Chapter V: IL Trovatore

Isabella mistrusted few people and disliked nobody for long. She was one of those happily constituted girls who are troubled with no problems, have no quarrel with destiny, and never resent their not having been born boys. She had endearing looks and a fine spirit, but without self-consciousness in the one, or arrogance in the other. She was never in arms for the prerogatives of her sex, because it never occurred to her that they were being either questioned or abused. If she coquetted at all, it was more with women than with men; yet she was equally natural with both. As sweet a princess as Perdita--as sweet a milkmaid she would have been, had fortune deposed her. Impressionable, poor child--it was a pity only that nature, not sparing her the softest of hearts, should have done so little to protect its own rich achievement from harm. But nature, bent only on relentless propagation, designs these triumphant things as lures.

Isabella, during all her young life, had endeared herself with whomsoever she had visited. Grandpapa Louis, the cynic and impure, doted upon his _charmante_; haughty grandmamma in Spain had, on her death, left her the solitary bequest devoted by that opulent lady to her lord’s relations. Isabella did not want the money, but she wept over that proof of affection; while papa Philip tried not to weep, tears of chagrin, over being left out in the cold. However, in that dismal poverty of the exchequer, something to somebody was better than nothing to nobody; and I have no doubt that the legacy was taken into account in all subsequent dispositions of the young Infanta’s “household.”

Wealth, after all, is like the other things, size and sound, relative. We are not to suppose, you and I, that, because a certain thousand a year might appear to us opulence, a duke might not consider himself a pauper on fifty times that income. I do not know what the revenues of Parma represented to Don Philip in hard cash; I do know that he was constantly and piteously complaining to his royal relatives of his embarrassments. One man’s affluence is another man’s necessity; else you and I again might have criticised the expenditure of the Parmese Court, have commented on the waste, the idle profusion of a State, which, for mere vanity’s sake, must boast a superfluity of service which it was inadequate to support; have suggested a drastic economy here, a wholesale retrenchment there. We should have been assured, no doubt, that all that _could_ be done _had_ been done, and that only the indispensable remained--a possibly unanswerable statement from the opposite to our own point of view. From that standpoint the emptiness of the great palace at Colorno, during the absence of the Court, was so qualified an emptiness that its superfluous inmates could still have peopled a substantial villa or two, and left something over for emergencies, Besides the personal staff, which included attendants, preceptors, valets and grooms sufficient--with a lady of the wardrobe, two _femmes de chambre_, and some minor officials attached to Isabella alone--the gardens, the stables, the kitchens, the guard-house all gave indolent occupation to a small garrison of retainers, who, mostly idle and mostly gossips, numbered amongst themselves none, perhaps, quite so pert and so voluble as Fanchette Becquet, the Infanta’s first _femme de confiance_.

Fanchette, who hailed from Paris, had attained her present post more through private and particular interest than through particular merit. There were reasons for this, it was understood, which it was not necessary to divulge, but of which the girl herself was fully sensible, and of which she would have been the last not to take ample advantage. There was no high-born lady of the Court who presumed, or was allowed to presume, so much on her position as Fanchette. Her very audacity and insolence of retort possessed for certain masculine minds a charm which was a perpetual source of indulgence and profit to her. The duke himself had been known to suffer her impertinences with an enjoying relish which redounded in no ways to her disadvantage. In style and temper she was a veritable Parisian _mondaine_, dapper and pretty, though her lips were a little thin and her nose a little sharp. She had no heart at all, but her emotions, easily responsive to small provocation, blinded herself and others to that defect.

Fanchette one evening was “finishing” her young lady in preparation for a descent to the audience chamber--to which was coming M. du Tillot, Marquis de Felino and Secretary of State--and was taking full advantage of the licence allowed her tongue by a spoiling mistress.

“It is fortunate, is it not, your Highness,” she said, with a little simper, “that somebody whom we know does not approve of rouge for ladies?”

