Chapter XVII: Conclusion: Of Magnani's Story

"My brain began to work," said Magnani, continuing his narrative. "As the grief that had overwhelmed me gave place to joy, the romantic portion of my adventure recurred to my memory. The slightest details stood out distinctly and assumed an intoxicating charm. That woman's soft voice, her graceful figure, her noble carriage, her white hand, were constantly in my mind. A ring which she wore, of a curious shape, had attracted my attention when she felt my poor mother's pulse.

"I had never entered the Palmarosa palace. It is not open to strangers or to inquisitive natives, like most of the ancient abodes of our patricians. The princess has lived in retirement there, hidden from the world, so to speak, ever since her father's death, receiving very few visitors, going out only at night, and that very rarely. I had to watch for an opportunity to see her near at hand, for I was determined to see her with the eyes which I had for her alone thenceforth. I had never desired before that time to see her features, and she had shown them so seldom in ten years that the people of the suburb had forgotten them. When she rode out the shades were lowered, and when she went to church her head was completely enveloped in her black mantilla. Indeed, it was commonly said among us that she had once been very beautiful, but that she had had a scrofulous eruption on her face which made her so frightful that she preferred not to show herself.

"All this was simply vague rumor, for my father and other mechanics whom she employed laughed at these stories, and declared that she was the same as always. But my youthful brain was affected, none the less, by these contradictory reports, and my desire to see that woman was blended with an indefinable dread which prepared me by slow degrees for the madness of falling in love with her.

"One fact in particular added to my ardent longing. My father, who went often to the palace, as a simple journeyman, to assist the master upholsterer to hang and drape curtains and the like, refused to take me there with him, although I was accustomed to go everywhere else with him. He had often put me off with excuses which I accepted without examining them; but when my longing to find my way into that sanctuary became overpowering, he was compelled to admit that the princess did not like to see young people in her house, and that the master upholsterer carefully excluded them when he went there with his workmen. This extraordinary restriction served only to inflame my desire. One morning I resolutely took my hammer and my apron and entered the Palmarosa palace, carrying a prie-Dieu covered with velvet, which my father had just finished in his employer's workshop. I knew that it was made for Signora Agatha; I consulted nobody, but took possession of it and started.

"That was five years ago, Michel! The palace which you see at this moment, so resplendent, with its doors wide open, and filled with people, was just the same a month ago as it was at the time of which I am telling you, just the same as it had then been during the five years that had passed since she was left an orphan and mistress of her own life, and as it probably will be again to-morrow. It was a tomb in which she seemed to have buried herself alive. All the treasures to-day spread out for everyone to see were buried in darkness under layers of dust, like relics of the dead in a tomb. Two or three servants, dismal and silent, walked noiselessly through the long galleries closed to the sunlight and the outer air. On all sides thick curtains hanging before the windows, doors which refused to swing on their rusty hinges, an air of solemn neglect, statues standing erect in the shadow like ghosts, family portraits that followed you with their eyes with a distrustful air. I was frightened, and yet I walked on. The house was not so jealously guarded as I expected. It had invisible sentinels in its reputation for inhospitable gloom and the dread of its loneliness. I carried thither the insane audacity of my twenty years, the ill-fated rashness of a heart enamored in anticipation, and rushing headlong to its destruction.

"By a chance which seemed like fatality, I was not questioned by anyone. The few servants of that dismal abode did not see me, or did not think of preventing me from proceeding, relying, perhaps, upon some Cerberus nearer to the person of their mistress, whose duty it was to guard the door of her apartments, and who, by some miracle, happened not to be there.

"Instinct or destiny guided me. I passed through several rooms, I put aside heavy, dust-covered portières; I passed through one more open door and found myself in a very richly furnished room, where a full-length portrait of a man occupied a panel of the wall directly opposite me. I stopped. That portrait sent a shudder through my veins. I recognized it from my father's description of the original, whose character was then a much more common subject of anecdote and gossip among our people than the peculiarities of the princess. It was the portrait of Dionigi Palmarosa, Princess Agatha's father, and I must tell you something of that terrible man, Michel; for it may be that you have not as yet heard his name in this country, where nobody mentions it except in fear and trembling. Indeed, I see that I should have mentioned him to you before, for the hatred and terror which his memory inspires would have explained to you in some measure the distrust, and even malevolence with which his daughter, despite all her virtues, is regarded by some persons of our station in life.

"Prince Dionigi was a fierce, despotic, cruel and overbearing man. The pride of birth made him almost insane, and every indication of spirit or of resistance on the part of his inferiors was punished with incredible arrogance and severity. Vindictive to excess, he had, it was said, killed his wife's lover with his own hand, and worried her to death, poor creature, in a sort of captivity. He was bitterly detested by his equals, and still more bitterly by the poor, whom he assisted, however, on occasion, with lordly liberality, but in such a humiliating way that one felt degraded by his benefactions.

