with your arms folded and allow your father to wait on you! Do at least
take the trouble to eat and drink yourself!"
"Excuse me, dear father, you seem to me to do the honors of the house
with a self-possession which I admire, but which I should not dare to
imitate. You also seem to me to be very much at home here."
"I am more comfortable here than at home," rejoined Pier-Angelo,
nibbling at the wing of a chicken, and offering the other wing to his
son. "Don't expect me to give you such suppers often. But make the most
of this one without false shame; I told you that the majordomo
authorized me to do this."
"The majordomo is simply a higher servant who pilfers like all the
others, and invites his friends to make themselves comfortable at his
mistress's expense. Excuse me, father, but this supper is distasteful to
me; my appetite has all disappeared at the thought that we are stealing
the princess's supper; for these Japanese plates filled with delicious
sweetmeats were not intended for our mouths, nor even for that of his
highness the majordomo."
"Well, if I must tell you, that is true; but it was the princess herself
who bade me eat her supper, because she is not hungry to-night, and she
supposed that you would have some reluctance to sup with her servants."
"Your princess is extraordinarily kind," said Michel, "and shows a most
exquisite delicacy of feeling with respect to me! I confess that I
should not care to eat with her lackeys. But, father, if you do it, if
it is the custom of the house, and a necessity of my new position, I
will be no more fastidious than you, and will accustom myself to it. But
how did it ever occur to the princess to spare me that petty annoyance
to-night?"
"Because I spoke to her about you. As she is particularly interested in
me, she asked me many questions about you, and, when she learned that
you were an artist, she declared that she would treat you as an artist,
and that she would find an artist's work for you in her house, in short,
that she would show you all the consideration you could possibly
desire."
"She is a very generous and very thoughtful lady," rejoined Michel, with
a sigh, "but I will not abuse her good-nature. I should blush to be
treated as an artist, side by side with my father the artisan. No, no, I
am an artisan myself, neither more nor less. I prefer to be treated like
my fellows, and if I eat here to-night, I propose to eat to-morrow where
my father eats."
"It is well, Michel; those are noble sentiments. I drink your health!
This Syracuse wine gives me courage, and makes the cardinal seem no more
formidable than a mummy to me! But what are you looking at so intently?"
"It seems to me that that curtain behind the glass keeps moving. There
is certainly some prying servant there who doesn't like to see us eating
such a delicious supper in his place. Ah! it will be very disagreeable
to have to deal with those people all the time! They must be carefully
handled, of course, for they can do us an ill turn with their masters,
and deprive an honest artisan, who happens to offend them, of a good
customer."
"That is true, generally speaking, but there is nothing of the sort to
be feared here. I have the princess's confidence; I deal with her
directly and without any orders from the majordomo. And, then, her
servants are excellent fellows. Come, eat in peace, and don't keep
looking at that curtain, which the wind is blowing."
"I assure you, father, that it isn't the wind, unless Zephyr has a
pretty little white hand with a diamond ring on the finger."
"In that case it must be the princess's first lady's-maid. She must have
heard me tell her mistress that you were a well-favored youth, and she
is curious to see you. Sit round this way, so that she can gratify her
curiosity."
"I am much more anxious to go and see Mila, father, than to be seen by
her ladyship the first lady's-maid. I have eaten my fill; let us go."
"I will not go until I have applied once more to this excellent wine for
courage and strength. Drink with me again, Michel! I am so happy to be
with you, that I would get drunk if I had the time!"
"And I am happy too, father; but I shall be still more so when we are at
home with my sister. I do not feel so much at ease as you do in this
mysterious palace: it seems to me that I am watched, or that some one
here is afraid of me. There is a silence and solitude here which do not
seem natural to me. People do not walk and show themselves as they do in
other places. We are stealthy in our movements, and we are being
stealthily watched. Anywhere else I would break a pane of glass to see
what there is behind that curtain--and just now, in the gallery, I had a
terrible shock. I was awakened by a cry, such a cry as I never heard
before."
"A cry, really? How does it happen that I heard nothing of the sort,
although I was very near you, in the same part of the palace? You must
have dreamed it!"
