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 RUFFINO 
 
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R U F F I N O 
 
 BY 
 
 OUIDA 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1890 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 SrOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STRliET SQUARE 
 LONDON 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RUFFINO 
 
 . 1 
 
 AN ORCHARD 
 
 . . ; . . . 217 
 
 TROTTOLINO . 
 
 . 245 
 
 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 273 
 
 813 
 
RUFFINO 
 
EUFFINO 
 
 A SERVANT brought a telegraphic despatch and 
 handed it over Ruffino's head to his master. 
 
 Kuffino disliked the look of telegrams. The 
 arrival of one was always associated in his mind with 
 rapid journeys, hasty exits, inconvenient arrivals, or 
 unexpected departures, and also, generally speaking, 
 with ladies. Ruffino held women in profound scorn 
 and abhorrence : they caressed and cajoled him in 
 vain ; he showed them his little white teeth, and 
 was adamant beneath their blandishments. They 
 absorbed and monopolised his master, and he con- 
 sidered his master his own property. In Ruffino's 
 estimation, a man does not own a dog ; the dog owns 
 the man. 
 
 Ruffino was a little Pomeranian dog with a small 
 black nose, and large black eyes, and a ruff as wide 
 and imposing as Queen Elizabeth's. He wore round 
 
 B2 
 
4 RUFFINO 
 
 his neck a gold porte bonheur with little silver bells 
 which made music as he moved. He was six years 
 old, and was gifted with very strong opinions, a very 
 marked character, and a very high spirit. From 
 the first weeks of his pnppyhood he had belonged 
 to the Duke of Castiglione, having been born in 
 Rome of parents who belonged to a cabstand. The 
 fact of the cabstand, and of another humiliating fact, 
 that he would have been drowned in the Tiber at a 
 month old had not his present master rescued him 
 from the hands of brutal boys, did not, however, 
 militate in any way against the patrician pride of 
 Ruffino, which was great, and his inborn certainty 
 that he had been created to rule the universe : a con- 
 viction which was never disturbed in its complacency 
 for a moment, although occasionally disputed by 
 other dogs of similar pretensions. 
 
 Ruffino now eyed the telegram askance. It was 
 from Rome, and contained a pressing invitation to 
 return there, stating that the Prince of Montefeltro 
 had been taken dangerously ill. The Prince of 
 Montefeltro was the father of the young duke who 
 owned, or was owned by, Ruffino. 
 
 <The presence of your Excellency in Rome is 
 urgently requested, as His Most Illustrious the 
 Prince, your father, is in danger of his life.* 
 
RUFFINO 5 
 
 So said the despatch, which was signed Maglia- 
 becchi Filippo and Gerini Antonio. 
 
 The recipient of the despatch knew the senders 
 of it : the Doctor Magliabecchi had been physician 
 to the household, and Don Antonio had been the 
 private chaplain and confessor of the Prince, for 
 forty years ; and he knew that these two worthies 
 were quite capable of exaggerating or distorting 
 any fact, or facts, if it suited their purpose to do so. 
 So he telegraphed to a friend whom he could trust, 
 a cousin who was on duty at the Vatican, to inquire 
 if it were true that his father was in any peril of his 
 life ; and in a few hours the Captain of the Pontifical 
 Guard replied : 
 
 'Yes; he is in danger: you should come at 
 once.' 
 
 Thus, there was no choice but to obey, and leave 
 the cool gardens of his charming and shady 
 country-house on the borders of the forest, his 
 horses and his mail-coach, and his multitude of 
 friends, and all the pretty women who made Baden 
 Baden at that season delightful to him ; and by the 
 night express he was travelling towards Rome ac- 
 companied only by his valet Saverio and his com- 
 panion Ruffino, neither of whom ever left him 
 wherever he went. 
 
6 RUFF I NO 
 
 Ruffino's master (or slave) was by name and 
 titles Don Ezzelino Lanfredi, Duke of Castiglione, 
 Marquis of Vivaldo, and Count of Leonessa ; he was 
 the only son of the Prince of Montefeltro : and 
 although there had been no great love ever felt 
 between him and his father, he could not in decency 
 remain absent in the pursuit of pleasure when the 
 old man lay in peril of his life. 
 
 He was a handsome and graceful person, thirty- 
 three years old, an accomplished man of the world, 
 and very popular with women and with men; he 
 was generous, good-natured, and imaginative, selfish 
 from habit, but kind from instinct ; all the ways and 
 customs and qualities and prejudices of the old 
 Prince were odious to him, and he and his father had 
 no single sentiment or opinion in common. 
 
 He would rejoice to disinherit me, if he could/ 
 thought Castiglione, as the train vibrated and oscil- 
 lated over the iron lines traversing the deep woods 
 of the Swabian alb while the pale dawn broke. 
 
 Euffino was lying curled up near him, and ever 
 and anon lifted his little delicate nose and his furry, 
 erect ears, to peer out into the night. When the train 
 stopped to take in water at a small station under the 
 shadow of oak-clothed hills, and a few peasants came 
 to the door of the carriage to offer their little ivory 
 
RUFFINO 7 
 
 and bone toys, carved in their long winter evenings, 
 Euffino barked angrily; what should he and his 
 master want with those trumpery trifles ? If they 
 had been bones to eat, indeed, there might have 
 been some sense in them. 
 
 ' You are not kind, Ruffino,' said Castiglione, and 
 he threw some silver coins out amongst the poor 
 people. 
 
 Buffino sniffed scornfully, and doubled himself up 
 again ; he disliked the train ; he could never imagine 
 why people ever travelled. When you were well 
 enough where you were, had soft things to lie on, 
 plenty to eat, and a roof over your head, what could 
 you want to change your place for, and racket about 
 from one end of the earth to the other ? Ruffino 
 had had a great deal of travelling since his puppy- 
 hood, and it had bored him. Just as he had got the 
 topography of a place well into his mind, and had 
 established tender relations with interesting canine 
 beauties, it always seemed to him that he was 
 whisked off, senselessly, to some other locality, in the 
 pursuit of what his owner thought pleasure. But, on 
 the other hand, he would not have had a moment's 
 peace if his master had gone anywhere without him : 
 unless a dog looks sharply after him, a man always 
 gets into mischief, or at least Kuffino thought so ; 
 
8 RUFFINO 
 
 and if these continual changes of place made him a 
 little heartless and volage, they also contributed 
 considerably to the polishing of his wits and the 
 increase of his experience. 
 
 Euffino knew Eome very well, as he knew most 
 European capitals, and yawned when he saw the ap- 
 proach to it ; it was a city he thought poorly of : he 
 preferred Baden, or Homburg, or Monte Carlo, or 
 any green place, and as his fur coat was very thick 
 and warm, he only really liked low latitudes and 
 north winds. Eome was his birthplace, but he had 
 never been able to comprehend how his race, with 
 their double coat of long hair, and short hair under- 
 neath, ever became natives of a hot country like 
 Italy ; yet it was quite certain that natives they had 
 been for a vast number of centuries, and had been 
 even cruelly honoured by being sacrificed to Flora in 
 the remote days of the old Latin gods, at least, if 
 those classic writers whom his master thought so much 
 of spoke the truth about anything, which was doubtful. 
 
 c Here we are, Euffino/ said his master, with a 
 restless sigh of despondency and irritation, as they 
 drove through one of the steep and narrow ways of 
 Trastevere, and between the open iron gates of a 
 fortress-like palace, over whose huge stone walls 
 hung clusters of roses and long boughs of jessamine, 
 
RUFFINO 9 
 
 with the branches of orange-trees and the green 
 plumes of palms rising above them. 
 
 The Montefeltro palace was one of the grandest 
 and most famous, both for architecture and art, in 
 all the Leonine city. 
 
 ' How is my father ? ' asked Castiglione of the 
 major-domo, who advanced with obsequious genu- 
 flexions from the bowing crowd of servants. 
 
 c His Excellency is in the same state, neither 
 worse nor better, most illustrious lord,' replied the 
 functionary, bending his back in two, and forcing 
 tears from his two small, bead-like eyes, and spread- 
 ing out his hands in a pantomime of woe. 
 
 c But what is his illness ? ' 
 
 4 A stroke ! ' murmured the official. 
 
 c Ah ! Paralysis ? Apoplexy ? ' 
 
 c Hemiplegia/ 
 
 * Is he conscious ? Does he speak ? ' 
 
 c Alas ! no/ 
 
 6 Send the doctors to me in my apartments/ 
 
 Followed by Ruffino, ringing his little bells, he 
 went to the right wing of the great house, which was 
 always set aside for his use. 
 
 It was three years since he had set foot in it. It 
 had been opened and aired, but the blinds of all the 
 west windows were down ; it was dusky and gloomy, 
 
lo RUFFINO 
 
 and had a scent of faded flowers, of evaporated per- 
 fumes; such a faint fragrance as old laces and old 
 tapestries have about them. Coming into these enor- 
 mous and shadowy apartments from the heat and 
 sunshine of the Eoman streets was like coming into a 
 crypt where the dead were buried. Castiglione, easily 
 impressed, gave a sigh and a little shudder : Euffino 
 coughed discreetly, as his habit was when he dis- 
 approved anything ; some of the dust off the mosaic 
 floors had got up his nostrils, and he was thinking 
 of the merry green woods of Baden, and of Elsa, a 
 white dog from Thuringia, who lived there, and with 
 whom he had left as much of his heart as could 
 possibly be taken from his master and himself. 
 
 The worthy doctors, summoned to the presence 
 of the heir, confirmed the statements of the major- 
 domo, and lost themselves, as doctors love to do, in 
 endless mazes of technical conjecture and suggestion : 
 they were pompous, servile, verbose, important, and 
 wore sombre, melancholy countenances, as beseemed 
 quacks who were beholding their patron and pro- 
 tector perish. 
 
 From their wordy descriptions Castiglione 
 gathered that his father had had a fit whilst playing 
 cards with the chaplain, was not conscious, might 
 die at any moment, or might, on the other hand, 
 
RUFFING ii 
 
 linger on in his present comatose state for days, 
 weeks, and even months. The Prince of Montefeltro 
 was over seventy years of age. 
 
 I will see him at once/ said his son ; and he took 
 his way across the great palace of his ancestors to the 
 chamber where the old prince was lying. 
 
 These apartments were on the first floor, and, 
 immense, sombre, darkened, and hushed, were melan- 
 choly as a grave. Euffino, depressed by the gloom 
 and the scent in the air of medicines and disinfect- 
 ants, sidled in after his master, making himself very 
 small to escape notice, and wearing his tail down in 
 decorous sympathy of woe. A smothered growl 
 escaped him, however, hatred being stronger than 
 discretion, as he passed Magliabecchi. Magliabecchi 
 had once administered oil to him, and Ruffino kept a 
 vigilant eye upon the doctor's ankles ; sooner or later 
 he meant to be even with his enemy, and wash out 
 the affront. True, he had swallowed none of it, 
 having violently resisted the dose, and succeeded in 
 scattering it over his own ruff and the shirt-front of 
 the offender ; but he had never forgiven the attempt 
 to force the oil down him. Besides, Ruffino knew a 
 rogue, as he knew a rat, by the scent of the animal ; 
 and Magliabecchi was written down in his shrewd 
 little mind as a very great rascal indeed. 
 
12 RUFFINO 
 
 The old Prince lay in his vast state bed, with its 
 canopy above him of purple velvet, heavily fringed 
 with bullion fringes, and surmounted by a gold crown ; 
 a bed three centuries old, if one, with a gilded estrade 
 before it, and beside it a purple carpet powdered 
 with golden roses, the device of the House of Monte- 
 feltro. He had been a handsome man in his day, 
 but he was now lean, and haggard, and white-haired ; 
 his bony hands were clenched hard upon the coverlet, 
 and his rigid face, in its stupefied, sullen unconscious- 
 ness, wore a look of stern and bitter hatred. The 
 eyelids were closed, and nothing but the painful and 
 stertorous breathing gave any sign of life. So he 
 had lain for three days, so he might lie for three 
 months ; or he might draw his last breath that night : 
 no one could tell. 
 
 Castiglione knelt down by the side of the bed and 
 made the sign of the cross. He and his father had 
 parted in deep anger and offence two years before, and 
 there had never at any time been any affection between 
 them ; but the sight of the haughty, imperious, and 
 tyrannical man reduced to that state of speechless, 
 helpless, corpse-like coma, stirred the soul of his son 
 to pity and emotion. The tears rose to his eyes, and 
 he murmured a Latin prayer which had never been 
 on his lips since boyhood. 
 
RUFFINO 13 
 
 He needed to ask nothing more : he knew death 
 when he saw it, and he knew that he saw it then. 
 
 c lf his most Illustrious had not had a marvel- 
 lous constitution, he would not have lingered so 
 long even thus/ whispered the dulcet voice of 
 Magliabecchi. 
 
 Castiglione silenced him with a gesture. The 
 remark, inoffensive though it was, grated on him. 
 
 The spectacle of this terrible old man, who had 
 ruled his household with a rod of iron, and lived 
 like a despot of the Eome of Giulio II. or Leone X., 
 struck down thus, impotent to scare away a fly or 
 lift a glass of water, keenly affected the careless, 
 but tender and impressionable, nature of his heir. 
 
 'We are consoled by the remembrance of his 
 sainted past,' said the chaplain, with unctuous 
 drawl ; ' the Church has seldom had a truer or more 
 devoted son. Though he pass from this life to the 
 next in utter unconsciousness, yet, Sir, may we be 
 sure of the celestial rewards which will await your 
 most august and revered progenitor.' 
 
 Castiglione, from decency, abstained from reply, 
 and made the sign of the cross mechanically. But 
 in himself he thought of the many scenes of savage, 
 causeless jealousy by which his mother's life had 
 been embittered ; of the ten thousand petty mean- 
 
T4 RUFFINO 
 
 nesses to tenants and dependents of which the 
 princely giver to the Church had been capable ; of 
 the harsh, grinding tyranny, the narrow, joyless 
 egotism, the fierce, ungoverned temper, the paltry 
 and harassing suspicions, all the egotism and all the 
 violence of which his father had been guilty and it 
 seemed to him that the balance of justice, whether 
 held by the hand of man or of God, was faulty. 
 
 If any vague, dim glimmerings of repentance 
 were now passing through that dulled brain, of what 
 worth were they ? What compensation would they 
 be to all those whom in their lives he had oppressed 
 and tortured ? 
 
 Oil done le trouves-tu, ce, Redresseur Eteruel ? 
 
 Castiglione asked himself the question of Beau- 
 delaire again and again, and could neither obtain or 
 divine an answer. 
 
 The hour of fate had struck, indeed ; impending 
 death had descended on the scheming, unmerciful 
 brain and on the cold, Jiard heart, and had put an end 
 to tyranny, and rapacity, and will, and suspicion, and 
 all which had made up the essence of their life. But 
 those who had been tormented and harassed by these 
 so many years what compensation had they ? 
 
 Some deeds done might be in a manner undone ; 
 some victim might, if tardily, be sought out and 
 
RUFFINO 15 
 
 atoned to : and lie promised himself that he would do 
 this as far as it should be in his power. But this 
 could only be possible in a limited degree; his 
 father was an old man, and had a long past lying 
 behind him. Much of the evil wrought must remain 
 evil for ever; and was it balanced by the jewelled 
 chasuble, the pyx of gold and silver, the enamelled 
 reliquary, or the embroidered Madonna's robe which 
 the dying Lord of Montefeltro had bestowed so 
 liberally on church and chapel, oratory and monas- 
 tery, through so long a life ? 
 
 II 
 
 . 
 
 HE could not shake off that heavy sense of awful- 
 ness and dread when he had left the sick-room 
 and returned to his own side of the palace, where the 
 glass doors had been opened to the evening air, and 
 to the grand loggia, with its colonnades, and arches, 
 and sweeping marble staircases, and colossal statues 
 of Greek and Latin gods and demi-gods. 
 
 This wing of the house had been set aside at her 
 marriage for the use of the Princess of Montefeltro, 
 and in his childhood Castiglione's feet had pattered 
 merrily on those black and white squares of marble, 
 whilst she had stood by, ur$er the foliage of the 
 
16 RUFFINO 
 
 climbing roses, smiling, and calling to him. She 
 had been a lovely, gentle, and very unhappy woman, 
 and her memory endeared to him those lofty 
 and noble arcades, those frescoed and rose -hung 
 walls. 
 
 When he thought of her, his heart hardened 
 more against the cruel old man, to whom he had 
 felt a momentary relenting. Were a few days, a few 
 weeks, of paralysed stupor, punishment enough for 
 a long life of violence, harshness, selfishness, and 
 bigotry ? 
 
 It was half-past nine by the clock, the third hour 
 of the night, as they still say in Home, when he sat 
 down to his solitary dinner. The great casements 
 stood wide open to the night. Beyond them was the 
 loggia, with its high arches and columns, and pave- 
 ment of black and white marbles. Beyond that were 
 the gardens. This part of the palace was as quiet as 
 though it had been a hut on the Sabine Mountains. 
 The house had been planned and built by Michel- 
 angiolo : its ceilings and frescoed walls had been 
 painted by Giulio Eomano ; where frescoes were not, 
 there were tapestries. Its proportions were of that 
 vastness, grandeur, and nobility, of which the whole 
 secret seems lost to modern architects ; and within its 
 chambers and its galleries were treasures of art only 
 
WFF1NO l? 
 
 surpassed by those of its neighbour, the Vatican, 
 which huge pile towered, like the stone form of some 
 fossilised mastodon, beyond the masses of the ilex 
 woods of the gardens. 
 
 All these things would be entirely his in a brief 
 space, perhaps only of hours : it was one of those 
 princely heritages, of which Home can still boast, 
 richer in art than any other in the world, and he, 
 who had a fine natural taste, cultivated by the 
 friendships he had made with scholars and artists, 
 brought to it an intelligence and reverent apprecia- 
 tion of which his immediate predecessors had been 
 incapable. His father had kept everything sacred 
 and untouched, because he would have considered it 
 degradation to sell a stick or stone; but all the 
 splendours around him had said nothing to his soul 
 or mind. To those of his son they said much ; he 
 was not only a man of pleasure : he was also a 
 connoisseur and a student. 
 
 When he found himself once more in this palace, 
 which had been his birthplace, its solemnity and 
 noble splendour made the luxury of his Paris house 
 and the gaiety of his Baden pavilion seem mere 
 vulgar, meretricious rubbish. 
 
 ' Those giants of the past had the secret of great- 
 ness in all they touched/ he thought as, after a dinner 
 
 C 
 
1 8 RUFFINO 
 
 which he had scarcely appreciated, he walked out on 
 to the loggia in the soft, luminous night air. 
 
 The terrace, with its covered colonnade, ran the 
 whole length of this side of the palace; it was of 
 much the same proportions as is the Loggia dei 
 Lanzi of Florence, and its wide, high archways 
 spanned nobly the deep blue sky, where the stars 
 were trembling, and a slender, crescent moon had 
 arisen. Across the dark leafy masses of the Monte- 
 feltro gardens there towered the mighty roofs of the 
 Vatican and the dome of St. Peter's. 
 
 There is no other such scene in Europe for 
 romantic beauty and for historical association,' he 
 thought, as he drew one of the lounging-chairs to 
 the edge of the wide, flight of marble stairs which 
 shelved downwards into the leafy, shadowy mazes of 
 the gardens. 
 
 Ruffino seated himself also, and with pricked 
 ears gazed down into the dusky depths of foliage ; 
 surely there were rats or cats underneath it ? 
 
 His master lighted a cigarette, and leaned his 
 head back against the cane of his chair : all the 
 serene and brilliant loveliness of the evening could 
 not dissipate the sense of melancholy and oppression 
 which had settled on him since his visit to his 
 father's room. Grey owls flew softly by, with deep 
 
RUFFINO 19 
 
 and mellow hoot; from the rose-thickets beneath 
 him nightingales were singing in amorous riot and 
 rivalry ; the fresh sound of fountains, falling and 
 splashing into marble basins, was musical on the 
 air ; in the semi-darkness the white bells of flowering 
 yuccas, the sceptres of lilies, the garlands of tea- 
 roses, were visible under the tangle of leaves. 
 
 Castiglione yawned, and then sighed, as the per- 
 fume and melody of the night were wafted to him. 
 It was an hour and a scene which wanted a Juliet 
 leaning there over the marble balustrade ; a Fran- 
 cesca passing to her tryst with -swift, noiseless, bare 
 feet adown the moonlit stair ; a Ginevra creeping 
 timidly, yet with hope, to the only heart which death 
 had no power to chill. And he was alone : he was 
 unused to be alone ; his solitude spoilt to him the 
 glory of the night ; he was tired, depressed, melan- 
 choly. 
 
 The grave makes all anger seem a poor and 
 childish fault. His conscience was not heavily 
 burdened. The blame of their disaccord lay more 
 with his father than himself. He had defended his 
 mother in his childhood and boyhood, and hence 
 there had been ill-blood between Montefeltro and 
 himself ever afterwards. But he had done and said 
 nothing for which he could in justice have been 
 
 c 2 
 
20 RUFFINO 
 
 blamed. Yet lie knew that in Roman society he 
 was regarded as an irreverent and unnatural son, 
 and the lean, hard, sightless face of the old man, 
 with its cruel jaw shut tight like a steel trap, 
 haunted him painfully; if only he would recover 
 consciousness, and say some kind word in farewell ! 
 
 Between the Lord of Montefeltro and his heir 
 there had always been coldness, and often feud : the 
 son had never rendered to the father that blind, 
 docile deference and obedience which are usual in 
 filial relations in Italian aristocratic families, and the 
 old man had never ceased imperiously to expect and 
 to demand them from him. He had French and 
 English blood in him through his mother ; he had, 
 also, through her a large private fortune, which made 
 him altogether independent of other wealth. His 
 mother had now been dead many years, but he had 
 idolised her in boyhood, and had never pardoned to 
 his father the wrongs and the sorrows which she had 
 endured in life. He had taken his own way, and 
 made his own relations, and passed his existence 
 chiefly out of Italy ; to Montefeltro he had always 
 seemed degenerate, insubordinate, capricious, fanciful, 
 foreign, intolerable. But he was the only son, the 
 inevitable heir. The old Prince had hated him, but he 
 had been unable to disinherit him : he had tormented 
 
RUFFINO 21 
 
 him as much as he had it in his power to do ; but 
 Castiglione was rich, and could live his own life, 
 and could afford to disregard alike censure and 
 criticism. 
 
 Montefeltro had been a fierce Churchman and 
 a bigot : his palace had never been open to any 
 festivity, unless it were some solemn banquet or 
 reception at which the cardinals were present in all 
 their crimson magnificence. His son, who had the 
 views of a man of the world, was in his sight an un- 
 believer, beyond all pale of salvation. All the habits, 
 preferences, and opinions of the younger man were 
 odious to him, and abominable ; and the gay and 
 easy temper, the luxurious ways, and the wide and 
 liberal views, of Castiglione, were in the strongest 
 and most abhorred contrast to all his own ideas and 
 tendencies. 
 
 When the latter had attained his thirtieth year a 
 climax had been reached in their disunion which had 
 made all mediation and concession impossible between 
 them : he had refused to enter into an alliance with 
 a daughter of another great Roman family, and the 
 old man had furiously forbidden him ever to enter 
 his sight. The marriage was a perfect one in Monte- 
 feltro's sight ; was beyond all others to be coveted, to 
 be secured, to be adored but his son did not see it 
 
22 RUFFINO 
 
 in the same light, and had refused to ratify the 
 engagement, which had been entered into unknown 
 to him. 
 
 ' Go, with my curse upon you ! stay with your 
 mother's people; waste your days in foolish plea- 
 sures, and with singing women, and French jesters, 
 and playwrights, and scribblers ; never blast my eyes 
 with the sight of you as long as you live ! ' the 
 furious old man had cried, in his rage at his defeated 
 projects ; and Castiglione had answered not a syllable, 
 but had left Rome that day, and had stayed away 
 from it entirely for three years, until now, when the 
 tidings of the Prince's seizure had enforced his return, 
 against his wishes. 
 
 It was eleven in the evening, and the sweet scent 
 of a million blowing roses and orange-blossoms was 
 
 wafted in from the gardens beyond. 
 
 ' Death is an ngly thing, Ruffino,' he said to the 
 
 little dog, who jumped on his knee and touched his 
 
 cheek with a. little moist black nose. 
 
 Ruffino could not pretend to be personally sorry 
 
 for the dying Prince, who had never said a kind 
 
 word to him, and whose observation he had learned 
 
 carefully to avoid by hiding under a sofa or a chair ; 
 
 but he was sorry that his master was sorry, which 
 
 came to exactly the same thing. 
 
RUFFINO 23 
 
 c Death is an ugly thing, Ruffino,' Castiglione 
 said again to his little furry friend. 
 
 Discordant noises at that moment irritated his 
 ear, and jangled harshly on the sweetness of the 
 falling waters, the singing nightingales, the plaintive, 
 mourning owls. Ruffino barked ; he always con- 
 ceived it to be his paramount duty to add his quota 
 to any noise that he might ever hear. 
 
 'It is that beastly lane,' thought Castiglione; 
 ' the first thing I will do is to compensate the people, 
 send them elsewhere, and knock the whole place 
 down/ 
 
 He rose, walked the length of the loggia, and 
 looked out over the balustrade which closed the 
 western end ; on this side both the loggia and the 
 palace alike looked down on a miserable little street 
 called in the Roman vernacular the Viccolo of 
 S. Anastasia. 
 
 On its front the house looked on its own piazza, 
 wide and fine ; on the back and on the left it was 
 entirely surrounded and shut in by its own gardens ; 
 but on the right it was bordered by this steep, 
 narrow, densely-populated little lane, which Monte- 
 feltro had always desired to purchase and destroy, 
 but of which the price had been too great not to 
 affright his avarice. 
 
24 RUFFINO 
 
 The mighty walls of the palace, and the bastion 
 supporting the loggia, shelved down into this little 
 lane like a great cliff hemming in a brook ; and the 
 tenements composing it were crowded, filthy, and 
 wholly unfit to be the neighbours of this stately 
 residence. They had scarcely even the attraction of 
 age, as age is counted in the Trastevere ; for they had 
 been originally stables, turned into dwelling-places 
 gradually in the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, and allowed to remain there by the care- 
 lessness of the Montefeltro of that time ; they now 
 belonged to a syndicate of Jews, and the price they 
 put on them had been too enormous for the present 
 Prince to .be willing to pay it for a mere artistic 
 whim. 
 
 To Castiglione, whose aesthetic feeling was much 
 more delicate and keen, the neighbourhood of that 
 crowded and foul-smelling passage beneath his walls 
 had always been an eyesore and an unendurable 
 offence. 
 
 * I will give the Jews whatever they want for it, 
 and I will have it all knocked down and cleared away/ 
 he thought now, as he gazed down over the wall, 
 where the creamy white of the climbing noisette 
 roses was like the surf of a sea. 
 
 Euffino had thrust his little muzzle through the 
 
RUFFIAO 25 
 
 foliage, and was growling ; he smelt cats : he could 
 not see them, but he smelt them ; and he could never 
 understand why cats, rats, and doctors had ever 
 been allowed to live by a too patient human race. 
 Kuffino would have made short work of all three 
 species could he have had his way. 
 
 Castiglione could see what offended him as much 
 as the cats did Kuffino : he could see dirt, rags, 
 squalor ; open sheds, where lean mules lay on reeking 
 straw ; tattered clothes, which hung to dry on iron 
 spikes ; baskets of half-rotting vegetables ; pans of 
 charcoal, with other pans simmering on the top of 
 them, full of beans, or paste, or little fish ; children 
 with naked limbs and unkempt hair, and mothers, 
 dishevelled and ragged, screaming in their ears; 
 petroleum lamps blazing, with foul smell, above 
 wretched interiors : and yet these people were every- 
 where shouting, making merry, enjoying life in their 
 nakedness and dirt ; a girl was dancing a tarantella 
 with a youth upon the stones, another was thrum- 
 ming a mandoline; little half-nude boys were jump- 
 ing about ; an old beggar was shouting a popular 
 song. A stranger contrast to the beautiful serenity 
 of the nightingale-haunted, fountain-filled, moon- 
 lighted gardens, and the grandeur of the silent 
 palace, could hardly have been found in all the world. 
 
26 RUFFINO 
 
 c After all, the poor have lighter hearts than we,' 
 thought the young Duke, as he stood above, amidst 
 his myrtle and jessamine blossoms, and the tea-rose 
 foliage. c They laugh and sing and dance, though 
 they lie six together in one bed, and gnaw rotten 
 melons and stinking fish, and are swept away when 
 the cholera comes, as the tunny are swept into the 
 nets at sea.' 
 
 'Wuff, wuff! ' said Kuffino, with feverish ex- 
 citement : he had seen a yellow-striped cat creeping 
 stealthily along the roof of a house immediately in 
 front of the loggia. He beheld her, he was within 
 a yard of her, and yet he could not reach her ! He 
 ran to and fro like a little maniac, barking, growl- 
 ing, agitating his tail, making springs in all direc- 
 tions except in the one which would have landed him 
 in the street below ; for in his many travels Kuffino 
 had learned to exercise extreme discretion in the 
 care of his own person. The cat, undisturbed, 
 went crawling on her placid way over the roof and 
 disappeared; and on her disappearance Kuffino 
 shook the universe with volley on volley of infuriated 
 barks. Was there ever a dog thus insulted before his 
 face? 
 
 The roof over which the offending animal had 
 passed was a low roof of old, red tiles, exactly facing 
 
RUFFINO 27 
 
 that end of the loggia on which Kuffino and his 
 master were standing. It belonged to a little 
 building which had been there for several centuries, 
 and was as superior in solidity and structure to the 
 eighteenth-century work as eighteenth-century work 
 is superior to the work of to-day. It was a very low 
 cottage of two storeys, and the top storey was on a 
 level with the floor of the loggia ; it ended the lane 
 with a tall, ancient stone chimney, and joined the 
 dead-wall of a convent of the nuns of the Sepolte 
 Vive. It was a quaint old place, like a house in the 
 engravings of the Middle Ages, and on the side of 
 the old, disused chimney grew wall-flowers and 
 valerian, dragon's-mouth and Madonna's herb, lichens 
 and green mosses ; and it was so close to the balus- 
 trade of the palace gardens that the boughs of the 
 rose-trees and the garlands of the wisteria, when 
 a high wind blew them outward, touched its modest 
 red-tiled roof. 
 
 Although the several habitations in the lane 
 belonged to a number of Jews, ostensibly very poor, 
 in reality very rich, and avaricious in proportion to 
 their wealth, this quaint little dwelling at the end, 
 abutting on the convent, belonged to a widow- woman 
 who sold vegetables, brooms, and charcoal, on the 
 ground-floor of it ; a big-boned, loud-voiced, Eoman 
 
28 RLFFINO 
 
 matron, with brawny muscles and a brown skin, 
 who had passed her life in that angle between the 
 garden and the convent wall, and knew how to 
 scream at a debtor and cringe to a creditor, to pass 
 off stale marrows and melons, and make her charcoal- 
 scales tell false weights, as well as any vendor in the 
 city. The three small chambers above her shop she 
 let, whenever she could, to any unfortunates whom 
 poverty might compel to seek those sorry lodgings. 
 
 As Castiglione was now placed, a little higher than 
 the casements of the opposite cottage, and not more 
 than three feet away from them, he could see straight 
 into the little room under the eaves. It was almost 
 bare of furniture, but was singularly clean, and in 
 strong contrast with its neighbourhood : a deal table 
 and deal chairs, with a press of ash wood, were all it 
 contained. In the next room was a small bed, and a 
 chest of drawers with an old Venetian mirror and a 
 dark picture of the Madonna and Child ; there were also 
 a big wooden tub and a copper pitcher. Nothing else. 
 On the window-sill was a plant of red geranium and 
 another of balsam. It was the abode of poverty, but it 
 was neat and wholesome-looking as any shore-pebble 
 washed daily by the tide of the sea. In contrast to 
 the disorder, dirt, and unspeakable nastiness of the 
 neighbouring interiors, it seemed like a miracle in 
 
RUFFINO 29 
 
 such a place. The two small casements of the upper 
 storey were open, and there was a light burning ; a 
 single wick, lit in a three-wicked brass lamp such as 
 Italians who cling to old ways still use. By the 
 light of it, a girl was sewing linen ; the star of flame 
 illuminated faintly her face and hands, and left all 
 the rest of the little chamber in which she sat in 
 darkness. When Ruffino barked, she looked up ; 
 but she saw nothing except the dense foliage of the 
 Canadian vine round one of the loggia-columns, and 
 she resumed her work. 
 
 4 She is a handsome child,' thought Castiglione, 
 whose taste in women's beauty was cultured and 
 exacting. She was young, apparently very young, 
 and was curiously like the portrait of Beatrice Cenci, 
 so far as he could distinguish her features by the 
 flickering reflection of the wick burning in front of 
 her. She was very poorly clad in cotton, but she 
 looked unlike the other dwellers in the lane. He 
 stood still and watched her for some time ; whilst 
 Ruffino, calming down from his indignation, sat, 
 with twitching ears, peering as far as he could into 
 the street and its ways, where everything appeared 
 to him to call for an interference and assistance 
 and correction which he was too remote to be able 
 to render. 
 
30 RUFFINO 
 
 The street interested him : he preferred sitting 
 here, where he could see it, to sitting above the great, 
 white, solemn stairs which led to nothing but .turf 
 and leaves and flowers, and where the most to be 
 hoped for, in the way of excitement, was a field- 
 mouse or a cricket. 
 
 It interested also his master since he had seen - 
 this vision of auburn Cenci-like hair, and great, 
 pathetic, brown eyes, like those of the hapless 
 Beatrice. 
 
 She was a poor girl, no doubt, working for her 
 livelihood; but she had a spiritual and uncommon 
 beauty, and her hands, as they moved, were small and 
 delicate, and so thin that they seemed scarcely made 
 of flesh and bone. 
 
 Standing above, amongst the noisette roses, he 
 spoke to her courteously and kindly. 
 
 c I see you look up at my flowers,' he said, as 
 he leaned over the marble balustrade. c If you will 
 come in, and gather some, you will be heartily 
 welcome. Shall I open the postern-door for you ? ' 
 
 It was the careless, good-natured, free-and-easy 
 address of a great gentleman to one who could not 
 fail to be pleased and flattered by his notice. His 
 amazement was extreme at the wholly dispropor- 
 tionate dismay and terror with which his overtures 
 
RUFFINO 31 
 
 were received. The young girl looked up with a 
 startled, frightened glance, rose hurriedly, caught 
 the iron hasps of the shutters of her window, and 
 drew the shutters themselves close, until only a little 
 thread of light glimmered between their wooden bars. 
 
 c " She doth protest too much," ' said Castiglione 
 to himself, with the ironical scepticism of a man 
 much sought and spoiled by women. f She cannot 
 have been sitting there all this time without having 
 seen me looking at her long before I spoke; and 
 a work-girl is not scared out of her wits by a few 
 civil words from a neighbour.' 
 
 Nevertheless, the rapid and rude action served to 
 excite his curiosity and stimulate his interest. He 
 remained there till midnight, smoking, and throwing 
 away the ends of many cigarettes ; but he saw nothing 
 more to reward him than the narrow gleams of light 
 between the unpainted bars of the window-shutters. 
 
 c She is only so coy to draw me on,' he told him- 
 self; and yet calculation and intrigue did not seem 
 to him to suit that pale, Cenci-like profile which had 
 been illumined by the rays of the little oil-lamp. 
 
 c Pshaw ! all women are alike, Kuffi ! ' he said, 
 with disappointment, as, tired of watching and 
 waiting, he threw his last cigarette down amongst 
 the rosebuds and went indoors. 
 
32 RUFJPIMO 
 
 ' Wuff ! ' said Ruffino, in an irritated adieu to 
 the striped cat. If the duplicity of women annoyed 
 and wearied his master, the perversity and insolence 
 of cats was the one cross laid on his own life. 
 
 Ill 
 
 AFTER dinner on the following evening Castiglione 
 strolled through the rooms, and returned to the 
 loggia; he sat down on the marble chair, and took 
 a copy of Lucian with him ; Lucian was his favourite 
 author. A servant set a reading-lamp down on the 
 round marble table near, and he was left to his 
 book, his cigarette, the nightingales and the owls, 
 for his evening's society. 
 
 Every now and then he glanced at the little 
 corner house visible through the foliage. The 
 shutters remained closed. If there were no other 
 outlet for air at the other side of the house, he 
 knew that the residents must be stifled and miserable, 
 thus shut up, in a warm night in late May ; and he 
 felt repentant for his own harmless words. 
 
 He sat thus an hour or more, looking now and 
 then at his Lucian, which he knew almost by heart, 
 and thinking of the days of his earliest youth, when 
 his mother's graceful form had passed so often up 
 
RUFFINO 33 
 
 and down the loggia in the moonlight on just such 
 summer nights as this. 
 
 She was buried in the palace chapel, a marvel of 
 architecture and of painting, erected and ornamented 
 by Bramante. But it had never seemed to him 
 as if she could really be imprisoned there, under 
 those marble saints and angels, and beneath the 
 jewelled altars and the high dome, which gleamed 
 with colour like some great jewel itself. 
 
 She seemed more near him here, where the mid- 
 summer moon was sailing beyond the arched colon- 
 nades, and the birds which she had loved so well 
 were calling from the dusk. 
 
 She had filled his childish mind with high ideals, 
 and now, remembering the lofty destinies which she 
 had imagined for him, his life seemed to him pur- 
 poseless and useless ; as it was, it would not have 
 contented her, although, indeed, it was more blame- 
 less in much than are most lives of men of his rank 
 and generation. 
 
 It grew late. 
 
 Euffino, tired of speculating on the possible con* 
 sequences of a jump into the lane, had turned on his 
 side and gone to sleep : even Homer nods and Jupiter 
 dozes now and then. Suddenly, however, he awoke 
 with a sharp little bark. He had heard in his 
 
 D 
 
34 RUFFINO 
 
 slumber the sound of an opening window. Castig- 
 lione heard it also, and looked cautiously through 
 the screen of foliage. 
 
 The girl was opening the shutter, and securing 
 it by its iron hasp to the wall. Then she seated 
 herself by it, and by the feeble light of an oil-wick 
 began to sew linen. Castiglione could plainly see 
 her profile like a delicate cameo against the darkness 
 within. 
 
 c Did she never sleep ? Was she for ever work- 
 ing ? ' he wondered. He took extreme care not to 
 be seen, lest he should again cause her to take flight : 
 but he looked no more at his Lucian ; he even extin- 
 guished his reading-lamp, lest the rays of it, seen 
 through the leaves, should catch her eyes, and affright 
 her anew. Her features were quite visible to him, 
 surrounded as they were by deep shadow ; and the 
 light of her flickering oil-wick fell full upon her fair, 
 almost transparent, and quickly-moving hands. 
 Now and then she glanced towards the loggia, and 
 listened when some richer burst of song from the 
 nightingales beguiled her to pause for a moment. 
 But almost continually she went on with her sewing, 
 stopping only to thread her needle; yet he could 
 have sworn that her ears lost no single note of all 
 those passionate lays with which his gardens were 
 
RUFFINO 35 
 
 resounding from every laurel-grove, and alley of 
 arbutus, and thicket of rose and myrtle. 
 
 He felt desperately tempted to address her again, 
 but he resisted the temptation ; it seemed to him 
 too cruel, too selfish to run the risk of again forcing 
 her to deprive herself of the air, which was now fresh 
 with the freshness of night and filled with the scent 
 of orange-blossoms. If his gardens could afford her 
 any compensation for the wretched life she led, he 
 was glad that they should do so. And yet an over- 
 whelming desire to speak again to her possessed him. 
 Below, the lane became quite silent, except for an 
 occasional shout or oath from some passer-by, or 
 the cry of a fractious child from one of the interiors ; 
 the inhabitants were very poor, and of the lowest 
 class, but they were all labouring folk, and slept early 
 and soundly on their beds of sacking. There was 
 something of mystery, of communion, almost of inti- 
 macy, in the sense that he and she were so near each 
 other, and yet so ignorant of each other ; in the still- 
 ness of the night, both awake, while all the city 
 seemed to sleep. 
 
 As she sat at the window, he could see every 
 movement of her hands ; he could almost see her 
 breath come and go. Her long locks shaded her 
 cheek as she looked down on her work, and the 
 
 D 2 
 
36 RUFFINO 
 
 cheek was pale and thin, although it had the soft, 
 round curves of youth. 
 
 Twice or thrice she paused, and pushed her hair 
 off her temples with a gesture of extreme fatigue ; 
 but she soon resumed her work again, and sewed on, 
 and on, and on, whilst the nightingales shouted from 
 the laurels and the myrtles of the garden. 
 
 It was three in the morning when she at last 
 ceased, overcome with an exhaustion which she could 
 no longer combat. She put out the light and closed 
 the shutter. 
 
 Castiglione rose and shook himself, like one who 
 shakes off a spell. He had been four hours watching 
 her needle fly in and out, and the light of the lamp 
 shine on her hair ; he felt embarrassed and ashamed, 
 although there was no spectator of his romantic vigil. 
 He went indoors to go to his bed, where Ruffino 
 curled himself up and dreamed of cats. 
 
 ' Am I moonstruck ? ' thought Castiglione, as he 
 lay gazing at the pale colossal figures of the tapestry 
 of his chamber, unable to fall asleep. ' It is absurd ! 
 It is monstrous ! A little sempstress, and I dare not 
 address her! I will go to that end of the loggia 
 no more. It comes of ennui. I have nothing to 
 think of here, and so my head gets filled with 
 folly. 
 
RUFFINO 37 
 
 In the morning he said to Viviani, the house- 
 steward, who was waiting on him for orders : c Tell 
 me, did they all fall through, the negotiations which 
 my father made with those Jews, Baldacchi, Cortona, 
 Leveschi, and the others, for the purchase of the lane 
 which adjoins the garden ? ' 
 
 c Yes, my lord duke/ replied the steward, c the 
 price asked by Baldacchi and the others was pre- 
 posterous. There was no means of bringing them to 
 reason. All was in vain.' 
 
 c The lane is an intolerable nuisance. What was 
 the price asked ? ' 
 
 Viviani named it. 
 
 ' It was indeed enormous,' said Castiglione. 
 ' But open the matter again with him. The lane is 
 unhealthy and odious, and the noises from it make it 
 impossible to be at peace either in the loggia or in 
 these rooms opening on it.' 
 
 1 That is undoubtedly the fact, your excellency,' 
 replied Viviani ; ' but if I may be permitted to make 
 a remark, I would suggest that your lordship's most 
 revered and sainted fathers have been trying to 
 purchase it for three centuries, and have never con- 
 sidered it worth the vast expenditure required.' 
 
 ' I will buy it at any price,' said Castiglione, very 
 imprudently. 
 
38 RUFFINO 
 
 c My lord is master of his purse and of his judg- 
 ment/ said the steward, with humility ; ' the first 
 we know is inexhaustible, the latter we know is 
 unimpeachable.' 
 
 < You are a courtier, my good Viviani.' 
 
 ' Oh no, your excellency, I am only the devoted 
 though feeble servant of yourself and of your- 
 illustrious house.' 
 
 c Nevertheless,' thought Castiglione, ' if you are 
 unwilling that I should buy the lane from its owners, 
 it is only that they will not give you a percentage 
 high enough for your own taste and pocket. 5 
 
 Aloud he added : c But the corner house the 
 house which touches on the Sepolte Vive the Jews 
 do not own that, I think ? ' 
 
 4 No, my lord/ answered the steward, wondering 
 whither these questions tended. 'It belongs to 
 Sior' Veneranda, the Pilotti widow ; she inherited it. 
 She would ask its weight in gold, for she sets great 
 store on it ; and she is a grinding skinflint, is Sior' 
 Veneranda.' 
 
 < Well, find out her price,' said Castiglione, care- 
 lessly. ' The whole place is a horrible eyesore, and, 
 somehow or other, sooner or later, it must belong 
 to us.' 
 
 Was this girl all alone in her part of this little 
 
RUFFINO 39 
 
 corner house, he wondered continually, with its 
 lichen-grown stones without and its Dutch-like 
 interior ? It seemed impossible ; yet he saw no one 
 else, except the old woman who owned it, and who 
 lived below, and sold charcoal and cabbages, rotten 
 firewood, and perishing fruit. 
 
