Chapter VI: The Staircase

"What! no farther advanced than this?" cried the majordomo, in despair, rushing in among the workmen. "Great God! what are you thinking of? The clock will strike seven in a moment; at eight the carriages will begin to arrive, and half of this room is not yet draped!"

As this apostrophe was addressed to no person in particular, no one replied, and the workmen continued to work with more or less speed, each according to the measure of his strength and his skill.

"Room, room for the flowers!" cried the controller of that notable branch of the establishment. "Put a hundred boxes of camellias in rows along the benches!"

"How do you expect to arrange your boxes of flowers before the carpets are down?" queried Master Barbagallo, with a profound sigh.

"And where do you expect me to put my boxes and flower-pots?" retorted the head gardener. "Why haven't your upholsterers finished their work?"

"Ah! there you are! why haven't they?" said the other, in a tone of intense indignation.

"Room! room for my ladders!" cried another voice; "the orders are that everything must be lighted at eight o'clock sharp, and that doesn't give me any too much time to light so many chandeliers. Room, room, I say!"

"Painters, take away your ladders," cried the upholsterers, in their turn; "we can do nothing as long as you are in the way."

"Such confusion, such an uproar, it's a second Tower of Babel," muttered the majordomo, wiping his brow. "I did all that I could to see that everything was done at the proper time; I warned everyone more than a hundred times; and here you are, all in a muddle, disputing the ground with one another, in one another's way, and making no progress at all. It is hopeless! it is disgusting!"

"Whose fault is it?" said the man with the flowers. "Can I put my wreaths on bare walls and my flowerpots on rough boards?"

"And can I climb up to the ceiling," said the man with the candles, "if my ladders are taken away to lay carpets? Do you take my men for bats, do you want me to make thirty honest fellows break their necks?"

"How do you expect my men to lay their carpets," said the chief upholsterer, in his turn, "if the painters don't take away their ladders?"

"And how do you expect our ladders to be taken away if we are still on them?" shouted one of the painters.

"The fault is all yours, you daubers!" cried the frantic majordomo; "or, rather, your master is the only culprit," he added, noticing that the young man whom he addressed glared fiercely at him at the epithet of dauber. "It's that old madman of a Pier-Angelo, who is not even here to direct you, I'll wager. Where can he be? At the nearest wineshop, I'll stake my head!"

A voice, still full and resonant, broke forth at the highest point of the ceiling with the refrain of an old ballad, and, on looking up, the wrathful majordomo saw the glistening bald head of the decorator-in-chief. Evidently the old man was laughing at the majordomo, and, being master of the field, proposed to put the finishing touches to his work at his leisure.

"Pier-Angelo, my friend," said the other, "you are making sport of us! That is too bad of you. You act like an old spoiled child, as you are; but we shall lose patience at last. This is no time to laugh and sing your drinking-songs."

Pier-Angelo did not deign to reply; he simply shrugged his shoulders as he talked with his son, who was even higher up than he, shading the dress of a dancing-girl of Herculaneum, who swam in a blue canvas sky.

"There are enough figures, enough folds and shading!" cried the majordomo, beside himself. "Who in the devil will ever look up there, to see if there's anything wrong with your divinities in the firmament? The general effect is there, and that's all that is necessary. Come, come down, you old fox, or I'll shake the ladder you are standing on."

"If you touch my father's ladder," exclaimed young Michel, in a voice of thunder, "I will crush you with this chandelier. No jests of that sort, Signor Barbagallo, or you will be sorry for them."

"Let him talk, and go on with your work," said old Pier-Angelo, calmly. "Disputing takes time; don't waste your breath in empty words."

"Go down, father, go down," said the young man. "I am afraid that in this confusion they may give you a fall; I shall finish in a moment. Go down, I entreat you, if you expect me to retain my presence of mind."

Pier-Angelo descended the ladder slowly; not that he had lost, at sixty years of age, the strength and agility of youth, but in order to make the time that his son required to complete his work seem less long.

"What folly, what trifling!" said the majordomo to the old man. "You work over these temporary canvases as if they were to be exhibited in a museum, whereas they will be rolled up and stored in a garret to-morrow, and will have to be covered with different figures for the next fête! Who will thank you for it? Who will pay the slightest attention to them?"

"Not you; everybody knows that," retorted the young painter, contemptuously, from the top of his ladder.

