Part 14

“As a usual thing, I banished these reflections from my mind, but they sometimes made me very anxious. And then, the pleasures that were intoxicating me so did not give me any real enjoyment, after all. At the home of my parents, and in their society, I had experienced nobler enjoyments, more genuine amusements. I retraced, in memory, the delightful walks we had taken together, always with a serious purpose, which afforded us a pure satisfaction, while, in the feverish activity of my present existence, I was conscious of being in realty as languid and exhausted as if I had been living in utter idleness. I began to dream again of the noble enjoyments of the adventurous traveller; and when I looked at my purse, which was always empty, I asked myself whether I could not have made a better use of the money that I earned by hard work; whether it would not have been more to my advantage to devote it to satisfying my genuine physical tastes and intellectual necessities, instead of throwing it away in diversions that wearied my body and exhausted my mind. And then suddenly I felt like a stranger, even in my home. I thought how foreign to my nature all my surroundings were in this country, where I was not rooted by any vital family ties; its frivolous society, its servile political condition, its enervating climate and indolent population. I felt, at the same time, more energetic and more thoughtful than this people. In spite of my twenty-three years and my poverty, I begun to consider whether I would not marry, so that I might have a home of my own, a motive of reform, a serious object in life. But when I confided these perplexities and moral anxieties to the cardinal, he laughed at me for a foolish fellow.

“‘You drank too much, or worked too much, last night,’ he said, ‘and your head is full of vapors. Go and drive them away with Cintia or Fiammetta, but don’t marry them, of all things.’

“I loved the cardinal, for he was a good-hearted and agreeable man; yet, though he was paternal, and unaffectedly kind to me, I saw plainly that he was rather amiable than loving. What he wanted was to have agreeable people about him, and he valued me because of my social qualities; but he was not the man to retain me in his service very long if I should become melancholy, and hence tiresome.

“I accordingly tried to drive away my thoughts, and to rest contented, like all around me, with the enjoyments of each day, without caring for the morrow. But I could not do it. My dissatisfaction increased, and I could not hide it. I became disgusted with easy successes in love; sensual infatuations, to which women of all ranks seemed to abandon themselves without resistance. Poor, and a plebeian, these intrigues had at first flattered my vanity; but when I saw that my barber, who was a good-looking fellow, was as successful as myself, I contracted a great horror of the marchioness. I became eager to quit Naples, and begged the cardinal to make me a librarian or steward, no matter what, at some one of his villas in Calabria or Sicily; I thirsted for repose and for solitude. But he still laughed at my plans for retirement. In fact he had no faith in them; he thought me no more fit for a steward than for a monk. In this he was right, no doubt; yet it was a misfortune that he retained me, as you will see.

“A second nephew of the cardinal returned from his travels, and became an inmate of the house. This was Marco Melfi, a young man as unintelligent, foolish, indolent, and vain, as his young cousin, Tito Villareggia, was sympathetic and kind-hearted. He made himself disagreeable to everybody; and very soon had several duels on his hands. He was an excellent swordsman, and wounded or killed all his adversaries without receiving a single scratch; and his insolence became, in consequence, perfectly insupportable. I avoided collisions with him as long as possible, but being one day urged beyond endurance by his brutal provocations, I gave him the lie in form, and offered him satisfaction with the sword. This he refused, saying that I was not a gentleman, and darting at me, he attempted to strike me. I, however, flung him down, and left him unhurt, except that he was almost choked with fury. The quarrel made a good deal of noise; and the cardinal, while he acknowledged to me between ourselves that I was in the right, yet begged me to hasten and conceal myself on one of his estates, until Melfi should depart on his travels again.

“The idea of hiding was revolting to me.

“‘But, my poor fellow,’ said the cardinal, ‘do you not know, that as things are, my nephew is obliged to have you assassinated?’

“This expression seemed to me rather amusing, and I replied that I would _oblige_ Marco to fight me.

