Albert Savarus

“What has happened?” asked Rodolphe, as he saw Francesca finish reading the last letter.

“La liberta!” she exclaimed, with an artist’s enthusiasm.

“E denaro!” added Gina, like an echo, for she had found her tongue.

“Yes,” said Francesca, “no more poverty! For more than eleven months have I been working, and I was beginning to be tired of it. I am certainly not a literary woman.”

“Who is this Tito?” asked Rodolphe.

“The Secretary of State to the financial department of the humble shop of the Colonnas, in other words, the son of our ragionato. Poor boy! he could not come by the Saint-Gothard, nor by the Mont-Cenis, nor by the Simplon; he came by sea, by Marseilles, and had to cross France. Well, in three weeks we shall be at Geneva, and living at our ease. Come, Rodolphe,” she added, seeing sadness overspread the Parisian’s face, “is not the Lake of Geneva quite as good as the Lake of Lucerne?”

“But allow me to bestow a regret on the Bergmanns’ delightful house,” said Rodolphe, pointing to the little promontory.

“Come and dine with us to add to your associations, povero mio,” said she. “This is a great day; we are out of danger. My mother writes that within a year there will be an amnesty. Oh! la cara patria!”

These three words made Gina weep. “Another winter here,” said she, “and I should have been dead!”

“Poor little Sicilian kid!” said Francesca, stroking Gina’s head with an expression and an affection which made Rodolphe long to be so caressed, even if it were without love.

The boat grounded; Rodolphe sprang on to the sand, offered his hand to the Italian lady, escorted her to the door of the Bergmanns’ house, and went to dress and return as soon as possible.

When he joined the librarian and his wife, who were sitting on the balcony, Rodolphe could scarcely repress an exclamation of surprise at seeing the prodigious change which the good news had produced in the old man. He now saw a man of about sixty, extremely well preserved, a lean Italian, as straight as an I, with hair still black, though thin and showing a white skull, with bright eyes, a full set of white teeth, a face like Caesar, and on his diplomatic lips a sardonic smile, the almost false smile under which a man of good breeding hides his real feelings.

“Here is my husband under his natural form,” said Francesca gravely.

“He is quite a new acquaintance,” replied Rodolphe, bewildered.

“Quite,” said the librarian; “I have played many a part, and know well how to make up. Ah! I played one in Paris under the Empire, with Bourrienne, Madame Murat, Madame d’Abrantis e tutte quanti. Everything we take the trouble to learn in our youth, even the most futile, is of use. If my wife had not received a man’s education – an unheard-of thing in Italy – I should have been obliged to chop wood to get my living here. Povera Francesca! who would have told me that she would some day maintain me!”

As he listened to this worthy bookseller, so easy, so affable, so hale, Rodolphe scented some mystification, and preserved the watchful silence of a man who has been duped.

“Che avete, signor?” Francesca asked with simplicity. “Does our happiness sadden you?”

“Your husband is a young man,” he whispered in her ear.

She broke into such a frank, infectious laugh that Rodolphe was still more puzzled.

“He is but sixty-five, at your service,” said she; “but I can assure you that even that is something – to be thankful for!”

“I do not like to hear you jest about an affection so sacred as this, of which you yourself prescribed the conditions.”

“Zitto!” said she, stamping her foot, and looking whether her husband were listening. “Never disturb the peace of mind of that dear man, as simple as a child, and with whom I can do what I please. He is under my protection,” she added. “If you could know with what generosity he risked his life and fortune because I was a Liberal! for he does not share my political opinions. Is not that love, Monsieur Frenchman? – But they are like that in his family. Emilio’s younger brother was deserted for a handsome youth by the woman he loved. He thrust his sword through his own heart ten minutes after he had said to his servant, ‘I could of course kill my rival, but that would grieve the Diva too deeply.’”

This mixture of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascinating creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two refugees, but depressing to Rodolphe.

“Can she be fickle?” he asked himself as he returned to the Stopfers’ house. “She sympathized in my sorrow, and I cannot take part in her joy!”

He blamed himself, justifying this girl-wife.

“She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by impulse,” thought he, “and I want her to be like a Parisian woman.”

Next day and the following days, in fact, for twenty days after, Rodolphe spent all his time at the Bergmanns’, watching Francesca without having determined to watch her. In some souls admiration is not independent of a certain penetration. The young Frenchman discerned in Francesca the imprudence of girlhood, the true nature of a woman as yet unbroken, sometimes struggling against her love, and at other moments yielding and carried away by it. The old man certainly behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Francesca treated him with a deeply felt gratitude which roused her instinctive nobleness. The situation and the woman were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma, of which the solution attracted him more and more.

These last days were full of secret joys, alternating with melancholy moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more delightful than the hours when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one mind. And he was more and more fascinated by this tenderness apart from wit, always and in all things the same, an affection that was jealous of mere nothings – already!

“You care very much for luxury?” said he one evening to Francesca, who was expressing her wish to get away from Gersau, where she missed many things.

“I!” cried she. “I love luxury as I love the arts, as I love a picture by Raphael, a fine horse, a beautiful day, or the Bay of Naples. Emilio,” she went on, “have I ever complained here during our days of privation.”

“You would not have been yourself if you had,” replied the old man gravely.

“After all, is it not in the nature of plain folks to aspire to grandeur?” she asked, with a mischievous glance at Rodolphe and at her husband. “Were my feet made for fatigue?” she added, putting out two pretty little feet. “My hands” – and she held one out to Rodolphe – “were those hands made to work? – Leave us,” she said to her husband; “I want to speak to him.”

The old man went into the drawing-room with sublime good faith; he was sure of his wife.

“I will not have you come with us to Geneva,” she said to Rodolphe. “It is a gossiping town. Though I am far above the nonsense the world talks, I do not choose to be calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I make it my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, my only protector. We are leaving; stay here a few days. When you come on to Geneva, call first on my husband, and let him introduce you to me. Let us hide our great and unchangeable affection from the eyes of the world. I love you; you know it; but this is how I will prove it to you – you shall never discern in my conduct anything whatever that may arouse your jealousy.”

She drew him into a corner of the balcony, kissed him on the forehead, and fled, leaving him in amazement.

Next day Rodolphe heard that the lodgers at the Bergmanns’ had left at daybreak. It then seemed to him intolerable to remain at Gersau, and he set out for Vevay by the longest route, starting sooner than was necessary. Attracted to the waters of the lake where the beautiful Italian awaited him, he reached Geneva by the end of October. To avoid the discomforts of the town he took rooms in a house at Eaux-Vives, outside the walls. As soon as he was settled, his first care was to ask his landlord, a retired jeweler, whether some Italian refugees from Milan had not lately come to reside at Geneva.

“Not so far as I know,” replied the man. “Prince and Princess Colonna of Rome have taken Monsieur Jeanrenaud’s place for three years; it is one of the finest on the lake. It is situated between the Villa Diodati and that of Monsieur Lafin-de-Dieu, let to the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. Prince Colonna has come to see his daughter and his son-in-law Prince Gandolphini, a Neopolitan, or if you like, a Sicilian, an old adherent of King Murat’s, and a victim of the last revolution. These are the last arrivals at Geneva, and they are not Milanese. Serious steps had to be taken, and the Pope’s interest in the Colonna family was invoked, to obtain permission from the foreign powers and the King of Naples for the Prince and Princess Gandolphini to live here. Geneva is anxious to do nothing to displease the Holy Alliance to which it owes its independence. Our part is not to ruffle foreign courts; there are many foreigners here, Russians and English.”

“Even some Gevenese?”

“Yes, monsieur, our lake is so fine! Lord Byron lived here about seven years at the Villa Diodati, which every one goes to see now, like Coppet and Ferney.”

“You cannot tell me whether within a week or so a bookseller from Milan has come with his wife – named Lamporani, one of the leaders of the last revolution?”

“I could easily find out by going to the Foreigners’ Club,” said the jeweler.

Rodolphe’s first walk was very naturally to the Villa Diodati, the residence of Lord Byron, whose recent death added to its attractiveness: for is not death the consecration of genius?

The road to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass each other.

At a few yards from the Jeanrenauds’ house, which he was approaching without knowing it, Rodolphe heard the sound of a carriage behind him, and, finding himself in a sunk road, he climbed to the top of a rock to leave the road free. Of course he looked at the approaching carriage – an elegant English phaeton, with a splendid pair of English horses. He felt quite dizzy as he beheld in this carriage Francesca, beautifully dressed, by the side of an old lady as hard as a cameo. A servant blazing with gold lace stood behind. Francesca recognized Rodolphe, and smiled at seeing him like a statue on a pedestal. The carriage, which the lover followed with his eyes as he climbed the hill, turned in at the gate of a country house, towards which he ran.

“Who lives here?” he asked the gardener.

“Prince and Princess Colonna, and Prince and Princess Gandolphini.”

“Have they not just driven in?”

“Yes, sir.”

In that instant a veil fell from Rodolphe’s eyes; he saw clearly the meaning of the past.

“If only this is her last piece of trickery!” thought the thunder-struck lover to himself.