Chapter V: The Casino

"Well," said Pier-Angelo, "don't you propose to help me? You sit there with your arms folded and allow your father to wait on you! Do at least take the trouble to eat and drink yourself!"

"Excuse me, dear father, you seem to me to do the honors of the house with a self-possession which I admire, but which I should not dare to imitate. You also seem to me to be very much at home here."

"I am more comfortable here than at home," rejoined Pier-Angelo, nibbling at the wing of a chicken, and offering the other wing to his son. "Don't expect me to give you such suppers often. But make the most of this one without false shame; I told you that the majordomo authorized me to do this."

"The majordomo is simply a higher servant who pilfers like all the others, and invites his friends to make themselves comfortable at his mistress's expense. Excuse me, father, but this supper is distasteful to me; my appetite has all disappeared at the thought that we are stealing the princess's supper; for these Japanese plates filled with delicious sweetmeats were not intended for our mouths, nor even for that of his highness the majordomo."

"Well, if I must tell you, that is true; but it was the princess herself who bade me eat her supper, because she is not hungry to-night, and she supposed that you would have some reluctance to sup with her servants."

"Your princess is extraordinarily kind," said Michel, "and shows a most exquisite delicacy of feeling with respect to me! I confess that I should not care to eat with her lackeys. But, father, if you do it, if it is the custom of the house, and a necessity of my new position, I will be no more fastidious than you, and will accustom myself to it. But how did it ever occur to the princess to spare me that petty annoyance to-night?"

"Because I spoke to her about you. As she is particularly interested in me, she asked me many questions about you, and, when she learned that you were an artist, she declared that she would treat you as an artist, and that she would find an artist's work for you in her house, in short, that she would show you all the consideration you could possibly desire."

"She is a very generous and very thoughtful lady," rejoined Michel, with a sigh, "but I will not abuse her good-nature. I should blush to be treated as an artist, side by side with my father the artisan. No, no, I am an artisan myself, neither more nor less. I prefer to be treated like my fellows, and if I eat here to-night, I propose to eat to-morrow where my father eats."

"It is well, Michel; those are noble sentiments. I drink your health! This Syracuse wine gives me courage, and makes the cardinal seem no more formidable than a mummy to me! But what are you looking at so intently?"

"It seems to me that that curtain behind the glass keeps moving. There is certainly some prying servant there who doesn't like to see us eating such a delicious supper in his place. Ah! it will be very disagreeable to have to deal with those people all the time! They must be carefully handled, of course, for they can do us an ill turn with their masters, and deprive an honest artisan, who happens to offend them, of a good customer."

"That is true, generally speaking, but there is nothing of the sort to be feared here. I have the princess's confidence; I deal with her directly and without any orders from the majordomo. And, then, her servants are excellent fellows. Come, eat in peace, and don't keep looking at that curtain, which the wind is blowing."

"I assure you, father, that it isn't the wind, unless Zephyr has a pretty little white hand with a diamond ring on the finger."

"In that case it must be the princess's first lady's-maid. She must have heard me tell her mistress that you were a well-favored youth, and she is curious to see you. Sit round this way, so that she can gratify her curiosity."

"I am much more anxious to go and see Mila, father, than to be seen by her ladyship the first lady's-maid. I have eaten my fill; let us go."

"I will not go until I have applied once more to this excellent wine for courage and strength. Drink with me again, Michel! I am so happy to be with you, that I would get drunk if I had the time!"

"And I am happy too, father; but I shall be still more so when we are at home with my sister. I do not feel so much at ease as you do in this mysterious palace: it seems to me that I am watched, or that some one here is afraid of me. There is a silence and solitude here which do not seem natural to me. People do not walk and show themselves as they do in other places. We are stealthy in our movements, and we are being stealthily watched. Anywhere else I would break a pane of glass to see what there is behind that curtain--and just now, in the gallery, I had a terrible shock. I was awakened by a cry, such a cry as I never heard before."

"A cry, really? How does it happen that I heard nothing of the sort, although I was very near you, in the same part of the palace? You must have dreamed it!"

"No! no! I heard it twice; a faint cry, it is true, but so vibrating, so peculiar that my heart beats fast when I think of it."

"Ah! that is just like your romantic mind! Now I recognize you, Michel; it delights my heart, for I was afraid that you had become too reasonable. However, I am sorry, for the sake of your adventure, to be obliged to tell you what I think about it, which is that her highness's first lady's-maid must have seen a spider or a mouse as she passed through one of the corridors that surround the great gallery of paintings. Whenever she sees one of those creatures, she utters frightful shrieks, and I take the liberty of laughing at her."