 He watched her by day and by evening, and her 
 habits had the regularity of the Angelus and the 
 Ave Maria. As soon as the sun smote hot and blind- 
 ing on the walls, she shut the old, rickety wooden 
 shutters attached to the casements ; at early evening 
 she was again at work with them wide opened. 
 Now and then she looked out at the loggia and its 
 flowers, then again resumed her labours of one kind 
 or another. He saw that she cooked for herself at a 
 little charcoal-stove in the corner of the room, and 
 she drew up her bread with a cord from the seller 
 who stood below. She did the same by various 
 vegetables, which seemed to him, with the bread, to 
 constitute her only food. It was when she leaned 
 out to draw up this cord that he saw her most 
 clearly ; saw her slender but beautifully-shaped arms 
 and wrists, her youthful bust, her shining hair, the 
 vigour and grace which she put into this homely and 
 simple act. He never heard her speak to any one, 
 except a brief word of thanks to the itinerant vendor 
 
40 RUFFINO 
 
 who brought her loaf and her cabbage, or carrots, 
 or artichokes, underneath her lattice. 
 
 ' What an existence ! ' thought Castiglione with 
 horror, and a sense of -shame that he, a man, had all 
 his life enjoyed luxury and abundance, and been 
 waited on and pampered and amused by every one 
 who approached him. 
 
 It interested him, this little homely idyll, shut 
 up in those two quaint little rooms, which he could 
 almost have touched with his hand if he had leaned 
 out over his balustrade. At any other time he would 
 have been too much occupied and amused by other 
 things to have paid any attention to it ; but in these 
 long, empty days and evenings, it beguiled his notice. 
 He did not go outside the walls of the palace, for at 
 any moment his father's state might pass from stupor 
 into death ; and he was dejected, and oppressed with 
 the sense of that impending dissolution, and of all 
 the burdens which would devolve on himself by his 
 succession to the great fief of Montefeltro. He would 
 have infinitely preferred to remain what he was ; he 
 had everything he wanted, and no responsibilities ; 
 his father once dead, a vast and troublesome mass of 
 honours and of duties would fall like a storm of hail 
 upon himself. The Prince of Montefeltro could not 
 lead the careless, irresponsible, boulevardier life which 
 
RUFFINO 41 
 
 had been so agreeable to the Duke of Castiglione. 
 His future would be trammelled, burdened, and 
 tedious; and, like every man of pleasure, tedium 
 was worse to him than misfortune. 
 
 Therefore, in these unoccupied and idle moments, 
 when a sense of decorum and respect withheld him 
 from all those pastimes which were natural to his 
 age and tastes, he frequented the loggia, and took 
 more and more interest in the very simple interior, 
 which he could see through the screen of leaves. 
 
 In the wall of the second little chamber there 
 was a door, and it led, he could perceive, into a 
 third room, or closet, beyond ; but into this last 
 retreat his sight could not pierce. 
 
 Its darkness and its mystery excited and tor- 
 mented him. The girl passed much of her time 
 there. Perhaps, nay, most probably, she had a lover, 
 he reflected. He saw none, but he felt sure that some 
 man there must be. When the wooden shutters were 
 shut there were, certainly, some compensations behind 
 them for that life of incessant toil and privation. 
 
 One day he questioned one of the gardeners 
 whom he found at work beside the marble of the 
 fishpond : 
 
 c Who lives in that little house which ends the 
 lane ? ' 
 
42 RUFFINO 
 
 The man reflected, straightening his back after 
 stooping over the ground-ivy. 
 
 4 1 think it is some foreigner, your excellency ; a 
 pagan, I believe.' 
 
 ' Why a pagan ? ' 
 
 c Not a Christian, your excellency. They never 
 go to mass.' 
 
 ' Who are they ? ' 
 
 * There is a sick man there, most illustrious, as 
 well as the girl.' 
 
 c What is the man to the maiden ? ' 
 
 The gardener shrugged his shoulders and spread 
 out his hands. 
 
 c I would not presume to say, your excellency. 
 With pagans, who can tell ? ' 
 
 Castiglione walked on under his trees, irritated at 
 the man's foolish prejudices, and more irritated at 
 what he heard. 
 
 Into the innermost room it was impossible to 
 see, and his mind instantly ran to the natural 
 conclusion. 
 
 Euffino looked out of one eye askance at him, 
 recognising that he was not pleased ; and Kuffino 
 himself yawned. 
 
 The garden was a very nice place, but it lacked 
 interest to a dog-of-the-world ; besides, his master, 
 
RUFFINO 43 
 
 slow and pensive, pacing to and fro the cool, dark 
 alleys between the walls of dipt cypress and bay, 
 affected his nerves by sympathy that sympathy 
 with human moods and fancies which dogs are so 
 quick to render, but which their owners so rarely 
 render to them. 
 
 When his master was as melancholy as this, 
 Ruffino could not find it in his heart to be gay; 
 instead of investigating suspicious crannies in the 
 rockeries and walls, and dashing after lizards over 
 flower-beds, or springing high in air to catch butter- 
 flies, as he was often wont to do, he walked demurely 
 behind, or in front, with his tail at half-mast, and in 
 his air an expression, chastened and subdued, which 
 he deemed adapted to his friend's feelings. The 
 lizards shot across his path, and the tiny garden-mice 
 frisked under his very nose : he was not to be be- 
 guiled into sport of any kind. Now and then he 
 cocked one ear anxiously when he heard a dog bark 
 beyond the garden-walls ; that was his sole conces- 
 sion to the outer world. 
 
 But it was dull work, and afforded no scope to the 
 energy and gaiety of his character; therefore, when 
 his master ascended to the loggia, he led the way every 
 evening with alacrity to that side of it which looked 
 upon the lane, carrying his tail high on one side of 
 
44 RUFFINO 
 
 his back, as his habit was when pleased ; and whilst 
 Castiglione sat on the marble chair, and lit his 
 cigarettes one after another, Ruffino watched 
 through the leaves this undisciplined rabble below, 
 human, canine, and feline, who stood much in need 
 of his admonition and administration. 
 
 IV 
 
 CASTIGLIONE almost every night went in to his dinner 
 alone, and dined in solitary state, surrounded by 
 Florentine tapestry and Roman statues, and above 
 his head a ceiling of Guercino's, painted with 
 that favourite subject of all Italian artists, Aurora 
 escaping from Tithonus. Ruffino was always seated 
 on a chair beside him, and knew what truffles meant, 
 and what an ortolan tasted like, as well as any epicure 
 in a Paris or London clubhouse. 
 
 Of his many friends and relatives, almost all had 
 already left Rome for the hot season ; and of the few 
 who remained, there were none whom he cared to 
 invite to break his solitude. 
 
 The Italian manner of greeting the Pale Rider on 
 the White Horse is to gather a voluble crowd in the 
 house and around the sickbed ; then, when it is quite 
 certain that death is nigh, everyone rushes out of the 
 
RUFFINO 45 
 
 house, and far away, to avoid meeting with it, and 
 the dying person is left to struggle through his last 
 fight for breath, his last wrestling with the spectre, as 
 best he can, alone. Sometimes, perhaps, a nun will 
 stay beside him, or a priest, but rarely even these ; 
 relatives never, not the nearest. Death is a painful 
 spectacle, and to witness it brings ill-luck. Where- 
 fore, then, remain ? 
 
 Castiglione, however, having northern blood in 
 him, and different ways, shut the palace to all except 
 his uncles and his cousins, and the priests of the 
 Church, and remained alone ; and intended so to 
 remain until all should be over. 
 
 ( Don Eczzelino manca un Venerdi,' said Maglia- 
 becchi, with a groan, to the chaplain. To miss a Friday 
 is a popular periphrase to express politely a belief 
 that a man is a lunatic; and nothing could seem 
 more insane to these Romans than for a person like 
 the Duke of Castiglione to shut himself up thus in 
 solitude, instead of filling the house with a throng of 
 noble and clerical mourners, who would have wept 
 and sighed, and dined and supped, and torn their 
 hair, and drained big beakers of the old, priceless 
 wines of the Montefeltro cellars. But all these 
 ways were odious to one who had lived so much 
 away from them, and it was in vain that they were 
 
46 RUFFINO 
 
 urged upon him ; lie would not hear of them for a 
 moment. 
 
 4 If only he lay in the place of the sainted Prince/ 
 sighed the doctor and the chaplain ; { he and his 
 accursed little dog ! ' 
 
 Ruffino represented the Evil One in person to both 
 these worthies; he had a way of rolling his black 
 eyes at them, and of making certain movements of 
 his lips, emitting at the same time a subdued, menac- 
 ing growl, which signified how good their calves would 
 taste, if only he could try his teeth on them, which 
 seemed to these gentlemen nothing short of diabolic. 
 They both thought, longingly, of various poisons 
 reposing in the doctor's cases which could have made 
 Euffino innocuous and immovable for evermore 
 in the space of a second; but fear withheld them 
 from resorting to these measures of self-defence ; the 
 crime would be easily done, but they dreaded his 
 owner's discovery of the act, and the vengeance he 
 would take for it. 
 
 They had a mutual and intense dislike to their 
 future master : he was, in their opinion, impious 
 and foreign in his ways. They knew that he only 
 bore with them to obey his father, and that as soon 
 as their patron should be laid to his last rest in the 
 chapel crypt, they would be politely but imperatively 
 
RUFFINO 47 
 
 bidden to betake themselves and their plunder else- 
 where. They had lived there nearly all their lives, 
 like rats in a cheese-house, and the death of Monte- 
 feltro would be their knell of exile from all the 
 luxurious living, and successful plottings and pick- 
 ings, which they had enjoyed in these long and 
 prosperous years of fraud and fatness. To do the 
 Duke of Castiglione any bad turn would have been 
 delightful to them. 
 
 This hatred for the heir came from the conviction, 
 felt by both the physician and the chaplain, that he 
 would never be tricked or beguiled into the same 
 position as his father had accepted. His father, 
 to all the world an arrogant tyrant, had been, in 
 actual fact, a mere victim of the designing and 
 unscrupulous men who had surrounded him. There 
 was no hope for them of obtaining such an influence 
 over his son, who thought for himself, saw for him- 
 self, judged for himself, and, despite the careless- 
 ness and good nature of his temper, had a talent only 
 second to Ruffino's for discovering and unmasking a 
 hypocrite. 
 
 These lonely days meanwhile made a deep and 
 painful impression on him. He had led a gay and 
 selfish life, like other men of his age and rank, 
 although his heart had remained more tender than 
 
48 RUFFINO 
 
 is usual in a life of mere pleasure. He had seldom 
 paused to think of the problems and the mysteries 
 of existence, and of its misery and necessity he had 
 only known from hearsay. 
 
 His reflections, as he sat alone in the lustrous 
 moonlight, with that crowded and poverty-stricken 
 lane so close to him, were troubled and perplexed. 
 Ho felt that he could never again return to the same 
 idle, thoughtless, agreeable habits which had hitherto 
 absorbed and contented him : he would henceforth 
 be Montefeltro, lord of vast tracts of land in the 
 pestilence-haunted Campagna, in the terrible, famine- 
 stricken Basilicata, in the morasses and marshes of 
 the Maremma, in the scorched and starved plains of 
 the Puglia. 
 
 The country herself was like a lamb torn by the 
 jaws of two quarrelling wolves : the one the Church, 
 avaricious, cruel, and blind ; the other the Govern- 
 ment, insatiate, despotic, and torturing. The one 
 was as bad as the other, and each alike was the foe, 
 the oppressor, and the thief of the nation on which 
 it was fastened. Neither Church nor Government 
 would help him in his task, for he abhorred them 
 both, and saw that both alike were leeches which 
 drained the blood of the people. His irresponsible 
 life of liberty and ease was at an end : with the 
 
RUFFINO 49 
 
 death of Montefeltro would devolve on him duties, 
 possessions, obligations which he could not in honour 
 evade ; and he would be forced to decide on many 
 questions which hitherto he had been able to leave in 
 abeyance, inclining neither to one side nor the other. 
 He shrank from the ordeal. He loved ease, serenity, 
 art, pleasure ; the prospect of being driven into the 
 choice of Hercules was painful and oppressive to his 
 temperament. 
 
 His father's state gave him sufficient excuse to 
 follow his momentary inclination to be alone : the 
 sense of approaching death was in the atmosphere ; 
 the household moved about noiselessly ; the great 
 doors were opened and shut without sound ; the whole 
 vast palace seemed quiet as the grave ; even Euffino 
 felt the influence of his surroundings, and when 
 indoors subdued his utterances to a smothered growl, 
 or a bark a mezza voce. 
 
 Of his neighbour at the little corner house, Casti- 
 glione, thus left to himself, and to the impressions of 
 the moment, thought more than was wise or than 
 was welcome to him ; the mystery which appeared to 
 surround her stimulated his interest to a dangerous 
 extent. 
 
 Sometimes he bowed to her silently, in sign of 
 his respect for her solitude, and obedience to her 
 
 E 
 
50 RUFFINO 
 
 wishes, but lie did not attempt to force his presence 
 or his conversation upon her. Himself unseen, he 
 watched her many an hour, studying the lines of 
 her form, the purity of her profile, the pathetic, 
 colourless beauty of her face. It was that kind of 
 beauty which gains by becoming familiar ; he drew 
 her portrait a hundred times, and never contented 
 himself, though he was an artist of no mean capacity. 
 But there was something ethereal and fugitive in her 
 which it was difficult to render; something of the 
 light of the soul, of that higher beauty which comes 
 from high thoughts and heroic sacrifice, for which all 
 mediums of art seemed too gross. 
 
 He could easily have heard any thing and every 
 thing which there might have been to hear if he had 
 inquired of his household; but he was withheld 
 from doing so by a vague sentiment that it would ill 
 become his dignity to show this curiosity, above all 
 at such a moment. He could not bring himself to 
 let his subordinates know that, when his father lay 
 dying, he was interested in watching the coming and 
 going of one of the inhabitants of the Viccolo of 
 S. Anastasia. He was careless, negligent of appear- 
 ances, and even what his father called democratic, 
 in some things ; but all the instincts of his race and 
 habits of his breeding imbued him with a strong 
 
RUFFINO 51 
 
 pride of birth and a strong sense of dignity. There 
 was little that would be flattering to either in the 
 confession that he passed this period of what should 
 be, at least in semblance, mourning, in amusing him- 
 self with the light and shade of a lamp falling on the 
 features of a work-girl. 
 
 A work-girl she must be, he thought, in class 
 and occupation, although her beauty was of a 
 patrician and poetic type. 
 
 Whenever he saw her, she was colouring little 
 prints which lay upon the deal table, or sewing 
 linen, or doing some household work. She inte- 
 rested him powerfully ; but he could not bring him- 
 self to confess such an interest, even so far as it 
 would be revealed if he in any way questioned 
 his people. He felt that he could never sit again 
 at that side of the loggia if they knew, or guessed, 
 why the screen of leaves was so attractive to him. 
 It was not a moment at which a man who had any 
 self-respect would like his servants to suppose him 
 capable of being diverted by a common amourette. 
 It was only when he was sure that he was un- 
 observed that he returned to the marble seat under 
 the tea-roses and jessamine which commanded that 
 side view into the narrow, teeming, noisy lane. 
 All the household, from Magliabecchi down to the 
 
 B 2 
 
52 RUFFINO 
 
 very scullions, knew that he had for years and years 
 desired the purchase and destruction of this eyesore ; 
 he would become absurd, in their estimate, if they 
 once saw his gaze riveted on that little mean house 
 at the end of the passage. Ruffino alone knew how 
 often he went there, and Ruffino approved : the lane 
 was to him a world of interest, movement, and 
 fascination, which drew him to it all the more 
 magnetically because he was unable to see very 
 far into it, and was conscious that it was all going 
 to rack and ruin for want of his inspection and 
 direction. 
 
 At times Castiglione, in the still, balmy night, 
 walked down the marble stairs into the delicious 
 gardens, and wandered under the laurel hedges 
 where the nightingales nested, and past the huge, 
 leafy fish-ponds where carp, centuries old, floated 
 lazily under water-lilies, and down the great, dark 
 avenues of ilex, whose impenetrable foliage closed 
 over his head. And Ruffino went with him con- 
 scientiously, step by step, and when his master 
 paused, indulged himself in a roll in the dewy grass ; 
 but the vast, silent, odorous gardens did not interest 
 him so much as did that abominable lane, where 
 vulgar dogs scratched in heaps of refuse, and in- 
 famous cats mewed and rniauled ? and where dark, 
 
RUFFINO 53 
 
 foul, scarce-seen doorways suggested endless myste- 
 ries to be explored. The gardens were so beauti- 
 fully kept, so old, so solitary, so tranquil, that there 
 was little in them, except an occasional gardener's 
 boy, requiring to be called to order ; and Kuffino 
 felt that there was no scope in this sylvan paradise 
 for his imperial genius of domination and dictation. 
 Whereas, could he only get down into the lane, he 
 knew that these dogs would soon be rolled on their own 
 cinder-heaps, and that those cats would soon wish 
 that they had never been kittened . Ruffino had a great 
 mind in a little body, and, like most great minds, 
 was pugnacious from a consciousness, far nobler 
 than mere vanity, that he had been born to set the 
 chaos of the world aright ; only, unlike Hamlet, he 
 deemed the mission flattering and agreeable, and 
 was not troubled by any doubts as to his own capa- 
 bilities for its government. 
 
 But how to get down to the lane ? Even the 
 high and undaunted spirit of Ruffino was forced to 
 admit that ten feet was too much of a jump ; and 
 though he knew the regular way down to it from 
 the courtyard of the palace, there was no chance of 
 getting out of that courtyard, for the porter would 
 not open the gates to him without his master, and 
 in these days and nights his master did not once 
 
54 RUFFINO 
 
 pass through those gates ; the only exercise he 
 took was in the gardens, which stretched as far as 
 the walls of the Vatican Gardens, and were more 
 than a mile in length. 
 
 It was an uneventful, and, to all except Euffino, 
 a painful and tedious period. Montefeltro continued 
 to exist in the same comatose state ; it could scarcely, 
 be called life, and yet it was not death. Innumer- 
 able names were written down in the book at the 
 porter's lodge ; countless letters and cards were left 
 in inquiry and in condolence; all the great Black 
 nobility of Home, and some of the White, flocked 
 there : but the bronze gates remained inexorably 
 shut to all. 
 
 ' The Prince is beyond hope, and the Duke sees 
 no one,' was the reply which the janitor of those 
 august portals, stately in scarlet and gold, with a 
 cocked hat and halberd, returned to every inquiry 
 and entreaty. 
 
 Castiglione had never been either shy or slow in 
 affairs with women : he was used to easy and rapid 
 courtships of them, his person and position alike 
 causing him to be received with universal favour. 
 But now he seemed possessed with the hesitation and 
 the modesty of a schoolboy before a first love. He 
 laughed at himself. 'Good heavens!' he thought, 
 
RUFFING 55 
 
 with impatience and derision ; c does this really 
 interest me ? Am I actually in love with a shadow, 
 a nameless personality, an unknown, of whom I see 
 nothing but the profile and the hands ? ' 
 
 It was so absurd that, alone as he was, he 
 laughed aloud one evening ; and Euffino, hearing, 
 recovered his spirits, hoisted his own tail in the air, 
 and caught a lizard's. 
 
 The absurdity of it, however, did not prevent him 
 from going out on to the loggia after dinner. On 
 these absurdities, incongruous and anomalous though 
 they be, a whimsical and amorous fancy best 
 thrives: the unwisdom of a passion is its nourish- 
 ing dew, the apparent impossibility of it makes its 
 actual strength; love is a flower which grows 
 luxuriantly on a barren rock, and only dies of a too 
 favourable soil. 
 
 When he approached the balustrade, it was at 
 that beautiful moment when day merges into night, 
 when the rosy and golden flush remaining after the 
 sunset is met by the deep twilight blue of the hushed 
 evening. The moon was rising above the ilex woods 
 of his own gardens, and hung, broad and yellow, and 
 magnified by the atmosphere, amidst grey and 
 silvered clouds. The intense odours of the gardens 
 below filled the air with perfume, and from the 
 
56 RUFF 2 NO 
 
 street beyond them came the sound of a lute and of 
 a young tenor voice singing joyously. For the 
 moment there was no other sound ; the harsh out- 
 cries of the lanes were stilled, the peace of a summer 
 night descended on the city. 
 
 The casements of the little corner house were 
 open, and a,t one of them the girl was standing ; the 
 reflections from the warmth of the west fell on her 
 face and throat, and lighted up her large, light 
 brown eyes ; there was a rapt, beatified expression 
 on her countenance, a faint smile parted her lips. 
 She was gazing up into the foliage of the loggia, and 
 evidently was listening. 
 
 ' Is the lutist serenading her ? ' thought Casti- 
 glione, with unreasonable anger. But the sound 
 of the lute and of the tenor voice grew fainter and 
 fainter, and finally ceased as the player, no doubt, 
 went higher up the street ; and the girl continued to 
 listen, and to look, with the smile of St. Cecilia on 
 her face. 
 
 Then at last he divined what she saw, and to 
 what she listened : it was a nightingale singing in 
 the rose-boughs to his mate upon her nest. 
 
 That surpassing melody was so eloquent, day and 
 night, all through the Montefeltro gardens, from 
 April to July, that he had never guessed before that 
 
RUFFINO 57 
 
 it was this attraction which drew her so often to her 
 window. 
 
 Where he stood a marble corbel, with a sculptured 
 Faun and goat, entirely screened him from her sight, 
 and he could gaze at her uninterruptedly. She was 
 poor, she was meanly clad ; there was no doubt that 
 she dusted and swept and washed her little home, 
 made her own bed, her own fire, her own food ; and 
 yet poverty and toil had not been able to take from 
 her the signs of race : the slender hands, the delicate 
 nostrils, the pure, transparent skin, and the fine lines 
 of brow and chin. Who could she be? Whence 
 could she have come? What could have dragged 
 her down into this lonely and miserable existence ? 
 
 But then it was not, perhaps, lonely, if what the 
 gardener had said was true? 
 
 There was a sick man in that inner chamber into 
 whose dusky limits his eyes could not see. Doubt- 
 less it was for this companion of her adversity that 
 she toiled and lived, and found a certain happiness, 
 even in this narrow and sordid home. 
 
 The thought of this man who dwelt with her 
 hardened his heart against his growing interest in 
 her, and her poverty, which had so powerful a hold 
 on him, and took from her that halo of virginal 
 innocence which had seemed to make her too sacred 
 
58 RUFFING 
 
 to be rudely approached. After all, a girl who lived 
 in a little hole like this with a lover, ill or well, was 
 not so holy or so hallowed that he himself need any 
 longer hesitate to make such advances to her as he 
 chose. If the lover, ill or well, disliked them, so 
 much the worse for him. 
 
 Acting on that impulse, he walked up to the 
 balustrade, pushed aside the rose and jessamine 
 boughs, and let himself become visible to her. 
 
 ' You are listening to my nightingales, signorina?' 
 he said, softly. c If you would come into the gardens 
 to hear them better, you would make me very happy. 
 I ventured to tell you so the other night, and I was 
 vexed to see that I seemed only to offend you/ 
 
 As soon as he had spoken the words, he regretted 
 them, for they destroyed in a single instant the un- 
 conscious and unstudied beauty of her attitude, and 
 the pleasure she had taken in the birds. She 
 changed colour violently, and stared at him with 
 her hazel, Cenci-like eyes ; he could almost see the 
 fluttering of her heart and hear the quickness of her 
 breath. 
 
 c I beg your pardon,' she said, hurriedly ; c I did 
 not know that you were that any one was there. 
 You did not offend me. I thank you very much, but 
 I cannot listen to anything you say.' 
 
RUFFING 59 
 
 Then breathlessly, and with the agitation of some 
 discovered criminal, she withdrew from the window, 
 and shut the wooden shutters again with precipita- 
 tion and alarm. 
 
 6 What have I done?' thought Castiglione, regret- 
 fully. c Now she is deprived of light and air once 
 more ; cooped up, on a June evening, behind a wooden 
 blind ! Is it assumed or genuine, all that shyness 
 and terror ? After all, she cannot live in that lane, 
 and remain the Casta diva of romance ; and she must 
 know as well as I know, that this is not an un- 
 occupied and enchanted palace. By the heavens 
 above us, if that were acting, it was admirable acting, 
 incomparable acting ! Perhaps the sick Lothario is 
 a jealous brute.' 
 
 He gathered a cluster of the roses, and threw 
 them across towards the other casement, which 
 remained open. But they fell short of it, and 
 dropped in the dust and filth of the stones below. 
 In another moment the shutter of that window was 
 closed also by that thin, small hand which had such 
 a charm for him ; the little house was like a blind 
 or eyeless face in front of him. 
 
 c What folly ! Does she think me a monster ? ' 
 said Castiglione angrily, half aloud. He regretted his 
 advances, since they had deprived her of light and 
 
60 RUFFINO 
 
 air ; he hated to think of her driven into that stifling, 
 dusky little interior, whilst the birds sang, and the 
 moon rose, and the great white cups of the magnolias 
 poured out their perfume like wine. There was no 
 doubt left in his mind that she had acted out of fear 
 of her lover's jealousy. Castiglione had a wide ex- 
 perience of her sex, and he did not believe in his 
 own presence causing alarm or aversion in any 
 woman. But he hated to think of her cooped up 
 indoors, and deprived, through his fault, of any con- 
 solation for her wretched fate which she might have 
 been able to gain from the enjoyment which his 
 roses and his nightingales offered her. 
 
 He went down the marble stairs into the gardens, 
 and picked up some smooth pebbles, and, returning 
 with these to the loggia, threw first one, and then 
 another, and then another, against the closed shutter, 
 Kuffino watching the action with keen excitement 
 and a puzzled countenance. 
 
 Boys threw stones, he knew, and dogs often felt 
 them, to their sorrow ; but why his master should 
 throw these he failed to imagine. There was not even a 
 cat on the roof. Though to Ruffino this action appeared 
 wholly aimless, yet the pebbles went, one after another, 
 against the wood; but they produced no response what- 
 ever. The little corner house was barred to the outer 
 
RUFFINO 61 
 
 world as completely as though it were a zenana in 
 the East. 
 
 4 What folly ! ' he repeated : such senseless terror 
 and such prolonged obstinacy irritated him ex- 
 tremely. An invitation to walk in his garden was 
 not an insult to scare either the shyest woman, or 
 the most jealous guardian of her, out of their wits : 
 and the goodness of his heart made him sorry that 
 she should be deprived of the cool evening air 
 through his own unconsidered and harmless over- 
 tures. 
 
 The last flush of lingering daylight faded ; the 
 moon rose higher in the heavens ; the soft notes of 
 the scops owl thrilled through the darkness. Castig- 
 lione, vexed, irritated, and perplexed, paced up and 
 down the length of the loggia, repeating to himself 
 fragments of Ariosto and Tasso which came back to 
 his memory from boyish days : the binding of 
 Angelica and Medoro in their love-knots, and the 
 slaughter of Einaldo by the nymphs with the white 
 lilies. It seemed to him as if he himself had been 
 bound in such magic bands, and slain by a white 
 lily. 
 
 V 
 
 RUFFINO, casting now and then a careful glance at 
 his master to be sur6 that he came to no harm, 
 
62 RUFF1NO 
 
 remained beside the balustrade, peering down into the 
 lane, and ejaculating every now and then a wuff ! 
 wuff ! of warning to the inhabitants below. In his 
 own mind he was always turning over the question 
 of whether a jump into it would, or would not, be 
 prudent as regarded his own bones. He was forbid- 
 den ever to go out anywhere alone ; but he did not 
 attach much importance to the virtue of obedience : 
 a dog so often knew what was best and wisest to do 
 so very much better than a man could possibly know. 
 A man has no nose to speak of; the human olfactory 
 nerves are defective, blunted, contemptibly limited 
 in what they perceive : to the finer nerves of the 
 canine nose the human nasal organ is but a mere 
 elementary pretence of a nose, and, to the mind of 
 a dog, the possessor of such an imperfect guide must 
 inevitably go astray. 
 
 Maida could find Scott across seas and strange 
 lands by her nose alone ; Scott could not so have 
 found Maida. 
 
 So that Ruffino, though he knew well that he 
 was forbidden to go into the lane, or anywhere 
 indeed, except the gardens, by himself, would not 
 have deemed it necessary to observe the injunction ; 
 it was only the difficulty of violating it which 
 troubled him. He could jump with great sureness 
 
RUFFINO 63 
 
 and agility, but the lane was a long way down below 
 the loggia, and he was in doubts whether to alight 
 on those stones would be an agreeable sensation. 
 Euffino, like all dogs, was of the Epicurean philo- 
 sophy : unless a cat or another dog forced him into 
 such a state of excitement and emotion that he lost 
 all control over himself, he was always careful not to 
 incur unpleasant sensations or run any risks to life 
 or limb. In defence of his master he would have 
 faced lions and tigers, devils and men, unhesita- 
 tingly ; but then his master was never in any kind 
 of danger, so that Euffino was at liberty to consider 
 his own safety and comfort as completely as he 
 chose ; and he did consider them, with a Pepys-like 
 interest in himself, and a Montaigne-like calmness of 
 judgment, which only in rare occasions of excitation 
 ever failed him. 
 
 Philosophically he now sat and weighed carefully 
 the chances of the descent. 
 
 How deep was the drop into the lane ? How 
 sharp were the uneven stones paving it ? Would 
 the game be worth the candle if he got there? 
 Would the roses have thorns if he went past them ? 
 Would he be any truly nearer the cats when he had 
 taken the jump, or would they all retreat instantly 
 into cellars at his mere approach ? 
 
64 RUFFINO 
 
 These questions absorbed him as he sat, with his 
 ears cocked and his ruff raised very high, looking 
 over the edge of the balustrade into the gutters 
 beneath him. 
 
 Ruffino's imagination was lively, and his passionate 
 instinct to alter, to interfere, and to command was 
 equalled only by that of the present German Kaiser : . 
 he saw himself as he would be if he could only get 
 down there, scattering the children, experimenting 
 on the youths' ankles, sternly interrogating the dogs, 
 exploring the dark interiors, and chevying the breath 
 out of every cat alive there. c The harmless, neces- 
 sary cat/ said the natural-history books. Harmless? 
 a creature who could spit like a soda-water bottle, 
 and scratch like a human virago ! And necessary ? 
 what strange tastes must those have had who could 
 ever have found her so ! Why, a cat was such a low 
 creature that she even ate the rodents which she 
 killed ! In Ruffino's estimation there was no lower 
 depth of ignominy. 
 
 The dwellers in the lane had lighted their little 
 flaring, foul-smelling, petroleum-fed wicks, and these 
 sparks of light blazed now here, and now there, in 
 darksome doorways, and in open holes which did 
 service as windows, thus making coarse and clumsy 
 imitations of the flitting and flashing of the fairy- 
 
RUFFINO 65 
 
 like fireflies with which the gardens were at that 
 hour animated and illumined. 
 
 Cautiously and softly the closed shutters of the 
 corner cottage opened, and the dimly-lit interior, 
 which so interested him, was once more visible ; he 
 did not move or speak, but through the foliage 
 watched anxiously. 
 
 His young neighbour was again at work ; 
 sewing- work, over which her head was bent assidu- 
 ously. It looked to him like some coarse shirting at 
 which she stitched so unceasingly, the oil-wick burn- 
 ing feebly beside her, her profile outlined against the 
 shadows like a white cameo cut on a dark ground. 
 He held his breath and sat, immovable, watching 
 her through the network of the rose-foliage. 
 
 An hour passed on, and the maiden had never 
 lifted up her head from her sewing. Suddenly, above 
 the other noises of the passage-way below, he heard 
 a harsh, coarse voice, raised in fury, and saw the 
 old Veneranda Pilotti standing in the young girl's 
 chamber, yelling at the top of her voice, and shaking 
 her fists in the air, her white, shaggy hair streaming, 
 and her lean form quivering with rage. 
 
 c Pay the rent, or out you will pack ! Pay the 
 rent, or I will sell you up ! ' she screamed, with a foul 
 oath. c Pay the rent, or out you will pack, you, 
 
66 RUFFINO 
 
 and your sick man, too ! Let him take up his bed 
 and walk. A Jew was bid to do it once, and a 
 heathen can do it now.' 
 
 ' I will pay you as soon as I can. Pray have 
 patience. Until now we have always paid you,' 
 replied the girl, without shrinking, and with simple 
 dignity ; but in the tension of her clasped hands, 
 and in the deadly pallor of her face, he could see the 
 violence of the emotion which she controlled. 
 
 The old woman shook both her fists in the air, 
 and thrust her face across the table, until it almost 
 touched that of her tenant, or lodger : the girl shrank 
 back, with instinctive aversion, from the contact. 
 
 ' Oh, you are proud, you minx ; you are too dainty 
 to be touched by me ! ' yelled the old woman, made 
 more furious by that involuntary action. c I am an 
 honest woman, I pay my way, I owe nobody any- 
 thing ; and you, you worm, you beggar, you pagan, 
 you think yourself too fine to be breathed upon by 
 me ! I'll teach you what you are, and what I am ! 
 I'll have the law on you ! The sheriffs officer and 
 the carabineers shall bundle you out neck and crop,, 
 you, and your sick man, and we will sell your 
 clothes"off your back, as you've got nothing else. We'll 
 sell the shoes off your feet, and the shift off your 
 body, and the shirt off his, or his shroud, if he die 
 
RUFFINO 67 
 
 to-night ! You shall see, you shall see ; we will pack 
 your sick man off to hospital, and you can go on the 
 streets why not ? You have got a fortune in your 
 face, and yet you are not ashamed to shut yourself 
 up here, and defraud an honest woman, when you 
 could get ' 
 
 ' Silence ! ' said the girl, coldly. c You can sell 
 what I have, if you please ; it is your right, I know. 
 But you have no right to insult and to outrage any 
 one.' 
 
 The woman laughed brutally. 
 
 c Oho ! you can use fine words, can you, and 
 play at being a fine lady ? You beggar's brat from 
 over seas, how dare you give yourself airs ! You 
 heathen, as penniless as a rag doll ! Pay me, and 
 then you can act the lady if you like, and starve on 
 your fine words, for aught that I shall care. Pay me, 
 I say ! Pay me ! pay me ! pay me ! ' 
 
 ' I am sorry, but I cannot.' 
 
 She spoke still very quietly, even coldly ; to the 
 looker-on at this pitiful scene it seemed as if he saw 
 a delicate doe of the forest being torn and badgered 
 by a butcher's bitch. 
 
 His impulse was to call aloud to the old harridan 
 that the rent should be paid by himself in the 
 morning ; his even stronger impulse was to descend 
 
 * 2 
 
68 RUFFINO 
 
 into the lane below, and mount the stairs of the 
 little house, and choke the beldame into silence with 
 a handful of bank notes. 
 
 But the remembrance of the sick man restrained 
 him, chilled him, made him doubt whether this 
 scene, like the terror at sight of himself a few hours 
 before, was not only an admirable piece of acting. . 
 
 A man may be moved by the purest chivalry, 
 but his enthusiasm will pale and halt before the 
 thought that it will only serve another lover who 
 has forestalled him in the life of the woman who 
 interests him. 
 
 And this sick man where was he ? How came 
 it that he did not find strength to say or to do 
 something in defence of her ? How could he lie 
 like a log in that inner room, not even lifting his 
 voice in her vindication ? 
 
 If not so ill that he was at the point of death, 
 surely such insults to a person beloved must give 
 momentary strength, even to a fainting heart and 
 palsied limbs ? 
 
 The whole place was so small that it was 
 impossible for any one living in it not to hear, in 
 an inner chamber, all that passed in an outer one. 
 Was he sleeping a sleep of stone, like the Emperor 
 Barbarossa beneath the mountains of the Untersberg ? 
 
RUFFINO 69 
 
 The old virago, swearing all the furious and 
 filthy oaths of the Roman vernacular, spit across 
 the table in sign of uttermost scorn and loathing, 
 and, vowing by all that was holy to have the law 
 on her tenant on the morrow, left the room with 
 violent gestures, her lips seeming to emit flame and 
 foulness as she went. 
 
 When the rickety, small door had closed on her, 
 the girl sank down on her seat, and losing all her 
 calmness and self-cominand, dropped her face upon 
 her hands and sobbed bitterly. 
 
 Castiglione, unable to control himself any 
 longer, rose, crossed the loggia, and descended the 
 marble staircase into the gardens, then went to a 
 little postern-door which opened out on the lane. 
 This door was never used, and its massive bolts were 
 rusty and almost immovable. 
 
 But after some minutes' laborious effort, he 
 contrived to drag them out from their sockets, and 
 to make the little door turn sullenly upon its hinges, 
 Ruffino all the while watching his endeavours with 
 an eagerness and wonder which filled his whole frame, 
 from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, with 
 intense and tremulous excitement. 
 
 Was he going to get into the lane at last ? But, 
 alas for his hopes ! Castiglione, as he opened the 
 
70 RUFFINO 
 
 door, put his little friend back into the garden. 
 c Wait there, Kuffo,' he said, in a tone against which 
 Kuffino, by sad experience, knew that there was no 
 appeal. His master shut the door on him inexorably, 
 and he was left with nothing to do but to scratch 
 madly at the wood and fill the air with lamenta- 
 tion. 
 
 Castiglione crossed rapidly the angle between his 
 own wall and that of the convent of the Sepolte Vive, 
 and went to the little house. He had never been in 
 the lane before. He knocked at its low, rounded, 
 ancient door, which someone within was just barring 
 up for the night. 
 
 ' Who is there ? ' asked a voice, which he recog- 
 nised as that of the old woman who had stormed and 
 raved upstairs. 
 
 ( I am the Duke of Castiglione open ! ' he an- 
 swered, in a low tone ; he did not want to be seen 
 or heard when on this errand, and he was afraid that 
 Euffino's piercing howls would attract the attention 
 of some of his household, who would discover that 
 the postern-door had been opened, and would, 
 perhaps, bar it afresh, and thus cut off his re- 
 treat. 
 
 The door of the little house unclosed, and a flare 
 of petroleum light, and the odour of garlic and herbs 
 
RUFFINO 71 
 
 and decaying vegetables, came into his face. The 
 old woman herself stared at him, silenced, aghast, 
 and paralysed with awe. Never before had one of 
 the House of Montefeltro been seen in that lane 
 within the memory of man. 
 
 He entered the house, making a gesture of 
 silence, and drew the door close behind him. 
 
 c I heard you speaking to your tenant or lodger 
 upstairs,' he said, sternly. ' You are a disgrace to 
 humanity. If you were not a woman, and old, I 
 would give you over to the police. Here are three 
 Napoleons, double the amount of your demand. Say 
 nothing, but do not trouble the the persons 
 upstairs, and merely tell them that you will allow 
 them time. Kern ember, that I shall know exactly 
 what you do or say ; and if you speak of this matter, 
 you will get no more money from me. Be wise and 
 prudent, and learn to use decent language, as 
 becomes your sex.' 
 
 Then he left her as abruptly as he had addressed 
 her, and re-entered his gardens by the postern-door, 
 Euffino receiving him with frantic capers, and leaps, 
 and circles of delight, as though he had returned 
 from a journey as long and perilous as Marco 
 Polo's. 
 
 It had been very unkind in his master to leave 
 
72 RUFFINO 
 
 him behind; but the generous little soul of Ruffino, 
 with a dog's magnanimity, forgave and forgot that in 
 his ecstasy at his beloved one's safe return. 
 
 Castiglione went up the marble staircase lost in 
 reverie. He knew that the charm of his gold and 
 his name would protect his neighbour from all 
 further persecution, and that the old woman's self- 
 interest would safely purchase her silence. 
 
 Ruffino followed, meekly and sadly; when the 
 first effervescence of delight had passed off, a sense 
 of pained offence, of wounded dignity, replaced it : 
 he had been pushed back and shut up in the garden ; 
 there was evidently something down in the lane 
 which it was not thought proper he should see. And 
 why ? He was a travelled dog, a dog of the world ; 
 a dog who knew men and manners, who was c versa- 
 tile ' in the true sense of the word. Why should he 
 be treated as if he were a baby or a puppy ? And if 
 there had been any danger down there, how could 
 his master ever possibly have gone into it without 
 his (Ruffino's) companionship and protection ? 
 
 It was a mystery and an affront. Ruffino ex- 
 pressed his sense of the injustice of it by the slant of 
 his tail, and by that stiffness of gait which, in dogs 
 as in men, expresses and symbolises wounded senti- 
 ments. 
 
RUFFINO 73 
 
 The attitude was, alas ! lost upon his master, who 
 was thinking of the act he had done, dissatisfied 
 because it was so little, and yet restlessly doubting 
 whether the interest he felt in the sorrows and 
 troubles of his neighbour was not a mere wasted 
 folly. If she lived with a lover who had dragged her 
 into such misery, was it for another man to take her 
 out of it ? He knew absolutely nothing of her, and 
 a high-bred sense of delicacy had made it impossible 
 for him to gratify his curiosity by making any in- 
 quiries of the wretched old woman below. His pride 
 had restrained him, and a nobler feeling also : it 
 seemed to him mean and ill-mannered to play the 
 spy on persons whom he befriended ; cowardly and 
 unworthy to turn an act of charity into the means 
 of discovering their secrets. 
 
 Whatever or whoever they were, they needed 
 pity, and were poor. 
 
 c Ah, Ruffino, what a misfortune it is to be a 
 sentimentalist ! To think that all the pretty coquines 
 who have flattered, and tricked, and robbed me, 
 have not taken all this kind of nonsense out of me ! 
 I daresay this child with the Cenci eyes, and the 
 white-rose cheeks, is no better than they were, 
 though she is reared in a harder school. Who is 
 the man, Euffino? Who is the white-livered cur 
 
74 RUFFINO 
 
 who spends his days in bed, and does not even raise 
 his voice in her defence ? ' 
 
 Kuffino could not interest himself in the ques- 
 tion. He had been considered unworthy to investi- 
 gate the mysteries of the lane, and if his master 
 felt worried by what he had seen there, it was an 
 accident for which Kuffino was clearly not respon- 
 sible. He occupied himself, with much ostentation 
 of indifference, in going round after his own tail to 
 capture a flea lodged in it. 
 
 Fleas, he considered, were subjects of much more 
 serious difficulty than human fancies and fiddle- 
 faddles. 
 
 Castiglione, glancing through the leaves, saw 
 that the girl had resumed her sewing: her face 
 looked ashen pale in the light of her lamp ; she was 
 working as if every breath of life depended on each 
 stitch. 
 
 c She must love the man/ he thought, c for 
 certainly no more miserable fate than this could ever 
 be offered to her.' 
 
 He was ashamed to think that even the old 
 woman who owned the corner house might divine 
 his weakness from his intervention between her and 
 her victim, or that his servants bringing his coffee 
 or his letters out on to the loggia might suspect 
 
RUFF I NO 75 
 
 the reason which made him take his seat on that 
 side of it where the noises from the lane were 
 audible. 
 
 Conscience makes cowards of the bravest ; and 
 he was conscious that the attraction to which he 
 surrendered himself was not wise, or flattering to 
 his dignity. But it was stronger than himself, and, 
 whatever suspicions his intelligence and experience 
 might bid him entertain, one glance at the pure, 
 pale profile of his young neighbour, and at her 
 slender, ever-busy hands, sufficed to scatter them to 
 the winds. 
 
 But his warm and tender sympathies were 
 checked by the misgivings as to the reality of that 
 which excited them. He had been the object of too 
 many solicitations and schemes on the part of 
 women not to have become sceptical with his mind, 
 although his nature was impulsive and trustful. 
 His experience told him that all which excited his 
 interest might be a mere picture, artificially arranged 
 to excite his curiosity and pity. With his heart he 
 believed in her undoubtingly ; but his acquired 
 wariness and incredulity made him sensible that 
 the romance and pathos of the situation might very 
 possibly be only parts of an ingenious fiction. 
 
 Like all men of generous character, he had been 
 
76 RUFFINO 
 
 in his earlier years both robbed and duped. He 
 knew that it was extremely probable that all which 
 so affected and attracted him now, might be but the 
 clever mise en scene of a melodrama carefully de- 
 signed to draw him at once by his pity and his 
 passions. Then, he had been absent from Rome three 
 years, and, according to the witness of the neigh- 
 bourhood, she had lived thus more than that space 
 of time. Still, it was possible that, if she were the 
 companion of a penniless, jealous lover, she might 
 have seen in the arrival of the heir of Montefeltro 
 an occasion for other and more advantageous 
 intrigues. He hated to think so, for suspicion to 
 fine natures always seems contemptible and base; but 
 his good sense, and his sad knowledge of life, forced 
 him to admit the possibility of it. 
 
 Every man resents the idea that he may be the 
 dupe of his better emotions ; and there were times 
 when, if he had not been tied to the spot by his 
 father's state, he would have gone out of the city to 
 shake off the too patent seduction of this mystery, 
 so near to him, yet so intangible and unchange- 
 able. 
 
 Some half-hour after his ascent to the loggia 
 that evening, the major-domo approached him 
 with a message from the house-physician, to require 
 
RUFFINO 77 
 
 his presence for a moment indoors. A change had 
 been observed in his father's state : he was breathing 
 heavily, and his eyes had unclosed; recovery was 
 almost impossible ; it was thought that this faint 
 movement, this feeble flicker of consciousness, must 
 be the precursor of the final change of all. 
 
