Last Tales (2 page)

Alas, Princess Benedetta was less stable. In the course of her second, third and fourth youths not a few lively scandals came to be associated with her name. I myself am the only person to know that all the time a slim, gentle, grave guardian-angel was walking with her and seeing to it that there should ever be music in her heart. And now, if you feel like it, you are free to smile at the fact that this dazzling and beguiling, often-embraced lady had for her only true lover the Marelli, who was the lover of no woman.

Shortly after the episode of Venice the term of waiting stipulated by Prince Pompilio expired, and the husband once more with much dignity turned toward his spouse.

No man’s hand during the three years had touched Princess Benedetta’s lovely person, yet it was changed by more than time. By now she knew the nature and value of what she was giving into the arms of her husband, and in her second bridal night she shed tears different from those of her first.

The Princess became with child, but as long as possible kept the happy state of things to herself.
“Caprice de femme enceinte,”
the Prince exclaimed, not a little piqued at an order of nature which would confide a momentous family matter to a lady, before informing her lord. Even afterwards she remained so strangely silent that it seemed as if she had given away only half her secret and had anchored her whole being in the other half. Her family physician had advised her not to sing, and she submitted to this recommendation as she had submitted to all other recommendations of his, for she meant her son to be glorious in strength and comeliness. In order to be secure against temptation she even dismissed her old singing-master. The old man, all in tears, blessed and kissed her at the parting hour, went back to his native village, lived on the pension granted him by his former pupil
and gave no more singing-lessons. But deep in her mind and blood ran the lovely air of Metastasio’s in which some day that son was to proclaim to the world the triumph of beauty and poetry as well as his own identity: “Ha! Now I know myself Achilles!”

The change of surroundings had not meant as much to the husband as to the wife, for at whatever scene of town or country Prince Pompilio would gaze, he would see in it the figure of Prince Pompilio. But the fall of dropping water, as Lucretius tells us, wears away the stone. The monotony of a country existence—without high duties at Court, without prominent roles in grand church ceremonies or grim political conferences—after a while began to tell on the master of the villa. He looked round vaguely for something to bear out the fundamental dogma of his own importance.

The villa had a chaplain and librarian, Don Lega Zambelli, a short, paunchy man—I have seen him, and remember his face—who in his career upwards from the humble position of a swineherd’s son had become skilled in the art of handling great people, particularly in handling them by flattery. By the time the princely couple took up residence at the villa, Don Lega in his fat and secure office had begun to miss opportunities for practicing his talents, and he now welcomed such a magnificent patron of the art as the Prince. The master of the villa, on his side, was pleasantly surprised to find in the midst of wild lonely mountains a man of so much virtue and discrimination. As he listened to Don Lega, he came to realize that—unappreciated by his wife, unfortunate in his son and heir, exiled from the elevated circles in which he was wont to shine, and in the heyday of his manhood condemned to celibacy—he had been favored with a particularly noble and precious cross. Before long he saw himself as a chosen martyr on earth, and a saint in embryo. His visitors noticed that with every month their host’s waistcoats, and his face, grew longer.

On a day six weeks before the Princess’ confinement, he
formally asked her for an interview, and in her green boudoir, which overlooked the valley and the lake, made her a little solemn speech. He wished to inform her of a decision to which—in his long meditations upon the melancholy state of the world—he had arrived. If his patience was to be rewarded with the birth of a son, the infant should become a pillar of the Church. In order to find the right name for this future light of the family—for a name is a reality, and a child is made known to himself by his name—he had made his librarian go through the whole of the
Vitae Sanctorum
, and had settled upon the great Father of the Church St. Athanasius, who is known as “the Father of Orthodoxy.” For sponsors to young Atanasio he had, after pious deliberation, selected the Cardinal Rusconi and the very holy Bishop of Bari.

The Princess during the address had kept her embroidering frame on her lap, and her eyes on it. When he had finished she looked up, and very quietly informed her husband that she too had been pondering the future and the name of her son, and had made up her mind. She had borne the house of her husband one son; now she was free. The child to come was to be the son of his mother, and the godson of the Muses. His name should be Dionysio, in reminiscence of the God of inspired ecstasy, for a name is a reality, and a child is made known to himself by his name—and for sponsors to her son she had selected the poet Gozzo, the composer Cimarosa, and the young sculptor Canova.

