CHAPTER XVI.
SAMPIERO IN EXILE—HIS WIFE VANNINA.
It was now that Sampiero began to show himself in all his greatness; for the man must be admitted to be really great whom adversity does not bend, but who gathers double strength from misfortune. He had quitted Corsica as an outlaw. The peace had taken the sword out of his hand; the island, ravaged and desolate from end to end, could not venture a new struggle on its own resources—a new war needed fresh support from a foreign power. For four years Sampiero wandered over Europe seeking help at its most distant courts; he travelled to France to Catherine, hoping to find her mindful of old services that he had done the house of Medici; he went to Navarre; to the Duke of Florence; to the Fregosi; to one Italian court after another; he sailed to Algiers to Barbarossa; he hastened to Constantinople to the Sultan Soliman. His stern, imposing demeanour, the emphatic sincerity of his speech, his powerful intellect, his glowing patriotism, everywhere commanded admiration and respect, among the barbarians not less than among the Christians; but they comforted him with vain hopes and empty promises.
While Sampiero was thus wandering with unwearied perseverance from court to court, inciting the princes to an enterprise in behalf of Corsica, Genoa had not lost sight of him; Genoa was alarmed to think what might one day be the result of his exertions. It was clearly necessary, by some means or other, to cripple once for all the dreaded arm of Sampiero. Poison and assassination, it is said, had been tried, but had failed. It was resolved to crush his spirit, by bringing his natural affection as a father and a husband into conflict with his passionate love of country. It was resolved to break his heart.
Sampiero's wife Vannina lived in her own house at Marseilles, under the protection of France. She had her youngest son, Francesco, beside her; the elder, Alfonso, was at the court of Catherine. The Genoese surrounded her with their agents and spies. It was their aim, and it was important to them, to allure Sampiero's wife and child to Genoa. To effect this, they employed a certain Michael Angelo Ombrone, who had been tutor to the young sons of Sampiero, and enjoyed his entire confidence; a cunning villain of the name of Agosto Bazzicaluga was another of their tools. Vannina was of a susceptible and credulous nature, proud of the ancient name of Ornano. These Genoese traitors represented to her the fate that necessarily awaited the children of her proscribed husband. Heirs of their father's outlawry, robbed of the seigniory of their renowned ancestors, poor—their very lives not safe, what might they not come to? They pictured to her alarmed imagination these, her beloved children, in the wretchedness of exile, eating the bread of dependence, or what was worse, if they trod in the footsteps of their father, hunted in the mountains, at last captured, and loaded with the chains of galley-slaves.
Vannina was deeply moved—her fidelity began to waver; the thought of going to Genoa grew gradually less foreign to her—less and less repulsive. There, said Ombrone and Bazzicaluga, they will restore to your children the seigniory of Ornano, and your own gentle persuasions will at length succeed in reconciling even Sampiero with the Republic. The poor mother's heart was not proof against this. Vannina was thoroughly a woman; her natural feeling at last spoke with imperious decision, refusing to comprehend or sympathize with the grand, rugged, terrible character of her husband, who only lived because he loved his country, and hated its oppressors; and who nourished with his own being the all-consuming fire of his sole passion—remorselessly flinging in all his other possessions like faggots to feed the flames. Her blinded heart extorted from Vannina the resolution to go to Genoa. One day, she said to herself, we shall all be happy, peaceful, and reconciled.
Sampiero was in Algiers, where the bold renegade Barbarossa, as Sultan of the country, had received him with signal marks of respect, when a ship arrived from Marseilles, and brought the tidings that his wife was on the point of escaping to Genoa with his boy. When Sampiero began to comprehend the possibility of this flight, his first thought was to throw himself instantly into the vessel, and hasten to Marseilles; he became calmer, and bade his noble friend, Antonio of San Fiorenzo, go instead, and prevent the escape—if prevention were still possible. He himself, restraining his sorrow within his innermost heart, remained, negotiated with Barbarossa about an expedition against Genoa, and subsequently sailed for Constantinople, to try what could be effected with the Sultan, not till then proposing to return to Marseilles to ascertain the position of his private affairs.
Antonio of San Fiorenzo had made all possible haste upon his mission. Rushing into Vannina's house, he found it empty and silent. She was away with her child, and Ombrone, and Bazzicaluga, in a Genoese ship, secretly, the day before. Hurriedly Antonio collected friends, Corsicans, armed men, threw himself into a brigantine, and made all sail in the direction which the fugitives ought to have taken. He sighted the Genoese vessel off Antibes, and signalled for her to shorten sail. When Vannina saw that she was pursued, knowing too well who her pursuers were likely to be, in an agony of terror she begged to be put ashore, scarcely knowing what she did. But Antonio reached her as she landed, and took possession of her person in the name of Sampiero and the King of France.
He brought her to the house of the Bishop of Antibes, that the lady, quite prostrate with grief, might enjoy the consolations of religion, and might have a secure asylum in the dwelling of a priest. Horrible thoughts, to which he gave no expression, made this advisable. But the Bishop of Antibes was afraid of the responsibility he might incur, and refusing to run any risk, he gave Vannina into the hands of the Parliament of Aix. The Parliament declared its readiness to take her under its protection, and to permit none, whoever he might be, to do her violence. But Vannina wished nothing of all this, and declined the offer. She was, she said, Sampiero's wife, and whatever sentence her husband might pronounce on her, to that sentence she would submit. The guilty consciousness of her fatal step lay heavy on her heart, and while she wept bitterest tears of repentance, she imposed on herself a noble and silent resignation to the consequences.
And now Sampiero, leaving the Turkish court, where Soliman had for a while wonderingly entertained the famous Corsican, returned to Marseilles, giving himself up to his own personal anxieties. At Marseilles, he found Antonio, who related to him what had occurred, and endeavoured to restrain his friend's gathering wrath. One of Sampiero's relations, Pier Giovanni of Calvi, let fall the imprudent remark that he had long foreseen Vannina's flight. "And you concealed what you foresaw?" cried Sampiero, and stabbed him dead with a single thrust of his dagger. He threw himself on horseback, and rode in furious haste to Aix, where his trembling wife waited for him in the castle of Zaisi. Antonio hurried after him, agonized with the fear that all efforts of his to avert some dreadful catastrophe might be unavailing.