Chapter XX: Bel Passo and Mal Passo

Suddenly Mila formed a firm resolution; for, as Magnani had truly said, she was superior to most of the young girls of her class in education, and Pier-Angelo had cultivated in her mind ideas as noble as his own. She had, in addition, a tincture of youthful enthusiasm, blended with the habit of courage and self-sacrifice, which her good taste and ingenuousness led her to conceal beneath apparent heedlessness. It is the acme of stoicism to be able to sacrifice oneself with a smile on one's face, and with no outward indication of suffering.

"My dear Magnani," she said, rising with her accustomed serenity of expression, "I thank you for your friendly interest in me; you have done me good, and I feel perfectly calm. Let me work now, for I didn't do my _day's work_ in the night, as you did; I must do my stint and earn my wages. Go away, so that people may not say that I am lazy, and that I waste my time chattering with the neighbors."

"Good-bye, Mila," replied the young man. "I pray God to restore your peace of mind to-day, and to make you happy all the days of your life."

"Thanks, Magnani," said Mila, offering him her hand. "I rely upon your friendship from this day."

The air of noble resolution with which that girl, so crushed by grief a moment before, offered him her hand, and the tone in which she pronounced the word friendship, like an heroic farewell to all her illusions, were not understood by Magnani; and yet there was in that gesture and that tone something that moved him deeply, although he could not guess the cause. Mila was transformed before him in the twinkling of an eye; she no longer seemed a charming child, she was serious and beautiful as a woman.

He took that little hand in his hard and powerful one, which did not hesitate to seal the friendly compact by a fraternal grasp, but which trembled suddenly at the touch of a hand as soft and dainty as a princess's; for Mila was very careful of her person, and knew how to be at once industrious and refined in her occupations.

Magnani fancied that he held Agatha's hand, which, by a strange caprice of fortune, he had touched once in his life. He felt a sudden wave of emotion, and drew Pier-Angelo's daughter to his heart as if to give her a brotherly kiss. He dared not do it; but she offered her forehead innocently, saying to herself that it would be the first and the last, and that she would cherish its memory as the symbol of an everlasting farewell to all her hopes.

Magnani had been living for five years under a self-imposed law of absolute chastity. It was as if he had taken an oath to imitate Agatha's exceptionally austere mode of life, and, engrossed by a fixed idea, had determined to waste away by slow degrees, knowing naught of love or marriage. He had never kissed a woman, not even his sisters, since he had carried in his heart that chimera of a hopeless passion. It may be that he had made a vow to that effect in some moment of painful agitation. But he forgot that grim vow when he felt young Mila's lovely dark head resting trustfully against his breast. He gazed at her for an instant, and those limpid black eyes, in which there was an expression of grief and courage which he could not understand, cast him into a sort of delirium of surprise and passion. His lips did not touch Mila's brow; they turned away trembling from her bright red lips, and rested upon her soft brown neck, perhaps a second or two longer than was absolutely necessary to cement a bond of fraternity.

Mila turned pale, her eyes closed, and a sorrowful sigh escaped from her broken heart. Magnani, shocked beyond measure, placed her upon a chair and fled, overwhelmed with dismay, astonishment, and, perhaps, remorse.

Mila, being left alone, was very near fainting; she staggered to the door and bolted it; then she knelt on the floor beside her bed, hid her face in her hands, and remained there absorbed by her suffering. But she had ceased to weep, and grief gave place to an excitement instinct with strenuous and ardent aspirations. Pier-Angelo's optimism, that faith in destiny which is a sort of superstition in stout hearts, awoke within her. She rose, rearranged her hair, looked in her mirror, and said aloud, as she resumed her work:

"I don't know why, nor when, nor how, but he shall love me; I have a right to desire it, I do desire it, and God will assist me!"

When Michel returned, he found her tranquil and lovely, gazing intently at a copy of the _Virgin of the Chair_, which he had made for her with much care, and which she had hung, not in her alcove, but above her mirror. He congratulated himself that he had allowed her to give way freely to her first outburst of grief, and that she had recovered her strength of will in her solitary meditation. He almost reached her side before she heard him; but she saw his face in the glass as he leaned over her to kiss her on the neck.

"Kiss me there," she said, offering him her cheek, "but never on my neck!"

"Why that prohibition for your brother, little madcap?"

"It is a whim of mine," she said. "You are beginning to have a beard and I don't want you to scratch my skin."

