"Tortured with winter's storms, and tossed with a tumultuous sea."
When God's curse forsook my country, it fell on me. I had been young
and heroic; I had fought well; what portion of the clock-work of Fate
had been allotted me I had utterly performed. Twelve years ago I became
a man and strove for my country's freedom; now she has attained her
heights without me, and I--what am I? A shapeless hulk, that stays in
the shadow, and that hates the world and the people of the world, and
verily the God above the world!
"Fight!" whispered Father Anselmo, the young priest, to me, at my last
shrift; and fight I did. For from Italy's bosom I had drawn the strength
of sword-arm, hip, and thigh; and I vowed to lose that arm and life and
all that made life dear toward the trampling of oppressors from the
sacred place.
My sun rose in storm, it continued in storm,--why not so have set? Why
not have died when swords swept their lightnings about me, when the
glorious thunders of battle rolled around and sulphurous blasts
enveloped, when the air was full of the bray of bugle and beat of drum,
of shout and shriek, exultation and agony? Why not have gone with the
crowd of souls reeking with daring and desire? Why, oh, why thus left
alone to wither? Why still hangs that sun above me, yet wrapt and veiled
and utterly obscured in thick, murk mists of sorrow and despair?
Peace!--let me tell you my story.
Since Father Anselmo--like all youth, whether under cowl, cap, or
crown--was a Liberal at heart, I had not wanted counsel; but when I
had told him all my yearnings and aspirations, had bared to him the
throbbings of my very thought, and he had replied in that one blessed
word, I hastened away. There were none to whom I should say farewell;
I was alone in the world. This wild blood of my veins ran in no other
veins; I knew thoroughly the wide freedom of solitude; the sins and
the virtues of my race, whatever they were, had culminated in me. As
I looked back, that morning, the castle, planted in a dimple of its
demesnes, old and gray and watched by purple peaks of Apennine, seemed
to hide its command only under the mask of silence. The wood through
which I went, with its alluring depths, the moss verdant in everlasting
spring beneath my eager feet, each bough I lifted, the blossoms that
blew their gales after, the bearded grasses that shook in the wind, all
gave me their secret sigh; all the sweet land around, the distant hill,
the distant shore, said, "Redeem me from my chains!" I came across a
sylvan statue, some faun nestled in the forest: the rains had stained,
frosts cracked, suns blistered it; but what of those? A vine covered
with thorns and stemmed with cords had wreathed about it and bound it
closely in serpent-coils. I stayed and tore apart the fetters till my
hands bled, cut away the twisting branches, and set the god free from
his bonds. Triumph rose to my lips, for I said, "So will I free my
country!" Ah, there was my error,--the shackling vines would grow again,
and infold the marble image that had consecrated the forest-glooms;
there is the flaw in all my work,--I have shorn, but have never uprooted
an evil. Youth is a fool; the young Titans cannot scale heaven,--heaven,
that, if what I live through be true, is ramparted round with tyrant
lies! But is it true? Am I what I seem to myself? Did I fail in my
purpose, in my will? Did Italy herself belie me? Did she, did she I
loved, she I worshipped, she the woman to whom I gave all, for whom I
sacrificed all, did she, too, forsake me? Ah, no! you will tell me Italy
is free. But I did not free her! She waits only to put on in Venice her
tiara. And for that other one, that fair Austrian woman, that devil whom
I serve and adore, that yellow-haired witch who brewed her incantations
in my holiest raptures,--she did not then play me foul, and falsely
feign love to win me to disgrace? May all the woes in Heaven's hands
fall on her!
God! what have I said? That I should live to ban her with a word! Did I
say it? Oh, but it was vain! Woe for her? No, no! all blessings shower
upon her, sunshine attend her, peace and gladness dwell about her!
