Valperga (33 page)

"Go, my dear boy," said the latter; "her
woman's heart trembles perhaps at this day's work. Shew her
the necessity of it; and make her think as little unkindly of me as
you can. Notwithstanding her coldness and perplexing ideas about
duty, I love her, and must not have her be my enemy. If she would
be content with any thing except the peace with Florence for the
morgincap, all my power and possessions were at her feet."

Arrigo went to Valperga: Euthanasia saw him alone; and, pale and
almost breathless, she asked what had caused this change, and
whether he knew what the schemes of Castruccio were?

"Indeed, Madonna," replied Arrigo, "I do not; I
believe that he aims only at the security of his own state; and
many of those he has exiled had plotted against his
government."

"It is possible; tyrants ever have enemies; but it were as
well to raze the city, as to banish all her citizens. There cannot
be less than a thousand souls included in his edict; women and
infants, torn from all the comforts, all the necessaries of daily
life, cast upon the world to weep and call down curses on him. What
does he mean?"

"He suspects all whom he has banished, and has strong
secret reasons for his conduct; of that, Euthanasia, you may be
sure. When I asked him why he banished so many of his
fellow--citizens, he replied laughing, `Because this city is not
big enough for them and me.' And then he told me seriously,
that his life was alone preserved by the vigorous measures of this
morning."

"Be it so; I wish I could believe him; I do indeed trust
that there is nothing wanton in his severity; yet methinks he had
better have banished himself, than so many families, who now go as
beggars through the world. He also was banished once; they say that
princes learn from adversity; I believe it; they learn a cunning in
cruelty the prosperous can never know."

"Nay, dear countess, speak not so hardly of him. Castruccio
was born to rule; he is noble-minded, but firm of resolution; and
can you blame him for securing a life on which the welfare of
Lucca, perhaps of Italy, depends?"

Euthanasia did not reply; she knew, although from the gentleness
of her nature she had never participated in it, that there was then
in Italy a spirit of cruelty, a carelessness for the life and pain
of others, which rendered it less wonderful that Castruccio should
have adopted a mode of conduct similar to that of most of his
contemporaries. It is strange, that man, born to suffering, and
often writhing beneath it, should wantonly inflict pain on his
fellows; but however cruel an individual may be, no one is so
remorseless as a ruler; for he loses even within himself the idea
of his own individuality, and fancies that, in pampering his
inclinations, and revenging his injuries, he is supporting the
state; the state, a fiction, which sacrifices that which
constitutes it, to the support of its mere name. Euthanasia knew
that she ought not to apply the same rule of conduct to a prince,
as to a private individual; yet that Castruccio should have tainted
himself with the common vices of his tribe, was a shock, that
unsettled the whole frame of her mind; it unveiled at once the idol
that had dwelt in the shrine of her heart, shewed the falseness of
his apotheosis, and forced her to use her faculties to dislodge him
from the seat he had usurped.

A few days after, Castruccio came himself to the castle of
Valperga. He came at a time when many other visitors were there,
and among them several whom he knew to be his secret enemies. He
took no notice of this; but, with the frankness of manner for which
he was remarkable, he entered into conversation with them, and
treating them as on a perfect equality with himself, he soon
softened the angry mood with which they had at first regarded him.
All political discussion was avoided; and the conversation turned
on one of those domestic tragedies which were then too common among
the petty courts of Italy, where each little lord possessing
supreme power, and unrestrained by principle, was ever ready to
wash supposed dishonour from his name in the blood of those who had
caused the stigma. The one at present under discussion was of
peculiar horror, and was the more singular, since nature had
vindicated her violated laws on their infringer, and he who boasted
of his morality in indulging his passionate revenge, was now
pursued by remorse and madness, and the ghosts of his victims
hunting him through the world, gave him no rest or hope. One of the
company, a Milanese, said, that it was impossible that remorse
could have caused the madness of Messer Francesco; since in
revenging the injury his wife had done him, he only followed the
example set him by hundreds of his countrymen; and if he had gone
beyond them in cruelty, it merely proved that his love, and his
sense of honour transcended theirs.

