CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR.
"And when he saw the statly towre
Shining baith clere and bricht,
Whilk stood abune the jawing wave,
Built on a rock of height,
"'Says, Row the boat, my mariners,
And bring me to the land,
For yonder I see my love's castle
Close by the saut sea strand."
Rough Royal.
"As 'twixt two equal armies Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance our state
Were gone out—hung 'twixt her and me:
"And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day."
DONNE, The Ecstasie.
She rose from the stone, but swayed a little, finding her feet. The dim light, as she turned her face to it, showed me that she was weary almost to fainting. She had come to a pass where the more haste would certainly make the worse speed.
"It is not spirit you lack, but sleep," said I; and she confessed that it was so. An hour's rest would recover her, she said, and obediently lay down where I found a couch for her on a bank of sweet-smelling heath above the road. I too wanted rest, and settled myself down with my back against a citron tree, some twenty paces distant.
Chaucer says somewhere (and it is true), that women take less sleep and take it more lightly than men. It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes before I opened them again at a touch on my shoulder. The night was yet dark around us, save for the glow to the northward, and at first I would hardly believe when the Princess told me that I had been sleeping near upon three hours. Then it occurred to me that for a long while the sky overhead had been shaking and repeating the boom of cannon.
"There is firing to the south of us," she said; "and heavier firing than where the light is. It comes from Nonza or thereabouts."
"Then it is no affair of ours, even if we could reach it. But the flame yonder will lead us to my father."
So we took the white glimmering high-road again and stepped out briskly, refreshed by sleep and the cool night air that went with us, blowing softly across the ridges on our right. We found a track that skirted the village of Pino, leading us wide among orchards of citron and olive, and had scarcely regained the road before the guns to the south ceased firing. Also the red glow, though it still suffused the north, began to fade as we neared it and climbed the last of steep hills that run out to the extremity of the cape. There, upon the summit, we came to a stand and caught our breath.
The sea lay at our feet, and down across its black floor to the base of the cliff on which we stood there ran a broad ribbon of light. It shone from a rock less than half a league distant: and on that rock stood a castle which was a furnace—its walls black as the bars of a grate, its windows aglow with contained fire. For the moment it seemed that this fire filled the whole pile of masonry: but presently, while we stood and stared, a sudden flame, shooting high from the walls, lit up the front of a tall tower above them, with a line of battlements at its base and on the battlements a range of roofs yet intact. As though a slide had been opened and as rapidly shut again, this vision of tower, roofs, battlements, gleamed for a second and vanished as the flame sank and a cloud of smoke and sparks rolled up in its place and drifted heavily to leeward.
With a light touch on the Princess's arm I bade her follow me, and we raced together down the slope. At the foot of it we plunged into a grove of olives and through it, as through a screen, into the street of a little marina—two dozen fisher-huts, huddled close above the foreshore, and tenantless; for their inhabitants were gathered all on the beach and staring at the blaze.
I have said that the folk at Cape Corso are a race apart: and surely there never was a stranger crowd than that in which, two minutes later, we found ourselves mingling unchallenged. They accepted us, may be, as a minor miracle of the night. They gazed at us curiously there in the light of the conflagration, and from us away to the burning island, and talked together in whispers, in a patois of which I caught but one word in three. They asked us no questions. Their voices filled the beach with a kind of subdued murmuring, all alike gentle and patiently explanatory.
"It is the island of Giraglia," said one to me. "Yes, yes; this will be the work of the patriots—a brave feat too, there's no denying."
I pointed to a line of fishing-boats moored in the shoal water a short furlong off the shore.
"If you own one," said I, "give me leave to hire her from you, and name your price."
"Perche, perche?"
"I wish to sail her to the island."
"O galant'uomo, but why should any one desire to sail to the island to-night of all nights, seeing that to-night they have set it on fire?"
I stared at his simplicity. "You are not patriots, it seems, at this end of the Cape?"
He shook his head gravely. "The Genoese on the island are our customers, and buy our fish. Why should men quarrel?"
"If it come to commerce, then, will you sell me your boat? The price of her should be worth many a day's barter of fish."
He shook his head again, but called his neighbours to him, men and women, and they began to discuss my offer, all muttering together, their voices mingling confusedly as in a dream.
By-and-by the man turned to me. "The price is thirty-five livres, signore, on deposit, for which you may choose any boat you will. We are peaceable folk and care not to meddle; but the half shall be refunded if you bring her back safe and sound."
"Fetch me a shore-boat, then," said I, while they counted my money, having fetched a lantern for the purpose.
But it appeared that shore-boat there was none. I learned later that my father and Captain Pomery, acting on his behalf, had hired all the shore-boats at these marinas (of which there are three hard by the extremity of the Cape) for use in the night attack upon the island.
"Hold you my gun, then, Princess," said I, "while I swim out to the nearest:" and wading out till the dark water reached to my breast, I chose out my boat, swam to her—it was but a few strokes—clambered on board, caught up a sweep, and worked her back to the beach. The Princess, holding our two guns high, waded out to me, and I lifted her on board.
We heard the voices of the villagers murmuring behind us while I hoisted the little sail and drew the sheet home. The night-breeze, fluking among the gullies, filled the sail at once, fell light again and left it flapping, then drew a steady breath aft, and the voices were lost in the hiss of water under the boat's stern.
But not until we had passed the extreme point of land did we find the true breeze, which there headed us lightly, blowing (as nearly as I can guess) from N.N.E., yet allowed us a fair course, so that by hauling the sheet close I could point well to windward of the fiery reflection on the water and fetch the island on a single tack. It was here, as we ran out of the loom of the land, that the waning moon lifted her rim over the hills astern; and it was here, as we cleared the point, that her rays, traversing the misty sea between us and Elba, touched the grey-white canvas of a vessel jeeling along (as we say at the fishing in Cornwall) and holding herself to windward for a straight run down upon the island—a vessel which at first glance I recognized for the Gauntlet.
Plainly she was standing-by, waiting; plainly then her crew—or those of them engaged for the assault—were detained yet upon the island; whence (to make matters surer) there sounded, as our boat ran up to it, a few loose dropping shots and a single cry—a cry that travelled across to us down the lane of light directing us to the quay. The blaze had died down; the upper keep, now overhanging us, stood black and unlit against a sky almost as black; but on a stairway at the base of it torches were moving and the flame of them shone on the slippery steps of a quay to which I guided the boat. There, jamming the helm down with a thrust of the foot, I ran forward and lowered sail.
We carried more way than I had reckoned for, and—the Princess having no science to help me—this brought us crashing in among a press of boats huddled in the black shadow alongside the quay-steps with such force as almost to stave in the upper timbers of a couple and sink them where they lay. No voice challenged us. I wondered at this as I gripped at the dark dew-drenched canvas to haul it inboard, and while I wondered, a strong light shone down upon us from the quay's edge.
