Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848

"Well! and even now the rites are in progress which bind her to Ulric Barberigo!"

"She will never wed Ulric Barberigo," was the quiet answer. "Why left you Olivolo?" she continued.

"Could I remain and look upon these hated nuptials – could I be patient and see her driven like a sheep to the sacrifice? I fled from the spectacle, as if the knife of the butcher were already in my own heart."

"You were wrong; but the fates have spoken, and their decrees are unchangeable. I tell you I have seen your bridal with Francesca Ziani. No Ulric weds that maiden. She is reserved for you alone. You alone will interchange with her the final vows before the man of God. But hasten, that this may find early consummation. I have seen other things! Hasten – but hasten not alone, nor without your armor! A sudden and terrible danger hangs over San Pietro di Castella, and all within its walls. Gather your friends, gather your retainers. Put on the weapons of war and fly thither with all your speed. I see a terrible vision, even now, of blood and struggle! I behold terrors that frighten even me! Your friend is a man of arms. Let your war-galleys be put forth, and bid them steer for the Lagune of Caorlo. There will you win Francesca, and thenceforth shall you wear her – you only – so long as it may be allowed you to wear any human joy!"

Her voice, look, manner, sudden energy, and the wild fire of her eyes, awakened Giovanni to his fullest consciousness. His friend drew nigh – they would have conferred together, but the woman interrupted them.

"You would deliberate," said she, "but you have no time! What is to be done must be done quickly. It seems wild to you, and strange, and idle, what I tell you, but it is nevertheless true; and if you heed me not now bitter will be your repentance hereafter. You, Giovanni, will depart at least. Heed not your friend – he is too cold to be successful. He will always be safe, and do well, but he will do nothing further. Away! if you can but gather a dozen friends and man a single galley, you will be in season. But the time is short. I hear a fearful cry – the cry of women – and the feeble shriek of Francesca Ziani is among the voices of those who wail with a new terror! I see their struggling forms, and floating garments, and disheveled hair! Fly, young men, lest the names of those whom Venice has written in her Book of Gold, shall henceforth be written in a Book of Blood!"

The reputation of the sybil was too great in Venice to allow her wild predictions to be laughed at. Besides, our young Venetians – Nicolo no less than Giovanni, in spite of what the woman had spoken touching his lack of enthusiasm – were both aroused and eagerly excited by her speech. Her person dilated as she spoke – her voice seemed to come up from a fearful depth, and went thrillingly deep into the souls of the hearers. They were carried from their feet by her predictions. They prepared to obey her counsels. Soon had they gathered their friends together, enough to man three of the fastest galleys of the city. Their prows were turned at once toward the Lagune of Caorlo, whither the woman had directed them. She, meanwhile, had disappeared, but the course of her gondola lay for Olivolo.

CHAPTER III

It will be necessary that we should go back in our narrative but a single week before the occurrence of these events. Let us penetrate the dim and lonesome abode on the confines of the "Jewish Quarter," but not within it, where the "Spanish Gipsy" delivered her predictions. It is midnight, and still she sits over her incantations. There are vessels of uncouth shape and unknown character before her. Huge braziers lie convenient, on one of which, amidst a few coals, a feeble flame may be seen to struggle. The atmosphere is impregnated with a strong but not ungrateful perfume, and through its vapors objects appear with some indistinctness. A circular plate of brass or copper – it could not well be any more precious metal – rests beneath the eye and finger of the woman. It is covered with strange and mystic characters, which she seems busily to explore, as if they had a real significance in her mind. She evidently united the highest departments of her art with its humblest offices; and possessed those nobler aspirations of the soul, which, during the middle ages, elevated in considerable degree the professors of necromancy. But our purpose is not now to determine her pretensions. We have but to exhibit and to ascertain a small specimen of her skill in the vulgar business of fortune-telling – an art which will continue to be received among men, to a greater or less extent, so long as they shall possess a hope which they cannot gratify, and feel a superstition which they cannot explain. Our gipsy expects a visiter. She hears his footstep. The door opens at her bidding and a stranger makes his appearance. He is a tall and well made man, of stern and gloomy countenance, which is half concealed beneath the raised foldings of his cloak. His beard, of enormous length, is seen to stream down upon his breast; but his cheek is youthful, and his eye is eagerly and anxiously bright. But for a certain repelling something in his glance, he might be considered a very handsome man – perhaps by many persons he was thought so. He advanced with an air of dignity and power. His deportment and manner – and when he spoke, his voice – all seemed to denote a person accustomed to command. The woman did not look up as he approached – on the contrary she seemed more intent than ever in the examination of the strange characters before her. But a curious spectator might have seen that a corner of her eye, bright with an intelligence that looked more like cunning than wisdom, was suffered to take in all of the face and person of the visiter that his muffling costume permitted to be seen.

"Mother," said the stranger, "I am here."

"You say not who you are," answered the woman.

"Nor shall say," was the abrupt reply of the stranger. "That, you said, was unnecessary to your art – to the solution of the questions that I asked you."

"Surely," was the answer. "My art, that promises to tell thee of the future, would be a sorry fraud could it not declare the present – could it not say who thou art, as well as what thou seekest."

"Ha! and thou knowest!" exclaimed the other, his hand suddenly feeling within the folds of his cloak, as he spoke, as if for a weapon, while his eye glared quickly around the apartment, as if seeking for a secret enemy.

"Nay, fear nothing," said the woman calmly. "I care not to know who thou art. It is not an object of my quest, otherwise it would not long remain a secret to me."

"It is well! mine is a name that must not be spoken among the homes of Venice. It would make thee thyself to quail couldst thou hear it spoken."

"Perhaps! but mine is not the heart to quail at many things, unless it be the absolute wrath of Heaven. What the violence or the hate of man could do to this feeble frame, short of death, it has already suffered. Thou knowest but little of human cruelty, young man, though thy own deeds be cruel!"

"How knowest thou that my deeds are cruel?" was the quick and passionate demand, while the form of the stranger suddenly and threateningly advanced. The woman was unmoved.

"Saidst thou not that there was a name that might not be spoken in the homes of Venice? Why should thy very name make the hearts of Venice to quail unless for thy deeds of cruelty and crime? But I see further. I see it in thine eyes that thou art cruel. I hear it in thy voice that thou art criminal. I know, even now, that thy soul is bent on deeds of violence and blood, and the very quest that brings thee to me now is less the quest of love than of that wild and selfish passion which so frequently puts on his habit."

"Ha! speak to me of that! This damsel, Francesca Ziani! 'Tis of her that I would have thee speak. Thou saidst that she should be mine, yet lo! her name is written in the "Book of Gold," and she is allotted to this man of wealth, this Ulric Barberigo."

"She will never be the wife of Ulric Barberigo."

"Thou saidst she should be mine."

"Nay; I said not that."

"Ha! – but thou liest!"

"No! Anger me not, young man! I am slower, much slower to anger than thyself – slower than most of those who still chafe within this mortal covering – yet am I mortal like thyself, and not wholly free from such foolish passions as vex mortality. Chafe me, and I will repulse thee with scorn. Annoy me, and I close upon thee the book of fate, leaving thee to the blind paths which thy passions have ever moved thee to take."

The stranger muttered something apologetically.

"Make me no excuses. I only ask thee to forbear and submit. I said not that Francesca Ziani should be thine! I said only that I beheld her in thy arms."

"And what more do I ask!" was the exulting speech of the stranger, his voice rising into a sort of outburst, which fully declared the ruffian, and the sort of passions by which he was governed.

"If that contents thee, well!" said the woman, coldly, her eye perusing with a seeming calmness the brazen plate upon which the strange characters were inscribed.

"That, then, thou promisest still?" demanded the stranger.

