THE MASTERPIECES OF
GEORGE SAND

AMANDINE LUCILLE AURORE DUPIN,
BARONESS DUDEVANT

VOLUME VIII

The Masterpieces of George Sand
Amandine Lucille Aurore Dupin, Baroness
Dudevant, NOW FOR THE FIRST
TIME COMPLETELY TRANSLATED
INTO ENGLISH THE PICCININO,
AND [THE LAST OF THE
ALDINIS] BY G. BURNHAM IVES

WITH TWELVE PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS BY
ORESTE CORTAZZO.

VOLUME II

PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SON
PHILADELPHIA

SIGNORA ALDINI AND HER GONDOLIER.

I saw the blood come and go in the signora's cheeks as I took the oar and eagerly pushed against the marble steps which seemed to flee behind us.

CONTENTS

THE PICCININO
CHAPTER
XXXVI. [THE FAMILY PORTRAITS]
XXXVII. [BIANCA]
XXXVIII. [A COUP DE MAIN]
XXXIX. [AN IDYLL]
XL. [DECEPTION]
XLI. [JEALOUSY AND GRATITUDE]
XLII. [AN EMBARRASSING CONJUNCTURE]
XLIII. [A CRISIS]
XLIV. [REVELATIONS]
XLV. [MEMORIES]
XLVI. [GLADNESS OF HEART]
XLVII. [THE VULTURE]
XLVIII. [THE MARQUIS]
XLIX. [DANGER]
L. [A NOCTURNAL JOURNEY]
LI. [CATASTROPHE]
LII. [CONCLUSION]
[THE LAST OF THE ALDINIS]
[INTRODUCTION]
[FIRST PART]
[SECOND PART]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE PICCININO
THE LAST OF THE ALDINIS
VOLUME II

[SIGNORA ALDINI AND HER GONDOLIER]
[THE PICCININO RECEIVES MILA]
[AGATHA PROTECTS MICHELANGELO]
[NELLO ENTERS THE ALDINI PALACE]
[THE STRANGE LUNCHEON]
[ALEZIA VISITS CHECCHINA]

THE PICCININO
(Continued)

XXXVI
THE FAMILY PORTRAITS

"Well," replied Michel, emboldened by his host's dignified arguments and sincere kindliness, "I will tell you my whole thought; and I trust that Master Barbagallo will permit me to speak before him, even though what I have to say may be offensive to his beliefs. If the study of heraldic science were a useful and moral study, Master Barbagallo, the favored nursling of that science, would regard all men as equal before God, and would recognize no distinction except between narrow-minded or wicked and intelligent or virtuous men. He would appreciate fully the vanity of titles and the very doubtful value of genealogical trees. He would have broader views concerning the history of the human race, as we were saying just now; and he would view that wonderful history with a glance no less firm than impartial. Whereas, if I am not mistaken, he views it with a certain narrowness of vision which I cannot accept. He esteems nobility an excellent thing because it is privileged; he despises the common people because they have no history and no memories. I will wager that he despises himself by dint of admiring the grandeur of others, unless he has discovered amid the dust of some library some document which affords him the honor of deeming himself related in the fourteenth degree to some illustrious family."

"I have not that honor," said the majordomo, somewhat disconcerted. "However, I have had the satisfaction of assuring myself that I am not descended from ignoble stock; some of my male ancestors were men of distinction in the clergy and in business."

"I congratulate you most sincerely," said Michel, ironically; "for my own part, it has never occurred to me to ask my father whether our ancestors were sign-painters, beadles or majordomos. Indeed, I admit that it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and that I have never had but one thought in that direction—namely, to owe any celebrity I may attain to myself, and to create my own coat-of-arms with my palette and brushes."

"Good!" exclaimed the marquis, "a noble ambition. You aspire to be the founder of a race illustrious in the arts, and to earn your own nobility, instead of throwing it away, as so many poor creatures do who are unworthy to bear a great name. But would you consider it a disadvantage that your descendants should be proud to bear your name?"

"Yes, signor marquis, I would, if my descendants were ignorant fools."

"My friend," replied the marquis, very calmly, "I am aware that the nobility has degenerated in all countries, and I do not need to tell you that it is the less pardonable in proportion to the degree of distinction that it had to bear and of grandeur to maintain. But is it for us to call this or that social rank to book, or to attempt to decide concerning the merit or lack of merit of the individuals who compose it? The most interesting, and at the same time the most profitable course for us all, in a discussion of this sort, would be to examine the institution in itself. Will you not tell me your ideas, Michel, and whether you approve or disapprove the distinctions established between different classes of men?"

"I approve them," said Michel, unhesitatingly, "for I aspire to distinguish myself; but I disapprove any application of the principle of heredity in such distinctions."

"Of the principle of heredity?" repeated the marquis. "In so far as fortune and power are concerned, I agree. That is a French idea—a bold idea. I like such ideas! But in so far as regards disinterested renown, honor pure and simple—will you allow me to ask you a few questions, my boy?

"Let us assume that Michelangelo Lavoratori, here present, was born only two or three hundred years ago. Let us assume that he was the rival of Raphael or Titian, and that he left a name worthy to stand beside those glorious names. I will assume, also, that this palace in which we now are belonged to him, and that it has remained in his family. Lastly, let us assume that you are the last scion of that family, and that you do not cultivate the art of painting. Your inclinations have turned you toward some other profession, or perhaps you have no profession, for you are rich; the noble works of your illustrious ancestor produced a fortune which his descendants have faithfully transmitted to you. You are standing here under your own roof, in the portrait gallery in which your ancestors have their places one after another. Moreover, you know the history of all of them. It is contained in manuscripts which have been carefully preserved and handed down in your family.

"Let us suppose, further, that I, a child picked up on the steps of a hospital, wander into this palace. I am ignorant of my father's name, and even of that of the unfortunate creature who gave birth to me. I have no ties whatever that bind me to the past, and, born but yesterday, I gaze with surprise upon this succession of ancestors from whom you have descended through well-nigh three centuries. I question you in open-mouthed wonder, and I am even inclined to make sport of you for living thus with the dead and through the dead; and I doubt whether this brilliant lineage has not deteriorated a little in the lapse of time.

"You answer me by pointing with pride to the founder of your race, the illustrious Michelangelo Lavoratori, who, from nothing at all, had become a great man, and whose memory will never perish. Then you tell me a fact at which I marvel greatly: that the sons and daughters of this Michel, overflowing with veneration for their father's memory, chose to be artists too. One was a musician, another an engraver, a third a painter. If they did not receive from heaven the same talents as their father, they did at all events retain in their hearts and transmit to their children respect and love for art. Their children, in their turn, did likewise, and all these talents, all these mottoes, all these biographies, which you exhibit to me and explain to me, present the spectacle of several generations of artists, eager to maintain the standard of their hereditary profession. Unquestionably only a few among all these seekers after glory were truly worthy of the name they bore. Genius is an exception, and it takes you but a short time to point out to me the small number of noteworthy artists who have upheld by their own labors the glory of your family. But that small number has been sufficient to replenish your generous blood, and to maintain in the ideas of the intermediate generations a certain fire, a certain pride, a certain thirst for grandeur which may still produce distinguished men.

"But I, a foundling, isolated in the vast expanse of time—I continue my apologue,—a natural scorner of all hereditary celebrity, seek to lower your pride. I smile with an air of triumph when you admit that this or that ancestor, whose portrait impresses me by its air of innocence, was never anything more than a paltry genius, a narrow-minded creature; that a certain other, whose rakish dress and bristling moustache I do not like, was a black sheep, a fool or a fanatic; in short, I give you to understand that you are a degenerate artist, because you have not inherited the sacred fire, and that you have fallen asleep in a luxurious far niente, contemplating the fruitful life of your forefathers.

"Thereupon you reply to me; and you will allow me to place in your mouth a few words which seem to me not devoid of sense:

"'I am nothing at all in myself; but I should be even less had I not a venerable past to lean upon. I am overborne by the apathy natural to minds devoid of inspiration; but my father taught me one thing which passed from his blood into mine: that I come of a distinguished family, and that if I could do nothing to renew its splendor, I should, at all events, abstain from tastes and ideas which might tarnish it. In default of genius, I have respect for family tradition, and, having no ground for pride in myself, I repair the wrong which my nullity might inflict upon my ancestors by bestowing a sort of adoration upon them. I should be a hundred times more guilty if, caring naught for my ignorance, I should shatter their images and profane their memory by airs of contempt. To deny one's father because one cannot equal him is the act of a fool or a dastard. On the other hand, it is a pious duty to invoke his memory in order to obtain forgiveness for being less eminent than he; and the artists with whom I consort and to whom I have no works of my own to show, listen to me with interest, at all events, when I speak to them of the works of my ancestors.'

"That is the answer you would make to me, Michel, and do you think that it would have no effect upon me? It seems to me that if I were the poor, abandoned child that I have imagined, I should fall into profound melancholy, and should complain of fate for having dropped me upon the earth alone, and, so to speak, without sponsors.

"But I pass to a less ponderous apologue, and one better adapted to your artistic imagination, which, however, I beg you will interrupt immediately if you have already heard it. The anecdote has been attributed to several persons cut after the pattern of Don Juan, and as old stories are rejuvenated from generation to generation, it has been told recently of Cæsar de Castro-Reale, the Destatore, the famous brigand, who was no ordinary man either in good or evil.