"No! no! I heard it twice; a faint cry, it is true, but so vibrating, so
peculiar that my heart beats fast when I think of it."
"Ah! that is just like your romantic mind! Now I recognize you, Michel;
it delights my heart, for I was afraid that you had become too
reasonable. However, I am sorry, for the sake of your adventure, to be
obliged to tell you what I think about it, which is that her highness's
first lady's-maid must have seen a spider or a mouse as she passed
through one of the corridors that surround the great gallery of
paintings. Whenever she sees one of those creatures, she utters
frightful shrieks, and I take the liberty of laughing at her."
This prosaic explanation annoyed the young artist a little. He hurried
his father, who was inclined to forget himself over the Syracuse wine,
and half an hour later he was in his sister's arms.
The next day Michelangelo Lavoratori was installed with his father at
the Palmarosa palace, to work industriously there the rest of the week.
The work in progress was the decoration of the enormous ball-room
constructed of wood and canvas for the occasion, adjoining the peristyle
of that beautiful country-seat, and opening on the gardens on every
side. The princess, who ordinarily lived in strict retirement, was about
to give a magnificent fête, in which all the wealthy and noble
inhabitants of Catania and of the neighboring villas were to take part.
Her reason for this departure from her usual mode of life was as
follows:
Every year the first society of that neighborhood co-operated to give a
subscription ball for the benefit of the poor, and each proprietor of a
spacious house, whether in the city or the country, was supposed to lend
it in his turn, and to pay a portion of the expenses of the fête when
the circumstances would permit.
Although the princess was exceedingly charitable, her taste for
seclusion had led her to defer offering her palace; but her turn had
come at last. She had most generously assumed the whole burden of the
fête, agreeing to pay all the expenses of the ball, including the
decorations of the ball-room, music, etc. By reason of her generosity,
the sum realized for the poor promised to be quite handsome, and, as the
Villa Palmarosa was the most superb residence in the province, and all
the preparations were on a magnificent scale, the fête promised to be
the most brilliant one ever seen.
The house was full of workmen, who had been at work a fortnight on the
ball-room, under the direction of Barbagallo the majordomo, a man of
wide experience in such matters, and under the preponderating influence
of Pier-Angelo Lavoratori, whose taste and skill were already well known
and highly esteemed throughout the province.
On the first day, Michel, true to his agreement and resigned to his lot,
made garlands and arabesques with his father and the apprentices in his
employ; but his probation was confined to that day, for on the following
morning Pier-Angelo informed him that the princess wished him to
undertake the painting of allegorical figures on the ceiling and canvas
walls of the ball-room. The selection and size of the subjects was left
to his discretion; he was requested simply to make haste and to have
confidence in himself. That task did not require the care and finish of
a durable work; but it opened a wide field to his imagination, and when
he realized that he was in possession of that vast space, upon which he
was at liberty to cast his fancies without restraint, he had a moment of
genuine bliss, and he was more intoxicated than ever with his profession
of artist.
His enthusiasm for the commission was greatly increased when the
princess sent word to him, through his father, that, if his work was
simply passable, it would be accepted as full payment of the sum lent to
Pier-Angelo for him; but that, if it earned the praise of connoisseurs,
he should be paid double.
Thus Michel was on the point of becoming free in any event, and perhaps
rich for a year to come, if he displayed any talent at all.
A single apprehension, but a very weighty one, chilled his joy; the day
for the ball was fixed, and it was not in the princess's power to
postpone it. A week remained, only a week! For an experienced decorator
that was enough, but for Michel, who had never done anything of the sort
on a large scale, and who could not refrain from looking upon it as a
matter in which his self-esteem was deeply involved, it was so little
that he shuddered at the bare thought.
Luckily for him, having worked with his father in his boyhood, and
having watched him work a thousand times since, the processes of
water-color work were familiar to him, as well as the geometrical
principles of decoration; but when he attempted to select his subjects,
he was oppressed by the superabundance of his ideas, and the prodigality
of his imagination put him on the rack. He passed two nights drawing his
compositions, and all day on his scaffolding, adjusting them to the
space at his command. He did not think of sleeping or eating, or even of
improving his acquaintance with his young sister, until his work was
definitely laid out. At last it was done, and he transferred his labors
to the courtyard of an old ruined chapel in the centre of the park,
where his canvas ceiling, forty feet long, was stretched on the ground.
There, assisted by several zealous apprentices, who handed him his
colors all ready for use, and walking barefooted over his mythological
sky, he prayed to the muses to impart to his trembling hand the
necessary skill and boldness; and at last, armed with a gigantic brush,
which might fitly have been called a broom, he sketched his Olympus and
worked with so much fire and hope that the canvas was ready to be put in
place two days before the ball.
He had still to superintend its removal and installation, and to retouch
such parts as were necessarily damaged in that process. And then he also
had to assist his father, who, having been delayed by him, still had
many borders of wainscots and cornices to finish.
That week passed like a dream to Michel, and the few moments of repose
in which he indulged seemed to him delicious beyond words. The villa was
wonderfully beautiful inside as well as outside. The gardens and the
park gave one an idea of the earthly paradise. Nature is so teeming in
that country, the flowers so beautiful and sweet, the vegetation so
luxuriant, the streams so clear and swift, that art has little to do in
order to create fairyland around the palaces there. Not that blocks of
lava and vast fields of ashes do not, here and there, present the image
of desolation beside the Elysian Fields. But those horrors add to the
charm of the oases which the volcanic flames have spared.
Villa Palmarosa, situated on the slope of a hill whose rugged summit was
exposed to the ravages of Ætna, had existed for centuries amid
continual disasters which it had been privileged to contemplate
undisturbed. The palace was very old, of a graceful type of
architecture, borrowed from Saracen models. The ball-room, which now
concealed the façade of the ground-floor, presented a striking contrast
to the dark coloring and severe decorations of the upper floors. Within,
the contrast was even more striking. While all was uproar and confusion
on the ground floor, all was tranquillity, order and mystery on the
floor above, where the princess lived. At meal times Michel entered that
silent portion of the mansion, for the little room with the glass door,
where he had supped with his father on the first evening, was reserved
for him, as a special and mysterious favor. They were all alone there,
and if the curtain moved again, the movement was so slight that Michel
could not be certain that he had inspired a romantic passion in the
first lady's-maid's breast.
The palace being built against the cliff, the princess's apartments were
on a level with terraces embellished with flower-beds and fountains; and
by descending a narrow flight of steps, boldly cut in the lava, one
could reach by that means the park and the open country. Once Michel
wandered into those Babylonian flower-gardens suspended over a
terrifying abyss. He saw the windows of the princess's boudoir, which
was two hundred feet above the main entrance of the palace, and yet she
could go out of doors to walk without descending a single step. Such
boldness of conception and such charm in the construction of a dwelling
made him giddy both physically and mentally. But he never saw the queen
of that enchanted abode. At the times when he went up to her apartments
she was taking a siesta or receiving visits from her intimate friends in
the salons on the second floor.
This Sicilian custom of living on the upper floors, to enjoy the fresher
air and more perfect quiet, is found in several Italian cities. These
private apartments, generally small and quiet, are sometimes called the
_Casino_, and, with their private gardens, form, as it were, a distinct
dwelling above the main palace. This of which we are speaking was set
back from the front and side walls of the lower building by the width of
a very broad terrace, so that it was concealed, and, as it were,
isolated. At the back it formed a building of a single story, on the
level of the flower-garden, since the lower edifice was built against
the cliff. Viewing it from that side, one would have said that a stream
of lava had flowed against the palace and hardened there, and had
blotted out one whole side of it up to the level of the Casino. But the
villa had been constructed in that way to avoid danger from fresh
eruptions. Looking at it from the direction of Ætna, one would have
taken it for a small summer-house perched on top of a rock. Not until
you had made the circuit of that mass of volcanic débris did you
discover a magnificent palace, consisting of three great structures, one
upon another, and climbing the hill backward, so to speak.
Under any other circumstances Michel would have been curious to know if
this lady, who was said to be lovely and gracious, was, poetically
speaking, worthy to inhabit so noble an abode; but his imagination,
engrossed by the hurried work which had been entrusted to him, paid
little heed to other things.
He felt so fatigued when he laid aside his rough brush for an instant,
that he was compelled to fight against drowsiness in order not to
prolong his siesta beyond half an hour. Indeed, he was so afraid that
the zeal of his companions might abate, that he took that brief interval
of rest by stealth in the gallery of paintings, where his father would
lock him in, and where it seemed that no one ever set foot. Two or three
times he lacked courage to go and pass the night in the suburb of
Catania, although his house was among the first on the road from the
villa, and he consented to allow his father to procure a bed for him in
the palace. When he did return to the wretched hovel where Mila bloomed
like a rose under glass, he neither saw nor comprehended anything that
took place about him. He confined himself to kissing his sister and
telling her that he was glad to see her, but he had no time to
scrutinize her or to talk with her.
The day before the fête was a Sunday. It only remained to give a last
glance and a finishing touch to the work. He determined to dress with
some care and to stroll about the city after escorting Mila to the
evening service. He soon learned the location of the principal churches,
squares, and buildings. Lastly, his father introduced him to several of
his friends and relations, who welcomed him cordially, and with whom he
strove to be amiable. But the contrast between that environment and the
society he had frequented at Rome made him sad in spite of himself, and
he retired early, longing for the morrow; for, in presence of his work,
and under the spell of the noble edifice in which he labored, he forgot
that he was of the common people, and remembered only that he was an
artist.
At last that day of hope and dread arrived, the day on which Michel's
work was to be applauded or ridiculed by the élite of Sicilian society.
VI
THE STAIRCASE
"What! no farther advanced than this?" cried the majordomo, in despair,
rushing in among the workmen. "Great God! what are you thinking of? The
clock will strike seven in a moment; at eight the carriages will begin
to arrive, and half of this room is not yet draped!"
As this apostrophe was addressed to no person in particular, no one
replied, and the workmen continued to work with more or less speed, each
according to the measure of his strength and his skill.
"Room, room for the flowers!" cried the controller of that notable
branch of the establishment. "Put a hundred boxes of camellias in rows
along the benches!"
"How do you expect to arrange your boxes of flowers before the carpets
are down?" queried Master Barbagallo, with a profound sigh.
"And where do you expect me to put my boxes and flower-pots?" retorted
the head gardener. "Why haven't your upholsterers finished their work?"
"Ah! there you are! why haven't they?" said the other, in a tone of
intense indignation.
"Room! room for my ladders!" cried another voice; "the orders are that
everything must be lighted at eight o'clock sharp, and that doesn't give
me any too much time to light so many chandeliers. Room, room, I say!"
"Painters, take away your ladders," cried the upholsterers, in their
turn; "we can do nothing as long as you are in the way."
"Such confusion, such an uproar, it's a second Tower of Babel," muttered
the majordomo, wiping his brow. "I did all that I could to see that
everything was done at the proper time; I warned everyone more than a
hundred times; and here you are, all in a muddle, disputing the ground
with one another, in one another's way, and making no progress at all.
It is hopeless! it is disgusting!"
"Whose fault is it?" said the man with the flowers. "Can I put my
wreaths on bare walls and my flowerpots on rough boards?"
"And can I climb up to the ceiling," said the man with the candles, "if
my ladders are taken away to lay carpets? Do you take my men for bats,
do you want me to make thirty honest fellows break their necks?"
"How do you expect my men to lay their carpets," said the chief
upholsterer, in his turn, "if the painters don't take away their
ladders?"
"And how do you expect our ladders to be taken away if we are still on
them?" shouted one of the painters.
"The fault is all yours, you daubers!" cried the frantic majordomo; "or,
rather, your master is the only culprit," he added, noticing that the
young man whom he addressed glared fiercely at him at the epithet of
dauber. "It's that old madman of a Pier-Angelo, who is not even here to
direct you, I'll wager. Where can he be? At the nearest wineshop, I'll
stake my head!"
