Part 15

“Of Celano,” said Christian; “again on the borders of a beautiful lake. I assure you, Monsieur Goefle, that my destiny is linked in with lakes; there certainly is some mystery under the association, which perhaps some day I shall penetrate.

“You have not forgotten that the police were at my heels, and that had it not been for the booth of marionettes, I should probably have been taken and hung. This booth, however, was very small, and could hardly contain more than one man. When I asked you if you knew how these marionette theatres are constructed--an excusable inquiry, since this characteristic Italian amusement is not common in your country, and perhaps has never been brought here except by myself--it was with the intention of explaining my position between the feet of the operator, who, busily occupied in making Punchinello fight with an officer, with his hands and eyes both raised as high as possible, and his mind intensely concentrated upon the work of improvising his burlesque drama, had no time to notice or to understand what was taking place in the vicinity of his knees. There remained, therefore, only a single minute before the denouement of the piece and my own fate together.

“I felt that it would not do to trust my safety to mere chance. Picking up from the ground two _burattini_, which, by a curious coincidence with my own circumstances, represented a judge and a hangman, and rising up as well as I could by the side of the operator, I placed the marionettes upon the stage, and at the risk of breaking through the cloth awning of the box, introduced an unexpected scene into the piece, quite impromptu. This scene had an immense success; and my associate, without being the least in the world disconcerted, received it quite as a matter of course, and although extremely crowded for room, sustained his part of the dialogue with extraordinary gayety and presence of mind.”

“Wonderful, fantastic Italy!” exclaimed M. Goefle; “nowhere else are men’s faculties so keen and so ready!”

“My companion,” continued Christian, “was a good deal more penetrating than you have imagined. He had recognized me; had comprehended my situation, and had resolved to rescue me.”

“And did he do so?”

“Most effectually: while I was delivering the closing speech to the public in his stead, he, without saying a word, put an old cap of his own on my head, flung a tattered red cloak about my shoulders, and rubbed some ochre on my face. Then, as soon as the curtain had fallen, he said in my ear:

“‘Goffredi, take the theatre on your back and follow me.’

“And, in fact, we passed through the square in this way, and left the village without being molested. We travelled all night, and before daylight had reached the Roman campagna.”

“But who was this devoted friend?”

“It was a young man of good family, one Guido Massarelli, who, like myself, had run away from the kingdom of Naples. His difficulty was a less serious one than mine; he had fled only from his creditors. But he was not so good a fellow as I, Monsieur Goefle, notwithstanding; I give you my word for it! Still, he was an amiable young man, well educated, accomplished, and with extremely attractive manners. I had been quite intimate with him in Naples, where he had wasted his property, and had made many friends. He was the son of a wealthy merchant, was naturally well endowed, and had received an excellent education; but, like myself, he had been too early launched in a society much too expensive for him; so that he speedily found himself without resources. I had myself supported him for some time; but as he could not be contented to live simply, and had not the force of character to work for a living, he had ended by becoming a swindler.”

“Did you know this?”

“I did, but I could not find it in my heart to reproach him at the moment when he had saved my life. Like myself, he was in a state of complete destitution. He had absconded with a few crowns, and with these had purchased from a mountebank a theatre of marionettes, which he used not so much to make his living as to hide his face.

“‘This business of mine,’ he said, ‘is a stroke of genius upon my part. Here I have been for two months rambling about the kingdom of Naples without being recognized. Perhaps you will ask why I do not go further away. The reason is, that I have creditors in all parts of Italy; I shall find them everywhere, unless I go as far as France. Besides, I had left some little love affairs at Naples that were still pulling at my heart, and I could not make up my mind to leave the neighborhood. This light cloth watch-tower keeps me invisible in the midst of the crowd. While all eyes are fixed upon my _burattini_, no one thinks of inquiring who the man is that moves them. I go from one neighborhood to another walking erect inside of my shell, and when I am once out of it, nobody knows that I am the same person who has been diverting the public.’

“‘It certainly is a good idea,’ I said; ‘but what do you propose to do now?’

“‘Whatever you choose,’ he answered; ‘I am so glad to meet you again, and to be of service to you, that I will go with you wherever you like. I am more attached to you than I can express. You have always treated me with indulgence. You are not rich, but you have done much more for me in proportion than many of my friends who are. You have defended me when I have been accused; and even while blaming me for my follies, have always tried to persuade me that I was perfectly able to reform. I do not know that you are right, but I am sure of this: that for the sake of pleasing you, I will make one supreme effort, only provided it be out of Italy; for anywhere in Italy I am lost and dishonored. If I am to attempt a better life, I must do it in a foreign country, and under an assumed name.’

