We heeded little (I except, in one main question, myself) the volcanic throes which were wrenching that doomed town across the water while we feasted and played. While Lazzaro and Jacobin, each dominant in his turn, were flushing the kennels with blood; while imperious Nelson, now promoted to his Foudroyant, was circling and swooping on and off, issuing edicts, arrogating to himself the lead, in infatuated touch all the time with his substantial mistress; while the French were planting the Tree of Liberty in the palace square, and giving birth, amidst song and jubilation, to the new republic; while, following their withdrawal, Cardinal Ruffo was descending, with his brutish swarms, upon the fated walls, which he was destined to retake in the king’s name, the king himself was absorbed in ombre or lansquenet, chuckling over charades, playing practical jokes upon the most reverend Spanish señors of the place, guzzling and drinking, and in every lazy way luxuriating in an utter self-abandonment to pleasure.
And indeed, in that wine-soft climate, there were many temptations to him as to us all. We were like Boccaccio’s company, forgathered out of range of the plague, and telling stories to pass the time. The similarity of our condition, in fact, gave me an idea. I set my wits to work, and became a public raconteuse. I invented and told in those days more tales than I can remember, but a selection from which the curious may find included in my Des Royautés Depouillées, first published in Paris in 1806.
The series became so popular, that poor Mrs. Hart found her nose quite put out of joint in the matter of her own contributions to the fund of gaiety. She might flop and pose like the most enormous of Greek goddesses; she might assail our ears with her voice, for she had still the remains of a very handsome one; or our hearts with her faculty for mimicry, which, being ill-natured, went deeper. Once my début was made, she must be content to play second fiddle; and that did not suit her at all. The result was a coldness towards me, which, by inevitable process, led to my disgrace with herself and her royal mistress, and my dependence, as much for my interests as my safety, upon the favour of the king. The court, in fact, became divided into the party of Diana and the party of Emma, and was much more concerned over our rivalry than over the ultimate destinies of the kingdom.
It mattered little to me, so long as I could keep the interest alive until the moment when my vengeance on a certain couple should be a fait accompli. That once executed, the two Sicilies, for all I cared, might disappear under the sea. O, believe me that Nicola Pissani did an ill thing when he loosed an insulted mistress on his track!
It is not to be supposed that throughout those idle months I had once lost sight of my purpose, or had failed to inform myself, through de’ Medici, of the real progress of events. And when at last the end came, and Ruffo with his bloody Calabrians was master of the city, and the republic had collapsed like a rotten hoarding, I prepared my hands for their share of the price to be exacted, and laughed to think how great a fool he had been who claimed to represent Reason by yielding his soul to the passion of a foolish face.
Now, at this end, Naples had become a shambles. Shot and fire and sharp steel, butchery and festering wounds and starvation, had left of the “patriot” hosts but a little mean swarm, that rotted out its remnant life in the prisons, awaiting the holocaust. Pissani and all his high hopes were scattered. The gods had no desire to be worshipped by Reason, missing their perquisites, as this “long-legged Hebe” might well at the first have assured Liberty’s apostles, if they had not been at the pains to discard her. She had been in Paris; had seen Reason sit in the churches; had heard the millennium proclaimed, and Olympus echo laughter. And what had been the result? Not till the temples of superstition were razed in all the lands, not till Reason sat in the fields, would the first glimmer of that golden dawn appear. This she knew from the table-talk whispers of the new race, which had decreed the old Titan Nature a vulgarity, and, having overthrown it in the common hearts of men, dreaded nothing but the destruction of the countless schools of sophistry on which its own lease of dominion depended. And I, who had preached, who had been ardent again to preach their crusade against a detestable lie, had been insulted by these wise reformers, and been driven back to pour headstrong wine to the gods of rank desire, and help them to hold the world a market to their passions! O, Pissani had done well indeed!
And yet he was not among the captured.
One day, near the finish, de’ Medici accosted me alone in the palace gardens. It was mid-June, and the scent of roses was thick in the air. I looked in his face, and, for all the warmth and fragrance, my heart was winter.
“He still baffles you, monsieur?”
“Most beautiful, the man is a fox, or perhaps already a ghost.”