Chapter XXVII: I Know How to Wait

Caserta Palace was a sort of Versailles to the Palazzo Reale. It was a fine, long, rectangular building, lofty and imposing in the eighteenth century style of grand architecture, with marble colonnades and innumerable windows. The town it dominated, being a royal town _par excellence_, was comparatively clean and reposeful; and the palace gardens were as extensive and as beautiful as any in the world.

It was not, however, to a corner of this stately pile that I found myself committed, but to rooms in the Casino of St. Lucius, which stood in the park some two miles north of the main building, and commanded a noble view, not only of the surrounding country, but of the dark pruned alleys beset with white statues, and the terraces and fountains and cascades of the gardens themselves--a lovely spot. And here, for the moment secure and at peace, I resolved upon a life of placid enchantment, treated like a queen’s hostage, and biding the development of events.

I had my little sleepy, soft-footed household--an old groom, a pretty maid or two, and a quite delectable cook. No restrictions were placed upon me; I was free to wander as I listed, and, indeed, had no inducement to venture without the cordon of sentries who were my best protection. The month was April, the most lovely in all Naples; and, save when Capri, showing near and blue, gave indications of the scirocco, I spent all my days out of doors. So tranquil was it, so remote from the centres of ferment, I could have thought myself in Avalon, though all the while and around the clouds of a coming tempest were gathering to burst. As I loitered by those empty corridors of green, smiling back the smiles of the unruffled statues, listening to the drowsy thunder of the waters, seeing only for all tokens of human life the little marionnettes of place swarming, quite distant and minute, about the steps of the palace, France was preparing to launch her legions on Naples both by land and sea; scared refugee cardinals were trotting by the dozen into the city; Nelson, off Toulon, was shaping his course, by way of Aboukir, to the arms of Mrs. Hart; Ferdinand was tremblingly fastening his warlike greaves on his fat shins; and, finally, Maria Carolina was making her bloody tally for the hangman. And only of the last was I actively cognisant, seeing that it was there alone lay my concern with the outer world.

From time to time M. de’ Medici would visit me in this connection, coming ingratiatory and quite lover-like to refresh his portfolio with new names from my list, or to examine my correspondence, which was entirely at his service. I had taken no half-measures. The spared assassin comes to strike again, was my motto.

“Have I not proved myself a sincere convert?” I said to him once.

“Assuredly, most beautiful,” he answered; and fell to counting on his fingers. “You have given us already certain proof of the guilty complicity of--One: Signor Domenico Cirillo, professor of botany, arborist, edenist, pupil of Jean Jacques, too delicate a flower for this climate; two: Francesco Conforti, court theologian, a priest and ambitious--nothing singular, but he will be beaten in the race for power by a neck; three: Carlo Muscari; four: his excellency the Marquis of Polvica, a lamentable case; five: Pasquale Baffi, professor of dead languages, for which he will soon be literally qualified; six: Gennaro Serra di Cassano, a very pretty young gentleman, late released from confinement--but it is sometimes policy to spare the cub, if one would learn the way to the dam; seven:--but, ’tis enough, madam: those six will vindicate you.”

“You are welcome to them, monsieur,” I said, “if only you would exchange against them all my dear, indispensable Gogo.”

At which, as usual, he shook his head, tightening his lips.

“A bond of sentiment. You are better apart.”

“At least you might acquaint me where he is?”

“As to that, he is very safe and well cared for.”

“In prison?”

“Nominally--nominally, _ma belle_. But, observe--so are you, you know. What then? There are prisons and prisons.”

“Well, if he is as well off as I?” I sighed. And, indeed, the assurance was a wonderful comfort to me.

As a matter of course he kept me constantly informed--though I never questioned him--as to the career of the Pissanis, the head and front of all offending.

“Signor Nicola is our bell-wether,” he would say. “We have hung a little invisible cymbal about his neck, which has the strange quality of sounding only to us. O, we police are the latter-day fairies, believe me! All unconsciously to himself, he calls the flock about him; and we--we have nothing to do but keep count of them, till the season of the butcher arrives. Then we shall see. I shall want, perhaps, all the fingers of my own hands, and of yours too--my God, a dainty tally! And madam, you ask--though your lips do not move? It is very laughable, take my word. At once, since her marriage, the dear little frog emulates the bull. O, fie, fie! Madam misreads me. Such a scandal! I would say only that it has inoculated her with her husband’s ambition; that she is become an enthusiast in the cause, attending meetings, distributing tracts, haranguing multitudes in her sweet round voice, that is like pelting giants with sugar-plums. Yes, as madam implies, it is marvellous. What will not love do? But for me, I am susceptible: I adore all beauty. I could wish the poor child another embrace than the hangman’s.”

