moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more delightful than the hours
when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one mind. And he was more and more
fascinated by this tenderness apart from wit, always and in all things
the same, an affection that was jealous of mere nothings--already!
“You care very much for luxury?” said he one evening to Francesca, who
was expressing her wish to get away from Gersau, where she missed many
things.
“I!” cried she. “I love luxury as I love the arts, as I love a picture
by Raphael, a fine horse, a beautiful day, or the Bay of Naples.
Emilio,” she went on, “have I ever complained here during our days of
privation.”
“You would not have been yourself if you had,” replied the old man
gravely.
“After all, is it not in the nature of plain folks to aspire to
grandeur?” she asked, with a mischievous glance at Rodolphe and at her
husband. “Were my feet made for fatigue?” she added, putting out two
pretty little feet. “My hands”--and she held one out to Rodolphe--“were
those hands made to work?--Leave us,” she said to her husband; “I want
to speak to him.”
The old man went into the drawing-room with sublime good faith; he was
sure of his wife.
“I will not have you come with us to Geneva,” she said to Rodolphe. “It
is a gossiping town. Though I am far above the nonsense the world talks,
I do not choose to be calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I
make it my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, my
only protector. We are leaving; stay here a few days. When you come on
to Geneva, call first on my husband, and let him introduce you to me.
Let us hide our great and unchangeable affection from the eyes of the
world. I love you; you know it; but this is how I will prove it to
you--you shall never discern in my conduct anything whatever that may
arouse your jealousy.”
She drew him into a corner of the balcony, kissed him on the forehead,
and fled, leaving him in amazement.
Next day Rodolphe heard that the lodgers at the Bergmanns’ had left at
daybreak. It then seemed to him intolerable to remain at Gersau, and
he set out for Vevay by the longest route, starting sooner than was
necessary. Attracted to the waters of the lake where the beautiful
Italian awaited him, he reached Geneva by the end of October. To avoid
the discomforts of the town he took rooms in a house at Eaux-Vives,
outside the walls. As soon as he was settled, his first care was to
ask his landlord, a retired jeweler, whether some Italian refugees from
Milan had not lately come to reside at Geneva.
“Not so far as I know,” replied the man. “Prince and Princess Colonna of
Rome have taken Monsieur Jeanrenaud’s place for three years; it is one
of the finest on the lake. It is situated between the Villa Diodati
and that of Monsieur Lafin-de-Dieu, let to the Vicomtesse de Beauseant.
Prince Colonna has come to see his daughter and his son-in-law Prince
Gandolphini, a Neopolitan, or if you like, a Sicilian, an old adherent
of King Murat’s, and a victim of the last revolution. These are the last
arrivals at Geneva, and they are not Milanese. Serious steps had to be
taken, and the Pope’s interest in the Colonna family was invoked, to
obtain permission from the foreign powers and the King of Naples for the
Prince and Princess Gandolphini to live here. Geneva is anxious to
do nothing to displease the Holy Alliance to which it owes its
independence. _Our_ part is not to ruffle foreign courts; there are many
foreigners here, Russians and English.”
“Even some Gevenese?”
“Yes, monsieur, our lake is so fine! Lord Byron lived here about seven
years at the Villa Diodati, which every one goes to see now, like Coppet
and Ferney.”
“You cannot tell me whether within a week or so a bookseller from Milan
has come with his wife--named Lamporani, one of the leaders of the last
revolution?”
“I could easily find out by going to the Foreigners’ Club,” said the
jeweler.
Rodolphe’s first walk was very naturally to the Villa Diodati, the
residence of Lord Byron, whose recent death added to its attractiveness:
for is not death the consecration of genius?
The road to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the
roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of
the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two
carriages to pass each other.
At a few yards from the Jeanrenauds’ house, which he was approaching
without knowing it, Rodolphe heard the sound of a carriage behind him,
and, finding himself in a sunk road, he climbed to the top of a rock to
leave the road free. Of course he looked at the approaching carriage--an
elegant English phaeton, with a splendid pair of English horses. He
felt quite dizzy as he beheld in this carriage Francesca, beautifully
dressed, by the side of an old lady as hard as a cameo. A servant
blazing with gold lace stood behind. Francesca recognized Rodolphe, and
smiled at seeing him like a statue on a pedestal. The carriage, which
the lover followed with his eyes as he climbed the hill, turned in at
the gate of a country house, towards which he ran.
“Who lives here?” he asked the gardener.
“Prince and Princess Colonna, and Prince and Princess Gandolphini.”
“Have they not just driven in?”
“Yes, sir.”
In that instant a veil fell from Rodolphe’s eyes; he saw clearly the
meaning of the past.
“If only this is her last piece of trickery!” thought the thunder-struck
lover to himself.
He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a whim, for he had
heard what a _capriccio_ might mean in an Italian. But what a crime had
he committed in the eyes of a woman--in accepting a born princess as
a citizen’s wife! in believing that a daughter of one of the most
illustrious houses of the Middle Ages was the wife of a bookseller!
The consciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe’s desire to
know whether he would be ignored and repelled. He asked for Prince
Gandolphini, sending in his card, and was immediately received by the
false Lamporani, who came forward to meet him, welcomed him with the
best possible grace, and took him to walk on a terrace whence there was
a view of Geneva, the Jura, the hills covered with villas, and below
them a wide expanse of the lake.
“My wife is faithful to the lakes, you see,” he remarked, after
pointing out the details to his visitor. “We have a sort of concert this
evening,” he added, as they returned to the splendid Villa Jeanrenaud.
“I hope you will do me and the Princess the pleasure of seeing you. Two
months of poverty endured in intimacy are equal to years of friendship.”
Though he was consumed by curiosity, Rodolphe dared not ask to see the
Princess; he slowly made his way back to Eaux-Vives, looking forward to
the evening. In a few hours his passion, great as it had already been,
was augmented by his anxiety and by suspense as to future events. He now
understood the necessity for making himself famous, that he might some
day find himself, socially speaking, on a level with his idol. In his
eyes Francesca was made really great by the simplicity and ease of her
conduct at Gersau. Princess Colonna’s haughtiness, so evidently natural
to her, alarmed Rodolphe, who would find enemies in Francesca’s father
and mother--at least so he might expect; and the secrecy which Princess
Gandolphini had so strictly enjoined on him now struck him as a
wonderful proof of affection. By not choosing to compromise the future,
had she not confessed that she loved him?
At last nine o’clock struck; Rodolphe could get into a carriage and say
with an emotion that is very intelligible, “To the Villa Jeanrenaud--to
Prince Gandolphini’s.”
At last he saw Francesca, but without being seen by her. The Princess
was standing quite near the piano. Her beautiful hair, so thick and
long, was bound with a golden fillet. Her face, in the light of wax
candles, had the brilliant pallor peculiar to Italians, and which
looks its best only by artificial light. She was in full evening dress,
showing her fascinating shoulders, the figure of a girl and the arms of
an antique statue. Her sublime beauty was beyond all possible rivalry,
though there were some charming women of Geneva, and other Italians,
among them the dazzling and illustrious Princess Varese, and the famous
singer Tinti, who was at that moment singing.
Rodolphe, leaning against the door-post, looked at the Princess, turning
on her the fixed, tenacious, attracting gaze, charged with the full,
insistent will which is concentrated in the feeling called desire, and
thus assumes the nature of a vehement command. Did the flame of that
gaze reach Francesca? Was Francesca expecting each instant to see
Rodolphe? In a few minutes she stole a glance at the door, as though
magnetized by this current of love, and her eyes, without reserve,
looked deep into Rodolphe’s. A slight thrill quivered through that
superb face and beautiful body; the shock to her spirit reacted:
Francesca blushed! Rodolphe felt a whole life in this exchange of looks,
so swift that it can only be compared to a lightning flash. But to what
could his happiness compare? He was loved. The lofty Princess, in the
midst of her world, in this handsome villa, kept the pledge given by
the disguised exile, the capricious beauty of Bergmanns’ lodgings. The
intoxication of such a moment enslaves a man for life! A faint smile,
refined and subtle, candid and triumphant, curled Princess Gandolphini’s
lips, and at a moment when she did not feel herself observed she looked
at Rodolphe with an expression which seemed to ask his pardon for having
deceived him as to her rank.
When the song was ended Rodolphe could make his way to the Prince, who
graciously led him to his wife. Rodolphe went through the ceremonial of
a formal introduction to Princess and Prince Colonna, and to Francesca.
When this was over, the Princess had to take part in the famous
quartette, _Mi manca la voce_, which was sung by her with Tinti, with
the famous tenor Genovese, and with a well-known Italian Prince then in
exile, whose voice, if he had not been a Prince, would have made him one
of the Princes of Art.
“Take that seat,” said Francesca to Rodolphe, pointing to her own chair.
“_Oime_! I think there is some mistake in my name; I have for the last
minute been Princess Rodolphini.”
It was said with the artless grace which revived, in this avowal hidden
beneath a jest, the happy days at Gersau. Rodolphe reveled in the
exquisite sensation of listening to the voice of the woman he adored,
while sitting so close to her that one cheek was almost touched by
the stuff of her dress and the gauze of her scarf. But when, at such a
moment, _Mi manca la voce_ is being sung, and by the finest voices in
Italy, it is easy to understand what it was that brought the tears to
Rodolphe’s eyes.
In love, as perhaps in all else, there are certain circumstances,
trivial in themselves, but the outcome of a thousand little previous
incidents, of which the importance is immense, as an epitome of the past
and as a link with the future. A hundred times already we have felt the
preciousness of the one we love; but a trifle--the perfect touch of
two souls united during a walk perhaps by a single word, by some
unlooked-for proof of affection, will carry the feeling to its supremest
pitch. In short, to express this truth by an image which has been
pre-eminently successful from the earliest ages of the world, there
are in a long chain points of attachment needed where the cohesion
is stronger than in the intermediate loops of rings. This recognition
between Rodolphe and Francesca, at this party, in the face of the world,
was one of those intense moments which join the future to the past,
and rivet a real attachment more deeply in the heart. It was perhaps of
these incidental rivets that Bossuet spoke when he compared to them
the rarity of happy moments in our lives--he who had such a living and
secret experience of love.
Next to the pleasure of admiring the woman we love, comes that of seeing
her admired by every one else. Rodolphe was enjoying both at once. Love
is a treasury of memories, and though Rodolphe’s was already full, he
added to it pearls of great price; smiles shed aside for him alone,
stolen glances, tones in her singing which Francesca addressed to
him alone, but which made Tinti pale with jealousy, they were so much
applauded. All his strength of desire, the special expression of his
soul, was thrown over the beautiful Roman, who became unchangeably the
beginning and the end of all his thoughts and actions. Rodolphe loved
as every woman may dream of being loved, with a force, a constancy, a
tenacity, which made Francesca the very substance of his heart; he felt
her mingling with his blood as purer blood, with his soul as a more
perfect soul; she would henceforth underlie the least efforts of his
life as the golden sand of the Mediterranean lies beneath the waves. In
short, Rodolphe’s lightest aspiration was now a living hope.
At the end of a few days, Francesca understood this boundless love;
but it was so natural, and so perfectly shared by her, that it did not
surprise her. She was worthy of it.
“What is there that is strange?” said she to Rodolphe, as they walked
on the garden terrace, when he had been betrayed into one of those
outbursts of conceit which come so naturally to Frenchmen in the
expression of their feelings--“what is extraordinary in the fact of your
loving a young and beautiful woman, artist enough to be able to earn her
living like Tinti, and of giving you some of the pleasures of vanity?
What lout but would then become an Amadis? This is not in question
between you and me. What is needed is that we both love faithfully,
persistently; at a distance from each other for years, with no
satisfaction but that of knowing that we are loved.”
“Alas!” said Rodolphe, “will you not consider my fidelity as devoid of
all merit when you see me absorbed in the efforts of devouring ambition?
Do you imagine that I can wish to see you one day exchange the fine name
of Gandolphini for that of a man who is a nobody? I want to become one
of the most remarkable men of my country, to be rich, great--that you
may be as proud of my name as of your own name of Colonna.”
“I should be grieved to see you without such sentiments in your heart,”
she replied, with a bewitching smile. “But do not wear yourself out too
soon in your ambitious labors. Remain young. They say that politics soon
make a man old.”
One of the rarest gifts in women is a certain gaiety which does not
detract from tenderness. This combination of deep feeling with
the lightness of youth added an enchanting grace at this moment to
Francesca’s charms. This is the key to her character; she laughs and she
is touched; she becomes enthusiastic, and returns to arch raillery with
a readiness, a facility, which makes her the charming and exquisite
creature she is, and for which her reputation is known outside Italy.
Under the graces of a woman she conceals vast learning, thanks to the
excessively monotonous and almost monastic life she led in the castle of
the old Colonnas.
This rich heiress was at first intended for the cloister, being the
fourth child of Prince and Princess Colonna; but the death of her two
brothers, and of her elder sister, suddenly brought her out of her
retirement, and made her one of the most brilliant matches in the Papal
States. Her elder sister had been betrothed to Prince Gandolphini, one
of the richest landowners in Sicily; and Francesca was married to him
instead, so that nothing might be changed in the position of the family.
The Colonnas and Gandolphinis had always intermarried.
From the age of nine till she was sixteen, Francesca, under the
direction of a Cardinal of the family, had read all through the library
of the Colonnas, to make weight against her ardent imagination by
studying science, art, and letters. But in these studies she acquired
the taste for independence and liberal ideas, which threw her, with her
husband, into the ranks of the revolution. Rodolphe had not yet learned
that, besides five living languages, Francesca knew Greek, Latin, and
Hebrew. The charming creature perfectly understood that, for a woman,
the first condition of being learned is to keep it deeply hidden.
Rodolphe spent the whole winter at Geneva. This winter passed like a
day. When spring returned, notwithstanding the infinite delights of the
society of a clever woman, wonderfully well informed, young and lovely,
the lover went through cruel sufferings, endured indeed with courage,
but which were sometimes legible in his countenance, and betrayed
themselves in his manners or speech, perhaps because he believed that
Francesca shared them. Now and again it annoyed him to admire her
calmness. Like an Englishwoman, she seemed to pride herself on
expressing nothing in her face; its serenity defied love; he longed to
see her agitated; he accused her of having no feeling, for he
believed in the tradition which ascribes to Italian women a feverish
excitability.
“I am a Roman!” Francesca gravely replied one day when she took quite
seriously some banter on this subject from Rodolphe.
There was a depth of tone in her reply which gave it the appearance of
scathing irony, and which set Rodolphe’s pulses throbbing. The month of
May spread before them the treasures of her fresh verdure; the sun was
sometimes as powerful as at midsummer. The two lovers happened to be at
a part of the terrace where the rock arises abruptly from the lake, and
were leaning over the stone parapet that crowns the wall above a flight
of steps leading down to a landing-stage. From the neighboring villa,
where there is a similar stairway, a boat presently shot out like a
swan, its flag flaming, its crimson awning spread over a lovely woman
comfortably reclining on red cushions, her hair wreathed with real
flowers; the boatman was a young man dressed like a sailor, and rowing
with all the more grace because he was under the lady’s eye.
“They are happy!” exclaimed Rodolphe, with bitter emphasis. “Claire de
Bourgogne, the last survivor of the only house which can ever vie with
the royal family of France--”
“Oh! of a bastard branch, and that a female line.”
“At any rate, she is Vicomtesse de Beauseant; and she did not--”
“Did not hesitate, you would say, to bury herself here with Monsieur
Gaston de Nueil, you would say,” replied the daughter of the Colonnas.
“She is only a Frenchwoman; I am an Italian, my dear sir!”
Francesca turned away from the parapet, leaving Rodolphe, and went to
the further end of the terrace, whence there is a wide prospect of the
lake. Watching her as she slowly walked away, Rodolphe suspected that
he had wounded her soul, at once so simple and so wise, so proud and so
humble. It turned him cold; he followed Francesca, who signed to him to
leave her to herself. But he did not heed the warning, and detected her
wiping away her tears. Tears! in so strong a nature.
“Francesca,” said he, taking her hand, “is there a single regret in your
heart?”
She was silent, disengaged her hand which held her embroidered
handkerchief, and again dried her eyes.
“Forgive me!” he said. And with a rush, he kissed her eyes to wipe away
the tears.
Francesca did not seem aware of his passionate impulse, she was so
violently agitated. Rodolphe, thinking she consented, grew bolder; he
put his arm round her, clasped her to his heart, and snatched a kiss.
But she freed herself by a dignified movement of offended modesty, and,
standing a yard off, she looked at him without anger, but with firm
determination.
“Go this evening,” she said. “We meet no more till we meet at Naples.”
This order was stern, but it was obeyed, for it was Francesca’s will.
* * * * *
On his return to Paris Rodolphe found in his rooms a portrait of
Princess Gandolphini painted by Schinner, as Schinner can paint.
The artist had passed through Geneva on his way to Italy. As he had
positively refused to paint the portraits of several women, Rodolphe
did not believe that the Prince, anxious as he was for a portrait of
his wife, would be able to conquer the great painter’s objections; but
Francesca, no doubt, had bewitched him, and obtained from him--which was
almost a miracle--an original portrait for Rodolphe, and a duplicate for
Emilio. She told him this in a charming and delightful letter, in which
the mind indemnified itself for the reserve required by the worship
of the proprieties. The lover replied. Thus began, never to cease,
a regular correspondence between Rodolphe and Francesca, the only
indulgence they allowed themselves.
Rodolphe, possessed by an ambition sanctified by his love, set to
work. First he longed to make his fortune, and risked his all in
an undertaking to which he devoted all his faculties as well as
his capital; but he, an inexperienced youth, had to contend against
duplicity, which won the day. Thus three years were lost in a vast
enterprise, three years of struggling and courage.
The Villele ministry fell just when Rodolphe was ruined. The valiant
lover thought he would seek in politics what commercial industry had
refused him; but before braving the storms of this career, he went, all
wounded and sick at heart, to have his bruises healed and his courage
revived at Naples, where the Prince and Princess had been reinstated in
their place and rights on the King’s accession. This, in the midst of
his warfare, was a respite full of delights; he spent three months at
the Villa Gandolphini, rocked in hope.
Rodolphe then began again to construct his fortune. His talents were
already known; he was about to attain the desires of his ambition; a
high position was promised him as the reward of his zeal, his devotion,
and his past services, when the storm of July 1830 broke, and again his
bark was swamped.
She, and God! These are the only witnesses of the brave efforts, the
daring attempts of a young man gifted with fine qualities, but to whom,
so far, the protection of luck--the god of fools--has been denied.
And this indefatigable wrestler, upheld by love, comes back to fresh
struggles, lighted on his way by an always friendly eye, an ever
faithful heart.
Lovers! Pray for him!
* * * * *
As she finished this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville’s cheeks were
on fire; there was a fever in her blood. She was crying--but with rage.
This little novel, inspired by the literary style then in fashion, was
the first reading of the kind that Rosalie had ever had the chance of
devouring. Love was depicted in it, if not by a master-hand, at any
rate by a man who seemed to give his own impressions; and truth, even if
unskilled, could not fail to touch a virgin soul. Here lay the secret
of Rosalie’s terrible agitation, of her fever and her tears; she was
jealous of Francesca Colonna.
She never for an instant doubted the sincerity of this poetical flight;
Albert had taken pleasure in telling the story of his passion, while
changing the names of persons and perhaps of places. Rosalie was
possessed by infernal curiosity. What woman but would, like her, have
wanted to know her rival’s name--for she too loved! As she read these
pages, to her really contagious, she had said solemnly to herself, “I
love him!”--She loved Albert, and felt in her heart a gnawing desire to
fight for him, to snatch him from this unknown rival. She reflected that
she knew nothing of music, and that she was not beautiful.
“He will never love me!” thought she.