A month had passed since Stradella and Ortensia had fled from Venice,
and after their adventure in Ferrara no hand had been raised against
them on their way to Rome. They had at first lodged in the ancient
hostelry at the Sign of the Bear, which still stands, and is not only
called the Orso inn as it was hundreds of years ago, but has given its
name to the street in which it is situated. It stands at the entrance to
that part of the city which was in old times dominated by the Orsini,
who undoubtedly got their name from some ancient stone or marble bear
that was built into the outer wall of their stronghold; but whether the
old inn was called after the image itself, or after the Orsini badge, no
one can tell.
Stradella and his wife lodged for a few days in that large upper room,
of which the beautiful loggia may still be seen from the new embankment;
but in those days, and much later, another row of tall houses stood on
the opposite side of the street, between the Orso and the river, making
an unbroken line as far as the Nona tower at the Bridge of Sant' Angelo,
and completely cutting off the view. It was the best of the Roman inns,
even when Rome had more hostelries than any city in Europe. Philippe de
Commines lodged there, and Montaigne, and many another famous man who
visited Rome before and after Stradella's time.
It was there, in that upper chamber, that the happy lovers first tasted
peace and rest after the trials and fatigues of their long journey; for
though they were man and wife it is but right to call them lovers, who
loved so truly till they died. It was there that they first learned to
know and understand each other, and to see why they had loved at first
sight and had fled together, wresting their happiness violently from an
adverse fate, when they had been alone scarcely one whole hour in all
during their brief acquaintance, and had kissed but twice.
For as they lived those first days together they found all they had
dreamed of, each in the other, and more too; and every fresh discovery
was a sweet new world, till many worlds made up the universe of their
new being that circled round love's sun in a firmament of joy. Love had
been great from the first, but now he grew to be all-powerful; there had
been hours when one or the other might have been persuaded to draw back
for some weighty reason, but no reason was strong enough to part them
now, not even the great last argument of death himself.
Surely, say you, the course of true love should have run smooth for
them, if ever. But know you not that the gods envy no small thing, nor
are angry at any humdrum happiness of common men? Know you not that the
god of war spares the coward and slays the brave? That in the race for
fortune Jove often trips the swiftest runners and lets the dull plodder
creep past the winning post alone? Know you not that whom the gods love
die young?
Ortensia and Stradella knew none of these things. He had grown famous
almost without an effort when scarcely more than a boy, and fame did not
desert him; and now that he had overcome obstacles and passed through
danger to be happy, he believed with child-like faith that such
happiness, once got, must be safe from outward harm, since it dwelt in
the heart, where no one could see it, to envy it as men envied worldly
glory. As for Ortensia, she neither thought of the future nor remembered
the near past, but lived only in each present dazzling day.
For a whole week they scarcely showed themselves, though Stradella's
return was known in Rome, and he received many invitations to rich men's
houses and requests for new compositions, and pressing offers of money
if he would but sing at mass or vespers in this basilica or that. If he
had needed gold, he could have had it for an hour's trouble, or for an
effort of a few minutes which was no effort at all. But for the moment
he had enough, and nothing should disturb the first days of his golden
honeymoon.
Trombin and Gambardella also lodged in the Orso, but in rooms far from
the happy pair, whom they chose to leave in peace for the present, never
asking to see them nor inviting them to their well-spread table. Indeed,
any such invitation might have come better from the other side now, for
never did a young runaway couple incur a heavier debt of gratitude than
Stradella and Ortensia owed to the two cut-throats who meant to murder
them, and were even then living under the same roof and on the best of
everything with money advanced to them for that very purpose.
But the time and the conditions were not now suited for the deed, which
might have been done easily enough a dozen times between Ferrara and
Rome. Moreover, the Bravi had not yet come to a definite agreement as to
the plan they should pursue, and Trombin's scheme, which seemed the
best, was far less easy to carry out than a common murder, and very much
more expensive; for it meant kidnapping both Stradella and his wife, and
taking them all the way back to Venice as close prisoners, without
exciting suspicion by the way, so that the inns at which they had all
stopped on their journey southwards would have to be scrupulously
avoided on their return.
There was no hurry, however, for they had not spent the two hundred
ducats advanced to them; or, to be accurate, they had played at the
French Ambassador's gambling-tables with a part of the money and had won
a good deal. For in those days every foreign ambassador in Rome claimed
the right to keep a public gambling-room in his embassy, for his own
profit, which was often large, and was always a regular source of
income. But the Bravi had already written to Pignaver as well as to the
lady for more funds, on the ground that forty days had passed without
affording them the opportunity they sought, and at two ducats a day
their account thus came to eighty ducats, already gone for unavoidable
expenses. Since they were paid twice over, it was quite natural that
their expenses should sometimes be doubled.