She was daintily fitting, as she spoke, a spray of natural pink rose-buds into the silken fillet which bound the girl’s unpowdered chestnut-brown hair. Isabella’s laced bodice was of the simplest, meet sheath for the flower-like neck and bosom which emerged from it. A _sacque_, like a drooped petal, fell from between her shoulder-blades; her slender hips were innocent of the grotesque abomination of hoops. So she was permitted, in that court of burlesque and man-millinery, to indulge her own humorous _naïveté_. It gave her an odd distinction, not unagreeable to papa’s pride. He would sternly repress any inclination detected in others to ape, servilely, that natural innocence; Isabelita should be the only sweet Arcadian in Parma. If she was to be Hebe in a raree show, she alone should display the delicious novelty of acting humanly, while the puppets, reversing their part, looked on and applauded. And yet, to Isabella herself, hers was no part at all, but only the most natural of instincts.

“Fanchette,” she said; “your voice sounds very demure; or else I am very stupid. Was it weighted, or was it not, with some meaning I did not understand?”

“Only that mademoiselle’s cheek, so sensitive to sudden changes of feeling, is its own best interpreter.”

“Interpreter of what, and to whom, Fanchette?”

“Ah! I have blundered,” said the maid; “and now I am full of confusion. It would be too daring in me to suggest.”

“Well, I will not ask you to,” said Isabella. “Does my cheek satisfy you now? But it does not blush for what you think; only to be made the target to gossips and impertinents.”

“O, mademoiselle! O, your Highness! Let me go and weep my heart out in solitude. I have offended you, and without the least little thought of offence. O, let me go, mademoiselle!”

“Don’t be silly, Fanchette. I am not blaming you for the idle chatter you repeat. People may think what they like about rouge, without its affecting my fortunes, that is all. Sensitive! There is nobody in the world so absurdly sensitive as yourself, I believe. Come----”

She rose to her feet, with a coaxing smile. The maid held in her hand a little ornament of paste and silver with which she had been about to fasten the flowers into place; Isabella took the trinket from her, and, putting an arm round the over-slim waist, tried the effect of the thing against Fanchette’s own powdered locks.

“It is like sparkles of ice through mist,” she said. “It suits you ever so much better than it does me. Will you accept it for your own, Fanchette, and bring me something else?”

Fanchette sobbed, wiping an eye which yet had a covetous side-glance for the toy.

“I’m sure I meant no presumption,” she gurgled; “or to abuse the confidence your Highness reposes in me. I only thought your Highness would approve sincerity better than an affectation of ignorance, which your Highness must know could not be real.”

Isabella sighed.

“There, girl,” she said--“there. To be sure I like sincerity.”

“Where what is to be is an open secret,” continued Fanchette--“and somebody’s tastes so coincide with your Highness’s; I--I thought your Highness would be gratified to know.”

Isabella laughed, and then sighed again, as she released her hold, with a little conciliatory pat, and reseated herself--a movement which gave Fanchette an opportunity furtively to examine her prize.

“I daresay I am,” said the Infanta. “It is gratifying, at least----” she stopped.

“It is gratifying, at least,” said the maid, who had resumed her duties, “to learn, as your Highness was about to remark, that philosophy can so concern itself with natural beauties. But indeed there are other proofs that a fine complexion is not the only thing honoured in Vienna.”

“I suppose I ought not to ask you what you mean, Fanchette.”

“Mademoiselle has not heard of the Chevalier Tiretta?”

“No.”

“Such a voice, your Highness, and such a man! He is a gift from the archduke to his Excellency, and has been ravishing the Courts of Parma with his music these days past. They say----”

“Well?”

“I hardly like to repeat.”

“Do not, then.”

“That somebody in love has made this nightingale his avant-coureur to overture his passion.”

“Do they say, girl? I think, indeed, your idle fancy is the only gossip.”

Fanchette’s head was seen in the mirror to nod itself, and her strait lips to smile.

“It is not fancy, at least,” she said, “but simple reason, your Highness, to deduce from this singer that philosophy may have its sentimental side. Else it would not choose for its close intimacy--as is whispered to be the case--so picturesque a comrade, or, having chosen, select him for a mission so romantic.”

Isabella rose. There was a little stately chill in her young aspect.

“That is quite enough,” she said. “I do not wish to listen to any more of this nonsense, or to seem to encourage you to repeat it. Give me my fan and mouchoir, please. It is time for me to descend.”

At the door a couple of powdered _valets-de-chambre_ greeted the young lady, low-bowing, and, candle in hand, preceded her down the broad stairway to the _salle-d’audience_. It was a fine chamber, bemirrored, bemarbled, with a pillared balcony through which the soft night air flowed in. Penury or plenty, there was nothing here, no seat, no ornament, no picture, between the painted ceiling and the rich, deep carpet, but declared itself in terms of gilt and splendour a thing of luxury. The room was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of wax candles set in girandoles, and as Isabella, announced by a gentleman usher, entered it, each separate flame bowed to her as to the goddess for whom they had all been waiting.

There were only three people present--the _gouvernante_, in an elaborate toilette and stupendous hoop; M. du Tillot, short, complacent, in a blaze of silk and embroidery; and a second gentleman, a stranger, somewhat soberly dressed, who stood in the background, bowing low, so that his face showed foreshortened. The Secretary of State came forward, beaming, ingratiatory, tripping on his fat little pumps. He bowed elaborately over the hand which Isabella gave him, and kissed it as if he were negotiating an oyster.

“I greet your Highness,” he said, “on behalf of the Court, myself, and, above all, his Excellency, your father, who, I rejoice to inform you, is very well.”

“And my maman, monseigneur?” asked Isabella, her eyes full and shining.

“She writes in the best of spirits,” said du Tillot: “like one who finds in the promised fruition of her hopes a glad new lease of life.” He was a kind old man. The formality achieved, he pressed the little palm, and, looking at the lowered lids, “we will do our best, will we not, my child,” he said, “to justify maman in her convalescence?”

“I want maman to be well above all things in the world,” said Isabella simply; and then the _gouvernante_ struck in in her high throaty voice:

“Eh bien! It is very well to wish for others what our self-will is inclined to deny them.”

It seemed unnecessary, but madam had that way of grudging its perfect bloom to harmony, to which certain minds, having a mistaken sense of humour, are wont, seemingly irresistibly, to be moved. She could not forego her grumble, even where policy counselled silence. She would deliberately invite offence, and then, resenting being treated as offensive, would study, though she had to bide her time for it, to make herself as unendurable as possible.

“Am I self-willed?” asked Isabella, appealing to the minister. But, though she spoke plaintively, there was a spark of ominous colour in her cheek.

“You are your mother’s true daughter,” answered du Tillot, with a glance of annoyance at the marquise. “You will yield to loving reason what you would ever refuse to dictation. But that is neither here nor there in the light of my present business, which is to introduce to your Highness’s good favour--” he wheeled, with an expressive gesture--“the person of the Chevalier Tiretta, a gentleman of the Viennese Court, and as admirable a musician and improvisatore as he is a soldier of tried merit.”

Isabella was conscious of a little thrill and shock, as she turned to the hitherto unregarded stranger. Then a flush mantled her face from chin to brow, and she dropped a curtsey quite repellent in its frigidity. She knew him at once; how could she fail to? or to associate this and that in the sudden leap of recognition? A sense of indignation, of recoil as from an astounding revelation, were the predominant emotions in her mind. Then Fanchette’s gossip, and the one conclusion to be drawn from it!--she hardly heard the purring phrases of the Secretary of State, as he improved upon his opening:

“His Excellency, your father, deploring his prolonged absence from his child, sends her this voice to interpret sweetly for him the love his heart is withheld from expressing. He entreats her to share with him a treasure his affection will not permit him to monopolise, and to preserve and honour it against his soon return.”

Isabella’s cheek, as if to vindicate Fanchette’s claim, had gone from red to white. She turned her back on the stranger.

“I needed no such proof of my papa’s love,” she said to du Tillot; “or of any instrument, however accommodating, to interpret it to me. But you will assure him from me, monsieur, that his daughter will not fail to give honour where honour is due.”

“Heyday!” cried the marquise--she had been effervescing where she sat, her eyes glassy, and a mirthless smile on her fat old lips. “This is not self-will, to be sure! This is a graceful yielding to reason, and a fine reception of his Excellency’s honoured protégé. What do you mean, child, abusing your father’s consideration and insulting his deputy in this fashion?”

All this, to be sure, was grievously embarrassing to the stranger, who had to stand during this dispute, feeling very much like an actor who has come forward to make an unwelcome explanation and holds his ground biding an abatement in the storm of hisses and orange peel which greets him. His mouth twitched, it is true, and there was a ghost of a twinkle in his mournful eyes; otherwise his aspect was one of profound wonder and deprecation. But the Gonzalès, wrought up now to the full fury of her resentment, would by no means consent to forego, in the face of this wounded appeal, the moral triumph it afforded her. She got to her feet, fuming and ejaculating, and, while M. du Tillot arched his brows in lost amazement over the scene, hurried across to the chevalier, and, seizing his two hands in hers, panted out a flurry of apology, explanation, protest:--

“No wonder you look surprised, monsieur; no wonder you look hurt. This reception of his Excellency’s gift, of an honoured subject and comrade moreover of one whose least recommendation should entitle its bearer to our utmost attention and consideration--it is unaccountable, it is infamous, it reflects upon my careful tuition in a way which is humiliating to a degree. I beg you to attribute to nothing but a spoilt caprice this seeming abuse of a favour, which others, less _self-willed_, can appreciate at its worth; to forget a slight----”

But here du Tillot, grim and peremptory, thought fit to interfere.

“The chevalier,” said he, “is, I am sure, more taken aback over this tirade than over any imaginary provocation to it. Her Highness said nothing to which exception could be taken by a reasonable mind. And as to the fine instrument--if monsieur will forgive me the figure of speech--she has as yet heard its virtues only trumpeted by others.”

He turned to Isabella, with a smile. The girl was quite white.

“I did not mean to imply such offence,” she said. “If my manner suggested a ‘spoilt caprice,’ monsieur will know how to interpret it at its true value.”

She would say no more. She seated herself on a sofa, and set to fanning her face, as if its aspect were not already chill enough.

Du Tillot, puzzled by the equivocalness of her words, met the situation, nevertheless, with diplomatic tact. This romantic essay--if, indeed, it were one, as privately surmised--had not opened propitiously. Possibly the girl’s prejudice against her royal suitor was more deep-seated than they supposed. Yet how could _she_ have guessed this troubadour’s presumptive mission? It was merely conjecture with the best of them. It would seem that only to be accredited from Vienna was offence enough in her eyes. At the same time he was furiously angered with the marquise over her outburst. What did the old fool, manœuvring to bring about this situation, and then spoiling it by belittling her charge in the eyes of Austria’s representative? He could have slapped her gross old arms, viciously, and with joy.

But he did nothing so impolitic. On the contrary, he tripped over to the cross old lady, and bantered her charmingly and playfully on her temper. The ardour of her spirit, he said, bespoke the youth which was perennially reluctant in her to quit the temple of its triumphs and conquests. But was not the generosity of sentiment, characteristic of that vernal condition, a little apt sometimes to wax unnecessarily hot in defence of its enthusiasms? There had been no slight intended here, he would answer for it, either to an exquisite gift or to her fine appreciation of it.

“Enthusiasms!” cried madam--but she was already mollified. “I assert nothing, for my part, but an unquestioning faith in the perfection of those accents which the tenderest regard has chosen to be its interpreter.”

“And which shall answer to your faith, I give my word,” said du Tillot.

