Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ while with clasped hands she remained motionless, so that every line and lineament of her faultless figure might be surveyed in unbroken symmetry.

      ‘Ah carina – che bellezza! come e graziosa!’ broke from those who, corrupt, debased, and degraded in a hundred ways as they were, yet inherited that ancient love of symmetry in form which the games and the statues of antique Rome had fostered. With a graceful ease no ballarina of the grand opera could have surpassed, she glided into those slow and sliding movements which precede the dance – movements meant to display the graces of form, without the intervention of action. Gradually, however, the time of the music grew quicker, and now her heightened colour and more flashing eye bespoke how her mind lent itself to the measure. The dance was intended to represent the coy retirings of a rustic beauty from the advances of an imaginary lover; and, though she was alone, so perfectly did she convey the storied interest of the scene, that the enraptured audience could trace every sentiment of the action. At one moment her gestures depicted the proudest insolence and disdain; at the next a half-yielding tenderness – now, it was passion to the very verge of madness – now, it was a soul-subduing softness, that thrilled through every heart around her. Incapable, as it seemed, of longer resisting the solicitations of love, her wearied steps grew heavier, her languid head drooped, and a look of voluptuous waywardness appeared to steal over her. Wherever her eye turned a murmured sigh acknowledged how thoroughly the captivation held enthralled every bosom around, when suddenly, with a gesture that seemed like a cry – so full of piercing agony it seemed – she dashed her hands across her forehead and stared with aching eye-balls into vacancy, – it was jealousy: the terrible pang had shot through her heart, and she was wild. The horrible transitions from doubt to doubt, until full conviction forced itself upon her, were given with extraordinary power. Over her features, in turn, passed every expression of passion. The heartrending tenderness of love – the clinging to a lost affection – the straining effort to recall him who had deserted her – the black bitterness of despair – and then, with a wild spring, like the bound of a tiger, she counterfeited a leap over a precipice to death!

      She fell upon the ground, and as the mingled sobs and cries rose through the troubled crowd, a boy tore his way through the dense mass, and fighting with all the energy of infuriated strength, gained the open space where she lay. Dropping on his knees, he bent over, and clasping her hand kissed it wildly over and over, crying out in a voice of broken agony, ‘Oh! Marietta, Marietta mia, come back to us – come back, we will love you and cherish you.’

      A great roar of laughter – the revulsion to that intensity of feeling so lately diffused among them – now shook the mob. Revenging, as it were, the illusion that had so enthralled themselves, they now turned all their ridicule upon the poor boy.

      ‘Santissima Virginia! if he isn’t a scholar of the Holy Order!’ shouted one.

      ‘Ecco! a real Jesuit!’ said another; ‘had he been a little older, though, he ‘d have done it more secretly.’

      ‘The little priest is offering the consolation of his order,’ cried a third; and there rained upon him, from every side, words of mockery and sarcasm.

      ‘Don’t you see that he is a mere boy – have you no shame that you can mock a simple-hearted child like this?’ said the burly Fra, as he pushed the crowd right and left, and forced a passage through the mob. ‘Come along, Gerald, come along. They are a cowardly pack, and if they were not fifty to one, they ‘d think twice ere they ‘d insult us.’ This speech he delivered in Italian, with a daring emphasis of look and gesture that made the craven listeners tremble. They opened a little path for the friar and his charge to retire; nor was it until they had nearly gained the corner of the Piazza that they dared to yell forth a cry of insult and derision.

      The boy grasped the Fra’s hand as he heard it, and looked up in his face with an expression there was no mistaking, so full was it of wild and daring courage.

      ‘No, no, Gerald,’ said he, ‘there are too many of them, and what should we get by it after all? See, too, how they have torn your soutane all to pieces. I almost suspect we ought to go back again to the college, my boy. I scarcely like to present you in such a state as this.’

      Well indeed might the Fra have come to this doubtful issue, for the youth’s gown hung in ribbons around him, and his cap was flattened to his head.

      ‘I wish I knew what was best to be done, Gerald,’ said he, wiping the sweat from his brawny face. ‘What do you advise yourself?’

      ‘I’d say, go on,’ cried the youth. ‘Will a great signor think whether my poor and threadbare frock be torn or whole? – he ‘ll not know if I be in rags or in purple. Tell him, if you like, that we met with rough usage in the streets. Tell him, that in passing through the crowd they left me thus. Say nothing about Marietta, Fra; you need not speak of her.’

      The boy’s voice, as he uttered the last words, became little louder than a mere whisper.

      ‘Come along then; and, with the help of the saints, we ‘ll go through with what we ‘ve begun.’

      And with this vigorous resolve the stout friar strode along down the Corso.

      CHAPTER VI. THE INTERVIEW

      It was full an hour after the time appointed when the friar, accompanied by young Gerald, entered the arched gate of the Altieri Palace.

      ‘You have been asked for twice, Frate,’ said the porter; ‘and I doubt if you will be admitted now. It is the time his Royal Highness takes his siesta.’

      ‘I must only hope for the best,’ sighed out the Fra, as he ascended the wide stairs of white marble, with a sinking heart.

      ‘Let us go a little slower, Fra Luke,’ whispered the boy; ‘I ‘d like to have a look at these statues. See what a fine fellow that is strangling the serpent; and, oh! is she not beautiful, crouching in that large shell?’

      ‘Heathen vanities, all of them,’ muttered the Fra; ‘what are they compared to the pure face of our blessed Lady?’

      The youth felt rebuked, and was silent. While the friar, however, was communicating with the servant in waiting, the boy had time to stroll down the long gallery, admiring as he went the various works of art it contained. Stands of weapons, too, and spoils of the chase abounded, and these he examined with a wistful curiosity, reading from short inscriptions attached to the cases, which told him how this wolf had been killed by his Royal Highness on such a day of such a year, and how that boar had received his death-wound from the Prince’s hand at such another time.

      It almost required force from the friar to tear him away from objects so full of interest, nor did he succeed without a promise that he should see them all some other day. Passing through a long suite of rooms, magnificently furnished, but whose splendour was dimmed and faded by years, they reached an octagonal chamber of small but beautiful proportions; and here the friar was told the youth was to wait, while he himself was admitted to the Prince.

      Charles Edward had just dined – and, as was his wont, dined freely – when the Fra was announced. ‘You can retire,’ said the Prince to the servants in waiting, but never turning his head toward where the friar was standing. The servants retreated noiselessly, and all was now still in the chamber. The Prince had drawn his chair toward the fire, and sat gazing at the burning logs in deep reverie. Apparently he followed his thoughts so far as to forget that the poor friar was yet in waiting; for it was only as a low, faint sigh escaped him that the Prince suddenly turning his head, cried out, ‘Ah! our Frate. I had half forgotten you. You are somewhat late, are you not?’

      In a voice tremulous with fear and deference Fra Luke narrated how they had been delayed by a misadventure in the Piazza, contriving СКАЧАТЬ