 Castiglione hastened across the house, and to the 
 apartments occupied by the Prince, and, reaching his 
 bedside, stooping, spoke a few gentle words. His 
 father's eyes had a momentary glare of recognition, 
 in which there was little kindness or affection ; then 
 their wrinkled, swollen lids drooped over them again, 
 and he sank once more into the sort of trance half- 
 stupor, half-slumber in which he had lain, and might 
 yet lay, so many dreary days. 
 
 c I will sit with him to-night,' said his son ; and 
 did so, whilst Ruffino slept, or watched fitfully, hidden 
 under the bed, and the deep bells of the many 
 churches around tolled the hours in succession with 
 slow, booming strokes. 
 
78 RUFFINO 
 
 VI 
 
 KUFFINO, lying thus, motionless, and very much bored, 
 under the dying magnate's couch, meditated long and 
 sullenly on the slight which had been put upon him, 
 and on the means by which he could possibly compass 
 an unperceived descent into the lane. The chief 
 difficulty which presented itself to his mind was the 
 disloyalty involved in leaving his master. He had 
 never left him, voluntarily, for an hour, and it was a 
 desertion which would, he felt, be extremely repugnant 
 to him, to allow his dear friend and owner to remain 
 unprotected even for ten minutes. But then he had 
 been insulted and ill-treated by that beloved friend ; 
 he had been thrust back into the garden and shut up 
 in it. The blow to his self-appreciation had been 
 severe, and the stimulus which it gave to his curio- 
 sity was immense and irresistible. On the whole, 
 the outrage which had been done to him decided him, 
 if he got the chance, to go down into this mys- 
 terious terra incognita, no matter what the cost. He 
 had seen the dogs who dwelt there scratching and 
 smelling so madly and indefatigably amongst the 
 rubbish -heaps, that the always-keen imagination with 
 which he was gifted (or cursed) was heated to boiling 
 
RUFFINO 79 
 
 over, and the conviction grew upon him more and 
 more that something very extraordinary and ex- 
 quisitely delightful must be concealed down there. 
 
 The long hours wore away, and the rose of dawn 
 spread over the city. 
 
 The dying Prince had sunk again into a lethargic 
 slumber, and lay like a log of wood beneath the 
 stately gold and red of the baldachino. The sinister 
 figures of Magliabecchi and Don Antonio, with that 
 of the nun in attendance, were black silhouettes 
 against the light of the wax candles. Castiglione, 
 with a slight, irrepressible shudder, walked noise- 
 lessly across the great chamber and opened one 
 of the windows. The beautiful radiance of earliest 
 day shone through the cross-bars of its iron grating. 
 He stood and looked out at the azure and opal hues 
 of the sky ; his heart was heavy as though, with the 
 death which was impending, there would go away 
 from him all peace and power and plenty, instead of 
 his fortunes being tripled and his liberty confirmed 
 by it. 
 
 There was something in the manner of this death 
 silent, sardonic, supine as it was which added to 
 its awe and horror ; something which showed that 
 human life was no more in the relentless passing of 
 time than a felled tree, than a blasted rock. 
 
8o RUFFINO 
 
 4 If your most illustrious would like to retire, 
 there is no immediate danger ; the present state is 
 likely to be again prolonged/ whispered Maglia- 
 becchi, as he came to his side, creaking, with elaborate 
 caution, in stiff shoes, over the mosaic floor. 
 
 Castiglione thanked him, and withdrew to his 
 own rooms to take a bath and sleep for a little while. . 
 
 Outside the bath-room Euffino paused, and sat 
 down. He never entered willingly where there was 
 any rushing and splashing of water. Twice or thrice 
 every year he was himself forced to undergo the 
 indignity of being washed by the servants. He 
 abhorred any sight or sound that even hinted at the 
 abominations of soaps, and sponges, and streams, hot 
 and oold, pouring out of taps. So he sat outside all 
 bath-rooms, invariably, whilst his master chose to 
 enjoy those things within. And whilst he sat here 
 now, it seemed to him that the hand of fate pointed 
 to a propitious hour for the safe exploration of the 
 Viccolo of S. Anastasia. 
 
 The sense that the end of Montefeltro's agony 
 was very near made the household at once subdued 
 and careless, preoccupied and inattentive. He had 
 been a great man, in the sense of dominion and 
 tyranny and possession, and his death was no slight 
 event in his household and in his city. 
 
RUFFINO 8 1 
 
 It would bring many changes with it, and the 
 functionaries and attendants and hangers-on, of 
 whom the name was legion, talked with bated breath 
 and anxious faces of the chances of their future. It 
 was known that the heir had but little love for the 
 c black brood ' which his father had fed and sheltered 
 for so long. The chief cause of dissension between 
 his father and himself had been their widely-differing 
 estimate of these parasites and hypocrites, who led an 
 indolent, useless, incumbering life, telling their beads 
 and filling their bellies under the shadow of the great 
 Montefeltro escutcheon. 
 
 There was no one, therefore, to observe or check 
 his adventurous movements as Ruffino, knowing very 
 well that he was doing wrong, trotted down the 
 corridor, with his tail hung low, and his eyes looking 
 from side to side with a very guilty apprehensiveness 
 of remark. 
 
 The gates of the great entrance would surely be 
 shut, he reflected, and it was of no use whatever to 
 think of going out by that way ; the back doors of 
 the offices were too far off to make it wise to waste 
 time in trying them on a mere chance of their being 
 ajar; there was nothing really sure except to jump 
 down into the lane from the loggia, and run the risk 
 
 Gr 
 
82 RUFFINO 
 
 of what the pointed, uneven stones might feel like 
 when he got to them. 
 
 His mind once made up, he acted on it with the 
 promptitude and decision which marked his character. 
 He sped through the well-known apartments with 
 the utmost swiftness ; and although some of the under 
 servants were polishing the massive floors, and 
 dusting the walls and furniture, no one of them 
 dared to stop him, and ask what he was doing. 
 Rnffino's character was not one with which inferiors 
 cared to take liberties. Whenever they attempted 
 to do so, they repented it. 
 
 In less than a minute of time he coursed through 
 the spacious and numerous rooms, all lying open to 
 the soft, clear daylight, passed out on to the loggia 
 and approached that western part of its balustrade 
 which looked upon the longed-for lane : he had his 
 moment and his means. A coward would have 
 quailed ; but Ruffino was of great courage, and knew 
 neither timidity nor indecision. Even his habitual 
 prudence and philosophic self-regard were forgotten 
 in the intensity of curiosity and the overwhelming 
 impulse to enjoy his liberty which had come like a 
 delirium upon him. He put one paw over the stone 
 parapet, and looked down : the descent was steep, the 
 stones were sharp, the fall would be uncomfortable. 
 
RUFFINO 83 
 
 He surveyed the depth below with one foot in the 
 air and both ears cocked. He hesitated, doubted, 
 almost abandoned the enterprise ; but in that one 
 instant of irresolution he saw a cat the same 
 wretched, tall, scraggy, skeleton-like yellow-and- 
 white cat he had so passionately loathed when he 
 had seen her from above, and which now stood upon 
 a doorstep, and seemed to his excited imagination 
 to be grinning sardonically at his fears. 
 
 Ruffino paused and pondered no more ; he put his 
 other foot over, slid into the tangle of the tea-rose on 
 the wall, and, rather scrambling down than leaping, 
 let himself drop unresistingly on the rugged cobble- 
 stones below. Happily for himself, he fell on a heap 
 of mouldy straw which had been pitchforked out of 
 one of the miserable stables opposite, and he rose to his 
 feet, stunned for the moment, and with the sensation 
 of having had all the breath knocked out of his body, 
 but otherwise unhurt, and sound in limb and wind. 
 
 His first thought was for the cat, but she was 
 gone ; the sight of his fall had scared her out of her 
 senses, and sent her flying up the street. He stood 
 a moment, and gazed up at his deserted loggia. How 
 very far away it seemed ! 
 
 Even Livingstone's and Burton's and Stanley's 
 spirits may have quailed momentarily on first finding 
 
 o 2 
 
84 RUFFINO 
 
 themselves alone in a barbarous and unknown land* 
 For one brief, ignoble instant Kuffino wished himself 
 safe back on his cushion beside his master's breakfast- 
 table, drinking his cream and tasting anchovy-toast 
 and potted prawns. The next, as became his race, he 
 shook himself with a snort of defiance, and surveyed 
 the scene into which he had come. 
 
 He was a little shaken and dulled by the fall, 
 which had been severe, although so greatly mitigated 
 by the mouldy straw : he was not quite himself, not 
 altogether so brisk, so self-possessed, so imperious of 
 temper, and so conscious of important missions com- 
 mitted to him, as he had always been hitherto. And 
 the aspect of the place was not as inviting as he had, 
 when viewing it from above, imagined it to be. Two 
 poor, lean, mangy mongrels were staring at him from 
 a safe distance, and another cat, a grey-striped one, 
 sat insolently aloft on the edge of a gutter, and peered 
 over at him from that secure elevation. The house 
 nearest him was a tumbledown place, scarcely more 
 than a shed ; in the doorway a ragged woman sat 
 stirring a pan of beans over a charcoal brazier, and 
 behind her, on the dirty wall, hung cats' skins and 
 rats' skins, and horror of horrors ! dogs' skins too. 
 
 Kuffino understood that his master had been wiser 
 than he had thought in forbidding him to approach 
 
RUFF1NO 85 
 
 the precincts of this charnel-house. But although he 
 was in himself disgusted and regretful, bon sang ne 
 peut mentir, arid he rose to the occasion. The de- 
 lightful excitement which he had anticipated from 
 the escapade seemed all, somehow or other, to have 
 evaporated as soon as he had touched the stones ; but 
 it still remained incumbent on him to preserve his 
 dignity, and call those impudent and plebeian dogs, 
 who were staring at him so rudely, to account. 
 
 There was a noise and confusion in this narrow 
 roadway which seemed to him altogether wrong and 
 offensive ; the whole scene reeked of filth and dis- 
 comfort, two things odious to the well-ordered mind of 
 Euffino : and the refuse-heaps, which from above had 
 looked so mysterious and tempting, were on close 
 observation mere piles of foul dust, which had been 
 searched through and through already by famished 
 canine canaille. 
 
 He was so much disgusted that he barked offen- 
 sively, imperiously, violently. 
 
 As much insult and scorn can be put into a bark 
 as can be conveyed by a human sneer or frown : the 
 bark of Euffino was a trumpet-blast of defiance and 
 disdain as gallant and fearless in its way as the blast 
 from Eoncesvalles. 
 
 It restored his own self-respect, but it made him 
 
86 RUFFINO 
 
 scores of enemies, as our pride is apt to do for all of 
 us. Boys, who hitherto had not noticed him, shouted 
 ' Brr r r r ! there's a fox-dog,' and shied stones 
 at him; a mastiff, who belonged to a tripe-seller, 
 came out of a shed with bristling back and stiffening 
 tail; the two lean curs showed their teeth, the 
 children yelled. In an instant the intruder, who had 
 been unnoticed before, became the centre of curiosity, 
 irritation, suspicion, malevolence ; even the miserable 
 yellow-and-white cat came out of her hiding-place, 
 and arched her back, and spit at him from a safe dis- 
 tance. 
 
 But these antagonisms and offences roused all the 
 temper of Ruffino to boiling-heat, and all his natural 
 hauteur and high-handedness returned to him re- 
 doubled in intensity. He dashed into the cat, rolled 
 her over, and shook her in the dust ; then he bolted 
 at the two staring curs, and hit out at them right 
 and left, whilst they yelled in terror and shrieked 
 for mercy ; then, nothing daunted by the mastiff's 
 enormous size and superiority, he went for him, his 
 own little white body quivering with rage, his snowy 
 ruff standing erect in fury, his black eyes blazing fire, 
 his silver bells clanging and clashing violently. But 
 the sinewy hand of the old woman who had been 
 stirring the beans over the brazier clutched him by 
 
RUFFINO 87 
 
 the neck, whilst with her other hand she flourished 
 her hot iron ladle. 
 
 ' Here Bau ! ' screamed this woman to the tripe- 
 man's mastiff, warning him off. Here Bau ! The 
 little one's got a rare fur coat of his own. Don't you 
 throttle him, Bau, or you'll spoil it for the trade. A 
 knife'll do his business neat and clean. I'll slit his 
 pipe and skin him in a brace of seconds.' 
 
 Euffino, struggling like one possessed, hung help- 
 less in the savage grip of the old witch : in vain 
 he strove to free his throat and use his teeth ; in 
 vain he tried to curve his body in such wise that he 
 could kick and scratch with his hind feet ; in vain ! 
 in vain ! She held him in a grip of steel, whilst she 
 pulled his gold necklace roughly over his head, and 
 then banged on to his poor little writhing body with 
 the hot and heavy iron ladle. 
 
 In a few moments more the knife would have slit 
 his throat, his gallant little spirit would have been 
 quenched for ever, his pretty white coat would have 
 been hung bleeding on a nail, and his body would 
 have been thrown on to one of the refuse-heaps. But 
 a good angel descended to his rescue. 
 
 c It is the Duke's little dog ; you must not touch 
 him ! ' said a voice which seemed to fall from heaven 
 on his ear ; and a young girl, with not less courage 
 
88 RUFFINO 
 
 than his own, thrust her way through the barking 
 dogs, the shouting children, the dust, the noise, and 
 the cruelty, caught the woman's wrist with one hand, 
 and with the other grasped Ruffino. 
 
 6 It is the Duke's pet, I tell you. You must not 
 touch a hair of his head. Give him to me ; he is all 
 bleeding ; you have hurt him ! You wicked people, 
 you have hurt him ! ' said his defender, who looked 
 like a young Saint Dorothea come down from a 
 fresco of Kaffaelle, with her shining hair catching 
 the sunlight, and her face flushed with excitement 
 and a holy wrath. 
 
 The people and the children fell back, the uproar 
 ceased ; the woman involuntarily relaxed her grip on 
 Ruffino, although she grumbled : 
 
 'The Duke? the Duke? What is the Duke to 
 me ? Get you along with your dukes. Let him pay 
 me if he want the little beast back.' 
 
 ' Pay you for trying to kill his dog ! ' cried the 
 girl with indignation ; but by this time she held 
 Euffino safely in her arms, and, not waiting to bandy 
 more words, she clasped him, all bleeding as he was, 
 to her breast, and ran indoors ; into the little corner 
 house where the herbs and vegetables, brooms and 
 charcoal, filled the entrance. 
 
 Ruffino offered no resistance ; he was half-stunned 
 
RUFFINO 89 
 
 by the blows of the iron ladle, but through his dulled 
 perceptions a sense of safety thrilled ; he felt that he 
 was in the arms of a friend. 
 
 She sped with him up the short, steep, stifling 
 wooden stair, and entered her own room that small, 
 neat, bare, whitewashed chamber in which she 
 painted her images by day and stitched her linen by 
 night. 
 
 He knew very well that he was in that little 
 corner house which was opposite his own beloved 
 loggia, and he kept trying to rise, craning his neck 
 to see the wall and the trees of his home out of the 
 tiny window of the place in which he was, and 
 whining and moaning in most piteous strain. 
 
 1 You want to go to your master, you poor little 
 fellow,' said his saviour, with compassion and sym- 
 pathy. ' If Volodia be awake, I will ask him what I 
 had better do.' 
 
 She left Ruffino a moment, and went into the 
 inner room, where on a low pallet-bed a youth was 
 sleeping. His slumber was so tranquil and so deep, 
 and his pale, worn face looked so peaceful in it, that 
 she withdrew without making a sound which could 
 disturb him, and stood a moment or two, thinking, 
 and gazing at the little dog. 
 
 ( Poor Ruffino ! dear Ruffino ! how could you ever 
 
90 RUFFINO 
 
 be so foolish as to go down into that wretched lane ! ' 
 she said tenderly, knowing his name from having 
 heard it often called on the loggia by his master and 
 his servants. 
 
 She laid him down on her bed, and with fresh 
 water and some soft rags proceeded to wash his 
 wounds. They were not deep, but they were numerous. 
 The cat had scratched and mauled, the mongrels had 
 bitten, the woman had bruised him, and he was 
 bleeding in several places, though his thick coat had 
 saved him from any mortal hurt. He allowed her, 
 gratefully, to do what she chose to him, and lay 
 motionless on the bed after drinking thirstily. In 
 his soul he was profoundly humiliated : he had failed 
 altogether in his explorations, and he had been igno- 
 miniously vanquished by his inferiors. No doubt, he 
 thought, the wretched cat had picked herself up, and 
 was sitting, grinning in triumph, somewhere ; whilst 
 as for the woman ! a thrill of unspeakable rage 
 and horror ran through his aching little body as he 
 thought of her, and her hot iron ladle, and the dried 
 dogs' skins hanging to the wall. 
 
 The girl touched him with the greatest care and 
 tenderness, and also with a certain skill, as of one 
 accustomed to suffering and its treatment, and would 
 have made him a comfortable little bed upon her own 
 
RUFFINO 91 
 
 pillow. But Ruffino, as soon as his pain and morti- 
 fication allowed him to become in any degree himself, 
 was pining for his home and his master. 
 
 She had just decided in her meditations that, 
 much as she disliked to approach the palace, she must 
 carry the patient to the gates, and bid the porter 
 there restore him to the Duke, when her patient, who 
 could not use one of his legs, limping hurriedly, despite 
 his wounds,, to the casement, whined, howled, trembled, 
 tried to mount, and failed, and showed every sign of 
 violent agitation. The girl looked across at the 
 loggia, and saw Castiglione, who was leaning down 
 over the balustrade. Tragic as had been the events 
 occurring in the time, the time itself had been brief ; 
 not more than ten minutes had elapsed since Euffino's 
 imprudent and perilous descent. Castiglione, upon 
 leaving the bath-room, had missed his little friend, 
 had dressed quickly, and had come to seek for him on 
 the loggia ; he was now looking up and down, whist- 
 ling for and calling him by name. 
 
 The young girl caught the dog up in her arms, 
 and held him up to the window. 
 
 ' Sir,' she cried aloud, breathlessly, c sir, he is 
 quite safe, look ! but he is much hurt ; he had 
 jumped into the lane, and the people were cruel. I 
 have done all I could for him. He wants to come to 
 
92 RUFFINO 
 
 you, but he cannot ; he must not jump, he has been 
 bleeding/ 
 
 All the while that she spoke Buffino was strug- 
 gling frantically to leap out of her arms, forgetful of 
 his wounds. She struggled to retain him ; her hair 
 was loosened in the combat, and fell about her shoul- 
 ders. In her excitement she conquered her shyness ; - 
 agitation and interest gave colour to her cheeks, and 
 animated her large, sad eyes; she looked scarcely 
 more than a child in years. 
 
 4 1 will come for him/ said Oastiglione, deeply 
 moved. ' How can I thank you for your goodness 
 in defence of my poor little dog ! ' 
 
 c Thank me by not coming here,' said the girl, 
 hastily. ' There is your garden-door ; I will put him 
 in there, and you can take him. No, no ! I entreat 
 you, Signor Duca, do not come here ! ' 
 
 She disappeared, as she spoke, from the casement, 
 carrying the struggling Kuffino with her. In another 
 instant Castiglione opened the postern-door, and met 
 her there. But before he could address or detain, 
 she put the little dog inside, and fled away. 
 
 c Do not follow me, pray do not ! ' she cried, as 
 she ran away ; and there was so genuine an appeal in 
 the accent of her voice, that he perforce obeyed her. 
 
 6 She is afraid of the man who lives with her ; he 
 
RUFFINO 93 
 
 must be a jealous brute. There is excuse for 
 jealousy, for she is lovely and interesting beyond 
 compare/ thought Castiglione, as he stooped over 
 Ruffino, and examined the wounds and the bruises 
 which had punished his small friend's disobedience. 
 Ruffino gave a long sigh of satisfaction : here was 
 his garden, here was his master, he wanted nothing 
 more ; but he felt crestfallen, humiliated, subdued ; 
 he closed his eyes, and lay motionless in his owner's 
 arms, to be borne gently up the marble stairs. 
 
 c Ah, Buffi ! I would never have believed that 
 you would have left me under any temptation what- 
 ever,' said Casfciglione : and this was the only reproach 
 or rebuke which the culprit received. 
 
 All was well that ended well, and the wounds 
 were not severe; the worse part of his injuries, to 
 him, was that the detested Magliabecchi came and 
 looked at them, and ordered one of the servants to 
 wash them with arnica, and basely made them an 
 excuse to try and administer a pill. To this last 
 outrage, however, Ruffino was, even in his suffering, 
 too much master of himself and of the position to 
 submit ; the dose was successfully resisted, and spat 
 out into the leech's face. 
 
 His master, as soon as he had placed the truant 
 in safety, and seen his wounds attended to, returned 
 
94 RUFFINO 
 
 to the loggia, only to find the wooden shutters shut 
 at the little house, and all means of oral commu- 
 nication ended for the time. It was evident that, 
 although she had rescued the dog, she had no in- 
 tention of making her good action a means of 
 increasing her acquaintance with his owner. 
 
 ' The sick man must be thrice over an Othello/ - 
 he thought, and pondered on what he could do to 
 testify his gratitude, and open the way to knowing and 
 seeing more of her. Her beauty and her timidity 
 fascinated him, and she had seemed to him still 
 lovelier in the full morning light than she had done 
 in the rays of the lamp and the moon. The courage 
 too, which, on inquiring into the facts, he found 
 that she had shown in saving Euffino, had been of 
 no common order. To have any one of so much 
 charm and youthfulness so near him, and yet so 
 completely severed from him, captivated the romance 
 of his temperament, and awakened that kind of 
 passion which finds root and increase in difficulty. 
 
 How could he recompense her ? To offer her 
 money was impossible. If he sent her any gifts at 
 all, he foresaw that they would be sent back to him. 
 He might aid her indirectly, but never directly. 
 Besides, who was the man who shared her existence ? 
 who burdened it, or sweetened it, and, at all events, 
 
RUFFINO 95 
 
 in some way or other, usurped it ? The memory of 
 this unknown stranger poisoned his peace and tainted 
 his memories of her. 
 
 The wooden shutters remained closed all that 
 evening. 
 
 On the following morning, almost as soon as the 
 sun rose, he returned to the loggia with an eagerness 
 of anticipation of which he was half-ashamed. 
 
 The windows were open, but no one was visible. 
 
 c Signorina ! Signorina ! ' he called, as loudly as 
 he could without being overheard by the people in 
 the lane, who were all standing about and gossiping 
 of the past episode, and looking upward, anxiously, at 
 the loggia, some afraid of the vengeance he would 
 take, some furious with the girl's interference, all 
 passionately regretting that they had not recognised 
 Ruffino, and so acted as to procure a large reward. 
 
 ' Signorina ! Signorina ! ' repeated Castiglione, 
 softly, c will you not listen to me for one moment ? 
 Believe in my gratitude, at least, if you will not 
 accept my friendship. 
 
 But he obtained no reply. 
 
 So far as he could see into them, the two little 
 chambers were empty. He watched them in vain. He 
 thought he could distinguish voices speaking in the 
 inner room, but the sound was indistinct. He could 
 
96 RUFFlNO 
 
 obtain no response, and he walked to and fro, on the 
 black and white pavement of the loggia, restless and 
 vexed. 
 
 At last he bethought himself of writing to her, and 
 tying the note to a stone, and throwing it across. 
 His consciousness of the extreme interest he took in 
 her restrained him from sending any servant to the 
 place. He went indoors, and wrote a few lines, 
 expressing his deep sense of obligation for her rescue 
 of his little favourite, and entreating her in return 
 to command his services in any way ; he hinted that 
 her burdens must be great, and asked for her con- 
 fidence, and her permission to be of use to her. He 
 signed it with his full name and titles, tied it to a 
 small fragment of marble which was lying on the 
 loggia, broken from one of the pilasters of the 
 balustrade, and threw it, with a sure aim, in at the 
 open window at which she had so often sat. 
 
 He heard it fall on the bare brick floor. 
 
 It was sent to a nameless woman, who, to all 
 semblance, lived with another man ; it was not a 
 prudent or a sensible action, but it was one whicli 
 pleased him, and gratified the romantic side of his 
 temperament. 
 
 And, after all, the service she had done him 
 was great, for his regard for Ruffino was no 
 
RUFFINO 97 
 
 common liking ; the little, shrewd, devoted, clever 
 creature was very dear to him, and for six years had 
 been part and parcel of his life. 
 
 Euffino himself, having now torn off all his 
 bandages, and licked his wounds with his tongue, 
 in a much surer surgery than Magliabecchi's, was 
 walking after him, very stiff indeed, and with one 
 leg useless, but absolutely refusing to stay on the 
 cushion and wear the appliances ordered for him. 
 His own way had proved a disastrous way to him for 
 once ; but, for all that, EufSno was not going to be 
 dictated to by a quack. 
 
 So long as there was a vital spark alive in his 
 body, he thought, he would resist such degradation 
 as that. His beauty had gone for the time being : 
 his coat was dirty, and smeared with bloodstains, 
 which had been only imperfectly washed off; one of 
 his eyes had been scratched by the cat, and was 
 temporarily closed ; and the useless limb had to be 
 carried in an elevated and crooked position, which 
 took from the dignity of his general appearance. 
 But within his spirit was dauntless, although his 
 pride was hurt. Gibed and grinned at by a cat, stared 
 and mouthed at by mongrel dogs, seized by one 
 woman, and saved by another woman ; all this was 
 humiliation and mortification which made his tail 
 
 H 
 
98 RUFFINO 
 
 droop low indeed; but his soul was still undaunted 
 within his breast, and he had torn up the arnica 
 bandages into a thousand atoms, and had limped out 
 after his master on to the loggia. 
 
 Castiglione watched till he was tired of watching, 
 to see some one enter the room and pick up the 
 letter, which he had purposely placed in a large 
 envelope, and sealed with his arms, that it might 
 attract attention. But no one appeared. 
 
 ' Your good angel is invisible, Kuffino ; perhaps 
 she has returned to the skies,' he said to the little 
 dog, who was busied in the endeavour to remove 
 from his white coat every mark of his recent en- 
 counter. 
 
 Castiglione remained there until it was mid-day, 
 and the marbles of the pavement were hot with the 
 blaze of the sun which poured down through the 
 cloth of the awnings. Then he went to his noon-day 
 breakfast with a sense of disappointment and irri- 
 tation. 
 
 He could appreciate the delicacy with which she 
 refrained from every possibility of attracting his 
 attention, or seeming to await his thanks for the 
 service she had done to him. But he wanted ex- 
 tremely to increase his acquaintance with her, and 
 learn who and what had brought her to earn her 
 
RUFFINO 99 
 
 bread so arduously in a strange land ; a strange land, 
 for, although she spoke the language of the country 
 fluently and faultlessly, there was that foreign accent 
 on her tongue with which he was accustomed in the 
 salons of Rome to identify Russians. It was pro- 
 bably because she was Russian that the people of the 
 lane, and his own gardener, called her a pagan, and 
 the picture which hung in the corner of her room 
 was embossed with metal, and was, to all appearance, 
 an Eikon. He had seen her on feast-days set a 
 lighted lamp before it. 
 
 He was occupied all that afternoon by urgent 
 matters of business, and by visits from great digni- 
 taries of the Church, who could not be welcomed by 
 subordinates. His father remained in the same state, 
 and at any hour might pass away. Scores of persons 
 were awaiting his orders, his directions, his answers 
 to momentous inquiries. He remained all day 
 indoors, and Ruffino, who was in much pain, 
 although too proud to complain of it, stayed also in 
 the great state-room where Castiglione received his 
 visitors and applicants, and, curled up on a velvet 
 armchair, lay eyeing enviously, with his uninjured eye, 
 the silken-clad legs of the prelates and the priests : 
 next to a cat and a doctor, Ruffino hated a church- 
 man. 
 
 H 2 
 
too &UFFINO 
 
 It was a beautiful day, warm without too great 
 heat, golden, dreamy, and fragrant. Castiglione be- 
 grudged its long, light hours passed in the carefully- 
 darkened room, under the domed ceiling painted by 
 Pietro of Cortona with the processions of the Flora- 
 lian games. He grew weary of the elaborate cere- 
 monial of inquiry and condolence, of the long formal 
 interviews, of the reiterated stereotyped phrases ; 
 and he shuddered to remember how many of these he 
 would have to endure in the future. 
 
 He was as content as a released prisoner when at 
 sunset his last visitor withdrew, and he was free at 
 last to traverse the apartments and go out into the 
 air. The hush and dew of evening were in the 
 atmosphere as he went out on to the loggia, followed, 
 as by his shadow, by the small, and now limping, 
 figure of Ruffino. The honeysuckle and lime- 
 blossom in the garden below poured out their fresh 
 perfume, and met the heavy odours of the blossom- 
 ing magnolias. 
 
 How many thousands of such nights our Borne 
 has known ! How many thousands of dead lovers, in 
 such nights as these, living, have here declared upon 
 each other's lips their loves eternal ! 
 
 Castiglione approached the balustrade, and looked 
 through the screen of the rose-foliage. He saw the 
 
RUFFINO 101 
 
 girl at the window, standing, as Beatrice Oenci may 
 oftentimes have stood, steeped in the sweetness and 
 the fragrance of the air. 
 
 She was, he thought, waiting there on purpose 
 to see him, for she was not working : her lamp was 
 unlighted, and her hands rested on the rough stone 
 sill of the casement. 
 
 She started a little as she perceived his eyes 
 looking at her, and heard his voice addressing her 
 through the leaves between the marble columns. 
 
 ' You found my letter ? ' he asked her, softly. 
 ' Pardon the rude fashion of its arrival for the sake 
 of the sincerity of its contents.' 
 
 c I found it,' she answered, her voice reaching 
 him in return, low and clear, across the chasm of the 
 passage which divided them. I thank you very 
 much for what you say. I did but little for your 
 dog, and there is no need that you should think of 
 what I did for a moment.' 
 
 ' I rejoice to think of ifc,' replied Castiglione, 
 warmly. ( It was a noble and courageous action. 
 Let it be a strong and enduring link between us ; 
 will you not ? ' 
 
 The extreme sadness of her face grew still more 
 pathetically grave as she shook her head. 
 
 * There cannot be even any acquaintance between 
 
102 RUFFINO 
 
 us, Signer Duca. You are a great nobleman, and I 
 am a poor person, a work-girl. I only speak to you 
 to-night because it seemed so churlish, so ill-bred, to 
 say nothing in answer to your generous words. But 
 I beg you never to address me again. It is the only 
 kindness you can do to me.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 ' For a thousand reasons. You may have seen, or 
 guessed, that I work for my bread, and and I do not 
 always gain it. If you notice me you can only hurt 
 me. I have promised one whom I love dearly, and 
 who has but little time left on earth, never to speak 
 to you ; and though I break the promise to-night in 
 order to thank you for your letter, I do wrong, and 
 I will never do it again.' 
 
 The words were quiet and resigned, but there was 
 an intense hopelessness in their sound which was in 
 dreary contrast with the youthfulness of the lips 
 which uttered them. 
 
 c The man who lies yonder ? ' said Castiglione 
 quickly, and with a sense of personal offence and 
 anger. ' The man who is ill ? It is he whom you 
 care so much for. What is he to you? and why 
 should he warn you against me, alone, of all the 
 human race ? ' 
 
 ' He is my brother, and he is dying. He did not 
 
RUFFINO 103 
 
 warn me against you especially., He made me pro- 
 mise when we came here never to speak to any 
 strangers whatsoever.' 
 
 ' Your brother ! ' said Castiglione, with a sense of 
 relief and pleasure at his heart, which was succeeded 
 by that vague scepticism which becomes second 
 nature to men of the world. 'Is it your brother, 
 then, who lives with you ? Is it he for whom you 
 toil so hardly ? Tell me a little more. What 
 country are you from ? Russian, if my ear does not 
 play me false.' 
 
 c Yes, we are Russian. Volodia, my brother, is 
 the Count Nelaguine. My name is Vera Nicolaievna. 
 My brother was an officer of the Guard, but he 
 became a Revolutionist ; he was driven into Nihilism 
 by the arrest and banishment to Tomsk of a dear 
 friend ; he would have been sent himself to Siberia 
 if he had not left the country secretly. He brought 
 me away with him, quite suddenly, one night. Our 
 parents were dead, and our relatives were harsh, proud 
 people, who abhorred his doctrines, and would not 
 have raised a hand to save his life. We came to 
 Rome because Volodia has great talent as a land- 
 scape painter ; and for the first two years we could 
 live fairly, though only in this little house. We had 
 brought nothing with us except some pearls which I 
 
104 RUFFINO 
 
 had round my throat, for we had to fly at a moment's 
 notice. But Yolodia sold his sketches well, and we 
 were happy. But six months ago he was caught in 
 a thunderstorm on the Campagna ; he was drenched 
 to the skin ; it brought on rheumatic fever, which 
 left him stone-deaf, and his heart is weakened by it. 
 I think he cannot live long. 5 
 
 Her voice shook, and she was silent from the 
 strength of her emotion. Castiglione was silent, too, 
 from a sense of the utter insufficiency of any words 
 to give her any consolation ; he felt, no doubt, that 
 she told the truth there was a simplicity and a 
 sincerity in the expression arid utterance which for- 
 bade him to doubt her for a moment. 
 
 Standing by the window, with the light from the 
 skies upon her face, she looked so young, and sad, 
 and desolate, that any man who could have doubted 
 her would, he thought, have been a monster. 
 
 1 1 am very sorry that you should have to bear 
 such great sorrow so early,' he said at last ; I can 
 only repeat what I said to you in my letter let me 
 be your friend. Allow me to do for you what I 
 can.' 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 'Volodia would never consent. He would be 
 very angry if he knew that I had even told you as 
 
RUFFINO 105 
 
 much as this. Your gardens, and the birds in them, 
 have been a great comfort to me. Do not force me 
 to shut the shutters ; it is so dark and so dull then.' 
 
 c Force you to shut them ? What can you mean ? 
 I am too rejoiced if you have gained any pleasure in 
 this place.' 
 
 ' I must shut them if you will talk to me. I 
 cannot disobey Volodia. I think he is calling me 
 now. Good night.' 
 
 ' But surely I may come and see your brother ? ' 
 
 < Oh no, indeed ! He would not see you if it were 
 to save his life. Good night.' 
 
 ' Wait ; I will go away in a moment. On my 
 honour I will go away. Only, for heaven's sake, have 
 your window open this warm night.' 
 
 * Will you really go away ? ' 
 
 ' I will really, if you wish it.' 
 
 4 1 do wish it. I mean I must obey my 
 brother.' 
 
 ' I will go away this time, at all events. Enjoy 
 the moonlight and the nightingales in peace. But 
 I want to hear so much more, so many details. Would 
 you write me your story, that I might understand it 
 better ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; I should think I might do that, if Volodia 
 does not mind.' 
 
io6 RUFFINO 
 
 < Why should you tell him ? ' 
 ' I tell him everything.' 
 
 'That is very honourable and noble of you. 
 Heaven forbid that I should tempt you to any 
 secrecy. But you must remember that sick men are 
 often apt to be tyrannical, capricious, and unjust. At 
 least, you must promise me that you will not shut 
 your windows.' 
 
 c I will not shut them if you also promise not 
 to speak to me. I cannot disobey Volodia. He is 
 helpless, and cannot see or know what I do. 5 
 
 4 That is a delicate and noble scruple. I would 
 not tempt you, if I could, to stifle your conscience. 
 But it pains me to think that my mere presence 
 should debar you from the enjoyment of looking on 
 my trees and listening to my birds.' 
 
 < We have been here three years,' she said with a 
 sigh, c and I think it has been the pleasure of these 
 gardens and the sweet air from them which has 
 kept me alive. No, I have never been into them. 
 But that does not matter : I can see into them, I can 
 see the birds making their nests, and I can watch the 
 leaves budding and the flowers coming, and when 
 there is no noise in the lane I can hear the splash of 
 the fountains. You know, without a garden one 
 cannot tell how the seasons come and go : those 
 
RUFFINO 107 
 
 tea-roses are a calendar ; the birds are like a clock. 
 I can tell the weather, and the months, and the 
 hours, all by the birds. Every moment that I can 
 spare I spend in watching them, I wonder you are 
 so much away from this beautiful place/ 
 
 4 Alas ! I have lost the fine sense that would 
 make me content with these fair and innocent things,' 
 said Castiglione. ' But it rejoices me that you have 
 found such pleasure here. You have passed three 
 summers in this place ? Without change ? Without 
 fresh air?' 
 
 ' It has not hurt me,' she answered; ' it has hurt 
 Volodia. You know a young man frets and chafes 
 so cruelly; a girl is naturally more patient. And 
 then I learned to bear disagreeable things at the 
 convent, and I was used there to long, dull days. He 
 had always enjoyed himself, and only knew what it 
 was to enjoy ; it has been so much worse here for him 
 than for me : he misses so much more, he needs so 
 much more.' 
 
 ' You have a generous heart,' said Castiglione. 
 4 It is the fault of your brother that you have this 
 misery to endure.' 
 
 * He cannot help it. He was drawn into these 
 conspiracies. I think he sees now the uselessness 
 and madness of them. But it is too late.' 
 
lot RUFFINO 
 
 6 How could he, an officer of the Guard, plot 
 against his sovereign ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, it was disloyal ; it was wrong and treache- 
 rous, perhaps : but the suffering of the people makes 
 any extremity excusable in those who feel for them. 
 You know, the worst excesses of Nihilism has a cer- 
 tain beauty ; there is a great courage, and devotion 
 to the nation ; it is heroic, it is unselfish.' 
 
 4 You are more so.' 
 
 4 1 ? Oh no ; I only do what must be done ; and 
 that comes to so little. I have no great talents ; I 
 am not like Volodia.' 
 
 'But, unaided, you have maintained him for 
 eighteen months.' 
 
 4 Yes, that was nothing. And I am disobeying 
 him now, and that is wicked.' 
 
 4 You adore your brother ? ' 
 
 She hesitated, and he concluded that it was less 
 affection than pity, habit, and duty, which chained 
 her there. 
 
 4 He has no one but me,' she answered, with a 
 little colour passing over her pale cheeks. c I must 
 go to him now, if you please. You will force me to 
 shut the shutters.' 
 
 4 Why should you be afraid 01 me ? I admire, 
 revere, I ' 
 
RUFFINO 109 
 
 c I am not afraid ; I am not at all afraid now. 
 But I have promised him.' 
 
 'If you wait a moment, only a moment, I will 
 bring you some flowers. 5 
 
 He went into the salon, where he had had a 
 bouquet of orchids and stephanotis put a little while 
 before in readiness for what he wished to do with it 
 if the occasion offered. 
 
 ' Catch ! ' he cried to her ; and he threw the 
 delicate blossoms at her from the balustrade. 
 
 She caught them skilfully, and her pathetic, 
 Cenci-like face flushed and lightened with childlike 
 eagerness and delight. 
 
 'You are very good to me, 5 she said, simply. 
 ' But do not give me any more. Volodia would not 
 like me to take them, if he knew. But I will tell 
 him when he wakes that you meant well. Good 
 night. 5 
 
 ' Good night, 5 said Castiglione, who would 
 have fain followed the road that his orchids had 
 taken, and been received as they were. ' Good 
 night, and do not forget your promise to write 
 to me. 5 
 
 She smiled a smile which momentarily chased 
 away the sadness of her face, and showed what it 
 would look like were her fate a happy one. 
 
i TO RUFFINO 
 
 C I will write once, if you wish it so much. 
 Adieu ; take care of the little dog. 3 
 
 Then she turned from the window, and Castiglione, 
 keeping his promise, went away with reluctant steps 
 from the balustrade. 
 
 VII 
 
 ONE person beside Kuffino had noticed the attrac- 
 tion which the loggia possessed for the future 
 master of the palace ; and this was Don Antonio, the 
 chaplain, whose rooms, contiguous to the chapel, 
 looked on the lane, and, obliquely, to the loggia. 
 He had imparted his information to his comrade, 
 Magliabecchi, whose own apartment was far away, on 
 the other side of the house ; and Magliabecchi had 
 immediately taken the loggia under his observation. 
 From one of the adjacent windows he kept an eye 
 on Castiglione's movements, and he saw that the 
 Duke did indeed pass a great deal of time there ; and 
 saw also, that the point of interest was evidently that 
 little house which joined the convent walls. 
 
 The following evening, when he was watching, his 
 quick eyes caught the sight of a letter tied to a stone 
 being thrown through the creepers over the balus- 
 trade. Castiglione was safe indoors at dinner at 
 
RUFFING in 
 
 the time, and the physician, with a daring which 
 would have become a better cause, stole out into 
 the gardens, and from the gardens came up into the 
 loggia, trusting to the shadows of evening to conceal 
 him, and went with noiseless movements towards 
 the balustrade. If only the dog inside would not 
 bark, he thought. 
 
 Kuffino, inside, did hear, and did bark; but his 
 master was dining, and did not attend. 
 
 So, stealthily glancing around him, Magliar 
 becchi picked up the little piece of marble, undid the 
 string, and read the note. Contempt and astonish- 
 ment blended on his features. The contempt was 
 for a man who, commanding all that the world could 
 offer, could waste his time thus; the astonishment 
 was that a girl who had nothing in the world could 
 fail to avail herself of the advantage of having found 
 favour in the eyes of such a man. 
 
 There is always one domain into which the rogue 
 cannot enter, even in imagination : it is the domain 
 of high and delicate impulses, of fine and generous 
 sentiments. This region is to the rogue closed by 
 an impassable barrier, and, when he fails, he fails 
 for want of being able to comprehend the language 
 which is spoken in this kingdom of the soul. 
 
 ' The girl must be an archi-comedian/ thought 
 
112 RUFFINO 
 
 Magliabecchi ; c and our Duke is a fool, an exaggerated 
 fool, as lie has always been.' 
 
 Then he tied the note on to the bit of marble 
 again, and put it back on the spot where it had been 
 lying previously. 
 
 The note was signed by her full name, and that 
 name struck a chord of remembrance in the busy" 
 brain of the doctor. He could not immediately 
 recall what was connected with it, but somewhere, 
 somehow, he had heard or seen it before. He stood 
 in the moonlight pondering, his big, bloated, crafty 
 face puckered up in meditation. 
 
 After a while he remembered fully, and he went 
 indoors, into that chamber where it had been the 
 habit of the dying Prince to conduct all his corre- 
 spondence, and have all letters answered under his 
 dictation by his secretary, or, occasionally, by Maglia- 
 becchi himself. Magliabecchi had duplicate keys 
 of all the bureaus and cabinets in that suite of 
 apartments, and had often laughed to himself, 
 noiselessly, to see his master so carefully locking 
 drawer after drawer, believing their sanctity in- 
 violable. 
 
 He went now to one, and, opening it, took out 
 several files of letters. He found what he wanted 
 after some search. It was a letter from the French 
 
RUFFINO 113 
 
 Ambassador at St. Petersburg, an old friend of Monte- 
 feltro's, asking him to inquire for and befriend a 
 young girl named Vera Nelaguine, who had shared 
 the flight, for political reasons, of her brother, one of 
 the Counts Nelaguine, and lately an officer of the 
 Guard ; the writer added that, for obvious causes, he 
 could not be seen himself to stir in the matter, but 
 would personally be glad if Montefeltro would find 
 out these young people, who, as he understood, had 
 hidden themselves in Rome, it was thought some- 
 where in the Trastevere. 
 
 The letter was three years old. On the back of 
 it was written, in Montefeltro's stiff, small writing : 
 
 c Replied that I could not interest myself in 
 revolutionists and persons of the Greek Church ; nc 
 more heard of this matter.' 
 
 Magliabecchi slipped the letter in his pocket, put 
 back all the others, and locked up the bureau. 
 
 He had no definite idea of what he could do 
 with the paper, but in view of Castiglione's present 
 caprice it was possible that it might be of value, 
 either to keep or to destroy, as it was clear, unbiassed 
 evidence of the right of the girl to the name which 
 she bore. Magliabecchi's experience had always 
 shown him that knowledge is always, in some way 
 or another, a power. 
 
 I 
 
ii4 RUFFINO 
 
 Then lie composed his countenance into the 
 professional expression suited to the bedside of his 
 illustrious master and patient, and took his way 
 across the house to the Prince's rooms. 
 
 It was none of his business, indeed, if Castiglione 
 made love to his neighbour; but Magliabecchi for 
 forty years had made it his business to know every- - 
 thing that went on under the palace-roof, treasuring 
 it all up for possible use, and deriving from it a 
 pleasurable sense of omniscience and omnipresence. 
 It was thus that, for a score of years, he had managed 
 to keep in leading-strings which were unfelt and 
 unseen, the haughty, suspicious, and tyrannical 
 character of the Prince of Montefeltro, who, seeing 
 in the doctor a minion, had in reality had in him a 
 master. 
 
