"No, no, it was not Prada, nor was it any one working for him. That I
swear to you. I did not recognise the man, but it wasn't Prada--no, no!"
There was such a ring of truth in Dario's words that Benedetta must have
been convinced by them. But terror once more overpowered her, for the
hand she held was suddenly growing soft, moist, and powerless. Exhausted
by his effort, Dario had fallen back, again fainting, his face quite
white and his eyes closed. And it seemed to her that he was dying.
Distracted by her anguish, she felt him with trembling, groping hands:
"Look, look, Monsieur l'Abbe!" she exclaimed. "But he is dying, he is
dying; he is already quite cold. Ah! God of heaven, he is dying!"
Pierre, terribly upset by her cries, sought to reassure her, saying: "He
spoke too much; he has lost consciousness, as he did before. But I assure
you that I can feel his heart beating. Here, put your hand here,
Contessina. For mercy's sake don't distress yourself like that; the
doctor will soon be here, and everything will be all right."
But she did not listen to him, and all at once he was lost in amazement,
for she flung herself upon the body of the man she adored, caught it in a
frantic embrace, bathed it with tears and covered it with kisses whilst
stammering words of fire: "Ah! if I were to lose you, if I were to lose
you! And to think that I repulsed you, that I would not accept happiness
when it was yet possible! Yes, that idea of mine, that vow I made to the
Madonna! Yet how could she be offended by our happiness? And then, and
then, if she has deceived me, if she takes you from me, ah! then I can
have but one regret--that I did not damn myself with you--yes, yes,
damnation rather than that we should never, never be each other's!"
Was this the woman who had shown herself so calm, so sensible, so patient
the better to ensure her happiness? Pierre was terrified, and no longer
recognised her. He had hitherto seen her so reserved, so modest, with a
childish charm that seemed to come from her very nature! But under the
threatening blow she feared, the terrible blood of the Boccaneras had
awoke within her with a long heredity of violence, pride, frantic and
exasperated longings. She wished for her share of life, her share of
love! And she moaned and she clamoured, as if death, in taking her lover
from her, were tearing away some of her own flesh.
"Calm yourself, I entreat you, madame," repeated the priest. "He is
alive, his heart beats. You are doing yourself great harm."
But she wished to die with her lover: "O my darling! if you must go, take
me, take me with you. I will lay myself on your heart, I will clasp you
so tightly with my arms that they shall be joined to yours, and then we
must needs be buried together. Yes, yes, we shall be dead, and we shall
be wedded all the same--wedded in death! I promised that I would belong
to none but you, and I will be yours in spite of everything, even in the
grave. O my darling, open your eyes, open your mouth, kiss me if you
don't want me to die as soon as you are dead!"
A blaze of wild passion, full of blood and fire, had passed through that
mournful chamber with old, sleepy walls. But tears were now overcoming
Benedetta, and big gasping sobs at last threw her, blinded and
strengthless, on the edge of the bed. And fortunately an end was put to
the terrible scene by the arrival of the doctor whom Victorine had
fetched.
Doctor Giordano was a little old man of over sixty, with white curly
hair, and fresh-looking, clean-shaven countenance. By long practice among
Churchmen he had acquired the paternal appearance and manner of an
amiable prelate. And he was said to be a very worthy man, tending the
poor for nothing, and displaying ecclesiastical reserve and discretion in
all delicate cases. For thirty years past the whole Boccanera family,
children, women, and even the most eminent Cardinal himself, had in all
cases of sickness been placed in the hands of this prudent practitioner.
Lighted by Victorine and helped by Pierre, he undressed Dario, who was
roused from his swoon by pain; and after examining the wound he declared
with a smile that it was not at all dangerous. The young Prince would at
the utmost have to spend three weeks in bed, and no complications were to
be feared. Then, like all the doctors of Rome, enamoured of the fine
thrusts and cuts which day by day they have to dress among chance
patients of the lower classes, he complacently lingered over the wound,
doubtless regarding it as a clever piece of work, for he ended by saying
to the Prince in an undertone: "That's what we call a warning. The man
didn't want to kill, the blow was dealt downwards so that the knife might
slip through the flesh without touching the bone. Ah! a man really needs
to be skilful to deal such a stab; it was very neatly done."