The Prince was first deeply surprised, then even more deeply shocked, to hear his wife, to his face, defy Heaven and him. Before he could find words to express his feelings, the Princess spoke again as quietly as before. She would remind him, she said, that at this moment the child was of one mind and body with her, and that it would follow her in whatever course she took. There was, indeed, nothing to prevent the two of them from walking out of the house and joining, say, a band of gypsies camping in the mountains
or a troupe of jugglers giving performances in the villages. Under no circumstances, she wished her husband to understand, would he ever see the ghost of a pillar of the Church.

Having made this final statement the lady rose from her chair and took a small, very stately step toward the door, as if she meant to carry put her plan then and there. The Prince, seeing the sudden terrifying shadow of public scandal fall on his house, hurriedly placed himself between her and the door, and at her second little step forward, still speechless, took a desperate, awkward hold of her slim arm. The moment he touched her the Princess fainted. Her husband laid her on the sofa, rang for her maids and marched out of the boudoir.

In his own rooms he bethought himself that no wise man will attempt to reason with a wife in her eighth month, and so as not to risk a repetition of a painful experience, he ordered his coach and left for Naples.

Six weeks later, in the palazzo of Naples, he received the message that his wife had been brought to bed of twin sons, and that the doctors feared for her life.

During the hurried return journey to the villa, Prince Pompilio, in his coach and for the first time in his married life, gave himself up to reflections on the character and disposition of his wife. He remembered her childish freshness at their first meeting, the gracefulness of her movements, her little timid attempts at confidence—an echo, of her voice when she sang and of her trilling girlish laughter, rang with a strange perplexing sadness in his ear. Possibly, he thought, he himself had been lacking in patience with the pretty child he had made his wife. Indeed, if he found the Princess alive, he would forgive her. And since Providence, here, in an inventive mood, had miraculously supplied him with a means of being generous, he began to take pleasure in the idea of being so.

At the sight of her, in the enormous four-poster, transparently white, fixing unfathomable dark eyes on his face,
he resolved to be even magnanimous. He touched her limp fingers with his hand, and slowly and solemnly, in a distinct voice so that she should be able to follow him, vowed to fulfill the wish that she had expressed in their last, turbulent meeting.

And in order to prove the worth of his princely word, he had the baptism of his sons take place in the chapel. The elder of the boys was christened Atanasio, and had for sponsors the Cardinal Rusconi and the Bishop of Bari. The younger boy was christened Dionysio, and his sponsors were the poet Gozzo, the composer Cimarosa, and the young sculptor Canova.

When the baptism was over, the old great-aunt of the children, not venturing to take liberties with the Prince-to-be of the Church, tied a pale-blue silk ribbon round the neck of little Dionysio in order to distinguish him from his brother, for the children were as like as two peas.

At the moment when the Princess was told that she was the mother of a live Dionysio, a faint flush rose to her white face. It was the beginning of an amazing recovery. Within a month she sat watching the children and their nurses in the rose garden. She had insisted on giving suck herself to her youngest son, and the repeated daily meetings between these two were—like kisses—reciprocal givings and takings of vigor and bliss.

You are a woman of the South, Madame, and you will not, like the more frivolous ladies of France, be amazed at the fact that a beautiful young creature, with the world at her feet, should find a full outlet for her emotional nature in her love for her infant. You will know that to watch our Southern mothers playing with and fondling their infants is to see the hearts aflame, and that an infant son, while still in swaddling clothes, may well be his mama’s lover. It will be so, most of all, in the cases in which a divine power has condescended to take human form, and where the young mother feels that she is fondling or playing with a saint or a great
artist. Why, we have before our eyes every day the image of that highest relation between mother and son, which includes all aspects of exalted, flaming love. A young maiden in love may seek sympathy and advice with the Virgin of Virgins, and the Queen of Heaven will not, like the austere virgins of the earth who know nothing of love, turn away from her confidence, but in the memory of a babe on her lap she will listen and answer in the manner of a
grande amoureuse
. I am not blaspheming, Madame, when I express the idea that any young mother of a saint or great artist may feel herself to be the spouse of the Holy Ghost. For it is a divinely innocent jest, and the Virgin herself may smile upon it, as upon a child toying with a bit of glass and catching in it the sun of the heavens itself.