Traitress though she were, I must love her yet; I cannot unlove her; I
would take her into my heart, and fold my arms about her.--Oh, I pray
you do not look upon me with that mocking smile! Pity me, rather! pity
this wretched heart that longs to curse God and die!--Nay, I want not
your idle words. Can good destroy? Can love persecute? I was a worm that
turned. What then? Why not have crushed me to annihilation? Oh, no, not
that! He took me up and shook me before the world, clipped me, and let
me fall. A derisive Deity,--why, the words give each other the lie!
Stop! Your sad eyes look as if you would go away, but for this infinite
pity in you. What makes you pity me? Because I am shorn of my strength?
because of all my fair proportions there is nothing left unshrivelled?
because my body--such as it is--is racked with hourly and perpetual
pain? because I die? For none of these? Truly, your judgments are
insenilable. For what then? Because,--yet, no, that cannot be,--because
I bear a stubborn heart? because I will not bend my soul as He has bent
my body? Partly,--but you are witless! What else? Because I toss off a
shield and buckler, you say. Because I will not lean upon a tower of
strength. Because I will not throw myself on the tide of divine love,
and trust myself to its course. It was that divine love, then, that
tower of strength, that shield and buckler, that made me this thing you
see. Tarpeia was enough. Away with your generalities! Go, go, you slave
of the past!
Yet no,--you have not gone? You believe what you say,--I know with those
eyes you cannot deceive. Ah, but I trusted her eyes once! Yet it gives
you rest;--your sorrows are not like mine,--there is no rest for me. I
cannot go and gather that balm of Gilead,--I have no legs. I have as
good as none. This wheel-chair and that dog of a turnkey are not the
equipage for such a journey.--Ah, do not turn from me now! My railing is
worse than my cursing, you feel indeed. Well, stay with me at least, and
if it is twelve years since you shrived me at first, perhaps you shall
shrive me at last,--for I doubt if I am ever brought out to this
sunshine again, if I do not die in the prison-damps to-night,--and you,
with all your change, are Father Anshmo, I think.--Stay, I will confess
to you, confess this. Man! man! this infinite pity of your soul for mine
throws a light on my dark ways; God's curse has fallen on me through
man's curse, why not God's love through man's love? Anselmo, though you
became priest, and I went to become hero, we were children together; I
was dear to you then; I am so still, it seems. In your love let me find
the love of that Heaven I have defied.--Stay, friend, yet another word.
If man's love can be so great, what can God's love be? That which I
said I said, in desperation; in very truth, that peace hangs like an
unattainable city in the clouds before my soul's vision, that love like
a broad river flowing through the lands, an atmosphere bathing the
worlds, the subtile essence and ether of space in which the farthest
star pursues its course,--why, then, should it escape me, the mote? Oh,
when the world turned from me, I sought to flee thither! I sighed for
the rest there! Wretched, alone, I have wept in the dark and in the
light that I might go and fling myself at the heavenly feet. But, do you
see? sin has broken down the bridge between God and me. Yet why,
then, is sin in the world,--that scum that rises in the creation and
fermentation of good,--why, but _as_ a bridge on which to re-seek those
shores from which we wander? Man, I do repent me,--in loving you I
find God. And you call that blasphemy!--Nay, go, indeed, my friend! So
humble, you are not the man for me. I can talk to the winds: they, at
least, do not visit me too roughly.
These are thy tears, Anselmo? Thou a priest, yet a man? Still with me?
Yet thou wilt have to bear with wayward moods,--scorn now, quiet then. I
am a tetchy man; I am an old man, too, though but just past thirty.--So!
I thank God for thee, dear friend!
