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Sant\' Ilario

F >> F. Marion Crawford >> Sant\' Ilario



This eBook was produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.



SANT' ILARIO

BY

F. MARION CRAWFORD


AUTHOR OF "MR. ISAACS," "DR. CLAUDIUS," "ZOROASTER," "A TALE OF A
LONELY PARISH," ETC.




TO

My Wife

THIS SECOND PART OF "SARACINESCA" IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED






CHAPTER I.


Two years of service in the Zouaves had wrought a change in
Anastase Gouache, the painter. He was still a light man, nervously
built, with small hands and feet, and a delicate face; but
constant exposure to the weather had browned his skin, and a life
of unceasing activity had strengthened his sinews and hardened his
compact frame. The clustering black curls were closely cropped,
too, while the delicate dark moustache had slightly thickened. He
had grown to be a very soldierly young fellow, straight and alert,
quick of hand and eye, inured to that perpetual readiness which is
the first characteristic of the good soldier, whether in peace or
war. The dreamy look that was so often in his face in the days
when he sat upon a high stool painting the portrait of Donna
Tullia Mayer, had given place to an expression of wide-awake
curiosity in the world's doings.

Anastase was an artist by nature and no amount of military service
could crush the chief aspirations of his intelligence. He had not
abandoned work since he had joined the Zouaves, for his hours of
leisure from duty were passed in his studio. But the change in his
outward appearance was connected with a similar development in his
character. He himself sometimes wondered how he could have ever
taken any interest in the half-hearted political fumbling which
Donna Tullia, Ugo Del Ferice, and others of their set used to
dignify by the name of conspiracy. It seemed to him that his ideas
must at that time have been deplorably confused and lamentably
unsettled. He sometimes took out the old sketch of Madame Mayer's
portrait, and setting it upon his easel, tried to realise and
bring back those times when she had sat for him. He could recall
Del Ferice's mock heroics, Donna Tullia's ill-expressed
invectives, and his own half-sarcastic sympathy in the liberal
movement; but the young fellow in an old velveteen jacket who used
to talk glibly about the guillotine, about stringing-up the
clericals to street-lamps and turning the churches into popular
theatres, was surely not the energetic, sunburnt Zouave who had
been hunting down brigands in the Samnite hills last summer, who
spent three-fourths of his time among soldiers like himself, and
who had pledged his honour to follow the gallant Charette and
defend the Pope as long as he could carry a musket.

There is a sharp dividing line between youth and manhood.
Sometimes we cross it early, and sometimes late, but we do not
know that we are passing from one life to another as we step
across the boundary. The world seems to us the same for a while,
as we knew it yesterday and shall know it to-morrow. Suddenly, we
look back and start with astonishment when we see the past, which
we thought so near, already vanishing in the distance, shapeless,
confused, and estranged from our present selves. Then, we know
that we are men, and acknowledge, with something like a sigh, that
we have put away childish things.

When Gouache put on the gray jacket, the red sash and the yellow
gaiters, he became a man and speedily forgot Donna Tullia and her
errors, and for some time afterwards he did not care to recall
them. When he tried to remember the scenes at the studio in the
Via San Basilio, they seemed very far away. One thing alone
constantly reminded him disagreeably of the past, and that was his
unfortunate failure to catch Del Ferice when the latter had
escaped from Rome in the disguise of a mendicant friar. Anastase
had never been able to understand how he had missed the fugitive.
It had soon become known that Del Ferice had escaped by the very
pass which Gouache was patrolling, and the young Zouave had felt
the bitterest mortification in losing so valuable and so easy a
prey. He often thought of it and promised himself that he would
visit his anger on Del Ferice if he ever got a chance; but Del
Ferice was out of reach of his vengeance, and Donna Tullia Mayer
had not returned to Rome since the previous year. It had been
rumoured of late that she had at last fulfilled the engagement
contracted some time earlier, and had consented to be called the
Contessa Del Ferice; this piece of news, however, was not yet
fully confirmed. Gouache had heard the gossip, and had immediately
made a lively sketch on the back of a half-finished picture,
representing Donna Tullia, in her bridal dress, leaning upon the
arm of Del Ferice, who was arrayed in a capuchin's cowl, and
underneath, with his brush, he scrawled a legend, "Finis coronat
opus."

