CHAPTER XIII
The Professor had a delightful hour with Cardinal Cestaldini, an hour during which personal preoccupations ceased to exist. The Cardinal, indeed, never seemed to have any of these; his bland, benevolent, well-ordered existence left no loophole for worry, the cipher word which expresses in five letters regrets for the past, irritation in the present, and anxiety concerning the future. Whatever the occupation of the moment might be, he came to it gladly and preparedly, knew that it was either obligatory or legitimate, and turned from it to the next without haste, without delay, without a jarring note in the harmonious modulations by which his spirit passed from key to key, from the inner sanctuaries of prayer and contemplation to the apostolic publicity of his sacredotal and hierarchical functions, the fulfillment of every duty as a priest and a prince of the Church; and again from these to the intellectual and artistic enjoyments which provided the recreation necessary to preserve the elasticity of his well-balanced mind.
He enjoyed few things, in a minor way, more than his occasional conversations with Carlo Bianchi. Those were the days when the new archæology was in its infancy, when the ground had been barely broken over the rich depths of the second Rome, although its more visible remains everywhere met the eye, built into palace and basilica or standing up in sun-stained beauty of colonnade and temple, amphitheater or triumphal arch. The first Rome lay still buried, still undreamed of, far beneath the second, in its cerement of soil, so closely spaded in by time that it served to bear the enormous weight of the Imperial city, which in its turn supported Roma Terza, the Rome of the middle ages and the popes. And every particle of that fine black soil had been soaked in blood whirled by tempest, fused by fire; had incorporated with itself uncounted thousands of human bodies, falling like living grain in the swathe of the invader, who dropped into it in his turn and was gathered to his enemy, hate to hate, Etruscan to Latin, Latin to Roman, Roman to Barbarian, as Fortune flung the numbers from her ever blood-bright wheel.
Perhaps some prophetic thrill of discovery was in the air already when Carlo Bianchi came to examine and discuss the Cardinal's fragment of inscription that sultry July afternoon. The strangely archaic lettering, the almost unintelligible elementariness of the few Latin words, threw the two interpreters of antiquity into a state of excitement most unusual to both of them. Their hearts warmed to this mutilated ancestor of history, separated from all catalogued relics by some great chasm of time; the Cardinal smiled like a boy and fingered the pitted stone as if it had been a flower; the Professor's hands trembled so that he had to take three rubbings before he could get a satisfactory impression of the treasure. Could they but find the rest! What might it not reveal! Ah, it might be far away, if not already ground to powder or built into the foundations of some ponderous mausoleum. Well, they could but search. The Professor, forgetful of all else, was for descending then and there to the vast vaults which lay beneath the palace; remains of huge nameless ruins which had been utilized as foundations for a fortress in mediæval times, a stronghold which had in its turn been shorn away and its materials built into the stately Renaissance dwelling erected by one of the Cardinal's ancestors to mark the accession of his family to power.
"Let me descend to this fortunate Avernus at once, Eminenza," Bianchi pleaded. "Who knows but that the workmen in their ignorance may destroy that which we so desire to find?"
"No, amico," replied the prelate, "there is no fear of that. All work was stopped at once when the foreman brought this to me, as he does every fragment of marble which is turned up by his men. They have gone away now. I would not have another spade struck into the earth until I should have consulted you. But you must not visit the place now; it is always damp, and especially unsafe at this hour, after the heat of the day. The chill would strike to the bone—would you invite an ague? No, if you will favor me by coming in the morning, having fortified yourself with a little quinine, and, speaking with respect, with a flannel vest, I will perhaps be so selfish as to accept your kind offer, though I shall appear to you as a coward, for I have caught a slight cold and dare not run the risk of accompanying you. It is like stepping into a cold bath. Indeed, much as I wish to discover more, my conscience tells me that you would do better to trust Michele, the foreman, who is most obedient and intelligent, to go carefully over the ground himself, to a permitted depth. Every atom of stone could be brought here for your inspection. We should lose nothing, I am sure."
