The marchesa was, as I have said, in a very bad humor. She had by no means recovered from what she conceived to be the affront put upon her by the brilliant display made by Count Nobili, at the festival of the Holy Countenance, nor, indeed, from the festival itself.
She had had the satisfaction of shutting up her palace, it is true; but she was not quite sure if this had impressed the public mind of Lucca as she had intended. She felt painful doubts as to whether the splendors opposite had not so entirely engrossed public attention that no eye was left to observe any thing else—at least, in that street. It was possible, she thought, that another year it might be wiser not to shut up her palace at all, but so far to overcome her feelings as to exhibit the superb hangings, the banners, the damask, and cloth of gold, used in the mediaeval festivals and processions, and thus outdo the modern tinsel of Count Nobili.
Besides the festival, and Count Nobili's audacity, the marchesa had a further cause for ill-humor. No one had come on that evening to play her usual game of whist. Even Trenta had deserted her. She had said to herself that when she—the Marchesa Guinigi—"received," no other company, no other engagement whatever, ought to interfere with the honor that her company conferred. These were valid causes of ill-humor to any lady of the marchesa's humor.
She was seated now in the sitting-room of her own particular suite, one of three small and rather stuffy rooms, on the second floor. These rooms consisted of an anteroom, covered with a cretonne paper of blue and brown, a carpetless floor, a table, and some common, straw chairs placed against the wall. From the anteroom two doors led into two bedrooms, one on either side. Another door, opposite the entrance, opened into the sitting-room.
All the windows this way faced toward the garden, the wall of which ran parallel to the palace and to the street. The marchesa's room had flaunting green walls with a red border; the ceiling was gaudily painted with angels, flowers, and festoons. Some colored prints hung on the walls—a portrait of the Empress Eugénie on horseback, in a Spanish dress, and four glaring views of Vesuvius in full eruption. A divan, covered with well-worn chintz, ran round two sides of the room. Between the ranges of the graceful casements stood a marble console-table, with a mirror in a black frame. An open card-table was placed near the marchesa. On the table there was a pack of not over-clean cards, some markers, and a pair of candles (the candles still unlighted, for the days are long, and it is only six o'clock). There was not a single ornament in the whole room, nor any object whatever on which the eye could rest with pleasure. White-cotton curtains concealed the delicate tracery and the interlacing columns of the Venetian windows. Beneath lay the Moorish garden, entered from the street by an arched gate-way, over which long trails of ivy hung. Beautiful in itself, the Moorish garden was an incongruous appendage to a Gothic palace. One of the Guinigi, commanding for the Emperor Charles V. in Spain, saw Granada and the Alhambra. On his return to Lucca, he built this architectural plaisance on a bare plot of ground, used for jousts and tilting. That is its history. There it has been since. It is small—a city garden—belted inside by a pointed arcade of black-and-white marble.
In the centre is a fountain. The glistening waters shoot upward refreshingly in the warm evening air, to fall back on the heads of four marble lions, supporting a marble basin. Fine white gravel covers the ground, broken by statues and vases, and tufts of flowering shrubs growing luxuriantly under the shelter of the arcade—many-colored altheas, flaming pomegranates, graceful pepper-trees with bright, beady seeds, and magnolias, as stalwart as oaks, hanging over the fountain.
The strong perfume of the magnolia-blossoms, still white upon the boughs, is wafted upward to the open window of the marchesa's sitting-room; the sun is low, and the shadows of the pointed arches double themselves upon the ground. Shadows, too, high up the horizon, penetrate into the room, and strike across the variegated scagliola floor, and upon a table in the centre, on which a silver tray is placed, with glasses of lemonade. Round the table are ranged chairs of tarnished gilding, and a small settee with spindle-legs.
In her present phase of life, the squalor of these rooms is congenial to the marchesa. Hitherto reckless of expense, especially in law, she has all at once grown parsimonious to excess. As to the effect this change may produce on others, and whether this mode of life is in keeping with the stately palace she inhabits, the marchesa does not care in the least; it pleases her, that is enough. All her life she has been quite clear on two points—her belief in herself, and her belief in the name she bears.
The marchesa leans back on a high-backed chair and frowns. To frown is so habitual to her that the wrinkles on her forehead and between her eyebrows are prematurely deepened. She has a long, sallow face, a straight nose, keen black eyes, a high forehead, and a thin-lipped mouth. She is upright, and well made; and the folds of her plain black dress hang about her tall figure with a certain dignity. Her dark hair, now sprinkled with white, is fully dressed, the bands combed low on her forehead. She wears no ornament, except the golden cross of a chanoinesse.
As she leans back on her high-backed chair she silently observes her niece, seated near the open window, knitting.