us all very impatient to know that Abbé Ninfo is on the mountain.
Doctor Recuperati is not the only one of my friends who is in danger,
and I instructed Fra Angelo to tell you our other reasons for desiring
to be rid of his presence forthwith."
The catlike Piccinino had not finished playing with the victim he
coveted. He pretended not to understand or not to remember that Michel
and his father were principally interested in the abbé's abduction.
"I think," he said, "that your highness exaggerates the dangers of
Ninfo's presence about the cardinal. You must be aware that his eminence
has the most profound contempt for that underling; that he can hardly
endure his presence, although he realizes the advantage of having so
zealous and quick-witted an interpreter; in short, that the cardinal,
while he may need his services, will never allow him to meddle with his
affairs. Your highness knows that there is a small legacy for the poor
abbé in the will, and I fancy that you will not stoop to contest the
payment of it."
"No, surely not!" replied the princess, surprised to find that the
bandit was so familiar with the contents of the will; "but it is not the
paltry fear that the abbé may obtain more or less money from the
cardinal that I have in my mind at this moment, I assure you. I have
already told you, captain, and Fra Angelo also must have told you, that
his brother and nephew are in great danger so long as Abbé Ninfo is in
a position to injure them with my uncle, the cardinal, and the
Neapolitan police."
"Ah!" said the crafty Piccinino, putting his hand to his forehead, "I
had forgotten that, and yet it is a matter of importance to you,
princess, I agree. Indeed I have several things to tell you in that
connection which you do not know. But it is a very delicate subject," he
said, feigning hesitation, "and it would be difficult for me to explain
myself in the presence of the two gentlemen who honor me with their
attention."
"You can say anything before the Marquis della Serra and Michelangelo
Lavoratori," said the princess, somewhat alarmed.
"No, signora, I know my duty too well to do so, and my respect for you
is too great to allow me to forget the proprieties to that point. If
your highness is disposed to listen to me without witnesses, I will
inform you of what has been planned and determined upon. If not," he
added, pretending to be preparing to go, "I will go and wait at Nicolosi
until you deign to advise me of the day and hour when it will be
agreeable to you to listen to me."
"At once, signor, at once," rejoined the princess hastily. "I am more
interested and more alarmed because the lives of my friends are
endangered for my sake than by any question of money. Come," she added,
rising, and resolutely placing her arm in the bandit's, "we will talk in
my flower-garden, and these gentlemen will await us here. Stay, stay, my
friends," she said to the marquis and Michel, who would have retired,
although the idea of that tête-à-tête caused them both an indefinable
dread; "I really need a breath of fresh air, and Signor de Castro-Reale
is kind enough to offer me his arm."
Michel and the marquis, as soon as they were alone, looked at each other
as if they had had the same thought, and, hastening each to a window,
stood where they would not lose sight of the princess for an instant,
although they could not overhear a conversation from which she herself
seemed content to exclude them.
XXVII
DIPLOMACY
"How did it happen, dear princess," said the bandit, in a careless tone,
as soon as he and Agatha were in the garden, arm-in-arm, "that you were
imprudent enough to try to make me speak of Michel in presence of a
cicisbeo so valuable to you as the Marquis della Serra? Your highness
forgets one thing: that if I know the secrets of Villa Ficarazzi, I
probably know those of Villa Palmarosa as well, since Abbé Ninfo
maintains an equally assiduous surveillance over both houses."
"So Abbé Ninfo has seen you first, eh, captain?" rejoined the princess,
trying to assume an equally unembarrassed tone; "and he took you into
his confidence in order to obtain your services in his interest?"
Agatha knew very well what to think in that respect. Certainly, if she
had not discovered that the abbé had already sought the Piccinino's
assistance in abducting, or perhaps murdering Michel, she would not have
thought it necessary to resort to him in order to procure the abduction
of the abbé. But she was careful not to allow her real motive to be
discovered. She desired that the bandit's self-love should be flattered
by what he might consider an instinctive impulse on her part.
