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

by George Sand

The good creature brought me back to life, and interested Signora Aldini in my fate. I speedily recovered from the effects of my fasting, and my persecutor, appeased by that expiation, accepted my acknowledgment of my wrong-doing, and my somewhat abrupt, but sincere expression of regret. My father, on learning from my master that I had disappeared, had come to Venice. He frowned when Signora Aldini expressed a purpose to take me into her service. He was a rough-mannered man, but proud and independent. In his view it was bad enough that my delicate constitution condemned me to live in the city. I was of too good a family to be a footman, and although gondoliers enjoyed important privileges in private establishments, there was a well-marked distinction in rank between public gondoliers and gondolieri di casa. These last were better dressed, to be sure, and shared the comforts of patrician life, but they were ranked as servants, and there was no such blemish in my family. However, Signora Aldini was so gracious and kindly that my excellent father, twisting his red cap about in his hands in his embarrassment, and constantly pulling his pipe from his pocket, as a matter of habit, could find nothing to reply to her affable words and her generous promises. He determined to leave me free to choose, expecting that I would refuse. But I, although I was utterly disgusted with the harp, could think of nothing but music. Signora Aldini exerted a magnetic influence over me which I cannot describe; it was a genuine passion, but an artistic passion, absolutely platonic and philharmonic. In the small room on the lower floor to which I had been taken—for I had several attacks of fever as a result of my fasting—I could hear her singing, and on those occasions she accompanied herself on the harpsichord, for she played equally well on several instruments. Intoxicated by her voice, I could not even understand my fathers scruples, and I accepted without hesitation the post of second gondolier at the Aldini palace.

It was good form in those days to be well equipped with gondoliers; that is to say, that, as the gondola in Venice corresponds to the carriage elsewhere, so gondoliers are at the same time luxuries and necessaries, like horses. All the gondolas being practically alike, according to the sumptuary law of the Republic, which required that they should all be draped in black, persons of wealth could make themselves noticeable among the multitude only by the figures and costumes of their oarsmen. The fashionable patrician's gondola would be propelled, at the stern, by a muscular man, of a masculine type of beauty; at the bow by a negro dressed in some unusual style, or by a fair-haired native, a sort of page or jockey, clad with taste and elegance, and placed there as an ornament, like the figure-head of a ship.

I was perfectly adapted to that honorable post. I was a genuine child of the lagoons, of fair complexion, ruddy-cheeked, very strong, with a somewhat feminine figure, my head and feet and hands being remarkably small, my chest broad and muscular, my arms and neck white and round and sinewy. Add to this, amber-colored hair, fine and abundant, and naturally curly; imagine a charming costume, half Figaro and half Cherubino, legs generally bare, sky-blue trunk hose kept up by a scarlet silk sash, and the breast covered simply by a shirt of embroidered linen, whiter than snow; then you will have an idea of the poor actor in embryo who was called in those days Nello, by contraction of his true name, Daniele Gemello.

As it is the fate of small dogs to be petted by idiotic masters and beaten by jealous servants, the ordinary lot of those in my position was a mixture of unbounded tolerance on the part of the former, and of brutal hatred on the part of the latter. Luckily for me, Providence cast my lines in a blessed spot: Bianca Aldini was the incarnation of kindness, indulgence, and charity. Widowed at twenty, she passed her life helping the poor and comforting the afflicted. Where there were tears to be wiped away, or alms to be bestowed, you would soon see her hurrying thither in her gondola, with her little four-year-old daughter in her lap; a fascinating miniature, so tiny, so pretty, and always so daintily dressed that it seemed as if her mother's lovely hands alone, in all the world, were soft and gentle and tapering enough to touch her without crushing or bruising her. Signora Aldini herself was always dressed with a taste and elegance which all the other ladies in Venice tried in vain to equal; she was immensely rich, loved luxury, and spent half of her income in the gratification of her artistic tastes and her patrician habits. The other half went in almsgiving, in favors bestowed, in benefactions of every sort. Although that was a sufficiently generous widow's mite, as she called it, she artlessly accused herself of lacking energy, of not doing all that she ought; and, being moved to repentance rather than pride by her charity, she determined every day that she would leave society and devote herself to her own salvation. From this mixture of feminine weakness and Christian virtue you can see that she had not a strong mind, and that her intelligence was no more enlightened than the period and the social circle in which she lived demanded. For all that, I do not know that a better or more delightful woman ever lived. Other women, jealous of her beauty, her wealth and her virtue, avenged themselves by declaring that she was narrow-minded and ignorant. There was some truth in that charge, but Bianca was a most lovable woman, none the less. She had a reserve stock of common sense which prevented her from ever being ridiculous; and as for her lack of education, the ingenuous modesty which resulted from it was an additional charm. I have seen the most enlightened and most serious-minded men gathered about her, never weary of conversing with her.

Living thus at church and at the theatre, in the poor man's garret and at sumptuous palaces, she imposed gratitude or cheerfulness upon one and all. Her disposition was even and playful, and the character of her beauty was enough to shed serenity all about her. She was of medium height, as white as milk, and fresh as a flower; all was gentleness and youth and kindliness. Just as one would have looked in vain for a sharp angle in her own graceful person, so there was never the slightest asperity in her temper, the slightest break in her goodness. As active as the true spirit of devotion, and at the same time as inert as Venetian indolence, she never passed more than two hours during the day in the same place; but in her palace she was always lying on a sofa, and out-of-doors she was always stretched out in her gondola. She said that she was weak on her legs, and she never went up or down stairs without being supported by two persons; in her own apartments she always leaned on the arm of Salomé, a young Jewess, who waited upon her and acted as her companion. People said that Signora Aldini was lame as a result of the fall of a piece of furniture which her husband had pushed upon her in a fit of anger, and which had broken her leg. Although for more than two years she leaned on my arm as she went in and out of her palace, I never discovered the exact truth of the matter, she took so much pains and exerted so much skill to conceal her infirmity.