It was nearly six o'clock in the afternoon of the 23d of
September. The day had been rainy, but the sky had cleared an hour
before sunset, and there was a sweet damp freshness in the air,
very grateful after the long weeks of late summer. Anastase
Gouache had been on duty at the Serristori barracks in the Borgo
Santo Spirito and walked briskly up to the bridge of Sant' Angelo.
There was not much movement in the streets, and the carriages were
few. A couple of officers were lounging at the gate of the castle
and returned Gouache's salute as he passed. In the middle of the
bridge he stopped and looked westward, down the short reach of the
river which caught a lurid reflection of the sunset on its eddying
yellow surface. He mused a moment, thinking more of the details of
his duty at the barracks than of the scene before him. Then he
thought of the first time he had crossed the bridge in his Zouave
uniform, and a faint smile flickered on his brown features. It
happened almost every day that he stopped at the same place, and
as particular spots often become associated with ideas that seem
to belong to them, the same thought almost always recurred to his
mind as he stood there. Then followed the same daily wondering as
to how all these things were to end; whether he should for years
to come wear the red sash and the yellow gaiters, a corporal of
Zouaves, and whether for years he should ask himself every day the
same question. Presently, as the light faded from the houses of
the Borgo, he turned away with an imperceptible shrug of the
shoulders and continued his walk upon the narrow pavement at the
side of the bridge. As he descended the step at the end, to the
level of the square, a small bright object in a crevice of the
stones attracted his attention. He stooped and picked it up.

It was a little gold pin, some two inches long, the head beaten
out and twisted into the shape of the letter C. Gouache examined
it attentively, and saw that it must have been long used, for it
was slightly bent in more than one place as though it had often
been thrust through some thick material. It told no other tale of
its possessor, however, and the young man slipped it into his
pocket and went on his way, idly wondering to whom the thing
belonged. He reflected that if he had been bent on any important
matter he would probably have considered the finding of a bit of
gold as a favourable omen; but he was merely returning to his
lodging as usual, and had no engagement for the evening. Indeed,
he expected no event in his life at that time, and following the
train of his meditation he smiled a little when he thought that he
was not even in love. For a Frenchman, nearly thirty years of age,
the position was an unusual one enough. In Gouache's case it was
especially remarkable. Women liked him, he liked them, and he was
constantly in the society of some of the most beautiful in the
world. Nevertheless, he turned from one to another and found a
like pleasure in the conversation of them all. What delighted him
in the one was not what charmed him most in the next, but the
equilibrium of satisfaction was well maintained between the dark
and the fair, the silent beauty and the pretty woman of
intelligence. There was indeed one whom he thought more noble in
heart and grander in symmetry of form and feature, and stronger in
mind than the rest; but she was immeasurably removed from the
sphere of his possible devotion by her devoted love of her
husband, and he admired her from a distance, even while speaking
with her.

As he passed the Apollo theatre and ascended the Via di Tordinona
the lights were beginning to twinkle in the low doorways, and the
gas-lamps, then a very recent innovation in Rome, shone out one by
one in the distance. The street is narrow, and was full of
traffic, even in the evening. Pedestrians elbowed their way along
in the dusk, every now and then flattening themselves against the
dingy walls to let a cab or a carriage rush past them, not without
real risk of accident. Before the deep, arched gateway of the
Orso, one of the most ancient inns in the world, the empty wine-
carts were getting ready for the return journey by night across
the Campagna, the great bunches of little bells jingling loudly in
the dark as the carters buckled the harness on their horses'
backs.

Just as Gouache reached this place, the darkest and most crowded
through which he had to pass, a tremendous clatter and rattle from
the Via dell' Orso made the hurrying people draw back to the
shelter of the doorsteps and arches. It was clear that a runaway
horse was not far off. One of the carters, the back of whose
waggon was half-way across the opening of the street, made
desperate efforts to make his beast advance and clear the way; but
the frightened animal only backed farther up. A moment later the
runaway charged down past the tail of the lumbering vehicle. The
horse himself just cleared the projecting timbers of the cart, but
the cab he was furiously dragging caught upon them while going at
full speed and was shivered to pieces, throwing the horse heavily
upon the stones, so that he slid along several feet on his head
and knees with the fragments of the broken shafts and the wreck of
the harness about him. The first man to spring from the crowd and
seize the beast's head was Anastase. He did not see that the same
instant a large private carriage, drawn by a pair of powerful
horses, emerged quickly from the Vicolo dei Soldati, the third of
the streets which meet the Via di Tordinona at the Orso. The
driver, who owing to the darkness had not seen the disaster which
had just taken place, did his best to stop in time; but before the
heavy equipage could be brought to a stand Anastase had been
thrown to the ground, between the hoofs of the struggling cab-
horse and the feet of the startled pair of bays. The crowd closed
in as near as was safe, while the confusion and the shouts of the
people and the carters increased every minute.

