CHAPTER XIII
The Romans approved of Montalto’s return. The reason why any civilised society continues to exist is that the majority of decent people look upon marriage seriously, and consider it as a permanent bond, spiritual or legal, or both. In such conservative countries as admit divorce, the respectable part of society looks upon it as a last resource in extreme cases, and no sensible citizen should regard it as anything else. When it has taken place, the society to which the two divorced persons belong decides which of them was in the right, and that one is received as cordially as ever; the other is treated coldly, and is sometimes turned out.
But there is no divorce law in Italy, and a civil marriage is as indissoluble in the eyes of the Italian state as a religious one is under the rules of the Catholic Church. There is such a thing as separation by law, but it gives neither party a right to marry again; it concerns the administration of property and the guardianship of children, but nothing else, and the parties may agree to unite again without any further ceremony.
Maria and her husband had never gone through the form of being legally separated, though they had taken towards each other the relative positions of separated husband and wife. Maria’s sufficient independent fortune enabled her to decline any subsidy from Montalto, and she had quitted his house after he left her; she had also kept the child. The two had voluntarily placed themselves where the law would probably have placed them, and society had been grateful to Montalto for having avoided the open scandal of any legal procedure against his wife; the more so, as it had chosen to take Maria’s side, on the principle that absent friends are always in the wrong.
But society was very glad to consider both Montalto and his wife in the right, now that he had come back quietly, at the very end of a season; and no objections were raised against the perfectly innocent fiction of his having stayed away from Rome many years to take care of his mother. It was a satisfaction to see such an important couple reconciled again and living peaceably together; everybody had something to repent of in life, and most people had something to conceal; Maria had repented and Montalto had covered up the spot on his honour, with as much tact and dignity as were respectively consistent with a stained escutcheon and a contrite heart; and it was really much more proper that Maria di Montalto, whose husband was an authentic Count of the Empire, should live in the great palace, instead of in a little apartment in the Via San Martino, and should drive in a big carriage behind a pair of huge black horses, in the shadow of tremendously imposing mourning liveries, than go about in a small phaeton drawn by a pair of hired nags, or even in a little brougham with one horse and no footman at all, as she had sometimes been seen to do; it was much more proper and appropriate. Why should any one make a fuss because a small boy called Leone Silani di Montalto had blue eyes instead of brown or black ones? Was it admissible that not one of the Montalto ancestors, since the First Crusade, should have had blue eyes, to account for Leone’s? Was nature to be allowed no latitude in such little matters? And so forth; and so on; and more to the same effect, and to the credit of Diego, Maria, and Leone di Montalto, happily reunited in their own home. These things were said without a smile by such excellent elderly people as the Princess Campodonico and the Duchess of Trasmondo, the good and beautiful old Princess Saracinesca, the whole Boccapaduli family, and all the secondary social luminaries which reflect the light of the great fixed ones round which they revolve. There had been a conspicuous gap at the banquet of the Roman Olympians for years; it was once more filled by those who had a right to it, and everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Candide’s tutor was the first to observe. So far as the Montalto family was concerned, the truth of the assertion was amply proved by the fact that Montalto himself was teaching Leone to ride, in the Villa Borghese. Three or four times a week you might meet him there in the early morning hours on a wonderful Andalusian mare he had brought from Spain, with the boy at his side, red in the face, fearless, and perfectly happy on a pony with a leading rein.
Castiglione saw them once from a distance, coming towards him, but he jumped his horse over the stiff fence into the meadow, crossed quickly, and was over into the ring again on the other side and out of the Villa by Porta Pinciana before the pair recognised him, for Montalto was rather near-sighted and Leone was so much interested in his lesson that even the uniform of the Piedmont Lancers no longer had great attractions for him. After that Castiglione gave up exercising his horses in the Villa.
The fact of riding a real animal, that could move its tail, had destroyed in a day all Leone’s bright illusions of toy guns and tin helmets. A boy who could ride was half a man already, and even half a man must be above the suspicion of playing with sham weapons. After his third ride in the Villa, Leone solemnly presented his whole armoury to the children of the porter downstairs, and though his room seemed very bare for a day or two, he found consolation in sitting astride of a chair, conscientiously repeating to himself and practising the instructions he had received from Montalto.
‘Toes in! Grip the saddle with your knees, not with your calves! Elbows to your sides! Your heels down, in a line with your head and your shoulder! Hold the bridle lightly, don’t hold on by it! Head straight, not thrown back, nor forward either! Look before you, between the pony’s ears!’
As he repeated each well-remembered precept Leone studied his position to be sure that he was really obeying the order. It was ever so much more real, even on a chair, than prancing about on his feet, astride of a stick, with a tin sabre, yelling the Royal March; and it was incomparably more dignified.