"« 8 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/danielecortisnovOOfogarich DANIELE CORTIS. :t; Daniele Cortis H novel TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF ANTONIO FOGAZZARO BY STEPHEN LOUIS SIMEON REMINGTON & CO., PUBLISHERS HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1890. TO ESME HOWARD, WHO SUGGESTED THE ATTEMPT, I DEDICATE THIS TRANSLATION. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. AGE WIND, RAIN, AND CHATTER, ...... 1 CHAPTER II. A GRAVE MATTER, 14 CHAPTER III. THE IDEAS OF DANIELE CORTIS, 32 CHAPTER IV. AMONGST THE ROSES 44 C APTER V. FOR him! for him! 56 CHAPTER VI. SIGNORA FIAMMA 82 CHAPTER VII. READY ! 97 CHAPTER VIII. IN THE FIELD, 108 CHAPTER IX. VOICES IN THE DARK, 129 CHAPTER X. THE baron's AFFAIRS, 143 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. PAGK FROM CKFALU TO ROME, 161 CHAPTER XII. DIFFICULT WALKING, 186 CHAPTER XIII. VERTIGO, 199 CHAPTER XIV. THEY WERE WORTHY OF THIS, 208 CHAPTER XV. THE SIONORA's SECRET, 221 CHAPTER XVI. IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, 236 CHAPTER XVII. AN INTERVENTION, 250 CHAPTER XVII I. NOCTURNAL STRUGGLES, 270 CHAPTER XIX. " OUGHT I TO GO ? " 290 CHAPTER XX. A HIDDEN DRAMA, 299 CHAPTER XXL THE POEM OF SHADOW AND OP LIFE, 329 CHAPTER XXII. AS THE STARS AND THE PALM-TREES, .... 348 CHAPTER XXIII. HYEME ET iESTATE, 567 Daniele Cortis. CHAPTEK I. WIND, RAIN, AND CHATTER. The balls knocked together sharply, twice over. "Tac, tac," said Count Perlotti, watching them atten- tively, with the chalk in his right hand, and his cue in liis left. " Bless my soul ! " exclaimed the senator, " what cues you have, Countess Tarquinia. This one has no top to it. It is impossible to play." " That is the twelfth," said the countess, in a low voice, to a group of ladies. "My dear son-in-law," she added, stretching her arms, " I keep on writing for some to be sent to me." He turned to Countess Perlotti, who smiled quietly, as she stood watching the weather through the glass door. "All very well," he grumbled. " This is the twentieth time I am told that. Does she want me to make the cues myself ? " "What weather," answered the lady prudently. "It is enough to frighten one." In front of the glass door the great dead cypress, en- veloped in wisteria to its top, raised the bright green of its burden to the sombre sky ; an occasional drop of rain splashed on the gravel. 2 DANIELE CORTIS. " Yes, indeed, signora. It is enough to frighten one. That is the right word." These remarks came as a chorus from four or five men and some ladies, in all their finery, who seemed very stiff and ill at ease at the great honour of being received in the house of Countess Tarquinia Carrfe. " Six to me ! " shouted the senator. " How many ? " inquired an invisible person. " Six, six, six ; are you deaf ? " "No, but those priests ! Listen to them." "Yes, indeed, they must be having an orgie. Do send and keep them quiet, Countess Tarquinia." The priests, who were playing at cards in a room over- head, were screaming and shouting. " My dear Grigioli," said the countess to a young man who was seated on a sofa, talking to the Baroness Elena Carr6 di Santa Giulia, "be so good as to go and ask those reverend gentleman, very nicely, not to make such a noise." The latter bowed. " By-the-bye," said the countess to him quietly, "you know I expect great things of you ! " " In what, countess ? " "Where is your head ? Cortis." " Oh, he will be all right, countess. Fifty votes certain ; here. I was just saying so to Baroness Elena." " Please, my dear friend, do not talk of these things to my daughter, who does not know which is right and which left. Go up to those priests now — Where is Cortis?" she said to her daughter, when the young man had left her. "Go, go, young man, and silence those priests," said the senator to Grigiolo, as he passed through the billiard-room. "Tell them to take a lesson from these other gentlemen. Silence, Don Bartolo ! ' At the far end of the large room, near another glass WIND, EAIN, AND CHATTER. 3 door, a group of men were discussing some apparently mysterious and important question. One of them called out : "Doctor Grigiolo ! " " What is it ? " answered the young man. " I am coming in a minute," and he went on. "Is that boy a doctor of medicine ?" asked the senator of his companion. " No, signore, a doctor of law," replied the other respect- fully. The priests had finished their game. The chaplain, Don Bartolo, was reciting some verses from a paper which he had in his hand, amid the shouts of laughter of his col- leagues. " Excuse me, Don Bartolo," said the ambassador. "Come in, doctor," replied Don Bartolo. "Come in, pray, and listen to this : " 'The pyndic replied he was quite in ihe right.' " "No, excuse me." "But you must listen to this." Doctor Grigiolo decided, with a shudder, to listen to an- other verse, which ended thus : " ' And the syndic replied that again he was right.' " " Very good ; but permit me." " Forgive me, why won't you listen ? I am just coming to the best part." Don Bartolo, excited by several glasses, continued to re- cite his anonymous satire, of which the subject was a wrangle between some common councilmen and a syndic, who said that they were each right in turn. " The syndic remained with his head in the air, And at last he replied that none was wrong there." At these lines the audience was convulsed with laughter. " Good, very good, excellent," exclaimed Doctor Grigiolo in spite of himself ; "but, my very dear chaplain, I don't 4 DANIELE CORTIS. see any necessity or breaking the drums of your neigh- bours' ears. You see there are a good many ladies down- stairs, and the countess begs you — " " Women ? " answered Don Bartolo. " But women can make noise enough too ! " " Be quiet ; let us go away ; do be quiet, chaplain," said hia friends. "Thank you, now I must go downstairs again. Be- sides, for the sake of Count Lao, who is not well." Doctor Grigiolo looked at the oldest priest in the room with a face which was half laughing and half serious. "Come here," shouted the incorrigible Don Bartolo, " come here, doctor, and don't be off after those women again. Stay and have a glass with us. Why did you men- tion Count Lao ? You know perfectly well that his rooms are on the other side of the house. Don't you know, too, that he is in better health than you or I ? Don't you know that he is mad ? " "Do silence Don Bartolo," shouted the senator from downstairs. "Can they have heard what you said?" asked Doctor Grigiolo in terror. " That man will be after us with his cue." " Heavens ! " ejaculated the chaplain. His disappearance, and his comic anguish, raised sucli unbridled hilarity amongst the others that Grigiolo fled with his hands to his head, while Don Bartolo, who had recovered himself, began to read the end of the poem, a speech to the electors : — " Chooue you the man who beems to you least evil And biinlbh all the others to the devil." "So you failed, Grigioli !" cried Countess Tarquinia in the distance. Another voice from among the conspirators said, — " Come here, Doctor Grigiolo." WIND, RAIN, AND CHATTER. 5 The latter answered : " In a minute," and was going on, when Raron Di Santa Giulia stopped him with a heavy liand, and exclaimed in his voice of thunder, — " Answer ! Are you Grigioli or Grigiolo ? " The pleasant-looking, slender youth jumped, took one step backward, and gazed at the senator as he might have gazed at Attila. "In reality it is Grigioli," he replied, "but the people — " " Ah, the people ! I understand," said the baron. " So you failed to silence Bartolo." " Im})ossible, senator. Quite impossible, countess. Your white wine is too strong. It would take a pump and plenty of water to quiet him. We are just going to have a deluge." "Do you think so?" " Yes, countess." " Don't you think the clouds are lifting ?" " I don't see it, countess." " Have you really looked ? " " Yes, I really have, countess." " And you cannot see it ? " " No, I really cannot, countess." "How many more times 'countess?'" muttered the senator, leaning over the billiard-table and practising n. stroke, his eyes fixed on his adversary's ball. " It is the custom, baron," answered Perlotti humbly, standing opposite him. '' Now do be off; the electors are expecting you," said the countess to Grigiolo, giving him a slight push. He was bored with the* election, and would much rather have stayed where he was. Then the countess turned to her guests and said : " I wager that this storm will come to nothing." And immediately there rose a chorus of obsequious WIMD^ KARL AXD CBATISK. 7 '^ "fc ^g «ftfe .tt»r X i«iMB»«f a yhMBJtfcfcii iji Ilium 8 DANIELE CORTIS. at her side. " And just as I was coming to make love to you, too ! " Slie raised her eyes. " Do join tlie rest of the party, Elena ; do go and look after them," insisted her mother. " Poor thing, she is so bored with them ; small blame to her ! " observed Perlotti caressingly, and in a melan- choly voice. " It is all right, Sofia is there," said the baroness. " My wife ? Yes ; but she is not the hostess." "No more am I." With this answer, given somewhat disdainfully, Elena rose and joined the guests. " I am afraid, my dear Tarquinia, that you will have to house all these people for the night," said Perlotti in the ear of the countess, gently leaning his hand upon her arm. She was still a handsome woman, and very well dressed. " Heaven forbid ! I have a feeling of Christian charity for all of them, and they come to my house twice a year ; but I hope to have done with them this evening ! " " I hope you will put me with that pretty little fair woman, Ziriseta, Zirisela — what is her name ? " " You wretch ! " said the countess, turning away laugh- ing. " I am going up to Lao," and she moved away, followed by a laugh from Perlotti. She stopped at the far end of the room, near a door leading to the staircase. " At last ! " she said ; " how did you find him ? " " Sad," answered a masculine voice. / " That is nothing new ! He is only ill because he eats and sleeps, and passes hour after hour in reading and plav- ing. I do not say that he may not suffer sometimes, but he pays a great deal too much attention to himself. The doctor says that he must be kept amused. Well, we must do our best. But if you knew, dear, how hard it WIND, EAIN, AND CHATTER 9 is to keep others amused ! If you knew how disgusted I feel sometimes, and how I struggle to hide it ! " '' Disgusted, aunt ? " The countess was silent, bit her lips, and swallowed a sob. " Nothing, nothing," she answered nervously, closing her eyes, in which the tears were shining. " You will not go away in this storm ? Bravo, then do go and look after some of these people for me." She went upstairs, and he to whom she had been talking entered the room just as all the ladies were turning away from watching the storm, and were settling them- selves on the sofa and the row of chairs between the billiard-table and the west door. Elena came round out- side the chairs, in order to pass near him, and she whispered to him, — " Thank you, Daniele, for having stayed so long with my uncle." Cortis pressed her hand without speaking. Elena looked at him closely, and started. " Is anything wrong ? " she asked. " A grave matter," he answered. " Here is our candidate," shouted the baron. " These gentlemen all want to know if you will bark at Tunis, and bite the ministry." The baron looked like an old Norman brigand, with his big person, his long yellow beard, and his loud voice. " What have we to do with Tunis ? We don't care about Tunis," said Checco Zirisela, a patriot who was afraid of nobody. " We are not in Sicily." " Long live Italy ! " answered the senator. " Think of that, all of you." And he turned away. " Let him go, that trombone," muttered Doctor Grigiolo. " Signor Cortis," said he to the new-comer, " our friend.s liere, who belong to this division, would be glad to say a few words to you." 10 DANIELE CORTIS. Daniele Cortis turned towards his friends who, leaning against the door in an attitude which, although respect- ful, scai'cely concealed the consciousness of their power, were watching the man as he came forward into the watery light. He was tall and slim, his well-cut features were remarkable for their dignity and soldierly resolu- tion, and his blue eyes were open and intelligent. " It is nothing," said Doctor Picuti, who always began his gravest speeches with these words ; " it is nothing. Here we are all of one mind, you know, but it sometimes happens that we talk to our friends from other divisions. I, for example, or my friend Zirisela." " Quite true," said the latter, encouraging his friend to continue. " Well, then, I say that we two and some others are often frequently obliged to go amongst people belonging to other divisions, and there we hear it said that you are but little known (they are ignorant people, and one can- not help that), and that they have no idea as to your opinions on certain questions ; so that we think it would be well that you should, either by means of a speech, or by means of the press, I don't know if I make myself clear — " " They want a jirogramme," said the baron, in a some- what modulated tone, from the end of the room. " They are quite right. Who ever heard of a candidate without a programme? It is like a house without a front to it." "That is better than having so many fronts without houses, or programmes without men behind them," said his wife hastily. " Is it true, Elena, that your cousin is called Daniele Volveno?" asked Countess Sofia Perlotti suddenly. " Yes," answered Elena drily. "What ridiculous names you people have here !" ex- claimed the baron. WIND, EAIN, AND CHATTER. 11 " It is not a name of our Yeneto country, baron," an- swered Signora Perlotti. " It is a name of Friuli, Signor Cortis comes from Friuli." " Of course, I know that ! And, pray, where is Friuli, if not in the Veneto ? Pretty geography you are teach- ing me." The lady bit her lips. " I am sorry," she said, " but — " Here her husband thought it advisable to go and flatten his nose against the window, exclaiming, — " Oh, do look here ! Look here ! Is not this Malcanton coming ? " They saw an umbrella slowly advancing under the drip- ping fir-trees. Every one rushed to the window except the baron and his wife. " Yes, it is certainly he ! Countess, here comes Mal- canton ! " "Bless my heart," exclaimed the countess, re-entering at that moment, " I had forgotten all about him." She had sent this Malcanton a few hours previously to do some commissions. "I had entirely forgotten him. But what an object he is. He looks like a drowned rat." She opened the door, put on her most amiable voice, and putting out her head, cried to him : "Quick, quick ! Do come in ! " Signor Malcanton came in, and shook himself like a spaniel, holding the umbrella with outstretched arm, while the countess groaned, " Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! I have been in such distress about you all this time. How drenched you are ! I am so sorry ! Quick, somebody, go and order some hot brandy- and -water." "I have done everything!" answered the poor spaniel. " I have seen Signor Momi and Signora Catina. I have engaged the band, and telegraphed for the fireworks." 12 DANIELE COETIS. " And taken in plenty of water into the bargain," roared the baron, who was seated behind the others, on the billiard-table, with his legs dangling, Every one laughed, except Malcanton, who stared at him open-mouthed. " Thank you, thank you a thousand times ; but, now, do go upstairs," said the countess, suppressing her laughter. " Elena, go to your uncle, and, on your way, see about that brandy-and-water." " By-the-bye," continued Malcanton, "I have written for that book about the laven-tennis, and I have asked how it should be pronounced." " Laan-tennis," said Countess Perlotti. " Loon, loon ! " bellowed the baron. "Whether it be loan, or loon, I still say laven" main- tained Malcanton. "But we shall soon hear." Countess Tarquinia had ordered a set of lawn-tennis, the first which had been seen in the neighbourhood. Nobody knew how to play, and every one pronounced it differently ; but all the same, there was the lawn-tennis at Villa Carr^. Even at the Italia, the cafe in the town, they had discussed at great length whether it should be laan or loon. " Now, if you will allow me," concluded Malcanton, and he disappeared behind the baroness, while the senator said in a marked voice, — "So you are going to have great doings here, Countess Tarquinia?" "Too great," muttered the wretched Malcanton to his companion, to whom he ostentatiously talked as though she were still a child. " Do you not think, Elena, that such a washing — " But she did not wait to listen to him ; she flew up the stairs, forgetting all about the brandy, and entered the large empty room on the second floor. She heard the con- fused voices of the priests, the senator and the rest of the company rise indistinctly, and the rain seemed to repeat WIND, RAIN, AND CHATTER 13 to her, in a deep bass voice: "A grave matter." She crossed the room slowly, with her eyes fixed on the door of the room in which Daniele had spent ao mucli time. A grave matter ! She knocked twice gently at the door; a loud voice answered, "Come in." CHAPTER 11. A GRAVE MATTER. " Come in," said Count Lao, "and shut the door quickly, for there is an infernal draught. So you've come at last ! And what a damnable row those priests are making: to think that I can't get at them with a stick ! What in the world does your mother mean by asking priests here? They are all drunk already ! What wine did she give them, the goose?' Elena, very seriously, made him a deepcurtsey, and said, — " I will go and enquire, count." " Ah, you naughty child," he exclaimed, recovering his temper, " come here. She came up to me ten minutes ago, as fresh as a rose, to ask me if I wanted anything. She must have lost her senses. As if I wanted anything, with this hurly-burly resounding all through the house. I told her I wished she would send them all to the deuce. But I don't believe you are listening to me. They seem not to think I have troubles enough as it is, and they want to deafen me into the bargain. Will you come in ? What are you standing at the door for ? Why are you staring at me ? Am I pale ? Am I green or yellow ? Do T look like a dead man ? " " No, no, uncle ; you look like a bear in a rage." "A white bear?" " No, a grey bear, uncle." Instead of replying. Count Ladislao drew a looking-glass from his pocket, and approached the window. A GKAVE MATTEE. 15 "Oh, no," he said, "I am not pale, or only very little." But he was pale, and his pallor was heightened by two large black eyes and a black beard, which, though short, was very thick, by a high yellowish forehead, scarcely covered by bristly hair. He turned his back to his niece, and looked at his tongue. " You are looking very well, uncle," said she, " you are really, so you may be quite happy." Her uncle turned round sharply, and drew himself up. " If only I were not ill," he said. He was tall and well-made ; a large, shapely nose did not spoil his face, which was partly sentimental and partly comic. " If only you did not think you were ill," said Elena. " So, I think, do I ! This life amuses me, does it ? I enjoy being unable to digest anything by day, or to sleep by night, do I ? I enjoy being in pain from January to December, I suppose ! Do you hear those abominable priests ? Perhaps I enjoy that, too ! Hold your tongue ; come and play me that symphony of Corelli's." He seated himself in an arm-chair behind a table, in the / " but how can they possibly be carried out while we are ^ in the state of transition in which we are living to-day ? " " There's the rub," answered the other. " But are we far off from the realisation ? " Grigiolo rose from his chair. "Yes," he answered, "far from it; and I have a twenty-minutes' walk before I get to my bed." " You are right ; I have been very thoughtless." " Not at all ! " " Now, I will send someone home with you." " Please don't ; it really is not necessary." Cortis rang the bell. "How is the weather?" he asked, as he ordered the servant to light a lantern, and accompanied Grigiolo into the porch. The white front and the white wings of the villa shone and disappeared again every moment, but no thunder was audible. 42 DANIELE CORTIS. " Will you sleep here ? " said Cortis, " unless you have any scruples against passing the night under my roof?" Grigiolo thanked him, and protested against his last speech. He really could not stay. He was not afraid of the weather, and besides, he did not think it was going to rain. " And you — " he said, " you start to-morrow ? " "Yes, I do." " Whatever the weather may be ? " •' Yes." They were both silent. Behind them, in the room, the lamps were dying out and beginning to smoke. From the window they could see the silvery jet of the fountain and the white gravel. The servant came bringing the lantern. " And so — ^" began Grigiolo. The other interrupted him ; " I will come part of the way with you," said he, seizing his arm and dragging him down the steps, without giving him any chance of pre- venting him. " You consider me a conservative ? " " I don't know ; to a certain extent it seems to me that you are." " And naturally you will say so to your friends ; you will tell them, won't you, that I am one of this new growth of fungi ? But tell them also to wait before they judge me." He was silent for a space, then opened his mouth im- petuously, but he refrained and said only, — " Let them wait." He went on a few steps, and then stopped as if in pain. " Good God ! " he said, " is there nothing left that our poor Italy can teach the world ? Has Providence raised her from the dead merely in order to make a bad demo- cracy, and a bad literature which will shortly ruin each other?" THE IDEAS OF DANIELE CORTIS. 43 '■Do not let us talk about it," answered Grigiolo. "Do you believe," continued Cortis, "that if it were so, the idea of going into Parliament would have ever entered my head ? If you knew the state of my mind you would not think that. Only tell your friends that I may be to be found amongst the ranks of a conservative party, but that I am a motive power. Good-bye." He left him with a rapid gesture of farewell, and dis- appeared in the darkness. Grigiolo remained standing, almost petrified, until Saturn, who had been running on in front, suddenly passed by him at full speed. A flash of lightning showed him some distance off, close to his master. " I will do what I can," thought Grigiolo, " but he is mad!" / CHAPTEE IV. AMONGST THE ROSES. The little chapel of the Villa Carre, hidden away in a corner of the garden between the railings and a group of firs, had apparently never ceased during the night of the 29th June from tinkling its bells. The day came, the sun came, the merry north wind came and rustled the leaves of the poplars along the high road, and whispered to the roses which climbed everywhere, even along the iron supports of the awning outside Elena's window ; and still the bells tinkled. Elena, who had fallen asleep just before dawn, was aroused by the noise, and lifted her head from the pillow. Had not somebody rung the door bell and brought her a letter from Daniele ? Had it not been placed there on the dressing-table ? No. On the table her rings and her bracelets were scattered, and her volume of Chateaubriand lay open. A dream : it must have been a dream. She rose and opened the window and let in the sweet air of the trees and the mountains. On her white bed, on the light walls of her room, which was enclosed like a nightingale's nest in a corner of the villa almost hidden by roses and jasmine, she could see the reflection of the blue sky and the pure light of the dawn. "Holiday, holiday," sang the bells. Elena felt a great wish to cry. She was always thus when she first woke, then her heart shut the door upon her passion and kept it a prisoner till the evening, except when Elena, finding herself alone, descended into the depths of her AMONGST THE EOSES. 45 heart, and delighted to feel in herself a flame of passion and of life. She dressed herself, alone and hastily. Her little room was like sweet music— too sweet ! The scent of the roses was too luxurious, their exquisite beauty was too delicate. She suffered there, and her mind lost all its vigour ; one ought to be happy to dwell in such a nest, and not to have thoughts in one's mind, such as she had, which accorded ill with the beautiful surroundings. Elena looked for a minute out of the window, through the leaves of the roses blown about by the wind. The tops of the moun- tains were red ; a bluish shadow covered the fields, the shrubs, and the paths of the gardens, which some labourers were raking. She thought that this was the third day since Cortis's departure, and that perhaps she might receive a letter. Ah ! ought she to wish for that letter ? She had loved him in secret for how long ! But there had been a time when she did not wish him to think of her. A friendly glance, a kind word, any token of kindness were enough for her. And on her side she only wished to show him quiet friendliness; loving and suffering in silence, with the passionate hope of being able to do something for him some day, but she knew not what ; of being able to do a little good in the world by that means. Otherwise, childless as she was, divided in her soul from her hus- band, she would have gone through life like a shadow, here and there comforting some sorrow perhaps, but finally bringing to God, like the servant in the gospel, many useless treasures laid up in her heart. But now she knew that she was loved, she doubted not that she had been understood by him ; at present her whole soul was in a state of restlessness, full of doubt and torment. She turned from the window and seized the book lying on her table. It was the third volume of Chateaubriand's 46 DANIELE CORTIS. Mimoires d outre Tomhe, and had been lent to her by Cortis. The latter had told her that, as a boy, he had conceived a violent passion for Lucile de Chateaubriand, Comtesse de Caud ; and now, with jealous anxiety, she hunted through the memoirs of the great poet for every word that might recal the figure of his sister. She sought to revive from them that beauty full of sadness, that spirit full of mystery and genius, which considered itself super- fluous upon earth, and so difficult to know, " tant il y a de diverses pens6es dans ma t^te," as she herself wrote to Chateaubriand, "tant ma timidit6 et mon espece de faiblesse ext^rieure sont en opposition avec ma force int6rieure." The volume was open at the beginning of the third book, wherein is described the retirement of Madame de Caud to the convent of the Dames Saint Michel in Paris, and in which are enshrined like relics, the last letters she wrote to her brother. Elena, the night before, had reached this passage in an undated letter. " Quelle piti6 que I'attention que je me porte ! Dieu ne pent plus m'affliger qu'en toi. Je le remercie du pr^cieux, bon et cher present qu'il m'a fait en ta personne et d'avoir conserve ma vie sans tache ; voilk tons mes tr6sors. Je pourrais prendre pour embleme de ma vie la lune dans un nuage, avec cette devise : souvent obscurcie jamais ternie." Elena had stopped reading at this point, with tears in her eyes. Had that brother, whom Lucile called the best part of herself and a gift of God, never been a danger to her ? As she read on in this state of mind she came to the description of Eenato, where, in the forests of Combourg, she lived only in his heart, and oppressed by unconquerable sadness she translated with him the Toedet animam meam mice mece of Job, or wrote those short prose lyrics to the dawn and to the moon, so melancholy and so sweet in their design, so softly musical in their AMONGST THE EOSES. 47 expression. As Elena read the letter, she put herself in the place of the writer ; she herself was speaking to Daniele. She began to read again, but her head was hot and excited, her chest so weighed down that she could not continue. She felt that she must have air and move- ment. She took up the volume and passed through the anteroom smelling of cigars, walking on tiptoe so as not to wake the baron, who was sleeping noisily in the room next her own, with, his door open. She went into the garden and followed the path which leads by the evergreen shrubs, to the chapel of Saint Peter, and to the gate which opens on to the high road. She met a messenger with a telegram for the Baron Senator Di Santa Giulia ; and having told him to take it without" delay to her husband, she passed through the gate, turned to the right, and walked along the road, bordered by poplars, leading to the poor cottages of Passo di Eovese and the river. She thought of Lugano, in which she had spent two days once some years before. She saw a sheet of blue water, a long row of white, yellow, and grey houses, a crown of hills green up to their very summit. Where was Daniele ? Her fancy changed his whereabouts every moment. He was at his window in the Hotel du Pare, or now he was in a somewhat gloomy villa on the lake which she remem- bered, or else he was in that red and yellow villa up on the hill. And she pictured to herself a person about him, who who took all sorts of shapes, some- times deserving pity, and sometimes repulsive ; an old woman in all the appearances of grief, either real or false. Daniele nmst have had his first meeting with his mother two days ago. Another day could not pass without a letter from him. The post did not come in until the evening. "Twelve hours more!" thought Elena, stopping on 48 DANIELE COETIS. the little wooden bridge to watch the shadowy waters of the Eovese, aad to drink in the health-giving air which bore in it the scent of the Alpine meadows and the fir trees. The owner of the neighbouring hydraulic saw- mill passed, and took off his hat to the " little countess," as she was still called all round the neighbourhood. She kept him in conversation, and, half seriously and half laughing, led him on to talk of the elections. The man, an influential elector, had been talked over by the Baron di Santa Giulia, and his mysterious answers, com- bined with his cunning smile, at first troubled Elena. However, she soon penetrated his secret, and dispersed all the baron's electoral cobwebs. She told him with a smile, that in politics she and her husband disagreed, and added, that Count Lao was very anxious for the success of Cortis. That was an important consideration, as the Carre family voluntarily paid half the cost of the maintenance of the bridge on which they were standing, and which had been made by the owner of the saw-mill. The latter, contrite, promised that he would vote for Signor Daniele, "now that you put it to me in that light ! " and with a profound sweep of his hat, he passed on his way. Elena walked along the left bank of the Rovese, among the alders that hid the river from the meadows. Now the thick wood is bathed in the river; farther on, a grassy projection from the bank stops the water, which runs slowly round it, with whirling current, Elena stopped with her closed book in her hands, and watched the stream, while on the other side she could see the old fir trees belonging to her own home. There was no living creature on the bank or in the meadows ; white clouds flying over the tops of the trees veiled the sky. How sweet it would be, she dreamed, to hide herself away with him for ever, in some secluded green retreat. " No ! " she muttered half aloud, " no, no ! " She con- AMONGST THE EOSES. 