The Cardinal spoke with all the emphasis he could muster, but there was a wistful entreaty in his eyes, in the very tones of his voice, as if he were unselfishly imploring some hero of romance not to lead a forlorn hope to the rescue of one dear to him.
The Professor, carried out of himself by true enthusiasm, was about to reply that nothing should deter him from personally continuing the search the following morning, when an old servant stole into the room and stood waiting beside his master's chair for permission to speak.
"What is it, Domenico?" the Cardinal inquired, looking up at him with a friendly smile.
"Eminenza," the man replied, "the avvocato De Sanctis is here. He says that he has brought the papers of the Ariccia property. If the Eminenza would condescend to sign them this evening he could go out and conclude the affair to-morrow. But if it is inconvenient—"
"Not at all!" replied the master. "Ask him to come in. A busy man like that must not be made to lose his time." Then, as the servant retired, he turned to Bianchi with gentle apology. "You will pardon the interruption, my friend? The business will occupy but a few moments. De Sanctis—but what is the matter? Are you indisposed?"
The Professor had risen unsteadily to his feet, at the same time turning sickly pale. De Sanctis! The last person he wished to meet or to have reminded of his existence till after the little ceremony which was to take place in three weeks! Distractedly he looked towards the door. He must fly—but he would be flying into the lawyer's arms. Well, better do that, and rush past him, than risk any polite inquiry as to how the excitable Signorina Brockmann was enjoying spending her abundant pocket money. There would be explanations—why keep such a pretty story a secret? The Cardinal would see his sister before long and would rally her on the fine good luck of her old protégée; and if the Princess came to know of that, after his own high-sounding protestations of disinterestedness that very afternoon—heavens, what a feast for carrion crows would the corpse of Carlo Bianchi's reputation become! The mere thought made him feel cold and sick.
"I must beg your Eminence to excuse me," he found voice to stammer, "a slight indisposition—pray incommode no one," for the Cardinal's hand was on his bell; "it will pass in the open air. With permission of the Eminenza I remove the inconvenience of my presence."
Scarcely waiting to hear his host's expressions of regret, he hurried from the room just in time to brush past De Sanctis, with averted face, in the curtained shadow of the next deep doorway. How he prayed that the sharp-eyed young man might not recognize him, might not, remembering the facts, entertain the kindhearted Cardinal with the story of a poor orphan, once the beneficiary of his noble sister's charity, who had, in the twinkling of an eye, become quite a little heiress in a modest way.
De Sanctis, intent on accomplishing his business, paid small attention to the outgoing visitor. When he had kissed the Cardinal's ring, and was preparing to spread his documents on the table, he carelessly pushed aside the three-cornered fragment of marble which was so precious in the eyes of the prelate.
"Take care, Guglielmo," cried the latter, putting out both hands to save his treasure, "that stone is more valuable to me than all the Ariccia property."
"Pardon my blindness, Eminenza," said De Sanctis. "Is this a new gem to add to the great collection?" There was a touch of amusement in his tone which jarred on the Cardinal's ear.
"You could not be expected to appreciate its value," he replied with gentle dignity; "that is for specialists like myself and Professor Bianchi. He suspects that it antedates all existing inscriptions by at least three hundred years. An account of it will appear in next month's Archæological Review." He wrapped the thing in a red silk handkerchief and signed to De Sanctis to deposit it on another table.
The lawyer obeyed in respectful silence; then he dipped the pen in the ink, handed it to his employer, shook the sand over the delicate pointed signatures on the three sheets and laid them together.
The Cardinal looked up at him with a little smile, saying, "You are very quiet to-day, my son. Did I reproach you too sharply for not sharing my little enthusiasms? You must forgive me. We old fellows are apt to grow querulous, you know."
"But, Eminenza, what an idea!" exclaimed De Sanctis in shocked protest. "No indeed. I fear my mind had wandered from the matter in hand. The mention of Professor Bianchi had set me thinking. I apologize for my bad manners."
"You know the Professor?" the Cardinal asked. "Ah, I have a great respect for him. Such deep learning and such simple modesty of character are rarely met with."
De Sanctis bowed in acquiescence. "I have only the honor of a slight acquaintance with him," he replied, "but doubtless your Eminence's discernment is not mistaken. Indeed I believe he hardly meets his due, in general, for public opinion accuses him of avarice—and I have caught him, red-handed, in a long-continued work of charity."
The Cardinal's eyes shone with the light of that lovely virtue and he leaned forward eagerly. "But this is delightful," he said, "tell me all about it. How consoling it is to hear of good deeds done in secret!"
"I will relate the facts with pleasure, Eminenza," the other answered. "Since they only redound to Professor Bianchi's credit, I think I shall not be guilty of any betrayal of confidence in doing so." And then he told the story of how a forsaken child had been cared for during her infancy by a kind-hearted gentleman; how when the burden became too heavy for him, the listener's most excellent sister had sent the child to school for nine years; how at the end of that time she had returned to the archæologist, who had received her as his own daughter (De Sanctis was convinced the Professor's daughter would have had to work quite as hard as Giannella, and he was merely repeating the facts as he had learned them from Bianchi himself); how Bianchi had kept her under his roof ever since, shielding her from all care and temptation; how the girl had unexpectedly inherited a competency which in her rank of life entitled her to make a good marriage—and how happy all this had made her benefactor. All that was wanting now was the appearance of a good, suitable young man to complete the family circle.
The Cardinal had completely forgotten his own intervention in the matter of Giannella's education and his defense of Bianchi from Fra Tommaso's reproaches at that time; he had received and attended to several scores of like applications in the last fourteen years, and never gave such things another thought when his part was done, so he beamed approbation at the lawyer's narrative. Many sad stories, he said, came to his ears, but few such encouraging ones. Did the Princess know of it? If not, he would give himself the pleasure of telling her; and as for the good young man—he laid his hand for a moment on that of De Sanctis—if the girl was sweet and virtuous, why should she not make the right wife for him? It was time he chose a partner for life. His own circumstances were prosperous, his future assured; and a good Christian wife would be a great comfort and assistance to him. The Cardinal believed in the wisdom of fairly early marriages, and De Sanctis, who had his own views on the subject, had to listen submissively to a discourse full of eloquence and sweetness on the benefits accruing to society and the individual from the experience and example of a Christian union.
"Your Eminence rates me too high," he said, when at last he could interrupt the persuasive periods. "I am a poor selfish devil, set on rising in my profession, and I have come to the conclusion that I can do that best as a bachelor. Indeed I am not sure that a lawyer has much more right to get married than a priest."
"And why not?" inquired the Cardinal, rather shocked at this unconventional proposition.
"Because," De Sanctis replied with his sardonic little smile, "he acts as a kind of father confessor to the public. And though the public is quite ready to confide its innocent little secrets to him, it does not care about having them shared with his pretty wife, who is sure to be as curious as Eve and as talkative as a parrot. No, Eminenza, I cannot afford to take on such a responsibility just yet. Eve was doubtless a great comfort and pleasure to Adam in Paradise—but she never rested till she got him turned out. She must have been more than woman if she did not reproach him for the catastrophe afterwards—and he must have been more than man if he did not frequently wish that he had been allowed to enjoy a peaceful existence alone."
The Cardinal was laughing now, but his sermon was not ended. "You are incorrigible, my son," he said, "but your fine philosophy will go to pieces when you find yourself old and lonely and miserably rich—with no child to inherit your money, no one to care whether you are ill or well, alive or dead. Then you will have to follow Professor Bianchi's example and adopt an orphan on whom to expend your natural goodness of heart. However, I forgive your recalcitrancy this time, for the sake of the charming story you told me. Good-bye—take care of yourself when you go into the country to-morrow. The weather is 'bisbetico'—capricious just now. I fancy the rains are at hand. Arrivederci."
* * * * * * *
"It was a pretty story," De Sanctis said to himself as he walked home through the darkening streets where the few oil lamps were winking bravely under the onslaughts of the hot, moist wind, the scirocco that caresses at one moment and sears in the next. "It was certainly a pretty story and I told it to that saintly man just as it was told to me. But—oh, you are a sad liar, Guglielmo mio," and he tapped his own forehead reproachfully, "for you know that in your heart you don't believe a word of it—the Professor's part of it at least. When the wolf divides its food with the lamb, then we can begin to talk about such a phenomenon. Diamini, here is the rain—and I have forgotten my umbrella."
The Professor returned to his home less gaily than he had quitted it. He seemed to have little appetite for his supper; Mariuccia heard him go out for a short time afterwards, and when he returned soon after ten, he seemed more cheerful, but still looked pale and tired. "He has caught another chill," she mournfully told herself, "I let him go out too soon, stupid creature that I was. Oh, San Giuseppe mio, are these troubles never to finish?"
Bianchi had had a critical question to settle. Was it—or was it not—safe to send Giannella to the Princess? He had little doubt that the latter would gain his point for him with the girl; Giannella had till now been singularly amenable to authority. Now that it seemed necessary to analyze it, her temperament, he decided, was a cold one; all northerners were like that; difficult to rouse, too sluggish to fight long, though tiresomely obstinate when some prejudice was in question. This was the first time she had ever attempted to oppose her will to that of her elders; it was a whim; it would pass. The scirocco had been blowing for several days—that probably accounted for it. Yes, she had always been a docile little thing, giving no trouble at all; he had no fear of the upshot if the Princess spoke to her as, a few hours since, she had promised to speak. But there was that one small but hideous possibility that De Sanctis—an apoplexy to him—might have told the Cardinal of Giannella's good luck, and that the Cardinal, in some caprice of amused benevolence, might, before to-morrow morning, have related the same to his sister. He sometimes paid her a visit in "prima sera," the early evening, always reserved for intimates; and some demon might prompt him to come to-night to wish her a pleasant journey to the country. All these possibilities were of the slightest kind, yet the mere shadow of them was desperately disturbing. If none of them became facts, all would go smoothly. To-morrow the Princess would depart for her annual villeggiatura at Santafede, forty miles away to the north, and when she returned in October she and her brother would have forgotten all about Giannella Brockmann's unimportant destinies, and, if they should ever hear or think of her, would never raise the question of whether it was before or after the twenty-fifth of July that she had inherited the forty thousand scudi which would seem a trifle to personages like them, but the mere possession of which would bring joy unspeakable to poor unobtrusive Carlo Bianchi.
So he walked up and down his room in a fever of suspense, looking out of his window every moment to see if the Cardinal's carriage were coming up the street from the Ripetta; then he would turn and look at the clock. If once the hands touched ten and the Cardinal had not come, he knew that he was safe. It wanted twenty minutes yet of that magic hour. Ah, there was a rumble of wheels. Again he was at the window, peering down at something going by, a heavy carriage apparently. He cursed his short sight, and the wretchedly dim light below, for he could not make out the details. As the vehicle turned the corner and disappeared into the piazza his heart stood still and a sudden rage possessed him. He must know if that carriage had entered the porte cochère, if it belonged to the Cardinal.
He snatched up his hat and cloak and went downstairs as rapidly as he dared, for the lights were few and the stone steps damp and slippery from the scirocco. At last he was safely out under the colonnade. Heaven be praised, the courtyard was empty. No hearse-like vehicle was standing at the far end waiting for its occupant. He walked the length of the colonnade and made sure that it was not under shelter at the entrance to the Princess's apartment. As he reached the spot, the clock in the porter's lodge struck ten, and the man came out, yawning, to close the great doors for the night. No music had ever sounded sweeter in the Professor's ears than those thin metallic strokes; the fat porter in his shirt sleeves running the bolts home in their stanchions was a bright, beneficent being shutting the demons of ill-luck out into the darkness. Glad at heart, at peace with all the world, Carlo Bianchi climbed the long stairs and regained his room. Now indeed he could go to sleep.