 Castiglione dined with little appetite this evening, 
 and paid slight attention to the conversation of his 
 cousin of the Guardia Nobile, who dined with him. 
 His mind was entirely absorbed with what he had 
 heard, and with the remembrance of the girl's face 
 as she had given him that one brief, sweet smile, 
 whilst the flush from the evening skies had fallen 
 upon her. 
 
 All his own comfort and ease, and the luxury 
 which surrounded him, seemed to him unkind and 
 
RUFFINO 115 
 
 unjust, as base evidences of the cruel inequalities of 
 chance. 
 
 c You are not well, my dear Ezzelino, 5 said his 
 cousin to him. ' You are shut up too much. You 
 should go out, and ride once a day, at least, over the 
 Campagna/ 
 
 ' I am well enough, 5 said Castiglione, with im- 
 patience ; c and as my father may pass away at any 
 moment, I cannot leave the house until the end 
 of all has come.' 
 
 After dinner his cousin proposed ecarte, and they 
 played several games. The card-table was set out 
 on the loggia, but Castiglione had it carried to the 
 opposite end of the long terrace, on the plea that 
 there might be a noise from the lane which would 
 disturb them disagreeably. He was very absent- 
 minded and inattentive, and lost almost every game. 
 
 ' Are you in love with one of the nuns of the 
 Sepolte Vive ? ' said his cousin ; c you are abstracted 
 enough to be Oliviero carrying on with Virginia 
 de Leyva.' 
 
 1 Those times are past,' he answered, angrily ; 
 c romance is dead.' 
 
 But in his heart he was passionately eager to 
 pursue his own romance, and go and see if there 
 were any letter for him lying by the balustrade. 
 
 i 2 
 
ii6 RUFFINO 
 
 When his cousin, having won a good deal of 
 money from him, took his departure, Castiglione 
 went to the marble chair, from which he had 
 watched the windows of the little corner house. 
 On the pavement was the same fragment of marble, 
 to which his own letter had been tied, and a little 
 note was fastened to it ; the shutters of the corner 
 house were open, but all was dark within. 
 
 He carried the note to the light which fell from 
 a lamp suspended in the loggia-roof, and opened it 
 with eagerness, unconscious that Magliabecchi had 
 been beforehand in its perusal. 
 
 It was written in haste, and with much agita- 
 tion, and was at once formal and simple ; yet in its 
 sedate lines there were that pathos and veracity which 
 touched his heart as no lamentation and exaggera- 
 tion would have done. 
 
 She did not add very much to the outlines of 
 the history which she had already given him. She 
 and her brother were of a noble family of the pro- 
 vince of Esthonia; the young man had been an 
 officer in the Imperial Guard, had been involved in 
 Nihilist schemes, and, to avoid arrest, and a certain 
 doom of either execution or lifelong exile to Siberia, 
 had been forced to fly in disguise at a moment's 
 notice; he had taken his sister with him, leaving 
 
RUFFINO 117 
 
 her no choice, and carrying her off from her first 
 ball at the Winter Palace. They had been already 
 three years in Rome ; he had had talent as a 
 draughtsman, and sold his sketches fairly well. One 
 fatal day he had been overtaken by a storm of rain 
 on the Campagna, when he had been heated by long 
 walking ; he had the malarian fever, and after that 
 had been seized by rheumatism; he had never rer 
 covered the use of his lower limbs, and he was now 
 stone-deaf. She coloured religious images by day, 
 and sewed linen by night. The Russian doctor, 
 Basilewsky, who lived in the neighbourhood, was, 
 she said, very good to them; they wanted for no- 
 thing. On this point she was very resolute : they 
 wanted for nothing ; she repeated it again and again. 
 
 Of course, it was possible that all she had said 
 and all she had written was mere acting, mere 
 admirable acting ; but he did not think so. Unseen, 
 he had observed her laborious life, her constant 
 exertions, her patient acceptance of a toil for which, 
 visibly, neither her tender age nor her social con- 
 ditions were fitted. 
 
 If her tale were true and he did not doubt it 
 how profoundly pitiful was her fate ! A fate so 
 terrible that it was wonderful she should find such 
 courage and such calmness to support it. And how 
 
n8 RUFFINO 
 
 could he help her ? He could perceive no way to 
 do it, for he was certain that nothing which would 
 seem a gift or an alms would be accepted either by 
 her or by the young man who had dragged her down 
 into this sordid and friendless existence. 
 
 In a postscript she added that the owner of the 
 house, who at first had been unkind, had now con- 
 sented to give them time to pay their rent. The 
 letter concluded with thanking him for his offered 
 kindness, but begging him to allow her to discon- 
 tinue his acquaintance, as her brother disapproved 
 even of her writing thus. It was signed by her full 
 name : Vera Nicolaievna, Countess Nelaguine ; and 
 as a second postscript she had added : ' Pray take 
 care of your dog, for he is venturesome.' 
 
 The whole note was written in French, in pure 
 and elegant language, and its style was calm, direct, 
 and simple, plainly narrating facts, and seeking no 
 theatrical effect. 
 
 c They want for nothing, she says ! ' thought 
 Castiglione. ' Good Heavens ! what an heroic lie ! 
 "What can one do in the face of such a declaration ? 
 They want for nothing, while every hour of her 
 existence is toil or misery ! What a brave child ! 
 The soul of St. Agnes is in her, with the face and 
 the body of Beatrice.' 
 
RUFFINO 119 
 
 He read the note again and again by the light of 
 the lamp, whilst the songs of the nightingales, sing- 
 ing in rivalry, came clear and strong from the dusky 
 gardens. 
 
 Then he sat down and wrote back a reply to her, 
 and when it was written went down the staircase 
 into the grounds beneath, bidding Kuffino stay above. 
 He went to the farthest end of the great gardens, 
 where the tropical glass-houses were, and entering 
 one of them, made a bouquet with his own hands 
 of the finest gloxinias blossoming there, carried the 
 flowers upstairs, tied his letter to them, and threw 
 them across, in at the open window of the little 
 darkened house. 
 
 It was a rude passage for the hothouse 
 blossoms, and they were sadly bruised as they 
 struck on the cold brick floor; but she would be 
 sure, he thought, to find them there some time 
 that night, and, as she was so fond of flowers, they 
 would please her. 
 
 c She was your good angel, Ruffino,' he said, as 
 if to excuse himself to his four-footed friend for so 
 sentimental an act. Ruffino, who was more occupied 
 with the wrongs done him by the arnica, and the 
 unavenged insults of the yellow cat, licked his 
 bruises, and made no response. 
 
120 RUFFINO 
 
 The episode had been a painful one to his body 
 and to his spirit ; he wished to make haste to get 
 well, and forget all about it, being convinced of the 
 wisdom of the advice, c Oubliez ! oubliez ! C'est le 
 secret de la vie. 9 All the same, he meant to pay off 
 his enemies with interest some time, and he equally 
 intended to befriend his saviour, if the occasion 
 occurred. 
 
 Castiglione read the note once more, and then, 
 again, a third time. 
 
 C I will send in the morning for this Doctor 
 Basilewsky, 5 he said to himself, as he watched the 
 dark, open window through the leaves. 
 
 In half-an-hour's time he saw her enter the little 
 chamber, bearing a very faintly-burning little lamp, 
 which threw no light around her. He saw her stop 
 and stoop, then saw her lift the gloxinias from the 
 floor, and hold them up to the light in astonishment ; 
 then, hurriedly, she closed the shutters, and he saw no 
 more ; but he strove to be content with the fact that 
 she had kept his flowers. 
 
 It was then midnight. 
 
 With early morning he sent for the old Russian 
 doctor; a small, dark, aged man, with an ugly, 
 intelligent countenance, who was much amazed and 
 disturbed at the summons to the Montefeltro Palace. 
 
RUFFINO 121 
 
 He was an obscure person, an exile, and wholly 
 unknown beyond the poorer classes of the foreign 
 students. 
 
 Castiglione met him with a charming urbanity 
 which put him at his ease very soon, and told him 
 candidly that what he had observed and guessed of 
 the pressing needs of his poor neighbours made him 
 desirous to ascertain all he could about them, with 
 the hope of alleviating their troubles. 
 
 Basilewsky was willingly communicative. He 
 confirmed the statement of the young girl: her 
 family was of high rank ; her brother a self-exiled 
 revolutionist, who had only escaped the scaffold or 
 the mines by flight ; their parents were dead, and the 
 other branches of their family would have nothing to 
 do with them ; their estates and all they possessed 
 had been forfeited to the State. The young man, he 
 said, was obstinate, wayward, talented, and was 
 wearing his soul out of his body by impatience at his 
 calamity and shame at his dependence on his sister. 
 Of her he spoke with tears in his eyes : it was 
 impossible to praise her too highly; all the mute 
 heroism, the saintly endurance, of which the Russian 
 character is capable, were at their finest and fullest 
 essence in her. He had known her all the three 
 
122 RUFFINO 
 
 years that she had been in Rome, and he had never 
 heard a murmur from her lips. 
 
 She had great cause of reproach against her 
 brother, who had dragged her into exile and misery 
 when he might have left her in peace in -her own 
 land ; for she had been only sixteen years old, and 
 fresh from her convent, and her relatives would have 
 dowered and married her well if she would have 
 detached her fortunes from his. But he had never 
 heard her utter a word of blame or of repining, and 
 he believed that she had never spoken or hinted one 
 to her brother. 
 
 ' And he is content to live on what she gains ? ' 
 said Castiglione, with disgust. 
 
 Basilewsky smiled mournfully. 
 
 c Content ? What can he do ? His limbs are 
 useless, and he is stone-deaf. He suffers agonies of 
 shame and of remorse; but that is no use. He 
 cannot undo what he has done, and he cannot rise 
 off his bed, or gain a crust of bread, with his crippled 
 hands. He would kill himself, were it not for the 
 misery that he knows his suicide would cause his 
 sister. 5 
 
 ( But is his malady incurable ? If he is so young, 
 there may surely be hope ? ' 
 
 * It is incurable when allied to poverty. Perhaps, 
 
RUFFINO 123 
 
 if he had means to move, to go to Koyat, Mont Dore, 
 Champel, Contrexeville any one of those places 
 where miracles of recovery are wrought such a 
 miracle might take place for him. But he cannot 
 stir out of this city, out of that house. He can have 
 nothing that he needs. She starves herself to give 
 him the best she can, but that best is poor indeed. 
 He grows weaker and weaker ; he cannot last 
 long.' 
 
 c It is dreadful,' murmured Castiglione, strongly 
 affected by the desolate and hopeless story. c It is 
 frightful. I would do anything that was possible. 
 Would they not accept ? ' 
 
 ' The man will accept nothing until he draws 
 his last breath/ replied Basilewsky, f and the girl 
 will never disobey or deceive him. We cannot 
 quarrel, my lord duke, with these qualities; it 
 would be well for the world if they were more 
 general.' 
 
 < Certainly. But ' 
 
 'There is no "but," sir,' said the old man. 
 c They are proud people, nobly-born people ; they 
 will perish miserably before they will take an alms 
 or live on others.' 
 
 { But that is suicide.' 
 
 4 Our nation sees no harm in suicide. In this 
 
124 RUFFINO 
 
 case it would be a more honourable choice than life 
 lived on the bread of strangers.' 
 
 4 Then you will not urge on him or on her to 
 allow me to do for them this common charity ? ' 
 
 * No, my lord ; I must decline the office.' 
 Castiglione was perplexed, distressed, and irri- 
 tated. 
 
 5 What mule-heads of obstinacy ! ' he said, with 
 anger and regret. 'Fine! Yes, it is fine, but 
 there is no sense in it ; it is suicide, and it is murder. 
 The young man will die, and the girl will follow him 
 to the grave from over-work and scanty food. He 
 will kill her with his insane exaggeration and 
 monomania. We could save her, and we could 
 save him. I would get him the advice of the first 
 physicians of Europe. I would send him to Mont 
 Dore, or any other place, to be cured, and he would 
 probably recover. Does he ever think, in his heroics, 
 what may be the fate of that child when he shall have 
 left her on the earth all alone, friendless, penniless, 
 with a broken heart and ruined health ? ' 
 
 It seemed to him that the dying youth was a 
 monster of false sentiments and selfishness. 
 
 4 Can nothing persuade this young madman that 
 I am not an ogre or a monster ? ' he said, impatiently. 
 c He shuts his sister up because I have spoken to 
 
RUFFINO 125 
 
 her across the wall. It is intolerable! I would be 
 their friend in any way they would allow. I will send 
 him wines, fruits, meats, medicines anything. I will 
 send a portable chair for him, and my men can carry 
 him into these grounds to have the air in the early 
 mornings, or after sunset. Cannot you persuade 
 him of my willingness, of my good faith ? He may 
 have a right to kill himself by inches, if it pleases 
 him, but he has no right to starve his sister to 
 death, and refuse all honest assistance.' 
 
 The old man listened deferentially, but replied 
 that it was impossible to alter a stubborn and 
 rooted prejudice ; a wrong-headed conviction that in 
 obstinacy lay honour. 
 
 1 He considers that to accept your kindness 
 would be a disgrace,' he added ; ' he will die in that 
 hole yonder sooner than grasp any stranger's hand 
 to raise him out of it.. It is a false view of honour, 
 in my esteem, but it is his view, and we cannot alter 
 it. The girl must suffer from it. We can do 
 nothing.' 
 
 4 She shall not suffer, if there be a heaven above 
 us ! ' said Castiglione, with a passionate irritation at 
 being powerless to force his benefits on a sick and 
 headstrong lad. It hurt him intolerably to look at 
 those closed shutters, and to know that this gentle 
 
126 RUFFINO 
 
 child, who loved light and flowers, and the voices of 
 birds, was behind them, working laboriously in the 
 gloom, deprived of her one solace. 
 
 6 You are a great lord, a great prince/ said 
 Basilewsky, ' but there is one thing which you 
 cannot do our Tzar could not do it you cannot 
 turn away a high and delicate spirit from the paths 
 of sacrifice and honour ! ' 
 
 ' Sacrifice and honour ! Folly and suicide, you 
 mean ! ' said Castiglione, beside himself with rage 
 and the chafing sense of his own impotence. 
 
 He had, at least, been able to keep their roof over 
 their heads; but he had no doubt that, were they 
 to know that, for his interference they would curse 
 him. Honour was a noble thing, and a rare one in 
 modern life ; but this view of it seemed to him a 
 morbid exaggeration, a criminal folly. The girl was 
 a victim of her brother's quixotism and selfishness. 
 
 He wrote to her a third time. 
 
 ' It requires a greater nature sometimes to accept 
 than to give,' he said in his letter ; c will yours not 
 be great enough to confer upon me the simple and 
 innocent pleasure of restoring, or trying to restore, 
 your brother to health and strength ? I have seen 
 Basilewsky, who tells me that there would be hope 
 for him if the right measures were taken. I shall 
 
RUFFINO 127 
 
 esteem it an infinite favour if you will allow me to 
 be the means of giving back to your brother the 
 enjoyment of life and of youth. I am a stranger to 
 you, but all Eome will tell you, and him, that no 
 one has ever repented having placed their trust 
 in me. Command me in any way you will, and I 
 shall be honoured by your confidence.' 
 
 He hesitated as to the way of conveying this 
 note to her : he was afraid that, if he threw it, the 
 action might be seen by some one passing under the 
 wall : and yet it seemed preferable to him to risk 
 this than to send it by a servant, who would inevi- 
 tably gossip about the errand he had done. After 
 some indecision, he chose the former way : he found 
 another fragment of marble, and flung it, with the 
 writing attached, into the room opposite, at a 
 moment when there was no one in sight below. The 
 interest of his new acquaintance possessed him en- 
 tirely : it had come into his life at a moment of ennui 
 and solitude like a little song in a silent chamber, 
 like a jewel found on a flat and marshy shore. 
 The thought that, with all his possessions, all his 
 social influence, all his wide estates, he was powerless 
 to force his friendship on a dying boy and a friendless 
 girl, seemed to him a grotesque irony of fate. 
 
 He remained in his apartments without ap- 
 
128 RUFFINO 
 
 preaching the side of the loggia from which he could 
 watch her windows ; he wished to leave her in perfect 
 liberty, and not take from her such simple conso- 
 lation as she was able to find in the air, and the 
 fragrance, and the birds of his gardens. 
 
 Rumno was glad that he should be thus inactive, 
 and thus remain in the library, in lieu of the loggia, 
 for his own wounds were still unhealed, and made 
 locomotion disagreeable to him, and one of the deep, 
 soft velvet chairs more pleasant than the marble 
 pavement. Besides, he had no doubt that the yellow 
 cat was sitting aloft, on some rain-pipe or house-eave, 
 waiting to witness and enjoy the spectacle of his 
 crippled state. 
 
 About ten o'clock, as Castiglione, tired of pacing 
 to and fro in the silence and splendour of the vast 
 library, was about to seek his own rooms, the major- 
 domo came to him to inform him that the physicians 
 feared the worst from his father's present sjbate, and 
 doubted if he would outlive the night. He went 
 once more to the sick chamber, and there remained 
 while the slow-passing hours were tolled from the 
 bells of Rome. He saw and felt that this lingering, 
 feeble flicker of existence must soon lapse into the 
 sadness and rigidity of death itself. He fell asleep 
 himself, now and then, in the great chair in which 
 
RUFFIKO 129 
 
 lie sat ; but rarely, and lie heard all ths hours toll 
 from the many church-clocks around. 
 
 The waxlights burning in the silver sconces 
 shed a soft, pale light on the immovable form 
 stretched beneath the great gold-and-purple canopy 
 of the bed where, for three centuries, the Princes of 
 his house had breathed their last ; even when a 
 Lord of Montefeltro had fallen in battle or in a duel, 
 his body had been always brought and laid there in 
 state upon this bed for all his retinue and dependents 
 to come and do him their last act of homage. 
 
 The time seemed interminable : the watching 
 Sisters counted their beads, and whispered their 
 paternosters ; Magliabecchi ever and again moistened 
 the lips of the dying man, or held a mirror to them ; 
 Don Antonio, with his hands folded across his ample 
 paunch, dozed and prayed, and dozed again, and held 
 his crucifix between his folded fingers, now and then, 
 as he nodded, letting it sink limply from his hold, 
 and then awakening himself and recovering the holy 
 object with a nervous grasp. Ruffino slumbered, or 
 seemed to slumber, at his master's feet ; his black 
 eyes, half-closed, glanced ever and again at the 
 churchman and the leech, whom he hated. On the 
 air there was that faint, oppressive scent of drugs, of 
 anodyneSj of anaesthetics 3 which medicine-men love 
 
 K 
 
130 RUFFING 
 
 to diffuse around a sick-bed, even when the sufferer 
 who lies on it is far beyond the aid of stimulants or 
 the solace of sedatives. 
 
 Castiglione felt the oppression of the atmosphere ; 
 and the confused memories and desires of a new- 
 born and ill-timed passion were warm in his veins and 
 busy in his mind. 
 
 The fleeting, sweeb smile of the girl's soft brown 
 eyes, liquid and deep as flowing waters, and of her 
 tender lips, the same colour as the pale Malmaison 
 carnations blossoming in his gardens below, was for 
 ever before his memory, even in this solemn and 
 melancholy scene. He could not shake off the 
 impression which she had made on him ; he could 
 not forget her heroic, innocent, wretched life passed 
 there within a stone's-throw of his palace ; he could 
 not persuade himself that what he felt for her was 
 a mere passing caprice, a mere impulse of admira- 
 tion, such as he had felt a thousand times. 
 
 All those many hours in which he had watched 
 her, himself unseen, had sunk indelibly into his 
 remembrance, and touched his heart to the quick. 
 It seemed to him as if she were a part of the summer 
 skies, the nightingales, the flowers ; as if she had, in 
 the words of the Spanish poet, entered his soul 
 through his eyes, never to be driven forth from it. 
 
RUFFINO 131 
 
 I love you ! I love you ! ' he thought ; c if you 
 be what I think you, I will give you all I have.' 
 
 As he sat in the silent chamber, the things of 
 the world seemed very poor and useless to him, and 
 the joys of the heart seemed the only treasures which 
 were worth the seeking, or were likely to endure. 
 
 VIII 
 
 WHEN the bells around tolled five of the clock 
 he arose, as he had done in the other nights of his 
 vigil there, and walked across the quiet room, and 
 drew the curtains aside from one of the windows, and 
 opened it, so as to let the earliest white light of day 
 into the chamber. Then he went out, to cross the 
 house to his own apartments. 
 
 For the first time in their lives he was not fol- 
 lowed by Ruffino. 
 
 Ruffino, withdrawn from observation behind the 
 heavy bullion fringes of the draperies of the bed, 
 was intensely watching Magliabecchi, and remained 
 beneath the curtains, letting his master leave the 
 apartment without him. So quiet and so motionless 
 had the little dog been for so long, that the physician 
 and the chaplain had alike forgotten that their 
 arch-enemy was there. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 RUFFINO 
 
 As soon as Castiglione had gone out of siglit and 
 hearing, Magliabecchi, who was standing by the bed, 
 turned, and said to the nun in attendance : 
 
 c My Sister, retire for a while ; Don Antonio 
 and I are sufficient for this morning watch ; praise 
 be the Lord, our beloved patron sleeps.' 
 
 The nun, willing to obey, made but feeble resist- 
 ance, and soon left the room. Magliabecchi looked 
 at the now widely-awakened eyes of Don Antonio. 
 
 ' Is it near ? ' whispered the chaplain. 
 
 { It is the end/ murmured Magliabecchi. 
 
 Valets and servants were keeping vigil in the 
 adjacent room. The doctor softly closed the great 
 door opening on to the place where they sat. The 
 chills of dawn were dangerous. 
 
 An hour went by; the dawn broadened into 
 day, and the clear, limpid rose-light of morning came 
 into the room, and fell, through the purple curtains 
 of the bed, on to the face of the dying man. There 
 was a look upon it which was not that of sleep. 
 Don Antonio was the first to observe it, and twitched 
 the sleeve of his colleague, who was dozing with his 
 chin on his breast. Magliabecchi started, and rose, 
 and bent over the bed, raised the eyelids, and laid 
 his fingers on the pulse. 
 
 c Gone at last ! ' he murmured to the chaplain. 
 
RUFFINO 133 
 
 ( Hush ! call no one ; there will be time ; we are 
 alone.' 
 
 Then, quick as thought, he raised the head of 
 his dead master with no gentle hand, lifted the 
 pillows on which it had rested, and took two keys 
 which were beneath it ; secret keys, of fine work- 
 manship, of which he knew well the destination. 
 Then, with rapid steps, followed closely and noise- 
 lessly by the ecclesiastic, he stole silently to an iron 
 safe contained in an ebony cabinet, moved the 
 hands of its dial to form the letters necessary to 
 unclose its bolts, and turned the key in the lock. 
 
 Inside the safe were many other keys, quantities 
 of bonds and scrip, and heaps of gold wrapped up in 
 bits of old paper and old envelopes ; there were also 
 uncut diamonds and other gems. The whole amount 
 was of great value. 
 
 1 There is not time for anything else, 5 he 
 whispered to the chaplain ; ' but these cannot be 
 missed nothing is known of them by any living 
 soul.' 
 
 And he proceeded to stuff the jewels and the 
 packets of gold-pieces into his inner pockets, whilst 
 Don Antonio did the same. But they had reckoned 
 without one witness : from where he lay hidden 
 under the bed, Buffino ? with only three legs to serve 
 
134 RUFFINO 
 
 him, but with tlie speed of lightning in those three, 
 forgetting his wounds, his bruises, and his stiffness, 
 sprang upon the doctor, and seized him by the ankle. 
 
 All the wrongs of the past the oil, the arnica, 
 the threatened pills, the black looks, the sly cuffs, 
 the smothered hatred all that he owed to Maglia- 
 becchi, were paid off now, as he pinned his adversary's ' 
 ankle-bone as in a vice, clinging hard and fast, whilst 
 Magliabecchi shrieked and Don Antonio fled, and the 
 chest lay open, with its jewels and gold and bonds in 
 a confused heap, within its yawning iron jaws. 
 
 The servants, awakened from their drowsy vigil 
 in the ante-room, rushed in ; but no one dared touch 
 the little dog, who having at last got his own and 
 his master's foe well within his grasp, would have 
 allowed his body to be pulled asunder rather than 
 leave his hold at any hireling's command, 
 
 4 Murder ! Murder ! Help ! ' shrieked the 
 physician, delirious with terror. 'Take him off! 
 Shoot him ! Brain him ! He is mad ! He has 
 gone mad, I say ! Help ! Help ! Help ! ' 
 
 But the servants stood together, frightened, 
 motionless, some grinning to see his plight, some 
 guessing his attempted crime, all afraid to risk the 
 teeth of Buffi no for themselves. 
 
 c Call the Duke ! Call the Duke ! He alone can 
 
RUFF1NO 135 
 
 take off the dog ! ' cried one of the varlets ; whilst 
 Magliabecchi, yelling and cursing hideously, struggled 
 to free himself, and in his frantic efforts to shake off 
 Ruffino shook out the precious stones, and the gold 
 ducats , and the loose letters from his coat pockets 
 upon the floor. 
 
 ' What is all this ? ' said the voice of Castiglione 
 behind the confused and inactive varlets. ' Ruffino, 
 let go ! ' 
 
 At that moment, unsummoned, he had entered 
 the chamber, and seeing the open cabinet, the dis- 
 ordered papers, the terrified man, the avenging dog, 
 comprehended at a glance what had happened. 
 
 c Ruffino, let go ! Come here, do you hear me ? 
 Come here ! ' he said to the little dog ; and looked 
 at the thief, and from him glanced to the cold, still 
 figure on the bed. 
 
 ' You have robbed my father forty years in life ; 
 could you not respect him even in death ? ' he said, 
 in a low voice ; then he made the sign of the Cross, 
 and knelt down by his father's corpse. 
 
 Ruffino had let go his hold, with sad reluctance, 
 at the word of command, and stood, breathless and 
 panting, pride, hatred, and satisfied vengeance 
 swelling his little soul with glory; whilst the 
 servants, surrounding Magliabecchi, pinioned his 
 
136 RUFFINO 
 
 arms, and held him fast from all possibility of 
 escape. A solemn silence fell upon the chamber 
 whilst the son was kneeling by his father's death- 
 bed : the rays of the sunrise, slanting through the 
 panes of the lofty windows, illumined the pale, 
 startled faces of the household ; the dark, knavish, 
 terrified countenance of the thief; the diamonds, * 
 rolling and shining on the mosaic floor, the gold 
 crown and arms of the baldachino. 
 
 In a few moments Castiglione rose, and motioned 
 to the household to leave him alone. 
 
 ' Let the rogue go,' he said to them, but put 
 him out of the gates, and see that he never enters 
 them again/ 
 
 Then he stooped, and stroked Ruffino. 
 
 c Thanks, little one ; you were wiser than we/ 
 
 Magliabecchi, as the servants pushed him to the 
 door, turned, and looked back with longing eyes at 
 the room where he had so long vaunted himself 
 master of life and of death. 
 
 c Don Antonio is as guilty as I,' he said, as he 
 was thrust from the chamber by the lacqueys ; he 
 could not even be true to the man who had schemed 
 with him, robbed with him, shared with him, 
 through so many years of plenty and of plunder. 
 
 ' Fear not ; your accomplice shall have his 
 
RUFFINO 137 
 
 deserts, 5 replied the man who was now his master ; 
 and then he shut the massive doors on them all, and 
 remained alone with the dead body, Kuffino rever- 
 ently watching by his side. 
 
 And without, a great awe fell upon the household, 
 for they knew that the new lord would set crooked 
 ways straight, and have gorged maws cleared, and 
 would sweep away the carrion crowd who had settled 
 there, feeding and fattening, like crows upon a rotting 
 carcase, on the credulity and suspicion, the bigotry, 
 and the superstitious fears of their dead master : 
 the conscience was clear of few of those who dwelt 
 beneath that roof. 
 
 The forty-eight hours which followed were full of 
 those painful and oppressive duties and ceremonies 
 with which the death of a great person is followed 
 for his heir and successors : the obsequies of a 
 Prince of Montefeltro were always as magnificent 
 as those of a Prince of the Church. 
 
 The etiquette, the ceremonial, the splendour, the 
 formality were very burdensome to him on whom the 
 onus of them fell, and seemed to him unending. All 
 the members of the family, and of the other great 
 families to which the deceased had been allied, flocked 
 thither to greet his successor as the chief of the 
 house, and pay their last respects to the corpse of 
 
138 RUFFINO 
 
 the dead lord. All patrician and ecclesiastical Rome 
 passed through his palace -gates. 
 
 When at length the coffin, draped in velvet, with 
 a prince's gold crown resting on it, was left in the 
 mortuary-chapel, to be taken, later on, into the 
 mausoleum of the castle in the Abruzzi which had 
 been the mountain-stronghold of his race, Castig-" 
 Hone, now Prince of Montefeltro, was left for the 
 first time in peace. 
 
 It was peace which would speedily be broken by 
 a thousand demands and duties thrusting on him 
 from all sides ; but for the time being he was alone, 
 and could breathe freely, and realise all the changes 
 which the last three days had brought about : he 
 was absolutely his own master, and arbiter as well 
 of many lives and many lands. 
 
 * I will do what I can to do good to the people, 
 and bind myself neither to Church nor State,' he 
 thought : and it is the only resolve which a man 
 can take which has any true wisdom in it ; for the 
 Church and the State alike emasculate and imprison 
 those who remain subject to their dictations. 
 
 But it was a prospect which had its terrors for 
 a lover of ease, of pleasure, and of day-dreams. He 
 knew well the mass of corruption which covers the 
 whole administration of property in Italy, and 
 
RUFFINO 139 
 
 lives like an ulcer in the flesh in the whole of the 
 national existence. In the endeavour to administer 
 all which would come to him honestly, justly, and 
 with true benevolence, he knew that he would be 
 plunged up to the throat in a quagmire of moral filth, 
 from which it would be difficult to emerge without 
 being odious to the many human creatures who 
 crawled and basked and had their paradise in its 
 slime. He was by temperament and character dis- 
 posed to like repose and indolence and amusement, 
 and the vista of intricate and arduous duties which 
 opened before him in the twilight of the future, on the 
 threshold of which he stood, was oppressive to him. 
 
 For many centuries the stewards, and accountants, 
 and writers of the Casa Montefeltro had sat in the great 
 stone chambers of the ground-floor allotted to them, 
 and spun their financial records, like spiders weaving 
 webs, undisturbed and unquestioned. From time to 
 time, when their lord of the moment had wanted 
 money, he had sent for his head steward, and said : 
 ' I want so much ; see that it is ready.' And ready 
 it had always been, in every century, supplied unfail- 
 ingly, no matter what pressure or what difficulty 
 had gone to the procuring of it. So long as the men- 
 of-business were never asked how they got it, they 
 got it cheerfully, squeezing it out of the land, or the 
 
140 RUFFINO 
 
 dwellers upon the land, and quite content so that they 
 could themselves pocket whatever they chose. Folio 
 on folio were piled in the muniment room, yellow 
 and dusty, filled with crabbed characters and millions 
 of cyphers : to the eye the accounts of the house of 
 Montefeltro, like the accounts of every great Italian 
 family, were kept with perfection and exquisite ex- 
 actitude, the .smallest fraction being duly recorded 
 and accounted for. But all these fair rows of figures 
 and precise balancing of receipts and expenditures 
 have never prevented, have only smoothly covered, 
 that gigantic system of daily robbery by which the 
 fortunes of these families are undermined by their 
 underlings as secretly and surely as Eastern timber 
 by white ants. 
 
 Castiglione knew that this system could only be 
 successfully uprooted and destroyed at the cost of 
 long and painful effort, and by the acceptation of 
 infinite odium and misconception ; and he knew 
 that the cleansing of this Augean stable was the 
 first clear, inexorable duty which stood out before 
 him in the future. To stop the extortion in the 
 land, he must first check and choke the robbery of 
 the administrators. 
 
 ' And I am no Hercules, to cleanse this filth and 
 strangle this python/ he thought, ruefully. His, 
 
RUFF1NO 141 
 
 father had let matters go on thus partly out of fear, 
 partly out of the sense that it was in the main 
 serviceable to himself, because, only so long as he 
 allowed these parasites to gorge would they suck 
 the blood of others at his bidding. But the idea 
 of turning to his own profit a system so cruel and . 
 iniquitous revolted the new lord. 
 
 The days seemed long, dull, and empty. 
 
 He had, indeed, many affairs to attend to, and 
 many persons sought audience of him. He was all- 
 powerful now, and would be so hereafter; all the 
 innumerable connections, parasites, and pensioners of 
 the Casa Montefeltro were eager to propitiate the 
 rising sun, and were ready to worship him with that 
 form of gratitude which has been designated as a 
 lively sense of favours to come. But all this was 
 uninteresting to him, and was often disgusting, by 
 the mean aspects of human nature which it revealed ; 
 and the loggia, with its fragrance of flowers and 
 harmony of birds and waters, seemed like a haven of 
 rest to him after the mean servility and cringing 
 avarice of many of his visitors. 
 
 Custom had prescribed that he must not leave 
 the palace whilst his father's body was lying in state 
 upon the bed where he had died ; but at night, when 
 sure that he was not observed, he had gone out on 
 
142 RUFFINO 
 
 to the terrace, and looked at the corner house. The 
 shutters had always been closed, and the clear, white 
 moon-rays had streamed on them without entering 
 within. 
 
 It disquieted and pained him to see no sign 
 of life there. 
 
 Was the young man dead ? Was his faithful 
 companion ill ? Had they both, by some miracle, 
 fled away, and gone elsewhere to hide their silent 
 misery ? 
 
 Ruffino, who disregarded his injuries in the joy 
 and triumph which he felt in having at last been 
 even with his hated enemy, went out after him, 
 and looked also at that little house. His supreme 
 mission the confusion and annihilation of the phy- 
 sician having been so thoroughly fulfilled, he had 
 leisure to think of other things, and, amongst them, 
 of the debt which he owed to the girl yonder. Ruffino 
 hated women almost as much as he did cats ; but he 
 did not allow his prejudices to obliterate his sense of 
 gratitude. But for her he knew that his skin would 
 be, ere now, hanging on a nail in that horrible den 
 below. He would have liked to show his feelings, 
 and prove that he had a soul filled by that sentiment 
 of gratitude which is so much stronger and more last- 
 ing in dogs than men; he would have liked to jump 
 
RUFFING 143 
 
 through her window, and thank her ; but the 
 shutters were always closed, and it was impossible. 
 
 c She will not accept anything, Ruffino, nor 
 believe in our good faith/ said his master; and 
 Ruffino, a little stiff in the loins, and somewhat 
 ragged in appearance, sat down before the tea-rose 
 foliage, and said, repeatedly and irritably : c Wuff ! 
 wuff! wuff!' 
 
 When both he and his master wanted her, why 
 should she persist in concealing herself? 
 
 The yellow cat was crawling over the roof in 
 odious ostentation and staring conceit. 
 
 That day, and the next, and the next, the 
 shutters were still shut. 
 
 Castiglione was infinitely distressed. He missed 
 the supreme interest of his days, and it pained him 
 exceedingly to think that she was deprived of the 
 pleasure which the waving of the trees and the sing- 
 ing of the birds had afforded her in all the cooler 
 hours. 
 
 He threw a pebble several times at the wooden 
 bars, but without obtaining any response. Then he 
 abstained entirely from approaching that side of the 
 loggia, and only Ruffino thrust out his little white 
 head through the foliage to look into the lane which 
 had cost him so dear. 
 
144 RUFFINO 
 
 On the evening of the sixth day after his father's 
 burial, Castiglione, wearied, perplexed, and disap- 
 pointed, telling himself that he would leave Eome 
 on the morrow, for the first time remembered that 
 it would be as well to look at the various papers 
 and precious stones which had been dropped from 
 Magliabecchi's pockets, and which he had hastily- 
 thrown back into the cabinet whence they had come, 
 without examination of them, when the lawyers had 
 affixed their seals, as to all other drawers and desks. 
 The seals were now broken, and the contents be- 
 longed to himself. He traversed the great, silent 
 house to the room where his father had died, the 
 waxlight which he carried with him shedding its 
 faint light before his feet, and leaving all the vast 
 apartment in deep gloom. He opened the drawer, 
 and took out the uncut diamonds and rubies, and the 
 three or four letters which had fallen from the rogue 
 in his flight. The jewels were of great value, the 
 letters of no interest, except the one which he took 
 up; that was the letter from St. Petersburg, with 
 the memorandum written in his father's writing. 
 
 He read it again, and yet again. It caused him 
 at once pleasure and pain : pleasure at the witness 
 which it bore to his neighbour's veracity, pain at 
 the knowledge that } through his father's bigotry and 
 
RUFFINO 145 
 
 hardness of heart, three years of useless suffering 
 and want had been caused to this hapless child. 
 
 c Oh, Ruffino, what a wise little dog you were 
 to stop that villain ! ' he said, as he locked up the 
 jewels again, and put this Russian letter into his 
 coat-pocket. 
 
 Ruffino, sitting bolt upright, blinking at the 
 candle, gave a little sound, half-sniff, half-snort, 
 which meant in its own language : 
 
 'Wise! of course I was wise. It is for their 
 superior intelligence that dogs are hated and hunted 
 by human jealousy. You thought the man a rogue, 
 indeed, but you did not think him so until I had told 
 you of it again, and again, and again ; and though 
 you knew he was a rogue, you allowed him to insult 
 me with arnica, and he would also have poisoned 
 me with a pill but for my own discretion, which you 
 considered obstinacy and disobedience/ 
 
 His master, who did not understand the lan- 
 guage of these just reproaches, sat awhile, lost in 
 thought, beside the jewel-cabinet, until the wax 
 candle, unsuited to the draught of air in that great 
 chamber, burning furiously, expired before its time, 
 and left him in darkness. Then he arose, and 
 feeling his way through those familiar rooms, passed 
 out into a vast corridor, where the rays of the moon 
 
 L 
 
146 RUFFINO 
 
 were falling full on the Olympian gods and Thracian 
 shepherds of the frescoed walls, and went back 
 through the silent house to his own apartments. 
 
 In the morning he sent for the old man, Basi- 
 lewsky, and in vain renewed all his proposals and 
 all his arguments. 
 
 ' Papers have come into my hands which corrobo- 
 rate the truth of the history which you have told me ; 
 and it is frightful/ he said, earnestly, ' frightful to 
 think that this young man will die in his obstinacy, 
 and drag his sister down into the grave after him. 
 There should be some law against such indirect 
 murder and self-murder. You will be guilty as an 
 accomplice if you will not take this madman any 
 message from me/ 
 
 { I am sorry that you blame me, sir,' said the old 
 man, meekly. c But I cannot act otherwise. He is 
 intractable, and tenacious, as cripples and deaf people 
 are. He is aware that he has ruined his sister's 
 present and future. If I were to irritate and offend 
 him, he would forbid me to go there, and she would 
 be deprived of my poor services. Besides ' 
 
 He hesitated a little, and then resumed : 
 
 c Pardon me, your excellency, if I speak with 
 what may seem to you a brutal frankness ; but in 
 such a moment candour is permitted. You are a 
 
RUFFINO 147 
 
 very great person, of illustrious rank, of large 
 fortune ; no offers of assistance could be accepted 
 from you by these people, nor could I make myself 
 your ambassador to them. That your motives are 
 pure, I have no doubt; but who would believe that? 
 A man of your rank and of your age could not 
 possibly befriend a girl like the Countess Vera 
 without creating a position which, you must grant, 
 no man belonging to her could possibly permit or 
 profit from without disgrace.' 
 
 c No, I do not see it ; I deny it, I deny it utterly,' 
 said Castiglione, with great anger. c It requires a 
 finer nature to accept benefits than to confer them. 
 I see that your invalid and yourself have both low, 
 ungenerous, base views of human nature ; and as my 
 views and feelings are honest, and with neither ego- 
 tism nor infamy behind them, I resent your suspicions 
 as an affront ; and if you let this mad youth perish in 
 his pride because you cannot bring yourself to believe 
 in the truth of what I say, you will have killed him 
 as certainly as though -you cut his throat ; and you 
 will have killed her, too, for she cannot long resist 
 so unnatural, so cruel, so miserable a life ! ' 
 
 He was passionately angry : he had been too 
 used to have his whims and wishes obeyed to en- 
 counter opposition without amazement and indigna- 
 
 L 2 
 
148 RUFFINO 
 
 tion ; the goodness of his heart made any doubts as 
 to his motives appear to him the most intolerable of 
 outrages ; and, beyond all these purely personal feel- 
 ings, there was the extreme pain of knowing that, do 
 what he would, this child, with her soul of St. Agnes 
 and her face of Beatrice, was leading the most 
 wretched, poverty-stricken, and laborious life a life" 
 which might at any moment fatally overcome the 
 weakness of her sex and youth. 
 
 Her brother was a madman, Basilewsky was a 
 monster, and she was as cruelly sacrificed to them 
 both as any maiden to the Minotaur of old. 
 
 Later in the day he asked for and obtained with 
 the Minister for Foreign Affairs an audience at the 
 Consulta, and afterwards an interview with the 
 Russian ambassador. He was given full confirmation 
 of the truth of their story, and of their identity with 
 the young exiles who had been recommended to his 
 father's pity ; but when he further pressed for some 
 clemency, some intercession which should restore the 
 youth to his rank and to his country, he was met by 
 a polite but peremptory refusal. The offence had 
 been too grave : criminal in all, in an officer of the 
 Imperial Guard the revolutionary principles and 
 intrigues were high treason which should have been 
 punished by the gallows. Not all his influence and 
 
RUFFINO 149 
 
 entreaty could induce the Muscovite envoy to promise 
 him the slightest possibility of pardon. 
 
 < Well, it does not matter,' thought Castiglione, as, 
 after these fruitless efforts, he took his way back to 
 his own palace, Ruffino, who had now recovered the 
 use of his fourth leg, trotting beside him, shaking his 
 silver bells. c It does not matter,' he repeated be- 
 tween his teeth. 1 1 will marry her ; and then this 
 wretched youth shall be cured, and provided for, 
 whether he chooses or no.' 
 
 The verification of the absolute truth of her 
 narrative had removed from his mind for ever those 
 vague doubts and fears, which had assailed him at 
 times, lest the romance of his temperament and the 
 personal beauty of his young and hapless neighbour 
 should hurry him into an uneven and ill-founded 
 passion. 
 
 To the generosity of his nature, it was the purest 
 delight to think that the creature whom he loved 
 should receive everything from his hands, should be 
 lifted up by him, from obscurity and misery, into the 
 fulness of happiness and the serenity of joy ; should be 
 led, at a bound, from the barren chambers of poverty, 
 into the splendours of an illustrious and omnipotent 
 rank. 
 
 c My poor, pale, niphetos rose from the north,' he 
 
150 RUFFINO 
 
 thought, with a tender smile, c you shall flower in 
 full luxuriance, and no wind but the wind of the 
 south shall blow on you ; and your children shall 
 blossom around you, and you shall give them all your 
 fair white soul and vour valorous heart ! ' 
 
 IX 
 
 HE dined somewhat more quickly than usual that 
 evening, dined alone, and left the table to go out on 
 to the loggia as the golden disc of the moon rose 
 above the dark woods of his gardens. It was still 
 early in the night : deep bells were tolling in all 
 directions around, for it was the vigil of Corpus 
 Domini ; young nightingales were trying their tender, 
 slender pipes against the full and sustained melody 
 of their elders' song; and the voices of choristers, 
 chanting in the chapel of his own palace, rose softly 
 and mournfully in the chaunts of the Church. 
 
 In the lane below there were quarrelling, cursing, 
 crying ; the screams of women, the outcries of 
 viragos, the mewing and miauling of cats. The dis- 
 cordant sounds jarred on the peaceful beauty of the 
 night. He sat down on the marble chair, and waited 
 until they should cease, and leave the place to its own 
 pure fragrance and the notes of the birds. He was 
 
RUFFINO 151 
 
 still lost in thought. The discovery of the letter had 
 impressed him greatly ; the knowledge that his father 
 might, by a single kind action, have spared this poor 
 child near him three long years of labour and priva- 
 tion, affected him as though it were some slur on his 
 own conscience, some brutal neglect of his own 
 doing. He was oppressed by the sense that she 
 had been so long close to all the luxury of 
 their daily lives, and had lived in misery which 
 would have been spared her if she had been given 
 one fraction of all that the dishonest household 
 pilfered and purloined every day. It made him feel 
 guilty and ashamed : so near him all this while, and 
 denied the bread that the swans on the garden-water 
 ate, the money that one tropical plant in the hothouses 
 cost to rear! His heart went out to her with "an 
 infinite tenderness : he had so much, and she had 
 nothing. 
 
