Chapter II: Marianna

I made my way downward through the huge palace, bowed to this red robe and to that, exchanged greetings with various “Gentlemen Chamberlains” whom I called my friends, promised Monsignore the General of the Dominicans that I would loan him a parcel of Greek books just come from Aldus’s press at Venice, and congratulated Messere Bibbiena on the piquancy and wit of his last comedy--in short, I moved on my way as became a man who knew how to avoid both discourteous haste and needless dallying; until at the entrance gate of the gardens the yellow-clad Swiss guardsman on duty saluted with his halberd, and before me opened the delightful masses of cool shrubbery and green lawn interspersed with the white marble of statuary,--the charming confines of the gardens that I knew so well.

As stated, I was not in good humor. No man could live in Rome, as I had lived in recent years, and fail to come close to deeds which non-Italian folk must needs call murder. Only the year before I had stood with my back to a wall and my rapier and three bravoes before me until timely help arrived; and I had met the instigator of those bravoes at a supper party not long since,--as polite and polished a nobleman as ever graced a court. Yet I had never actually been myself a prime mover in an assassination. I had killed my man in a duel, but that was another matter. I strongly suspected the cardinals had summoned me in, not to secure my help, but to laugh at my squeamishness, and I was inclined to wish that Orosi would grievously disappoint his employers, and turn the laugh against them.

“After all,” I reflected, “I am not certain that I wish to enter the Church; and if I do, His Holiness can give me a better preferment than this debated to-day.”

Likewise the memory of sundry injunctions of my father (grizzled warrior) must needs at such times ring in my ears, especially his word just ere he was slain at Ravenna. “You have your mother’s hair and eyes, my Walter, but your heart is from me; and remember that long as I have lived in this merry southland my heart is German. Live like a German, think like a German, and remember the German honor--the honor of the Regensteins. Many of us have been caught by the Devil; but never has the Devil caught us in the back!”

“And may the Devil eat Orosi, and Forli, too!” I at length muttered. “If the chance comes, I am even minded to give the wink to poor Bari.”

Yet despite my mood I quickened my steps, for I knew my lady would be ungracious over delaying. One or two excursions into the nooks of shrubbery failed to discover her, and I was a little at a loss until I ran upon one of the smooth-lipped eunuch-sopranos of His Holiness’s choir, who informed me that Donna Marianna was walking with a gentleman of the Spanish embassy, near the Pope’s casino; and so near the garden lodge I found her.

Don Velasco let his mustaches quiver with vexation when he saw me,--surely he was having a most pleasant stroll under those splendid box trees: but Madonna knew how to do an ungracious thing graciously. Very politely she explained that the Conte di Palaestro was present by appointment: very ceremoniously Velasco and I scraped and flourished as he bade us farewell. Not until he was fairly out of sight behind a curve in the leafy way did her white hand go out to me, as I fell on my knees and kissed it; then I rose for a fairer kiss upon my lips, whereupon I forgot our conversation; for were we not close together, I at least intoxicated by the glory of her presence, and the mere joy of her companionship?

Years ago it was; and years how full of many things! Yet the richness of those moments in the Vatican gardens lingers with me still. And if you could have seen her then, with the gold of that Latin sunlight pouring itself over her, you would not have wondered that all Rome called me as lucky in my love as in my fortune. For Marianna’s beauty was the hot dark beauty of the south,--of Trojan Helen, of Aspasia, or more likely of Poppaea Sabina, enchantress of Nero. Angel she was not. Pinturicchio’s and Perugino’s seraphs had never such raven hair, nor that full bare neck, nor the black eyes, the cheeks of cream and rose color tinted by the Neapolitan sun: also their glances were mild and dove-like, not lit by Queen Juno’s wit and fire. Still do I see her, as she walked with me; the springtime sun glowing on her face and forehead, on her long arms, on the Arabian pearls upon her hair, the Egyptian turquoise at her throat, and the full satin sheen of her scarlet dress and golden girdle; while all the time her hands flew in those quick Italian gestures, accenting the music of her voice. Verily, were not the Vatican gardens even as the gardens of the Hesperides to me that hour? And would I then have accepted heaven had an archangel offered it?

But at last we were ready to talk of many matters, and plainly Marianna had somewhat to ask.

“So, Gualtiero, you have seen my father?”

“I have just left his chambers.”

“And who was there?”

“Why, Rocca--a little criticism of some of Sanazarro’s verses--”

Marianna shook her head charmingly.

“Manifestly, Gualtiero, your wits were made in the north. Did my father and Rocca meet solely to weigh Latin metres?”

“I do not understand, _cara mia_.”