"At Palermo, in the days when he sought to deaden his faculties in wild dissipation, uncertain whether he should succeed in making a perfect brute of himself, or should decide to raise the standard of rebellion, it is said that he went one evening to visit a venerable palace which he had just lost at play, and which he wished to see once more before leaving it never to return. It was the last remnant of his fortune, and perhaps the only thing which caused him the slightest regret; for it was there that he had passed his early years, there that his parents had died, there that the portraits of his ancestors were buried in the dust of long neglect.

"He went there to notify his steward to receive on the morrow, as the proprietor of the estate, the nobleman who had won it on a cast of the dice.—'What,' said the steward, who, like Master Barbagallo, had a profound respect for family traditions and portraits; 'you have staked everything, even your father's grave, even the portraits of your ancestors?'

"'Staked and lost everything,' replied Castro-Reale, heedlessly. 'However, there are a few articles which I am able to redeem, and my successful adversary will not haggle over them. Let us look at these family portraits! I have forgotten all about them. I used to admire them at a time when I knew nothing about such things. If there are some which have merit, I will set them aside and make some arrangement with their new owner. Take a light and follow me.'

"The steward, agitated and trembling, followed his master through the dark and deserted palace. Castro-Reale strode before, with arrogant assurance; but they say that he had drunk immoderately on arriving at his palace, in order to provide himself with a store of stoicism or recklessness that should last to the end. He himself opened the rusty door, and seeing that the hand trembled in which the old majordomo held the light, he took it in his own and held it on a level with the face of the first portrait in the gallery. It was a fierce warrior armed from top to toe, with a broad ruffle of Flemish lace over his iron cuirass. See! here he is, Michel, for the same pictures which play a part in my narrative are here before your eyes; they are the same which were sent from Palermo to me, as the last heir of the family."

Michel looked at the old warrior and was impressed by his masculine features, his bristling moustache, and his stern appearance.

"Well, your excellency," he said, "that decidedly unamiable and ungenial face gave the dissoluto food for reflection, I doubt not?"

"Especially," replied the marquis, "as the face became animated, the eyes rolled angrily in their dark orbits, and the lips uttered these words in a sepulchral voice: 'I am not pleased with you!' Castro-Reale shuddered and recoiled in terror; but, deeming himself the dupe of his own imagination, he passed to the next portrait and looked it in the face with an insolence bordering on madness. It was an ancient and venerable abbess of the Ursulines of Palermo, a great-great-aunt, who died in the odor of sanctity. You can see her, Michel, yonder on your right, with her veil, her gold cross, her yellow face wrinkled like parchment, her piercing and imperious eyes. I fancy that she says nothing to you; but when Castro-Reale raised the candle to her face, she blinked her eyes as if dazzled by the sudden light, and said to him in a strident voice: 'I am not pleased with you!'

"This time the prince was frightened; he turned to the steward, whose knees were knocking against each other. But, determined to struggle on against these warnings from the supernatural world, he suddenly confronted a third portrait, that of the old magistrate, whom you see beside the abbess. He put his hand on the frame, not daring to look too long at the ermine cloak which is hardly distinguishable from the long white beard; but he tried to shake him, saying: 'And you?'

"'Nor am I,' replied the magistrate, in the crushing tone of a judge pronouncing sentence of death.

"Castro-Reale dropped his candle, they say, and, unconscious of what he did, stumbling at every step, went on to the end of the gallery, while the poor majordomo, frozen with fear, stood dumb and motionless at the door by which they had entered, daring neither to follow him nor to abandon him. He heard his master stumbling along in the darkness, at an uneven, hurried gait, colliding with the furniture and muttering curses; and he also heard each portrait apostrophize him as he passed with the terrible, monotonous words: 'Nor am I!—Nor am I!—Nor am I!'—The voices grew fainter as they receded along the gallery; but all repeated the fatal sentence distinctly, and Castro-Reale was unable to escape that long series of maledictions, which not one of his ancestors spared him. It took him a long while, it seems, to reach the door at the other end. When he had passed through it and closed it violently behind him, as if he thought that he was pursued by spectres, silence reigned once more; and, so far as my knowledge goes, these portraits have never recovered the power of speech from that day to this."

"Tell the rest, tell the rest, your excellency!" cried Fra Angelo, who had listened to this narrative with gleaming eyes and parted lips; for despite his intelligence and the education he had received, the ex-brigand of Ætna was too much of a monk and too much of a Sicilian not to believe it to a certain extent; "tell him that after that moment neither the steward of the palace of Castro-Reale, nor any inhabitant of the province of Palermo ever saw the Prince of Castro-Reale again. There was, at the end of the gallery, a drawbridge which they heard him cross, and as his plumed hat was found floating on the water, they concluded that he was drowned, although they searched in vain for his body."

"But the lesson had a more salutary effect," added the marquis. "He fled into the mountains, organized a band of partisans, and fought there ten years, to rescue, or, at all events, to avenge his country. False or true, the story was current for a long while, and the new owner of Castro-Reale believed it in so far that he preferred not to keep these terrible family portraits, and sent them to me at once."

"I do not know whether the story is authentic," said Fra Angelo. "I never dared ask the prince; but it is perfectly certain that his determination to become a partisan came to him in the manor-house of his ancestors the last time that he visited it. It is certain, too, that he experienced some violent emotion there, and that he did not like to have anybody mention his ancestors to him. It is certain, too, that his mind was never sound after that night, and that I have often heard him say, in his days of depression: 'Ah! I ought to have blown out my brains when I crossed the drawbridge of my palace the last time!'"

"Surely that is all the truth there is in this fanciful tale," said Michel. "But no matter! Although there is not the slightest connection between these illustrious individuals and my humble self, and although I am not aware that I have any reason to reproach myself with respect to them, I should be a little disturbed, it seems to me, if I had to pass the night alone in this gallery."

"For my part," said Pier-Angelo, "I am not ashamed to say that I don't believe a word of this story; and yet, if the signor marquis would give me his fortune and his palace to boot, I wouldn't take them on the condition of having to remain here alone an hour, after sunset, with the lady abbess, the magistrate, and all these illustrious monks and soldiers. The servants have tried more than once to lock me in here for their own amusement; but I have never let them catch me, I would jump out of window first."

"And what are we to conclude from all this, with respect to the nobility?" said Michel to the marquis.

"We conclude, my child," replied the Marquis della Serra, "that privileged nobility is an injustice, but that family traditions and memories have much force, usefulness and beauty. In France they obeyed a noble impulse when they invited the nobles to burn their letters patent, and the nobles performed a duty imposed by tact and good taste by consummating the holocaust; but afterward they broke open tombs, exhumed dead bodies, and even insulted the image of Christ, as if the resting-place of the dead were not sacred, and as if the Son of Mary were the patron of the great nobles only and not of the poor and lowly. I forgive all the frenzies of that revolution, and I understand them better, perhaps, than those persons who have discoursed of them to you, my young friend; but I also know that the philosophy which guided it was not very complete or very deep, and that, with respect to the idea of nobility, as with respect to all other ideas, it was much more successful in destroying than in building up, in uprooting than in sowing. Let me say another word to you on this subject, and then we will go and have some ices out of doors, for I am afraid that all these dead men and women bore and depress you."

XXXVII
BIANCA

"Look you, Michel," said the marquis, taking Pier-Angelo's hand in his right hand and Fra Angelo's in his left; "all men are noble! And I would stake my head that the Lavoratori family is quite as good as the family of Castro-Reale. If we are to judge the dead by the living, surely here are two men who must have had men of worth, men of heart and brain for ancestors; whereas the Destatore, a mixture of great qualities and deplorable faults, prince and bandit, repentant devotee and desperate suicide by turns, as surely gave the lie many a time to the nobility of the haughty personages whose images surround us. If you are rich some day, Michel, you will begin a family gallery without realizing it, for you will paint these two noble faces, your father's and your uncle's, and you will never sell them!"

"And his sister's!" cried Pier-Angelo; "he will not forget hers either, for it will serve some day as a proof that our race was not unpleasant to look upon."

"Well," continued the marquis, still addressing Michel, "do you not consider that you have every reason to regret that you do not know the story of your father's and your uncle's father?"

"He was a worthy man!" cried Pier-Angelo; "he was once a soldier, then an honest mechanic, and I knew him as a most excellent father."

"And his brother was a monk like myself," said Fra Angelo. "He was pious and wise; my memory of him had great influence on me when I was hesitating about taking the frock."

"There you see the influence of family memories!" said the marquis. "But your grandfather and great-uncle, my friends, what were they?"

"As for my great-uncle," replied Pier-Angelo, "I don't know that I ever had one. But my grandfather was a peasant."

"What was his life?"

"I was told in my childhood probably, but I don't remember."

"And your great-grandfather?"

"I never heard of him."

"I have a vague remembrance that we had a great-great-grandfather who was a sailor, and one of the bravest of sailors. But his name has escaped me. For us the name of Lavoratori dates back but two generations. It is a sobriquet like most plebeian names. It marks the transition from one trade to another in our family, when our grandfather ceased to be a peasant in the mountains to become a mechanic in the town. Our grandfather's name was Montanari; that was a sobriquet too. His grandfather had a different name, doubtless. But at that point everlasting night begins for us, and our genealogy enters into oblivion so complete that it is equivalent to non-existence."