49 tinued her way, sighing, opened the Chateaubriand at the last few pages, far from Madame de Gaud's letter, read a few lines about Buonaparte, and closed the book again. As she passed near a large poplar, she remembered that a few years before she had cut upon it the name of a girl-friend. She sought for it and found nothing; no trace of that happy time was left to her. Where were they all now, those mad joys, those fantastic hopes, those melancholy feelings of a day, those deep sorrows of an hour ? Her friend was now living in some out-of-the-way little town in Piedmont. She had lost her only child and would not be comforted ; she had even ceased to answer Elena's letters. She had cut her name there in the Autumn of 1869, a few months after she had first known Gortis. She was about seventeen at the time, he was nearly twenty. She remembered the first visit of her uncle and his son, in the May of that year. It was only after her marriage that Elena had become aware that old Doctor Gortis, who had for some time lived in Piedmont, had always refused to return to Friuli, after his domestic catastrophe ; and that he had been induced by his sister Tarquinia to buy Villascura. How long a time had passed since then, and how many things ? The resounding current of the Eovese seemed to her like an echo, and pained her. " What a child I was ! " thought Elena. Her cousin, a good-looking young man, full of cleverness and life, used to like watching her, but she, as she looked back now, re- membered that she had taken no notice of him, till some time later ; and then old Gortis had died, and Daniele had gone away into the world with the stream. He had travelled for many years, had studied political economy at Berlin, and taught it at Florence, and now, after seven long years, he had returned to Villascura, to carve out a political career for himself. What years those had been for her ! Elena opened her book, sat down D 50 DANIELE CORTIS. by the way-side, read a few lines without understandings them, and finally let herself drift with the rush of painful thoughts that assailed her. Every now and then she opened her heart to them in desperation, so as to get a moment's respite from the pain of fighting them. She heard her mother introducing to her Colonel Baron di Santa Giulia, she saw his slight bow as he took her hand. Then she saw herself again in lier girlish bed, one long December night, debating with herself, whether she could remain in that house which had become hateful to her, through certain fancied evi- dences of sin, or whether she should say that painfully bitter, "Yes." Her hands grasped the book, her eyes fixed themselves upon the pages ; she forced herself to read a few lines in order to rid herself of those fancies. She chanced upon these words, — " II n'y a qu'un deplaisir auquel je crains de mourir difficilement, c'est de heurter en passant, sans le vouloir, la destin^e de quelque autre." It was only after reading two or three lines further on, that she perceived how applicable this paragraph was to herself. Then she returned to it with avidity, and forgot herself in it until the sun, coming up between the shoulders of the overhanging mountains, shone upon her book. She seated herself on a low wall at the edge of the wood, whence the road ran down to the river, which displayed its glittering pebbles and its bright banks in the sun- light. She passed through a moment of mortal hopelessness. Always that same doubt, that same remorse, that shadow that haunted her. She was hurting him, although no word of love had ever passed between them, she was a hindrance and an impediment in his life. She laid the book down upon the wall, and ceased thinking, lulled by the sun and the murmur of the Rovese. After a time AMONGST THE EOSES. 61 she took up the book again, and hunted slowly through it with icy fingers, for the passage, "II n'y a qu'un deplaisir." She closed it again hastily, got down off the wall, with eyes full of tears, and slowly turned towards the house. As she passed under the windows of Count Lao, she saw him making signs of greeting to her, from behind the panes. She signalled to him to open, but in return she received nothing but a gesture of horror, and a finger was pointed to call her attention to the trees which were swaying in the wind. Malcanton and Perlotti were going round the garden with the bailiff; they were giving orders, taking measurements, and studying the ground, as though they were about to fortify a camp in presence of a hostile army. They had to decide where the band should be placed, and where the fireworks should be ar- ranged. Malcanton had been specially charged to lay out the lawn-tennis ground before the arrival of the guests, who were expected from the neighbouring town. As soon as he saw Elena in the distance, he began waving a letter above his head, crying out, — " Laan, laan ! " Elena started and hastened towards him. " Has the post come ? " she asked. "Yes, that idiot of a postman thought fit to keep the letters in his pocket all last night. There is one for you. The rules have arrived, and they say that it ought to be pronounced ' laan,^ as you said. See, here it is, I will read it to you." "While Malcanton was hastily beginning to read the rules for the game of lawn-tennis, Elena turned her back on him. "Here ! " he cried ; " Elena ! " but she was already in the house, and he, poor man, grumbling a little, returned to his work. She found her husband fuming and raging in his shirt- 52 DANIELE COETIS. sleeves, furious with her for her absurd passion for going out before sunrise. Elena did not wait till he had done, but pushed the door too in his face. He, however, kicked it open, and, just as he was, came into the passage. "This is no joke," said he. "I have very serious matters to talk to you about." " Say what you please," answered Elena, " but not in that manner." " Go ill," replied the baron, holding the door open ; " we will put on our best manners to please your lady- ship. Will you kindly come in ? " Elena entered ; her husband closed and locked the door with a grunt of satisfaction, and muttered, 'What suscep- tibility !" " Be quiet," he said, seeing that Elena wished to put in a word. " We must start to-night. Do you hear ? " "Why ? Yes, I hear perfectly. Is there anything else? " "There is this, that we cannot start thus." Elena seated herself in an arm-chair, and began to read her Chateaubriand. " Damn your books ! " exclaimed the baron. " Have the goodness to listen to me. I tell you that we cannot start thus." "But what can I do, if I know nothing and understand nothing. What prevents us from starting ? " " You spend your life a thousand miles above the clouds. Do you imagine that I came for my own pleasure into this infernal country of yours, this land of rheumatism and ice, where one freezes in June, and where it rains sixty times a day ? I didn't come here to sleep in a nutshell like this, where my feet stick out of the door. You know that, I suppose ? " " If I had not known it I might have guessed it." " You need not be so witty. I have said it." " And what next ? " AMONGST THE KOSES. ' 53 "Why." The baron lowered his voice, and with an obscene oath, said that he had got nothing of what he expected. "And this is what you want me for, is it?" asked Elena, rising and putting her hand on the door-handle. " "What the devil should I want you for otherwise ? " " But is this money my business, pray ?" " Certainly it is. You spend most of it ! " Elena knew perfectly well the various secret means which the baron had for getting rid of his money, but she disdained to retort, and only said, "And therefore ?" " And therefore, if that skinflint of an uncle of yours — " Elena, in an instant, rushed into her room ; but before she could close the door her husband followed her crying, — " Come now, what — " •' Leave my room," she said, turning towards him. His voice dropped, he was abashed by the glittering eyes that were fixed upon him, he hesitated a moment and finally withdrew, slamming the door violently behind him. Elena saw a letter on her table and seized it with a beating heart. It was from Cortis, dated from Lugano. She waited an instant, then opened it and read, — "Dear Elena, — I shall probably start for home to- morrow evening, and pray heaven that I may still find you. I have great need of you. I will tell you all when we meet. I am worn out. As hitherto my heart has no resting place but you, it shall never have any other. " Daniele." She did not know how long she remained standing with the letter in her hand, when her husband entered fasten- ing his necktie. " What has happened to you ? " he asked. 54 DANIELE COETIS. She placed the letter openly on the table, unconcernedly, and answered quietly, — " "What do you want with me ? " " What I want ? I want to tell you this, that I must have money, and that if I don't, you will regret it, for I will shut you up at Cefal^ for ever and a day, and not all the powers of Eome, or Venice, or heaven itself, will get you out of it. You see that I will get it ! " " How will you get it ? " " Now, at once, from your uncle. If not the money itself, I will get a little bit of writing, or even a verbal promise, because I am a good fellow, they know they can trust me. It will do if the money reaches me in Rome in a week's time. Do you think I am afraid of your uncle ? I am going straight to his room, and I will offer him the alternative ; either Cefaltl or the money. If he cries out, I will cry out too." He took his long yellow beard and pulled it through his hands. Elena studied his face in order to discover whether he had really meant what he said, or whether he only meant to frighten her into interfering. To say the truth, the baron had a certain amount of military sincerity, and his forehead was undisturbed. " I will do it," she said ; and she noticed a look of satisfaction in his eyes. " I will do it, on one condition." "What condition?" "That you do not say one word. Do you hear? One word, and I will do nothing." " I will not speak." "To nobody?" " To nobody." " Now go, and shut the door." The noble baron had noticed the letter on the table, but left the room without any comment on it. He suddenly reappeared at the door, however, and said, — AMONGST THE ROSES. 55 " You must ask your uncle to advance to you some of the money he always gives you, Fifteen thousand lire will be enough for the present. You may tell him I need it to pay the last instalment of the mortgage upon Cefalii, And you may add, that if I have to borrow it elsewhere, I shall take every one belonging to me to Cefalii and put them on half rations. Do you understand ? Either the money or Cefalii." Elena was reading her letter a second time, and answered without looking up, — " Very good." The door closed ; she was alone. Then she laid down the letter and seated herself on her bed, which was not yet made, and looked oat of the window to the west, through the roses, upon a green meadow bathed in sun- light. Many thoughts rose in her heart, designs and plans formed themselves slowly in her brain. Her lips moved as though uttering words, but no sound came from them. At last she rose, went to the window, and, hidden behind the roses, she wept. CHAPTEK V. FOR niM ! FOR HIM ! Malcanton and Count Perlotti were standing under the window of Elena's room, and were knocking at Doctor Grigiolo's closed shutters ; he was fast asleep. Elena passed them boldly, put on her hat and gloves, and went to her mother, who was still sleeping, and, without much preamble, announced that her departure was fixed for that evening. The countess's thoughts immediately flew to the money required by her son-in-law, and she was terrified at the idea of a scene on that day of all others, wdien her house was full of guests. Imagine Lao with his temperament ! She wished that money and excitable people were all at the bottom of the sea together. " You, my child," she said, " had better not mix your- self up in it at all. Let your uncle do as he pleases." She told her of all she had suffered during the last fort- night, between the ill-temper of her son-in-law and the scoldings of her brotlier-in-law. " And you would never let me talk to you about it." Elena interrupted her, told her that everything was settled, and, without further explanation, begged her to allow her maid to pack her trunks. " Everything settled ? How ? When ? " Countess Tarquinia was beside herself with surprise, but she could obtain no explanation from her daughter, who embraced her, begging her not to make herself miserable about it any more, and then departed. The countess rang FOR HIM ! FOR HIM ! 57 her bell violently, and sent for Elena again. She did not know where they were going, whether to Rome or to Aix-les-Bains. Elena then admitted that she did not know herself. Her husband had not told her, and she had not enquired. Probably it would be Rome, however, because a telegram had come, and Di Santa Giulia was expecting to be summoned to a meeting of the Senate. Countess Tarquinia would have desired greater certainty, but Elena ran away, and went straight to Count Lao, who, having got up for a minute to look at the weather, had betaken himself back to bed. When Elena, in hat and gloves, suddenly burst into his room, and said, " I am going away," he fancied that she was on the point of starting and sat up in bed. The twelve hours' delay ap- peared to him a clear gain ; at least they could talk it over. He rained questions upon his niece. Could she not do this ? Could she not do that ? Surely the baron could go by himself to Rome, or even farther. It did not occur to him to propose to accompany her himself, but he mentioned the steward, and that fool Malcanton who, as he said, was good for nothing else. When he saw he could not move her, he flew into a passion, turned his face to the wall, huddled himself up in the bedclothes, and screamed to his niece to go away, and at once, that he did not care a pin whether she went to Rome, or Sicily, or Africa, or anywhere else she pleased, and that she need be in no hurry to return. Elena moved, approached the bed quietly and leant over it ; the face, which was half-hidden between the pil- lows and the sheets, was moved also. " Ugh ! " said Count Lao in a rough voice, as if to ward off any demonstrations of tenderness or affection. Sud- denly Elena kissed his forehead. " It is my duty," she said softly. Then she spoke to him about the money. Lao gradually turned towards her, listening attentively. Elena, laugh- 58 DANIELE COKTIS. iiig, told him not to be afraid, and ordered him to reply merely to her mother, should she question him, that he and Elena had come to an understanding ; he was not to say anything more. Her uncle did not understand, and demanded explanations. She gave him another kiss, and, excusing herself on the plea that she had to go to mass (although it would not begin for another hour or more), she left him. She ordered a carriage and drove to Yillascura, where she stopped at the priest's house. He was in church, but a pleasant housekeeper begged the "little countess" to wait a moment and retired discreetly, just as the priest himself entered and greeted her with a manner in which were mingled respect, surprise and expectation. Elena had come to take leave of him. He expressed his regrets, which were perhaps increased by the fact that he had several times been the channel through which passed her secret charities. This time also she wanted to lay a similar burden upon him, but she also wanted to be advised and assisted. The priest exhausted himself in thanking her in the name of his poor. He also hoped to obtain the support of the senator in some difficulty which had arisen between him and the Commissioners of the Crown Lands. The baroness gave him to understand that her husband could not help him much, but that she thought that it was in her power to be of use to him ; and as she said good-bye, she begged him with a smile to be good enough to bless the crops of those who voted for Daniele Cortis. The priest grew very red, and protested that he had never refused his blessing from political motives. But there was a story which was not without foundation in fact, that he had refused his assistance to keep the caterpillars off the cabbages belonging to some of the supporters of Cortis. Elena comforted him. Now was the time, she said, to remedy the evil. The priest had not known Cortis well when he had done this : but now he could FOR HIM ! FOE HIM ! 59 conscientiously state to the electors that Cortis was by no means an enemy of religion ; quite the contrary ; she would answer for him. The priest promised to do all that her ladyship wished, even to adapting his political convictions to those of Countess Tarquinia, and, with bare head, he accompanied the baroness to her carriage. " Villa Cortis," said Elena to the coachman as she got in. When the last cottages of the village were passed, she saw the wall surrounding the French garden, and above it the gleaming fountain and the dark-wooded sides of the hills. With pale and sad countenance she went up to the little grass lawn in front of the house, passed through the court-yard, and turning off by the garden railings, disappeared in the wood. She lost herself in the mystery of the shadows which cast around their silent invitation and which in a short time become thick and dense, lying darkly over the paths that wind in and out among them. Within tliose woods are hills and valleys perpetually shaded ; lakes, ponds, and glades, girt round by over- shadowing trees, and there may be heard, too, the voices of invisible springs. The branches of the lofty trees, growing around the garden gate, by their waving and murmuring in the wind, suggest a poem of shadow and of life, and give one a foretaste of its sombre magnificence. Elena entered by the broad path to the left. It might have been possible for a quick ear to distin- guish her light footfall as she walked ; but had any one followed her cautiously and lost sight of her after the first bend in the path, he would have listened vainly for her step. She descended into the valley which opened on her left immediately after this turning, a narrow valley through which a stream covered with water-lilies trickled ; the grass grew thickly over the path, and overhead the branches of the acacias on either side mingled, and cast a golden green shadow. Thence she mounted to a quiet Qgn ;ery ^ ion, y 60 DANIELE COETIS. opening in the hills, and there, among the trees on a grassy plateau, stood a column of ancient marble, brought from the batlis of Caracalla to this other solitude, and bearing on its base two clasped hands carved in relief, and the following words : — Hyeme et Estate Et prope et procul Usque dum vivam et ultra. Elena reappeared half-an-hour later still paler. She closed the garden gate behind her, leaning her head against it for a last look at the dear flowers, and to say to them, " Shall I ever see you again ?" The trees could not hear her, they were too high, but they still swayed and murmured in the wind, offering her the poem of life and shadow, the sweet day-dreams of love. But she would not hearken to them. She turned away with a sigh, and walked away with bowed head, and with the words of the old column in her heart : " In winter and in summer, from near and from far, as long as I live, and beyond that again." She stopped at Yillascura for mass. Coming out of church she found Pitantoi and Don Bartolo in friendly conversation with the coachman. Little Don Bartolo came forward with his somewhat comic familiarity and reproved the contessina for leaving them so quickly. " Contessina," said Pitantoi, remaining respectfully in the background, " it will be all right for Signor Daniele, even though the good priest here does dislike it." "What, what, what !" exclaimed Don Bartolo, turning round quickly and grasping his knobbed stick. Elena took no notice of him, but she nodded pleasantly to the other. "Good-bye,'' she said, as the horses started at full speed, covering with dust the two combatants. FOE HIM ! FOE HIM ! 61 Countess Tarquinia was in the garden with the Per- lottis. Malcanton, red and perspiring like a porter, had not yet succeeded in marking out the lawn-tennis ground, notwithstanding the help of the bailiff ; Doctor Grigiolo was upstairs in a small room preparing fire balloons for the evening, and at that moment was leaning out of window shouting, " Paste, paste ! " As soon as he saw the carriage return, he rushed down from his laboratory and joined the Perlottis and Malcanton, who had gone to meet Elena to express to her their regrets at her intended departure. Signora Perlotti told her that she and her husband had arranged with the baron that they should all start at half-past ten, after the illuminations and fire- works. Countess Tarquinia, guessing what they were talking about, began to exclaim, " No, no," from a dis- tance, and made gestures of dissent with her fan. " Your mamma won't hear of it," said Signora Perlotti ; " she is always so good, poor dear. But we really must go!" "We really must," repeated her husband, notwith- standing some expressed doubts of Malcanton and Doctor Grigiolo. " I am selfish," said Elena smiling. " I shall be glad to start with you." They all turned towards Countess Tarquinia, who, with her parasol, was beckoning to them to come into the shade between the house and the dead cypress tree clothed in wisteria. The baron soon joined them there. His mother-in-law rallied him in a friendly manner about his sudden flight, and again begged the Perlottis to stay on at the villa. The baron looked sulky, and seemed to ask, " What is the good of this comedy ? " Elena was silent, and let her mother talk on undisturbed. All at once the hall door opened, and Count Lao, who was re- ceived with acclamation, appeared. It was very seldom that he came out of his room so early in the day. He 62 DANIELE COETIS. answered with a nod to the surly "good-morning" of the baron, and quickly gave the rest of the party to under- stand, that he wanted none of them except Elena, who meanwhile found an opportunity of telling her mother not to press the Perlottis to stay. It was time for mass, and all the group, except Elena and her uncle, moved, more or less willingly, in the direc- tion of the little church, the baron going last, and turning round now and then to watch the two who w^ere standing together. Perlotti asked the Countess whether Lao never went to church. " Oh ! " she said, " the Carres have always been infidels, one and all. Did you not know that ? " And they entered the church under the fir trees. Then Lao took his niece's arm. " Now, explain all this to me," he said. "What, uncle?" She looked at him with her two honest eyes, arching her brows and smiling ; then she exclaimed, " Oh, yes ! " as if she had suddenly remembered. "You are always in the moon, and it takes you some time to travel down to the earth," said Lao crossly. "Do you imagine that she has waited all this time without coming to find out from me what was the matter?" Lao hardly ever mentioned his sister-in-law by name ; he merely called her " she." " And -what did you answer ? " " I was, I am, and always shall be, a fool. I answered her as you wished, that everything was settled between you and me, that that was enough for her, and that she was not to bother me any more. You may tell her any- thing you please, I don't care what you say to her ; but you must explain matters to me." " But if everything is settled ! " Elena broke in, laugh- FOE HIM ! FOE HIM ! 63 ing, " what is there for me to explain ? Let us go for a little walk, dear uncle." She proposed that they should take a turn in the garden, and offered him her arm, but he would not hear of it, demanded these explanations, and was quite angry with her for being in such good spirits. " Oh, uncle ! she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, and looking quite gravely at him, " Forgive me," said Lao, recovering his temper ; " but you ought to see that it is necessary for me to have this cleared up." Elena looked into his face for an instant without a word, then, taking his arm, she said, — "Come along," and drew him off towards the agent's office — a pretty little house at a short distance from the villa, its northern side curiously sheltered by some mediaeval ruins, and its eastern side covered with creepers and roses up to the roof. Elena entered it by the southern door, which led into the little room that had been her sitting-room as a girl, a nest hidden behind vines and roses, facing the open country towards Villascura and the mountains of Passo Grande. "What in the world have you brought me into this "box for ?" grumbled Lao, stooping under the doorway. "Listen, everybody," she answered, "to this bear with- out taste or feeling ! " She compelled him to sit down on the little sofa, and to admire the view of meadows and mountains, and her coquettish little nest, perfect from its flooring of walnut- wood, up to the gilded dove which supported in her beak the hangings of red and white silk, wherewith the walls and ceiling were draped. " Yes, yes," growled Lao, " an old sweetmeat box, empty and greasy. And what next ? " " Have you no confidence in me, uncle ? Need I give 64 DANIELE CORTIS. you so many reasons before you will do anything for me ? Come now, don't be angry ! I will tell you all about it, and explain it all to you. Only you must be kind to me during these, the last few hours that I have to spend here." " And you still keep up these mysteries," exclaimed the Count, throwing down his hat. You will keep on putting me off for the next hundred years." "Gently, gently," said Elena, "I am going to tell you all about it. A tine secret, indeed ! There is no secret ! Don't you understand ? I have talked it over with my husband this morning, and he will say no more about it." " Very good. But pray, why am I given any part in the comedy ? " Elena tapped the ground with her foot. " How dense you are, uncle. Can't you understand ? " " Very dense, indeed," answered Lao. " I can under- stand nothing at all ; I am still waiting for the key." "But for mamma's sake ! You see my husband has always been to mamma about these matters, and has always told her that he would not go without this money, of which he is in great need ; and now it seems to me that we must save her feelings, and, in order to do that, she must be allowed to believe that everything has been arranged according to his wishes." "And has he made up his mind not to ask for any more?" " That is more than I can tell you." Count Lao was silent, and looked at his niece in such a way as to make her blush. "All right," he said at last. "And what are your plans after you have been to Rome ? " She did not like the conversation to be thus abruptly broken off. She feared that he had some suspicion, but she dared not clear up her doubts. They talked of what they would do in October when Elena, according to custom, would be coming home for a month. A fresh FOR HIM ! FOR HIM ! 65 coldness had sprung up between them ; they talked with- out looking at each other, without any regret in their voices ; and, displeased with each other, they soon relapsed into silence. " How much does your husband require ? " suddenly asked Lao, " I don't know," answered Elena, without surprise, as though she had seen from the first whither her uncle's thoughts were tending. " He talked about fifteen thou- sand lire." She opened the drawer of the little table standing by the sofa, and taking from it a pencil, she wrote, under a line of other dates, " 29th June 1881 ? " For many years she had always written in that drawer the dates of her arrival and departure. This time she added a note of interrogation, and closed the book. " What are you about ? " asked Lao. " Take a wife, uncle," she answered. " Silly child ! " At these words the cold and strained feelings which were weighing upon them vanished. Elena laughed, took one of her uncle's hands, and preached him a little sermon, in joke, upon the subject of an ideal aunt, a mature and majestic beauty. " Mercy ! " exclaimed Count Lao, at this description, now quite amused at the idea, notwithstanding the " silly child ! " with which he had at first received the idea, " I know what you are driving at. Many thanks. A nice barge to take in tow." Having joked about this for a time, they returned arm- in-arm to the garden, and there they found a fly-driver, who had been ordered by Di Santa Giulia from Villascura. Countess Tarquinia could not let Elena have the horses from the Villa that evening, as they would be wanted the next day to take her over to pay a visit at a neighbouring country house. B 66 DANIELE CORTIS. Count Lao flew into a passion, declared to Elena that the horses belonging to the house should be at her dis- posal, and warned her not to say a word against his arrangements ; then, turning to the driver, he told him to go to Countess Tarquinia, and to take his orders respect- ing the next day's visit from her. At this moment the Countess and her guests advanced towards them from the church under the fir trees. The baron was listening inattentively to Count Perlotti, while he watched his ■wife and Lao closely. He had not yet been alone with his mother-in-law, and therefore he did not know what Elena had said to her about the money. But Elena must certainly have talked about it to her uncle while all the rest were at mass. With what results ? They both seemed to be in good humour ; his spirits revived. Just then a servant came and announced the arrival of a party of guests from the town. " Elena, Elena ! " cried her mother, dismayed, " come and help me with the luncheon, do try to be of some use. God bless these people ; fancy coming at this hour ! " She hurried forw^ard, with Malcanton, Perlotti, and Grigiolo, to greet the new-comers. Di Santa Giulia, in the confusion, succeeded in whispering to his wife, — " Have you spoken ? " " It's all settled," answered she^ hurrying towards the house. Di Santa Giulia remained alone with Count Lao for a moment, because Elena, on reaching the house, turned round and called the latter. The baron stretched out his hand. " Thank you," he said. "No need," said Lao drily, thinking that he was being thanked for the horses ; and he called to Elena, " I am coming." The baron let him go, and walked with long strides, Avith his hat on the back of his head, and his beard flying FOE HIM ! FOE HIM ! . 