“The Conte (she called me thus to make me vexed) is disingenuous. I will refresh his memory. He was asked if he did not wish to enter the Church?”

“I was.” It displeased me Forli had revealed matters to his daughter. I always discussed with Marianna at disadvantage.

“And of course you consented?”

“How fast that green lizard runs across the path,” I observed, trying to change the subject.

“Not more fast than a thousand others. Tell me,--are you to be Archbishop of Bari?”

“When I found precisely what their Eminences had to propose,” I replied constrainedly, “I was obliged to decline my share in the project.”

“Excellent!” she clapped her hands prettily. “I have won my wager with Rocca! His best white palfrey against my Moorish boy.”

“Your wager with Rocca?”

“Assuredly. You remember the horse races in the Piazza di San Pietro? I sat with Rocca near His Holiness at the Vatican windows. We talked of you and your northern ancestry. Rocca vowed you had become wholly Italian, a true virtuoso and humanist. I rejoined I knew you better. You would fight a score of duels, but never hire a bravo. He doubted. We laid a wager. My father’s plans fell in well with the test. He has long held you must enter the Church, in justice both to yourself and your friends. Bari of course has been a marked man for months. To-day the bait was proffered you. _Ecco!_ I have won.”

With any save Marianna, I would have been exceeding angry, but with her hand upon my wrist, her breath almost upon my face, I think she could have said, “I will feed you to the Hydra,” and I would have cheerfully assented. After I had finished laughing at her pleasantly, I asked why she seemed so anxious to have me enter the Church.

“Because, Gualtiero _mio_, look on the world,--I mean, of course, Italy. What secular prince is of consequence? Did not Caesare Borgia have as fair a chance to found a great power as can be given any man--ability, an iron will, a ready hand, a Pope for father, and marvellous good luck? But he is dead, an exile in Spain. Are not we Italians caught betwixt the French and Spanish millstones? If we keep our duchies and counties is it not by foreign sufferance? Does not His Holiness chafe daily at the insolent dictation of the foreign ambassadors? But art, learning, the love of the beautiful, the tongue of Cicero, and the tongue of Dante still are ours. And the Church is ours--the revenues drawn from frozen Norway and foggy England, from all Christendom,--still they come to Rome! And Rome having riches, wit, beauty, learning, has still her Empire. Therefore I would have you enter the Church. For I am ambitious for you, _caro mio_, very ambitious,”--and again she kissed me.

“The good sisters who taught you at the convent of San Silvesto may well be proud of their pupil,” I rejoined gratefully. “Greece boasted Sappho as the peeress of Homer in poetry. May not Italy then praise Marianna di Forli as rival to the ancient Cicero and the modern Piccolomini in the fair art of eloquence?”

Madonna shook her glorious head.

“Praise me, after you obey me. If you enter the Church, what a fair future! You are rich, the Pope proverbially poor. How you can win his favor! The red hat in a very few years, and then”--with a little laugh--“will not the Conclave prefer a gay young Pope to an old surly one? And who handsomer, wittier, more learned, better bred?--”

She did not finish, but flashed at me with her black eyes till my head fairly buzzed with fine notions. And yet her suggestion amused me mightily, and I replied:--

“I am glad you did not add, ‘and who more devout in life and conversation.’”

“Devout? You, Gualtiero? Oh, Santo Spirito, what a noble figure you would make arrayed as a black Dominican! You would even pass for a Master Inquisitor.”

“In which case I think I know a noble lady one could send to the rack for a thousand pagan heresies. Well--Rocca has just hinted your father will be Pope: may he have a long pontificate ere I succeed him. But less merrily, I sometimes wonder whither all this pleasant, gay life at His Holiness’s court is tending.”

“To a great fête on Corpus Christi day, I trust sincerely.”

“And something thereafter. Hear this, Madonna,--Italy is not quite all the world, though you may think it. What if we, with our Greek and Latin, our Plato and our Plotinus, have learned to laugh at much of the old theology, to think that San Marco and Æsop alike wrote very good fables? Believe me, beyond the Alps they still receive the old story of God and the saints as open-eyed peasants stand before a mountebank. And if some day your ‘doltish Germans’ (as you say) learn how His Holiness and the rest use these fables to filch money from their purses,--do you think the round bags of gulden will come to Rome quite so steadily as before?”

Marianna shrugged her shoulders gracefully.

“I don’t like your talk, Gualtiero. I only know that almost everybody who has advised keeping back the Pope’s dues has been burned, and that the last indulgence sale in Germany was profitable.”

“Excellent,” I assented; “still, suppose I do not prosper in the Church? My plans go wrong?”