"Yes, yes," murmured Dario, "he spared me; had he chosen he could have
pierced me through."
Benedetta did not hear. Since the doctor had declared the case to be free
from danger, and had explained that the fainting fits were due to nervous
shock, she had fallen in a chair, quite prostrated. Gradually, however,
some gentle tears coursed from her eyes, bringing relief after her
frightful despair, and then, rising to her feet, she came and kissed
Dario with mute and passionate delight.
"I say, my dear doctor," resumed the Prince, "it's useless for people to
know of this. It's so ridiculous. Nobody has seen anything, it seems,
excepting Monsieur l'Abbe, whom I ask to keep the matter secret. And in
particular I don't want anybody to alarm the Cardinal or my aunt, or
indeed any of our friends."
Doctor Giordano indulged in one of his placid smiles. "/Bene, bene/,"
said he, "that's natural; don't worry yourself. We will say that you have
had a fall on the stairs and have dislocated your shoulder. And now that
the wound is dressed you must try to sleep, and don't get feverish. I
will come back to-morrow morning."
That evening of excitement was followed by some very tranquil days, and a
new life began for Pierre, who at first remained indoors, reading and
writing, with no other recreation than that of spending his afternoons in
Dario's room, where he was certain to find Benedetta. After a somewhat
intense fever lasting for eight and forty hours, cure took its usual
course, and the story of the dislocated shoulder was so generally
believed, that the Cardinal insisted on Donna Serafina departing from her
habits of strict economy, to have a second lantern lighted on the landing
in order that no such accident might occur again. And then the monotonous
peacefulness was only disturbed by a final incident, a threat of trouble,
as it were, with which Pierre found himself mixed up one evening when he
was lingering beside the convalescent patient.
Benedetta had absented herself for a few minutes, and as Victorine, who
had brought up some broth, was leaning towards the Prince to take the
empty cup from him, she said in a low voice: "There's a girl, Monsieur,
La Pierina, who comes here every day, crying and asking for news of you.
I can't get rid of her, she's always prowling about the place, so I
thought it best to tell you of it."
Unintentionally, Pierre heard her and understood everything. Dario, who
was looking at him, at once guessed his thoughts, and without answering
Victorine exclaimed: "Yes, Abbe, it was that brute Tito! How idiotic,
eh?" At the same time, although the young man protested that he had done
nothing whatever for the girl's brother to give him such a "warning," he
smiled in an embarrassed way, as if vexed and even somewhat ashamed of
being mixed up in an affair of the kind. And he was evidently relieved
when the priest promised that he would see the girl, should she come
back, and make her understand that she ought to remain at home.
"It was such a stupid affair!" the Prince repeated, with an exaggerated
show of anger. "Such things are not of our times."
But all at once he ceased speaking, for Benedetta entered the room. She
sat down again beside her dear patient, and the sweet, peaceful evening
then took its course in the old sleepy chamber, the old, lifeless palace,
whence never a sound arose.
