Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Whenever he spoke of his early life he always became quiet and depressed, and, for a long time, I believed that he brooded over his mistake in exchanging a happy home for the vicissitudes of Bohemia. It came out slowly, however, that he was haunted by a superstition, a strange and ingenious one, which was yet not without a certain show of reason for its existence. Little by little I learned the following facts about it: His father was of pure Szeklar, or original Hungarian, stock, as dark-skinned as a Hindoo, and his mother was from one of the families of Western Hungary, with probably some Saxon blood in her veins. His three brothers were dark like his father, but he and his sister were blondes. He was born with a peculiar red mark on his right shoulder, directly over the scapula. This mark was shaped like a forked stick. His father had received a wound in the insurrection of ’48, a few months before the birth of him, the youngest son, and this birth-mark reproduced the shape of the father’s scar. Among Hungarians his father passed for a very learned man. He spoke fluently German, French, and Latin (the language used by Hungarians in common communication with other nationalities), and took great pains to give his children an acquaintance with each of these tongues. Their earliest playthings were French alphabet-blocks, and the set which served as toys and tasks for each of the elder brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The letters were formed by the human figure in different attitudes, and each block had a little couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter on the block. The Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a trapeze, and, being a letter which does not occur in the Hungarian language except in combinations, excited most the interest and imagination of the youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nickname Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the _Y a-t-il_ to be one word, and, with boyish fondness for nicknames, saddled the youngest with this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this letter, borne on his body in an indelible mark, and brought to his mind every moment of the day, came to seem in some way connected with his life. As he grew up in this belief he became more and more superstitious about the letter and about everything in the remotest way connected with it.

The first great event of his life was joining the circus, and to this the letter Y more or less directly led him. He left home on his twenty-fifth birthday, and twenty-five was the number of the letter Y in the block-alphabet.

The second great event of his life was the Turin lottery, and the number of the lucky ticket was twenty-five. “The last sign given me,” he said, “was the accident in the circus here.” As he spoke, he rolled up the right leg of his trousers, and there, on the outside of the calf, about midway between the knee and ankle, was a red scar forked like the letter Y.

From the time he confided his superstition to me he sought me more than ever. I must confess to feeling, at each visit of his, a little constrained and unnatural. He seemed to lean on me as a protector, and to be hungry all the time for an intimate sympathy I could never give him. Although I shared his secret, I could not lighten the burden of his superstition. His wound had entirely healed, but, as his leg was still weak and he still continued to limp a little, he could not resume his place in the circus. Between brooding over his superstition and worrying about his accident, he grew very despondent. The climax of his hopelessness was reached when the doctor told him at last that he would never be able to vault again. The fracture had been a severe one, the bone having protruded through the skin. The broken parts had knitted with great difficulty, and the leg would never be as firm and as elastic as before. Besides, the fracture had slightly shortened the lower leg. His circus career was therefore ended, and he attributed his misfortune to the ill-omened letter Y.

Just about the time of his greatest despondency, war was declared between Russia and Turkey. The Turkish embassadors were drumming up recruits all over Western Europe. News came to the circus boarding-house that good riders were wanted for the Turkish mounted gendarmes. Nagy resolved to enlist, and we went together to the Turkish embassy. He was enrolled after only a superficial examination, and was directed to present himself on the following day to embark for Constantinople. He begged me to go with him to the rendez-vous, and there I bade him adieu. As I was shaking his hand he showed me the certificate given him by the Turkish embassador. It bore the date of May 25, and at the bottom was a signature in Turkish characters which could be readily distorted by the imagination into a rude and scrawling Y.

* * * * *

A series of events occurring immediately after Nagy left for Constantinople resulted in my own unexpected departure for the seat of war in a civil capacity in the Russian army. The series of curious coincidences in the experience of the circus-rider had impressed me very much when he related them, but in the excitement of the Turkish campaign I entirely forgot him and his story. I do not, indeed, recall any thought of Nagy during the first five months in the field. The day after the fall of Plevna I rode towards the town through the line of deserted earthworks. The dead were lying where they had fallen in the dramatic and useless sortie of the day before. The corpses on a battle-field always excite fresh interest, no matter if the spectacle be an every-day one; and as I rode slowly along I studied the attitudes of the dead soldiers, speculating on the relation between the death-poses and the last impulse that had animated the living frame. Behind a rude barricade of wagons and household goods, part of the train of non-combatants which Osman Pasha had ordered to accompany the army in the sortie, a great number of dead lay in confusion. The peculiar position of one of these instantly attracted my eye. He had fallen on his face against the barricade, with both arms stretched above his head, evidently killed instantly. The figure on the alphabet-block, described by the circus-rider, came immediately to my mind. My heart beat as I dismounted and looked at the dead man’s face. It was unmistakably Turkish.

