“She is the first Ballarina of the world,” cried one. “None ever did, nor ever will, dance like her.”
“They say she is a Prima Donna too; but how could such excellence be united in one creature?”
To their wild transports of praise Roland listened patiently, in the hope that he might glean something of her story; but they knew nothing, except that she was reputed to be a Sicilian, of a noble family, whose passion for the stage had excited the darkest enmity of her relatives; insomuch that it was said she was tracked from city to city by hired assassins. She remained two days at Naples; she appeared but once at Rome; in Genoa, though announced, she never came to the theatre. Such were the extravagant tales, heightened by all the color of romantic adventure,—how, at one time, she had escaped from a royal palace by leaping into the sea,—how, at another, she had ridden through a squadron of the Swiss Guard, sabre in hand, and got clean away from Bologna, where a cardinal's letter had arrested her. Incidents the strangest, the least probable, were recounted of her,—the high proffers of marriage she had rejected; the alliances, even with royal blood, she had refused. There was nothing, where her name figured, that seemed impossible; hers was a destiny above all the rules that guide humbler mortals.
Excellence, of whatever kind it be, has always this attraction,—that it forms a standard by which men measure with each other their capacities of enjoyment and their powers of appreciation. Roland's curiosity was stimulated, therefore, to behold with his own eyes the wonder which had excited these youthful heroics. He had long since ceased to be sanguine on any subject; and he felt that he could sustain disappointment on graver matters than this.
When they reached Venice, they found that city in a state of enthusiastic excitement fully equal to their own. All the excesses into which admiration for art can carry a people insensible to other emotions than those which minister to the senses, had been committed to welcome “La Regina de la Balla.” Her entrée had been like a triumph; garlands of flowers, bouquets, rich tapestries floating from balconies, gondolas with bands of music; the civic authorities even, in robes of state, met her as she entered; strangers flocked in crowds from the other cities of the north, and even from parts beyond the Alps. The hotels were crammed with visitors all eager to see one of whom every tongue was telling. A guard of honor stood before the palace in which she resided,—as much a measure of necessity to repel the pressure of the anxious crowd as it was a mark of distinction.
The epidemic character of enthusiasm is well known. It is a fervor to which none can remain insensible. Cashel was soon to experience this. How could he preserve a cold indifference to the emotions which swayed thousands around him? How maintain his calm amid that host, which surged and fretted like the sea in a storm? La Ninetta was the one word repeated on every side; even to have seen her once was a distinction, and they who had already felt her fascinations were listened to as oracles.
She was to give but three representations at Venice, and ere Cashel's party had arrived all the tickets were already disposed of. By unceasing efforts, and considerable bribery, they contrived at last to obtain places for the first night, and early in the forenoon were admitted among a privileged number to take their seats. They who were thus, at a heavy cost, permitted to anticipate the general public, seemed—at least to Cashel's eyes—to fill the house; and so, in the dim indistinctness, they appeared. Wherever the eye turned, from the dark parterre below, to the highest boxes above, seemed filled with people. There was something almost solemn in that vast concourse, who sat subdued and silent in the misty half light of the theatre. The intense anxiety of expectation, the dreary gloom of the scene, contributed to spread a kind of awestruck influence around, and brought up to Roland's memory a very different place and occasion—when, himself the observed of all observers, he stood in the felons' dock. Lost in the gloomy revery these sad thoughts suggested, he took no note of time, nor marked the lagging hours which stole heavily past.
Suddenly the full glare of light burst forth, and displayed the great theatre crowded in every part. That glittering spectacle, into which beauty, splendor of dress, jewels, and rich uniforms enter, broke upon the sight, while a kind of magnetic sense of expectancy seemed to pervade all, and make conversation a mere murmur. The opera—a well-known one of a favorite composer, aud admirably sustained—attracted little attention. The thrilling cadences, the brilliant passages, all fell upon senses that had no relish for their excellence; and even the conventional good-breeding of the spectators was not proof against the signs of impatience that every now and then were manifested.
The third act at last began, and the scene represented a Spanish village of the New World, which, had it been even less correct and true to nature, had yet possessed no common attraction for Roland,—recalling by a hundred little traits a long unvisited but well-remembered land. The usual troops of villagers paraded about in all that mock grace which characterizes the peasant of the ballet. There were the same active mountaineers, the same venerable fathers, the comely matrons with little baskets of nothing carefully covered by snowy napkins, and the young maidens, who want only beauty to make them what they affect to be. Roland gazed at all this with the indifference a stupid prelude ever excites, and would rapidly have been wearied, when a sudden pause in the music ensued, and then a deathlike stillness reigned through the house. The orchestra again opened, and with a melody which thrilled through every fibre of Roland's heart. It was a favorite Mexican air; one to which, in happier times, he had often danced. What myriads of old memories came flocking to his mind as he listened! What fancies came thronging around him! Every bar of the measure beat responsively with some association of the past. He leaned his head downwards, and, covering his face with his hands, all thought of the present was lost, and in imagination he was back again on the greensward before the “Villa de las Noches;” the mocking-bird and the nightingale were filling the air with their warblings; the sounds of gay voices, the plash of fountains, the meteor-like flashes of the fireflies, were all before him. He knew not that a thousand voices were shouting around him in wildest enthusiasm,—that bouquets of rarest flowers strewed the stage,—that every form adulation can take was assumed towards one on whom every eye save his own was bent; and that before her rank, beauty, riches—all that the world makes its idols—were now bending in deepest homage. He knew nothing of all this, as he sat with bent-down head, lost in his own bright dreamings. At length he looked up, but, instead of his fancy being dissipated by reality, it now assumed form and substance. There was the very scenery of that far-off land; the music was the national air of Mexico; the dance was the haughty manolo; and, oh! was it that his brain was wandering,—had reason, shaken by many a rude shock, given way at last? The dancer—she on whose witching graces every glance was bent—was Maritaña! There she stood, more beautiful than he had ever seen her before; her dark hair encircled with brilliants, her black eyes flashing in all the animation of triumph, and her fairly rounded limbs the perfection of symmetry.
Oh, no! this was some mind-drawn picture; this was the shadowy image that failing intellect creates ere all is lost in chaos and confusion! Such was the conflict in his brain as, with staring eyeballs, he tracked her as she moved, and followed each graceful bend, each proud commanding attitude. Nor was it till the loud thunder-roll of applause had drawn her to the front of the stage, to acknowledge the favor by a deep reverence, that he became assured beyond all question. Then, when he saw the long dark lashes fall upon the rounded cheek, when he beheld the crossed arm upon her bosom, and marked the taper fingers he had so often held within his own, in a transport of feeling where pride and joy and shame and sorrow had each their share. He cried aloud,—