"You will join us?" he asked, profering a slice. "You will drink, then, at least? Ah, that is better. And will you convey my apologies to your two bandits and beg them to excuse my conversing with you in English? To tell the truth"—here, having helped them to a slice apiece and laid one aside for the Princess, he took the remainder upon his own plate—"though as a rule we make collation at noon or a little before, my English stomach cries out against an empty morning. You will like my Thespians, sir, when you see 'em. The younger ladies are decidedly—er—vivacious. Bianca, our Columbine, has all the makings of a beauty—she has but just turned the corner of seventeen; and Lauretta, who plays the scheming chambermaid, is more than passably good-looking. As for Donna Julia, her charms at this time of day are moral rather than physical: but, having married our leading lover, Rinaldo, she continues to exact his vows on the stage and the current rate of pay for them from the treasury. Does Rinaldo's passion show signs of flagging? She pulls his ears for it, later on, in conjugal seclusion. Poor fellow!—

"Non equidem invideo; miror magis.

"Do the night's takings fall short of her equally high standard? She threatens to pull mine: for I, cavalier, am the treasurer. . . . But at what rate am I overrunning my impulses to ask news from you! How does your father, sir—that modern Bayard? And Captain Pomery? And my old friend Billy Priske?"

I told him, briefly as I could, of my father's end. He laid down his spoon and looked at me for a while across the table with eyes which, being unused to emotion, betrayed it awkwardly, with a certain shame.

"A great, a lofty gentleman! . . . You'll excuse me, cavalier, but I am not always nor altogether an ass—and I say to you that half a dozen such knights would rejuvenate Christendom. As it is, we live in the last worst ages when the breed can afford but one phoenix at a time, and he must perforce spend himself on forlorn hopes. Mark you, I say 'spend,' not 'waste': the seed of such examples cannot be wasted—"

'Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust:'

nay, not their actions only, but their every high thought which either fate froze or fortune and circumstance choked before it could put forth flower. Did I ever tell you, Cavalier, the Story of My Father and the Jobbing Gardener?"

"Not that I remember," said I.

"Yet it is full of instruction as an egg is full of meat. My father, who (let me remind you) is a wholesale dealer in flash jewellery, had ever a passion for gardening, albeit that for long he had neither the time nor the money nor even the space to indulge his hobby. His garden—a parallelogram of seventy-two feet by twenty-three, confined by brick walls—lay at the back of our domicile, which excluded all but the late afternoon sunshine. As the Mantuan would observe—"

'nec fertilis illa juvencis, Nec Cereri opportuna seges, nec commoda Baccho.'

To attend to it my father employed, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, an old fellow over whose head some sixty-five summers had passed without imparting to it a single secret. In short, he was the very worst gardener in West Bromicheham, and so obstinately, so insufferably, opinionated withal that one day, in a fit of irritation, my father slew him with his own spade.

"This done, he had at once to consider how to dispose of the body. Our garden, as I have said, was confined within brick walls, two long and one short; and this last my father had screened with a rustic shed and a couple of laurel-bushes; that from his back-parlour window, where he sat and smoked his pipe on a Sunday afternoon, he might watch the path 'wandering,' as he put it, 'into the shrubbery,' and feast his eyes on a domain which extended not only further than the arm could stretch, but even a little further than the eye could reach.

"In the space, then, intervening between the laurels and the terminal wall my father dug a grave two spits deep and interred the corpse, covering it with a light compost of loam and leaf-mould. This was on a Wednesday—the second Wednesday in July, as he was always particular to mention. (And I have heard him tell the story a score of times.)

"On the Sunday week, at half-past three in the afternoon, my father had finished his pipe and was laying it down, before covering his head (as his custom was) with a silk handkerchief to protect his slumber from the flies, when, happening to glance towards the shrubbery, he espied a remarkably fine crimson hollyhock overtopping the laurels. He rubbed his eyes. He had invested in past years many a shilling in hollyhock seed, but never till now had a plant bloomed in his garden.

"He rubbed his eyes, I say. But there stood the hollyhock. He rushed from the room, through the back-doorway and down the garden. My excellent mother, aroused from her siesta by the slamming of the door, dropped the Family Bible from her lap, and tottered in pursuit. She found my father at the angle of the shrubbery, at a standstill before a tangled mass of vegetation. Hollyhocks, sunflowers, larkspurs, lilies, carnations, stocks—every bulb, every seed which the dead man had failed to cultivate—were ramping now and climbing from his grave high into the light. My father tore his way through the thicket to the tool-shed, dragged forth a hook and positively hacked a path back to my mother, barely in time to release her from the coils of a major convolvulus (_ipomoea purpurea) which had her fast by the ankles.

"Now, this story, which my father used to tell modestly enough, to account for his success at our local flower-shows, seems to me to hold a deeper significance, and a moral which I will not insult your intelligence by extracting for you . . . The actions of the just? Foh!" continued Mr. Fett, and filled his mouth with melon. "What about their passions? Why, sir, yet another story occurs to me, which might pass for an express epologue upon your father's career. Did you never hear tell of the Grand Duchess Sophia of Carinthia and her Three Wooers?"

"Pardon me, Mr. Fett—" I began.

"Pardon me, sir," he cut me short, with a flourish of his spoon. "I know what you would say: that you are impatient rather to hear how it is that you find me here in Genoa. That also you shall hear, but permit me to come to it in my own way. For the moment your news has unhinged me, and you will help my recovery by allowing me to talk a little faster than I can think. . . . I loved your father, Cavalier. . . . But our tale, just now, is of—"

"THE GRAND DUCHESS AND HER THREE WOOERS."

"Once upon a time, in Carinthia, there lived a Grand Duchess, of marriageable age. Her parents had died during her childhood, leaving her a fine palace and an ample fortune, which, however, was not—to use the parlance of the Exchange—easily realizable, because it consisted mainly in an avenue of polished gold. By this avenue, which extended for three statute miles, the palace was approached between two parallel lines of Spanish chestnuts. It ran in an easterly direction and was kept in a high state of polish by two hundred retainers, so that it shone magnificently every morning when the Grand Duchess awoke, drew her curtains, and looked forth towards the sunrise.

"Her name was Sophia, and the charms of her young mind rivalled those of her person. Therefore suitors in plenty presented themselves, but only to be rejected by her Chancellor (to whom she left the task of preliminary inspection) until he had reduced the list to three, whom we will call Prince Melchior, Prince Otto, and Prince Caspar. The two former reigned over neighbouring states, but Prince Caspar, I have heard, came from the north, beyond the Alps.

"A day, then, was fixed for these three to learn their fate, and they met at the foot of the avenue, at the far end of which, on her palace steps, stood the Grand Duchess to make her choice. Now, when Prince Melchior came to the golden road, he thought it would be a sin and a shame were his horse to set hoof on it and scratch it and perchance break off a plate of it; so he turned aside and rode up along the right of it under the chestnuts. Likewise and for the same reason Prince Otto turned aside and rode on the left. But Prince Caspar thought of the lady so devoutly and wished so much to be with her that he never noticed the golden pavement at all, but rode straight up the middle of it at a gallop.

"When the three arrived, Sophia felt that she liked Prince Caspar best for his impetuosity; but, on the other hand, she was terribly annoyed with him for having dented her precious avenue with hoof-marks. She temporized, therefore, professing herself unable to decide, and dismissed them for three years with a promise to marry the one who in that time should prove himself the noblest knight.

"Thereupon Prince Melchior and Prince Otto rode away in anger, for they coveted the golden road as well as the lady. Prince Melchior, who loved fighting, went home to collect an army and avenge the insult, as he called it. Prince Otto, whose mind worked more subtly, set himself by secret means to stir up disaffection among the Carinthians, telling them that their labour and suffering had gone to make the splendid useless avenue of gold; and he persuaded them the more easily because it was perfectly true. (He forbore to add that ho coveted it for his own.) But Prince Caspar, having seen his lady-love, could find no room in his heart either for anger or even for schemes to prove his valour. He could think of her and of her only, day and night. And finding that his thoughts brought her nearer to him the nearer he rode to the stars, he turned his horse towards the Alps, and there, on the summit, among the snows, lived solitary in a little hut.

"His mountain overlooked the plain of Carinthia, but from such a height that no news ever came to him of the Grand Duchess or her people. From his hut, to which never a woodman climbed, nor even a stray hunter, he saw only a few villages shining when they took the sun, a lake or two, and a belt of forest through which—for it hid the palace—sometimes at daybreak a light glinted from the golden avenue. But one night the whole plain broke out far and wide with bonfires, and from the grand-ducal park—over which the sky shone reddest—he caught the sound of a bell ringing. Then he bethought him that the three years were past, and that these illuminations were for the wedding; and he crept to bed, ashamed and sorrowful that he had failed and another deserved.

"Towards daybreak, as he tossed on his straw, he seemed to hear the bells drawing nearer and nearer, until they sounded close at hand. He sprang up, and from the door of his hut he saw a rider on muleback coming up the mountain track through the snow. The rider was a woman, and as she alighted and tottered towards him, he recognized the Grand Duchess. He carried her in and set her before his fire; and there, while he spread food before her, she told him that the Princes Melchior and Otto had harried her lands and burnt her palace, and were even now fighting with each other for the golden avenue.

"Then," said Caspar, pulling his rusty sword from under a heap of faggots, "I will go down and win it from them; for I see my hour coming at last."

