Tales from ten poets

Front matter

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I

The Comparini, man and wife, Pietro and Violante, were yesterday as happy as any prosperous couple in Eome. To-day they lie dead in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.

Crowds from the populous Corso have streamed into the aisles all day long to have a look at the murdered pair, where they rest on either side of the altar. There is an endless buzz of question and counter-question, of curiosity and sympathy, and of hot vengeance uttered against Count G-uido Franceschini, who is known to have done the deed.

It is a motley throng inside the old church. Here the scarlet robe of a cardinal moves down the midst of dark-cloaked idlers from the streets ; over there, in faded homespun, lounges some peasant come into town for the holiday. They push on to the chancel, throw up their eyes, cross themselves, look hastily at the dead and the notched triangular dagger lying at their feet, and then give place to the pressing lines behind. All the world knew the old pair, and all the world has come to talk the tragedy over. Once within, they find it hard to leave. They have climbed the columns, and perched themselves on the chapel-rail, jumped over and broken the painted wood-work, crammed the organ-loft, and literally packed every corner of the sacred place.

" Not in seventy years," says toothless Luca Cini, bending on his staff, — "not in all the seventy years I have seen bodies set forth has there been a day like it."

Now this is the story of those two, lying there with faces stabbed out of recognition by an enemy who thus vindicated his honor, according to the wont of the noblemen of his day.

It was the year of our Lord 1679, and Rome was the religious centre of the world. Pope Innocent the Twelfth sat upon the papal throne, a feeble old man who ruled benignly but firmly the great realm, both spiritual and temporal, which belonged to the church. In his service were numberless prelates high and low, and a * throng of nuns and monks and friars, who carried the ecclesiastical power into every rank of society. They were the judges in the city courts, the officers of the municipal govern-

Tlie Ring and the Book. 15

ment, the scholars who preserved and taught the older learning, and they led, moreover, the social world of Eome, whether it dwelt in the palaces of the Corso or lived a simpler life in the Yia Yittoria.

And in the Yia Yittoria, plain, substantial, the abode of good citizens who had wealth enough to bring them leisure, even if too little to indulge in many luxuries, — in this pleasant thoroughfare lived Pietro and Yiolante Comparini. They had been born in that quarter of the city seventy-odd years before, and remained there throughout their lives. They, like all the rest around them, married young, but they were childless, and this was a disappointment to Pietro and a distress to his good wife, for Pietro's wealth, such as it was, belonged to him only during his life, and would pass into the hands of some distant heir when he should die. Yet they had led a careless and happy existence in their city house and in the villa out in the Pauline district just beyond the walls. This rural place Pietro had bought to retire to for little frolics such as men in his condition loved to plan with congenial friends who had a tooth for good wine and loved free laughter. But with its dark sides hidden in foliage and thick trees overhanging its roof, the villa was after all just the place to put murder into an enemy's head.

Such idle living is, however, a costly thing even if one have an ample income to draw upon, and the funds of the Comparini were not by any means inexhaustible. As the years went by they began to feel the drain upon their resources, and before very long they actually found themselves in debt. So, like most people who have gained a distinction for liberality among neighbors and friends, they clung blindly to the reputation, and continued to load their board for flattering guests even while they held out their hands for the papal bounty, which in that day was dispensed to the needy who were too respectable to beg.

But the sole way out of the dilemma was to secure an heir. Pietro's income was exhausted, that was plain enough. The original wealth whence it was drawn, however, remained in the custody of the law, and should the miracle ever occur that he and Yiolante might still have born to them an heir, then the coveted money would fall into their hands and all would be well. So Pietro prayed earnestly for an heir to his fallen house, but Yiolante, more practical though less nice in honor, went secretly to work to fulfil the pious yearning of her husband.

There was a place in Eome down past San Lorenzo, beyond labyrinths of ancient dwellings, where, at the end of a certain black and dingy court, stood a house which Yiolante one day sought and entered. She had left the Yia Yittoria book in hand as if to hear mass, as was her daily wont, in San Lorenzo church ; but book and pious face were assumed to deceive Pietro, who must not know of her secret errand into the dark places of the city. There was a light at the top of the house, and she mounted by the filthy steps, holding tight to the cord which did service for baluster, until she had reached the last landing. She groped towards the half-open door where the dim light fell through, and entered on her hidden quest. A half-clad woman started up at her footsteps.

" What, you back already !" she cried. " Have mercy on me, poor sinner that I am !" But seeing only a woman, her voice changed from terror to entreaty, and " What may your pleasure be ?" she civilly asked of the undaunted Yiolante.