Meanwhile they watched their prey closely, and without any apparent
intention of disturbing the peace of the lovers' paradise they were very
often just strolling out or coming in exactly when Stradella and
Ortensia were passing through the gate in one direction or the other. In
this way Trombin saw Ortensia almost every day, and all four generally
exchanged a few friendly words before going on their way.
The beautiful Venetian and her husband were in the habit of going out
together either early in the morning, when they were sure not to meet
any of Stradella's fashionable acquaintances, or late in the June
afternoons, when all society congregated in certain fixed gathering
places and nowhere else, such as the gardens of the French Embassy,
which was established in the Villa Medici, or in the vast grounds of the
Villa Riario, which is now called Corsini, where Queen Christina of
Sweden had finally taken up her abode, and was giving herself airs right
royally as the chief living patroness and critic of all the arts and
sciences. To her, too, and to her court, Stradella had sung more than
once when he had last been in Rome, at which time she had lived there
little more than a year. Again, the precincts of the Vatican were to be
avoided, and the news-mongering Banchi Vecchi, where every smart gossip
in town resorted twice or thrice in the week to replenish his stock of
facts and anecdotes, true and untrue, and where he could buy the
sensational account of the latest execution, or elopement, or fraud.
The young couple avoided all such places carefully. Stradella knew the
city well, and led Ortensia to many lovely spots unknown to fashion, and
into many dim old churches, more than one of which had echoed to his own
music on great feast-days, from the Lateran and Santa Croce and Santa
Maria in Domnica, far away beyond the Colosseum, in the wilderness
within the southern wall of the city, to the fashionable Santa Maria in
Via, and San Marcello and the Pantheon.
Sometimes, if they had turned and looked into the distance behind them,
they might have seen Trombin's pink cheeks and well-turned figure not
very far away. For he was a susceptible creature, as he often confessed
to his companion, and the very first sight of Ortensia on the morning of
her marriage had made a deep impression on him. It was not only her face
and her hair, which resembled that of the late lamented Titian's Beauty;
there was something in her figure and walk that made him half mad when
he watched her; hers was not the stately stride of the black-eyed
plebeian beauty, balancing her huge copper 'conca' on her classic head,
still less was it the swaying, hip-dislocating, self-advertising gait of
some of those handsome and fashionable ladies who frequented the Villa
Medici on Sunday afternoons, and progressed through a running fire of
compliments from pale-faced young gentlemen of wealth and noble lineage.
Perhaps, after all, it was not Ortensia's walk in itself, but also
every movement of her beautiful body that made the Bravo's pulses throb;
it was not her step only, with all the mystery the moving draperies
could mean, but the grace in the half-turn of her head too, the
undulating motion of her hand and wrist and half-bent arm when she
fanned herself, the resistless seduction in her flexible figure when she
turned quickly to Stradella, while leaning on his arm and still walking
on, to ask some new question, or in pleased surprise at something he had
just told her.
The end of their first days of peace at the Orso came one afternoon
quite suddenly in the queer round church of San Stefano Rotondo, which
is not like any other in the world, and is entirely decorated, if the
word may be so misused, with representations of the awful tortures
undergone by early martyrs. If Stradella himself had ever been there, he
would not have taken his wife to see such sights, but the church was not
more often open then than now, and the two went in from pure curiosity.
As they entered the vast circular aisle and turned to the right, they
came suddenly upon a group of fashionable people listening to the
explanations of an imposing gentleman with perfectly white hair, who
indicated the points of interest in a picture with a heavy stick made of
a narwhale's ivory horn. He was describing minutely and realistically
the sufferings of a virgin martyr, and his chief hearer followed what he
said with absorbed interest.
Stradella instantly recognised the ex-Queen of Sweden. There was no
mistaking the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, with her square face and
red cheeks, her disagreeable eyes and her black wig, her short green
skirt and her mannish bearing. She was forty-four years old at that
time. The fine-looking old man was Bernini, the sculptor; at her elbow,
and not much above it in height, stood a misshapen youth with the face
of a sad angel, the poet Guidi; he was evidently pained and disgusted by
the lecture. Three other gentlemen stood at a little distance behind the
Queen, but there was nothing to distinguish them from ninety-nine out of
a hundred other fine gentlemen of fashionable society who wore extremely
good coats, cut and curled their hair in the latest style, and proved
that they were not absolute fools by holding their tongues when men like
Bernini or Guidi were speaking.