The coachman of the private carriage threw the reins to the
footman and sprang down to go to the horses' heads.

"You have run over a Zouave!" some one shouted from the crowd.

"Meno male! Thank goodness it was not one of us!" exclaimed
another voice.

"Where is he? Get him out, some of you!" cried the coachman as he
seized the reins close to the bit.

By this time a couple of stout gendarmes and two or three soldiers
of the Antibes legion had made their way to the front and were
dragging away the fallen cab-horse. A tall, thin, elderly
gentleman, of a somewhat sour countenance, descended from the
carriage and stooped over the injured soldier.

"It is only a Zouave, Excellency," said the coachman, with a sort
of sigh of relief.

The tall gentleman lifted Gouache's head a little so that the
light from the carriage-lamp fell upon his face. He was quite
insensible, and there was blood upon his pale forehead and white
cheeks. One of the gendarmes came forward.

"We will take care of him, Signore," he said, touching his three-
cornered hat. "But I must beg to know your revered name," he
added, in the stock Italian phrase. "Capira--I am very sorry--but
they say your horses--"

"Put him into my carriage," answered the elderly gentleman
shortly. "I am the Principe Montevarchi."

"But, Excellency--the Signorina---" protested the coachman. The
prince paid no attention to the objection and helped the gendarme
to deposit Anastase in the interior of the vehicle. Then he gave
the man a silver scudo.

"Send some one to the Serristori barracks to say that a Zouave has
been hurt and is at my house," he said. Therewith he entered the
carriage and ordered the coachman to drive home.

"In heaven's name, what has happened, papa?" asked a young voice
in the darkness, tremulous with excitement.

"My dear child, there has been an accident in the street, and this
young man has been wounded, or killed--"

"Killed! A dead man in the carriage!" cried the young girl in some
terror, and shrinking away into the corner.

"You should really control your nerves, Faustina," replied her
father in austere tones. "If the young man is dead, it is the will
of Heaven. If he is alive we shall soon find it out. Meanwhile I
must beg you to be calm--to be calm, do you understand?"

Donna Faustina Montevarchi made no answer to this parental
injunction, but withdrew as far as she could into the corner of
the back seat, while her father supported the inanimate body of
the Zouave as the carriage swung over the uneven pavement. In a
few minutes they rolled beneath a deep arch and stopped at the
foot of a broad marble staircase.

"Bring him upstairs carefully, and send for a surgeon," said the
prince to the men who came forward. Then he offered his arm to his
daughter to ascend the steps, as though nothing had happened, and
without bestowing another look on the injured soldier.

Donna Faustina was just eighteen years old, and had only quitted
the convent of the Sacro Cuore a month earlier. It might have been
said that she was too young to be beautiful, for she evidently
belonged to that class of women who do not attain their full
development until a later period. Her figure was almost too
slender, her face almost too delicate and ethereal. There was
about her a girlish look, an atmosphere of half-saintly
maidenhood, which was not so much the expression of her real
nature as the effect produced by her being at once very thin and
very fresh. There was indeed nothing particularly angelic about
her warm brown eyes, shaded by unusually long black lashes; and
little wayward locks of chestnut hair, curling from beneath the
small round hat of the period, just before the small pink ears,
softened as with a breath of worldliness the grave outlines of the
serious face. A keen student of women might have seen that the dim
religious halo of convent life which still clung to the young girl
would soon fade and give way to the brilliancy of the woman of the
world. She was not tall, though of fully average height, and
although the dress of that time was ill-adapted to show to
advantage either the figure or the movements, it was evident, as
she stepped lightly from the carriage, that she had a full share
of ease and grace. She possessed that unconscious certainty in
motion which proceeds naturally from the perfect proportion of all
the parts, and which exercises a far greater influence over men
than a faultless profile or a dazzling skin.

