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BOOK IV - THE REWARD: CHAPTER 1
Where are the portraits of those who have perished in spite of their
vows?
One bright March day in the year 1783 the bells of Pianura began to ring
at sunrise, and with their first peal the townsfolk were abroad.
The city was already dressed for a festival. A canopy of crimson velvet,
surmounted by the ducal crown and by the "Humilitas" of the Valseccas,
concealed the columns of the Cathedral porch and fell in royal folds
about the featureless porphyry lions who had seen so many successive
rulers ascend the steps between their outstretched paws. The frieze of
ramping and running animals around the ancient baptistery was concealed
by heavy green garlands alternating with religious banners; and every
church and chapel had draped its doorway with crimson and placed above
the image of its patron saint the ducal crown of Pianura.
No less sumptuous was the adornment of the private dwellings. The great
families--the Trescorri, the Belverdi, the Pievepelaghi--had outdone
each other in the display of golden-threaded tapestries and Genoese
velvets emblazoned with armorial bearings; and even the sombre facade of
the Boscofolto palace showed a rich drapery surmounted by the
quarterings of the new Marchioness.
But it was not only the palace-fronts that had put on a holiday dress.
The contagion had spread to the poorer quarters, and in many a narrow
street and crooked lane, where surely no part of the coming pageant
might be expected to pass, the crazy balconies and unglazed windows were
decked out with scraps of finery: a yard or two of velvet filched from
the state hangings of some noble house, a torn and discoloured church
banner, even a cast-off sacque of brocade or a peasant's holiday
kerchief, skilfully draped about the rusty iron and held in place by
pots of clove-pink and sweet basil. The half-ruined palace which had
once housed Gamba and Momola showed a few shreds of colour on its sullen
front, and the abate Crescenti's modest house, wedged in a corner of the
city walls, was dressed like the altar of a Lady Chapel; while even the
tanners' quarter by the river displayed its festoons of coloured paper
and tinsel, ingeniously twisted into the semblance of a crown.
For the new Duke, who was about to enter his capital in state, was
extraordinarily popular with all classes. His popularity, as yet, was
mainly due to a general detestation of the rule he had replaced; but
such a sentiment gives to a new sovereign an impetus which, if he knows
how to use it, will carry him a long way toward success; and among those
in the Duke's confidence it was rumoured that he was qualified not only
to profit by the expectations he had raised but to fulfil them. The last
months of the late Duke's life had plunged the duchy into such political
and financial disorder that all parties were agreed in welcoming a
change. Even those that had most to lose by the accession of the new
sovereign, or most to fear from the policy he was known to favour,
preferred the possibility of new evils to a continuance of present
conditions. The expertest angler in troubled waters may find waters too
troubled for his sport; and under a government where power is passed
from hand to hand like the handkerchief in a children's game, the most
adroit time-server may find himself grasping the empty air.
It would indeed have been difficult to say who had ruled during the year
preceding the Duke's death. Prime ministers had succeeded each other
like the clowns in a harlequinade. Just as the Church seemed to have
gained the upper hand some mysterious revulsion of feeling would fling
the Duke toward Trescorre and the liberals; and when these had
attempted, by some trifling concession to popular feeling, to restore
the credit of the government, their sovereign, seized by religious
scruples, would hastily recall the clerical party. So the administration
staggered on, reeling from one policy to another, clutching now at this
support and now at that, while Austria and the Holy See hung on its
steps, awaiting the inevitable fall.
A cruel winter and a fresh outbreak of the silkworm disease had
aggravated the misery of the people, while the mounting extravagance of
the Duchess had put a last strain on the exhausted treasury. The
consequent increase of the salt-tax roused such popular fury that Father
Ignazio, who was responsible for the measure, was dismissed by the
panic-stricken Duke, and Trescorre, as usual, called in to repair his
rival's mistake. But it would have taken a greater statesman than
Trescorre to reach the root of such evils; and the new minister
succeeded neither in pacifying the people nor in reassuring his
sovereign.
Meanwhile the Duke was sinking under the mysterious disease which had
hung upon him since his birth. It was hinted that his last hours were
darkened by hallucinations, and the pious pictured him as haunted by
profligate visions, while the free-thinkers maintained that he was the
dupe of priestly jugglery. Toward the end there was the inevitable
rumour of acqua tofana, and the populace cried out that the Jesuits were
at work again. It seems more probable, however, that his Highness, who
had assisted at the annual festival of the Madonna del Monte, and had
mingled on foot with the swarm of devotees thronging thither from all
parts, had contracted a pestilent disorder from one of the pilgrims.
Certain it is that death came in a dreadful form. The Duchess, alarmed
for the health of Prince Ferrante, fled with him to the dower-house by
the Piana; and the strange nature of his Highness's distemper caused
many to follow her example. Even the Duke's servants, and the quacks
that lived on his bounty, were said to have abandoned the death-chamber;
and an English traveller passing through Pianura boasted that, by the
payment of a small fee to the palace porter, he had obtained leave to
enter his Highness's closet and peer through the doorway at the dying
man. However this may be, it would appear that the Duke's confessor--a
monk of the Barnabite order--was not to be found when his Highness
called for him; and the servant sent forth in haste to fetch a priest
returned, strangely enough, with the abate Crescenti, whose suspected
orthodoxy had so long made him the object of the Duke's detestation. He
it was who alone witnessed the end of that tormented life, and knew upon
what hopes or fears it closed.
Meanwhile it appeared that the Duchess's precautions were not unfounded;
for Prince Ferrante presently sickened of the same malady which had cut
off his father, and when the Regent, travelling post-haste, arrived in
Pianura, he had barely time to pass from the Duke's obsequies to the
death-bed of the heir.
Etiquette required that a year of mourning should elapse between the
accession of the new sovereign and his state entry into his capital; so
that if Duke Odo's character and intentions were still matter of
conjecture to his subjects, his appearance was already familiar to them.
His youth, his good looks, his open mien, his known affability of
manner, were so many arguments in his favour with an impressionable and
impulsive people; and it was perhaps natural that he should interpret as
a tribute to his principles the sympathy which his person aroused.
It is certain that he fancied himself, at that time, as well-acquainted
with his subjects as they believed themselves to be with him; and the
understanding supposed to exist was productive of equal satisfaction to
both sides. The new Duke had thrown himself with extraordinary zeal into
the task of loving and understanding his people. It had been his refuge
from a hundred doubts and uncertainties, the one clearly-defined object
in an obscure and troubled fate. And their response had, almost
immediately, turned his task into a pleasure. It was so easy to rule if
one's subjects loved one! And so easy to be loved if only one loved
enough in return! If he did not, like the Pope, describe himself to his
people as the servant of the servants of God, he at least longed to make
them feel that this new gospel of service was the base on which all
sovereignty must henceforth repose.
It was not that his first year of power had been without moments of
disillusionment. He had had more than one embittering experience of
intrigue and perfidy, more than one glimpse of the pitfalls besetting
his course; but his confidence in his own powers and his faith in his
people remained unshaken, and with two such beliefs to sustain him it
seemed as though no difficulties would prove insurmountable.
Such at least was the mood in which, on the morning of his entry into
Pianura, he prepared to face his subjects. Strangely enough, the state
entry began at Ponte di Po, the very spot where, on a stormy midnight
some seven years earlier, the new Duke had landed, a fugitive from his
future realm. Here, according to an ancient custom, the sovereign
awaited the arrival of his ministers and court; and then, taking seat in
his state barge, proceeded by water to Pianura, followed by an escort of
galleys.
A great tent hung with tapestries had been set up on the river-bank; and
here Odo awaited the approach of the barge. As it touched at the
landing-stage he stepped out, and his prime minister, Count Trescorre,
advanced toward him, accompanied by the dignitaries of the court.
Trescorre had aged in the intervening years. His delicate features had
withered like a woman's, and the fine irony of his smile had taken an
edge of cruelty. His face suggested a worn engraving, the lines of which
have been deepened by a too-incisive instrument.
The functionaries attending him were, with few exceptions, the same who
had figured in a like capacity at the late sovereign's court. With the
passing of the years they had grown heavier or thinner, more ponderous
or stiffer in their movements, and as they advanced, in their splendid
but unwieldy court dress, they seemed to Odo like superannuated
marionettes whose springs and wires have rusted from disuse.