Now, Yiolante had long kept in mind the object of her present visit, and she had noticed this woman over her open-air washing at the cistern by Citorio, noticed and envied her shapely figure, and had tracked her home to her forlorn house-top, whither she had now come to tempt her by proposing an unlawful bargain. The talk was short between them, for the wretched washerwoman was only too willing to earn an addition to her scanty wages, 1 h 2* and Violante was disinclined to linger long in such compromising intercourse. They parted at the stairway, and as Yiolante descended into the darkness below the woman repeated, in a loud whisper above her on the landing, the terms of the agreement, —

" Six months hence, then, a person whom you trust is to come and fetch the babe away, no matter what its sex. The price is to be kept secret, and the child to be yours."

Violante was triumphant. Here was the whole trouble solved by a single deft stroke of diplomacy. To be sure, it was an unworthy subterfuge and weighed a trifle on her conscience, but the heirs to Pietro's wealth must look out for themselves, and as for the stain of such a compact as she had just made, that must be atoned for by redoubled fervor in devotion ; and, so thinking, she hurried off to church, gaining her place just in time for the Magnificat, which she uttered with unusual energy.

When she arrived at home Yiolante revealed to Pietro a startling and joyous piece of news. Her constant orisons, she said, and charitable work had brought her a fulfilment of her great longing. She must keep in-doors for the next half-year, and then, maybe, — and she coupled the news with an elderly caress, — maybe they might at last be blessed with an heir to restore their fortunes and brighten their fast-approaching age.

So one day Pietro found himself the father of a little black-eyed girl, and with the conscious pride of mature paternity, as well as the inward satisfaction that now his financial troubles were likely to be mended, at least for a time, he and his wife bore the infant to San Lorenzo churchy where the Curate Ottoboni christened it, with the prodigality of names then in vogue, Francesca Yittoria Pompilia Comparini.

Yiolante played her part well, and no shadow of suspicion crossed the mind of her husband or of the gossips of the Yia Yittoria. Whether or not the dangerous secret preyed upon her mind, she bore herself as a mother should, and did with unfaltering assurance what was needful in the ceremony of baptism. Hers was a calculating mind, and she had carefully planned and now as carefully executed a hazardous scheme, which, she reflected, had for its end a justifying benefit both for her husband and herself. Moreover, was it not a worthy act to rescue from squalid surroundings and degrading influences a child that might prove a delight to their barren age and grow to useful and perhaps beautiful womanhood ? Such thoughts ran through her mind as she stood beside her husband at the font, and with them her commonplace nature postponed for a time the inevitable reassertion of conscience.

But Pietro in all the luxury of his new fatherhood was a vain and delighted man. He bore the little Pompilia home with a thousand caresses, and from that day forth he was her playmate and her slave. He romped with her on the floor, taught her, as she grew, many a childish game, and year by year measured her increasing height against the walls of the shaded villa beyond the gates.

Poverty, however, had always of late lurked at Pietro' s heels, and one day, with scarce a warning, he found himself in absolute need. He had squandered his inherited income, had idled away his opportunities to repair it, and now in his old age he was destitute and helpless. But Yiolante was a wife of many resources, and her busy mind went to work with all its old vigor to solve the new difiiculty. They still had one possession which might retrieve their fortunes. Pompilia was now a grown girl, with great dark eyes and a bounty of black hair. She had, moreover, the sweet touch of that first youth which is a potent charm to most men, but which appeals with a peculiar zest to the jaded taste of a man of the world. She was over-young, to be sure, for marriage, but in the Italy of that day a young girl stepped out of childhood directly into wedlock, and immaturity of mind and of character was overlooked by wooers who sought only beauty or wealth.

It was the crafty Violante's plan, then, to carry her attractive goods to the most favorable market. She had grown attached to the child, because of its loving traits and infantile charm, and because it had so well served her purpose, but the family need weighed heavily on her now, and, like many another ambitious dame with only half her motives, she set deliberately to work to secure at one stroke for Pompilia a wealthy husband and for herself and Pietro a snug fireside protective against want, with even a little luxury thrown in if that were possible.

Now, the desperate state of Pietro's affairs was unknown as yet to his neighbors, and he had managed thus far with the remnants of his credit to eke out a respectable appearance. No whisper of the inward anxiety was allowed to mar the customary outward thrift, and the old reputation for fortune and prosperity was untouched by rumor. This being the case, Pompilia, with fresh young beauty and the repute of considerable wealth, was an eligible match likely to be snapped at by a suitor whose-own fortunes while not exhausted still needed replenishing, or by some elderly seeker after a youthful spouse.