Instead of taking her father's arm, Donna Faustina turned and
looked at the face of the wounded Zouave, whom three men had
carefully taken from the carriage and were preparing to carry
upstairs. Poor Gouache was hardly recognisable for the smart
soldier who had crossed the bridge of Sant' Angelo half an hour
earlier. His uniform was all stained with mud, there was blood
upon his pale face, and his limbs hung down, powerless and limp.
But as the young girl looked at him, consciousness returned, and
with it came the sense of acute suffering. He opened his eyes
suddenly, as men often do when they revive after being stunned,
and a short groan escaped from his lips. Then, as he realised that
he was in the presence of a lady, he made an effort as though to
release himself from the hands of those who carried him, and to
stand upon his feet.

"Pardon me, Madame," he began to say, but Faustina checked him by
a gesture.

Meanwhile old Montevarchi had carefully scrutinised the young
man's face, and had recognised him, for they had often met in
society.

"Monsieur Gouache!" he exclaimed in surprise. At the same time he
made the men move on with their burden.

"You know him, papa?" whispered Donna Faustina as they followed
together. "He is a gentleman? I was right?"

"Of course, of course," answered her father. "But really,
Faustina, had you nothing better to do than to go and look into
his face? Imagine, if he had known you! Dear me! If you begin like
this, as soon as you are out of the convent--"

Montevarchi left the rest of the sentence to his daughter's
imagination, merely turning up his eyes a little as though
deprecating the just vengeance of heaven upon his daughter's
misconduct.

"Really, papa--" protested Faustina.

"Yes--really, my daughter--I am much surprised," returned her
incensed parent, still speaking in an undertone lest the injured
man should overhear what was said.

They reached the head of the stairs and the men carried Gouache
rapidly away; not so quickly, however, as to prevent Faustina from
getting another glimpse of his face. His eyes were open and met
hers with an expression of mingled interest and gratitude which
she did not forget. Then he was carried away and she did not see
him again.

The Montevarchi household was conducted upon the patriarchal
principle, once general in Rome, and not quite abandoned even now,
twenty years later than the date of Gouache's accident. The palace
was a huge square building facing upon two streets, in front and
behind, and opening inwards upon two courtyards. Upon the lower
floor were stables, coach-houses, kitchens, and offices
innumerable. Above these there was built a half story, called a
mezzanino--in French, entresol, containing the quarters of the
unmarried sons of the house, of the household chaplain, and of two
or three tutors employed in the education of the Montevarchi
grandchildren. Next above, came the "piano nobile," or state
apartments, comprising the rooms of the prince and princess, the
dining-room, and a vast suite of reception-rooms, each of which
opened into the next in such a manner that only the last was not
necessarily a passage. In the huge hall was the dais and canopy
with the family arms embroidered in colours once gaudy but now
agreeably faded to a softer tone. Above this floor was another,
occupied by the married sons, their wives and children; and high
over all, above the cornice of the palace, were the endless
servants' quarters and the roomy garrets. At a rough estimate the
establishment comprised over a hundred persons, all living under
the absolute and despotic authority of the head of the house, Don
Lotario Montevarchi, Principe Montevarchi, and sole possessor of
forty or fifty other titles. From his will and upon his pleasure
depended every act of every member of his household, from his
eldest son and heir, the Duca di Bellegra, to that of Pietro
Paolo, the under-cook's scullion's boy. There were three sons and
four daughters. Two of the sons were married, to wit, Don Ascanio,
to whom his father had given his second title, and Don Onorato,
who was allowed to call himself Principe di Cantalupo, but who
would have no legal claim to that distinction after his father's
death. Last of the three came Don Carlo, a young fellow of twenty
years, but not yet emancipated from the supervision of his tutor.
Of the daughters, the two eldest, Bianca and Laura, were married
and no longer lived in Rome, the one having been matched with a
Neapolitan and the other with a Florentine. There remained still
at home, therefore, the third, Donna Flavia, and the youngest of
all the family, Donna Faustina. Though Flavia was not yet two and
twenty years of age, her father and mother were already beginning
to despair of marrying her, and dropped frequent hints about the
advisability of making her enter religion, as they called it; that
is to say, they thought she had better take the veil and retire
from the world.

The old princess Montevarchi was English by birth and education,
but thirty-three years of life in Rome had almost obliterated all
traces of her nationality. That all-pervading influence, which so
soon makes Romans of foreigners who marry into Roman families, had
done its work effectually. The Roman nobility, by intermarriage
with the principal families of the rest of Europe, has lost many
Italian characteristics; but its members are more essentially
Romans than the full-blooded Italians of the other classes who
dwell side by side with the aristocracy in Rome.

When Lady Gwendoline Fontenoy married Don Lotario Montevarchi in
the year 1834, she, no doubt, believed that her children would
grow up as English as she herself, and that her husband's house
would not differ materially from an establishment of the same kind
in England. She laughed merrily at the provisions of the marriage
contract, which even went so far as to stipulate that she was to
have at least two dishes of meat at dinner, and an equivalent on
fast-days, a drive every day--the traditional trottata--two new
gowns every year, and a woman to wait upon her. After these and
similar provisions had been agreed upon, her dowry, which was a
large one for those days, was handed over to the keeping of her
father-in-law and she was duly married to Don Lotario, who at once
assumed the title of Duca di Bellegra. The wedding journey
consisted of a fortnight's retirement in the Villa Montevarchi at
Frascati, and at the end of that time the young couple were
installed under the paternal roof in Rome. Before she had been in
her new abode a month the young Duchessa realised the utter
hopelessness of attempting to change the existing system of
patriarchal government under which she found herself living. She
discovered, in the first place, that she would never have five
scudi of her own in her pocket, and that if she needed a
handkerchief or a pair of stockings it was necessary to obtain
from the head of the house not only the permission to buy such
necessaries, but the money with which to pay for them. She
discovered, furthermore, that if she wanted a cup of coffee or
some bread and butter out of hours, those things were charged to
her daily account in the steward's office, as though she had been
in an inn, and were paid for at the end of the year out of the
income arising from her dowry. Her husband's younger brother, who
had no money of his own, could not even get a lemonade in his
father's house without his father's consent.

Moreover, the family life was of such a nature as almost to
preclude all privacy. The young Duchessa and her husband had their
bedroom in the upper story, but Don Lotario's request that his
wife might have a sitting-room of her own was looked upon as an
attempt at a domestic revolution, and the privilege was only
obtained at last through the formidable intervention of the Duke
of Agincourt, the Duchessa's own father. All the family meals,
too, were eaten together in the solemn old dining-hall, hung with
tapestries and dingy with the dust of ages. The order of
precedence was always strictly observed, and though the cooking
was of a strange kind, no plate or dish was ever used which was
not of solid silver, battered indeed, and scratched, and cleaned
only after Italian ideas, but heavy and massive withal. The
Duchessa soon learned that the old Roman houses all used silver
plates from motives of economy, for the simple reason that metal
did not break. But the sensible English woman saw also that
although the most rigid economy was practised in many things,
there was lavish expenditure in many departments of the
establishment. There were magnificent horses in the stables,
gorgeously gilt carriages in the coach-houses, scores of domestics
in bright liveries at every door. The pay of the servants did not,
indeed, exceed the average earnings of a shoe-black in London, but
the coats they wore were exceeding glorious with gold lace.

It was clear from the first that nothing was expected of Don
Lotario's wife but to live peaceably under the patriarchal rule,
making no observations and offering no suggestions. Her husband
told her that he was powerless to introduce any changes, and
added, that since his father and all his ancestors had always
lived in the same way, that way was quite good enough for him.
Indeed, he rather looked forward to the time when he should be
master of the house, having children under him whom he might rule
as absolutely and despotically as he was ruled himself.

In the course of years the Duchessa absorbed the traditions of her
new home, so that they became part of her, and as everything went
on unchanged from year to year she acquired unchanging habits
which corresponded with her surroundings. Then, when at last the
old prince and princess were laid side by side in the vault of the
family chapel and she was princess in her turn, she changed
nothing, but let everything go on in the same groove, educating
her children and managing them, as her husband had been educated
and as she herself had been managed by the old couple. Her husband
grew more and more like his father, punctilious, rigid; a strict
observant in religious matters, a pedant in little things,
prejudiced against all change; too satisfied to desire
improvement, too scrupulously conscientious to permit any
retrogression from established rule, a model of the immutability
of an ancient aristocracy, a living paradigm of what always had
been and a stubborn barrier against all that might be.

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