Chapter XXXIX: An Idyll

The Piccinino returned with his young companion to the garden, and, having suddenly become pensive, sat down upon a bench and apparently forgot her presence. And yet he was thinking of her, and this is what he was saying to himself:

"Would it not be an idiotic performance to allow this lovely creature to go hence as calm and serene as she came? Yes, it would be an idiotic performance for a man who was resolved upon her ruin; but I simply wished to test the power of my glance and my voice to lure her into my cage, like a beautiful bird whom one likes to examine close at hand, and to whom one then restores its liberty, because one does not wish it to die. There is always a touch of hatred in the violent desires a woman arouses in us."--The Piccinino is still musing and meditating upon his impressions.--"For victory, in such cases, is a matter of pride, and it is impossible to fight, even in play, without a little temper.--But there is no more of hatred than of anger or desire in the feeling this child arouses in me. It does not even occur to her to be coquettish with me. She is not afraid of me; she looks me in the face without blushing; she is not agitated in my presence. If I abuse her isolation and her weakness, she will defend herself badly perhaps, but she will go away from here all in tears, and it may be will kill herself--for there are some who kill themselves.--At all events she will detest the thought of me and blush to have belonged to me. Now, a man like myself cannot afford to be despised. Women who do not know him must fear him; they who do know him must esteem him or love him; they who have known him must regret him. To be sure, there is, on the border-line between presumption and violence, an infinite enjoyment, a complete consciousness of victory; but that is so on the border-line only: a hair's-breadth beyond, and it is all bestiality and brutality. The moment that a woman can accuse you of having resorted to force, she resumes her sway, although conquered, and you risk becoming her slave because you have been her master against her will. I have heard that there was something of that sort in my father's life, although Fra Angelo would never tell me anything definite about it. But everybody knows that my father lacked patience and that he drank heavily. Those were the failings of his time. We are more civilized and more adroit to-day. More moral? no, but more refined, and, consequently, more irresistible. Would there be much skill or much merit involved in obtaining from this girl what she has not as yet accorded her lover? She is so trustful that the first half of the road would be easy enough. Indeed, I have already gone halfway. She was fascinated by my air of chivalrous virtue. She came here, she entered my house, she sat by my side. But the other half is not simply difficult; it is impossible. I could never make her desire to struggle with me; it would never occur to her to yield in order to obtain. If she were mine, I would dress her as a boy and take her with me hunting. At need she would hunt the Neapolitan as she has hunted the abbé to-day. She would soon be hardened. I should love her as a page; I should not look upon her as a woman at all."

"Well, monsignor," said Mila, a little annoyed by her host's long silence, "are you waiting for the Piccinino to come? Can I not go away now?"

"Do you want to go?" replied the Piccinino, looking at her with a distraught air.

"Why not? You managed the affair so quickly that it is still early, and I can return alone by daylight. I shall not be afraid now that I know where the abbé is, and that he is incapable of coming after me."

"Wouldn't you like me to escort you, at least as far as Bel-Passo?"

"It seems to me quite unnecessary for you to put yourself out."

"Very well, go, Mila; you are free, since you are in such haste to leave me, and are so uncomfortable in my company."

"No, signor, do not say that," replied the girl, artlessly. "I am highly honored to be with you, and if it were not for the danger, which you realize, of being spied upon and falsely accused, I should enjoy staying with you; for it seems to me that you are sad, and I might at least divert your thoughts. Sometimes Princess Agatha is sad too, and when I would leave her alone, she says to me: 'Stay with me, little Mila; even if we don't speak, your presence does me good.'"

"Princess Agatha is sad sometimes? Do you know the reason?"

"No; but I have an idea that she is bored to death."

Thereupon the Piccinino asked many questions, which Mila answered with her usual ingenuousness, but neither would nor could tell him anything more than he had already heard; that is to say, that she lived a virtuous, retired life, that she was very charitable, that she read a great deal, that she loved the arts, and that she was gentle and placid, almost to the point of apathy, in her external relations. But the unsuspecting Mila added that she was sure that her dear princess was more ardent and self-sacrificing in her affections than people thought; that she had often known her to be moved to tears by the story of some misfortune, or even by some touchingly simple anecdote.

"For instance?" said the Piccinino; "give me an example."