"Now you will understand better the small degree of sympathy which his daughter has acquired. It seems to me that the constraint in which she passed her early youth, under the iron rule of such a detestable father, may well explain her reserved disposition, and what I may call the premature withering or repression of her heart. Doubtless she is afraid of reawakening antipathies connected with the name she bears, by entering into relations with other people; and if she avoids intercourse with her fellow men, it is for reasons which should arouse the compassion and deep interest of fair-minded persons.

"A single other fact will serve to exhibit Prince Dionigi's disposition. About fifteen or sixteen years ago, I think--it is all very vague in my boyish memories,--a young mountaineer in his service, being maddened beyond endurance by the harshness of his language, ventured, they say, to shrug his shoulders as he held the stirrup for the prince to dismount from his horse. He was a worthy, honest fellow, but proud and of violent temper. The prince struck him a vicious blow. Thereafter they hated each other intensely, and the groom--his name was Ercolano--left the Palmarosa palace, saying that he knew the great secret of the family and that he would soon have his revenge. What was that secret? He had no time to reveal it, and no one ever knew what he had to reveal; for they found Ercolano the next morning on the seashore, murdered, with a dagger bearing the Palmarosa arms in his breast. His relations dared not demand justice, they were poor!"

Magnani had reached this point when the white figure they had seen wandering about the terrace crossed the flower-garden once more and went inside. Michel shuddered from head to foot.

"I don't know why your story has such an effect upon me," he said. "I seem to feel the cold blade of that dagger in my breast. That woman terrifies me. A strange superstition is creeping into my mind. A person cannot have a murderer's blood in her veins without having either a wicked heart or an unhinged mind. Give me a chance to breathe, Magnani, before you finish your story."

"The painful emotion that you feel, the dark thoughts that come to your mind," rejoined Magnani, "all fell to my lot at sight of Dionigi's portrait; but I passed on and through another door; the staircase leading to the casino was before me, and I found myself in the princess's oratory, where I set down the prie-Dieu and looked about me. No one there! I had no excuse for going farther; the mistress of that depressing mansion had evidently gone out. So I must needs retire without seeing her, lose the benefit of my audacity, and perhaps never again have the courage or the opportunity.

"It occurred to me to make a noise to attract her attention, in case she were in the adjoining room; for I was certainly in her apartments, I could not doubt it. I took my hammer and struck the gilt nails of the prie-Dieu, as if I were putting the finishing touch to it.

"My stratagem succeeded.--'Who is there? who is making such a noise?' said a faint voice, with a pure and distinct enunciation which left no doubt in my mind of the identity of that voice with that of the mysterious visitor whose accents had not ceased to echo in my heart like an ineffably sweet melody.

"I walked toward a velvet portière and raised it with the determination born of a last hope. I saw a woman reclining on a couch, in a bedroom sumptuously furnished in antique style: it was the princess; I had roused her from her siesta.

"My appearance terrified her beyond words; she leaped into the middle of the room as if she would fly. Her lovely face, whose gentle and somewhat languid serenity I had been able to contemplate with admiration for a second, was distorted by childish, incredible terror.

"I hastened to retrace the steps I had taken.--'I beg your excellency not to be frightened,' I said: 'I am only a poor upholsterer's apprentice, an awkward lout, ashamed of my mistake. I thought that your highness was out, and I was working here----'

"'Go away!' she exclaimed, 'go away!'

"And with a gesture in which there was more bewilderment and dismay than sternness and anger, she pointed to the door.

"I attempted to go, but I seemed to be rooted to the floor as in a dream. Suddenly I saw the princess, who had risen with extraordinary vehemence, turn as pale as a lovely lily; her breathing ceased; her head fell back; her arms dropped at her sides. She would have fallen to the floor had I not rushed to her and caught her in my arms.

"She had lost consciousness. I placed her on her couch, I was so bewildered that it did not occur to me to call for help. Indeed what would have been the use of ringing? Everybody was asleep or attending to his special duty in that house, where silence and solitude alone seemed to be absolute masters. May God forgive me! Twenty times since then I have been tempted to enter her service as a footman!

"Oh! Michel, it would be impossible for me to tell you to-day what took place within me during the two or three minutes that that woman lay stretched out like a dead woman before my eyes, with her lips as white and dry as pure wax, her eyes half-open, but strange and expressionless, her dark hair falling over her brow on which the cold perspiration stood in beads, and all that exquisite, refined beauty, above all comparison in my thought. It was not the intoxicating flame of a gross animal passion that was kindled in my plebeian blood. It was adoration, as pure and timid and refined and mysterious as the being who inspired it. I felt an irresistible longing to prostrate myself at the feet of a dead and gone martyr, for I thought that she was dead, and it seemed as if my soul were ready to leave the earth with hers.

"I dared not touch her; I did not know what to do to restore her. I had no voice with which to call for help. I was motionless in my perplexity, as one is when struggling violently in a horrible dream. At last a phial fell under my hand, I know not how. She recovered consciousness little by little, looked at me without seeing me, not understanding or seeking to understand who I could be. At last she raised herself on her elbow and seemed to be collecting her thoughts.