But the Princess said, "Foolish man, it is here! And as for the golden avenue, that too is here, or all that was ever worth your winning." And thereupon she drew aside her cloak, shaking the snow from it; and when the folds parted and the firelight fell on her bosom, he saw a breastplate gleaming—a single plate of gold—and in the centre of it the imprint of a horse's hoof.

"So these two, Cavalier—or so the story reached me—lived content in their silly hut, nor ever thought it worth their while to descend to the plain and lose what they had found. . . . But you were good enough just now to inquire concerning my own poor adventures."

"Billy Priske," said I, "has given me some account of them up to your parting from my father—at Calenzana, was it not?"

"At Calenzana." Mr. Fett sighed assent. "Ah! Cavalier, it has been a stony road we have travelled from Calenzana. Infandum jubes renovare dolorem . . . but Badcock must bear the blame."

Badcock with his flute made trees—

Has it ever struck you sir, that Orpheus possibly found the gift of Apollo a confounded nuisance; that he must have longed at times to get rid of his attendant beasts and compose in private? Even so it was with Badcock.

"That infernal mufro chivvied us up the road to Calvi and into the very arms of a Genoese picket. The soldiers arrested us—there was no need to arrest the mufro, for he trotted at our heels—and marched us to the citadel, into the presence of the commandant. To the commandant (acting, as I thought, upon a happy inspiration) I at once offered the beast in exchange for our liberty. I was met with the reply that, as between rarities, he would make no invidious distinctions, but preferred to keep the three of us; and moreover that the mufro (which had already put a sergeant and two private soldiers out of action) appeared amenable only to the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. . . . And this was a fact, Cavalier. At first, and excusably, I had supposed the brute's behaviour to express aversion; until, observing that he waited for the conclusion of a piece before butting at Mr. Badcock's stomach, I discovered this to be his rough-and-ready method of demanding an encore.

"The commandant proved to be a virtuoso. Persons of that temperament (as you may have remarked) are often unequal to the life of the camp with its deadening routine, its incessant demand for vigilance in details; and, as a matter of fact, he was on the point of being superseded for incompetence. His recall arrived, and for a short while he was minded to make a parting gift of us to his late comrades-in-arms, sharing us up among the three regiments that composed the garrison and endowing them with a mascot apiece; but after a sharp struggle selfishness prevailed and he carried us with him to the mainland. There for a week or two, in an elegant palace behind the Darsena, we solaced his retirement and amused a select circle of his friends, till (wearying perchance of Badcock's minstrelsy) he dismissed us with a purse of sequins and bade us go to the devil, at the same time explaining that only the ingratitude he had experienced at the hands of his countrymen prevented his offering us as a gift to the Republic.

"We left the city that afternoon and climbed the gorges towards Novi, intending our steps upon Turin. The mufro trotted behind us, and mile after mile at the brute's behest—its stern behest, Cavalier— Mr. Badcock fluted its favourite air, I attempt from love's sickness to fly. But at the last shop before passing the gate I had provided myself with a gun; and at nightfall, on a ledge above the torrent roaring at our feet, I did the deed. . . . Yes, Cavalier, you behold a sportsman who has slain a wild sheep of Corsica. Such men are rare.

"The echoes of the report attracted a company of pedestrians coming down the pass. They proved to be a party of comedians moving on Genoa from Turin, whence the Church had expelled them (as I gathered) upon an unjust suspicion of offending against public morals. At sight of Badcock, their leader, with little ado, offered him a place in the troupe. His ignorance of Italian was no bar; for pantomime, in which he was to play the role of pantaloon, is enacted (as you are aware) in dumb-show. Nay, on the strength only of our nationality they enlisted us both; for Englishmen, they told me, are famous over the continent of Europe for other things and for making the best clowns. We therefore turned back with them to Genoa.

"But oh, Cavalier! these bodily happenings which I recite to you, what are they in comparison with the adventures of the spirit? I am in Italy—in Genoa, to be sure, which of all Italian cities passes for the unfriendliest to the Muse: but that is my probation. I have embraced the mission of my life. Here in Italy—here in the land of the vine, the olive—of Maecenas and the Medicis—it shall be mine to revive the arts and to make them pay; and if I can win out of this city of skinflints at a profit, I shall have served my apprenticeship and shall know my success assured. The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind; opportunity given, they would sneak the breeches off a highlander: they divide their time between commercialism and a licentiousness of which, sordid as it is, they habitually beat down the price. And yet Genoa is Italy, and has the feeling of Italy—the golden atmosphere, the clean outlines, the amplitude of its public spaces, the very shadows in the square, the statues looking down upon the crowd, the pose, the colouring, of any chance poor onion-seller in the market—"

But here Mr. Fett broke off his harangue to rise and salute the Princess, who, entering with our host at her heels, turned to Marc'antonio and bade him, as purse-bearer, count out the money for a week's lodging. Payment in advance (it seemed) was the rule in Genoa. Messer' Fazio bit each coin carefully as it was tendered, and had scarcely pocketed the last before a noise at the front-door followed by peals of laughter announced the arrival of our fellow-lodgers. They burst into the room singing a chorus, O pescatore da maremma, and led by Mr. Badcock, who wore a wreath of seaweed a-cock over one eye and waved a dripping basket of sea-urchins. Two pretty girls held on to him, one by each arm, and thrust him staggering through the doorway.

"O pesca—to—o—o—" Mr. Badcock's eyes, alighting on me, grew suddenly large as gooseberries and he checked himself in the middle of a roulade. "Eh! why! bless my soul, if it's not—"

"Precisely," interjected Mr. Fett, with a quick warning wink and a wave of his hand to introduce us. "I pescatori da maremma. . . . To them enter Proteus with his attendant nymphs. . . . They rush on him and bind him with strings of sausages (will the Donna Julia oblige by tucking up her sleeves and fetching the sausages from the back kitchen, with a brazier?) The music, slow at first, becomes agitated as the old man struggles with his captors; it then sinks and breaks forth triumphantly, largo maestoso, as he discourses on the future greatness of Genoa. The whole written, invented, and entirely stage-managed by Il Signore Fetto, Director of Periodic Festivities to the Genoese Republic. . . . To be serious, ladies, allow me to present to you four fellow-lodgers from—er— Porto Fino, whom I have invited to share our repast. What ho! without, there! A brazier! Fazio—slave—to the macaroni! Bianca, trip to the cupboard and fetch forth the Val Pulchello. Badcock, hand me over the basket and go to the ant, thou sluggard; and thou, Rinaldo, to the kitchen, where already the sausages hiss, awaiting thee. . . ."

In less than twenty minutes we were seated at table. Master Fazio's hotel (it appeared) welcomed all manner of strange guests, and (thanks to Mr. Fett's dextrous tomfooling) the comedians made us at home at once, without questions asked. Twice I saw Mr. Badcock, as he held a mouthful of macaroni suspended on his fork, like an angler dangling his bait over a fish, pause and roll his eyes towards me; and twice Mr. Fett slapped him opportunely between the shoulder-blades.

He had seated me between the Duenna and the pretty Bianca, to both of whom—for both talked incessantly—I gave answers at random; which by-and-by the Columbine observed, and also that I stole a glance now and then across the Princess, who was trying her best to listen to the conversation of the Matamor.

"Are you newly married, you two?" asked the Columbine, slily. "Oh, you need not blush! She puts us all in the shade. You are in love with her, at least? Well, she scorns us and is not clever at concealing it: but I will not revenge myself by trying to steal you away. I am magnanimous, for my part; and, moreover, all women love a lover."



CHAPTER XXIX.

VENDETTA.

"Have ye not seyn som tyme a pale face Among a prees, of him that hath be lad Toward his death, wher-as him gat no grace, And swich a colour in his face hath had, Men mighte knowe his face that was bistad, Amonges alle the faces in that route." CHAUCER. Man of Lawe's Tale.

"Criticism," said Mr. Fett, with his mouth full of sausage, "is the flower of all the arts."

"For my part, I hate it," put in the melancholy Rinaldo.

"To be sure," Mr. Fett conceded, "if all men grasped this great truth, there would be an end of artists; and in time, by consequence, of critics, who live by them and for whom they exist. Therefore I keep my discovery as a Platonic secret, and utter it but occasionally, in my cups, and when"—with a severe glance at Mr. Badcock—"the vulgar are not attending."

Mr. Badcock woke up at once. "On the contrary," he explained, "I listen best with my eyes closed; a habit I acquired in Axminster Parish Church. Indeed, I am all ears."

"Indeed you are. . . . Well then, as I was about to say, the secret of success in the Arts is to make other men do the work for you. At this obviously he will excel who has learnt to appraise other men's work, and knows exactly of what they are capable; that is to say, the Critic. Believe me, dear friends, the happiest moment of my life will come when, as impresario I shall have realized the ambition of giving myself, as capo comico, the sack at twenty-four hours' notice."

"A man should know his own worth," grumbled Rinaldo, "if only in self-defence on pay-day."

"'Tis notorious, my dear Rinaldo, that your mere artist never does. Intent upon expressing self, he misses the detachment which alone is Olympian; whereas the critic—Tell me, why is an architect architectonic? Because he sits in his parlour, pushing the brown sherry and chatting with his clients, while his clerks express their souls for him in a back office. This lesson, O Badcocchio, I learnt from an uncle of mine, who had amassed a tidy competence by thus vicariously erecting a quite incredible number of villa residences for retired tradesmen in the midlands—to be precise, in and around Wolverhampton. I say vicariously, for on his deathbed it brought him inexpressible comfort that he himself had not designed these things.