The Prince now sent for his eldest son, and for a fortnight the life of the reunited family unexpectedly blossomed into an idyll, and only the Princess knew the happiness of the household to be radiating from the cradle of the infant of the pale-blue ribbon. Finding herself suddenly surrounded by a family of three—like a little girl all at once presented with three life-size dolls—she gave herself up whole-heartedly to the role of a materfamilias, distributing her tenderness equally to her three small sons, and generously washing her mind of past disagreements with their papa. She attended Mass every morning with the Prince in the chapel, and there patiently listened to the praying of Don Lega; of an afternoon she took the air with her husband in his light carriage round the lake and on the mountain roads, and in the evenings listened with sweet attention while he held forth on politics and theology. The Prince felt that his magnanimity had been rewarded with a genuine change of heart in his young wife.

Alas, the idyll was as short-lived as it was perfect.

Six weeks after the birth of Atanasio and Dionysio, while the Prince and Princess were out, the librarian of the villa placed his glasses on the window sill upon a pile of old missives from the Holy See to worthy ancestors of the Prince.
The rays of the sun hit the lenses and ignited the irreplaceable documents, the fire leapt to moldering papers and books and spread to wainscots and ceiling. The whole pavilion, which contained, on the ground floor, the library and, on the first floor, the nursery of the two babies, was burnt down.

The father and mother in their carriage from beyond the lake saw smoke rising from and soon enveloping the villa, and had the horses set into a gallop. As they swept up the avenue they took hope for a moment on seeing the fire partly conquered; indeed, the main part of the building still stands today. But rushing from the carriage they were received with dreadful news.

At the moment when the fire had reached the nursery, only one nurse was present there. She had snatched both children from their cradles, but upon the burning stairs, her clothes aflame and herself half choked with smoke, she had fainted. Other servants of the villa—headed by that dauntless old lady, Prince Pompilio’s aunt, who cried out in a high voice: “Atanasio!”—had forced their way up and had dragged her out onto the terrace. Of her small precious charges one had been rescued from the pavilion alive, the other was laid down in the hall of the main building limp and lifeless, his guileless little soul borne upwards with the smoke. The pale-blue silk ribbon was gone.

I have been told that the Princess, as, wavering on her feet, she reached the group of weeping women in the hall, seized the surviving child from a lap, tore open her bodice and laid the baby to her breast, as if she meant to make him, in this one gesture, forever her own.

The Prince in a talk with a friend, on the evening of that same day, showed great fortitude of mind. “The hand of the Lord,” he said, “has fallen heavy upon me, but I shall try to acquiesce in His will. Praise be to St. Rocco, the patron saint of my house—my son Atanasio has been spared to me.”

A second tragic event trod upon the heels of the first: the
noble and brave old lady of the villa, who at first had not seemed to be fatally hurt in the accident, two days later succumbed either to some internal injury or to shock. It was a strange thing that on her last day she went on invoking the name of Dionysio, and in her incoherent talk gave vent to odd fancies which nobody could understand. “Do you not know,” she cried, “that I am a nymph of the mountain Nysa, and the chosen guardian of this child!”

Princess Benedetta never attempted to argue the matter with her husband; in fact she never once touched upon the question of the children’s identity. Along her small son’s left cheek there ran a long burn, the scar of which showed for the rest of his life. His mother often, even when he had grown into a tall young man and was no longer her bambino lover, kissed this scar, as if seeing in it a proof that the burnt-up silk ribbon had once been tied round his neck. The son, as an old man, would also remember the little pet name of Pyrrha, by which she had called him in their most intimate hours of play and confidence. For a year she wore mourning with much dignity. Her calm made the Prince vaguely uneasy; at times he watched mother and child with a kind of strange misgiving.