‘And I am to see him again to-morrow, Marietta,’ continued he proudly; ‘he is to take me with him to the Galleries. I am to see the Pitti and the Offizzi, where in the Tribune the great triumphs of Raffael are placed, and the statue of Venus, too: he is to show me these, and the portraits of all the illustrious men who have made Italy glorious. How eager I am to know how they looked in life, and if their features revealed the consciousness of the fame they were to inherit! And when I come back at night to thee, Marietta, how full shall I be of all these, and how overjoyed if I can pour into your heart the pleasures that swell in my own! Is it not good, dearest, that I should go forth thus to bring back to you the glad tidings of so many beautiful things—will you not be happier for yourself, prouder in me? Will it not be better to have the love of one whose mind is daily expanding, straining to greater efforts, growing in knowledge and gaining in cultivation? Shall I not be more worthy of you if I win praise from others? And I am resolved to do this, Marietta. I will not be satisfied to be ever the mean, ignoble thing I now am.’
‘Our life did not seem so unworthy in your eyes a day or two ago,’ said she sighing. ‘You told me, as we came up the Val d’Arno, that our wandering, wayward existence had a poetry of its own that you loved dearly. That to you ambition could never offer a path equal to that wayside rambling life, over whose little accidents the softening influences of divine verse shed their mild light, so that the ideal world dominated the actual.’
‘All these will I realise, but in a higher sphere, Marietta. The great Alfieri himself told me that a life without labour is an ignominy and a shame. That he who strains his faculties to attain a goal is nobler far than one whose higher gifts lie rusting in disuse. Man lives not for himself, but for his fellows, said he, nor is there such incarnate selfishness as indolence.’
‘And where, and how, and when is this wondrous life of exertion to be begun?’ said she half-scornfully. ‘Can the great poet pour into your heart out of the fulness of his own, and make you as he is? Or are you suddenly become rich and great, like him?’
The youth started, and an angry flush covered his face, and even his forehead, as he arose and walked the room.
‘I see well what is working within you,’ said the girl. ‘The contrast from that splendour to this misery—these poor bleak walls, where no pictures are hanging, no gilding glitters—is too great for you. It is the same shock to your nature as from the beautiful princess in whose presence you stood to that humble bench beside me.’
‘No, by Heaven! Marietta,’ cried he passionately, ‘I have not an ambition in my heart wherein your share is not allotted. It is that you may walk with me to the goal——’
A scornful gesture of disbelief, one of those movements which, with Italians, have a significance no words ever convey, interrupted his protestation.
‘This is too bad!’ he cried; ‘nor had you ever conceived such distrust of me if your own heart did not give the prompting. There, there,’ cried he, as he pointed his finger at her, while her eyes flashed and sparkled with a wild and lustrous expression, ‘your very looks betray you.’
‘Betray me! this is no betrayal,’ said she haughtily. ‘I have no shame in declaring that I too covet fame, even as you do. Were some mighty patron to condescend to favour me—to fancy that I resembled, I know not what great personage—to imagine that in my traits of look and voice theirs were reflected, it is just as likely I should thank fortune for the accident, and bid adieu to you, as you intend, to-morrow or next day, to take leave of me.’