Valperga (29 page)

At length grey dawn appeared; she was silent, motionless and
wan; she marked it not; but he did; and rising hastily he cried,
"I must go, or you are lost; farewell, Beatrice!"

Now she awoke, her eyes glared, her lovely features became even
distorted by the strength of her agony,--she started up--"Not
yet, not yet--one word more! Do you--love another?"

Her tone was that of command;--her flashing eyes demanded the
truth, and seemed as if they would by their excessive force strike
the falsehood dead, if he dared utter it: he was subdued, impelled
to reply:--

"I do."

"Her name?"

"Euthanasia."

"Enough, I will remember that name in my prayers. Now, go!
seek not to come again; the entrance will be closed; do not
endeavour to see me at the house of the bishop; I shall fly you as
a basilisk, and, if I see you, your eyes will kill me. Remember
these are my words; they are as true, as that I am all a lie. It
will kill me; but I swear by all my hopes never to see you more.
Oh, never, never!"

She again sank down pale and lifeless, pressing her hands upon
her eyes, as if the more speedily to fulfil her vow. Castruccio
dared stay no longer, he fled as the dæmon might have fled from the
bitter sorrows of despoiled Paradise; he left her aghast,
overthrown, annihilated.

He quitted Ferrara that day. He was miserable: careless of the
road, he sought solitude alone. Before night he was among the wild
forests of the Apennines,--and there he paused; he was surrounded
by the dark pine-forests that sung above him, covered by a night
which was cloudy and unquiet, for the swift wind drove the rack
along the sky, and moaned, and howled; while the lightnings of a
distant storm, faint, but frequent, displayed the savage spot on
which he rested. He threw himself from his horse, and abandoned
himself to sorrow: it stung him to reflect, that he was the cause
of sharpest pain to one who loved him; and the excuses he fondly
leaned upon before his explanation, broke as a reed under the wild
force of Beatrice's despair. He had heard her story, he knew
her delusions, and ought not to have acted towards her, as to a
fellow-being who walked in the same light as himself, and saw
objects dressed in the same colours: a false sun made every thing
deceptive for her eyes,--and he knew it.

Yet what could he now do? Go again to Beatrice? Wherefore? What
could he say? but one word--"forget me!" And that was
already said. His early vows, his deepest and his lasting hopes,
were bound up in Euthanasia: she depended on him alone; she had no
father, no relation, none to love but him. She had told him that
she gave up her soul to him, and had intreated him not to cast
aside the gift. Beatrice had never demanded his faith, his promise,
his full and entire heart; but she believed that she had them, and
the loss sustained by her was irretrievable.

Yet she would soon forget him: thus he reasoned; hers was one of
those minds ever tossed like the ocean by the tempest of passion;
yet, like the ocean, let the winds abate, and it subsides, and
quickly again becomes smiling. She had many friends; she was loved,
nay, adored, by all who surrounded her: utter hopelessness of ever
seeing him again would cause her to forget him; her old ideas, her
old habits would return, and she would be happy. His interference
alone could harm her; but she, the spoiled child of the world,
would weep out her grief on some fond and friendly bosom, and then
again laugh and play as she was wont.

He spent the following day and night among these forests; until
the tempest of his soul was calmed, and his thoughts, before
entangled and matted by vanity and error, now flowed loose, borne
on by repentance, as the clinging weeds of a dried--up brook are
spread free and distinct by the re-appearance of the clear stream.
He no longer felt the withering look of Beatrice haunt even his
dreams; it appeared to him that he had paid the mulct of remorse
and error; the impression of her enchantments and of her sorrows
wore off; and he returned with renewed tenderness to Euthanasia,
whom he had wronged; and, in the knowledge that he had shamed her
pure lessons, he felt a true and wholesome sorrow, which was itself
virtue. Yet he dared not go back to her; he dared not meet her
clear, calm eye; and he felt that his cheek would burn with shame
under her innocent gaze. He suddenly remembered his engagement to
visit Pepi, the old Ghibeline politician, who, without honesty or
humanity, snuffed up the air of self-conceit, and who, thus
inflated, believed himself entitled to cover others with the venom
of sarcasm and contempt.