When Pierre began to go out again he at first merely took a brief airing
in the district. The Via Giulia interested him, for he knew how splendid
it had been in the time of Julius II, who had dreamt of lining it with
sumptuous palaces. Horse and foot races then took place there during the
carnival, the Palazzo Farnese being the starting-point, and the Piazza of
St. Peter's the goal. Pierre had also lately read that a French
ambassador, D'Estree, Marquis de Coure, had resided at the Palazzo
Sacchetti, and in 1638 had given some magnificent entertainments in
honour of the birth of the Dauphin,* when on three successive days there
had been racing from the Ponte Sisto to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini
amidst an extraordinary display of sumptuosity: the street being strewn
with flowers, and rich hangings adorning every window. On the second
evening there had been fireworks on the Tiber, with a machine
representing the ship Argo carrying Jason and his companions to the
recovery of the Golden Fleece; and, on another occasion, the Farnese
fountain, the Mascherone, had flowed with wine. Nowadays, however, all
was changed. The street, bright with sunshine or steeped in shadow
according to the hour, was ever silent and deserted. The heavy, ancient
palatial houses, their old doors studded with plates and nails, their
windows barred with huge iron gratings, always seemed to be asleep, whole
storeys showing nothing but closed shutters as if to keep out the
daylight for evermore. Now and again, when a door was open, you espied
deep vaults, damp, cold courts, green with mildew, and encompassed by
colonnades like cloisters. Then, in the outbuildings of the mansions, the
low structures which had collected more particularly on the side of the
Tiber, various small silent shops had installed themselves. There was a
baker's, a tailor's, and a bookbinder's, some fruiterers' shops with a
few tomatoes and salad plants set out on boards, and some wine-shops
which claimed to sell the vintages of Frascati and Genzano, but whose
customers seemed to be dead. Midway along the street was a modern prison,
whose horrid yellow wall in no wise enlivened the scene, whilst,
overhead, a flight of telegraph wires stretched from the arcades of the
Farnese palace to the distant vista of trees beyond the river. With its
infrequent traffic the street, even in the daytime, was like some
sepulchral corridor where the past was crumbling into dust, and when
night fell its desolation quite appalled Pierre. You did not meet a soul,
you did not see a light in any window, and the glimmering gas lamps, few
and far between, seemed powerless to pierce the gloom. On either hand the
doors were barred and bolted, and not a sound, not a breath came from
within. Even when, after a long interval, you passed a lighted wine-shop,
behind whose panes of frosted glass a lamp gleamed dim and motionless,
not an exclamation, not a suspicion of a laugh ever reached your ear.
There was nothing alive save the two sentries placed outside the prison,
one before the entrance and the other at the corner of the right-hand
lane, and they remained erect and still, coagulated, as it were, in that
dead street.
* Afterwards Louis XIV.--Trans.
Pierre's interest, however, was not merely confined to the Via Giulia; it
extended to the whole district, once so fine and fashionable, but now
fallen into sad decay, far removed from modern life, and exhaling a faint
musty odour of monasticism. Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where
the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the
lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts
contrasted violently with the black sunken dwellings of the neighbouring
lanes. In the evening the globes of the electric lamps on the Corso shone
out with such dazzling whiteness that the gas lamps of the Via Giulia and
other streets looked like smoky lanterns. There were several old and
famous thoroughfares, the Via Banchi Vecchi, the Via del Pellegrino, the
Via di Monserrato, and an infinity of cross-streets which intersected and
connected the others, all going towards the Tiber, and for the most part
so narrow that vehicles scarcely had room to pass. And each street had
its church, a multitude of churches all more or less alike, highly
decorated, gilded, and painted, and open only at service time when they
were full of sunlight and incense. In the Via Giulia, in addition to San
Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli
Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the
Dead, Santa Maria dell' Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower
end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to
dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the
Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to
search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna. One
evening he was present at the funeral of two unknown men, whose bodies,
after remaining unburied for quite a fortnight, had been discovered in a
field near the Appian Way.
However, Pierre's favourite promenade soon became the new quay of the
Tiber beyond the Palazzo Boccanera. He had merely to take the narrow lane
skirting the mansion to reach a spot where he found much food for
reflection. Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be
quite abandoned. There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken
fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around. To such a height had it
been necessary to carry the quay walls--designed to protect the city from
floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past--that the
old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to
which pleasure boats had once been moored, now lay in a hollow,
threatened with annihilation whenever the works should be finished. But
nothing had yet been levelled; the soil, brought thither for making up
the bank, lay as it had fallen from the carts, and on all sides were pits
and mounds interspersed with the abandoned building materials. Wretched
urchins came to play there, workmen without work slept in the sunshine,
and women after washing ragged linen spread it out to dry upon the
stones. Nevertheless the spot proved a happy, peaceful refuge for Pierre,
one fruitful in inexhaustible reveries when for hours at a time he
lingered gazing at the river, the quays, and the city, stretching in
front of him and on either hand.