"Hush, Michel, and attend to your work," said his father. "Everyone takes pride in doing the best he can," he added, looking at the steward. "There are some who take pride in claiming the credit of all our labors! Come! the upholsterers may begin. Give me a hammer and some nails, you fellows! As I have delayed you, it's no more than fair that I should help you."

"Always a good comrade!" said one of the upholsterers, handing the old painter some tools. "Come, Master Pier-Angelo, let art and trade lend each other a hand! One must be mad to get into trouble with you."

"Oh! yes," grumbled Barbagallo, who, contrary to his customary reserved and courteous habit, was in a savage humor that evening; "that's the way everybody pays court to the obstinate old fool, and he doesn't care a fig how much trouble he makes for others."

"Instead of grumbling, you ought to help at the nailing, or by lighting the candles," said Pier-Angelo, with a mocking air. "But, psha I you are afraid you might spoil your satin breeches and tear your ruffles."

"Master Pier-Angelo, you are altogether too familiar, and I swear that I will never employ you after to-day."

"God grant it!" retorted the other with his accustomed phlegm, accompanying himself with sturdy, measured blows of the hammer upon the nails which he drove in quick succession; "but, on the very next occasion, you will come and implore me, and say that nothing can be done without me; and I, as usual, shall forgive your impertinence."

"Well!" said the majordomo to Michel, as he came slowly down his ladder, "is it done at last? That is very fortunate! Quick! quick! help the upholsterers, or the gardeners, or the lamplighters. Do something to make up for lost time."

Michel eyed the majordomo with a haughty air. He had so entirely forgotten even the idea of becoming a mere workman, that he could not imagine how that subordinate could venture to order him to take part in tasks unconnected with his special duties; but, just as he was about to make a sharp retort, he heard his father's voice calling him.

"Come, Michel, bring us some nails here, and help these good fellows, who won't finish in time without us."

"Nothing can be fairer," the young man replied. "I may not be very skilful at that work, but I have good strong arms for stretching. Come, what must I do? Tell me, you fellows!"

"Good!" exclaimed Magnani, a young journeyman upholsterer, outspoken and full of animation, who lived next door to the Lavoratori family in the suburb. "Be a good comrade like your father, whom everybody loves, and you will be loved as he is. We have been told that, because you had studied painting at Rome, you were inclined to be a little conceited, and you certainly do go about the city in a coat that is hardly fitted for an artisan. You have a very pleasing face, to be sure, but people blame you for being ambitious."

"Where would be the harm?" rejoined Michel, working industriously beside Magnani. "Who is not entitled to be ambitious?"

"I like the frankness of your reply, but every man who wishes to be admired should begin by winning affection."

"Am I hated, pray, in this country, where I have just arrived, and where I know no one as yet?"

"It is your own country; you were born here, your family is well known here, and your father highly esteemed; and the very reason that everybody has their eyes fixed on you is that you have just arrived. People think you a comely fellow, well dressed and well built. So far as I am able to judge, you have talent, the figures you have sketched and colored up yonder are not mere vulgar daubs. Your father is proud of you, but that is no reason why you should be proud of yourself. You are still a child, you are several years younger than I; you have almost no beard on your chin; you have never had an opportunity to furnish proofs of courage and virtue. When you have suffered a little because of the hardships of your condition in life, without complaining, then we will forgive you for carrying your head high and swaying from your hips up as you cross the street, with your cap over one ear. Otherwise we shall tell you that you are trying to impose on us, and that if you are not an artisan, but an artist, you had better ride in a carriage and not look the young men of your own rank in the face; for, you see, your father is a workman like us; he has talent in his line, and it may be more difficult to paint flowers, fruit, and birds on a cornice than to hang draperies at a window and arrange colors to harmonize in furnishing a room. But the difference isn't so great that we are not cousins-german in trade. I do not think that I am any better than the carpenter or mason; why do you think yourself above me?"

"I have no such thought," Michel replied; "God preserve me from it!"

"In that case, why didn't you come to our artisans' ball last night? I know that your cousin Vincenzo wanted to bring you, and you refused."

"Do not form a bad opinion of me for that, my friend; it may be that I am of a melancholy and unsociable temperament."

"I don't believe it. Your face says the contrary. Forgive me for speaking to you without ceremony; it is because I like you that I reproach you in this way. But our carpet is all nailed here; we must go somewhere else."

"Two or three of you to each chandelier!" cried the head lamplighter to his men; "you will never finish if you scatter so!"