A man stood there, holding a torch high over his head and shading his eyes as he peered down at the boat—a tall man in a Trappist habit girt high on his naked legs almost to the knees.
"My father?" I demanded. "Where is my father?"
He made no answer, but signed to us to make our landing, and waited for us, still holding the torch high while I helped the Princess from one boat to another and so to the slippery steps.
"My father?" I demanded again.
He turned and led us along the quay to a stairway cut in the living rock. At the foot of it he lowered his torch for a moment that we might see and step aside. Two bodies lay there—two of his brethren, stretched side by side and disposedly, with arms crossed on their breasts, ready for burial. High on the stairway, where it entered the base of a battlemented wall under an arch of heavy stonework, a solitary monk was drawing water from a well and sluicing the steps. The water ran past our feet, and in the dawn (now paling about us) I saw its colour. . . .
The burnt building—it had been the Genoese barracks—stood high on the right of the stairway. Its roof had fallen in upon the flames raging through its wooden floors, so that what had been but an hour ago a blazing furnace was now a shell of masonry out of which a cloud of smoke rolled lazily, to hang about the upper walls of the fortress. Through its window-spaces, void and fire-smirched, as now and again the reek lifted, I saw the pale upper-sky with half a dozen charred ends of roof-timber sharply defined against it—a black and broken grid; and while yet I stared upward another pair of monks crossed the platform above the archway. They carried a body between them—the body of a man in the Genoese uniform—and were bearing it towards a bastion on the western side, that overhung the sea. There the battlements hid them from me; but by-and-by I heard a splash. . . .
By this time we were mounting the stairway. We passed under the arch—where a door, shattered and wrenched from its upper hinge, lay askew against the wall—and climbed to the platform. From this another flight of steps (but these were of worked granite) led straight as a ladder to a smaller platform at the foot of the keep; and high upon these stood my uncle Gervase directing half a score of monks to right an overturned cannon.
His back was toward me, but he turned as I hailed him by name— turned, and I saw that he carried one arm in a sling. He came down the steps to welcome me, but slowly and with a very grave face.
"My father—where is he?"
"He is alive, lad." My uncle took my hand and pressed it. "That is to say, I left him alive. But come and see—" He paused—my uncle was ever shy in the presence of women—and with his sound hand lifted his hat to the Princess. "The signorina, if she will forgive a stranger for suggesting it—she may be spared some pain if—"
"She seeks her mother, sir," said I, cutting him short; "and her mother is the Queen Emilia."
"Your servant, signorina." My uncle bowed again and with a reassuring smile. "And I am happy to tell you that, so far at least, our expedition has succeeded. Your mother lives, signorina—or, should I say, Princess? Yes, yes, Princess, to be sure—But come, the both of you, and be prepared for gladness or sorrow, as may betide."
He ran up the steps and we followed him, across the platform to a low doorway in the base of the keep, through this, and up a winding staircase of spirals, so steep and so many that the head swam. Open lancet windows—one at each complete round of the stair— admitted the morning breeze, and through them, as I clung to the newel and climbed dizzily, I had glimpses of the sea twinkling far below. I counted these windows up to ten or a dozen, but had lost my reckoning for minutes before we emerged, at my uncle's heels, upon a semi-circular landing, and in face of an iron-studded door, the hasp of which he rattled gently. A voice answered from within bidding him open, and very softly he thrust the door wide.
The room into which we looked was of fair size and circular in shape. Three windows lit it, and between us and the nearest knelt Dom Basilio, busy with a web of linen which he was tearing into bandages. His was the voice that had commanded us to enter; and passing in, I was aware that the room had two other occupants; for behind the door stood a truckle bed, and along the bed lay my father, pale as death and swathed in bandages; and by the foot of the bed, on a stool, with a spinning-wheel beside her, sat a woman.
It needed no second look to tell me her name. Mean cell though it was that held her, and mean her seat, the worn face could belong to no one meaner than a Queen. A spool of thread had rolled from her hand, across the floor; yet her hands upon her lap were shaped as though they still held it. As she sat now, rigid, with her eyes on the bed, she must have been sitting for minutes. So, while Dom Basilio snipped and rent at his bandages, she gazed at my father on the bed, and my father gazed back into her eyes, drinking the love in them; and the faces of both seemed to shine with a solemn awe.
I think we must have been standing there on the threshold, we three, for close upon a minute before my father turned his eyes towards me— so far beyond this life was he travelling, and so far had the sound of our entrance to follow and overtake his dying senses.
"Prosper! . . ."
"My father!"
He lifted a hand weakly toward the bandages wrapping his breast. "These—these are of her spinning, lad. This is her bed they have laid me on. . . . Who is it stands there behind your shoulder?"
"It is the Princess, father. You remember the Princess Camilla? Yes, madam"—I turned to the Queen—"it is your daughter I bring— your daughter, and, with your blessing, my wife."
The Queen, though her daughter knelt, did not offer to embrace her, but lifted two feeble hands over the bowed head as though to bless, while over her hands her gaze still rested on my father.
"We have had brave work, lad," he panted. "I am sorry you come late for it—but you were bound on your own business, eh?" He turned with a ghost of his old smile. "Nay, child, and you did right; I am not blaming you—The young to the young, and let the dead bury the dead! Kiss me, lad, if you can find room between these plaguey bandages. Your pardon, Dom Basilio: you have done your best, and, if I seem ungrateful, let me make amends and thank you for giving me this last, best hour. . . . Indeed, Dom Basilio, I am a dead man, but your bandages are tying my soul here for a while, where it would stay. Gervase"—he reached out a hand to my uncle, who was past hiding his tears—"Gervase—brother—there needs no talk, no thanks, between you and me. . . ."
I drew back and, touching Dom Basilio by the shoulder, led him to the window. "He has no single wound that in itself would be fatal," the Trappist whispered; "but a twenty that together have bled him to death. He hacked his way up this stair through half a score of Genoese; at the door here, there was none left to hinder him, and we, having found and followed with the keys, climbed over bodies to find him stretched before it."
"Emilia!" It was my father's voice lifted in triumph; and the Queen rose at the sound of it, trembling, and stood by the bed. "Emilia! Ah, love—ah, Queen, bend lower!—the love we loved—there, over the Taravo—it was not lost. . . . It meets in our children—and we—and we—"
The Queen bent.
"O great one—and we in Heaven!" I raised the Princess and led her to the window fronting the dawn. We looked not toward the pillow where their lips met; but into the dawn, and from the dawn into each other's eyes.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.
"If all the world were this enchanted isle,
I might forget that every man was vile,
And look on thee, and even love, awhile."
The Voyage of Sir Scudamor.
We had turned from the bed, that no eyes but the Queen's might witness my father's passing. Her arm had slipped beneath his head, to support it, and I listened dreading to hear her announce the end. But yet his great spirit struggled against release, unwilling to exchange its bliss even for bliss celestial; and presently I heard his voice speaking my name.
