great variety, great life. And now the fine season commences,
and the Signor Console’s countrymen will be coming to Venice. Perhaps,”
added Don Ippolito with a polite dismay, and an air of sudden anxiety
to escape from his own purpose, “I may be disturbing or detaining the
Signor Console?”
“No,” said Mr. Ferris; “I am quite at leisure for the present. In what
can I have the honor of serving you?”
Don Ippolito heaved a long, ineffectual sigh, and taking his linen
handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his forehead with it, and rolled it
upon his knee. He looked at the door, and all round the room, and then
rose and drew near the consul, who had officially seated himself at his
desk.
“I suppose that the Signor Console gives passports?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” replied Mr. Ferris, with a clouding face.
Don Ippolito seemed to note the gathering distrust and to be helpless
against it. He continued hastily: “Could the Signor Console give a
passport for America ... to me?”
“Are you an American citizen?” demanded the consul in the voice of a man
whose suspicions are fully roused.
“American citizen?”
“Yes; subject of the American republic.”
“No, surely; I have not that happiness. I am an Austrian subject,”
returned Don Ippolito a little bitterly, as if the last words were an
unpleasant morsel in the mouth.
“Then I can’t give you a passport,” said Mr. Ferris, somewhat more
gently. “You know,” he explained, “that no government can give passports
to foreign subjects. That would be an unheard-of thing.”
“But I thought that to go to America an American passport would be
needed.”
“In America,” returned the consul, with proud compassion, “they don’t
care a fig for passports. You go and you come, and nobody meddles. To
be sure,” he faltered, “just now, on account of the secessionists, they
_do_ require you to show a passport at New York; but,” he continued more
boldly, “American passports are usually for Europe; and besides, all the
American passports in the world wouldn’t get _you_ over the frontier at
Peschiera. _You_ must have a passport from the Austrian Lieutenancy of
Venice.”
Don Ippolito nodded his head softly several times, and said,
“Precisely,” and then added with an indescribable weariness, “Patience!
Signor Console, I ask your pardon for the trouble I have given,” and he
made the consul another low bow.
Whether Mr. Ferris’s curiosity was piqued, and feeling himself on the
safe side of his visitor he meant to know why he had come on such an
errand, or whether he had some kindlier motive, he could hardly have
told himself, but he said, “I’m very sorry. Perhaps there is something
else in which I could be of use to you.”
“Ah, I hardly know,” cried Don Ippolito. “I really had a kind of hope in
coming to your excellency.”
“I am not an excellency,” interrupted Mr. Ferris, conscientiously.
“Many excuses! But now it seems a mere bestiality. I was so ignorant
about the other matter that doubtless I am also quite deluded in this.”
“As to that, of course I can’t say,” answered Mr. Ferris, “but I hope
not.”
“Why, listen, signore!” said Don Ippolito, placing his hand over that
pocket in which he kept his linen handkerchief. “I had something that it
had come into my head to offer your honored government for its advantage
in this deplorable rebellion.”
“Oh,” responded Mr. Ferris with a falling countenance. He had received
so many offers of help for his honored government from sympathizing
foreigners. Hardly a week passed but a sabre came clanking up his dim
staircase with a Herr Graf or a Herr Baron attached, who appeared in
the spotless panoply of his Austrian captaincy or lieutenancy, to
accept from the consul a brigadier-generalship in the Federal armies,
on condition that the consul would pay his expenses to Washington, or
at least assure him of an exalted post and reimbursement of all outlays
from President Lincoln as soon as he arrived. They were beautiful men,
with the complexion of blonde girls; their uniforms fitted like kid
gloves; the pale blue, or pure white, or huzzar black of their coats was
ravishingly set off by their red or gold trimmings; and they were
hard to make understand that brigadiers of American birth swarmed at
Washington, and that if they went thither, they must go as soldiers of
fortune at their own risk. But they were very polite; they begged pardon
when they knocked their scabbards against the consul’s furniture, at the
door they each made him a magnificent obeisance, said “Servus!” in their
great voices, and were shown out by the old Marina, abhorrent of
their uniforms and doubtful of the consul’s political sympathies. Only
yesterday she had called him up at an unwonted hour to receive the visit
of a courtly gentleman who addressed him as Monsieur le Ministre, and
offered him at a bargain ten thousand stand of probably obsolescent
muskets belonging to the late Duke of Parma. Shabby, hungry, incapable
exiles of all nations, religions, and politics beset him for places of
honor and emolument in the service of the Union; revolutionists out of
business, and the minions of banished despots, were alike willing to be
fed, clothed, and dispatched to Washington with swords consecrated to
the perpetuity of the republic.