"He was in many respects a remarkable man, and came near to being a great one. His name originally was Lorenzo Smith, to which in later years he added that of Desborough—partly for euphony, partly because the initials made to his mind a pleasing combination, partly also in pursuance of his theory of life, that he best succeeds who makes others work for him. By annexing the Desborough patronymic—which, however, he tactfully spelled Desboro', to avoid conflict with the family prejudices—he added, at the cost of a trifling fee to the Consistory Court of Canterbury, a flavour of old gentility to the artistic promise of Lorenzo, the solid commercial assurance of Smith. Together the three proved irresistible. He prospered. He died worth twenty-five thousand pounds, which had indeed been fifty thousand but for an unlucky error.

"Like many another discoverer, he pushed his discovery too far. He reasoned—but the reasoning was not in pari materia—that what he had applied to Art he could apply to Religion. In compliment to what he understood to be the ancient faith of the Desboroughs he had embraced the principles of Roman Catholicism—his motto, by the way, was Thorough—and this landed him, shortly after middle age, in an awkward predicament. He had, in an access of spleen, set fire to the house of a client whose payments were in arrear. The good priest who confessed him recommended, nay enjoined, an expiatory pilgrimage to Rome; and my uncle, on the excuse of a rush of orders, despatched a junior clerk to perform the pilgrimage for him.

"For a time all went well. The young man (whom my uncle had promoted from the painting of public-house sign-boards) made his way to Rome, saluted the statue of the Fisherman, climbed on his knees up the Scala Sancta, laid out the prescribed sum on relics, beads, scapulars, medals, and what-not, and, in short, fulfilled all the articles of my uncle's vow. On the second evening, after an exhausting tour of the churches, he sat down in a tavern, and incautiously, upon an empty stomach, treated himself to a whole flask of the white wine of Sicily. It produced a revulsion, in which he remembered his Protestant upbringing; and the upshot was, a Switzer found him, late that night, supine in the roadway beneath the Vatican gardens, gazing up at the moon and damning the Pope. Behaviour so little consonant with his letters of introduction naturally awoke misgivings. He was taken to the cells, where he broke down, and with crapulous tears confessed the imposture; which so incensed His Holiness that my uncle only bought himself off excommunication by payment of a crippling sum down, and an annual tribute of his own weight (sixteen stone twelve) in candles of pure spermaceti. O Badcock, fill Donna Julia's glass, and pass the bottle!"

We spent the next five days in company with these strange fellow-lodgers, and more than once it gave me an uncanny feeling to turn in the midst of Mr. Fett's prattle and, catching the eye of Marc'antonio or Stephanu as they sat and listened with absolute gravity, to reflect on the desperate business we were here to do. We went about the city openly, no man suspecting us. On the day after our arrival we discovered the Prince Camillo's quarters. The Republic had lodged him, with a small retinue, in the Palazzo Verde, a handsome building (though not to be reckoned among the statelier palaces of the city), with a front on the Via Balbi, and a garden enclosed by high walls, around which ran the discreetest of vicoli. One of the Dorias, so tradition said, had built it to house a mistress, early in the seventeenth century. I doubt not the Prince Camillo found comfortable quarters there. For the rest, he had begun to enjoy himself after the fashion he had learnt in Brussels, returning to dissipation with an undisguised zest. The Genoese—themselves a self-contained people, and hypocritical, if not virtuous—made less than a nine days' wonder of him, he was so engagingly shameless, so frankly glad to have exchanged Corsica for the fleshpots. There was talk that in a few days he would make formal and public resignation of his crown in the great hall of the Bank of Saint George. Meanwhile, he flaunted it in the streets, the shops, the theatres. His very publicity baulked us. We tracked him daily—his sister and I, in our peasant dress; but found never a chance to surprise him alone. His eyes, which rested nowhere, never detected us.

We hunted him together, not consulting Marc'antonio and Stephanu, but rather agreeing to keep them out of the way. Indeed I divined that the Princess's anxiety to hold him in sight was due in some degree to her fear of these two and what they might intend. For my part, I watched them of an evening, at Messer' Fazio's board, expecting some sign of jealousy. But it appeared that they had resigned her to me, and were content to be excluded from our counsels.

Another thing puzzled me. Public as the Prince made himself, he was never accompanied by his evil spirit (as I held him) the priest Domenico. Yet—ame damnee, or master devil, whichever he might be—I felt sure that the key of our success lay in unearthing him. So, while the Princess tracked her brother, I begged off at whiles to haunt the purlieus of the Palazzo Verde—for three days without success. But on the fourth I made a small discovery.

The rear of the Palazzo Verde, I have said, was surrounded by narrow alleys, of which that to the south was but a lane, scarcely five feet in width, dividing its garden from the back wall of another palace (as I remember, one of the Durazzi). Halfway up this lane a narrow door broke the wall of the Palazzo Verde's garden. I had tried this door, and found it locked.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, as I turned into this lane, a middle-aged man met and passed me at the entrance, walking in a hurry. I had no proof that he came from the garden-door of the Palazzo Verde, but I thought it worthwhile to turn and follow him; which I did, keeping at a distance, until he entered a goldsmith's shop in the Strada Nuova, where presently, through the pane, I saw him talking with a customer across the counter. I retraced my steps to the lane. The door (needless to say) was closed; but behind it, not far within the garden, I heard a gentle persistent tapping, as of a hammer, and wondered what it might mean.

It spoke eloquently for the Prince Camillo's zest after pleasure that he pursued it abroad in spite of the weather, which was abominable. A searching mistral blew through the streets for four days, parching the blood, and on the night of the fourth rose to something like a hurricane. Our players fought their way against it to the theatre, only to find it empty; and returned in the lowest of spirits. The pretty Bianca was especially disconsolate.

Before dawn the gale dropped, and between eleven o'clock and noon, in a flat calm, the snow began, freezing as it fell.

The Prince Camillo did not show himself in the streets that day. But towards dusk, as we passed down the Via Roma, he drove by in an improvised sleigh with bells jingling on the necks of his horses. He was bound for the theatre, which stood at the head of the street. The Princess turned with me, and we were in time to see him alight and run up the steps, radiant, wrapped in furs, and carrying a great bouquet of pink roses, such as grow in the Genoese gardens throughout the winter.

But it appeared that, if we kept good watch on him, others had been keeping better; for, five minutes later, as we stood debating whether to follow him into the theatre, Marc'antonio and Stephanu emerged from its portico and came towards us.

"O Princess," said Marc'antonio, "we have seen him at length and had word with him. When we told him that you were here in Genoa, he looked at us for a moment like a man distraught—did he not, Stephanu?"

"One would have said he was going to faint," Stephanu corroborated.

"I think, with all his faults, he is terrified for your sake, for the risk you run. He implored us to get you away from the city; and when we told him it was impossible, he sent word that he would come to you after the play, and himself try to persuade you. We dared not let him know where we lodged, for fear of treachery; so, being hurried, we appointed the street by the Weavers' Gate, where, if you will meet him, masked, a little after nine o'clock, Stephanu and I will be near—in case of accidents—and doubtless the Cavalier also."

"Did he say anything of the crown, O Marc'antonio?"

"No, Princess, for we had not time. The crowd was all around us, you understand; and he drew up and talked to us, forcing himself to smile, like a nobleman amusing himself with two peasants. For the crown, we shall leave you to deal with him."

"And I shall hold you to that bargain, O Marc'antonio," said she. "But what will you two be doing with yourselves meanwhile?"

"With permission, Princess, we return to the theatre. We shall watch the play, and keep our eyes on him; and at half-past seven o'clock the girl Bianca dances in the ballet. Mbe! I have not witnessed a ballet since my days of travel."

"And I will run home, then, and fetch my mask. At nine o'clock, you say?"

"At nine, or a little after—and by the Weavers' Gate."

"And you will leave him to me? You understand, you two, that there is to be no violence."

"As we hope for Heaven, Princess."

"Farewell, then, until nine o'clock!" She dismissed them, and they returned to the portico and passed into the theatre. "That is good," said she, turning to me with a sigh that seemed to lift a weight from her heart. "For, to tell the truth, I was afraid of them."

For me, I was afraid of them still, having observed some constraint in Marc'antonio as he told his story, and also that, though I tried him, his eyes refused to meet mine. To be sure, there was a natural awkwardness in speaking of the Prince to his sister. Nevertheless Marc'antonio's manner made me uneasy.

It continued to worry me after I had escorted the Princess back to our lodgings. Across the court, in the chamber over the archway, some one was playing very prettily upon a mandolin. In spite of the cold I stepped to the outer door to listen, and stood there gazing out upon the thick-falling snow, busy with my thoughts. Yes, decidedly Marc'antonio's manner had been strange. . . .

While I stood there, a clock, down in the city, chimed out the half-hour. Its deep note, striking across the tinkle of the mandolin, fetched me out of my brown study. Half-past seven. . . . I had an hour and a half to spare; ample time to step down to the Palazzo Verde and reconnoitre. If only I could hit upon some scent of the priest Domenico!

I started at a brisk pace to warm my blood, which had taken a chill from the draught of the doorway. The snow by this time lay ankle-deep, and even deeper in the pitfalls with which the ill-lit streets abounded; but in twenty minutes I had reached the Via Balbi. The wind was rising; in spite of the snow driven against my face I had not noticed until I heard it humming in the alley which led under the shadow of the garden wall. I had scarcely noticed it before my ears caught the jingle of bells approaching swiftly down the Via Balbi.

