The Prince shivered with delight and with fear, for, as you know, he was in love with Massimilla. But, in spite of this faith in love which fired his blood, and which of old inspired the painters of Spain, which gave Italy her Madonnas, created Michael Angelo’s statues and Ghilberti’s doors of the Baptistery, – desire had him in its toils, and agitated him without infusing into his heart that warm, ethereal glow which he felt at a look or a word from the Duchess. His soul, his heart, his reason, every impulse of his will, revolted at the thought of an infidelity; and yet that brutal, unreasoning infidelity domineered over his spirit. But the woman was not alone.
The Prince saw one of those figures in which nobody believes when they are transferred from real life, where we wonder at them, to the imaginary existence of a more or less literary description. The dress of this stranger, like that of all Neapolitans, displayed five colors, if the black of his hat may count for a color; his trousers were olive-brown, his red waistcoat shone with gilt buttons, his coat was greenish, and his linen was more yellow than white. This personage seemed to have made it his business to verify the Neapolitan as represented by Gerolamo on the stage of his puppet show. His eyes looked like glass beads. His nose, like the ace of clubs, was horribly long and bulbous; in fact, it did its best to conceal an opening which it would be an insult to the human countenance to call a mouth; within, three or four tusks were visible, endowed, as it seemed, with a proper motion and fitting into each other. His fleshy ears drooped by their own weight, giving the creature a whimsical resemblance to a dog.
His complexion, tainted, no doubt, by various metallic infusions as prescribed by some Hippocrates, verged on black. A pointed skull, scarcely covered by a few straight hairs like spun glass, crowned this forbidding face with red spots. Finally, though the man was very thin and of medium height, he had long arms and broad shoulders.
In spite of these hideous details, and though he looked fully seventy, he did not lack a certain cyclopean dignity; he had aristocratic manners and the confident demeanor of a rich man.
Any one who could have found courage enough to study him, would have seen his history written by base passions on this noble clay degraded to mud. Here was the man of high birth, who, rich from his earliest youth, had given up his body to debauchery for the sake of extravagant enjoyment. And debauchery had destroyed the human being and made another after its own image. Thousands of bottles of wine had disappeared under the purple archway of that preposterous nose, and left their dregs on his lips. Long and slow digestion had destroyed his teeth. His eyes had grown dim under the lamps of the gaming table. The blood tainted with impurities had vitiated the nervous system. The expenditure of force in the task of digestion had undermined his intellect. Finally, amours had thinned his hair. Each vice, like a greedy heir, had stamped possession on some part of the living body.
Those who watch nature detect her in jests of the shrewdest irony. For instance, she places toads in the neighborhood of flowers, as she had placed this man by the side of this rose of love.
“Will you play the violin this evening, my dear Duke?” asked the woman, as she unhooked a cord to let a handsome curtain fall over the door.
“Play the violin!” thought Prince Emilio. “What can have happened to my palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman’s bed, and she certainly thinks herself at home – she has taken off her cloak! Have I, like Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those dreams in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?”
The unknown fair one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness.
“Ring for Giulia,” said she; “I want to get my dress off.”
At that instant, the Duke noticed that the supper had been disturbed; he looked round the room, and discovered the Prince’s trousers hanging over a chair at the foot of the bed.
“Clarina, I will not ring!” cried the Duke, in a shrill voice of fury. “I will not play the violin this evening, nor tomorrow, nor ever again – ”
“Ta, ta, ta, ta!” sang Clarina, on the four octaves of the same note, leaping from one to the next with the ease of a nightingale.
“In spite of that voice, which would make your patron saint Clara envious, you are really too impudent, you rascally hussy!”
“You have not brought me up to listen to such abuse,” said she, with some pride.
“Have I brought you up to hide a man in your bed? You are unworthy alike of my generosity and of my hatred – ”
“A man in my bed!” exclaimed Clarina, hastily looking round.
“And after daring to eat our supper, as if he were at home,” added the Duke.
“But am I not at home?” cried Emilio. “I am the Prince of Varese; this palace is mine.”
As he spoke, Emilio sat up in bed, his handsome and noble Venetian head framed in the flowing hangings.
At first Clarina laughed – one of those irrepressible fits of laughter which seize a girl when she meets with an adventure comic beyond all conception. But her laughter ceased as she saw the young man, who, as has been said, was remarkably handsome, though but lightly attired; the madness that possessed Emilio seized her, too, and, as she had no one to adore, no sense of reason bridled her sudden fancy – a Sicilian woman in love.
“Although this is the palazzo Memmi, I will thank your Highness to quit,” said the Duke, assuming the cold irony of a polished gentleman. “I am at home here.”
“Let me tell you, Monsieur le Duc, that you are in my room, not in your own,” said Clarina, rousing herself from her amazement. “If you have any doubts of my virtue, at any rate give me the benefit of my crime – ”
“Doubts! Say proof positive, my lady!”
“I swear to you that I am innocent,” replied Clarina.
“What, then, do I see in that bed?” asked the Duke.
“Old Ogre!” cried Clarina. “If you believe your eyes rather than my assertion, you have ceased to love me. Go, and do not weary my ears! Do you hear? Go, Monsieur le Duc. This young Prince will repay you the million francs I have cost you, if you insist.”
“I will repay nothing,” said Emilio in an undertone.
“There is nothing due! A million is cheap for Clara Tinti when a man is so ugly. Now, go,” said she to the Duke. “You dismissed me; now I dismiss you. We are quits.”
At a gesture on Cataneo’s part, as he seemed inclined to dispute this order, which was given with an action worthy of Semiramis, – the part in which la Tinti had won her fame, – the prima donna flew at the old ape and put him out of the room.
“If you do not leave me in quiet this evening, we never meet again. And my never counts for more than yours,” she added.
“Quiet!” retorted the Duke, with a bitter laugh. “Dear idol, it strikes me that I am leaving you agitata!”
The Duke departed.
His mean spirit was no surprise to Emilio.
Every man who has accustomed himself to some particular taste, chosen from among the various effects of love, in harmony with his own nature, knows that no consideration can stop a man who has allowed his passions to become a habit.
Clarina bounded like a fawn from the door to the bed.
“A prince, and poor, young, and handsome!” cried she. “Why, it is a fairy tale!”
The Sicilian perched herself on the bed with the artless freedom of an animal, the yearning of a plant for the sun, the airy motion of a branch waltzing to the breeze. As she unbuttoned the wristbands of her sleeves, she began to sing, not in the pitch that won her the applause of an audience at the Fenice, but in a warble tender with emotion. Her song was a zephyr carrying the caresses of her love to the heart.
She stole a glance at Emilio, who was as much embarrassed as she; for this woman of the stage had lost all the boldness that had sparkled