This prosaic explanation annoyed the young artist a little. He hurried his father, who was inclined to forget himself over the Syracuse wine, and half an hour later he was in his sister's arms.

The next day Michelangelo Lavoratori was installed with his father at the Palmarosa palace, to work industriously there the rest of the week. The work in progress was the decoration of the enormous ball-room constructed of wood and canvas for the occasion, adjoining the peristyle of that beautiful country-seat, and opening on the gardens on every side. The princess, who ordinarily lived in strict retirement, was about to give a magnificent fête, in which all the wealthy and noble inhabitants of Catania and of the neighboring villas were to take part. Her reason for this departure from her usual mode of life was as follows:

Every year the first society of that neighborhood co-operated to give a subscription ball for the benefit of the poor, and each proprietor of a spacious house, whether in the city or the country, was supposed to lend it in his turn, and to pay a portion of the expenses of the fête when the circumstances would permit.

Although the princess was exceedingly charitable, her taste for seclusion had led her to defer offering her palace; but her turn had come at last. She had most generously assumed the whole burden of the fête, agreeing to pay all the expenses of the ball, including the decorations of the ball-room, music, etc. By reason of her generosity, the sum realized for the poor promised to be quite handsome, and, as the Villa Palmarosa was the most superb residence in the province, and all the preparations were on a magnificent scale, the fête promised to be the most brilliant one ever seen.

The house was full of workmen, who had been at work a fortnight on the ball-room, under the direction of Barbagallo the majordomo, a man of wide experience in such matters, and under the preponderating influence of Pier-Angelo Lavoratori, whose taste and skill were already well known and highly esteemed throughout the province.

On the first day, Michel, true to his agreement and resigned to his lot, made garlands and arabesques with his father and the apprentices in his employ; but his probation was confined to that day, for on the following morning Pier-Angelo informed him that the princess wished him to undertake the painting of allegorical figures on the ceiling and canvas walls of the ball-room. The selection and size of the subjects was left to his discretion; he was requested simply to make haste and to have confidence in himself. That task did not require the care and finish of a durable work; but it opened a wide field to his imagination, and when he realized that he was in possession of that vast space, upon which he was at liberty to cast his fancies without restraint, he had a moment of genuine bliss, and he was more intoxicated than ever with his profession of artist.

His enthusiasm for the commission was greatly increased when the princess sent word to him, through his father, that, if his work was simply passable, it would be accepted as full payment of the sum lent to Pier-Angelo for him; but that, if it earned the praise of connoisseurs, he should be paid double.

Thus Michel was on the point of becoming free in any event, and perhaps rich for a year to come, if he displayed any talent at all.

A single apprehension, but a very weighty one, chilled his joy; the day for the ball was fixed, and it was not in the princess's power to postpone it. A week remained, only a week! For an experienced decorator that was enough, but for Michel, who had never done anything of the sort on a large scale, and who could not refrain from looking upon it as a matter in which his self-esteem was deeply involved, it was so little that he shuddered at the bare thought.

Luckily for him, having worked with his father in his boyhood, and having watched him work a thousand times since, the processes of water-color work were familiar to him, as well as the geometrical principles of decoration; but when he attempted to select his subjects, he was oppressed by the superabundance of his ideas, and the prodigality of his imagination put him on the rack. He passed two nights drawing his compositions, and all day on his scaffolding, adjusting them to the space at his command. He did not think of sleeping or eating, or even of improving his acquaintance with his young sister, until his work was definitely laid out. At last it was done, and he transferred his labors to the courtyard of an old ruined chapel in the centre of the park, where his canvas ceiling, forty feet long, was stretched on the ground. There, assisted by several zealous apprentices, who handed him his colors all ready for use, and walking barefooted over his mythological sky, he prayed to the muses to impart to his trembling hand the necessary skill and boldness; and at last, armed with a gigantic brush, which might fitly have been called a broom, he sketched his Olympus and worked with so much fire and hope that the canvas was ready to be put in place two days before the ball.

He had still to superintend its removal and installation, and to retouch such parts as were necessarily damaged in that process. And then he also had to assist his father, who, having been delayed by him, still had many borders of wainscots and cornices to finish.

