Part 19 (2/2)

'Greater than any prince.'

'That must mean a king, then.'

'Kings die, and a few lines chronicle them; but I speak of one whose memory will be graven in his language, and whose n.o.ble sentiments will be texts to future generations. What think you of Alfieri?'

'Alfieri!'

'Himself. He was the Count who rescued us from the mob, and with him I have pa.s.sed the hours since I saw you. Not that I ever knew nor suspected it, Marietta: if I had, I had never dared to speak as I did about ourselves and our wayward lives in such a presence. I had felt these themes ign.o.ble.'

'How so?' cried she eagerly. 'You have ever told me that art was an enn.o.bling and a glorious thing; that after those whose genius embodied grand conceptions, came he who gave them utterance. How often have you said, the poet lives but half in men's hearts whose verses have not found some meet interpreter; with words like these have you stimulated me to study, and now----'

'And now,' said he, sighing drearily, 'I wake to feel what a mere mockery it is:

'”Tra l'ombra e bella L'istessa stella Che in faccia del sole Non si miro.”

Ah, _Marietta mia_, he who creates is alone an artist!'

The girl bent her head upon her bosom, and while her long waving curls fell loosely over him, she sobbed bitterly. Gerald clasped her closer to his heart, but never spoke a syllable.

'I ever thought it would be so,' murmured she at last: 'I felt that in this sense of birth and blood you boasted of, would one day come a feeling of shame to be the companion of such as me. It is not from art itself you turn away, it is the company of the strolling actor that you shun.'

'And who or what am I that I should do so?' said Gerald boldly. 'When, or where, have I known such happiness as with you, Marietta? Bethink you of the hours we have pa.s.sed together, poring over these dear old books there, enriching our hearts with n.o.ble thoughts, and making the poet the interpreter between us? Telling, too, in the fervour we spoke his lines, how tenderly we felt them; as Metastasio says:

'”And as we lisped the verse along, Learning to love.”'

'And now it is over,' said she, with a sigh of deep despondency.

'Why so? Shall I, in learning to know the great and the ill.u.s.trious--to feel how their own high thoughts sway and rule them--be less worthy of your love? The poet told me, to-night, that I declaimed his lines well; but who taught me to feel them, _Marietta mia!_' And he kissed her cheek, bathed as it was and seamed with, hot tears. Again he tried to bring back the dream of the past, and their oft-projected scheme of life; but he urged the theme no longer as of old; and even when describing the world they were about to fly from, his words trembled with the emotion that swelled in his heart. In the midst of all these would he break off suddenly with some recollection of Alfieri, who filled every avenue of his thoughts: his proud but graceful demeanour, his low, deep-toned voice, his smile so kind and yet so sad withal; a gentleness, too, in his manner that invited confidence, seemed to dwell in Gerald's memory, and shed, as it were, a soft and pleasing light over all that had pa.s.sed.

'And I am to see him again to-morrow, Marietta,' continued he proudly; 'he is to take me with him to the Galleries. I am to see the Pitti and the Offizzi, where in the Tribune the great triumphs of Raffael are placed, and the statue of Venus, too: he is to show me these, and the portraits of all the ill.u.s.trious men who have made Italy glorious.

How eager I am to know how they looked in life, and if their features revealed the consciousness of the fame they were to inherit! And when I come back at night to thee, Marietta, how full shall I be of all these, and how overjoyed if I can pour into your heart the pleasures that swell in my own! Is it not good, dearest, that I should go forth thus to bring back to you the glad tidings of so many beautiful things--will you not be happier for _yourself_, prouder in _me_? Will it not be better to have the love of one whose mind is daily expanding, straining to greater efforts, growing in knowledge and gaining in cultivation? Shall I not be more worthy of _you_ if I win praise from others? And I am resolved to do this, Marietta. I will not be satisfied to be ever the mean, ign.o.ble thing I now am.'

'Our life did not seem so unworthy in your eyes a day or two ago,'

said she sighing. 'You told me, as we came up the Val d'Arno, that our wandering, wayward existence had a poetry of its own that you loved dearly. That to you ambition could never offer a path equal to that wayside rambling life, over whose little accidents the softening influences of divine verse shed their mild light, so that the ideal world dominated the actual.'

'All these will I realise, but in a higher sphere, Marietta. The great Alfieri himself told me that a life without labour is an ignominy and a shame. That he who strains his faculties to attain a goal is n.o.bler far than one whose higher gifts lie rusting in disuse. Man lives not for himself, but for his fellows, said he, nor is there such incarnate selfishness as indolence.'

'And where, and how, and when is this wondrous life of exertion to be begun?' said she half-scornfully. 'Can the great poet pour into your heart out of the fulness of his own, and make you as he is? Or are you suddenly become rich and great, like _him_?'

The youth started, and an angry flush covered his face, and even his forehead, as he arose and walked the room.

'I see well what is working within you,' said the girl. 'The contrast from that splendour to this misery--these poor bleak walls, where no pictures are hanging, no gilding glitters--is too great for you. It is the same shock to your nature as from the beautiful princess in whose presence you stood to that humble bench beside _me_.'

'No, by Heaven! Marietta,' cried he pa.s.sionately, 'I have not an ambition in my heart wherein your share is not allotted. It is that you may walk with me to the goal----'

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