Three days later--the autumn sun was going down, and it was already
getting dusk in the large room--Giraldi sat at his writing-table near
the window, reading the letters which had arrived for him. A
considerable number had accumulated in the course of the day, which he
had spent since early morning in important business in the town, for
the sale of the property to the Count had taken place to-day; there
were political letters from Paris and London, ecclesiastical matters
from Brussels and Cologne, a detailed report from a trusty friend at
Strasburg upon the state of affairs in Alsace-Lorraine, business
letters of the most varied kind--English, French, Italian, German.
Giraldi read one as easily as the other; he even made his marginal
notes always in the same language as his correspondent wrote in. "It
grows and grows," murmured he: "we are not far now from the crisis; and
how delightful it is to hear from the mouths of others as extraordinary
news, things that could not have happened without us. Unfortunately
they are beginning to find out here the importance of the untitled and
undecorated Signor, the mere private secretary to a lady of rank, and
the best part of my working powers will be lost. So long as one is a
nobody one can hear everything and hear it correctly; but the moment
people begin to point at one, one learns very little, and that little
wrong. That is the curse of royalty."
He took up a letter, which he had before thrown on one side, taking it
from its shape to be one of the begging letters which he constantly
received from poor fellow-countrymen, or from native _chevaliers
d'industrie_. "It is a priest's hand," he said. "Ah! from my
correspondent at Tivoli. Well! the worthy man has kept me a long time
waiting for an answer." He hastily opened the letter, ran through the
contents, and then leaned back in his chair with a look of annoyance.
"H'm!" he muttered, "the old fox will not fall into the trap. He has
understood me, that is clear. He admits that there are many wonderful
dispensations of Providence, he even hints that the boy's birth is
shrouded in mystery, which means, in Italian, that he is not the son of
his parents, only that circumstances are too much against my paternity.
Idiot! He must himself know that best; or is he not so stupid? Have I
not offered him enough? I ought to have left the price to himself. I
would pay anything. I----"
He had got up, and slowly paced up and down through the darkening room.
"That is to say, I do not care to throw away my money, and the first
experiment has miserably failed. Her reluctance to see the boy was
decided enough, and she will not even discover a trace of likeness;
says he is the type of the Roman peasants, such as are found at Albano,
and Tivoli, and everywhere. Not even his beauty will she allow. There
is no soul in the countenance, only the commonplace, brilliant stamp of
a strong, sensual nature. And to that she holds with an obstinacy which
she has never shown in anything else. It seems that the mother's
instinct cannot be deceived. Bah! what deception cannot be carried out,
if a man only sets about it in the right way! I have been too hasty,
that is what has startled her. I must allow that I have been, too
sanguine, must play at resignation, and then perhaps like a woman, out
of sheer caprice, she will come round herself--
"What is it, François?"
"The lady in black, monsieur."
"Once for all, she is to be shown in to me by the other passage."
"They are working in the other passage to-day, monsieur."
"Never mind. You will take her back by the other passage."
"Very well, monsieur; can she come in?"
"One moment. Madame dines at home. I dine out, at Herr von
Wallbach's--the carriage for me at half-past five. Let madame know, and
that at a quarter-past five I will come and take leave of her. Has
Signor Antonio been here in the course of the day?"
"No, monsieur."
"No one else is to be admitted. Let the lady come in."
Giraldi did not get up as the lady entered, and now only gave her a
sign to take a place near him at the writing-table.
"I was expecting you. How are we getting on?"
"No better than on the first day."
"That is bad."
"It is very wearisome," said Bertalda, throwing back her veil, "very
wearisome. I have come to tell you so; I am sick of the whole thing."
She lay back in her chair, with a look of ill-humour, knocking the tips
of her boots against each other.
"Bah!" said Giraldi, "how much do you want?" and he stretched out his
hand to a casket which stood before him on the table.
"I want nothing," said Bertalda. "I told you at once, the first time
you sought me out, that I only did it out of pity for poor Werben, and
because I have a weakness for him, and because I wish to annoy that
fine Philip, who behaved so abominably to Victorine, and I wish from my
heart that his sister should be no better."
"I have told you already that it was not from Herr Schmidt that I
learnt that Herr von Werben is visiting you again."
"Then you heard it from Count Golm, and I cannot abide him; he will
have to wait a long time before I give him a good word, and now----"
"My dear child, permit me to observe that you are not very judicious,"
said Giraldi, smiling. "You have half a dozen personal reasons for
doing what you are doing; I pay you besides, and beg you moreover to
consider me at your disposal in that matter, and you want to give the
whole affair up because----"
"It bores me! I can bear anything except being bored."
"What is it that bores you? Explain that to me."
