Part 13 (1/2)

Antonio knew not whether to scold or laugh; however he constrained himself to be calm, and to let the old woman have her chatter; for owing, as it seemed, to her former acquaintance with his family, she possest a strange power over him. But how did he start with amazement when she suddenly cried out: ”Crescentia!”

”For Heaven's sake!” he said, almost breathlessly: ”do you know her?

can you see her? can you tell me anything about her?”

”What's the matter with you?” howled the old woman: ”how can I help knowing her, seeing she is my own daughter? Only look yourself how the lazy s.l.u.t has fallen asleep in her chair there, and lets the fire go out and the soup get cold.”

She took up the lamp and went to the chimney; but what were the youth's feelings, when again for the second time on that day he beheld his beloved, almost the same as in the evening? Her pale head lay dropt back; her eyes were closed; every feature, even the dark tresses, were those of his bride; just so were her little hands folded, and just so did she too clasp a crucifix between them. Her white dress helpt to increase the illusion; the flowers alone were wanting; but the dusk wove something like wreaths of dark heavy foliage around her hair.

”She is dead!” sighed Antonio gazing fixedly upon her.

”Sluggish is she, the lazy jade,” said the old woman, and shook the fair slumberer awake: ”she can do nothing but pray and sleep, the useless baggage.”

Crescentia roused herself, and her confusion still hightened her beauty. Antonio felt on the brink of madness at thus again seeing before him one whom he had yet lost for ever.

”Old witch!” he cried out vehemently: ”where am I? and what forms art thou bringing before my wandering senses? Speak, who is this lovely being? Crescentia, art thou alive again? Dost thou still acknowledge me as thine own! How camest thou hither?”

”Holla! my young prince,” screamed the old woman; ”you are gabbling away there, as though you had quite lost your little bit of an understanding. Is the storm beating about inside of your pate? has the lightning perchance singed your brains? She is my daughter, and always has been so.”

”I do not know you,” said the pale Crescentia, blus.h.i.+ng sweetly: ”I was never in the city.”

”Sit down,” the old woman interposed; ”and eat and drink what I have to give you.”

The soup was placed on the table, along with some fruit; and the old woman going to a small cupboard took out a flask of excellent Florentine wine.

Antonio could eat but little; his eye was spellbound upon Crescentia; and his disturbed and shattered imagination was evermore persuading him anew that this was his lost bride. Then again he often fancied he was lying enchained by a heavy dream, or had been seized by a trance of madness which was transforming every object around him, so that he was perhaps still in Padua, or at his own home, and saw nothing but phantasmal forms, and could not recognize or understand any of the friends who might be round about consoling him or mourning over him.

The storm had raved itself out, and the stars were s.h.i.+ning in the pacified dark sky. The old woman ate greedily, and drank still more plenteously of the sweet wine.

”Now at length, young Antonio,” she began after some time, ”tell us, prithee, what brought you to Padua, and what has driven you hither?”

Antonio started as from sleep. ”You may well,” he replied, ”demand some account of your guest, since, beside that reason, you knew my father, and it may be my mother too.”

”To be sure I knew her,” said the old woman sn.i.g.g.e.ring; ”n.o.body so well as I. Yes, yes, she died just six months before your father celebrated his second marriage with the Marchesa Manfredi.”

”So you know that too?”

”Why, it seems to me,” she continued, ”as though I could see the dainty trim doll at this very moment before me. Well, is your beautiful stepmother still living? When they drove me out of the country she was just in her prime full bloom.”

”I cannot again go through,” said Antonio with a sigh, ”what I suffered from that alien mother. She held my father as under enchantment; and he was readier to wrong all his old friends, readier to wrong his own son, than in anywise to offend her. At last however their behaviour to each other altered; but my heart almost broke at the sight of their hatred, while before it had only bled at the insults I had to endure.”

”So there was plenty of bitter malice,” askt the old hag with a nauseous grin, ”throughout the whole family?”

Antonio eyed her with a sharp look, and said confusedly: ”I know not how I have come to be talking here about my own and my parents misery.”

The old woman swallowed a b.u.mper of red wine, which stood like blood in the gla.s.s. Then with a loud laugh she said: ”Faith, I know no such glorious pleasure, nothing, I mean, so like what one may call perfect rapture and bliss, as when such a wedded couple, who in earlier days were once a pair of fond lovers, fall out in this way, and snarl and snap at each other, like cat and dog, or two tiger-beasts, and scold and curse each other, and would each give up heart and soul to Satan, only to hurt and pain or to get rid of the other. This, my young lad, is the true glory of mortal life: but more especially, if the two yoke-fellows have of yore gone stark mad with love, if they have done everything, even what is a little bit out of the way, for each other, if they have waded through much of what certain good pious folks would call crimes and sins, merely for the sake of getting at one another, merely for the sake of at last tying the knot, which they now so cordially abhor. Trust me, this is a grand feast for Satan and all his comrades, and it makes those below keep jubilee and sing psalms. And here now even ... but I'll hold my tongue; I might easily say too much.”

Crescentia lookt mournfully at the astonisht youth. ”Forgive her,” she whispered: ”you see she has drunk too much; pity her.”

But in Antonio's soul there now rose up with fresh power the image of former times and all their dark scenes. The sorrowful day came back upon him, when he saw his stepmother on her deathbed, when his father was in despair and curst himself and the hour of his birth, and called upon the spirit of his first wife and prayed for forgiveness.

”Have you nothing else to tell?” askt the old woman, and thereby awakened him from his dreamy amaze.