Castruccio replied; "Far be it from me to plead for those
childish notions, which would take the sword out of the hand of
princes, and make them bind men of iron with chains of straw. But
it does surprise me, that any man should dare so to idolize
himself, as to sacrifice human victims at the shrine of his pride,
jealousy or revenge. Francesco was a monster, when he tortured and
murdered his wife; he is now a man, and feels the fitting remorse
for so foul a deed. Man may force his nature, and commit deeds of
horror; but we are all human beings, all the children of one common
mother, who will not suffer that one should agonize the other,
without suffering in his turn a part of the anguish he has
inflicted."

After a time the other visitors departed; and Euthanasia was
left alone with Castruccio. For a while they were silent; the
changeful colours of her cheek might shew, that love had not
forgotten its accustomed course, but rushed in a warm flood to her
heart, and then ebbed, commanded by a power hardly less strong than
that which bids the ocean pause; the power of virtue in a well
formed human heart. Castruccio watched her; but, in the returning
calmness of her eye, and in her unhesitating voice when she did
speak, he read all of female softness, but none of female
weakness.

"Will you pardon me," she said, at length, "if I
speak frankly to you; and not take in ill part the expression of
those reflections to which your late words have given
rise?"

Castruccio smiled, and replied, "Madonna, I know already
what you are about to say; but you are mistaken in your
conclusions. I said that no man could with impunity sacrifice the
lives of his fellow-creatures to his own private passions; but you
must not torture my meaning; the head of a state is no longer a
private man, and he would act with shameful imbecility, if he
submitted to his enemies because he dared not punish
them."

Euthanasia replied to this, and drew a lively picture of the
sufferings of the exiles, but Castruccio answered laughing,
"You speak to one wiser on that subject than yourself. Have
not I been an exile? and do you think that I forget our mournful
procession, when we poor Ghibelines left Lucca nearly twenty years
ago? And do you think that the Neri would have reigned, if they had
not turned us out; and how should I reign, if I permitted this
horde of Guelphs to sit here, and plot in my citadel? Their very
number is an argument against them instead of being one in their
favour. But let us leave this discussion, my too compassionate
Euthanasia, and for a moment cast our thoughts on our own
situation. There must be some end put to the riddle, some crown to
a work, which seems as if it were to have no conclusion. I will be
frank with you; I am neither going to turn hermit, and, laying down
my sceptre, to take up with a crucifix: nor like your friends, the
holy fathers of the church, am I going to war with money and
falsehood, instead of with my sword. I am lord of Lucca, and shall
continue so as long as God permits me. I am at the head of the
Ghibelines in Tuscany, and my design is that the Ghibelines should
put down their old enemies; and, seeing a fair prospect of success,
I shall neither spare words nor blows against those who would
oppose me in this undertaking. You are a Guelph; but surely, my
dear girl, you will not sacrifice your happiness to a name, or
allow party-spirit to get the better of all the more noble feelings
of your nature."

Euthanasia listened with attention, and answered in mild
sadness; "It does not appear to me, Castruccio, that I
sacrifice any thing noble in my nature, when I refuse to unite
myself to the enemy of my country. As a Ghibeline you know that I
loved you; and it is not words alone that cause my change; fight
the Florentines with words only, and I am still yours. But more
than I love Florence, or myself, or you, Castruccio, do I love
peace; and my heart bleeds to think that the cessation of bloodshed
and devastation which our poor distracted country now enjoys, is to
be of short duration. Have you not lived in a country suffering
from war? Have you not seen the peasants driven from their happy
cottages, their vines torn up, their crops destroyed, often a poor
child lost, or haplessly wounded, whose every drop of blood is of
more worth than the power of the Cæsars? And then to behold the
tears and despair of these poor creatures, and to find men who
would still inflict them,--and for what? The bubble is yours,
Castruccio.--What would you have? Honour, fame, dominion? What are
these if peace do not purchase them, but contempt, infamy and
despotism! Oh! rule your own heart; enthrone reason there, make
virtue the high priest of your divinity; let the love of your
fellow-- creatures be your palace to dwell in, and their praises
your delicate food and costly raiment; and, as all sovereigns have
dungeons, so do you have them, in which your pride, ambition, and,
forgive the word, your cruelty, may be enchained; and then the
purple-clad emperors of Constantinople may envy your state and
power.