"Yes, old fox!" he cried, "I will unearth you,
and see if there is aught in your kennel worth the labour. Methinks
you would give out as if gold were under the dirt, or that power
and wisdom lurked beneath your sheepskin and wrinkles; but believe
me, my good friend, we Italians, however base our politics may be,
are not yet low enough to feed from a trough with you for the
driver."

The recollection of something so low and contemptible as
Benedetto of Cremona, relieved Castruccio from a load of
dissatisfaction and remorse. Comparing Pepi with himself, not
directly, but by inference of infinite contempt, he felt that he
could again unabashed raise his eyes. This was not well; far better
was the blush of humiliation which covered him in comparing his
soiled purposes and strayed heart to something high and pure, than
the ignoble heavings of self-consequence in matching himself with
such a blotted specimen of humanity as Pepi. So, as we are wont,
when we return from the solitude of self- examination to the
company of fellow-sinners, he twisted up again the disentangled
tresses of his frank and sincere thoughts into the million-knotted
ties of the world's customs and saintly-looking falsehoods;
and, leaving the woods of the Apennines, something wiser in
self-knowledge, and but little improved in generous virtue, and the
government of his passions, he put spurs to his horse, and turned
his steps towards Cremona.

IT was on the evening of the tenth of September that Castruccio
arrived at the bridge which Pepi had indicated. No one was there,
except an old woman spinning with a distaff, who from her age and
wrinkles might have served for a model of the eternal Fates; for
her leathern and dry, brown skin, did not seem formed of the same
frail materials as the lily cheek of a high-bred dame. She looked
full at Castruccio; so that he laughing asked her, whether she
would tell him his fortune.

"Aye," replied the beldame, "though no witch, it
is easy for me to tell you what you are about to find. Say the word
you were bid repeat here, and I will conduct you where you desire
to go."

"Lucca."

"Enough; follow me. He of whom you wot, will be glad that
you come alone."

She led him out of the high road, by numberless lanes through
which his horse could hardly break his way, among the entangled
bushes of the hedges. The woman trudged on before, spinning as she
went, and screaming out a few notes of a song, returning to them
again and again with a monotonous kind of yell, as loud as it was
discordant. At length they arrived at a mean suburb of Cremona;
and, traversing a number of dirty alleys and dark streets, they
came to one bounded on one side by the high, black, stone wall of a
palace. The old woman knocked at a small, low door in this wall,
made strong with iron clamps, and which, when cautiously opened,
appeared not less in thickness than the wall of the palace itself.
It was Pepi's muscular, but withered hand, that turned the
massy key, and forced back the bolts of three successive doors that
guarded this entrance. After having admitted Castruccio (the old
woman being left behind with the horse, to lead him to the front
gate of the palace), he closed the doors with care; and then, it
being quite dark within the passage, he uncovered a small lamp, and
led the way through the gallery, up a narrow staircase, which
opened by a secret door on the great and dreary hall of the palace.
This vast apartment was hardly light, although at the further end a
torch, stuck against the wall, flared with a black and smoky
flame.

"Welcome again, noble Castruccio, to my palace," said
Pepi: "I have waited anxiously for your arrival, for all my
hopes appear now to depend upon you. At present, since you appear
wet and cold, come to the further hall, where we shall find fire
and food: and pardon, I intreat you, my homely fare, for it is by
economy and privation that I have become that which I am."