Madam laughed high.

“After such assurance,” she said, “the chevalier has no choice but to submit his credentials. What shall it be, monsieur--love, friendship, philosophy? Say philosophy as applied to love.”

The stranger’s mandolin was lying on the harpsichord. He lifted it, with the quietest air of acquiescence, and caressing it in his arms, as if it had been a dear infant, touched out a disconnected note or two. Thence his fingers seemed to wander haphazard over the strings, seeking, while his abstracted eyes pursued their theme, the point where thought and setting should blend into one alliance, melodious and expressive. And presently the words came:

“Apply philosophy to love, as salve is applied to a wound: and, lo! as the wound is healed, so is the salve infected with its virus. If love, then, shall live, philosophy must die.”

So ran his theme, followed, with an infinite elaboration of word and note, to the little rippling cadenza on which it ended. It was very finished, very clever; but with scarce a suggestion of real feeling behind it. Only the soft flexibility of the voice seemed to suggest itself a medium for nobler inspirations. It was very sweet in quality and very moving.

The marquise applauded the improvisation sky-high. “What do you think now, little grudger?” she said, with a triumphant look at Isabella. “Has not monsieur justified in himself his Highness’s gift? It is for you, in turn, to propose the theme.”

“I think,” responded the young lady, coldly, but with a faint rose of colour on her cheek, “that love is a vulgar complaint and philosophy a rare one. I would let love, for my part, be the one to die, since he is the easier spared. Monsieur, perhaps, will sing us his requiem.”

Monsieur bowed low, a smile in his eyes, while madam, shooting a significant glance at du Tillot, set to fanning herself scornfully.

Once again the fingers fluttered lightly on the strings, and once again gradually disentangled from them, as it were a flowering spray from a thicket, a tender Lydian measure:

“Love died of Isabel, and lay at rest,
Slain by the cold sweet arrows from her breast.
And, as he quiet slept, came Isabel
To view the cruel work she’d done so well;
When, as is wont to hap, the wound she’d given
Broke forth anew, denouncing her to heaven.
For whom Death answered, dropping from above:
‘Now is my reign established, quit of Love!
For my sake did you do this thing?’ Then she:
‘Ah, no! But that I loved Philosophy.’
So, hardly had she spoke when, with a spring,
Love rose, and, laughing joyously, took wing.”

Madam, at the finish, broke into rapturous applause: “Il fait tourner la chance!” she cried, with a rocking laugh. “Il fait tourner la chance. O, that was very well indeed, monsieur! You have the true genius for improvisation.”

But du Tillot, secretly watchful, shook his head just perceptibly.

“I hope not too daring,” he thought, noticing the girl’s face.

Isabella neither applauded nor dissented. A liberty, her aspect might have denoted, was best rebuked by contemptuous silence. Only when presently the marquise called the stranger to her side, she rose, as if in quick avoidance of his neighbourhood, and addressed herself exclusively for the rest of the evening to the Secretary of State.

But when the gentlemen were gone--one of them in the stinging consciousness of an obeisance unacknowledged--she turned upon the _gouvernante_ with real anger in her eyes:

“Did you not recognise him, madame?”

The old lady actually quailed before the inquisition of that look.

“What if I did?” she said sullenly: “What then?”

“And draw the only conclusion that one can draw from his presence here?”

“You are a fool and a prude,” cried the marquise, bursting out suddenly between fury and trepidation. “My God, I think I have never known such another. All this to-do about a piece of pleasantry that was nothing in itself, and should count for less than nothing in the context of that sincere and noble nature which condescends to honour you with its regard. The selection by such a prince of an instrument to sing his devotion in your ears should be enough to convince you of the high character of his deputy. But whether you like the chevalier or not, and whatever your sense of filial duty, you have got to endure him, that is all--aye, and to listen to him, too.”

“It will not be your fault, at least, madame,” said Isabella, “if my ears by this time are not inured to offence,” and, very pale, with her head high, she walked out of the room.