Chapter X: Problem

"But, after all, what is the source of this friendship of the princess for you," continued Michel, after a pause; "what have you ever done for her that she should make you such presents?"

"Nothing at all. Father, who is on excellent terms with her, took me to the palace one day to present me to her. She took a fancy to me; she paid me all sorts of attentions; she asked me for my friendship, and I promised it and gave it to her at once. I passed the day all alone with her, walking about her villa and the gardens. Since then I go there when I choose, and I am always sure of being well received."

"And you go often?"

"I have never been but twice, for it isn't long since I first knew her. I know that the palace has been turned upside down this last week by the preparations for the ball, and I was afraid of being in poor Agatha's way when, of course, she had a thousand things to do. But I shall go in two or three days."

"So that is the whole of the mystery, is it? Why did you need so much urging to tell it?"

"Oh! because the princess said to me when I came away: 'Mila, please don't tell anyone about the delightful day we have passed together and the friendship we have formed. I have my reasons for asking you to keep it secret. You shall know them later, and I know that I can rely on your promise if you will give it to me.'--As you can imagine, Michel, I did not refuse it."

"Very good; but you are breaking your word now."

"No, I am not. You are not _anybody_ to me, and, of course, the princess didn't suppose I would have any secrets from my father or my brother."

"Does my father know all this, then?"

"Certainly, I told him about it at once."

"And he was neither surprised nor disturbed by this whim of the princess?"

"Why surprised, please? It is your surprise that is very strange and a little impertinent, Michel. Am I not capable of inspiring friendship, even in a princess? And why disturbed? Is not friendship a good and pleasant thing?"

"Still, my child, I am, if not disturbed, at all events astonished at this friendship. Tell me this, which may explain it in some measure. Has our father rendered Princess Agatha some great service?"

"He has done much beautiful decorating in the palace. He has made some superb foliage in the dining-room among other things."

"I have seen all that; but he is well paid. The princess has taken a liking to him because of his zeal and disinterestedness, I suppose?"

"Yes, that must be it. Isn't it true that anybody who knows father for a little time loves him?"

"That is so. Then it is because of our excellent father that you arouse so much interest in this great lady!"

"Oh! Michel, she isn't a great lady, I tell you! she's a good woman, a kind, lovely woman."

"And what could she find to say to you, my child, for a whole day?"

"She asked me a thousand questions, about myself and father and you, about our life in Rome, your occupations, our home life and our tastes. I really believe that she made me tell our whole history day by day, ever since I was born; I talked so much that I was tired out that evening."

"It seems that this lady is terribly inquisitive; for what does it all matter to her?"

"Now you mention it, I believe that she is a little inquisitive; but it is a pleasure to answer her questions; she listens to you with so much interest, and she is so pleasant! Come, don't speak ill of her, or I shall be angry with you!"

"Very well, let us say no more about her; God forbid that I should teach you distrust and dread, my lovely angel heart! Go to bed, now; father is waiting for me. To-morrow we will talk again of your adventure, for surely this great friendship with a beautiful princess is a marvellous adventure in a life like yours--although she no more thinks of you now than of the last pair of slippers she wore. No matter! don't put on that injured air. It may be that, some day when she is lonely and idle, the Princess of Palmarosa will send for you, to be entertained again by your prattle."

"You don't know what you are saying, Michel. The princess is not idle, and if you insist upon taking it this way, I will tell you that, kind-hearted as she is, she has the reputation of being decidedly cold with people of our station. Some say that she is proud, others that she is timid. The fact is that she always speaks pleasantly and courteously to the workmen and servants who come in contact with her, but that she speaks to them so little, so little!--that she is noted for it, and that some people who have worked for her for years have never known the sound of her voice and have hardly seen her in her own house. So that her friendship for father and me is no commonplace thing; it is genuine friendship, and your mockery will never prevent me from relying upon it. Good-night, Michel; I am not very well pleased with you to-night; I never saw you with this sarcastic air before. You talk as if you meant to say that I am only a little girl and no one can love me!"

"That is not my thought, so far as I myself am concerned, at all events! for, little slip of a girl as you are, I adore you!"

"What did you say, brother? You adore me? that is a lovely word. Kiss me."

The child threw herself into his arms. Michel embraced her lovingly, and as she laid her lovely brown head on his shoulder, he kissed the long hair that fell over the girl's half uncovered back.

But suddenly he pushed her away with a painful shudder. All the burning thoughts that had excited his brain an hour earlier recurred to his mind with the vividness of remorse, and it seemed to him that his lips were no longer pure enough to bless his little sister.