"Eh?" thought I, "is the Prince returning, then, to change his dress? Or has he sent home his carriage, meaning to pursue the adventure on foot?"

There was no time to run back to the street corner and satisfy my curiosity. The horses went clashing past the head of the alley at a gallop, and presently I heard the front gates of the palace grind open on their great hinges. Half a minute later they were closed again with a jar, and almost immediately the clocks of the city began to toll out the hour.

Was it my fancy? Or did the last note die away with a long-drawn choking sound, as of some one struggling for breath? . . . And, last time, it had been the tap-tap of a hammer. . . . Surely, strange noises haunted this alley. . . .

I listened. I knew that I must be standing near the small door in the wall, though in the darkness I could not see it. The sinister sound was not repeated. I could be sworn, though, that my eyes had heard it; and still, for two minutes perhaps, I stood listening, my face lifted towards the wall's coping. Then indeed I heard something—not at all that for which I strained my ears, but a soft muffled footfall on the snow behind me—and faced about on it, clutching at the sailor's knife I wore in my belt.

It was a woman. She had almost blundered into me as I stood in the shadow of the wall, and now, within reach of my arm, drew back with a gasp of terror. Terror indeed held her numb while I craned forward, peering into her face.

"Signorina Bianca!"

"But what—what brings you?" she stammered, still between quick gasps for breath.

In the darkness, close by, a door slammed.

"Ah!" said I, drawing in my breath. Stretching out a hand, I laid it on her shoulder, from which the cloak fell away, disclosing a frosty glint of tinsel. "So it was for you the Prince drove home early from the theatre! But why is the door left open?"

Pretty Bianca began to whimper. "I—I do not know; unless some one has stolen my key." She put a hand down to fumble in the pocket of her cloak.

"Then we had best discover," said I, and drew her (though not ungently) to the door. I found it after a little groping and, lifting the latch—for the gust of wind had fastened it—thrust it open upon a light which, though by no means brilliant, dazzled me after the darkness of the alley.

I had counted on the door's opening straight into the garden. To my dismay I found myself in a narrow vestibule floored with lozenges of black and white marble and running, under the wall to my left, towards an archway where a dim lamp burned before a velvet curtain. For a moment I halted irresolute, and then, slipping a hand under Bianca's arm, led her forward to the archway and drew aside the curtain.

Again I stood blinking, dazzled by the light of many candles—or were they but two or three candles, multiplied by the mirrors around the walls and the gleams from the gilded furniture? And what—merciful God, what!—was that foul thing hanging from the central chandelier?—hanging there while its shadow, thrown upward past the glass pendants, wavered in a black blot that seemed to expand and contract upon the ceiling?

It was a man hanging there, with his neck bent over the curtain's rope that corded it to the chandelier; a man in a priest's frock, under which his bare feet dangled limp and hideous.

As the unhappy Bianca slid from under my arm to the floor, I tiptoed forward and stared up into the face. It was the face of the priest Domenico, livid, distorted, grinning down at me. With a shiver I sprang past the corpse for a doorway facing me, that led still further into this unholy pavilion. The curtain before it had been wrenched away from the rings over the lintel—by the hand, no doubt, of the poor wretch as he had been haled to execution—since, save for a missing cord, the furniture of the room was undisturbed. The room beyond was bare, uncarpeted, and furnished like a workshop. A solitary lamp burned low on a bracket, over a table littered with tools, and in the middle of the room stood a brazier, the coals in it yet glowing, with five or sick steel-handled implements left as they had been thrust into the heart of the fire. Were they, then, also torturers, these murderers?

My eyes turned again to the work-table. On it, among the tools, rested a crown—the crown of Corsica! Nay, there were two—two crowns of Corsica! . . . In what new art of treachery had the man been surprised? Treachery to Genoa, on top of treachery to Corsica. . . . The crowns were surprisingly alike, even to the stones around the band—and I bethought me of the jeweller I had met in the alley. But, feeling around the rim of each, I recognized the true one by a dent it had taken against the Gauntlet's ballast. Quick as thought, then, I whipped it under my arm, ran back to Bianca, and thrust it under her cloak as I bent over her.

She lay in a cold swoon. I could not leave her in this horrible place. . . .

I was lifting her to carry her out into the alley, when—in the workshop or beyond it—a key grated in a lock; and I raised myself erect as the Prince Camillo came through the pavilion, humming a careless tune of opera.

"Hola!" he broke off and called, "Hola, padre, where the devil are you hiding? And where's the pretty Bianca? . . . O, confusion seize your puss-in-the-corner! I shall be jealous, I tell you—and br-r-h! what a mistral of a draught!"

He came into the room rubbing his hands, half scolding, half laughing, with the drops of melted snow yet shining on his furred robe from his walk across the garden. I saw him halt on the threshold and look about him, prepared to call "Hola!" once again. I saw his eyes fall on the corpse dangling from the chandelier, fix themselves on it, and slowly freeze. I saw him take one tottering step forward; and then, from an alcove, Marc'antonio and Stephanu stepped quietly out and posted themselves between him and retreat.

"It will be best done quietly," said Marc'antonio. "The Cavalier, there"—he pointed to me—"has the true crown, and will carry it to good keeping. You will pardon us, O Cavalier, that we were forced to tell the Princess an untruth this evening; but right is right, and we could not permit her to interfere."

In all my life I have never seen such a face as the Prince turned upon us, knowing that he must die. The face grinning from the chandelier was scarcely less horrible.

He put up a hand to it. "Not here!" he managed to say. "In the next room—not here!"

"As your highness wishes." Marc'antonio let him pass into the workshop and he stood before the brazier, stretching out his palms as though to warm them.

"These!" he whispered hoarsely, pointing to the instruments on the brazier.

"Your Highness misunderstands. We are not torturers, we of the Colonne," answered Marc'antonio, gravely.

A clock on the mantelpiece tinkled out the hour of nine.

"No, nor shall be murderers," I interposed. "The Princess is yet your mistress, O Marc'antonio, and I am her husband. In the Princess's name I command you both that you do not harm him."

To my amazement the wretched youth drew himself up, his cowardice gone, his face twisted with sudden venomous passion.

"You? You will protect me? Dog, I can die, but not owe that!"

I leapt forward, disregarding him, seeing that Marc'antonio's hand was lifted, and that in it a dagger glittered. But before I could leap the Prince had snatched one of the steel rods from the brazier— a charcoal rake. And as I struck up Marc'antonio's arm, the rake crashed down on my skull, tearing the scalp with its white-hot teeth.

I staggered back with both hands held to my head. I did not see the stroke itself; but between my spread fingers I saw the Prince sink to the floor with the handle of Marc'antonio's dagger between his shoulder-blades. I saw the blood gush from his mouth. And with that I heard scream after scream from the doorway where Bianca stood swaying, and shouts from the garden answering her screams.

"Foolish girl!" said Marc'antonio, quietly. "And yet, perhaps, so best!"

He stepped over the Prince's body, and taking me by both shoulders, hurried me through the room where the priest hung, and forth into the vestibule. Stephanu did the same with Bianca, halting on his way to catch up the crown and wrap it carefully in the girl's cloak. At the garden gate he thrust the bundle into my hands, even as Marc'antonio pushed us both into the lane.

Outside the door I caught at the wall and drew breath, blinking while the hot blood ran over my eyes. I looked for them to follow and help me, for I needed help. But the door was closed softly behind us, and a moment later I heard their footsteps as they ran back along the vestibule, back towards the shouting voices; then, after a long silence, a shot; then a loud cry, "CORSICA!" and another shot.

"They have killed him?"

I turned feebly to Bianca; but Bianca had not spoken. She leaned, dumb with fright, against the wall of the alleyway, and stared at the Princess, who faced us, panting, in the whirls of snow.

"I tried"—it was my own voice saying this—"yes, indeed, I tried to save him. He would not, and they killed him . . . and now they also are killed."

"Yes—yes, I heard them." She peered close. "Can you walk? Try to think it is a little way; for it is most necessary you should walk."

I had not the smallest notion whether I could walk or not. It appeared more important that my head was being eaten with red-hot teeth. But she took my arm and led me.

"Go before us, foolish girl, and make less noise," she commanded the sobbing Bianca.

"But you must try for my sake," she whispered, "to think it but a little way."

And I must have done so with success; for of the way through the streets I remember nothing but the end—a light shining down the passage of Messer' Fazio's house, a mandolin still tinkling over the archway behind us, and a door opening upon a company seated at table, the faces of all—and of Mr. Fett especially—very distinct under the lamp-light. They rose—it seemed, all at once—to welcome us, and their faces wavered as they rose.



CHAPTER XXX.

THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

"Aucassins, biax amis doux En quel terre en irons nous? —Douce amie, que sai jou? Moi ne caut u nous aillons, En forest u en destor, Mais que je soie aveuc vous!" _Aucassin and Nicolete.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle." Dante.

I awoke to a hum of voices . . . but when my eyes opened, the speakers were gone, and I lay staring at an open window beyond which the sky shone, blue and deep as a well. On a chair beside the window sat the Princess, her hands in her lap. . . . While I stared at her, two strange fancies played together in my mind like couples crossing in a dance; the first, that she sat there waiting for something to happen, and had been waiting for a very long, an endless, while; the other that her body had grown transparent. The sunlight seemed to float through it as through a curtain.