* * * * *
Anselmo, look out on this scene below us here, as we sit on our lofty
battlement. Not on the turrets or the loopholes, the grates and spikes,
or all the fortified horror,--but on the earth. It is fair earth, though
not Italy; this is a mountain-fortress; here are all the lights and
shadows that play over grand hill-countries, and yonder are fields of
grain, where the winds and sunbeams play at storm, and a little hamlet's
sheltered valley. Doubtless there are towers, besides, half hidden in
the hills. It is Austria: slaves tread it, and tyrants drain it, it is
true,--but the wild, free gypsies troop now and then across it, and
though no fiction of law supports a claim they would scorn to make, they
use it so that you would swear they own it. Do you see how this iron
reticulation of social rule and custom and force makes a scaffolding on
which this tameless race build up their lives? I watch them often. Each
country has its compensations. Anselmo, this first made me tremble in
my petty defiance,--I, an ephemera of May, defying the dominations of
eternity!--Not so,--not too lowly; I also am, and each limitation of
life is as well, a domination of eternity. But I saw that it was no
purpose of God to have destroyed Italy; when men in weakness and
wantonness suffered their liberties to be torn from them, suffered
themselves to become enslaved, there was compensation in that their sons
had chance for heroic growth; they might, in efforts for freedom, create
virtues that, born to freedom, they would never have known. I, too, had
my field; I lost it; my enemy was myself. But when I think of her--Ay,
there it is! Do not let me think of her! I become mad, when I think of
her!--At least, allow me this: God's ways are dark. Not that? Not even
that? I needed what I have? If my ambitions, my passions, my will, had
ruled, my soul would have remained null? Ah, friend, and is that so much
the worse? It is the soul that aches!--I am a man of the people, a
man who acts,--I _was_, I mean,--not a man who thinks; and all your
subtleties of word perchance entrap me. I am not wary when you come to
logic. See! I surrender point after point. I shall be dead soon, you
know; when this morning's sun shave have set, when the moon shall hold
the night in fee, I shall depart,--wing up and away;--is it, that, my
body already dead, my mind sickens and dies with it, bit after bit, and
so I yield, and attest, that, without the agony of my life, death had
failed to burst my soul's husk? Oh, for I was born of an earthy race,
blood ran thick in our veins, we were sensuous and passionate, the
breath and steam of pleasure stifled our brains, and our filmy eyes
could not see heaven. Yes, yes, I needed it all; but, friend, it is
pitiful.
* * * * *
I like to sit here in the sun. It is only a twelvemonth, of all my long
years' imprisonment, that this has been allowed me. I like to sleep in
it, like any wild creature,--the lizard, a mere reptile,--the bird, a
hindered soul. To lie thus, weak as I am, but pillowed and warmed by the
searching genial rays, seems such comfort, when I think of the bed I
once had on the rack! This little slumber from which I wake revives me.
I feared not to find you, and did not unclose my eyes at once. It was
good in you to come, Anselmo; it must have been at risk of much.
You ask me to speak of my life since I went away on that morning of
your command,--to reconcile the hostile acts, to gather the scattered
reports. Hear it all!
You know my wealth was equal to my demand. I used it; before six
months were over, I was the life and soul of those who must needs be
conspirators. They saw that I was earnest, that my sacrifices were real;
they trusted me. Soon the movement had become general; all the smothered
elements of national life were convulsed and throbbing under the crust
of tyranny.
How proud and glad was I that morning after our victory! I saw great
Italy, beautiful Italy, once more put on her diadem; I beheld the future
prospect of one broad, free land, barriered by Alps and set impregnably
in summer seas, storied seas, keys of the West and East. We embraced
each other as brothers of this glorious nation, ancient Rome risen from
trance; as we walked the streets, we sang; Milan was turbulent with
gladness; no gala-day was ever half so bright; the very spires appeared
to spring in the white radiance of their flames up a deeper heaven; the
sun stayed at perpetual dawn for us. Walking along, jubilant and daring,
at length we paused in a square where a fountain dashed up its column of
sunshine, and laved our hands. By Heaven! We forgot independence, Italy,
freedom; we were crazed with success and hope; it seemed that the stream
was Austrian blood! Then, in the midst of all, I looked up,--and on a
balcony she stood. A fair woman, with hair like shredded light, her
great blue eyes wide and full and of intense dye, her nostril distended
with pride, and fear and hate of us,--but on the full lips, ripe with
crimson bloom, juicy and young and fresh, on those Love lay. The others
wound forward,--I with them, yet apart; and my eyes became fixed on
hers. Then I lifted my cap with its tricolor. She did not return the
courtesy, but stood as if spellbound, one hand threading back the
straying hair, the lips a little parted; suddenly she turned to fly,
that hand upraised to the casement's side, and still, as she looked
back, the beautiful eyes on mine. My companions had preceded me; we were
alone in the square; she wavered as she stood, then tore a rose from her
bosom, kissed it deep into its heart, and tossed it to me.