At the sharp click of Ortensia's little heels on the stone pavement the
Queen turned her head and instantly recognised Stradella, who bowed low
as she nodded to him, and extended her hand in a gesture that bade him
wait. He had no choice, and she looked at the picture again and listened
with evident satisfaction to the great sculptor's explanation of the
unpleasant subject. Guidi, however, tried not to hear; he also knew
Stradella, who had set some of his verses to music, and he exchanged a
glance of intelligence with him, wondering who his lady companion might
be.
Stradella was already bending to whisper in her ear and tell her who the
lady was, and that it was impossible to run away. Ortensia had never
seen a queen before, and looked at her critically. Queen Christina, she
thought, was anything but a fine-looking woman, though she looked
intelligent, and Ortensia remembered scores of Venetian ladies who were
much more queenly in appearance.
When Bernini had brought his poor little martyr to her last gasp, he
added that, while he declined to disparage the work of a late
fellow-artist, he considered Pomarancio's paintings beneath criticism;
he then paused and took snuff. The Queen smiled sarcastically at his
last words.
'Without speaking well of you, Cavaliere,' she said, 'I consider you as
agreeable as you are famous.'
Bernini shut his snuff-box with a sharp snap and bowed low, though he
quite understood the rebuke. Meanwhile Stradella led Ortensia forward,
and the Queen turned to them as they came up.
'I am overjoyed to see you, Maestro,' she said, graciously giving him
her hand to kiss while he touched the ground with one knee, and Ortensia
executed a ceremonious courtesy. 'And who is this lady?' the Queen asked
almost at once.
'My wife, Madam,' answered Stradella proudly. 'We are lately married.'
'Surely you are not a Roman, my dear child?' the Queen said inquiringly.
'No, Madam,' answered Ortensia, meeting the penetrating gaze of the
disagreeable eyes without any nervousness. 'I am a Venetian, and was
born a Grimani.'
The Queen smiled still more graciously at the ancient name, though she
was a little surprised that a Grimani should have married a singer.
Bernini and Guidi greeted Stradella while the Queen exchanged these few
words with his wife, and the three gentlemen also came forward and
pressed his hand, asking him questions about his journey, his marriage,
and his present lodgings.
'What?' cried young Paluzzo Altieri. 'Lodging at the Orso? At an inn? My
uncle will never allow that, nor her Majesty either!' He glanced at the
Queen, who was still talking with Ortensia. 'You are the Pope's guests
in Rome, Maestro, and I shall see that you are treated as such! Where
will you be pleased to lodge, my dear Stradella? The whole Altieri
palace is at your disposal, and you have but to choose your
apartments----'
'Surely,' interrupted the Queen, who was listening now, 'I have a prior
right to lodge a great artist in my house! Will you come and stay awhile
with me, my dear?' she asked, turning to Ortensia again, with a sudden
smile.
Ortensia was not at all overcome by the invitation, as the Queen perhaps
expected that she would be, and she answered with demure caution.
'Your Majesty is too kind,' she said, without committing herself.
'Very well, my dear Altieri,' the Queen went on at once, as if Ortensia
had already refused the proffered hospitality, 'I yield, but to His
Holiness only, not to you!'
She laughed that strangely hard ringing laugh of hers, that reminded
northern men of the sound of sharp skates cutting the smooth ice of a
frozen river, where leafless birches and frost-bound banks send the
notes echoing away between them till they are lost in the distance.
'The Pope owes your Majesty thanks,' the young courtier answered,
bending his head a little, though he could hardly take his eyes from
Ortensia.
Her Majesty Christina was out on one of her sight-seeing expeditions, in
which old Bernini felt himself highly honoured to play guide, though she
sometimes, as now, insisted on seeing sights which he would not
willingly have shown her, and on hearing explanations which he would
willingly have omitted. For though she set herself up as a profound
critic and a super-refined aesthetic, her real nature was at once coarse
and slightly Sadie, and she took pleasure in tales of bloodshed and
suffering which would have disgusted a healthy-minded woman of ordinary
sensitiveness. Indeed, as her Italian contemporaries knew her during
those long years she spent in Rome, she was very far from being the
royal Christina of the playwrights and poets. Her knowledge of art was
not that of the critic, but of the professional dealer in antiquities,
and though her opinion on the beauty of anything, from a picture to an
inlaid cabinet, was often mere nonsense, she was never mistaken as to
the price of the object. She was not an amateur, but an expert, and
though anything that was really fashionable pleased her, she would buy
nothing that had not an intrinsic value. In those first years of her
permanent residence in Rome she was rich, for in voluntarily abdicating
the throne she had reserved to herself a liberal income, which
afterwards dwindled to very little, and she kept up a considerable state
in the Palazzo Riario, that overlooks the river from the Trastevere
side. There was hardly an artist or a literary man in Rome, or a student
of science or a musician, who did not regularly pay his court to her,
and dedicate to her something of his best work. Not rarely, too, she
gave her advice; Bernini should finish his last statue in such and such
a way, Guidi should avoid one rhyme and introduce another, on pain of
her displeasure. Bernini yielded politely, because of all Italy's
artists of genius he was the most thoroughly cynical in following the
fashion of his time; Guidi obeyed because a dinner was always a dinner
to a starving youth of twenty, and a rhyme was no great price to pay for
it; but he quietly enclosed her suggestions in quotation marks, thereby
disclaiming any responsibility for them.