"Why do you cause this cruel combat? or, why would you
increase the struggle in my heart? As the enemy of Florence I will
never be yours; as the deliberate murderer of the playmates of my
infancy, of the friends of my youth, of those to whom I am allied
by every tie of relationship and hospitality that binds mankind, as
such, I will never be yours. Here then is the crown of the work;
the sea in which the deep and constant stream of my affections
loses itself,--your ambition. Let these be the last words of
contest between us: but if, instead of all that I honour and love
in the world, you choose a mean desire of power and selfish
aggrandizement, still listen to me. You are about to enter on a new
track, yet one on which the course of thousands of those that have
gone before you is to be seen: do not follow these; do not be
sanguinary like them;--the Italians of the present day have all a
remorseless cruelty in them, which will stain the pages of their
history with the foulest blots; let yours be free from these!

"Pardon me that I speak to you in this strain. From this
moment we are disjoined; whatever our portions may be, we take them
separately. Such is the sentence you pronounce upon us."

Castruccio was moved by the fervour of Euthanasia; he tried to
alter her determination, to argue her from the point of difference
between them, but in vain; he moved her to tears. She wept, but did
not reply: her purpose was fixed, but her heart was weak; she loved
for the first and only time; and she knew that she sacrificed every
hope and joy in life, if she sacrificed Castruccio. But she was
firm, and they parted; a parting that caused every nerve in
Euthanasia's frame to thrill with agony.

She tried to still these feelings, to forget that she loved; but
tears, abundant tears, alone eased the agony of her heart, when she
thought, that the soft dreams she had nourished for two years were
vain, gossamer that the sun of reality dissipated. Sometimes she
schooled herself as being too precise and over-wise, to sacrifice
all her hopes to the principles she had set up. But then the
remembrance of the grief she had endured during the last war with
Florence, and the worse struggles she would feel, if she dared
unite herself to any enemy, if, by binding her fate to his, she
might neither pray for the cause of her husband, nor for that of
her beloved country; when to wish well to Castruccio would be to
desire the success of tyranny and usurpation; and to have given her
vows to the Florentines in their necessary defence, was to wish the
overthrow of the companion of her life--the idea of these struggles
gave her courage to persevere; and she hoped, that the approbation
of her own heart, and that of her dearest and most valued friends,
would in some degree repay her for her sufferings. She thought of
her father and his lessons; and her heart again swelled with the
desire of the approbation of the good, with the warm and ardent
love of right which ever burned within her soul. Hers had been a
natural and a lawful passion; she could not live, believing that
she did wrong; and the high independence and graceful pride of her
nature would never permit her, to stoop beneath the mark she had
assigned as the object of her emulation.

Yet when, in the silence of night and of solitude, she consulted
her own heart, she found that love had quenched there every other
feeling, and not to love was to her to die. She looked on the quiet
earth, where the trees slept in the windless air, and the only
sound was the voice of an owl, whose shriek now and then with
monotonous and unpleasing sound awoke the silence, and gave a
melancholy life to what else were dead; she looked up to the sky
where the eternal lamps of heaven were burning; all was unchanged
there; but for her all was different. It was on a night, in an
Italian autumn, that she sat under her acacia tree by the basin of
the fountain of the rock. To look on the hues of sunset, to see the
softened tints of the olive woods, the purple tinge of the distant
mountains, whose outline was softly, yet distinctly marked in the
orange sky; to feel the western breeze steal across her cheek, like
words of love from one most dear; to see the first star of evening
penetrate from out the glowing western firmament, and whisper the
secret of distant worlds to us in our narrow prison; to behold the
heaven-pointing cypress with unbent spire sleep in the stirless
air; these were sights and feelings which softened and exalted her
thoughts; she felt as if she were a part of the great whole; she
felt bound in amity to all; doubly, immeasurably loving those dear
to her, feeling an humanizing charity even to the evil. A sweet
scent coming from the lemon-flowers, which mingled with the gummy
odour of the cypress trees, added to the enchantment.
Suddenly,--list! what is that? Music was heard, and sweeter than
all other instruments, the human voice in chorus singing a national
song, half hymn, half warlike; Euthanasia wept; like a child she
wept,--but there was none near to whom she could tell the
complicated sensations that overpowered her: to speak to those we
love in such moments, exhilarates the spirits; else the deep
feeling preys on the heart itself. She became sad, and looked up to
the many-starred sky; her soul uttered silently the bitter
complaint of its own misery.