"Let all its petals be joys!" I said, and she vanished.
Oh, friend, the leaves have fallen, the rose is dead! Look! I have kept
it through all,--sear leaf and withered spray!
That night we danced; and the Austrian girl was there. They told me she
was exiled, and that she loved liberty; no one told me she was a spy. I
saw her swim along the dance, the white satin of her raiment flashing
perpetual interchange of lustrous and obscure, the warm air playing in
the lace that fell like the spray of the fountain round her golden hair
and over her pearly shoulder; grace swept in all her motions, beauty
crowned her, she seemed the perfect, pitch of womanhood.
Still she swims along the lazy line with indolent pleasure, still floats
in dreamy waltz-circles perchance, still bends to the swaying tune
as the hazel-branch bonds to the hidden treasure,--but as for me, my
dancing days are over.
By-and-by it was I with whom she danced, whose hand she touched, on whom
she leaned. I wondered if there were any man so blest; I listened to her
breath, I watched her cheek, our eyes met, and I loved her. The music
grew deeper, more impassioned; we stood and listened to it,--for she
danced then no more,--our hearts beat time to it, the wind wandering at
the casement played in its measure; we said no words, but now and then
each sought the other's glance, and, convicted there, turned in sudden
shame away. When I bade her good-night, which I might never have done
but that the revel broke, a great curl of her hair blew across my lips.
I was bold,--I was heated, too, with this half-secret life of my heart,
this warm blood that went leaping so riotously through my veins, and yet
so silently,--I took my dagger from my belt and severed the curl. See,
friend! will you look at it? It is like the little gold snakes of the
Campagna, is it not? each thread, so fine and fair, a separate ray of
light: once it was part of her! See how it twists round my hand! Haste!
haste! let me put it up, lest I go mad!--Where was I?
I busied myself again in the work to be done; because of our victory we
must not rest; once more all went forward. I saw the Austrian woman only
from a window, or in a church, or as she walked in the gardens, for many
days. Then the times grew hotter; I left the place, and lived with stern
alarums; and thither she also came. I never sought what sent her. She
was with the wounded, with the dying. Then the need of her was past, and
she and all the others took their way. At length that also came to an
end.
We were in Rome,--and thither, some time previously, she had gone.
One night, our business for the day was over, our plans for the morrow
laid, our messages received, our messengers despatched, and those who
had been conspirators and now bade fair to be saviours were sleeping.
Sleep seemed to fold the world; each bough and twig was silent in
repose; the spectral moonlight itself slept as it bathed the air. I
alone wandered and waked. With me there were too many cares for rest;
work kept me on the alert; to court slumber at once was not easy after
the nervous tension of duty. I was torn, too, with conflicting feelings:
half my soul went one way in devotion to my country, half my soul
swerved to the other as I thought of the Austrian woman. I grew tired of
the streets and squares; something that should be fragrant and bowery
attracted me. I mounted on the broken water-god of a dry bath and leaped
a garden-wall.
No sooner was I there than I knew why I had come. This was her garden.
Heart of Heaven! how all things spoke of her! How the great white roses
hung their doubly heavy heads and poured their perfume out to her! how
the sprays shivered as T spoke the name she owned! how the nightingales
ceased for a breath their warbling as she rustled down a fragrant path
and met me! All her hair was swept back in one great mass and held by an
ivory comb; a white cloak wrapped her white array; she was jewel-less
and stripped of lustre; she was like pearl, milky as a shell, white as
the moonlight that followed in her wake.