Pompilia herself was just thirteen years old, and knew nothing of the trials which beset her parents. She had lived a careless and happylife in the garden of the villa, and scarcely ever, save when she went to San Lorenzo church, saw the great world outside its walls. She had a sole friend in the early times, Tisbe, a neighbor's child, whom Yiolante brought in to play with her on rainy afternoons ; and the two would trace each other's fortunes in the woven stories of the household tapestry.

"Tisbe, that's you, there, with a half-moon on your hair-knot and a spear in your hand, — a huntress. See, you are following the stag, and a great blue scarf blows out at your back."

"And there you are, Pompilia, with green leaves growing from your finger-ends and all the rest of you turned into a sort of tree."

Then they would laugh together and play out the tales pictured for them through the folds of the dim old hangings ; or they would often run off to the vineyard and sit in the shade of the vine-leaves for whole mornings together.

Such childish happiness had wrought in little Pompilia a thoughtful and sympathetic nature, but she had grown up without mental training and unconscious of the simplest experiences of life. She could neither read nor write ; she had scarcely known one of the opposite sex save the fatherly old Pietro, and she was entirely ignorant that such a thing as giving in marriage existed.

But one day as Pietro was taking an afterdinner doze and Pompilia, in some far-away chamber, was busy at her broider-frame, there came a priest to the Via Vittoria: a smoothmannered and sleek-faced personage in the habit of an Abate, who asked for Yiolante with a conscious air of knowing that she was within and alone.

" Might he speak ?"

" Yes," came promptly from in-doors, with a flutter of skirts, and he entered and seated himself with the suave grace of one used to more elevated interviews. He begged leave to present himself as the Abate Paolo, the younger brother of a Tuscan house, whose actual representative was the Count Guido Franceschini ; and then, glossing his great flap hat with the palm of his hand or reaching down to smooth the wrinkles from his shapely stocking, but always keeping a keen gray eye fixed on the flattered dame, he descanted on the house of the Franceschini, how old they were, what ancestors they boasted of, and a score of other notable things fit to turn the head of a much wiser mother than the susceptible Yiolante.

" But we are not rich," he said, with an apparent burst of candor, — " that is, not so poor either. One can't have everything, you know. We are well enough off to support the reputation of the house, and then we are in the way to fortune," — and he leaned forward with a confidential lowering of the voice, as if to speak into Violante's ravished ear, — " and to fortune better than the best. Well, my good madam, you see, if we could but keep Count Gruido patient for a little while, constant to his own interests and friendly with the Cardinal whom he serves, we should one day wear — it is promised us — the red cloth that keeps a whole household warm. But he is restless, dissatisfied, and, moreover, he's slipping on into years, and years make men want certainties, — not promises alone, not promises." And the Abate emphasizing the word, Yiolante also said, seriously, —

" Quite right, quite right, your Reverence ; promises make poor living."

"What I was about to say," continued the Abate. " Promises make poor living indeed ; and, in truth, my brother Guido is home-sick, — longs for the old sights and usual faces again ; he has, poor fellow, no ecclesiastical tastes ; he's a cold nature, humble but self-sustaining. Ah, poor brother Guido ! he cares little enough for the pomp of Eome. Dear me ! he'd rather live in his dingy palace, as vast almost as a quarry and

The Bing and the Book, 25

nearly as bare, or up at his villa on the hill-side by Yittiano."

Yiolante interjected here a pleased " Indeed !" to signify her sense of the honor done her by such explicit revelations of family aifairs, and then the Abate went on :

" Yes, he talks of nothing else ; it's the palace and the villa, the villa and the palace, all day long, — enough to make one's ears ache. And lately nothing will do but he must fly away from Rome post-haste to cheer his mother's old age by domesticating with her in the palace; and a new idea has struck him too. He must not go back alone ; he must carry a wife with him to enliven his mother's declining years and inspire her with hope and gayety, — so he says."

Yiolante was hardly able to suppress her desire to oifer Pompilia then and there, and to sing her praises as a wife, but she had a glimmering sense that a slight resistance would be seemly, and she merely betrayed the wish by a sharp little movement forward in her chair and a lifting of her hands from her lap.

" La, now," she said, " and a very good thing for him to do."

" True, true," continued the Abate, " a very rational thing to do," and he smiled gayly at the pleased old dame. " Ought now a man to interpose if his brother contemplates so wise

B 3

26 Tales from Ten Foets.

a step ? There's no making Guido great ; that's out of the question. Why, then, not let him for once be happy ? But he must be protected from designing matrons who covet the distinction of such an alliance without being able to give sufficient in return. Yes, Guido needs the watchful interest of his brothers," — the Abate here cast down his eyes in humble deprecation of his own merits : " he must not be allowed to make a mesalliance. That at least we must forestall."