At eight in the morning the sun already gilded the vast opening. On
turning to the left he perceived the roofs of the Trastevere, of a misty,
bluish grey against the dazzling sky. Then, just beyond the apse of San
Giovanni, on the right, the river curved, and on its other bank the
poplars of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito formed a green curtain, while
the castle of Sant' Angelo showed brightly in the distance. But Pierre's
eyes dwelt more particularly on the bank just in front of him, for there
he found some lingering vestiges of old Rome. On that side indeed between
the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Sant' Angelo, the quays, which were to
imprison the river within high, white, fortress-like walls, had not yet
been raised, and the bank with its remnants of the old papal city
conjured up an extraordinary vision of the middle ages. The houses,
descending to the river brink, were cracked, scorched, rusted by
innumerable burning summers, like so many antique bronzes. Down below
there were black vaults into which the water flowed, piles upholding
walls, and fragments of Roman stone-work plunging into the river bed;
then, rising from the shore, came steep, broken stairways, green with
moisture, tiers of terraces, storeys with tiny windows pierced here and
their in hap-hazard fashion, houses perched atop of other houses, and the
whole jumbled together with a fantastic commingling of balconies and
wooden galleries, footbridges spanning courtyards, clumps of trees
growing apparently on the very roofs, and attics rising from amidst pinky
tiles. The contents of a drain fell noisily into the river from a worn
and soiled gorge of stone; and wherever the houses stood back and the
bank appeared, it was covered with wild vegetation, weeds, shrubs, and
mantling ivy, which trailed like a kingly robe of state. And in the glory
of the sun the wretchedness and dirt vanished, the crooked, jumbled
houses seemed to be of gold, draped with the purple of the red petticoats
and the dazzling white of the shifts which hung drying from their
windows; while higher still, above the district, the Janiculum rose into
all the luminary's dazzlement, uprearing the slender profile of Sant'
Onofrio amidst cypresses and pines.
Leaning on the parapet of the quay wall, Pierre sadly gazed at the Tiber
for hours at a time. Nothing could convey an idea of the weariness of
those old waters, the mournful slowness of their flow along that
Babylonian trench where they were confined within huge, bare, livid
prison-like walls. In the sunlight their yellowness was gilded, and the
faint quiver of the current brought ripples of green and blue; but as
soon as the shade spread over it the stream became opaque like mud, so
turbid in its venerable old age that it no longer even gave back a
reflection of the houses lining it. And how desolate was its abandonment,
what a stream of silence and solitude it was! After the winter rains it
might roll furiously and threateningly, but during the long months of
bright weather it traversed Rome without a sound, and Pierre could remain
there all day long without seeing either a skiff or a sail. The two or
three little steam-boats which arrived from the coast, the few tartanes
which brought wine from Sicily, never came higher than the Aventine,
beyond which there was only a watery desert in which here and there, at
long intervals, a motionless angler let his line dangle. All that Pierre
ever saw in the way of shipping was a sort of ancient, covered pinnace, a
rotting Noah's ark, moored on the right beside the old bank, and he
fancied that it might be used as a washhouse, though on no occasion did
he see any one in it. And on a neck of mud there also lay a stranded boat
with one side broken in, a lamentable symbol of the impossibility and the
relinquishment of navigation. Ah! that decay of the river, that decay of
father Tiber, as dead as the famous ruins whose dust he is weary of
laving! And what an evocation! all the centuries of history, so many
things, so many men, that those yellow waters have reflected till, full
of lassitude and disgust, they have grown heavy, silent and deserted,
longing only for annihilation.
One morning on the river bank Pierre found La Pierina standing behind an
abandoned tool-shed. With her neck extended, she was looking fixedly at
the window of Dario's room, at the corner of the quay and the lane.