67 ill the wind, towards the stables, where a stack of umbrellas and parasols denoted the advent of at least eight or ten persons. Count Lao did that day a thing most extraordinary for him. He came to luncheon, although it had been post- poned a whole hour in consequence of the new arrivals. These all talked loudly and coraplainingly of Elena's departure, " By the way. Countess Tarquinia," said the baron, " have you arranged with the fly-driver ?" " Yes," she replied, in a cross voice ; " did not my brother-in-law tell you that you could have our horses ? " Di Santa Giulia slightly turned his head towards Lao, and mumbled a few words of thanks. "But — " began Lao, surprised that he did not know of the arrangement about the carriage ; and then he stopped short. Countess Tarquinia asked Elena, as soon as she found an opportunity, whether she were a witch. Every- thing seemed settled, and everyone pleased and satisfied. She even managed to whisper to her son-in-law, " You will be contented now," to which he answered aloud, « Certainly." She proposed that the party should adjourn to the billiard-room after luncheon, but Elena suggested that they should walk in the gardens of the Yilla Cortis, and sent her husband in her place, excusing herself on the score of her packing. The baron would have gladly re- mained behind in order to learn from his wife what had really been the result of her interview with Lao, but, feeling certain that it was good, he determined to show himself in an amiable light, and therefore went with the rest of the party, Grigiolo alone remained behind, in order to arrange the supports for the illumination of the grounds, the house, and the agent's office. " Now, explain this to me," said Count Lao to his niece as soon as the party had started. 68 DANIELE COETIS. "What?" " Your good-for-nothing husband came up to me after church this morning, and thanked me as warmly as though I had saved his life, which I certainly would not do ! " "Uncle!" " No, I certainly would not ! But I w^ant to know the reason for this gratitude." " For the loan of the horses, perhaps." " The horses ! nonsense ; he knew nothing about them then. Did you not hear what passed at luncheon ? " "Perhaps it was for the hospitality you have shown him during these three weeks." The uncle was silent, and looked at Elena as he had looked at her in her little sitting-room at the agent's cottage. She did not blush this time, but pretended in- difference. She remained talking for a few minutes, and then said that she must go upstairs to see to her trunks. " And Cortis ? " cried Lao, as she was going upstairs. Elena started at the sound of that name, and stopped short without turning round. She had not talked of Cortis to her uncle since she had repeated to him those three words : a grave matter. " Has he not come back yet ?" asked the count. " I do not think so," answered Elena, with a trembling voice. " I wonder how this election will go ?" said the count. Elena slowly went «p the stairs without answering. As the hour of her departure grew nearer, she felt more clearly how difficult it was to talk of him, or to restrain her own feelings. She hastily finished her packing with the help of her mothers maid, and then went out to say good-bye to the bailiff's wife and to two or three other peasants. As she was coming back to the house, her uncle called to her from his window, and begged her to go vip to him. FOR HIM ! FOR HIM ! 69 " Look here," he said, " do you want any money ? " On hearing from Elena that she did not, he insisted, begging her to speak clearly, and ask him if she wanted anything for herself. After all, everything that he pos- sessed would be hers one day or the other. Elena hesi- tated a minute, and then refused. Lao said no more about it. " Let us say good-bye now," he continued, pressing her to his heart " This evening, with so many tiresome people about, I shall not have an instant alone with you. And remember this, whensoever, wheresoever, and for whatsoever purpose you want me, I do it for your sake, and also," lie kissed her forehead, '• for your father's," he added, raising his face. Elena looked at him with tears in her eyes, and grasped his hands tightly. Her father and Count Lao had been brothers, but not friends ; that was one of the reasons why the latter had lived away from his own country for so long. His health having broken down, and his brother being ill with the malady which finally killed him, they had become reconciled, and Lao, at the express wish of his brother, had taken his place as head of the family. The party that had gone to Villascura was to return shortly before dinner, Elena ordered that meal to be sent up a few minutes earlier than usual, and told her mother that she had done so when she came home ; neither the countess nor the baron had any opportunity of finding out exactly what had passed between her and her uncle. Towards the end of dinner, the band from Villascura entered the garden, playing as it came, and Malcanton, the factotum, rushed out to receive it, and to place it in the corner reserved for it between the agent's house and the laurels which bordered the garden on the west. Follow- ing the band came several people ; the Ziriselas, the Picutis, and all the society of Villascura and Passo di 70 DANIELE CORTIS. Rovese. A moment later Countess Tarquinia went out of doors with the whole of the party except Lao, who hurried to his room, where he shut himself up. When the countess appeared, the band struck up a fantasia on the " Sicilian Vespers," the Ziriselas and Picutis, in their best clothes, came forward to greet their hostess, and a number of people stood about under the trees, which were gilded by the rays of the setting sun. Baron di Santa Giulia took his wife's arm, and led her away from the rest. " The devil take you ! " he said ; " can't you speak to me ? Tell me what has happened ? First of all, how much?" "Wait," answered Elena, stopping short, and looking over her shoulder. " Excuse me," she added, shaking off his hand, " those ladies have come on purpose to see me. How can you expect me to leave them ? " and with these words she ran to greet Signora Zirisdla. Before they went into the garden. Countess Tarquinia had said to her son-in-law, " You will be satisfied now ! " therefore there could be no doubt that things had been settled, but the baron would have preferred to have more definite information. The shadows were growing longer and longer, the wine ran freely in the corner between the cottage and the laurel-bushes, and inspired the musicians of Villascura to play with still more diabolical vigour. In front of the band, on the grass, the gentlefolk were dancing ; the peasants were dancing too, but in the background. The indefatigable Perlotti, bathed in perspiration, wanted, at all hazards, to make Elena dance with him, and made her a thousand ridiculous speeches. Elena, annoyed, tried to free herself from him with a sharp speech, when her mother interposed. " Leave her with me a little," she said, " I lose her to- night," FOE HIM ! FOE HIM ! 71 Mother and daughter moved away together along a little path that ran by the side of a stream between the agent's cottage and the fields. When other people were present, the countess was all tenderness towards her daughter, although the latter replied but coldly to her advances ; when they were alone there was much reserve between them, the countess not having any ideas, inclinations, or feelings in common with Elena, knowing that the latter was her superior both morally and intellectually, and conscious of certain pre- vious gallantries which, although the countess freely for- gave them in herself, she knew would be very differently regarded by her puritanical daughter. She complained to Elena that she could not spend these last few hours alone, quite alone, with her ; but how was it possible with a house full of guests, on such a day ? She would make up for it in October. She begged Elena to come back quickly, and not to allow herself to be carried off into Sicily ; and she added that if they were to pass the summer by the sea, it would not be prudent to go to Naples. If her husband absolutely declined to come to Venice, there were Leghorn, Genoa, many other places more suitable than Naples. Or why not Dieppe or Ostend ? But if they did not go to the sea, she thought they could not do better than try Aix. Di Santa Giulia had talked of Aix at first, if only he could raise the money. Now Elena could remind him of what he had said, and keep him to his word. And when she went to Aix,- or wherever it might be, she must take a maid with her, she must insist upon that. Now he could not pretend that economy was necessary. " By-the-bye," said the countess at this point, " how did you succeed in converting your uncle, and what did you settle?" "You know quite well," answered Elena, " what my husband wanted." l/h^e 72 DANIELE CORTIS. "Yes, he wanted at least fifteen thousand lire, which, after all, would not ruin one, and I can't help thinking that your uncle might have made less fuss about giving it," "What did my husband once say to you, mamma? id he not say that if he failed to get this money he would imprison me at Cefalii for ever and a day?" " The wretch !" exclaimed the countess. "Yes, he did ! " "Well, now it is settled that I shall not go to Cefalii unless I choose." "Thank God for that ; but—" A shiver ran through Elena, and shook her wliole body. "What is the matter," exclaimed her mother, "what has happened ? " In a moment Elena regained her self-control. " Nothing," she answered ; " really nothing." The countess, genuinely uneasy, insisted, but without avail. At this moment, Malcanton came up to ask whether, during the religious functions, the band might rest in the house instead of going to play in the church, as the priests had requested. Elena left the two to con- sider this weighty matter, and wended her way to the stables, to see whether her luggage had been taken in the cart, and whether everything were ready for their start ; but as her husband chanced to come out of the house at tliat moment calling to a servant, "Is the baroness there?" Elena turned back. Now she wanted to avoid her mother, who, having got rid of Malcanton, was coming in search of her. She went in-doors, and took refuge with Count Lao. As she knocked at his door, she remembered that stormy evening when the rain had clouded every window, and she had knocked at the same door with a presentiment of a new and unknown danger. Now the quiet evening light lay on the floor; the church-bells were ringing in the clear sky ; merry voices floated FOR HIM ! FOR HIM ! 73 through the open windows from the garden ; all seemed to saj, " Go away thou of the sad thoughts." A lamp was already burning in Count Lao's room, and he was writing. " Is it you ? " he said. " What time is it ? " " About nine, uncle." "So you still have an hour? Excuse me if I goon writing this letter, which it is important for me to finish." Elena sat in silence near the window. A thread of light filtered through the trees from the tower of the church. Other lights were moving about the garden, and the chattering increased momentarily. She could hear Doctor Grigiolo's voice as he screamed out his direc- tions for the illuminations. A servant came in search of Elena. The countess wanted her at once. She was waiting for her daughter just outside the house near the dark billiard-room. Countess Tarquinia did not pretend to be a saint, but she was convinced that her heart was good, and she wished to prove it to Elena. She implored her to speak, to confide in her if she had anything on her mind. "I have not your virtues," she said with humility, " nor your talents ; but I am your mother after all." Elena v/as moved, and embraced her with more affec- tion than she had exhibited towards her for a long time. " It was nothing," said she ; " but when you said ' thank God ! ' a stupid thought passed through my mind — a fear lest I should never come back here, and I shivered — that was all." Her mother kissed her, and scolded her for giving way to such foolish thoughts. In her heart of hearts she was not at all comforted, for she knew that Elena was most unlikely to give way, to empty dreams. V V 74 DANIELE COKTIS. Their conversation was interrupted by the Perlottis, who came ont of their room in travelling costume. " It is early," said the countess. " Yes, dear ; I know we have nearly an hour," answered her friend ; " but Grigiolo begged us to miss as little as possible of the illuminations ! " They went out together. Festoons of coloured lamps hung from tree to tree, and from the windows of the house to those of the cottage. There they stopped, but they encircled the dead cypress nearly to the top, and in the darkness it rose up like an obelisk of fire. The people cheered and clapped their hands. Then the band struck up, and marched through the trees and round the grounds, and took up its position on the lawn. A rocket cleaved the darkness from the far side of the field ; then another and another ; stars of every colour fell from the sky. The crowd ran from all parts of the ground. The baron, who had been hunting high and low for his wife, cursing between his teeth, found her at last, with her mother and the Perlottis, on the steps of the porch facing the ^eld. " Elena," said he, " I want you a moment." He called her indoors near the billiard-table. He was furious at not having yet been able to speak to her. The money ! Had she got it ? Had she a letter, or a promise by word of mouth, perhaps ? Had she allowed herself to be put off with that ? Elena replied contemptuously that he had said himself that he would be satisfied with a promise, and that her uncle's word was as good as his bond, or his gold either. Then she desired him to have the horses put to the carriage, and turned back to her mother and the Perlottis, who were calling her. After the rocket, a balloon went up filled with crackers and squibs, that fizzed and exploded .n the air. FOE HIM ! FOR HIM ! 75 " Long live Grigiolo ! " screamed Peilotti. The baron, instead of ordering the carriage, went up to Count Lao's room. He met him coming downstairs with a letter in his hand, and said that he was come to say good-bye, and to thank him. " There is no need," said the count shortly. " I am sorry," continued Di Santa Giulia, " that, owing to the payment of this interest, I should be obliged — " " What payment of interest ? " Lao scratched his head as if trying to remember some- thing. " Well," exclaimed the baron, losing his temper, " Elena must have told you of the reasons which oblige me — " he concluded the sentence by an expressive noise in his throat. The count was silent, and looked hard at him ; then he said, — " I know ; all right." He departed, leaving the baron not overpleased. " What the deuce has happened to all these people to- day ? " said the latter to himself, as he went to order the carriage. Count Lao, wrapped in his great-coat, with its cape well buttoned, and collar turned up, joined the group in which his niece was standing, on the south side of the billiard- room. Two minutes later Doctor Grigiolo rushed up, quite out of breath, watch in hand. " Oh, Baroness Elena, it is only just nine o'clock, and you are already having the horses put to the carriage ; for pity's sake, baroness, don't go yet ; the most beautiful show of all is just coming ! " "Let us be off," said the baron, coming up at the moment. " The best of all is not to miss the train ; I must be in Rome to-morrow evening." " Ten minutes, only ten minutes more ! " implored Grigiolo. 76 DANIELE CORTIS. " Five ! " roared the baron. A rocket went up, and at the same moment there burst out Bengal lights which illuminated the whole villa and grounds, the tower of the church at Villascura, and even the woods of Passo Grande. The air resounded with exclamations of applause. Then other white lights blazed over the fields to the right and left, throwing a silvery light over the gravel and the grass, and over the black croud of spectators. The band played the chorus from " Nebuchadnezzar." Elena, the countess, Lao, and the baron stood together in a group on the thorns of hidden uneasiness. " I am sorry that we have had to hurry it all so much," said Grigiolo, turning round, humble in his glory. The carriage was announced. " Come along," growled the baron. Lao squeezed his niece's hand, and returned to the house. Notwithstanding the brilliancy of the illuminations, it was not possible to see much near the carriage, drawn up as it was between the stables and the thick magnolias which grew on that side of the garden. Peasants, ser- vants, boys, all crowded round the horses. There was a moment of confusion. Signora Perlotti could not find her travelling-bag, and feared it had fallen under the wheels. " I will light a Bengal fire ! " exclaimed Grigiolo. " Please don't," begged Elena, her voice full of terror, and seizing his arm. Then came the kisses and the good-byes. Elena's old nurse, now the wife of the bailiff", sobbed aloud. All were in their places and ready to start except Signora Perlotti, who could not find her bag. At last it was found to have been sent on with Elena's luggage, which Iiad started an hour previously. "Let us be off," said the baron. "Good-bye, gentle- men FOR HIM ! FOR HIM ! 77 The horses started ; the gravel creaked under the heavy wheels. As they drove under the portico, Perlotti waved his cap, and his wife her handkerchief ; the wheels and the iron hoofs of the horses clanged for an instant over the pavement; and then all at once the sound died away, and was lost in the distance. But Grigiolo and one of his assistants ran up to the colossal fir-tree that, from the plateau above the road, ex- tends its black fringes over the country. As the carriage passed underneath it, by the side of the Rovese, a wliite Bengal light, like a ray of sunshine in the darkness, dis- covered to Elena the old tree leaning over the slope of the hill. " Safe journey ! " shouted Grigiolo at the top of his voice. Elena leaned back in the carriage, as though she would carry away in her heart that last sight. " That fellow is mad," said the baron. Everything became dark again, and nothing was heard save the roaring of the Rovese torrent and the measured trot of the horses. The Perlottis began by making an attempt at conversation, but, finding that they could awake no response, they both quickly fell asleep. It is a good three hours' drive from Passo di Rovese to the town at which the Di Santa Giiilias were to take the train for Rome. The baron neither spoke nor slept. Wrapped in a shawl of his wife's, he grumbled curses between his teeth at the abominable dampness of the night, and at the rheumatic horses of the countess. Elena, leaning as far back as pos- sible in one corner of the carriage, was silent, and kept her eyes fixed upon the road. At the station the Perlottis found their bag, and then insisted upon remaining with Elena, so that they might write to her mother the next day that they had actually seen her into the train. While Di Santa Giulia was look- 76 DANIELE CORTIS. ing after the luggage, the servant, who had come from the house with them, gave Elena a letter from Count Lao. " Is it for the post ? " she inquired. On looking at it, however, she saw that it was ad- dressed to herself, and put it into her pocket, saying only, " Very good." After a quarter of an hour, the train arrived full of people. Di Santa Giulia made such a noisy use of his titles, parliamentary and otherwise, that an extra first- class carriage was attached to the train, so that the hon- ourable senator and his wife might travel alone. " At last," said he, throwing himself at full length upon the cushions, with his knees in the air, and his hands under his head, " at last we have got rid of those bores ! Now tell me all about the money. What did you settle ? " " I settled it according to your wish." "Fifteen?" This question was answered by the whistle of the engine as the train moved out of the station. " Fifteen ? " repeated he. Elena hesitated a moment, keeping her head out of the window, until all the lights and the offices of the station had disappeared from sight. " No," she said, drawing in her head ; " I chose the other course." " What do you mean ? " exclaimed the baron, sitting bolt upright and facing his wife. " The other course ? " "You told me," answered Elena, raising her voice so as to be heard above the noise of the train, now rushing at full speed, " that unless you got the money you would send me into Sicily, and that I should hear no more of either Venice or Rome. You told me distinctly that I should put the case thus before Uncle Lao : ' Either the money or Cefalil.' Well, as it depended upon myself, I tliought that I had a perfect right to decide, and I have chosen Cefalil." FOE HIM ! FOR HIM ! 79 During this speech a change had come over the baron's face. At the last words he seized her knees, leaning for- wards to her. "So," he said, through his clenched teeth, "you mean me to understand that you said nothing at all about the money ? " Elena neither spoke nor moved. " Did you not speak ? " he repeated violently, squeezing and shaking her knees. " No, certainly I did not speak," she replied. The baron thought she was telling a lie, and that she, her uncle, and her mother had all combined to make a fool of him ; in a frenzy of rage he lifted his hand. " Courage," she murmured quietly, without flinching. He did not dare to strike her. " Ah ! " he said, " you did not speak ? " The train at this moment entered a tunnel. Elena saw her husband gesticulating furiously ; she heard him screaming, but without being able to catch what he said. She did distinguish, however, the word " hypocrite." Her eyes flashed. She pointed at her husband, in answer, with the forefinger of her right hand. "I ?" screamed the man. He was silent, and so was Elena, until the train left the tunnel, and the noise became less in consequence. " What do you want the money for ? " she asked. He answered brutally that he wanted it for his own purposes. It was not true ; he wanted it in order to enable him to meet formidable engagements, but he wished to insult her. He added that she had been the first to play the hypocrite, for she had deceived him at the altar with her false " I will," which she did not mean. Elena's heart ached at this. It was true, quite true ; she recognised her own fault, the selfishness of the resolu- tion she had made to quit the paternal roof. She dis- 80 DANIELE COETIS. daiued to answer that ; even if she did not believe in God, she would die sooner than belie her " I will," however much she might grieve for it. She must suffer the penalty alone, in silence, until the end. Her husband asked if she thought that he had threatened Cefalil as a joke. " I hope not," she replied. " I hope," retorted the baron with a sneer, " I hope those two other people will laugh at me now," he added, "but may God crush me if ever I look upon their faces again, or if ever I receive from them a drop of water, even though I die of thirst." To Elena's protestations that her relations knew no- thing about it, he made no reply, and, huddling himself up in the opposite corner of the carriage, he relapsed into silence. They watched each other, each from his own corner — he surly, she grave — in the cold and darkness which blew in at the windows, and made the lamps flicker as though they were afraid of it. Suddenly Elena re- membered her uncle's letter, and read it secretly. Count liao said, in very few words, that he did not altogether believe what she had told him, and, fearing some senti- mental foolishness, he had sent to the National Bank at Rome for her the sum of fifteen thousand lire, that she might repay him in October, if she really did not need it. Elena replaced the letter in her pocket, and looked out of the window. Little by little the noise of the train became to her like the continual beating of the waves, then it seemed to be like a tumult, with the shouts of many people ; the dark country looked to her like a sea, and the fixed eyes of three distant planets seemed to call her to themselves, as if they knew her secret thought : " For him, for his sake, so as not to sadden his life ! " The rare stoppages of the train interrupted these thoughts. Travellers got in and FOR HIM ! FOR HIM ! 81 out unnoticed by her. Towards daybreak the train passed, with a great noise, over a bridge with high sides of iron lattice-work, through which were visible a large sheet of water, and the reflection of the waning stars. Someone said, in a low voice, — " The river Po." Elena roused herself from her thoughts ; she was sorry to see the first glimmer of dawn, and she closed her eyes again to the vanishing bank of the river, and revived in her passionate imagination the words engraved upon the poor stone hidden far away on the horizon in the gardens of the Villa Cortis: "In winter and in summer — from near and from far — as long as I live, and beyond that again." CHAPTER VI. SIGNORA FIAMMA. CoRTis arrived late in the evening at Lugano, and went to the modest Pension du PanoraTna, one of the houses which dignify with the name of Paradise that edge of the lake in the curved hollow far from the town, and from behind which rise the steep slopes of San Salvatore. He left his inn immediately, and took the path that led up- wards to Pazzallo. His mother's friend, Signora Leonora Fiamma, had written to hira that they lived in a little house between Paradise and Pazzallo, on the left-hand side of the road, somewhat below a tavern, almost hidden under the shade of a thickly-wooded slope. He was to ring a bell which he would find in the red railings between two mul- berry trees. Cortis found and rang the bell. He had announced his coming by telegraph, so that he knew he would be expected. A maid servant came to the gate. " Is Signora Fiamma living here ? " he asked. " Yes, sir." " How is the other lady ? " The maid hesitated for a moment. " Are you," she inquired, " the gentleman who sent a telegram ? " " Yes." "Good. The lady is much the same as she was.' "111?" "The same." SIGNORA FIAMMA. 83 " Have the goodness to answer me," said Cortis sharply. " Is she ill or not ? " " My mistress will tell you," she replied impertinently, as she opened, with very bad grace, the door of a little drawing-room on the ground floor. "Here is that gentleman," she announced, looking to- wards the opposite corner of the room. Cortis entered. High up in the corner he saw a lamp ; under the lamp, and in the shade of a large easy-chair, lie saw some shining black hair, and the face of a woman which in that light looked faded and tired. " Signora Fiamma ? " he said. The glossy head made an affirmative motion, and after a pause, a voice, neither youthful nor sweet, but rather languid and sad, said gently, — "And you are Signor Cortis ?" The reception and the voice displeased Cortis, who did not return a direct answer. " And your friend," he asked, " how is she ? " " Still in the same sad state," was the answer. " Pray sit down. It will be impossible for you to see her this evening, as the doctor does not think it would be safe. I must apologise to you," she went on, " if my reception of you seems cold, and if I do not express all the gratitude that I ought to feel, and that I do feel, for you ; but I myself am far from well." Signora Fiamma pronounced these last words as if with her last breath, and rested her head on the back of her chair. As the lamp light fell upon her, it displayed a forehead deeply marked with wrinkles, and a large and tragical nose. Her eyes looked passionate and untrust- worthy. She heaved a sigh so deep that it was almost a groan ; and turned her head, without raising it from the cushion, towards Cortis. " You see," she said, " I can do no more." 84 DANIELE COETIS. " Listen to me," said Cortis ; " in no case did I wish to see your friend this evening, unless it were of vital im- portance that I should. You must forgive me, signora, if I speak to you very frankly, as is my custom. I have always believed ray mother was dead. You tell me she is living." " You want proofs ? " sighed Signora Leonora. " Does not your heart tell you," she continued, in a dramatic voice, "that under this roof — " "Please leave my heart out of the question, signora," broke in CortivS, "I shall be grateful if you will show me the proofs of what you have stated." " It will be a great blow to Signora Cortis," she mur- mured, raising her eyes to heaven, "but it is just, it is only just ! We were prepared for this ! Now I will show you my friend's papers." She wiped her eyes several times with a scented pocket- handkerchief, which she afterwards gazed at as though to assure herself that she had not shed tears of blood. She begged Cortis to ring the bell, ordered a candle to be brought, and raised herself with an evident effort. She was tall and thin, a long, yellowish neck showed above her collar of black tulle ; her large black eyes were sur- rounded by a yellowish rim. She wore a very well-made black gown, with a long train, and her walk was rather like that of Lady Macbeth when she appears upon the stage asleep, bearing the light in her hand. As soon as she had gone, Cortis made a hurried ex- amination of the room ; he noticed two oil pictures, a Magdalen and a Saint Cecilia, evidently copies, the photo- graphs of an old lady and of an old man covered with decorations, and with an inscription underneath in Ger- man ; a few ascetic books, a small basket crammed with visiting-cards, and an album of water-colour sketches, which bore on its first page the name of Signora Leonora Fiamma, artist in ordinary to H.R.H. the Grand- SIGNOEA FIAMMA. 85 Duke Leopold of . A dusty harp stood in one corner. The signora returned in a few minutes, placed the candle and a small portfolio on a little oval table which stood near her arm-chair, and told Cortis that her friend wanted her at that moment, but that he was at liberty to open the portfolio and see for himself. She would come back later. Cortis, when he was alone, had to exercise all his self- command, for, before opening the portfolio, he buried his face in his hands, and drove away, with a violent shake of his head, every thought of weakness that might disturb his judgment. When he uncovered his face he was grave, but calm. The first paper that he lighted upon was a letter from a Doctor P , an old friend of his father. It appeared from this letter that in 1857, more than a year after she had quitted her husband's roof, Signora Cortis had written to him imploring his forgiveness. Doctor P had been charged to answer her appeal, and had been told to say that there was no chance of it being granted ; and he had added, on his own account, to this bitter message, a loug and friendly letter of encouragement, good advice, and vague hopes for the future. This doctor had been a colleague of the elder Cortis in the Crimean war, while the signora was allowing herself to be led astray at Alessandria. On his return, her husband discovered her infidelity, and she had then accused an artillery officer, who had died a few days previously. P gave her to understand that her husband did not much believe this story of the officer, and that this doubt of her truth was doing her still greater injury in his mind. While Cortis was reading, groans and sobs resounded above his head in the silent house. He seized the candle to go and see whence they came, but he heard a step, a quiet voice, and all was silent again. He put down the S6 DANIELE CORTIS. candle, and tinished his reading in a very agitated frame of mind. He next opened a little gold locket, and found therein the portraits of his maternal grandparents, Charles and Magdalen Zarutti di Cividale. As a child, he had twice passed the autumn with them at Cividale. There was his grandfather, that dear old man who used to come to Alessandria to fetch him away in September, and bring liim back at the end of October. There he was, smiling ! And his grandmother too, poor old lady, how happy she looked ! They died of broken hearts within a year of each other, and now, as they looked at him, they seemed to say, " Dear boy, we are your grandparents ! " Cortis looked no further, but hurried out of the room in search of the signora. He called, opened a door that he came upon by chance, and found himself in a studio, filled with easels and chairs, and reeking of paint and tobacco. On a table lay a copy of Nana^ between a bottle and a pile of cigars. A moment later the maid-servant appeared, breathless. " What do you want ? " she asked crossly ; " what are you looking for ? " " That Signora Fiamma," answered Cortis ; " go up- stairs and tell her to come down." His voice and manner expressed disgust rather than good- will towards " that Signora Fiamma." The woman pushed past him, and hastily shut the door of the studio. " I cannot at this moment," she said. " Very well ; then I will go myself," declared Cortis. "Oh, for mercy's sake, don't. It is strictly for- bidden." Cortis took one of his cards out of his pocket, scribbled a few words on it in haste, and then tore it up. " Go," he said, " tell her that I am waiting," and he re- turned to the drawing-room. SIGNOEA riAMMA. 