“The dispensation to reënter the world is purchasable. You would still have your countships. We might even marry.”

“Marriage is the death of true love, carissima,” said I, my face close now to hers. And what more we might have done I know not, for at this instant our friends the Bishop of Montebello and the guards-captain Della Fabriano surprised us, evidently upon some errand....

An excursion up the Tiber towards Primaporta was what they wanted us to join, and you may wager we did not decline on such a day. His Reverence of Montebello was accompanied by a charming Florentine lady whom he called his cousin: Fabriano was with a handsome, but somewhat dull lady of Ravenna whom he did not call his cousin. Both of the gentlemen had a lively wit, and there was enough bright dialogue amongst us to go into a stage-play. Whilst our six stout watermen stroked us along the yellow twisting stream we made Latin verses in praise of Fabriano’s exploits upon the recent Urbino expedition: verses which Montebello swore were equal to Ovid’s; and we attempted a few in Greek, although here none of the ladies could follow us save Marianna.

Oh! It was a day worth living, with the wind chasing down from the Apennines, and sending little cohorts of white clouds flying before the sun, and the soft, southern air, telling of Naples, Sicily, Greece, caressing us. On the shore sounded the notes of the shepherds piping to their sheep. Around our bow was the lapping music of the old, old river. Behind us, into a golden haze, faded the domes and campaniles of the undying city. If we had been Hellenes of Attica, like mad Alcibiades full of the pagan sparkle and glory, never could the “joy of life” have come more to us than it came upon that day.

And I think Marianna knew in part my thoughts, when the general banter flagged a little, and we sat together listening to the water and the oars.

“Confess to me, Gualtiero,” she broke softly in at last, “are you not glad your mother was an Italian?”

“I thank all Olympus and its gods.”

“Yet you have visited your dreary north. Was it not very dreadful?”

“I went only as a young boy. What I recall is not unpleasant.”

“Come tell me, _caro mio_; I have known you so long, yet you tell little enough of yourself. I know that you are rich, are a nobleman in your own right both in Italy and Germany. What is this German inheritance, Lich-ten-stein, and Re-gen-stein?” (She puckered her lips, pronouncing each syllable as if it hurt her.) “Where is it? When did your father get it?”

“A long story,” I began listlessly, leaning back on the cushions and gazing more at Madonna’s face than at the gliding river bank. “I have had no patience to learn it all. But the tale of my house is this. I am a Lichtenstein; and anywhere north of the Alps there is not a herald or pursuivant who will not tell you that many Dukes and Markgrafs have no better blood than ours. Well--the older line has kept the paternal principality near Austria. The younger line--whereof I am the chief--acquired by marriage a castle in the Harz, nigh to the centre of Germany--Regenstein. Therefore I am called the Graf von Lichtenstein zum Regenstein, or more briefly, in the speech of the country, the Graf von Regenstein.”

“I understand. But what is Regenstein? A black rocky tower amid a desert?”

“By no means. I spent three years within it as a boy. I remember the great turrets, with their spirelike roofs; the gray stretches of impenetrable walls; the clouds of dusky rooks above every pinnacle; huge halls where great fires roared, and shot out a ruddy glare upon the bearskin rugs and the antlers and array of spears upon the wall. The folk of the castle were gruff, unlike our sleek fellows here, all oiled and bowing,--but honest and kindly. Around the castle, to every side, stretched a deep wood such as is nowhere in Italy; sentinel beeches and ancient firs; and not far off ran a stream. In winter it was very cold. My father and his friends sat by the chimney place at their beer all day long,--save when the foresters reported a wild boar close to the castle--”

Madonna’s hands went up in a playful kind of horror.

“Oh! To talk of your Regenstein, while we float here upon the beautiful river. Liefer would I fall amongst the man-eating savages the Spaniards say they are finding over seas, than spend a winter there!”

“I shall not compel you, _cara mia_,” I said, ardently.

“Blessed Mother! I trust not. Three years even as a boy in such a place--why were you not ruined? The boorish habits,--guzzling, gorging, and a boar hunt for interim! Doubtless not a book in the whole vast dungeon?”

“Old chaplain Jakob had a small library.”

“Of saints’ lives and sham miracles, or else of outworn theology. Perhaps a tract by a Hussite heretic; but no Latin poet, not to name a Greek?”

“I fear not, Madonna.”

“Pity on you, my poor Gualtiero! How comes it you are such a tolerable cavalier, and speak good Italian and Latin?”

“You forget,” I said, smiling, “my mother was the Contessa di Palaestro. She died while I was a young boy, but her kinsfolk bred me up amidst the best afforded by Padua and Florence. Since my father’s death, five years since, I have sought Rome--and you.”