That week passed like a dream to Michel, and the few moments of repose in which he indulged seemed to him delicious beyond words. The villa was wonderfully beautiful inside as well as outside. The gardens and the park gave one an idea of the earthly paradise. Nature is so teeming in that country, the flowers so beautiful and sweet, the vegetation so luxuriant, the streams so clear and swift, that art has little to do in order to create fairyland around the palaces there. Not that blocks of lava and vast fields of ashes do not, here and there, present the image of desolation beside the Elysian Fields. But those horrors add to the charm of the oases which the volcanic flames have spared.

Villa Palmarosa, situated on the slope of a hill whose rugged summit was exposed to the ravages of Ætna, had existed for centuries amid continual disasters which it had been privileged to contemplate undisturbed. The palace was very old, of a graceful type of architecture, borrowed from Saracen models. The ball-room, which now concealed the façade of the ground-floor, presented a striking contrast to the dark coloring and severe decorations of the upper floors. Within, the contrast was even more striking. While all was uproar and confusion on the ground floor, all was tranquillity, order and mystery on the floor above, where the princess lived. At meal times Michel entered that silent portion of the mansion, for the little room with the glass door, where he had supped with his father on the first evening, was reserved for him, as a special and mysterious favor. They were all alone there, and if the curtain moved again, the movement was so slight that Michel could not be certain that he had inspired a romantic passion in the first lady's-maid's breast.

The palace being built against the cliff, the princess's apartments were on a level with terraces embellished with flower-beds and fountains; and by descending a narrow flight of steps, boldly cut in the lava, one could reach by that means the park and the open country. Once Michel wandered into those Babylonian flower-gardens suspended over a terrifying abyss. He saw the windows of the princess's boudoir, which was two hundred feet above the main entrance of the palace, and yet she could go out of doors to walk without descending a single step. Such boldness of conception and such charm in the construction of a dwelling made him giddy both physically and mentally. But he never saw the queen of that enchanted abode. At the times when he went up to her apartments she was taking a siesta or receiving visits from her intimate friends in the salons on the second floor.

This Sicilian custom of living on the upper floors, to enjoy the fresher air and more perfect quiet, is found in several Italian cities. These private apartments, generally small and quiet, are sometimes called the _Casino_, and, with their private gardens, form, as it were, a distinct dwelling above the main palace. This of which we are speaking was set back from the front and side walls of the lower building by the width of a very broad terrace, so that it was concealed, and, as it were, isolated. At the back it formed a building of a single story, on the level of the flower-garden, since the lower edifice was built against the cliff. Viewing it from that side, one would have said that a stream of lava had flowed against the palace and hardened there, and had blotted out one whole side of it up to the level of the Casino. But the villa had been constructed in that way to avoid danger from fresh eruptions. Looking at it from the direction of Ætna, one would have taken it for a small summer-house perched on top of a rock. Not until you had made the circuit of that mass of volcanic débris did you discover a magnificent palace, consisting of three great structures, one upon another, and climbing the hill backward, so to speak.

Under any other circumstances Michel would have been curious to know if this lady, who was said to be lovely and gracious, was, poetically speaking, worthy to inhabit so noble an abode; but his imagination, engrossed by the hurried work which had been entrusted to him, paid little heed to other things.

He felt so fatigued when he laid aside his rough brush for an instant, that he was compelled to fight against drowsiness in order not to prolong his siesta beyond half an hour. Indeed, he was so afraid that the zeal of his companions might abate, that he took that brief interval of rest by stealth in the gallery of paintings, where his father would lock him in, and where it seemed that no one ever set foot. Two or three times he lacked courage to go and pass the night in the suburb of Catania, although his house was among the first on the road from the villa, and he consented to allow his father to procure a bed for him in the palace. When he did return to the wretched hovel where Mila bloomed like a rose under glass, he neither saw nor comprehended anything that took place about him. He confined himself to kissing his sister and telling her that he was glad to see her, but he had no time to scrutinize her or to talk with her.

The day before the fête was a Sunday. It only remained to give a last glance and a finishing touch to the work. He determined to dress with some care and to stroll about the city after escorting Mila to the evening service. He soon learned the location of the principal churches, squares, and buildings. Lastly, his father introduced him to several of his friends and relations, who welcomed him cordially, and with whom he strove to be amiable. But the contrast between that environment and the society he had frequented at Rome made him sad in spite of himself, and he retired early, longing for the morrow; for, in presence of his work, and under the spell of the noble edifice in which he labored, he forgot that he was of the common people, and remembered only that he was an artist.

At last that day of hope and dread arrived, the day on which Michel's work was to be applauded or ridiculed by the élite of Sicilian society.