At the street door, I learned from his old attendant Guiseppe, that the Signor had not yet risen, being somewhat indisposed from a slight cold and sore throat; I sent in my card, and was about leaving to rejoin my friend, when Guiseppe came running back, saying the Signor “would be happy to see me in his room, if I would honor him.”
I followed the old man up the lofty stair-case, through the long galleries past the studio, when he turned down a short passage and ushered me into a small elegantly furnished room, where lay Carrara in a black velvet gown and cap, reclining upon a sofa.
“So you are too sick to accompany us to the gay Corso to-day, my kind friend?” I asked, after having cordially shaken hands with him and drawn my chair close to his sofa.
“I do not feel well enough to venture out,” he replied; “nevertheless, I thank you most sincerely for your politeness in calling for me; this is a mere transient attack of sore throat, I presume; I have had many such before, I shall be recovered from it in a day or two; I regret not being able to see the horse races and the ball to-night, as I have been an annual spectator for the last twenty years. You will attend the masquerade ball this evening? of course, I need not ask, every one goes to the carnival ball.”
“I have not yet made up my mind, perhaps I may: it will be a gay affair I suppose?”
“Very: one sees such variety of costume, and variety of faces, it forms altogether an interesting sight, especially to a stranger.”
“I should think,” I remarked, glancing around the quiet room, “I should think, my dear Signor, that you would sometimes feel lonesome, shut up alone in this spacious house of yours, especially when sick, with no female relative or friend to nurse you?”
“Guiseppe generally answers all my purposes as nurse and attendant; he is faithful and constant; when very ill I sometimes employ a hired nurse; but as for other higher attentions, what is there about my person, a poor, ugly old man, already tottering on the brink of the grave, what is there about me to attract beauty’s gentle care? No, no, my dear young friend, myself has sufficed thus far, and myself will suffice to the end; my own thoughts and recollections of the past, are society enough for me.”
I had never heard Carrara speak so sadly before, for although philosophic in his tone of mind, he was generally cheerful, sometimes even gay. I attributed it to his slight indisposition and his solitude, and took my leave, promising to call on the morrow, and bring an entertaining English novel to read aloud to him.
As I mechanically traversed the long distance which intervened between his house and the Corso, I soliloquized upon the lonely life a man leads without wife or children. He seems to hang, as it were, a loose disjointed member upon society, disconnected from the rest of his fellow beings, by all those household ties, which seem to form the connecting links of life. I thought of myself, and then my thoughts reverted to the beautiful portrait in Carrara’s studio, and I ardently wished that I might see the original of that picture. “Suppose you should see her this day,” reason said, “will not time have changed her? where would be the rosy hue of health and beauty’s bloom?” I suddenly remembered, Carrara had told me she was dead. “She receives naught now, then, but the clammy embraces of death; better that, however, than live to become a withered hag, after having being so gloriously beautiful.”