"You breathed my name,--I came," she said.
"Pardon!" I replied. "I heard the fountains dash and the nightingales
sing, and I but came for rest under the spell."
"And have you found it?"
"I have found it."
We remained silent then, while floods of passion gathered and lay darkly
still in our hearts. No, no! I know now that it was not so; yet I will
tell it, tell it all, as I thought it then.
She did not stir; indeed, she had such capability of rest, that, had I
not spoken, she would never have stirred, it may be. She knew that my
glance was upon her; for herself, she looked at the broad lilies that
grew at her feet, and listened to the melody that seemed to bubble from
a thousand throats with interfluent sound upon the night. It was her
repose that soothed me: moulded clay is not so calm, the marble rose of
silence not half so beautifully folded to dreamful rest, so lovely
and so still no garden-statue could have been; the cool, soft night
infiltrated its tranquillity through all her being.
As we stood, the nightingales gave us capricious pause; one alone,
distant and clear, fluted its faint piping like the phantom of the
finished strain. Another sound broke the air and floated along on this
too delicious accompaniment: music, fine and far. Some other lover sang
to her his serenade. The voice in its golden sonority rose and crept
toward her with persuading sweetness, winding through all the alleys and
hovering over the plots of greenery with a tranquil strength, as if such
song were but the natural spirit of the night, or as if the soul of the
broad calm and silence itself had taken voice.
"Thy beauty, like a star
Whose life is light,
Shines on me from afar.
And on the night.
"Each midnight blossom bends
With sweetest weight,
And to thy casement sends
Its fragrant freight.
"Each, air that faintly curls
About thy nest
Its daring pinion furls
Within thy breast.
"The night is spread for thee,
The heavens are wide,
And the dark earth's mystery
Is magnified.
"For thee the garden waits,
The hours delay,
The fountains toss their jets
Of shimmering spray.
"Then leave thy dim delight
In dreams above,
Come forth, and crown the night
With her I love!"
She listened, but did not lift her head or suffer the change of a fold;
then there came the tinkle of the strings that embalmed the tune, and
the singer's steps grew soundless as he left the street. A new phantasm
crept upon me. What right had any other man to sing to her his
love-songs? Did she not live, was not her beauty created, her soul
given, for me? Did not the very breath she drew belong to me? My voice,
hoarse and husky, disturbed the stillness, my eyes flamed on her.
"Do you love that man who sang?" I murmured.
"Signor, I love you," she said.
Then we were silent as before, but she stood no longer alone and
opposite. One passionate step, an outstretched arm, and her head on my
bosom, my lips bent to hers.
All the nightingales burst forth in choral redundance of song, all the
low winds woke and fainted again through the balmy boughs, all the great
stars bent out of heaven to shed their sweet influences upon us.
It seemed to me that in that old palace-garden life began, my memory
went out in confused joy. I held her, she was mine! mine, mine, in life
and for eternity! Fool! it was I who was hers! Man, you are a priest,
and must not love. I, too, was sworn a priest to my country. So we break
oaths!
O moments of swift bliss, why are you torture to remember? Let me not
think how the night slipped into dawn as we roamed, how pale gold
filtered through the darkness and bleached the air, how bird after bird
with distant chirrup and breaking time announced the day. She left me,
and as well it might be night. I wound a strange way home. I questioned
if it were the dream of a fevered brain; I wondered, would she remember
when next she saw me? None met with me that day; I forgot all. With the
night I again waited in the garden. In vain I waited; she came no more.