I dare say that I lay incapable of movement; but this did not distress me at all, for I felt no desire to stir—only a contentment, deep as the sky outside, to rest there and let my eyes rest on her. Yet either I must have spoken or (yes, the miracle was no less likely!) she heard my thoughts; for she lifted her head and, rising, came towards me. As she drew close, her form appeared to expand, shutting out the light . . . and I drifted back into darkness.

By-and-by the light glimmered again. I seemed to be rising to it, this time, like a drowned man out of deep water; drowned, not drowning, for I felt no struggle, but rather stood apart from my body and watched it ascending, the arms held downwards, rigid, the palms touching its thighs—until at the surface, on the top of a wave, my will rejoined it and forced it to look. Then I knew that I had been mistaken. The sky was there, deep as a well; and, as before, it shone through an opening; and the opening had a rounded top like the arch of a window; yet it was not a window. As before, my love sat between me and the light, and the light shone through her. My bed rocked a little under me, and for a while I fancied myself on board the Gauntlet, laid in my bunk and listening to the rolling of her loose ballast—until my ear distinguished and recognized the sound for that of wheels, a low rumble through which a horse's footfall plodded, beating time.

I was scarcely satisfied of this before the sound grew indistinct again and became a murmur of voices. The arch that framed the sunlight widened; the sky drew nearer, breaking into vivid separate tinctures—orange, blood-red, sapphire-blue; and at the same time the Princess receded and diminished in stature. . . . The frame was a window again, and she a figure on a coloured pane, shining there in a company of saints and angels. But her voice remained beside me, speaking with another voice in a great emptiness.

The other voice—a man's—talked most of the while. I could not follow what it said, but by-and-by caught a single word, "Milano"; and again two words, "The mountains" and yet again, but after an interval, "The people are poor; they give nothing; from year's end to year's end"—and the voice prolonged itself like an echo, repeating the words until, as they died away, they seemed to measure out the time.

"The more reason why you—" began the Princess's voice. "There shall be spared one—a little one—for Our Lady."

But here I felt myself drifting off once more. I was as one afloat in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as I clutched at it.

The eddy brought me round again to the window that was no window, the rumble of wheels, the plodding of a horse's hoofs. Beyond the low arch—or was it a pent?—shone a star or two, and against their pale radiance a shadow loomed—the shadow of the Princess, still seated, still patient, still with her hands in her lap. The rumble of the wheels, the slow rocking of my bed beneath me, fitted themselves to the intermittent flash of the stars, and beat out a rhythm in my memory—a rhythm, and by degrees the words to fit it—

"Tanto ch'io vidi delle cose belle Che porta il ciel, per un pertugio tondo, E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."

A riveder le stelle—I closed my eyes, opened them again, and lo! the stars were gone. In their place shone pale dawn, touching the grey-white arch of a tilt-waggon, on the floor of which I lay in a deep litter of straw. But still by the tilt, between me and the dawn, rested my love, and drowsed, still patient, her hands in her lap.

"At last! At last!"

She called to the driver—I could not see him, for I lay with my face to the tilt—and he pulled up his horse with a jolt. Belike he had been slumbering, and with the same jolt awoke himself. I tried to lift a hand—I think to brush away the illusion of the window and its painted panes.

Maybe, slight as it was, she mistook the movement to mean that I felt stifled under the hood of the waggon and wanted air. At any rate, she called again, and the driver (I have clean forgotten his face), left his reins and came around to her. Between them they lifted me out and laid me on a bank between the road and a water-course that ran beside it. I heard the water rippling, near by, and presently felt the cool, delicious touch of it as she dipped up a little in her hollowed palms and moistened my bandages.

Our waggon had come to a halt in the very centre (as it seemed) of a great plain, criss-crossed with dykes and lines of trees, and dotted with distant hamlets. The hamlets twinkled in the fresh daylight, and in the nearest one—a mile back on the road—a fine campanile stood up against the sun, which pierced through three windows in its topmost story. So flat was the plain that mere sky filled nine-tenths of the prospect; and all the wide dome of it tinkled with the singing of larks.

"Ma dove? dove? . . ."

The Princess pointed, and far on the road, miles beyond the waggon, I saw that which no man, sick or hale, sees for the first time in his life without a lift of the heart—the long glittering rampart of the Alps.

"Do we cross them?"

"Pianu. . . . In time, O beloved; thou and I . . . all in good time."

I gazed up at her, half-frightened by the tenderness in her voice; and what I saw frightened me wholly. The sullenness had gone from her eyes; as a mother upon the child in her lap, so she looked down upon me; but her face was wan, even in the warm sunlight, and pinched, and hollow-eyed. I lifted her hand—a little way only, my own being so weak. It was frail, transparent, as though wasted by very hunger.

She read the question I could not ask, and answered it with a brave laugh. (It appeared, then, that she had taught herself to laugh.)

"We have been sick, thou and I. The mountains will cure us."

I looked along the road towards them, then up at her again. I remembered afterwards that though she spoke so cheerfully of the mountains, her gaze had turned from them, to travel back across the plain.

"A little while!" she went on. "We must wait a little while to recover our strength. But there are friends yonder, to help us."

"Friends?" I echoed, wondering that I possessed any.

"You must leave all talk to me," she commanded; "and, if you are rested, we ought not to sit idling here." She helped the driver to lift me back into the waggon, where, as it moved on, she seated herself in the straw and took my hand. All her shyness had gone, with all her sullenness.

"There is a farm," began she, "a bare twelve leagues from here, says the waggoner, who knows it. I carry a letter to the farmer from his brother, who is the parish priest of Trecate, and a good man. He says that his brother, too, is a good man, and will show us kindness for his sake, because the farm once belonged to my friend, as the elder, until he gave it up to follow God. The pair have not met since twenty years; for Trecate lies not far from Milan, and the farm is deep in the mountains, above a village called Domodossola, where the folk are no travellers. . . ."

Here her voice faded into a dream again; for a very little waking wearied me, then and for weeks to come, and the word Milano brought back the church, the stained window, the priest's voice talking, and confused all these with the rumbling of the waggon. But I held my love's hand, and that was enough.

We came that same evening to the shore of a lake, beautiful as a pool dropped out of Paradise, and the next day crawled uphill, hour after hour, over a jolting road to the village, where I lay while the driver climbed to the farm with the Princess's letter. He was gone five hours, but returned with the farmer, and the farmer's tall eldest son; and the pair had brought a litter, in which to carry me home.

The name of this good man was Bavarello—Giacomo Bavarello—and he lived with his wife Battestina in a house full of lean children and live-stock. The house had deep overhanging eaves, held down by cords and weighted with rocks; but this must have been rather in deference to the custom of the country than as a precaution against storms, for the farmstead lay cosily in a dingle of the mountain, where storms never reached it. Yet it took the sun from earliest dawn almost to the last beam of midsummer daylight. Behind it a pine forest climbed to the snow; and up and across the snow a corniced path traversed the face of the mountain and joined the diligence-road a little below the summit of the pass. At the point of junction stood a small chapel, with a dwelling-room attached, where lived a brother from the Benedictine hospice on the far side of the pass. His name was Brother Polifilo, and it was supposed that he had fallen in love with solitude (else how could he have endured to live in such a place?); yet his smile justified his name, and his manner of playing with the children when he descended to bring us the consolations of religion— which he did by arrangement with the infirm parish priest in the valley. Also, on fine mornings when the snow held and the little ones could be trusted along the path, the entire household of the Bavarelli would troop up to Mass in his tiny chapel.

For me, it was many weeks before my sick brain allowed me to climb beyond the pines; and many weeks, though the Princess always went with me—before she told me all the story of what had happened in Genoa. Yet we talked much, at one time and another, though we were silent more; for the silences told more. Only our talk and our silences were always of the present. It was understood that the whole story of the past would come, some day, when I had strength for it. Of the future we never spoke. I could not then have told why; though now all too well I can.

Sick man though I was, bliss filled those days for me, and their memory is steeped in bliss. Yet a thought began, after a while, to trouble me. We were living on these poor Bavarelli, and, for aught I knew, paying them not a penny. The good farmer might be grateful to his priest-brother down yonder; but even if his gratitude were inexhaustible we—strangers as we were—ought not to test it so. To be sure, he and his wife wore a smile for us, morning and evening—and this, though I had a notion that Donna Battestina was of a saving disposition. I had heard the pair of them protest when the Princess offered to make herself useful in the farm-work—for which she was plainly unfit—or, failing that, in the housework. They had made up their minds about us, that we were persons of gentle blood, to whom all work must be derogatory.

The next day I insisted on climbing the slope to the pine-wood without support of her arm.

"It is time," said I, "that I grew strong; unless somewhere you are hiding a fairy purse."

She looked at me—for between us, by this time, one spoken word would be the key to a dozen unspoken. "You are not fit to start," she stammered hastily, "nor will be for a long while. There are mountains behind these, and again more mountains—" She broke off and sat down upon a pine-log, trembling.

"I was not thinking of that," said I; "but of these people and their hospitality. Since we have no money I must work for them—at least, until I can get money sent from England."

She glanced at me again, and with a shiver up at the snow peaks beyond the pines. I could read that she struggled with something, deep within her, and I waited. By-and-by she leaned forward, clasped her hands about her knee, and sat silent for a long minute, gazing southward over the plain at our feet.

"Listen," she said at length, but without turning her eyes. "I have something to confess to you." Her voice dragged upon the words; but she went on, "You have not asked me what has happened in Genoa after—that night. The snow covered up our footmarks and the blood—for you were bleeding all the way; but at our lodgings the actors were frightened out of their wits, and worse than ever when I told them what had happened to Marc'antonio and Stephanu. They would all be arrested, they declared; the Bank of Genoa had eyes all over the city. Nevertheless one of them showed great courage. It was that strange friend of yours, Messer' Badcock. My first thought was to get you down to the boat and slip away to sea; and he offered—he alone—first of all to make his way to the harbour and bring word if the coast (as he said) was clear. He went very cautiously, by way of a cellar leading under our house and the next, and opening on a back street—this, that his steps might not be traced to the front door; and it was well that he went, for on the quay, hiding behind a stack of timber, he saw two men in uniform posted at the head of the water-stairs. So he hastened back, using less caution, because by this time the snow had smoothed over his tracks, and was falling faster every moment. The actors had already begun to pack, and Messer' Fazio was running about in a twitter, albeit he declared that, beside themselves, not a soul in Genoa knew of his having lodged these Corsicans. Doubtless, however, his house would be searched in the morning, and the important, the pressing need was to get rid of us.

"In his haste he could think of nothing better than an old onion-loft, some sixty paces up the lane at the back. It was a store merely, not connected with any house, but owned by a rich merchant of the city who had acquired it for some debt and straightway forgotten all about it—at least, so Messer' Fazio declared. If we were discovered in hiding there, it could be explained that we had found it, and used it for a lodging, asking no man's leave; and suspicion would fall on no good citizen.

"I made sure that you were dying, and for myself I was past caring; so I thanked him and told him to do with us as he thought best. He and Messer' Badcock carried you out then, and I followed. The building was of two floors, with a door to each. A flight of steps led from the lane to the upper door, which was padlocked; and no one had used that way for twenty years, or so the landlord said. We entered by the lower door, which was broken—both hasp and hinge— and led straight from the lane into a dirty cellar, worse than any cowshed and paved with mud. But from this a ladder rested against the wooden ceiling, and just above it was a plank that had worked loose. Messer' Fazio slipped the plank aside, and with great pains we carried you up through the opening and into the loft. I had bandaged your head so that we left no traces of blood in the lane or on the floor below. Then Messer' Fazio gathered up some onions which were strewn on the floor—I believe he had been drying them there on the sly—and took leave of us in a hurry. When he reached the bottom again, he carried away the ladder, declaring that it belonged to him.

"I had brought with me but a loaf of bread, a flask of milk, and one thing else—I will tell you what that was, by-and-by. I sat by you, waiting for you to die. When morning came I forced you to drink some of the milk. The loft was bitterly cold, and I wondered indeed that you were not dead.

"Towards evening I felt faint with hunger, and was gnawing a piece of my loaf, when a voice spoke up to me from below. It was a woman's voice, and I took it at first for Lauretta's—she was the girl, you remember, who played the confidante's part and such-like. But when I pulled the plank a little aside and looked down, I saw a girl unknown to me—until I recognized her for one of those who lived above the archway at the entrance of Messer' Fazio's court. Lauretta had told her, swearing her to be secret, and she was here in pity. She called herself Gioconda; and I bless her, for your sake.

"She fetched me bread, milk, and a little wine. But for her—for Messer' Fazio came never near us, and the actors, she told me, had decamped—we should both have perished. The cold lasted for ten days; I cannot tell how you endured it; but at the end of them I hoped you might recover, and with that I tried to think of some plan for escaping from Genoa. The worst was, I had no money. . . ."

The Princess paused, and shivered a little.

"That cold . . . it is in my bones yet. I feel as though the least touch of it now would kill me . . . and I want to live. Ah, my love, turn your eyes from me while I tell you what next I did! The crown . . . it belonged to Corsica. I had denied your right to it; but you had won it back from dishonour, and I remembered that in the band of it were jewels, the price of which might save you. Moreover, the little that kept us from starving came from—those women; and it was hateful to owe them even for a little bread. So I felt then. Afterwards—But you shall hear; only turn away your eyes. I prayed to the Virgin, but my prayers seemed to get no clear answer. . . . Then I pulled a staple from the wall, and with the point of it prised out one of the jewels, an amethyst. . . . I had spoken already to Gioconda. That evening she brought me one of her dresses, with shoes, stockings, and underskirt; a mirror, too, and brush and comb, with paints, powders, and black stuff for the eye-lashes, all in the same bundle, which she passed up through the floor. I dressed myself, painted my face, tired my hair, till I looked like even such a woman as Gioconda; and then, letting myself down at dark by a rope made of the sheet I drew from under you, I ran through the streets to the quarter of the merchants. La Gioconda had forgotten to pack a cloak in the bundle; the night was snowing, with snow underfoot; and I had run past the quays before the fear struck me that, at so late an hour, the jewellers would have closed their shops. But in the street behind the Dogano I found one open, and the jeweller asked no questions. It appeared that he was used to such women, and, having examined the stone through his magnifying-glass, he counted me out three hundred livres.

"I ran back, faster than I had come, and climbed to the loft, hand over hand, with the money weighing me down. It was in my mind to bribe one of the market-women, through Gioconda, to smuggle you out through the North Gate, under the baskets in her cart. But the day had scarcely broken before Gioconda came (and she had never come yet until evening) with terrible news. She said that I must count on her no more, for the accursed clericals (as she called them) had made interest with the Genoese Government to clear all the stews, and that she and her sisters by the gateway had orders to be quit of the city within twenty-four hours; in fact her sisters had begun to pack already, and the whole party would drive away, with their belongings, soon after night-fall. I asked her whither. 'To Milan,' she said; for at Turin the Church was even stronger and more bigoted than in Genoa.

"A new thought came to me then. I handed down my money to Gioconda, keeping back only a little, and prayed her to go to the woman, her mistress, and bargain with her to carry you out of the city, concealed beneath the furniture. The girl clapped her hands at the notion, and ran, but in an hour's time came creeping back in tears. The woman would have more money—even threatened to betray us unless I found her five hundred livres in all. . . .

"I borrowed Gioconda's shawl and sent her away, charging her to return before evening. Then I loosened another stone from the crown—a sardonyx—and again I went out through the streets to the jeweller's. It was worse now than by night, for the people stared, and certain men followed me. I took them for spies at first; but presently my stupid brain cleared, and I guessed for what they mistook me; and then I kept them at their distance, using such tricks as in Brussels I had seen the women use. . . ."

"O brave one! O beloved!"

I stretched out my hand, but she turned from the caress, and hurried on with her tale, her eyes still fastened on the distant plain, her voice held level on the tone of a child reciting its task.

"The jeweller, too, asked many questions. I think he was suspicious at my coming twice in a few hours. But the sardonyx was a finer stone than the amethyst, and he ended by giving me three hundred and fifty livres. Two of the men were loitering for me outside the shop. I gave them a false address and walked home quickly, longing to run but not daring. To mislead the men, in case they were following, I made first for the house by the archway, and there on the stairs I met the woman coming down with a bundle of stuff.

"I bargained with her, then and there. There was a horrible man belonging to the house, and at night-fall he fetched you, a little before the carts arrived; and this was not a minute too soon. For a crowd came with the carts. While the loading went on they stood around the door, calling out vile jokes, and afterwards they followed through the streets, waving torches and beating upon old pans. I sat in the second cart, among half a dozen women. My face was painted, and I smiled when they smiled. But you lay under the straw at my feet; and when the gate was passed, while the women were calling back insults to the soldiers there, I gave thanks to Our Lady.

"Beloved, that is my story. At Tortona I parted from the women, and hired the waggon which brought us the rest of the way. But I had done better, perhaps, to go with them to Milan, as Gioconda advised. For my money began to run low, and, save Milan, there was no large town on the road where I could sell another jewel. Yet here again Our Lady helped; for at Trecate I found the good priest, the brother of these Bavarelli, and he, having heard my tale, offered to travel to Milan and do my business. So I parted with two more of the stones; and yet a third—a little one—I gave him for Our Lady of Trecate, as a thank-offering. We have money enough to reward these good people, though they lodge us for yet another six months; but the crown has only one stone remaining. It is a diamond—set in the very front of the band—and, I think, more valuable than all the rest."

Her voice came to a halt. "O beloved," she asked after a while, quietly, almost desperately, "why are you silent? Can you not forgive?"

"Forgive?" I echoed. "Dear, I was silent, being lost in wonder, in love. Forget that foolish crown; forget even Corsica! Soon we will take the diamond and cross the mountains together, to a kingdom better than Corsica. There," I wound up, forcing myself to speak lightly, "if ever dispute should arise between us, as king and queen we will ask my uncle Gervase to decide. He, gallant man, will say, 'Prosper, to whom do you owe your life?' . . ."

"The mountains? Ah, not yet—not yet!" She put out her hands and crept to me blindly, nestling, pressing her face against my ragged coat. "A little while," she sobbed while I held her so. "A little while!—until the child—until our child—"

How can I write what yet remains to be written?

Our child was never born. So often, hand in hand, we had climbed to the pine-woods that it escaped my notice how she, who had used to be my support, came by degrees to lean on my arm. I saw her broken by fasting and vigil, and for me, I winced at the sound of her cough. The blood on her handkerchief accused me. "But we must wait until the child is born," I promised myself, "and the mountain air will quickly cure her." Fool! the good farm-people knew better. While I gained strength, day by day she was wasting. "Only let us cross the mountains," I prayed, "and at home all my life shall pay for her love!" Fool, again! She would never cross the mountains, now.

There came a day when I climbed the pine-wood alone. With my new strength, and because her weight was not on my arm, I climbed higher than usual; and then the noise of chopping drew me on to the upper edge of the forest, where I found Brother Polifilo with his sleeves rolled, hacking at a tree. He dropped his axe and stared at me, as at a ghost. I could not guess what perturbed him; for he had called at the farm but the day before and heard me boast of my new strength.

I sat down to watch him. But after a stroke or two his arm appeared to fail him, and he desisted. Without a word, almost without looking at me, he laid the axe over his shoulder and went up the path towards his chapel.

I gazed after him, wondering. Then, of a sudden, I understood.

Three days later she died. To the end they could not persuade me it was possible; nay at the very end, while she lay panting against my arm, I could not believe.

She died quietly—so quietly. A little before the end she had been restless, lying with a pucker on her brow, and eyes that asked pitiably for something—I could not guess what, until she turned them to the chair, over the back of which (for the day was sultry), I had tossed my coat.

I reached for the coat and slipped it on. Her eyes grew glad at once.

"Closer!" she whispered. As I bent closer, she nestled her face against it. "La macchia! . . . la macchia!"

With that last breath, drawing in the scent of it, she laid her head slowly back, and slept.

The Bavarelli took it for granted that I would bury her in the graveyard, down the valley. But I consulted with Brother Polifilo. I argued that every high mountain-top by its very nature came within the definition of consecrated ground; and after a show of reluctance he accepted the heresy, on condition I allowed him first to visit the spot chosen and recite the prayer of consecration over it.

We laid her in the coffin that Brother Polifilo brought, and carried her to the summit of the mountain overlooking the pass, where the rock had allowed us to dig the shallowest of graves. Beside it, when the coffin was covered, I said good-bye to the Bavarelli and dismissed them down the hill. They understood that I had yet a word to speak to the good monk.

"One thing remains," I said, and showed him the crown with the five empty settings, and the one diamond yet glittering in its band.

"Help me to build a cairn," said I.

So he helped me. We built a tall cairn, and I laid the crown within it.

The sun was setting as we laid the last stone in place. We walked in silence down to the pass, and there I shook hands with him by the little chapel, and received his blessing before setting my face northwards.

I dare say that he stood for a long while, watching me as I descended the curves of the road. But I never once looked back until I had crossed the valley, far below. The great peak rose behind me; and it seemed to me that on its summit a diamond shone amongst the stars.



POSTSCRIPT.

BY GERVASE ARUNDEL.

July 15 (St. Swithun's), 1761.

My nephew has asked me to write the few words necessary to conclude this narrative.

The day after my brother's burial, the Gauntlet, in company with General Paoli's gunboat, Il Sampiero, weighed and left the island of Giraglia for Isola Rossa, where by agreement we were to wait one calendar month before sailing for England.

The foregoing pages will sufficiently explain why the month passed without my nephew's putting in an appearance. For my part, albeit my arguments had been powerless to dissuade him from going to Genoa, I never expected him to return, but consoled myself with the knowledge that he had gone to his fate in a good cause, and in a spirit not unworthy of his father.

We were highly indebted during our stay at Isola Rossa to the General, who, being detained there by the business of his new fortifications, exerted himself that we should not lack a single comfort, and seemed to inspire a like solicitude in his subjects. I call the Corsicans his subjects since (if the reflection may be permitted) I never met a man who carried a more authentic air of kingliness—and I am not forgetting my own dear brother-in-law. Alive, these two men met face to face but once; and Priske, who witnessed the meeting, yet understood but a bare word or two of what was said, will have it that for dignity of bearing the General would not compare with his master. The honest fellow may be right; for certainly no one could speak with John Constantine and doubt that here was one of a line of kings. Nevertheless to me (a matter-of-fact man), Paoli appeared scarcely less imposing in person, and withal bore himself with a businesslike calm which, in a subtle way I cannot describe, seemed to tolerate the others, yet suggest that, beside his own purpose, theirs were something unreal. As an Englishman I should say that he felt the weight of public opinion behind him all the while, without which in these days the kingliest nature must miss something of gravity. Yet he has proved more than once that no public man can be more quixotic, upon occasion.

It distressed me to find that the Queen Emilia would have none of his courtesies; as I think it distressed him, though he comported himself perfectly. She rejected, and not too graciously, his offer to restore her to her palace at Casalabriva and secure her there against all enemies. From the first she had determined, failing her son's return, to sail with us to England; and sail she did.

But from the first I doubted her reaching it alive. Her sufferings had worn her out, and it is a matter of dispute between Dom Basilio (who administered the last sacrament), and me whether or no her eyes ever saw the home to which we carried her. They were open, and she was certainly breathing, when we made the entrance of Helford river; for we had lifted her couch upon deck and propped her that she might catch the earliest glimpse of Constantine above the trees. They were open when we dropped anchor, but she was as certainly dead. She lies buried in the private chapel of the house, disused during my brother-in-law's lifetime, but since restored and elaborately decorated by our Trappist guests. A slab of rose-pink Corsican granite covers her, and is inscribed with the words, "Orate pro anima Emiliae, Corsicorum Reginae," the date of her death, and beneath it a verse which I took to be from the Vulgate until Parson Grylls quarrelled with Dom Basilio over it—

"CRAS AMET QVI NVNQVAM AMAVIT QVIQVE AMAVIT CRAS AMET."

As I have said, I had parted with all hope to see my nephew again: and it but confirmed my despair when I received a letter from General Paoli with news that the Prince Camillo had been assassinated; for neither his sister nor Prosper had said word to me of the young man's treachery, and I concluded that they had bound themselves to rescue him, an unwilling prisoner. In our last brief leave-taking on the island, Prosper had confided to me certain wishes of his concerning the house at Constantine, and the disposal of his estate; wishes of which I need only say here that they obliged me after a certain interval to get his death "presumed" (as the phrase is), and for that purpose to ride up to London and seek counsel with our lawyer, Mr. Knox.

I arrived in London early in the second week of November, 1760—a few days after the decease of our King George II.; and, my business with Mr. Knox drawing to a conclusion, it came into my head to procure a ticket and go visit the Prince's chamber, near the House of Peers, where his Majesty's body lay in state. This was on the very afternoon of the funeral, that would start for the Abbey after nightfall, and at Westminster I found a throng already gathered in the mud and murk. In the chambre ardente, which was hung with purple, a score of silver lamps depended from the roof around a tall purple canopy, under which the corpse reposed in its open coffin, flanked with six immense silver candelabra. Between the candelabra and at the head and foot of the coffin stood six gigantic soldiers of the guard, rigid as statues, with bowed heads and arms reversed. Only their eyes moved, and I dare say that I stared at them in something like terror. Certainly a religious awe held me as the pressure of the sightseers carried me forth from the doors again and into the street, where I wedged myself into the crowd, and waited for the procession. By this time a fog had rolled up from the river, and the foot-guards who lined the road had begun to light their torches. Behind them were drawn up the horse-guards, their officers erect in saddle, with naked sabres and heavy scarves of crape. There amid the sounds of minute guns, and of bells tolling I must have waited a full hour before the procession came by—the fifes, the muffled drums, the yeomen of the guard staggering with the great coffin, the pall-bearers and peers walking two and two, with pages bearing their heavy trains. All this I watched as it went by, and with a mind so shaken that a hand from behind had plucked twice or thrice at my elbow before I was aware that any one claimed my attention. Then, turning with a moisture in my eyes—for the organ had begun to sound within the abbey—I found myself staring past the torch of a foot-guard and into the face of my nephew, risen from the dead! He was haggard, unkempt in his hair and dress, and (I think) had been fasting for a long while without being aware of his hunger. He drew me back and away from the crowd; but when I had embraced him, it seemed that to all my eager questions he had nothing to answer.

"I was starting for Cornwall, to-morrow," he said. "Shall we travel together?" And then, as though painfully recollecting, he passed a hand over his forehead and added, "I have walked half-way across Europe. I am a good walker by this time."

"We will hire horses, to be sure," said I, finding nothing better to say.

The age, the lines in his young face cut me to the heart, and I longed to ask concerning the Princess, but dared not.

"Horses? Ah, yes, to be sure, I come back to riches. Nay, my dear uncle, you are going to tell me that the estates are mortgaged deep as ever—I know. But allow me to tell you there is all the world's difference between poverty that is behindhand with its interest, and poverty that has to trust God for its next meal."

At the eating-house to which I carried him he held out his scarred palms to me across the table.

"They have worked my way for me from the Alps," said he. "I left my crown there, and"—he laughed wearily—"I come back to find another monarch in the act of laying aside a greater one. My God! The vanity of it!"

He drank off a glass of wine. "Find me a bed, Uncle Gervase," said he. "I feel that I can sleep the clock round."

We rode out of London next day. He started in a fret to be home, but this impatience declined by the way, and by the time we crossed Tamar had sunk to a lethargy. Sore was I to mark the dull gaze he lifted (by habit) at the corner of the road where Constantine comes into view; and sorer the morning after, when, having put gun into his hand and packed him off with Diana, the old setter, at his heel, I met him an hour later returning dejectedly to the house. For the next three or four months he went listless as a man dragging a wounded limb. But since spring brought back rod and angle, I think and pray that the voice of running water (best medicine in Nature) begins to cure him. He has written the foregoing narrative in a hot fit which, while it lasted, more than once kept his lamp burning till daybreak; and although the last chapter was no sooner finished than he flung the whole away in disgust. I have hopes of him. I may even live to see a child running about these silent terraces . . . But this, my dearest wish, outruns all present indications; and if Prosper ever marries again it will be as his father married, and not for love.[1]

By good fortune I am able to supply the reader with some later news of two members of the expedition, Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock. It came to me, early this summer, in the following letter:—

To Gervase Arundel, Esq., of Constantine in Cornwall, England.