She ignored this last, and pushed her interrogations.

“Nevertheless, although you speak as an Italian, dress as an Italian, are as gallant and learned as many an Italian, still you prefer to be called the lord of Re-gen-stein?”

“It was my father’s wish. He found favor and fortune in Italy, even an Italian title through my mother, yet his heart was ever in the north. I know it was his dear wish that I should keep the old name, and even return to the old land, and spend my days chasing the wild doe over the slopes of the Brocken.”

“Will you ever return to Germany, Gualtiero?” she asked, holding down her head.

“It is unlikely. Adolf, a bearish, loyal old martinet keeps the castle and forwards the rents from the peasants. You would rather visit me at Palaestro.”

“Yes: in the hills above Perugia, and infinitely beautiful. We could hold a court there, as did the late Duke of Urbino. Poets, music, fêtes-of-love, theatricals, carnivals,--that would amuse us all the year long. How delightful!”

And then she smiled radiantly, and I knew she was about to press a petition.

“Gualtiero, I shall never be happy until I know you severed from your uncouth north forever. Sell Regenstein,--some fool will surely buy it. The Pisani bank at Venice is a safer place for your fortune; then, whether you enter the Church or not, I can think you are wholly ours.”

“Impossible, Madonna; I must retain Regenstein, if only to honor my father’s desire.”

She was not pleased, but I persisted; yet I was not sorry when Montebello made the discussion general again by proposing a new attack at the old question,--how many angels (infinitely compressible) could dance upon the point of a needle (infinitely small). Upon this merry whetstone, we sharpened our wits right valiantly until the boat touched the shore near Primaporta. Here, under some noble ilexes, the bishop’s servants spread us a delightful collation,--everything choice, from the roasted thrushes to the cool Frascati. The luncheon ended, it was then time to pull back Romewards....

I accompanied Marianna to the Forli palace near the Ponte San Angelo. The streets were crowded: five bandits had just been hanged by the police upon the bridge, and everybody had turned out to see the execution. The recent rains had left the ways very muddy, and pigs and goats were running loose among the people, who treated them with characteristic Roman indifference. The shadows were advancing; already numerous gay-robed cavaliers and ladies of the merrier sort,--all masked, were out for the evening pleasures, and mingling with the ubiquitous water vendors and the Swiss guards off duty. Our servants made us a path through the crowds, and we soon gained the palazzo. In the courtyard I found Forli, a little apart, taking leave of some elegantly clad personage, with a golden chain, a jewelled hilt, and a delicately trimmed little red beard. Thinking him a gentleman-in-waiting with whom I was acquainted, I drew near, but their conversation soon undeceived me.

“So you intend to fulfil my little commission promptly?” urged the cardinal.

The stranger pressed one hand upon his heart, while he swept the pavement with his black hat-feather in salutation.

“Your Magnificence--I have been overwhelmed with the honor of fulfilling your august desires. Is not my word given? Have I not sworn by the Holy Mother of Loretto? Eccellenza--you deal with a man of virtue and honor, who has but one and the same word for promise and performance.”

“Then I may hope soon to hear of your dealings with Monsignore di B----”? with a glance lest the servants be within ear-shot.

“Eccellenza--to-night: to-morrow at the latest. I know the gentleman’s haunts and habits. I pledge to your service the skill of Orosi, Ettore Orosi the valiant, the incomparable.”

“Very good; you already understand your honorarium.”

“I do, Eminenza: but in addition to the small gratification for myself which you named, you will, I am sure, have a due number of masses said for the soul of the unfortunate Monsignore. For as a Christian”--he crossed himself devoutly,--“I profess, I would not have his damnation upon my conscience. The more as the event does not admit his being rightly shriven.”

“I pledge you they shall be most ample. I will even persuade the Holy Father to perform one in person. Therefore report quickly. Addio!”

Thus with a wave of the hand Forli sent the bravo out; then turned to me.

“Ecco! A most proper man: and stumbled on most promptly the very hour we wanted him. As for you, I trust that Marianna has laughed you out of your scruples.”

“She has surely laughed enough at me. How convinced I am I dare not say. Enough that she has just promised to go with me to a late supper party at Messere Chigi’s: and now I must hurry to my own palazzo in order to dress in a manner not to disgrace her.”

“Donna Venus bless you, my children!” cried the good man; “how gay you are together. I feared I was about to have a stupid evening with my books, but His Holiness has summoned me to join him at his cards. Then perhaps, ere we go to bed, we can hear from Orosi.”

Which surmise came true, though not as His Eminence expected.