"Ah! you flatter me exceedingly," laughed Michel; "that fear does too much honor to my budding moustache! I had no idea that it could frighten anybody as yet! But do you care less for the smoothness of your cheek than of your pretty neck, little Mila? Is that because you have just been admiring this beautiful Madonna's neck?"

"Perhaps so!" she said. "It is very beautiful, really, and I would like to resemble that face in every feature."

"I should judge that you were making the attempt before your mirror. These are very profane ideas to indulge in before that holy image!"

"No, Michel," replied Mila, gravely. "There is nothing profane in my conception of her beauty. I have never understood it as I have to-day, and I fancied that no one had ever been able to create so beautiful a face as Princess Agatha's. But I see now that Raphael went farther. He gave his Madonna more strength of character, if not more tranquillity. That divine face is intensely alive; it has a great deal of will; it is sure of itself. She is the most virtuous, but, also, the most loving of women. She seems to say: 'Love me because I love you.'"

"Well, well, Mila, where did you find that?" cried Michel, looking at his sister in surprise. "I fancied I was dreaming as I listened to you!"

The conversation of the two children was interrupted by the arrival of their father. He came to suggest to Michel that they should go and demolish the ball-room. All the workmen who had taken part in building it had agreed to meet at three o'clock in the afternoon, to rid the palace of that temporary structure.

"I know," said Pier-Angelo, "that the princess is anxious to preserve your frescoes on canvas, and I want you to help me roll them up and carry them safely to one of the galleries of the palace."

Michel followed his father, but they were no sooner outside the city than the old man stopped.

"My boy," he said, "I am going to the villa alone, for I must talk a moment with the princess about that infernal abbé, who disguises himself as a monk to spy upon something or somebody in her house. Do you walk about two miles to the northwest, following the path that begins here, and turning neither to right nor left. In an hour you will reach the Capuchin convent of Bel Passo, where your uncle Fra Angelo told me that he would wait for you till sunset. He has satisfied himself that the suspicious monk whom we pointed out to him was no other than Ninfo, and, without deigning to inform me what he supposes his designs to be, he told me that he wished to have a serious talk with you. I suspect that your uncle knows more than we do about the cardinal's condition and the abbé's plans; but he is a man of sense and foresight. He has probably made inquiries during the morning, and I shall be very glad to have his opinion."

Michel followed the path, and, after an hour's walk through the most beautiful country that the mind can conceive, he reached the gate of his uncle's convent.

This convent was situated on a hill above a small village in the cultivated district, gay with flowers and dotted with country houses, which lies at the foot of Ætna. The building was sheltered by the great trunks of venerable trees, and the garden, exposed to the African sun, commanded a magnificent view bounded by the sea.

This romantic spot, strewn with formidable masses of lava, bore two names which had been given it in turn, and which, in view of the uncertainty as to which it was more likely to retain, were bestowed upon it indifferently at the time of which we write. The location being superb, the soil fertile, and the climate mild and agreeable, it had been called on general principles _Bel Passo_. Then had come the terrible eruptions of Ætna and Monte-Rosso, which had overwhelmed and ruined it; whereupon it had been christened _Mal Passo_. Then, as time passed on, the village and convent were rebuilt, the lava broken up, cultivation resumed, and they gradually reverted to the original complimentary name. But these two contrasting designations were still confused in the memories and the customs of the people. The old men, who had seen their country in its primitive splendor, said _Bel Passo_, as did the children, who had seen it only after it had emerged from chaos, and had been restored to life, as it were. But the men who had seen the spectacle of the catastrophe and experienced its disastrous results in their early years--who had had no other cradle than toil and terror, and were just beginning to obtain some result from their labors--called it _Mal Passo_ more frequently than _Bel Passo_.

For a very long time that gorge had changed its name thus, twice or thrice in a century, according to circumstances; an example of the heedless courage of the human race, which builds its nest beside the broken branch, and continues to love and beautify and sing the praises of the domain which it has with difficulty reconquered from the tempests of yesterday.

However, this spot afforded equal justification for both of the names which disputed possession of it. It was an epitome of all the horrors and all the charms of nature. Where the river of fire had poured its destructive waves, the ridges of lava, the gray wastes of slag, the ruins of the former soil, upturned, flooded or baked, recalled the evil days, when the population was reduced to begging, and wives and mothers were in mourning; Niobe changed to stone at the sight of her murdered children. But near at hand old fig-trees, reanimated by the passage of the flame, had put forth new branches, and strewed with their succulent fruit the new grass and the worn-out soil, newly steeped in the most generous juices.