I waxed full of love's anger, I crushed the tendril and the vine, I
wandered up and down the walks and cursed these thorns that tore my
heart. As I went, an angle of the shrubbery allured; I turned, and lo!
full radiance from open doors, and silvery sounds of sport. I leaned
against the ilex, lost in shadow, and watched her as she stirred and
floated there before me in the light. She seemed to carry with her an
atmosphere of warmth and brilliance; all things were ordered as she
moved; one throng melted before her, another followed. By-and-by
she stood at the long casement to seek acquaintance with the night.
Constantly I thought to meet her eye, and I would not reflect that she
saw only dusk and vacancy. Then indignantly I stepped from the ilex and
confronted her. A low, glad cry escapes her lips, she holds her arms
toward me and would cross the sill, when a voice constrains her from
within. It is he, the accursed Neapolitan.
"Signor," she says, "a vampire flitted past the dawn."
Dawn indeed was breaking. The man still stood there when she left him,
and still looked out; his eyes lay on me, and irate and motionless
I returned their gaze. One by one her guests departed; with a last
threatening glance, he, too, withdrew. I plunged into the silent places
again, and waited now, assured that she would come. The constellations
paled, and still I was alone. Then I wandered restlessly again, and,
winding through thickets of leaf-distilled perfume, I came where just
above a balcony, and almost beyond reach from it, a light burned dimly
in one narrow window. I did not ask myself why I did it, but in another
moment I had clambered to the place, and, standing there, I bent forward
to my right, pulled away the tangle of ivy that filled half the niche,
and was peering in.
"What is that?" said a voice I knew, with its silvery echo of the South,
the accursed Neapolitan's.
"It is the owl that builds in the recess, and stirs the ivy," she
replied.
"Haste!" said a third,--"the day breaks."
She was sitting at a low table, writing; Pia, the old nurse, stood
behind her chair; the oil was richly scented that she burned; the
single light illumined only her, and covered with her shadow the low
ceiling,--a shadow that seemed to hang above her like a pall ready to
fall from ghostly fingers and smother her in its folds; the others
lounged about the room and waited on her pen, in gloom they, their faces
gleaming from that dusk demoniacly. It was a concealed room, entered by
secret ways, unknown to others than these.
When she had written, she sealed.
"There is no more to await. Adieu," she said.
"It is some transfer of property, some legal paper, some sale, some
gift," I said to myself, as I watched them take it and depart. Then she
was alone again. I saw her start up, pace the narrow spot,--saw her
stand and pull down the masses, so interspersed with golden light, that
crowned her head, and look at them wonderingly as they overlay her
fingers,--then saw those fingers clasped across the eyes, and the
lips part with a sigh that, prolonged and deepened, grew to be a
groan,--while all the time that shadow on the ceiling hovered and
fluttered and grew still, till it seemed the cluster of Eumenides
waiting to pounce on its prey. In another pause I had taken the perilous
step, had hung by the crumbling rock, the rending vine, had entered and
was beside her. A cold horror iced her face; she warned me away with her
trembling hands.
"What have you seen?" she said.
"You, O my love, in grief."
"And no more?"
"I have seen you give a letter to the Neapolitan, who departs to-morrow
with the little Viennois,--perhaps to your friends at home."
"And that is all?"
"That is all."
"I have no friends at home. To whom, then, could the letter be?"
"How should I divine?"
"It was for the Austrian Government! Now love me, if you dare!"
"And do you suppose I did not know it?"
"Then is your love for me but a shield and mask?"
As I gazed in reply, my steady eyes, the soul that kindled my smile, my
open arms, all must have asseverated for me the truth of my devotion.
"Still?" she said. "Still? And you can keep your faith to me and to
Italy?"
What was this doubt of me, this stain she would have cast upon my honor?
That armor's polish was too intense to sustain it; it rolled off like
a cloud from heaven. Italy's fortunes were _my_ fortunes; it was
impossible for me to betray them; this woman I would win to wed them.
How long, how long my blood had felt this thing in her! how long my
brain had rebelled! In a proud innocence, I stood with folded arms, and
could afford to smile.