The manners of Pepi were unusually inflated and triumphant; and
Castruccio wondered what new scene a being, whom he considered as
half a buffoon, and half a madman, intended to act. A large fire
blazed in the middle of the second hall, and a pot hung over it
containing the supper of the family: Pepi took Castruccio's
cloak, and spread it carefully on the high back of a chair; and
then he pushed a low bench close to the fire, and the two friends
(if so they might be called) sat down. There was no torch or lamp
in the room; but the flame of the burning wood cast a broad glare
on Benedetto's face, which Castruccio observed with curiosity;
his brows were elevated, his sharp eyes almost emitted sparks of
fire, his mouth was drawn down and compressed with a mixed
expression of cunning and pride; he threw another log on the
blazing hearth, and then began to speak:--

"My lord Castruccio, I think it were well that we should
instantly enter on our business, since, when we have agreed upon
our terms, no time must be lost in our proceeding. My proposition
last May, was, as you may remember, to restore this town to the
Ghibelines; and this is in my power. Cane, the lord of Verona, is I
know about to approach with an army to besiege it, and it rests
with me whether he shall succeed or not. If he do not agree to my
terms, he must fail, as I may well say that the keys of this town
rest with me. It is true, that when I spoke to you in May, I did
not know that Can' Grande would attempt the town, and in that
case I should have needed no more aid from you than your mere
interposition: but in affairs of importance a mediator's is not
a humble task; and I hope that you will not disdain to act a
friendly part towards me."

Pepi paused with an inquisitive look; and Castruccio, assuring
him of his amicable dispositions, intreated him to continue his
explanation, and to name what he called his terms. Benedetto
continued: "My terms are these, and truly they may easily be
fulfilled; of course Cane only wishes to take the town out of the
hands of the Guelphs, and to place it in trust with some sure
Ghibeline; now let him make me lord of Cremona, and I will engage,
first to put the town into his hands, and afterwards on receiving
the investiture, to aid him with men during war, and pay him a
tribute in time of peace. If he agree to this, let him only lead
his troops to the gate of the town, and it shall be his without
costing him one drop of blood."

Castruccio listened with uncontrollable astonishment. He looked
at the wrinkled and hardly human face of the speaker, his uncouth
gait and manners, and could scarcely restrain his contempt; he
remembered Pepi's want of every principle and his boasted
cruelty; and disgust overcame every other feeling; but, considering
that it was as well to understand the whole of the man's drift,
after a moment's pause he replied: "And where are the keys
of the town which you say are in your possession?"

"Would you see them?" cried Pepi, starting up with a
grin of triumph; "follow me, and you shall behold
them."

He called his old woman, and, taking the lamp from her hand, he
bade her prepare the supper; and then with quick steps he conducted
Castruccio from the apartment: they crossed the court into the
second hall, and he opened the door of the secret staircase. After
Pepi had again carefully closed it, he opened another door on the
staircase, which Castruccio had not before observed, and which was
indeed entirely concealed in the dirty plaster of the wall.
"Even she," said Pepi, pointing towards the hall,
"even my old witch, does not know of this opening."

After closing it, he led the way through a dark gallery, to
another long and narrow flight of stairs, which seemed to lead to
the vaults underneath the castle. Castruccio paused before he began
to descend, so deeply was he impressed with the villainy of his
companion; but, remembering that they were man to man, and that he
was young and strong, and his companion old and weak, and that he
was armed with a sword, while Pepi had not even a knife at his
girdle, he followed his conductor down the stairs. Flight after
flight succeeded, until he thought they would never end; at length
they came to another long gallery, windowless and damp, which by
its close air indicated that it was below the surface of the
ground, and then to various dreary and mildewed vaults in one of
which stood two large chests.

"There," cried Pepi, "are the keys of the
town."

"Where?" asked Castruccio, impatiently, "I see
them not."

Pepi turned to him with a grin of joy; and, taking two keys from
his bosom, he knelt down, and exerting his strength, turned them in
their locks, and threw back the lids of the chests, first one, and
then the other: they were filled with parchments.

"I do not understand this mummery; how can these musty
parchments be the keys of your town?"

Pepi rubbed his hands with triumphant glee; he almost capered
with delight; unable to stand still, he walked up and down the
vault, crying, "They are not musty! they are parchments of
this age! they are signed, they are sealed;--read them! read
them!"

Castruccio took up one, and found it to be a bond obliging the
signer to pay the sum of twenty thousand crowns on a certain day,
in return for certain monies lent, or to forfeit the sum of thirty
thousand, secured on the lands of a noble count of Cremona.