 Hour on hour went on ; the fragrance grew 
 deeper as the night lengthened ; the noises of the 
 lane grew less and less ; the singing of the nightin- 
 gales rippled like flowing water through the dark. 
 He had no light in the loggia ; he had extinguished 
 even the lamp which hung from the roof; he had 
 hoped thus to tempt her, perchance, to open her 
 window, in the belief that there was no one there to 
 
152 RUFFINO 
 
 see her. But, to his own disappointment, and 
 Ruffino's great vexation, there was nothing to be 
 seen of the tenant of the corner house. The shutters 
 were closed, and neither moon-ray nor sunbeam could 
 enter into the rooms behind. He alternately paced 
 up and down the loggia, and sat at watch in the 
 marble chair, but all was useless. No sign nor sound 
 rewarded his long patience. 
 
 Ruffino, peering through the ivy, could see the 
 yellow cat, and other of his enemies, but his master 
 could see nothing of the young Vera. 
 
 ' It is absurd, intolerable, odious,' thought Cas- 
 tiglione, all his anger against her brother increasing 
 tenfold and twentyfold. Had he been less person- 
 ally interested and vexed, he would have admitted 
 that it was natural and honourable in the sick 
 Russian to withdraw his sister from the observations 
 and attentions of a man of rank, from the dangerous 
 admiration of a too-illustrious neighbour. But he 
 was too keenly intent on his pursuit of her, too 
 sincerely conscious of the purity and generosity of 
 his own intentions, to be capable of exercising 
 philosophic judgment. The young man seemed to 
 him to be a monster of brutality and egotism, and 
 he bitterly blamed the vile suspicions which could 
 see in himself a Lothario and a Lovelace. 
 
RUFFINO 153 
 
 He was only sensible of his own insufferable 
 disappointment as the hours passed away, and the 
 wooden shutters remained closed against all the 
 brilliancy and fragrance of the summer night. 
 
 c Where is your friend, Euffino ? ' he said, wist- 
 fully, to the little dog ; and Ruffino cocked his head 
 on one side, and looked wise, yet puzzled. He knew 
 that some question was asked of him to which he 
 could not reply. 
 
 Castiglione only left the loggia as the dawn 
 broke, its clear, white light rising above the crowded 
 domes and towers and roofs of Rome. With the 
 morning she must open the house, he thought ; 
 they must be stifled in it as it was. But when the 
 morning came, and even the noonday, the shutters 
 were still closed on the upper windows. 
 
 Below, the door stood open, and the old woman 
 was seated at it, surrounded with her vegetables, 
 and her brooms, and her sacks of dusty, half- 
 charred charcoal ; but at the upper windows there 
 was still no sight nor sound of life. A chill and 
 nameless dread came over him. Was it possible 
 that this Nihilist fanatic had persuaded or com- 
 pelled his young sister to die with him, and by 
 him, in their proud and hopeless wretchedness ? 
 He knew that men of that character and opinions set 
 
154 RUFFINO 
 
 little store upon life, and often regard suicide 
 as an heroic end to all sentient woes. His appre- 
 hension mastered him : who knew what dread secret 
 might lie hidden behind those worm-eaten, un- 
 painted, wooden bars ? 
 
 The girl's devotion to her brother had seemed so 
 largely infused with fear and obedience, that she 
 might very possibly have surrendered herself, in 
 despair, to his will, even in this dread sacrifice. 
 
 The full, broad brightness of a midsummer noon- 
 day was streaming on the lane below and on the 
 walls of the wretched house. The yellow cat slept 
 soundly, stretched upon the stones ; the people took 
 their siesta within doors, or under such shade as 
 tilted carts or mounds of rubbish afforded them ; the 
 poor, starved dogs forgot their aching stomachs in 
 blissful dreams, stretched upon the flags ; there were 
 for all those moments of oblivion which soothe the 
 most miserable into momentary peace. 
 
 In that midday silence the click of the shutter- 
 hasp sounded sharply. Castiglione, who was stand- 
 ing in the sun-bathed loggia, went eagerly to the 
 balustrade, with an exclamation of delight upon his 
 lips. Alas for his hopes ! It was the horny brown 
 hand of the old hag, Veneranda, which was opening 
 the wooden blind, and it was her frowsy grey head, 
 
RUFFINO 155 
 
 with a red rag of a handkerchief wound round it, 
 which peered out from the now open casement. 
 
 She had a broom in her other hand, and when 
 she had flung open the other shutter, he saw her 
 begin to sweep, with a fierce, desultory dashing of 
 her broom hither and thither, at wall and floor and 
 ceiling; the little iron bed was turned up as if it 
 had not been slept in; the Venetian mirror and 
 the Eikon were gone ; the table on which the photo- 
 graphs and prints had been used to lie was bare. 
 
 Castiglione cast his dignity to the winds, and 
 leaned over the balustrade, and called out to her : 
 ' Why are you there ? Has anything happened ? 
 Are your tenants ill ? What is it ? ' 
 
 The old woman dropped her broom, arid came to 
 the window. 
 
 c The saints above us, Signor Principe ! how you 
 frightened me ! I thought, of course, it was you who 
 took them away, or I should have come at once and 
 told your servants to apprise you of it. How was I to 
 know ? And I thought, though the rooms are paid 
 for, that your most illustrious would let me get 
 another tenant, for I am a lone, half-starved, and 
 miserable creature, and every farthing is sore 
 needed ' 
 
 ' What has happened ? ' said Castiglione, breath- 
 
156 RUFFINO 
 
 lessly ; whilst Kuffino, at the sight of the Sor ' Vener- 
 anda's grizzled pate, filled the air with volleys of 
 barks, which woke the poor mongrels sleeping on 
 the stones. 
 
 The old woman stared hard with her sharp 
 black eyes. Her surprise was genuine and extreme. 
 
 c It is not your excellency, then, who has taken 
 them away ? ' 
 
 ' Why should I take them away ? ' said Castiglione, 
 angrily. ' I had no interest in them, except pity. 
 What has happened ? Where are they gone ? Speak 
 plainly, and I will pay you well/ 
 
 Veneranda Pilotti had a vivid remembrance of 
 the two new gold-pieces which had passed from his 
 hand to hers a few days earlier. She tried to speak 
 as clearly as she could. In the dusk of the previous 
 evening her tenants had gone out of the house; a 
 facchino had carried the sick man down to a cart, and 
 the girl had got in the same cart, and they had been 
 driven away ; it was a common cart, with a mule in 
 it. They had taken their clothes with them, and the 
 old picture, which she supposed was their god ; 
 nothing else. They had said nothing to her, and she 
 had said nothing to them, supposing that the Signor 
 Principe, having befriended them before, was assist- 
 ing them again. 
 
RUFFINO 157 
 
 She did not say, what was the fact, that the fine 
 red wine, of which she had bought a barrel with 
 one of the Napoleons, had been so much too strong 
 for her that she had been lying drunk in her back 
 room, upon a heap of empty charcoal-sacks, at the 
 time of their departure, and so had only learned the 
 details of it by hearsay from her neighbours when 
 she had found the rooms vacated early that morning. 
 She had had no doubt in her own mind that their 
 illustrious neighbour had removed them, a cart 
 being used in lieu of a carriage merely for the sake 
 of attracting less notice in the lane. The experi- 
 ence of Sor' Yeneranda had not been of a nature to 
 acquaint her with generous or disinterested senti- 
 ments, and the interest taken by her princely neigh- 
 bour in a poor girl who sewed linen and coloured 
 prints for a livelihood could, in her estimation, have 
 but one motive and conclusion. 
 
 c I hope your excellency/ she whined, as she 
 leaned from the window-ledge, waving her bony hands 
 in eloquent protestation, ' will believe me that I was 
 like a mother to that sweet young soul. I loved her 
 like my own daughter, and many's the good turn I 
 have done for her in secret ; for she was so proud that 
 one had to creep like a mouse and hide like a mole 
 to put the least bit of bread in her mouth. The day 
 
158 RUFFINO 
 
 your most illustrious told me that I spoke too quick 
 to her, I was crossed in the grain because she was 
 so proud-stomached and masterful, and shut-up in 
 her misery. But, Lord ! your excellency, they were ' 
 only words ; I was good as mother's milk to her. 
 My temper may be hot like a peppered risotto, but 
 my heart is good as gold and true as steel. I wa's 
 only now dusting out her room, because, if I may 
 let it, though it is paid for by your most noble lord- 
 ship, the gain will be great to me; and if the dear 
 maiden is gone to a finer home and a better fate, 
 I will thank the Holy Virgin on my knees every 
 night, for a sweeter creature never breathed than 
 she is, and looking a princess born.' 
 
 ' Hold your peace ! ' said Castiglione, sternly. c I 
 have nothing to do with her flight, and if you dare 
 to say that I have, it will be the worse for you. 
 Do what you choose with your rooms, but do not 
 dare to take her name in vain, or you will answer 
 to me.' 
 
 Then he turned away from the balustrade, and 
 went within to his own house; whilst Veneranda 
 Pilotti wagged her unkempt head over her broom- 
 stick. 
 
 c He, he, he ! Ho, ho, ho ! ' she chuckled. / A 
 fine way my Lord Prince is in because I guessed 
 
RUFFINO 159 
 
 his pranks ! What is the use of all those lies ? 
 Haven't I seen his flowers, and his letters, and his 
 star-gazing all these weeks since he first espied the 
 girl sitting here at this lattice ? Nor do I know 
 why he should be so afraid of having it known. The 
 old man is dead, and this young lord has. got no 
 wife/ 
 
 She vexed herself over the problem all the while 
 that she swept and garnished and banged about her 
 rooms ; but she could make nothing out of it : a poor 
 girl was a poor girl ; she could not see why the new 
 Prince should be mightily ashamed of taking one for 
 sport, as a child plucks a cherry. 
 
 But, holy angels ! she's been in luck ! ' she 
 said to herself twenty times that day ; ( a poor, puny 
 thing, with no colour, and red hair ! ' 
 
 If he had taken Poppea, now, the daughter of 
 Pompeo, the scavenger, a fine, black-browed, full- 
 breasted goddess, who danced the tarantella in a 
 manner wondrous to behold, then indeed she could 
 have understood this great lord's condescension to 
 what was so far beneath him. 
 
 Castiglione went indoors with one dread light- 
 ened, but another substituted for it. Into what 
 depths of misery might not her mad and heartless 
 brother have hurried this poor child ? Without 
 
160 RUFFINO 
 
 money, without help, without friends, what could 
 become of her, with a paralysed invalid on her hands, 
 and deprived of such shelter and support as she had 
 derived from a little home familiar to her ? He 
 divined that Volodia Nelaguine had been the cause 
 and mover of this sudden disappearance, and that the 
 obstinacy and rashness of his character had made 
 him force his sister into an act which multiplied her 
 difficulties, and drove her out into wholly unknown 
 conditions of life. Three years, at her age, seem long, 
 and three years' residence in the little corner house 
 had endeared its poor shelter to her : the gardens 
 had been, as she had said, her consolation, her 
 calendar, her one undying pleasure. Into what 
 darkness, what foulness, what danger, what horrible 
 contact, might she now be thrust by her brother's 
 despotic folly ? 
 
 Castiglione lost not a moment in seeking out the 
 Kussian doctor ; but Basilewsky's distress and amaze 
 and anxiety were so genuine on hearing of their 
 disappearance, that the greatest sceptic could not 
 have doubted his absolute ignorance. 
 
 6 1 am shocked, and I am grieved. I did not 
 foresee such a possibility,' he said, when he 
 recovered his calmness. ' Nelaguine has taken his 
 sister away from you ; there is no doubt of that ; his 
 
RUFFINO 161 
 
 body was helpless, but his will was iron, and his 
 authority over her was great. He must have had 
 some trifle of money hidden, which he employed for 
 this purpose ; probably some small sum saved to pay 
 for his burial. With those coins he must have paid 
 the man who carried and the cart which transported 
 him, and the new hole in which he has gone to 
 earth. You would not listen to me, Signor Principe. 
 I told you that he was a youth of savage honour, of 
 unalterable obstinacy; to such a man, what must 
 your attentions and letters to his sister have seemed ? 
 Only an insult to be avoided at any cost, even at that 
 of death for both herself and him.' 
 
 4 He is a madman ! ' said Castiglione, as his 
 forehead grew red under the just reproach and 
 inference of the speaker. 
 
 ( He is not wholly sane,' said Basilewsky. c No 
 man is who lies on his back, helpless, torn to pieces 
 by remorse and regret, and seeing no more of the 
 living world around him than if he were lying dead 
 in a church-vault. You must be just. He saw only 
 one way to save his sister from what he considered to 
 be impending dishonour. He has taken that way.' 
 
 ' I will find her, if I spend every day of my life 
 and every thought of my brain,' he said impetuously, 
 forgetful of the presence of a stranger. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 RUFFINO 
 
 c And if you succeed, my lord,' said Basilewsky, 
 'her brother will only take her away again, only 
 bury her five fathoms deeper. A youth who braved 
 the Tzar of all the Eussias fears no ills, physical or 
 mental ; when anyone, of his own deliberate choice, 
 risks Siberia or the scaffold, nothing afterwards can 
 have terrors for him. If it be necessary, Volodia 
 Nelaguine will fire his revolver into his sister's bosom 
 sooner than see her in any danger from your admira- 
 tion. I speak bluntly. You will pardon me ; I am 
 no courtier, and it hurts me to think that this child 
 should be hidden like this, even from me. I am her 
 only friend.' 
 
 'Not her only one,' said Castiglione, with re- 
 pressed emotion. 
 
 c You cannot be her friend,' said the old man, 
 harshly. 'That her brother knew; and for once, 
 fool though he be, he is right.' 
 
 Are you so sure ? ' said Castiglione, dreamily. 
 4 Well, let us find her first ; then we will see.' 
 
 'If I can find her, I shall not tell you of it, my 
 lord,' said the old man, curtly. 
 
 ' You will be wrong,' said the younger man, with 
 sadness ; for why, he thought, must everyone think 
 that he had neither pity nor chivalry in him ? 
 
 c We will find her ourselves, Euffino,' he said to 
 
RUFFINO 163 
 
 his little dog; and Euffino put his head on one 
 side, and assumed his most sedate and sympathetic 
 expression. 
 
 He did not know what troubled his master ; he 
 supposed that it was the yellow cat. 
 
 Ruffino was very human in his mental vision; 
 his own enmities and amities were to him the 
 measure of the world's. He could imagine no one 
 being altogether at peace so long as the yellow cat 
 crawled in freedom over the tiles, and cleaned its fur 
 unmolested in the sunshine. The whole universe 
 was out of joint whilst such a wrong endured. 
 
 ' I will find" her/ Castiglione said to himself, 
 passionately, c if I spend on it every day of my life 
 and every thought of my mind.' 
 
 And, at first sight, to discover her retreat seemed 
 easy enough to a man who knew the city in which 
 she was so well, and commanded such resources of 
 wealth and service as he did. But the time slipped 
 away, and to find her did not prove to be so easy. He 
 could not bring himself to employ the police in the 
 search ; he could not bear to give her over to such 
 vulgar surveillance, and he was not sure what harm it 
 might not do to her companion. He endeavoured to 
 conduct the investigations himself, employing only 
 such men in his own service as he could entirely trust. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 RUFFINO 
 
 But their efforts were in vain, and he began in 
 despair to believe that, miraculous as such an escape 
 would seem, they must have got by some means to 
 Civita Yecchia, and thence by some sea-route to 
 another land. Yet their extreme poverty, and the 
 physical helplessness of Nelaguine, forbade this 
 explanation to be seriously entertained. The alter- 
 nate conclusion, that they were hidden somewhere in 
 the city, was more probable. Rome was large, and 
 had many obscure portions, which strangers could 
 remain in, untroubled by inquiries municipal or 
 fiscal. It was likely enough that they were close 
 by, in some one of the narrow passages of the 
 Trastevere, where the population burrowed like 
 rabbits. He made every investigation that was 
 possible, but of the man and mule who had carried 
 them away there was no trace to be found. No one 
 in the lane had taken any notice of so common an 
 event as a common cart stopping at a door in 
 the dusk. Unassisted, however, no invalid would 
 have been able to arrange so rapid and secret a 
 change of habitation ; and Castiglione felt sure 
 that the young girl herself had been no willing 
 agent in the abandonment of her little home, and 
 of the neighbourhood of those gardens which were 
 so dear to her : he was sure that she had been the 
 
RUFFINO 165 
 
 victim now, as she had been in the flight from 
 Kussia. 
 
 But all his suspicions, all his anxieties, were 
 useless ; no one could tell him anything, and he him- 
 self walked the streets of Rome, in all its poorest 
 quarters, without success. 
 
 Again and again he implored, menaced, com- 
 manded, entreated Basilewsky to reveal the truth; 
 but the old man declared that he knew no more than 
 the dead : and the visible trouble in which he was 
 plunged by the loss of his country-people confirmed 
 the truth of his declaration. Had he known where 
 his young favourites were, and merely concealed it 
 from a sense of duty, he would not have been, as he 
 evidently was, distressed at the want of confidence 
 which they had shown in him, and the mystery 
 which surrounded their disappearance. 
 
 But Castiglione had a patrician's scepticism as to 
 the good faith of revolutionists ; and Basilewsky was, 
 by his own admission, a Nihilist, who had been driven 
 out of his own country by the doctrines which he 
 followed and professed. He caused the old doctor to 
 be followed day and night for a week ; but nothing 
 was learned or gained by it, except the proof that 
 his charity to the poorest of the population was 
 inexhaustible, and that a love of botany took him 
 
1 66 RUFF1NO 
 
 often out on to the Cainpagna, and to the meadows 
 and woods of the various villas. He was a lonely 
 man, and lived hardly, and tramped about with a 
 stout stick as his only aid, and a tin case for his 
 botanical specimens slung across his back. 
 
 It was quite certain that he could hold no com- 
 munication with the fugitives, for the record of his' 
 days, to every minute, was brought to Castiglione 
 by those whom he employed to watch the move- 
 ments of this harmless anarchist. 
 
 The great heats of the full summer had now 
 come, and he was unused to, and oppressed by, 
 them ; for so many years he had passed every 
 summer month in green pleasure-places of Germany 
 or France, in English country-houses, or on cool, 
 northern seas, in his steam-yacht. The vast accumu- 
 lation of affairs consequent on the death of his father 
 gave him excuse enough to remain in Rome ; but he 
 was conscious that his people wondered at his long 
 delay in leaving the city, and Saverio, his old body- 
 servant, ventured several times to suggest that the 
 mountain air of the great Montefeltro castle, on the 
 slopes of the snow-crowned Leonessa, would be better 
 for his master's health than these close heats of 
 Trastevere. 
 
 'The Holy Father is shut up in Trastevere/ 
 
RUFFINO 167 
 
 replied Castiglione, curtly, with a motion of his hand 
 towards the pile of the Vatican ; and the opinion 
 gained ground amongst his household that he was 
 going to alter his ways and views, and become a 
 devotee, as the late Prince had been. But Saverio 
 shook his head when he heard them say this. 
 
 ( It is not priests he is thinking of ; it is a 
 woman/ said Saverio to himself. Nothing but a 
 woman would have kept his lord here, in the melan- 
 choly and silent magnificence of his Roman palace, 
 when the canicular heats were burning brown the 
 lawns of his gardens, and making the carp in 
 his fishponds lie faint and gasping amongst the 
 yellowed leaves of the water-lilies. 
 
 Saverio saw, as Ruffino saw, that his master was 
 distressed and angered. These long wanderings on 
 foot through the worst portions of the city fatigued 
 and depressed him. By them he became acquainted 
 with the haunts of misery and crime ; he saw 
 hunger and nakedness in their worst forms; he 
 understood want, as it existed side by side with 
 luxury and power. 
 
 Whilst tender-hearted, and by temper generous, 
 he had led the careless and selfish life of a man of 
 pleasure : he had given liberally, but he had thought 
 little of where his gifts went, and of why they were 
 
168 RUFFINO 
 
 wanted ; lie had been often imposed upon, and he had 
 been content with the surface of things. But in 
 these weeks in which he searched for Vera Nelaguine, 
 his eyes were opened, and his mind was filled with the 
 true meanings of the misery which lay without his 
 gates, grovelling in the filth of rags and in the horrors 
 of disease. 
 
 To think that this gentle child, whose labours he 
 had watched so long, was lost to him amidst these 
 unutterable desolations of the city, cut him to the 
 quick ; to know that she must be in one of these 
 dens where the poor were crowded during the torrid 
 heat, the noisome fever-mists, the sights and scents 
 and sounds of some squalid alley, or some foul nest 
 made between the broken columns of what once had 
 been a temple or a palace, was to him an almost 
 unendurable torture. The scorching cloudless days, 
 the heavy, dewless nights, were trying enough to him 
 in his vast and noble house, with its cool, marble 
 courts, its wide, long corridors, its shadowy, fragrant 
 gardens, and its superb halls and chambers, which 
 were so lofty that the eye gazing upwards saw the 
 angels and the gods of their frescoed domes lost as 
 in a vision, Ezekiel-like, of the heavens opened. 
 
 If even here and thus, the canicular weeks were 
 hard to bear, what, he thought, must they be where 
 
RUFFINO 169 
 
 she was ; doubtless in some festering, filthy, crowded 
 passage, where the blackened walls shut out the sky, 
 and the air was made hideous by screams and oaths 
 and blows and children's shrieks ! 
 
 To think of her thus was an almost insupport- 
 able pain to him, into which self-reproach entered. 
 If he had not approached her, she would at least 
 have remained in this little house which was familiar 
 to her, with the verdure of his own gardens and 
 the ripple of his own fountain-waters near at hand 
 to give her at least some sound and solace of the 
 summer. 
 
 * She did us good, Euffino, and we have done her 
 nothing but ill,' he said to the little dog as he paced 
 the loggia one evening. Kuffino shook his head, 
 making his new silver bells ring where they were 
 hidden under his ruff. 
 
 Life was dull to him in Rome. At this season 
 he was always trotting on the green edges of some 
 promenade at Spa, or Homburg, or Karlsbad, or Vichy, 
 flirting with Elsa or some other canine fair at Baden, 
 or scratching up the sea-sand on the shore of 
 Schweningen or Blankenberghe, or some other marine 
 resort where the white-and-gold sides of his master's 
 yacht shone in the sunshine amongst similar pleasure- 
 craft. Rome made Ruffino hot and cross. Fleas were 
 
1 70 RUFFINO 
 
 many ; flies were legion ; and the very marble itself 
 grew warm where the sun-rays baked it all day long. 
 
 Besides, the supreme interest of watching for his 
 enemy, Magliabecchi, was now a thing of the past ; 
 Magliabecchi and Don Antonio had alike faded out 
 from the range of his vision, and the vigil over 
 the yellow cat was only a source of exasperating- 
 and hopeless irritation ; for, to prevent any possibility 
 of his ever again descending after her into her lane, 
 his master had caused the balustrade to be fenced in 
 with copper netting, and Ruffino could only get the 
 tip of his nose between those closely-woven wires; 
 and it seemed to him that the yellow cat, safe in her 
 shamelessness, looked up at him, and 'grinned at him 
 in derision from below. 
 
 On the whole Eome was dull to him, and there 
 was no amusement for him except to eat ; and in that 
 amusement he indulged liberally and unchecked. 
 
 But Kuffino, eating the foie gras and scorning the 
 aspic, picking out the truffles and leaving the salmi, 
 was occasionally visited by the Nemesis of all gour- 
 mets, and did not digest as well as the poor mongrels 
 below, who had stomachs which could cope with bits 
 of wood and bones swallowed entire. Besides his 
 dyspepsia, Kuffino was often pained by his ignorance 
 of, and exclusion from, the movements of the man he 
 
RUFFINO 171 
 
 loved. To have a plate of good things set before him, 
 and be bidden to lie still in the loggia or in the library 
 whilst his master went out on unknown errands, was 
 a vexation to his devoted and enterprising spirit. 
 
 Castiglione did not take him into all these 
 dangerous and poverty-haunted portions of the city, 
 because he was afraid that harm might come to the 
 small dog owing to his audacious temper and insatiate 
 curiosity ; but Kuffino could not tell his motive, and 
 was only vexed and wounded at being left behind. 
 The valorous exposer of Magliabecchi should, he felt, 
 not be deemed unworthy to accompany his lord any- 
 where. When his lord said to him, c Stay at home, 
 little one,' he obeyed, because he could not do other- 
 wise, but he felt that he was outraged and ill-treated. 
 That yellow cat was allowed full freedom ; and he, 
 Ruffino, her superior in every way in the scale of 
 creation, was treated like a baby, and shut up on the 
 loggia or in the library, with a china bowl of iced 
 milk and a plate of chopped liver, there to yawn away 
 the long, empty hours as best he could. He could 
 hardly bring himself to be sympathetic when his master 
 returned, as he inevitably did, from his solitary ex- 
 cursions, jaded, fatigued, and evidently disappointed. 
 
 c Where can she be, Ruffino ? ' said Castiglione, 
 often, with a tired sigh ; and Ruffino, although he could 
 
172 RUFFINO 
 
 not understand the words, knew very well that his 
 lord was worried 1 and depressed about something. 
 
 It was not Magliabecchi now ; therefore it must 
 be the abominable yellow cat. Ruffino wrinkled his 
 brows, and pondered anxiously : he did not see how 
 he could ever help his master if he were left behind 
 in the palace, and for all excursions confined to the 
 lawns and alleys of the gardens below. 
 
 He observed that his master never now sat on the 
 marble chair by the balustrade, and whenever he did 
 pace up and down the loggia, looked now and again 
 out at the evening skies with an impatient sigh. 
 
 'There is something wrong/ thought Euffino. 
 < But what ? ' 
 
 He, with all his wisdom, could not guess why 
 his dear friend never now opened a book, and had no 
 heart to watch the constellations loom large, as night 
 waned, above the ilex woods. 
 
 c And we see no ladies ever now/ he thought. 
 Ruffino hated ladies ; but they amused him because 
 they were always so terribly afraid of him, and yet 
 complimented and caressed him (or would have 
 caressed him) so flatteringly, to please his owner. 
 Nothing had ever better diverted him than to show 
 his little, pearl-like teeth at them and make them 
 scream. 
 
RUFFINO 173 
 
 Things must be in a strange way, he thought, 
 when there were none of those living packets of lace, 
 and pearl-powder, and jewels, and blonde curls, any- 
 where about the steps of his master. 
 
 He remembered, when he was a puppy, pulling 
 one of the blonde curls once offone of them ; and how 
 the lady had blushed and fidgeted ; and how every- 
 body else near them had tittered ; and how his 
 master, convulsed with laughter, had called him 
 1 enfant terrible a quatre pattes,' which had seemed 
 to Ruffino approbation. 
 
 But such merry days were now no more ; and no 
 ladies ever crossed the threshold of the Montefeltro 
 palace, except an austere Mother Superior of an aris- 
 tocratic Order, who was Castiglione's aunt and god- 
 mother, and who, under dispensation, called solemnly 
 on him once to propose an alliance to him with a 
 cousin, which he ungratefully declined. 
 
 c WHERE is she, Ruffino ? ' said Castiglione, restlessly, 
 seeing through the open windows of the little corner 
 house some frowsy women, in gaudy-coloured petti- 
 coats, who were hanging out strings of sliced tomatoes 
 in the sun to dry. He repented him that he had 
 
174 RUFFINO 
 
 not forbidden the old Veneranda to let the rooms. It 
 seemed odious profanity to see those beldames there 
 in the little chamber where he had thrown his glox- 
 inias, and where Vera had slept her innocent sleep, 
 and prayed to her familiar Eikon. It was a humble 
 common place, but it had been spiritualised and 
 poetised by the presence of a pure and heroic youth*. 
 
 He was incensed against himself that he should 
 not have prevented such a sacrilege : it seemed to 
 accentuate and confirm more hopelessly the entire 
 loss of her, when he saw those hags leaning out of 
 her casement, and heard them chattering in guttural 
 voices, as they hung out their tomatoes. 
 
 4 1 wish to buy that lane ; I give you full powers,' 
 he said that day to his steward. Yes, of course the 
 price will be utterly out of proportion to its value ; 
 that one must expect : but it is an eyesore, an un- 
 utterable and intolerable nuisance. I desire to annex 
 it to the palace, and throw it into the gardens. Deal 
 with the owners as best you can, but purchase the 
 whole place ; the old woman owning the corner house 
 will drive a hard bargain, but to clear it all away 
 I shall not grudge the price.' 
 
 'It shall be done before the week is out, most 
 illustrious,' said the steward, 
 
 But he had reckoned without Veneranda Pilotti. 
 
RUFFINO 175 
 
 The first hint which she received that her illustrious 
 neighbour wished to buy her premises sufficed to 
 make her hold to them tooth and nail. 
 
 His agents seduced, cajoled, tempted, dazzled, 
 finally threatened her all to no avail. 
 
 ' Oh ! he wants my poor house, does he ? ' she said 
 to all of them. ' Well, he will not have it, then. No, 
 not if he filled it chuck full of gold-pieces from cellar 
 to rafter. There is law in the city,' she added, as 
 the miller of Sans Souci said to Frederick the Great, 
 c and we will see if a young noble can despoil a poor 
 lone widow. Pay ? Why, yes, he would pay ; I hear 
 that well enough, but I do not choose to sell ; go tell 
 him so. He wants it to please his puny, pale-faced 
 dama] and he shall not have it ; it is mine mine mine 
 as much as the Vatican yonder is our Holy Father's. 
 I will not sell no ! no ! no ! no ! Go, tell him so ! ' 
 
 She fully intended to sell, but after the manner 
 of her nation she walked backwards to spring farther 
 and spring higher. 
 
 She had bemoaned herself a hundred times a week 
 that the house ruined her, wretched little hole as it 
 was, and yet taxed as if it were a palace ; she had 
 longed to sell it, tried to sell it, over and over again, 
 meaning if she could do so to go and live in the 
 place of her birth, a village under Castel Gandolfo. 
 
1 76 RUFFINO 
 
 But the power of refusing her great neighbour any- 
 thing was sweet to her, and as her shrewdness 
 divined the tender emotion which moved him to 
 take it out of her hands, she said to herself that she 
 would make him go on his knees to her before he got 
 it, and pay for every brick of it its weight in gold. 
 
 That their lord could spend his summer in the 
 Trastevere, and vex his soul over the purchase of the 
 lane, stupefied his household. Even his father, who 
 had loathed change of any kind, had never remained 
 later than June in Eome, and had always gone at the 
 end of that month to the castle on the Leonessa, or to 
 his marine palace by Palo. 
 
 ' I must go away,' said Castiglione every night to 
 himself, as the fever-breeding mists stole up like 
 smoke from the baked, cracked earth, and the myriads 
 of gnats and mosquitoes circled round every lamp 
 which hung from the palace-walls or burned in the 
 old bronze sconces. 
 
 But when the morning came he said, invariably, 
 ' I will stay one more day. Perhaps I shall hear of 
 her to-day.' 
 
 Invitations of all kinds lay in piles on his table : 
 women whose wishes had always had magic over 
 him wrote in vain, and in vain beguiled and besought 
 him to join them by northern waters, under western 
 
RUFFINO 157 
 
 Woods, or in voyages of pleasure and pastime. He 
 took no notice of all their proposals and entreaties. 
 The death of the Prince of Montefeltro was known 
 all over Europe ; he let all the world suppose that he 
 was absorbed in grief or overwhelmed in affairs. The 
 printed letter of the faire part addressed to them by 
 his secretary was all that his most intimate friends 
 received. 
 
 He had no memory for any one of them : all he 
 saw was a Cenci-like face, with brown, soft, dove- 
 like eyes, and a thin, small, white hand, for ever 
 working working working. He could not bring 
 himself to leave the city while she was still unfound. 
 She could hardly fail to be in great wretchedness, 
 unless she had discovered some new friends, of whom 
 he knew nothing ; and this did not seem to him likely. 
 Her brother might have dragged her down into still 
 lower deeps of poverty and sickness ; her own health 
 might have given way under the severe strain which 
 she put on it : there was no end to the various shapes 
 of misery in which his imagination pictured her. He 
 could not sleep for thinking of all which might have 
 befallen, which might still befall her ; and Ruffino, 
 who liked to enjoy a good night's rest undisturbed, 
 justly deeming the daylight long enough for toil and 
 trouble, was much annoyed by the manner in which 
 
 N 
 
1 78 RUFFINO 
 
 his master got up and walked restlessly about in the 
 hot and windless hours which immediately preceded 
 dawn. 
 
 A sense of duty made Kuffino sit bolt upright all 
 the time, on the watch lest there should be any rat 
 or cat from which his friend required to be delivered ; 
 but he yawned frequently, and felt that an owner 
 troubled with insomnia was a severe trial to the loyalty 
 of a dog. To occupy himself, and keep himself 
 awake, he made drowsy dashes at the tapestries, 
 behind which he could hear mice rustling stealthily ; 
 but it was fruitless work, and Ruffino preferred sound, 
 uneventful sleep to a campaign against rodents who 
 defied him in their secure intrenchment behind the 
 historic draperies designed by John of Flanders. 
 
 One morning, Castiglione, who rose little re- 
 freshed from his bed, went down after his bath, in 
 the early morning air, into the gardens. It was that 
 season of great heat in which the daybreak even is 
 not cool, and the sultry night sinks languidly into 
 the oppressive fever of the dawn. 
 
 c Decidedly I must go away,' he thought, c or I 
 shall lose my mind and my health in this solitude.' 
 
 Yet he could not endure the thought of leaving 
 Rome in continued ignorance of her fate ; it seemed 
 to him incredible that all the resources of money and 
 
RUFFINO 179 
 
 of intelligence should be of no avail to trace her steps. 
 His dread lest death should have sealed the mystery 
 of her fate returned, and increased upon him. The 
 poor and forlorn die unnoticed, unnamed, unmourned, 
 even as they live. She might, very possibly, have 
 passed from the obscurity of poverty and exile into 
 the eternal exile of the tomb, without any human 
 being having mourned for her. " He shuddered as he 
 thought of her delicate beauty hustled by rough hands 
 into the deal shell of a pauper's coffin, and thrown 
 into the common pit where the poor are left to rot 
 together. If it were so, he said to himself, bitterly 
 her maniac of a brother would have murdered her as 
 surely as though he had shot her dead as Basilewsky 
 had imagined. 
 
 ( And that is fraternal affection ! that is family 
 honour ! ' thought Castiglione, passionately, as he 
 paced the long aisles of clipped arbutus and bay 
 which closed in fragrant darkness above his head. 
 Ruffino paced thoughtfully beside him, thinking a 
 little of Thuringian Elsa, but more of the minced 
 chicken which would be ready for him when he should 
 go indoors. 
 
 Suddenly he stopped, growled, and sniffed the air ; 
 the scent of something wicked was borne on it to 
 his sensitive olfactory nerves ; then he ran forward, 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o RUFFINO 
 
 and pounced upon a square white envelope lying on 
 the grass, and would have torn it into a hundred 
 pieces with his teeth and claws had not his com- 
 panion taken it from him. 
 
 ' Stop, Ruffino ! ' said Castiglione, as he rescued it ; 
 c it may be from her.' 
 
 Ruffino let it go reluctantly ; it had a wicked " 
 smell. 
 
 Castiglione tore it open in haste ; its cover was 
 inscribed to { The Most Noble the Prince of Monte- 
 feltro, Duke of Castiglione and Marquis of Vivalda. 5 
 
 On a broad sheet of paper were written a few 
 lines : 
 
 c The Russian maiden for whom you care so much 
 is in ill-health ; her brother is dead, and she will soon 
 follow him. Tins is for your information, from one who 
 is your friend. Cease to search for her, for you ivill 
 never find her ; you will not even find her grave.' 
 
 The brutal words were as the echo of his direst 
 fears , his dreadest forebodings. He stood still, like 
 one stunned, whilst the deep black shadows of the 
 arbutus and bay fell across his path. 
 
 This letter from a friend ! It must have come 
 from his bitterest enemy, he thought. Ruffino had 
 been right in scenting the hand of a foe. 
 
 It must have come, also, from some one con- 
 
RUFFINO 181 
 
 versant with the gardens, and acquainted with his 
 preference for this alley above all other parts of the 
 many avenues and green walks. 
 
 c Oh ! Kuffino, you are wiser than I,' he said, with 
 a heavy sigh. 
 
 Euffino coughed politely ; it was his way of de- 
 precating a compliment, yet allowing its accuracy. 
 He knew from whom the letter came. He could 
 smell in it the fingers of Magliabecchi. But, alas ! he 
 could not say so in any language which should be 
 intelligible to the blunt and finite senses of man. 
 
 Castiglione walked to and fro the grassy path 
 with agitated, aimless haste, affrighting the nightin- 
 gales amongst the bay thickets, and startling the 
 blackbirds from their breakfast on the arbutus-fruit. 
 He did not doubt the truth of what the letter said, 
 for it accorded too well with his own fears, and it 
 bore the stamp of a brutal and malignant veracity. 
 
 From whom could it come ? If her brother were 
 dead, who could have any interest in separating her 
 from him ? Her very existence was known to 
 hardly any one out of all the population of Rome. 
 Basilewsky, indeed, might have found her : but no ; 
 Basilewsky had always shown himself a kind and 
 honest man ; he would be incapable of this act of 
 devilish malignity. 
 
1 82 RUFFINO 
 
 Then, remembering the little dog's fury at the 
 sight and scent of the letter, and the knowledge of 
 his own daily habits which its place in that especial 
 walk betokened, his slower human sense arrived at 
 the same suspicion which Kuffino's quick canine 
 instincts had reached at once. 
 
 ' It is from Magliabecchi,' he said aloud ; and 
 Buffino, hearing the detested name, stopped in his 
 walk, and lifted up an eloquent little face with 
 black lips upcurled over two rows of small, sharp 
 teeth. 
 
 c Ah ! you knew it, Ruffo ? ' said Castiglione. 
 c Great heavens ! if she be in that fiend's power ! ' 
 
 All his possessions, all his riches, all his position 
 seemed vain and useless things ; he felt as helpless 
 as an animal caught in the jaws of a trap. 
 
 The letter was not in the handwriting of either 
 Magliabecchi or of Don Antonio, but he had no doubt 
 that it was a revenge of one or both of them ; a return 
 for the clemency with which he had let them depart 
 unmolested and unpunished. He hurried to the 
 house, and bade his people inquire what and where 
 had been the actions and residence of the physician 
 and the chaplain since their dismissal on the day of 
 his father's death. They were both well-known men ; 
 they had been forty years in his father's service ; it 
 
RUFFINO 183 
 
 would be easy, he thought, to find them, even if they 
 were in hiding. 
 
 Of Don Antonio he soon received tidings ; he was 
 in retreat with a religious fraternity outside the walls : 
 of Magliabecchi, everyone declared, truly or falsely, 
 that they knew nothing ; only one of the gardeners 
 testified to having seen some one who had looked like 
 him under the south wall of the lower garden on the 
 previous evening. No doubt,' Castiglione thought, 
 he had laid the letter there himself for greater 
 security, and it was the scent of his touch upon it 
 which Ruffino had recognised with so much rage. 
 
 He communicated with the municipal police, 
 although he had no confidence in them, and gave 
 them the errand of finding Magliabecchi ; of her 
 he could not bring himself to speak to the Questura. 
 The news given him might be the mere malicious 
 inventions of a revengeful and false rogue ; but he 
 could not be sure of that, and they agreed too 
 completely with his own presentiments to be doubted 
 or rejected. 
 
 Magliabecchi had probably been the cause of her 
 disappearance, perhaps by some information or 
 suggestion given to her brother, whose suspicions 
 had been so easy to arouse ; and the youth had 
 probably died of the excitement and exertion of the 
 
1 84 RUFFINO 
 
 removal, perishing in some nameless hole in the city, 
 like a wounded fox in its secret earth. 
 
 Never before had Castiglione been so conscious of 
 the impotency of rank and wealth. He would have 
 given all that he had just inherited to trace and save 
 one fragile, fleeting life ; and he was as helpless as 
 if he had been any penniless labourer working on 
 the mud banks of the Tiber, with the woman whom 
 he loved left behind him to perish of ague in a rush- 
 hut on the Agro Rom ana. 
 
 c Rank is an irony sometimes, Ruffino/ he said to 
 his only confidant, who did not entirely understand, 
 but knew that something was wrong, and felt that if 
 the wire had not been put up to separate him from 
 the yellow cat, this wrong would probably have 
 been set right long ago. He never doubted that 
 the cat was at the bottom of everything, and that 
 Magliabecchi had originally created her. 
 
 Castiglione read and re-read the cruel lines which 
 had, as it were, plunged a knife into his breast. He 
 could not doubt the truth of them, passionately as 
 he longed to do so. He showed them to Basilewsky, 
 and once again, before the genuine distress of the old 
 man, was forced to believe that he was as ignorant as 
 he declared. 
 
 ( See into what your refusal to press my friendship 
 
RUFFINO 185 
 
 on her brother has led herself and him ! ' he said, in 
 bitter anger and reproach. 
 
 Basilewsky bent his grey head in meekness 
 under the rebuke. 
 
 c I acted according to my light ; I did what I 
 considered my duty.' he said, gently. c Besides, 
 it is quite certain, my lord, that nothing which I 
 could have said cr done would have altered this 
 poor youth's views of your desire to befriend him. 
 I have little hope that this letter you show me is 
 untrue. It is only too likely that the effort of his 
 removal has resulted in his death, and that the strain 
 so long put before her strength has broken it down. 
 She has been his victim from first to last. He had 
 no right to drag her down to share his self-sought 
 miseries. She was a delicately-nurtured, aristocratic 
 child, a hot-house flower; and he brought her 
 where she had to work like a common drudge, and 
 hardly earn every bit and drop which passed her lips 
 and his. He felt intense remorse ; but that was of 
 no use. The evil was done when he dragged her 
 after him away from her home and her friends. No ; 
 I do not know anything of her. I give you my 
 word that I do not. But I agree with you, it is 
 only too probable that all which this letter says is 
 true.' 
 
1 86 RUFFINO 
 
 ' Ill-news is always true/ said Castiglione, bitterly. 
 c It is only our joys which deceive us.' 
 
 Basilewsky looked at him earnestly. 
 
 4 You are not well, my lord, yourself,' he said ; 
 'you should leave Rome. You have set your soul 
 upon this thing because it eludes you. But you 
 would do better to put it out of your mind altogether. 
 You are young, you are powerful, you are exception- 
 ally favoured by Nature and by fortune. Put this 
 unhappy child out of your thoughts, and seek your 
 pleasures and affections in your own world. Even if 
 Volodia Nelaguine be in his grave, she will not dis- 
 obey him if she has promised him to flee from you.' 
 
 c I will find her, and we shall see,' said Castiglione, 
 obstinately. c I will not leave Eome until I find her 
 living or dead.' 
 
 c You will waste your own life uselessly,' said the 
 elder man. 
 
 ' And has not hers been wasted?' said Castiglione. 
 All his accustomed luxuries, all his pleasant habits, 
 all his ephemeral passions, all his physical indulgences, 
 seemed to him like a crime against her. 
 
 ' Whilst I was dining or playing ecarte, those 
 brutes were bearing her off out of my reach,' he 
 thought, with a heavy sense as of some sin against her. 
 
 He felt that he should have been more vigilant, 
 
RUFFINO 187 
 
 quicker ; more resolute to take her from her brother's 
 domination, more swift and eager to assure her of his 
 own tenderness and protection. His father's death, 
 his engrossing affairs, his own hesitation, his vacilla- 
 tion between belief in her and doubt of her, had let 
 slip time which now he would have given half his 
 possessions to recall. 
 
 It seemed to him as if he had been so miserably 
 lacking in decision, in energy, in faith, that the 
 burden of her loss lay at his own doors. 
 
 He regretted, with a despairing knowledge of how 
 useless all regret was, that he had not disregarded 
 her entreaties, and forcibly made his way into the 
 presence of her brother. 
 
 He put the search for her in the hands of one of 
 his men-of-business. It was odiously repugnant to 
 him to speak of her ; but he dared waste no more 
 time, or leave untried any chance or possibility which 
 might lead to her discovery. Magliabecchi had 
 easily been traced ; but he was living, quietly, on a 
 third floor in the street of the Quattro Fontane, and 
 there was nothing in his daily habits and occupations 
 to connect him in any way either with the composition 
 of the letter or the disappearance of the fugitives. 
 
 The certainty existing in Castiglione's own mind 
 admitted of no proof. He had the rogue watched 
 
1 88 RUFFING 
 
 carefully, day after day, but nothing was recorded, 
 except wholly uninteresting details of such sober 
 amusements and blameless occupations as became a 
 man of his mature years and respectable calling. He 
 had laid by enough in his long service in the 
 Montefeltro palace to live at ease, to dabble in some 
 safe speculations on the Bourse, and water his capons 
 and quails with the best and oldest wines, and make 
 his fifteen per cent, snugly in private loans and 
 judicious mortgages. 
 
 Of his dismissal from that palace, as it had been 
 followed up by no arrest or criminal proceedings, he 
 made light in all appearance, however fiercely and 
 bitterly his soul chafed at it in secret. 
 