"From whatever source I derive my information," he replied, with a
smile, "I leave it to you to judge of its accuracy. The last time that
the cardinal came to visit your highness, there was a young man at the
gate of your park whose distinguished features and bearing were in
striking contrast with his costume, which was covered with dust and worn
by a long journey. What caprice induced the cardinal to examine that
young man and to insist upon questioning him? that is something which
Ninfo himself does not know and has commissioned me to find out, if
possible. One thing is certain: that the mania, which has beset the
cardinal for a long time, of inquiring the name and age of all the young
men of the lower classes whose faces attract his attention, has survived
the loss of activity and memory. It is as if he still retained a sort of
vague distrust, a relic of his exalted police functions; and his
imperative glance commands Abbé Ninfo to ask questions and report to
him. It is true that when the abbé showed him the written result of his
investigation, he seemed to take no interest in it; in like manner,
whenever the abbé annoys him with his impertinent requests or
insinuating questions, his eminence, after reading the first words,
closes his eyes angrily, to show that he doesn't wish to be fatigued any
more. Perhaps your highness did not know these details, which Doctor
Recuperati knows nothing of; for, during the few hours' sleep which the
excellent doctor is permitted to enjoy, the watchfulness of the devoted
servants with whom Your Highness has surrounded the cardinal does not
avail to prevent Ninfo from entering his room, waking him without
ceremony, and placing before him certain written sentences from which he
hopes for favorable results. When the cardinal is awakened in this way,
his pain and his anger make his mind momentarily more lucid than usual;
he reads, seems to understand, and tries to utter words of which an
occasional syllable is intelligible to his persecutor; but almost
immediately he collapses again, and the feeble flame of his life is so
much nearer extinction."
"So that villain has ceased to be a mere flatterer and spy, to become my
unfortunate uncle's torturer and assassin?" cried the princess,
indignantly. "You must see, signor captain, that he must be delivered
from him at once, and that I need no other motive for desiring that he
be taken out of our way."
"Pardon me, signora," rejoined the bandit, obstinately. "If I had not
informed you of these things, you would still have personal motives of
even greater weight, which you do not choose to tell me, but which I
have learned from Ninfo. I never enter into an affair without making
myself thoroughly acquainted with it; and it sometimes falls to my lot,
as you see, to question both parties. Permit me to continue my
disclosures, therefore, and I trust that they will lead to disclosures
on your part.
"Abbé Ninfo did not examine very closely or ask many questions of the
individual at your highness's park gate. After a moment, seeing that the
cardinal continued somewhat agitated by the encounter, as if the young
man's face had aroused memories which he could not arrange and
place,--for his eminence often wears himself out, it seems, in such
painful mental toil,--the abbé retraced his steps and examined the
young man more carefully. The young man evidently had some reason for
being on his guard, for he deceived the abbé, who really took him for a
poor devil, and even gave him alms. But two days later, the abbé,
having, for the purpose of spying, disguised himself as a workman
employed in the preparations for your ball, soon discovered that his
poor devil was a brilliant artist, very much petted and favored by your
highness, and by no means in a position to accept alms at the gate of a
palace, since he is the son of a well-to-do artisan, Pier-Angelo
Lavoratori.
"On the night succeeding this discovery, the abbé did not fail to place
before Monsignor Hieronymo a sheet of paper containing this information
in large letters. But by dint of trying to tighten the last remaining
chords of the instrument, the abbé broke them. The cardinal did not
understand. The names of Pier-Angelo and Michelangelo Lavoratori
conveyed no meaning to him. He muttered a violent oath because Ninfo
disturbed his slumber. And so," added the Piccinino, with malicious
significance, "the fears which your highness entertains, or pretends to
entertain, with respect to Pier-Angelo are entirely without foundation.
Although the cardinal long ago prosecuted that excellent man as a
conspirator, he has so completely forgotten him that even Ninfo has no
hope of reviving the memory of an affair of which he himself knows
nothing, and your protégé is in no danger from any denunciation by
him, at present."
"I breathe again," said the princess, allowing the bandit to take her
hand in his, and even responding to his pressure, with generous
confidence. "Your words do me good, captain, and I bless you for having
confidence enough in me to reveal the truth to me. That was my whole
fear; but, since the cardinal remembers nothing and the abbé knows
nothing, I trust to your sagacity for the rest. Look you, captain, it
seems to me this is what we have to do. Do you find in your fertile
genius some method of obtaining possession of the will, and see that the
abbé is informed of it, so that there will be no further occasion for
him to persecute the worthy doctor; then keep the abbé's attention
diverted so that he will allow my unfortunate uncle to die in peace.
That will conclude by diplomatic methods an affair in which I have
feared that blood might be shed over paltry questions of money."
"Your excellency goes very fast!" rejoined the Piccinino. "The abbé
cannot be put to sleep so easily with regard to another subject, which
it is impossible for me, despite my respect, my awe and my
embarrassment, to pass over in silence."
"Speak, speak!" said Agatha, hastily.
"Very well, since your highness authorizes me to do so, and does not
choose to understand a hint, I will tell you that Abbé Ninfo, while in
quest of political intrigues which he has not succeeded in discovering,
has put his hand upon a love affair which he has turned to his
advantage."
"I do not understand," said the princess, with an air of sincerity that
startled the adventurer.
"Can Ninfo have been gulling me," he thought, "or is this woman strong
enough to hold her own against me? We will see."
"Signora," he said, in a honeyed tone, holding Agatha's hand against his
breast, "you will detest me, I suppose. However, I must serve you
against your will by telling you what I know. The abbé discovered that
Michelangelo was admitted every day at certain hours to the private
apartment in your Casino; that he did not eat with your servants or with
the other workmen, but with you, in secret; in a word, that, when he
took his siesta, he rested from his artistic labors in the arms of the
loveliest and most lovable of women."
"It is false!" cried the princess; "it is an abominable falsehood. I
treated that young man with the distinction which I considered that I
owed to his talent and his ideas. He ate with his father in a room next
to mine, and took his siesta in my picture gallery. Abbé Ninfo did not
watch very closely, or he might have told you that Michel, being utterly
tired out, passed two or three nights under my roof."
"He told me that, too," replied the Piccinino, who always chose to seem
to know beforehand what anyone told him.
"Very well, Signor de Castro-Reale," said Agatha, in a firm voice,
looking him full in the face, "there is no doubt about the fact; but I
can swear upon my mother's soul and your mother's that that young man
never saw me until the day of the ball, when his father first introduced
him to me, in presence of two hundred mechanics. I talked to him during
the ball, on the main staircase, and the Marquis della Serra, who was
escorting me, complimented him, as I did myself, upon his paintings.
From that moment down to this very evening Michel had never seen me; ask
himself! You are not a man whom one can deceive, captain; use your
perspicacity, and I will trust it."
The Piccinino quivered with pleasure at this concise declaration, made
with the assurance which truth alone can give, and he pressed Agatha's
hand against his breast with such force that she detected his sentiments
at last. She had a moment of terror, augmented by a ghastly
reminiscence. But she realized, in a flash, the full extent of the
dangers to which Michel had been exposed, and, postponing the matter of
her own safety to a more favorable season, she determined to deal
tenderly with Carmelo Tomabene's pride.
"What motive could Abbé Ninfo have had in telling us that extraordinary
story?" he exclaimed.
Agatha fancied that she could understand that the abbé had detected the
violent passion for herself by which she saw at last that the bandit was
possessed, and that he had endeavored to incite him to vengeance by his
tale of intrigue. "If that is so," she thought, "I will use the same
weapons, vile Ninfo, since you have been kind enough to furnish me with
them."
"Listen, captain," she said; "you who know men so well and read so
readily the innermost folds of the conscience, must have discovered
that, in addition to all his manifest vices, the abbé is an insatiable
libertine? Do you suppose that he has confined himself to coveting my
inheritance? did he not let you see that it was not for money alone that
he would try to sell me a part of it if he should succeed in obtaining
possession of it?"
"Yes!" cried the Piccinino, this time with the utmost sincerity; "I
thought that I could detect revolting desires and hopes on the part of
that monster of ugliness and lust. His affected incredulity concerning
the possibility of resistance by a woman, in such cases, is simply an
attempt to console himself when he thinks of his own physical and moral
ugliness. Yes, yes, I suspected it in spite of his hypocrisy. I will not
say that he loves you; that would be a profanation of the word love; but
he desires you, and he is jealous. Jealous, do I say! Ah! that word
again is too respectable! Jealousy is the passion of young hearts, and
his is decrepit. He suspects and detests everybody about you. In fact,
he has devised an infernal method of conquering you: judging rightly
that the desire to ransom your inheritance would not suffice, and
supposing that you loved this young artist, he has determined to use him
as a hostage and to compel you to purchase at his own price the life and
liberty of Michelangelo."
"I ought to have expected that," replied the princess, affecting an air
of contemptuous tranquillity, although her whole body was bathed in cold
perspiration. "And so he selected you, captain, as his associate in an
undertaking worthy of those men who devote themselves to the most
hideous of all trades, the mere name of which is so degrading that no
true woman could bear to speak it in any tongue! It seems to me that
that mark of confidence on the part of the excellent Abbé Ninfo merits
a somewhat severe punishment at your hands!"
Agatha had touched the right chord. The abbé's execrable projects,
which had previously moved the young bandit to nothing more than
satirical contempt, appeared to him now in the light of a personal
insult and kindled the thirst for vengeance in him. So true is it that
love, even in a wild, unbridled heart, arouses the sentiment of manly
dignity.
"Severe punishment!" he said, in a deep voice, with clenched teeth; "he
shall have it!--But," he added, "have no further anxiety about anything,
signora; deign to place your fate in my hands unreservedly."
"My fate is already in your hands, captain," replied Agatha; "my
fortune, my reputation, and the lives of my friends: think you that I
have an anxious air?"
And she looked him through and through with a profound gaze, wherein she
was so happily inspired by the superior sagacity of the courageous
woman, that the Piccinino felt its influence and found that respect and
awe were mingled with his passion.--"Ah! you romantic woman," he
thought, "you have not outgrown the belief that a bandit chief must be a
stage hero or a chevalier of the Middle Ages! And here am I compelled to
play that part for your pleasure! Very well, I will play it. Nothing is
difficult to him who has read much and reasoned much.--Indeed, why
should I not be a hero in good earnest?" he said to himself, as he
walked silently beside that trembling woman whom he believed to be so
trustful and confiding, pressing her arm to his side with his own
trembling arm. "If I have not deigned to be one hitherto, it is simply
because the opportunity has never offered, and my essays at grandeur
would have been absurd. With such a woman as this, the game is well
worth the candle, and I cannot believe that it is difficult to be
sublime when the reward is destined to be so sweet. It is an undertaking
founded upon a selfish motive more elevated, but no less substantial or
less logical than others."
Before assuming definitively the attitude of the princess's true knight,
he determined to do away with a lingering remnant of distrust, and he
was almost ingenuous in seeking to cure himself of it.
"The only weakness of which I am conscious," he said, "is the dread of
playing a ridiculous rôle. Ninfo wished me to play an infamous one, he
shall be punished for it; but if your highness really loves that young
man--why, that young man also will have reason to regret having deceived
me!"
"How am I to understand you?" rejoined Agatha, leading him into the ray
of light which the chandelier in her boudoir cast into the garden; "I do
really love Michelangelo, Pier-Angelo, and Fra Angelo, as devoted
friends and estimable men. To rescue them from the enmity of a villain I
would give all the money that anyone might ask. But look at me, captain,
and look at that young man musing yonder behind that window. Do you
consider that there can possibly exist a bond based upon impure passion
between two persons of our respective ages and conditions? You do not
know my character. Nobody has ever understood it. Will you be the first
one to do it justice? I wish it might be so, for I care very much for
your esteem, and I should think that I was wholly undeserving of it if I
entertained for that child sentiments which I feared to allow you to
detect."
As she spoke, Agatha, who had dropped the bandit's arm, took it again to
return to the boudoir; and he was so grateful to her for that mark of
trustful friendship, of which she desired Michel and the marquis to be
witnesses, that he felt intoxicated and, as it were, beside himself with
joy.
XXVIII
JEALOUSY
Neither the marquis nor Michel had heard a word of the conversation we
have reported. But the first was tranquil in his mind, the other was
not. The marquis, having assured himself that the princess was calm, had
no fear that she incurred any immediate danger with the brigand; whereas
Michel, not being familiar with her character, suffered keenly at the
bare thought that the Piccinino might, in his speech, have gone beyond
the bounds of respect. His suffering was intensified when he saw the
Piccinino's face as he returned to the boudoir.
That face, ordinarily so indifferent and composed, was, as it were,
illuminated by confidence and joy. The little man seemed to have grown a
cubit taller, and his black eyes flashed flames which one would not have
believed could be kindled in a head so cool and calculating.
No sooner had the princess, who was somewhat fatigued from having walked
a long while in a small space, seated herself on the couch, to which he
escorted her with the most dignified courtesy, than he fell, rather than
sat down upon a chair, on the other side of the small boudoir, but with
his face turned toward her as if he had stationed himself there to gaze
at her in the glare of the chandelier. In truth, the Piccinino, after
having enjoyed in the garden the sweetness of her voice, the flattering
significance of her words, and the softness of her hand, desired, in
order to put the finishing touch to the sensuous delight which he had
felt for the first time in his life, to gaze at her at his leisure,
without the labor of speech or of thought. He fell into a silent
meditation, more eloquent than Michel could have desired. He feasted his
bold eyes with the sight of that exquisite and fascinating woman, whom
it seemed to him that he already possessed, as with a treasure which he
had stolen, and which he took pleasure in gloating over, as it lay
gleaming before him.
The young painter's distress was intensified by the fact that, under the
mysterious influence of that all-pervading passion, which but just born
was already spreading with the rapidity of a conflagration, the bandit
acquired a strange power of fascination. His exquisite beauty shone
forth like a star emerging from the vapors on the horizon. All that was
unusual in the outlines of his features and disquieting in their veiled
expression gave way to a subtle charm, an overpowering effusiveness,
albeit silent, and, as it were, overwhelmed by its own ardor. He was
lying back in his chair, but no longer affected indifference or
absent-mindedness. His hanging arms, his bent back, his eyes, glistening
and fascinated, and fixed intently on the princess, indicated that he
was shattered, as it were, by the explosion of a force unknown to
himself, and drowned in the anticipated joys of his triumph. Michel was
afraid of him for the first time. He would still have defied him
fearlessly in the ill-omened solitude of the _Destatore's Cross_; but in
that room, radiant with a strange ecstasy, he seemed too overpowering
for any woman to escape the fascination of that basilisk glance.
However, Agatha did not seem to notice it, and whenever he turned his
eyes from the bandit to her, he found her apparently calm and
undisturbed, having no thought either of attacking or of defending
herself.
"My friends," she said, after pausing a moment to take breath, "we can
say good-night and separate with our minds at rest. I place my full
confidence in this new friend whom Providence, acting through the wisdom
of Fra Angelo, has sent to us. You will share my confidence when I tell
you that he knew beforehand, and knew far better than ourselves, what we
had to fear and to hope."
"It is a decidedly interesting affair, it is true," said the Piccinino,
making an effort to emerge from his dreaming; "and it is time that this
young man should know why I roared with laughter when he came to see me.
You will laugh too, I hope, Master Michelangelo, when you learn that you
came and entrusted your fate to a man who had been strenuously urged, an
hour earlier, to do you a bad turn; and if I were not calm and prudent
in such affairs, if I believed blindly the words of those who came to
consult me, while you were urging me in her highness's behalf to kidnap
Abbé Ninfo, I should have seized you and thrown you into my cellar,
securely bound and gagged, at the request of Abbé Ninfo. I see by your
manner that you would have resisted vigorously. Oh! I know that you are
brave, and I fancy that you are stronger than I. You have an uncle who
has kept his muscles in play so persistently for twenty years past,
breaking stone, that he cannot have lost any of the strength which
caused him to be called _Iron Arm_ when he plied another trade on the
mountain; but, when one is engaged in a matter of great political
moment, one takes precautions, and I had but to touch a little bell to
have my house surrounded by determined men, who would not have afforded
you even the pleasure of resistance."