87 The maid reappeared presently with these words written by Signora Fiamma, — " Your mother is so upset at this moment that it is impossible for me to come down to you. Come to-mor- row morning at eight. Take the portfolio away with you." " Good God ! " exclaimed Cortis, " but may I not even be told how this other lady is, or what she is, suffering from ? "Why can I not see her this evening ? When will the doctor come ? "Who is the doctor ? Do you not know that I must see him ? Come, speak, say something ! Don't you belong to the house ? Are you dumb ? Can't you answer ? Speak, I tell you ! " " Hush," said the woman, " her illness is all nerves — a woman's illness ; I don't believe there is any danger. But if she has said that she cannot see you this evening, it's no use to wait. Come to-morrow." " But what is this doctor's name ? Where does he live ? " The servant named a certain doctor who, she said, lived outside Lugano, and who would probably not come again before the following evening. Cortis took the portfolio. " You will say to your mistress," he began — " but, by the way, who is your mistress ? " " What do you mean by who is she ? " " Is she Signora Fiamma, or the other ? " " Oh, Signora Fiamma." " And the other ? How comes it that they live to- gether ? " " I don't know. I have only been here two months. I think they have always been together." " How long have they lived in Lugano ? " " Three or four months." " And how long has this other lady been ill ? " " She is neve well. She has always been poorly ever since I came." 88 DANIELE COETIS. Cortis could get nothing more out of the maid. " Well, then," he continued, " tell your mistress that I should have much liked to see her again this evening, that I will bring back her papers to-morrow." The servant took a light, and accompanied him as far as the garden gate. " My mistress wished me to ask you where you are staying ? " " At the 'Panorama: " She answered by a contemptuous grimace that was full of eloquence, and closed the gate. Cortis walked hastily away, torn by his feelings, which could only find vent in active exercise. What a repulsive face that artist of the Grand Duke had ! What a perfume of lies there was in that house, and what a stench under- lay it ! And his mother — his niotlier ! The anxious doubts that had been raised by the rigmarole written to him by Sig- nora Fiamma rose again in his mind more painfully than ever. How could she be the friend of such a woman ! Nevertheless, Doctor P had evidently some esteem and friendly feeling for her when he wrote to her. And she, at least at that time, had wept, and prayed, and suffered. There was still hope for her ! But how could she have deceived such a man as his father ? When these two opposite opinions clashed in his mind, Cortis stopped short, and spoke aloud in the darkness ; then, when he had vented his feelings, he looked upon the lights of Lugano, the austere, dumb passion of the moun- tains which raised their black masses against the sky, and still further in the background, the mysterious lake, of which he could see neither the beginning nor tlie end. His recollections of Lugano were of bright sunshine amongst the hills and sparkling water ; but it was very different now. That dolomite peak, far away to the east, menacing heaven with its lofty head, seemed new to hira. SIGNOKA FIAMMA. 89 He had not seen that previously. Before going back to his inn, he walked along the lake into the town. Every- thing was deserted. The silent steamboats lay at anchor in front of the dark houses. A few foreigners were still talking and smoking on the terrace of the Washington Hotel, where Cortis had stayed with his father in the September of 1868. He stepped on to the little steamboat pier, and watched the grey, motionless lake, and the lofty ghost of San Salvatore. He had arrived there thirteen years before with a crowd of pleasure-seeking people ; the day had been very bright and very windy. He ran away, and returned exhausted, as he hoped he would, to his hotel. That night, in his few snatches of sleep, he dreamed that Elena led his mother to him by the hand, saying, " Comfort her ! " His mother was small and fair, with blue eyes ; she did not speak — she only wept. He rose a little before six, and went out into the hotel garden, where an old man was watering the flowers. The sky was clear ; on the lake and mountain lay the oblique lights and long shadows of early morning, and far away to the east the dolomite peak, now bathed in blue mist, no longer looked threatening. Cortis asked the old gardener if he could tell him anything of two ladies, who had lived in a villa near Pazzallo for some few months ? He did not know them ; he had known one lady who used to paint, and who lived somewhere in that direction. She came to luncheon several times at the Panorama, but now the proprietor would not let her come any more, as he had not been paid, after the first two or three visits. More than this Cortis could not discover. He felt that he could wait no longer, and took the road up the hill, de- termined to get some information before eight o'clock. He met some peasants coming down into the town with vegetables and fruit, and inquired of them ; but they could tell him nothing. He had reached the red railings, 90 DANIELE CORTIS. when he saw a milk-woman coming out of the gate. He stopped her, and asked for a glass of milk. The woman, smiling, asked if he were going up San Salvatore. Cortis drank, and made no reply. " Listen, ' said he ; " is it you who generally brings the milk to this house ? " " Always." " So of course you know the ladies who live here ? " " To be sure." " What are their names ? " " Why, the servant is Miss Barbara, and the mistress has a name that I have never been properly able to master." " And the other lady ? " "Which one?" " The other, the friend of the mistress of the house ? " " My good sir," said the woman in surprise, " I don't know her at all." " But they live together ! " " Indeed not, sir ; there is only one lady here." " What do you mean ? " he asked. " Don't you know that there is a sick lady here ? " " That there painter lady is always queer, but there is no other lady in the house, unless she arrived yesterday. The day before yesterday I was working in the garden the whole day." The woman's face was honest and open, and her words rung like truth. " Thank you," said Cortis with a pale face, " that will do." He rang the bell. The door of the drawing-room was opened slightly and then shut again. No one appeared. Cortis rang a second and a third time, always more loudly, and always without result. A peasant who passed stopped to look on. "You may pull that bell all day," he said, "if they SIGNORA FIAMMA. 91 don't choose to answer. That's what always happens with these here swindlers." " Do yon know these people ? " inquired Cortis. The peasant replied that he knew the artist lady very well indeed. She lived alone, looked like a witch, and paid nobody. Cortis rang for the fourth time. At last the maid appeared. " It is only seven o'clock," said she, " we were all in bed." He entered without speaking, but gave her such a look that she turned pale, and was silent. "Your mistress?" he said, "where is your mistress? "Why do you look at me like that? "Why don't you answer me ? Is she in bed ? I must speak to her. Come here," he exclaimed, as the woman was retreating, " how is tlie other lady?" The servant drooped her eyes and began, — " It is not my fault—" " Let me in," said Cortis. " It is not my fault," she continued. " I only say what I am told." Cortis ordered her to be silent, and to lead the way. As they reached the drawing-room, the woman said in a whisper, — " It is three months since I have had a penny of my " In that case you tell lies for your own pleasure," said Cortis. " Your mistress is up ; she is not in bed." Some one could be heard moving about overhead. At the same moment a bell rang. " I am wanted," said the servant, going towards the door. Cortis stopped her. " One minute," he said. " Is her real name Fiarama or not?" Barbara looked at him open-mouthed. 92 DANIELE CORTIS. " Why ? Didn't yoii understand ? No, no ! that's a name that the lady invented for herself. She is really your mamma ! " And she turned to go upstairs. " I will go," said he ; " where is the staircase ? " He found it at the end of a short passage, where a petroleum lamp was burning before various images of saints and madonnas of every kind and colour. He had reached the last step, when a door in front of him was thrown open, and Signora Fiamma, dishevelled and untidy, appeared on the landing with a cry. " Ah ! I see ! " she exclaimed, " your heart has told you ! " She clasped her hands, and would have thrown herself on her knees, but Cortis seized her by the arm, dragged her into the room, and shut the door behind him. She fought and struggled to go down upon her knees, pushing her arm against the back of her son, jerking herself backwards, and shaking her head violently. At length she fell exhavisted into the arm-chair towards which Cortis pushed her. " I lied to you," she said panting, and out of breath, " I have deceived you, I had not courage to tell you all at once ; I wanted to see you, to hear you for one hour in peace." Cortis, leaning over her, interrupted her first words, placed his hand over her eyes, kissed her, as though im- pelled to do so, and quickly withdrew himself from the arms which she had twined round his neck. She re- mained with her hands in the air, stupefied with joy. " Daniele ! " she said. She no longer saw him standing in front of her, but she heard his voice from behind her chair ; his manly voice broken with sorrow. " Forgive me ; I kissed my mother and did not wish you to see me." SIGNOEA FIAMMA. 93 Signora Fiamraa was silent for a moment, and then, in a low, complaining voice, she answered, — " I don't know what you mean." Cortis sighed and made no reply. Some minutes passed. " Here is your portfolio," he said at last, drily. " Oh, Daniele, Daniele ! " groaned the signora, " do not speak to me like that ! " and she burst into tears. " I only half deceived you," she went on ; " I am suffering so much. I have only a short time to live, do you know, Daniele ? Had I not known that, I should never have dared to write to you. God is merciful. He has purified me with an accumulation of indescribable troubles and sorrows. Now I can bear no more, I can bear no more. You have been good enough to come to me ; search in your heart for one word, after hearing which I may die happy." " But, don't you see," broke in Cortis, " don't you under- stand that I do not — " That I do not believe you, he was going to have said. The signora waited, pale and staring, for the words which were not pronounced. Her voice died on her half-open lips. Daniele took a chair, and, moving it close to his mother, planted it on the ground with such force as almost to break its legs. " Tell me everything," he said, throwing himself heavily into it. "Everything, from that day till this. You cannot 1 "' he cried, with sparkling eyes, as his mother hesitated. " I can, indeed I can," said the signora, with a theatri- cal gesture. " It will be painful, but I can do it. It is my duty, and I will speak." Cortis seemed in that moment to recognise his mother better than he had done by the papers in the portfolio, better than by the dim memory that had remained to him from his childhood. He fancied that there was some 94 DANIELE CORTIS. electricity in both their veins, although his mother used hers only for theatrical experiments, while he reserved his for real thunder and lightning. She told a long, rambling, sentimental story, bathing her worn-out sentences with tears, in hopes of making them seem fresh. Her purification had begun on the very day of her well- deserved punishment. Grief, good resolutions, hope — yes, even hope itself — had never abandoned her thence- forth. On leaving her husband's roof, she had implored the compassion of some kind relations, who had taken her to their house. But her life with them had been made too luxurious by their tenderness and affection ; it was no expiation ! On that account, she had quitted the dear creatures, to whom she hoped God would show mercy, as they had shown it to her ! Signora Cortis laid great stress upon this detail, being afraid of a certain calumnious re- port, according to which the " dear creatures " had driven her, after three months' trial, away from their tenderness and affection. Then God had whispered to her, " You can paint," and she had turned to art, and said, " Save me !" She had betaken herself to Rome, in order to copy in the galleries for money. While there, the Grand Duchess of had appointed her to be her painter-in -ordinary. Unkind people might have said the Grand Duke — she said the Grand Duchess. Of the Grand Duke, she said only that he had died a few years later, and she added that his afflicted widow had lost her love of art, and no longer desired painters-in-ordinary at the court. She had been speaking for an hour when she reached this point. It may have been from fatigue and excitement, or it may have been that the latter part of her story was more diffi- cult to tell than the former, but it is certain that she now began to lose her self-control, and to interrupt her narra- tive with sighs and groans. Long, long years of suffering SIGNOEA FIAMMA. 96 passed confusedly before the eyes of Cortis, who sat silent and frowning. He heard all the wails, he saw all the fatigues and the privations of her wandering life, he understood all the ills that no doctor had ever been able to comprehend, and which arose therefrom. She had come to Lugano from Dtisseldorf a few months previously, because her doctors had recommended her to return to tlie Italian climate. Her sufferings, allayed for a time, had reasserted themselves with renewed force. Work had become almost impossible to her. And then, feeling herself less able to cope with the wretchedness that had lasted more than five-and-twenty years, and seeing that her last day would dawn in gloom and misery, she asked God whether the bitter cup were not yet emptied, and whether she might see her son again before her death. God had given her permission to write, but not the courage. Not daring to say, " I am your mother," fearing to be disbelieved, or worse, she had written to him as a friend of her own, under her artistic pseudonym ; that was an inviolate name, indeed it was ! She paused and wept. Cortis looked rather black than sympathetic. "Help?" he said. "Never? From my father, I mean ? " " No, never anything. Indeed I had not ! " Cortis frowned. She had said " Indeed I had not " in a tone which seemed as if she would imply a reproach, but without quite daring to do so. "What do you mean?" he asked. "That he should have helped you ? " " Oh, no, no," said the signora, sobbing. " My father had already done much for you," continued Cortis. "When you left his house he restored to you your whole private fortune. Is not th^t so ? " " It was very little," she said. A flush rose to Cortis's cheek. He saw and felt over 96 DANIELE CORTIS. him the eye of his father ; not severe, but vigilant ; and he was now more conscious than ever of all the sorrow, all the trouble that that just and firm man had intended to conceal from him. " My father was generous to you," he said. " Besides, there are several things in your story that I find difficult to explain." She was seized with a violent fit of convulsions, and from them passed into a condition of such exhaustion that she could not either speak nor hear. Cortis called Barbara, and, with austere face and in silence, assisted her to do what was necessary for his mother. CHAPTEE YII. ready! SiGNORA CoRTis did not recover during the whole day, in spite of the assistance of her homoeopathic medicine-chest, and of several glasses of rum, the most efficacious, accord- ing to her, of all medicines. Late in the evening she fell asleep. Then Daniele, who had barely found time to dine and write a note to Elena, went down to Lugano. Before leaving the house he made Barbara open the studio for him ; neither the book, the bottle, nor the cigars were there. "Does any one come to see her ?" asked Cortis. " Next to nobody," answered the maid. " Sometimes a Hussian lady comes." " Who is she ? " " I think she is a lady from the theatre. But she is as old as my mistress. She had written her name in a book. It was lying here yesterday, but I don't see it now. My mistress must have taken it away last night." Cortis looked at a study of Monte Eosa, from Pazzallo, and at the portrait of a man, the only pictures which were begun. The man was a local doctor, who, after the first few visits and sittings, had not reappeared. " Did you know," asked Cortis, as he left the studio, " that the signora had written to me ? " " Yes, sir," answered the servant, in a low voice, and with an air of mystery. " She told me the other day that she had done so, when your telegram arrived. She 98 DANIELE COKTIS. told me so many tilings, and cried. You should have seen how she cried." "What did she tell you?" " I can't remember. So many things. That she had not been able to live with her poor husband, and that she had a son, a gentleman, to use her own words, and tliat this son was coming to join her, and that she did not wish to be known all at once, and that she had written so and so. And then she told me that if you came and asked after the lady who was ill, I was not to look surprised, and to say that she was still the same." "And what was that you told me this morning ? That you don't get your wages ? " "Certainly. It is three months since I have had a penny." " And what does the signora say ? " "That at present she has no money, but that she expects some soon. She tells the same tale to everybody." " What do you mean by ' to everybody' ? " " Ah, sir, if things go on as they are at present, I shall run away. Every moment of the day there is some one here, first one and then another, asking to be paid ; either the landlord, or the butcher, or the pork butcher, or the chemist. And there is no money for them ; and then, you see, they are mostly uneducated people, and they speak out their minds about it. I tell you this because I think, in some cases, it is better — " Barbara broke off at this point in order to follow Cortis with a light. He had turned his back upon her, caring little about her conclusions. The following morning he returned to the house and found his mother up and dressed. He said no more about the past ; he only wished to know how she had got know- ledge of his address at Villascura. She mentioned no names, but told him that she had always had the most exact information of the doings of her dearly loved son, EEADY ! 99 and that her thoughts and her heart had always followed him. She spoke to him about Countess Tarquinia and Villascura. She knew that his house was large and ill- kept, and she had often thought how lonely her poor Daniele must be there. Cortis encouraged her to talk of the present, and of her own necessities, and she recounted a whole iliad of troubles. But what were her privations compared to the anguish of solitude ? It was just, nay, it was pleasant, that suffering should come to any one who, like herself, had committed a fault, a single fault ; a fault — if all were known ! if the whole story could be told ! — that was, so to speak, involuntary; but to suffer alone, cut off from all affection or pity, no, that was unendur- able ; she could bear that no longer ! At this point she burst into a flood of tears. Cortis was silent. " Last night — I had — a dream ! " said the signora, struggling with her sobs. Cortis did not utter. " It was too beautiful," she murmured, half closing her eyes, and dangling an arm over the side of her chair. " Too beautiful ! " She slowly shook her head, which was leaning over to- wards her leftshoulder, and sighed again, " too beautiful." A Cortis did not display the slightest desire to know what it was. "There is a kind of misery which ought not to come near you," he said. " I will see to it." "Thank you," said the signora, "thank you." She opened her mouth as if to continue speaking, but apparently she suddenly changed her mind. " I pray God," she said, after a short silence, "that He will grant me the favour of being as little trouble to you as possible. It was He who inspired me to settle at Lugano. I have here found the air that will most rapidly kill me." 100 DANIELE CORTIS. Daniele in vain repeated to her that she might search from the Alps to the sea without finding a climate more suited to the state of her nerves. She reiterated each time with more contrition and more resignation the same tragic refrain. If the signora fondly dreamed that, after so many vicissitudes of storm and fine weather, she was going to brighten up her miserable afternoon with a ray of sun- shine, and that her sun would finally set in dignity and peace in the drawing-room of Cortis's house, she was very much mistaken ; and it was pitiful to see her beating again and again, stealthily, with vulgar artifice, at a door that remained deaf and dumb. Later on they went down into the little drawing- room, and talked business. Daniele wished to discover the amount of his mother's debts, and it was by no means easy to do, as, according to her, not a quarter of the things had ever come into her house which the lying shopkeepers had written down on their bills. Fortu- nately for the latter, Barbara had a better memory, and, after a long wrangle over every item and every figure between mistress and maid, Daniele arrived at a conclu- sion not far from correct. When he was again alone with his mother, he told her that he meant to leave the next morning, and that in a few days' time he would send her money, and tell her in what manner he would provide for her maintenance in the future. The signora asked when she would see him again, but Daniele could not answer this question. It depended on so many things, upon the result of his elec- tion, and upon other private affairs. Then she began to say, weeping again, that he had every reason for not caring about her, that she would come into his house as a servant, a scullery-maid, but that she knew she was unwoithy to be under the same roof as he : oh, yes, in- deed she was unworthy. EEADY! 101 "I do not think," he said, "that such an arrangement would suit either you or me." ^ His mother said nothing for a minute, and then, raising her handkerchief to her streaming eyes, she murmured, — " I offer this sacrifice to the blessed Virgin." Cortis, fuming with anger, went to the window of the room to get some fresh air. Suddenly a wailing voice said in his ear, — " Have I offended you ? " He pretended not to hear. Through the shining mul- berry trees he was looking at the garden gate, the white road bathed in sunlight, and beyond, the parapet, the calm, deep lake, and the purple mountains of Val Colla. That pure air, that glimpse of innocent life, were a restorative to him. At that moment the train from Milan passed, thundering and whistling under the heights of San Salvatore. Cortis looked at the clock, and asked his mother if she knew the exact time of the first train. "Heavens!" she said, "what are you thinking of? Come here, Daniele, I beg you," she added, after a moment. " It is true that I cannot speak to you like a mother, but you, who are an angel, will perhaps allow me to ask you if there be any dear, good girl — " " No," said Cortis, without turning round. "I should have been so glad," exclaimed the signora with a sigh. "But, then, I did not expect it ! " " Why ? " asked Daniele, surprised. " Oh, nothing. I thought that you could never find a woman worthy of you." Cortis leaped out of the drawing-room window, and hid himself between the mulberry trees and the Indian corn, out of sight of his mother. The latter took hold of the corners of the white hand- kerchief that she held, and gave it such a violent pull that she tore it across. y 102 BANIELE CORTIS. "I vow I will not stay in this cursed place," she muttered between her teeth. She hated Lugano, because, at the age of fifty-two, she had fallen in love with a young doctor ; and he, disgusted, would not go near her again. She rose from her chair, and opening a cupboard in the wall, plunged her hand into it, swallowed something hurriedly, and then closed the door very gently, keeping one eye on the window all the time ; then, grumbling to herself, " Now I will go and speak to him," she went in search of Daniele. She soon met him. " Daniele," she said, " bear with me. I have a favour — one only favour — to ask of you." " What is it :< " " Come farther away," whispered the signora, looking up at the open windows. They entered a trellised walk to the left of the house. Cortis did not seem the least anxious to know his mother's last whim, but walked beside her, watching the train below him, which was still visible through an open- ing in the hills. " That Villascura, Daniele ! " said she, " that Villas- cura ! " She stopped, and covered her eyes with her hand. " What do you mean with ' that Villascura ? ' " asked Daniele puzzled. " Leave it, for Heaven's sake ! " exclaimed his mother. " Live at Rome, or at Udine, or where you please, but not there." " Why ? " The signora dropped her eyes, and answered, in a low voice, — " It is impossible for me to tell you," " In that case—" said Daniele, as though he considered the conversation at an end. " Not to please me ? " insisted his mother. READY ! 103 Daniele did not understand. " But why ? " he asked, looking at the clock. He had thought of going down to the hotel presently to inquire if any letters or telegrams had arrived, "At any rate," exclaimed Signora Cortis, with sudden energy, "do not go to the Carre's Villa." Cortis frowned, and his face flushed. " Why not ? " he asked, in a voice which trembled with anger. " I shall always go to the Carre's house." " Oh, Daniele ! not, in any case, while the Di Santa Giulias are there ! " As she said this, the signora's face and voice really seemed sincere. " Very good," returned Cortis, with bitterness ; " tell your correspondent, whoever he may be, that he is a liar and a fool, and that the lady in question and I are too far above him to be hurt by his poison." There had been ill-natured reports at Villascura, and Cortis knew it. " The lady ? " said the signora, with flashing eyes. " I know nothing of the lady." Cortis, who was looking a^vay, turned his head sharply round, and fixed his eyes on her face, waiting for further explanations. But she said no more. " Well ? » he said. " Nothing," she replied, with a sigh. Cortis insisted. " What has been written to you ? " he asked. His mother laid one hand on his shoulder, and with the other beat her own forehead, saying, — " It is written here. No one has told me. It is all written here." Daniele lost his patience. "Speak plainly," said he; "I can't read what is there." " If I were to speak plainly," whispered the signora, raising her face with its large eyes, and extending the 104 DANIELE CORTIS. forefinger of her right hand, " you would experience ever- lasting remorse for having taken the accursed hand (here the finger was raised towards the sky) of that man !." " What has he done ? " asked Daniele, in amaze- ment. She clenched her hands, emitted a deep groan from between her closed lips, turned hastily round, and ran away with her head down. When she reached the steps leading to the door, she picked up her petticoats in both hands, and rushed into the house. Daniele followed her, but before he had time to in- terrogate her, she flew into a violent rage, begged him not to question her, and promised to tell him all at a more quiet opportunity. Nevertheless, it was his duty to leave Villascura and go far, far away. "I hope," she said, "that they will make you deputy, and then you can establish yourself at Rome. Then I will come to Rome too. It is the city of my heart. Oh ! if only I could die at Rome. I should often see you there, if it were only from the gallery of the Chamber. Should I not, Daniele?" " What has Di Santa Giulia done ?" he asked. " Heavens ! why should you go on tormenting me ? Surely your father must have spoken to you about him?" "Yes, I know that he made his acquaintance in Pied- mont when he went thither to join the military academy, that he brought letters of introduction to him from a Sicilian doctor, but that he very seldom came to our house, that he was not a bad soldier, that he gambled a great deal nevertheless, and never studied a bit." " And now they have made him a senator !" muttered the signora to herself. "They made him a senator immediately after his re- tirement from the army, because they wanted a senator from his province, and he possessed a fine name, a good READY ! 