"Even so," rejoined the marquis; "you have summed up the whole history of the common people in the example of your family. Two or three generations are conscious of a connecting bond; but all those which preceded and all those which will follow are strangers to them forever. Do you consider that just and as it should be, my dear Michel? Is not this utter neglect of the past, this heedlessness of the future, this absence of interest in the intermediate generations, a sort of barbarism, an uncivilized condition of affairs, indicating a most revolting contempt for the human race?"

"You are right, and I understand you, signor marquis," Michel replied. "The history of each family is the history of the human race, and whoever knows one knows the other. Certainly the man who knows his own ancestors, and who derives from a scrutiny of their successive existences a series of examples to follow or to shun, has, so to speak, a more intense and more complete life in his heart than he who can refer only to two or three vague and intangible shadows of the past. Therefore nobility of birth is a great social privilege; if it imposes grave duties, it furnishes vast enlightenment and vast powers. The child who spells out the knowledge of good and evil in books written with the blood which flows in his own veins, and in the features of the painted faces which reflect his own image like mirrors in which he loves to recognize himself, should always become a great man, or at least, as you said, a man enamored of true grandeur, which is an acquired virtue supplying the place of inborn virtue. I realize now what there is that is true and estimable in this principle of heredity which binds the generations together. What there is in it that is unfortunate, I will not remind you; you know it better than I."

"What there is unfortunate I will tell you myself," replied the marquis. "There is the fact that nobility is an exclusive privilege which all families do not share; that established distinctions rest upon a false principle, and that the peasant hero does not win fame and have his name inscribed in history like the patrician hero; that the domestic virtues of the workingman are not recorded in a book that is always open to his posterity; that the poor and virtuous mother of a family, lovely and chaste to no purpose, does not leave her name and her image on the walls of her hovel; that that hovel of the poor man is not even assured to his descendants as a place of refuge; that all men are not wealthy and free, so that they may consecrate thought, monuments and works of art to the worship of their past; lastly, that there is no such thing as the history of the human race, but only of a few names rescued from oblivion, which are called illustrious names, heedless of the fact that at certain times whole nations become illustrious under the influence of the same deed and the same idea. Who can tell us the names of all the enthusiastic, noble hearts who have thrown aside the spade or the hoe to go to fight the infidel? You have ancestors among them, I doubt not, Pier-Angelo, and you know nothing of them! Or the names of all the sublime monks who have preached the law of God to savage peoples? Your ancestors are among them, Fra Angelo, and you know nothing of them! Ah! my friends, how many noble hearts are stilled forever, how many noble deeds buried in oblivion without advantage to those who live to-day! How melancholy and disastrous is this impenetrable darkness of the past to the common people, and how my heart aches to think that you are probably descended from the blood of brave men and martyrs, although you cannot find the faintest trace of their passage upon the paths you follow through life! Whereas I, who am not so good a man as you, can learn from Master Barbagallo what ancestor of mine was born or died this month five hundred years ago! Consider! On one side the unmitigated abuse of this worship of the patrician; on the other the horror of a vast grave which swallows up without distinction the consecrated bones and the impure bones of the common people! Oblivion is a punishment which should be visited upon the wicked only, and yet it is visited upon no one in our haughty families; whereas in yours it overtakes the most virtuous! History is confiscated to our profit, and you people seem to have no connection whatever with history, which, however, is your work more than ours!"

"Well," said Michel, deeply moved by the marquis's ideas and sentiments, "you have given me for the first time a true conception of nobility. I always attributed it to a few glorious personalities, who must be separated from their race. Now I can imagine lofty and generous thoughts, succeeding one another from generation to generation, connecting the generations with one another, and making as much account of humble virtues as of brilliant deeds. That is judging as God judges, signor marquis, and if I had the honor and the misery to be of noble birth—for it is a grievous burden to him who comprehends it—I should like to see and think as you do."

"I thank you," replied the marquis, taking his hand and leading him out on the terrace of his palace. Pier-Angelo and Fra Angelo looked at each other with deep emotion; both had understood the full scope of the marquis's ideas, and they felt strengthened and uplifted by this new aspect which he had given to life, collective and individual alike. As for Master Barbagallo, he had listened with religious respect, but had understood absolutely nothing; and he went away wondering how one could be noble without a palace, without parchments, without a coat of arms, and above all else, without family portraits. He concluded that the nobility could not do without wealth: a marvellous discovery which fatigued him much.

At that moment, as the beak of a great pelican of gilded wood, which did duty as hour hand on a monumental clock in the gallery of the Della Serra palace, marked four o'clock in the afternoon, the Piccinino was thinking that his five or six repeating watches must be slow, so impatiently did he await Mila's arrival. He went from the English watch to the Geneva watch, disdaining the Catanian watch which he might have purchased with his money—for the Catanians are watch-makers as well as the Genevans—and from the one surrounded with diamonds to the one adorned with rubies. Being a connoisseur in jewels, he laid claim to none but articles of the most exquisite quality from the booty taken by his men. Thus no one knew the time better than he, who was so keen to make the most of it, and to employ his moments most methodically, in order to lead side by side a life of study and of meditation, a life of adventures, intrigues, and coups de main, and a life of pleasure and of lust, which he neither could nor wished to enjoy otherwise than in secret.

Fierce to the point of despotism in his impatience, he was as intolerant of having to wait himself as he was fond of making others wait and of worrying them by skilfully devised delays. This time, however, he had yielded to the necessity of coming first to the rendezvous. He could not be sure that Mila would have the courage to wait for him, or to enter his house if he were not there himself to meet her. He went to the gate more than ten times, and angrily retraced his steps, afraid to leave the wooded road that bordered his garden, lest, if he should meet anyone, he should seem to be intent upon some design. The leading principle in his scheme of life was always to appear calm and indifferent in the eyes of placid people, always distraught and preoccupied in the eyes of busybodies.

THE PICCININO RECEIVES MILA.

He strode toward Mila with an imperious air, seized the rein of her mule, and, taking the girl in his arms as soon as she was in front of his garden gate, lifted her to the ground, pressing her lovely body with something very like violence.

When Mila at last appeared at the top of the green path which descended sharply to his orchard, he was really angry with her, for she was a quarter of an hour late, and, thanks to the Piccinino's discernment or fascinations, there was not one among the fair maidens of the mountain who would have allowed him to be first at the rendezvous in a love-affair. The brigand's unruly heart was inflamed therefore with ill-disguised rage; he forgot that he was not dealing with a mistress, and he strode toward Mila with an imperious air, seized the rein of her mule, and, taking the girl in his arms as soon as she was in front of his garden gate, lifted her to the ground, pressing her lovely body with something very like violence.

But Mila, partly opening the folds of her double mantle of muslin, gazed at him in surprise.

"Are we in danger already, my lord?" she said, "or do you think that I have brought anyone with me? No, no! See, I am alone, I have come with perfect confidence in you, and you have no reason to be displeased with me."

The Piccinino recovered his self-control as he looked at Mila. She had ingenuously arrayed herself in her Sunday garb to appear before her protector. Beneath her purple-velvet waist could be seen a second waist of a pale blue, embroidered and laced with excellent taste. A light net of gold thread confined her beautiful hair, in accordance with the fashion of the province, and to protect her face and her costume from the sun's scorching heat, she had enveloped herself in the mantellina, a thin veil of ample proportions, which covers the head and the whole body, when it is skilfully arranged and worn with grace. The Piccinino's sturdy mule, bearing a flat saddle of velvet trimmed with gilt nails, upon which a woman could easily ride sidewise, was panting and restive, as if proud to have borne and to have saved from all danger so lovely a rider. It was easy to see, from his foam-flecked sides, that little Mila had not spared him, or that she had bravely trusted to his zeal. It had been a dangerous ride, however: ridges of lava to cross, torrents to ford, precipices to skirt. The mule had taken the shortest path; he had climbed and leaped like a goat. Mila, seeing how strong and adroit he was, could not, despite her anxiety, avoid that intense and mysterious pleasure which women find in danger. She was proud of having felt physical courage spring to life within her with moral courage; and while the Piccinino admired the brilliancy of her eyes, and of her cheeks flushed by the exercise, she, thinking only of the merits of the white mule, turned and kissed him on the nose, saying: "You are worthy to carry the pope!"

The brigand could not help smiling, and he forgot his anger.

"Dear child," he said, "I am very glad that my good Bianca pleases you, and now I think that she would be worthy to eat from a golden manger, like the charger of a Roman emperor. But come quickly; I don't wish anyone to see you come in here."

Mila docilely quickened her pace, and when the brigand had led her across his garden, after securely locking the gate, she allowed him to escort her into his house, whose neatness and coolness delighted her.

"Is this your own house, pray, my lord?" she asked him.

"No," he replied, "we are in Carmelo Tomabene's house, as I told you; but he is my debtor and my friend, and I have a room under his roof to which I sometimes retire when I need rest and solitude."

He led her through the house, which was arranged and furnished in rustic fashion, but with an orderly, substantial, homelike appearance which the dwellings of rich peasants seldom display. At the end of the ventilating corridor, which ran from end to end of the upper floor, he opened a double door, the inner one being bound with iron, and ushered Mila into the truncated tower which he had incorporated into his house, so to speak, and where he had fitted up a dainty and mysterious boudoir.

No princess ever possessed one more sumptuous, more sweetly perfumed or adorned with rarer objects. But no artisan had ever put his hand to it. The Piccinino himself had concealed the walls beneath hangings of Oriental silk stitched with gold and silver. The divan of yellow satin was covered with the skin of a huge royal tiger, whose head startled the girl at first; but she soon grew bold enough to touch its scarlet-velvet tongue, its eyes of enamel, and to sit upon its black-striped side. Then she gazed about with dazzled eyes at the gleaming weapons, the Turkish sabres adorned with jewels, the pipes with gold tassels, the chafing-dishes, the China vases, the innumerable objects of an exquisite beauty, a magnificence or a singularity which appealed to her imagination like the descriptions of enchanted palaces with which it was filled.

"All this is even more incomprehensible and more beautiful than anything I have seen at the Palmarosa palace," she said to herself, "and surely this prince is richer and even more illustrious than the princess. He must be some claimant to the Sicilian crown, who is working secretly to bring about the downfall of the Neapolitan government."—What would this poor child have thought if she had known the source of that piratical splendor!

While she gazed at everything with the artless admiration of a child, the Piccinino, who had bolted the door and lowered the Chinese shades at the window, gazed at Mila with the utmost amazement. He had expected that he would have to tell her the most incredible fables, the most audacious lies, to induce her to follow him to his lair, and the facility of his triumph began already to disgust him with it. To be sure, Mila was the loveliest creature he had ever seen; but was her perfect tranquillity due to impudence, or stupidity? Could so seductive a creature possibly be ignorant of the effect her charms were certain to produce? Could so young a maid risk a tête-à-tête of this sort without a moment of fear or embarrassment?

The Piccinino, observing that she had a very beautiful ring on her finger, and thinking that he could follow the thread of her thoughts by following the direction of her glances, said to her, with a smile: "You love jewels, my dear Mila, and, like all girls, you think more of personal adornment than of anything else in this world. My mother left me a few trinkets of some value, which are in that lapis lazuli casket by your side. Would you like to look at them?"

"If I may without indiscretion, I would like to," Mila replied.

Carmelo took the casket, placed it on the girl's knees, and, kneeling beside her on the edge of the tiger's skin, he displayed before her eyes a mass of necklaces, rings, chains and buckles which were thrown pell-mell into the casket with a sort of superb contempt for such a multitude of priceless objects, some of which were masterpieces of old-fashioned carved work, others perfect treasures by reason of the beauty and great size of the diamonds.

"My lord," said the girl, running her inquisitive fingers over all this wealth, while the Piccinino fastened his dry, inflamed eyes upon her at close range, "you have too little respect for your mother's jewels. My mother left me only a few bits of ribbon and a pair of scissors with gold handles, which I preserve as relics, and which are very carefully stowed away in my closet. If we had time before that accursed abbé comes, I would put this casket in order."

"Do not take that trouble," said the Piccinino; "indeed we have not time. But you have time enough to take whatever you would like to keep."

"I?" said Mila, with a laugh, replacing the casket on the mosaic table. "What should I do with them? Not only should I, a poor silk-spinner, be ashamed to wear a princess's jewels, which, by the way, being your mother's, you should give only to your betrothed, but I should be very much embarrassed with all these inconvenient trinkets. I like to look at jewels, and, also, to touch them, as hens turn over with their claws anything shiny that they see on the ground. But I prefer to see them on somebody's else's neck and arms rather than my own. I should be so embarrassed by them that even if I owned them I should never use them."

"And you take no account whatever of the pleasure of owning them?" queried the bandit, amazed at the result of his experiment.

"To own things for which one has no use seems to me a very embarrassing thing," said she; "and I cannot understand one's burdening one's life with such gew-gaws, unless they are given to one as a sacred trust."

"And yet you wear a very beautiful ring!" said the Piccinino, kissing her hand.

"Oh! monsignor," said the girl, withdrawing her hand with an offended air, "are you worthy to kiss that ring? Forgive me for speaking to you so, but it is not mine, as you see, and I must return it to Princess Agatha to-night; she sent me to the jeweller's to get it."

"I will wager," said the Piccinino, scrutinizing Mila with distrust and suspicion, "that Princess Agatha overwhelms you with presents, and that that is the reason why you despise mine!"

"I despise nothing and nobody," replied Mila; "and when Princess Agatha drops an embroidery needle or a bit of silk, I pick them up and treasure them as relics. But if she should attempt to overwhelm me with handsome presents, I should beg her to keep them for those who need them. But I must tell the truth: she once gave me a beautiful locket in which I carry some of my brother's hair. But I keep it out of sight, for I do not care to wear any ornaments unsuited to my station in life."

"Tell me, Mila," rejoined the Piccinino, after a moment's silence, "you are no longer afraid, are you?"

"No, my lord," she replied, confidently; "when I saw you on the road, near this house, my fear left me. Before that I confess that I was trembling all over, that I fancied that I saw that horrid abbé's face behind every bush, and that I don't quite know how I ever got here. When I saw how far good Bianca was carrying me, when I finally spied this tower and these trees, I said to myself: 'Great God! suppose my protector was unable to come! suppose that wicked abbé, who is capable of anything, has had him arrested by the campieri, or murdered on the road, what will become of me?' Then I was terrified, not only on my own account, but because I look on you as our guardian angel, and because it seems to me that your life is much more valuable than mine."

The Piccinino, who had felt very cold, and, as it were, displeased with Mila ever since her arrival, felt a slight thrill of emotion, and took his seat beside her on the tiger's skin.

XXXVIII
A COUP DE MAIN

"So you really feel a little sincere interest in me, do you, my child?" he said, fastening upon her that dangerous glance of which he well knew the power.

"Sincere? yes, upon my soul!" replied the girl, "and I surely owe you that much, after the interest you have displayed in my family."

"And do you think that your family has the same feeling that you have?"

"Why—how could it be otherwise? However, to tell the truth, no one has ever mentioned you to me, and I do not know your secrets; they have treated me like a tattling little girl; but you do me more justice, for you see that I am not inquisitive, and that I do not even ask you who you are."

"And have you no desire to know? Isn't this one way of asking me?"

"No, monsignor, I should not dare to ask you questions, and I prefer not to know what my father has thought best not to tell me. I feel very proud to work with you to ensure their safety, without trying to remove the bandage with which they have covered my eyes."

"That is very noble of you, Mila," said the Piccinino, beginning to feel somewhat piqued by the girl's perfect tranquillity; "it is too noble, perhaps!"

"Why and how is it noble?"

"Because you run great risks with unexampled imprudence."

"What risks, monsignor? did you not promise me before God that you would protect me from all danger?"

"So far as that vile monk is concerned, I promise you on my life. But have you no suspicion of other people?"

"Yes, I have," said Mila, after a moment's reflection. "You mentioned at the fountain a name that frightened me terribly. You spoke as if you had some relations with the Piccinino. But you said to me again after that: 'Come without fear,' and I came. Not without fear, I admit, so long as I was alone on the road. I fancy that I shall be afraid again when I go away from here; but, as long as I am with you, I am not afraid of anything; I feel very brave, and it seems to me that, if we were attacked, I could help in defending ourselves."

"Even against the Piccinino?"

"Ah! I don't know about that. But, great heaven! is he likely to come here?"

"If he should come, it would be to punish the monk and protect you. Why in heaven's name are you so terribly afraid of him?"

"Really, I don't know; but among us, when a girl goes out into the country alone, people make sport of her and say: 'Look out for the Piccinino!'"

"So you think that he murders young maids, do you?"

"Yes, monsignor; for they say that they never come back from the place he takes them to; or, if they do come back, that it would have been better for them to have stayed."

"And you hate him, I suppose?"

"No, I do not hate him, because they say that he inflicts much injury on the Neapolitans, and that if people only had the courage to help him he would do the country a great deal of good. But I am afraid of him, which is not the same thing by any means."

"You have been told that he was very ugly, I suppose?"

"Yes, because he has a long beard, and I think that he must resemble the monk I detest so. But isn't the monk coming? When he has come I can go away, can I not, monsignor?"

"Are you in a hurry to go, Mila? do you find it so very unpleasant here?"

"Oh! not at all; but I should be afraid to go home after dark."

"I will take you home."

"You are very good, monsignor; I ask nothing better, provided that nobody sees us. But about this Abbé Ninfo, are you going to do him any injury?"

"No injury. I presume that it would give you no pleasure to hear him shriek?"

"God in heaven! I do not want to see or be the cause of any cruel treatment of the man; but if the Piccinino comes here, I am terribly afraid there will be bloodshed. You smile, monsignor," said Mila, turning pale. "Oh! now I am afraid! Pray send me away as soon as the abbé has set foot in the house."

"Mila, I swear to you that the abbé shall suffer no cruelty at my hands. As soon as I have made sure of his person, the Piccinino will come and take him away, a prisoner."

"And is all this done by the Princess Agatha's orders?"

"You ought to know."

"In that case, my mind is at ease. She would not desire the death of the lowest of men."

"You are very compassionate, Mila; I thought that you were stronger and prouder. So you would not have the courage to kill that man if he should come here and insult you?"

"Excuse me, monsignor," rejoined Mila, taking from her bosom a dagger which the princess had given to Magnani the day before, and of which she had succeeded in gaining possession without his knowledge: "I could not see a man killed in cold blood without fainting, I think; but if I were insulted, I think that my anger would carry me a long way."

"So you prepared for war, did you, Mila? You had no confidence in me, I see."