"'Who are you, my friend?' she said, seeing me on my knees by her side, 'and what do you want? You seem to feel very sorrowful.'

"'Ah! yes, your highness, God is my witness that I am very unhappy to have frightened you so.'

"'You did not frighten me,' she said, with an evident embarrassment which astonished me. 'Did I cry out?--Ah! yes,' she continued, with a shudder, yielding once more to an impulse of distrust or alarm.--'I was asleep; you came in; you frightened me. I do not like to be surprised in that way. But did I say anything unkind to you, that you weep?'

"'No, your highness,' I replied; 'you fainted, and I would rather have died than have caused you this discomfort.'

"'Am I alone here, pray?' she cried in a tone of distress that tore my heart. 'Can anybody who pleases enter my apartments and insult me?'--She rose and ran to her bell-rope. She seemed desperate--beside herself. Her words and her excitement had affected me so painfully that it did not occur to me to fly. And yet, if she had rung--if anyone had come--I should have been treated like a criminal. But she stopped, and the expression of her face told me the truth at once concerning her disposition.

"It was a blending of unhealthy suspicion and sympathetic kindliness. She had been so wretchedly unhappy in her early youth--so everyone said! At all events, she could not have been ignorant of her father's execrable character. She may have witnessed some murder in her childhood. Who knows what scenes of violence and terror have been enacted behind the thick walls of that dumb mansion? It was by no means impossible that she might have acquired therefrom some mental malady of which I had just witnessed an outbreak; and yet what angelic sweetness her glance expressed when she dropped the bell-cord, apparently overcome by my humble attitude and the grief by which I was overwhelmed!

"'You came in here by chance, did you not?' she said. 'You did not know that it is a whim of mine not to like new faces; or, if you did know it, you had the courage to disregard my orders, because you have had some misfortune which I can lighten? I have seen you somewhere; I have a vague remembrance of your features. Your name is----?'

"'Antonio Magnani, your highness. My father works here sometimes.'

"'I know him; he has some little means. Is he sick? Has he run in debt?'

"'No, signora,' I replied, 'I do not ask alms, although you are the only person on earth from whom I could accept alms without blushing. I have long wished to see you; not to beg from you, but to bless you. You saved my mother; you encouraged me. You leaned over her pillow; you restored my hope and her life. That is certain; of course you do not remember it, but I shall never forget it. May God reward you for what you did for us! That is all I wanted to say to your highness; and now I will go away, begging you not to blame anyone, for the fault is entirely mine.'

"'I will not tell anyone that you came into my house in spite of my orders,' she said. 'Your employer and your father would reprove you for it. Nor do you say that you saw me in such a fright. People would say that I am mad, as they say now, I believe, and I do not much like to have people talk about me. As for your thanks, I do not deserve them. You are mistaken; I never did anything for you, my child.'

"'Oh! I am not mistaken, your highness; I should have known you among a thousand. The heart has instincts deeper and truer than the senses. You do not wish your benefactions to be discovered, so I do not speak of them. I do not intend to thank you for paying the doctor; no, you are rich, and it is easy for you to give. But you are not obliged to love and pity those whom you help. And yet you pitied me when you saw me weeping at the door of the house where my mother lay dying, and you loved my mother when you leaned over her bed of pain.'

"'But I tell you again, my child, that I do not know your mother.'

"'That is possible; but you knew that she was sick. You wished to see her, and charity was in your very glance--how ardent at that moment!--since your glance, your voice, your touch, your breath, cured her as by a miracle. My mother was conscious of it; she remembers it; she thinks that it was an angel who appeared to her; she addresses her prayers to you because she thinks that you are in Heaven. But I was sure that I should find you on earth, and should have an opportunity to thank you.'

"Princess Agatha's cold and impassive face relaxed as if involuntarily. It lighted up for an instant with a warm glow of sympathy, and I saw that treasures of kindliness were contending in that suffering heart against a painful misanthropical propensity.--'Well,' she said, with a divine smile, 'I see, at all events, that you are a good son and adore your mother. God grant that I may in truth have brought her good fortune! but I believe that God alone deserves thanks. Thank Him and worship Him, my child; He alone understands and can relieve certain sorrows, for men cannot do much for one another. How old are you?'

"I was twenty at that time. She listened to my reply, and said, looking at me as if she had not yet noticed my features: 'True, you are older than I thought. You can come and work here when you choose. I am accustomed to your face now, and it will not startle me again; but another time do not wake me suddenly by hammering in my ears in that way, for I am always depressed and nervous when I wake. That is my disease!'

"While she was speaking, and while she looked after me as I walked toward the door, her eyes expressed this thought: 'I do not offer you my assistance in life, but I will keep my eye on you, as I do on so many others, and I will find ways to serve you without your knowledge; and I will take measures to avoid having to listen to your thanks again.'

"Yes, Michel, that is what was said by that face, at once angelic and cold, maternal and unfeeling; a terrible enigma, which I have never been able to solve, and which I am less able to solve to-day than ever."