105 military rank, and great interest. Surely you are not making a crime of that ? My father never told me any- thing more about him. What else should he have had to tell ? " " Nothing, nothing ; he could not have said any more." Cortis shrugged his shoulders, glanced at the clock for the second time, and said, — " I am going," His mother had no intention of letting him go so easily. " You start by the first train to-morrow morning, don't you ? " she asked. " At six o'clock ? " " Yes." " I hope that you will come here again." " Yes, yes," answered her son indifferently, as he hunted for his hat. " Then we will talk further this evening." It appeared that these few words had only been said by a painful effort on the part of Signora Cortis, for she bowed her head on to her breast, and closed her eyes. Before leaving the room, Daniele turned to look at her. Now that the false eyes were hidden, and the harsh voice was mute, he felt how dear she might have been to him. Suddenly a flash of memory recalled to him his father on his knees teaching him to pray for the repose of the soul of his dear mamma. " It was better so ! " he exclaimed, seizing his hat. The signora, startled, raised her head. " What ? " she asked. " Nothing," answered he, and went away without another word. Barbara opened the gate for him, and said, in a low voice, — "My mistress will not believe it, but all the things have really been consumed in the house. Only think of all the raw cutlets that she puts on her face at night ! " 106 DANIELE COKTIS. A few minutes before Cortis reached his hotel, this telegram had come for him from the chairman of his electoral committee, — " To Cortis, H6tel du Panorama^ Lugano. " Opposition press prints your private letter, and ac- cuses yoa of belonging to clerical party. Great impres- sion. To-morrow here meeting of electors, one o'clock. Come, or send telegram for publication. Newspapers follow. B." The next train for Milan started in three quarters of an hour. Cortis hastily despatched a note to his mother, and the following telegram to Signor B. : — "I arrive to-morrow, 11.30. Cortis." Then, in frantic haste, he packed his things, and reached the station just as the passengers were taking their seats. " Fertig ! " * cried the guard. Until that moment Cortis had thought of nothing but how to catch his train. As soon as he took his seat, he saw himself in the hall at the public meeting, in presence of his friends, amazed or angry, possibly, too, of his mocking adversaries ; alone, assailed by weapons which he himself had forged, with words that as yet he did not know, but which he had certainly written in all sincerity, but who knows when or where ; determined to attempt no evasion, no denial, no retractation ; compelled to fight under a new flag, and at a time and in a place not chosen by himself. He saw all this, and at the same moment he felt as though a flood of vital fire had filled his head and heart, and his courage rose higher than ever, and, as he stretched him- self upon the red velvet seat, with a certain haughty in- • In German in the original. — Note by tlie Translator. EEADY ! 107 difference, he mentally answered to the guard, "Go a-head ! I am ready ! " As the train rushed over the bridge which crosses the road leading to Pazzallo, his thoughts turned for an instant up the hill, but they did not get as far as the little house with the red railings, in which, during the last few hours, he had heard such strange words, and where he had failed to discover the hidden meaning of the accusations that had been made. His thoughts turned back to the railroad which was carrying him on towards his goal. Meanwhile, the sheet of water to the east, black with the wind, spread itself out gradually, unfolding itself be- fore him till it reached the very foot of that lofty dolo- mite peak, which rose in front of Cortis in all its full length, towering above the other mountains, giving him an example of enduring boldness. CHAPTER VII I. IN THE FIELD. The following morning, at the penultimate station of his long journey, Cortis found B. and several other friends, who had come to meet him. They rushed anxiously up and down the train, opening doors, and examining the carriages. When at last they discovered Cortis, they all scrambled to shake his hand, and to greet him in low voice, and with every appearance of sympathy. " Is it very bad ? " he inquired, looking round him at their somewhat blank faces. " As bad as can be," answered B. dejectedly. " I am honest with you, and I tell you clearly that I consider it's all up with your chance." " Gently, gently," broke in another. " Excuse me, but I don't think everything is lost yet." Then B., who at first had spoken as though he had no breath in his body, got up and began to storm like a madman. " It's all up, I tell you ! You don't think so ? What do you mean with your ^ I donH think so?' Where do you come from ? Don't you know, from the Society of Labour and from the newspapers, that it's all up ? " " And from the walls," suggested a third. " Bravo ! " yelled B. " And from the walls. Ten mani- festoes of our opponents' to one of ours ! " " Wait, you will see to-day." " All very well ; what do you expect us to see to-day ? " " You shall see what you shall see." IN THE FIELD. 109 " Ah, yes ! you think you are going to upset all those people, do you ? " "Yes." " No." Then they began to fight and argue among themselves, as if Cortis had not been present. " One moment, gentlemen," he said, making his voice heard above the rest. " Is this meeting to take place or not?" "Yes — of course — certainly," were the answers. " And I am to take part in it ? " he asked. " That is the very point, you see," cried B., facing him, and leaning his face on his clenched fingers. " That was one difficulty when we invited you to attend, because some said that it was unnecessary, others said they knew enough, others again — " " But this letter," asked Cortis, " this letter of mine that has been printed ?" "Ah!" exclaimed B., striking his forehead, and then fumbling in every pocket. " What a memory mine is ! I came on purpose to show it you. I have it here some- where." Out came his letters, papers, notes. B., red as a lob- ster, looked through them all in haste, throwing them on to the floor of the carriage, or the window-ledges, or the knees of his friends. At last he pulled out a newspaper cutting containing the famous letter addressed to a cer- tain professor at Venice, who had been dead two months. The editor declared that he had received it officially, and published some remarks upon it. "The letter is a pretext," said B., collecting his scat- tered letters and papers. " It is a pretext. They don't like you." " Well," said another, " but if the letter could be shown not to be his ? " " But it is his," muttered another, while Cortis, skip- V no DANIELE CORTIS. ping the editor's comments, lighted upon these terrible passages, — " If for the present we can do nothing better, transeat, we must try to get on as we are ; but you know that I am a Catholic, and that I trust in the progressive develop- ment of Christian civilisation in which Cavour trusted. For that reason I look forward to the time when a par- liamentary party shall be formed to keep before itself / this ideal as an element of government. It must needs be that some of the attempts to move public opinion in this direction will fail ; you know even better than I, that this has always been the historical preparation for every great and difficult enterprise. Many may fail, but I am convinced that at a certain moment this party, the effect of political necessities, will rise, and that then, if not before, the hero, as your beloved Carlyle would say, will be found to lead it ; behind that hero, either in the front rank or in the last, will be found, if he be alive, your affectionate Danielb Cortis." " Of course it is mine ! " exclaimed Cortis to the man who had expressed a doubt, " Of course it is mine I Altogether mine ! " " Alas ! " said B., " I feared as much." The rest were silent. "And what do the electors say ? " asked Cortis. "What do they say?" answered B. "Look at your paper, and you will see what they say." " The editor is an ass !" *' Ah, my dear fellow, the electorate ig not composed of Cavours. They don't understand. They see Catholic, Christian civilisation, new parliamentari/ parti/ — they do not see clearly the distinction that may be drawn between conservative and clerical, and straightway they proclaim you a clerical ! They make the greatest fuss over your phrase, * we must try to get on as we are,' and they de- clare — forgive me for repeating what I hear — that it IN THE FIELD. Ill s disloyal and dishonest of you, that yon only want to be elected by one means or the other, that you are making game of the electorate, and so on. Besides, you must understand that your opponent has been working like the devil, and that for the people whom he has influenced, your letter is a pretext. Those are they who will refuse to listen to you." " But they must, they shall hear me ! " cried Cortis, his eyes flashing. " What in the world can they have understood from that letter ? They must hear me ! " " Yes, of course they must," grumbled B., with a sar- castic laugh. "But we shall see whether they will, al the same. "We must hope so ! " " I shall appear before them alone, and without invita- tion, if my friends have not the courage to accompany me," said Cortis. " And if no one asks me to speak, I shall take French leave. And ?" Here Cortis named a great man, who was one of his strong supporters. " Ah, my friend," answered B., " this represents his condition," and, raising his right hand, with his fingers apart, he let it swing slowly to and fro from his wrist, as if the muscles of his forearm were useless. " As far as he is concerned," he continued, " we are all in the same boat. Remember that, if you speak to-day, you must make an allusion to that despot who pretends to order rain and fine weather in the whole division." " Good," said Cortis ; " now, I would beg you to let me think a little." He retreated to a corner of the railway carriage, and read over and over again the act of accusation, then began to reflect, sometimes looking out of the window, and some- times burying his face in his hands, till at last B. said to him,— - " Here we are. It is now twelve o'clock. My carriage is here, and I will drive you home, and let you get some luncheon while I go out and see how things are. At one 112 DANIELE COETIS. I will come for you, and we will go coUte que coHte. Oh, look at that fellow ! " As Cortis was getting out of the train, his opponent was being met on the platform by a crowd of friends, who were all talking and laughing loudly. " Do you see them ? Do you hear them ? " asked B., in solemn voice. "They are sure of their vic- tory ! " One of the group noticed Cortis. They all turned and stared at him, as though to see which could be the most insolent. Just as he and his committee were pass- ing through the gates of the station, a few hisses were heard in the background. " Wait here for me," said Cortis, stopping short. He turned back quietly, and went straight towards the other candidate, who had one foot on the step of his carriage, and stretched out his hand to him, without noticing the others any more than if they had not existed. His opponent grew crimson, greeted him with evident confusion, and clumsily excused himself for not having seen Cortis sooner. " Not at all ! " answered the latter. " I do not demand any recognition from you. But I, as a gentleman and a friend of gentlemen, wish to go through the ordinary forms of courtesy with my adversary before we cross- our swords. Good-bye." Having said this, he passed haughtily through the group, and rejoined B. and the others, who had watched the scene from a distance. " What is it ; what happened ? " they all asked, look- ing pale and anxious. " Nothing ; let us go away," answered Cortis, taking B.'s arm. " I merely showed him and his friends, with the most exquisite politeness, that they are a parcel of cads. Now they respect me, do you see. And besides, it always does me good to call a man a cad who deserves it '" IN THE FIELD. 113 Twenty minutes later every one in the little town had heard of the scene at the station, of the hissing, and of whatCortis had done. B., who had just deposited him at his house, rushed off to the cafe\ and came back at one o'clock to fetch him, breathlessly crying, — " Quick ! come on, good impression ; I have arranged with the heads of the party. Your swagger — for that is what your opponents call it, but under their breath — your swagger has made a good impression. A gentle- man, they say. Then I lectured some of the miserable beings who don't mean to listen to you. What idiots they are ! But I gave it them ! I gave it them ! " Cortis interrupted him by saying, with a smile, — "Thanks. But are you sure that you will be pleased with what I am going to say ? " "I won't have that cad at any rate," screamed B. " Quick, now, come along ! " Outside, the fly-driver who was frequently employed by Countess Tarquinia stopped Cortis. The countess was very anxious to speak to Signor Daniele, and she had ordered him to wait and bring him over to Passo di Eovese immediately after the meeting. Cortis ordered him to be in readiness at half -past two. " No news ? " he asked. " No, sir." "They are all well?" " Yes, sir ; I think so." " And the contessina ? " " The little countess went away last night, sir. I heard that she was going to Borne." " Hi ! " cried B., seeing Cortis standing in a dream, with- out speaking or moving. "Come along ! quick !" On the steps of the hall where the meeting was to be held, groups of electors were already collected, who opened their ranks as Cortis approached, saluting him with manner expressing both curiosity and coldness ; H 114 DANIELE CORTIS. then forming up behind him, they advanced in silence to the hall. There they found three or four members of the electoral committee talking near a long bench that faced serried rows of empty chairs, which, to Cortis, seemed stiff and unfriendly. When he entered, these men advanced towards him with some shyness and embarrassment. "You have come from Switzerland?" asked the boldest "Yes, I have." " It is a fine country." " It is indeed." Then B., with his most smiling and pleasant manner, advanced and said, — "Our friend Cortis is quite prepared." "That is not the word," broke in Cortis, while the other repeated, " Well, well," making great gesticulations of agreement, and drawing back so as to make room for the principal actor. " That is not the word. I am most anxious to offer to the electors those explanations to which they are fully entitled ; and, as my candidature has already been discussed and talked over in this place, I have con- sidered it my duty, as I must speak somewhere, to speak here." "Here is our president," answered one of the committee, pointing towards a tall, stoutish man, who came in just at that moment in haste, and out of breath, and who greeted Cortis with much more cordiality than the others had displayed. When they asked him to repeat to the presi- dent what he had just said to them, the latter interrupted them, and said, — " Yes, yes ; it's all right. I have settled all that with our friend B. here," and then he dismissed his colleagues to assemble and bring the electors into the hall. "The four muffs," murmured B. to Cortis, who was studying the roof. "Look here," said the president, taking Cortis aside, " I shpuld speak in this manner," and he primed him with IN THE FIELD. 115 a little speech that he had prepared, keeping one eye upon his interlocutor and the other upon the people who were crowding in, involuntarily dropping his voice at the ap- pearance of a hostile face. B. had taken up a position close by, so as to be able to catch all that fell from the president without appearing to listen ; but he also did not lose sight of one of the faces that appeared, studying them, observing them as tliey took their seats, leaning his head first towards one and then towards another with the manifest desire of over- hearing every whisper. " A lot of people," he.said to Cortis, when the president had taken his place, " and some nasty-looking ones among them too ! Will the president's speech do ? " The latter rang his bell at this moment, and looked round him with great dignity, and without the faintest idea that many people were laughing at him. He re- minded his hearers that on a previous occasion the candi- dature of Cortis had been supported by a large majority, wherefore the committee had approved his canvass. He added that a recent publication, well-known to all, had produced such varied impressions, that it had been con- sidered necessary to call this meeting. To tell the truth, there had been some discussion as to the advisability of asking the honourable Signor Cortis to address them, as it was known that he was at a distance. It had been proposed to discuss merely whether the candidate should be asked to limit himself to explanations or not. The unexpected arrival of Signor Cortis had removed all these doubts, and the committee felt certain that the electors would rather have before them the public statements of the candidate than an extract from a letter. Then, without opposition, he called upon Signor Cortis to address the meeting. The president seated himself, looking round smilingly in hope of catching tokens of approbation on the faces of his colleagues, and for a moment nobody spoke, when 116 DANIELE CORTIS. Cortis rose and began, in a deliberate voice, to speak thus : — *' Gentlemen, I thank you for, and I congratulate you upon, having been willing to listen to me to-day. I neither complain nor boast because my enemies have done a dis- honest action ; it was natural for them, and I willingly leave in obscurity those who did it, their deeds, and names. I know that a letter of mine has been pub- lished—" A murmur arose in the hall. "Yes, gentlemen," continued Cortis, while his friends looked at him with anxious faces, " a letter which, with- out fearing to lower myself, I acknowledge as mine." Some one in a corner of the hall cried " Hear, hear," and then all was silent again. " A letter of mine, susceptible of grave interpretations, and calculated to remove from me the confidence of those who dread to see the introduction into the Chamber of elements hostile to our institutions and liberties, has been published ; and one effect of this has been that some of you, gentlemen, whose honest fears I respect, have, as 1 have just heard from our honourable president, strong objections to listening to me. Well, gentlemen, I con- gratulate you upon having allowed the more liberal and just side of your natures to prevail, notwithstanding the unworthy interpretation that has been put upon some of njy words. I repudiate the charges that have been brought against me of disloyalty, and of wishing to make game of the electorate of this division. " Yes, I have written privately, and I now repeat publicly, without hesitation, that, if for the moment we caimot change for the better, we must try to get on as we are ; and I am sure that, if you read my letter again, you will see at once that no allusion whatever could have been intended to this electorate, but that I alluded to the present condition of our national, political existence ; IN THE FIELD. 117 a condition which, in my opinion, is neither prosperous nor promising, but through which we must pass in order to reach something better, keeping before ourselves a highei- ideal." The same voice again cried " Bravo." There were a few cries of " Silence," and some subdued titterings. All eyes were turned to one corner of the hall. " I thank my unknown friend," said Cortis, looking in the same direction, and obtaining, fortunately, a friendly laugh from his audience, "I thank ray unknown friend who gives me a good example, inasmuch as he expresses the convictions of his heart, and like myself does not mind doing it at the cost of being Vox- clamantis in deserto" Laughter and some quickly-suppressed applause fol- lowed. Cortis stopped a moment ; when he spoke again, it was in a somewhat lower tone, — " I come now to this ideal." He bent his head in thought. No one breathed. Every eye was fixed on him when he raised his head and began again, — J • " No, gentlemen, my political ideal will never be that of any party which would desire to subordinate the \t interests and rights of the State to any authority, how- Ay ever great, however legitimate, but which is founded on / another basis, and maintained by other means for other ends. I might wish, in my scheme for political equili- brium and internal pacification, that this party should honestly accept the present state of things, and should try to be useful in the Chamber ; but if ever I have the honour of representing you, I will never fight on its side — " Here and there some applause was heard, not warm nor unanimous ; the unknown friend remained silent. " — Until it has been transformed from an essentially / clerical party into an essentially civil party, and has '^ modified entirely its views upon the rights and duties of the State. y 118 DANIELE CORTIS. "It is evident, gentlemen, that in writing a familiar letter, I could not have made use of more clear and exact words." At this point a murmur rose in the hall which sounded like " At last ! " in tones of not unmixed satisfaction. Cortis went on, — "No, I. do not repudiate anything I have said, but I might have been more precise in the expression of my opinion, and have made it as clear in my letter as I shall try to make it now to you. " It is you, electors under the old law, who to-day hold in your hands the great power of the State ; but there are people who are already preaching a new gospel, and to-morrow you may be called upon, too, to evangelise the populace. It is wrong and foolish to anticipate that these new electors will want to lay their hands upon the existing state of things, and that the country will go to rack and ruin ; but it is only foolish not to recognise that there will be taken, not a leap in the dark, but a long step forward on the clear and fatal road of demo- cratic evolution, and that the newly enfranchised multi- tudes will strive to procure for themselves some direct advantage from their participation in the government, and to promote some legislative action which, though exaggerated and imprudent, will tend exclusively to their own profit. For myself, gentlemen, I feel no empty or childish fear of this. I believe that in this democratic fer-"^ mentation there is some leaven snatched from Christianity .( In my mind's eye I see a bright ideal of a Christian de-^, mocracy, one also capable of realisation very different \ from the despotism of selfish majorities only greedy j for their own advancement, which now threatens our modern liberties. A real political party caimot be founded on airy ideals. I know well that they will bear no weight. But we must have an ideal ; therein lies the strength of those who seek to destroy our institutions ; and what IN THE FIELD. 119 ideals have we to oppose to them ? One day it is electoral reform, and the abolition of the exchange upon the paper currency ; another day it is the equalisation of the land tax, and the maintenance of the ' rentes' at par." " And isn't that enough ? " asked a voice. " No," retorted Cortis, " it is not enough to keep hearts and minds united, much less will it suffice for an enlarged electoral body in which sentiment and fancy will play an important part And when you talk to me of a new party, whose ideal shall be merely the preservation of the existing social and political ranks, then again I reply that it is not enough, and that such an ideal would be without grandeur, and without life. You cannot uphold our fatherland, gentlemen, as you would an old monument, by girding it with iron railings and supports ; our country^ is a living creature, an organ continually working and developing itself, and which, by the reasonable use and proper exercise of its natural faculties, keeps itself in good health." At these words, uttered in a passionate voice, loud cheers burst from the audience. "I desire," continued Cortis quietly, "to see the founda- tion of a party which will keep before itself the shining ideal that I have described, and which shall expressly consent, in order to produce this result, to the present state of our requirements. I am convinced that, if you wish to pave the way for a sincerely liberal democracy, without the predominance of any class, you must have a political power sufficiently strong to lead the country ; and now a fixed idea is necessary, if it ever were, to stand against the rising tide of parliamentary majorities. You must have ministers convinced that the monarchy is not a hazy irresponsibility, that it is not merely a gilded coat- of-arms on the summit of our constitutional mechanism, but that it is the mainspring, if I may say so, of this mechanism; that it is a wheel answerable to God and ; let AcB ffagr^Fidi ike fire, let l^wm ks«. 1Mb m tte if yi try to riiwijgr i^ ywi will «J laMMtatailM I«9^lftiatklyAefaw«f l«w«f N:. IN THE FIELD. 121 future, without the co-operation of reKgious sentiment, which, in Italy, can onlj be given bj the Catholic Church." A wave passed over the audience, and nothing oonld be heard save murmurs, groans, and confused voices. Cortis, leaning with both hands on the seat in front of him, threw his bodj forward, as though to receive the sho(^ of an emen j. He waited till the tumult had sabeaded, and then went on in his firm and measured voice, — ** The curia of Bome, gentleman, and a large porticHi of the Catholic clergy, have displayed, I regret to say, so blind a hatred to oar uatiomd movanent — sodi a £atad appiecia- tion of their tonpoial poasessioBa — that any one who, in Italy, talks ai favouring Gatholkism, may almost expect to be answered as the missionaiy in AiEnca was who preached about God : * And what if he eats vsl' I have frequently asked myself whether the preaut violent re- action against the Churdi and her institations, by bringing hack the clergy to poverty and evangdkal hnmilitf , by forcing tliem to study, and to l«ad Uamdess lives, may not be productive of resolts visry salataiy fur die trae Catholic sentiment. Bat a pradoit statesman oaght to discover in such an esoessive reaidtion the danger of tiioae opinions whidi incukate respect for law, brodierly lov«^ and a kind of moral subordination of tiie classes to tiM»e less well ol^ in nHnch vigoroos than is qaite desirable to rqair all the injustice and misery. ** Tbe party of the future, timefoR^ miaal^ to a eerlaua extent^ agree to the rigid applkatioii of oar «— m im law to the Chanch. "Iwillnottdl yea how far I slioaldgooB tkisroad. I am alrendy too dear to yoor vcnenhle detgy ; and I have no intaatMNa of offering them, in evi wa tiim of my politkal sins, cither bleaaad mtdalw, or lives of Ike or inaraased stipends.* 122 DANIELE COETIS. An ironical smile twinkled in his eyes as he thus alluded to certain proceedings on the part of his adversary. The hall rang with laughter and cheers. " But, on the other hand," continued Cortis, raising his forehead and wrinkling his brow, " we must agree with the principle laid down by Count Cavour, in a memorable speech upon the abolition of the Ecclesiastical Court, namely, that the progress of modern society demands the V assistance of religion and liberty. We must require that / religious instruction shall be given by the clergy, where- soever and whensoever they please. We need not stupidly imagine that we are sinning against liberty because we refuse to pay professors of atheism out of State funds ; we must recognise all religious associations whose objects are not contrary to law ; guarantee to all persons, without ex- ception, the full and complete exercise of their religious ) rites in public and in private ; abstain from any legal or forcible interference with the internal affairs of the Church, save the right of guardianship of property. The govern- ment must always show, by its behaviour, that it places the highest value upon the spirit of religion." The phrases relative to instruction and religious associa- tions were the only ones that moved the audience, who allowed the rest of this rugged sentence to pass in silence. " You murmur, gentlemen," exclaimed Cortis ; " but I can picture to myself the very much less friendly reception that I should receive from a meeting of priests, if I ever had the honour (I certainly should have the courage) to tell them what, in my opinion, ought to be the conduct of \ the priesthood best calculated to secure the advancement i\ of the Catholic religion. Your rare interruptions recall to my mind something that I learned at school. I remember hearing a description given of large banks of living shells, which lie on the sea-shore, and open in the sunshine, send- ing forth a deep murmur whenever a cloud obscures the TN THE FIELD. 123 sun, and closes them up. Allow me to believe that you have found in my ideas more sun than shadow. "I must admit to you that I do not consider the time V to be quite ripe for the formation of this party of the future, and, therefore, there was not yesterday, nor is there to-day, any reason for including its bases in an electoral programme, especially as foreign complications, combined with our ecclesiastical policy, might compel the State to be temporarily less liberal in its judicial dealings with the Church. I should not, therefore, have mentioned it had it not been brought into prominence by this recent publication, and if your wish had not been to me a law. " Desirous of obeying you, I did not consider, I disdained to consider, the risk that my too open and plain-spoken declarations might deprive me of the honour of entering parliament as your representative. In that letter of mine, I made an ill-omened quotation; the sentence about the development of Christian civilisation was written by Count Cavour in an address to the electors of Vercelli, who rejected him. It is probable, if I may compare myself with so shining an example, that the same fate is in store to me. While I shall be grateful to those among you who have trusted me, I shall feel no resentment what- ever against such as have withdrawn their confidence. " I hear talk of high influence being brought to bear in my favour; I have never begged for such, nor shall I beg now. If, in this division, you have deities who can move the earth with their nod, I do not wish that it should be said of me, as it was said of a Roman emperor on the point of losing life and power: 'Alieni jam imperii fatigahat deos.' " If, at the conclusion of this struggle, I am beaten, I shall not be disgraced ; and I shall remember, gentlemen, that in every free country there are representatives un- elected, legislators not in parliament ; that there are many methods whereby every citizen can fight for what he 124 DANIELE CORTIS. thinks politically right, and that a dumb black or white ball in the ballot-box is not tlie only, or even the most powerful, way of securing the supremacy of truth." The first rows of the audience, immediately below the speaker, applauded ; from the others rose a roar of diverse opinions. The members of the committee remained motionless. The president alone seized Cortis by the hand, and said in a low voice, somewhat with the manner of a master pleased with an industrious pupil, — " Bravo, bravo ! Very frank, and very clear. Fine ideas, noble ideas." Cortis, pale and grave, only answered, — "Now, it is for you to settle, gentlemen," and left the hall, followed by B, and some few friends. " Your servant, sir, your servant," said his unknown supporter, pushing a way for himself through the crowd, and seizing his hand just as he was reaching the door. " I congratulate myself upon having heard you," he continued. He was a fine-looking man, with a ruddy countenance and bushy white whiskers. "You are a great man, sir, and you are not a bit of a clerical; you are religious, and so am I. Doctor Franceschi, at your service. And don't be afraid that we shall leave you in the lurcli whatever that d — d fool, the deity of our divi- sion, may say." The bystanders laughed. Cortis bowed, and passed on with his friends. " Well," he said as soon as they were outside the hall, " 1 am not a bit pleased. What do you think?" " You humbug I " said B., seizing him. " I must era- brace you." They all embraced him at once, suffocating him with fulsome adjectives. " The part that pleased me most was that about the shells," said one ; " it was magnificent." " And I liked what you said about our country," said IN THE FIELD. 