"As in God, monsignor; but God is everywhere, and some unforeseen accident might have prevented you from being here."

"Do you know that it was very brave in you to come, Mila? and that if people knew it——"

"Well, my lord?"

"Instead of admiring your heroism, they would blame your rashness."

"There is one thing I know very well," said Mila, with a sort of playful excitement, "and that is that, if people knew of my being closeted here with you, I should be lost."

"Doubtless! Slander——"

"Slander and calumny! Half as much would be enough to cause a young girl to be cried down and degraded forever."

"And you felt sure that this expedition of yours would be enveloped forever in impenetrable mystery?"

"I relied upon your prudence, and I left the rest in God's hands. I know very well that there are many risks to run; but did you not tell me that it was a question of saving my father's life and the Princess Agatha's honor?"

"And you carried your devotion to the point of endangering your own honor, without regret?"

"Endangering it in public opinion? I prefer that to allowing those whom I love to be killed and dishonored. As between them and myself, isn't it better that I should be the victim? But what does all this mean, monsignor? You speak to me in a very strange way; one would think that you were rebuking me for believing in you and for doing what you advised me to do."

"No, Mila, I am questioning you. Forgive me for trying to understand you and know you, so that I may esteem you as much as you deserve."

"Very good; I will answer you frankly."

"Well, my child, tell me everything. Did it not occur to you that I might be setting a trap for you, and be luring you hither to insult you, or, at least, to try to seduce you?"

Mila looked the Piccinino in the face, trying to discover what could possibly induce him to put forward such a supposition. If it was a method of testing her, she considered it insulting; if it was a jest, she considered it in very bad taste on the part of one who seemed to be a man of superior intellect and of exalted rank. This was the decisive moment for her and for him. If she had felt the slightest fear—and she was not the woman to conceal it, like Princess Agatha—the Piccinino would have grown bolder; for he knew that fear is the beginning of weakness. But she looked him in the face with such frank fearlessness, and with so brave an air of displeasure, that he was convinced at last that he was dealing with a really strong and sincere character; and thereafter he had not the slightest desire to open hostilities. He felt that a battle of ruses with so straightforward a creature could have no other result for him than shame or remorse.

"Well, my child," he said, giving her hand a frank and friendly pressure, "I see that you had a confidence in me which does honor to us both. Will you permit me to ask you one more question? Have you a lover?"

"A lover? no, monsignor," replied Mila, blushing crimson; but she added, without hesitation: "I may tell you, however, that there is a man whom I love."

"Where is he now?"

"In Catania."

"Is he rich—well-born?"

"He has a noble heart and two stout arms."

"And he loves you as you deserve to be loved?"

"That does not concern you, monsignor; I will not answer that question."

"However, you came here at the risk of losing his love?"

"As you see, alas!" said Mila, with a sigh.

"O women! are you really so much nobler than we men?" exclaimed the Piccinino, rising. But he had no sooner glanced out of doors than he took Mila by the hand.

"Here's the abbé!" he said; "follow me. Why do you tremble so?"

"Not with fear," she replied, "but with disgust and displeasure; but I will follow you."

They went down to the garden.

"You will not leave me alone with him a single minute, will you?" said Mila, as they left the house: "if he should so much as kiss my hand, I should be forced to burn the place with a red-hot iron."

"And I should be forced to kill him," rejoined the Piccinino.

They walked under the arbor to an opening, where the Piccinino glided behind the trellis, and so followed Mila to the garden gate. Emboldened by his presence, she opened it and motioned to the abbé to enter.

"Are you alone?" he said, making haste to put aside his monk's frock and show how gallantly he was arrayed in black—a veritable musk-laden abbé.

She made no other reply than: "Come in quickly." No sooner had she secured the gate than the Piccinino made his appearance, and never was there a more disappointed face than Abbé Ninfo's. "Excuse me, monsignor," said the Piccinino, assuming an air of simplicity which surprised his companion; "I learned from my cousin Mila that you wished to see my poor garden, and I determined to admit you myself. Excuse me, it is only a peasant's garden, but the fruit trees are so old and so fine that people come from all directions to see them. Unluckily, I have an engagement, and I must go away in five minutes; but my cousin has promised to do the honors of the house, and I will retire, with your lordship's permission, as soon as I have offered you some wine and fruit."

"Do not put yourself out, my good man!" replied the abbé, reassured by this speech. "Go about your business, and do not stand on ceremony. Go, go at once, I say, I do not propose to incommode you."

"I will go as soon as I can see you at table. Lord God! you will die of the heat. Our roads are so rough! Come to the house; I will pour the first glass for you, and then I will go, as your lordship kindly permits me to do so."

"My cousin will not go away until you are in the house," said Mila, in obedience to a meaning glance from the Piccinino.

The abbé, seeing that he could not get rid of his obsequious host except by complying with his wish, passed through the arbor without an opportunity to address a word or a glance to Mila; for the Piccinino, still playing the part of a respectful peasant and zealous host, walked between them. The abbé was ushered into a cool, dark room, where a collation was served. But, as they entered, the Piccinino said in Mila's ear: "Let me fill your glass, but do not so much as smell it."

A topaz-hued muscatel glistened in a large decanter which stood in a terra-cotta vessel filled with cold water. The abbé, who was somewhat disturbed by the peasant's presence, emptied at a single draught, without hesitation, the glass that was offered him.

"Now," he said, "off with you at once, my boy! I should never forgive myself for having caused you to break your engagement."

"Come with me, Mila," said the Piccinino. "You must lock the gate after me, for, if it should be left open, even for a moment, the children would come in and steal my peaches."

Mila did not wait to be asked twice to hurry after the Piccinino; but he went no farther than the door of the room, and when he had closed it behind him, he put his finger on his lips, and, applying his eye to the keyhole, remained absolutely motionless. After two or three minutes he rose, saying aloud: "It is all over!" And he threw the door wide open.

Mila saw the abbé lying on the floor, with a purple face, and breathing heavily.

"Oh! my God!" she cried, "have you poisoned him, monsignor?"

"No, indeed," replied Carmelo; "for we need a few words from him later. He is only asleep, the dear man, but very sound asleep!"

"Oh! do not speak so loud, monsignor: he sees us and hears us! His eyes are open and staring at us."

"And yet he doesn't know who we are, he has no comprehension of anything. What good does it do him to see and hear, when nothing conveys any meaning to his poor brain? Do not come near, Mila, if the paralyzed viper still frightens you; for my part, I must study the effects of this narcotic a little. They vary in different individuals."

He walked calmly to the abbé's side, while Mila, completely bewildered, remained in the doorway and watched him with dismay. He touched his victim as the wolf sniffs before devouring. He made sure that the head and hands passed speedily from intense heat to icy cold, that the face lost its flush, that the respiration became regular and weak.

"This is a good result," he said, as if speaking to himself; "and such a weak dose! I am well satisfied with the experiment. This is very preferable to blows, a struggle, shrieks stifled by a gag, isn't it, Mila? A woman can look on at this sort of thing without an attack of hysterics. This is the sort of method I like, and if it were well known, nobody would use any other. But you must never mention it, Mila, do you hear? for it might easily be abused, and no one, you see, no one could protect himself against it. If I had chosen to put you to sleep like this, it was entirely in my power to do it. Would you take a glass of water from my hand now, if I should offer it to you?"

"Yes, monsignor, I would accept it," replied Mila, taking this challenge for a jest.—"He jests on all subjects," she said to herself. "He has a satirical bent like Michel."

"So you would be no more suspicious than this poor abbé?" continued the Piccinino, in a preoccupied tone; for he was busily searching his sleeper, with perfect self-possession.

"You forbade me even to smell that wine," replied Mila; "so you evidently had no purpose to play me a trick!"

"Ah! here it is!" muttered the bandit, taking a wallet from the abbé's pocket. "Don't be impatient, Mila; I must examine this."

Seating himself at the table, he opened the wallet and took therefrom divers papers, over which he cast his eye with tranquil celerity.

"A report against Marc-Antonio Ferrara!—an obscure man; doubtless some husband whose wife he wished to seduce! Here, Mila, here is my flint and steel. Will you light the lamp and burn this? This Marc-Antonio will never suspect that your fair hand saved him from imprisonment.

"And this? Ah! this is more important; an anonymous warning, addressed to the captain of the city, that the Marquis della Serra is planning a conspiracy against the government! The dear abbé proposed to get rid of the princess's cicisbeo, or to give him something to think about at all events! The idiot! he doesn't even know enough to disguise his handwriting! Burn it up, Mila; it shall not go to its address.

"Another warning!" continued the Piccinino, still examining the wallet. "The wretch! he proposed to have the gallant champion arrested who brought him into relation with the Piccinino! This is worth saving. Malacarne will see that he did well not to trust this hound's promises, and that he would have been well punished for not reporting to his chief.

"I am surprised to find nothing against your father, Mila. Ah! yes, here it is! The signor abbé's measures were all taken to strike his great blow. This evening Pier-Angelo Lavoratori and—Fra Angelo too!—Ah! you reckoned without your host, my friend! You did not know that the Piccinino will never allow a finger to be laid on that shaven head! How ill-informed you were! Why, Mila, this man, whom people look upon as a monster of iniquity, is nothing but an idiot, upon my word!"

"Of what did he accuse my father and my uncle?"

"Of conspiring—always the same refrain; it is so worn out! There is one thing that surprises me, and that is that the police continue to pay any attention to this venerable nonsense. The police are as stupid as the people who set them on."