This incident revived my interest in the life of the circus-rider, and gave me an impulse to look among the prisoners to see if by chance he might be with them. I spent a couple of days in distributing tobacco and bread in the hospitals and among the thirty thousand wretches herded shelterless in the snow. There were some of the mounted gendarmes among them, and I even found several Hungarians; but none of them had ever heard of the circus-rider.

The passage of the Balkans was a campaign full of excitement, and was accompanied by so much hardship that selfishness entirely got the upperhand of me, and life became a battle for physical comfort. After the passage of the mountain range, we went ahead so fast that I had little opportunity, even if I had the enterprise, to look among the few prisoners for the circus-rider.

Time passed, and we were at the end of a three days’ fight near Philippopolis, in the middle of January. Suleiman Pasha’s army, defeated, disorganized, and at last disbanded, though to that day still unconquered, had finished the tragic act of its last campaign with the heroic stand made in the foot-hills of the Rhodope Mountains, near Stanimaka, south of Philippopolis. A long month in the terrible cold, on the summits of the Balkan range; the forced retreat through the snow after the battle of Taskosen; the neck-and-neck race with the Russians down the valley of the Maritza; finally, the hot little battle on the river-bank, and the two days of hand-to-hand struggle in the vineyards of Stanimaka--this was a campaign to break the constitution of any soldier. Days without food, nights without shelter from the mountain blasts, always marching and always fighting, supplies and baggage lost, ammunition and artillery gone--human nature could hold out no longer, and the Turkish army dissolved away into the defiles of the Rhodopes. Unfortunately for her, Turkey has no literature to chronicle, no art to perpetuate, the heroism of her defenders.

The incidents of that short campaign are too full of horror to be related. Not only did the demon of war devour strong men, but found dainty morsels for its bloody maw in innocent women and children. Whole families, crazed by the belief that capture was worse than death, fought in the ranks with the soldiers. Women, ambushed in coverts, shot the Russians as they rummaged the captured trains for much-needed food. Little children, thrown into the snow by the flying parents, died of cold and starvation, or were trampled to death by passing cavalry. Such a useless waste of human life has not been recorded since the indiscriminate massacres of the Middle Ages.

The sight of human suffering soon blunts the sensibilities of any one who lives with it, so that he is at last able to look upon it with no stronger feeling than that of helplessness. Resigned to the inevitable, he is no longer impressed by the woes of the individual. He looks upon the illness, wounds, and death of the soldier as a part of the lot of all combatants, and comes to consider him an insignificant unit of the great mass of men. At last, only novelties in horrors will excite his feelings.

I was riding back from the Stanimaka battle-field, sufficiently elated at the prospect of a speedy termination of the war--now made certain by the breaking-up of Suleiman’s army--to forget where I was, and to imagine myself back in my comfortable apartments in Paris. I only awoke from my dream at the station where the highway from Stanimaka crosses the railway line about a mile south of Philippopolis. The great wooden barracks had been used as a hospital for wounded Turks, and, as I drew up my horse at the door, the last of the lot of four hundred, who had been starving there nearly a week, were being placed upon carts to be transported to the town. The road to Philippopolis was crowded with wounded and refugees. Peasant families struggled along with all their household goods piled upon a single cart. Ammunition wagons and droves of cattle, rushing along against the tide of human beings towards the distant bivouacs, made the confusion hopeless. Night was fast coming on, and, in company with a Cossack, who was, like myself, seeking the headquarters of General Gourko, I made my way through the tangle of men, beasts, and wagons in the direction of the town. It was one of those chill, wet days of winter when there is little comfort away from a blazing fire, and when good shelter for the night is an absolute necessity. The drizzle had saturated my garments, and the snow-mud had soaked my boots. Sharp gusts of piercing wind drove the cold mist along, and as the temperature fell in the late afternoon, the slush of the roads began to stiffen and the fog froze where it gathered. Every motion of the limbs seemed to expose some unprotected part of the body to the cold and wet. No amount of exercise that was possible with stiffened limbs and in wet garments would warm the blood. Leading my horse, I splashed along, holding my arms away from my body, and only moving my benumbed fingers to wipe the chill drip from my face. It was weather to take the courage out of the strongest man, and the sight of the soaked and shivering wounded, packed in the jolting carts or limping through the mud, gave me, hardened as I was, a painful contraction of the heart. The best I could do was to lift upon my worn-out horse one brave young fellow who was hobbling along with a bandaged leg. Followed by the Cossack, whose horse bore a similar burden, I hurried along, hoping to get under cover before dark. At the entrance to the town numerous camp-fires burned in the bivouacs of the refugees, who were huddled together in the shelter of their wagons, trying to warm themselves in the smoke of the wet fuel. I could see the wounded, as they were jolted past in the heavy carts, look longingly at the kettles of boiling maize which made the evening meal of the houseless natives.

