"I know it," she replied. "Your tears prove it, and I feel it; for, since you have been with me, I should have forgotten that I had ever been unhappy, if I had not had my story to tell you."
"Thank you, mother, but do not say that you leave me at liberty to do as I please. I am only a child, and I feel so insignificant beside you that I never desire to see anything except through your eyes, or to act except by your orders. I will help you to carry the burden of wealth and of almsgiving, but I will be your man of business—nothing more. I, a rich man and a prince! I, endowed with any sort of authority when you are here! when I am your son!"
"My child, you must be a man. I have not had the happiness of bringing you up; I could have done it no better than worthy Pier-Angelo. It is my business now to love you—nothing more—and that is enough. To justify my love, you will not need to have your ancestors' portraits say to you: 'I am not pleased with you.'—You will so conduct yourself that your mother will always say to you: 'I am pleased with you.' But listen, Michel! the bells are tolling; all the bells in the city are tolling the knell of a dying man, and it must be some great personage. It is your kinsman—your enemy—Cardinal Palmarosa, who is about to be called to account by God for his crimes. It is daylight, and we must part. Go and pray to God to be merciful to him. I go to receive his last breath!"
XLVI
GLADNESS OF HEART
While the princess rang for her maid and ordered her horses, that she might go and pay her last respects to the moribund cardinal, Michel went down into the park from the flower garden by the staircase cut in the lava; but, when he was only halfway down, he spied Master Barbagallo, who was already on his feet and beginning his conscientious day's work, very far from believing, the excellent man, that that splendid palace and those beautiful gardens were no longer aught save the deceptive symbol and the vain simulacrum of a handsome fortune. In his eyes to expend one's income in almsgiving was a lordly and estimable custom. He seconded the princess zealously in her charitable work. But to encroach upon one's capital was a heinous sin, inconsistent with the hereditary dignity of a great name; and, if Agatha had enlightened him or consulted him in that respect, all his genealogical learning would have been none too much to prove to her that no Palmarosa had ever committed that crime of lèse-nobility, unless at the bidding of his king. What! deprive oneself of the real source of one's power for the benefit of miserable wretches! Fie! unless it were a question of founding a hospital or a monastery, monuments which endure, and which transmit the renown and virtue of the founder to posterity, and impart new glory to a name instead of dimming its lustre.
Michel, when he saw the majordomo innocently blocking his path—for Barbagallo was gazing fixedly at an East India shrub which he had planted with his own hands at the foot of the staircase—determined to lower his head and pass rapidly on without any explanation. A few hours later, he would have no motive for concealment, but, for propriety's sake, it would be much better to await the princess's public declaration.
But the majordomo seemed to be planted beside his shrub. He was surprised that the climate of Catania, which, according to him, was the most salubrious climate in the world, did not agree with that rare plant better than the climate of the tropics; which fact proves that he understood the cultivation of genealogical trees better than that of real trees. He was stooping—almost lying oh the ground—to see if some destructive worm had not attacked the roots of the languishing plant.
Michel, having reached the lowest stair, decided to leap over Master Barbagallo, who uttered a loud yell, thinking perhaps that it was the beginning of a volcanic eruption, and that a stone vomited forth by some near-by crater had fallen beside him.
His exclamation had such a comical, rancous sound that Michel laughed heartily.
"Cristo!" cried the majordomo, as he recognized the young artist, whom the princess had ordered him to treat with great consideration, but whom he was very far from believing to be Agatha's son or lover.