“Guido spoke with deep earnestness, and even shed tears. I knew him to be kind-hearted, and I believed him sincere. Perhaps he was so at that moment. To tell you the truth, I have always felt very indulgent towards those who are generous as well as prodigal, and this was the case with Guido, to my own knowledge. I beg you, however, Monsieur Goefle, not to suppose that I confound together liberality and selfish extravagance, although I, too, have been an offender in this respect. At any rate, I allowed myself to be moved and persuaded by my old comrade and new friend; so you will please to imagine us within the territories of the pope, breakfasting frugally together under the shade of a clump of pine-trees, and arranging a joint plan of operations.

“We were equally destitute; but my situation, though in a legal point of view more serious than his, was still by no means desperate. It would have been quite possible for me to have effected my escape without so much risk, fatigue and suffering. I should only have had to take refuge outside the city of Naples, with any one of a number of honorable persons, who had assured me of their friendship, and who would certainly have believed my word when I described to them how I had been in some sort forced to kill my cowardly enemy. He was hated, and I was beloved. I should have been well received, concealed, properly cared for, and enabled to leave the country in safety under influential protection. The police, and even the inquisition, can sometimes be induced to close their eyes when sufficient influence is exerted. However, I could not bring myself to adopt this plan; I felt an insurmountable repugnance to it, on account of my poverty, and the necessity I should have been under of accepting aid at the very outset. While I was with the cardinal, my salary had been too liberal to justify me in leaving him empty handed. He himself would certainly never have suspected how destitute I was. I should have been ashamed to confess, not that I was without money, for the young men in the circle I frequented were constantly in a similar condition, but that I had no prospect of receiving any until I had earned it in some new employment; and still further, the fact that it would be necessary for me to live much more sensibly and prudently than I had done in the past. Upon this latter point I was quite ready to enter into an engagement with myself; but, under the circumstances, my pride would not allow me to make promises to others.

“When I explained my situation to Guido Massarelli, he was greatly astonished at my scruples, and seemed even to feel a sort of contempt for them. But the more he urged me to apply to my friends in Rome for assistance, the more repugnant the idea became to me. Perhaps I was unreasonable about it; but at any rate, while I felt no shame at all at being reduced to the necessity of eating lupins with my companion in misfortune, it is certain that I would have died of hunger rather than go with him to beg a dinner of my old acquaintances. He had so long abused the efficacy of applications for aid, promises, useless repentances and artfully contrived narratives, that I should have been very much afraid of being supposed engaged in a similar course.

“‘We have been foolish,’ I said to him, ‘and we ought to be men enough to take the consequences. For my part, I have decided to proceed into France by the way of Genoa, or else into Germany by Venice. I shall go on foot, and live as I can. As soon as I can reach some large town outside of Italy, for here I am constantly in danger of falling into the hands of the Neapolitan police from the least imprudence, I will look out for some regular employment. I will write to the cardinal, and justify myself; from my friends I will request letters of recommendation, and I am confident that, after more or less of poverty and delay, I shall find some respectable position. If you like to come with me, come, and I will help you to the best of my ability in doing as I do--that is, in earning a respectable living by honest work.’

“Guido seemed so perfectly willing, and so well convinced, that I no longer hesitated to allow myself the enjoyment of an intimacy with him. In fact, I have often observed that a thorough scoundrel is often one of the most agreeable of men, and that the most companionable people are frequently those most destitute of dignity of character. But we have an absurd sort of conceit that makes us believe that we can exert an influence over such unfortunates; and when they deceive us, the fault is as much ours as theirs.

“I make these preliminary reflections so as to avoid interrupting the account of what followed.

“Our first business was to escape from Italy: in other words, to travel some hundreds of leagues without a farthing in our pockets. I promised that I would find the means, asking only for a few days’ rest to enable my wound to heal, for it was very painful and feverish.

“‘In the meanwhile,’ I said, ‘go and provide for yourself. I will take a loaf of bread and establish myself under a rock, near a spring. That ought to be sufficient for a man in a fever. We will appoint some place of meeting, and I will join you as soon as I can travel.’

“He refused to depart, and devoted himself to taking care of me; and so much zeal and ingenuity did he display in relieving my pain and supplying my wants, that I could not help feeling sincerely grateful. In three days I was upon my feet again, and by this time I had made my reflections.