125 another, 'when you compared it to a slowly developing monument ! Nobody can deny hat that is a splendid idea — a true idea, a novel idea ! " "Yes ; but that bit about the shells was so good, because it was like saying to your audience : if you grumble, you are a pack of oysters." " And the medals ? " put in a third. " Where do you place the medals and the lives of the saints ? " " Yes, yes," said B. " The oysters and the medals were both good, but the great point of this speech lies in the ideas expressed in it. The ideas are new and burning — worthy of Bismarck ! Force and progress ! Throne, altar, gallows, and forward!" " No, no, no," cried Cortis ; " what the devil do you mean ? " " Oh, no, signor," observed the man who had talked about the oysters, while B. muttered to himself, ''We under- stand each other, we understand each other ! " " Why, Signor Cortis wishes to abase the throne, to drag it down from its lofty place among the clouds : to drag it down from the clouds, he said, and to make the king responsible just as the ministers are; that seems quite fair too !" " Bless my soul ! " exclaimed Cortis, " did I ex]>ress my- self so badly as that ? " All the others rose against such a disgraceful critic. They would have torn him to pieces almost. "Well, gentlemen," observed B. presently, "we ought to be going in again. Don't you think so ?" In the hall a great uproar was going on, notwithstanding the frequent and angry ringing of the president's bell. B, promised Cortis that he would sent him word to Villa- scura that evening of the result of the deliberations of the meeting. " What do you think they will settle ? " asked Cortis. *' To me they seemed so cold as almost to take away my breath." 126 DANIELE CORTIS. " Yes," answered B., " they were cold, but less so than I feared they would be. Besides, many of them were puzzled at the beginning, and never could pick up the thread again. You were rather above them. Do you know what I am afraid of ? Of that closing sentence of yours about legislators outside parliament. People might say that the electorate — I don't know if I make my meaning clear." "Above them, no," said another; "it was not elevated, even in idea. I will explain myself : elevated it was, but we could understand it perfectly. Perhaps, though, you might have put in a word about our external policy, about the army and navy." "Are you never coming ?" groaned B., raising his eyes to heaven. " Do come along ; we mast go back ; do make haste ! " Cortis descended the steps alone. At the bottom he was met by Sign or Checcho Zirisela, who said, — " Your servant, I am sorry I cannot stop now ; an absolute king, if you like, but I am satisfied to play at cards with the priests, and then to have done with them. You know I am speaking for myself. Priests in an ale- house are all very well, but not in church — your servant." " Cortis ! " cried B., from the top of the steps, " when shall we see you here again ? " " I don't know. It depends upon what my aunt wants." " Oh, send her to glory ! We haven't time for aunts now " The fly-driver who was waiting in the courtyard went to meet Cortis, hat in hand. " Put to," said the latter ; " where are your horses ? " " At the ' Golden Shield.' " " I will be there immediately." Cortis walked to the cafe. The corners of the streets, deserted at that, the hottest hour of the day, were covered IN THE FIELD. 127 with electoral addresses. His own were few in number, and were for the most part concealed hy the flaring posters of his opponent, which nearly all began thus : " Do not elect enemies of your country." Near the door of the cafe there was scribbled on the wall : " Down with the people of Friuli ! " Cortis entered somewhat excited. A group of young men were discussing the meeting, and one proposed to go and wait for the " little Saint Paul " Cortis at the door of the hall, in order to hiss him. The rest agreed. Cortis meanwhile sipped his coffee in silence. " And we will hiss B., too," said one of the group. Cortis stood up, very pale. " You will do nothing of the kind," he said. The other looked at him in amazement, and answered in an uncertain voice. " Won't we ? Who are you to dictate to us ? " "I am a man," thundered Cortis, "who, if I say no to you, and to a hundred like you, do not expect to get i/es for an answer, unless you are prepared to feel your face — " He did not finish his sentence, but threw down, in order to make a way for himself, tables, chairs, and all that was on them, and finally stopped in front of his ad- versary, with his arms crossed on his breast. The pro- prietress shrieked, the waiters hurried up ; the rest of the party were so taken by surprise that they did not know whether they stood on their heads or their heels. Cortis, seeing that the other neither moved nor spoke, threw his card to one of the waiters who was picking up the broken pieces. "I will pay for everything," he said, "including a glass of rnm that you had better give to that gentleman." And he left the caf^. A quarter of an hour later he was in the carriage, on his way to Villascura, and thinking of Elena. He felt ill at ease, and disturbed : disgusted with himself, with 128 DANIELE COETIS. politics, with his obstinate enemies and his stupid friends, with the anger he showed to some, and the toleration he showed to the others. Italy ! Yes, but if he did not succeed to-day, he would to-morrow. It was his destiny, and his determination ; but what would he not give for one day of love ! To forget everything for one day, to contemn the world, and to unite her the most beautiful to himself the most powerful ! Visions of intense happi- ness passed before him. From the road which, passing straight through the plane trees, on the border of an immense plateau watered by the blue streams from the Alps, the eyes of Cortis greedily sought the shadowy clouds which hung on the edge of the mountains. He could see Elena and himself hidden in a house amongst those deserted wilds. Elena did not look melancholy as she often did, she was so happy in his love. Now he felt her arms, fresh and gentle as those streams, encircling him ; now he sought her in the forest, and she came out to meet him, laying her head on his breast, and saying to him : " Art thou happy ? I am ! " Cortis leaned back in a corner of the carriage, and looked at the distant horizon in which she had vanished. CHAPTER IX. VOICES IN THE DARK. Countess Tarquinia was much disturbed. As soon as Elena was gone, she wished to liave a conference with her brother-in-law ; but how was it possible in the middle of all this bustle ? And, besides, Count Lao had vanished suddenly". At midnight, when tlie band had taken itself off, and the lights were all out, the countess remained alone, not daring to go and attack him in his own room. She went to him in the morning, and found him in bed with a headache, black, and so cross that she could do nothing with him. He cursed the noise and the illu- minations ; he knew nothing, had heard nothing, had given nothing, had taken part in nothing. ^ " So," said the countess, dismayed, " they went off with- \out either money, or letter, or promise ?" Count Lao, notwithstanding the pain in his head, raised himself to a sitting posture in bed, and cried, — " Yes ; and I should not care if they had gone to hell ! And now don't stay here to bore me any longer ! Get out of my sight ! " The countess ran away, banging the door behind her in her wrath. " What an old bear ! " she said. So Elena had deceived her ! And she had deceived her husband too ! And certainly she had come to some ar- rangement with her uncle. Now she understood it all. It was a stratagem of Lao's to save his money, and of 130 DANIELE CORTIS. Elena's to prevent a family scene. She ought to have been told about it! But where did Elena get her zeal from ? She who had hitherto always disregarded ques- tions of money, and who had never taken the smallest pains to avoid family quarrels ! She must have had some secret reason for her conduct. And what was it ? It was ^ enough to drive one mad ! And now what would that 1 ^ .^ beast of a son-in-law of hers do ? He was capable of any- r^ i^^^ thing ! She had known nothing about it. All this dis- ^y turbance of things and people had left her no time for /T] anything else. And now she was alone, for Grigiolo and Malcanton were gone alone with that old toad of a brother- in-law of hers, without any one to help or advise her ! What in the world had become of that Cortis! He would be better than nobody. How ill she felt ! And the garden and house annoyed her because of their untidiness ; there was nothing left but disgusting dregs, out of which all the pleasure had been squeezed ! The beds of mignonette and vanilla round the house were all trampled ; the fir trees and the meadow were littered with half - burnt papers ; even the billiard-room was all daubed with gum from the horrible balloons that Grigiolo had made there ! And how every room in the house reeked of stale cigars ! At eleven o'clock the driver came to the door, according to orders. The countess had forgotten all about it. She had other things to think of besides paying visits ! She was just going to dismiss him, when she heard shouts of " Your servant ! your servant," and in the field she saw little black Don Bartolo, in his three-cornered hat, and with his bamboo cane. He had come to return the decorations from the church of St Peter, and to drink a glass of white wine. The countess asked him at once if he knew any- thing of Cortis. To be sure he did. Doctor Picuti had just returned from the chief town of the division with all the last political news. Advertisements of a public njeet- ing to be held that day were out, and Cortis was expected VOICES IN THE DARK. 131 to be present, and Signor Zirisela had gone into town with the idea of hearing him. " I believe," added the priest, " that he has telegraphed to his bailiff from Milan, and that they expect him home to-morrow." It was then that it occurred to Countess Tarquinia to send the fly to meet him. She had great faith in Daniele Cortis. He would tell her what to do, and would give her good advice ; while that selfish wretch Lao could think of nothing but his aches and pains. "Of course, countess, you know where that stay-at- home, Signor Daniele, has been to ? " suddenly asked Don Bartolo. " I do not," answered she drily. " How strangely things are divided in this world ! " ex- claimed the priest, rising. " Why, here is a real countess who does not know something that the poor housekeeper of the priest knows." " "Well, where has he been ?" " Now, now ; of course you know ; you are only laugh- ing at me, countess. Do you not, really ? He has been to Lugano. And do you know what he has found there ? Why, no less a person than his sainted mother, whom they have always tried to make us believe was dead, and who now turns out to be alive, the great — " The countess did not show much surprise. She had always doubted her death; and as she very cordially hated everything to do with her sister-in-law, she rather preferred that Cortis should have said nothing to her. " How did it become known ? " she asked. "It was known that he was gone to Lugano, because his servants at Villascura had orders to forward letters or telegrams there. It was the parish priest who knew about his mother. It appears that she writes to him sometimes." "What about?" 132 DANIELE COETIS. " How should I know ? To show that she still has good manners, perhaps — pray don't go away ! " Tlie usual clinking of glass was heard as the tray was brought. The countess, having sent away the keys of the chapel, left Don Bartolo to enjoy a pleasant glass of white wine, on the balcony, in the cool breeze. " I must get ready," said he, " and then I shall be off immediately." She went vip to Elena's room, remembering that she had promised to restore to Cortis a book that had been left on the table. She entered the empty room, and was some- what moved to see how coldly tidy everything looked, and how sadly Elena's beloved roses were hanging their heads at her window. The book was there on the table. The countess remembered having seen it several times in her daughter's hands. She looked at the title-page — Chateaubriand — M^moires dC Outretomhe. She did not know it. It was probably some sad, deep book, Elena preferred that kind of reading. Daniele Cortis had written his own name on the first page. The countess looked at it for some time, and then said to herself, with a sigh : " He wanted Elena ! " But, in this matter, she really was not to blame. When Daniele first began, perhaps, to think about it, Elena was a girl who had grown up prematurely, and perfectly un- attractive to most young men. And then he had gone away, and the other one had made his appearance ; and it seemed a good marriage, and one that promised well. She opened the table-drawer. It contained nothing but an old torn visiting card of Elena's. But it bore on it, besides her name, a few words scrawled in pencil, which had been obliterated, and were now illegible. The countess instinctively understood that the secret reasons that governed Elena's conduct could not be dis- covered by her in any manner, save perhaps through that obliterated writing, whence a voice seemed to reach her. VOICES IN THE DAEK. 133 Towards four o'clock horses and wheels drove noisily up to the portico. The countess rushed out to receive Cortis, who jumped out. She seized both his hands. How grateful she was to him. With what warmth she received him. "Poor beasts," grumbled the driver, looking at his horses. " Well," said Cortis anxiously, " are you alone ? " " Very much so, my dear boy." Scarcely had they entered the house when the countess began to weep. Cortis did not know what to think. "My dear aunt," he said, "tell me what is the matter." The aunt hesitated before replying. Presently a bell was heard ringing two or three times. " Nothing," she said ; " it's nothing ; it's only my weak- ness. But now I feel convinced that there is something very wrong, Daniele, and I did not know when I should see you here, and be able to talk to you, and hear what you would say. Do you remember the evening of the storm, when you were coming from Lao's room, and met me just by the door of the hall ? Do you remember that there were tears in my eyes ? " Then she began to relate many things to Cortis of which he already knew a large part ; how embarrassed for money her son-in-law was, his demands, the difficult family ques- tions that had been raised thereby, Lao's inflexibility, her own sufferings. " Signora," said her maid, coming in at this moment, " the count heard the carriage, and desired to know who had arrived, and now he begs that Signor Daniele will go to him at once." "Good gracious!" exclaimed the countess, displeased, " I never get a chance of two words with you. He has got a bad headache, I warn you. Signor Daniele will come in a minute. Wait a little." She wished to finish her story, and she did finish it in 134 DANIELE COETIS. furious haste. Neither Cortis nor she noticed that all the time the bell was ringing more violently than ever, and that her maid had come back and was waiting on the threshold. " Signor Daniele," she said at last, timidly. " Yes, yes, go to him, in Heaven's name ! " ejaculated the countess, " only make haste and come down again, because I want you." Before Cortis had reached the staircase, the door of the verandah was pushed violently open, and Saturn dashed in, barking and leaping for joy. Behind Saturn came the bailiff of Villascura and two other persons. The bailiff had heard from Don Bartolo that Cortis was expected at Villa Carre, and so he had come for his orders, and also to bring with him two gentlemen who were the secretaries of the communes of A. and B., and who were most anxious to talk to him, Cortis shook hands with them, and, begging them to wait a few minutes, went to Count Lao's room. On the stairs he was joined by the maid, who said, — " Signor Daniele." He turned round. " May I speak to you about my young mistress ? " she continued, " I haven't spoken to the countess, because — poor thing ! " " What is it ? " "Yesterday I was helping her to pack her trunks. 'Bettina,' she said, 'I fear we shall never meet again.' ' Whatever do you mean, signora?' said I. ' Why should we not meet again ? I intend to live for several years yet,' I said. ' That may be,' says she ; ' but I, Bettina, shall not come back. I am going far away,' says she. ' But you will come back ? ' I said. ' Why sliouldn't you come back ? ' 'I don't know,' says she. Do you think now, Signor Daniele, that the contessina would have said all this without good reason ? Heaven knows what she may have got into her head, poor dear ! Only think ! A minute later she takes up a book, stands looking at it for VOICES IN THE DAEK. 135 a quarter of an hour, trembling like a leaf all the time, puts it down at the bottom of a trunk, and then, when the trunk is quite full, nothing will satisfy her but she must open it, take out everything till she comes to her book, then she writes a note and puts it into the book. Then she leaves the room, and comes back suddenly in a great hurry, tears up her note, and writes another instead." Daniele made no reply, but entered Lao's room. Dark- ness, heat, and the odour of camphor stopped him at the door. " Forgive me, my dear Daniele," said the count's voice ; " light a match. The candle is on the floor, behind the bed." " How are you ? " asked Cortis, gently. " Bad, but no matter. And how — " At that moment Cortis struck a match, which flamed. " Oh, I see," murmured Lao. " I could have told you so beforehand. That woman could only change for the worse." " I will tell you about that presently," answered Cortis. " Good. And the election ? " " Bad, too." Cortis lighted the candle, and could at last distinguish Lao, who, lying on his bed, pale, with his head tied up, and his eyes half-closed, was saying in a low voice, " Pigs ! " Cortis pressed his hand. " I will leave you quiet," he said. Lao detained him, and asked if he had told him of the upset of the previous day. " I advise you," he said, " to do nothing without first asking me. Good-bye. What time is it ? " " Ten minutes to five." " Give me my pills. There they are on the table." He took a pill of valerian and quinine, and, letting his 136 DANIELE CORTIS. head fall again on to the pillow, muttered, as Cortis was leaving the room : " Pigs ! " Cortis went down hastily to the secretaries, who were waiting. They brought good news from the mountains. Up there, people did not care a bit for what the town thought. On the contrary, there was a great jealousy existing between the mountain and the plain — a keen antagonism. All the same, it would be well if Cortis would go up there the next day, just to show himself. He promised. All this time Countess Tarquinia was coming and going, throwing impatient glances at Cortis and his political friends. " At last ! " she said, when the latter were gone. She gave the Chateaubriand to Cortis, who did not remember having lent the book to Elena, and opened it with curiosity. He found one of his cousin's cards inside, bearing the words : " With many thanks and greet- ings." " By-the-bye," said the countess, " I will go and fetch you another card that was on her table." Now Cortis began to understand the maid's story. That was the book which Elena had at first packed up with so much emotion ; with an emotion that was so jealously concealed in her last note, after the first rush of repentance. Perhaps it appeared too plainly in her first letter, and she did not wish to betray herself. The countess returned with the note. It was impossible to make anything out of it. Cortis tried in vain, and handed it back to the countess witli apparent indiff'erence, and without a word. " I wrote to her this morning," said the countess ; "but I can't help wondering what has happened, or what will happen when her husband learns that he has been de- ceived. A wretch like that ! " The countess talked, groaned, wept and talked again, VOICES IN THE DARK. 137 mixing np in her lamentations the past, the present, and the future. Cortis answered nothing. " If I were a man," she said at last, " I think I should have gone after her. Do you think I can ask any one, Daniele, to do me this favour ? " Cortis had not heard the question, and had to ask her to repeat it. The countess bewailed his inattention, and accused him of having no thought for anything but his election. But still he did not see why he should run after the Di Santa Giulias. And besides, for three days, without count- ing the all-important Sunday, he could not leave home. They dined together in the cool north room which looks to the firs of the garden and the bare rocks of Monte Barco. " And I must stay here in this melancholy plight," said the countess. " Who knows when I shall be able to drag him up to town ? " Then neither spoke again till the end of dinner. When the servant left them to fetch the coflFee, the countess clasped her hands and said, — " At least, write to lie'r." He bowed in token of assent. "I will write to-night," he said suddenly, like one awaking from a dream. The countess thanked him heartily. It never occurred to her that there could be any risk in encouraging a correspondence between her daughter and Cortis. She had such perfect confidence in both of them, and saw that they were so different from the frivolous and corrupt people amongst whom she had learned what love was. They were only capable of an airy sentiment at best, which seemed to her somewhat ridiculous. " Scold her ! " she said ; " write that no scene with her husband could have been more displeasing to me than what has happened. Say that she ought to have spoken 138 DANIELE COETIS. clearly and distinctly to her uncle, and to have asked him to make the sacrifice. She has never spoken to him at all, you know. Say (I have said it to her once, but you can repeat it) that she shall have the money somehow or other, and that she may tell her husband so at once." The servant reappeared with the coffee, and a letter for Cortis from B., which had been brought by a special messenger. He wrote : — "A line in haste, from the benches of the electoral X/' meeting. Excited discussion followed your speech. Your / \ opponents accuse you of clericalism and masked absolut- ism, or at any rate of belonging to no party, because those that exist do not suit you, and your own is not yet formed. The ballot showed forty-six votes in your favour and fifty- eight against. Great confusion. Every one will vote ac- cording to liis pleasure. Your friends will fight to the last, and even longer for you. News from the mountains assure that a visit from you will be attended by great results. B." "Elections?" asked the countess when Cortis had finished reading ; and without waiting for an answer she went on : "To-morrow you must give up the whole day to me. Either my brother-in-law must be persuaded to give this money, or else I must find it somehow. In any case, you must help me." Cortis replied that it was out of the question. He had to start at dawn for the mountains, and he could not be sure of reaching home again in the evening. The countess had a fit of weeping. He remained firm and cold as ice. Seeing that he could win, he felt it his duty to fight. Every sentiment, even that of love, disappeared, went down without a struggle, in presence of the clear and dis- tinct vision of duty. He rose, and promising to write to Elena that night, he went to Villascura. VOICES IN THE DAEK. 139 As he passed the little rose-covered house in which was Elena's studio, he thought of an evening twelve years ago, on which Elena, coming from the meadow to her room, with a red flower in her hair, and flaming cheeks, had said : " Oh, Daniele, how I have run," and then she ran on again, sending out a silvery laugh into the air. Now the meadow was deserted, the studio closed, and she far away. And she loved him, and sufi"ered, and was miser- able. Cortis picked a rose growing near the door of the studio. " Elena," said he, " I beg thee of God." And after that he thought no more about her, and began to talk to Pitantoi, whom he met carrying some cray-fish up to the house. Only late that evening he returned to the thought. After he had written a dozen notes in his own room, with Saturn at his feet, he rang for his servant, and ordered that they should be despatched the first thing in the morning. Then, having dismissed him, he took a large sheet of paper and began to write hurriedly : — " ViLLASCDRA, 20 th June 1881. " Elena, — I expected to find you, your voice, your face, your heart; I have found your thanks and your greet- ings. What had you written in the note that your mother found in your room ? What was it, Elena, that you wished to destroy and obliterate ? I, who am writing in this great empty barn of Villascura, with my head tired, and my heart full of bitterness, feel, notwith- standing your treasured thanks and greetings, that your soul is here, near me. " It would have been better had my mother been really dead. I need say no more to you. It will be difficult for me to see her again yet awhile. I will provide for her suitably, but from a distance. Do you know what re- mains in my heart ? The memory of my father, which is more bright and clear than ever. 140 DANIELE CORTIS. " I came away post-haste from Lugano on account of my election, which is going on wheels. I am sorry for my poor friends whose livers will suffer, that is to say, those who have any ! I came direct from Lugano to . At the station they hissed me, but then I made a speech to the electors, and later on I offered, at the ca/e, an in- definite number of thrashings to any body who cared to apply for one ; so that I don't think I am much in debt to my good neighbours. r" My speech, very Catholic, but always from the point of view of the State, went fairly well. You know that I am not an orator yet (shall I ever be !) ; besides, just before I spoke, they told me that you had gone away, and also the atmosphere was charged with idiotic fluid. On the other hand, my proffered thrashing, less Catholic, answered very well, and I am not likely to be led into the temptation of following it up by a sword-thrust. I only intended to give a lesson, or an example, whichever you like, of brotherly love; and I think that I did well both with hand and mind. Finally, our old friend, Schiro, sent by your mother, drove me out to Villa Carrd, cursing the blazing sun all the time ; and I dreamed violently of a certain lady who is cold as ice. We stopped a moment near Rocchette, under the fortress that you know so well ; and thence I made a sentimental jo\irney up to that level bit of ground where the said lady once picked some col- chicum in autumn, which I begged of her, but which she hid in her bosom, giving me instead only a stony silence. At Villa Carre I found my aunt very unhappy, and your uncle delightfully rabid. I could only give him a hand and a quinine pill, and we did not talk about you, although his head and my heart were aching on your account. Your mother talked a great deal about you instead. " What have you been doing, Elena ? I cannot pretend to have thoroughly understood from Aunt Tarquinia, and T don't think she was very clear about it herself; but VOICES IN THE DAEK. 141 from what I could gather, it looks to me very like a deep and subtle plot laid by you against the peace of Villa Carre, for the sake of one day's peace, and torture ever after. Your mother is trembling for you, and would make any sacrifice to confine the storm which she fears will burst upon you. For my own part, I know you better than your mother does, and I am not afraid for you. Another feeling rises in my heart; a contempt which I cannot express. In any case, reassure this poor woman, towards whom you may be, sometimes, ever so slightly unjust. " Good God ! Elena, why did I not find you here? Why did you scruple to leave a better word for me ? " I picked a rose this evening at the door of your studio. Its delicate beauty, lying as it is on a barbarous volume of Hansard, is dying with a sweet gravity that somewhat recalls you to me at certain moments. I thought, as I looked at your studio, of the past, and of what might have been. We will live among the roses, Elena. Is it never the lot of souls like ours? We are made to meet war and tempest, we are weapons in an unknown hand which never rests, and never lets us rest; and how firmly it grasps us. " To-morrow morning I am going to carry my gospel into the mountains. I shall preach at and . I know that this will not please you, my haughty lady; but there is no politician and no patriot who has not felt it necessary in certain times and places to depose his weak pride. I am as haughty as you, and if the world could only read my feelings when I am asking for votes, it would indeed praise me. But if the electors had left me at Villascura, as after all they very likely will do, I certainly should not have troubled to run after them. I calculate that I have in me still thirty-five years of political life ; if I am to waste two of them at the doors of the Chamber, it will not ruin me. Nevertheless I will 142 DANIELE COETIS. not hide from you, as I do from the rest of the world, that I feel a certain agitation, an excitement, which will prevent me from sleeping much till after Sunday. " Do you know that the evening before I went away, you said, 'Write to me'? This is the second time I have written, and if the Holy Inquisition itself were to see my letters, it could find no fault : it would not find one of the words that I may have whispered to that dying rose, who won't repeat them. So now, answer me. If you do not do so at once, and fully, I shall come to you, wherever you may be, and demand an explanation. " Now I am going to cool myself in the lake in the garden. It is half-past eleven, there is no moon ; it would be hard to distinguish between a fish and a candi- date ; but make your mind easy, politicians never sink. "Good-bye, Elena. If things go badly with me on Sunday, I shall bury myself for a month in my garden, with Shakespeare and you. Daniele." He went out with Saturn, and disappeared in the thick shadows of the limes growing by a path leading to the lake, an oval sheet of water, bordered by dark foliage, and shaded by the overhanging peak of Passo Grande. A few minutes later, Saturn was left alone on the bank, and was mournfully wagging his tail, while violent splashings were heard from the middle of the dark, motionless water. CHAPTEE X. THE baron's affairs. The Di Santa Giulias had been two days in Rome, and the baron had not as yet addressed a word to his wife. They had two bedrooms and a sitting-room at the Hotel Bristol, having given up their usual dwelling in the Via Quattro Fontane a month previously when they went into Veneto. The senator had chosen this hotel in the Piazza Barberini so as not to be too far away from his usual haunts ; although in July, at certain hours of the day, the piazza was baking. It is true that tlie baron suffered but little from this. He never got up until after two o'clock, when he went out, not returning until day- light. Elena never saw him. The first day the chamber- maid told her that the baron had gone out, and would not be in to dinner. The second day she happened to be in the sitting-room when her husband passed through, looking cross and worried. Neither of them spoke a word ; she heard him come in at four in the morning. Henceforward it became a daily occurrence. It was better for Elena that it should be thus ; it was better for her not to see him, to know that he was out. It mattered little where he spent his time, whether at the senate, or at the club, or in some place where the play was higher and more secret than at the club. She had heard rumours some time before that there was such a place in the immediate neighbourhood of the Piazza Bar- berini. Perhaps her husband spent his nights there. 