"Give me that, give me that, and I will burn it with right good will!" cried Mila.

"Here's another! Who is—Antonio Magnani?"

Mila did not answer. She put out her hand so eagerly to seize and burn this last denunciation, that the Piccinino turned and saw that her cheeks were suffused with a sudden flush.

"I understand," he said, giving her the paper. "But he ought to have forwarded this denunciation before venturing to pay court to you. Always too late, always beside the mark, poor man!"

He opened and ran through several other papers which mentioned none but unknown names, and which Mila burned without looking at them. But suddenly he started and exclaimed:

"Can it be? This in his hands? Good! I did not believe you capable of making this capture. Excuse me, my dear abbé," he continued, putting in his pocket a paper much more bulky than the others, with an ironical bow to the miserable wretch lying at his feet, his mouth half-open and his eye glassy and lifeless. "I honor you with my esteem to a certain point. Really, I did not believe you capable of it!"

Ninfo's eyes seemed to rekindle. He tried to move, and there was a sort of rattle in his throat.

"Ah! have we reached that stage?" said the Piccinino, putting the mouth of the decanter of narcotized wine to his lips.

"Did that wake you up? You set more store by that than by the fair Mila, eh? In that case, you should have let love-making go, and should not have come here instead of attending to your business! Sleep, I pray you, your excellency, for if you understand what is going on, you will have to die!"

The abbé fell back upon the floor; his vitreous stare remained fastened like that of a dead man on the Piccinino's ironical face.

"He needs rest," said the latter to Mila, with a cruel smile; "let us not disturb him any more."

He secured the stout shutters at the windows with heavy padlocked iron bars, and left the room with Mila, locking the door and putting the key in his pocket.

XXXIX
AN IDYLL

The Piccinino returned with his young companion to the garden, and, having suddenly become pensive, sat down upon a bench and apparently forgot her presence. And yet he was thinking of her, and this is what he was saying to himself:

"Would it not be an idiotic performance to allow this lovely creature to go hence as calm and serene as she came? Yes, it would be an idiotic performance for a man who was resolved upon her ruin; but I simply wished to test the power of my glance and my voice to lure her into my cage, like a beautiful bird whom one likes to examine close at hand, and to whom one then restores its liberty, because one does not wish it to die. There is always a touch of hatred in the violent desires a woman arouses in us."—The Piccinino is still musing and meditating upon his impressions.—"For victory, in such cases, is a matter of pride, and it is impossible to fight, even in play, without a little temper.—But there is no more of hatred than of anger or desire in the feeling this child arouses in me. It does not even occur to her to be coquettish with me. She is not afraid of me; she looks me in the face without blushing; she is not agitated in my presence. If I abuse her isolation and her weakness, she will defend herself badly perhaps, but she will go away from here all in tears, and it may be will kill herself—for there are some who kill themselves.—At all events she will detest the thought of me and blush to have belonged to me. Now, a man like myself cannot afford to be despised. Women who do not know him must fear him; they who do know him must esteem him or love him; they who have known him must regret him. To be sure, there is, on the border-line between presumption and violence, an infinite enjoyment, a complete consciousness of victory; but that is so on the border-line only: a hair's-breadth beyond, and it is all bestiality and brutality. The moment that a woman can accuse you of having resorted to force, she resumes her sway, although conquered, and you risk becoming her slave because you have been her master against her will. I have heard that there was something of that sort in my father's life, although Fra Angelo would never tell me anything definite about it. But everybody knows that my father lacked patience and that he drank heavily. Those were the failings of his time. We are more civilized and more adroit to-day. More moral? no, but more refined, and, consequently, more irresistible. Would there be much skill or much merit involved in obtaining from this girl what she has not as yet accorded her lover? She is so trustful that the first half of the road would be easy enough. Indeed, I have already gone halfway. She was fascinated by my air of chivalrous virtue. She came here, she entered my house, she sat by my side. But the other half is not simply difficult; it is impossible. I could never make her desire to struggle with me; it would never occur to her to yield in order to obtain. If she were mine, I would dress her as a boy and take her with me hunting. At need she would hunt the Neapolitan as she has hunted the abbé to-day. She would soon be hardened. I should love her as a page; I should not look upon her as a woman at all."

"Well, monsignor," said Mila, a little annoyed by her host's long silence, "are you waiting for the Piccinino to come? Can I not go away now?"

"Do you want to go?" replied the Piccinino, looking at her with a distraught air.

"Why not? You managed the affair so quickly that it is still early, and I can return alone by daylight. I shall not be afraid now that I know where the abbé is, and that he is incapable of coming after me."

"Wouldn't you like me to escort you, at least as far as Bel-Passo?"

"It seems to me quite unnecessary for you to put yourself out."

"Very well, go, Mila; you are free, since you are in such haste to leave me, and are so uncomfortable in my company."

"No, signor, do not say that," replied the girl, artlessly. "I am highly honored to be with you, and if it were not for the danger, which you realize, of being spied upon and falsely accused, I should enjoy staying with you; for it seems to me that you are sad, and I might at least divert your thoughts. Sometimes Princess Agatha is sad too, and when I would leave her alone, she says to me: 'Stay with me, little Mila; even if we don't speak, your presence does me good.'"

"Princess Agatha is sad sometimes? Do you know the reason?"

"No; but I have an idea that she is bored to death."

Thereupon the Piccinino asked many questions, which Mila answered with her usual ingenuousness, but neither would nor could tell him anything more than he had already heard; that is to say, that she lived a virtuous, retired life, that she was very charitable, that she read a great deal, that she loved the arts, and that she was gentle and placid, almost to the point of apathy, in her external relations. But the unsuspecting Mila added that she was sure that her dear princess was more ardent and self-sacrificing in her affections than people thought; that she had often known her to be moved to tears by the story of some misfortune, or even by some touchingly simple anecdote.

"For instance?" said the Piccinino; "give me an example."

"Very well," said Mila; "one day I told her that there was a time when we were very poor in Rome. I was only five or six years old then, and as we had almost nothing to eat, I used sometimes to tell my brother Michel that I was not hungry, so that he would eat my share. But Michel, suspecting my motive, began to say that he was not hungry either; so that we often kept our bread over night, neither of us being willing to admit that we longed to eat it. And the result of that performance was that we made ourselves more unhappy than we really were. I told the princess this laughingly; suddenly she burst into tears and pressed me to her heart, saying: 'Poor children! poor dear children!'—Tell me, signor, if that shows the cold heart and dull mind that people say she has?"

The Piccinino took Mila's arm in his and walked about the garden with her, leading her on to talk of the princess. His imagination was engrossed by that woman who had made so deep an impression on him, and he entirely forgot that Mila had occupied his thoughts and disturbed his senses during a part of the day.

Honest Mila, still convinced that she was talking to a sincere friend, abandoned herself to the pleasure of praising the woman whom she loved with enthusiasm, and forgot that she was forgetting herself, as she expressed it, after walking about for an hour under the magnificent trees in the garden at Nicolosi.

The Piccinino had an impressionable brain and a fickle humor. His whole life was a constant alternation of meditation and curiosity. The simple and graceful conversation of Mila, her kindly thoughts, the generous outflow of her affections, and an indefinable touch of grandeur of soul, courage, and cheeriness of temperament, which she inherited from her father and uncle, gradually fascinated the brigand. New horizons opened before him, as if he were passing from the contemplation of a painful and fatiguing drama to that of a placid and lightsome idyll. He was too intelligent not to understand everything, even those things which were most opposed to his instincts and habits. He had devoured Byron's poems. In his dreams he had raised himself to the level of Don Juan and Lara; but he had read Petrarch too, and knew him by heart; indeed he had smiled instead of yawning, as he murmured to himself the concetti of Aminta and the Pastor Fido. He felt soothed by his frank converse with little Mila, even more than he ordinarily was when he resorted to that sentimental nonsense to allay the tempests of his passions.

But at last the sun began to sink. Mila thought of Magnani, and asked leave to go.

"Very well, addio, my sweet Mila," said the Piccinino; "but as we walk back to the garden gate I propose to do for you in all seriousness what I have never done for any woman, except from some selfish motive or in mockery."

"What is that, monsignor?" queried Mila, in amazement.

"I propose to pluck a bouquet for you, a virginal bouquet, from the flowers in my garden," he answered, with a smile, in which, if there was a suspicion of mockery, it was directed at himself alone.

To Mila this attention seemed much less surprising than it seemed to the Piccinino. He plucked with care white roses, myrtle, and orange blossoms; he picked the thorns from the roses; he selected the finest flowers; and with more taste and skill than he would have given himself credit for, he made a superb bouquet for his amiable guest.

"Ah!" he said as he presented it to her, "we must not forget the cyclamen. There must be some among this grass. No, no, Mila, do not look; I want to pick them myself, so that the princess may enjoy inhaling the perfume of my bouquet. For you must tell her that it comes from me, and that it was the only attention which I ventured to offer you, after a tête-à-tête of two hours in my house."

"Then you do not forbid me to tell Princess Agatha that I have been here?"

"You must tell her, Mila. You must tell her everything. But her alone, do you understand? Swear it on your salvation, for you believe in that, do you not?"

"Why, do not you believe in it, signor?"

"I believe that I have earned the right to go to Paradise to-day, if I should die at once; for my heart is as pure as a little child's since you have been with me."