“Well, sir,” I answered, “you will have occasion, perhaps, to offer her the alternative.”

“O, fie!” he said. “Is not my heart engaged immutably? Otherwise--who knows? It is a sad world.”

It was a very dark and bitter one to me from the moment of his revelations. So, she could be independent of me, and happy in her independence! What a world of hypocrisy and double-dealing was exposed in this her easy repudiation of my claims upon her! During all these years that I had counted her my slave, she had been nursing her schemes of treachery--been manœuvring, probably, to make me the instrument of her conveyance to her lover’s arms. And now, no doubt, they were laughing over their outwitting of me. Well, who laughs last laughs best.

One day I had a notable visit. Two ladies, walking through the grounds, came upon me where I was seated in a grove of myrtle. One was Lady Hamilton, very great and gorgeous in a shell-shaped hat _de sparterie_, trimmed with butterflies and a violet ribbon knotted under one ear; while the other, whom I did not know, a dowdy, ignoble old figure with watery eyes, wore a plain _fichu-chemise_, and an immense bonnet with a veil thrown back over it. They both stopped upon seeing me, and Lady Hamilton beckoned. I rose, advanced, and curtsied.

“Here, your Majesty,” said my friend, “is the very person herself.”

Her Majesty! I paled and trembled; then ventured a glance from under my lashes. Sure I was not to blame for my remissness. I vow I could have thought my lady had brought her monthly nurse with her for an airing in the country. The poor woman looked steeped in caudle, flocky with child-beds, and no wonder. In some two dozen years out of her forty-five or so she had borne near as many children. She had prayed for an heir, and Heaven had sent her a tempest. The eternal lyings-in had soured her temper, which was not further improved by neuralgia and opium. Nursing, as she did, outside her litter, a perpetual ambition to wear the breeches of government, it had been characteristically mean of her husband to adopt this method to correct it. Yet, in spite of all she had borne both from and to her lord, her vigour remained unquenchable. Indeed, in a kingdom which annually abandoned some twenty-five thousand babies to the foundlings, a child was the cheapest present one could make to one’s favourite of the moment. Yet, as I saw her now, she was the farthest from imposing or attractive. Her legs were short, and her upper lip so long that her nose stood nearer her forehead than her chin, on the former of which she wore a single fat curl like a clock-spring. She put a hand to it two or three times, before she addressed me, very quick and hoarse, in French.

“_Maria! Mais elle fait une bonne mine à mauvais jeu!_ Come hither, child. So this is our redoubtable little _moucharde_? We have need of her in these days of the devil’s advocacy.”

Her eyes looked injected; her flabby face puckered at the temples like yellow milk skin. As I approached, she turned away in evident pain. Lady Hamilton was all effusive attentions at once. She waved me to stop, and supported her friend to the seat I had just occupied, commiserating, explaining, and fondling in one.

“O, my darling queen! It is the neuralgia that worries my sweet like a dog. Lean on your Emma. Have you nothing, child--no salts, no drops?”

I fetched a certain vinaigrette from my pocket, and bending before the royal knees, snapped the stopper once or twice under the royal nose. The effect was instantaneous. An expression of maudlin relief succeeded to the strain. She lay breathing peacefully, with a smile on her lips, until, after some minutes, she aroused herself with a sigh.

“What was it, then? It is a Circe, with her witch’s face and her potions!”

But this was to trespass on the other’s domain.

“Give it to me, if you please,” said Mrs. Hart coldly. “Her Majesty would prefer to take it from my hand.”

I returned it quietly to my pocket.

“Nay, madam,” I said; “it is a remedy that must not be repeated.”

She looked at me astounded; then broke into a forced laugh. “Hey-day! We are pretty absolute, are we not?” But the queen, grown suddenly very affable and communicative, put her aside with a hand which she laid upon my arm--

“We will not quarrel with our physician. She knows what she knows. Moreover, for all her long exile and the little errors which she has redeemed, she is of the great nation which we love. Is it not so, child? and hast thou heard what are the best and latest news? None other than that thy glorious captain, the supreme Nelson, has within the last few days annihilated the French fleet at Aboukir! Ah! that rose is from thy heart. It speaks the proud blood, the red rose of England, mantling above all foolish sophistries. Thou canst not but rejoice with us in the destruction of the enemies of thy race--of all the world!”

And then she and the other began a little litany of excommunication:--

“Dogs and assassins!”

“Despoilers of churches and women!”

“Hordes of anti-Christ vomited from hell!”

“Scum and rabble of an infamous democracy!”

“Monsters of sacrilege!”

“Cowards curst of God!”

“Whom to slay is righteousness!”

“To whom to give quarter is deadly sin!”

“Subverters of all order and decency!”

“The devil hang the lot!” said Lady Hamilton.

The queen rose, quite refreshed and reinvigorated. Suddenly she was holding me with a piercing look. Craft and villainy peeped out of her little inflamed eyes.

“I come to put a question to you, madam,” she said. “There is a lady of our retinue--the Signora de Fonseca Pimentel. Your correspondence contains no proof of her disloyalty to us?”

“No, madam, or I should have informed M. de’ Medici,” I answered, in a faint terror; but rallied immediately. “I know only that she is in communication with the Signor Carafa since his escape.”

“Ha!”

The red eyes of the ferret closed a moment, then reopened to an ineffable smile. She held out her hand to me to kiss.

“We find you an invaluable physician, Madame Lavasse. To have eased a poor queen--it is something; but to cure this land of its headache”--

“Ah, madam!” I said, “there I yield to the hangman.”

Both ladies burst out laughing as they moved away. The queen turned and waved her hand.

“You shall not be forgotten,” she cried; and I curtsied.

A few days later M. de’ Medici called upon me. He read out a little indictment he had prepared for my behoof--

“Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, wife to Pasquale Tria de Solis, Neapolitan officer, noble, now deceased: emotional; authoress of some panegyrical sonnets to royalty and the age of gold; since suspect of schemes for the education of the populace; shows a partiality for red; advocates an appropriation of the Punch and Judy shows to the lessons of national virtue; claims the liberty of the press to print her halting rhapsodies;” (Monstrous!) “imputed sympathiser with Ettore Carafa (son to the Duke of Andria, the king’s major-domo, and to the duchess, Her Majesty’s mistress of the robes) in said Ettore’s late conspiracy to print and distribute an Italian version of the ‘Rights of Man,’ which conspiracy resulted in the execution of some companion malignants, and the escape from Naples of said Ettore; finally, convicted of corresponding with said fugitive, to the end of His Majesty’s overthrow and the subversion of his government!”

“Not convicted, M. de’ Medici.”

“That is all one, most beautiful,” said the chief of police, folding his paper. “Madame Lavasse’s word is as good as her bond.”

Within a week the Pimentel was lodged in the prison of the Vicaria.

That was in October; and thenceforward things moved fast, though scarce quick enough for me, who was beginning to beat my wings against the gilded bars of my cage. For what was all the national excitement to me but a means to my personal vengeance? And I feared, feared that while I lay aside for others’ use, my prey would find a means to escape me.

On the 22nd of September I had heard the guns of the citadels down below in the bay welcoming Nelson’s arrival. The sound shook every nerve in my restless heart, so that I could hardly eat or sleep that night; and I laughed myself into hysterics over my little maid Martita’s description of how Madame l’Ambassadrice d’Angleterre had flown up the side of the _Vanguard_, and cast herself upon the breast of her hero, who was a very little man, and quite unable to support so much emotion.

Still, thereafter, as day by day drums beat, and recruits were gathered, and men hanged themselves to avoid serving, and the English admiral was urging upon the poor fat, wind-blown king one of three alternatives: To advance upon the French, and conquer; to die sword in hand; or to remain and be kicked out--while all Naples was seething and roaring in a vortex about my garden, the garden itself remained silent and empty, an island in the midst of a whirlpool.

But at last His Majesty _did_ set out, and reaching actually as far as Rome, while the republican general Championnet was falling back for a spring, blustered naughtily for a little, killing a few Jews, threatening the wounded enemy in the hospitals, committing to sack and pillage the very sacred city he had come to relieve, and finally, upon the approach of the concentrated French, deserting his demoralised army, and pelting back, with all the might of his perspiring legs, to where?--why, to Caserta.

It was evening of the 19th of December, and a thunderstorm, to terrify one to death in that desolate park, had broken over the town. All the imprisoned electricity of months past seemed to me, as I stood fascinated at an upper window of the Casino, to have torn itself free, and to be hunting in and out of the trees for fugitives from its fury. Far away and below the thousand eyes of the palace shut sickly to each blaze, and blinked and were staring frightened again in the crash that followed. The hand of an incensed God bent the proud necks of the trees, and His wrath drove a roar of leaves and twigs criss-cross about the alleys. It was the anarchy beginning.

In the midst I saw two figures, cloaked and dusk, butt their way to the door below; and a moment later Martita summoned me to receive messengers from the palace. I went down, and found two officers, pale and glaring, awaiting me in the parlour. The rain dripped from their unbonneted locks; their hands were restless with their hats and sword-hilts. I curtsied in wonder; and the elder, with a shaky, conciliatory smile, addressed me.

“You will pardon this intrusion, madam. The occasion is our excuse. You have in your possession some charm, some restorative, by which Her Majesty the queen has already greatly benefited?”

“Assuredly, monsieur. It is in my pocket now.”

“It is much needed at the moment. You will vouchsafe us the loan?”

“You must forgive me, monsieur. Its virtue is incommunicable save by the possessor.”

“That is so? Then will madam, perhaps, administer it in person?”

“To whom, monsieur? Monsieur will consider the night.”

“Alas, madam! But to assure that this night shall not be endless--that the sun of our hopes be not extinguished for ever?”

“Pray, sir, have mercy on me. To whom do you allude?”

“To His Majesty--no less.”

“The king?”

“He has but now ridden--been driven, would be truer--from Albano. For the moment everything seems lost. Ferdinand is at the last extreme of exhaustion and agitation. Madam will come to quiet him?”

“I will come, monsieur.”

“Ah! _Dio mercè! Questo benefizio è una grande grazia._”

We set out without delay. My companions took each an arm of me, laughing very gallant scorn of the lightning and my fright thereat. Between them, however, they bruised my poor shoulders horribly, in their instinctive efforts to come together and clutch one another whenever the thunder slammed.

I was so dazed with the rain and uproar that I had little wit left me to note my surroundings as they hurried me, blown and breathless, up a flight of steps into a great hall, blazing with lights, thronged with confusion. Courtiers, nobles, mud-stained soldiers; weeping women, frightened maids--here they stood in gabbling, gesticulating groups, which were constantly detaching and discharging units into other groups, the whole contributing to a sum of frenzy which swayed the candle-flames. And throughout, threading the frantic maze, went scared pages and lackeys; all, from captain to scullion, looking for orders, and receiving none.

There were a few whispers, a few who observed and remarked upon me, as my conductors forced me through the press, crying a passage to the royal closet.

“It is the beautiful English witch! _O, quanti vezzi!_ They are going to try to cure him like King David!”

The opening and swinging-to of a door; as instant a muffling of the tumult; the peace of a lofty anteroom, padded with thick carpets; a muttered challenge, a muttered answer; the passage of a further portal--and I was in the royal presence.

Now, all my life I have had to battle with a fatal sense of humour. I will simply undertake to relate the test to which it was here put.

The room, shut away from all disturbance, was brilliantly lighted. In the midst, at a gorgeous escritoire, sat a secretary in black, biting a pen. Hard by stood a staff officer--in a glittering uniform, but sopped and mud-splashed--who incessantly, with a white, nervous hand, turned down and bit at his moustache, making a motion with his lips as if he were talking to himself. The two all the time followed with their eyes the movements of a third figure, the only other in the room, which went to and fro, up and down, in a sort of tripping dance, gabbling an eternal accompaniment the while to its own _chassé_, and at odd moments ringing a little gilt bell which it carried in its hand. This in itself, to be sure, was sufficiently remarkable; but O, my friend, for the appearance of this eccentric, who indeed was no other than the monarch himself. Cocked on the top of his large head was a little tie-wig, which, for the last touch to disguise, he had borrowed during his flight from the Duke of Ascoli, after exchanging clothes with that peer, who was a much smaller man. The effect may be imagined. His Majesty’s breeches’ ends were half-way up his thighs; his waistcoat was a mere rope under his arm-pits; his coat-tails stuck apart from the small of his back like ill-fitting wing-cases. Add to this that he was pinned all over with holy pictures, and hung with reliquaries and medals like a mountebank at a fair, and the picture is complete.

