unexpectedly. "Come, open your fingers, or I will prick them with my
needle."
"I will do it," he said, "but this locket isn't yours. You have already
taken the one that belongs to you."
"Really!" said Mila, snatching the trinket from her brother's hand, for
he made little resistance, but watched her closely; "this is not mine?
Do you think I can be mistaken?"
"In that case you have the other, Mila."
"What other? Have you one also? I don't know anything about that; but
this is mine. Here is the princess's crest. It is my property; it is my
souvenir. Take back your hair. If we are at odds, I am willing you
should; but this locket shall never leave me again."
And she replaced it in her bosom, by no means resolved to take out the
hair, for which she cared more than she chose to admit in her childish
wrath.
Michel returned to his room. The other locket must be there. There was
so much candor and confidence in Mila's expression and her words! But he
found nothing, and so he determined to search his sister's room as soon
as she had gone out. Meanwhile, he tried to make peace with her. He
coaxed and cajoled her, and, vowing that all that had happened was only
a jest on his part, reproached her with being proud and sensitive.
Mila consented to make peace and to kiss her brother; but she continued
to be somewhat downcast, and her lovely cheeks were tinged with a less
delicate flush than usual.
"You chose a bad time to tease me," she said. "There are days when one
does not feel in the mood to endure raillery, and I thought that you
were teasing me on purpose to make sport of my disappointment."
"Your disappointment, Mila!" cried Michel, pressing her to his heart
with a smile. "Have you been disappointed? Because you didn't see the
ball last night, I suppose? Oh! you are a very unfortunate little girl,
and no mistake!"
"In the first place, Michel, I am not a little girl. I shall soon be
fifteen, and I am old enough to have disappointments. As for the ball, I
cared very little about it; and now that it's over, I don't think about
it at all."
"What is this great sorrow, then? Do you want a new dress?"
"No."
"Your nightingale isn't dead?"
"Don't you hear him singing?"
"Perhaps our neighbor Magnani's big tom-cat has eaten up your
turtle-dove?"
"I would like to see him try it! I tell you that I don't bother my head
about Signor Magnani or his cat."
The tone in which she uttered Magnani's name made Michel prick up his
ears, and, upon glancing at his little sister's face, he saw that she
had her eyes fixed, not upon her work--although her head was bent--but
upon a wooden gallery where Magnani usually worked, opposite Mila's
chamber. At that moment Magnani was walking along his gallery. He did
not look at Mila's window, and Mila did not look at her work.
"Mila, my darling child," said Michel, taking both her hands and kissing
them, "do you see that young man with the absent-minded air?"
"Well," Mila replied, as the blood came and went in her cheeks, "what
about him?"
"I want to tell you, my child, that if your heart is ever inclined to
love, you must not think of that young man."
"What nonsense!" said the girl, shaking her head and trying hard to
laugh. "He is the last man of whom I should ever think, I tell you
that!"
"Then you will be exceedingly wise," rejoined Michel, "for Magnani's
heart is not free; he has long been in love with another woman."
"That doesn't concern me, and is of no possible interest to me," said
Mila; and, bending over her work, she turned her wheel swiftly. But
Michel was pained to see two great tears fall upon her skein of silk.
Michel's heart was very tender. He understood the feeling of shame by
which his young sister was overwhelmed, and which added a fresh pang to
those from which he himself was suffering. He saw the superhuman efforts
that the poor child made to stifle her sobs and overcome her confusion.
He felt that that was not the moment to humiliate her more by insisting
upon an explanation.
So he pretended to see nothing; and, thinking that he would reason with
her when she was more self-possessed, he left the room where she was
working.
But he was so excited himself that he could not stay in his own room. He
made one last, fruitless search, and, abandoning the hope of finding the
vanished talisman,--hoping that it would appear when he was not thinking
about it, as often happens in the case of lost articles,--he determined
to go and see Magnani and make peace with him; for they had parted in
anger, and Michel, unable to avoid a secret feeling of pride in the
thought that the princess was madly in love with him, felt that his
generous solicitude for his unfortunate rival redoubled.
He crossed the yard and entered Magnani's father's workroom on the
ground floor. But he looked in vain for Antonio in his room. His old
mother told him that he had gone out a moment before; but could not tell
him in what direction he had gone. Michel thereupon strolled into the
country, half thinking of overtaking him, half absorbed by his own
musings.
Meanwhile Magnani, impelled by the same feelings of loyalty and regard,
had determined to go and see Michel. His modest dwelling had a second
exit, and the one that he took led less directly, through a dark and
narrow passage at the rear of the other two houses, to the poor,
old-fashioned house which Pier-Angelo occupied with his children.
Thus the two young men did not meet. Magnani went upstairs and looked
into a large, bare, dilapidated room, where he saw Pier-Angelo stretched
out on his cot-bed, in a deep sleep which the emotions of love and youth
no longer disturbed.
Thereupon Magnani climbed the staircase, or rather the ladder leading to
the attics, and entered Michel's chamber, which adjoined Mila's.
Michel's door was open; Magnani went in, and, finding no one there, was
about to go out again, when the cyclamen, which Michel had carefully
placed in an old Venetian glass of curious workmanship, caught his eye.
Unquestionably Magnani was the soul of probity, the incarnation of
scrupulous honor; and yet it is not certain that, if he had dreamed that
that flower had fallen from the princess's bouquet, he would not have
stolen it. But it did not occur to him; he concluded simply that Michel,
like himself, had a passion for the cyclamen.
Suddenly Magnani was roused from his contemplation by a sound which
startled him. Somebody was weeping in the adjoining room. He heard sobs,
stifled but heart-rending, behind the partition, not far from the door
between the two rooms. Magnani was well aware that Mila lived on that
floor. He had often nodded to her smilingly from his gallery, when he
saw her, blooming with youth and beauty, at her window. But, as she had
made no impression on his heart, and as he had never spoken to her
except as to a child, he did not consider at that moment the exact
location of her attic, nor indeed did he think of her at all. To be sure
there was nothing masculine in her manner of weeping, but in Michel's
voice there were some tones so youthful and so soft that it might well
be he who was mourning so. Magnani thought only of his young comrade,
and, full of solicitude for him, hastily opened the door and entered
Mila's room.
At sight of him the girl uttered a loud shriek and fled to the farthest
corner of her room, hiding her face.
"Mila, my dear little neighbor," cried honest Magnani, standing
respectfully near the door, "forgive me, do not be afraid of me; I made
a mistake, I heard someone weeping as if his heart would break, and I
thought it was your brother. I didn't stop to think, but rushed in here,
in my anxiety--but, great heaven, my dear child, why are you weeping
so?"
"I am not weeping," replied Mila, stealthily wiping her eyes, and
pretending to look for something in an old chest of drawers against the
wall; "you are entirely mistaken. I thank you, Signor Magnani; but leave
me, you ought not to come into my room like this."
"True, true, I know it, I am going away, Mila; and yet I don't dare to
leave you thus, you are too much overcome, I can see. I am afraid you
are sick. Let me go and wake your father, so that he can come and
comfort you."
"No, no! do not think of it! I don't want you to wake him!"
"But, my dear ----"
"No, I tell you, Magnani; you would make me much worse if you should
cause my father that trouble."
"But what is the matter, Mila? Your father has not been scolding you,
has he? You never deserve to be scolded! And he is so kind, so gentle,
he loves you so dearly!"
"Oh! no, indeed, he never said a word to me except words of love and
kindness. You see that you are dreaming, Magnani; I have no sorrow, I
was not weeping."
"Why, I can see from here that your face is swollen and your eyes red,
my dear girl. What heart-breaking grief can one have at your age,
lovely, and beloved by all, as you are?"
"Don't laugh at me, I beg you," said Mila, proudly. But she turned pale,
and trying to sit down calmly, fell sobbing upon her chair.
Magnani had so little suspicion that he could possibly be anything more
than a friend in her eyes, and his feeling for her was so placid that he
no longer thought of leaving her. He approached her without any other
emotion than affectionate interest, sat down at her feet on a cushion of
plaited straw, and, taking her hand in his, questioned her with an
assumption of something like paternal authority.
Poor Mila was so perturbed that she had not the strength to repel him.
It was the first time that he had ever spoken to her so near and with
such evident affection. Oh! how happy she would have been but for the
fatal words that Michel had said to her! But those words were still
ringing in her ears, and Mila was too proud to allow her secret to be
suspected. She made a mighty effort, and answered with a smile that her
trouble was a matter of little importance, and was due simply to a
little quarrel she had had with her brother.
"Michel quarrel with you, my poor angel?" said Magnani, watching her
carefully; "is it possible? Oh! no! you are mistaken. Michel loves you
more than all the world, and he is quite right. If you had quarreled, he
would be here, as I am, at your feet, and much more eloquent than I to
comfort you; for he is your brother, and I am only your friend. But,
however that may be, I am going to find him; I will scold him roundly,
if he is in the wrong. But it will be enough for him to see you cast
down and changed as you are, to make him much unhappier than you."
"Magnani," said Mila, detaining him as he rose, "I forbid you to go and
find Michel. That would be giving too much importance to a piece of
childish folly. Pay no more attention to it, and do not speak of it to
him or to my father. I assure you that I have already forgotten it, and
that my brother and I will be entirely reconciled to-night."
"If it is only a childish quarrel," said Magnani, sitting down beside
her, "why, your susceptibilities are altogether too keen, my dear Mila.
I have sisters too, and when I was not so sensible as I am now, when I
was Michel's age, I used to tease them a little. But they didn't cry;
they paid back my mischief with interest, and I always came out second
best."
"That was because they had spirit, and apparently I haven't enough to
defend myself," replied Mila, sadly.
"You have a great deal of spirit, Mila, I have noticed that; you are not
Pier-Angelo's daughter and Michel's sister for nothing, and you have a
better education than the other young women of your station. But you
have more heart than spirit, since you can defend yourself only with
your tears!"
Magnani's praise comforted and pained the girl at the same time. She was
flattered to find that, while not seeming to pay any heed to her, he had
observed her closely enough to be able to do her justice. But the
tranquil kindliness of his manner told her plainly enough that Michel
had not deceived her.
XX
BEL PASSO AND MAL PASSO
Suddenly Mila formed a firm resolution; for, as Magnani had truly said,
she was superior to most of the young girls of her class in education,
and Pier-Angelo had cultivated in her mind ideas as noble as his own.
She had, in addition, a tincture of youthful enthusiasm, blended with
the habit of courage and self-sacrifice, which her good taste and
ingenuousness led her to conceal beneath apparent heedlessness. It is
the acme of stoicism to be able to sacrifice oneself with a smile on
one's face, and with no outward indication of suffering.
"My dear Magnani," she said, rising with her accustomed serenity of
expression, "I thank you for your friendly interest in me; you have done
me good, and I feel perfectly calm. Let me work now, for I didn't do my
_day's work_ in the night, as you did; I must do my stint and earn my
wages. Go away, so that people may not say that I am lazy, and that I
waste my time chattering with the neighbors."
"Good-bye, Mila," replied the young man. "I pray God to restore your
peace of mind to-day, and to make you happy all the days of your life."
"Thanks, Magnani," said Mila, offering him her hand. "I rely upon your
friendship from this day."
The air of noble resolution with which that girl, so crushed by grief a
moment before, offered him her hand, and the tone in which she
pronounced the word friendship, like an heroic farewell to all her
illusions, were not understood by Magnani; and yet there was in that
gesture and that tone something that moved him deeply, although he could
not guess the cause. Mila was transformed before him in the twinkling of
an eye; she no longer seemed a charming child, she was serious and
beautiful as a woman.
He took that little hand in his hard and powerful one, which did not
hesitate to seal the friendly compact by a fraternal grasp, but which
trembled suddenly at the touch of a hand as soft and dainty as a
princess's; for Mila was very careful of her person, and knew how to be
at once industrious and refined in her occupations.
Magnani fancied that he held Agatha's hand, which, by a strange caprice
of fortune, he had touched once in his life. He felt a sudden wave of
emotion, and drew Pier-Angelo's daughter to his heart as if to give her
a brotherly kiss. He dared not do it; but she offered her forehead
innocently, saying to herself that it would be the first and the last,
and that she would cherish its memory as the symbol of an everlasting
farewell to all her hopes.
Magnani had been living for five years under a self-imposed law of
absolute chastity. It was as if he had taken an oath to imitate Agatha's
exceptionally austere mode of life, and, engrossed by a fixed idea, had
determined to waste away by slow degrees, knowing naught of love or
marriage. He had never kissed a woman, not even his sisters, since he
had carried in his heart that chimera of a hopeless passion. It may be
that he had made a vow to that effect in some moment of painful
agitation. But he forgot that grim vow when he felt young Mila's lovely
dark head resting trustfully against his breast. He gazed at her for an
instant, and those limpid black eyes, in which there was an expression
of grief and courage which he could not understand, cast him into a sort
of delirium of surprise and passion. His lips did not touch Mila's brow;
they turned away trembling from her bright red lips, and rested upon her
soft brown neck, perhaps a second or two longer than was absolutely
necessary to cement a bond of fraternity.
Mila turned pale, her eyes closed, and a sorrowful sigh escaped from her
broken heart. Magnani, shocked beyond measure, placed her upon a chair
and fled, overwhelmed with dismay, astonishment, and, perhaps, remorse.
Mila, being left alone, was very near fainting; she staggered to the
door and bolted it; then she knelt on the floor beside her bed, hid her
face in her hands, and remained there absorbed by her suffering. But she
had ceased to weep, and grief gave place to an excitement instinct with
strenuous and ardent aspirations. Pier-Angelo's optimism, that faith in
destiny which is a sort of superstition in stout hearts, awoke within
her. She rose, rearranged her hair, looked in her mirror, and said
aloud, as she resumed her work:
"I don't know why, nor when, nor how, but he shall love me; I have a
right to desire it, I do desire it, and God will assist me!"
When Michel returned, he found her tranquil and lovely, gazing intently
at a copy of the _Virgin of the Chair_, which he had made for her with
much care, and which she had hung, not in her alcove, but above her
mirror. He congratulated himself that he had allowed her to give way
freely to her first outburst of grief, and that she had recovered her
strength of will in her solitary meditation. He almost reached her side
before she heard him; but she saw his face in the glass as he leaned
over her to kiss her on the neck.
"Kiss me there," she said, offering him her cheek, "but never on my
neck!"
"Why that prohibition for your brother, little madcap?"
"It is a whim of mine," she said. "You are beginning to have a beard and
I don't want you to scratch my skin."
"Ah! you flatter me exceedingly," laughed Michel; "that fear does too
much honor to my budding moustache! I had no idea that it could frighten
anybody as yet! But do you care less for the smoothness of your cheek
than of your pretty neck, little Mila? Is that because you have just
been admiring this beautiful Madonna's neck?"
"Perhaps so!" she said. "It is very beautiful, really, and I would like
to resemble that face in every feature."
"I should judge that you were making the attempt before your mirror.
These are very profane ideas to indulge in before that holy image!"
"No, Michel," replied Mila, gravely. "There is nothing profane in my
conception of her beauty. I have never understood it as I have to-day,
and I fancied that no one had ever been able to create so beautiful a
face as Princess Agatha's. But I see now that Raphael went farther. He
gave his Madonna more strength of character, if not more tranquillity.
That divine face is intensely alive; it has a great deal of will; it is
sure of itself. She is the most virtuous, but, also, the most loving of
women. She seems to say: 'Love me because I love you.'"
"Well, well, Mila, where did you find that?" cried Michel, looking at
his sister in surprise. "I fancied I was dreaming as I listened to you!"
The conversation of the two children was interrupted by the arrival of
their father. He came to suggest to Michel that they should go and
demolish the ball-room. All the workmen who had taken part in building
it had agreed to meet at three o'clock in the afternoon, to rid the
palace of that temporary structure.
"I know," said Pier-Angelo, "that the princess is anxious to preserve
your frescoes on canvas, and I want you to help me roll them up and
carry them safely to one of the galleries of the palace."
Michel followed his father, but they were no sooner outside the city
than the old man stopped.
"My boy," he said, "I am going to the villa alone, for I must talk a
moment with the princess about that infernal abbé, who disguises
himself as a monk to spy upon something or somebody in her house. Do you
walk about two miles to the northwest, following the path that begins
here, and turning neither to right nor left. In an hour you will reach
the Capuchin convent of Bel Passo, where your uncle Fra Angelo told me
that he would wait for you till sunset. He has satisfied himself that
the suspicious monk whom we pointed out to him was no other than Ninfo,
and, without deigning to inform me what he supposes his designs to be,
he told me that he wished to have a serious talk with you. I suspect
that your uncle knows more than we do about the cardinal's condition and
the abbé's plans; but he is a man of sense and foresight. He has
probably made inquiries during the morning, and I shall be very glad to
have his opinion."
Michel followed the path, and, after an hour's walk through the most
beautiful country that the mind can conceive, he reached the gate of his
uncle's convent.
This convent was situated on a hill above a small village in the
cultivated district, gay with flowers and dotted with country houses,
which lies at the foot of Ætna. The building was sheltered by the great
trunks of venerable trees, and the garden, exposed to the African sun,
commanded a magnificent view bounded by the sea.
This romantic spot, strewn with formidable masses of lava, bore two
names which had been given it in turn, and which, in view of the
uncertainty as to which it was more likely to retain, were bestowed upon
it indifferently at the time of which we write. The location being
superb, the soil fertile, and the climate mild and agreeable, it had
been called on general principles _Bel Passo_. Then had come the
terrible eruptions of Ætna and Monte-Rosso, which had overwhelmed and
ruined it; whereupon it had been christened _Mal Passo_. Then, as time
passed on, the village and convent were rebuilt, the lava broken up,
cultivation resumed, and they gradually reverted to the original
complimentary name. But these two contrasting designations were still
confused in the memories and the customs of the people. The old men, who
had seen their country in its primitive splendor, said _Bel Passo_, as
did the children, who had seen it only after it had emerged from chaos,
and had been restored to life, as it were. But the men who had seen the
spectacle of the catastrophe and experienced its disastrous results in
their early years--who had had no other cradle than toil and terror, and
were just beginning to obtain some result from their labors--called it
_Mal Passo_ more frequently than _Bel Passo_.
For a very long time that gorge had changed its name thus, twice or
thrice in a century, according to circumstances; an example of the
heedless courage of the human race, which builds its nest beside the
broken branch, and continues to love and beautify and sing the praises
of the domain which it has with difficulty reconquered from the tempests
of yesterday.
However, this spot afforded equal justification for both of the names
which disputed possession of it. It was an epitome of all the horrors
and all the charms of nature. Where the river of fire had poured its
destructive waves, the ridges of lava, the gray wastes of slag, the
ruins of the former soil, upturned, flooded or baked, recalled the evil
days, when the population was reduced to begging, and wives and mothers
were in mourning; Niobe changed to stone at the sight of her murdered
children. But near at hand old fig-trees, reanimated by the passage of
the flame, had put forth new branches, and strewed with their succulent
fruit the new grass and the worn-out soil, newly steeped in the most
generous juices.
Everything that did not lie directly in the path of the molten
lava--everything that was saved by an inequality of the ground--had
benefited by the destruction that had passed so near. So it is with
mankind, and death everywhere makes room for life. Michel noticed that,
in some places, one of two twin trees had disappeared as if carried away
by a cannon-ball, and displayed its charred stump beside the proud trunk
which seemed to tower triumphantly over its ruins.
He found his uncle occupied in breaking away the rock to enlarge a bed
planted with flourishing vegetables. The garden had been dug out of
solid lava. The paths were covered with mosaics of enamelled porcelain,
and the beds of vegetables and flowers, cut from the very heart of the
rock, and made of earth brought from elsewhere, resembled gigantic boxes
buried to the edges. To make the resemblance more striking, between the
beds and the porcelain paths they had left the black lava, as it were a
border of box or thyme, and at each corner of the beds it had been
fashioned into a ball, the sacramental ornament of our orange-tree
boxes.
It will be seen, therefore, that nothing could be neater or more ugly,
more symmetrical or more depressing, in a word, more monastical than
that garden, an object of pride and affection to the good monks. But the
beauty of the flowers, the splendor of the bunches of grapes which
enveloped heavy pillars of lava, the soft murmur of the fountain, which
sent forth a thousand silvery threads to refresh each plant in its rocky
cell, and above all, the view from that terrace with its southern
exposure, afforded ample compensation for the melancholy effect of such
hard and patient toil.