144 DANIELE COETIS. This thought occurred to her the first time that she was disturbed by his return. It did not make her unhappy ; she was perfectly indifferent. Neither did slie worry herself about Cefalil ; she waited apathetically for the sea and solitude. She might perhaps become fond of them, but she cared little even about that. Since the first days of her married life she had never felt such a profound hopelessness. Her virtuous sacrifice, her plan made, and already in part carried out, of remov- ing herself as far as possible from the heart and sight of Cortis, had not at all raised in her that secure conscious- ness of having done right which exalts the mind. On the contrary, she felt keenly the pain that her cold note must have inflicted upon Cortis ; she hated herself at times for having been more hard than was necessary ; for never having made any allusion to the letter she had received from Lugano. And immediately afterwards she scolded herself for these uprisings of feeling and these falterings of will. As soon as she reached Eome, she wrote a fairly affec- tionate letter to her mother. She answered her uncle Lao's letter the following day, thanking him, but not accepting the proffered money. She joked about the sermon that her crabbed old uncle had preached to her, to the sound of his polka, about this wretched money ; she joked about the prodigality of the preacher. She went on to speak of the heat of Rome, where she found no one she knew, and said that she sighed for the sea, and preferred Sicily to the horrible watering-places of the continent. She ended her letter by announcing her inten- tion of going up to the Church of the Capucins, where she would get a breath of air, and where she could pray for all rheumatic uncles. As she wrote she felt bitterly amazed at herself, and a good deal humiliated at finding that she could act so cleverly. Henceforth everything seemed to her a comedy. THE BAEON'S AFFAIKS. 145 everything seemed false, all human faces, words and actions. And the " I will " spoken at the altar, might she not consider that too as an answer given in a play ? At this idea her blood boiled. Never, never! No sentiment, not even that of religion, spoke so loudly in her as her proud fidelity. Moreover, she did not believe in her religion : her mother had always gone to mass too mach, and her uncle too little. She only preserved a sad, severe faith in God, a faith which forbade her, as weak and unworthy, any expectation of reward or of personal happiness either here or hereafter. And at this time, even this, her last light, was burning very dimly. Up there, in the Capucin church, when she wanted to pray with fervour, and to beg help from God against herself, a sinister impression, carried away by her years previously from that same church, suddenly recurred to her. A lay- brother had shown her the horrible mortuary chapel without causing her much disgust; afterwards, in the church, he liad said to her quietly, with his expressionless face : " Under this stone is buried Cardinal Barberini, founder of the church. See, signora, the inscription : hie jacet pulvis, cinis et nihil — that means dust, ashes, and nothing ! " Pulvis, cinis et nihil, Elena had looked at the words cut into the stone with wonder and terror, as if they had risen from the kingdom of the dead to explain to her the sad mystery of human life, pulvis et nihil, to the utter exclusion of the spirit ; and the man with the expression- less face looked to her like the priest of some tragic religion of death and nothingness. At Rome she was often assailed by those pangs of hopeless scepticism ; she found it in the ruins of a dead faith which were scattered around her, in the worn-out pomp of a sickly faith, in the campagna, which girt her round with its silence and desertion. The evening after her arrival she drove to the lending- 146 DANIELE CORTIS. library to get the Memoirs d' Outretombe, and there she met Senator Clenezzi from Bergamo, a lively little old man, who had always been at her feet on account of her beauty, her cleverness, and also because, rara avis, she never worried him with tickets for charity concerts or other good works. He did not know that Elena was in Rome, He kissed her hand with unusual tenderness, and kept repeating: "Dear Donna Elena, dear Donna Elena ! " till at last the librarian, waiting with the Chdteauhriand in hand, laughed. Before getting into her carriage, Elena told him that she expected to remain a, few days longer in Rome before going to some baths, and that she hoped to see him again. " At the Quattro Fontane ? " asked Clenezzi. " No, at the Bristol." " At what time shall I not find your husband ? " Elena smiled. "I never see him," she answered. "Come when you like. Why are you afraid to meet my husband ? Have you quarrelled ? " " It is not that," answered the little old man. " Well, then ? " He helped her into her carriage. " Am I so old as all that ? " he said. " He may stab me, but all the same I will come." "Do," answered Elena, smiling. "And if you know any more friends of ours in Rome, bring them with you. I am always alone ; come soon if you want to find me." "That poor thing knows nothing," said Clenezzi to himself, returning into the shop as the carriage drove off in the direction of the Piazza Colonna. The next day he went to the Hotel Bristol. Elena received him with considerable excitement, talking to him of this, that and the other, with a feverish gaiety that caused him some embarrassment. He answered in tnonosyllables, fidgeted on his chair, looking uncomfort- THE BARON'S AFFAIRS. 147 able, and yet unable to go away, till Elena said to him, — " What is the matter with you, Clenezzi ? You are like ' une ^rae en peine.' Tell me, have you to make a speech in the senate?" " Bless my heart ! " exclaimed the startled senator ; " no, no, not in the senate." Elena thought for a moment. " Ah ! " she said, lowering her voice to a tone of freezing indifference, "have yon anything to say to me? Is it something which concerns my husband ? " The man's embarrassment left him all at once, leaving in its place an anxious look and a nervous countenance. " So you know ? " he asked. Elena shook her head, shrugging her shoulders, and raising her eyebrows, and in a scarcely audible voice answered, — " I know nothing." Clenezzi, stupefied, remained with his mouth open, not knowing whether to continue or to hold his tongue. Elena's lips moved again, and she whispered, — "Tell me." The senator fancied her indifferent. He grew very red, and protested that he had no desire to touch upon certain matters, that he had only been induced to do so by a feel- ing of devotion, but that, if it did not interest Donna Elena, he had no wish — "Clenezzi," she said, interrupting him in a tone of mournful reproof, as she stretched out her hand. She was accustomed to these outbursts from her old friend, who, notwithstanding his seventy years, had all the fire of a boy of twenty. " Forgive me," he said, greedily kissing the white taper- ing fingers. " I am wrong. I come from Bergamo, I was born on the Brembo, and I am violent." " No, no ! " exclaimed Elena, " but listen. Supposing / 148 DANIELE COETIS. you had children ! Now tell nie everything. It is my duty to do all that I can for my husband, and I will do it." Then the senator asked her whether she had never sus- pected anything wrong in the state of her husband's affairs. Yes, her suspicions might have been roused long ago, if she had noticed certain ugly people who used to come and inquire for the baron, certain letters that irritated him, the fuss he made over every domestic expense. She knew also that he gambled ; she had learned that from the first anonymous letters that had come both to her and to her uncle ; besides, an ofiicious woman friend had whispered it to her at Eome. In May, before going to Passo di Rovese, her husband had begged her to use her influence with the Carres to get him a certain sum of money. At this point Elena stopped. It appeared impossible to Clenezzi that the baron should have entirely concealed from his wife all the threatened misfortunes that were hang- ing over his head. But still it was the fact. Donna Elena knew nothing, and turned towards him the indifferent face that she had at first displayed. Then he told her roughly that her husband's honour and liberty were at stake. Elena shook her head. " I don't believe it ! " she said. • She knew that she had a rude, violent and vicious man for a husband. She did not believe him capable of a dishonest action. " Ah, Donna Elena ! " exclaimed Clenezzi, with a look that expressed a hundred things. And then he told her that, two months previously, the lawyer Boglietti, commissioned by a Sicilian loan society, had been to the president of the senate bear- ing a most serious accusation against Senator Di Santa Giulia. The society had charged him, as their chair- man, to obtain a sum owing to them by a banking- house in Eome, and to deposit it with the Minister of Finance as security for certain borrowed money. THE BAEON'S AFFAIRS. 149 Di Santa Giulia had performed the first part of the com- mission, but not the second. The board of directors having discovered this fact, had immediately instituted inquiries as to the manner in which their commis- sion had been carried out. Here there was a dark spot. It appeared that Di Santa Giulia had alleged some pre- text or another, and by means of promises had per- suaded the board, of which several of his supporters were members, to proceed no farther. But the matter had got abroad, and the board had been compelled, at the end of May, to call upon Di Santa Giulia to restore the money, and to make good their losses by the 18th of June, threatening him with criminal proceedings for misappropriation of funds in case of refusal. The baron had begged for a delay, promising to repay one-half of the sum on the 30th of September of that year, and the remainder on the 31st of March 1882. He trusted that his friends on the board would be able to bring about a settlement upon these terms. But 'instead, Boglietti had been instructed to make one more attempt at a friendly solution, demanding the immediate payment of one-third of the sum, and agreeing that the remaining debt should be paid in two equal portions, just the proposal of the baron. Failing this, he was to move for a writ against him. The lawyer had thought it best to go and lay the whole case before the president of the senate, hoping that he might find a means of avoid- ing such a scandal, and of forcing the baron to do his duty. The president telegraphed on the 29th of June to Passo di Rovese, recalling Di Santa Giulia to Rome. On the 1st of July, at four in the afternoon, a few hours before the meeting of Elena and Clenezzi at the library, a member of the president's office had received a promise from the baron that the required payment should be made before the 7th, failing which his name was to be struck ofi" the list of senators of the kingdom. 150 DANIELE COETIS. Now there was not the slightest probability that the baron would be able to find the money. It was said that he was over head and ears in debt. Would his wife's family come to the rescue ? "In such a case as this," Clenezzi concluded hastily, " no one can help but relations." " I believe," Elena began, " that all my money has long since been dissipated. And, besides, do you suppose that my family has never done anything ? " " I understand ; but — " Elena thought for a moment. " What is the amount ? " she asked. " From twelve to fifteen thousand lire. If you can raise that sum, your husband must never see it. It must be in Boglietti's hands before Thursday." " Ah ! dear Clenezzi," sighed Elena, " if money could do everything ! Supposing that we can find this money, may I send it to you ? Will you look after it ? If it had to be drawn out of the National Bank, would you see to it for me ? " The senator, who for love of Elena and for the pleasure of saving his own money, would have walked into the fire, placed himself entirely at her disposal. He looked at the clock. It happened that on that very day the plan for electoral reform was to be laid before the senate, and a debate was expected on the composition of the Central Office. He must get to the house. " We must hope," he said, rising. " What for ? " asked Elena, with a smile so bitter, and a look so sad, that it brought tears to the eyes of the poor senator. " Forgive me ! " he exclaimed. " I am a poor old man, a poor old fool, but if you were my daughter, by our Lady ! I would carry you off into my own country as sure as God is above us ; and if that ugly fellow came to take you away, he should see what we are made of in Brembo I " THE BARON'S AFFAIRS. 151 " No, no," she said, in an offended tone, " yoa don't know me." "And me?" retorted the senator, "do you know me? I should like to see him come." Elena seemed afraid to discuss this question, for she hastily replied, — " Go to the senate, go to the senate," and rang the bell. She remained alone, standing in the middle of the room, gazing fixedly at the triton in the fountain on the piazza. A waiter opened the door and asked : " Did you ring ? " but receiving no answer, he repeated : " Did the signora baron essa ring ?" " Ah ! " said Elena looking at him, and just realising that he was there, and then she added : " Nothing." Scarcely had the waiter retired when she remembered that she had rung and what she wanted, and going to the door, called after him : " A cab," and then returned to the contemplation of the fountain. Within her mind all was confusion. With her other feelings for her husband there was now mingled, for the first time, one of horror. He was laden with other people's money. And then it appeared to her that all this tumult quieted down ; her fancies and thoughts subsided as though some invisible door had been opened for them in the depths of \ her mind. All was blank and dark ; and as her eyes unconsciously gazed at the fountain, so there came un- consciously into her mouth a few words recently read in / the Memoires d) Outretombe^ the words of poor Madame de Beaumont at Tivoli : " II faut laisser tomber les flots." However, this deadly calmness could not last long. As soon as the waiter came back to tell her that the cab was ready, she got up, determined to think of nothing but her duty. She drove at once to the telegraph office, and despatched a message to her Uncle Lao, accepting the money she had previously refused, begging that it might Y 152 DANIELE CORTIS. be sent to her, and promising explanations by post. On her return to the hotel, with a feeh'ng of bitter satisfac- tion, she thought over the excitement that would be caused at Villa Carre by her telegram, the fury of her uncle, and the lamentations of her mother. There came into her mind, who knows why, a recollection of the roses which were peeping into her empty room. The previous morning she had received from her mother a letter full of affection, of fears, of reproof. What would she say now ? At the corner of the streets of the Due Macelli and the Tritone, she thought she saw her husband turning hastily down a back street to the left. A wave of anger swept over her. Could that gambling-house be down there ? Her first impulse was to stop the cab, and rejoin him. Her contempt overcame it ; she let him go. For some time past she had known him to be coarse, violent, and vicious ; but she had always attributed to him a certain rough honesty, the brutal frankness of the barbarian ; also of the heart. But now no more ; now that money that did not belong to him rendered him unclean in her eyes. She let him go. At the hotel she found Cortis's letter. When she left that dry note for him at Passo di Rovese, her design had been to irritate him, and to prevent him from writing to her, at least for some time. She hoped for much from distance and silence ; not for herself, but for him. She experienced an invincible feeling of pleasure when she saw that her plan had failed ; and as she opened the letter she did not know whether she felt afraid of, or anxious for, passionate words. She devoured it, first of all, from beginning to end, slurring over the little expressions of affection as though they burned her ; especially over the sentence, "it would not find in my letter one of the words that I may have whispered to the dying rose, which will not repeat them." She thought that Cortis ought not to have written thus ; and on reaching the end, she THE BAEON'S AFFAIES. 153 turned hurriedly back to the first page, whereon he spoke of his mother. She read once more those disconsolate lines, and experienced a profound sorrow. At that moment she felt neither her own troubles nor the sweetness of know- ing herself loved. All her heart had gone out to him. She suffered with him, she shared his disenchantment, his bitter loneliness. She realised all this so deeply as to fear lest she no longer belonged to herself, but had become part of him. And his election ? Daniele only spoke of it jokingly, but here, as in other parts of his letter, his gaiety betrayed the real disturbance of his mind. A rush of indignation against the stupid electors made the hands and silent lips of Elena tremble ; the man whom she loved could not please the crowd. Nevertheless she felt no shadow of a doubt as to his ultimate success. The future of Cortis was certainly not in the hands of a few idiots. And there was some comfort to be extracted from his letter. She felt that his moral strength was greater than his love, that his great soul might suffer by a woman's abandonment, but that it would not crush him, nor make v him swerve from the path he had marked out. Thus, and / X thus only, did Elena love him ! As for herself, whatever ', fate might await her, whatever misfortune might come \ upon her, it should not be allowed to signify either to I herself, nor to the world, nor to God. 1 A fleeting vision rose before her, and showed her the placid lake at Villa Cortis, with Daniele seated on the brink. She was seated beside him, having fled from Eome and her unworthy husband. The shadows of the garden, the lake, and their own hearts, were all at peace to their inmost recesses. She chased away the picture with a sudden frown. It could never be ! Cortis must not love her. Even if she sacrificed herself, she could ofi"er him nothing but a feverish present and an overcast future ; even by allowing him to love her thus ideally, she saddened his life. He was alone in the world, and on the path he 154 DANIELE CORTIS. had chosen for himself, fatigues, pains, and weariness were lying in wait for him. Why had he no family to be a rest and a comfort to him ? She must make him forget her. She thought of the little meadow near the fir trees, where Cortis had left her ; she thought of that colchicum blossom, that flower with its powerful juice, which she had insisted upon keeping for herself. She smiled and wept. Her husband did not reappear during the whole day. Elena ought to have gone to some friends in the Via Urbana, who were kind enough to take charge of her plate, but she did not feel in the humour to see people, or to put on a mask of gaiety. She read over and over again in the Memoires all the passages of which Cortis had told her, but, above all, the letters of Madame de Caud, and she turned now and again to the passage which speaks of unintentionally dashing against the destiny of another. She eat no dinner. In the evening, as her head and her eyes ached with the constant reading, feeling herself suffocated in her little room, she ordered a cab, and had herself driven beyond the Porta Pia. The last lights of the sunset tinged with purple the Sabine hills, the air was pleasant ; Elena could not but weep. Bat the melancholy of the hour, the solitude, and, away to- wards Ponte Numentano, the ruins scattered about, seemed all to find voices of sympathy with her, and her tears were less bitter in consequence. As they went down towards Ponte Numentano, the driver let^his horses walk. An old woman begged of the beautiful lady, and on receiving her alms, she noticed that the giver's eyes were full of tears. "My daughter, God will give you peace," she said. At the same moment, Elena experienced a violent fit of shivering; her thoughts turned to the fever, to a possible and desirable peace, and to the words on the marble tomb in the Capucin church : " Pulvis, cinis et nihil." As she descended towards Rome, she saw before her the moon THE BAEON'S AFFAIES. 155 setting behind the cypresses in the Villa Albani, and as she drove past the gardens, the air was heavy with the scent of magnolias. Near Porta Pia she met a young man and woman riding. How handsome they looked on their fiery horses. To her, the evening voices spoke only of sadness, but how sweetly must they speak of love to others ! At ten in the evening she received a telegram from Lao, which began by promising her the money within three days, through the National Bank. It went on: " At to-day's ballot, Cortis had 342 votes X 338. Cortis elected." Elena felt a keen sensation of joy in her heart, and her face flushed with pleasure. She put her hands to her cheeks, they were burning ; to her temples, they were throbbing. Cortis elected ! He had conquered, he had won the first step, he must be happy. He would come to Rome, he would have to live there for many months, and she might be there too. No, no, good God ! keep away that thought. She was going to Cefalti, to remain there for ever, never to see him again, and, above all, never to be seen by him, and to betray herself. Oh, heavens ! might she not send him one word ? What would he think of such a silence? Certainly he would guess its true cause. Would not that be worse? He would want one line, one word; and she would only answer him very coldly, very distantly, so as to keep him off". She began to write this cold and severe letter with fever in her heart and in her head. •'EOME, 2d./M/yl881. " Dear Cousin, — They tell me you are elected. I am sincerely glad to know that you have taken this step on your road, which I trust may be happy and distinguished. " I have just received your letter, and have been much pained by what you wrote to me from Lugano. I would I could hasten by my prayers the moment — " 156 DANIEIiE CORTIS. Here two tears fell on to her paper, but she continued to write, setting her lips tightly. " — In which a pure and faithful woman might comfort you, and warm your deserted hearth. " I think, and have always thought of you with friend- liness, but there cannot be in my heart, and I will not allow in yours, any other feeling. I am therefore com- pelled to say to you that several sentences in your note from Lugano, and in your letter of to-day, have offended me. I hope you will not lind it very difficult to alter both your mind and your language ; otherwise I should prefer not to have to see you again." Elena ceased. The labour of writing these cruel words had been too great ; fancy, stimulated by passion and fever, suggested others of a very different nature. She did not know how to go on. And as she was thinking, with her eyes fixed on the white paper, as thought after thought passed through her mind, her hand unconsciously wrote : " In winter, in summer, from heart and — " She started, saw it, and tore up the sheet. She was suffering, she was mortally tired, but the thought of find- ing that letter there on the table the next morning frightened her. She took another sheet of paper, and copied the first letter down to the word " again," and then continued : — "You will forgive me for writing so briefly. As I am in Rome for so few days, I have very much to do, and the evening always finds me very tired. Please tell mamma and my uncle that I am very well, and enjoying myself. Rome always fascinates me ! " Good-bye, and once more a thousand congratulations from your affectionate cousin, Elena Di S. G." She fastened the letter, and sent it without delay to the post. No sooner had the waiter gone, than she regretted not having said to Cortis that she was sorry for the pain THE BAEON'S AFFAIES. 157 she was causing him ; but then she told herself that he, with his temper, would be irritated and not pained by her letter. It was better so ! Because certainly the love that Cortis bore her in nowise resembled her own inextinguish- able passion. He would fly into a rage, and would not write to her again ; it would be easy, during his con- temptuous silence, to draw herself little by little out of his heart. But what if he should suddenly come to Eome ? "What if she were to find herself obliged to see him? Elena passed the night in weary restlessness, troubled by a succession of dreams. She fell asleep at dawn, and fancied herself, sitting by the lake at Villascura, alone, a volume of Shakespeare in her hand, her eyes fixed on the motionless water, and engraved on her heart the melan- choly words of Portia in the "Merchant of Venice" : " My little body is aweary of this great world." At six o'clock she heard a violent knocking at her door, and, as she did not answer at once, it was opened with pushes, kicks and blows, and somebody came storming into her room. " God bless my soul ! what an oven ! " Elena raised her head from the pillow, and saw her husband throwing her windows open. " This room is stifling ! " he growled, leaning over the bed. " How are you ? " Elena answered him shortly. That was a nice way indeed of entering her room ! The baron's hair was dishevelled, his necktie awry, his eyes shining. In his grumbling there was a sort of good temper like that of a wild beast in a pleasant mood. " Are you angry ? " he asked. " It is three days since we last saw each other." And stretching his hand over the bed, he seized her foot. Elena started, and withdrew it at once. " Leave me alone ! " she said. 158 DANIELE COETIS. " That's nice, too ! " exclaimed the baron. "You should say, my dear husband, how good of you to come and see rae after the trick I have played you." Elena did not condescend to answer. He pulled an arm-chair up to the bedside, and threw himself into it, with his legs apart. " I am good ! " he said. " I am very good ! Why do I speak like this ? " he continued. " "Why do I look like a good-natured devil, but because I have in me the fire of the south. You cold-blooded northern creatures regard me as a Bacchus, and perhaps something worse ! Look here, you who are the angel of Paradise, whose finger no one is worthy to touch, you have deceived me, you have tried to take my life, my pretty charmer ! " " Your life ! " exclaimed Elena. "Yes, my life, my life. Those fifteen thousand lire represented my honour, and I would have you know that, although I may be a most cruel tyrant, I would not keep my life a moment if by losing it I could save my honour ! Now you have done all in your power to prevent me from getting that money, do you see ? I have had to spend three nights in the devil's company in order to get it. And now here I am, peaceful as a lamb ! " He stood up, and leaned over her with a smile. "And I am very fond of you, my little heart." She pushed him away. " Are you afraid of Cefalii ? Then you sha'n't go there. I forgive you, but I'll never forgive your people. Who knows where we won't go to. I have heaps of money, you know. But you must be kind to your husband, my pretty lady ! " He had not touched a drop of wine, but the excitement of gambling, the long nights that he had been sitting up, and love, so to speak, made his eyes glitter as though he were drunk. " Have you been playing ? " asked Elena. THE BARON'S AFFAIRS. 159 "For three nights, I have won twenty-six thousand five hundred lire. Now that I am in luck, I should like to go to Aix," " No, no. Will you not go direct to Boglietti, the lawyer ? " " Curse him ! " yelled the baron. " What do you know about it ? Has he been here, the scoundrel ? The black- guard ! Yes, I will go to him, and pay him at once, and I will give him the September payment at the same time, and I know he won't be pleased with that. So he has been here, has he, the dog ? I'll break his head for him ! " " No," said Elena, " he has not been here." "Then how do you know anything about him ?" " Never mind," " Well, I won't ask you. I am in such a good humour this morning. Tell the truth now, am I not a good devil — a cloud that thunders but never hails ? I like to play a little ; it's my only vice. I can't tell you what good thoughts come to me now and then. Why, I would em- brace your mother and your uncle now if I were to meet them. But you must be kind to me, my beauty." He bent forward suddenly to give her a kiss, but she, turning sharply round, received it only on her hair. " Go away," she said ; " close the shutters, and leave me in peace." " What is the matter ? " grumbled her husband im- patiently " I have the fever." He thought she was not speaking the truth, a flash of anger came into his eyes as he felt her pulse. His face changed, however, and he finished by letting her white inert hand fall back on to the bed, saying, — " You have done this to plague me ! I had invited some people to dinner to-day." " Never mind. It is Roman fever. It will be gone by this evening." 