“I have here,” said Don Ippolito, too intent upon showing whatever it
was he had to note the change in the consul’s mood, “the model of a
weapon of my contrivance, which I thought the government of the North
could employ successfully in cases where its batteries were in danger of
capture by the Spaniards.”
“Spaniards? Spaniards? We have no war with Spain!” cried the consul.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Don Ippolito made haste to explain, “but those of
South America being Spanish by descent”--
“But we are not fighting the South Americans. We are fighting our own
Southern States, I am sorry to say.”
“Oh! Many excuses. I am afraid I don’t understand,” said Don Ippolito
meekly; whereupon Mr. Ferris enlightened him in a formula (of which
he was beginning to be weary) against European misconception of the
American situation. Don Ippolito nodded his head contritely, and when
Mr. Ferris had ended, he was so much abashed that he made no motion to
show his invention till the other added, “But no matter; I suppose the
contrivance would work as well against the Southerners as the South
Americans. Let me see it, please;” and then Don Ippolito, with a
gratified smile, drew from his pocket the neatly finished model of a
breech-loading cannon.
“You perceive, Signor Console,” he said with new dignity, “that this is
nothing very new as a breech-loader, though I ask you to observe this
little improvement for restoring the breech to its place, which is
original. The grand feature of my invention, however, is this secret
chamber in the breech, which is intended to hold an explosive of high
potency, with a fuse coming out below. The gunner, finding his piece in
danger, ignites this fuse, and takes refuge in flight. At the moment
the enemy seizes the gun the contents of the secret chamber explode,
demolishing the piece and destroying its captors.”
The dreamy warmth in Don Ippolito’s deep eyes kindled to a flame; a
dark red glowed in his thin cheeks; he drew a box from the folds of his
drapery and took snuff in a great whiff, as if inhaling the sulphurous
fumes of battle, or titillating his nostrils with grains of gunpowder.
He was at least in full enjoyment of the poetic power of his invention,
and no doubt had before his eyes a vivid picture of a score of
secessionists surprised and blown to atoms in the very moment of
triumph. “Behold, Signor Console!” he said.
“It’s certainly very curious,” said Mr. Ferris, turning the fearful toy
over in his hand, and admiring the neat workmanship of it. “Did you make
this model yourself?”
“Surely,” answered the priest, with a joyous pride; “I have no money to
spend upon artisans; and besides, as you might infer, signore, I am not
very well seen by my superiors and associates on account of these
little amusements of mine; so keep them as much as I can to myself.” Don
Ippolito laughed nervously, and then fell silent with his eyes intent
upon the consul’s face. “What do you think, signore?” he presently
resumed. “If this invention were brought to the notice of your generous
government, would it not patronize my labors? I have read that America
is the land of enterprises. Who knows but your government might invite
me to take service under it in some capacity in which I could employ
those little gifts that Heaven”--He paused again, apparently puzzled by
the compassionate smile on the consul’s lips. “But tell me, signore, how
this invention appears to you.” “Have you had any practical experience
in gunnery?” asked Mr. Ferris.
“Why, certainly not.”
“Neither have I,” continued Mr. Ferris, “but I was wondering whether
the explosive in this secret chamber would not become so heated by the
frequent discharges of the piece as to go off prematurely sometimes, and
kill our own artillerymen instead of waiting for the secessionists?”
Don Ippolito’s countenance fell, and a dull shame displaced the
exultation that had glowed in it. His head sunk on his breast, and he
made no attempt at reply, so that it was again Mr. Ferris who spoke.
“You see, I don’t really know anything more of the matter than you do,
and I don’t undertake to say whether your invention is disabled by the
possibility I suggest or not. Haven’t you any acquaintances among the
military, to whom you could show your model?”
“No,” answered Don Ippolito, coldly, “I don’t consort with the military.
Besides, what would be thought of a _priest_,” he asked with a bitter
stress on the word, “who exhibited such an invention as that to an
officer of our paternal government?”
“I suppose it would certainly surprise the lieutenant-governor
somewhat,” said Mr. Ferris with a laugh. “May I ask,” he pursued after
an interval, “whether you have occupied yourself with other inventions?”
“I have attempted a great many,” replied Don Ippolito in a tone of
dejection.
“Are they all of this warlike temper?” pursued the consul.
“No,” said Don Ippolito, blushing a little, “they are nearly all of
peaceful intention. It was the wish to produce something of utility
which set me about this cannon. Those good friends of mine who have done
me the honor of looking at my attempts had blamed me for the uselessness
of my inventions; they allowed that they were ingenious, but they said
that even if they could be put in operation, they would not be what
the world cared for. Perhaps they were right. I know very little of the
world,” concluded the priest, sadly. He had risen to go, yet seemed not
quite able to do so; there was no more to say, but if he had come to the
consul with high hopes, it might well have unnerved him to have all
end so blankly. He drew a long, sibilant breath between his shut teeth,
nodded to himself thrice, and turning to Mr. Ferris with a melancholy
bow, said, “Signor Console, I thank you infinitely for your kindness, I
beg your pardon for the disturbance, and I take my leave.”
