odor of musk exhaled by the pink-tipped petals of that pretty little
flower, he saw palpable images take shape and gather about him. Women,
lights, flowers, gushing waters, diamonds with a bluish gleam; and with
the things which seemed real, fanciful things were mingled as in a
dream. Lovely dancing-girls of antique times, whom Michel had painted on
the ceiling, stood forth gracefully from the canvas, and, raising their
azure and purple tunics above their knees, glided through the crowd, and
cast upon him as they passed lewd glances and mysterious smiles. Drunk
with desire, he followed them, and lost them, and found them again,
seizing one by her floating girdle, another by her transparent _peplum_,
but exhausting himself in vain efforts, in vain entreaties, to detain
them and give them substance.
Then a white female passed slowly and took sole possession of his
vagrant passion. She stopped in front of him and gazed at him, at first
with stony eyes, which gradually became animated and ended by flashing
flames, whereby he felt that he was being consumed. Lying motionless at
her feet, he saw her stoop over him. He fancied that he felt her breath
upon his brow; but instantly the giddy band of Latin harlots entangled
him in a network of multi-colored tunics and whirled him upward toward
the ceiling. Then he found himself alone on his ladder, smeared with
paint, covered with dirt, exhausted, gasping for breath, in a ghastly
solitude, dimly lighted by a vague gleam of daylight. Silence hovered
over the cold, deserted rooms; naught remained of his vision save a
little broken flower, whose fragrance he had exhausted by inhaling it.
This hallucination became so painful that Michel, in terror, pushed the
cyclamen away once more, thinking that there must be something soporific
or poisonous in its exhalations. But he could not make up his mind to
destroy it. He placed it in a glass of water and opened his window
again.
"Why suffer thus without reason and without any object?" he said to
himself; "is it a woman's glance, or the distant view of a great fête,
that makes my disordered imagination run riot thus? Very well! if the
mad creature is untamable, let her have her way; doubtless the spectacle
of what really is will either extinguish her frenzy or furnish it with
fresh food. I shall either become calm, or suffer in some new way; what
does it matter!"
"What is the trouble, that you are talking to yourself so, Michel?" said
a soft voice, while at the same time the door of his little chamber
opened behind him. And Michel, turning his head, saw his little sister
Mila, who approached him on tiptoe, with bare feet and her body wrapped
in a _piddemia_--a brown cloak worn by the women of the people.
No one in the world was so pretty, so sweet, and so lovable as Mila.
Michel had always loved her dearly. And yet her appearance at that
moment caused him some vexation.
"What are you doing here, little one?" he said; "why aren't you asleep?"
"Asleep already!" she said, "when I hear carriages rumbling through the
streets and see the princess's palace shining yonder like a star? Oh! I
cannot sleep! Our father made me promise to go to bed as usual, and not
to go running about the palace with the other girls, to try to look at
the fête through the open doors. So I went to bed, and although those
violins, which you can hear from here, made my heart beat time, I was
determined to go to sleep, when my friend Nenna came and asked me to go
with her."
"And you mean to go, Mila? to disobey your father? to loiter about that
house, which is all surrounded by servants, beggars and vagabonds, with
a hare-brained creature like Nenna? You shall not do it, I forbid you!"
"Oh! you needn't put on those high and mighty paternal airs, my dear
brother," retorted Mila, in an offended tone. "Do you suppose I am mad
enough to listen to Nenna? I sent her away; she is a long way from here,
and I was going to sleep again when I heard you walking about and
talking. I thought father was with you; but I saw through the crack of
the door that you were alone, and then ----"
"Then you came in here to chatter, in order to avoid going to sleep,
eh?"
"It is true that I have no desire to go to bed so early, and father
didn't forbid me to listen and look on from a distance at what is going
on up there! Oh! how beautiful it must be! You can see much better from
your window than from mine, Michel; do let me feast my eyes on that
beautiful bright light!"
"No, little one. The wind is cool to-night, and you have almost no
clothes on. I am going to shut the window and go to bed. Go and do the
same; good-night."
"You are going to bed; and have just dressed yourself! what did you do
it for, pray? Michel, you are deceiving me, you are going to see the
ball, you are going in! I will bet that you are invited, and that you
won't tell me so!"
"Invited! they don't invite people like us to such grand affairs, my
poor dear! When we enter that palace, we go as workmen, not as friends."
"What difference does that make, so long as you're there? Then you are
going? Oh! how I would like to be in your place!"
"Why, what is the meaning of this frantic desire to see this fête?"
"To see what is beautiful, Michel, isn't that all? When you draw a
beautiful figure, I take more pleasure in looking at it, perhaps, than
you do who drew it."
"But if you were there, it would be on condition that you were hidden in
some hole, for if they saw you, they would turn you out; you could not
even show yourself, much less dance!"
"Very true; but I should see the others dance, and that would be much."
"You are a child. Good-night."
"I see that you aren't willing to take me!"
"No, surely not; I can't. They would turn you out, and I should have to
break the head of some insolent lackey for insulting you when you were
on my arm."
"What! isn't there some little corner no bigger than your hand, where I
could hide? I am so small! Look, Michel, I could get into your cupboard.
Anyway, you could take me to the door without taking me in, and father
would not be angry to know that I was there with you."
Michel preached a beautiful sermon to Mila on the subject of childish
curiosity, and the violent instinctive longing which she felt to
intoxicate herself with the spectacle of patrician grandeur. He forgot
that he was consumed by the same longing, and that he was anxious to be
alone so that he might give way to it.
Mila listened to reason when Michel told her that he was going to assist
his father to overlook the decorations of the ball; but she heaved a
deep sigh, none the less.
"Well," she said, tearing herself away from the window, "it's no use to
think any more about it. However, it's my own fault; for if I had had
any idea that I should be so wild to go, I could very easily have asked
the princess to invite me."
"Now you are going mad again, just as I thought you were becoming
reasonable, Mila! As if the princess could have invited you, even if she
had taken it into her head to do it!"
"Why, of course she could; isn't she the mistress of her own house?"
"Even so! what would all those ancient dowagers, all those august
blockheads say, if they should see little Mila, with her velvet jacket
and striped skirt, dancing about among their noble dolls of daughters?"
"Let me tell you, that I might perhaps cut a better figure than all of
them, young and old!"
"That is no reason."
"I know that; but the princess is a queen in her house, and I will bet
that she will invite me to the first ball she chooses to give."
"You will ask her to, I suppose?"
"To be sure! I know her, and she is very fond of me; she is a friend of
mine."
As she said this, Mila drew herself up and assumed an air of importance,
so comical and so fascinating that Michel laughed and kissed her.
"I like to see, Mila," he said, "that you have no suspicion of anything.
And why should I deceive you? You will lose soon enough the trustful
illusions of your age of gold! But, since you know this beautiful
princess so well, pray tell me something about her, my dear little
sister; tell me how it happens that you are so intimately acquainted
with her, without my knowing anything about it?"
"Aha! Michel, you are curious to know that, now! But since you have
shown so little eagerness to question me, you will kindly wait a little
longer, until it pleases me to answer you."
"So it's a secret, is it?"
"Perhaps! what do you care?"
"I care very little, in truth, to know anything whatsoever concerning
this princess. She has a fine palace, I work there, she pays me, and I
care little about anything else for the moment. But nothing that
interests my little Mila can be indifferent to me, nor should it be
hidden from me, in my opinion."
"Now you are flattering me to make me speak. Well, I will not speak,
there! But I will show you something that will make you open your eyes.
See, what do you say to this pretty thing?"
And Mila took from her bosom a locket surrounded by large diamonds.
"They are fine stones," she said, "and worth I don't know how much
money. Enough to provide me with a marriage portion if I chose to sell
them; but I will never part with them, because they came from my best
friend."
"And that friend is the Princess of Palmarosa?"
"Yes, Agatha Palmarosa; don't you see her cipher engraved on the gold of
the locket?"
"Yes, that is true! But what is there inside this priceless trinket?"
"Hair, lovely light chestnut hair, with a touch of gold, naturally
curly, and so fine!" said the girl, opening the locket. "Isn't it soft
and glossy?"
"That isn't the princess's, for hers is black."
"So you have seen her, after all?"
"Yes, I just caught a glimpse of her. But tell me, Mila, whose hair you
wear against your heart, and in such a valuable locket?"
"How inquisitive you are! you are blind and dull, too, like all
inquisitive people. Don't you recognize it? Don't you remember where I
got it?"
"No, indeed, I do not."
"Well, put it against yours and you will recognize it, although your
head has grown a little darker in a year."
"Dear little sister! yes, I do remember now that you cut it from my head
the day you left Rome--and you have kept it all this time!"
"I used to carry it in a little black bag. My friend Agatha asked of
what saint I carried a relic in my scapulary, and when I told her that
it was my darling and only brother's hair, she took it and said she
would send it back to me the next day; and the next day she sent me by
father this lovely locket filled with your hair. However, some of it was
missing. The jeweller who put it inside either stole it or lost it."
"Lost it, that may be," said Michel, with a smile; "but as for stealing
it! This hair has no value to anyone but you, Mila!"
X
PROBLEM
"But, after all, what is the source of this friendship of the princess
for you," continued Michel, after a pause; "what have you ever done for
her that she should make you such presents?"
"Nothing at all. Father, who is on excellent terms with her, took me to
the palace one day to present me to her. She took a fancy to me; she
paid me all sorts of attentions; she asked me for my friendship, and I
promised it and gave it to her at once. I passed the day all alone with
her, walking about her villa and the gardens. Since then I go there when
I choose, and I am always sure of being well received."
"And you go often?"
"I have never been but twice, for it isn't long since I first knew her.
I know that the palace has been turned upside down this last week by the
preparations for the ball, and I was afraid of being in poor Agatha's
way when, of course, she had a thousand things to do. But I shall go in
two or three days."
"So that is the whole of the mystery, is it? Why did you need so much
urging to tell it?"
"Oh! because the princess said to me when I came away: 'Mila, please
don't tell anyone about the delightful day we have passed together and
the friendship we have formed. I have my reasons for asking you to keep
it secret. You shall know them later, and I know that I can rely on your
promise if you will give it to me.'--As you can imagine, Michel, I did
not refuse it."
"Very good; but you are breaking your word now."
"No, I am not. You are not _anybody_ to me, and, of course, the princess
didn't suppose I would have any secrets from my father or my brother."
"Does my father know all this, then?"
"Certainly, I told him about it at once."
"And he was neither surprised nor disturbed by this whim of the
princess?"
"Why surprised, please? It is your surprise that is very strange and a
little impertinent, Michel. Am I not capable of inspiring friendship,
even in a princess? And why disturbed? Is not friendship a good and
pleasant thing?"
"Still, my child, I am, if not disturbed, at all events astonished at
this friendship. Tell me this, which may explain it in some measure. Has
our father rendered Princess Agatha some great service?"
"He has done much beautiful decorating in the palace. He has made some
superb foliage in the dining-room among other things."
"I have seen all that; but he is well paid. The princess has taken a
liking to him because of his zeal and disinterestedness, I suppose?"
"Yes, that must be it. Isn't it true that anybody who knows father for a
little time loves him?"
"That is so. Then it is because of our excellent father that you arouse
so much interest in this great lady!"
"Oh! Michel, she isn't a great lady, I tell you! she's a good woman, a
kind, lovely woman."
"And what could she find to say to you, my child, for a whole day?"
"She asked me a thousand questions, about myself and father and you,
about our life in Rome, your occupations, our home life and our tastes.
I really believe that she made me tell our whole history day by day,
ever since I was born; I talked so much that I was tired out that
evening."
"It seems that this lady is terribly inquisitive; for what does it all
matter to her?"
"Now you mention it, I believe that she is a little inquisitive; but it
is a pleasure to answer her questions; she listens to you with so much
interest, and she is so pleasant! Come, don't speak ill of her, or I
shall be angry with you!"
"Very well, let us say no more about her; God forbid that I should teach
you distrust and dread, my lovely angel heart! Go to bed, now; father is
waiting for me. To-morrow we will talk again of your adventure, for
surely this great friendship with a beautiful princess is a marvellous
adventure in a life like yours--although she no more thinks of you now
than of the last pair of slippers she wore. No matter! don't put on that
injured air. It may be that, some day when she is lonely and idle, the
Princess of Palmarosa will send for you, to be entertained again by your
prattle."
"You don't know what you are saying, Michel. The princess is not idle,
and if you insist upon taking it this way, I will tell you that,
kind-hearted as she is, she has the reputation of being decidedly cold
with people of our station. Some say that she is proud, others that she
is timid. The fact is that she always speaks pleasantly and courteously
to the workmen and servants who come in contact with her, but that she
speaks to them so little, so little!--that she is noted for it, and that
some people who have worked for her for years have never known the sound
of her voice and have hardly seen her in her own house. So that her
friendship for father and me is no commonplace thing; it is genuine
friendship, and your mockery will never prevent me from relying upon it.
Good-night, Michel; I am not very well pleased with you to-night; I
never saw you with this sarcastic air before. You talk as if you meant
to say that I am only a little girl and no one can love me!"
"That is not my thought, so far as I myself am concerned, at all events!
for, little slip of a girl as you are, I adore you!"
"What did you say, brother? You adore me? that is a lovely word. Kiss
me."
The child threw herself into his arms. Michel embraced her lovingly, and
as she laid her lovely brown head on his shoulder, he kissed the long
hair that fell over the girl's half uncovered back.
But suddenly he pushed her away with a painful shudder. All the burning
thoughts that had excited his brain an hour earlier recurred to his mind
with the vividness of remorse, and it seemed to him that his lips were
no longer pure enough to bless his little sister.
He was no sooner alone than he rushed through the door of the old house
in which he lived, without pausing to close that of his room. To tell
the truth, he paid no heed to the distance he travelled, and, still
haunted by his dreams, he fancied that he stepped directly from the
landing of his attic to the marble peristyle of the villa. And yet it
was nearly a mile from the last houses of the suburb of Catania to the
gateway of the palace.
The first face upon which his eyes fell as he was about to enter the
ball-room was that of the stranger to whom his attention had been
attracted as he went away. The young man was walking slowly from the
room, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief trimmed with lace. Michel,
puzzled by his conduct, and wondering if it were not a woman in
disguise, resolutely accosted him.
"Well, my friend," he said, "did you succeed in seeing Princess Agatha?"
The stranger, who seemed absorbed by his thoughts, raised his head
abruptly, and darted at Michel a glance instinct with such inexplicable
distrust, and even malevolence, that the young painter felt a sort of
cold shiver run down his back. It was not the glance of a woman, but of
a forceful and hot-tempered man. The feeling of hostility is unfamiliar
to youthful hearts, and Michel's contracted as with a sudden pang. It
seemed to him that the stranger instinctively felt for a knife in his
gold embroidered satin waistcoat, and he followed his movements with
surprise.
"How does it happen?" said the other, in the same soft voice, in marked
contrast to his angry, threatening manner, "that you were a mechanic a
short time ago, and that now you are a gentleman?"
"The fact is that I am neither one nor the other," replied Michel, with
a smile; "I am an artist employed in the palace. Do you feel more at
ease? my question seems to have disturbed you greatly. However, one
question deserves another. Did you not ask me one without knowing me?"
"Do you mean to jest, signor?" retorted the stranger, who spoke in
excellent Italian, without any accent to justify the Greek or Egyptian
antecedents suggested by Barbagallo.
"Not in the least," replied Michel, "and, as for my accosting you, pray
pardon an impulsive exhibition of curiosity entirely free from
malevolent intention."
"Curiosity! why curiosity?" rejoined the unknown, clenching his teeth
and crowding his words together in peculiarly Sicilian fashion.
"Faith! I have no idea," replied Michel. "We have had enough discussion
over a thoughtless word; I had no purpose of offending you. If your
displeasure continues, do not look about for pretexts to begin a
quarrel, for I have no intention of avoiding it."
"Are not you the one who seeks to quarrel with me?" rejoined the
stranger, with a glance more threatening than the first.
"On my word, signor, you are mad," said Michel, with a shrug.
"You are right," retorted the unknown, "for I stand here listening to
the idle talk of a fool."
The words had no sooner passed his lips than Michel rushed at him with a
sudden determination to strike him. But, fearing lest he might strike a
woman, for the stranger's sex still seemed to him very doubtful, he
paused; and he congratulated himself when he saw that problematical
personage turn upon his heel and vanish so quickly that Michel could not
determine in what direction he had gone, and concluded that he had been
dreaming again.
"Surely I am beset by phantoms to-night," he said to himself. But as
soon as he found himself in presence of real mortals, he recovered the
notion of reality. He was asked for his card of admission. He gave his
name.
"Ah! Michel," said the door-keeper, "I did not know you. How fine you
are! You look like an invited guest. Go in, my boy, and pay close
attention to the lights. The pretty stuff that you have hung over our
heads would take fire so quickly! It seems that you are coming in for a
deal of praise. Everybody says that the figures are done by a master
hand."
Michel was offended at being addressed thus familiarly by a servant,
offended at being assigned to the duties of fireman, and secretly
delighted nevertheless at having obtained a triumph which was already
the talk of the antechamber.
He glided into the crowd, hoping to pass through unnoticed and to reach
some secluded corner where he could see and hear at his ease; but there
were so many people in the great ball-room that they brushed against one
another and trod on one another's feet. He was carried to the other end
of the vast structure before he realized the impetus that the compact
mass had imparted to him; and thus he arrived at the foot of the great
staircase. Not until then was he able to stop, gasping for breath, and
open his eyes, nostrils, ears, and mind, to the enchanting spectacle of
the fête.
Being somewhat above the flower-bedecked benches, he could see at a
glance both the dances in progress about the fountains, and the
spectators who jostled and squeezed one another to watch the dances. The
noise and glare and commotion were well adapted to dazzle and bewilder
a more mature brain than Michel's. What an array of lovely women,
marvellous jewels, white shoulders and resplendent head-dresses! What
majestic or alluring charms! What merriment, feigned or genuine! What
airs of languor, counterfeited or ill dissembled!
Michel was intoxicated for an instant; but when his eyes began to see
more clearly and to separate the countless details of the scene,--when
he asked himself which of all those women would be, in his mind, an
ideal model,--he looked up at the ideal figures he had painted in the
ceiling, and was better satisfied, vain-glorious youth, with his own
work than with God's.
He had dreamed of perfect beauty. He believed that he had found it in
the creations of his brush. He was probably mistaken; for it is
impossible to create a divine image without giving it human features,
and nothing on earth is blessed with absolute perfection. However that
may have been, Michel, still faltering and awkward in his art in several
respects, had approached as nearly as possible to perfect beauty in his
types. That was what impressed all those who examined his work; above
all, that was what impressed him when he sought among real persons the
personification of his ideas. Among the whole number he saw only two or
three women who seemed truly beautiful, and even those two or three he
would have liked to hold against his canvas, in order to take away from
one or give to another a certain outline or a certain coloring, wherein
they seemed to him to lack fullness or purity.
He was perfectly cool,--cool as an artist analyzing a figure,--and he
realized that the human countenance made up for its shortcomings in the
way of perfection of feature solely by the expression of life.
"I have drawn more beautiful faces," he said to himself, "but they are
not true. They do not think, they do not breathe, they do not love. It
would be better that they should be less beautiful and more animate.
When I roll up these canvases to-morrow, I will destroy them all, and
then I will change them, and, it may be, overturn all the ideas which
have guided me hitherto."
And he abandoned the quest for ideal perfection of form among the living
dancers whom he was studying, to watch their movements, their grace, the
attitudes of the body, the expression of the glance and smile; in a
word, the secret of life.
Enchanted at first, he felt that he grew cold once more as he analyzed
each being by itself. In all probability there are many ingenuous souls
among women and among men; but there are very few ingenuous faces to be
found at a ball in fashionable society. People there assume expressions
which are almost always at variance with their characters, whether they
are seeking to attract or to shun attention. Michel fancied that he
could see that some were hypocritically concealing their vanity, while
others arrogantly flaunted it; that this girl, who desired to seem
amorous, was cold and blasé; that the gayety of that other was dismal,
and the melancholy of a third a pretence. A parvenu strove to assume the
air of a man of noble birth; a noble strove to adopt the bearing of a
man of the people. Everybody posed more or less. The most humble tried
to seem self-possessed, and even touching timidity struggled to avoid
the awkwardness which triumphed over its efforts.