"Prosper," he said; but his eyes looked upward into the Queen's, and his voice, as it grew firmer, seemed to interpret a vision not of earth. "Learn of me that love, though it delight in youth, yet forsakes not the old; nay, though through life its servant follow and never overtake. Even such service I have paid it, yet behold I have my reward!
"To you, dear lad, it shall be kinder; yet only on condition that you trust it.
"You will need to trust it, for it will change. Lose no faith in the beam when, breaking from your lady's eyes, it fires you not as before. It widens, lad; it is not slackening; it is passing, enlarging into a diviner light.
"By that light you shall see all men, women, children—yes, and all living things—akin with you and deserving your help. It is the light of God upon earth, and its warmth is God's charity, though He kindle it first as a selfish spark between a youth and a maid.
"Trust it, then, most of all when it frightens you, its first passion fading. For then, sickening of what is transient, it dies to put on permanence; as the creature dies—as I am dying, Prosper—into the greatness of the Creator.
"Take comfort and courage, then. For though the narrow beam falls no longer from heaven, you and she will remember the spot where it surprised you, unsealing your eyes. Let the place, the hour, be sacred, and you the witnesses sacred one to another. So He that made you ministers shall keep your garlands from fading.
"O Lord of Love, high and heavenly King! who, making the hands of boy and girl to tremble, dost of their thoughtless impulse build up states, establish societies, and people the world, accept these children!
"O Master, who payest not by time, take the thanks of thy servant! O Captain, receive my sword! O hands!"—my father raised his stiffly towards the crucifix which Dom Basilio uplifted, standing a little behind the Queen. "O wounded hands—nay, they are shaped like thine, Emilia—reach and resume my soul! _In manus tuas, Domine—in manus— in manus tuas. . . ."
"It is over," said Dom Basilio, slowly, after a long silence.
I saw the Queen lower the grey head back against its pillow, and turned to the window, where the Princess gazed out over the sea. For a minute—maybe for longer—I stood beside her following her gaze; then, as she lifted a hand and pointed, I was aware of two ships on the south-west horizon, the both under full sail and standing towards the castle.
"Last night," said I, and paused, wondering if indeed so short a while had passed; "theirs were the guns, off Nonza."
She nodded, meeting my eyes for an instant only, and averting hers again to the horizon. To my dismay they were dark and troubled.
"Not now—not now!" she murmured hurriedly, almost fiercely, as I would have touched her hand. Again her eyes crossed mine, and I read that love no longer looked forth from them, but a gloomy doubt in its place.
From the next window my Uncle Gervase had spied the ships, and now drew Dom Basilio's attention to them. The two discussed them for a minute. "Were they Corsican vessels, or Genoese?" Dom Basilio plucked me by the arm, to know my opinion. I told him of the firing we had heard off Nonza.
"In my belief," said I, "they are Corsicans that have drawn off from the bombardment, though why I cannot divine, unless it be in curiosity to discover why Giraglia was a-burning last night."
"If, on the other hand they be Genoese," answered my uncle, shaking his head, "this is a serious matter for us. The Gauntlet has but five men aboard, and will be culled like a peach."
"Had she fifty, she could not keep up a fight against two gunboats— as gunboats they appear to be," said I. "You will make a better defence of it from the island here, with the few cannon you have not dismounted."
"In that case I had best take boat, tell Captain Pomery to drop his anchor, leaving the ketch to her fate, and fetch him ashore to help us."
"Do so," said I. "Yet I trust 'tis a false alarm; for that these are
Corsicans I'll lay odds."
"It may even be," suggested Dom Basilio, "that the two are enemies, the one in chase of the other."
"No," I decided, scanning them; "for they have the look of being sister ships. And, see you, the leader has rounded the point and caught sight of the Gauntlet. Mark how she is carrying her headsheets over to windward, to let her consort overtake her."
"The lad's right!" exclaimed my uncle. "Well, God send they be not
Genoese! but I must pull out to the ketch and make sure.
You, Prosper, can help Dom Basilio meanwhile to muster his men and
right as many cannon as time allows."
He stepped to the door, tip-toeing softly, and we followed him—with a glance, as we went, at the figure bending over the bed. The Queen did not heed us.
From the upper terrace at the foot of the tower the Princess and I watched my uncle as, with two stalwart Trappists to row him, he pushed out and steered for the Gauntlet. We saw him run his boat alongside and climb aboard. Five slow minutes passed, and it became apparent that Captain Pomery had views of his own about abandoning the ship, for the Gauntlet neither dropped anchor nor took in canvas, but held on her tack, letting the boat drop astern on a tow-rope.
Just then Dom Basilio sent up half a dozen stout monks to me from the base of the rock; and for the next few minutes I was kept busy with them on the eastern bastion, refixing a gun which had been thrown off its carriage in the assault, until, casting another glance seaward, I saw to my amazement that the ketch had run up her British colours to her mizzen.
But happily Captain Pomery's defiance was thrown away. A minute later the leading gunboat ran up a small bundle on her main signal halliards, and shook out the green flag of Corsica.
"You can let the gun lie," said I to my monks. "These are friends."
"They are my countrymen," said the Princess at my elbow. "That they are friends is less certain."
"At any rate, they are lowering a boat," said I; "and see, my uncle is jumping into his, to intercept them."
The Corsicans, manning their boat, pulled straight for the island; but at half a mile's distance or less, being hailed by my uncle, lay on their oars and waited while he bore down on them. I saw him lift his hat to a man seated in the stern-sheets, who stood up and saluted politely in response. The two boats drew close alongside, while their commanders conversed, and after a couple of minutes resumed their way abreast and drew to the landing-quay, where Dom Basilio stood awaiting them.
"By his stature and bearing," said I, conning him through a glass which one of the monks passed to me, "this must be the General himself."
"Paoli?" queried the Princess.
I nodded.
"Shall we go down the rock to meet him?"
"It is Paoli's place to mount to us," said she proudly.
We waited therefore while my uncle led him up to us. But Pascal Paoli was too great a man to trouble about his dignity; and for courtesies, he contented himself with omitting none.
"Salutation, O Princess!" He halted within a few steps of the head of the stairway, and lifted his hat.
"Salutation, O General!"
"And to you, Cavalier!" He included me in his bow, "Pouf!" he panted, looking about him; "the ascent is a sharp one, under the best conditions. And you carried it in the darkness, against odds?" He turned upon my uncle. "You English are a great race."
"Excuse me, General," said my uncle, indicating Dom Basilio and the monks: "the credit belongs rather to my friends here."
"I had the pleasure to meet Sir John Constantine, a while ago, outside our new town of Isola Rossa, where he did me a signal service. You are his son, sir?"
I bowed.
"I condole with you, since I come too late to thank him—on behalf of Corsica, Princess—for a yet more brilliant service. An assault such as your party made last night requires brave men; but even more, it requires a brave leader and a genius even to conceive it. Let me say, sirs, that we heard your fire and saw Giraglia blazing, as far south as Nonza, where we were conducting a far meaner enterprise; and came north in wonder where Corsica had found such friends."