Inside the town, the wounded and the refugees were still more miserable than those we had passed on the way. Loaded carts blocked the streets. Every house was occupied, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with Russian soldiers, who looked wretched enough in their dripping overcoats, as they stamped their rag-swathed feet. At the corner, in front of the great Khan, motley groups of Greeks, Bulgarians, and Russians were gathered, listlessly watching the line of hobbling wounded as they turned the corner to find their way among the carts, up the hill to the hospital, near the Konak. By the time I reached the Khan the Cossack who accompanied me had fallen behind in the confusion, and, without waiting for him, I pushed along, wading in the gutter, dragging my horse by the bridle. Half-way up the hill I saw a crowd of natives watching with curiosity two Russian guardsmen and a Turkish prisoner. The latter was evidently exhausted, for he was crouching in the freezing mud of the street. Presently the soldiers shook him roughly, and raised him forcibly to his feet, and, half supporting him between them, they moved slowly along, the Turk balancing on his stiffened legs, and swinging from side to side.

He was a most wretched object to look at. He had neither boots nor fez; his feet were bare, and his trousers were torn off near the knee, and hung in tatters around his mud-splashed legs. An end of the red sash fastened to his waist trailed far behind in the mud. A blue-cloth jacket hung loosely from his shoulders, and his hands and wrists dangled from the ragged sleeves. His head rolled around at each movement of the body, and at short intervals the muscles of the neck would rigidly contract. All at once he drew himself up with a shudder and sank down in the mud again.

The guardsmen were themselves near the end of their strength, and their patience was well-nigh finished as well. Rough mountain marching had torn the soles from their boots, and great, unsightly wraps of raw-hide and rags were bound on their feet. The thin, worn overcoats, burned in many places, flapped dismally against their ankles; and their caps, beaten out of shape by many storms, clung drenched to their heads. They were in no condition to help any one to walk, for they could scarcely get on alone. They stood a moment shivering, looked at each other, shook their heads as if discouraged, and proceeded to rouse the Turk by hauling him upon his feet again. The three moved on a few yards, and the prisoner fell again, and the same operation was repeated. All this time I was crowding nearer and nearer, and as I got within a half-dozen paces, the Turk fell once more, and this time lay at full length in the mud. The guardsmen tried to rouse him by shaking, but in vain. Finally, one of them, losing all patience, pricked him with his bayonet on the lower part of the ribs exposed by the raising of the jacket as he fell. I was now near enough to act, and with a sudden clutch I pulled the guardsman away, whirled him around, and stood in his place. As I was stooping over the Turk he raised himself slowly, doubtless aroused by the pain of the puncture, and turned on me a most beseeching look, which changed at once into something like joy and surprise. Immediately a death-like pallor spread over his face, and he sank back again with a groan.

By this time quite a crowd of Bulgarians had gathered around us, and seemed to enjoy the sight of a suffering enemy. It was evident that they did not intend to volunteer any assistance, so I helped the wounded Russian down from my saddle, and invited the natives rather sternly to put the Turk in his place. With true Bulgarian spirit they refused to assist a Turk, and it required the argument of the raw-hide (_nagajka_) to bring them to their senses. Three of them, cornered and flogged, lifted the unconscious man and carried him towards the horse; the soldiers meanwhile, believing me to be an officer, standing in the attitude of attention. As the Bulgarians bore the Turk to the horse, a few drops of blood fell to the ground. I noticed then that he had his shirt tied around his left shoulder, under his jacket. Supported in the saddle by two natives on each side, his head falling forward on his breast, the wounded prisoner was carried with all possible tenderness to the Stafford House Hospital, near the Konak. As we moved slowly up the hill, I looked back, and saw the two guardsmen sitting on the muddy sidewalk, with their guns leaning against their shoulders--too much exhausted to go either way.

I found room for my charge in one of the upper rooms of the hospital, where he was washed and put into a warm bed. His wound proved to be a severe one. A Berdan bullet had passed through the thick part of the left pectoral, out again, and into the head of the humerus. The surgeon said that the arm would have to be operated on, to remove the upper quarter of the bone.

The next morning I went to the hospital to see what had become of the wounded man, for the incident of the previous evening had made a deep impression on my mind. As I walked through the corridor I saw a group around a temporary bed in the corner. Some one was evidently about to undergo an operation, for an assistant held at intervals a great cone of linen over a haggard face on the pillow, and a strong smell of chloroform filled the air. As I approached, the surgeon turned around, and, recognizing me, said with a nod and a smile, “We are at work on your friend.” While he was speaking, he bared the left shoulder of the wounded man, and I saw the holes made by the bullet as it passed from the pectoral into the upper part of the deltoid. Without waiting longer, the surgeon made a straight cut downward from near the acromion through the thick fibre of the deltoid to the bone. He attempted to sever the tendons so as to slip the head of the humerus from the socket, but failed. He wasted no time in further trial, but made a second incision from the bullet-hole diagonally to the middle of the first cut, and turned the pointed flap up over the shoulder. It was now easy to unjoint the bones, and but a moment’s work to saw off the shattered piece of the humerus, tie the severed arteries, and bring the flap again into its place.