"But, suppose the princess asks me who you are, monsignor, and whom I am talking about—how shall I describe you so that she may know?"

"You will tell her what I wish you also to know, Mila. But perhaps there will be times hereafter when my face and my name will no longer be in accord. Then you must hold your peace, and, at need, pretend that you never saw me, for with a word you could cause my death."

"God forbid!" cried Mila, effusively. "Ah! monsignor, rely on my prudence and my discretion as if my life were bound to yours!"

"Very well; say to the princess that it was Carmelo Tomabene who rescued you from Abbé Ninfo, and who kissed your hand as respectfully as he would kiss her own."

"It is for me to kiss your hand, monsignor," replied the guileless child, putting the brigand's hand to her lips, firmly persuaded that it was at least a king's son who treated her with such condescending courtesy; "for you are deceiving me," she continued. "Carmelo Tomabene is a villano, and this house is no more yours than his name is. You might live in a palace, if you chose, but you disguise yourself for political reasons which I ought not to know, and do not wish to. I have an idea that you will be King of Sicily some day. Ah! how I would like to be a man and fight for your cause! for you will bring about the happiness of your people, I am sure of it!"

Mila's jesting extravagance caused a momentary madness in the brigand's audacious brain. He had a touch of vertigo, and felt almost the same emotion as if she had guessed the truth instead of dreaming a dream. But instantly he laughed an almost bitter laugh, which did not dispel Mila's illusions. She thought that it was an attempt to banish her rash suspicions, and she frankly asked his forgiveness for the words that had escaped her.

"My child," he replied, kissing her on the brow and assisting her to mount the white mule, "Princess Agatha will tell you who I am. I authorize you to ask her; but, when you find out, remember that you are my accomplice, or that you must send me to the gallows."

"I would rather go myself!" said Mila, as she rode away, calling his attention to the respectful kiss she bestowed upon his bouquet.

"Well!" said the Piccinino to himself, "this has been the pleasantest and most romantic adventure of my whole life. I have played the part of a king in disguise, without showing it, without taking the trouble to prepare for it, without making any arrangements to afford myself that amusement. Unexpected pleasures are the only genuine ones, they say; I begin to believe it. Perhaps it is because I have premeditated my actions too much, and laid out my life beforehand too carefully, that I have so often found ennui and distaste at the end of my undertakings. Fascinating Mila! What a wealth of poesy, what freshness of the imagination in your young brain! Oh! if only you were a youth of my own sex! if I could keep you beside me without causing you to lose any of your pleasant illusions and your blessed purity! I should find the sweet companionship of a wife in a faithful comrade, without danger of arousing or feeling the passion which poisons and destroys all friendships! But such mortals do not exist. Woman cannot fail to be treacherous; man cannot cease to be brutal. Ah! I always have missed—I always shall miss—the being able to love some one. I should have had to fall in with a mind different from all other minds and even more different from my own—which is impossible!

"Am I then an exceptional character?" he asked himself, following with his eyes the prints of Mila's little feet on the gravelled paths of his garden. "It seems to me that I am, when I compare myself with the mountaineers with whom I am compelled to live, and with these bandits whose leader I am. I have more than one brother among them, so it is said. The fact that they have none of my qualities, makes it impossible for me to believe it. The passions which serve as a bond between us differ as much as our features and our bodily strength. They desire booty in order to convert into money everything that is not money; and I care for nothing which is not of value by reason of its beauty or its rarity. What they succeed in obtaining they hoard because they are miserly; I use it sparingly, so that I may be able to bear myself royally with them on occasion, and extend my power and influence over everyone about me.

"Thus gold is to me only a means, while to them it is the end. They love women as chattels, and I, alas! would fain be able to love them as human beings! They are intoxicated with delight by acts of violence which make me sick at heart, and by which I should be humiliated, knowing that I have the power to please, and having never been compelled to force myself upon anyone. No, no! they are no brothers of mine; if they are the Destatore's sons, they are the offspring of wild dissipation and of his years of moral decadence. I am the son of Castro-Reale; I was conceived on a day when his mind was lucid. My mother was not violated like the rest. She abandoned herself to him willingly, and I am the fruit of the intercourse of two free hearts, who did not give me life against their wills.

"But, in that world which is called society, and which I call the legal community, are there not many persons of both sexes with whom I could enter into relations, and so escape this ghastly solitude of my thoughts? Are there not men of intelligence, endowed with keen perception, whose friend I might be? Are there not many women, proud and adroit, whose lover I might be, without being compelled to laugh at the pains I had taken to overcome them? In a word, am I doomed never to find emotion of any sort in this life which I embraced as being most fruitful in violent emotions? Shall I always be obliged to expend endless stores of imaginative power and of tact, in order to succeed in pillaging a vessel on the coast or a party of travellers in the gorges of the mountain? And all to obtain a multitude of petty trinkets, a little money, and the hearts of a few Englishwomen, ugly or half-mad, who adore adventures with brigands as a remedy for the spleen!

"But I have closed to myself forever that world where I might find my equals and my fellows. I can enter only through the secret doors of intrigue, and, if I wish to appear there in broad daylight, I can do it only on condition of being followed by the mystery of my past, that is to say, by a sentence of death always hanging over my head. Shall I leave the country? It is the only country where the trade of bandit is more perilous than dishonorable. Anywhere else I shall be asked for proof that I have always lived in legitimate society; and if I cannot furnish it I shall be classed with the most degraded creatures who wallow in the sloughs of their pretended civilization!

"O Mila! how completely you have filled with grief and dismay this heart upon which you have shed a ray of your sunlight!"

XL
DECEPTION

Thus did that man, so ill-placed in life if we compare his intellectual powers with his social position, torture himself with vain reflections. Mental culture, which was his greatest enjoyment, was also his torment. Having read everything that fell into his hands, without method and without selection, and allowing himself to be impressed by everything in turn, he was as learned in evil as in good, and he was insensibly drawing near that scepticism which no longer believes absolutely in either good or evil.

He returned to his house to take certain precautions with respect to Abbé Ninfo, so that, if the unexpected should happen, and his domicile be invaded, there should be no traces of violence. He put the narcotized wine out of sight, and filled the decanter with unadulterated wine, in order that he might safely pretend to experiment upon himself at need. He placed the abbé on a couch, extinguished the lamp, and swept up the ashes of the papers Mila had destroyed. No one ever entered his house in his absence. He had no regular servants, and the spotless neatness which he himself maintained did not cost him much trouble, for he occupied only a few rooms, and even those few he did not enter every day. He worked in his garden, in his leisure moments, to keep himself in condition, and to be consistent with his assumed rôle of peasant. He had himself applied to all the issues of his abode a simple but substantial system of fastening, calculated to resist for a long time any attempt to force an entrance. Finally, he released two enormous and savage mountain dogs, fierce beasts who knew nobody but him, and who would infallibly have strangled the prisoner if he had tried to escape.

Having taken these precautions, the Piccinino washed and perfumed himself, and, before going down to the city, showed himself in the village of Nicolosi, where he was highly esteemed by all the people. He conversed in Latin with the priest, under the vine-clad arbor of the vicarage. He exchanged sly jests with the pretty girls of the village, who ogled him from their doorsteps. He held several consultations on agriculture and general affairs with men of sense who appreciated his intelligence and his extensive knowledge. As he left the village he fell in with an officer of campieri, with whom he walked for some distance, and who informed him that the Piccinino still succeeded in eluding the pursuit of the police and the municipal brigade.

Mila, eager to tell all her secrets to the princess, and to avail herself of the mysterious prince's permission to ascertain their meaning, travelled as quickly as Bianca was able to descend those steep and dangerous slopes. It did not occur to her to hold the mule back; she was too deeply absorbed in her meditations. Persons of pure heart and tranquil mind must have noticed that, when they communicate their mental disposition to perturbed and agitated minds, their own serenity is diminished in proportion. They give only at the price of running in debt themselves to some extent; for confidence is a matter of exchange, and there is no heart so richly endowed and so powerful that it does not risk something in gratifying its beneficent impulses.

Gradually, however, pretty Mila's terror changed to joy. The Piccinino's conversation had left an echo as of sweet music in her ears, and the odor of his bouquet kept alive the illusion that she was still in that rustic garden, under the shade of the black fig-trees and pistacias, walking upon carpets of moss strewn with mallow, orchids and fraxinella, sometimes catching her veil on the aloes and the twigs of the thorny smilax, from which her host quickly detached it with respectful courtesy. Mila had the simple tastes of her class, added to the tendency to romance and poesy born of her intelligence. If the marble fountains and statues of Villa Palmarosa appealed to her imagination, the vine-clad arbors and wild apple-trees of Carmelo's garden spoke more loudly to her heart. She had already forgotten the bandit's oriental boudoir; she had not felt at her ease there as she had under the arbor. He had been cold and satirical almost all the time in the boudoir, whereas, among the flowering shrubs and beside the silvery spring, he had displayed an artless mind and a tender heart.

How did it happen that this girl, who had just seen such strange and distressing things, a queen's boudoir in the house of a peasant, and the ghastly scene of Abbé Ninfo's lethargy, no longer remembered what must have impressed her imagination so profoundly? Her surprise and her fright had vanished like a dream, and her mind was engrossed by the final tableau, fresh and unsullied, where she saw naught but flowers, greenswards, birds chattering among the leaves, and a handsome young man who guided her through that enchanted labyrinth, conversing with her in chaste and charming language.