“In brief, this was their result. I had come to the conclusion that we could not do better than to continue our marionette exhibition, which only required to be made more profitable and less vulgar. We needed to escape from the everlasting drama of Punchinello, to choose plots equally simple, but less threadbare; and, taking these for the groundwork, to improvise together amusing little comedies. Guido had enough, and to spare, of wit for this sort of work, and instead of applying himself to it with reluctance and dislike, he saw at once that, with an agreeable companion, it could be made very amusing. It is a general rule, by the way, that we cannot entertain other people when we are bored ourselves. So he readily assisted me to build a portable theatre in two sections, one of which served each of us as a shelter, in which we walked, safe from sun, rain, and police-officers; and which, when joined together by a few hooks, formed a stage large enough for the manœuvring of our two pairs of hands. I transformed his wretched _burattini_ into intelligent and well-costumed figures, and added to them a dozen characters invented by myself. Then, in the open air, in a solitary wilderness, we made the first trial of our new theatre.

“The sale of my little devotional images carved out of stone, which Guido sold about the country to much better advantage than I could have done, defrayed the humble expenses of this establishment. In about a week we had advanced so far as to give a dozen representations in the suburbs of Rome, which had the greatest success, and netted the fabulous profit of three Roman crowns! This was enough to enable us to set out on our journey across the deserted regions that separate the Eternal City from the other provinces of Italy. Guido, who was delighted at our success, wanted to stay longer at Rome. It is very true that we might have risked going into the more fashionable quarters of the city, so as to have attracted the attention of a better class of society to our little comedies. But that was precisely what I was afraid of, and what we both needed to be afraid of, considering our reasons for remaining concealed. I therefore overruled my companion, and we took the road to Florence, exhibiting, as we went, in the villages and small towns, to pay our current expenses.

“We went by the way of Perugia, and it was not without a reason that I preferred this to the Sienna route. I wished to see again my own beautiful and beloved city, my sweet lake of Thrasymene, and, most of all, the little villa where I had been so happy. We reached Bassignano at nightfall. Never had I seen the sun setting in such luminous splendor in waters so calm and transparent! I left Guido to establish himself in a small inn, while I went along the shore of the lake towards the little villa which had formerly been occupied by the Goffredis.

“In order to avoid being recognized in the neighborhood, I put on a mask and a harlequin hat, which I had bought at Rome to use in case of danger. A few parti-colored rags transformed me into a professional mountebank--a very appropriate character for an exhibitor of marionettes employed in distributing handbills. The village children, fancying that I was going to play tricks for their amusement, followed me with cries of joy, but I drove them away with my wooden sword, and was soon alone upon the shore.

“The night had come on, but the air was bright, and in the limpid crystal of the lake, where the lines of the horizon were indistinguishable in the twilight, I seemed to trace and follow the immensity of the starry heavens, and to float, like a disembodied spirit, upon some fantastic similitude of infinity. Ah, Monsieur Goefle! how strange is life sometimes! And what a strange appearance did I myself present, in that grotesque costume, seeking about, like a lost soul, under the shade of the willows, which had grown in my absence, for the solitary tomb of my poor parents! For a moment I believed that it had been removed, that they had robbed me of it--for it was mine--my only possession! With my very last means I had purchased the little nook of consecrated earth where I had laid their remains.

“At last, however, I discovered the humble tomb, and, sitting down by it, and taking off my harlequin’s mask, I wept freely. I remained there for a good part of the night plunged in reflection, for I desired, before leaving this spot probably for the last time, to review my life, to repent of my errors, and to make good resolutions for the future. Divine grace is no illusion, Monsieur Goefle. I do not know to what extent you are a Lutheran, and for my part I do not pretend to be very much of a Catholic. In these days, in fact, nobody believes in very much of anything, unless it be in the necessity and duty of toleration. But I believe, in a vague sort of way, in a soul of the world--no matter by what name you call it--a great soul all love and goodness, which receives our tears and our aspirations. The philosophers are just now asserting that it is a platitude to imagine that the Being of beings will condescend to concern himself with such worms as the human race. But I say that there is nothing either great or small, in the sight of Him who is All; and that, in an ocean of Love, there will always be room to receive with kindness one poor little human tear.

“Accordingly I instituted an examination of my conscience over that tomb; and, in the rain of soft light which fell upon me from the quiet stars, I fancied that the two beings whom I had loved as a father and mother, must surely be sending at least one ray to find me out and bless me. I felt that between me and them there was neither crime, shame, cowardice, nor impiety. I had never forgotten them for a single day; and, in the very midst of my dissipations, whenever the demon of youth and curiosity had urged me towards the deeper abysses of this vicious and unbelieving world, I had always drawn back and protected myself by invoking the memories of Silvio and Sophia.