Everything that did not lie directly in the path of the molten lava--everything that was saved by an inequality of the ground--had benefited by the destruction that had passed so near. So it is with mankind, and death everywhere makes room for life. Michel noticed that, in some places, one of two twin trees had disappeared as if carried away by a cannon-ball, and displayed its charred stump beside the proud trunk which seemed to tower triumphantly over its ruins.

He found his uncle occupied in breaking away the rock to enlarge a bed planted with flourishing vegetables. The garden had been dug out of solid lava. The paths were covered with mosaics of enamelled porcelain, and the beds of vegetables and flowers, cut from the very heart of the rock, and made of earth brought from elsewhere, resembled gigantic boxes buried to the edges. To make the resemblance more striking, between the beds and the porcelain paths they had left the black lava, as it were a border of box or thyme, and at each corner of the beds it had been fashioned into a ball, the sacramental ornament of our orange-tree boxes.

It will be seen, therefore, that nothing could be neater or more ugly, more symmetrical or more depressing, in a word, more monastical than that garden, an object of pride and affection to the good monks. But the beauty of the flowers, the splendor of the bunches of grapes which enveloped heavy pillars of lava, the soft murmur of the fountain, which sent forth a thousand silvery threads to refresh each plant in its rocky cell, and above all, the view from that terrace with its southern exposure, afforded ample compensation for the melancholy effect of such hard and patient toil.

Fra Angelo, armed with an iron sledge hammer, had removed his frock in order to be more free in his movements. Clad only in a short brown jacket, he displayed the mighty muscles of his hairy arms in the sunlight, and at every blow that he dealt the rocky mass, shivering it into fragments, he gave a sort of savage grunt. But, when he saw the young artist, he drew himself up and showed a mild and serene countenance.

"You come just in time, young man," he said. "I was thinking about you, and I have many questions to ask you."

"I thought, uncle, that you had, on the contrary, many things to tell me."

"Yes, doubtless I should have, if I knew what sort of man you are; but, except for the tie of relationship that unites us, you are a stranger to me; and, whatever your father may say, blinded perhaps by his affection, I do not know whether you are really a man. What do you think of the position in which you find yourself?"

"To avoid my having to answer your questions by asking others, you would do well, perhaps, my dear uncle, to put them clearly in the first instance. When I know what my position is, I shall be able to tell you what I think of it."

"Then you know nothing of the secrets in which you are concerned?" said the Capuchin, examining Michel with a stern and searching gaze; "you have not even a suspicion of them? You have never guessed anything? Nobody has ever told you anything?"

"I know that my father was involved in a political conspiracy long ago, about the time of my birth, I think. But at that time I was quite unable to decide whether he was in the right or in the wrong. Since then he has never explained his position to me in that respect."

"He lacks confidence in you, then, or you take little interest in his welfare?"

"I have questioned him at times; he has always answered evasively. I have never drawn therefrom, as you do, uncle, the conclusion that he distrusted me; that would have seemed impossible to me; but I have always thought that, having really had a hand in the business, he was bound by oaths, as is the case in all secret societies. So I should have thought that I failed in the respect I owe him, if I had questioned him farther."

"That is well said; but does it not conceal a profound indifference touching the affairs of your native country, and a selfish disregard of the sacred cause of its liberty?"

Michel was a little embarrassed by this question, so concisely put.

"Come," continued Fra Angelo, "answer without fear, I am only asking for the truth."

"Very well, I will answer you, uncle," said Michel, meeting the monk's cold glance, which distressed him in spite of himself, for he would have liked to have the regard of that man, whose face, voice, and bearing commanded his respect and sympathy. "I will tell you what I think, since you wish to know it, and also what I am, at the risk of losing your good-will. Convince me that the cause of liberty, so far as Italy and Sicily are concerned, is really the cause of the men who are deprived of liberty, and you will see that I will devote myself to it, I do not say with enthusiasm, but with frantic zeal. But alas! hitherto I have always seen men sacrifice themselves simply to change masters, while the noble and wealthy classes used them for their own profit, in the name of this or that idea. That is why, while I am not indifferent to the spectacle of the misery and oppression of my fellow-countrymen, I have never chosen to conspire under the auspices and for the benefit of the patricians, who are so eager in inciting us to conspire."

"O mankind! O mankind! _everyone for himself_ will always be your motto!" cried the Capuchin, springing to his feet as if beside himself with indignation; then, resuming his seat with a strange and bitter laugh, he added, looking at Michel with an ironical expression: "Signor prince, _excellenza_, you are pleased to make sport of us, I judge!"