 ' I did wrong to let him go unpunished,' said 
 Castiglione ; c but he had served my father so many 
 years, and I counted on some decency of gratitude.' 
 The lawyers to whom he said this smiled 
 discreetly. Rogues, they knew, no more feel grati- 
 tude than they feel remorse. Magliabecchi forgot 
 the clemency ; but he remembered very keenly the 
 loss of the jewels and the ducats, the exposure before 
 servants, and the sharp incisions of Ruffino's little 
 stiletto-like teeth. 
 
 One evening, in the loggia Ruffino saw a nice, 
 brown, tempting-looking piece of fried meat, lying on 
 
RUFF1NO 189 
 
 the pavement near the balustrade ; he was not hungry ; 
 he was, indeed, as usual, so completely satisfied, gas- 
 tronomically, that he had not a grain of appetite 
 left, so that he was indifferent and cautious, and 
 merely sniffed gingerly at the morsel. The scent of 
 it seemed to him unusual and suspicious, and he let 
 it lie where it was ; and in the morning the servants 
 going to polish the marble pavement found two 
 garden rats lying stiff and stark and swollen in the 
 place where the fragments of the poisoned cutlet were. 
 
 It had been the good physician's parting gift for 
 Ruffino. 
 
 But Magliabecchi made no more of such dan- 
 gerous presents. He aimed at higher vengeance, 
 and to that end led a sober and blameless life quite 
 openly in the sight of all men. 
 
 * Little devil ! ' he said viciously, whenever his 
 thoughts reverted to his victorious four-footed foe, 
 c you should not live a second were it not that, if I 
 kill you, I may miss something that will hurt your 
 master more.' 
 
 For Magliabecchi knew that if Ruffino died a 
 violent death he would be certainly judged to be the 
 dealer of it, and observation and suspicion would be 
 attached to him by that act which might baulk him 
 of the greater blow he so carefully prepared. 
 
190 RUFFINO 
 
 XI 
 
 THE days passed on, and neither the espionage 
 on the physician nor the acute investigations of Cas- 
 tiglione's lawyers produced any effect. No traces 
 of the fugitives could be found; it seemed as if 
 death indeed had closed in its eternal mystery over 
 them both. 
 
 The Jews who were the owners of the lane had 
 all agreed to sell their rights over it ; the price asked 
 was exorbitant, but Castiglione bade his represen- 
 tative accept it, and the Viccolo of St. Anastasia at 
 last became his, with the exception of Veneranda 
 Pilotti's corner house. She still held out, partly 
 from the keenness of over-reaching avarice, partly 
 from the triumph of feeling that she, old, poor, and 
 disreputable as she was, could refuse what he wished 
 to the Prince of Montefeltro in all his power, youth, 
 and plenitude. 
 
 She guessed that he hated to hear the jar of 
 drunken voices, the clatter of wine-flasks, the hissing 
 of frying lard, the uproar of quarrelling boys, where 
 the gentle vision of his lost love had been seen in 
 the serenity of the moonlight and the warm flush of 
 sunrise. She guessed that her presence and that 
 of her lodgers irritated and sickened her patrician 
 
RUFFINO 191 
 
 neighbour when he paced his marble floor, under 
 the lofty arches of his loggia, behind his screen 
 of tea-rose foliage and thickly-woven noisettes ; 
 and the sense of power and malign superiority 
 which it bestowed on her was too sweet to be 
 readily parted with. She had not forgotten the 
 censures which he had passed on her when he had 
 paid her those two gold-pieces for her rent. 
 
 ' My fine gentleman ! you shall dance like a 
 dancing dog after . my pleasure ! ' she said, with a 
 glow of coarse delight. c You want my house, and 
 you want your dama. Well, you shall get neither 
 until you go on your bended knees to me/ 
 
 For she had found out where her last tenants had 
 gone, and knew their fate ; but it was a secret which 
 she meant to keep, as she meant to keep her house, 
 until she had wrung out of him such a stream of 
 wealth that she should be able to drink lachryma 
 Christi by the pailsful, and stuff her mattress with 
 bundles of bank-notes instead of dry leaves. But 
 being almost constantly more or less drunk, she was 
 confused in her ideas, and did not realise that unless 
 she offered both her secret and her house, her dreams 
 of Paradise could never even be started upon the 
 road to realisation. 
 
 c You'll stand out till you will lose all/ said one 
 
192 &UFFINO 
 
 of her neighbours, shrewdly. f Sure it will not be 
 for ever, nor for long, that a great prince like him 
 yonder will fret his soul out of his body wishing for 
 a bit of a cottage and a puny work-girl. You should 
 take him whilst the whim is on him and the cat 
 jumps.' 
 
 Startled and terrified by this argument, Sor J 
 Veneranda, after the manner of her class, rushed 
 from one extreme to another; from the heights of 
 wily and triumphant cunning, she fell headlong 
 down into the lowest deeps of agonised trepidation. 
 If she should have outstayed her market ? If, in 
 her excessive greed and caution, she should have 
 killed her goose ere it laid any golden eggs at all ? 
 The terror of having missed her mark and overshot 
 her arrows fermented hotly in her scheming brain, 
 and produced in her that temerity which is seldom 
 wanting in those who are confused with the fumes of 
 wine. 
 
 < Maybe I will sell my house, but I will not sell 
 stick or stone of it unless I see the Prince himself 
 about ifc 5 ' she said, doggedly, to his agents, who in 
 vain protested to her that he never transacted any 
 business himself, and could not be approached upon 
 the subject. She was dogged and unchangeable. 
 
 c I will see his most illustrious himself, or I will 
 
RUFFING 193 
 
 not sell my house,' she repeated; and finding that 
 the agents and stewards and servants were all firm 
 in declaring such a stipulation to be inadmissible, 
 she set herself to watch for his coming out on to the 
 loggia. He was there but little now, for nowhere 
 did he suffer so much from the loss of the pale 
 maiden, who, like a snowdrop from the north, had 
 used to come into his vision with the moonlight and 
 the starlight. But still, sometimes, in the sultry 
 evenings, he strolled there for the sake of coolness 
 when he was tired out from his hot and dusty 
 wanderings in the streets. 
 
 One evening she saw him thus, standing behind 
 the smooth green foliage of the rose-trees which 
 formed so thick a screen between the lane and loggia, 
 although the roses themselves bloomed no more. 
 
 She leaned as far as she could out of the upper 
 window the window of Yera and made a trumpet 
 of her big and bony hands. 
 
 ' Signor Duca ! Signor Principe ! I have some- 
 thing to say to you. Will you hear ? ' 
 
 Castiglione, on whose nerves the harsh, coarse 
 voice grated, came to the balustrade, moved by a 
 sudden revival of that hope which every day grew 
 fainter and fainter within him. Perhaps this old 
 wretch knew something, 
 
 
 
I 9 4 RUFFINO 
 
 ' What do you want with me ? ' he asked curtly ; 
 whilst Ruffino, with his slender nose thrust as far 
 as it would go through the wires, growled his dis- 
 approval of her audacity. 
 
 It was late at night; the lane was quiet, the 
 moon was full and high in the heavens, and poured 
 its silvery brightness on the bold brown face and the* 
 rough grizzled head of the old Roman, as she leaned 
 eagerly from her lattice. 
 
 i Excellency ! J she whined, trying in vain to 
 make her rude voice soft and persuasive : c you 
 have always wronged me, excellency, and never 
 believed in my zealous devotion to that sweet 
 creature, who was as dear to me as if she had been 
 my granddaughter. And now I hear you want to 
 buy my house, just by way of remembrance of her ; 
 but the price your people offer me, most illustrious, 
 is robbery, sheer robbery ! I am a poor lone crea- 
 ture, and wholly at the mercy of a great gentleman 
 like yourself, but sure am I that your generous 
 and benevolent heart would never take any advan- 
 tage of a widow's needs ' 
 
 c Name your price to my agents, and they will 
 give it if they think it a proper one,' said Castig- 
 lione, disappointed in his hope, and losing patience. 
 c If you have anything more to say to me, say it 
 
RUFFINO 195 
 
 quickly, and without roundabout falsehoods. You 
 are a cruel and bad woman. You cannot impose 
 upon me.' 
 
 4 The saints above us befriend me ! ' cried the 
 Sor' Veneranda. c Never was any poor creature so 
 belied and so unjustly blamed. Your excellency 
 will learn one day how you have wronged me. 
 Meantime, my house is my own, and what I know 
 is. my own, too. Neither prince nor pontiff can get 
 either house or secret out of me.' 
 
 c I am ready to pay for your house, and I am ready 
 to pay for your secret,' said Castiglione, sternly; 
 ' but if you want to sell either one or the other, 
 or to sell both, you would do well not to trifle with 
 me, for I may be in no mood to buy them another 
 night/ 
 
 The soul of the old woman quaked within her. 
 It was just as her neighbour had suggested : he might 
 alter his mind and change his fancies, and then 
 ' adieu veau, vache, cochons ! ' 
 
 She hastened to change her mind before he could 
 change his. 
 
 <I have always said I would take a thousand 
 scudi for the house, and it is too much honour 
 for a poor miserable creature like me to have 
 anything which can please your most illustrious 
 
 o 2 
 
196 RUFFINO 
 
 self,' she whined in her most servile and cajoling 
 accents. 
 
 ' A thousand scudi ! It is not worth three 
 hundred. You know that/ 
 
 ' A thousand scudi ; and that is less than the nuns 
 of the Sepolte Vive would have given me for it last 
 year. And it is solely because I know your 
 excellency wants it out of memory of the poor 
 young thing, that I consent to give it up for such a 
 pittance.' 
 
 Castiglione shrank from the coarse, rough touch 
 on his tenderest sentiment ; it was horrible to him 
 that this old wretch should have guessed, and, thus 
 guessing, be able to spread abroad the reason of 
 his tenacious desire for the purchase of her free- 
 hold. 
 
 4 My father wished for years to purchase the lane, 
 and I do so because it is a nuisance and a scandal,' 
 he replied. ' I shall not treat with you. If you 
 wish to sell your property, acquaint my people. They 
 will settle it.' 
 
 ' But if I could tell your excellency where the 
 signorina is ? ' said the old woman, insidiously. ' You 
 would not like me to go to your men-of-business with 
 her name ? ' 
 
 A thrill ran through him as he heard. He 
 
RUFFINO 197 
 
 realised how completely a noble, delicate, and lofty 
 feeling can at times place those in whose breast it 
 dwells at the mercy of coarse brutality and avaricious 
 cunning. 
 
 He was silent ; and the old woman whispered, as 
 gently as her hoarse voice could do so : 
 
 ' If I tell your most illustrious what I know, will 
 you order your people to give me a thousand scudi 
 for this house ? ' 
 
 6 If you tell me what I find true, I will. The 
 price is absurd, enormous ; but if you tell me the 
 truth you shall receive it.' 
 
 c And a hundred crowns for myself, for good 
 will?' 
 
 ' No ; not a farthing more. Speak, or keep silent, 
 as you choose.' 
 
 She perceived that it was his last word ; she was 
 sharp and shrewd when the wine-fumes were not in 
 her head, and she saw that she must limit her 
 aspirations or lose all. 
 
 4 Well, well,' she said, piteously, ' it is a great 
 honour that your most illustrious should hearken in 
 person to such as I ; far be it from me to haggle and 
 huckster with a great prince, who surely will never 
 let a poor old creature lose by doing him a service. 
 This is what I know, your excellency, though, as 
 
198 RUFFINO 
 
 these heavens are above us, I only learned it yester- 
 night. It was the leech who served the most high, 
 your father, and who was put out of the house by 
 you with contumely, who got those poor young folk 
 away/ 
 
 Castiglione was silent. 
 
 He knew that it was very possible that from the* 
 first she had known both the cause of their depar- 
 ture and whither they had gone : the baser and 
 coarser she was, the more likely was it that she had 
 purposely concealed her knowledge to traffic in it 
 thus. It might be only a lie to raise the price of her 
 tenement ; but, again, it might be the truth. For 
 even such creatures as she can tell the truth when 
 they are likely to gain money by it. 
 
 ' If you indeed know anything/ he said, cutting 
 short her repeated flatteries and asseverations, c say 
 it, and say it as it is. You are already likely to be 
 in trouble with the police for not having given due 
 notice of your tenants' change of place, and you will 
 best consult your own interests in being honest if 
 you can be so.' 
 
 Veneranda Pilotti leaned farther out of the window, 
 the whole of her brown, fierce, wrinkled face working 
 eagerly with avarice and fear and longing, the brass 
 earrings she wore glittering in the bright moonlight, 
 
RUFFINO 199 
 
 and riveting the stern, inquisitive gaze of Ruffino's 
 black eyes. 
 
 ' Great gentlemen like you, your excellency, 
 always forget that there may be venom in the worm 
 which you tread under heel : the puff-adder looks like 
 a dry, dead stick in the dust, but there is life in it 
 and there is death in it. The leech his name I can- 
 not remember got in here, pretending to the girl to 
 the signorina that you had sent him, and that he had 
 a marvellous cure, with which he could raise her 
 brother from his bed and make a man of him. She, 
 being beguiled by your name and her own hopes, let 
 him in ; and he got to the sick youth's side, and then 
 shut the door on her ; and when she was safely got rid 
 of began to write things to her brother on the slate 
 which she always used, for you know the lad was 
 stone-deaf. Myself, I listened, and looked through a 
 chink in the wall a chink I made on purpose twenty 
 years ago, for it is always well to see what one's 
 lodgers do. The leech only wrote on the slate, and 
 I cannot tell what he wrote ; but I guessed it was 
 about you and the girl the signorina for the young 
 man, he raved against you like a madman, and 
 I heard him say that he would sooner shoot his sister 
 dead than you ever again set eyes upon her. And 
 then I know no more what they agreed on, for the 
 
200 RUFFINO 
 
 youngster whispered, and the leech wrote on the 
 slate. But in the dusk that night the cart took 
 them away, and yesternight, by mere chance, I 
 learned that they went across the water to that 
 passage-way, called after Papa Bonifazio, which joins 
 the Ghetto ; and I learned that the young man died 
 there of chills taken in his removal, and that the girl" 
 the signorina had fallen ill of grief, and perhaps of 
 hunger, too, and had been sent to some poor hospital, 
 and whether now living or dead no one in that 
 quarter could say. I suppose the leech took no 
 thought or care of her ; he only frightened her brother 
 away to be avenged upon your most illustrious. And 
 this is truth, so help me our dear Mother ! and all 
 the truth, and your excellency can go to this lane of 
 Papa Bonifazio and ask for yourself; and you will 
 order your agents to pay me the thousand crowns 
 to-morrow, and no more ado/ 
 
 By the white light of the full moon she saw 
 the face of her auditor grow grey and colourless, 
 and his hands close on the stone edge of the 
 balustrade as though they gripped . the throat of 
 Magliabecchi. 
 
 ' By the Virgin and by Venus ! ' muttered the 
 old woman to herself, c if I were a great prince and a 
 rich lord, who can buy what he wishes, like you, much 
 
RUFFINO 201 
 
 would I care for a pale, puny beggar like her ! What 
 queer mad creatures they are, these mighty folk, 
 with the pick of the plums in their hands, and only 
 hungering for a wretched windfall.' 
 
 Briefly, he ordered her to go on the morrow to 
 his agents to receive her price and put her cross 
 to the necessary documents, and then he bade her 
 begone. She withdrew from the window her frowsy 
 and witch-like head, arid he, delivered from her 
 presence, paced up and down the loggia, and sought 
 the shadows of the gardens with a ceaseless rest- 
 lessness which sorely tried the patience of Kuffino, 
 who, half-asleep, paced after him drowsily, only 
 allowing himself to slumber at intervals, when his 
 master sat down on some stone bench or marble 
 chair. 
 
 Castiglione knew what the hospitals of Rome 
 were : he had visited them often. , The thought of his 
 lost love in their dirt, their neglect, their foul atmo- 
 sphere, their crowded corridors, made his heart grow 
 sick, and tainted the sweet-perfumed air of the 
 gardens around him. How could he hope that her 
 already overtaxed strength had resisted the grief of 
 her brother's death and the trials of physical as well 
 as mental suffering ? 
 
 In that little house facing the loggia she had 
 
202 RUFFINO 
 
 been sustained by familiarity, habit, hope, the 
 support of regular work, the incentive of a strong 
 affection ; but her brother dead, and she alone in a 
 strange place, and incapacitated by illness from seek- 
 ing or doing work, even her youth and heroism could 
 have found no force against such accumulated trials. 
 
 He scarcely doubted that death had taken her * 
 also from her misery, and a poignant self-reproach 
 added its bitterness to his sorrow. 
 
 Why had he let pass those earlier summer days, 
 in which she had been within the reach of his voice, 
 the touch of his hand ? 
 
 ' I was a coward,' he thought ; I could not bring 
 myself to admit that I loved a woman of whom I 
 knew nothing. I was afraid to look a dupe in my 
 own sight and the sight of others/ 
 
 With earliest morning he sent his men to the 
 place where Magliabecchi lived, and to the various 
 quarters where permission to visit the hospitals, lay 
 and clerical, was to be obtained. The orders of 
 admission were at once accorded to him by the civil 
 and by the ecclesiastical authorities; but of the 
 physician there was no news : his apartment was shut 
 up, he had gone away the previous day, saying that 
 he was going to the sea; several heavy boxes had 
 gone with him. He had no doubt become alarmed 
 
RUFFINO 203 
 
 by the sense that he was watched, and had left the 
 city in which his evil ways so long had- prospered, 
 having made sure of his revenge before he had looked 
 his last on Rome. 
 
 Castiglione, with a heavy sense upon him that all 
 he could do now would be done too late, turned his 
 steps first to that wretched passage-way which the 
 old woman had indicated to him as the alley of Papa 
 Bonifazio. It was still scarcely more than Ave 
 Ma,ria, and the network of streets had the stillness 
 and comparative freshness of early morning in them. 
 
 The place named after the hapless Boniface was 
 one of the most wretched haunts of Rome, close to 
 the fish-market, and inhabited only by the poorest 
 of the poor. Twenty-four hours in its sights and 
 sounds and odours would surely have been enough 
 to strike down with fever such a delicate organisa- 
 tion as that of the Russian girl. 
 
 He found there that what the woman Pilotti had 
 said had been true : two young people answering to 
 the description of the young Nelaguine and his sister 
 had been dwellers for a little time in one of the 
 upper floors of a wretched house reeking with damp 
 and dirt, black with charcoal smoke, and hung about 
 with fishing-nets and rags of all kinds. The people 
 of the street told him that the young man had died, 
 
204 RUFFINO 
 
 soon after his arrival there, of ague and fever they 
 believed ; that his sister had fallen insensible when 
 the pauper's shell had been brought for his body, and 
 the beccamorti had carted it away. No one con- 
 fessed to have noticed what had become of her : they 
 thought some nuns had carried her away in a litter, 
 but they were not sure. Nobody seemed to think 
 that it could matter ; and they all stared in amaze 
 to see this grand gentleman vex his soul over such 
 a search. 
 
 Weary and heart-sick, he returned to his own 
 palace to seek the orders to visit the various asylums 
 and hospitals. It was now noon. Euffino came to 
 him, and gently claimed his recognition. 
 
 Ruffino knew that his master was unhappy and 
 ill at ease, and his sympathetic nature made him 
 subdue his proud temper, and put aside his sense of 
 injury at having been left at home alone, and offer 
 all such condolences as it was in his power to 
 express. 
 
 Why leave me here ? I am your one safe guide 
 and counsellor/ said his black eyes, wistfully and 
 eloquently. 
 
 Even in the profound sorrow and anxiety of his 
 own thoughts, Castiglione was touched by that mute 
 appeal. 
 
RUFFINO 205 
 
 Poor little Kuffo ! will you come with me ? ' lie 
 said to his little comrade. * Perhaps your finer 
 senses may find her ; mine are too blunt, and dulled 
 by too long selfishness.' 
 
 Ruffino understood the permission, and capered 
 wildly, turning round upon himself like a teetotum, 
 and springing thrice his own height in the air. 
 
 Then, conscious that he compromised his dignity 
 in the eyes of the servants standing about the ante- 
 rooms, he sobered down, and with a shake to adjust 
 his new gold necklace properly under his ruff, he 
 assumed a staid and grave demeanour, and walked 
 after his master, step for step, out of the ante-rooms, 
 down the staircase, and into the court, where Castig- 
 Hone's mail-phaeton awaited him. 
 
 Grave as a judge, Ruffino sat upon the cushion 
 beside his owner. He was well used to that seat of 
 honour, and many a time, from a similar eminence, had 
 surveyed the world in the Allee des Acacias of Paris, 
 in the Ringstrasse, and in the drive in Hyde Park. 
 But now his spirit was too anxious to take pleasure 
 in looking around him ; he knew that his friend was 
 out, not for pastime, but in trouble. The spectacle 
 of the streets had no interest for him; his loyal 
 little soul was sad because his beloved one was not 
 happy. 
 
206 RUFFINO 
 
 They drove from one hospital and refuge to an- 
 other, entering them all, searching them diligently ; 
 but with no avail. 
 
 c Let my dog come in with me, for I seek a lost 
 friend, and his recognition will be quicker than 
 mine,' said Castiglione to the authorities, who were 
 scandalised at the sight of a four-footed visitant 
 trotting through their wards and corridors. The 
 rank of a Prince of Montefeltro procured indulgence 
 to his caprice, and Euffino came through these ter- 
 rible abodes of woe, his nose to the ground and his 
 intelligence on the alert, not knowing why he was 
 brought thither, but fully determined to do his duty 
 whenever he should find out what it was. 
 
 He looked diligently under all the beds, for he 
 thought that it was the yellow cat who was wanted 
 at last by a just, though too slow, Nemesis : and wan 
 smiles came on colourless, thin lips, and faces dark with 
 pain and rage cleared for a moment as the little busy 
 form, ringing its silver bells, trotted briskly from one 
 pallet to another, bringing to the wretched beings 
 lying thereon memories of mirthful, healthful hours, 
 gone for evermore, when, with just such a little dog as 
 this, they had run through the blowing grasses after a 
 hopping quail, or driven a wine-cart cheerily, through 
 the fresh autumn nights, up to the gates of Rome. 
 
RUFFINO 207 
 
 Castiglione, worn with disappointment and weary 
 with apprehension, was made more wretched still by 
 all these scenes of torture, which he could do so little 
 to alleviate. 
 
 c As God lives above us,' he swore to himself, { if 
 I find her I will give my life to help the poor ! ' 
 
 All his past life of pleasure looked to him a 
 frivolous, base thing, beside this immense, unquench- 
 able, unpitied, utterly useless, world of woe. 
 
 He visited every refuge for the ailing and the poor ; 
 but neither in the wards of the hospitals nor in the 
 entries of their books could he discover any trace of 
 her ; she seemed totally, irrevocably lost under the 
 deep and swift oblivion which attends the wretched 
 in the crowds of a great city. 
 
 Untiring, Kuffino and he went forth each day, 
 and looked all shapes of misery in the face, and saw 
 all forms of pain, and even all forms of crime and mad- 
 ness. 
 
 c What is it ? ' Kuffino's little face asked, inquir- 
 ingly and wistfully, knowing that they looked for 
 something, but not knowing what : unless, indeed, it 
 were the yellow cat. But she, he came to think, it 
 could not be, because every evening from the loggia 
 he saw her sitting, in bumptious and insolent security, 
 upon roof or lintel or gutter, and of her his master 
 
208 RUFFINO 
 
 took no kind of notice whatever. Euffino came to 
 the conclusion, so painful to all of us, and coupled 
 with such sad disillusion, that what he thought was 
 of such supreme, universal, imperial importance really 
 did only interest himself alone. 
 
 XII 
 
 ON the fifth day after the news he had received 
 from Veneranda Pilotti, he heard that Magliabecchi 
 had been traced to Brindisi, and there had taken 
 steamer to Constantinople, safely putting seas and 
 mountains betwixt himself and danger. The fox had 
 got away, and no force or skill could find him, and 
 make him disgorge the secret which he carried. 
 
 ' If she is dead/ thought Castiglione, * I will 
 follow him, and run him down, if I hunt through 
 every town in Asia: she shall not perish unpitied 
 and unavenged.' 
 
 He had now searched through every hospital, every 
 refuge, every asylum. There were only the prisons 
 left to search ; it was possible that under some false 
 charge she had been taken there, or even on no 
 charge at all ; for utter poverty and friendlessness are 
 crimes punishable and punished in every State. The 
 weather was cooler ; the first rains had fallen ; the 
 
RUFFINO 209 
 
 air was fragrant with- the scent of orange-flowers and 
 of the odorous olive : as he stood on the loggia in the 
 evening silence, he felt as if his heart would break 
 that he could not find her in her misery, and raise her 
 up, King Cophetua-like, into all that peace, that 
 beauty, that sweetness, which were around him. He 
 had so much to give, and he could not reach her to 
 give her anything. 
 
 ' Let us try once more, Ruffino,' he said, sadly ; 
 and he and his little comrade went out, and down 
 through the great Piazza of St. Peter's, where the 
 fountains were leaping in the moonlight and the 
 ebon shadows were lying between the great pillars 
 of the colonnades. From the square, the mighty 
 mass of his own palace, with its gardens rising 
 behind it, could be seen dark against the lustrous, 
 starry skies. 
 
 He left the Piazza, and descended the street 
 where the Fornarina once dwelt, and where beautiful 
 Raffaelle must so often have passed, with passion- 
 winged feet, going to and from his garden-pavilion 
 in the Borghese woods. As he reached the end of it, 
 one of his own servants, running breathless after 
 him, handed him a telegraphic message which had 
 just been left at the palace. He had of late given 
 such imperative orders that any message or missive 
 
 P 
 
210 RUFFINO 
 
 of any kind brought to his house should be delivered 
 to him immediately, that his people, having seen 
 him cross the square, had sent this on after him. 
 
 He tore it open, vaguely hoping against hope 
 that it might bring him some news of her, though it 
 was scarcely possible or probable that it would do so. 
 He read the printed words by the light of a lamp in" 
 a doorway. They said : 
 
 ' The girl is dying of the perniciosa. If you find 
 her, and get all the skill of Rome, you will not keep 
 her alive. I leave Italy, talcing my honest savings 
 with me. Adieu. You will remember Magliabecchi 
 as one who paid his debts. 9 
 
 The telegram had been sent from the port of 
 Brindisi. 
 
 Castiglione's hand clenched on the paper as if 
 it were a living thing which stung and poisoned 
 him. The snake had crawled safely away, leaving its 
 venom behind it. 
 
 Dying of the worst form of Roman fever, and 
 none knew where, in what haunt of misery, in what 
 $en of torture ! He walked on and on like a blind 
 man, taking his way where chance led him, followed 
 like his shadow by Iluffino a little white figure 
 glancing in the moonlight, with bright eye.s which 
 shone like balls of phosphorus. 
 
RUFFING 211 
 
 Castiglione felt as if lie could not ever again 
 return to his own home, where every luxury awaited 
 him, and where art and ease were his willing hand- 
 maidens, whilst she, the innocent and hapless child, 
 was dying, or already dead, alone and unpitied, 
 amidst the haste and heartlessness of a great city. 
 He wandered on and on, not noting whither he 
 went, for once forgetful of the faithful friend by his 
 side. The Roman streets were unsafe at such an 
 hour for a man so well-known for his rank and 
 riches : but of that he took no thought ; he walked 
 on and on, until he had unconsciously reached the 
 labyrinth of poor tenements which lie along the 
 Tiber under the vast shadow of St. Angelo. 
 
 Ruffino, checking all his impulses of curiosity and 
 investigation under the stern duty of watching over 
 his master's safety in these foul and noisome places, 
 walked steadily, with his nose to the ground and all 
 his fine and delicate senses sharply on the alert, 
 ready at the smallest sign of danger to give alarm, 
 and leap with all the courage of his race on any 
 assailant. 
 
 As he reached the edge of the river, even tho 
 restless wretchedness of Castiglione's meditation 
 could not wholly blind him to the beauty of the 
 scene : the moonlight made the Tiber waters a 
 
 p 2 
 
2t2 RUFF1NO 
 
 silver pathway fit for the perished gods of Rome ; 
 the boats rocked silently upon the rippling surface ; 
 grand masses of white cloud sailed above head where 
 the angel in mockery crowned the Mausoleum of 
 Hadrian. 
 
 He stood still on the brink of the river, and 
 gazed at the illumined loveliness, with a vague sense 
 of its awful beauty penetrating the gloom of his 
 passionate thoughts. 
 
 It was late, and there was little sound or move- 
 ment near : a string of mules was going along the 
 opposite shore, a priest was passing over the bridge, 
 from a boat under the walls of the fortress there came 
 the voice of a boatman chanting a barcarolle. 
 
 Rufiino, subdued by the stillness and the shadows, 
 was mute, standing small and white against the 
 gloom from the massive walls. 
 
 Suddenly he whimpered, moved restlessly, and 
 pricked his ears, as his wont was when excited or 
 disturbed. 
 
 His master did not heed him; he was gazing 
 down the river : never, never, he thought, would he 
 find his lost love on earth. 
 
 But Euffino grew more and more agitated : his 
 hair stood erect, his body trembled, his tail moved 
 over his back ; he whined, and gave little short, 
 
RUFFINO 213 
 
 sharp barks ; then, without waiting for leave or 
 sympathy, he darted away, across to a litter of cord- 
 age and sail and boats turned keel upwards which 
 were lying black and shapeless on the shore. Reach- 
 ing them, he scratched and whined and barked, and 
 ran to and fro, and returning to his master, leaped 
 on him, whimpering and quivering, his phosphores- 
 cent eyeballs flashing in the dark. 
 
 4 What is it, Ruffo ? ' said Castiglione, absently ; 
 he thought the little dog had found some rat, or cat, 
 or sleeping lizard. 
 
 But Ruffino ran back again to the boats, and ex- 
 pressed in his own language such intense excitement 
 and such rapturous pleasure, that his master followed 
 him, lifted the old sails which hung above a broken 
 oar, and there, by the light of the moon, he saw a 
 woman's form, sleeping or senseless. As her face 
 was turned to the rays of the moon, and he put 
 aside the heavy hair which covered it, he recognised 
 the face which had haunted him through so many 
 days and nights. 
 
 With a loud cry, he fell on his knees on the sandy 
 grass. 
 
 A rat hurried away from beneath the rotten wood 
 on which her head was lying, as a rat ran once from 
 the skull of Dante, 
 
214 RUFFINO 
 
 i My love, my love, awake ! J he cried to her. 
 c It is I. Look at me. Listen to me. You must 
 live, and live for me ! ' 
 
 The girl, who was lying in the heavy stupor of 
 fever, vaguely understood ; her great brown, pathetic 
 eyes unclosed and looked up at him. She had been 
 driven out of her miserable lodging a few hours 
 before, and had crept down to the riverside to die. 
 A shudder shook her frame ; she recognised the dog 
 and his master. 
 
 ( Volodia is dead/ she whispered. c He bade me 
 never never never see you ; I promised ' 
 
 Castiglione kissed her worn and wasted hands, 
 her burning brow, her hair, damp with the dews of 
 tfie night. 
 
 c Volodia, if his spirit lives, forgives me now/ 
 he murmured in her ear. My poor pale angel of 
 sorrow, I will teach you what happiness means.' 
 
 XIII 
 
 ON her marriage-day, three months later, he pre- 
 sented her with the title-deeds to all the land and 
 houses contained in the Viccolo of St. Anastasia. 
 
 ' You can do as you will with it all/ he said to 
 her : c pull it down, build it up, lay it into the 
 
RUFFINO 215 
 
 gardens, or make an orphanage or a hospital there, 
 just as it pleases you best. It is wholly yours. 3 
 
 She smiled, with tears in her eyes. 
 
 ' If it may be so indeed, I will send the bad 
 people away, but not the good ones, because, though 
 it is all so poor, yet it is a home to them, and I think 
 we have no right to turn them out of it. But we will 
 purify it, and plant it, and make it sweet and whole- 
 some, and everyone shall be happy there, and lead 
 peaceful and cleanly lives ; and all the animals shall 
 be well cared for and kindly treated in it ; and at the 
 little corner-house my little house we will make a 
 dwelling-place for some poor old, friendless women, 
 and we will put over the door a little statue of San 
 Eocca and his dog, for the sake of my dear friend 
 Kuffino.' 
 
 Euffino heard his name, and coughed discreetly, 
 to remind them that he also had his own views on 
 the subject of that lane, which was now part of his 
 kingdom. No beauty of art and architecture, no 
 holiness, or cleanliness and sweetness, no verdure 
 of foliage and blossoming of flowers, could be so 
 delightful, or so excellent, or so acceptable, either, to 
 San Rocca or to himself, as the successful destruction 
 of the yellow cat. 
 
 It is still his dream of the future. 
 
AN ORCHARD 
 
AN ORCHARD 
 
 6 YES, I planted it all myself, fifty years ago come 
 Easter. Easter fell early that year. I had married 
 at Epiphany, and that made me more willing to 
 work. Yes, I planted every tree, then and later 
 on. Of course, they have had to be renewed, some 
 of them. But every bit of it is my own labour, the 
 work of my own hands. I never let my lads have 
 aught to do with the trees/ 
 
 So said the master of the orchard, with harm- 
 less pride. The trees were almond, peach, and 
 pear trees, lying full south on a sunny hillside. He 
 who had planted it was a Tuscan peasant, whose fore- 
 fathers had dwelt there for four hundred years. The 
 place was called Satinella, and the family name was 
 Nerozzi ; but they were always called the Satinelli, 
 the name of the ground replacing the name of the 
 race for all their country-side, as is so often the 
 custom in Tuscany. 
 
 Lindoro Nerozzi (il Satanello to all his neigh- 
 
2ao AN ORCHARD 
 
 bourhood) was a tall, hale, handsome man of seventy 
 years old, with black eyes, still full of light, and an 
 abundance of white and curling hair. He had lived 
 here all his life, and had improved the soil vastly, 
 for it lay on a mountain slope, and was by nature 
 barren ; but he, with patience and perseverance, had 
 made the stony earth fruitful, had carried up fresh 
 soil, and laboured on it ceaselessly from morning to 
 evening, and this orchard of his own creation sur- 
 rounding the house was the apple of his eye, the joy of 
 his soul. In January the almond-trees were clouds of 
 rosy blossom ; and the pear-trees were, later on, white 
 as snow ; and the peach-trees, still later, were marvels 
 of pink-hued blossom ; and in the grass beneath the 
 trees daffodils and narcissus and hyacinths grew, and 
 in the boughs nightingales often made their nests. Of 
 all this loveliness the old Satanello had not much per- 
 ception: he liked it vaguely, without knowing what 
 it was that he liked. The mind of the peasant is 
 usually slow, and dull in its perceptions, as the mind 
 of the oxen that he guides before his plough. But 
 the place itself he loved passionately : he had seen it 
 grow little by little ; he had called it out of the barren 
 ground, as Moses called the water-spring; and its 
 blossom and its fruits were doubly his own, because 
 without him they would never have been there. 
 
AN ORCHARD 221 
 
 He paid the half of the value they brought 
 honestly to his landlord, for the Tuscan is always 
 obedient and conservative by nature. But the orchard 
 seemed none the less his own to him ; his people had 
 been on that same soil for centuries, and he himself 
 had run about there in his childhood with brown, 
 naked feet, and every day of every year all through 
 his manhood had seen the sunrise widen in the 
 east, and the sunset flame and fade in the west, 
 through the straight stems of the pine-trees and 
 cypresses which stood like sentinels round his home. 
 
 Far down beneath him stretched the Vale of Arno, 
 a sea of verdure flecked with golden lights ; and up 
 above him rose the woods, with their stone-pines, and 
 their heather, and their yellow-flowering gorse. He 
 had known misfortune ; he was old, and his children 
 had died before him, and almost all his grandchildren, 
 too : only one girl, Candida, and one boy, Lucio, 
 were left to him, and lived there with him. And he 
 was satisfied as to their future : ' for you will be 
 here after me,' he said to the lad, c and you will 
 marry early, as I did, and then you will wed Candida 
 to some honest, hard-working fellow, who will take 
 her off your hands ; and the trees are all sound, fine, 
 full-bearing trees, and they will keep you and yours 
 for many a day, never fear.' 
 
222 AN ORCHARD 
 
 Lucio was a good little lad, only fourteen, but 
 strong and sturdy, and very docile. Candida, a year 
 or two older, was not so good : she was lazy, and 
 could be saucy, and liked her own way, and did not 
 like work. She was pretty, too, and knew it, and 
 when she could get a few pence to herself spent 
 them on finery, and sulked for a week after every 
 feast-day because her grandfather would not give 
 her her grandmother's pearls. 
 
 c They shall be yours when you marry, but not 
 before,' said Satanello; and she thought it very hard. 
 
 4 You only love the trees, Nonno ! ' she said, 
 angrily ; and the old man laughed. < When you are 
 as lovely and as useful as the trees, my wench, then 
 you shall have the pearls ; but I see no sign of that 
 yet. You are only a weed, bambino, ; a pretty weed, 
 like the mouse-ear, but of no use at all to any one.' 
 
 For she let the soup burn, and scorched the linen 
 when she ironed it, and made the bread heavy as 
 lead, and let the pig get amongst the young peas 
 and the fowls scratch up the spinach-plants, and 
 spent all her time looking at her own face in a bit of 
 cracked mirror ; so that often little Lucio had to turn 
 cook instead of her, and her grandfather was forced 
 to scold her seriously, which he hated to do, for she 
 was the child of the son whom he had loved the 
 
AN ORCHARD 223 
 
 most. Nevertheless, they were very happy together 
 at Satinella ; and if the girl were idle and wayward, 
 'marriage cures all that/ thought her grandfather, 
 and he had his eye on a youngster on whom he 
 meant to bestow her, a fine young fellow at the 
 forge at the foot of the hill. 
 
 ' That will leave Lucio's hands clear, and the land 
 will keep him and his when I am gone,' the old man 
 thought, as he pruned his fruit-trees in autumn. 
 
 But although he said, f when I am gone,' to him- 
 self and to others, he did not in the least realise that 
 he was old, and that life could not last very long for 
 him. He was strong and hale, having lived in that 
 pure, high air all his years ; and it seemed to him 
 that he was rooted in the soil like his old pear-trees : 
 very old -they were, the pear-trees, gnarled and 
 mossy, and grey with lichens ; but they bore richer 
 fruit still than the young ones. 
 
 c They could not get on without me, nor I without 
 them,' said Satanello a hundred times a season. 
 
 He worked amongst them early and late, and 
 when he rested, it was on the low stone wall facing 
 them that he liked best to sit. Pears, and peaches, 
 and almonds, they all grew together in amity, their 
 boughs touching, their roots crossing, their shadows 
 waving on the sunny, thick grass below them, free 
 
224 AN ORCHARD 
 
 and careless and beautiful, like apple-trees in Devon- 
 shire or Normandy. 
 
 It was his world to him, and all its population was 
 familiar to him : the great green beetles, the little 
 green lizards, the big death's-head moths, the huge 
 water-beetles, the stoat coming stealthily through the 
 gloom, the chattering tree-frog, the beautiful butter- 
 flies. He never hurt any of them more than he could 
 help, and his shrewd observation had told him of the 
 good birds ; he never molested the nests that were 
 made upon the branches and down in the grass of 
 
 his orchard. 
 
 If the snake do not eat me, 
 If the thorn do not prick me, 
 If the man do not kill me, 
 I shall sing my zee, zee, zee 1 
 
 says the Tuscan rhyme ; and Satanello used to say 
 the rhyme, and like to hear the zee, zee, zee,' which 
 began to be heard everywhere around, from bush and 
 briar, as soon as the wild sorrel blossomed in January. 
 
 He used to talk to the trees, as people who are 
 much alone grow apt to talk to anything which is 
 the daily companion and constant witness of their 
 solitary lives. 
 
 ' I have done well by you, and you have done 
 well by me,' he said to them, straightening his back, 
 and resting for a minute from his work. ' You will 
 
AN ORCHARD 225 
 
 find the boy in food and clothing after me, and he 
 will be with you all the days of his life, as I have 
 been. I have taught him all you want and all you 
 like ; you are hard to please sometimes, but, Christ ! 
 that is more the fault of the weather than of you. 
 When it hails after Palm Sunday, or when it freezes 
 after Fat Thursday, how can you be expected to 
 understand it ? You must draw your buds in, as a 
 snail draws in his horns. When the season is rea- 
 sonable you are never out of humour. All the many 
 years I have known you, never have I had to find 
 fault with you, though when the north wind blew 
 after Easter it was hard lines on you, and on me.' 
 
 And the leaves of the pear-trees flickered in 
 the sun, and the slender boughs of the almonds 
 bent under a chaffinch's weight, and the small, 
 pointed, green fruit of the peach-trees swelled in the 
 soft, passing breeze ; and the old man was contented 
 that they all understood, and took up his heavy 
 spade, shaped like an ace of clubs, and turned the 
 sods about their roots, while two little wrens made 
 loud twittering over his head, and built a nest in a 
 forked branch of the oldest pear in the orchard. 
 
 4 Nonno gets daft ; hear him chattering and 
 mumbling to those trees/ said Candida to her 
 cousin. But the little lad was of another opinion. 
 
 Q 
 
226 AN ORCHARD 
 
 4 Nonno is wiser than we,' he answered. 4 And the 
 trees are very wise, too, in their ways ; how else could 
 they make all that fruit with nothing but the air 
 and the sun to make it out of will you tell me 
 that?' 
 
 c The fruit grows,' said Candida, scornfully ; c and 
 you are as daft as Nonno/ 
 
 4 Grows ; yes, it grows/ said Lucio, doubtfully, 
 1 But it is the trees make it grow. You know 
 the proverb about the vine : " Never let the eye of 
 the vine see your pruning-hook." If the vine has 
 eyes, why should not the trees in the orchard have 
 ears ? ' 
 
 ' You goose ! ' said Candida. c That only means 
 that you must not cut them higher than their first 
 eye, or knot/ 
 
 But this prosaic explanation did not satisfy Lucio, 
 who had inherited something of his grandsire's 
 imagination, and really believed that trees could see 
 and hear. After all, if they could do so, it would 
 not be more wonderful than are the death and birth 
 of their foliage, the miracle of their bud and blossom. 
 ( You will take great care of them, Lucio, when I 
 am gone ? ' said the old man to him a hundred times 
 a year; and Lucio always answered, with fervour: 
 4 The very greatest care, Nonno.' 
 
AN ORCHARD 227 
 
 He was a good little lad, and worked very hard 
 from dawn to sunset, and trotted into the town, half- 
 a-dozen miles off, meekly and willingly, with his 
 burden of fruit or vegetables, and did not gamble 
 or smoke, as many boys did, on the road, and brought 
 every farthing home carefully and soberly to his 
 grandfather. 
 
 When the great crop of pears was gathered in 
 the summer months, they were too many for him to 
 carry alone, and Satanello himself slung the big 
 skipsful over his shoulder, and trudged with them 
 down the solitary roads in the heat, sometimes, but 
 rarely, getting a lift behind a neighbour's mule or 
 donkey cart. It was hard living ; for the little farm 
 did not yield much, except the products of the 
 orchard. But there was always bread enough in the 
 cupboard, and generally meat in the soup-pot on 
 Sundays and feast-days; so that the old man and the 
 boy wanted nothing more. Candida wanted many 
 things ; all the gowns and ribands in the pedlars' 
 packs to begin with, and, most of all, the pearls 
 locked up in the big walnut-wood chest. 
 
 The steward of their lord had never troubled 
 them much ; he was a stout, jovial man, who 
 cheated his employer, but was not hard on the 
 peasantry, loving wine well, and being good-natured. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 AN ORCHARD 
 
 One day word came up the hillside that there was to 
 be a new steward ; the old one had drunk too much 
 once too often, and had been dismissed. 
 
 ' I always knew the vin santo would betray that 
 good soul/ said Satanello, with regret ; for he had 
 always got on well with the wine-bibber, though 
 himself the most sober of men. 
 
 A little later the new one came to inspect all the 
 outlying farms on the hillside : he had an eye-glass, 
 he had a city air, he spoke with a drawl, he had 
 come fresh from an agricultural college. 
 
 6 A fine, new-fangled fool that ! ' said Satanello, 
 with sound contempt; and he answered the new 
 comer's many questions curtly and bluntly. 
 