"Very well," said Mila; "one day I told her that there was a time when we were very poor in Rome. I was only five or six years old then, and as we had almost nothing to eat, I used sometimes to tell my brother Michel that I was not hungry, so that he would eat my share. But Michel, suspecting my motive, began to say that he was not hungry either; so that we often kept our bread over night, neither of us being willing to admit that we longed to eat it. And the result of that performance was that we made ourselves more unhappy than we really were. I told the princess this laughingly; suddenly she burst into tears and pressed me to her heart, saying: 'Poor children! poor dear children!'--Tell me, signor, if that shows the cold heart and dull mind that people say she has?"

The Piccinino took Mila's arm in his and walked about the garden with her, leading her on to talk of the princess. His imagination was engrossed by that woman who had made so deep an impression on him, and he entirely forgot that Mila had occupied his thoughts and disturbed his senses during a part of the day.

Honest Mila, still convinced that she was talking to a sincere friend, abandoned herself to the pleasure of praising the woman whom she loved with enthusiasm, and _forgot that she was forgetting herself_, as she expressed it, after walking about for an hour under the magnificent trees in the garden at Nicolosi.

The Piccinino had an impressionable brain and a fickle humor. His whole life was a constant alternation of meditation and curiosity. The simple and graceful conversation of Mila, her kindly thoughts, the generous outflow of her affections, and an indefinable touch of grandeur of soul, courage, and cheeriness of temperament, which she inherited from her father and uncle, gradually fascinated the brigand. New horizons opened before him, as if he were passing from the contemplation of a painful and fatiguing drama to that of a placid and lightsome idyll. He was too intelligent not to understand everything, even those things which were most opposed to his instincts and habits. He had devoured Byron's poems. In his dreams he had raised himself to the level of Don Juan and Lara; but he had read Petrarch too, and knew him by heart; indeed he had smiled instead of yawning, as he murmured to himself the _concetti_ of _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_. He felt soothed by his frank converse with little Mila, even more than he ordinarily was when he resorted to that sentimental nonsense to allay the tempests of his passions.

But at last the sun began to sink. Mila thought of Magnani, and asked leave to go.

"Very well, _addio_, my sweet Mila," said the Piccinino; "but as we walk back to the garden gate I propose to do for you in all seriousness what I have never done for any woman, except from some selfish motive or in mockery."

"What is that, monsignor?" queried Mila, in amazement.

"I propose to pluck a bouquet for you, a virginal bouquet, from the flowers in my garden," he answered, with a smile, in which, if there was a suspicion of mockery, it was directed at himself alone.

To Mila this attention seemed much less surprising than it seemed to the Piccinino. He plucked with care white roses, myrtle, and orange blossoms; he picked the thorns from the roses; he selected the finest flowers; and with more taste and skill than he would have given himself credit for, he made a superb bouquet for his amiable guest.

"Ah!" he said as he presented it to her, "we must not forget the cyclamen. There must be some among this grass. No, no, Mila, do not look; I want to pick them myself, so that the princess may enjoy inhaling the perfume of my bouquet. For you must tell her that it comes from me, and that it was the only attention which I ventured to offer you, after a tête-à-tête of two hours in my house."

"Then you do not forbid me to tell Princess Agatha that I have been here?"

"You must tell her, Mila. You must tell her everything. But her alone, do you understand? Swear it on your salvation, for you believe in that, do you not?"

"Why, do not you believe in it, signor?"

"I believe that I have earned the right to go to Paradise to-day, if I should die at once; for my heart is as pure as a little child's since you have been with me."

"But, suppose the princess asks me who you are, monsignor, and whom I am talking about--how shall I describe you so that she may know?"

"You will tell her what I wish you also to know, Mila. But perhaps there will be times hereafter when my face and my name will no longer be in accord. Then you must hold your peace, and, at need, pretend that you never saw me, for with a word you could cause my death."

"God forbid!" cried Mila, effusively. "Ah! monsignor, rely on my prudence and my discretion as if my life were bound to yours!"

"Very well; say to the princess that it was Carmelo Tomabene who rescued you from Abbé Ninfo, and who kissed your hand as respectfully as he would kiss her own."

"It is for me to kiss your hand, monsignor," replied the guileless child, putting the brigand's hand to her lips, firmly persuaded that it was at least a king's son who treated her with such condescending courtesy; "for you are deceiving me," she continued. "Carmelo Tomabene is a _villano_, and this house is no more yours than his name is. You might live in a palace, if you chose, but you disguise yourself for political reasons which I ought not to know, and do not wish to. I have an idea that you will be King of Sicily some day. Ah! how I would like to be a man and fight for your cause! for you will bring about the happiness of your people, I am sure of it!"

