"Happy heedlessness of truly popular natures!" said Michel to himself, as he leaned on his window-sill, half-dressed. "One would say that nothing unusual was taking place in my family, that we were not surrounded by enemies and snares; that my sister slept as usual last night, that she knows nothing of love without hope, of the danger of being beautiful and poor in view of the schemes of vicious minds, and of the other danger that she may be deprived at any moment of her natural protectors. My father, who must know everything, acts as if he suspected nothing. In this wretched climate everything is forgotten or takes on an entirely different aspect in the twinkling of an eye. The volcano, tyranny, persecution—nothing interrupts the songs and laughter. At noon, overwhelmed by the heat, they all sleep and seem like corpses. The cool evening air revives them like vigorous plants. Terror and rashness, grief and joy, succeed one another with them like the waves on the shore. Let one of the chords of the heart be relaxed, and twenty others wake to new life, just as the taking of a flower from a glass of water causes a whole bouquet to appear there! I alone, amid these incomprehensible transformations, am always on the alert, but always serious; my thoughts are always lucid, but always gloomy. Ah! would that I had remained the child of my caste and the man of my native land!"
XXXII
THE ESCALADE
The group of houses of which Michel's formed a part was shabby and ugly in reality, but exceedingly picturesque. Built upon blocks of lava, and in part constructed of the same lava, those rough structures bore traces of the last earthquakes which had overturned them. The lower floors, which were bolted to the solid rock, retained an unmistakable flavor of antiquity; and the upper portions, erected in haste after the disaster, or already shaken by later shocks, even now had a decrepit look: huge cracks, roofs with a threatening pitch, and dangerous staircases, the rails of which were all awry. Wild vines inextricably tangled about the ragged protuberances of cornices and awnings, prickly aloes, crushing by their weight the old terra-cotta urns, and encroaching with their rough branches upon the little terraces which hovered in the most insane way upon the highest points of those tumble-down buildings; white linen, or garments of gaudy hue hanging from all the windows, or flying about like banners on lines stretched from house to house: all this formed a strange, bold picture. One could see children playing and women working almost among the clouds, on narrow platforms surrounded by pigeons and swallows, and barely protected, away up there in space, by a few black, worm-eaten rails, which it seemed that the first gust of wind would blow away. The slightest change of level in that volcanic soil, the slightest convulsion in that gorgeous but ill-omened landscape, and the torpid or reckless occupants of those houses would be engulfed in a raging hell, or swept away as the leaves are by the tempest.
But danger acts upon men's minds in proportion to its distance. In the midst of actual security, the idea of a catastrophe presents itself under terror-inspiring colors. When one is born, breathes and lives in the midst of actual danger, under a never-ceasing threat, the imagination becomes deadened, fear loses its keen edge, and there ensues a strange repose of mind which resembles torpor rather than courage.
Although the picture we have described possessed a genuine poetic charm, in its very shabbiness and its disorder, Michel had not yet detected it. He had passed his childhood at Rome, in houses more solidly constructed at all events and of a neater aspect, if not more sumptuous, and his thoughts always aspired to the splendor of palaces. His father's abode, that hovel in which Pier-Angelo had lived ever since his childhood, and to which he had returned with so much love in his heart, seemed to young Michel nothing more than a pestiferous den which he would have been glad to see return to the lava from which it had come forth. In vain did Mila, in marked contrast to her neighbors, keep their little quarters almost fastidiously neat and clean. In vain was their staircase embellished with the loveliest flowers. In vain did the bright morning sun draw broad lines of gold athwart the shadows of the black lava and upon the heavy arches of the recessed portions of the building. Michel thought of nothing but the grotto of the naiad, the marble fountains of the Palmarosa palace, and the porch where Agatha had appeared to him like a goddess in the doorway of her temple.
At last, after bestowing one regretful thought upon his recent chimera, he was ashamed of his dejection. "I came to this country, when my father hadn't sent for me," he said to himself, "and my uncle the monk convinced me that I must submit to the drawbacks of my position and accept its duties. I subjected myself to a most severe test when I turned my back upon Rome and the hope of glory to become an obscure workingman in Sicily. The test would have been too mild and too short if, at the outset, being loved or admired at first sight by a great and noble lady, I had had only to stoop and pick up laurel crowns and piastres. Instead of that, I must be a good son and a good brother, and, moreover, a stout-hearted man, to defend at need the honor of my family. I am well assured that the signora's esteem and my own, perhaps, can be had only at that price. Very well, I will accept my destiny cheerfully, and learn to endure without regret what my nearest and dearest endure so courageously. I will be a man in advance of my years, and lay aside the overpetted personality of my youth. If I have anything to blush for, it is for having been a spoiled child so long, and for having failed to see that it would soon be my duty to assist and protect those who devoted themselves to me so unselfishly."
This determination restored peace to his heart. His father's songs and little Mila's seemed to him the sweetest of melodies.
"Yes, yes," he said to himself, "sing on, happy birds of the South, pure as the sky that looked down upon your birth! This merriment is the indication of a perfectly clear conscience, and laughter well befits you, who have never had an idea of evil! Ah! my old father's dear old ballads, which have allayed the anxieties of his life and lessened the fatigue of his labor—I should listen to them with respect instead of smiling at their simplicity! And my young sister's merry laughter I should welcome with affectionate delight as a proof of her courage and her innocence! Away with my selfish dreams and my unfeeling curiosity! I will go through the storm with you, and will enjoy as you do a burst of sunlight between two clouds. My careworn brow is an insult to your candor—black ingratitude for your kindness. I propose to be your staff in distress, your comrade in toil, and your boon companion in joy!
"Sweet and melancholy flowers," he added, stooping fondly over the bouquet of cyclamen, "whatever hand plucked you, whatever the sentiment of which you are a pledge, my breath, aflame with evil desires, shall sully you no more. If I sometimes lay bare my heart, as you do, I pray that it may be as pure as your calices; and if it bleeds, as you seem to bleed, I pray that virtue may exhale from its wounds, even as fragrance exhales from your bosom."
Immediately after forming these excellent resolutions, made more seductive by this vein of poetic imagery, young Michel completed his toilet without further dallying, and made haste to join his father, who was already at work mixing colors to patch the paint at Villa Palmarosa in many places where it had been marred by the chandeliers and decorations of the ball.