 4 An ill-mannered, ignorant churl/ thought, in 
 return, the man from the city. 
 
 c What white hands he has ! ' said Candida, on 
 whom he had bestowed a condescending smile. 
 
 c White hands ! ' echoed her grandfather ; < who- 
 ever saw a fattore with white hands ? Do you want 
 white hands to weigh wheat, to judge a steer, to tot 
 up a sum, to break in a colt? White hands ! Let 
 him take his white hands back to the city desk he 
 came from ; we want none of his white hands here, 
 in our honest muck and mould ! ' 
 
 Though the homestead and orchard of Satanello 
 
AN ORCHARD 229 
 
 were isolated on a lonely hillside, with the nearest 
 neighbour three miles off, yet there were not wanting 
 mischief-makers to carry these speeches, and many 
 like them, which the old man made, to the ear of the 
 new steward, at the Fattoria down in the valley ; and 
 the steward said to the landlord down in the town, 
 that good ground was being ruined by an old 
 boor past work and two useless children, and 
 he suggested, insidiously, to his employer, that 
 since pear-trees seemed to like the soil, espaliers, 
 with choice growths from the Channel Islands, 
 severely trained in modern fashion, would bring in 
 ten times as much as these old and moss-grown 
 trees, growing at their own free-will and fancy. The 
 steward was in favour of all new modes ; and the wire- 
 netting and iron posts, and young trees from the 
 Channel Isles, would he knew come up to a goodly 
 sum, and enable him to slice off a good percentage 
 as commission on their purchase. 
 
 The landlord listened: he was avaricious and 
 silly ; he would spend a pound to save a penny. He 
 was quickly dazzled by any promise of gain, and, 
 though a timid man and a mean one, would walk 
 into a new speculation, which promised well, as the 
 fly walks into the spider's web. The trees were old, 
 certainly, he admitted ; and the man was old, too ; too 
 
230 AN ORCHARD 
 
 old ; and there was only the boy besides. Very likely 
 the steward might be right ; he had not seen the place 
 for many years ; yes, the trees must be nearly past 
 bearing, and the new way of espaliers was better, no 
 doubt. So he gave leave to his underling to write 
 to Jersey to inquire the prices of the finest sorts of 
 pear-trees. He was fresh from a scientific college, 
 and believed in pulling down and rooting up as 
 the first and last excellence of progress ; besides, 
 had not the old man at Satinella spoken of him 
 on all the hillside as a new-fangled fool and an up- 
 start? 
 
 The steward was a patient man. and smooth of 
 tongue, and was never betrayed into anger, nor 
 drank overmuch like his predecessor; but he did not 
 forget an offence quickly, nor easily relinquish a 
 project. When, in pursuit of his duties, he rode past 
 Satinella, he looked under his eyelids at the orchard 
 between its grey stone walls ; whether it was a misty 
 tangle of brown branches in winter, or a glory of 
 lovely blossom in springtime, it found no favour in 
 his sight. It was old fashioned ; and he hated old 
 ways and old things : no profits for himself could be 
 got out of it, no bills set down for it for phosphates, 
 and guanos, and liquid manures ; the sturdy old trees, 
 like their old husbandman, wanted nothing of modern 
 
AN ORCHARD 231 
 
 chemicals and modern cleverness. The orchard, 
 making a smiling landscape on the rude hillside, 
 with its sweet, fresh odours, and its flood of song 
 from nesting-birds, was an eyesore to him ; he 
 longed to see its branches broken up into faggots 
 of firewood. 
 
 * Your trees are as old as you,' said he, once, to 
 Satanello, who replied, gruffly : ' Maybe ; but we 
 both do a good year's work.' 
 
 Satanello never lifted his head when the steward 
 rode by, and, if called to by him, only very slowly 
 and reluctantly touched his hat and left off his 
 labours. It was a small, out-of-the-way homestead, 
 which was a mere atom in the widely-scattered 
 estate to which it belonged, and he had always been 
 used to do very much as he chose upon it. Four 
 hundred years the generations of his race had lived 
 and laboured on that slope of the wild hillside ; wars 
 and revolutions, and dynasties and invasions, and 
 battles and riots, and sieges and encampments, all 
 going on in the vale below them, but all to them 
 wholly indifferent, except when a tongue of fire shot 
 up as high as their own straw-stack, or a free- 
 lance dragged them down, tied to his stirrup- 
 leather. 
 
 ' Your grandfather is not quite himself always, is 
 
232 AN ORCHARD 
 
 he, my pretty one? J said the steward to Candida, 
 meeting her on the road one afternoon. 
 
 Candida laughed, to show her pre'tty, shining, 
 white teeth. 
 
 ' Nonno is old/ she answered. ' It is a pity they 
 live to be so old.' 
 
 The steward patted her rosy cheeks. She and he 
 met often in the pine-woods; his scientific college 
 had not taught him to deny himself the pleasure of 
 deceiving a round-faced, red-lipped, soft, and blush- 
 ing little girl, with a skin like a peach and a body 
 as plump as a pigeon's. And to Candida he seemed 
 a very great and powerful personage. But the old 
 man stood in the way : to deceive the girl was easy, 
 but it was not so to mislead and blind the shrewd 
 and vigilant grandfather. 
 
 4 His white hands have been dipped in bird-lime ; 
 take care of them,' the old man said to his little 
 girl ; and Candida was sulky, and made the bread 
 heavier than ever. But Satanello kept sharp watch 
 over her, and it was not easy to elude his observa- 
 tion. And the steward, in revenge for his thwarted 
 plans, returned again and again to the subject of the 
 espaliers and the Channel-Island pears, and drew up 
 such an array of figures and such battalions of facts, 
 that at length his master said to him ? half-ashamed. 
 
AN ORCHARD 233 
 
 half-impatient : * I have full confidence in your judg- 
 ment ; do what you deem best : the old man is a 
 slave to old ways, and will never learn any other.' 
 
 The steward replied with many protestations of 
 his own unworthiness and humble devotion. He 
 had got all he wanted ; his hands were free. 
 
 One bright November day Satanello was at work 
 in his orchard ; Candida was well in sight, beating 
 linen in the brook which ran past the house, and 
 Lucio was plucking the ripe cones of the millet, 
 which grew in a narrow strip under the orchard-wall. 
 The cypresses and the still green poplars waved 
 against a radiant sky, and in the boughs linnets and 
 woodlarks were trilling their autumn songs. 
 
 ' We'll have a rare fine winter/ thought the old 
 man. c The astrologer says so, and it is plain to see, 
 if he did not say it.' 
 
 The astrologer was an almanack-maker, of great 
 local renown, who published with his 'almanacks 
 weather-predictions, agricultural counsels, and a 
 portrait of himself with a conical cap, a long robe, 
 and a number of occult instruments. 
 
 Satanello was standing on a ladder, cutting some 
 dead wood out of one of his pear-trees ; the little 
 yellow dragon's mouth was bright in the grass 
 beneath the deep bells of a distant monastery were 
 
234 AN ORCHARD 
 
 tolling melodiously. Lucio's clear voice was singing 
 a couplet as he shook and stripped the rustling stalks 
 of the maize. It was all luminous, and serene, and 
 gay, and peaceful in the golden November sunlight ; 
 from the wet grass and the fallen leaves sweet, pun- 
 gent odours filled the air. The heart of the old man 
 was glad as he looked up at the blue sky through 
 the network of grey-brown boughs and twigs. 
 
 The rattle of wheels creaking up the stony hill- 
 road jarred on the stillness ; another few minutes 
 four men came in sight, climbing up the foot-path. 
 
 c Good-day, Nerozzi,' said the steward ; ' we are 
 come to measure the ground.' 
 
 c The ground has done without measuring long 
 enough,' said the old man, standing on his ladder, 
 and lifting, reluctantly, his hand to his felt hat. 
 
 c Get to work ! ' said the steward to his men. 
 
 Candida, wringing out her linen, laughed to 
 herself; she knew what was to follow. 
 
 Lucio drew near, with anxious eyes. 
 
 Satanello turned round on his ladder, and went 
 on at his work with the billhook. 
 
 c New-fangled ways ! ' he thought, with contempt, 
 as the men drew their measuring-tapes along the 
 ground. ' If the master don't know the length and 
 breadth of his land by this time it is odd indeed : 
 
AN ORCHARD 235 
 
 for his people have been here just half the time that 
 mine have, and the half is two hundred years.' 
 
 And he chopped away at the dead wood with his 
 billhook. 
 
 The steward looked up at him with a slow, cruel 
 smile. 
 
 ' You need not take the trouble to do that/ he 
 said ; ' the trees will be cut down to-morrow.' 
 
 'What! ' 
 
 The old man turned round on the ladder, with 
 all the blood from his body hot in his face. 
 
 Then, with a short, contemptuous laugh, he 
 resumed his work. 
 
 ' Fools be many,' he said, curtly ; < but the master 
 is not quite such a fool as to send such a message as 
 that to me.' 
 
 ' The trees will be all cut down to-morrow, and 
 the soil turned, and laid open ; and in the spring we 
 shall replant the ground ; these cumbersome old trees 
 have wasted good earth too long. We have been too 
 indulgent, and left you alone too much, but it is time 
 to alter all this-; the new systems economise labour 
 and yield double profits.' 
 
 Satanello came down from the ladder; his face 
 had ceased to be ruddy, and was ashen-grey. The cold, 
 slow, unmoved tone of the steward carried conviction 
 
236 AN ORCHARD 
 
 with it ; but still he would not believe, he could not 
 believe : it was too horrible, too hideous. 
 
 Wringing out her linen, Candida laughed. 
 
 'Are you mad, you poor jackanapes? 5 said the 
 old man, hoarsely. 'You have set everything else 
 topsy-turvy on the lands, but you'll not come here 
 to do it. I planted the first tree here fifty years 
 ago come Easter, and the trees are mine, mine> 
 mine ! Get you out ! ' 
 
 'Never mind him; go on/ said the steward to 
 the men who were measuring the ground. 
 
 ' Cut down my trees ! ' shouted Satanello. ' Lord 
 forgive you for your blasphemy ! The trees are the 
 finest trees on the country-side, and they are mine, 
 mine, mine ! The priest has blessed them every 
 year, and every year they have brought forth in 
 peace and plenty. You should sooner kill me than 
 the trees. The lad loves them as I love them, and 
 he will feed them as they have fed me. Cut down 
 my trees ! You are mad ; stark, staring mad ! Get 
 off the ground, you scoundrels! get off it, I tell 
 you ! We will see what the master says to-morrow. 
 How dare you come here with your lies in his 
 name ? ' 
 
 ' Go on ! ' said the steward to his men, taking no 
 more heed of the old man's fury than of the babbling 
 
AN ORCHARD 237 
 
 and roaring of the little stream which came down 
 from the hills above. The old man flung down his 
 billhook, and took up his heavy spade, and swung 
 it above his head as though it were a mere rod of 
 hazel. 
 
 4 The first man that touches one of my trees shall 
 have his skull cut in two with this ! ' he said, with 
 a sound in his voice which meant more than the 
 words or the gesture. 
 
 The steward changed colour, for he was not brave, 
 and murmured a few sentences in a low tone to his 
 underlings, of which the words, the ' carabineers/ 
 and * the law,' were all which reached the strained 
 ears of little Lucio. Then he called off his men 
 sullenly, and went out of the orchard, taking no 
 notice of the action or the spade of Satanello. 
 
 The old man brought his spade down on the 
 earth with a loud thud, and laughed aloud once 
 more. ' The white-livered cur ! He ! to dare touch 
 my trees. Well ! the master shall hear of it to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 Then he wiped his hot, red forehead, and passed 
 his hand over his eyes with a dazed look. 
 
 < A parcel of fools ! Cut the trees ! Cut the trees ! ' 
 he shouted, ' Lord ! of course he only said it to hurt 
 me. Nobody could be such a madman aa that. 
 
238 AN ORCHARD 
 
 Trees that have not their like in bearing, not on the 
 whole hillside.' 
 
 And he laughed again a laughter which was 
 jarred and joyless ; and swore bitterly and fiercely, 
 staring up at the brown twigs and boughs. Lucio 
 was crying, and Candida, too ; the boy because his 
 grandfather and the orchard were menaced, the girl 
 because the steward had not looked at her. 
 
 c Good children, good children,' muttered Satan- 
 ello ; f but do not be afraid, it is all moonshine. 
 That upstart only said it to hurt me. I will go 
 see the master to-morrow. I have never had speech 
 with him face to face, but now I must have it. He 
 shall take that knave off the land. Cut the trees ! 
 Cut the trees ! Better cut his own throat.' 
 
 And he picked up his billhook, and climbed the 
 ladder, and began hewing out the dead wood as 
 though nothing had happened ; but his hand shook, 
 and the steel curve of the tool flickered before his 
 dimmed sight. 
 
 When twilight came he did not touch his supper ; 
 he sut in the porch, and watched the stars come out 
 above the brown haze of the orchard- branches. It 
 was cold; but he did not feel the cold; he was 
 thinking over all he would say to the master, re- 
 hearsing, planning, meditating the interview which 
 
AN ORCHARD 239 
 
 he would have on the morrow. It was so still 
 he could hear the rats run, and the stoats steal 
 through the orchard-grass ; in the strong, white 
 moonlight the tracery of the branches was as distinct 
 as though they were drawn in pencil on a silvered 
 plate. 
 
 His trees ! his trees, which stood about the 
 house like brothers, like children, like friends ! his 
 trees, which had been about him all the days of his 
 life ! Cut down his trees ! 
 
 His teeth clenched on his pipe-stem, and he 
 laughed again in his throat ; and then his eyes filled 
 with sharp, salt tears, and he went out in the moon- 
 light, and put his arms about the stem of the oldest 
 pear-tree, and laid his rugged forehead against its 
 rugged bark : they had been companions for so long. 
 
 When the day broke, he dressed himself in his 
 Sunday-going clothes, and put his big silver watch 
 in his pocket, to go down to the city and let the 
 master hear the truth. Simple souls are always sure 
 that it is only necessary to tell the truth, and justice 
 will be done whenever they tell it. 
 
 ' Mind and let nobody in, Lucio, till I come 
 back, 5 he said to the boy, who promised obedience. 
 There was no means of keeping anyone out, for the 
 door always stood open, and the stone wall was not 
 
240 AN ORCHARD 
 
 higher than a man's knees ; but little Lucio barred 
 the low gate carefully, and brought the dog to lie 
 down before it, and followed, with wistful eyes, the 
 figure of his grandfather, as the old man went down 
 the stony path. 
 
 At a bend in the path there was a wooden shrine : 
 Satanello knelt down, and said an Ave there ; then, 
 as he rose, he looked back once more at his home- 
 stead. He was near enough to see the white body 
 of the dog, the yellow curls of Lucio, the various 
 shapes of the orchard-trees, with the thrushes flying 
 about them, and the fleecy clouds sailing above. He 
 crossed himself, and blessed them ; then he went on 
 his way to the city. 
 
 When he had been away an hour or more, 
 twenty men walked up from the Fattoria ; they 
 carried hatchets and pickaxes, and other tools, and 
 coils of rope ; at their head was the steward, and on 
 each side of him a gendarme with sabre and uniform. 
 The sun was risen. 
 
 When the day was far spent Satanello toiled 
 up the steep ascent ; he was bathed in sweat, 
 covered with dust, hot, and footsore, and very weary. 
 He had made his long tramp for nothing ; the land- 
 lord was not in the city, the servants of his palace 
 would not say where he was. ( Come next week/ 
 
AN ORCHARD 241 
 
 was all the reply he received; he had wasted the 
 whole day uselessly. ' Never mind, I will go back 
 next week/ he thought ; and he cheered himself 
 with the thought of his evening's rest and his good 
 bed of sacking and maize leaves. 
 
 The sky had clouded over in the afternoon, and 
 the evening shadows had fallen early, and his sight 
 not being so clear as it had used to be, he thought 
 his eyes were at fault because there was a look about 
 his home which was unfamiliar. It looked barer, 
 colder, less sheltered. 
 
 c It is the way the light falls, and I grow blind 
 as a mole,' he said to himself, with a cruel pain of 
 vague apprehension gnawing at his heart. 
 
 He pressed on up the steep path, regardless of 
 his fatigue, his aching limbs, the stones over which 
 he stumbled. With a shrill cry the little figure of 
 Lucio flew through the shadows. 
 
 c Oh, Nonno ! Nonno ! ' he shrieked. < Nonno ! 
 the trees are down ! Don't go up, don't go up ! the 
 trees are down ! ' 
 
 With a great and terrible oath, the old man threw 
 the boy out of his path, and tore headlong up the 
 slope, as though the blood of youth were boiling in 
 his veins. The trees were felled, the orchard was a 
 thing of the past. Hewn through at their roots, they 
 
 R 
 
242 AN ORCHARD 
 
 lay prone on the ground, fallen one on another, their 
 branches entangling like the hair of dead bodies, 
 their shattered trunks eloquent in their mute ruin ; 
 their boughs and bark and lichen strewing the grass 
 in confused litter ; the startled birds flying still, in the 
 gloom, with unhappy lamentation, over the prostrate 
 shapes of the friends which so long had sheltered 
 them. The trees were down. Nevermore would the 
 nightingales nest and the narcissus blossom beneath 
 them. 
 
 The old man stood and gazed, his eyes wide open, 
 his veins swollen, his breath choking in his throat. 
 Then, without a word, he fell forward, and lay, as the 
 trees lay, flat and helpless on the earth. 
 
 Life lingered in him three days, and consciousness 
 came back to him in a measure; he kept saying 
 perpetually, day and night : ' The trees, the trees, 
 save the trees ! ' and then, again, would cry out that 
 the butcher was at his throat, was cleaving his skull, 
 was severing his limbs : for he was dying like the 
 trees. 
 
 On the night of the fourth day Death took him, 
 his eyes staring to the last through the lattice to 
 look at the trees where they were stretched on the 
 earth. 
 
 Lucio wept passionately, flung, face downwards, 
 
AN ORCHARD 243 
 
 upon the old dead body; and the dogs, trembling 
 and moaning, pressed close to his side. But Can- 
 dida found the keys of the oak chest, took the pearls 
 out of their hiding-place, clasped them round her 
 throat, and stole away from the house of mourning. 
 
 B 2 
 
TROTTOLINO 
 
TROTTOLINO 
 
 TROTTOLINO came singing through the canes. 
 
 It was a day in early summer, with light, fragrant 
 winds, which blew the riband-like leaves of the canes 
 to and fro, and ruffled into gentle ripples the green 
 waters of the stream by which they grew. Trottolino 
 had received many baptismal names from Holy 
 Church ; but none of them were ever used. He was 
 Trottolino to all the world, though he now was 
 twenty-one years of age. 
 
 He was a very pretty lad, small, but admirably 
 made, and lithe as a deer. He had a round face, 
 with laughing eyes, auburn curls, a mouth like a 
 pomegranate flower, and shining, snow-white teeth. 
 He was always gay and merry. 
 
 He was a baker's boy, and went about the country 
 with the big, moon-like loaves piled in a small, blue, 
 covered cart with a white awning, drawn by a donkey 
 which was very small, too, but sturdy and swift, and 
 on the best of terms with its driver. What busi- 
 
248 TROTTOLINO 
 
 ness was it of anyone's if Trottolino and his donkey 
 took a nap on the roadside grass, or loitered where 
 the fish were leaping in the river, or plucked a peach 
 or two from a wayside tree, or strayed now and then 
 into the grassy paths under the vines? The cus- 
 tomers waited for their bread, indeed ; but then, when 
 Trottolino did appear, his laugh was so irresistible, as 
 he murmured ' Pazienza ! ' that none could ever find 
 it in their hearts to scold or to report him. Trotto- 
 lino could sing very cheerily, too ; and he had an old 
 mandoline tucked in the back of the cart, which, when 
 he traversed lonely lanes or bits of solitary moorland 
 he would take out, and, with the reins safe knotted 
 away on his arm, would wake the echoes with its 
 chords, while he sang, with a full, gay, tenor voice, 
 the songs of the country-side. 
 
 Many a lonely cottage and waterside mill had its 
 doorways filled by women and children as these 
 echoes floated to them. ' J& il Trottolino ' (Here is 
 the little spinning-top ! ) they said to one another, 
 and would laugh, and call out, and ask him in; 
 and though the delivery of the loaves was sadly 
 hindered by his popularity and his melodies, his 
 days were much the brighter for both. Not very 
 many years ago Tuscan people all made their own 
 bread, and would no more have thought of eating 
 
TROTTOLINO 249 
 
 bakers' bread than of eating the smooth white stones 
 of the river-bed ; but now, except in farmhouses, no 
 home-made bread is seen, and everyone goes to the 
 baker's, to the injury of their digestions and finances 
 an example of that curious increase of improvidence 
 and indolence which is the especial sign of all modern 
 progress. So Trottolino's rounds were long, and his 
 halting-places many, in the fragrant, fertile country- 
 side which he traversed. 
 
 The donkey knew as well as he every house by 
 heart, and would quicken his steps of his own accord 
 whenever they drew near any doorway, more hos- 
 pitable than others, where a draught of mezzo vino for 
 his driver was likely to be accompanied by a wisp of 
 tares or an armful of grass for himself. 
 
 Trottolino's master was more honest than many 
 bakers are, and his loaves were solid, and of fair 
 weight. He was a big, brawny man, who spent most 
 of the day on his threshold, stripped to the waist in 
 warm weather, and wearing a red, conical cap. His 
 share of the business was to display himself thus ; the 
 bread was made and baked indoors by his women 
 and his apprentices. Trottolino did little with oven or 
 trough ; his merrier mission was to scour the country 
 with the little blue cart. 
 
 His people were poor : his father was a bricklayer, 
 
250 TROTTOLINO 
 
 and his brother a mason. There were three sisters : 
 pretty, saucy girls, younger than he, who were always 
 straying about the lanes with their straw-plaiting as 
 an excuse for being idle. They had a little cottage 
 at the angle of a wood, a mile from the village where 
 the bakery was. It was old and tumbledown ; but 
 the sweet-smelling firs stood around, and above it, 
 and near it. 
 
 The shallow green river purled over its stones, 
 carrying trout and perch in its clear ripples, and 
 often brushed by the low-flying wings of freshwater 
 birds. The mother and grandmother did the house- 
 work : cooked, sewed, spun, and kept the family 
 together; they were happy, cheerful, affectionate 
 people, and it was the pride of their hearts to see 
 Trottolino, in the blue cart, winding up the sandy 
 path into the pine-woods, and disappearing behind 
 the tall canebrakes by the river. 
 
 He was a favourite with his employer. His 
 small weekly wage was a vast help to his family. 
 And the baker's daughter, who was sixteen, looked 
 with favouring eyes on his auburn curls : she was 
 herself a pretty blonde. She was always called 
 Biondina ; so that the couplet, 
 
 Biondina 1 Come sta ? 
 
 Oggi sto ben', ma doman' chi sa ? 
 
TROTTOLINO 251 
 
 was often shouted by him to the pastoral solitudes, 
 while the hoofs of Peppino, the little ass, went pit- 
 pat, tic-tac, on the sand of the roads. It was a high- 
 vaulting ambition, no doubt, to dream of wedding 
 Biondina and succeeding to the bakery. But less 
 likely things had happened ; and the baker was 
 known to look on with an indulgent smile when 
 Trottolino, tout endimanche, brought the girl, on 
 Sundays, a bunch of carnations and a few china roses 
 from his own strip of garden : and Biondina, who 
 was a gentle child, but a little coquette, put them 
 in the front of her bodice or in her waistband, and 
 went with them, thus honoured, to Mass or to 
 Vespers. 
 
 ' How can you encourage it ? ' said the baker's 
 wife ; c the son of a Iracciante, a lad who drives your 
 ass ! ' 
 
 And the baker laughed, and answered, with good 
 humour: c Eh ! he might be an ass himself! That 
 would be worse. Trottolino has stuff in him, though 
 he is always laughing and singing : he has doubled 
 the custom, and never is there a centime wrong. 
 These are qualities, my woman : these are qualities 
 that are not picked up every day. Let things wag 
 as they will ; they are children as yet, but if they 
 keep in the same mind when he has served his time, I 
 
r 
 
 252 TROTTOLINO 
 
 am not sure that I shall say no. He is small, you say. 
 Yes ; he is not a giant. But a bee is a very little 
 thing, and where will you find anything that beats a 
 bee for work ? ' 
 
 This complacency in his master was more or less 
 known to the lad, and made him feel secure as to 
 his future. He was in love with Biondina, but in a 
 simple, innocent, youthful way, with a touch of self- 
 interest in it which made him gay and sanguine. 
 Always in the open air, and living with the utmost 
 frugality, the fumes of passion were unknown to 
 him, and his courtship was a playtime. He would 
 talk a great deal about Biondina to the donkey, who 
 moved its soft ears at her name, because it often 
 got a sour apple to munch from her hand ; and 
 Biondina was always in his head as he sang of lilies, 
 and roses, and stars, and doves, and fountains, and 
 all the other gems of the stornelli. But it was a 
 boyish love, sweet, not eager, content to wait, into 
 which neither impatience nor bitterness entered. 
 Trottolino, too, always saw everything as he wished 
 it to be : to live in the same place all his life, and 
 go his daily rounds, and laugh and sing and chatter 
 and dance in the farmhouses at vintage-time and 
 carnival-time, this was Paradise to him ; he could 
 conceive no other life that could possibly be better. 
 
TROTTOLINO 253 
 
 Everybody was his friend, and every door stood open 
 to him. 
 
 He was sorely startled in his happy and uncon- 
 scious optimism when, one day, a miller to whom 
 he had gone for some flour for his master said sud- 
 denly to him : 
 
 ' Do you know that they will take almost all the 
 lads of your year next autumn ? They want so 
 many men for Africa ; the height-standard has been 
 lowered again, and the numbers also.' 
 
 Trottolino's fresh face lost its ruddy colour. 
 
 c Do you mean no, you don't mean ? ' he 
 
 stammered. 
 
 4 Yes, I mean that very likely you will have to 
 serve, my poor Trottolino,' said the miller, who was 
 an authority in the neighbourhood, being a rich man, 
 and one who read the newspapers, and one who had 
 even been known to contradict the syndic of the 
 commune. 
 
 ' All the lads go into the regiments ; all grist 
 comes to the mill; anybody is good enough to be 
 shot by the blacks, or killed of thirst. That is 
 what we pay taxes for to lose our lads, and 
 bury good money in foreign sands. It is all wrong, 
 Trottolino, all damnably wrong. The boys and 
 the money are the strength of the country, and 
 
254 TROTTOLINO 
 
 they throw them both away as if they were mildewed 
 barley.' 
 
 Trottolino, caring nothing for generalisations, 
 stared at the speaker with distended, horrified eyes. 
 
 4 1 made sure we made sure ' he muttered ; 
 
 ' they always said there was no sort of fear for me.' 
 
 c Times change/ said the miller. ' Who could 
 tell they would go and make fools of themselves in 
 Africa ? You are short, to be sure, but they have 
 lowered the standard ; and you are very well made. 
 Mark my words, come September they will take 
 you !' 
 
 The first tears that he had ever shed in his life 
 rushed into Trottolino's eyes, and he hid them on 
 the short, thick mane of Peppino. 
 
 c I could not serve ! I could not ! ' he said, 
 piteously. 
 
 The miller, who was not an unkind man, yet 
 who liked to thrust unwelcome truths home to other 
 people, patted his shoulder. 
 
 c Hundreds of them say that, but they go. You 
 will see it will be as I say. You won't get out of it. 
 And it won't be playing the lute, and petting the 
 donkey, and ogling Biondina all day long there, my 
 poor fellow ! J 
 
 The mill stood on the river some little way 
 
TROTTOLINO 255 
 
 distant from Trottolino's home. It was a lovely, 
 laughing day in April, with the furrows of the green 
 corn starred with hyacinths and daffodils, and roots 
 of primrose blossoming all along the grassy banks. 
 But all the gladness of it was clouded over for 
 the boy, and the blue heavens ceased to wear a 
 kindly smile for him. He let Peppino amble on his 
 own pace, unhurried, and crop mouthfuls here and 
 there at pleasure ; and he went past more than one 
 open door not even hearing the cries from within of 
 'Trottolino! Eh, Trottolino ! ' The dread terror 
 of the conscription had laid its cold hand on him, 
 and frozen the laugh on his lips and hushed the 
 music in his soul. 
 
 It was late ; and when his rounds made him late 
 he was allowed to stable the donkey in a shed at 
 homej on condition that he presented himself with it 
 at the bakery by daybreak. He was met some yards 
 from home by his sisters, who, laughing, and full of 
 glee, climbed up into the cart, and seized the reins, 
 and chattered like so many sparrows in an acre of 
 green peas. 
 
 But Trottolino had no heart nor heed for them. 
 When he reached his father's cottage, he bade them 
 see to Peppino, as they often did; and he him- 
 self walked up the garden path of shingle. 
 
256 TROTTOLINO 
 
 ' Granny ! Mother ! ' he said, in a low, unsteady 
 voice, to the two women sitting in the evening 
 shadows in the porch. c They say they have lowered 
 the standard; when autumn comes they will take 
 me ; everybody is going to Africa.' 
 
 c Ah, no ! ' shrieked the women together ; while 
 the girls left Peppino at the entrance, and ran in, 
 terrified, to listen. i Ah, no ! The Madonna forbid ! 
 Never, never must they take you, Trottolino you, 
 our one comfort, our one treasure, our bread-winner, 
 our staff, our darling ! never, never ! The dear 
 Mother in Heaven will never permit it ! ' 
 
 4 Our Mother in Heaven never moves a finger 
 for a conscript/ said Trottolino, sadly. 'Does she 
 not let all the lads be taken, till half the land lies 
 until led ? They always said I was too short ; but 
 it seems they have lowered the standard, they want 
 soldiers so much for Africa/ 
 
 ' Where is Africa ? ' said the eldest girl ; while 
 the mother and grandmother rent the air with their 
 outcries and supplications to Mary, who had been a 
 mother, and ought to know better than to tear lads 
 away from their mothers. 
 
 c Africa is is ' muttered Trottolino ; ' I don't 
 know what it is. It is a place where they bury 
 men and money every day ; a sort of oven, I think, 
 
TROTTOLINO 257 
 
 far away beyond the seas ; it is a pit, a furnace ; I 
 don't know what exactly, but they keep on trying 
 to fill it, and it is never filled.' 
 
 A shudder of horror seized the women, and 
 checked in awe, for a moment, their frantic outcries. 
 
 c But what have we to do with it ? ' asked his 
 sister Rosa, who was of a clear and logical mind. 
 
 4 1 don't know. It has to be so,' said Trottolino, 
 with that acquiescence in inscrutable and undisputed 
 authority which is so embedded in the national 
 character, and is as passive as the fatalism of the 
 oriental mind. 
 
 4 But I cannot go ! ' he cried aloud. c I cannot 
 go ! Oh granny ! oh mother ! I cannot go ! I shall 
 die if they take me away from Biondina, and Pep- 
 pino, and the cart, and all of you ! ' 
 
 Then he threw himself down on the threshold, 
 and sobbed, and writhed, and moaned. It was 
 indeed the end of all things for him, poor boy. 
 
 A moment later his father and brother came in, 
 tired and hot, their bare feet wet with dew, their 
 open shirts wet with perspiration; they had been 
 digging trenches to plant young vines. 
 
 But the miller had been right in his foreboding, 
 and Trottolino, with other lads of the district born 
 in the same year with himself, was forced to go in 
 
 s 
 
258 TROTTOLINO 
 
 due course to the neighbouring town, and be stripped, 
 and examined, and draw his number like the rest. 
 The Government wanted men, and the standard of 
 height was lowered, and even many youths far from 
 healthy or well-shaped were accepted. 
 
 Trottolino, who was of short stature, but as 
 healthy as a fine-grown colt, and as admirably 
 shaped as the Faun statue, had no possible physical 
 chance of escape. He drew a fatal number, and 
 was doomed to serve. All his agony was of no 
 avail ; he had to go. 
 
 In. vain the women at home wept, and knew that 
 their chief mainstay was to be torn from them ; for 
 the father was weak of health, and the elder lad a 
 cripple and drunkard. If the wheels of the con- 
 scription could be stopped by women's tears, it would 
 rust inactive for ever. In due course he had to go. 
 
 You will wait for me, Biondina ? ' said the boy, 
 imploringly. 
 
 ' Ah, who knows ? ' said the girl, lightly and 
 unkindly. I could not promise that, Trottolino. 
 Who can say what one will do to-morrow, or next 
 year ? ' 
 
 ' But if you love me you will wait,' stammered 
 Trottolino, aghast and timid. 
 
 c Eh ! ' said the little maiden, with a shrug of the 
 
TROTTOLINO 259 
 
 shoulders, ' I like you now you are here. When you 
 are gone, who knows ? ' 
 
 Trottolino did not protest. His spirit was cowed. 
 All his sunny, merry, careless life was killed in him, 
 as a blue lupin growing in the grass is cut down by 
 a mower's scythe. 
 
 Biondina was cruel ; but so was fate. It seemed 
 natural, inevitable, that one calamity should come 
 on the top of another. It always was so. The 
 king, or the Virgin, or the saints, or somebody, was 
 angry with him, and would have it so. Trotto- 
 lino was wretched, unspeakably wretched, but he 
 did not rebel. The lamb bleats, but goes meekly 
 to the slaughter. So did he. 
 
 And in a little while the village knew him no 
 more. 
 
 The baker bought a bigger donkey, and sent a 
 man out with the loaves, a surly, silent, uninterested 
 person, who delivered the bread as a machine might 
 do. The mandoline hung on a rusty nail for awhile, 
 and then was sold by the eldest girl, Rosa, that 
 she might buy a necklace of coloured beads for her- 
 self. The mother and grandmother sighed and 
 grumbled and wept for the lost help and the vacant 
 chair. The weeds grew thicker in the little garden, 
 and the soup-pot rarely saw a slice of meat. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 TROTJOLINO 
 
 ' What a lad he was to work ; I never saw his 
 like : and so merry with it all, as if it were so much 
 play ! ' said the baker now and then, when angry 
 with others. And Biondina cried a little when she 
 heard her father say this, and looked wistfully at the 
 palm, with its knot of ribbon, and sprig of olive, and 
 bunch of everlasting flowers, which Trottolino had 
 given her at Easter, and which hung over her little 
 narrow bed. But no one can sorrow for ever ; and 
 Biondina was a little girl much courted, and before 
 long she ceased to give the donkey an apple on feast- 
 days for old remembrance' sake when she saw it in 
 the village, and began to smile on one of her suitors, 
 Gian il Morone, or Big Black John, a master-farrier, 
 who had a forge at the other end of the hamlet, and 
 was handsome, and saucy, and well-to-do, and who 
 helped to draw closer the veil of oblivion which 
 absence had already gathered over the memory of 
 the absent. 
 
 ' Poor Trottolino ! ' thought Biondina sometimes, 
 plaintively: but he had been only a boy, and 
 had had nothing ; and he was far away far away. 
 Who could care for a person gone right away 
 into remote, invisible, unimaginable scenes? His 
 mother might do that; but Biondina could not. 
 Then Gian the farrier had money, and a tine house 
 
TROTTOLINO 261 
 
 next his forge, all yellow stucco and green blinds, as 
 if it were a house in the town ; and she would wear 
 a bonnet and a silk frock if she married him, and 
 have a charwoman to do the dirty work, and eat 
 fried liver every day, and be the envy of all her 
 companions. 
 
 What chance had a mere memory against all this, 
 or the mute, pathetic, small-voiced reproach of the 
 bunch of palm and olive hung above her bed ? 
 
 Meanwhile, Trottolino, far away, toiled and 
 sweated and suffered, and broke his heart under the 
 heavy pack and musket, and the brutal orders of the 
 barracks : his pretty, thick, loose curls shorn ; his 
 limbs aching, his lungs panting, his body starving, 
 and all his soul sickening, too, for the life he had 
 loved and the affections he had left. 
 
 Poor little Trottolino ! one amongst thousands ot 
 country lads torn from their peaceful hills and vales, 
 their quiet meadows, and their gladsome vineyards, 
 to swell the ranks of ill-clad, ill-fed, ill-treated con- 
 scripts, kennelled in filth, pushed to and fro in cattle- 
 trucks, weighted with loads like panting pack-mules : 
 forced down under the brutalising machine of mili- 
 tary life, which presses out Nature from the very 
 veins and bones of its victims, and shapes from the 
 warm, living flesh, a puppet, a tool, a thing, a creature 
 
262 TROTTOLINO 
 
 without eyes or ears or sense or will of its own ; a 
 plaything for death, a missile in the merciless hand 
 of the State. Poor little Trottolino ! 
 
 They sent him far away, to some town of which 
 he had never heard the name. He was miserable, 
 and ofttimes on the march big tears would falter 
 on his curling lashes, and roll down his cheeks, 
 once rosy as the roses before his cottage-door at 
 home. 
 
 He was perpetually at fault, and perpetually 
 punished ; he was agile as a goat, lithe as a squirrel, 
 and he had once been gay as a lark. He did not wish 
 to disobey, but obedience was impossible to him; 
 such blind, stupid, dull obedience against all the laws 
 of Nature, as was now exacted from him. At home, 
 never in all his life had he disobeyed his mother or 
 his master ; he had run to do their bidding like a 
 docile dog. But here in the barracks they brutalised, 
 bewildered, stunned, stupefied, maddened him; he 
 was always in fault; often he knew not why or 
 wherefore ; and punishment rained on him, as blows 
 will rain upon a willing horse from cruel hands, 
 until his happy and buoyant spirit was broken, and 
 beaten down into a sullen silence which was as un- 
 natural to him as it is to the rippling and murmur- 
 ing river to grow still and foetid and stagnant 
 
TROTTOLINO 263 
 
 under the pressure of factory- wheels and the burden 
 of factory-refuse. 
 
 They kept him there, in the ugly city of the 
 south, with its baked and dust-strewn plains, its 
 blinding, stony streets, its scorching drought ; drag- 
 ging his feet in seemingly unending marches, lying 
 dazed with fatigue, and hungry, on the benches 
 of the barrack-yard; always tired, always footsore, 
 always aching from head to foot ; longing, with a 
 dim, passionate longing, like a chained dog, for his 
 familiar roads, his grassy hillside, his merry, simple 
 life, his people, and his home. 
 
 And Biondina ? 
 
 Biondina could write a very good, stiff, school- 
 taught handwriting ; but she never sent him a line, 
 nor even a message. The rare letters he got were 
 from his mother and grandmother, written for them 
 by the village priest. They were short and sad; 
 there was always some bad news in them : once his 
 father had driven the pitchfork through his instep, 
 and was useless for months; another, the elder 
 brother had the fever, got in making ditches ; another, 
 the big grey sow had died, and the hens had chicken- 
 cholera. Of Biondina there was never a word. 
 
 In the rude scrawl which he had learned to 
 write that he might keep account of the bread-sales 
 
264 TROTTOLINO 
 
 he answered their letters faithfully, though he had 
 to go without tobacco to find money for the postage ; 
 and he asked always : c What of my dear Biondina ? 
 Tell me always of Biondina ! Ask Biondina, for the 
 pity of heaven, to send me some word ! ' 
 
 But Biondina never sent him any word ; and in 
 his mother's letters, which came to him about once 
 in three or four months, there never was any hint 
 concerning her. And the time went on ; the heavy, 
 hot season passing into a muddy, chilly winter; 
 and that, again, drifting into another burning, arid 
 summer ; for it seemed to him that there was neither 
 spring nor autumn, nor anything sweet or fresh, but 
 only blinding heat and piercing cold, in this hideous 
 barrack of a manufacturing city. And then, when 
 four seasons had thus gone by, Trottolino, who was 
 only one of the rank-and-file of an infantry regiment, 
 was sent to Naples, and was drafted off, with his bat- 
 talion, on board a transport-ship. They were to go 
 to Africa. 
 
 He heard the fools in the streets shouting and 
 cheering them as they tramped to the docks ; he 
 heard the still greater fools around him on the deck 
 shouting back poor lads ! and telling one another 
 all the fables narrated to them by the officers ; fables 
 of the ruby mines, and the rivers of wine, and the 
 
TROTTOLINO 265 
 
 king's palaces, and the black slave-girls, and the 
 ropes of pearls that they would all have as loot when 
 they should touch the African shores. But Trottolino 
 could not see the shores he left for the great tears 
 that blinded his eyes ; and all he did see was what 
 he never would see again a little cottage in a green 
 garden of herbs and roses ; grassy roads winding 
 between thickets of cane ; a little donkey trotting 
 merrily along the margin of a stream ; a fair-faced 
 maiden, with blue, smiling eyes, and braided hair the 
 colour of ripe wheat, coming coyly out with an 
 apple in her hand. That was all he saw, as the 
 crowded transport-ship, under its cloud of foul smoke, 
 steamed out of the harbour, bearing its living freight 
 to suffer, and pine, and sicken, and swelter, and 
 perish under the brazen skies of Africa. 
 
 He was no longer Trottolino. 
 
 He had long ceased to be Trottolino. 
 
 He was only a private in a marching-regiment 
 bound for Massaua ; only one of the many pieces of 
 throbbing flesh with which War builds up its arch of 
 triumph. 
 
 And his place knew him no more; and no 
 one remembered him except, now and then, his 
 mother and grandmother, who, as they sat shivering 
 over a little pot of charcoal in the long winter even- 
 
266 TR01TOLINO 
 
 ings, when the girls were away dancing at farmhouses, 
 shook their heads together, and said to one another : 
 
 c How warm and well it was when Trottolino was 
 here ! what big branches he used to bring down 
 from the woods ! and always a merry tongue, and 
 always a useful hand ! ' 
 
 When the next Easter-tide came round there was 
 a fine wedding in the village under the hill. Gian il 
 Morone espoused Biondina, and so splendid a bridal 
 had not been seen in those parts for many a day. 
 Both the father and the bridegroom were men who 
 could spend, when they chose to open their purse- 
 strings. Such eating and drinking, such dancing 
 and singing, such uproar and gaiety, had never been 
 as were now in the baker's house in honour of his 
 little daughter. It was mid-April, and all Nature 
 seemed to rejoice with the red tulips and the blue 
 irises, the wild roses, and the hawthorn in- the hedges 
 all blossoming all over the wide fields. Only the 
 donkey was left hungry in his stable while the men 
 feasted. And two women who had not been bidden 
 to any feast thought sadly, as they dug up their 
 patch of vegetable ground in front of their hut : 
 
 c The poor lad ! Not a thought of him, though 
 once he was half-promised he should have the bride- 
 groom's place. Not a single thought of him ; and 
 
TROTTOL1NO 267 
 
 the little blue-eyed doll is smirking, and blushing, 
 and kissing, and making a fool of Black John, and 
 thinking herself a fine lady, with the strings of pearls 
 round her neck, and all the village wishing her joy ! ' 
 
 It was hard. It seemed very hard to Trottolino's 
 mother and grandmother, as they painfully hoed the 
 heavy black earth, and weeded the speedwell and 
 vetch out from the rows of peas. It was the way of 
 the world, no doubt ; but the way of the world is apt 
 to seem hard to simple folk. 
 
 Some months later, when the green peas had long 
 been gathered and sold, and the heat of the summer 
 had been heavy on the earth, though the vines loved 
 it, and flourished in its sultry dust, the miller who 
 lived at the water-mill, and who was a kindly man, 
 though rough and sarcastic in speech, walked down 
 by the side of the stream one evening, when his 
 wheel was at a standstill because the water was so 
 low, and said to the two women working together as 
 usual, hanging out linen on lines under the pear- 
 trees : 
 
 c Say, wife, do ever you hear from your lad in 
 Africa?' 
 
 The women shook their heads. 
 
 They had heard nothing since March ; then he 
 had written only a few lines, which had said that 
 
268 TROTTOLINO 
 
 it was hot as hell in those foreign parts, and he had 
 been ill with fever. Ever since then, never a word. 
 If only the king would please send him back! His 
 father had been bedridden ever since that accident 
 to his foot ; it was thought it would end in gangrene ; 
 and the girls were giddy-paced wenches, good for 
 naught; and the son left to them spent all he 
 got on wine and tobacco at the village drinking- 
 places ; and the Lord only knew how things would 
 end two women could not keep the roof over their 
 heads and find bread for everybody. Was there any 
 way in which Trottolino could be got back ? He had 
 been away nigh on two years. And what would he 
 say when he heard that Biondina had got married, 
 and was big with child already ? 
 
 The miller shook his head. He sometimes bought 
 a newspaper ; he had bought one in the town the 
 previous day, and he had seen a story of Africa : 
 of a forced march ; of men gone mad from heat and 
 thirst ; of young soldiers shot by their officers ; of 
 others shot by their own hand to get out of their 
 torture. There had been no names given, except 
 those of two captains and some subalterns who were 
 dead ; but eighty-five privates were said to be killed 
 or missing. And what he had read had made him 
 think of one young lad who was in Africa, and come 
 
TROTTOLINO 269 
 
 down through the canes to ask if there had been of 
 late any news of Trottolino. He said nothing of what 
 he had seen or of what he feared to the two women, 
 but went sadly to his home, where the mill-wheel 
 was standing still in the blue evening shadows, the 
 swallows and the bats wheeling above its waters. All 
 the evening long he saw, in memory, the pretty, 
 merry, brown face of Trottolino, with its blowing 
 curls, and its laughing lips, and its gay eyes so wide 
 open to the sunshine. All the evening long he 
 seemed to hear the notes of the old mandoline, as it 
 had used to sound above the muttering of the mill- 
 water, and the trot of the little donkey's hoofs. 
 