Despite her benevolence and sweetness of disposition, Bianca lacked neither discrimination nor prudence in the choice of her associates; I can safely say that I have never seen in any other place so many excellent people together. If you detect in me any kindness of heart, any praiseworthy pride, you must attribute it to my stay in that house. It was impossible not to contract the habit there of thinking, speaking and acting rightly; the servants were honest and hard-working, the friends faithful and devoted; even the lovers—for I cannot deny that there were lovers—were loyal and honorable. I had several masters while I was there; of them all the signora was the least imperious. However, they were all kind, or at all events just. Salomé, who was the executive officer of the household, maintained order with some little severity; she seldom smiled, and the great arch of her eyebrows was rarely divided into two quarter circles over her long black eyes. But she had much patience, a keen sense of equity, and a searching glance which never misinterpreted sincerity. Mandola, the chief gondolier and my immediate superior, was a Lombard giant, whose huge black whiskers and muscular frame might have led one to take him for Polyphemus. Nevertheless he was the mildest, calmest and most humane peasant who ever came down from his mountains to the civilization of great cities. Lastly, Count Lanfranchi, the handsomest man in the whole Republic, whom we had to row about every evening in a closed gondola with Signora Aldini, from ten o'clock to midnight, was the most gracious and amiable nobleman whom I have ever met.

I never knew anything of the late Signor Aldini except a full-length portrait, at the entrance to the gallery, in a superb frame, which stood out a little from the wall, and seemed to command a long file of ancestors, each darker and more venerable than the last, who receded, in chronological order, into the obscure depths of that vast room. Torquato Aldini was dressed in the latest fashion of his time, with a shirt-frill of Flanders lace and a morning coat of apple-green cloth with bright red frogs. He was beautifully frizzled and powdered. But, despite the elegance of that pastoral undress, I could not look at him without lowering my eyes; for there was upon his yellowish-brown face, in his blazing black eye, on his sneering and disdainful mouth, in his impassive attitude, and even in the dictatorial gesture of his long, thin, diamond-laden hand, such an expression of overbearing arrogance and inflexible harshness as I had never met with under the roof of that palace. It was a beautiful portrait, and the portrait of a handsome young man. He died at twenty-five, from wounds received in a duel with a Foscari, who dared to say that he was of a better family. He had left behind him a great reputation for courage and decision of character, but it was whispered that he had made his wife very unhappy, and the servants did not seem to regret him. He had kept them in such a state of dread that they never passed that picture after dark, startlingly true to life as it was, without uncovering as they would have done before their former master in person.

His hardness of heart must have caused the signora much suffering, and have disgusted her with the married state, for she refused to enter into a new contract, and rejected the best partis in the Republic. And yet she evidently had a yearning for love, for she tolerated Count Lanfranchi's assiduous attentions and seemed to deny him none of the joys of marriage except the indissoluble oath. After a year, the count, abandoning all hope of inspiring in her the necessary confidence for such an engagement as he desired, sought fortune elsewhere, and confessed to her that a certain wealthy heiress gave him more reason to hope. The signora generously gave him his liberty at once. She seemed depressed and ill for a few days, but at the end of a month the Prince of Montalegri took the place in the gondola left vacant by the ungrateful Lanfranchi, and for another year Mandola and I rowed that amiable and seemingly fortunate couple about the lagoons.

I was very deeply attached to the signora. I could imagine nothing on earth lovelier and better than she was. When she turned her sweet, almost motherly glance upon me, when she smilingly said a pleasant word to me—no others could come from her lovely lips—I was so proud and happy that, to afford her a moment's pleasure, I would have thrown myself under the Bucentaur's sharp keel. When she gave me an order, I flew; when she leaned on me, my heart beat fast for joy; when, to call the Prince of Montalegri's attention to my fine hair, she gently placed her snow-white hand on my head, I flushed with pride. And yet I was not jealous as I plied my oar with the prince seated beside her. I replied gayly to the kindly jests which the gentlemen of Venice love to exchange with the gondoliers, to test their wit and gift of repartee; and, despite the extraordinary liberty accorded to the challenged boatman under such circumstances, I had never felt the slightest inclination to make a bitter retort to the prince. He was an excellent young man; I was grateful to him for consoling the signora for Signor Lanfranchi's desertion. I had not that ridiculous humility which grovels before the privileges of high rank. We hardly recognize those privileges in this country, in the matter of love, and we recognized them even less in those days. There was not so much difference in age between the signora and myself that I might not fall in love with her. The fact is that I should be sorely embarrassed to-day to give a name to my feeling for her at that time. It was love, perhaps, but love as pure as my age; and tranquil love, because I was neither ambitious nor covetous.

In addition to my youth, my zeal in her service, and my mild and cheerful disposition, my love for music had pleased the signora particularly: it delighted her to see my emotion at the sound of her beautiful voice, and whenever she sang she sent for me. In her affable, unceremonious way, she would bid me come into her cabinet and permit me to sit beside Salomé. It seemed to me that she would have liked to see that inflexible task-mistress lay aside a little of her habitual austerity with me. But Salomé was to me a much more awe-inspiring person than the signora, and I was never tempted to be bold when she was present.