"Say rather, sir, where my mother had found them," interposed the
Princess, coldly. "Is this curiosity of yours all your business?"
The General met her look frankly. If annoyed, he hid his annoyance.
"O Princess," answered he, "I will own that Corsica has left the Queen, your mother, overlong here in captivity. For reasons of state it was decided to work northward from point to point, clearing the Genoese as we went. We did not reckon that, before we reached Giraglia, an Englishman of genius would step in to anticipate us. Our hopes, Princess, fell short of an event so happy. But I can say that every Corsican is glad, and would wish to be such a hero."
"Did you, then, clear the Genoese from Nonza?" I put in hastily, noting the curl of my mistress's lips.
"Sir, there were no Genoese to clear. We bombarded it idly, only to learn that the Commandant Fornari had abandoned it some hours before; that he and his men had escaped northward in long boats, rowing close under the land."
I glanced at the Princess, and saw her mouth whiten. "Excuse me," I said. "Do you tell me that the whole garrison of Nonza had escaped?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Paoli, too, glanced at the Princess; but for an instant only. "We landed after the fortress had fired one single gun at us, which we silenced. Beside it we found two men standing at bay; its only defenders; and they, strange to tell, were Corsicans. I have brought them with me on my own ship."
"You need not tell me their names," said I.
"My brother?" the Princess gasped. "Where is my brother?"
The General lowered his eyes. "I regret to tell you, Princess, that your brother has fallen into our enemies' hands. They have carried him north, to Genoa, and with him the Priest who was his confessor. This I learned from your two heroes, who had entered Nonza with no other purpose than to rescue him, but had arrived too late. They shall be brought ashore, that you may question them.
"But what is this?" said a voice from the turret-door behind us.
"My son Camillo a prisoner, and in Genoa!"
We turned all, to see the Queen standing there, on the threshold. The Princess, suddenly pallid, shot a look at Paoli—a look which at once defied and implored him.
"It is true, dear mother," said she, steadying her voice.
"God help us all!" The Queen clasped her hands. "The Genoese have no pity."
"Let your Majesty be reassured," said Paoli, slowly, "The Genoese, to be sure, have no pity; yet I can almost promise they will not proceed to extremities with your son. An enemy, madam, may have good reasons for negotiating; and although the Genoese Government would be delighted to break me on the wheel, yet, on some points, I can compel them to bargain with me."
He lifted his eyes. Mine were fixed on the Princess's, and I saw them thank him for the falsehood.
"Come, dear mother," she said, taking the Queen's hand.
"Though Camillo be in Genoa he can be reached."
"My poor boy was ever too rash."
"He can be reached," the Princess repeated—but I saw her wince— "and he shall be reached. General, I pray you to send these two men to me. And now, mother, let one sorrow be enough for a time. There is woman's work to be done upstairs; take me with you that I may help."
I did not understand these last words, but was left puzzling over them as the two passed through the turret-door and mounted the stairway. Nor did I remember the custom of the country until, ten minutes later, I heard their voices lifted together in the upper chamber intoning a lament over my father's body.
My father—so my uncle told me—had left express orders that he should be buried at sea. Throughout the long afternoon, with short pauses, the voices wailed overhead, while we worked to set the fortress in order for the garrison which Paoli sent (despatching his second gunboat) to fetch from Isola Rossa; until, an hour before sunset, two monks came down the stairway with the corpse, and bore it to the quay, where Billy Priske waited with one of the Gauntlet's boats. Paoli and my uncle had taken their places in the stern-sheets, and Dom Basilio and I, having lifted the body on board and covered it with the Gauntlet's flag, ourselves stepped into the bows, where I took an oar and helped Billy to pull some twenty furlongs off the shore. Dom Basilio recited the funeral service; and there, watched by his comrades from the quay, we let sink my father into six fathoms, to sleep at the foot of the great rock which had been his altar.
As I landed and climbed the path again, I caught sight of Camilla, standing by the parapet of the east bastion, in converse with Marc'antonio and Stephanu. She had braided her hair, and done away with all traces of mourning, At the turret door her mother met me, equally neat and composed.
"I have been waiting for you," said the Queen. "Come, O son, for I want your advice."
She led me up past the second window of the turret, lifted the latch of an iron-studded door in the opposite wall, and, pushing it open, motioned me to enter.
"But what is this?" said I, gazing around upon two camp beds, spread with white coverlets, and a dressing-table with a jugful of lilac-coloured stocks, such as grew in the crannies of the keep and the rock-ledges under the platform.
"I had no mother," said she, "to prepare my bride-chamber, and rough is the best I can prepare for my child. But it is done with my blessing."
"Madame—" said I, flushing hotly, and paused at the sound of a footstep on the stair.
It was the Princess who came; and in an angry haste. She kissed her mother, thrust her gently from the room, and so, closing the door, stood with her back against it.
"You knew of this?" she demanded.
"Before God, I did not," I answered.
"It is folly." She glanced around the room. "You will admit that it is folly," she insisted.
I bowed my head. "It is folly, if you choose to call it so."
"I have been wanting to tell you . . . I believe you to be a good man. Oh yes, the fault is with me! This morning—you remember what your father said? Well, I listened, and the truth was made clear to me, that I cannot give you the like of such love—or the like of any such as a woman ought to give, who—who—"
"Say no more," said I, as gently as might be. "I understand."
"Ah, that is kind of you!" She caught at the admission eagerly.
"It is not that I doubted; I see now that some men are not vile.
But until I can feel it, what use is being convinced?"
She paused, "Moreover, to-night I go on a journey."
"And I, too," said I, meeting her eyes firmly. "To Genoa, is it not?"
"You guessed it? . . . But you have no right—" she faltered.
I laughed. "But excuse me, my wife, I have all the right in the world. At what hour will Marc'antonio be ready with the boat?"
CHAPTER XXVIII.
GENOA.
"Gobbo. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to Master Jew's?
"Launcelot. Turn up on the right hand at the next turning, but at the very next turning of all, on your left: marry at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew's house.
"Gobbo. By God's sonties, 'twill be a hard way to hit." The Merchant of Venice.
At eleven o'clock that night we four—the Princess, Marc'antonio, Stephanu, and I—hoisted sail and stood away from the north shore of Giraglia, carrying a fair wind with us. Our boat had been very cunningly chosen for us by Marc'antonio out of the small flotilla which my father had hired at Cape Corso for the assault. She was undecked, measured some eighteen feet over-all, and carried a fair-sized lateen sail; but her great merit for our purpose, lay in her looks. The inhabitants of Cape Corso (as the reader knows) have neither the patriotism nor the prejudices of their fellow-islanders; and this (however her owner had come by her) was a boat of Genoese build. So Marc'antonio had assured me; and my own observation confirmed it next day, as we neared the coast off Porto Fino.