"I say! I am all alone!" cried Visconti, one of the lighters, a stout fellow and fond of the bottle, who, having a little wine in his brain already, did not hold the lighted match within two inches of the candle. Michel, impressed by the lesson Magnani had given him, placed a stool under the chandelier and attempted to assist Visconti.

"Ah! that is right!" said the latter; "Master Michel's a good fellow, and he will have his reward. The princess pays well, and moreover she wants everybody to enjoy themselves in her house on fête days. There will be a supper for us after the dessert of the nobility's supper, and there'll be no lack of good wine. I have already had a little on account as I passed through the pantry."

"And so you are burning your fingers!" said Michel, with a smile.

"Perhaps your hand won't be as steady as it is now, two or three hours later," retorted Visconti; "for you will come to supper with us, won't you, young man? Your father will sing us his old ballads, which are always good for a laugh. There'll be more than a hundred of us at table at once! Ah! what a lark we will have!"

"Make room, make room!" cried a tall footman, with gold lace on all the seams of his livery; "the princess is coming to see if everything is ready. Make haste, stand aside! Don't shake the carpets so hard, you raise a dust. I say! you lighters up there, don't drop the wax so! take away your tools, make a passage!"

"Well," said the majordomo, "now you will hold your peace, I trust, you workmen! Come, make haste; if you are late, at least act as if you were hurrying. I won't be responsible for the rebuke you are going to receive. I am very sorry for you. But it's your own fault; I can't justify you. Ah! Master Pier-Angelo, this time you have no excuse for coming to beg for compliments."

These words reached young Michel's ears, and all his pride reawoke in his heart. The idea that his father could _beg for_ compliments and receive reproaches was intolerable to him. If he had not as yet been able to see the princess, he could fairly say that he had made no attempt to see her. He was not one of those who run eagerly at the heels of a wealthy and powerful person, to feast that person's eyes with the spectacle of puerile and servile admiration. But this time he stooped as he stood on the stool, seeking with his eyes that haughty personage who, according to Master Barbagallo, would in a moment humiliate an assemblage of intelligent and willing mechanics with a gesture or a word. He remained in that position, considerably above the level of the crowd, in order to see better, but all ready to jump down, rush to his old father's side, and answer for him if, in a spasm of too great affability, the heedless old man should allow himself to be insulted.

The vast apartment which they were hastening to complete was nothing more than an immense garden terrace, covered on the outside with such a wilderness of foliage, garlands and streamers, that one might have taken it for an enormous bower after the style of Watteau. Within, movable floors had been laid on the gravel. Three great marble fountains, decorated with mythological characters, were not at all in the way in that extemporized ball-room, but formed its most beautiful decoration. There was sufficient room to promenade and to dance between those graceful piles. They discharged their jets of limpid water into veritable thickets of flowers, beneath the resplendent glare of the great chandeliers, which spangled them with sparks of light. Benches, arranged as in an ancient amphitheatre, dotted with rose-bushes here and there, provided numerous seats for the guests and did not impede the circulation.

The ceiling was so high that the main stairway of the palace, an admirable piece of architecture, adorned with antique statues and jasper urns of the most beautiful patterns, was wholly within the ball-room. The white marble stairs were newly covered with a purple carpet, and the lackeys who preceded the princess having swept back the crowd of workmen, there was a solemn void about the foot of the staircase. Everybody instinctively held his peace in anticipation of a majestic spectacle.

The workmen, impelled by a feeling of curiosity, ingenuous and respectful in some, mocking and indifferent in others, all fixed their eyes on the great carved doors at the top of the staircase. Michel felt that his heart was beating fast, but it was with anger no less than with impatience. "Who in God's name are these nobles and wealthy mortals," he said to himself, "that they walk so proudly over the altars and platforms that our degraded hands construct for them? A goddess of Olympus would hardly be worthy to appear in such state, at the summit of such a temple, to the base mortals prostrate at her feet! Oh! insolence, falsehood and mockery! It may be that the woman who is about to come forth before my eyes is a woman of narrow mind, of ordinary parts; and yet all these bold, strong men, uncover at her approach!"

Michel had asked his father very few questions concerning Princess Agatha's tastes and character; and even those few questions Pier-Angelo had answered, especially of late, in an absent-minded way, as his custom was when anyone introduced a subject foreign to the train of thought induced by his work. But Michel was proud, and the thought that he was about to be brought face to face with some one prouder than himself aroused a feeling of anger and something like hatred in his heart.