The Piccinino, Volume 2 (of 2); The last of Aldinis

by George Sand

She had finished speaking a quarter of an hour before Michel entered. She had looked calmly into the faces of her audience. She knew what to think of the artless emotion of some, of the masked malevolence of others. She knew that she should have the courage to face all the exaggerations, all the sneers, all the malicious remarks to which her declaration would give rise in the outside world, and especially in aristocratic society. She was ready for everything, and felt strong and brave, supported by her son's arm—that woman who had steadfastly refused to accept the protection of a husband or the consolations of a lover. Some of those present, whether maliciously or from stupidity, had tried to induce her to add some details, some further particulars, to her declaration. She had replied gently but firmly:

"Not before so many witnesses, and on a day of mourning and solemnity, can I undertake to entertain or interest you by telling a love-story. Besides, it is all a long way off. I was very young then, and after twenty years have passed since those exciting days, I should find it hard to speak of them from a standpoint which would enable you to understand the choice I thought fit to make. I will allow you to consider it an extraordinary act, but I will not allow anyone to speak reproachfully of it in my presence; for that would be an insult to the man whose name I accepted, to hand it down to my son."

There was much eager whispering among the groups scattered through that vast apartment. Only the group at the extreme end, consisting of honest workmen and faithful servants, was grave and calm, and secretly touched. Magnani's father and mother came forward weeping, and kissed Agatha's hand. Mila, in the midst of her transports of amazement and joy, was a little depressed in the depths of her heart. She said to herself that Magnani should be there; but she could not see him, although she looked everywhere. However, she forgot him when Michel appeared, and she rose to rush to him through the groups, malevolent or thunderstruck, which opened to give passage to the artisan prince and his woolen blouse. But she stopped short, with crimson cheeks and in sore distress: Michel was no longer her brother; she must not kiss him any more.

Agatha, who had risen first, turned and beckoned to her, and, taking her by the hand, walked toward her son with the proud resolution of a queen and a mother. First she led him to receive publicly the blessing of his father and his uncle by adoption, then turned him over to the cordial hand-clasps of her friends and the salutations of her acquaintances. Michel took pleasure in adopting a cold and haughty bearing with those who seemed to him cold and haughty; but when he was in the midst of the more popular portion of the company, he appeared as he felt, overflowing with sincerity and cordiality. He had no difficulty in winning the hearts of those good people, and he was greeted as heartily as if they had been present at his birth, and he had grown to manhood before their eyes.

After the production of the certificates of marriage and birth, which, having been recorded under the former ecclesiastical administration, were perfectly regular and authentic, Agatha took leave of the family gathering, and withdrew to her private apartments with Michel, the Lavoratori family, and the Marquis della Serra. There they tasted the unalloyed happiness of being together, and recovered from the fatigue due to the constraint to which they had been subjected. They laughed over the incident of the grandfather's gala costume, Master Barbagallo's happy thought. They made merry in anticipation of all the monstrous and absurd tales concerning the state of affairs in the family, to which the imaginations of the good people of Catania, Messina, and Palermo would give birth while the excitement was at its height.

But the day had not passed before they felt that they would all require more genuine courage than they had yet been called upon to display. The news of the murder of Abbé Ninfo, together with a copy of the audacious inscription, reached the city during the evening, and was speedily circulated. Persons who were out walking had brought the copy, the campieri brought the body. As the incident seemed to have a political color, it was discussed in undertones; but as it had some connection with the great events of the day, the death of the cardinal and Agatha's declaration, people talked about it all night, having no desire to sleep. The greatest and most beautiful city on earth, unless it be one of the great metropolises of civilization, is always, so far as its spirit and its ideas are concerned, a petty provincial town, especially in the south of Europe.

The police were aroused by the vengeance wreaked upon one of their agents. Persons in the good graces of the government assumed, in aristocratic salons, a menacing attitude toward the patriotic nobles. The Neapolitan faction asserted that the Prince of Castro-Reale had better look to himself if he wished his father's crimes to be forgotten; and, ere long, salutary warnings intended for the princess found their way into her very boudoir. A sincere, but cowardly friend informed her that the assertion of her innocence in the Piccinino's extraordinary document, and the appeal therein made to her son to avenge Castro-Reale, would compromise her very seriously unless she made haste to take some measures dictated by prudence: as, for instance, to present her son to the ruling powers, and to manifest her purpose, indirectly but clearly, to abandon her defunct brigand to the devil, and her bastard stepson's body to the headsman, to be a true and loyal Palmarosa, like her father and uncle before her, and to make herself responsible for the proper political education of the heir of a name so difficult to bear as that of Castro-Reale was likely to be.

To these warnings, Agatha replied calmly and judiciously that she never went into society; that she had been living for nearly twenty years in undisturbed seclusion, where no conspiracies had ever been formed; that to take any measures at that moment to obtain the favor of the ruling powers would be in effect to admit the justice of suspicions which she did not deserve; that her son was still a child, brought up in an obscure station and in ignorance of everything outside of the poetry of art; that she would bear boldly, with him, the name of Castro-Reale, because it would be cowardly to deny her marriage and his descent, and that they would not fail to make that name respected, even under the eyes of the police. As for the Piccinino, she very adroitly pretended that she had no idea what they meant, and that she did not believe in the existence of that intangible phantom, a sort of ogre, whose name was used to frighten the little children and old women of the suburbs. She was surprised and distressed by the murder of Abbé Ninfo; but as the will turned up opportunely in Doctor Recuperati's custody, no one could suspect that she owed the recovery of the document to a secret arrangement with the brigands of the mountain. The doctor did not even know that it had been taken from him; for, just as he was about to make a public declaration that Ninfo had stolen it, Agatha had interrupted him, saying:

"Be careful, doctor, you are very absent-minded, you know; don't accuse anyone hastily. You showed me the will two days ago; may you not have left it in my chamber, under a piece of mosaic?"

An official visit to the place indicated had resulted in finding the will there intact. The doctor, astounded at his carelessness, had believed in it with the others.