The young Paluzzo Altieri was nephew to the Cardinal who governed Rome
as the 'real' Pope, while the octogenarian Clement X., who was called
the 'nominal' Pope, spent most of his days more or less in his bed. The
Cardinal and all his relations had been adopted by him as 'nephews,' and
as he was the last of his race he had bestowed on them and their heirs
all his vast private possessions instead of enriching them out of the
treasury, as many popes did by their families.
Alberto Paluzzo Altieri was good-for-nothing, and like most really
worthless young men he exercised an extraordinary charm on every one who
knew him, both women and men. For to be a real good-for-nothing,
without being a criminal, implies a native genius for wasting other
people's time as agreeably as one's own, and for helping rich men to get
rid of their money with infinite pleasure and no profit at all, and for
making every woman believe that she can certainly convert and reform the
prodigal by the simple process of allowing him to fall in love with her,
which, of course, must elevate him to her moral and intellectual level.
There was nothing very remarkable about Alberto except that charm of
his. He was dark, he had straight black hair, and tolerably regular
features, like many young Romans; he was neither tall nor short, nor
exceptionally well made, and of the three young gentlemen who
accompanied the ex-Queen on her sight-seeing excursion, he was the least
ostentatiously dressed. But he had a wonderfully pleasant voice in
speaking, with the smile of a happy and phenomenally innocent boy, and
his bright brown eyes had the most guileless expression in the world. At
the present time it amused him to be Queen Christina's favourite,
perhaps because she was a genuine queen, or possibly because her
cold-blooded murder of Monaldeschi was still so fresh in every one's
memory that there was a spice of danger in the situation; but in any
case he was prepared for the first pleasant opportunity of changing his
allegiance which might present itself.
When he saw Stradella's young wife it occurred to him at once that such
a chance was within his reach, and he was not satisfied till he had made
the musician promise to move from the inn to the Altieri palace on the
next day but one; for Alberto was the eldest son, and neither his
father, who was old, nor his mother, who was a slave to her perpetual
devotions, ever attempted to oppose his wishes in such matters. Was he
not a model son? Could anything surpass his sweet-tempered affection for
his parents? Why should he not have what he liked? Good-for-nothings are
often their mothers' favourites; but Alberto had long ago won over his
father as well, and not him only, but his uncle also, the Cardinal, who
ruled Rome and the States of the Church like a despot. The great man was
really not sorry that one of his own family should occupy the most
important position in Queen Christina's household; for it is the
instinct of all ex-sovereigns to meddle in politics, and it was not
possible to predict what such a woman might do if she were bored.
Ortensia was a mere girl still, but her eyes had been opened of late,
and she did not fail to notice the impression she had made on the young
man; she was far too much in love with her husband, however, to care for
such admiration, or even to be pleased by it, and somehow the present
case seemed to be of bad omen.
The Queen and her party had already been long in the church, for they
had begun their round on the other side of the entrance, and were just
ending it when Stradella and his wife appeared; now, therefore, after a
few more words, they took themselves off amidst much bowing and scraping
on the part of all except the Queen herself. She smiled to Ortensia, and
nodded familiarly to Stradella, making a beckoning and inviting gesture
to him over her shoulder with her right hand as she turned away.
Alberto looked quickly at the musician, not so much taking him for a
possible rival as for a convenient successor; but the faintly
contemptuous smile that flickered in the musician's face as he saw the
careless signal assuredly did not mean that he was either flattered or
attracted. Ortensia saw the gesture too, and resented it; but a moment
later she smiled to herself at the thought that such a woman as the
Queen could ever win so much as a second thought from Alessandro.
The two had seen enough of San Stefano, and were glad to escape from the
nightmare of horrors depicted on its walls; but before going out they
waited a few minutes in the vestibule to allow the party time to get out
of sight.
'So that is the famous Queen Christina!' Ortensia said, expressing her
surprise and disappointment as soon as they were alone. 'Pina looks more
like a lady!'