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A Siren

T >> Thomas Adolphus Trollope >> A Siren




And yet that storm-wind did not produce the same effect, as it would
have produced, and is seen to produce every day on the strong, wide-
spread canvas of some young navigator on the ocean of life, putting
out into the open waters at the time when such storms are frequent.
Every day we see such craft scudding with all sails spread before
the blast without attempt at reefing or tacking. Right ahead they
drive before the wind with no doubtful course. But it was not and
could not be so in the case of the Marchese Lamberto. The whole
habits of a life--the ways, notions, hopes, desires, ambitions, that
time had made into a part of the nature of the man; the passions,
which though calm and unviolent in their nature, had become strong,
not by forcible energy, but by the deep and unconscious sinking of
their roots into the depths of his character--all these things
opposed a resistance to the new and suddenly-loosed passion-wind,
such as that which the deep-rooted oak opposes to the tempest with
no result of conquering it, only with the result of causing its own
leaves and branches to be buffeted to and fro, torn, broken, and
wrecked.

Thus it was that the unhappy Marchese was violently driven to and
fro from hour to hour between the extremities of love and hate, till
his brain reeled in the terrible conflict; and alternate attraction
and repulsion bandied his soul backwards and forwards between them.

A ball-room is not a pleasant exercise-ground for a jealous man who
does not dance. No "bolgia" of the hell invented by the sombre
imagination of the great poet could have surpassed, in torment, the
Circolo ball-room on that last Carnival night to the Marchese
Lamberto.

The sight of the sorceress who had bewitched him, as he watched her
in the dance, had once again scattered to the winds all resolution,
all hope of the possibility of escaping from the toils. What was all
else that he desired to be put in comparison with that raging,
craving desire that he felt and sickened with for her? That was what
he really wanted--what he must have or die. It was madness to see
her, as he saw her then, in the arms of other men, laughing,
sparkling, brilliant with animation and enjoyment. Worst hell of all
to see her thus with his nephew, her admiration for whom she had
frankly confessed; whose ways with women he knew, and whose intimacy
with Bianca had already become suspicious to him.

Yet not the less did he stand and gaze, as they danced together,
clearly the handsomest and best-matched couple in the room--matched
so admirably evidently by design and forethought.

He had seen Ludovico and Bianca leave the ball-room, after the last
dance, together with the crowd of most of those who had been joining
in it, and had begun fluttering, poor moth, after the irresistible
attraction, to follow them towards the supper-room. Missing sight of
them in the throng for a minute, he had followed on to the principal
supper-room, and not finding them there (for the reason the reader
wots of) had returned on his steps, and was sitting on the end of a
divan, by the door of the next room to the ball-room, through which
all had to pass who wished to go thence to the supper-room. There
were people passing through the centre of the room from door to
door; but there was no other, save the Marchese, sitting down in it.

There the Conte Leandro found him, and came and sat down by his
side; much, at first, to the Marchese's annoyance.

"What! you not in the supper-room, Signor Leandro. I thought your
place was always there?" said the Marchese.

"I'm no greater a supper-eater than another; let them say what they
please. But I have just been getting a glass of wine and a biscuit
in the little supper-room at the further end there."

"What, are there two supper-rooms? I did not know that!"

"Only a buffet in the little room at the end, where the papers
generally are. It was mainly Ludovico's doing,--in order to have
less crowd in the supper-room,--and perhaps to have a quiet place
for a tete-a-tete supper himself. Oh! I knew better than not to
clear out, when he and La Diva Bianca came in; specially as there
was nobody else there. Faith! I left them there alone together."

"Oh! that's where he is supping, then?" said the Marchese, in the
most unconcerned tone he could manage.

"Yes; supping,--or enjoying himself in some other way, quite as
delightful. The fact is, Signor Marchese," continued the poet, in a
lowered voice, and rapidly glancing around to see that there were no
ears within such a distance as to overhear his words,--"the fact is,
that I am afraid Signor Ludovico is less cautious than it would be
well for him to be, circumstanced as he is! I am sure I did not want
to listen to what he and the Lalli were saying to each other. It is
nothing to me. But they spoke with such little precaution, that I
could not help overhearing what they said; and what do you think
Ludovico is up to now?"

"How should I know!" said the Marchese, with the tips of his pale
lips; for he was grinding his teeth together to prevent them from
chattering in his head.

"He is off at six o'clock to-morrow morning tete-a-tete with La
Bianca, on an excursion to the Pineta. Coming it strong, isn't it?"

"To-morrow morning!" said the Marchese under his breath, and with
difficulty; for his blood seemed suddenly to rush back cold to his
heart, and he was shivering all over.

"Niente meno! I heard them arrange it all. He is to slip away from
the ball presently, in order to make all needful preparations, and
to be at her door with a bagarino at six o'clock in the morning.
Doing the thing nicely, isn't it?"

For a minute or two the Marchese was utterly unable to answer him a
word. His head swam round. He felt sick. A cold perspiration broke
out all over him; and he feared that he should have fallen from his
seat.

"He is a great fool for his pains," he said at last, mastering
himself by a great effort, sufficiently to enable himself to utter
the words in an ordinary voice and manner.

"Well, it seemed to me a mad scheme, considering all things. And the
truth is, that I thought your lordship would very likely think it
well to put a stop to it. And that is why I have bored your lordship
by mentioning it to you."

"At six o'clock, you say?" asked the Marchese.

"Yes; that was the hour they fixed. Then he is to drive her to a
farm-house on the border of the forest, leave the bagarino there,
and go into the wood for a stroll. Not a bad idea for a wind-up of
the Carnival, upon my word!"

"I think you have done very wisely and kindly in telling me this,
Signor Conte," said the Marchese, in as quiet tones as he could
command; "and if you will complete your kindness by saying no word
of it to anybody else, I shall esteem myself much obliged to you."

"Oh! for that you may depend on me, Signor Marchese. I should never
have thought of mentioning it to you, but for thinking that it would
be a real kindness to Ludovico to put a stop to it."

"Thanks, Signor Conte. A rivederla!" said the Marchese, rising.

"Felicissima notte, Signor Marchese," returned Leandro, rising also,
and bowing to his companion.



CHAPTER III

St. Apollinare in Classe


The Marchese remained at the ball to see one more dance between
Ludovico and Bianca after their supper; and then left the rooms.
There was nothing at all to cause remark in his thus retiring before
the evening. He never danced;--he happened not to be playing cards
on that evening. It was quite natural that such a man should prefer
going home to bed to remaining with the jeunes gens till the break-
up of the ball.

How he enjoyed that last dance, which he stayed to see, the reader
may perhaps imagine. Standing by a chimney-piece, on one corner of
which he rested his elbow, he in great measure shaded his face with
his hand, yet not so as to prevent him from seeing every movement of
the persons, and every expression of the faces of the couple he was
watching. There was a raging hell in his heart. And yet he stood
there, and gazed eagerly, greedily one would have said. And every
minute, and every movement blasted his eyes and stabbed his heart,
and poured poison into his veins.

When the dance was over he did not move for some time; for he
doubted his power to hold himself upright and walk steadily.
Presently, however, when Ludovico and Bianca had again quitted the
ball-room together, he gathered himself up, and moved slowly away,
shaking in every limb, pale, fever-lipped, and haggard.

The man who gave him his cloak in the ante-room remarked to another
servant, as soon as he was gone, that he would bet that the Marchese
Lamberto would not be at the next Carnival ball.

At six o'clock, with wonderful punctuality for an Italian, Ludovico,
with a neat little bagarino and fast-trotting pony, was at the door
of the Diva's lodging. But Bianca was not ready. Her maid came down
to the door with all sorts of apologies, and assurances that her
mistress would be ready in a few minutes. The few minutes, however,
became half an hour, as minutes will under such circumstances. And
the result of this delay was that Ludovico and his companion were
not the first travellers out of the Porta Nuova that morning.

During the whole of the past Carnival and the latter months of the
previous year there had been living in Ravenna a young girl,--an
artist from Venice, who had come to Ravenna with a commission given
her by a travelling Englishman to make copies of some of the more
remarkable of the very extraordinary and unique series of mosaics
which exist in the old imperial city. She had brought with her a
letter of introduction from her employer to the Marchese Lamberto,--
a circumstance which had led to a degree of intimacy between the
Marchesino Ludovico and the extremely attractive young artist, which
threatened to stand more or less in the way of the match which had
been arranged by the high-contracting parties between Ludovico and
the Lady Violante, the great niece of the Cardinal. The girl's name
was Paolina Foscarelli.

It is probable that in due time and season the reader may become
better acquainted with Paolina. But at present there is no need of
troubling him with more particulars respecting her than the above,
save to mention that, having industriously and successfully
completed the greater portion of her task in the churches within the
city, she had determined to make her first visit to the strange old
Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe, on that same Ash Wednesday
morning. She did not purpose beginning her task there on that day;
but intended merely to reconnoitre the ground, look to the needful
preparations that had been made for her work, and ascertain how far
the spot was within her powers of walking.

Paolina, too, had felt that the morning of Ash Wednesday was a
favourable time for the first experiment of an undertaking that a
little alarmed her. For she also had calculated that on such a
morning she should be little likely to meet anybody. It was just
about six o'clock when Paolina started on her proposed walk; and she
passed through the Porta Nuova, therefore, a little more than half-
an-hour before Ludovico and his companion passed, travelling in the
same direction.

The road, which it was necessary for her to follow in order to reach
St. Apollinare in Classe, is the same for the whole of the distance
between the city and the ancient church as that which Ludovico and
Bianca would follow to reach the celebrated pine forest. The soil on
which the forest stands is composed of the accumulation of sand
which the rivers--mainly the Po--have brought from distant
mountains, and deposited in the bed of the Adriatic since the old
church was built "in Classe,"--where the fleet once used to be
moored. The building thus stands nearly at the edge of the forest,
hardly more than a stone's throw from the furthest advanced
sentinels of the wood. The road coming out from the city by the
Porta Nuova, on its way to the little town of Cervia, a few miles to
the southward, traverses ground once thickly covered with palaces,
streets, and churches, now open fields,--and passes by the western
front and doorway of the almost deserted old Basilica, a little
before it reaches the turning off towards the left, which enters the
forest.

The walk before Paolina, when she had passed the city gate, was
about two miles or rather more. So that had La Bianca taken a few
less minutes to put the finishing touches to the charming morning
toilette which replaced the gorgeous Venetian costume she had taken
off, the bagarino which carried her and Ludovico would infallibly
have overtaken the young artist. As it was, however, having more
than half-an-hour's start of it, she reached the church before they
came within sight of it.

Little Paolina had felt rather nervous when first stepping into the
cool fresh morning air from the door of the lodging she occupied.
But the street was utterly empty, and she took courage. The first
human beings she saw on her way were the octroi officers at the
gate. They sat apparently half asleep at the doorway of their den,
by the side of the city gate, wrapped in huge cloaks; and took not
even so much heed of her as to say "Good morning."

The long bit of straight flat road outside the gate was equally
deserted; and Paolina, braced by the morning air, stepped out
vigorously, and began to enjoy her walk.

There is little enough, however, in the country through which she
was passing to delight the eye. The fields in the immediate
neighbourhood of the city are cultivated, and not devoid of trees.
But the cheerfulness thence arising does not last long. Very soon
the trees cease, and there are no more hedge-rows. Large flat
fields, imperfectly covered with coarse rank grass, and divided by
the numerous branches of streams, all more or less diked to save the
land from complete inundation, succeed. The road is a causeway
raised above the level of the surrounding district; and presently a
huge lofty bank is seen traversing the desolate scene for miles, and
stretching away towards the shore of the neighbouring Adriatic. This
is the dike which contains the sulkily torpid but yet dangerous
Montone.

Gradually, as the traveller proceeds, the scene grows worse and
worse. Soon the only kind of cultivation to be seen from the road
consists of rice-grounds, looking like--what in truth they are--
poisonous swamps. Then come swamps pure and simple, too bad even to
be turned into rice grounds,--or rather simply swamps impure; for a
stench at most times of the year comes from them, like a warning of
their pestilential nature, and their unfitness for the sojourn of
man. A few shaggy, wild-looking cattle may be seen wandering over
the flat waste, muddy to the shoulders from wading in the soft
swamps. A scene of more utter desolation it is hardly possible to
meet with in such close neighbourhood to a living city.

Paolina shivered, and drew her little grey cloak more closely around
her shoulders; not from cold, though a bleak wind was blowing across
the marshes. She was warmed by walking; but the aspect of the scene
before her almost frightened the Venetian girl by the savagery of
its desolation.

The raised causeway, however, keeps on its course amid the low-lying
marshes on either side of it; and presently the peculiar form of
outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the maritime pine
is distinguishable on the horizon to the left. The road quickly
draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark
verdure become visible. In a forest such as the famous Pineta,
consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when
seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of
perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees. And
the effect produced by the continuity of spreading umbrella-like
tops is peculiar.

Then, soon after the forest has become visible, the road brings the
wayfarer within sight of a vast lonely structure heaving its huge
long back against the low horizon, like some monster antidiluvian
saurian, the fit denizen of this marsh world. It is the venerable
Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe.

Through all this dismal scene Paolina tripped lightly along with a
quick step through the crisp morning air, no little awed by the
dreary, voiceless desolation of it, but yet encouraged and not
unpleased by the solitude of it.

The walk she found to be quite within her powers, at all events at
that hour of the morning and in that season of the year; and when
she stood before the western door of the ancient church, in front of
which the road passes, Ludovico and Bianca were only then on the
point of starting from the quarters of the latter, in the Strada di
Porta Sisi.

Though knowing but little of the long and strangely diversified
story which presses on the mind of a stranger read in history as he
stands before the door of that desolate old church, Paolina could
not but be much struck by the appearance of the building and of the
scene around it. If ever a spot was expressive in every way by which
a locality can speak to the imagination of the abomination of
desolation, the view which spreads before the eye at the huge
doorway of the Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe is so. The
general character of the country around it has been described. But
the church itself is the most dreary and melancholy feature in the
landscape. No desolation resulting solely from the operations of
Nature, even in her least kindly mood, can ever suffice to speak to
the imagination as the change and decay of the works of man's hand
speak. To produce the effect of desolation in its highest degree man
must have at some former period been present on the scene, and the
remains of his work must be there to show that activity, life,
energy, has once existed where it exists no more. Nature is always
and everywhere progressive, and no sentiment of sadness belongs to
progress. Man's ruined work alone imparts the suggestion--(a
delusive one, indeed, but most forcible)--of falling back from the
better to the worse.

Wonderfully eloquent after this fashion are the temples of Paestum,
far away there to the south beyond Naples, on the flat strip of
miserably cultivated soil between the Apennines and the
Mediterranean. But they are too far gone in ruin and decay to speak
with so living a voice of sadness as does this old Byzantine church.
The human element is at Paestum too far away,--too utterly dead and
forgotten. In St. Apollinare life still lingers. Life, flickering in
its last spark, like the twinkling of a lamp which the next moment
will extinguish, is still there. Life more suggestive of death, than
any utter absence of life could be.

There are some dilapidated remains of conventual buildings on the
southern side of the church, mean, and of a date some thousand years
subsequent to that of the Basilica. They are nearly ruinous, but are
still--or were till within a few years--inhabited by one Capucin
friar, and one lay brother of the order, whose duty it was to mutter
a mass, with ague-chattering jaws, at the high altar, and act as
guardians of the building.

Small guardianship is needed. The huge ancient doors--made of planks
from vine trunks which grew fifteen hundred years ago on the
Bosphorus--are never closed; probably because their weight would
defy the efforts of the two poor old friars, to whom the keeping of
the building is committed, to move them. But a poor and mean low
gate of iron rails has been fitted to the colossal marble door-
posts, which suffices to prevent the wandering cattle of the waste
from straying into the church, but does not prevent the fever-laden
mists from the marshes from drifting into the huge nave, and
depositing their unwholesome moisture in great trickling drops upon
the green-stained walls.

But not even the low iron gateway was closed when Paolina reached
the church. It stood partially open. After having stood a minute or
two before the building to look round upon the scene, Paolina
stepped up to the gate and looked into the church, but could see no
human being. Within, as without, all was utter death-like silence.
She shivered, and drew her cloak more closely round her, as she
stood at the gate; for the healthy blood was running rapidly through
her veins after her brisk walk, and the deadly cold damp air from
the church struck her with a shudder, which was but the physical
complement of the moral impression produced by the aspect of the
place.

After a minute, however, wondering at the stillness, half frightened
at the utter solitude, and awed by the vast gloomy grandeur of the
naked but venerable building, she pushed the gate, and entered.



CHAPTER IV

Father Fabiano


Paolina entered hesitatingly, and starting at the echoes of her
footsteps on the flagstones, wet and green, and slimy from the
water, which often in every year lies many inches deep on the floor
of the church. She advanced towards a small marble altar which
stands quite isolated in the middle of the huge nave. And as she
neared it she perceived, with a violent start, that there was a
living figure kneeling at it. So still, so utterly motionless had
this solitary worshipper been, so little visible in the dim light
was the hue of the Franciscan's frock that entirely covered him,
that Paolina had not imagined that there had been any living
creature in the church. She saw, however, in the same instant that
she became aware of his presence, that the figure was that of a
Capucin friar, and doubted not that he must be the guardian of the
church, whom she had been told she would find there.

The little low altar, of an antiquity coeval with that of the
church, which stands in the centre of the nave, is the sole
exception to the entire and utter emptiness of the place. There are,
indeed, ranged along the walls of the side aisles, several ancient
marble coffins, curiously carved, and with semi-circular covers,
which contain the bodies of the earliest Bishops of the See. But the
little altar is the sole object that breaks the continuity of the
open floor. The body of St. Apollinare was originally laid beneath
it, but was in a subsequent age removed to a more specially
honourable position under the high altar at the eastern end of the
church. There is still, however, the slab deeply carved with letters
of ancient form, which tells how St. Romauld, the founder of the
order of Camaldoli, praying by night at that altar, saw in a vision
St. Apollinare, who bade him leave the world, and become the founder
of an order of hermits.

It was on the same stones that the knees of St. Romauld had pressed,
that the Capucin was kneeling, as Paolina walked up the nave of the
church. The peaked hood of his brown frock was drawn over his head,
for the air of the church was deadly cold, and the fever and ague of
many a successive autumn had done their work upon him. He was called
Padre Fabiano, and was said to be, and looked to be, upwards of
eighty years old. Probably, however, his age was much short of that.
For the nature of his dwelling-place was such as to stand in the
place of time, in its power to do worse than time's work on the
human frame.

Of course, it can be no matter of question, why a monk is here or is
there, does this or does that. Obedience to the will of his
superiors is the only reason for all that, in the case of other
human beings, depends on their own volition. The monk has no
volition.

No human being who had, it might be supposed, would consent to live
at St. Apollinare in Classe, with one lay brother for a companion,
and discharge the duties assigned to the Padre Fabiano. But the
question why his superiors sent him there, was still one that might
suggest itself, though it was little likely ever to be answered. And
the absence of all answer to such question was supplied by the
gossips of Ravenna, by tales of some terrible crime against
ecclesiastical discipline of which the Padre Fabiano had been guilty
some sixty years or so ago. Certain it was that be had occupied his
dreary position for many years; and it was wonderful that fever and
ague and the marsh pestilence had not long since dismissed him to
the reward of his long penitence on earth.

He rose from his knees as Paolina approached him, and gravely bent
his cowled head to her in salutation.

"You are early, Signora," he said. "I suppose you are the person for
whom yonder scaffold has been prepared."

"Yes, father, I am the artist for whom leave has been obtained to
copy some of your mosaics."

"You will find it cold work, daughter. The church is damp somewhat.
You would do better, methinks, not to begin your day's work till the
sun has had time to warm the air a little."

"I had no thought, father, of beginning to-day. I have brought
nothing with me. I only thought that I would walk out and have a
look at the job before me. It is not so far from the city as I
thought."

"It is far enough to be as lonely and as deserted as if it were a
thousand miles from a human habitation," said the monk, looking into
the girl's face with a grave smile.

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