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Ferris. “Let us see each other again. In regard
to the inventions,--well, you must have patience.” He dropped into some
proverbial phrases which the obliging Latin tongues supply so abundantly
for the races who must often talk when they do not feel like thinking,
and he gave a start when Don Ippolito replied in English, “Yes, but hope
deferred maketh the heart sick.”
It was not that it was so uncommon to have Italians innocently come
out with their whole slender stock of English to him, for the sake
of practice, as they told him; but there were peculiarities in Don
Ippolito’s accent for which he could not account. “What,” he exclaimed,
“do you know English?”
“I have studied it a little, by myself,” answered Don Ippolito,
pleased to have his English recognized, and then lapsing into the
safety of Italian, he added, “And I had also the help of an English
ecclesiastic who sojourned some months in Venice, last year, for his
health, and who used to read with me and teach me the pronunciation. He
was from Dublin, this ecclesiastic.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Ferris, with relief, “I see;” and he perceived that what
had puzzled him in Don Ippolito’s English was a fine brogue superimposed
upon his Italian accent.
“For some time I have had this idea of going to America, and I thought
that the first thing to do was to equip myself with the language.”
“Um!” said Mr. Ferris, “that was practical, at any rate,” and he mused
awhile. By and by he continued, more kindly than he had yet spoken, “I
wish I could ask you to sit down again: but I have an engagement which I
must make haste to keep. Are you going out through the campo? Pray wait
a minute, and I will walk with you.”
Mr. Ferris went into another room, through the open door of which Don
Ippolito saw the paraphernalia of a painter’s studio: an easel with a
half-finished picture on it; a chair with a palette and brushes, and
crushed and twisted tubes of colors; a lay figure in one corner; on the
walls scraps of stamped leather, rags of tapestry, desultory sketches on
paper.
Mr. Ferris came out again, brushing his hat.
“The Signor Console amuses himself with painting, I see,” said Don
Ippolito courteously.
“Not at all,” replied Mr. Ferris, putting on his gloves; “I am a painter
by profession, and I amuse myself with consuling;” [Footnote: Since
these words of Mr. Ferris were first printed, I have been told that a
more eminent painter, namely Rubens, made very much the same reply to
very much the same remark, when Spanish Ambassador in England. “The
Ambassador of His Catholic Majesty, I see, amuses himself by painting
sometimes,” said a visitor who found him at his easel. “I amuse myself
by playing the ambassador sometimes,” answered Rubens. In spite of the
similarity of the speeches, I let that of Mr. Ferris stand, for I am
satisfied that he did not know how unhandsomely Rubens had taken the
words out of his mouth.] and as so open a matter needed no explanation,
he said no more about it. Nor is it quite necessary to tell how, as he
was one day painting in New York, it occurred to him to make use of a
Congressional friend, and ask for some Italian consulate, he did not
care which. That of Venice happened to be vacant: the income was a few
hundred dollars; as no one else wanted it, no question was made of Mr.
Ferris’s fitness for the post, and he presently found himself possessed
of a commission requesting the Emperor of Austria to permit him to enjoy
and exercise the office of consul of the ports of the Lombardo-Venetian
kingdom, to which the President of the United States appointed him from
a special trust in his abilities and integrity. He proceeded at once
to his post of duty, called upon the ship’s chandler with whom they had
been left, for the consular archives, and began to paint some Venetian
subjects.
He and Don Ippolito quitted the Consulate together, leaving Marina to
digest with her noonday porridge the wonder that he should be walking
amicably forth with a priest. The same spectacle was presented to the
gaze of the campo, where they paused in friendly converse, and were
seen to part with many politenesses by the doctors of the neighborhood,
lounging away their leisure, as the Venetian fashion is, at the local
pharmacy.
The apothecary craned forward over his counter, and peered through the
open door. “What is that blessed Consul of America doing with a priest?”
“The Consul of America with a priest?” demanded a grave old man, a
physician with a beautiful silvery beard, and a most reverend and
senatorial presence, but one of the worst tongues in Venice. “Oh!” he
added, with a laugh, after scrutiny of the two through his glasses,
“it’s that crack-brain Don Ippolito Rondinelli. He isn’t priest enough
to hurt the consul. Perhaps he’s been selling him a perpetual motion for
the use of his government, which needs something of the kind just now.
Or maybe he’s been posing to him for a picture. He would make a very
pretty Joseph, give him Potiphar’s wife in the background,” said the
doctor, who if not maligned would have needed much more to make a Joseph
of him.