The lightning penetrated the ruddy blinds with no more than the silent flicker of a ghost; but no glass could muffle the shattering reports of the thunder, at every clap of which His Majesty whinnied and crossed himself--

“O Lord, spare Thine anointed! Beloved saints, be particular to point out to Him where I am!” (ring). “This, you must know, is not my usual cabinet; but I will withdraw to my own, if you desire it, though it is in the hands of the decorators. There!--O!--San Gennaro, protect me! Caution our Master of the risk of striking among the chimneys, lest the levin brand, following a wrong course, enter this room instead of another, and destroy me in mistake for a lesser man” (ring). “_Dio non vóglia!_ O, saints! I believe I am struck! No, it is my breeches splitting. But they are Ascoli’s. Make no mistake, Lord. I am not Ascoli. Take the breeches, but spare the king!”

He shut his ears distracted to a louder boom, and immediately was off again at a tangent--

“O Lady of Loretto, plead for thy servant!” (crash). “_Mea maxima culpa_--I will confess--if your Majesty will condescend to keep it to yourself--I am really a stupid man” (loud ring)--“well meaning, holy mother; well meaning, San Gennaro, but dull, as kings go, and surrounded by greater fools than myself. I have been seventeen times a father” (ring)--“at least” (loud ring), “and only once a husband” (groan). “Fool though I be, I have propagated my race for the glory of Holy Mother Church--and the confusion of the learned, her enemies. For the sake of my family, Madonna, succour me!”

He chattered so loud, racing up and down all the time, that I could hear his every word where I stood, awaiting events, by the door. Once, in a lull of the storm, he swooped round my way, and, suddenly becoming aware of me, stopped as if petrified, then rattled out, in a thick, gulping voice--

“Do you know who I am, madam? Do you know who I am?”

I curtsied profoundly.

“Sire,” I murmured, “--such a little cloud--to hide the sun of Majesty!”

He stared at me, and down at himself. “I am the king,” he muttered; “is it not so?”

The officer hurried to him, and whispered in his ear.

“Eh!” he exclaimed, “my wife’s physician? You find me very distraught, madam, very overtasked. I am so constituted I never could abide thunder”--and he was off again.

“Monsieur,” I whispered, “if we could get him prostrated on a sofa.”

“Ah!” replied the officer, “for myself, it would be madness. But you--you are beautiful--you may dare.”

I did not hesitate, but, stealing catlike to a couch, took the opportunity of His Majesty’s passing to seize him by his wing-cases, and with such effect that in a moment he was sprawling on his back on the cushions, with his legs in the air. Then, before he could protest or avoid me, I had clapped the duck-stone to his nostrils. Instantly the convulsion of his limbs relaxed, and a great sigh heaved itself out of his depths. His wig had tumbled off; his brows were dark over goggle eyes; he had a long, aquiline nose falling to a slack jaw. Imagine all this revealing itself in an expression of the most perfect contentment and idiocy.

The soldier tiptoed across, and looked down scared.

“God in heaven, madam!” he whispered, “what have you done to His Majesty? He is not himself.”

“Pardon me, monsieur,” I said; “never so much so.”

He came round in about ten minutes, and gazed at me in a sort of affectionate beatitude.

“_Dio mercè!_” he murmured; “I dreamt I was in purgatory, and awake to find myself in paradise. Another dose--one more.”

I shook my head.

“Enough is as good as a feast.”

“I will give thee a fortune for thy talisman.”

“Its virtue lies in myself.”

“Ah! Then the casket must be mine too.”

He sat up suddenly, all rumpled, and bellowed out in a thick, slurred voice,--

“Away, dolts and rapscallions! What! are you prying and listening?”

The secretary hurried to the door, and disappeared. The officer lingered only to protest--

“Affairs of urgency, sire”--

“Pooh!” said the king. “I am attending to them.”

I drew away.

“Pardon me, sire”--I began, when a clap of thunder rattled the glass. His Majesty ran at me whimpering--

“You think to leave me? No, no, madam. I am but half recovered yet. I must be watched, or I shall die. For yourself, you are as safe as in a convent.”

He drew himself up, and endeavoured to thrust his hand into the breast of his waistcoat; but not finding any, caught at his braces instead.

“Though all else be lost to Ferdinand, honour remains.”