There was no time to pause, for the surgeon began to fear the effects of the chloroform on the patient. We hastened to revive him by every possible means at hand, throwing cold water on him and warming his hands and feet. Although under the influence of chloroform to the degree that he was insensible to pain, he had not been permitted to lose his entire consciousness, and he appeared to be sensible of what we were doing. Nevertheless, he awoke slowly, very slowly, the surgeon meanwhile putting the stitches in the incision. At last he raised his eyelids, made a slight movement with his lips, and then deliberately surveyed the circle of faces gathered closely around the bed. There was something in his eyes which had an irresistible attraction for me, and I bent forward to intercept his gaze. As his eyes met mine they changed as if a sudden light had struck them, and the stony stare gave way to a look of intelligence and recognition. Then, through the beard of a season’s growth, and behind the haggard mask before me, I saw at once the circus-rider of Turin and Paris. I remember being scarcely excited or surprised at the meeting, for a great sense of irresponsibility came over me, and I involuntarily accepted the coincidence as a matter of course. He tried in vain to speak, but held up his right hand and feebly made with his fingers the sign of the letter which had played such an important part in the story of his life. Even at that instant the light left his eyes, and something like a veil seemed drawn over them. With the instinctive energy which possesses every one when there is a chance of saving human life, we redoubled our efforts to restore the patient to consciousness. But while we strove to feed the flame with some of our own vitality, it flickered and went out, leaving the hue of ashes where the rosy tinge of life had been. His heart was paralyzed.

As I turned away, my eye caught the surgeon’s incision, which was now plainly visible on the left shoulder. The cut was in the form of the letter Y.

TEDESCO’S RUBINA

Any one may see among the fragments of antique sculpture in one of the museums of Rome a marble head of a young maiden which has been rudely broken off at the neck. It bears no marks of restoration, and is mounted on the conventional pedestal or support. There is a half-coquettish twinkle in the lines of the mouth and eyes, and a most bewitching expression of innocent youthful happiness about the face, which at once attract and fascinate the eye of even the most careless observer of these relics of ancient art. The head is gracefully poised and exquisitely proportioned, but is not conventionalized to the degree usual in busts of a similar character. Indeed, notwithstanding its classical aspect, there is a marked individuality of treatment noticeable in its composition, if I may so call the arrangement of the hair and the pose of the head. The features are small and regular; the chin a trifle too delicate, if possible, to complete the full oval suggested by the upper part of the face; and the hair, in which a wreath of ivy is twined, clusters in slender, irregular curls around a low forehead, and is gathered behind in a loose knot. One tress of hair, escaping from the embrace of the ivy-branch, caressingly clings to the neck. On the pedestal is the label:

“A Roman Nymph--Fragment.”

Visiting the museum one day in company with two artist friends, I pointed this head out to them as we were hastily passing through the room. Like myself, they were enchanted with the fragment, and lingered to sketch it. They were very long in making their sketches; and after they declared them finished, shut their books with a resolute air, walked briskly off, but returned again, one after the other, to take another look. At last I succeeded in dragging them away; but while we were examining another part of the collection, in an adjoining room, each disappeared in turn, and came back, after a few minutes’ absence, with the volunteered excuse that he had found it necessary to put a last touch on his drawing of the attractive fragment. When we left the museum both of my infatuated friends had made arrangements with the custodian to permit a moulder to come and take a cast of the head.

The island of Capri is the most delightful spot in the Mediterranean. Blessed with a fine climate, a comparatively fertile soil, and a contented population, it is one of the best places accessible to the ordinary traveller in which to spend a quiet season. In this refuge life does not sparkle, but stagnates. Tired nerves recover their tone in the eventless succession of lazy days. Overtaxed digestion regains its normal strength through the simple diet, the pure air, and the repose of mind and body which are found in this paradise. Of late years the island has become a great resort for artists of all nationalities. Many good studios are to be had there; plenty of trained models of both sexes and all ages are eager to work for trifling wages; living is cheap, rents are by no means exorbitant, and subjects for pictures abound at every step.

A few modern buildings of some pretensions to size and architectural style have been erected within the last twenty or thirty years, but the greater part of the houses on the island, both in the town of Capri and in the village of Anacapri, are very old and exceedingly simple in construction. The streets of the town are narrow and crooked, and twist about in a perfect maze of tufa walls and whitewashed façades, straggling away in all directions from the piazza. The dwellings of the poorer classes are jumbled together along these narrow streets as if space were very valuable. They overhang and even span the roadway at intervals, and frequently the flat roof of one house serves as a _loggia_, or broad balcony, for the one above it. Small gardens are sometimes cultivated on these housetops, and the bleating of goats and cackling of hens are often heard in the shrubbery there. Not the least among the many attractions of Capri are its historical relics. Ruined Roman villas and palaces abound all over the hills; traces of ancient baths and grottos of the nymphs may be seen along the water’s edge; and fragments of Roman architecture are built into every wall, and into almost every house. The peculiar geological formation of the island furnishes the excuse for a variety of short and pleasant excursions; for there are numbers of interesting caves, strange rock forms, and grandly picturesque cliffs and cañons within easy reach by sea or by land.