 ' A good lad, a happy lad, a useful lad ! ' thought 
 the old man, as he sat in the porch smoking his last 
 pipe before bedtime. c And the fools send him to go 
 mad, and rot like spoiled fruit, far away at the other 
 end of the world. Tax, tax, tax ! slaughter, slaughter, 
 slaughter ! that is the only tune they play to us ; and 
 we are such besotted asses that we turn our purses 
 inside out, and give our boys to feed the carrion-birds 
 to please them ! ' 
 
 And a few months later on, when the olives 
 were being gathered, and the child of Biondina was 
 being carried to the font, baptized in all its finery, 
 and the old man, who had died of gangrene in the 
 
270 TROTTOLINO 
 
 foot, was being shuffled into a nameless hole under 
 the rank grass where the poor were buried, they 
 heard at last that Trottolino was dead. He had been 
 dead many months dead as the palm which Bion- 
 dina had thrown out upon the dustheap a year 
 before. 
 
 On that awful day of which the miller had read, 
 under the brazen skies of Africa, in the drought, and 
 the sand, and the thirst, and the plague of stinging 
 insect-life, and the agony of blinded, festering eyes, 
 he had dropped down as the patient camel drops 
 when its last breath of life is passing ; and one of his 
 officers had yelled at him, and cursed him as a skulk- 
 ing cur, and when he had failed to obey, and rise, 
 had shot him : the vultures, already gorged by blood, 
 heavily floating above him, then settled slowly to 
 their work. 
 
 His village talked of him a little while ; not long, 
 not much : he had been only a baker's lad. 
 
 But a simple, happy, useful life was gone for 
 ever, and by its loss the world was so much the poorer. 
 He had been blithe and harmless as a swallow in the 
 April air, as a leveret in the fields of June : and the 
 State had taken him, and jammed him under its iron 
 heel, and crushed him into nothingness, body and 
 soul. 
 
TROTTOLINO 271 
 
 And it is for this fate that women bring forth 
 male children ; to this end that the people strain and 
 travail, and are stripped of their hard- won earnings. 
 
 < War hath three daughters,' said a great king 
 once : ' Fire, and Blood, and Famine.' And these 
 three devour the nations, yet the nations crawl in 
 the dust and kiss their feet ! 
 
THE BULLFINCH 
 
s 
 
THE BULLFINCP1 
 
 A SKETCH 
 
 c I WANT a black gown/ said Lula. 
 
 She had set her heart on a black gown. She 
 was a pretty, brown child, with bare feet, and bare 
 head, and bare arms, nearly seventeen years old, and 
 as saucy as a squirrel, and as agile as one. She lived 
 at a little stone cottage at a place where four roads 
 met. Her father was a road-mender : road-mending 
 is hard work, and ill-paid ; but he was a cheery man, 
 and did not complain. 
 
 The four roads were little traversed, except by 
 shepherds with their flocks and herdsmen with their 
 carts. Two were Roman-made roads, fine and dura- 
 ble, solid as a slab of rock ; two were quite youth- 
 ful roads ; only about a hundred years old or so ; 
 and these were ill-made and soft, and constantly 
 breaking. These highways traversed & plain sown 
 with wheat and planted with vines ; a vast plain, 
 green or yellow or brown according to season, with a 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 low line of mountains visible many miles off, and, 
 many miles farther still, in the opposite direction, a 
 hazy, silvery line, which was said to be the sea. 
 
 Lula had never been farther than her feet could 
 carry her on one of the four roads ; and she was seldom 
 able to go as far as that, for she had everything to 
 do at home, being the only female creature in the 
 cottage. Her father and her two brothers were 
 terrible hands at wearing out shirts and breeches. 
 She spun, plaited, swept, cooked, sewed, kept the 
 little garden in order, and attended to the pigs in the 
 stye, the bees in the hive, and the fowls in the out- 
 house ; she was a good little girl, who got up at dawn, 
 and went to bed at night-fall ; but the day was never 
 long enough for her. 
 
 She worked hard, and sang over her work, and 
 had no nonsense in her little brain, because, happily 
 for herself, she could not read a line. She could 
 only keep her house tidy, and make her men comfort- 
 able ; which she did better than most of her com- 
 peers, because her mother had been a woman from 
 the north, and had trained her in clean and whole- 
 some ways. 
 
 The mother had been dead two years, but her 
 lessons remained in Lula's heart and conscience. 
 
 She had all day long one little companion and 
 
THE BULLFINCH 277 
 
 friend : a bullfinch, a caponero in the tongue of that 
 province. He had been given to her when he was but 
 a little nestling, and she had reared him, and edu- 
 cated him, and loved him dearly ; though he loved 
 her more dearly still. His name was Zi-Zi, and he 
 was four years old. He sang marvellously : she had 
 taught him ' Nel silenzio della nottej and other songs 
 of the peasantry, until he whistled them to perfec- 
 tion; and he had, besides, many melodies of his 
 own. Zi-Zi was the little Eobin Goodfellow of the 
 house, and his sweet piping could be heard far out 
 into the fields. He was always free to come and go 
 in and out of his cage, and even in and out of the 
 house, as he chose ; he never went farther afield, and 
 was the happiest little bird in all the cruel world of 
 men. He would obey all she told him, and eat out 
 of her hand and out of her lips ; he bustled and 
 chirped about her all day long, and awaked her in 
 the morning. The men were all fond of him, and 
 her sweetheart often said, ' He is jealous of me, 
 but I love him all the better for that/ 
 
 For Lula was betrothed. Her damo was a hand- 
 some fellow, who was a carter and a teamster, and 
 lived at a big farm, miles away in the centre of the 
 wide wheat-plains. His name was Hugo of the Cara- 
 dori family, and his fame as a good fellow, a pretty 
 
278 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 singer, and a brave ball player, was great in the 
 country-side through which he drove his waggons of 
 grain, with the huge horses in them which his masters 
 had bought somewhere very far away, from France 
 or Flanders, nobody knew which : however, where- 
 ever they came from, their solid limbs, their arched 
 necks, and their vast stature made them seem like 
 elephants or mammoths beside the lean little Friuli 
 or Maremana horses in use in that district. 
 
 Lula was a very proud little girl when her young 
 man came in sight, carolling lustily, with some 
 carnations behind his ears, and pheasants' feathers 
 and foxes' tails swinging at the ears of his team. 
 
 To and fro, backwards and forwards, along those 
 long, level, white roads, from the broad grain-fields to 
 the town lying out of sight under the blue haze in 
 the far distance, Hugo and his horses travelled con- 
 stantly with the waggon-loads of wheat or oats or 
 straw ; and it was during these journeys that he 
 and Lula had made, first acquaintance, and then 
 courtship ; and the big team knew so well that little 
 cottage by the meeting of the cross-roads, that they 
 stopped of their own accord under the shadow of 
 its one huge plane-tree. 
 
 Hugo was only a day-labourer, a carter at a 
 weekly wage, which in this country is thought a 
 
THE BULLFINCH 279 
 
 position very low down in the world ; but lie was a 
 fine fellow, and sober and industrious, and full of 
 bright good humour, 
 
 ' The child will be poor ; but she is used to poverty, 
 and she might do worse,' said Lula's father, in con- 
 s anting to her betrothal. He himself would miss her 
 terribly, he knew ; but one of his sons wanted to 
 marry, and bring a woman into the house, so ' the 
 one thing slipped into the other, like a tool into its 
 handle/ said the good man ; and all was well. 
 
 Hugo had two breezy rooms over a great granary 
 in which he lived, overlooking the cornfields, while 
 the carthorses champed in their stalls below, and 
 in summer the straw lay, like the waves of a yellow 
 sea, tossed and heaped all about everywhere in the 
 large stone court; the child would be very well 
 there, her father thought and said. So the marriage 
 had been fixed to take place on All Saints' Day ; 
 a leisure-time with the teamster, for the roads were 
 then bad, and the grain of the year had been by 
 that date either stacked or sold. 
 
 Lula was very happy ; she was very fond of her 
 handsome Hugo, and their loves were as playful and 
 merry as those of two greenfinches in glad March 
 weather amongst peach-blossoms and daffodils. Only 
 one sorrow weighed heavily on Lula's light little 
 
280 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 heart: she wanted a black gown, wanted it so 
 dreadfully ; and she could not possibly ever get it. 
 Not to be married in a black gown seems, to a Tuscan 
 maiden, as terrible as it would seem to an English 
 one not to be married in a white gown. Unless a 
 Tuscan girl has a black gown to go to church in, she 
 feels degraded, vulgar, unseemly ; and a black gown 
 was as high out of Lula's reach as the feather robes 
 of Paradise. 
 
 A black gown of cashmere, properly made, and 
 with some ruffles at the throat and the wrist, was 
 the ideal of her innocent, childish soul. But under 
 thirty francs forty even, perhaps such a gown was 
 not to be had, and Lula might as well have wished 
 for the Bands of Orion as for thirty francs. She and 
 her people and her betrothed were all of them very 
 poor, with scarcely means enough to fill the pot and 
 the platter, and keep upon them decent, homely 
 working-clothes. To save up enough to pay the 
 priest's fees and the registry fees was the uttermost 
 that her father and Hugo could manage to do between 
 them. 
 
 As for a new gown, a cashmere gown, a black 
 gown whenever she ventured to speak of it her 
 father and brothers told her, roughly, to stop such 
 idle pining. 
 
THE BULLFINCH 281 
 
 ' Hugo takes you without dower or necklace; be 
 grateful to him,' they said, angrily ; for to be married 
 when you cannot give with yourself some sort of 
 dower, and a string of small pearls, is a disgrace : 
 some dower, if only ten pounds, and some pearls, 
 if only small as sago, are essential to every Tuscan 
 bride, however poor. 
 
 The dower and the pearls she knew well she 
 could never aspire to. But the black gown ! waking 
 and sleeping, Lula dreamed of a black gown. It was 
 oftener in her thoughts than Hugo was. The 
 nearest and dearest friend she had, the daughter of 
 a man as poor as her own father, had worn a black 
 gown, the gift of a godmother, on her marriage at 
 the last vintage-time. But Lula knew not even 
 who her godmother had been, or whether she had 
 ever had one. There was no chance of a fairy comare 
 coming down from the skies to bring her what she 
 sighed to possess. 
 
 To be wedded without a black gown is to be the 
 laughing-stock, the by-word, the ridicule of all 
 other women ; it is a confession of the most abject 
 poverty, the most complete misery ; it is to fall at 
 once from the ranks of the decent, respectable work- 
 ing-classes, into the naked, hungry rank of the 
 hopelessly poor. Custom is law, says a Tuscan 
 
282 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 proverb; and in no country is the individual so 
 subjectly, entirely, and tremblingly the slave of 
 custom. i It is the habit of the country ' is a fact 
 beyond which there is no appeal for either high or 
 low. Therefore, to be married without a black gown 
 clouded all her happy days to Lula. To have to 
 wear her russet-stuff Sunday gown, already patched 
 and darned, on her wedding-day, was humiliation 
 unspeakable. But there was no help for it. 
 
 c Black gown ? Go to, you little jade ! ' said her 
 father; how should they get bridal clothes, when 
 they could scarcely get bread and oil to eat ? 
 
 Thirty francs was to them a sum as enormous and 
 unattainable as if it had been thirty millions. 
 
 There are pedlars who come out to those lonely 
 rural peasants ; pedlars who walk, or at most have a 
 donkey to drag their long, light cart, filled with rolls 
 and bales of wearing apparel. They are the minia- 
 ture Mephistopheles, the petty Mercadets of the 
 country-side ; women are tempted by the smartness 
 and apparent cheapness of their wares, and run into 
 debt to these ambulant vendors, and never get out of 
 it, and cheat their fathers, and husbands, and brothers, 
 and lovers in consequence. Lula's innocence and 
 honesty would not, probably, have been more proof 
 against this kind of temptation than were those of 
 
THE BULLFINCH 283 
 
 others ; but no pedlar would sell to her on credit. 
 With the daughters and wives of the peasants it was 
 different : there was a farm more or less rich behind 
 them ; they could save on the sly from eggs, or milk, 
 or fruit ; they could give the salesmen drinks of good 
 wine, slices of good polenta, plates of warm soup. 
 But Lula was too poor to do this ; and the pedlar, 
 who had a black cashmere on his cart, showed it to 
 her, and expatiated on it, and tortured her with the 
 sight of it, but tucked it up in his box again. 
 
 i Senza soldi mai ! ' he said, ruthlessly : without 
 money down, never should a square inch of it be 
 hers. 
 
 If she had been going to marry a well-to-do man, 
 then, indeed, he might have let her have it, and the 
 bridegroom might have paid for it afterwards. But 
 the pedlar, whose business it was to know all about 
 everybody, knew that Hugo the carter was as poor 
 as Job, with no riches present or prospective, except 
 his youth, and his health, and his strength. 
 
 So c Senza soldi mai,' he said, sternly, shutting 
 up the gown-stuff in the wooden box with the big 
 padlock which contained his choicest goods. 
 
 And Lula sobbed as if her heart would break as 
 she saw the donkey-cart wind its slow way along one 
 of the roads between the fallow-fields, where the corn 
 
284 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 had long been reaped, and the grass was springing 
 in the furrows ; for it was nearly October, and if the 
 cashmere gown could not be bought and made very 
 quickly, All Saints' Day would have already dawned, 
 and she would have to go to church in her common, 
 russet, patched frock. 
 
 The pedlar went plodding on in the dust under 
 the ripe grapes of the vines which bordered the road, 
 and all her hopes went with him. 
 
 ' He might have let me have it ; I would have 
 surely paid him some time/ she thought, with that 
 happy-go-lucky trust in the friendliness of Fortune 
 which makes so much of the misery of the improvi- 
 dent poor. 
 
 Suddenly the donkey stopped, the cart turned, 
 and the pedlar came back slowly through the sun- 
 shine. Lula's heart flew high as heaven as she stood 
 under the plane-tree, and her tears ceased. He was 
 coming to offer it to her, she was sure. She ran 
 to meet him, with hot cheeks, and eyes dancing 
 through her tears. 
 
 ' You are going to give it me, dear Pietro ? ' she 
 said, caressingly. c Oh, do give it me, and I will 
 never eat a mouthful till I pay you ! ' 
 
 4 Che ! J said the pedlar, with scorn for her sim- 
 plicity. ' I must see the notes in my hand before I 
 
7 HE BULLFINCH 285 
 
 give it you. You are a pretty girl, and a good one, 
 and I am very fond of you ; but business is business, 
 and money is money. However, I came back to tell 
 you that there is a way, now I think of it, by which 
 you might make the money, and no trouble to you, 
 either.' 
 
 c Nothing dishonest ? ' asked Lula, beginning to 
 tremble. 
 
 { No, no, bless your soul ! I am not a bad man, 
 am I ? Pietro likes money ; Pietro never denies it ; 
 but Pietro is as pure as asses' milk not a drop of 
 poison ever in him.' 
 
 c But what can I do ? ' said Lula, impatiently 
 cutting short his paean of self-admiration, which 
 would otherwise have scarcely ended at broad noon. 
 
 ' What a lass you are to bite one's nose off ! ' said 
 Pietro. c Well, you can sell Zi-Zi.' 
 
 < Sell Zi-Zi ! ' 
 
 Lula stared, with her black eyes grown round as 
 moons. 
 
 < Why, who would buy him ? A little common- 
 bird, a mere wild black-cap ! ' 
 
 4 A black cap for a black gown,' said the old 
 pedlar with a chuckle ; c a rare proper exchange, eh ? 
 Rhymes like afioretta. Well, it so happens that I 
 know a lady who asked me to get her a piping black- 
 
286 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 cap, and your Zi-Zi has a rare pipe of his own. She 
 is a foreigner. Foreigners are always crack-pates. 
 They buy all the rubbish we show them. Give me 
 Zi-Zi, and I will take him to her to-morrow, and try 
 and get her to give as much as you want for the 
 gown.' 
 
 'Sell Zi-Zi?' repeated Lula, stupidly. 
 The little bird, hearing his name thus repeated, 
 flew out of the house, and circled round her head, 
 and fluttered and chirruped, and then, with a flash of 
 his wings in the sunlight, darted up over the plane- 
 leaves, and there broke into sweetest song. 
 
 c Oh, I could not sell Zi-Zi ! ' she murmured, with 
 a pale, scared face. ' I could not, I could not ! and 
 Hugo is so fond of him ! ' 
 
 c Just as you please,' said the pedlar ; c I only 
 wished to please you. For myself, I would sooner 
 keep the cashmere, for I shall want it for the Rossi's 
 Amalia's wedding, and it is a beautiful, rare piece of 
 goods. Only, do not ever say again that Pietro would 
 not do you a good turn when he had the chance. 
 Pietro has a heart of gold.' 
 
 Then he pulled cruelly at his donkey's mouth, 
 and turned round the cart once more. Zi-Zi, above 
 the plane-leaves, was pouring out the Nel silenzio 
 della notte, in a flood of exquisite silvery melody. 
 
THE BULLFINCH 287 
 
 The pedlar had only come up so far out of his way 
 that morning because he had had for several weeks 
 a commission to buy a piping bullfinch and had 
 found none in good voice or well-trained anywhere, 
 and so had remembered Lula's Zi-Zi, and had gone 
 this roundabout way to work because no Italian 
 ever takes a straight road if he can find a devious 
 one. He meant to get fifty, sixty, perhaps seventy 
 francs from the foreigner whose pate was cracked ; 
 and if he then sold the cashmere into the bargain, even 
 if he had to part with thirty francs as Zi-Zi's price, 
 he would make a good day's work out of it, such as 
 was sweet to his peddling soul. 
 
 4 Wait a moment wait,' cried Lula, breathlessly. 
 
 And she was very pale, and kept glancing up- 
 ward at the little singing-bird, as though he could 
 know his fate was in the balance. 
 
 c Would he be. happy, do you think?' she said, 
 in a low, shamed voice. 
 
 ' Stuff and nonsense ! ' replied Pietro, with bound- 
 less contempt : < birds are happy anywhere, if that 
 matters, and where he'd go is a palace, with fountains, 
 and flowers, and fine glass places and a power of silver 
 and of gold everywhere. Happy ! Lord, if he sing 
 one tune here, he'll sing twenty there. Catch him, and 
 give him to me. And here's the cashmere all at once, 
 
288 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 my dear ; beautiful, rare stuff, given away for a 
 song.' 
 
 4 Oh, I can't, I can't ! ' she muttered, shrinking 
 away from the cart, as the flood of the little bird's 
 song poured through the sunlit air. c I'll never be 
 at peace again if I sell Zi-Zi ; and why should any 
 one ever buy him for all that money, a little common 
 bird?' 
 
 She was doubtful, suspicious, ashamed, envious, 
 tortured ; she longed passionately for the gown, but 
 her heart was warm, and she loved Zi-Zi ; moreover, 
 she was stupefied and incredulous. She knew no- 
 thing of foreigners, or rich people, and their fancies ; 
 it seemed to her utterly impossible that anyone 
 could give such an enormous sum for one little tiny 
 bird, that would be sold for a farthing to stick on a 
 spit. 
 
 The pedlar thrust the cashmere upon her ; but she 
 was suspicious, and, though her whole soul was 
 pining for it, would not take it so. 
 
 ' You would declare afterwards that I was in debt 
 for it,' she said, rudely, to the old man, who raised his 
 hands to heaven in horror at such a foul aspersion. 
 
 And she would not believe him, nor accept the 
 stuff, nor give the bird. 
 
 Poor little Zi-Zi, all the while unconscious of 
 
THE BULLFINCH 289 
 
 the conspiracy against him, was singing his little 
 heart out of his body in his joy at the sunbeams, 
 and the leaves, and the blue sky, and the answering 
 notes of some woodlarks flying through the vines. 
 It was their season of the year to sing, and was not 
 his. But that did not matter to Zi-Zi ; he sang, 
 more or less, all the year through, whenever he 
 heard his mistress's voice or laughter. 
 
 The pedlar got very angry : he swore, and bullied, 
 and compelled, and cajoled, and flattered ; and the 
 black cashmere lay all the while spread out on the 
 lid of the box, with some white cotton lace which 
 was generously to be given in with it. 
 
 6 1 am ruining myself/ he declared. c But it is 
 all for love of you, and to keep my promise to the 
 lady to take her a blackcap. And then you, you 
 ungrateful, graceless, disbelieving, stony-hearted little 
 jade, go and say that I am lying, and that I have 
 some hidden interest of my own to serve ! ' 
 
 c I only say I'll see where Zi-Zi goes, if I let him 
 go,' said Lula. 
 
 And her voice was dogged and low, with a sound 
 as of shame in it. 
 
 c Then I'll take you,' said Pietro, with fury and 
 reluctance, seeing all his hoped-for gains gliding 
 away from, him into the haze of uncertainty. 
 
 u 
 
290 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 c Then I'll take you, Lula, daughter of Gian ; I'll 
 take you, and you may get what you can; but I'll 
 never let you have that cashmere never, so help 
 me Heaven ! That ever a sixteen-year-old wench, 
 who I nursed on my knee as a babe, should doubt 
 the honest word of her friend, her best friend, her 
 oldest friend ! Ah ! it is women are vile, core through ; 
 and Pietro is a fool, a thrice-accursed fool, to wear 
 his aged bones out in serving them ! The girl's 
 dying for the gown, and I remember a foreigner's whim 
 to serve her, and I put her in the way of getting a 
 fine wedding-dress, lace and all, for nothing, and she 
 won't give up a little hedge dickey-bird that is only 
 fit to be ate in a mouthful of pastry ! ' 
 
 And so eloquently did he talk, and so greatly did 
 he magnify his benevolence, and so craftily did he 
 appeal to her self-love and her vanity, and so com- 
 pletely did he confuse her mind and fan the heat of 
 her greed, that after two hours' excited dispute, both 
 of them talking hard one against another, with the 
 donkey standing asleep in the sun, and the cashmere 
 lying outspread on the cart, Lula, ashamed of what 
 she did, with a feeling of guilt and a loud-throbbing 
 heart, afraid lest the very stones in the road should 
 hear her, said, in a hoarse, abashed whisper : 
 
 c Well, 111 give him, then, if you're sure he'll be 
 
THE BULLFINCH 291 
 
 happy > and if you'll throw me those three yards of 
 ribbon in with the gown. 5 
 
 c What a wench ! ' groaned the pedlar, half in 
 horror of the cunning of this lass, half in admiring 
 homage of her shrewdness. ' To think she was a 
 babe at the breast a summer or two ago, and now 
 would talk the very heart out of a poor, harmless, 
 trustful old man like Pietro, and leave him penniless, 
 to please her, on his dying bed ! ' 
 
 But, despite his torrents of reproaches and regrets, 
 he was quick to secure his bargain ; he made up the 
 cashmere, and the lace, and the ribbon for trimming, 
 into a parcel, and wrote out on an atom of yellow 
 paper a clear receipt for all of them, as of c value 
 received ' for all ; and then, with his hand laid firmly 
 upon them, he said to her : 
 
 ' Now give me Zi-Zi in his cage, and all these 
 beautiful things are your own. Make haste, for I've 
 got far to go with him ; very far ; and I've lost all 
 the morning here.' 
 
 Lula had a blanched, frightened look, as of guilt, 
 on her face ; her ruddy lips had grown quite colour- 
 less, and trembled. 
 
 ' You're sure he'll be loose where he goes ? ' she 
 whispered. 
 
 ' Loose ! ' said the pedlar, roughly ; { loose, yes ! 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 He'll fly about all day long among the fountains and 
 the flowers. Come, look sharp, and get him into 
 the cage ! I can't waste all the day here.' 
 
 Zi-Zi, who had been darting hither and thither, 
 taking a drop of water out of a pan, snatching an 
 atom of thistledown off a plant, searching for a 
 belated caterpillar under the leaves, but always 
 keeping one little bright black eye fixed on Lula, 
 was now perched on the sill of the casement, sending 
 out all manner of sweet trills and triplets and liquid 
 roulades, a linnet answering him from a thicket of 
 rose-bushes. 
 
 4 Zi-Zi! Zi-Zi!' called Lula, 
 
 * Zi ! ' said the little bird, in joyous and confident 
 response. 
 
 He flew up from the window-sill on to her 
 shoulder, and pecked, in his pretty, caressing way, at 
 the rosy tip of her little brown ear. 
 
 * Va cuccia, Zi-Zi ! ' she said, in a faint, hoarse 
 voice. 
 
 It was her good-night word of command, it was 
 the order to go to bed ; and Zi-Zi could not under- 
 stand it at that hour of bright midday, with the 
 broad sun shining in the zenith, and his friends, the 
 linnets and the woodlarks, in full sport and song. 
 
 ' Fa cuccia ! J said Lula, more sharply. 
 
THE BULLFINCH 293 
 
 And then the little bird, knowing she was in 
 earnest, and sorrowfully supposing that he was some 
 way in fault, sadly left his loved place upon her 
 shoulder, and flew, slowly and reluctantly, to the 
 cottage, and entered the little rusty cage which served 
 him as a sleeping-place, and of which the door stood 
 open day and night. 
 
 1 Zi-Zi ! ' he chirped, as he flew to his perch, with 
 a melancholy protest and reproach in the notes. 
 
 What had Zi-Zi done that he was punished ? 
 
 4 Take him ! ' said the girl, savagely. 
 
 Then she buried her face in her hands not to see. 
 
 The pedlar went indoors, reached down the cage, 
 closed the little wire wicket, and covered the cage 
 with an old bit of calico. Then he set it on the cart, 
 and laid the cashmere, the ribbon, and the receipt, 
 down on the bench under the plane-tree. 
 
 ' There they all are, my dear. You'll never have 
 such another friend as Pietro in all your days, and 
 when you get a baby next year, Pietro will stand for 
 him at the font,' he said, with fatherly tenderness. 
 
 Then he shook the donkey awake, and the little 
 rusty wheels of the cart began to turn and creak. 
 
 c Zi-Zi ! Zi-Zi ! ' came plaintively and uneasily from 
 the covered cage, in tremulous, oft-repeated notes, all 
 its music gone, and a hoarse appeal and terror in the 
 
294 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 little shrill voice. Lula stood with her face buried 
 in her hands ; she could not bear to see, she could 
 not bear to hear ; sobs shook her frame from head to 
 foot. She had bartered love for money. 
 
 The cart soon passed out of view through the 
 sunshine, over the white dust. 
 
 The linnets and woodlarks were all chirping, 
 the bees were humming, the pigeons were cooing : 
 but to Lula it seemed as though a great silence and 
 desolation had fallen on the place. 
 
 Little Zi-Zi was going away away away she 
 did not even know where. She felt as if she had killed 
 some little innocent thing. There were the black 
 cashmere, the lace, the ribbon, everything she had 
 desired so passionately for so many months : she 
 would go to her wedding in fine, new, wedding- 
 garments, and they had cost her nothing ; and she 
 tried to be glad, tried to laugh, and look at the 
 stuff, and think of how bravely she would appear at 
 the church in the eyes of the other girls. But it 
 was of no use ; she could not see her treasures for the 
 tears that rained from her eyes, and she knew that 
 she had done a greedy, a mean, and a cruel thing. 
 
 Thrice she started from her seat to run after and 
 overtake the pedlar's cart, which she could have done, 
 for she was fleet of foot, and knew his route. But 
 
THE BULLFINCH 295 
 
 each time she sat down again, overcome by the false 
 shame of looking foolish in the old man's eyes, and 
 by the longing, still in her, to be suitably arrayed 
 upon her marriage-day. 
 
 She had the desire of her soul ; but she was 
 wretched. 
 
 < Zi-Zi ! Oh, Zi-Zi ! ' she moaned. 
 
 There she sat alone in the sunshine, where never 
 more would the little red-breasted, black-capped, 
 merry, devoted friend, flutter and twitter about her 
 under the leaves. 
 
 ' What have you done with Zi-Zi ? ' asked her 
 father when he came home. 
 
 And when she told him, he was silent. But one 
 of her brothers said, roughly : 
 
 ' Was there ever aught like a woman for loving 
 herself? Hang me if I would have sold little Zi-Zi ! 
 no, not to have tobacco and wine all the year round 
 for nothing ! ' 
 
 ' A black cap for a black gown,' said the younger 
 lad, making the same poor joke that the pedlar had 
 made. c Well, we'll never hear a bird whistle as 
 Zi-Zi whistled ; I could hear his note half-a-mile off, 
 and I'd swear to it out of ten thousand.' 
 
 And Lula knew that they all of them condemned 
 her. 
 
296 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 She could not bear to look at the old oak chest 
 upon which his cage had used to stand. 
 
 That evening Hugo walked over from the Grange, 
 where he lived, and glanced at the chest, where 
 Zi-Zi at that hour was always to be seen, a little 
 ball of russet plumage, at roost on his perch. He 
 missed the cage, 
 
 ( Have you lost the little bird ? ' he inquired 
 anxiously. 
 
 Lula shook her head, with the tears gathering 
 afresh in her eyes ; her voice failed her. 
 
 c She's sold him to get her black dress/ said her 
 father, gruffly. { Of course, it's right, and well enough, 
 he was her own ; but I feel as if the luck of the 
 house had gone with little Zi-Zi/ 
 
 { Sold him ? Who would buy him at any price 
 high enough to get a gown ? ' said Hugo, in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 * Some foreigner ; foreigners are always three- 
 parts daft,' said the older man, impatiently. < Sure as 
 you live, my mother sold an old battered pan to one 
 of them ; it had always served for the pigeons' water, 
 and nobody thought naught of it, and the foreigner 
 paid for it ten times its weight in gold because of 
 somebody who, he said, had modelled it : they are 
 
THE BULLFINCH 297 
 
 always picking up dirt like that ; they don't know 
 any better/ 
 
 c What did you get for Zi-Zi ? ' Hugo inquired, 
 turning to his betrothed. 
 
 But she threw her apron over her head, and got up 
 from the table, and ran away into the open air and 
 the evening shadows. 
 
 1 She got her black gown/ said her father. c I 
 wouldn't have done it myself to get a black coat, 
 or twenty black coats. But, Lord ! you know what 
 women are when they have a bit of finery in their 
 heads. They'd sell themselves, and all belonging to 
 'em.' 
 
 c I will get her another bird,' said Hugo. ' But I 
 am sorry.' 
 
 ' I think the luck of the house is gone with Zi-Zi,' 
 said the old man ; c and you may be sure that mean 
 rogue, Pietro, has made a rare profit on it. If the 
 child had waited till one of us had come in, 'twould 
 have been better.' 
 
 4 Ay, it would ; we could have gone with him, 
 and seen what he did get. To give a whole gown 
 for a little blackcap ! saints above us ! and he 
 isn't a man to give anything without getting three 
 times as much again for himself.' 
 
 The discovery that a gold-mine had been with 
 
298 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 them in the tiny form of the little bullfinch stupefied 
 all the men ; these pretty songsters were netted, or 
 shot, or bird-limed all around them, only to furnish a 
 mouthful at a feast-day meal. They knew nothing 
 of rich people and their fancies, and the prices 
 which were paid for well- trained birds in full song. 
 
 6 Anyhow, I am sorry the little chap is gone/ 
 said Hugo, as he looked again at the ^mpty cage. 
 c I always thought he'd bring us luck. I heard him 
 piping the first time I stopped my beasts by these 
 cross-roads, and saw Lula's face in the doorway.' 
 
 And then he went outside the house, and tried to 
 console Lula, who was sitting on the bench, crying 
 still, as if her heart would break. 
 
 But she had her black gown, and had to make 
 it, and it took up all her leisure, and some of her 
 working-hours : so that, for the first time in her 
 short life, the bread she baked was heavy, and the 
 cottage was ill-swept, and the cabbage soup simmered 
 itself all away, and when the men came home 
 nothing was ready for them. 
 
 { The devil take your gown ! ' said her father 
 more than once. i It's been ill got, and it's played 
 the deuce with you ! ' 
 
 If the cashmere gown had only been rolls of 
 bank-notes, and if she had only known whither the 
 
THE BULLFINCH 299 
 
 bird was gone, so great was her remorse, that she 
 would have taken the money, and begged for Zi-Zi 
 back again. But to do this was impossible: in her 
 haste and confusion, in her greed and regret, she had 
 not thought to make the pedlar tell her where those 
 rich folks dwelt : perhaps at some villa on the plains, 
 perhaps in some one of the little towns, perhaps in 
 the city itself, of which, on fine days, she could see the 
 crosses on the cathedral domes shining in the blue 
 haze under those far-off mountains. She could not 
 tell ; in her haste to possess the black gown she had 
 let her little friend pass away from her into the vast 
 unknown, and she could not trace him. 
 
 As she sat and stitched at the woollen stuff, of 
 which the dye blackened her fingers, and the folds fell 
 about her like a funeral pall, she could not bear to 
 see the thrushes flying amongst the vines, and hear 
 the autumn singing-birds chirp and warble in the 
 fields. It was so like Zi-Zi, and yet so unlike. 
 And then, when morning dawned, there was no little 
 twitter at her ear to wake her, no tapping against 
 the windo\v-glass to greet the sunrise. 
 
 ' I wish, dear, you'd gone without the gown,' said 
 Hugo. ' I should have liked little Zi-Zi always 
 singing about my place : it is a poor place he'd 
 have made it bright. 5 
 
300 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 ' We can get other birds,' said Lula, quickly and 
 crossly. 
 
 She could not bring herself to confess that she 
 regretted what she had done, and that the memory 
 of the little songster was always with her, haunting 
 her restlessly, ceaselessly, darkening into what was 
 almost remorse the days of her betrothal-time, which 
 should have been so blithe and cloudless. 
 
 In a fortnight from the day of his sale the wed- 
 ding-gown was finished, made very stiff with whale- 
 bone and buckram, and disfiguring the slim, supple, 
 child-like figure of her very greatly, and suiting ill 
 her round, cherubic face, and her tanned and rosy 
 skin. 
 
 But it was a black gown, the garment which 
 custom required, and she was proud to think that 
 everybody who had ever known her in her short life 
 would see her arrayed in it. And yet she hated the 
 sight of it where it lay in the chest with some 
 powdered iris-root to sweeten it, and the blessed palm 
 of the past Easter laid upon it to bring it good 
 fortune. 
 
 Once she walked to where old Pietro lived ; it was 
 a dusty, ugly little village, several miles off, and she 
 was tired when she got to it, and the old man was 
 out on his rounds, and was not expected back for two 
 
THE BULLFINCH 301 
 
 days. No one could tell her anything about the 
 bird, but some women of the house he lodged at 
 said he had seemed flush of money that week. Lula 
 went home with a heavy heart. 
 
 ' I will get you another bullfinch to-morrow, my 
 girl,' said Hugo, with his arm about her, under the 
 porch. 
 
 < No, not another never another,' said Lula, pas- 
 sionately. ' He loved me oh ! he did love me, Hugo. 
 I was a wicked wretch, a vain fool, to send him away 
 to get my gown. But I could not bear the women 
 to laugh at me, and see me go to the church with 
 you in a shabby old frock ! ' 
 
 * The frock did not matter,' said Hugo. 4 But 
 don't sob so about it. I dare say the little bird will 
 be as merry there as he was here"; they must be rich 
 folk who have got him, or they would not have paid 
 such a sight of money for a mere whim. Cheer up, 
 my lass.' 
 
 But Lula was not to be comforted ; the sense of 
 some crime committed, some treachery done, weighed 
 on her wherever she was. 
 
 She knew that her sweetheart was right, and that 
 it would have been better to have gone without the 
 gown. 
 
 The day she had put the last stitch to it, and 
 
302 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 laid it there, with the palm and the iris powder, was 
 a fine, sunshiny vintage-day : the grapes were being 
 gathered all over the plain, and the laughter of the 
 boys and girls, and the creak of the waggon wheels, 
 and now and then the glad bark of a dog, came to her 
 from the fields. For the first time in her life she was not 
 out under the vines, pulling down the bunches, skip- 
 ping, laughing, wrestling, playing with the rest under 
 the maple -boughs and the vine-leaves. She was alone 
 with her black gown, troubled and anxious because 
 one of the girls who lived nearer the town had told 
 her that she had cut the waist too long, and the skirt 
 too full, to be like what they now wore in the streets. 
 
 Suddenly she heard a voice which called her name ; 
 it was that of Pietro, the pedlar. 
 
 She started and sighed as she heard it ; it was 
 hateful to her. 
 
 4 What can he want with me ? ' she wondered : 
 c he gave me a clear receipt in full ; he cannot come 
 for any money/ 
 
 But apprehensive, perplexed, and reluctant, she 
 went out of the doorway, and saw the old man and 
 his cart, just as she had seen them fifteen days before, 
 when she had sold Zi-Zi, only in the shafts of the 
 cart there was a dappled-grey pony. 
 
 1 Lula, will you come along with me ? ' said the 
 
THE BULLFINCH 303 
 
 pedlar. 'The rich folks who bought Zi-Zi want 
 you.' 
 
 All the blood in her body seemed to leap into 
 Lula's face. 
 
 c Oh, my Zi-Zi ! oh, my Zi-Zi ! ' she cried, with a 
 deep sob. c Is he well ? Is he happy ? ' 
 
 4 Oh ay/ said the old man, hastily. ' But but 
 he won't sing, and nothing will do for the lady 
 that has him but to fetch you, and see if you can 
 make him sing. You'll come, won't you ? Of course^ 
 I have been paid for him, and it doesn't matter to 
 me ; but Pietro is always a man of honour, and having 
 sold him for a singing- bird, a piping blackcap, why 
 you see ' 
 
 c Oh ! I knew he would be wretched,' said Lula, 
 with a wailing cry. ' How I hate you how I hate 
 you ! Oh, why did I listen to you, and take your 
 stuff that day ? It is half cotton, and dyed so badly, 
 and is so coarse, not the least like, they tell me, 
 what they wear in the town/ 
 
 4 You are an ungrateful hussy,' said the old man, 
 and I have a mind to drag the brass earrings out 
 of your ears. If you are so fond of your Zi-Zi, come 
 and see him. and get him to sing.' 
 
 4 But is it very far ? You would not tell me 
 where.' 
 
304 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 c It is ten miles off. But I've said I'll take you, 
 and I'll take you. Pietro's word is his bond.' 
 
 < But my father ? ' 
 
 < I passed your father on the road, and I told 
 him I was coming for you. Throw a shawl about 
 your head, and get up beside me quick ! ' 
 
 'Is Zi-Zi ill?' 
 
 c Well, he is not over well. You'll cure him if 
 you come.' 
 
 Lula sprang into the cart. Her heart was sick, 
 and her conscience was heavy-laden. 
 
 Pietro banged on to the grey pony with a heavy 
 stick, and it started off at a quick pace ; they rolled 
 over the stones and the dust, under the reddening 
 leaves of the pollard maples. The pedlar never 
 spoke a word ; he was full of apprehension lest Lula 
 should learn that he had received no less than eighty 
 francs for poor Zi-Zi. But he had had no choice 
 but to seek her out, for the servants of the great 
 foreign house had threatened him with breaking 
 every bone in his body if he did not fetch the girl, 
 and make the bird sing. 
 
 Zi-Zi, when he had first been released from dark- 
 ness, and saw the light, the flowers, and the fountains 
 around him, had burst into a flood of song, rapturous 
 and far reaching ; so that the lady, who had set her 
 
THE BULLFINCH 305 
 
 heart on possessing a piping bullfinch, had said 
 hastily to the people : 
 
 'Pay the man who brought him anything he 
 asks, and let him go.' 
 
 But, that one song ended, Zi-Zi had sung no 
 more, he had broken off in the midst of the Nel 
 silenziOy and, looking uneasily about him, had called 
 ' Zi-Zi ! Zi-Zi ! ' with agitation, and realised that he 
 was in a strange place, and that she whom he loved 
 was not near him. 
 
 They had never been able to induce him to sing 
 again, and day by day he had pined and drooped, a 
 little more, and a little more. The lady had accused 
 the servants of tampering with him ; the servants 
 had sought out the pedlar and said to him : 
 
 c Make the bird sing as he sang when he came, 
 or we will make you disgorge every farthing you 
 received.' 
 
 4 1 can't make him sing,' the old man had 
 answered angrily. ' 'Tis only the girl who reared 
 him that can do that.' 
 
 ' Well, bring the girl,' the servants had said ; and 
 so he had come, borrowing a stout pony to put in 
 the shafts instead of his feeble donkey, for the way 
 was long between the cottage at the cross-roads and 
 the great house. 
 
 x 
 
306 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 He was angered and apprehensive. He had 
 gained eighty francs by Zi-Zi, and he could not be 
 sure that when the girl should speak with the ser- 
 vants this fact would not come out against himself. 
 
 The drive was long and tedious, and frightened 
 her : she had never been so far out over the plains 
 in her life. She did not know where she was, and 
 she was afraid of the crafty, ugly old man, whose 
 usual loquacity was stilled, and who only grumbled 
 a few bad words every now and then when a wheel 
 sank into a rut or jolted over a stone in the 
 road. 
 
 Pietro was thinking all the time : c If she should 
 find out I had eighty francs ? ' 
 
 But one fear casts out another, and the servant 
 who had paid him in the lady's name had said to 
 him : c If your bird does not sing, I will break every 
 bone in your old yellow skin ! ' 
 
 So he had sought for Lula. 
 
 The pony soon tired of trotting, and jogged slowly 
 on through the sunshiny width of the plains, all 
 green and golden with vines, and passed farms, and 
 villages, and churches, and wooded places, and at last 
 drew near a great house in the midst of great gardens, 
 such as Lula had never dreamed could be so near 
 her, and yet so far from her. 
 
THE BULLFINCH 307 
 
 Her heart beat quickly, with terror and relief: 
 Pietro had done her no harm, but she* was brought 
 into a strange and terrifying place. 
 
 ' Oh, my Zi-Zi, my Zi-Zi ! ' she murmured, with 
 a lump in her throat. 
 
 They went through avenues, and past fishponds, 
 and under terraces, and the scene was gorgeous and 
 amazing to the ignorance of the girl, and a great 
 shyness and a frost of fear came on her, and her 
 tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth, 
 and her heart felt cold as ice. 
 
 She was confused, and hardly sensible of what 
 she did or where they took her, when she got down 
 alone before a vast, white, shining house, and was 
 led by a lackey through a succession of rooms such 
 as she had never dreamed of in her visions of 
 Paradise, and which she saw, in a whirl of strange 
 colours, dancing and swaying before her eyes. 
 
 At the end of the rooms was a glass house, full 
 of flowering-trees, with a fountain playing in their 
 midst ; and a voice said to her : 
 
 c There is your bird. Make him sing. He has 
 never sung for us.' 
 
 Then she saw, amongst many-hued flowers of 
 strange shape, a golden cage, or one which looked 
 of gold to her ; and on the perch of it sat, huddled 
 
308 THE BULLFINCH 
 
 up, a little ball of feathers, with its small, black head 
 sunk down into its breast-feathers. 
 
 With a shrill cry Lula sprang forwards to it 
 and opened the door of the cage. 
 
 < Zi-Zi!' she cried. c He is dying! Oh, he 
 is dying! Zi-Zi! Zi-Zi! don't you know Lula, 
 Zi-Zi ? ' 
 
 The little bird lifted his drooping head, and a 
 tremor ran through him like a sigh : his dulled eyes 
 brightened, his wings fluttered, he flew out of the 
 cage and lit on the girl's shoulder. 
 
 c My Zi-Zi ! Oh, my Zi-Zi ! ' she cried, with the 
 tears coursing down her cheeks. 
 
 ' Make him sing,' said the voices round her. 
 
 She took him in her hand, and he fluttered to her 
 lips, and pecked at them with joy, his wings out- 
 stretched and trembling in a passion of ecstasy. 
 
 Then his little black head fell back, his feathers 
 drooped, motionless, his eyes clouded he would 
 never sing any more. 
 
 His little heart had broken under the burden 
 of its ill-requited love. 
 
 The black gown which had cost his Jife was worn 
 on Lula's wedding-day ; and it was worn once more, 
 
THE BULLFINCH 309 
 
 a year later, when she died in childbirth, and they 
 dressed her in it as in a shroud. 
 
 They laid her in the common ground, which 
 every few years is emptied of its bones, and filled 
 afresh with newer dead. 
 
 In the shadows of the summer evenings a little 
 bird is often seen fluttering above the nameless 
 cross of wood, which alone marks her burial-place. 
 
 ' It is Zi-Zi ! ' say the country people, with 
 hushed breath. 
 
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 Camiola. 
 
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 Open ! Sesame I 
 
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 Held in Bondage. 
 
 Strathmore. 
 
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 Idalla. 
 
 Cecil Castle- 
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 Robin Gray. 
 
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 Llnley Rochford. 
 
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 Camiola* 
 
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