"Thou shalt see for thyself," was the reply. Thus speaking the woman slowly arose and brought forth a small chafing-dish, also of brass or copper, not much larger than a common plate. This she placed over the brazier, the flame of which she quickened by a few smart puffs from a little bellows which lay beside her. As the flame kindled, and the sharp, red jets rose like tongues on either side of the plate, she poured into it something like a gill of a thick tenacious liquid, that looked like, and might have been, honey. Above this she brooded for awhile with her eyes immediately over the vessel; and the keen ear of the stranger, quickened by excited curiosity, could detect the muttering of her lips, though the foreign syllables which she employed were entirely beyond his comprehension. Suddenly, a thick vapor went up from the dish. She withdrew it from the brazier and laid it before her on the table. A few moments sufficed to clear the surface of the vessel, the vapor arising and hanging languidly above her head.

"Look now for thyself and see!" was her command to the visiter; she herself not deigning a glance upon the vessel, seeming thus to be quite sure of what it would present, or quite indifferent to the result. The stranger needed no second summons. He bent instantly over the vessel, and started back with undisguised delight.

"It is she!" he exclaimed. "She droops! whose arm is it that supports her – upon whose breast is it that she lies – who bears her away in triumph?"

"Is it not thyself?" asked the woman, coldly.

"By Hercules, it is! She is mine! She is in my arms! She is on my bosom! I have her in my galley! She speeds with me to my home! I see it all, even as thou hast promised me!"

"I promise thee nothing. I but show thee only what is written."

"And when and how shall this be effected?"

"How, I know not," answered the woman, "this is withheld from me. Fate shows what her work is only as it appears when done, but not the manner of the doing."

"But when will this be?" was the question.

"It must be ere she marries with Ulric Barberigo, for him she will never marry."

"And it is appointed that he weds with her on the day of St. Mary's Eve. That is but a week from hence, and the ceremony takes place – "

"At Olivolo."

"Ha! at Olivolo!" and a bright gleam of intelligence passed over the features of the stranger, from which his cloak had by this time entirely fallen. The woman beheld the look, and a slight smile, that seemed to denote scorn rather than any other emotion, played for a moment over her shriveled and sunken lips.

"Mother," said the stranger, "must all these matters be left to fate?"

"That is as thou wilt."

"But the eye of a young woman may be won – her heart may be touched – so that it shall be easy for fate to accomplish her designs. I am young; am indifferently well fashioned in person, and have but little reason to be ashamed of the face which God has given me. Beside, I have much skill in music, and can sing to the guitar as fairly as most of the young men of Venice. What if I were to find my way to the damsel – what if I play and sing beneath her father's palace? I have disguises, and am wont to practice in various garments; I can – "

The woman interrupted him.

"Thou mayest do as thou wilt. It is doubtless as indifferent to the fates what thou doest, as it will be to me. Thou hast seen what I have shown – I can no more. I am not permitted to counsel thee. I am but a voice; thou hast all that I can give thee."

The stranger lingered still, but the woman ceased to speak, and betrayed by her manner that she desired his departure. Thus seeing, he took a purse from his bosom and laid it before her. She did not seem to notice the action, nor did she again look up until he was gone. With the sound of his retreating footsteps, she put aside the brazen volume of strange characters which seemed her favorite study, and her lips slowly parted in soliloquy,

"Ay! thou exultest, fierce ruffian that thou art, in the assurance that fate yields herself to thy will! Thou shall, indeed, have the maiden in thy arms, but it shall profit thee nothing; and that single triumph shall exact from thee the last penalties which are sure to follow on the footsteps of a trade like thine. Thou thinkest that I know thee not, as if thy shallow masking could baffle eyes and art like mine; but I had not shown thee thus much, were I not in possession of yet further knowledge – did I not see that this lure was essential to embolden thee to thy own final overthrow. Alas! that in serving the cause of innocence, in saving the innocent from harm, we cannot make it safe in happiness. Poor Francesca, beloved of three, yet blest with neither! Thou shalt be wedded, yet be no bride; shall gain all that thy fond young heart craveth, yet gain nothing! Be spared the embraces of him thou loathest, yet rest in his arms whom thou hast most need to fear, and shalt be denied, even when most assured, the only embrace which might bring thee blessings! Happy at least that thy sorrows shall not last thee long – their very keenness and intensity being thy security from the misery which holds through years like mine!"