"Venice. Ash Wednesday (4.30 a.m.), 1761.

"Excellent Sir,

"I take up my pen, and lay aside the false nose I have been wearing night and day for close on a week, to make a communication which will doubtless interest you as it has profoundly affected me. It will also interest your nephew and his lady (whose hands I kiss) if they succeeded in effecting their escape to England—where, failing news of them, I do myself a frequent pleasure to picture them at rest upon the quiet waters of domestic felicity. But I address myself rather to you, whom (albeit on the briefest acquaintance) I shall ever regard as the personification of stability and mild repose. Heracleitus and his followers may prate of a world of flux; but there are men to whom the recollections of their fellows ever turn confidently, secure of finding them in the same place; and of such, sir, you are the palmary example among my acquaintance.

"On the circumstances of our retreat from Genoa I need not dilate. We decamped—I and my brother artistes—to Pisa, where, after an unsatisfactory season, we broke up our company by mutual consent and went our various ways in search of fortune. Mr. Badcock—by this time a pantaloon of considerable promise and not to be sneezed at in senile parts where affection or natural decay required, or at least excused, a broken accent—threw in his lot with me: and we bent our steps together upon this unique city, where for close upon twelve months I have drawn a respectable salary as Director of Public Festivities to the Sisterhood of the Conventual Body of Santa Chiara. Nor is the post a sinecure; since these estimable women, though themselves vowed against earthly delights, possess a waterside garden which, periodically—and especially in the week preceding Lent—they throw open to the public; a practice from which they derive unselfish pleasure and a useful advertisement.

"On Thursday last, the Giovedi Grasso, the Abbess had (in consultation with me) provided an entertainment which not only attracted the rank and fashion of Venice but (I will dare to say) made them forget the exhaustion of the maddest day of carnival with its bull-baiting and battles of confetti. An hour before midnight all Venice had taken to its gondolas and was being swept, with song and music, towards the Giudecca. The lagoons swam with the reflections of a thousand moving lanterns, and all their streaming ribbons of light converged upon the bridge of Santa Chiara, beyond which, where the gardens descended in stairways of marble to the water, I had lined the banks with coloured lamps. Discreet narrow water-alleys, less flauntingly lit, but with here and there a caged nightingale singing in the boscage, intersected the sisters' pleasure-grounds; but the main canal led around an ample stretch of turf in the midst of which my workmen had reared a stage for a masque of my composing, entitled The Rape of Helen. Badcock, who was to enact the part of Menelaus, had at my request attired himself early, for some few of my nightingales were young birds and not to be depended on, and I had an idea of concealing him in the shrubberies to supply a flauto obbligato while our guests arrived. I had interrupted my instructions to despatch him on some small errand connected with the coloured fires, and he had scarcely disappeared among the laurels, when along the path came strolling two figures I recognized as fellow-countrymen—the young Lord Algernon Shafto, of the English embassy, and his mother's brother, the Venerable John Kynaston Worley, Archdeacon of Wells. Lord Algernon wore a domino. His uncle (I need scarcely say) had made no innovation upon the laced hat and gaiters proper to his archidiaconal rank—though it is likely enough that the Venetians found this costume as eccentric as any in the throng. He had arrived in the city a bare week before; and walked with an arm paternally thrust in his nephew's, while he made acquaintance with the luxurious frivolities of a Venetian carnival.

"As they passed me I stooped to trim the peccant wick of one of the many lamps disposed like glowworms along the path: but a moment later their voices told me that my countrymen had found a seat a few paces away, in an arbour whence, by the rays of a paper lantern which overhung it, they could observe the passers-by.

"'A wonderful nation,' the Archdeacon was saying, in that resonant voice of which the well-connected among the Anglican clergy (and their wives) alone possess the secret. 'I may tell you, my dear lad, that this visit to Venice has been a dream of my life, cherished though long deferred. I had not your advantages when I was a young man. The Grand Tour was denied me; and a country curacy with an increasing family promised to remove the realization of my dream to the Greek Kalends. But in all those years I never quite lost sight of it. There is a bull-dog tenacity in us British: and still from time to time I renewed the promise to myself that, should I survive my dear wife—as I hoped to do—'

"Here, having trimmed my lantern, I straightened myself up to find that Mr. Badcock had returned and was standing behind my shoulder. To my amazement he was trembling like an aspen.

"'Hush!' said he, when I would have asked what ailed him.

"I listened. I suppose Lord Algernon responded with a polite hope that Venice fulfilled his uncle's long expectation: but I could not catch the words.

"'Entirely so,' was the reply. 'I may even say that it surpasses them. Such an experience enlarges the mind, the—er—outlook. And if a man of sixty can confess so much, how happy should you be, my dear Algy, to have received these impressions at your age! Yet, my dear lad, remember they are of value only when received upon a previous basis of character. The ladies, for instance, who own these delightful grounds . . . doubtless they are devout, in their way, but in a way how far removed from those God-fearing English traditions which one day, as a landlord among your tenantry and to that extent responsible for the welfare of dependent souls, it will be yours to foster!'

"Here, warned by a choking cry, I put out a hand to catch Mr. Badcock by the sleeve of his pallium: but too late! With a wild gesture he broke loose from me and plunged down the pergola towards the arbour, at the entrance of which he flung himself on his knees.

"'Oh, sir!' he panted, abasing himself and stretching forth both hands to the archidiaconal gaiters. 'Oh, sir, have pity! Teach me to be saved!'

"The Archdeacon (I will say) after the momentary shock rose to the occasion like a sportsman. A glance sufficed to assure him that the poor creature was in earnest, and with great presence of mind he felt in his pocket for a visiting-card.

"'Certainly, my good fellow, certainly . . . if you will call on me to-morrow at my lodgings . . . two doors from the embassy. . . . Dear me, how provoking! Would you mind, Algernon, lending me one of your cards? I remember now leaving mine on the dressing-table.'

"He fished out a pencil, took the card his nephew proffered and, having written down name and address, handed it to Badcock.

"'The door of grace, my friend, stands ever open to him who knocks. . . . Shall we say at ten-thirty to-morrow morning? Yes, yes, a very convenient hour for me, if you have no objection? Farewell, then, until to-morrow!' With a benedictory wave of the hand he linked arms with Lord Algernon and strolled away down the walk.

"'Badcock,' said I, stepping forward and clapping a hand on his shoulder. 'Hark to the gong calling you to the masque!'

"But the creature stood as in a trance. 'His signature!' he answered in an awed whisper. 'The Archdeacon of Wells's own signature, and upon Lord Algernon's card!'—and I declare to you that he fell to kissing the pasteboard ecstatically.

"Well, he was past all reason. Luckily, having written it, I had his part by rote; and so, snatching his Menelaus' wig and beard, I ran towards the theatre.

"That, sir, is all my tale. The man is lost to me. He left Venice yesterday in the Archdeacon's carriage, but in what precise capacity—whether as valet, secretary, or courier—he would not impart. He told me, however, that his salary was sufficient, if not ample, and that he had undertaken as a repentant sinner to make himself generally useful. The Archdeacon, it appears, is collecting evidence in particular of the horrors of a Continental Sabbath.

"Addio, sir! For me, I have now parted with the last of my comrades, yet my resolution remains unshaken. On this sacred soil, where so many before me have cultivated the Arts, I will do more. I will make them pay. Meanwhile I beg you to accept my sincere regards, and to believe me

"Your obliged, obedient servant,

"Phineas Fett."

William Priske has espoused Mrs. Nance, our good housekeeper; I believe upon her own advice.

The Trappists (sixteen in number) yet dwell with us, and the left wing of Constantine has been reserved for their use. They have deserved our gratitude, though, out of respect for their rules, I could never convey it to them in words. Indeed, it is but seldom that I get speech even with Dom Basilio. Sometimes when his walk leads him by the river-bank where I stand a-fishing he will seat himself for a while and watch; and then I find a comfort in his presence, as though we conversed together without help of speech. Then also, though my reason disapprove of our guest's rigour, an inward voice tells me that there is good in their religion, as perchance there is good wherever men have found anchorage for their souls.

I remember once listening in our summer-house, upon St. Swithun's feast, while my dear brother-in-law disputed with Mr. Grylls upon action and contemplation—which of them was the properer end of man. I thought then that each of them, though they talked up and down and at large, was in truth defending his own temperament: and, because I loved them both, that neither needed defending. For my own part, the small daily cares of Constantine have stolen away from me, not altogether unhappily, the time of choosing, and I ask now but to follow that counsel of the Apostle wherewith my master Walton closed his book, and "Study to be Quiet."

G.A.

[1] Here—for it scarcely appears in the narrative—let me say that my sister was an exemplary wife and, while fate spared her, a devoted mother. I knew my brother-in-law for a great man, incapable of a thought or action less than kingly, and I worshipped him (as Ben Jonson would say) "on this side idolatry"; but if the Constantines have a fault, it is that they demand too much of life, and exact it somewhat too much as a matter of course. I have heard this fault attributed to other great men.—G.A.

FINIS