The barge was a magnificent gilded Bucentaur, presented to the late
Duke's father by the Doge of Venice, and carved by his Serenity's most
famous sculptors in wood. Tritons and sea-goddesses encircled the prow
and throned above the stern, and the interior of the deck-house was
adorned with delicate rilievi and painted by Tiepolo with scenes from
the myth of Amphitrite. Here the new Duke seated himself, surrounded by
his household, and presently the heavy craft, rowed by sixty
galley-slaves, was moving slowly up the river toward Pianura.
In the clear spring light the old walled city, with its domes and
towers, rose pleasantly among budding orchards and fields. Close at hand
were the crenellations of Bracciaforte's keep, and just beyond, the
ornate cupola of the royal chapel, symbolising in their proximity the
successive ambitions of the ducal race; while the round-arched campanile
of the Cathedral and the square tower of the mediaeval town-hall sprang
up side by side, marking the centre of the free city which the Valseccas
had subjugated. It seemed to the new Duke, who was given to such
reflections, that he could read his race's history in that broken
skyline; but he was soon snatched from its perusal by the cheers of the
crowd who thronged the river-bank to greet his approach.
As the Bucentaur touched at the landing-stage and Odo stepped out on the
red carpet strewn with flowers, while cannon thundered from the walls
and the bells burst into renewed jubilation, he felt himself for the
first time face to face with his people. The very ceremonial which in
other cases kept them apart was now a means of closer communication; for
it was to show himself to them that he was making a public entry into
his capital, and it was to see him that the city had poured forth her
shouting throngs. The shouts rose and widened as he advanced, enveloping
him in a mounting tide of welcome, in which cannon, bells and
voices--the decreed and the spontaneous acclamations--were
indistinguishably merged. In like manner, approbation of his person was
mingled with a simple enjoyment of the show of which he formed a part;
and it must have taken a more experienced head than Odo's to distinguish
between the two currents of enthusiasm on which he felt himself swept
forward.
The pageant was indeed brilliant enough to justify the popular
transport; and the fact that the new Duke formed a worthy centre to so
much magnificence was not lost on his splendour-loving subjects. The
late sovereign had so long held himself aloof that the city was
unaccustomed to such shows, and as the procession wound into the square
before the Cathedral, where the thickest of the crowd was massed, the
very pealing of the church-bells was lost in the roar of human voices.
Don Serafino, the Bishop's nephew, and now Master of the Horse, rode
first, on a splendid charger, preceded by four trumpets and followed by
his esquires; then came the court dignitaries, attended by their pages
and staffieri in gala liveries, the marshals with their staves, the
masters of ceremony, and the clergy mounted on mules trapped with
velvet, each led by two running footmen. The Duke rode next, alone and
somewhat pale. Two pages of arms, helmeted and carrying lances, walked
at his horse's bridle; and behind him came his household and ministers,
with their gentlemen and a long train of servants, followed by the
regiment of light horse which closed the procession.
The houses surrounding the square afforded the best point of view to
those unwilling to mix with the crowd in the streets; and among the
spectators thronging the windows and balconies, and leaning over the
edge of the leads, were many who, from one motive or another, felt a
personal interest in the new Duke. The Marchioness of Boscofolto had
accepted a seat in the windows of the Pievepelaghi palace, which formed
an angle of the square, and she and her hostess--the same lady who had
been relieved of her diamond necklace by footpads suspected of wearing
the Duchess's livery--sat observing the scene behind the garlanded
balconies of the piano nobile. In the mezzanin windows of a neighbouring
wine-shop the bookseller Andreoni, with half a dozen members of the
philosophical society to which Odo had belonged, peered above the heads
of the crowd thronging the arcade, and through a dormer of the leads
Carlo Gamba, the assistant in the ducal library, looked out on the
triumph of his former patron. Among the Church dignities grouped about
his Highness was Father Ignazio, the late Duke's confessor, now Prior of
the Dominicans, and said to be withdrawn from political life. Seated on
his richly-trapped mule he observed the scene with impassive face; while
from his place in the long line of minor clergy, the abate Crescenti,
with eyes of infinite tenderness and concern, watched the young Duke
solemnly ascending the Cathedral steps.
