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.
To the household and to the friends of the house the little boy remained Atanasio. Only on a marble tablet in the family mausoleum was the name of Dionysio preserved.
As to Don Lega Zambelli, whose negligence had caused the disaster, his happy days as the Prince’s adviser and comforter were over. He was dismissed from the villa, gave up his ecclesiastical career, and after many vicissitudes became accountant to an illustrious English milord. Atanasio happened to meet his father’s former chaplain on the day before he was ordained priest, and mused upon the part which this fat man had played in his young life.
It was during the years which followed the catastrophe that Princess Benedetta’s beauty, her talents and her rare gaiety of heart blossomed out. It has been said, earlier in this story, that at one time of her life she had learned to dream. By now she had done with dreaming and stood in need of reality.
Her son, who had known her in no other quality than that of a great lady of the world, later in life tried to form for himself a picture of the young Benedetta.
“Dear Mother,” he thought, “you were ever a loyal and dauntless seeker of happiness. You willed the world to be a glorious place and life a fine and sweet undertaking. A man in your situation might have been perplexed and bewildered to the extent of losing confidence in his own judgment, giving up realities and taking refuge in illusions. But your sex possesses sources and resources of its own; it changes its blood at celestial order, and to a fair woman her beauty will be the one unfailing and indisputable reality. A very lovely woman, such as yourself, may indeed feel freest and most secure upon an edge or a pinpoint in life, with this reality as her balancing pole. You had been, till now, a small boat upon the great waters of existence, striving only, amongst its swells and breakers, to keep afloat and on an even keel, and looking to the stars for guidance. Now you set sail and stood out, gallantly making headway against tide and current, a full-rigged sailer. And O my dear Mother, in your arrogance and exuberance there was ever much deep humility!” He might even, here, with a sigh quote to himself the lines of a great poet: “Humility, and that I never had!”
So indeed daily life in the palazzo or the villa of the young Princess was gradually turned into a majestic and graceful regatta, with gay streamers flying. Its circle of friends grew to include all that the country contained of wit, splendor, elegance and romanticism, and outside the gate of the palazzo the poor of the streets would crowd to see its mistress stepping into her carriage, and cry out: “Bella! Bella!”
The Prince, at first watching the career of his wife with surprise and anxiety, before he knew of it was overpowered and laid low. In the course of years he came to accept, in sublime glow, the role of a saintly, dethroned king. Possibly his vanity even found a kind of melancholy gratification in the renown and glory of his palazzo and in the envy of other palazzos. To the eyes of the world the princely spouses from then on remained on befitting terms of stately amicability.
Little Atanasio grew up in this house, without realizing it himself, a highly important figure in it. Prominent tutors and preceptors to the two young Princes, of all subjects of learning, came and went in the halls. Ercole, the heir to the name and its future perpetuator, was trained in all accomplishments of a nobleman and a courtier, while Atanasio was schooled in Greek and Hebrew and the Fathers of the Church, and at times sent a longing glance toward the worldlier exercises. Still, as the elder brother wished to have the younger constantly by his side and was found to make faster progress when he partook of his lessons, the quick-witted and industrious little boy managed to become a fair horseman and to acquire skill on the harpsichord and in a minuet. He was a favorite in his mother’s circle and at home in the great world; he was as happy on horseback as with the classics and, during the family’s sojourns at the villa, he took delight in lonely wanderings in the mountains.
All the same, Madame, the task of existing and growing up was not an easy one to this child. It will never be an easy task to a child who, in the relation to father and mother, finds himself placed in the line of fire between two belligerent fortresses. But it was particularly exacting to the boy of whom we are speaking inasmuch as here father and mother did view his small person in totally different lights, did in fact see him as two totally different personalities.
To his father he was from the beginning the Prince of the Church and the glory of his name. While the Prince kept his son to his Latin and Greek and allowed him little freedom and no levity, there was ever in his extremely dignified manner toward the prelate-to-be a little touch of reverence. To the mother the pretty boy—apart from being his own adorable self—was the child-prophet of earthly beauty and delight. She spent much time in his company, was even annoyed when her love affairs took her away from him, and in her smiles and sighs made him her confidant, as if she wished to see his little figure in the classical role of Cupid loosening his mother’s girdle. The child was thus at an early age schooled in the art of equipoise.
He kept his small head by adopting and perfecting, in the innocent manner of a child, the doubleness of his elders. He saw the lovely and beloved form of his mother with the eyes of the priest, the spiritual physician and gardener, watching her with tenderness and forbearance, and at times gently remonstrating with her and imposing upon her light, graceful penances. He saw his father with the eyes of the artist, and followed the stern figure with the attention and approval with which a connoisseur follows the movements of an accomplished actor or ballet dancer. To the perception of this child-connoisseur his papa was the brilliant, finishing coal-black brush stroke within the exquisite color scheme of the palazzo. The papa himself, who had never been a picturesque figure to anyone, faintly sensed the fact; as the boy grew up he became almost indispensable to his father.
In this way the hand of a child out of the elements of an anomalous family life produced a reconciling synthesis.
It is seemly, here, to say a few words about Ercole. The heir to the name—otherwise a taciturn and sullen boy, who showed no partiality to any human being, and only distinguished himself by growing up to a most unusual height—all through their childhood together displayed a staunch and loyal friendship toward his little brother. In the life of Atanasio he was, during that time, a support and a comfort, possibly on account of the fact that he had but one eye.
At the age of twenty-one the young Prince was ordained to the priesthood, and six months later his brother and friend quite suddenly died