We had laid this course of set purpose, intending to work up to the great harbour coastwise from the southward and enter it boldly, passing ourselves off for a crew from Porto Fino with a catch of fish for market. The others had discarded all that was Corsican in their dress, and the Princess had ransacked the quarters of the late garrison on Giraglia to rig us out in odds and ends of Genoese costume. For the rest we trusted to fortune; but an hour before starting I had sought out my Uncle Gervase and made him privy to the plot. He protested, to be sure; but acquiesced in the end with a wry face when I told him that the Princess and I were determined.
This understood, at once my excellent and most practical uncle turned to business. Within ten minutes it was agreed between us that the Gauntlet should sail back with General Paoli and anchor under the batteries of Isola Rossa to await our return. She was to wait there one month exactly. If within that time we did not return, he was to conclude either that our enterprise had come to grief or that we had re-shaped our designs and without respect to the Gauntlet's movements. In any event, at the end of one calendar month he might count himself free to weigh anchor for England. We next discussed the Queen. My uncle opined, but could not say with certainty, that the General had it in mind to offer her protection and an honourable retirement on her own estates above the Taravo. I bade him tell her that, if she could wean herself from Corsica to follow her daughter, our house of Constantine would be proud to lodge her—I hoped, for the remainder of her days—for certain, until she should tire of it and us.
The rest (I say) we left to chance, which at first served us smoothly. The breeze, though it continued fair, fell light soon after daybreak, and noon was well past before we sighted the Ligurian coast. We dowsed sail and pulled towards it leisurably, waiting for the hour when the fishing-boats should put out from Porto Fino: which they did towards sunset, running out by ones and two's before the breeze which then began to draw off the land, and making a pretty moving picture against the evening glow. When night had fallen we hoisted our lateen again and worked up towards them.
These fishermen (as I reasoned, from our own Cornish practice) would shoot their nets soon after nightfall and before the moon's rising— to haul them, perhaps, two hours later, and await the approach of morning for their second cast. Towards midnight, then, we sailed boldly up to the outermost boat and spoke her through Marc'antonio, who (fas est ab hoste doceri) had in old campaigns picked up enough of the Genoese patois to mimic it very passably. He announced us as sent by certain Genoese fishmongers—a new and enterprising firm whose name he invented on the spur of the moment—to trade for the first catch of fish and carry them early to market, where their freshness would command good prices. The fishermen, at first suspicious, gave way at sight of the Genoese money in his hand, and accepted an offer which not only saved them a journey but (as we calculated) put from three to four extra livres in their pockets. Within twenty minutes they had transferred two thousand fish to our boat, and we sailed off into the darkness, ostensibly to trade with the others. Doubtless they wished us good night for a set of fools.
We did not trouble their fellows. Two thousand fish, artfully spread to look like thrice the number, ought to pass us under the eyes of all Genoa: so for Genoa we headed forthwith, hauling up on the starboard tack and heeling to our gunwale under the breeze which freshened and blew steadily off the shore.
Sunrise found us almost abreast of the harbour: and the clocks from the city churches were striking seven as we rounded up under the great mole on the eastern side of the entrance and floated into the calm basin within. I confess that my heart sank as Genoa opened in panorama before us, spreading in a vast semicircle with its dockyards and warehouses, its palaces, its roofs climbing in terrace after terrace to the villas and flower-gardens on the heights: nor was this sense of our impudence lessened by reflecting that, once within the mole, we had not a notion to which of the quays a fishing-boat ought to steer to avoid suspicion. But here, again, fortune helped us. To the right, at the extreme inner corner of the mole, I espied half a dozen boats, not unlike our own, huddled close under a stone stairway; and I had no sooner thrust down the helm than a man, catching sight of us, came running along the mole to barter.
Marc'antonio's conduct of the ensuing bargain was nothing short of masterly. The stranger—a fishmonger's runner—turned as he met us and trotted alongside, shaping his hands like a trumpet and bawling down his price. Marc'antonio, affecting a slight deafness, signalled to him to bawl louder, hunched his shoulders, shook his head vehemently, held up ten fingers, then eight, then (after a long and passionate protest from above) eight again. By this time two other traffickers had joined the contest, and with scarcely a word on his side Marc'antonio kept them going, as a juggler plays with three balls. Not until our boat's nose grated alongside the landing was the bargain concluded, and the first runner, a bag of silver in his fist, almost tumbled upon us down the slippery stairs in his hurry to clinch it.
I stepped ashore and held out a hand to the Princess who, in her character of paesana, very properly ignored it. Luckily the courtesy escaped notice. Stephanu was making fast the boat; the runner counting his coins into Marc'antonio's hand.
The Princess and I mounted the stairs and, after a pretence to loiter and await our comrades, strolled off towards the city around the circuit of the quay. We passed the great warehouses of the Porto Franco, staring up at them, but impassively, in true country fashion, and a little beyond them came to the entrance of a street which—for it was strewn with cabbage leaves and other refuse—we judged to lead to the vegetable market.
"Let us turn aside here," said the Princess. "I was brought up in a cabbage-market, remember; and the smell may help to put me at my ease."
Now along the quays we had met and passed but a few idlers, the hour being early for business; but in the market, when we reached it, we found a throng—citizens and citizens' wives and housekeepers, all armed with baskets and chaffering around the stalls. The crowd daunted me at first; but finding it too intent to heed us, I drew breath and was observing it at leisure when my eyes fell on the back of a man who, bending over a stall on my right, held forth a cabbage in one hand while with the other—so far as the basket on his arm allowed—he gesticulated violently, cheapening the price against an equally voluble saleswoman.
Good heavens! That back—that voice—surely I knew them!
The man turned, holding the cabbage aloft and calling gods, mortals, and especially the population of Genoa, to witness. It was Mr. Pett!—and, catching sight of me, he stared wildly, almost dropping the vegetable.
"Angels and ministers—" here, at a quick sign of warning from me, he checked himself sharply. "O anima profetica, il mio zio! . . . Devil a doubt but it sounds better in Shakespeare's mother-English," he added, as I hurried him aside; and then—for he still grasped the cabbage, and the stallwoman was shouting after him for a thief. "You'll excuse me, signora. Two soldi, I think you said? It is an infamy. What? Your cabbage has a good heart? Ah, but has it ever loved? Has it ever leapt in transport, recognizing a long-lost friend? Importunate woman, take your fee, basely extracted from me in a moment of weakness. O, heel of Achilles! O, locks of Samson! Go to, Delilah, and henceforth for this may a murrain light on thy cucumbers!
"Though, strictly speaking," said Mr. Fett, as I drew him away and down the street leading to the quay, "I believe murrain to be a disease peculiar to cattle. Well, my friend, and how goes it with you? For me"—here he tapped his basket, in which the cabbage crowned a pile of green-stuff—"I am reduced to buying my salads." He wheeled about, following my glance, and saluted the Princess, who had followed and overtaken us.
"Man," said I, "you shall tell us your story as soon as ever you have helped us to a safe lodging. But here are we—and there, coming towards us along the quay, are two comrades—four Corsicans in all, whose lives, if the Genoese detect us, are not worth five minutes' purchase."
"Then, excuse me," said Mr. Fett, becoming serious of a sudden, "but isn't it a damned foolish business that brings you?"
"It may be," I answered. "But the point is, Can you help us?"
"To a lodging? Why, certainly, as luck has it, I can take you straight—no, not straight exactly, but the devil of a way round—to one where you can lie as snug as fleas in a blanket. Oh—er—but excuse me—" He checked himself and stood rubbing his chin, with a dubious glance at the Princess.
"Indeed, sir," she put in, smoothing down at her peasant-skirt, "I think you first found me lodging upon a bare rock, and even in this new dress it hardly becomes me to be more fastidious."
"I was thinking less of the lodgings, Princess, than of the company: though, to be sure, the girls are very good-hearted, and Donna Julia, our prima amorosa, makes a most discreet duenna, off the boards. There is Badcock too—il signore Badcocchio: give Badcock a hint, and he will diffuse a most permeating respectability. For the young ladies who dwell at the entrance of the court, over the archway, I won't answer. My acquaintance with them has not passed beyond an interchange of winks: but we might send Badcock to expostulate with them."
"You are not dealing with a child, sir," said the Princess, with a look at me and a somewhat heightened colour. "Be assured that I shall have eyes only for what I choose to see."
Mr. Fett bowed. "As for the lodgings, I can guarantee them. They lie on the edge of a small Jew quarter—not the main ghetto— and within a stone's-throw of the alleged birthplace of Columbus; if that be a recommendation. Actually they are rated in the weavers' quarter, the burgh of San Stefano, between the old and new walls, a little on the left of the main street as you go up from Sant' Andrea towards Porticello, by the second turning beyond the Olive Gate."
"I thank you," I interrupted, "but at a reasonable pace we might arrive there before you have done giving us the direction."
"My loquacity, sir, did you understand it," said Mr. Fett, with an air of fine reproach, "springs less from the desire to instruct than from the ebullience of my feelings at so happy a rencounter."
"Well, that's very handsomely said," I acknowledged. "Oh, sir, I have a deal to tell, and to hear! But we will talk anon. Meanwhile"—he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step beside him—"permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had the pleasure of meeting her—a distinct lessening of hauteur—a touch of (shall I say?) womanliness. Would it be too much to ask if you are running away with her?"
"It would," said I. "As a matter of fact she is in Genoa to seek her brother, the Prince Camillo."
"Nevertheless," he insisted, and with an impertinence I could not rebuke (for fear of drawing the attention of the passers-by, who were numerous)—"nevertheless I divine that you have much either to tell me or conceal."
He, at any rate, was not reticent. On our way he informed me that his companions in the lodgings were a troupe of strolling players among whom he held the important role of capo comico. We reached the house after threading our way through a couple of tortuous alleys leading off a street which called itself the Via Servi, and under an archway with a window from which a girl blew Mr. Fett an unabashed kiss across a box of geraniums. The master of it, a Messer' Nicola (by surname Fazio) had rooms for us and to spare. To him Mr. Fett handed the market-basket, after extracting from it an enormous melon, and bade him escort the Princess upstairs and give her choice of the cleanest apartments at his disposal. He then led us to the main living-room where, from a corner-cupboard, he produced glasses, plates, spoons, a bowl of sugar, and a flask of white wine. The flask he pushed towards Marc'antonio and Stephanu: the melon he divided with his clasp-knife.
"You will join us?" he asked, profering a slice. "You will drink, then, at least? Ah, that is better. And will you convey my apologies to your two bandits and beg them to excuse my conversing with you in English? To tell the truth"—here, having helped them to a slice apiece and laid one aside for the Princess, he took the remainder upon his own plate—"though as a rule we make collation at noon or a little before, my English stomach cries out against an empty morning. You will like my Thespians, sir, when you see 'em. The younger ladies are decidedly—er—vivacious. Bianca, our Columbine, has all the makings of a beauty—she has but just turned the corner of seventeen; and Lauretta, who plays the scheming chambermaid, is more than passably good-looking. As for Donna Julia, her charms at this time of day are moral rather than physical: but, having married our leading lover, Rinaldo, she continues to exact his vows on the stage and the current rate of pay for them from the treasury. Does Rinaldo's passion show signs of flagging? She pulls his ears for it, later on, in conjugal seclusion. Poor fellow!—
"Non equidem invideo; miror magis.
"Do the night's takings fall short of her equally high standard?
She threatens to pull mine: for I, cavalier, am the treasurer. . . .
But at what rate am I overrunning my impulses to ask news from you!
How does your father, sir—that modern Bayard? And Captain Pomery?
And my old friend Billy Priske?"
I told him, briefly as I could, of my father's end. He laid down his spoon and looked at me for a while across the table with eyes which, being unused to emotion, betrayed it awkwardly, with a certain shame.
"A great, a lofty gentleman! . . . You'll excuse me, cavalier, but I am not always nor altogether an ass—and I say to you that half a dozen such knights would rejuvenate Christendom. As it is, we live in the last worst ages when the breed can afford but one phoenix at a time, and he must perforce spend himself on forlorn hopes. Mark you, I say 'spend,' not 'waste': the seed of such examples cannot be wasted—"
'Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust:'
nay, not their actions only, but their every high thought which either fate froze or fortune and circumstance choked before it could put forth flower. Did I ever tell you, Cavalier, the Story of My Father and the Jobbing Gardener?"
"Not that I remember," said I.
"Yet it is full of instruction as an egg is full of meat. My father, who (let me remind you) is a wholesale dealer in flash jewellery, had ever a passion for gardening, albeit that for long he had neither the time nor the money nor even the space to indulge his hobby. His garden—a parallelogram of seventy-two feet by twenty-three, confined by brick walls—lay at the back of our domicile, which excluded all but the late afternoon sunshine. As the Mantuan would observe—"
'nec fertilis illa juvencis, Nec Cereri opportuna seges, nec commoda Baccho.'
To attend to it my father employed, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, an old fellow over whose head some sixty-five summers had passed without imparting to it a single secret. In short, he was the very worst gardener in West Bromicheham, and so obstinately, so insufferably, opinionated withal that one day, in a fit of irritation, my father slew him with his own spade.
"This done, he had at once to consider how to dispose of the body. Our garden, as I have said, was confined within brick walls, two long and one short; and this last my father had screened with a rustic shed and a couple of laurel-bushes; that from his back-parlour window, where he sat and smoked his pipe on a Sunday afternoon, he might watch the path 'wandering,' as he put it, 'into the shrubbery,' and feast his eyes on a domain which extended not only further than the arm could stretch, but even a little further than the eye could reach.
"In the space, then, intervening between the laurels and the terminal wall my father dug a grave two spits deep and interred the corpse, covering it with a light compost of loam and leaf-mould. This was on a Wednesday—the second Wednesday in July, as he was always particular to mention. (And I have heard him tell the story a score of times.)
"On the Sunday week, at half-past three in the afternoon, my father had finished his pipe and was laying it down, before covering his head (as his custom was) with a silk handkerchief to protect his slumber from the flies, when, happening to glance towards the shrubbery, he espied a remarkably fine crimson hollyhock overtopping the laurels. He rubbed his eyes. He had invested in past years many a shilling in hollyhock seed, but never till now had a plant bloomed in his garden.
"He rubbed his eyes, I say. But there stood the hollyhock. He rushed from the room, through the back-doorway and down the garden. My excellent mother, aroused from her siesta by the slamming of the door, dropped the Family Bible from her lap, and tottered in pursuit. She found my father at the angle of the shrubbery, at a standstill before a tangled mass of vegetation. Hollyhocks, sunflowers, larkspurs, lilies, carnations, stocks—every bulb, every seed which the dead man had failed to cultivate—were ramping now and climbing from his grave high into the light. My father tore his way through the thicket to the tool-shed, dragged forth a hook and positively hacked a path back to my mother, barely in time to release her from the coils of a major convolvulus (_ipomoea purpurea) which had her fast by the ankles.
"Now, this story, which my father used to tell modestly enough, to account for his success at our local flower-shows, seems to me to hold a deeper significance, and a moral which I will not insult your intelligence by extracting for you . . . The actions of the just? Foh!" continued Mr. Fett, and filled his mouth with melon. "What about their passions? Why, sir, yet another story occurs to me, which might pass for an express epologue upon your father's career. Did you never hear tell of the Grand Duchess Sophia of Carinthia and her Three Wooers?"
"Pardon me, Mr. Fett—" I began.
"Pardon me, sir," he cut me short, with a flourish of his spoon. "I know what you would say: that you are impatient rather to hear how it is that you find me here in Genoa. That also you shall hear, but permit me to come to it in my own way. For the moment your news has unhinged me, and you will help my recovery by allowing me to talk a little faster than I can think. . . . I loved your father, Cavalier. . . . But our tale, just now, is of—"
"THE GRAND DUCHESS AND HER THREE WOOERS."
"Once upon a time, in Carinthia, there lived a Grand Duchess, of marriageable age. Her parents had died during her childhood, leaving her a fine palace and an ample fortune, which, however, was not—to use the parlance of the Exchange—easily realizable, because it consisted mainly in an avenue of polished gold. By this avenue, which extended for three statute miles, the palace was approached between two parallel lines of Spanish chestnuts. It ran in an easterly direction and was kept in a high state of polish by two hundred retainers, so that it shone magnificently every morning when the Grand Duchess awoke, drew her curtains, and looked forth towards the sunrise.
"Her name was Sophia, and the charms of her young mind rivalled those of her person. Therefore suitors in plenty presented themselves, but only to be rejected by her Chancellor (to whom she left the task of preliminary inspection) until he had reduced the list to three, whom we will call Prince Melchior, Prince Otto, and Prince Caspar. The two former reigned over neighbouring states, but Prince Caspar, I have heard, came from the north, beyond the Alps.
"A day, then, was fixed for these three to learn their fate, and they met at the foot of the avenue, at the far end of which, on her palace steps, stood the Grand Duchess to make her choice. Now, when Prince Melchior came to the golden road, he thought it would be a sin and a shame were his horse to set hoof on it and scratch it and perchance break off a plate of it; so he turned aside and rode up along the right of it under the chestnuts. Likewise and for the same reason Prince Otto turned aside and rode on the left. But Prince Caspar thought of the lady so devoutly and wished so much to be with her that he never noticed the golden pavement at all, but rode straight up the middle of it at a gallop.
"When the three arrived, Sophia felt that she liked Prince Caspar best for his impetuosity; but, on the other hand, she was terribly annoyed with him for having dented her precious avenue with hoof-marks. She temporized, therefore, professing herself unable to decide, and dismissed them for three years with a promise to marry the one who in that time should prove himself the noblest knight.
"Thereupon Prince Melchior and Prince Otto rode away in anger, for they coveted the golden road as well as the lady. Prince Melchior, who loved fighting, went home to collect an army and avenge the insult, as he called it. Prince Otto, whose mind worked more subtly, set himself by secret means to stir up disaffection among the Carinthians, telling them that their labour and suffering had gone to make the splendid useless avenue of gold; and he persuaded them the more easily because it was perfectly true. (He forbore to add that ho coveted it for his own.) But Prince Caspar, having seen his lady-love, could find no room in his heart either for anger or even for schemes to prove his valour. He could think of her and of her only, day and night. And finding that his thoughts brought her nearer to him the nearer he rode to the stars, he turned his horse towards the Alps, and there, on the summit, among the snows, lived solitary in a little hut.
"His mountain overlooked the plain of Carinthia, but from such a height that no news ever came to him of the Grand Duchess or her people. From his hut, to which never a woodman climbed, nor even a stray hunter, he saw only a few villages shining when they took the sun, a lake or two, and a belt of forest through which—for it hid the palace—sometimes at daybreak a light glinted from the golden avenue. But one night the whole plain broke out far and wide with bonfires, and from the grand-ducal park—over which the sky shone reddest—he caught the sound of a bell ringing. Then he bethought him that the three years were past, and that these illuminations were for the wedding; and he crept to bed, ashamed and sorrowful that he had failed and another deserved.
"Towards daybreak, as he tossed on his straw, he seemed to hear the bells drawing nearer and nearer, until they sounded close at hand. He sprang up, and from the door of his hut he saw a rider on muleback coming up the mountain track through the snow. The rider was a woman, and as she alighted and tottered towards him, he recognized the Grand Duchess. He carried her in and set her before his fire; and there, while he spread food before her, she told him that the Princes Melchior and Otto had harried her lands and burnt her palace, and were even now fighting with each other for the golden avenue.
"Then," said Caspar, pulling his rusty sword from under a heap of faggots, "I will go down and win it from them; for I see my hour coming at last."
But the Princess said, "Foolish man, it is here! And as for the golden avenue, that too is here, or all that was ever worth your winning." And thereupon she drew aside her cloak, shaking the snow from it; and when the folds parted and the firelight fell on her bosom, he saw a breastplate gleaming—a single plate of gold—and in the centre of it the imprint of a horse's hoof.
"So these two, Cavalier—or so the story reached me—lived content in their silly hut, nor ever thought it worth their while to descend to the plain and lose what they had found. . . . But you were good enough just now to inquire concerning my own poor adventures."
"Billy Priske," said I, "has given me some account of them up to your parting from my father—at Calenzana, was it not?"