“‘But you can’t kill my nephew,’ said he, patting me gayly on the head. ‘Even supposing you were skilful enough, you would not make such a return as that for the fatherly kindness that I have shown you?’

“This observation silenced me. I returned to my lodging and made ready to depart. I ought to have been more cautious about it, but I could not bring myself to seem to be running away secretly. All at once, as I stepped out of my room to look for a small box that was in the vestibule of the house, where I lived by myself, two villains fell upon me and undertook to overpower and tie me. In the struggle that ensued, I pushed them down stairs; but, just as I was about to escape, the door was shut in my face, and I heard a harsh voice proceeding from the vestibule exclaim:

“‘Courage! tie him! I want to beat him to death on the spot!’

“My rage, at hearing this, gave me superhuman strength, and I fought my two assailants with so much fury, that they were both overpowered in a few seconds. Then, without further notice of them, I sprang at Marco, who, seeing that his attempt had failed, tried to flee. I, however, forced him against the door, and snatched away his sword, which he would have drawn to defend himself.

“‘Scoundrel!’ I said, ‘I will not kill you, but you shall fight me, and at once.’

“Marcus was slender, and inferior to me in strength. I made him go up stairs before me, and pushed him into my room, when I double-locked the door, took my sword, and giving him his, said:

“‘There, defend yourself; you see that you may sometimes be obliged to fight with a plebeian!’

“‘Goffredi,’ he replied, lowering the point of his weapon. ‘I do not wish to fight you, and I will not; I am too certain of killing you; and I should be very sorry to do that, for you are a good fellow. You might have assassinated me, and you did not do it. Let us be friends.’

“Not mistrusting him, and not being of a revengeful disposition, I held out my hand to take that which he had offered me, when he aimed a swift and skilful left-handed stab at my throat with a stiletto. I evaded the thrust, which only wounded my shoulder. Upon this I no longer restrained my anger, but instantly and furiously attacked the villain, who was forced to stand on his defence. Our weapons were equal, and he certainly had greatly the advantage over me in skill and practice. But, however it may have been, I laid him dead at my feet. He fell, sword in hand, without speaking a word, and with an infernal smile on his face. At this very moment there was a violent knocking and pounding at my door, and he may have thought that he should quickly be avenged. For my part, I did not know whether the two assassins, recovered from their stupor, had returned to the attack, or whether they had warned the police to come and arrest me; but, exhausted as I was with emotion and fatigue, I felt that I should be lost in either case. So I mustered up what strength I had left, and jumped out of the window. It was not more than about twenty feet high; I alighted upon the court-yard pavement without much injury, and holding my coat tight around me, to prevent the blood from my shoulder from indicating my track, I fled as far as my legs could carry me.

“It was well for me that I succeeded in gaining the country, for as this affair had passed without witnesses, it would necessarily have been a very bad one for me. It made no difference that I was in the right, that my behavior had been loyal and generous, and that my adversary was a cowardly scoundrel. He belonged to one of the first families in the kingdom, and the holy inquisition would have made but a single mouthful of a poor wretch like me.

“I found refuge for the night in a fisherman’s cabin, but I had not a single farthing about me with which to pay for the dangerous hospitality. Moreover, my torn and bloody clothes would not allow me to show myself by day; and my wound--whether it was severe or not I did not know--pained me extremely. I felt my strength failing, and I well knew that the whole police of the kingdom was already on foot, and hunting after me. Lying on a miserable mat, under a little shed, I wept bitter tears, not over my unfortunate destiny--I should have been incapable of such weakness--but because of the sudden and irreparable rupture of my relations with the good cardinal and with my amiable pupil. I felt that I loved them deeply, and I cursed the fate which had caused me to defile with blood the mansion where I had been received with so much confidence and kindness.