Doubtless she had been frightened by Victorine's severe reception, and
had not dared to return to the mansion; but some servant, possibly, had
told her which was the young Prince's window, and so she now came to this
spot, where without wearying she waited for a glimpse of the man she
loved, for some sign of life and salvation, the mere hope of which made
her heart leap. Deeply touched by the way in which she hid herself, all
humility and quivering with adoration, the priest approached her, and
instead of scolding her and driving her away as he had been asked to do,
spoke to her in a gentle, cheerful manner, asking her for news of her
people as though nothing had happened, and at last contriving to mention
Dario's name in order that she might understand that he would be up and
about again within a fortnight. On perceiving Pierre, La Pierina had
started with timidity and distrust as if anxious to flee; but when she
understood him, tears of happiness gushed from her eyes, and with a
bright smile she kissed her hand to him, calling: "/Grazie, grazie/,
thanks, thanks!" And thereupon she darted away, and he never saw her
again.
On another morning at an early hour, as Pierre was going to say mass at
Santa Brigida on the Piazza Farnese, he was surprised to meet Benedetta
coming out of the church and carrying a small phial of oil. She evinced
no embarrassment, but frankly told him that every two or three days she
went thither to obtain from the beadle a few drops of the oil used for
the lamp that burnt before an antique wooden statue of the Madonna, in
which she had perfect confidence. She even confessed that she had never
had confidence in any other Madonna, having never obtained anything from
any other, though she had prayed to several of high repute, Madonnas of
marble and even of silver. And so her heart was full of ardent devotion
for the holy image which refused her nothing. And she declared in all
simplicity, as though the matter were quite natural and above discussion,
that the few drops of oil which she applied, morning and evening, to
Dario's wound, were alone working his cure, so speedy a cure as to be
quite miraculous. Pierre, fairly aghast, distressed indeed to find such
childish, superstitious notions in one so full of sense and grace and
passion, did not even venture to smile.
In the evenings, when he came back from his strolls and spent an hour or
so in Dario's room, he would for a time divert the patient by relating
what he had done and seen and thought of during the day. And when he
again ventured to stray beyond the district, and became enamoured of the
lovely gardens of Rome, which he visited as soon as they opened in the
morning in order that he might be virtually alone, he delighted the young
prince and Benedetta with his enthusiasm, his rapturous passion for the
splendid trees, the plashing water, and the spreading terraces whence the
views were so sublime. It was not the most extensive of these gardens
which the more deeply impressed his heart. In the grounds of the Villa
Borghese, the little Roman Bois de Boulogne, there were certainly some
majestic clumps of greenery, some regal avenues where carriages took a
turn in the afternoon before the obligatory drive to the Pincio; but
Pierre was more touched by the reserved garden of the villa--that villa
dazzling with marble and now containing one of the finest museums in the
world. There was a simple lawn of fine grass with a vast central basin
surmounted by a figure of Venus, nude and white; and antique fragments,
vases, statues, columns, and /sarcophagi/ were ranged symmetrically all
around the deserted, sunlit yet melancholy, sward. On returning on one
occasion to the Pincio Pierre spent a delightful morning there,
penetrated by the charm of this little nook with its scanty evergreens,
and its admirable vista of all Rome and St. Peter's rising up afar off in
the soft limpid radiance. At the Villa Albani and the Villa Pamphili he
again came upon superb parasol pines, tall, stately, and graceful, and
powerful elm-trees with twisted limbs and dusky foliage. In the Pamphili
grounds, the elm-trees steeped the paths in a delicious half-light, the
lake with its weeping willows and tufts of reeds had a dreamy aspect,
while down below the /parterre/ displayed a fantastic floral mosaic
bright with the various hues of flowers and foliage. That which most
particularly struck Pierre, however, in this, the noblest, most spacious,
and most carefully tended garden of Rome, was the novel and unexpected
view that he suddenly obtained of St. Peter's, whilst skirting a low
wall: a view whose symbolism for ever clung to him. Rome had completely
vanished, and between the slopes of Monte Mario and another wooded height
which hid the city, there only appeared the colossal dome which seemed to
be poised on an infinity of scattered blocks, now white, now red. These
were the houses of the Borgo, the jumbled piles of the Vatican and the
Basilica which the huge dome surmounted and annihilated, showing greyly
blue in the light blue of the heavens, whilst far away stretched a
delicate, boundless vista of the Campagna, likewise of a bluish tint.