In the porch the Bishop waited, impressive as ever in his white and gold
dalmatic, against the red robes of the chapter. Preceded by two
chamberlains Odo mounted the steps amid the sudden silence of the
people. The great bronze portals of the Cathedral, which were never
opened save on occasions of state, swung slowly inward, pouring a wave
of music and incense out upon the hushed sunlit square; then they closed
again, engulphing the brilliant procession--the Duke, the Bishop, the
clergy and the court--and leaving the populace to scatter in search of
the diversions prepared for them at every street-corner.
It was not till late that night that the new Duke found himself alone.
He had withdrawn at last from the torch-lit balcony overlooking the
square, whither the shouts of his subjects had persistently recalled
him. Silence was falling on the illuminated streets, and the dimness of
midnight upon the sky through which rocket after rocket had torn its
brilliant furrows. In the palace a profounder stillness reigned. Since
his accession Odo, out of respect for the late Duke, had lodged in one
of the wings of the great building; but tradition demanded that he
should henceforth inhabit the ducal apartments, and thither, at the
close of the day's ceremonies, his gentlemen had conducted him.
Trescorre had asked permission to wait on him before he slept; and he
knew that the prime minister would be kept late by his conference with
the secret police, whose nightly report could not be handed in till the
festivities were over. Meanwhile Odo was in no mood for sleep. He sat
alone in the closet, still hung with saints' images and jewelled
reliquaries, where his cousin had so often given him audience, and
whence, through the open door, he could see the embroidered curtains and
plumed baldachin of the state bed which was presently to receive him.
All day his heart had beat with high ambitions; but now a weight sank
upon his spirit. The reaction from the tumultuous welcome of the streets
to the closely-guarded silence of the palace made him feel how unreal
was the fancied union between himself and his people, how insuperable
the distance that tradition and habit had placed between them. In the
narrow closet where his predecessor had taken refuge from the detested
task of reigning, the new Duke felt the same moral lassitude steal over
him. How was such a puny will as his to contend against the great forces
of greed and prejudice? All the influences arrayed against
him--tradition, superstition, the lust of power, the arrogance of
race--seemed concentrated in the atmosphere of that silent room, with
its guarded threshold, its pious relics, and lying on the desk in the
embrasure of the window, the manuscript litany which the late Duke had
not lived to complete.
Oppressed by his surroundings, Odo rose and entered the bed-chamber. A
lamp burned before the image of the Madonna at the head of the bed, and
two lighted flambeaux flanked the picture of the Last Judgment on the
opposite wall. Odo remembered the look of terror which the Duke had
fixed on the picture during their first strange conversation. A
praying-stool stood beneath it, and it was said that here, rather than
before the Virgin's image, the melancholy prince performed his private
devotions. The horrors of the scene were depicted with a childish
minuteness of detail, as though the painter had sought to produce an
impression of moral anguish by the accumulation of physical sufferings;
and just such puerile images of the wrath to come may have haunted the
mysterious recesses of the Duke's imagination. Crescenti had told Odo
how the dying man's thoughts had seemed to centre upon this dreadful
subject, and how again and again, amid his ravings, he had cried out
that the picture must be burned, as though the sight of it was become
intolerable to him.
Odo's own mind, across which the events and emotions of the day still
threw the fantastic shadows of an expiring illumination, was wrought to
the highest state of impressionability. He saw in a flash all that the
picture must have symbolised to his cousin's fancy; and in his desire to
reconstruct that dying vision of fleshly retribution, he stepped close
to the diptych, resting a knee on the stool beneath it. As he did so,
the picture suddenly opened, disclosing the inner panel. Odo caught up
one of the flambeaux, and in its light, as on a sunlit wave, there
stepped forth to him the lost Venus of Giorgione.
He knew the picture in an instant. There was no mistaking the glow of
the limbs, the midsummer languor of the smile, the magical atmosphere in
which the gold of sunlight, of autumn leaves, of amber grapes, seemed
fused by some lost alchemy of the brush. As he gazed, the scene changed,
and he saw himself in a darkened room with cabalistic hangings. He saw
Heiligenstern's tall figure, towering in supernatural light, the Duke
leaning eagerly forward, the Duchess with set lips and troubled eyes,
the little prince bent wonderingly above the magic crystal...
A step in the antechamber announced Trescorre's approach. Odo returned
to the cabinet and the minister advanced with a low bow. The two men had
had time to grow accustomed to the new relation in which they stood to
one another, yet there were moments when, to Odo, the past seemed to lie
like fallen leaves beneath Trescorre's steps--Donna Laura, fond and
foolish in her weeds, Gamba, Momola, and the pure featherhead Cerveno,
dying at nineteen of a distemper because he had stood in the other's
way. The impression was strong on him now--but it was only momentary.
Habit reasserted itself, and the minister effaced the man. Odo signed to
Trescorre to seat himself and the latter silently presented his report.
He was a diligent and capable administrator, and however mixed might be
the motives which attached him to his sovereign, they did not interfere
with the exact performance of his duties. Odo knew this and was grateful
for it. He knew that Trescorre, ambitious of the regency, had intrigued
against him to the last. He knew that an intemperate love of power was
the mainspring of that seemingly dispassionate nature. But death had
crossed Trescorre's schemes; and he was too adroit an opportunist not to
see that his best chance now lay in making himself indispensable to his
new sovereign. Of all this Odo was aware; but his own motives in
appointing Trescorre did not justify his looking for great
disinterestedness in his minister. The irony of circumstances had forced
them upon each other, and each knew that the other understood the
situation and was prepared to make the best of it.
The Duke presently rose, and handed back to Trescorre the reports of the
secret police. They were the documents he most disliked to handle.
"You have acquitted yourself admirably of your disagreeable duties," he
said with a smile. "I hope I have done as well. At any rate the day is
over."
Trescorre returned the smile, with his usual tinge of irony. "Another
has already begun," said he.
"Ah," said Odo, with a touch of impatience, "are we not to sleep on our
laurels?"
Trescorre bowed. "Austria, your Highness, never sleeps."
Odo looked at him with surprise. "What do you mean?"
"That I have to remind your Highness--"
"Of what--?"
Trescorre had one of his characteristic pauses.
"That the Duke of Monte Alloro is in failing health--and that her
Highness's year of widowhood ended yesterday."
There was a silence. Odo, who had reseated himself, rose and walked to
the window. The shutters stood open and he looked out over the formless
obscurity of the gardens. Above the intervening masses of foliage the
Borromini wing raised its vague grey bulk. He saw lights in Maria
Clementina's apartments and wondered if she still waked. An hour or two
earlier she had given him her hand in the contra-dance at the state
ball. It was her first public appearance since the late Duke's death,
and with the laying off of her weeds she had regained something of her
former brilliancy. At the moment he had hardly observed her: she had
seemed a mere inanimate part of the pageant of which he formed the
throbbing centre. But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him.
She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious
duality of vision that belongs to such moments he beheld her again as
she had first shone on him--the imperious child whom he had angered by
stroking her spaniel, the radiant girl who had welcomed him on his
return to Pianura. Trescorre's voice aroused him.
"At any moment," the minister was saying, "her Highness may fall heir to
Monte Alloro. It is the moment for which Austria waits. There is always
an Archduke ready--and her Highness is still a young woman."
Odo turned slowly from the window. "I have told you that this is
impossible," he murmured.
Trescorre looked down and thoughtfully fingered the documents in his
hands.
"Your Highness," said he, "is as well-acquainted as your ministers with
the difficulties that beset us. Monte Alloro is one of the richest
states in Italy. It is a pity to alienate such revenues from Pianura."
The new Duke was silent. His minister's words were merely the audible
expression of his own thoughts. He knew that the future welfare of
Pianura depended on the annexation of Monte Alloro. He owed it to his
people to unite the two sovereignties.
At length he said: "You are building on an unwarrantable assumption."
Trescorre raised an interrogative glance.
"You assume her Highness's consent."
The minister again paused; and his pause seemed to flash an ironical
light on the poverty of the other's defences.
"I come straight from her Highness," said he quietly, "and I assume
nothing that I am not in a position to affirm."
Odo turned on him with a start. "Do I understand that you have
presumed--?"
His minister raised a deprecating hand. "Sir," said he, "the Archduke's
envoy is in Pianura."
Content of BOOK IV - THE REWARD: CHAPTER 1 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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