"Little danger," said the discreet Yiolante, "with so experienced a hand to guide him." The Abate made a profound bow and proceeded :

"No, signora, we are not anxious for name and fame ; we have sufficient of them already. But if some pure and charming woman, untainted by the world, and all tenderness and truth, could be found, — some girl, not too wealthy, to match with Guido's own moderate fortune, — but, of course, with a sufficient dowry, — if such a girl could be discovered, she would indeed be the ideal wife for Count Guido."

Yiolante said nothing, but she showed by conscious interest that she had taken the bait so craftily suggested by the Abate, and was ready when he had twitched the line to be handsomely landed.

" And now," he began, with an assumption of ignorance and an insinuating voice, " is it not true that you, Signora Yiolante, keep hidden here in this very house a lily of a daughter such as we seek for Count Guido ? Ah, I have guessed your secret !" he laughed, with mockthreatening finger raised. " You conceal here under your sheltering mother-wing a wife worthy of Guido's house and heart."

" By no means, your Reverence," said Yiolante, with becoming humility ; " merely my little daughter Pompilia, unworthy, believe me, such an honor."

"Ah," said the gallant Abate, "you cannot long hide such a beauty from the light. But I merely came to see. I have spoken frankly and openly. I could do no less." Here he patted his well-shaped calf again, and then, straightening up with a shrug, said. " If any harm's done — well, the matter's at least off my mind, and I humbly ask your pardon, signora, for the intrusion."

He rose now with a clerical dignity abandoned during their conversation and grandly kissed the devout Yiolante's hand. Then he bowed low and left her.

When he was quite gone, Yiolante rubbed her eyes awhile in sheer bedazzlement, and then ran off to waken Pietro and tell him the wonderful news. Her more practical husband rubbed his eyes in turn, looked very knowing, and indeed not a little puzzled too, took up his cane and hat, and then sallied forth to the Square of Spain, towards the Boat-fountain, where his gossips were wont to lounge and exchange the news. He made some display of his latest honor, and expected to be congratulated on such good fortune, but he only got well laughed at for his pains. They told him with blunt jocosity just who his visitor was : the brother of Count Guido Franceschini, whose paternal acres were a stubble-field and brick-heap. There used to be a palace, but it was long ago burned down. To be sure, he was a count, but he hadn't a coin in his pouch, — nothing left to support a noble name but sloth, pride, and rapacity. Wanted to go home, did he? Well, let Pietro help him; he'd not get home without assistance.

" As for this Abate Paolo," said an old graybeard who sat on the fountain-step, " he's a shrewder mouse. He's done well here in Eome, — fattened on the church and made a comfortable nest. But Guido's had to shift for himself, and now his Cardinars cast him off, and his last shift's this of yours. He's snuffed your snug little annuity, and in return would make your girl a lady, forsooth ! There," and he looked with a derisive smile up at Pietro, " don't brag to us. Do you suppose Count Guido 'd stoop to you and yours if lie had one coin to chink against another ? Bah !"

So Pietro went home again disenchanted and rueful, yet glad that the matter had ended where it did and no harm done.

The marriage being thus impossible, all else followed in due course : Paolo serenely heard his fate ; Count Guido bore the blow with resignation ; and poor disappointed Yiolante wiped away a tear or two, renouncing her golden dreams with bitter reluctance. But she praised through her tears Pietro' s prompt sagacity and affected to acquiesce in his wiser decree.

Thus all went well for a day or so ; then Yiolante, as she one night fondled Pompilia in her arms, whispered to her, —

" And what if a gay cavalier should come to-morrow to see my little Pompilia ?" And she held the girl off and looked smilingly into her great dark eyes. " And if he does come, Pompilia must let him take her hand and kiss it ; and then some fine night we shall all go off to San Lorenzo church, and you and he will be married at the altar; and after that we will come home again and leave the cavalier, and — that's all. But, you naughty girl, you must say nothing about it, — not even to papa Pietro, —

3* now, do you hear? Girl-brides must not tell secrets. And won't it be a gay lark to steal away and never let him know ?"

So on the morrow Count Guido came and paid his devoirs to his intended bride. He was in pitiable contrast with the young and beautiful girl he was to marry. Hook-nosed and yellow, with a great bush of a beard, he looked like an ancient owl clad in the garb of a Roman nobleman. But Pompilia was ignorant of the commonest usages of life, and wedlock for her, even with such a groom, had none of the terrors which it would have had for a more mature and experienced woman.

The next night, through a driving December storm, the girl and her mother, well cloaked and veiled, set out for San Lorenzo, and there met the Abate Paolo at the altar-side. Two tapers shivered in the damp chill of the church, and Pompilia, standing in mute expectancy, heard the outer doors locked behind her, as if barring out help and hope.

" Quick, lose no time !" cried the priest, and straightway down from behind the altar, where he was in hiding, stepped Count Guido, who caught Pompilia' 8 hand. The Abate then went hurriedly through the service, and at last pronounced them man and wife. Then the two brothers drew aside and talked together, while

Pompilia, trembling and dismayed, crept down and joined her mother, who was weeping. They were noticed no further, and stole on tiptoe to the door, which was now unlocked. It had stopped raining, and they hastened through the dark wet streets for home. At the house-door Violante turned, and, placing a finger across Pompilia' s lips, whispered, —

"Not a word to papa Pietro. Girl-brides never breathe a word. You hear ?"

Cheerily Pietro welcomed them home with not a little banter.

" What do these priests mean," he said, " by praying folks to death in such weather as this ? Christmas at hand, too, to wash off our sins without need of rain."

Yiolante gave Pompilia's hand a timely squeeze, and the young bride kissed the old man and said not a word.

II

Three weeks of Pompilia's Hfe had uneventfully passed, when one morning as she sat singing alone in her chamber at her embroideryframe two or three loud voices, with now and then a sob and the names " Guido," " Paolo," angrily spoken, broke the silence and startled her to her feet. She ran into the room where the voices came from, to see what was the matter, and there stood the Count and his brother the Abate with his sly face nowise dismayed, while Pietro seemed all red and angry, scarce able to stutter out his wrath. Yiolante stood by sobbing as he reproached her, —

" You have murdered us, — me and yourself and the poor child!"

" Murdered or not, Signor Pietro Comparini," Guido interposed, " your child is now my wife. I claim her, and have come to take her."

But Paolo, with more dexterity, put suavely in : " Consider, Signor Pietro — or — kinsman, if I may call you so, what is the good of all your sagacity except to give you wisdom in such a strait as this ? The two are irrevocably man and wife ; that I guarantee, whether it please you or not. Now, we look to you for counsel, not violence, since the thing cannot be undone. Tell us what to do and we will gladly follow your advice," and Paolo smiled craftily, sensible that the game was wholly in his own hands ; the while Yiolante, sobbing all the faster, murmured, "Yes, all, all murdered. Oh, my sin, my secret !" and other such contrite fragments, consolatory to no one in particular.

Then Pompilia began to surmise the truth. Something false and underhand had happened, for which Yiolante was to blame and she to be pitied, for they all spoke of her, though none addressed her. She stood there mute until Pietro embraced her and said, —

"Withdraw, my child!" then turning to the rest, " She is not likely at this stage to be helpful to the sacrifice. Do you want the victim by while you estimate its value ? For her sake I consent, then, to hear you talk ; but she must retire. Go, child, and pray God to help the innocent !"

Pompilia went away then and knelt to pray ; but soon Yiolante came in to her with swollen eyes and hushful movements of the mouth, to make believe matters were coming right again.

" You are too young," she sobbed, " and cannot understand yet. Your father did not understand at first. I wanted to benefit us all three, and when he failed to see my meaning, why, I tried to do it without his aid; but now he confesses he was wrong, and the trouble's half over. To be sure it was right to give you a husband with a noble name and a palace and no end of other pleasant things ! What do you care about youth and good looks ? — this is the kind of a man to keep the house and love his wife. We lose a daughter, to be sure, but we gain a son, that's all, and now Pietro begins to be reasonable."

Pompilia strove to pacify her agitated mother I.— c and made cheerful assent to all she asked, then Yiolante went on :

" It's to be arranged, my dear child, so that we shall never separate. Papa Pietro and I are to go to Arezzo to live with you and the Count, in a fine palace where you will be the queen; and you'll forgive your unhappy old mother, now, won't you, — there's a sweet ?"

" Forgive her ! what for ?" exclaimed Pompilia. " Everything is right, mother, if only you will stop crying. There, there, you have done no harm, and it was all for the best after all !"

Then Yiolante kissed her fervently and took her back to where her father leaned opposite Count Guido, who stood eying him as a butcher might eye a cast ox that accepts its fate and ceases to struggle. Paolo looked archly on, touching his brow with the pen-point now and then to subdue a look of triumph, and when Pompilia came up to them he said impressively with a dignified gesture towards her and the Count, —