He was no sooner alone than he rushed through the door of the old house in which he lived, without pausing to close that of his room. To tell the truth, he paid no heed to the distance he travelled, and, still haunted by his dreams, he fancied that he stepped directly from the landing of his attic to the marble peristyle of the villa. And yet it was nearly a mile from the last houses of the suburb of Catania to the gateway of the palace.

The first face upon which his eyes fell as he was about to enter the ball-room was that of the stranger to whom his attention had been attracted as he went away. The young man was walking slowly from the room, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief trimmed with lace. Michel, puzzled by his conduct, and wondering if it were not a woman in disguise, resolutely accosted him.

"Well, my friend," he said, "did you succeed in seeing Princess Agatha?"

The stranger, who seemed absorbed by his thoughts, raised his head abruptly, and darted at Michel a glance instinct with such inexplicable distrust, and even malevolence, that the young painter felt a sort of cold shiver run down his back. It was not the glance of a woman, but of a forceful and hot-tempered man. The feeling of hostility is unfamiliar to youthful hearts, and Michel's contracted as with a sudden pang. It seemed to him that the stranger instinctively felt for a knife in his gold embroidered satin waistcoat, and he followed his movements with surprise.

"How does it happen?" said the other, in the same soft voice, in marked contrast to his angry, threatening manner, "that you were a mechanic a short time ago, and that now you are a gentleman?"

"The fact is that I am neither one nor the other," replied Michel, with a smile; "I am an artist employed in the palace. Do you feel more at ease? my question seems to have disturbed you greatly. However, one question deserves another. Did you not ask me one without knowing me?"

"Do you mean to jest, signor?" retorted the stranger, who spoke in excellent Italian, without any accent to justify the Greek or Egyptian antecedents suggested by Barbagallo.

"Not in the least," replied Michel, "and, as for my accosting you, pray pardon an impulsive exhibition of curiosity entirely free from malevolent intention."

"Curiosity! why curiosity?" rejoined the unknown, clenching his teeth and crowding his words together in peculiarly Sicilian fashion.

"Faith! I have no idea," replied Michel. "We have had enough discussion over a thoughtless word; I had no purpose of offending you. If your displeasure continues, do not look about for pretexts to begin a quarrel, for I have no intention of avoiding it."

"Are not you the one who seeks to quarrel with me?" rejoined the stranger, with a glance more threatening than the first.

"On my word, signor, you are mad," said Michel, with a shrug.

"You are right," retorted the unknown, "for I stand here listening to the idle talk of a fool."

The words had no sooner passed his lips than Michel rushed at him with a sudden determination to strike him. But, fearing lest he might strike a woman, for the stranger's sex still seemed to him very doubtful, he paused; and he congratulated himself when he saw that problematical personage turn upon his heel and vanish so quickly that Michel could not determine in what direction he had gone, and concluded that he had been dreaming again.

"Surely I am beset by phantoms to-night," he said to himself. But as soon as he found himself in presence of real mortals, he recovered the notion of reality. He was asked for his card of admission. He gave his name.

"Ah! Michel," said the door-keeper, "I did not know you. How fine you are! You look like an invited guest. Go in, my boy, and pay close attention to the lights. The pretty stuff that you have hung over our heads would take fire so quickly! It seems that you are coming in for a deal of praise. Everybody says that the figures are done by a master hand."

Michel was offended at being addressed thus familiarly by a servant, offended at being assigned to the duties of fireman, and secretly delighted nevertheless at having obtained a triumph which was already the talk of the antechamber.

He glided into the crowd, hoping to pass through unnoticed and to reach some secluded corner where he could see and hear at his ease; but there were so many people in the great ball-room that they brushed against one another and trod on one another's feet. He was carried to the other end of the vast structure before he realized the impetus that the compact mass had imparted to him; and thus he arrived at the foot of the great staircase. Not until then was he able to stop, gasping for breath, and open his eyes, nostrils, ears, and mind, to the enchanting spectacle of the fête.

Being somewhat above the flower-bedecked benches, he could see at a glance both the dances in progress about the fountains, and the spectators who jostled and squeezed one another to watch the dances. The noise and glare and commotion were well adapted to dazzle and bewilder a more mature brain than Michel's. What an array of lovely women, marvellous jewels, white shoulders and resplendent head-dresses! What majestic or alluring charms! What merriment, feigned or genuine! What airs of languor, counterfeited or ill dissembled!

Michel was intoxicated for an instant; but when his eyes began to see more clearly and to separate the countless details of the scene,--when he asked himself which of all those women would be, in his mind, an ideal model,--he looked up at the ideal figures he had painted in the ceiling, and was better satisfied, vain-glorious youth, with his own work than with God's.