When I was in Capri, there was one remarkably pretty girl among the models, called Lisa. She was only fifteen years old, but, like the usual type of Southern maiden, was as fully developed as if she were three or four years older. Her father and mother were dead, and she lived with her great-grandmother in a small house of a single room in a narrow street which ran directly under my bedroom. None of the houses of the quarter where my studio and apartment were situated had glass in the windows, but the interiors were lighted, like those of the ancient Romans, by square holes provided with wooden shutters. From the rude window in my bedroom, and also from the _loggia_ in front of the studio, I could look directly down into the small dwelling below, and at all times of the day could see the old woman knitting in the shadow just inside the open door, and Lisa flitting about, busy with the primitive housekeeping. Whenever I wanted the girl to sit for me, I had only to call down and she would come up to the studio. It takes but a few days to become intimately acquainted with the simple-hearted islanders, and in a short time the old woman grew very friendly and communicative. At my invitation she frequently came to sit on the _loggia_, whence she could look over the sea, towards the south, to watch for returning coral fishermen, or on the other side, to the north and east, where Naples shimmered in the sun, and Vesuvius reared its sombre cone. She was not comely to look upon, for she was wrinkled beyond belief, and her parchment skin was the color of oak-tanned leather. She often said that Lisa was the image of her own family, but I could trace no resemblance between the blooming maid and the withered dame. The chief beauty of the young girl’s face, or at least the most remarkable feature of it, was the eyes, which were of a deep-blue gray, almost as brilliant as the rich, dark ones common to the Italian type, but more unique and more charming in contrast with the olive-tinted skin and black hair. The old woman’s eyes were as dark as those of the generality of her race, and apparently but little dimmed by her great age. All over the island she had the reputation of being the oldest inhabitant; but as she could not remember the date of her birth--if, indeed, she ever knew it--and as there had been no records kept at the time she was born, there was no means of proving the truth or the falsity of the tales about her wonderful age. She bore everywhere the peculiar name of La Rubina di Tedesco--Tedesco’s Rubina--the significance of which, although it was variously explained by common tradition, had really been forgotten more than a generation before, and was now known only to herself. The islanders are fond of giving nicknames, and I should not have remarked this one among so many others if it had not been for the word Tedesco, which in Italian means German. My curiosity was excited on this account, to discover what the name really meant and why it had been given to her.

In the long summer twilights I used to talk with the old woman by the hour, or rather I used to listen to her by the hour, for without a word of encouragement from me she would drone on in her queer patois in the garrulous way very old people have, elaborating the details of the most trivial incidents, and rehearsing the intimate family history of all her numerous acquaintances. She looked upon me with the more favor because it happened that I was the only artist who employed Lisa, and consequently furnished all the money for the support of the small household. Relying on the position I held in her esteem as patron, and cannily increasing her obligation to me by various small presents, I schemed for a long time to make her tell the history of her own life. She had an aggravating way of either utterly ignoring all questions on this subject, or else of taking refuge in a series of wails on the change in the times and on the degeneracy of the islanders. By degrees and at long intervals I did, however, succeed in getting a full account of her early life and of the origin of her popular name.

Long ago, even long before any steamers were seen on the Bay of Naples, two young Germans--a sculptor and an architect--wandered down to Capri, to study the antiquities of the island. They were both captivated by the beauties of the spot, by the delights of the pastoral life they led there, and possibly also by the charms of the island maidens, who even then had a wide reputation for beauty, and they consequently stayed on indefinitely. Rubina was then a girl of fourteen, and held the enviable position of belle of Anacapri. The sculptor, whose name was Carl Deutsch, somehow made the acquaintance of the beauty, and after a time persuaded her to sit to him. He first made a bust in wax, and then began to work it out in marble, using for his material an antique block found in one of the ruined palaces of Tiberius. Days and weeks he toiled over this bust, and as he worked he grew hopelessly in love with his model. As time passed, the islanders, with their usual freedom with foreigners’ names, translated Carl Deutsch into its Italian equivalent, Carlo Tedesco, and Rubina, who was constantly employed by the sculptor as a model, was naturally called Tedesco’s Rubina.