"Stay!" she said again, after our mute gaze, and laying her hand upon my
arm. "You shall not love me in vain, you shall not trust me for nothing.
Your cause is mine to-day. That is the last message I send to Vienna."
And then I believed her.
The light, slanting up, crept in and touched the brow of an ideal bust
of Mithras which she had invested with her faintly-faded wreath of
heliotropes; their fragrance falling through the place already made the
atmosphere more rich than that of chest of almond-wood,--this perfume
that is like the soul of the earth itself exhaled to the amorous air.
Behind an alabaster shrine she lighted a holy-taper, slowly to waste
and pale in the spreading day. We went to the window, where among the
ivy-nooks day's life was just astir with gaudy wings.
"All will be seeking you, and yet you cannot go," she said.
"Why can I not go?"
"It is broad morning."
"And what of that?"
"One thing. You shall not compromise yourself, going from the house of
an Austrian woman and worse!"
She was too winningly imperious to fail. I delayed, and together we
looked out on the rosy sky.
"Come down," she said at last, "and on an arbor-moss the sun shall
drowse you, the flower-scents be your opiates, the birds your lullaby,
and I your guard."
We went, and, wandering again through the garden-paths, she brushed
the dew with her trailing festal garments, and plucked the great blue
convolvuli to crown her forehead. Soon, on a plot of Roman violets,
screened by tall trees and trellises, we breakfasted. One might have
said that the cloth was laid above giant mushroom-stems, the service
acorn-cups and calices of milky blooms; golden was the honey-comb we
broke, manna was our bread; she caught the water in her hand from the
fountain and pledged me, and swift as sunshine I bent forward and
prevented the thirsty lips. Then she laid my head on her shoulder, with
her cool finger-tips she stroked the temples and soothed the lids,
they fell and closed on the vision bending above me,--loveliness like
painting, pallor that was waxen, yellow tresses wreathed with azure
stars, eyes that caught the hue again and absorbed all Tyrian dyes.
The plash and bubble of waters swooned dreamily about my ears, and far
off it seemed I heard the wild, sad songs of her native land, that now
in tinkling tune, and now in long, slow rise and fall of mellow sound,
swathed me with sweet satiety to dreamless rest.
The sun stole round and rose above the screen of trees at last and woke
me. I was alone, the silent statues looked on me, the breath of the dark
violets crushed by my weight rose in shrouding incense. I lifted myself
and searched for her, and asked why I must needs believe each hour of
joy a dream,--then went and cooled my brow in the lucent basin at hand,
and waited till she came, in changed raiment, and gliding toward me as
the Spirit of Noon might have come. She led me in, well refreshed, and
in the cool north rooms of the palace the warm hours of the day slipped
like beads from a leash. It scarcely seemed her fingers that touched the
harp to tune, but as if some herald of sirocco, some faint, hot breeze,
had brushed between the strings. It scarcely seemed her voice that
talked to me, but something distant as the tone in a sad sea-shell. What
I said I knew not; I was in a maze, bewildered with bliss; I only knew I
loved her, I only felt my joy.
She told me many things: stories of her mountain-home, in distant view
of the old fortress of Hellberg,--this is the fortress of Hellberg,
Anselmo,--of her youth, her maidenhood, her life in Vienna, her lovers
in Venice, her health, that had sent her finally there where we sat
together.
"I thought it sad," she said at length, "when they exiled me, so to
say, from Vienna and all my gay career there, because Venice, with its
water-breaths, might heal my attainted health,--and sadder when the
winter bade me leave night-tides and gondolas and repair to Rome. Now
spring has come, and all the hills are blue with these deep violets,
the very air is balm, the year is at flood, and life at what seems its
height is perfected with you."
"But you love that land you left?" I replied, after a while, and lifting
her face to meet my gaze.
"Love it? Oh, yes! You love your land as you love a person in whose
veins and yours kindred blood runs, because it is hardly possible to do
otherwise. The land gave me life, that is all; I never knew till lately
that it was anything to be thankful for. It is not sufficiently a
_country_ to kindle enthusiasm; it has no national life, you know,--is
an automaton put through its motions by paid and cunning mechanists.
I thought it right to obey orders and serve it. But now _you_ are my
country,--I serve only you."
It was easy so to pass to my own hopes, to my own life, to my land, the
land to which I had vowed the last drop of blood in my gift. Her eyes
beamed upon me, smiles rippled over her face, she clasped me now and
then and sealed my brow with kisses. Soon I left her side and strode
from end to end of the long _salon_, speaking eagerly of the future that
opened to Italy. I told her how the beautiful corpse lay waiting its
resurrection, and how the Angel of Eternal Life hovered with spreading
wings above, ready to sound his general trump. My pulses beat like
trip-hammers, and as I passed a mirror I saw myself white with the
excitement that fired me.
"You are wild with your joyous emotion," she said, coming forward and
clinging round me. "Your eyes flame from depths of darkness. What, after
all, is Italy to you, that your blood should boil in thinking of her
wrongs? These people, for whom in your terrible magnanimity, I feel that
you would sacrifice even me, to-morrow would turn and rend you!"
"No, no!" I answered. "All things but you! You, you, are before my
country!"
The tears filled her large, serious eyes, her lips quivered in
melancholy smile, as sunshine plays with shower over autumn woodlands.
Was I not right? Right, though the universe declare me wrong! I would do
it all again; if she loved me, she had authority to be first of all in
my care; in love lie the highest duties of existence.
I had forgotten the subject on which we spoke; I was thinking only of
her, her beauty, her tenderness, and the debt of deathless devotion that
I owed her. It was otherwise in her thought; she had not dropped the old
thread, but, looking up, resumed.
"It is, then, an idea that you serve?"
Brought back from my reverie, "Could I serve a more worthy master?" I
asked.
"You do not particularly love your countrymen, nine-tenths of whom
you have never seen? You do not particularly hate the hostile race,
nine-tenths of whom you have never seen?"
"Abstractly, I hate them. Kindliness of heart prevents individual
hatred, and without kindliness of heart in the first place there can be
no pure patriotism."
"And for the other part. What do you care for these men who herd in the
old tombs, raise a pittance of vetch, and live the life of brutes? what
for the lazzaroni of Naples, for the brigands of Romagua, the murderers
of the Apennine? Nay, nothing, indeed. It is, then, for the land that
you care, the mere face of the country, because it entombs myriad
ancestors, because it is familiar in its every aspect, because it
overflows with abundant beauty. But is the land less fair when foreign
sway domineers it? do the blossoms cease to crowd the gorge, the mists
to fill it with rolling color? is the sea less purple around you, the
sky less blue above, the hills, the fields, the forests, less lavishly
lovely?"
"Yes, the land is less fair," I said. "It is a fair slave. It loses
beauty in the proportion of difference that exists between any two
creatures,--the one a slave of supple symmetry and perfect passivity,
the other a daring woman who stands nearer heaven by all the height of
her freedom. And for these people of whom you speak, first I care for
them because they _are_ my countrymen,--and next, because the idea which
I serve is a purpose to raise them into free and responsible agents."
"Each man does that for himself; no one can do it for another."
"But any one may remove the obstacles from another's way, scatter the
scales from the eyes of the blind, strip the dead coral from the reef."
She took yellow honeysuckles from a vase of massed amethyst and began to
weave them in her yellow hair,--humming a tune, the while, that was full
of the subtilest curves of sound. Soon she had finished, and finished
the fresh thought as well.
"Do you know, my own," she said, "the men who begin as hierophants of
an idea are apt to lose sight of the pure purpose, and to become the
dogged, bigoted, inflexible, unreasoning adherents of a party? All
leaders of liberal movements should beware how far they commit
themselves to party-organizations. Only that man is free. It is easier
to be a partisan than a patriot."