Part 19 (1/2)
But if this be and pain That bringeth joy enricheth often gain; I ask thee not, O Love, To give me gain thy common gains above.
If gentle dear disdains And dulcet coy defeats And strifes fond lovers use To fire their hearts--but close with love's long truce.”
NOTE.--The selections from the _Amyntas_ quoted in this article have been selected from the admirable metrical translation of Mr.
R. Whitmore.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER VI
MONDRAGONE
”'Tis a grave responsibility to play the dragon to a pretty woman.”
This was the a.s.sertion with which Celio Benvoglio, private secretary of her Highness, Princess Pauline Bonaparte Borghese, invariably prefaced the following story, and had I a like knack in telling it, you would admit the demonstration of that proposition. By dragon you will understand that his Excellency, Prince Camillo Borghese, signified a guardian and protector. To const.i.tute Celio Malespini a spy and reporter was no more in the thought of the Prince than it could have been in Celio's performance. He was young, and as chivalric an admirer of the Princess as he was loyal in his devotion to her husband. Had he discovered anything equivocal in her conduct, wild horses could not have torn her secret from him, and it is possible that the Prince counted upon this when he said:
”Celio, the Princess is very young and impulsive; that she is a foreigner and therefore inexperienced in our strict etiquette will not excuse her slightest mistake in the eyes of our severe Roman dames, who would be prejudiced against the sister of Napoleon were she as circ.u.mspect as the Madonna. Her beauty has already made them envious, her wit and light-heartedness is considered levity. They will delight in wagging their tongues maliciously on the least shadow of suspicion. In appointing you secretary to the Princess I place you in a position where you will be able to guard her from the appearance of evil. Understand well that I have no fear of its reality, but where there are windows overlooking one's garden the neighbours may see more than the owner, more even than actually occurs.”
”Have no fear, my lord,” the young secretary rashly promised. ”You know the Tuscan proverb in regard to avoiding the suspicion of fruit stealing. Ah, well, no visitor shall be allowed to tie his shoestrings among your strawberries or to use his handkerchief under your plum tree.”
So the Prince went away to Florence and Celio found that he had more than he had bargained for. Not that Pauline Bonaparte committed actual indiscretions; but she was wild for admiration, loved dress, and knew how to dress well, setting off her marvellous beauty with that combination of style and taste that the French call _chic_, which the heavier intellects of the Roman modistes with all their pretence to fas.h.i.+on can never attain, and which the imperious Roman matrons could never forgive.
One of these, hoping to rob this audacious rival of the advantage of Parisian modishness, gave a fete in which the guests were requested to appear in cla.s.sical costume, whose severe simplicity she fancied would be more becoming to the plenitude of her own Juno-like charms than to the slight figure of the French girl. But the Princess vanquished her hostess for she came as a Bacchante in a robe of her own designing, bordered with vine leaves embroidered in gold and belted beneath the b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a golden girdle. A mantle of panther's fur swept from her shoulders, her arms and her bust were laden with heavy necklaces and bracelets taken from some Etruscan tomb, and she waved a golden thyrsus.
Her entrance illuminated the ball-room and the character which she represented gave her authority for giving free vent to her natural vivacity and dancing with the utmost grace and abandon. Her victory over the male part of the a.s.sembly was complete for they saw no one else that evening.
They were wrong who supposed that her beauty was enhanced by dress; on the contrary it was limited by the clothing which it adorned. The sculptor Canova proved this in his portrait statue of her as Venus Victorious, and then her detractors, affecting to be greatly scandalised, changed their tune and declared that it was false that the Princess was too fond of dress, that on the contrary a greater regard for it would have been more decent.
The young secretary was not a little troubled by the caprice of his patroness to thus display her beauty to the world. ”But why not, my Celio?” she had argued. ”The Prince, my husband, has bestowed upon me a great t.i.tle for which I feel my obligation to his n.o.ble family, and I shall pay it with interest, for I shall leave the Borgheses this incomparable statue, and the glory of having possessed one Princess whose beauty cannot be denied or equalled.”
Why Prince Borghese should have deputed this dragon service to another instead of undertaking it himself, is a question which I cannot answer.
Some misunderstanding doubtless there was, or two people who loved each other would never have agreed that it was better to live apart, but the Prince carried a sore and longing heart with him to Florence, and it may be that the Princess was no happier, though she had more bravado.
”I will come when you send for me and not before,” her husband said to her, ”and I trust you understand the motives which underlie my self-banishment.”
”I am grateful to them at least,” was her equivocal retort. ”Has your Highness any preference as to my residence during your absence?”
”None,” he replied sadly, ”but I shall be happier if you do not make choice of your Neapolitan villa.”
She flashed at him indignantly, ”You wish to estrange me from my family, from my sister Caroline.”
”I have only the highest respect for her Majesty, the Queen of Naples,”
he replied; ”her devotion to her husband is undoubted. I could wish--”
and here the Prince paused.
”That I were more like her,” the Princess finished his sentence.