When Mila had passed the Destatore's cross, she dismounted, as Carmelo had advised her to do, as a measure of prudence. She fastened the reins to the saddle-bow and waved a switch about Bianca's ears. The intelligent beast started back at a gallop toward Nicolosi, needing no guidance to return to her stable. Mila continued her journey on foot, avoiding the neighborhood of Bel-Passo; but, by a veritable fatality, Fra Angelo happened to be returning just then from the Della Serra palace to his convent by a by-path, so that Mila suddenly found herself face to face with him.

The poor girl drew her mantellina about her and began to walk very fast, as if she had not seen her uncle.

"Where have you been, Mila?" was the greeting which brought her to a standstill, uttered as it was in a tone which admitted of no hesitation.

"Why! uncle," she replied, putting aside her veil, "I didn't see you; the sun was in my eyes."

"Where have you been?" repeated the monk, not deigning to discuss the probable truth of that reply.

"Well, uncle," said Mila, resolutely, "I will not tell you a lie; I saw you plainly."

"I know it; but will you tell me where you have been?"

"I have been to the convent, uncle. I was looking for you, and, not finding you, I was going back to the city."

"What was it that you were in such a hurry to say to me, my dear girl? It must be very important, for you to dare to come out into the country alone, contrary to your habit. Come, answer me! You say nothing! You cannot lie, Mila!"

"Yes, uncle, yes! I came——" And she stopped short, completely at a loss, for she had made no preparations for this meeting, and her wits abandoned her.

"You are losing your head, Mila," rejoined the monk, "for I tell you that you do not know how to lie, and you answer 'Yes!' Thank heaven, you don't know what you are saying! Do not try to lie, my child, but tell me frankly where you have been."

"Well, uncle, I cannot tell you."

"Indeed!" cried Fra Angelo, with a frown. "I order you to tell me!"

"It is impossible, dear uncle, impossible," said Mila, hanging her head, crimson with shame, and with her eyes filled with tears; for it was very painful to her to see her excellent uncle angry with her for the first time in her life.

"Then you wish me to believe that you have been doing either an insane or a wicked thing!"

"Neither!" cried Mila, raising her head. "I call God to witness!"

"God!" repeated the monk, in a despairing tone. "How you pain me by speaking so, Mila! Can you be capable of swearing a false oath?"

"No, uncle, no, never!"

"Lie to your uncle, if it seems best to you, but do not lie to God!"

"Am I in the habit of lying, I ask you, then?" exclaimed the girl, proudly; "and ought I to be suspected by my uncle, the man who knows me so well, and for whose esteem I care more than for my life?"

"In that case, speak!" rejoined Fra Angelo, grasping her wrist in a way which he considered encouraging and paternal, but which bruised the child's arm and extorted a cry of terror from her.—"Why this fright, pray?" demanded the monk, in amazement. "Ah! you are guilty, girl. You have just done—not anything sinful, I cannot believe that—but some foolish thing or other, which is the first step on the pathway of evil. If it were not so, you would not recoil from me in terror; you would not have tried to hide your face when we met; above all things, you would not have tried to lie! And now, as it is impossible for you to have any innocent secret from me, you should not refuse to explain your actions."

"But I tell you, uncle, that it is an entirely innocent secret, and still it is impossible for me to tell you what it is. Do not ask me any more questions. I would die before I would speak."

"At all events, Mila, promise me that you will tell your father this secret which I may not know!"

"I cannot promise you that; but I swear that I will tell it to Princess Agatha."

"I have the greatest esteem and veneration for Princess Agatha," replied the monk, "but I know that women are excessively indulgent to one another in the matter of certain errors of conduct, and that virtuous women are the more tolerant because of their ignorance of evil. I do not, therefore, like the idea of your seeking shelter against shame on your friend's bosom, instead of explaining your conduct to your family, with head erect. Go, Mila; I insist no farther, since you have withdrawn your confidence from me; but I pity you because your heart is not pure and calm this evening as it was this morning. I pity my brother, whose pride and joy you were; I pity your brother, who will soon have to answer for your conduct before the world, I doubt not, and who will have plenty of trouble on his hands unless he chooses to allow you to be insulted on his arm. Woe, woe to the men of a family, when the women, who should watch over its honor as the Vestals watched over the sacred fire, break the laws of prudence, modesty and truth!"

Fra Angelo passed on, leaving poor Mila, crushed by this malediction, kneeling on the stones in the road, with bloodless cheeks and her bosom heaving with sobs.

"Alas!" she said to herself, "until this moment it seemed to me that my conduct was not only innocent, but brave and praiseworthy. Oh! how harsh the laws of modest reserve and the necessity of an unsullied reputation are for women, since, even when it is a question of saving the lives of one's family, one must expect to be blamed by those whom one loves best! Was it wrong for me to trust to the prince's promises? He may have deceived me, it is true! But when his conduct has proved his honor and his virtue, ought I to blame myself for believing in him? Was it not a presentiment of the truth that led me toward him, and not mere foolish and imprudent curiosity?"

She kept on down the mountain, but, as she walked, she questioned her conscience severely, and some scruples awoke within her. Had she not been impelled by pride to accomplish a difficult and perilous enterprise of which no one would have believed her to be capable? Had she not allowed herself to be influenced by the stranger's comeliness and charm of manner, and would she have had equal confidence in an older and less eloquent man?

"But what does it matter after all?" she said to herself. "What have I done that is wrong, and what reproach could be brought against me if I had been watched? I have run the risk of being misrepresented and slandered, and that is certainly a fault when one does it from egotism or a spirit of coquetry; but when one exposes oneself to danger to save one's father and brother!—Princess Agatha will be my judge; she will tell me whether I have done right or wrong, and whether she would have acted as I did."

But imagine poor Mila's dismay, when, as soon as she began her story, the princess interrupted her, saying: "O my child! it was the Piccinino!"

Mila tried to struggle against the truth. She insisted that everybody said that the Piccinino was short, thickset, awkwardly built, afflicted with hideous ugliness, and that his face was darkened by bushy hair and a beard; whereas the stranger's slight figure was so graceful and refined, his manners so gracious and noble!

"My child," said the princess, "there is a false Piccinino who plays the part of his chief with people of whom his chief is suspicious, and who would play it, at need, before the police and magistrates, if he should fall into their hands. He is a repulsive, savage creature, who enhances, by the horror of his appearance, the terror inspired by the expeditions of the band. But the real Piccinino, the one who styles himself the justicier d'aventure, and who directs all the operations of the brigands of the mountain; the man whom nobody knows and as to whom, if he should be captured, it would be impossible to prove that he had ever been the leader or a member of the band, is a handsome, well-educated, eloquent, dissipated and cunning young man; the same Carmelo Tomabene with whom you talked at the fountain."

Mila was so thunderstruck that she almost determined not to go on with her story. How could she confess that she had been the dupe of a hypocrite and had placed herself at the mercy of a libertine? She did confess everything, however, with absolute sincerity, and, when she had finished, began to weep afresh, thinking of the risks she had run, and of the conjectures of which she would be the object if the Piccinino should chance to boast of her visit.

But Agatha, who had trembled with apprehension more than once as she listened, and who had resolved to reprove her for her imprudence, by pointing out to her that the Piccinino was too adroit to have really needed her assistance, was disarmed by her ingenuous grief, and embraced her warmly to comfort her. What impressed her quite as deeply as the rashness of the girl, was the physical and moral courage which had inspired her, her determination to take her own life at the slightest suggestion of outrage, and her unbounded devotion and her generous confidence. She thanked her affectionately therefore, because she had been guided in part by the desire to deliver her from an enemy; and finally, when she was fully assured that Abbé Ninfo was really in the justicier's power, she was so overcome by joy that she kissed little Mila's hands, calling her her good fairy and her angel of salvation.

Mila being thus comforted and reconciled with herself, the princess, in an outburst of childlike merriment, proposed to her that she should change her dress to assist her to recover from the fatigue of her expedition, and that then they should go and surprise her father and brother at the marquis's villa.

"We will go on foot," she said, "for it is close by if we go by way of the garden; and we will dine together first. Then we shall have the darkness and cool breeze of early evening, and in addition a travelling companion whom you do not expect perhaps, but whom you will not be sorry to see, for he is a friend of yours."

"I wonder who it can be," said Mila, with a smile; she guessed shrewdly enough, but with respect to her heart's secret, and to that alone, she recovered all the prudence of the feminine mind.

The dinner and the preparations of the two friends occupied about an hour; after which the maid came and whispered to the princess: "The young man of last evening, at the end of the garden, by the eastern gate."

"That is right," said the princess, leading Mila away; "that is our road." And they hurried across the park, joyous and light of heart; for both were born again to the hope of happiness.

Magnani was walking back and forth, melancholy and distraught, waiting to be sent for to go to the palace, when two veiled women, issuing from the clumps of myrtle and orange, ran to him, and grasping each an arm, hurried him along with them without speaking. He recognized them perfectly, the princess better than Mila, who seemed to him to be dressed more elaborately than usual under her light cape; but he was too deeply moved to speak, and he pretended to accept this gracious jest gayly. A smile played about his lips, but his heart was troubled; and, while he sought relief from the perturbation caused by Agatha's presence, he derived but little assistance from feeling Mila's arm in his.

As they passed into the marquis's park, the princess put aside her veil and said to him: