I was amazed. “Bellini dead!” the great master, whose noble creations had enchanted me but a few hours before! Sad news, indeed! and grievous it was to think how early he had been called from us; he, so admirable as an artist—so honored and beloved as a man! I felt even disposed to murmur at the painful dispensation.
After a few moments’ indulgence of emotion, Francilla endeavored to compose herself. She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, rose and went for her album, to show me the drawing I had sent her for the volume. The drawing was a sketch of herself as Romeo, in the moment that Juliet, awakening in the tomb, calls on his name, while he answers with uplifted eyes, thinking it the voice of an angel.
We turned over the leaves of the album, which she held on her lap, while I knelt beside her. It was a pleasure to observe the play of her expressive features, as this or that name presented itself, exhibiting different emotions in turn. When the bold, rude autograph of Judith Pasta was displayed, the soft and languishing eyes of Francilla kindled with a look of haughtiness; and Sontag herself never smiled more sweetly than she, pointing to the name of Countess Rossi.
When she came to the handwriting of her uncle Pixis, in Prague, she stopped to tell me of his wife and mother, and their quiet domestic life; charging me, in case I went again to Prague, with many messages. While running on thus, and turning over the leaves of the album, she suddenly paused. Two names were recorded, opposite each other, those of Vincenzo Bellini and Maria Malibran. Maria had written a few words of friendship; Bellini a passage from the Capuletti,—the beginning of Romeo’s lamentation over Juliet, when he first discovers her death.
Without speaking, Francilla took from me a silver pencil she had sent me some time before, drew a cross under Bellini’s signature, and gave me back the pencil with a look I shall never forget.
Al length, to break the painful silence, I said, “Tell me, Francilla, why, in the last act of the Capuletti, do you make use of Vaccai’s music—not Bellini’s? No doubt, in detached portions, Vaccai is simpler and more expressive; but as a whole, Bellini’s composition is far superior, and the close infinitely more touching. The passage, ‘Padre crudel,’ etc., in particular, is so moving, and at the same time so calm, I wonder, and so do others, that you have changed it for Vaccai’s, which is so much tamer.”
Francilla did not answer immediately, but looked earnestly at me. When she spoke, it was in a strangely solemn tone. “Listen, and I will tell you a history, which is indeed a romance in itself. You will then see what our poor friend has suffered: and why Maria and I could not sing his last act.”
And with her eyes fixed upon the cross under Bellini’s name, she continued:
“You know, mon ami, that Vincenzo was born at the foot of Etna. He looked not like it, indeed, for he was fair and blue-eyed, like your pretty women of Dresden; and to say truth, was a little effeminate, and rather foppish sometimes in his manners. Poor Vincenzo! I used to laugh, when you, in old times, described him to me as you thought him. In short, he was like any ordinary young gentleman, both in appearance and behavior. I tell my story after a crooked fashion?” she asked, interrupting herself, with a smile.
“No, no! dear Francilla,” I cried, “go on, I pray you!”