160 DANIELE CORTIS. " Roman fever ? " exclaimed the baron, frowning. " I will send for a doctor." " It is not necessary. I know what will cure me immediately." "What?" Elena turned her face towards him. " Sicily," she said. CHAPTEE XI. FROM CEFALl) TO ROME. " To the Baroness Elena di Santa Giulia, at Cefalii. " Rome, \^th January 1882. " Elena. — Only one word. " You went to Sicily last July, ill with fever, and you have not sent one line to your mother, who only learned it by accident a few days ago from Senator Clenezzi. You said that you would return to Veneto in the early days of October, and then you made a pretext for putting it off until last month. At the end of October you wrote that the opening of parliament would take place so shortly that it was not worth your while to make so long a journey in order to have to retrace your steps to Rome almost immediately. Parliament was opened ; you said that you wished to see something of a Sicilian winter, and that you would come back immediately after the Christmas holidays. Now your husband is here alone. He never answers any letters from Casa Carre, and it is impossible to get any precise information about you from him. Aunt Tarquinia would start for Sicily if she could. Un- fortunately, Lao is in bed with arthritis, as you know, and she cannot leave him, unless it be absolutely necessary. In conclusion, my aunt writes to me this morning, begging me to take the journey and to go and see you. "Remembering your last letter, and being, alas ! unlike you in some things, and unable to change my feelings 162 DANIELE CORTIS. and language as rapidly as an actress changes her parts and her dresses, I shall answer that I am extremely busy, and that I cannot possibly leave Rome. Good-bye. — Your affectionate cousin, D. Cortis." " To the Most Illustrious Deputy, Daniele Cortis, at Rome. " CEFALb 23d January 1882. "Most Illustrious Sir, — I have had the honour of being charged by the most illustrious baroness Di Santa Oiulia to answer your letter of the 19th instant. " The noble lady is in bed, under my care ; she is suffer- ing from slight rheumatic fever, and therefore is unable to write herself. She wishes me to say that, except for this accidental and unimj)ortant indisposition, her health IS good, and that it would be most displeasing to her should you undertake so long a journey. I am to add that the news of her slight indisposition has been all ready conveyed to his excellency the baron, and to the baroness's family. " The baroness desires me to present to you her respects. — Awaiting your orders, I have the honour to be, your most humble and obedient servant, "Doctor j^.ntonino Niscemi." " To the Same {Confidential). " By the express desire of the baroness, I was obliged to write as she wished, and she read the letter when it was finished. Now my conscience orders me to write these lines, on a separate sheet, for your better information. "The baroness, in addition to an anoemic condition, is at present suffering, not from rheumatic fever, but from a slight gastric attack, together with congestion of the liver, the probable remains of an attack of miasmatic FEOM CEFALU TO EOME. 163 fever. In itself the illness would not be serious, but I am anxious about the general anoemic state, and the extreme moral depression of the patient. A few days ago I began the use of some mineral waters of ours from Ter- mini. I have seen miracles done by them. We must hope. " I do not ask you to come, because the baroness seems to me most uneasy at the idea of your taking this journey, on account of your health, and she is quite determined to prevent it, and I cannot advise you to go against her wishes. I must tell you of one circumstance, how- ever. At my visit of yesterday, I was fairly satisfied with the look and condition of the invalid. Your letter was brought to her just as I came in; and she had not yet opened, nor would she open it, notwithstanding my entreaties, while I was present. It appears that she read it as soon as she was alone, that she then passed several hours in a state of great agitation, and had a very bad night, with great pain in the right side, and violent fits of coughing. " I do not know the contents of your letter. I only know that you are a near relation of this incomparable lady, who seems to have an exalted and well-merited opinion of you, most illustrious sir. I would therefore beg of you, in my capacity as doctor, to write to her, because she has much need of moral help and amusement, but to avoid saying anything that might upset or worry her. " You will forgive me, sir, if a feeling of duty, and of respectful attachment to the baroness, have made me write thus earnestly. — And believe me, with profound respect, your obedient, humble servant. Doctor A. N." " To the Baroness Elena di Santa Giulia, at Cefalu. "EoME, 21th January 1882. " I did not expect the obsequiously worded certificate of 164 DANIELE COETIS. your excellent Doctor Niscemi. Rheumatism ? It is a slight thing, but, nevertheless, I seem to have entered your sick-room very roughly. Forgive me, dear Elena. Well, I will not come to Cefalil, but, instead, I will try to give you all the gossip of Eome. And I will try to be rather pleasanter than I was last time. " What would you have ? I am up to my neck in politics, and they are spoiling my manners and my style. I was better on that June night, in the lake in my garden. The first plunge into the parliamentary ocean freezes one to the very heart. Amongst my new colleagues I see some who are numbed with the cold, bewildered, ill with weari- ness and home sickness. They think : Are the heart and the wisdom of Italy here. Last December a minister said that, by comparing our politics with those of Spain, Bis- marck did us honour, and we, vain, querulous shadows, puffed up with self-satisfaction, were silent. "Meanwhile, I am studying; I am studying men and things, for the future. The present is not good for any- thing. I have spoken twice, very briefly, upon perfectly uninteresting subjects, just to tune the instrument, and find the keynote. Last time there was a lady in the president's gallery very like you. The subject was the agricultural vote, and I spoke on the woods and forests. I fear that, in honour of the said lady, I was more flowery and shadowy even than my forests. " I ride every morning, notwithstanding politics. Colonel B., now in command of the Staff-College, has lent me a beautiful little Irish bay mare, that jumps like a cat. This morning I went for a gallop beyond Porta Maggiore, along the Via Prenestina, in search of the Temple of Quiet — used there not to be a ^emple of Quiet somewhere there ? But it is written that I shall never find it ! The sky was clear, it was hot, the earth was dusty and green ; the mountains were sprinkled with snow. I passed between the great pine tree and the rocks FROM CEFALU TO ROME. 165 under which we used to sit — do you remember ?— amongst the poppies, while we watched the great sea of the campagna, with its tombs and spectres of aqueducts. My mare stopped suddenly about a mile farther on, just by the Via Labicana, near to a square tomb. Perhaps she thought that was the Temple of Quiet, for she is intelligent ; or, perhaps, in the silence, she heard the whistle of the Naples train. I heard it too, and I thought of Sicily and you, but, penetrated by the peacefulness and solitude, my thoughts took a new direction. " Rome, city of the soul : who called it that ? I did not remember that I had a body, much less a horse, between my legs. Is my brain giving away, or am I suffering from miasmatic mysticism ? I do not think it is likely ; but it is a bad sign. Imagine that sometimes I think that I should like to go and live in the palace of Septimius Severus, with Thomas h Kempis and the ravens. " Perhaps I am talking too much, and you are getting tired. I must remember Doctor Niscemi, and this letter shall be continued in a future number. The recommenda- tion comes a little late, perhaps, but still I will not reject it, though I will write to you again soon. Good-bye, dear Elena. Salute your good doctor for me, and accept a cordial hand-shake from your affectionate cousin, " CORTIS." " To Doctor Antonino Niscemi, at Cefalu, " EOME, 21th January 1882. " Sir, — I am extremely grateful to you for your letter marked confidential, and I beg you to furnish me with frequent and exact accounts of the state of the invalid. Should she become worse, or even if she do not show an immediate improvement, I should strongly advise your writing directly and secretly to Countess Tarquinia Carr^. In case you feel that personal motives might make it difficult for you to do this, I would willingly undertake 166 DANIELE CORTIS. to arrange that the countess should come to Cefalil with- out compromising you. " I have written to-day to my cousin, carefully follow- ing your advice. I will write to her again shortly ; but I tirst wish to discover the effect of this second letter. I have the greatest esteem for my cousin, and we have always been the best of friends, but we do not always exactly agree in our opinions; and then, perhaps, I am inclined to speak out my mind a little too clearly. — Believe me to be your obedient servant, " Daniele Cortis." " To the Most Illustrious Deputy^ Signor Daniele Cortis^ at Rome, " Cefalu, 3]s< January 1882. " Most Illustrious Signor, — The baroness received your last letter on Tuesday, the day before yesterday. I was not with her at the time, and she has, as yet, said nothing to me on the subject. I knew it from her maid, who told me that, though her mistress had said nothing, her eyes expressed great satisfaction. "For my own part, I am much pleased with my new cure. I have noticed a marked improvement during the last two days. Yesterday the baroness, who generally goes straight from her bed to a sofa, was able to walk about the house a little, and she acknowledged to me that she could eat her food with less repugnance. This, morning I found her in tears. She told me, smiling as she wept, that she was overjoyed at feeling so much better, and that she could not help crying. This is merely the result of weak- ness, which is still great, and her diet has still to be kept to milk and vegetables ; but if once we can bring her to stand iron and meat, I hope for a speedy recovery. — With profound respect, I am your most humble and obedient, " Doctor A. Niscemi." FROM CEFALU TO EOME. 167 " To the Baroness Elena Di Santa Giulia, at Cefalu. " EoME, Uh February 1882. "Dear Elena, — You neither write to me yourself, nor do you make any one write for you. My conscience tells me that I should have done right in satisfying your mother without further ado. Is the rheumatism not gone yet ? And is poor Doctor Niscemi at the end of his science ? I have never been clever at finding the equation of two unknown quantities. " The other day I wrote to you from the Chamber ; to- day I write from my rooms in the Via Principe Amedeo, with my windows open to a warm Petrarchesque sun, and to a reviving spring, and also to all the trumpets and whistles of all the trams and railways that Lucifer has put into the world. Had things been like this a hundred years ago, I fancy that Alfieri could not have written the Merope as he wrote it, according to an inscription on a stone within a few yards of my house ; and I should never have raised a laugh, as I did in the theatre at college, by declaiming like a madman, — " ' Alas, how great an undertaking it is to support thee, O throne ! ' " The noise is a drawback, but I have a good view of the slope of Viminale, a picturesque medley of tiled roofs ; on the other side of the street, almost underneath my windows, I have a beautiful green carpet of acacias and roses, brightened up by fountains, and to the left, through the telescope made for me by the shady road, I get a peep of the blue sky and the Albanian mountains. I am some way from the Chamber, but I could not live in that neighbourhood; and until Septimius Severus will let me a room in his house, I must abide by commonplace Rome. "Speaking of the Chamber, I forgot to tell you the other day that I have spoken in favour of the monks, and 168 DANIELE CORTIS. of the Franciscan monks into the bargain. Oh ! I can hear you say. But I say yes, madam, and what is more, I spoke very well, although my words fell by the wayside and among thorns. Imagine that it has been suggested to the minister to increase the subsidies to our lay schools in the East, and to diminish those given to schools kept by religious bodies. The minister answered very feebly, not convinced in his own heart, but bowing before so much wisdom. Oest bete mais dest comme ga. Only one member of the Left dared to say that although we were living in the light of philosophy and science, those poor Asiatics were still in the shadow of religion, and that, if we wished to rescue them from it, we must do it by the means proposed, as France had done ! At present one can say nothing more popular than : ' See what they have done in France ! See how they manage these things in England ! ' I despair of ever hearing other countries say : ' See how they do these things in Italy ! ' However, this time the gentleman in question just gave me my opportunity, and I spoke in the name of a great political interest, and on behalf of those poor noble people who are slaving for an idea, who seek neither fame, honour, nor wealth, and whom these over-fed free-thinking members of the Budget Commission wish to leave in the lurch. I did not quite call them these names in the chamber, you know ; there, I rather offered incense to them. After speaking of our country's interests, I begged them, of their great wisdom, to consider whether that splendid civilisation which now produces, independently of religion, such shining parliamentary lights, had no longer need to lean upon the Gospel ; in such a case it would be only fair to restore it to the East, which lent it to us, and to aid the monks to maintain it out there. My speech produced no particular effect, either warm or cold. Many <;ongratulated me, and said I was right, but not until after the sitting, and outside the chamber. But I was cer- FKOM CEFALU TO EOME. 169 tainly better listened to than I had been on either of the two previous occasions. "A few days ago a lady tried to persuade me to go with her and some other people to an audience of the Pope. I declined, as I could not go with my name and position as member of parliament. I am satisfied to go and visit, whenever I can, that lowly pontiff who is saying the De Profundis in the Confession of St Peter, and who always gives one plenty to think about. " I have need of God, dear Elena. I feel that hence- forward my life ought to be made to conform rigorously to the opinions which I laid before the electors, and for which I will fight. It is a political duty as well ; one must raise one's own banner and fight under it ; one must stand firm. " By which I mean, dear, that my passions will be no danger to any one. The one which I fear the most is my temper. I shall try to walk along my own path in the future, and not to box the ears of any one wdio does not deserve it. Pray for me as regards this particular danger, for here I am tempted at every moment, there are so many vulgar, untrustworthy and boorish people about. I have not very much time to pray for myself ! All the same, I am not what Aunt Tarquinia would call an ' infidel.' Last Sunday I went to mass at St Peter's, and I heard the most wonderful music. I could not discover whose it was. I am an outer barbarian as regards music, but that made a great impression upon me ! It sounded to me like a sinister prophecy, a voice broken with weeping. When I came out of church the sky over the Vatican was black, a ray of sunlight gilded the fountain on the left, the colonnade, and the palace; there was not a creature in the piazza. What presenti- ments did I not feel of ruin and storm ! * Tout cela passera comme une voix chantante.^ In how many years ? Or in liow many centuries ? It is more than probable that 170 DANIELE COETIS. our grandchildren or our great-grandchildren will see that day. A poet who is a friend of mine said to me the other day that the undecipherable characters engraved upon all the obelisks frightened him, and that they seemed to him to be so many repetitions of ' Mene^ Mene, Tekel^ Upharsin,^ written over the eternal city. I cannot read these obelisks, but I can read, and to a certain extent understand, men and things past and present, and I see the beginning of a speech that, after heaven knows how many commas and full stops, must end badly. But I don't lose heart on this account. Would it seem to you a little thing if I could succeed in saving a generation or two ? The blindness of certain people annoys me. It annoys me, for instance, to hear the deputy L., a very clever, gentlemanlike man, say that if We want to improve the conditions of the working classes, we must not preach to them charity and a future state, but what are and what are not profitable investments. As if the age were not suffering from selfishness in its very vitals. All the same, I envy the man who will see not only the ruins of St Peter's and the Vatican, but who will also see those sublime pontiffs of the last days, that is to say, if they are like what 1 hope and imagine that they will be. "My mother is still at Lugano, and wishes to come to Home. I have paid her debts, and made her a monthly allowance sufficient for her, but on condition that she should live how and where I will. Certainly not in Eome, at least not as long as I am here. " I am soon going to Yillascura, where I shall probably spend in the snow the few days' holiday that we have in carnival time. But I shall first of all go and see your mother and uncle, of whom they write that he is still in the same state. Do you know who often talks to me about you ? That good Clenezzi, whom I meet at the D.'s sometimes in the evening. I can never meet him, not FEOM CEFALU TO ROME. 171 even in the street, without his saying to me, in that curious idiom that he always employs when he wishes to be confidential, and which is one-quarter Italian and three- quarters Bergamesque: 'And she? Have you news of her?'^ " He is a dear, good man, the pearl of the senate. Good- bye, Elena. You see I have not forgotten my promise of chattering to you. Now send me some news of yourself. I warmly clasp your hand. — Your affectionate cousin, " CORTIS." " To the Most Elustrious Deputy, Signer Daniele Cortis, at Rome. " Cefalu, 8 As he spoke, they reached the door. She still kept repeating : " We will help him, we will help him ! " She left the room, but returned in a moment, and knocked at the door. " You can't come in," cried Lao. " I am just going to the Chamber," she said. *' Mamma is on tlie second flour — No. 39." AN INTEEVENTION. 259 Lao answered aloud, "All right," and grumbled be- tween his teeth, — " Go, and be blessed thirty-nine times, you stupid crea- ture ! She may go on sleeping ! " And he continued his toilette, exclaiming at every mo- ment as he washed his face or buttoned his vest, — " Pretty business ! Body of Bacclius ! Pretty busi- ness altogether ! " The toilette took a very long time, because Count Ladislao was as careful and particular as a woman. At last, however, it came to an end, and then he went up, full of thought, to the second floor in search of No. 39. A chambermaid pointed it out to him, and he was just going in when he heard a strange voice. He turned to- iler, and asked whose room was 39 ? She replied, — " Countess Carre's." " She has somebody with her ? " The woman did not know ; she had seen no one go in. "Hang it," grumbled the count ; and, hearing the voice of his sister-in-law, he entered without further ado. Countess Tarquinia, as red as fire, was standing in the room, exclaiming, — " I am surprised — " Opposite her stood Signora Cortis, her two black eyes flashing, and her face very pale. She had raised her arm against her sister-in-law as though to ward ofl" her words, to beat them back if possible, and to get one in herself at the first opportunity. Lao stopped in the doorway. " I am surprised," continued the countess, " and I am glad that my brother-in-law should hear what I say. I am surprised at your boldness — " Signora Cortis, turning her back upon her, went towards Lao. " Count Ladislao, if I am not mistaken ? " she said timidly. 260 DANIELE COETIS. Lao scarcely bowed, and answered, — "At your service." "Oh, count!" she continued, "you must remember me, and I remember that you had a large heart ; I appeal to you." "Tome?" Lao stepped backwards, and opened the door, saying, — " Then come to my tribunal." The signora hesitated a moment, and seemed disturbed. " No," she said ; " I cannot leave this room without a promise." " Oh, indeed," said Lao. " Promise ! " exclaimed Countess Tarquinia disdainfully. "What promise?" " Let us hear," said the count. " Did not the signora appeal to me ? If she will not leave the room I will hear the case at once." He made a sign to Countess Tarquinia, who hastily vanished into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Signora Cortis advanced to retain her, but was too late. " I am not being treated with common civility," said she. " Well," exclaimed Count Lao, pretending not to have heard her, " what is this promise that you require ? Let us sit down, if you don't mind, as I have travelled eight hours to-day. I am rejoiced at your resurrection," " It would be better if I were dead," answered the sig- Dora, in a tragical voice. The count maintained a significant silence. Leaning back in Countess Tarquinia's arm-chair, with his hands in his pockets, one knee crossed over the other, he was swing- ing his foot and watching the signora, who had sunk down upon the sofa and covered her face with her handkerchief. " Merciful powers ! " he suddenly exclaimed, as if speak- ing to himself. The signora raised her head, and interrogated him with her eyes. / AN INTERVENTION. 261 "Oh nothing," he said. "I was just thinking of the visit I paid you at Alessandria in 1853." " Oh, count," whimpered she, smoothing out the hand- kerchief on her knees, and watching, with bent head, her unconscious work. " I have been very wicked, but I have also suftered much. You, if you can remember me as I was, will see that in my face." " Of course I can see it," answered Lao. " And now, if you will take my advice, you will tell me what you want of my sister-in-law." " Tarquinia has treated me badly. When all's said and done, if a son forgives, who has any right to throw stones ? And besides, I am not at all sure that, once upon a time,. Tarquinia did — " " Hush," said Lao, frowning, and shaking his right hand, which was extended towards her. " Come to the point," he continued. "A mother !" exclaimed the signora, raising her arms. " Fancy treating a mother thus ! But where are the feel- ings, where is the virtue of these people ? " " Who cares to know where they are ?" said the count, " Have the kindness to come to the point." "The Magdalen," continued the other, as if inspired, " the Magdalen, Mary of Egypt, and many others, have become saints." " Pretty saints," murmured Lao. " But such women as these of to-day are without , charity ! To treat thus a poor unfortunate creature X^ who has absolutely nothing left to her but her son and •her God ! How can they ? " " Look here," said Lao, sitting upright in his chair, and drawing out his watch, " I will give you one minute to come to the point." " I am coming to it," said the signora, with a sigh. " You were nicer to me once." " Naturally." 262 DANIELE CORTIS. Her voice now changed suddenly ; from whining it became dry and hard. " I want you to know," she said, " that I have been driven, in violation of all right and propriety, from my son's sick-room, and that in that room there comes and goes, as mistress, a person — " At this point the signora probably saw something terrible in Lao's eyes, for she stopped and began afresh, — " Another person, in short. But that is not all. My son is recovering miraculously fast; I have prayed so much, count! They ought to be thinking of moving him to his own house, where he would be much more com- fortable, poor dear! Heaven kuows how much more comfortable he would be! Not at all. Do you know what they want, and what they propose ? They propose A to move him straight into the country, and not to his own house even there, but to Passo di Rovese, to the Villa Carrfe! It is too much! I oppose it, and will con- tinue to oppose it by every means in my power ! " " By what means, my dear creature ? 1 know nothing about such matters, but it seems to me the most natural thing in the world for the doctors to order Daniele to go into the country and have absolute rest. It seems to me the most natural thing, especially now that the Chamber is closed, to leave the sick man quiet until the time comes for moving him into a sleeping-carriage on the railway. It seems to me the most natural thing in the world that his relations and friends should prefer to have him with them rather than leave him to mope in solitude at Villascura during his convalescence." "His relations?" exclaimed Signora Cortis. "His friends ? And his mother ? Does she count for nothing ? Would not Daniele be comfortable at Villascura with his mother?" "Listen to me," answered the count coldly. "You have settled all this very quickly in your own mind, but AN INTERVENTION. 263 as the house in question is the one wherein his father died, Daniele might feel some slight difficulty. In fact, it is clear to me that he does feel it ; he has mentioned it to me in his letters. But he is not a doll ; he can say himself whither he wishes to go, and with whom." " That's all very fine ! " broke in the signora, with intense bitterness, "he can speak for himself indeed ! When there is always at his elbow some one who forever talks to him of Passo di Rovese, and who seeks to keep me away from him by every method. And I know why ! There are tw^o reasons. Tlie first is that you and my sister-in-law could not bear me when poor Cortis married me. She thought he was marrying beneath him. There is another reason, which is not connected with Tarquinia, and which is somewhat more delicate, and which I will only mention in an extreme case, that is, if I see Daniele being carried off to Passo di Rovese. But then I will say it so that even Daniele shall understand it. There will be a scandal, what does that matter ? but at least we shall see if Daniele will go ! Are you all afraid of a scandal ? Will you promise — " " What ? What do you mean ? " broke in Lao. " What is this scandal ? " " In an extreme case, I repeat, in an extreme case I will tell you." " But what extreme case ? " said the count, his eyes and forehead denoting the storm tliat was brewing. " Let us suppose that the case is extreme now. If they have said they will do tliis, they will do it as sure as fate. You know they won't wait to ask your permission." Signora Cortis bit her lip, smiled, and slowly said, with affected sweetness, — "And dear Elena, who so earnestly desires to do this, will she not ask leave of the Senator Di Santa Giulia?" Count Ladislao impetuously tossed his head, then, r 264 DANIELE CORTIS. half-closing his eyes, scrutinised the signora for a moment, and finally, rising from his chair, pointed to the door with the forefinger of his outstretched left hand, saying, with a calmness that was threatening, — " Have the goodness to leave the room." " I will go — I will go ! " answered she, getting up. " I will go, because now I am quite content to do so. Of course the senator will grant his permission, as he is having liis , debts paid by my son." Y Count Lao was on the point of seizing and putting her out of the room, when the door opened, admitting Elena, who, on seing her aunt, remained for an instant in amaze- ment. " Let her pass ! " thundered the count. Elena did not stir ; she interrogated with her eyes, first one, and then the other. " Elena is not accustomed to letting me pass," remarked the signora with irony. " It does not depend upon me," answered she. " I have just come from Daniele, and I have to tell you that he is asking for you." The signora extended her long, fleshless arms and skinny fingers towards Elena. With her big Eembraudt hat on the top of her head, her hair in disorder, her pale face and long, yellowish neck, her black cloak awry on her shoulders, she looked like a Fury unaccustomed to modern clothes. " He has always wanted me ! " she screamed, as she left the room with great strides. Elena looked at her uncle. He was livid and trembling. " Tell me at once ! " he cried. " How much has Cortis paid?" Elena gazed at him in surprise. " Uncle ! " she said. " How much has Cortis paid, 1 ask you ? What has he given your husband ? " AN INTEEVENTION. 265 Elena understood neither the question, nor the angry voice, nor the furious countenance. " I know nothing about it," she answered ; " I have told you all I know." " What put it into his head to mix himself up with all these matters ? '' Elena blushed. " Uncle, uncle ! " she said. " Ah ! " she added, with a start, " I do remember now that he told me that he was simply acting for you, and doing what you would have done, as there was no time to ask you, and you would certainly approve all he had done in your place." " But then he should have written to tell me ! " " You are not aware, uncle," answered Elena, " that Daniele saw my husband at noon on the 25th, just before going to the Chamber?" " Is she gone?" asked Countess Tarquinia, putting her head through the doorway of her room. " Heaven be praised ! " Lao took no notice whatever of her. " Was no one else present ? " he said. " The representative of the bank at CefalCi, Boglietti, the lawyer, was to have been there," answered Elena. Lao took his hat, and said, with determination, — " I am going to him." "Where?" asked Countess Tarquinia in surprise. " What has happened ?" " Will you not go to Daniele first ? " inquired Elena, in her turn. Count Lao hastily replied, — " No. If I went to Daniele I should abuse him, and that would not do just now." " But tell me," repeated his sister-in-law, '' what has happened ? " Elena quickly answered : " Nothing, mamma," and added that she too was going out in search of her hus- 266 DANIELE CORTIS. baud. Henceforward Daiiiele did not need her. Her uncle asked her if it were a fact that they thought of moving him to Villa Carre. Yes, and the doctors had even gone so far as to say that he might travel the next day, but they did not yet know who could accompany him. She herself did not intend to leave Rome without having first done all in her power for her husbaiid ; and she looked to the others to help her. " I am to see him this evening," she added. "I know nothing ; I want to know nothing," cried her uncle. " I am going to look for this Signer Boglietti." " Boglietti ?" said the countess ; " where does this Bog- lietti spring from ?" " I will explain it to you, mamma," said Elena, as Count Lao was leaving the room. The countess called him back. " Come here," she cried, extending her hand. " Do you know that we have not greeted each other yet ?" " Ugh ! " said Lao, raising his arm as if to say : " Why do you bother me with such rubbish now." And that was his greeting. Elena immediately inquired of her mother, how her Aunt Cortis had got in. "Allow me to tell you that you have got a precious donkey for an uncle," answered the countess. " "What manners ! Of course, I suppose I ought to be accustomed to them by this time, but there are some things to which one can never accustom one's self. That woman ? How should I know how she got in? She stood before me without my knowing anything about it. Imagine what sort of person she must be to walk in without asking anybody. I tell you that if I stay here three days more, I shall die of consumption. My dear child, for mercy's sake let us take Daniele with us and go away. What are you doing there ? Are you not going to take off your hat?" AN INTEEVENTION. 267 Elena put down the parasol that she held in her hand, and let herself fall on the sofa. " I will rest a minute," she said, " and then I must go out. I told you so." " Go out again ? " exclaimed her mother, surprised. " I