“To have avoided evil, however, was not enough; it was my duty to do well. Well-doing is a task which varies with the position and capabilities of each one of us. My own duty was, to continue the labors of Silvio Goffredi, and to accumulate the means of writing out and publishing the results of his researches. For this it would have been necessary, in the first place, to acquire quite a fortune, in order to complete his travels. I had at first thought of doing this, but my inexperience, the pleasures of the senses, and bad examples, had led me on, from day to day, in a life like that of a mere adventurer. It was this reckless course which had resulted in my ruin. If I had remained contented with the appropriate position of a modest professor, I should not have been obliged to kill Marco Melfi. He would never have thought of insulting me; indeed, he would not have met me in the cardinal’s saloons. He would not have searched me out in my study among my books--he would not even have known that I existed. I had tried to play the gentleman, and had been obliged to become a bully.

“‘How my poor mother would have wept!’ I thought to myself, ‘to have seen me transformed into a strolling mountebank, bruising, on the stones of the pavement, the feet that she used to warm in her own hands before putting me in my cradle! And would not my father have disapproved of the false sense of honor which had made me a murderer and an outcast?’

“I remembered the quick sensibilities and scrupulous pride of the noble Silvio, and yet he could not manage a sword, and had refused to allow me a fencing-master. ‘A man’s honor,’ he used to say, ‘must be very frail, if he could not make himself respected without having a sword dangling at his side.’

“By the memory of these dear and holy friends I took an oath to amend my faults; and, after gazing for a long time at the heavens, where I imagined them reunited in some happy star, I returned at once to the village, without caring any longer to go in search of the _villetta_. Why should I have gone there to indulge in barren regrets? It was not to enable me to live in idleness that Goffredi had bequeathed it to me. He must needs have blessed me, even from his tomb, for alienating the property, and expending his whole fortune in solacing the last days of his widow. But when that was done, I ought to have labored all the harder, instead of acting as if one small act of devotion to my family had given me a right to go and live in dissipation at the tables of idlers.

“On the shore of the lake I met Guido Massarelli; my long absence had made him uneasy, and he was coming to look for me. I opened my heart to him, and he seemed to be greatly touched by my emotion. We sat down in a boat moored to the shore, and talked sentiment, ethics, philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, and poetry, until the day began to dawn. Guido possessed a very noble intellect. And, indeed, this strange anomaly occurs in the case of many worthless characters, as if to make us doubt the validity of God’s own logic.

“Next day we were on the road again, and some days later were attracting a crowd on the Piazza del Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence. Our receipts were excellent. If we had chosen, we could have travelled to Genoa by wagon. We preferred to walk, however, although our loads, continually augmented by additional figures and scenery, had become very heavy.

“At Genoa, further success, and extraordinary receipts. We became such favorites that we were unable to comply even with the private engagements that were offered us. At first we had simply amused the common people, who gathered on the public square; but passers-by of higher rank had chanced to stop before our booth, and we could not resist the temptation of elevating our dialogue on the occasion to a correspondingly higher intellectual level.

“This was observed, and was spoken of in society. One of these casual listeners was a Marquis Spinola, who invited us to his house to amuse his children. We went masked, as usual, for we made our incognito an express condition of appearing. Our theatre was erected in the garden, and we had for an audience the best and most brilliant society of the city.

“For days afterwards, we knew not which way to turn. Our representations were in the greatest demand, and Guido demanded extremely high prices, which were conceded without hesitation. The mystery with which we surrounded ourselves, the pains we took to remain masked outside of our theatre, and the fantastic names we had assumed, added, no doubt, to our popularity. Every one readily guessed that we were two young men of good family; but while some guessed, also, that it was our own follies that had forced us to become wandering showmen, others tried to persuade themselves that we had adopted this employment merely for our amusement, and on a wager. Some went so far as to insist upon it that we were two young men of the city, who, as we learned later, were very well pleased with the imputation.

“At Nice, at Toulon, everywhere until we reached Marseilles, our progress was a series of triumphs. As we travelled slowly, our fame preceded us, and at every inn where we stopped we heard that persons had already come to inquire after us, and to engage our evenings.

“From Marseilles our success diminished steadily, until we reached Paris. My knowledge of the French language was thorough; and, as I improved daily, I soon freed myself from the Italian accent which had prevented me at first from giving sufficient variety to the intonations of my actors. But Guido’s accent, which was much more pronounced than mine, seemed to become stronger rather than otherwise, and our dialogue suffered in consequence. This, however, scarcely troubled me at all. Our career as professional buffoons was approaching an end, and I flattered myself that I should soon be able to command a more dignified position.”

[Footnote 5: This is still true, in a great measure. During the last, and in the beginning of this century, the works of the middle ages were regarded with general contempt.]

VI.

AFTER resting a few moments, Cristiano--we will hereafter call him Christian--continued his narrative as follows: