CHAPTER XX
The avvocato De Sanctis lived in the Via Condotti, on higher ground by some feet than the other end of the Ripetta. About the time when Bianchi, fired with enthusiasm, was wading joyfully towards Palazzo Cestaldini, the lawyer issued from his door with the same goal in view. He had business with the Cardinal's maestro di casa concerning some houses in the suburbs, his Eminence's property, of which the leases were expiring, and which would require repairs before fresh contracts could be signed. One secret of De Sanctis's success in his profession was his very un-Italian habit of attending to each detail as it came up, whenever that was possible. He was sure that the bad weather would keep clients away to-day, and, undeterred by it himself, set out to clear one piece of business off his crowded list. Of course there was not a cab in sight, but he persevered, keeping to the higher levels till it was necessary to strike off to the right to reach the back entrance of Palazzo Cestaldini, which the Professor had also fortunately recollected, thus avoiding the "sea" which, as Peppino had assured Rinaldo, had already taken possession of the long street which forms the southern bank of the Tiber.
Signor Bianchi had been warmly welcomed by the Cardinal, who was feeling very unwell, poor gentleman; a fact which he concealed from his guest, merely saying that he regretted not being able to accompany him on his search and thanking him for being willing to undertake it in such unfavorable circumstances. He conscientiously pointed out that Bianchi was committing an imprudence in doing so; the vaults were always damp, and just now probably some inches under water. But the Professor made light of his warnings and begged to be allowed to descend at once. Many valuable fragments had been found in and around the palace, which, like so many others, was largely built out of ancient and mediæval remains: a headless male figure, the head was probably close by—perhaps he himself would find it! So two workmen were summoned to accompany him with picks and lanterns, and a few minutes later he was in his element, grubbing about in the vast dark crypt, regardless of time, weather, hunger, or any of the other conditions which call a halt to humanity in everyday life.
He had been thus employed for some hours when the avvocato De Sanctis, having ended his business with the maestro di casa, inquired if he might have the honor of paying his respects to the Cardinal. He was much attached to the kind prelate, whom he regarded as very good company, and who in his turn felt sincere affection for the hard-working young lawyer who had attained success without ceasing to be an honest Christian.
This morning, however, the Cardinal received him with a slight expression of amusement. He had felt feverish the evening before; his anxious attendants had hastily summoned his doctor, who had administered some of the heroic remedies with which the local pharmacopœia bristled in those prehistoric days; and the Cardinal thought that the doctor and the rest, believing his life to be in danger, had followed his general directions that on the first hint of such a possibility his confessor and his man of business were to be sent for without a moment's delay. The confessor, Padre Anselmo, from San Severino, had not appeared, but here was De Sanctis, doubtless prepared to receive his expiring instructions. When De Sanctis, after kissing his patron's ring, explained that having had to call on professional affairs, he availed himself of the opportunity to inquire after the illustrious health, the Cardinal smiled indulgently.
"Figlio mio," he said, "I know all about these kind little accidental visits. The doctor, and my chaplain, and that good old servant of mine, thought that I was in danger, that the discovery of a statue in the cellar had excited my nerves and brought on fever. So they summoned you to attend my deathbed. I am surprised at not having yet received a visit from Padre Anselmo, but they probably thought I could attend to spiritual matters better when earthly ones were off my mind. Kind souls, I am grateful to you all, and I trust that when I am in extremis you will comfort me with your presence, but I think I shall be allowed to give you plenty of trouble yet. I feel much better this morning, though naturally a little weakened by our distinguished physician's prescriptions. At my age, Guglielmo, one cannot be freely bled, and dosed with quinine and palma Christi, without certain remorses of nature making themselves felt." He laid two fingers delicately on his broad red waistbelt to indicate the region of physical contrition, "but as I said, I am much better this morning, in spite of the terrible weather."
"It gives me happiness to hear that, Eminenza," De Sanctis replied, "for I was grieved to learn, on my arrival here, of your Eminence's indisposition. Word of an honest man, that was the first I heard of it. No one sent for me on that account. But the Eminenza must be very careful for the next few days. The flood will cause much sickness in the town, and the damage done is already great. I have noted with satisfaction that this respected palace was built with forethought for such emergencies, the whole level of the courtyard being considerably higher than that of the street."
"An arrangement I have often murmured at," the Cardinal said, "for the steep incline under the portone makes the horses slip, and the coachman objects to waiting there. However, in times like these one appreciates the necessity of it. He is a treacherous neighbor, Sor Tevere. There is already a good deal of water in the cellars, Domenico says, and I fear that poor Professor Bianchi is exposing himself to catch a bad cold."
"Professor Bianchi, Eminenza?" De Sanctis pricked up his ears. "Is he in the vaults?"
"Where else?" replied the Cardinal, turning on him a glance of mild surprise; "naturally he is examining the statue. It is my misfortune that I cannot be at his side, but Heaven's will be done. See, I have just received this note from him." And he handed a scrap of paper to the lawyer. Scribbled on it was these words: "Probably a Hermes. Græco-Roman. Fine preservation. Seeking for head."
As De Sanctis read, his eyes began to gleam with suppressed humor. His familiar little demon of malice was whispering in his ear. He rose to take his leave, and the Cardinal, who had been watching the sheets of rain slipping down the window-panes, turned to him, saying, "Yes, go home, my son, for unless you do that quickly you will have difficulty in reaching your house."
"Is there anything I can do for the Eminenza first?" De Sanctis inquired.
"Only this," said the Cardinal, "I shall be much obliged if you will be so kind as to speak to the Professor and beg him, with my compliments, to consider his health and desist from further work in that damp spot, for the present. Please say, however, that I trust he will honor me with another visit before taking his departure."
"Your Eminence shall be obeyed," De Sanctis replied. "But may I venture to remind you that if he returns upstairs and the flood increases, he may have to stay here all day. That would be a great fatigue for the Eminenza, I fear."
"Fatigue?" The Cardinal's fine face lighted up as he spoke. "No, indeed. A pleasure, a rare pleasure. We are two old enthusiasts, Guglielmo, and have a thousand subjects of interest to discuss. I know of no one whom I would rather have for my companion at such a time than that learned man. I sit at his feet—as a humble disciple. I reap instruction as he speaks."
"Doubtless, doubtless," the lawyer replied gravely. "I will execute the commission at once."
As he sped down the stairs he laughed softly. "It is not professional," he told himself, "but it will be great fun, and he really deserves a fright."
An hour later the Cardinal touched his handbell and Domenico's wrinkled face at once appeared in the doorway. "Is the Signor Professore still in the vaults?" the master inquired. "Please go down and see. It is most imprudent for him to remain there any longer."
In ten minutes the servant returned, looking rather scared. "Eminenza," he said, "the gentleman must have left without coming upstairs. It is impossible to go down into the vaults—they are full of water."
The Cardinal seemed disappointed. "That is unfortunate," he said at last, "but you need not be alarmed, my good Domenico. You know there is nothing there to be injured, the foundations are solid, and, thank Heaven, the statue cannot swim away. The Professor was right to leave at once—I hope he did not get a chill. Yes, you may bring my soup now, and then I will sleep a little." As Domenico retired, his master shook his head over his own weakness. "Paolo mio," he told himself, "you are a very imperfect kind of creature. You are really disappointed because you have been cheated of hearing all Bianchi had to say about the discovery. What children we all are—clamoring for our playfellows and turning sulky when we are deprived of them."
The vaults of Palazzo Cestaldini were much older than the dwelling itself, being the indestructible remains of an Imperial mausoleum which above ground had been partially overthrown in the course of centuries of fighting, and then unscrupulously utilized as material for the new palace. The vaults, deep and wide, ran the whole length of the frontage, and were dimly lighted by heavily grated windows some three feet above the level of the outer street. From within the space had the appearance of a subterranean church with windows set high up in the walls; from without, the few who were curious enough to look down through the bars could see only depths of darkness with here and there a corner of worn masonry catching the light. From the ground, thirty feet below the windows, there rose on the street side a series of shallow steps, like tiers in an amphitheater; these ran the whole length of the wall and were surmounted by a narrow platform from which it was possible to look out on the upper world. In truth the crypt had been adapted by one of Paolo Cestaldini's ancestors for spectacular purposes, the adjacent river, with its many conduits, providing all that was necessary for mimic aquatic shows. Later, in more troubled times, it had sheltered great numbers of fighting men, and the barred windows had been crowded with rough faces and picturesque costumes, and had served as loopholes and defenses in many a joyful riot. In these days the vaulted roofs were gray with cobwebs and dark with moisture. In one distant corner lay a pile of rococo plaster figures, used long ago for some carnival pageant and then flung aside, legs and arms interlaced and broken, to crumble into a gruesome resemblance to blanched corpses deprived of burial.
These melancholy surroundings struck chill on the lawyer's humor as he descended the stairs and peered round for the Professor. Ah, there he was, down on his knees digging madly at a mound of earth; one of his workmen had left him; the other was holding a lantern for him with evident impatience to be gone. Water was trickling and lapping somewhere, and everything underfoot was moist and slippery, but the Professor seemed unconscious of all but his quest. He stood up suddenly, one hand to his aching back, the other raised in triumph. "The head!" he shouted. "I can feel it through the mold. Nunc Dimittis!" And he went down on his knees again and began to remove the earth with extreme care, his face streaming with perspiration, his spectacles two shifting blots of light in the beams of the lantern.
Suddenly this was set down with a clang and the workman flew past De Sanctis towards the exit. "Come away!" he cried, pointing at the same time to the stairs, down which a thin, continuous sheet of water was flowing. "The river is out at last. There will be a sea here in half-an-hour."
"Rubbish," replied De Sanctis, "that is only the rain." And he came stealthily to Bianchi's side and, laying a heavy hand on his shoulder, bent down and said sternly, "Signor Professore, what have you done with Giannella Brockmann's money?"
The Professor leaped to his feet with a scream and his pick fell from his hand. He stared in the lawyer's face, his own sickly with fear. In the scant up-thrown rays of the lantern it was impossible to distinguish more than a pair of gleaming black eyes and an accusing scowl; the rest was dreadful shadow.
But ere another word had been spoken a ripple of water broke round De Sanctis's feet. "Diamini, but he was right, that man!" he exclaimed; and in an instant he too had dashed away towards the stairs.
In that instant Bianchi had recognized him and breathed again. It was only De Sanctis, after all; an inconvenient, intrusive person to whom unimportant matters could easily be explained some other time. Meanwhile he must hasten to uncover, and feast his eyes on, the marble head which he was certain lay close to his hand; he must carry it up to the Cardinal himself, if it were not too heavy. What a triumph that would be. Ah, gently—there showed a gleam of whitish surface. Hands now, not to injure the precious thing. Doubled over, down on his knees, he worked like a demon, with blackened fingers and earth-choked nails, till at last it lay revealed, a calm immortal countenance gazing up at him with eyes that seemed to have been seeing in the grave; full, closed lips smiling as if with Olympic scorn at the hopes and fears of perishable man. Some under-ripple of life seemed to be pulsing over the broad brow, the divinely moulded cheeks and chin. Bianchi sank back on his knees, his hands clasped, trembling with unbearable joy.
"Greek, Greek," he whispered, as the saints have whispered prayers in ecstatic trances, "purest Greek. There were but five or six in the whole world—I have found one more. Dio mio, Dio mio, let me not die of happiness."
He seized the light and bent tenderly to uncover the throat. Ah, there it was, the original severance; the cement still clung to it where it had been attached to the beautiful but far less ancient figure which lay prone in mutilated grandeur in the trench, some twenty yards away. The Professor bent closer still over the perfect thing, touching the creamy marble with his cheek, with his tongue, while he rubbed the mould off his fingers with his coat tails, his shirt front, anything to leave their sensitive tips free to feel the marvelous surface, as different from that of the figure yonder as true old Sevres from modern imitation. Fra Tommaso was right; Bianchi could have told it in the dark, that touch of the creator's chisel during the one short period of perfect sculpture our world has ever known, the touch which made every atom of the marble its living vehicle, which gave the uneven yet flawless surface so closely resembling human flesh that the senses tell us it breathes and dimples with the very tide of life. Brought to Rome by Greece's conquerors, fitted to a body wrought, at the command of an imperious ignorant master, by a Greek sculptor in captivity, remembering through his tears the glories of Greece's past—here was an immortal crown to which the stately figure had served as a humble pedestal. What wonder that Carlo Bianchi, in his passionate reverence for true art, trembled and worshiped, and shivered with insane joy—while inch by inch the turbid waters of the Tiber rose on the floor of his fane, poured in from the ten great windows high in the wall a hundred feet away, covered the statue in the trench and crept up the hollow at the foot of the stairs, gurgling pleasantly on the steps as it reached them one by one.
When it had cut off retreat behind him it swam forward with a leap, broke over him where he knelt, drowned the white glory from his side and swept his extinguished lantern far beyond his reach.
Then indeed he sprang to his feet. But they slipped from under him and he fell forward, his hand landing on the cold, submerged face. In a moment he was up again, wading through the fast-rising flood, staggering towards the blackness which shrouded the stairway. But long before he reached it the shelving ground was letting him down, down into the water, and at last he turned and struggled back in the direction of the distant windows, gray blurs now upon an enormous pall of darkness, with something that caught a gleam of light flowing in and sliding over their edges. Again and again he fell, betrayed by the uneven ground and the swaying current. He was wet to the skin but he did not know it. For once in his semi-vitalized existence he was awake to all realities. He knew that unless he could attain to some higher level there would soon be another cold body lying among the antiquities in the crypt.
As he fell for the third time and scrambled up with his mouth and eyes full of water, another reality, forgotten in the joy of his discovery, and then in the fever of self-preservation, recurred to his mind. He remembered Giannella, his all but fraudulent concealment of her inheritance, his machinations to effect a marriage with her before she should learn of it. If he were to die (oh, horrid thought!) would not the Judge of souls ask him the same question that that brigand De Sanctis had asked, "What have you done with Giannella Brockmann's money?" Carlo Bianchi could certainly say "Domine Dio, it is all there I have not spent a penny of it yet. It is at interest in the Banco di Roma, three and a half per cent." Then the Lord would say, "All there, two hundred scudi, and you have not let that poor child have the shoes she needs so badly? You have let Mariuccia, who has saved you money for twenty years, continue to work hard and eat little so as to share her wages with Giannella Brockmann? Miser, idolater, begone! My good San Pietro, have the kindness to take this sinner away and send him to hell at once."
Then it would be all over; and Carlo Bianchi would have to roast, and gnash his teeth, and have nothing to look at for all eternity but ugly grinning devils. No beautiful angels with Greek heads and Roman—no, Græco-Roman, bodies. Would the wings be strong enough to carry all that marble? Good God, he was going mad. And the water was up to his waist. One more fight he must make for life, for nice dry clothes, for Mariuccia's golden fries, for his cigar and slippers and The Archæological Review after dinner. Also, of course, for the chance to undo the intended wrong to Giannella and get it erased from his account this side of judgment. He vowed miserably that if the mercy of God would but bring him safely out of this pit of destruction, his first act should be to tell Giannella everything and give her even the whole two hundred scudi to squander on shoes, ribbons, chocolates, theaters, anything she liked. And (yes, the water was certainly getting deeper) he would promise not to marry her unless she were quite willing. Higher than that, human nature could not rise.
When he had registered these generous vows he felt quite light-hearted as to eternity, and more confident of reaching physical safety. Now he was at the foot of the steps below the windows. Blessed steps. He had forgotten their existence. He scrambled up them and sank down on one, exhausted and dripping, but above the level of the flood. There was just enough daylight here for him to see the perils he had escaped. He shivered as he looked back on the expanse of black choppy water lost in the shadows from which he had come.
The sense of relief was great, but it was uncomfortably tempered by finding that a thin sheet of liquid was flowing over his cold seat, from the window above him, so he rose wearily and reached the window itself at last. Standing there clinging to the bars, he looked out at a changed upper world. The view seemed to embrace water everywhere. Well-known landmarks of old Ripetta, a pillar here, a battered statue there, a lamp-post all awry a little farther on—these seemed to be holding their own with difficulty in the shadow tossing stream which swept by, sending billow after billow through his opening and carrying past the strangest kind of flotsam in its course. An open umbrella came dancing towards him like an evil bird with claws to its wings; then a derelict hencoop from some poulterer's shop, followed first by a wicker cradle and then by a floating island of cabbages and carrots sustaining a pair of old boots. Not a human being was in sight, and the poor prisoner's heart sank within him, for he knew that only a speedy rescue could save him from the effects of the chill which already had him in its grip, causing his teeth to chatter pitifully.
Suddenly he gave a shout, and waved an arm wildly through the bars. Far down the street a boat had appeared, a boat with three or four men in it, surely one of the rescue parties which never fail to give aid in these periodical calamities. Heaven had taken pity on him; and at once he began to think that in his recent excitement he had promised Heaven too high a price for its mercies. Perhaps the arrangement would have to be revised; he must reflect seriously before permitting Giannella to embark on a course of extravagance and dissipation.
Again he waved his arms and shouted to the boat. Oh horror, it was turning round—he could see its side rocking in the swirl of the current—it was heading the other way! It was gone!