Doubtless it was for form's sake, to satisfy the proprieties, or from good nature, for she simply walked, and did not seem to take the slightest pleasure in it. But she walked better than the others danced, and, without a thought of striving to be graceful, she displayed every variety of grace. That woman really possessed an extraordinary charm which penetrated like a subtle perfume, and finally dominated or effaced everything about her. One would have said that she was a queen in the midst of her court, in some kingdom where moral and physical perfection reigned.
It was the chastity of the celestial virgins with their omnipotent serenity—a pallor in nowise extreme or sickly—which denoted the absence of intense emotions. People said that the secret of that mysterious life was either systematic abstinence from excitement or extraordinary indifference. And yet her appearance was not that of a lifeless statue. Kindness of heart lent animation to her somewhat absent-minded glance and gave an indescribable sweetness to her faint smile.
In the glare of those countless lights she appeared to Michel an entirely different woman from her he had seen in the grotto an hour earlier, when the peculiar light or his own imagination had made her appear a little terrifying to him. Now her indifference was calm rather than depressed, habitual rather than forced. She had recovered just enough animation to vanquish the heart and leave the passions undisturbed.
XIV
BARBAGALLO
If Michel could have removed his eyes from the object of his contemplation, he would have seen his father playing a flageolet in the orchestra a few steps away. Pier-Angelo had a passion for art in any form in which he could assimilate it. He loved and understood music, and played several instruments by instinct in almost perfect tone and time. Having attended to several details of the fête which had been placed under his supervision, and having nothing more to do, he had been unable to resist the desire to mingle with the musicians, who knew him well, and who took pleasure in his gayety, his attractive, kindly face, and the enthusiasm with which he produced from time to time a shrill ritornello on his instrument. When the minstrel whose place he had taken returned from the buffet, Pier-Angelo seized upon the vacant cymbals, and, toward the end of the quadrille, was sawing with great delight the heavy strings of the bass-viol.
He was enchanted above all things to play for the princess, who, having espied his bald head on the platform among the orchestra, bestowed upon him from a distance a smile and an imperceptible friendly nod which the old man stored away in his heart. Michelangelo would have considered perhaps that his father gave his time too lavishly to the service of his dear patroness, and did not maintain strictly enough his dignity as an artisan. But at that moment Michel, who believed that he had forgotten or been cured of the effect of Princess Agatha's glance, had fallen so completely under its influence that he cared for nothing but to encounter it again.
His only fine clothes, which a lingering remnant of ineradicable aristocratic feeling had led him to bring through the gorges of Ætna in a travelling-bag slung over his shoulder, were of fashionable cut and in good taste. His face, too, was so handsome and so noble that there certainly was nothing to which exception could be taken in his person or in his dress. And yet his presence in the circle immediately surrounding the princess had, for some moments past, offended the eyes of Master Barbagallo, the majordomo of the palace.
That individual, ordinarily the mildest and most humane of men, had nevertheless his antipathies and his spasms of comical indignation. He had recognized Michel's talent; but the young man's impatient air when he ventured to address some trivial remark to him, and the small respect he had seemed to entertain for his authority, had caused the majordomo to look upon the painter with distrust and something like aversion. According to his ideas—and he had made a special study of titles and heraldry—nobody was noble but the nobles, and he looked upon all other classes of society with silent but unconquerable disdain. He was shocked and offended, therefore, to see the haughty palace of his masters thrown open to what he called a mob—tradesmen, lawyers, Jewesses, suspicious travellers, students, petty officers; in a word, to anyone who chose to pay a gold-piece for the privilege of dancing in the princess's quadrille. This subscription fête was a new invention, imported from abroad, and it overturned all his notions of decorum.
The retirement in which the princess had always lived had assisted this worthy majordomo to retain all his illusions and all his prejudices touching the excellence of castes. That is why he became more and more distressed, restless and morose as the night advanced. He had seen the princess promise a contra-dance to a young lawyer who had had the audacity to invite her; and when he saw Michelangelo Lavoratori gazing at her at such close quarters with enraptured eyes, he wondered if that dauber of canvas would not also enter the lists to dance with her.
"The world has turned upside down in twenty years, I see," he said to himself; "if such a ball as this had been given here in Prince Dionigi's time, things would have been managed differently. Each class would have kept apart from the rest; they would have formed different groups, and no group would have mingled with its superiors or inferiors. But here all ranks are jumbled together; it's a bazar—an infernal revel!—But, by the way," it occurred to him, "what is that little painter doing here? He didn't pay any money; he has not even the right which anyone can buy to-day, alas! at the door of the noble Palmarosa palace. He is only admitted here as a workman. If he chooses to play the tambourine beside his old father, or look after the lamps, let him stand back from where he is now. I will take down his conceit a peg, and it won't do him any good to play at being a great painter. I'll send him back to his sizing. It's a little lesson that I owe him, as his old madman of a father spoils him and doesn't know how to manage him."