Part 19 (2/2)

”I never said so, Pauline,” he said impulsively, ”or wished that you were like any other than yourself.”

His last words should have softened her, but, pained and indignant at his desertion, she hardly heeded them; how was she to know that Camillo Borghese was, under his cold exterior, very honestly in love with his wife and just now cruelly tortured with jealousy of her brother-in-law, the dare-devil Murat? For the latter was as unscrupulous as he was handsome, as Napoleon was to find to his cost, though in recognition of his services as a das.h.i.+ng leader of cavalry he had rewarded him with the hand of his sister Caroline and the crown of Naples.

Hitherto the Princess had not even remarked the bold admiration of her brother-in-law, and after the departure of her husband she wept and sulked for days, when suddenly an event of great political importance, which was also of deep personal interest to herself, threw into the background every other consideration.

Napoleon's abdication and the treaty of Fontainebleau came upon his friends with the shock of an earthquake. Especially to his sister Pauline it was as though the foundations of the earth were tottering.

He had been the Providence of all his family, dividing the nations between them; but Pauline had been his favourite, he had loved her sincerely, and she had responded with the utmost devotion.

”I will go to him in his trouble,” she declared, and though her secretary could not see how her presence could aid the deposed Emperor, he could not but approve her generous impulse.

She met her brother at Hyeres near the frontier of France, from which point he embarked for the Island of Elba. The allies had granted him the lords.h.i.+p of the island, with an income to support a pseudo court; but the framers of that treaty, and Napoleon himself, knew well that its terms were a farce and his kingdom in reality a prison.

What transpired between the Princess and her brother in that brief interview Celio did not know. Each pa.s.sed from it calmed and cheerful.

There was a kindlier look in the Emperor's face, a more a.s.sured elasticity in his step as the English sailors who transported him to his exile shouted their, ”Better luck next time”; and sparks were lighted in the eyes of the Princess which every one who saw her noted, though none guessed what hidden fires of resolve fed their flashes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

Fountain in Gardens of the Villa Borghese]

They called her that season the Firefly, and many misinterpreted her illy suppressed excitement and the scrutiny of those lambent eyes sending out their flame signals in search of answering lights. Even her secretary did not know that the dark shadows which ringed them were not due to the b.a.l.l.s and other frivolities in which she was so conspicuous; but to complicated and dangerous schemes which robbed her of sleep at night, and were never forgotten as she danced and chatted and coquetted while the most astute diplomats laid their hearts and their secrets at her feet.

She received strange visitors too at the magnificent Villa Borghese, just outside the Porta del Popolo, wild-eyed agitators and suspects who had never before been permitted to enter those aristocratic gates. The first had come disguised in a marble-cutter's blouse as an a.s.sistant of Canova; but he had dropped a word which the n.o.ble model understood, and the fire signals had flashed between them. After the sculptor had left the casino his a.s.sistant tarried, and Celio, dismissed by his mistress but lingering at the threshold, heard fragments of the man's talk: ”Liberty, united Italy, and death to the Austrians.”

Later, when he attempted to warn the Princess that if the man were not a maniac he was more dangerous, she asked him bluntly if her husband had const.i.tuted him her dragon, and thereafter in half contemptuous banter she gave him the nickname of ”Mondragone.”

It was the name also of another villa belonging to the Borghese, the most sightly of all the boldly seated summer resorts of the n.o.bility at beautiful Frascati. Not one of these commands a view comparable to the one from its terrace of the Pope's Chimneys, so named from the strange monumental constructions which are so conspicuous that, with a gla.s.s, they are plainly visible from Rome.

So when the Princess announced, ”I love Mondragone,” her secretary did not flatter himself that the equivocal utterance bore any reference to himself. Had he also had the wit to perceive that if she indeed cared for the villa or for any other object at this time, it was only for some service which it might render her brother, his duties as dragon would have occasioned him far less of mental anguish.

Celio was writing one day in a room adjoining the apartment which Canova had used as his studio in the casino of Villa Borghese, when he was startled by a heavy step in the room which he had supposed unoccupied. Throwing aside the portiere he instantly recognised from report the imposing figure which confronted him. On a lesser man so gorgeous a costume as the one which now dazzled the astonished eyes of the secretary would have suggested the mountebank; but there was something regal as well as Oriental in Joachim Murat's appearance, and the barbarous colour extravagances of his dress became him like those of a sultan.

His curling hair, black and long, fell upon a green velvet cloak heavily embroidered with gold which hung from his shoulders displaying a sky-blue frogged tunic, whose breast was covered with jewelled crosses and beribboned decorations. The crimson breeches which met the high boots of yellow morocco were braided with gold in the Polish fas.h.i.+on and fitted closely his shapely thighs, but the tarnished and battered cavalry sabre clanking at his side occasioned him no inconvenience, and it needed but a glance at the broken plumes of the ruby-clasped aigrette which decorated a shabby wide-brimmed hat to convince the beholder that this was no gala costume but the habitual garb of a soldier. He was spurred and played nonchalantly with his riding-whip as he returned Celio's questioning glance with a smile, half arrogant, half familiar.

Wheeling upon his heel without deigning any explanation of his presence, he returned to his contemplation of the portrait statue of the Princess, and the young secretary's blood boiled as he saw that the expression of contemptuous familiarity on the sensual face had been elicited not by his insignificant self but by the masterpiece of Canova.

”A fair portrait doubtless,” he said indifferently, ”for I recognise certain points of resemblance to her sister, whose perfections, however, the Princess Borghese cannot hope to emulate.”

”Pardon me, sir,” stammered the secretary in tones which he vainly strove to render icy,--”but this is the Villa Borghese and not a public museum.”

The intruder looked down with amused bonhommie. ”I am an acquaintance of the Prince,” he vouchsafed, ”and have been invited by him to view his art collections.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari_

Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese

Portrait statue by Canova at Villa Borghese]

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