"No, no!" cried Pier-Angelo, earnestly. "I forgot myself in sounding the praises of Catania, and I do not want you to go there with me now. I know that your loving heart and your anxiety for us urge you to it; but I know also that your real inclination does not lie that way. I want the desire to come to you naturally, when the hour of your destiny has struck, and when you will kiss the soil of your fatherland with love, instead of treading it, as you would do to-day, with disdain."
"These reasons are of little weight, father, in view of the anxiety I shall feel during your absence. I prefer to be bored and waste my time in Sicily, rather than to let you go there without me and pass my time here dreaming of dangers and disasters."
"Thanks my child, and farewell!" said the old man, embracing him affectionately. "If I must tell you explicitly, I cannot take you. Here is half of all the money I possess; be careful of it until I am able to send you more. You can depend upon it that I shall not waste my time at Catania, and that I will work energetically to procure the means for you to continue your painting. I shall need time for the journey and to get settled; after which I shall find plenty of work, for I had many friends and patrons in my country, and I know that I shall find some of them there still. Do not dream of dangers and disasters. I will be prudent; and although duplicity and fear are not my ordinary failings, I have too much Sicilian blood in my veins not to be able to display the cunning of an old fox, at need. I know Ætna as well as I know my own pocket, and its ravines are deep enough to keep a poor fellow like me hidden for a long while. Besides, I have maintained friendly relations with my kinsfolk, as you know. I have a brother a Capuchin, who is a great man. Mila will find shelter and protection with them, if need be. I will write to you—that is to say your sister will write for me—as often as possible, and you shall not be left long in uncertainty as to our fate. Do not mention the names of the Princes of Palmarosa, unless we mention them to you first."
"And meanwhile," said Michel, "shall I not know what I have to fear or to hope from these princes?"
"You? nothing, upon my word," replied Pier-Angelo; "but you do not know Sicily; you would not have the prudence that is absolutely necessary in countries that are subjected to foreigners. You have the ideas of a young man, all the ardent ideas which circulate here in Rome, under the cloak of lax administration, but which, in Sicily, are hidden and held in reserve under the ashes of the volcanoes. You would compromise me, and they would manufacture a conspiracy against the court of Naples out of a single phrase thoughtlessly uttered by you in your fervent liberalism. Farewell once more; do not detain me. I must see my country once more! You have no idea what it means to me to have been born at Catania, and to have been away eighteen years; or, rather, you do not understand it, for it is true that you were born at Catania yourself, and that the story of my exile is the story of yours! But you were brought up at Rome, and you look upon Rome as your country, alas!"
A month later Michel received, by the hand of a mechanic who arrived in Rome from Sicily, a letter from Mila, which informed him that their journey was most successful; that they had been welcomed with open arms by their relations and former friends; that Pier-Angelo had found work and valuable patronage; but that the cardinal was still living, although not greatly to be feared, because he had withdrawn from the world and from public affairs. However, Pier-Angelo did not wish Michel to join him, for no one knew what might happen.
Until then Michel had been depressed and anxious, for he loved his father and sister dearly; but, as soon as his mind was at rest with respect to them, he involuntarily rejoiced that he was at Rome and not at Catania. His life there had been very pleasant since his father had permitted him to devote himself to painting. Favored by his masters, who were attracted to him not only because of his happy aptitude, but also because of a certain elevation of mind and of language above his years and his condition, received in the society of young men much richer and more aristocratic than he—and we must admit that he was much more accessible to their advances than to those of the sons of artisans, his equals—he devoted his leisure to the cultivation of his brain and the enlargement of his circle of ideas. He read rapidly and greedily, he frequented the theatres, he conversed with artists; in a word, he prepared himself wonderfully well for a free and noble existence, to which, however, he was by no means certain that he could properly aspire.
For the resources of the poor painter in distemper, who sent half of his wages to him, were not inexhaustible. Illness might put an end to them at any time, and painting is so serious and profound an art that one must study many years before one can hope to make profitable use of it.
This thought terrified Michel, and sometimes cast him into the deepest dejection. "O father!" he was saying to himself, when we met him at the gate of a palace near his native town: "Did you not, through excessive affection for me, do yourself as well as me a great injury, by urging me on in the pathway of ambition? I do not know if I shall succeed, yet I feel that it will be very hard for me to resume the life which you lead, and for which fortune destined me. I am not so strong as you; I am a degenerate in the matter of physical strength, which is the stamp of nobility of our race. I cannot walk, I am fatigued beyond measure by what would be simply healthy exercise for you, at sixty years of age. And here am I used up, wounded in the foot, by my own fault, by reason of my absent-mindedness or my awkwardness. And yet I was born among these mountains, and I see children running over these sharp lava beds as I would walk on a carpet. Yes, my father was right, this is a beautiful fatherland; one may well be proud of having issued like the lava, from the sides of yonder terrible mountain! But one should be wholly, not half worthy of such a glorious origin. He should be a great man and fill the world with peals of thunder and lightning flashes; or else he should be a stout-hearted peasant or a determined brigand, and live in the desert, without other resource than a carbine and a pitiless heart. That too is a poetic destiny. But it is too late for me; I have learned too many things, I know the laws, society and mankind too well. That which is heroism in these artless and uncivilized mountaineers would be cowardice and crime in me. My conscience would reproach me for having succeeded in attaining grandeur by genius and the gifts of civilization, and for having relapsed, from impotence, to a condition of brigandage. So I should have to live an obscure, insignificant life!"
Let us leave Michel for a little while to nurse and rub his aching foot, and inform the reader why, despite his love for Rome and the pleasant days he passed there, he found himself now at the gates of Catania.