He had dreamed of perfect beauty. He believed that he had found it in the creations of his brush. He was probably mistaken; for it is impossible to create a divine image without giving it human features, and nothing on earth is blessed with absolute perfection. However that may have been, Michel, still faltering and awkward in his art in several respects, had approached as nearly as possible to perfect beauty in his types. That was what impressed all those who examined his work; above all, that was what impressed him when he sought among real persons the personification of his ideas. Among the whole number he saw only two or three women who seemed truly beautiful, and even those two or three he would have liked to hold against his canvas, in order to take away from one or give to another a certain outline or a certain coloring, wherein they seemed to him to lack fullness or purity.

He was perfectly cool,--cool as an artist analyzing a figure,--and he realized that the human countenance made up for its shortcomings in the way of perfection of feature solely by the expression of life.

"I have drawn more beautiful faces," he said to himself, "but they are not true. They do not think, they do not breathe, they do not love. It would be better that they should be less beautiful and more animate. When I roll up these canvases to-morrow, I will destroy them all, and then I will change them, and, it may be, overturn all the ideas which have guided me hitherto."

And he abandoned the quest for ideal perfection of form among the living dancers whom he was studying, to watch their movements, their grace, the attitudes of the body, the expression of the glance and smile; in a word, the secret of life.

Enchanted at first, he felt that he grew cold once more as he analyzed each being by itself. In all probability there are many ingenuous souls among women and among men; but there are very few ingenuous faces to be found at a ball in fashionable society. People there assume expressions which are almost always at variance with their characters, whether they are seeking to attract or to shun attention. Michel fancied that he could see that some were hypocritically concealing their vanity, while others arrogantly flaunted it; that this girl, who desired to seem amorous, was cold and blasé; that the gayety of that other was dismal, and the melancholy of a third a pretence. A parvenu strove to assume the air of a man of noble birth; a noble strove to adopt the bearing of a man of the people. Everybody posed more or less. The most humble tried to seem self-possessed, and even touching timidity struggled to avoid the awkwardness which triumphed over its efforts.

Michel saw several young mechanics of his acquaintance pass. They were performing the duties which they had undertaken, and they attracted attention by their manly appearance and by a touch of picturesqueness in their holiday attire. The majordomo had evidently selected them from among the most _presentable_, and they were well aware of it; for they, too, posed artlessly: one put forward each shoulder in turn to display its enormous breadth; another made the most of every inch of his great stature as he passed many a diminutive great personage; a third elevated the arch of his eyebrows to show the fair dames an eye as bright as a carbuncle.

Michel was surprised to see those honest fellows transform themselves so, and sacrifice the advantages of their natural dignity or their attractive exterior by an affectation, perhaps involuntary, but certainly ridiculous.--"I knew," he thought, "that all men eagerly sought approbation, to whatever class or profession they might belong. But why does this craving to attract attention suddenly deprive us of the charm or the dignity of our manners? Can it be that the desire is over-eager, or that the object is contemptible? Must beauty necessarily be unconscious of itself in order to lose nothing of its splendor? Or am I alone endowed with this intolerable clearness of vision? Where is the intense enjoyment that I expected to find here? Instead of following with interest the actions of other people, I am exerting myself to pass judgment in cold blood on everything that meets my eye, and to deprive myself of any external enjoyment!"

By dint of watching so closely and making so many comparisons, Michel had forgotten the main object of his presence at the ball. He remembered at last that he was especially desirous to study calmly a certain figure, and he was about to ascend the great staircase and wander about the interior of the palace, where all the rooms were open and lighted, When, happening to turn his head, he saw close at hand a detail of the decorations of which he had forgotten to observe the effect.

It was a rockwork grotto, which formed a recess of considerable size under the staircase. He had himself decorated with shellwork, branches of coral and picturesque plants, that cool retreat, at the farther end of which an alabaster naiad poured water from her urn into a huge shell, always brimming full of clear running water.

The taste Michel had displayed in all the details entrusted to him had induced the majordomo to allow him to arrange many things as he chose; and as this naiad had impressed him as a charming creation, he had taken pleasure in placing in her grotto the prettiest vases, the daintiest garlands and the finest rugs. He had spent a full hour surrounding the mother-of-pearl shell with a border of moss, as fine and soft as velvet, in selecting and arranging in graceful and charming disorder bunches of iris and water-lilies, and those long ribbon-like leaves which harmonize so perfectly with the undulating movement of running water.

Now the grotto was lighted by a pale light concealed behind the foliage; and as everybody was intent upon watching the dance, the entrance was unobstructed. Michel entered stealthily; but he had not taken three steps when he saw a person seated, or rather reclining, in the half-light, at the naiad's feet. He hastily concealed himself behind a jutting rock, and was about to retire; but an irresistible fascination detained him.