A voice, still full and resonant, broke forth at the highest point of
the ceiling with the refrain of an old ballad, and, on looking up, the
wrathful majordomo saw the glistening bald head of the
decorator-in-chief. Evidently the old man was laughing at the majordomo,
and, being master of the field, proposed to put the finishing touches to
his work at his leisure.
"Pier-Angelo, my friend," said the other, "you are making sport of us!
That is too bad of you. You act like an old spoiled child, as you are;
but we shall lose patience at last. This is no time to laugh and sing
your drinking-songs."
Pier-Angelo did not deign to reply; he simply shrugged his shoulders as
he talked with his son, who was even higher up than he, shading the
dress of a dancing-girl of Herculaneum, who swam in a blue canvas sky.
"There are enough figures, enough folds and shading!" cried the
majordomo, beside himself. "Who in the devil will ever look up there, to
see if there's anything wrong with your divinities in the firmament? The
general effect is there, and that's all that is necessary. Come, come
down, you old fox, or I'll shake the ladder you are standing on."
"If you touch my father's ladder," exclaimed young Michel, in a voice of
thunder, "I will crush you with this chandelier. No jests of that sort,
Signor Barbagallo, or you will be sorry for them."
"Let him talk, and go on with your work," said old Pier-Angelo, calmly.
"Disputing takes time; don't waste your breath in empty words."
"Go down, father, go down," said the young man. "I am afraid that in
this confusion they may give you a fall; I shall finish in a moment. Go
down, I entreat you, if you expect me to retain my presence of mind."
Pier-Angelo descended the ladder slowly; not that he had lost, at sixty
years of age, the strength and agility of youth, but in order to make
the time that his son required to complete his work seem less long.
"What folly, what trifling!" said the majordomo to the old man. "You
work over these temporary canvases as if they were to be exhibited in a
museum, whereas they will be rolled up and stored in a garret to-morrow,
and will have to be covered with different figures for the next fête!
Who will thank you for it? Who will pay the slightest attention to
them?"
"Not you; everybody knows that," retorted the young painter,
contemptuously, from the top of his ladder.
"Hush, Michel, and attend to your work," said his father. "Everyone
takes pride in doing the best he can," he added, looking at the steward.
"There are some who take pride in claiming the credit of all our labors!
Come! the upholsterers may begin. Give me a hammer and some nails, you
fellows! As I have delayed you, it's no more than fair that I should
help you."
"Always a good comrade!" said one of the upholsterers, handing the old
painter some tools. "Come, Master Pier-Angelo, let art and trade lend
each other a hand! One must be mad to get into trouble with you."
"Oh! yes," grumbled Barbagallo, who, contrary to his customary reserved
and courteous habit, was in a savage humor that evening; "that's the way
everybody pays court to the obstinate old fool, and he doesn't care a
fig how much trouble he makes for others."
"Instead of grumbling, you ought to help at the nailing, or by lighting
the candles," said Pier-Angelo, with a mocking air. "But, psha I you are
afraid you might spoil your satin breeches and tear your ruffles."
"Master Pier-Angelo, you are altogether too familiar, and I swear that I
will never employ you after to-day."
"God grant it!" retorted the other with his accustomed phlegm,
accompanying himself with sturdy, measured blows of the hammer upon the
nails which he drove in quick succession; "but, on the very next
occasion, you will come and implore me, and say that nothing can be done
without me; and I, as usual, shall forgive your impertinence."
"Well!" said the majordomo to Michel, as he came slowly down his ladder,
"is it done at last? That is very fortunate! Quick! quick! help the
upholsterers, or the gardeners, or the lamplighters. Do something to
make up for lost time."
Michel eyed the majordomo with a haughty air. He had so entirely
forgotten even the idea of becoming a mere workman, that he could not
imagine how that subordinate could venture to order him to take part in
tasks unconnected with his special duties; but, just as he was about to
make a sharp retort, he heard his father's voice calling him.
"Come, Michel, bring us some nails here, and help these good fellows,
who won't finish in time without us."
"Nothing can be fairer," the young man replied. "I may not be very
skilful at that work, but I have good strong arms for stretching. Come,
what must I do? Tell me, you fellows!"