Mila's jesting extravagance caused a momentary madness in the brigand's audacious brain. He had a touch of vertigo, and felt almost the same emotion as if she had guessed the truth instead of dreaming a dream. But instantly he laughed an almost bitter laugh, which did not dispel Mila's illusions. She thought that it was an attempt to banish her rash suspicions, and she frankly asked his forgiveness for the words that had escaped her.

"My child," he replied, kissing her on the brow and assisting her to mount the white mule, "Princess Agatha will tell you who I am. I authorize you to ask her; but, when you find out, remember that you are my accomplice, or that you must send me to the gallows."

"I would rather go myself!" said Mila, as she rode away, calling his attention to the respectful kiss she bestowed upon his bouquet.

"Well!" said the Piccinino to himself, "this has been the pleasantest and most romantic adventure of my whole life. I have played the part of a king in disguise, without showing it, without taking the trouble to prepare for it, without making any arrangements to afford myself that amusement. Unexpected pleasures are the only genuine ones, they say; I begin to believe it. Perhaps it is because I have premeditated my actions too much, and laid out my life beforehand too carefully, that I have so often found ennui and distaste at the end of my undertakings. Fascinating Mila! What a wealth of poesy, what freshness of the imagination in your young brain! Oh! if only you were a youth of my own sex! if I could keep you beside me without causing you to lose any of your pleasant illusions and your blessed purity! I should find the sweet companionship of a wife in a faithful comrade, without danger of arousing or feeling the passion which poisons and destroys all friendships! But such mortals do not exist. Woman cannot fail to be treacherous; man cannot cease to be brutal. Ah! I always have missed--I always shall miss--the being able to love some one. I should have had to fall in with a mind different from all other minds and even more different from my own--which is impossible!

"Am I then an exceptional character?" he asked himself, following with his eyes the prints of Mila's little feet on the gravelled paths of his garden. "It seems to me that I am, when I compare myself with the mountaineers with whom I am compelled to live, and with these bandits whose leader I am. I have more than one brother among them, so it is said. The fact that they have none of my qualities, makes it impossible for me to believe it. The passions which serve as a bond between us differ as much as our features and our bodily strength. They desire booty in order to convert into money everything that is not money; and I care for nothing which is not of value by reason of its beauty or its rarity. What they succeed in obtaining they hoard because they are miserly; I use it sparingly, so that I may be able to bear myself royally with them on occasion, and extend my power and influence over everyone about me.

"Thus gold is to me only a means, while to them it is the end. They love women as chattels, and I, alas! would fain be able to love them as human beings! They are intoxicated with delight by acts of violence which make me sick at heart, and by which I should be humiliated, knowing that I have the power to please, and having never been compelled to force myself upon anyone. No, no! they are no brothers of mine; if they are the _Destatore's_ sons, they are the offspring of wild dissipation and of his years of moral decadence. I am the son of Castro-Reale; I was conceived on a day when his mind was lucid. My mother was not violated like the rest. She abandoned herself to him willingly, and I am the fruit of the intercourse of two free hearts, who did not give me life against their wills.

"But, in that world which is called society, and which I call the legal community, are there not many persons of both sexes with whom I could enter into relations, and so escape this ghastly solitude of my thoughts? Are there not men of intelligence, endowed with keen perception, whose friend I might be? Are there not many women, proud and adroit, whose lover I might be, without being compelled to laugh at the pains I had taken to overcome them? In a word, am I doomed never to find emotion of any sort in this life which I embraced as being most fruitful in violent emotions? Shall I always be obliged to expend endless stores of imaginative power and of tact, in order to succeed in pillaging a vessel on the coast or a party of travellers in the gorges of the mountain? And all to obtain a multitude of petty trinkets, a little money, and the hearts of a few Englishwomen, ugly or half-mad, who adore adventures with brigands as a remedy for the spleen!

"But I have closed to myself forever that world where I might find my equals and my fellows. I can enter only through the secret doors of intrigue, and, if I wish to appear there in broad daylight, I can do it only on condition of being followed by the mystery of my past, that is to say, by a sentence of death always hanging over my head. Shall I leave the country? It is the only country where the trade of bandit is more perilous than dishonorable. Anywhere else I shall be asked for proof that I have always lived in legitimate society; and if I cannot furnish it I shall be classed with the most degraded creatures who wallow in the sloughs of their pretended civilization!

"O Mila! how completely you have filled with grief and dismay this heart upon which you have shed a ray of your sunlight!"