“However, it was escape, and not lamentation, that I needed to concern myself about. It occurred to me, of course, to find the little Jew who had asserted that he knew the mysterious friends or relations who were watching over me, or who had employed him to do so. I forgot to say that this Jew had established himself in Naples, where I had met him more than once. But it seemed to me too dangerous to return into the city, and I could not have written to him without running the risk of being discovered. Hence I gave up the idea.

“It is needless for me to relate in full my adventures in effecting my escape from the kingdom of Naples. I had managed to exchange my tattered clothes for some other rags not quite so suspicious in appearance, but I found it very hard to obtain food. The whole community knew that pursuit was being made after the ‘vile assassin’ of a nobleman, and poor vagrants were looked upon with distrust. If it had not been for the women, who are always more courageous and more humane than we men, I should have died of hunger and fever. My wound often forced me to halt in the most solitary and deserted spot I could find, and in some such hiding-place, lacking every kind of assistance, it seemed more than likely, on several occasions, that I should leave my bones, from sheer lack of strength to rise up and go forward. And yet, M. Goefle, can you believe that, even in this desperate situation, I experienced, at moments, a sense of delirious joy, as if, in spite of everything, I were enjoying a foretaste of my reconquered liberty. The open air, the motion, the freedom from conventional restraints, the sight of the open plains, whose distant horizons I might now expect to reach and pass--all, even to the hardness of my bed of rock, recalled to my mind the projects and aspirations of the time when I had really lived.

“At last I gained the frontiers of the Papal States in safety; and as I had not followed the road to Rome, but had made a detour through the mountains, I had every reason to hope that the spies on the lookout for me had been baffled. I stopped in a village, therefore, to dispose of my merchandise; for such was my horror of begging, and so angry did it make me to be refused, that, to avoid the temptation of beating the people who sent me off with rude brutality, I had taken it into my head--as I should have told you before--to become a merchant!”

“A merchant?” interrupted M. Goefle, “a merchant of what? You had not a penny to start with!”

“Very true, but I had a pen-knife in my pocket when I fled, and this took the place of capital. Although I had I never worked in sculpture, I was familiar enough with the principles of design, and one day, chancing to notice on the road a remarkably white and unusually soft layer of rock, it occurred to me to provide myself with a dozen or so fragments from it. These I broke off on the spot; and afterwards, while I was resting, carved into little figures of madonnas and cherubs, about as large as a finger. This stone, or rather chalk, which was scattered all about the country in this direction, was very light; I could carry as many as fifty of my little statuettes without inconvenience, and I used to sell them to the farmers and peasants for five or six _baiocchi_ each. This was certainly all they were worth, and it was enough to furnish me with bread.

“For several days I had succeeded remarkably well in my new avocation, and I hoped, on seeing that it was market-day in this village, that I would be able to dispose in safety of my whole supply of merchandise. I found, however, but little custom, in consequence of the competition of a Piedmontese with a great tray of plaster figures; and so it occurred to me to sit down and execute my carving in sight of the crowd, who quickly gathered round me. This plan was extremely successful. The quickness of my work, and very likely the simplicity of its style, made it very popular, and the admiration and delight of these good folks, especially of the women and children, made my Piedmontese competitor extremely jealous and angry. He addressed me several times in a violent manner, without making me lose patience. I saw plainly that he meant to force a quarrel on me in order to drive me away, but I only made fun of him, telling him to go to work as I did, and make some of his statuettes, so as to show his talents to the company, a suggestion which was received with great applause; for in Italy even the lowest classes are fond of everything connected with art. So my rival found himself laughed at as a mere mechanic, while I was loudly declared to be a real artist.

“The malignant rascal, upon this, contrived a very mean trick to revenge himself. He dropped two or three of the cheapest of his images on purpose, and then made a terrible outcry, so as to attract the attention of some of the police, who were moving about here and there in the crowd. When he had succeeded in bringing them to the spot, he charged that I had been stirring up the people against him, that they had been shoving him about, and had caused great damage to his frail wares. He was a respectable person, he said, who paid for his license, and was well-known in the neighborhood, while I was a mere vagrant, and very likely something still worse, who could say? perhaps that vile assassin of the cardinal? This was the shape that the story had already assumed, and it was in this character that I was held up to public animadversion, and to the scrutiny of the police. The people, however, took my part; and many witnesses testified to my innocence as well as their own, proving that no one had pushed, or even touched the tray of the figure-merchant. Those who were immediately about me stepped quietly in the way of the officers, and made room for me to pass.

“But although I found good friends among them, there were also plenty of blackguards or cowards, who pointed me out without saying a word, as I rushed precipitately into a crowded by-street. The officers pursued me; I had a good start, but I knew nothing of the locality; and instead of gaining the open country, very soon found myself in another square, where a number of people had gathered attentively about a theatre of marionettes. Scarcely had I had time to join this group, when the officers came up and began looking around with penetrating eyes. I made myself as small as possible, and was pretending to feel a great interest in Punchinello, so as not to excite the curiosity of my neighbors, who were jostling me on every side, when suddenly a luminous idea, suggested by my imminent danger, flashed into my excited brain. While the officers were trying to force an entrance into the compact and motionless crowd, I crept gradually forward until I could touch the canvas of the booth. Then stooping slowly down, I suddenly glided in under it as a fox runs into a hole, and found myself squatting almost between the legs of the operator--that is, of the person who was moving the marionettes and speaking for them.

“Do you know what a theatre of marionettes is, M. Goefle?”

“Certainly! I saw Christian Waldo’s only a little while ago, at Stockholm.”

“Saw it?--From the outside, you mean?”

“That’s all; but I have a very good idea of the inside, though that one seemed to me to be rather complicated.”

“It is a theatre for two operators, or, in other words, for four hands, which means, of course, four actors on the stage, and that is a sufficiently large company of _burattini_.”

“What are _burattini_?”

“They are the classical, primitive marionettes; the best. The _burattino_ is not the same as the stiff, wooden _fantoccio_ which, hung to the ceiling by strings, moves about without touching the ground, or else with a noise that is ridiculous and unnatural. The jointed marionette, which is much more scientific and complete, contains some really ingenious mechanism, that enables it to make very natural gestures and to assume graceful attitudes. With further improvements it could undoubtedly be constructed to imitate nature perfectly; but, on investigating the subject, I have asked myself of what use this would be, and what advantage art would derive from a theatre of automata? The larger they were made, the more like human beings, the more disagreeable, and even frightful, the spectacle of such artificial actors would become. Does it not appear to you so?”

“Certainly, it does--but the digression interests me less than the continuation of your narrative.”

“Pardon me, pardon me, Monsieur Goefle, the digression is unavoidable. I am just coming to a singular part of my adventurous career, and I must positively prove to you the superiority of the _burattino_. I want to convince you that the instrument of the comic artist, in this elementary representation, is neither a machine, nor a puppet, nor a doll; it is a living being.”

“Ah! Indeed? A living being?” repeated M. Goefle, looking with astonishment at his companion, and asking himself whether he was not liable to occasional fits of insanity.

“Yes, a living being! I insist upon it,” replied Cristiano, with enthusiasm; “and all the more because it has no body. The _burattino_ has neither wheels, nor strings, nor pulleys. It is a head, and nothing more; a head with expression and intelligence, in which--but wait a moment!”

Cristiano stepped under the staircase, and opening a box, produced a little wooden figure, dressed in rags, which he threw down, picked up, tossed in the air, and caught again in his hand.

“There,” he resumed, “look at that! A rag--a mere chip, the figure scarcely indicated. Now see, I put my hand inside of this little leather bag, my forefinger in the head, which is hollow, my thumb and middle finger into these sleeves, to manage the two little wooden hands. These hands, you see, are short, formless, and not exactly either open or shut. This is intentional; it is to conceal their immovability. Now let me stand at such a distance from you as suits the size of the little thing. There; stay where you are, and look!”

“While he was speaking, Cristiano had mounted the staircase at two bounds, crouched down so as to hide his body behind the balustrade, raised his hand above it, and moved the marionette with extreme address and grace.

“You see, now,” he cried, as gayly as ever, and yet with real earnestness, “you see how perfect the illusion is, even without either theatre or scenery. The face, which is sketched, as it were, in a broad style, and painted in colors of a somewhat dull tone, begins, as it moves, to look as if it were alive. If I were to show you one of the best German marionettes, all varnished and shining, covered with spangles, and moving by wheel-work, you could not help remembering that it is only a doll--a mere piece of machinery; while my _burattino_ here, lithe and obedient to every motion of my fingers, comes and goes, salutes, turns its head, folds its arms, raises them towards heaven, expresses all manner of emotions, strikes a blow, beats upon the wall with joy or despair. And don’t you see that you fancy you perceive all these emotions expressed in the face too? What is it that causes such a wonderful effect? How is it that a head so roughly cut, so ugly when closely examined, should suddenly assume, in the play of the light, such a lifelike expression, that you quite forget its real size. Yes, I insist upon it, that when you see the _burattino_ in the hands of a real artist, upon a theatre where the scenery, the stage, the surroundings are in proper proportion to the actors, you completely forget that you yourself are not upon the same scale; you forget even that the voice that speaks for them is not their own. The association apparently so impossible, of a head no larger than my fist, with a voice as strong as mine, is admitted readily in the state of mysterious intoxication into which I manage gradually to bring you, and the whole miracle is accomplished. Do you see what causes it? The fact that the _burattino_ is not an automaton, but a thing obedient to my caprice, my inspiration, my impulses; because all its motions are the results of ideas which spring up in my mind, of words which I furnish; in short, because it is myself; therefore, a living being and not a doll!”

Having thus argued his case with a great deal of animation, Cristiano came down stairs, laid the marionette on the table, took off his coat, apologizing to M. Goefle on the ground of being too warm, and placed himself astride upon his chair again, so as to resume the thread of his story.

During this odd interruption, M. Goefle’s attitude had been about as amusing as Cristiano’s.

“Wait a moment,” he observed, taking up the _burattino_. “All that you have said is very true, and well argued. And now I understand the extraordinary pleasure which I took in the representations of Christian Waldo. But what you do not explain, and what I nevertheless perceive very plainly to be the fact, is, that this good little gentleman that I have in my hand, I would like very well to make him move and talk myself--Come, my little friend,” he proceeded, inserting his fingers into the head and sleeves of the _burattino_, “come; take a look at me. That’s right: yes; you are very good-looking, and I am happy to make so close an acquaintance with you. And now, I declare I remember you! You are Stentarello, that very joyous, satirical and graceful Stentarello who made me laugh so much a fortnight ago at Stockholm! And you, young man,” continued M. Goefle, turning to his guest--“although I have never seen your face before, yet I recognize you perfectly by your voice, your sprightliness, your gayety, and your sensibility as well--you are Christian Waldo, the famous operator of the Neapolitan _burattini_!”

“Very much at your service,” answered Christian Waldo, bowing to the doctor of laws, with much grace; “and if you would like to know how Cristiano del Lago, Cristiano Goffredi, and Christian Waldo came to be one and the same person, attend to the rest of my adventures.”

“I am listening, and with a great deal of curiosity, too. But I want to know when you received this new name of Christian Waldo?”

“Oh, that one is really new. It only dates back to last autumn, and I should find it difficult to tell why I adopted it. The fact is, I believe it came to me in a dream, and that it is a reminiscence of the name of some locality which made an impression upon my mind during my infancy.”

“That is singular! Well, no matter. You left off inside the theatre of marionettes, in the square of--”