Then on the peaceful island was enacted the same old tragedy that has been played all over the world myriads of times before and since. Tedesco’s friend, the architect, also fell in love with the model, and took advantage of the sculptor’s preoccupation with his work to gain the girl’s affection. Early in the morning, while his friend was engaged in preparing his clay and arranging his studio for the day, he would toil up the six hundred stone steps which led to the village of Anacapri, on the plateau above, meet Rubina, and accompany her down as far as the outskirts of the town. Then often, at the close of the day, when the sculptor, oppressed with the hopeless feeling of discouragement and despair which at times comes over every true artist, would give up his favorite stroll with Rubina and remain to gaze at his work and ponder over it, the architect would be sure to take his place. So it went on to the usual climax. Rubina, flattered by the assiduous attentions of the one, and somewhat piqued by the frequent fits of absent-mindedness and preoccupation of the other, at last reluctantly gave her consent to marry the architect, who planned an elopement without exciting a suspicion on the part of the sculptor that his idol was stolen from him. The faithless friend, pretending to the innocent girl that, being of different religions, it was necessary for them to go to the mainland to be married, sailed away with her one morning at daybreak without the knowledge of any one save the two men who were hired to row them to Naples. Where they went, and how long they lived together, I could not find out, for she would not open her lips about that portion of her history. Only after a great deal of persuasive interrogation did I learn that when she came back she brought with her a girl baby a few months old. It was always believed in the village that her husband had died. I drew my own inference about the circumstances of her return.

When she reached the island, Tedesco had long since disappeared, and, although there were no absolute proofs, he was thought to be dead. For months after he had learned of the faithlessness of both sweetheart and friend he had been seen very little outside his studio. What he did there was not known, for he invited nobody to enter. Even the neighbor’s wife who had done the housekeeping for the two young men did not see the interior of the studio after Rubina ran away. She gossiped of the sculptor to the women down the street, and they all shook their heads, touched their foreheads significantly with index-fingers, and sadly repeated, “_Un po’ matto, un po’ matto_”--“A little mad.” Several weeks passed after the flight of the young couple, and then the sculptor was observed nearly every morning to walk over one of the hills in the direction of a high cliff. Sometimes he was absent but a few hours, but on other days he did not return until night. At length, towards the end of winter, he gave up his studio and apartment without a word of his plans to any one. When he had departed, carrying the few articles of clothing which were kept in the outer room, the housekeeper entered the studio and found, to her astonishment, that, with the sculptor, all traces of his work had disappeared.

After a while it was discovered that he had taken up his abode in a certain cave near the water’s edge, at the foot of the cliff, along the top of which he had been frequently seen walking. This cave had always been considered approachable only from the water side; but some men who were fishing for cuttlefish near the shore had seen the mad sculptor clamber down the precipice and enter the mouth of the cave, which was half closed by accumulated rubble and sand. The fishermen, of course, exaggerated their story, and the simple islanders, who always regard a demented person with awe, came to believe that the sculptor possessed superhuman strength and agility; and, although their curiosity concerning his mode of life and occupation was much excited, their superstitious fears prevented them from interfering with him or attempting to investigate his actions. At long intervals the hermit would appear in the piazza, receive his letters, buy a few articles of food, and disappear again, not to be seen for weeks.

Summer passed and a second winter came on, and with it a succession of unusually severe storms. During one of these long gales the sea rose several feet, and the breakers beat against the rocks with terrific force. On the weather side of the island all the boats which had not been hauled up much higher than usual were dashed to pieces. No one dared to leave the island, and there was no communication with the mainland for nearly two weeks. After that storm the sculptor was never seen again. Some fishermen ventured into the mouth of the cave, now washed clear of rubbish, but discovered nothing. It was therefore believed that the hermit, with all his belongings, was swept out to sea by the waves. Of late years no one had visited the cave, because the military guard stationed near by to prevent the people from gathering salt on the rocks, and thus evading the payment of the national tax on this article, had prohibited boats from landing there. This prohibition was strengthened by the orders which forbade the exploration of any of the Roman ruins or grottos on the island by persons not employed for that purpose by the government. Several years before, the authorities had examined all the ruins. They had carried to Naples all the antiquities they could find, and then had put a penalty on the explorations of the islanders, to whom the antiquities are popularly supposed to belong by right of inheritance. This regulation had created a great deal of bad feeling, particularly since several peasants had been fined and imprisoned for simply digging up a few relics to sell to travellers.

I asked the old woman what became of her child, for she did not readily volunteer any information concerning her.

“_Ah, signor padrone_,” she said, “she was a perfect little German, with hair as blond as the fleece of the yellow goats. She was a good child, but was never very strong. She married a coral fisherman when she was seventeen, and died giving birth to Lisa’s mother. Poor thing! May the blessed Maria, mother of God, rest her soul! Lisa’s mother was blond also, but with hair like the flame of sunset. She was a fine, strong creature, and could carry a sack of salt up the steps to Anacapri as well as any girl in the village--yes, even better than any other. She married a custom-house officer and moved to Naples, where she had meat on her table once every blessed week. But even in her prosperity the misfortunes of the family followed her, and the cholera carried off her husband, herself, and a boy baby--may their souls rest in Paradise!--leaving Lisa alone in the world but for me, who have lived to see all this misery and all these changes. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Lisa resembles her mother only in her eyes. All the rest of her is Caprian. Ah me! ah me! She’s the image of what I was, except her eyes. By the grace of God I am able to see it! May the Virgin spare her to suffer--” and so on to the end of the chapter of mingled family history and invocations.

Lisa resemble her? I thought. Impossible. What! that wrinkled skin ever know the bloom of youth like that on Lisa’s cheek; that sharp chin ever have a rounded contour; that angular face ever show as perfect an oval as the one fringed by the wavy hair straggling out from Lisa’s kerchief? Did that mask, seared with the marks of years of suffering, privation, and toil, ever bear the sweet, bewitching expression which in Lisa’s face haunts me with a vague, half-remembered fascination? Never! It cannot be!

This history of a love-tragedy, enacted when Goethe was still walking among the artificial antiquities in the groves of Weimar had a curious charm for me. I patiently listened to hours of irrelevant gossip and uninteresting description of family matters before I succeeded in getting together even as meagre a thread of the story as the one I have just repeated. The old woman had a feeble memory for recent events and dates, but she seemed to be able to recollect as well as ever incidents which took place at the beginning of the century. She retailed the scandals of fifty years ago with as much delight as if the interested parties had not all of them long since been followed to the hillside graveyard or been buried in the waste of waters in that mysterious region known as the coral fisheries.

Partly in order to test the accuracy of her memory, and partly to satisfy my curiosity, I persuaded her to show me the place where the sculptor used to walk along the edge of the cliff. I had previously taken a look at the cave from the water, and knew its position in relation to the cliff, but had never been able to discover how the German had succeeded in clambering up and down. Accordingly, one Sunday afternoon, when most of the islanders were in church, she hobbled along with me a short distance up the hillside and pointed out the spot where the children had seen the mad sculptor vanish in the air. This place was marked by a projecting piece of rock, which cropped out of the turf on the very edge of the cliff, not at its highest point, but at some distance down the shoulder of the hill, where it had been broken sheer off in the great convulsion of nature which raised the isolated, lofty island above the sea. I could not induce her to go within a dozen rods or more of the edge of the cliff, and, having shown me the spot I wished to find, she hobbled homeward again.

There was no path across the hill in any direction, and the scant grass was rarely trodden except by the goats and their keepers. On that Sunday forenoon there was no one in sight except, a long distance off, a shepherd watching a few goats. Thinking it a favorable opportunity to investigate the truth of the story about the sculptor, I walked up to the very brink of the precipice and lay down flat on the top of the piece of rock pointed out by the old woman, and cautiously looked over the abyss. The cliff below me was by no means sheer, for it was broken by a number of irregular shelf-like projections, a few inches wide, upon which loose bits of falling stone had caught from time to time. Cautiously looking over the cliff, I saw at once that it would be possible for me to let myself down to the first irregular projection, or bench, provided I could get some firm hold for my hands. The turf afforded no such hold, and at the very edge, where it was crumbled by the weather, it was so broken as to be dangerous to stand on. I looked along the smooth, perpendicular ledge, but found no ring to fasten a rope to and no marks of any such contrivance. A careful search in the immediate neighborhood disclosed no signs of a wooden post or stake, or, indeed, anything which would serve as an anchor for a hand rope. I lay down and hung over the cliff, to see if I could discover any traces of a ladder, marks of spikes, tell-tale streaks of iron-rust, or anything to show how the descent had been made. Nothing of the kind was visible.

Far below, the great expanse of turquoise sea, stained with the shadows of summer clouds, seemed to rise with a convex surface to meet the sky at the distant horizon line. Away off to the south, towards Stromboli and Sicily, a few sails, minute white dots relieved against the delicate blue water, hung motionless, as if suspended in an opalescent ether. To the left the green shores of the mainland stretched away to hazy Pæstum. To the right the headland of Anacapri rose majestically against the tender summer sky, and a bank of cumulus clouds was reflected in the smooth sea. Beneath screamed a flock of sea-gulls, sailing hither and thither in graceful flight.

While dreaming over the beauty of the scene before me, I suddenly caught sight out of the very corner of my eye, as it were, of a crevice in the ledge beside me, almost hidden by the grass which grew tall against the rock. Hastily tearing the grass away with my right hand, I found that this cleft, which was only a couple of inches wide at the most, continued downward along the face of the cliff in a slanting direction, rapidly diminishing in width until it lost itself or became a simple crack in the rock. With my knife and fingers I dug the cleft out clean, as far in as I could reach, expecting to find an iron rod or a spike or something to which a rope could be fastened. But I was again disappointed, for there were no signs of iron and no visible marks of man’s handiwork. Whether this was an artificial excavation in the rock, or merely an accidental irregularity, I could not determine, but it made a perfect hold for the hand, like an inverted draw-pull. The moment I discovered this I saw how the descent could easily be accomplished, and without stopping to reflect I clutched my right hand firmly in the cleft and swung off the cliff. My feet struck a pile of loose stones, but I soon kicked them off, made a solid foothold for myself, and then cautiously turned around. The wall of rock pitched backward sufficiently for me to lean up against it, with my face to the sea, and stand there perfectly secure. When I turned again and stood facing the rock, my head was above the edge of the cliff so that I could overlook quite an area of the hilltop. Before attempting to descend the cliff I thought it prudent to test my ability to reach the turf again. Seizing the cleft with the fingers of my right hand, and clutching the irregularities of the edge of the rock with my left, I easily swung myself upon my chest, and then upon my knees, and stood on the turf. Elated now by my success, I let myself over the edge again, and began the difficult task of picking my way down the face of the cliff. By diligently kicking and pushing the rubble from the bench I was on, I slowly made my way along, steadying myself as well as I could by putting my fingers in the crevices of the rock. In two places I found three or four holes, which had the appearance of having been artificially made, and by the aid of these I let myself down to the second and third projecting benches. From this point the descent was made without much difficulty, although I carefully refrained from casting my eyes seaward during the whole climb. Fortunately I was on the face of the cliff, which was at a receding angle, and consequently was not swept by the telescope of the guard on the beach to the right, and I finished the descent and reached a point to the left of the mouth of the cave, and on a level with it, without any interruption. I was too much fatigued to care to risk discovery by the guard in entering the cave, which was in full sight of his station; so, after resting awhile on the rocks, I clambered up the path I had come, and found that the ascent, though toilsome, was not particularly difficult.

I told no one of my adventure, not even the old woman; but early the next Sunday morning I went down the cliff again, unobserved as before, and, watching my chance when the guard was sweeping the shore to the right with his glass, I stole into the cave. It was an irregular hole, perhaps thirty feet deep at its greatest length, and not over ten feet high in any part. Three shallow, alcove-like chambers led off the main room. These were all three nearly full of gravel, sand, and disintegrated rock, and the floor of the whole cavern was covered with this same accumulation. There were plentiful marks of the labors of the Italian antiquarians, for the ground had all been dug up, and the last shallow pits which had been excavated to the bed-rock had not been refilled.

With no settled purpose I took up a piece of an old spade I found there, and began to dig on one side of the cave near the largest alcove. The accumulation was not packed hard, and I easily threw it aside. I had removed a few feet of earth without finding anything to reward my labors, and then began to dig in the heap of rubbish which was piled in the alcove, nearly touching its low ceiling. Almost the first shovelful of earth I threw out had a number of small gray tesseræ in it. Gathering these up and taking them to the light, I found that part of them were of marble, or other light-colored stone; but that a few were of glass with a corroded surface, which could be clipped off with great ease, disclosing beautiful iridescent cubes underneath. The whole day was passed in this work, for I was much interested in my discovery. The tesseræ were of no great value, to be sure, but they proved that the cave had been used by the Romans, probably as a grotto of the nymphs, and they were certainly worth keeping in a private collection. Possibly not a little of the charm of the operation of excavating was due to the element of danger in it. The guard was stationed less than a rifle-shot away, and if I had been discovered, fine and possibly imprisonment would have been my lot.

To make a long story short, I made several excursions to the cave in the same manner, and dug nearly the whole ground in a systematic way, leaving until the last a small alcove near the mouth of the cave, because I found very few tesseræ anywhere in the strong daylight. Everything which was not a simple, uninteresting piece of stone or shell I stowed away in a bag and carried to my studio. In a few Sundays I had a peck or more of tesseræ, a quarter of them glass ones, and a great many bits of twisted glass rod and small pieces of glass vessels. One day the spade turned out, among other things, several small pieces of brown, porous substance which looked in the dim light like decayed wood. I put them in the bag with the rest, to be examined at my leisure at home. The next morning, when I came to turn out the collection gathered the day before, these curious pieces fell out with the rest, and immediately attracted my attention. In the strong light of day, I saw at once what they were. They were the decayed phalanges of a human hand. The story of Tedesco and Rubina was always in my mind; and I compared the bones with my own fingers, and found them to be without doubt the bones of an adult, and probably of a man.

I could scarcely wait for the next Sunday to arrive, but I did not dare to risk the descent of the cliff on a week-day lest I should be seen by the fishermen. When at last I did reach the cave again, I went at my work with vigor, continuing my search in the place where I left off the previous week. In a short time I unearthed several more bones similar to those I already had, but, although I thoroughly examined every cubic foot of earth which I had not previously dug over, I found no more of the skeleton.