"At Calenzana." Mr. Fett sighed assent. "Ah! Cavalier, it has been a stony road we have travelled from Calenzana. Infandum jubes renovare dolorem . . . but Badcock must bear the blame."
Badcock with his flute made trees—
Has it ever struck you sir, that Orpheus possibly found the gift of Apollo a confounded nuisance; that he must have longed at times to get rid of his attendant beasts and compose in private? Even so it was with Badcock.
"That infernal mufro chivvied us up the road to Calvi and into the very arms of a Genoese picket. The soldiers arrested us—there was no need to arrest the mufro, for he trotted at our heels—and marched us to the citadel, into the presence of the commandant. To the commandant (acting, as I thought, upon a happy inspiration) I at once offered the beast in exchange for our liberty. I was met with the reply that, as between rarities, he would make no invidious distinctions, but preferred to keep the three of us; and moreover that the mufro (which had already put a sergeant and two private soldiers out of action) appeared amenable only to the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. . . . And this was a fact, Cavalier. At first, and excusably, I had supposed the brute's behaviour to express aversion; until, observing that he waited for the conclusion of a piece before butting at Mr. Badcock's stomach, I discovered this to be his rough-and-ready method of demanding an encore.
"The commandant proved to be a virtuoso. Persons of that temperament (as you may have remarked) are often unequal to the life of the camp with its deadening routine, its incessant demand for vigilance in details; and, as a matter of fact, he was on the point of being superseded for incompetence. His recall arrived, and for a short while he was minded to make a parting gift of us to his late comrades-in-arms, sharing us up among the three regiments that composed the garrison and endowing them with a mascot apiece; but after a sharp struggle selfishness prevailed and he carried us with him to the mainland. There for a week or two, in an elegant palace behind the Darsena, we solaced his retirement and amused a select circle of his friends, till (wearying perchance of Badcock's minstrelsy) he dismissed us with a purse of sequins and bade us go to the devil, at the same time explaining that only the ingratitude he had experienced at the hands of his countrymen prevented his offering us as a gift to the Republic.
"We left the city that afternoon and climbed the gorges towards Novi, intending our steps upon Turin. The mufro trotted behind us, and mile after mile at the brute's behest—its stern behest, Cavalier— Mr. Badcock fluted its favourite air, I attempt from love's sickness to fly. But at the last shop before passing the gate I had provided myself with a gun; and at nightfall, on a ledge above the torrent roaring at our feet, I did the deed. . . . Yes, Cavalier, you behold a sportsman who has slain a wild sheep of Corsica. Such men are rare.
"The echoes of the report attracted a company of pedestrians coming down the pass. They proved to be a party of comedians moving on Genoa from Turin, whence the Church had expelled them (as I gathered) upon an unjust suspicion of offending against public morals. At sight of Badcock, their leader, with little ado, offered him a place in the troupe. His ignorance of Italian was no bar; for pantomime, in which he was to play the role of pantaloon, is enacted (as you are aware) in dumb-show. Nay, on the strength only of our nationality they enlisted us both; for Englishmen, they told me, are famous over the continent of Europe for other things and for making the best clowns. We therefore turned back with them to Genoa.
"But oh, Cavalier! these bodily happenings which I recite to you, what are they in comparison with the adventures of the spirit? I am in Italy—in Genoa, to be sure, which of all Italian cities passes for the unfriendliest to the Muse: but that is my probation. I have embraced the mission of my life. Here in Italy—here in the land of the vine, the olive—of Maecenas and the Medicis—it shall be mine to revive the arts and to make them pay; and if I can win out of this city of skinflints at a profit, I shall have served my apprenticeship and shall know my success assured. The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind; opportunity given, they would sneak the breeches off a highlander: they divide their time between commercialism and a licentiousness of which, sordid as it is, they habitually beat down the price. And yet Genoa is Italy, and has the feeling of Italy—the golden atmosphere, the clean outlines, the amplitude of its public spaces, the very shadows in the square, the statues looking down upon the crowd, the pose, the colouring, of any chance poor onion-seller in the market—"
But here Mr. Fett broke off his harangue to rise and salute the Princess, who, entering with our host at her heels, turned to Marc'antonio and bade him, as purse-bearer, count out the money for a week's lodging. Payment in advance (it seemed) was the rule in Genoa. Messer' Fazio bit each coin carefully as it was tendered, and had scarcely pocketed the last before a noise at the front-door followed by peals of laughter announced the arrival of our fellow-lodgers. They burst into the room singing a chorus, O pescatore da maremma, and led by Mr. Badcock, who wore a wreath of seaweed a-cock over one eye and waved a dripping basket of sea-urchins. Two pretty girls held on to him, one by each arm, and thrust him staggering through the doorway.
"O pesca—to—o—o—" Mr. Badcock's eyes, alighting on me, grew suddenly large as gooseberries and he checked himself in the middle of a roulade. "Eh! why! bless my soul, if it's not—"
"Precisely," interjected Mr. Fett, with a quick warning wink and a wave of his hand to introduce us. "I pescatori da maremma. . . . To them enter Proteus with his attendant nymphs. . . . They rush on him and bind him with strings of sausages (will the Donna Julia oblige by tucking up her sleeves and fetching the sausages from the back kitchen, with a brazier?) The music, slow at first, becomes agitated as the old man struggles with his captors; it then sinks and breaks forth triumphantly, largo maestoso, as he discourses on the future greatness of Genoa. The whole written, invented, and entirely stage-managed by Il Signore Fetto, Director of Periodic Festivities to the Genoese Republic. . . . To be serious, ladies, allow me to present to you four fellow-lodgers from—er— Porto Fino, whom I have invited to share our repast. What ho! without, there! A brazier! Fazio—slave—to the macaroni! Bianca, trip to the cupboard and fetch forth the Val Pulchello. Badcock, hand me over the basket and go to the ant, thou sluggard; and thou, Rinaldo, to the kitchen, where already the sausages hiss, awaiting thee. . . ."
In less than twenty minutes we were seated at table. Master Fazio's hotel (it appeared) welcomed all manner of strange guests, and (thanks to Mr. Fett's dextrous tomfooling) the comedians made us at home at once, without questions asked. Twice I saw Mr. Badcock, as he held a mouthful of macaroni suspended on his fork, like an angler dangling his bait over a fish, pause and roll his eyes towards me; and twice Mr. Fett slapped him opportunely between the shoulder-blades.
He had seated me between the Duenna and the pretty Bianca, to both of whom—for both talked incessantly—I gave answers at random; which by-and-by the Columbine observed, and also that I stole a glance now and then across the Princess, who was trying her best to listen to the conversation of the Matamor.
"Are you newly married, you two?" asked the Columbine, slily. "Oh, you need not blush! She puts us all in the shade. You are in love with her, at least? Well, she scorns us and is not clever at concealing it: but I will not revenge myself by trying to steal you away. I am magnanimous, for my part; and, moreover, all women love a lover."