And she looked him through and through with a profound gaze, wherein she was so happily inspired by the superior sagacity of the courageous woman, that the Piccinino felt its influence and found that respect and awe were mingled with his passion.—"Ah! you romantic woman," he thought, "you have not outgrown the belief that a bandit chief must be a stage hero or a chevalier of the Middle Ages! And here am I compelled to play that part for your pleasure! Very well, I will play it. Nothing is difficult to him who has read much and reasoned much.—Indeed, why should I not be a hero in good earnest?" he said to himself, as he walked silently beside that trembling woman whom he believed to be so trustful and confiding, pressing her arm to his side with his own trembling arm. "If I have not deigned to be one hitherto, it is simply because the opportunity has never offered, and my essays at grandeur would have been absurd. With such a woman as this, the game is well worth the candle, and I cannot believe that it is difficult to be sublime when the reward is destined to be so sweet. It is an undertaking founded upon a selfish motive more elevated, but no less substantial or less logical than others."
Before assuming definitively the attitude of the princess's true knight, he determined to do away with a lingering remnant of distrust, and he was almost ingenuous in seeking to cure himself of it.
"The only weakness of which I am conscious," he said, "is the dread of playing a ridiculous rôle. Ninfo wished me to play an infamous one, he shall be punished for it; but if your highness really loves that young man—why, that young man also will have reason to regret having deceived me!"
"How am I to understand you?" rejoined Agatha, leading him into the ray of light which the chandelier in her boudoir cast into the garden; "I do really love Michelangelo, Pier-Angelo, and Fra Angelo, as devoted friends and estimable men. To rescue them from the enmity of a villain I would give all the money that anyone might ask. But look at me, captain, and look at that young man musing yonder behind that window. Do you consider that there can possibly exist a bond based upon impure passion between two persons of our respective ages and conditions? You do not know my character. Nobody has ever understood it. Will you be the first one to do it justice? I wish it might be so, for I care very much for your esteem, and I should think that I was wholly undeserving of it if I entertained for that child sentiments which I feared to allow you to detect."
As she spoke, Agatha, who had dropped the bandit's arm, took it again to return to the boudoir; and he was so grateful to her for that mark of trustful friendship, of which she desired Michel and the marquis to be witnesses, that he felt intoxicated and, as it were, beside himself with joy.
XXVIII
JEALOUSY
Neither the marquis nor Michel had heard a word of the conversation we have reported. But the first was tranquil in his mind, the other was not. The marquis, having assured himself that the princess was calm, had no fear that she incurred any immediate danger with the brigand; whereas Michel, not being familiar with her character, suffered keenly at the bare thought that the Piccinino might, in his speech, have gone beyond the bounds of respect. His suffering was intensified when he saw the Piccinino's face as he returned to the boudoir.
That face, ordinarily so indifferent and composed, was, as it were, illuminated by confidence and joy. The little man seemed to have grown a cubit taller, and his black eyes flashed flames which one would not have believed could be kindled in a head so cool and calculating.
No sooner had the princess, who was somewhat fatigued from having walked a long while in a small space, seated herself on the couch, to which he escorted her with the most dignified courtesy, than he fell, rather than sat down upon a chair, on the other side of the small boudoir, but with his face turned toward her as if he had stationed himself there to gaze at her in the glare of the chandelier. In truth, the Piccinino, after having enjoyed in the garden the sweetness of her voice, the flattering significance of her words, and the softness of her hand, desired, in order to put the finishing touch to the sensuous delight which he had felt for the first time in his life, to gaze at her at his leisure, without the labor of speech or of thought. He fell into a silent meditation, more eloquent than Michel could have desired. He feasted his bold eyes with the sight of that exquisite and fascinating woman, whom it seemed to him that he already possessed, as with a treasure which he had stolen, and which he took pleasure in gloating over, as it lay gleaming before him.
The young painter's distress was intensified by the fact that, under the mysterious influence of that all-pervading passion, which but just born was already spreading with the rapidity of a conflagration, the bandit acquired a strange power of fascination. His exquisite beauty shone forth like a star emerging from the vapors on the horizon. All that was unusual in the outlines of his features and disquieting in their veiled expression gave way to a subtle charm, an overpowering effusiveness, albeit silent, and, as it were, overwhelmed by its own ardor. He was lying back in his chair, but no longer affected indifference or absent-mindedness. His hanging arms, his bent back, his eyes, glistening and fascinated, and fixed intently on the princess, indicated that he was shattered, as it were, by the explosion of a force unknown to himself, and drowned in the anticipated joys of his triumph. Michel was afraid of him for the first time. He would still have defied him fearlessly in the ill-omened solitude of the Destatore's Cross; but in that room, radiant with a strange ecstasy, he seemed too overpowering for any woman to escape the fascination of that basilisk glance.