'I pray you do, madam. I long to know his features. It is a face I have painted in fancy often and often.'

'Tell me, then, how you would portray him,' said she, smiling.

'Not regularly handsome; but n.o.ble-looking, with the traits of one who had such vigour of life and mind within, that he lived more for his own thoughts than the world, and thus would seem proud to sternness. A high, bold forehead, narrow and indented at the temples, and a deep brow over two fierce eyes. O! what wildly flashing eyes should Alfieri's be when stirred by pa.s.sion and excitement!'

'And should you find him different from all this--a man of milder mould, more commonplace and less vigorous--will you still maintain that faith in his genius that now you profess?' said the Count, with slow and quiet utterance.

'That will I. How could I, in my presumption, doubt the power that has moved the hearts of thousands?'

'Come, then, and look at him,' said the d.u.c.h.ess, and she arose, and moved into a room fitted up as a library. Over the chimney was a large picture, covered by a silk curtain. To this Gerald eagerly turned his eyes, for he already marked that the gilded eagle that surmounted the frame held in his beak a wreath of flowers, interwoven with laurel leaves.

'One whose enthusiasm equals your own, boy, placed the wreath there, on the 17th of January last. It was the festa of Vittorio Alfieri,' said the d.u.c.h.ess, as she gently pulled the cord that drew back the curtain.

Gerald moved eagerly forward--gazed--pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, as if to dispel a fancy--gazed again and again--and then, turning round, stood steadfastly staring at the Count himself. A faint, sad smile was on the calm and haughty face; but, as it pa.s.sed away, the boy dropped down upon his knees, and seizing the other's hand, kissed it rapturously, as he cried--

'Oh! that I should have ever known a moment like this! Tell me, I beseech thee, Signor Conte, is my brain wandering, or are you Alfieri?'

'Yes, boy,' said he, with a slight sigh, while he raised him from the ground, laying one hand gently on his shoulder.

'It is with reason, boy, you are proud of this event in your life,' said the d.u.c.h.ess. 'The truly great are few in this world of ours; and you now stand before one whose memory will be treasured when we are all dust.'

The poet did not seem to heed or hear these words, but stood calmly watching the boy, who continued to turn his eyes alternately from the picture to the original.

'I suspect, boy,' said he, with a smile, 'that your mind-drawn picture satisfied you better--is it not so?'

'O! you who can so read hearts, why will you not interpret mine?' cried Gerald, in rapture; for now to his memory in quick succession were rising the brilliant fancies, the splendid images, the heart-moving words of one whose genius had been a sort of worship to him.

'This, too, is fame!' said the poet, turning to the d.u.c.h.ess.

'But we are keeping you too long from your guests, madam; and Gherardi and I will have many an opportunity of meeting. Come up here to-morrow in the forenoon, and let me talk with you. The youth is more complimentary to me than was the cardinal yesterday.'

'What was it that he said?' asked she.

'He wondered I should have written the tragedy of "Saul," since we had it already in the Bible! To-morrow, Gherardi, about eleven, or even earlier--_a rivederlo!_'

As with slow steps, half in a dream, and scarce daring to credit his senses, Gerald moved down the stairs, the poet overtook him, and pressing a purse into his hand, said--

'You must have some more suitable dress than this, and remember to-morrow.'

CHAPTER XVII. A LOVER'S QUARREL

When Gerald found himself once more in his little room at the Porta Rosa, it was past midnight. He opened his window and sat down at it to gaze out upon the starry sky and drink in the refreshing night air, but, more than even these, to calm down the excitement of his feelings, and endeavour to persuade himself that what he had pa.s.sed through was not a dream. It is not easy for those who have access to every grade they wish in life--who, perhaps, confer honour where they go--to fashion to their minds the strange, wild conflict that raged within the youth's heart at this moment. Little as he had seen of the great poet, he could not help comparing him with Gabriel, his acquaintance at the Tana. They were both proud, cold, stern men--strong in conscious power, self-reliant and daring. Are all men of genius of that stamp, thought Gerald. Are they who diffuse through existence its most elevating influences, its most softening emotions--are they hard of mould and stern in character?

Does the force with which they move the world require this impulse of temperament, as rivers that traverse great continents come down, at first, from lofty mountains? And if it be so, is not this a heavy price for which to buy even fame? Then, again, he bethought him, what a n.o.ble gift to bestow must be the affection of such men--how proud must be they who owned their love or shared their friendship! While he was thus musing a round, warm arm clasped his neck, and Marietta sat down beside him. She had waited hours for his return, and now stole gently to his room to meet him.

'I could not sleep till I had seen you, _caro_,' said she fondly. 'It seemed as if in these few hours years had separated us.'

'And if they had, Marietta, they could scarcely have brought about anything stranger. Guess where I have been--with whom I have pa.s.sed this entire evening?'

'How can I? Was he a prince?'

'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----'