"What is there to explain?" cried Bertalda; "it is just tiresome. If
one is foolishly in love with a man, and he comes and weeps in one's
arms, and one hears from others why he weeps, why should one not do him
a kindness and help him to gain the woman he loves? Why, goodness me,
there is nothing very hard in that; I am a good-natured creature, and
if there is a little acting to be done--why one learns to cut a few
capers in the ballet, and it is all the more amusing. And the acting
you suggested was very pretty so far, and there is no great harm in
standing as a model for a couple of days, when there is nothing to be
done but to hold up your bare arms, and half the time is spent in
talking too; but on the third day one ought to be able to say,
So-and-so is waiting for you at such a place, and make an end of it!"
"I gave you permission yesterday to hint at the real state of affairs."
"Oh yes, hint!" cried Bertalda. "I told her the whole story to-day.
There!"
Giraldi half started from his chair, but immediately recovered himself,
and asked in his quiet way:
"What do you mean by the whole story, my dear child?"
"Why, that I am not a model, and that I have come on Herr von Werben's
account--"
"Sent by Signor Giraldi----"
"What! as if I would have allowed myself to be sent if I had not
chosen."
"Of your own accord then--so much the better! And how did she take it?"
Bertalda burst into a ringing laugh.
"My goodness!" cried she, "it was a farce! She did not know whether to
thank me on her knees, or to trample me under her feet. I think she
mentally did first one and then the other, whilst with clasped hands,
and crying as I never saw a girl cry before, she stood in front of me,
and then raged about the room with uplifted arms, as I never saw any
one rage before either. First she called me a saint, a penitent
Magdalen, I don't know what all, and a moment after a hussy, a--well, I
don't know what either. It went on so for at least an hour without
pause, and the end of the story was----"
"That you were not to presume to return?"
"Heaven forbid! To-morrow I was to return, and then it would all begin
over again, and it really is too wearisome, I say, and I shall not go
there again to-morrow." Bertalda got up with one last energetic tap of
her boots. Giraldi remained sitting, stroking his beard.
"You are right," he said; "do not go there again to-morrow, nor the
next day; on the third day she will come to you."
Bertalda bent forward to look more closely at the man, who said this
with such certainty, as if he were reading it from a paper which lay on
the table before him.
"Supposing, of course," continued Giraldi, "that you do not answer the
letter which she will write to you on the second day, and that
altogether you play at drawing back a little as a person whose kindness
has been misunderstood, and so on. If you can and will do this we
remain friends; if you will not--it is not well to make an enemy of me,
believe me."
Bertalda rose and went behind her chair, and leant both her elbows on
the back.
"If I only knew," she said, "what you have to do with it all?"
"And if you knew?"
"Then I should know what to do myself. I am not afraid of you--what can
you do to me? but I fear for poor Ottomar. I do not wish that any harm
should happen to him."
Giraldi got up also, seated himself sideways in the chair on which
Bertalda leant, and took her hands in his.
"Good girl!" he said; "and if I swear to you that I am Ottomar's best
friend, that he has no secrets from me, not even that of his debts;
that it is I who have just now helped him up again, that it is from me
that he has the hundred-thaler notes, of which, perhaps, one or two
have found their way into your pocket; and if in case you will not
believe me, I show it to you in black and white, in Ottomar's own hand,
what would you say then?"
"Nothing at all," answered Bertalda. She had, while he still held her
hands, come round the chair, and suddenly sat down on his lap, with her
hands, which she now freed, stroking his soft black beard. "At most,
that you are a charming uncle, such as are scarce, and that you deserve
a kiss, and--there, you have one."
She had wound her arms round his neck, and kissed him, first teasingly,
then with a passion which seemed to surprise even herself, and which
also deprived him for the moment of the full use of his faculties, so
that he did not hear the knock at the door, and only let Bertalda slip
off his knee when François was already in the room. Bertalda gave a
shriek of surprise, and hastily drew her veil over her face.
"What do you want?" cried Giraldi hotly.
"Monsieur Antonio, monsieur!" said François in a whisper; "he begs so
urgently."
"All right," said Giraldi. "Show mademoiselle out. I will let in the
young man myself. I shall hear from you, mademoiselle. For the present,
adieu."
He walked hastily to the door of the anteroom, whilst Bertalda,
conducted by François, rushed to another door leading into his bedroom,
and from thence into the second corridor, and only opened it as
Bertalda was on the point of disappearing behind the portière, one side
of which François had drawn back for her. Antonio, who, standing close
to the door and listening, had heard Bertalda's shriek, and whose mind
was filled with the image of Ferdinanda, had immediately concluded that
he recognised her voice, and at once stepped in; Bertalda could not so
quickly get out. In her embarrassment she had run against the side of
the portière which was down, and entangled herself in it, and it was a
moment or two before, with François' help, she was free, long enough
for the sharp-eyed Antonio to discover that the lady whom he was
putting to flight was not Ferdinanda herself, but the mysterious
unknown who had lately come so regularly to Ferdinanda's studio, and
whom he had taken for an ambassador from his deadly enemy. So she did
not come from him, but from here! And why should she run off so hastily
the moment he was admitted? If the signor mentioned the lady--well,
perhaps it was all right--he would try and trust him still, as
heretofore; if he did not mention her, he would never believe another
word that passed his lips--never!
These thoughts flew through Antonio's mind as he made his bow;
meanwhile Giraldi had recovered from his surprise, and taken his
resolution. He had taken it for granted that Antonio, from the
studio in which he worked, would remark the coming and going of the
black-veiled lady to the other studio, and had consequently enjoined
the utmost circumspection upon Bertalda. Antonio was not to learn who
she was, least of all that she had any connection with him. Now, in
consequence of the youth's hasty entry, the secret was within a
hair's-breadth of escaping; but that he should have seen, or in any way
recognised Bertalda, was quite impossible. The end of the great room
was buried in almost total darkness, and as his own attention had been
entirely centred on the door by which Antonio would enter, the delay in
Bertalda's departure by the other had escaped his notice. "A second
later would have been too late," he thought to himself, as he took the
youth's hand and--now completely master of himself--said in his usual
quiet, friendly tone:
"Welcome, my dear Antonio--no, no, my son--I am not consecrated yet."
Antonio, bending low, had raised the hand which Giraldi had offered him
to his lips. "The less you trust him the more submissive must you be,"
said Antonio to himself.
"You are sacred to me, signor," he said aloud. "The good Brother
Ambrose, the benevolent guardian of my wretched youth, is not in my
eyes more revered and sacred than you are."
"I am glad to hear it," answered Giraldi. "The best ornament of youth
is a grateful disposition. As a reward for it I can impart to you the
good brother's blessing. I have just received a letter from him. But of
that later. First, as to your business here. Have you at last again
seen and spoken with her?"
"Only seen, signor--as she left her studio just now to go home. I do
not venture to speak to her. She talks, they say, to no one, and no one
dares go into her studio except----"
"Her father, probably."
"A lady, signor, in black, and thickly veiled, who goes to her studio
regularly every afternoon. The students take her to be a model."
It must be decided now; Antonio's heart beat till Giraldi's answer
came.
"A lady in black and thickly veiled," repeated Giraldi slowly, as if he
was deeply considering the matter; "and only a model? That is surely
very unlikely, and very suspicious. We must try to get to the bottom of
this."
He lied. It flashed like lightning through Antonio's mind that to this
man he had confided his secret, the treason which he contemplated, his
criminal desires, the very plan of his revenge; he had given all--all
into his hands, as to the priest in the confessional, and he lied!
"I have tried to get to the bottom of it, signor," he said, "but in
vain. As she comes and goes while our studio is full of men, I cannot
watch her through the door, nor absent myself without causing a
sensation. Yesterday I tried under some pretext, but I was too late. A
carriage--not an ordinary cab, signor, but a fly--was standing a few
yards from the house under the trees near the canal; the unknown got
in, and vanished from me in a moment."
"He will be more cunning next time," thought Giraldi; "she must on no
account go again."
"At what time does she come?" he asked.
"Between five and six at first; now, I suppose on account of greater
security, between four and five."
"Good! To-morrow I will myself keep watch in my carriage; she shall not
escape us, you may depend upon it. And now to continue, has nothing of
importance transpired in the conversations between your maestro and the
Captain? The name in question not been mentioned?"
"No, signor; on the contrary, since the young lady went away----"
"I know, three days ago."
"They have been very prudent, and speak so low, that it is impossible
to catch more than a word here and there. But instead I have just found
this letter, which the maestro received to-day and has read through at
least a dozen times, and also showed it to the Captain, who came in the
middle of the day."
"It was dangerous to steal a letter which awakens such interest."
"The maestro threw it into his desk, as he does all his letters, and
when he went out, locked it up, and took the key with him; but I have
long known how to open that frail lock without a key. To-morrow he will
find the letter again in his desk."
"Who is it from?"
"From the young lady, I think. It is an abominable handwriting,
signor."
"Give it to me!"
Giraldi took the letter out of Antonio's hand, and stepped to the
window to get the advantage of the last gleam of daylight.
A superstitious dread ran through Antonio, as he saw the extraordinary
speed with which the man at the window ran through the sixteen pages of
the letter, of which he, who so prided himself on his knowledge of
German, had hardly been able to read a line. How could he venture to
enter into a struggle of cunning and skill with him, who saw through
everything, knew everything as if he were in league with the evil one?
And yet, one thing he did not know, that he would have pierced him with
his dagger as he stood in the window, with the evening light shining
like an aureole round his head with its black locks, did he venture to
deceive and betray him, as he had undoubtedly deceived and betrayed all
the world besides.
Giraldi had read the last two pages more slowly than the first ones. He
now read them over again. Then without saying a word, he lighted the
candle which stood on his writing-table, sat down, and began as it
appeared to copy out these two last pages. The pen flew over the paper
almost as quickly as his eyes before over the pages. In a few minutes
it was done, and he gave the letter back to Antonio. "There! now return
it again to its place with the greatest care, and bring me every letter
in the same handwriting. You will thereby be doing me the greatest
service, and my gratitude will keep pace with your willingness to help
me."
"I do what I do for your sake, signor," said Antonio; "without hope or
expectation of reward. The only one for which I care, even you cannot
give me."
"You think so," answered Giraldi. "Boy, what do you know of what I can
or cannot do? I tell you that kings tremble when they feel that
Gregorio Giraldi's hand is upon them; that the Holy Father in Rome
even, only knows himself to be infallible so long as I am near him. And
shall I not fulfil the desire of your heart? Not give into your arms
that beautiful woman, whom you may possess at any moment you choose?
Are you not young and handsome? Are you not strong and courageous? What
is impossible to a handsome and young man who is strong and courageous,
where a woman is in question? I tell you that the times of Saul are not
yet gone by, who went out to seek his father's asses, and found a
kingdom. The letter in your pocket might prove it to you. Do you fancy
yourself worth less than that clumsy German sailor? Surely not. And he
has won the love of a German maiden, to whom men of his position would
not generally dare to lift their eyes. And now you! Do you not know
that God has ever specially loved shepherds and shown Himself gracious
to them? Have you never, as you drove your goats on the mountains near
Tivoli, heard a voice out of the thundering cataracts of the Arno, or
out of the sighing of the wind in the oak trees of Arsoli, which said,
'Poor sunburnt, ragged boy, in a few years you, a beautiful youth,
dressed like the gentlemen who approach yonder in their smart carriages
over the dusty roads, shall walk through streets of the capital of the
northern barbarians, whose very names you do not yet know?' Believe me,
my son, such voices may be heard by all, only one must understand them,
as I have always understood those which speak to me. Or if you will not
trust my guidance, let me speak to you through the mouth of the worthy
man who protected your tender youth, and whom you may thank, that you
do not still tend your goats. I had written to him about you, and how
wonderful it was that you, favoured with these gifts of mind and body,
should be of such low birth as are the people you have respected as
your parents. And what does he reply?"
Giraldi had seized the priest's letter, and read: "'A miracle, truly,
my dear sir, but are we not surrounded by miracles, so that they often
appear no miracles just because they are so near us? And has God lost
His omnipotence because the serpent of doubt and unbelief lifts its
head now higher than ever? Can He not breathe His Spirit into a clod if
He will? make the dead to live again? lighten the darkness in which the
origin of so many men, and--I must admit--of our good Antonio also, is
enveloped? Can He not raise up for a man who stands solitary and pines
for love, a dear relation in a seeming stranger?' Look, Antonio! there
it stands, written in your honoured friend's own hand."
He held out the letter to Antonio---just long enough for the youth to
be certain that it really was his old preceptor's hand. He might not
see what immediately followed; that according to all human calculation
Antonio could not possibly be the son that Giraldi had so long lost,
and whom he had so eagerly sought after, and still sought in spite of
all disappointments, and for whose recovery no reward was too great.
As if overcome with emotion, he had thrown the letter into the drawer
and stretched out both his hands: "Now go, in God's name, my son, and
remember that no father could more truly mean well towards you than I
do!"
Antonio bent down and kissed the outstretched hands, moved and
conquered by the superior mental power of the man, his mind filled with
a confusion of ambitious hopes and dazzling dreams of satisfied love,
as quickly followed by the fear that all was but a dream and an
illusion, and that this great magician was playing with him, as he
himself as a boy had often, enough done with a bird fluttering on a
string.
He was gone. Giraldi touched the bell. François came in.
"I told you that no one was to come in, without exception!"
"Monsieur had always received the young man, and he was so pressing."
"It may pass for this time; the next time you commit such a blunder,
you are dismissed without appeal--mind that."
He locked his letter into his drawer.
"I will dress without assistance; see that the carriage is ready in ten
minutes."
He went into the next room through which Bertalda had previously taken
flight. François shook his fist behind him, and then again smiled his
fawning smile, as if he would not admit even to himself that he had
ventured to threaten the mighty man.