Part 49 (1/2)

'I offered to take off his sword and the golden collar of his order, but he bade me angrily to desist, and said--

'”These are all that remind me of what I am, and you would rob me of them.'”

'True enough; the pageantry was a brief dream! And what said he next?'

'He talked wildly about his cruel fortunes, and the false friends who had misguided him in his youth, saying--

'”These things never came of blind chance; the destinies of princes are written in letters of gold, and not traced in the sands of the sea. They who betrayed my father have misled _me_.”'

'How like his house,' exclaimed the Pere; 'arrogant in the very hour of their dest.i.tution!'

'He then went on to rave about the Scottish wars, speaking of places and people I had never before heard of. After lamenting the duplicity of Spain, and declaring that French treachery had been their ruin, ”and now,” cried he, ”the game is to be played over again, as though it were in the day of general demolition men would struggle to restore a worn-out dynasty.”'

'Did he speak thus?' cried Ma.s.soni eagerly.

'Yes, he said the words over and over, adding, ”I am but the 'figurino,'

to be laid aside when the procession is over,” and he wept bitterly.'

'The Stuarts could always find comfort in tears; they could draw upon their own sympathies unfailingly. What said he of _me_?' asked he, with sudden eagerness.

Giacomo was silent, and folding his arms within his robe of serge, cast his eyes downward.

'Speak out, and frankly--what said he?' repeated the Pere.

'That you were ambitious--one whose heart yearned after worldly elevation and power.'

'Power--yes!' muttered the Pere.

'That once engaged in a cause, your energies would be wholly with it, so long as you directed and guided it; that he had known men of your stamp in France during the Revolution, and that the strength of their convictions was more often a source of weakness than of power.'

'It was from Gabriel Riquetti that he stole the remark. It was even thus Mirabeau spoke of our order.'

'You must be right, reverend father, for he continued to talk much of this same Riquetti, saying that he alone, of all Europe, could have restored the Stuarts to England. ”Had we one such man as that,” said he, ”I now had been lying in Holy rood Palace.”'

'He was mistaken there,' muttered Ma.s.soni half aloud. 'The men who are without faith raise no lasting edifices. How strange,' added he aloud, 'that the Prince should have spoken in this wise. When I have been with him he was ever wandering, uncertain, incoherent.'

'And into this state he gradually lapsed, singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of peasant songs to himself, and mingling Scottish rhymes with Alfieri's verses; sometimes fancying himself in all the wild conflict of a street-fight in Paris, and then thinking that he was strolling along a river's bank with some one that he loved.'

'Has he then loved?' asked Ma.s.soni in a low, distinct voice.

'From chance words that have escaped him in his wanderings I have gathered as much, though who she was and whence, or what her station in life, I cannot guess.'

'She will tell us this,' muttered the Pere to himself; and then turning to Giacomo said, 'To-morrow, at noon, that woman they call the Egyptian Princess is to be here; she is to come in secret to see him. The Prince of Piombino has arranged it all, and says that her marvellous gift is never in fault, all hearts being open to her as a printed page, and men's inmost thoughts as legible as their features.'

'Is it an evil possession?' asked Giacomo tremblingly.

'Who can dare to say so? Let us wait and watch. Take care that the small door that opens from the garden upon the Pincian be left ajar, as she will come by that way; and let there be none to observe or note her coming. You will yourself meet her at the gate, and conduct her to his chamber--where leave her.'

'If Rome should hear that we have accepted such aid----'

A gesture of haughty contempt from the Pere interrupted the speech, and Ma.s.soni said--