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

by George Sand

I found her weeping bitterly beside her daughter's bed. The child had been awakened in the middle of the night by the noise of the constant going and coming of the frightened servants. She had listened to their comments on the signora's prolonged absence, and, believing that her mother was drowned, she had gone into convulsions. She had barely become calm when I entered, and Bianca was blaming herself for the child's suffering, as if she had wilfully caused it.

"O my Bianca," I said to her, "be comforted and rejoice because your child and all those about you love you so passionately. I will love you even more than they do, so that you may be the happiest of women."

"Do not say that the others love me," she replied with some bitterness. "It seems to me that under their breaths they are calling this love of mine, which they have already divined, a crime. Their glances are insulting to me, their words wound me, and I greatly fear that they have let slip some imprudent remark in my daughter's hearing. Salomé is openly impertinent to me this morning. It is high time for me to put an end to these insolent comments on my conduct. You see, Nello, they look upon my loving you as a crime, and they approved of my supposed love for the avaricious Lanfranchi. They are all low-minded or foolish creatures. I must inform them this very day that I passed the night, not with my lover, but with my husband. It is the only way to make them respect you and refrain from betraying me."

I dissuaded her from acting so hastily. I reminded her that she might perhaps repent; that she had not reflected sufficiently; that I myself needed time to consider her offer seriously; and that she had not sufficiently weighed the consequences of her decision, with respect to its possible future effect upon her daughter. I obtained her promise to be patient and to act prudently.

It was impossible for me to form an enlightened judgment regarding my situation. It was intoxicating, and I was a mere boy. Nevertheless, a sort of instinctive repugnance warned me to distrust the fascinations of love and fortune. I was excited, anxious, torn between desire and fear. In the brilliant destiny that was offered me, I saw but one thing—possession of the woman I loved. All the wealth by which she was surrounded was not even an accessory to my happiness, it was a disagreeable condition for me in my heedlessness to accept. I was like one who has never suffered and can conceive of no better or worse state than that in which he has always lived. In the Aldini Palace I was free and happy. Petted by all alike, permitted to gratify all my whims, I had no responsibility, nothing to fatigue my body or my mind. Singing, sleeping, and boating, that was substantially the whole of my life, and you Venetians who are listening to me know whether any life is sweeter or better adapted to our indolent and careless natures. I imagined the rôle of husband and master as something analogous to the superintendence exercised by Salomé over household affairs, and such a rôle was very far from flattering my ambition. That palace, of which I had the freedom, was my property in the pleasantest sense of the word: I enjoyed all its pleasures without any of its cares. Let my mistress add the joys of love, and I should be the King of Italy.

Another thing that disheartened me was Salomé's gloomy air and the embarrassed, mysterious and suspicious demeanor of the other servants. There were many of them, and they were all excellent people, who had treated me hitherto as a child of the family. In that silent reprobation which I felt hovering over me, there was a warning which I could not, which I did not wish to disdain; for, while it was due in some measure to a natural feeling of jealousy, it was dictated even more by the affectionate interest which the signora inspired.

What would I not have given in those moments of dire perplexity to have a judicious adviser? But I did not know whom to apply to, and I was the sole confidant of my mistress's secrets. She passed the day in bed with her daughter, and sent for me the next day, to repeat to me all that she had said on the marsh. All the time that she was speaking to me, it seemed to me that she was right, and that she had a triumphant answer to all my scruples; but when I was alone again, my distress and irresolution returned.

I went up into the gallery and threw myself upon a chair. My eyes wandered absent-mindedly from one to another of that long line of ancestors whose portraits formed the only heritage that Torquato Aldini had been able to bequeath to his daughter. Their smoke-begrimed faces, their beards, cut square, and pointed, and diamond-shaped, their black velvet robes and ermine-lined cloaks, gave them an imposing and depressing aspect. Almost all had been senators, procurators, or councillors; there was a multitude of uncles who had been inquisitors; those of least consequence were minor canons or capitani grandi. At the end of the gallery was the figure-head of the last galley fitted out against the Turks by Tiberio Aldini, Torquato's grandfather, in the days when the powerful nobles of the republic went to war at their own expense, and esteemed it glorious to place their property and persons voluntarily at the service of their country. It was a tall glass lantern, set in gilded copper, surmounted and supported by metal scroll-work of curious design, and with ornaments so placed that the bow of the vessel ended in a point. Above each portrait was a long oak bas-relief, reciting the glorious deeds of the illustrious personage beneath. It occurred to me that, if we should have war, and the opportunity should be offered me to fight for my country, I should be as patriotic and as brave as all those noble aristocrats. It seemed to me to be neither very extraordinary nor very meritorious to do great things when one was rich and powerful, and I said to myself that the trade of great nobleman could not be very difficult. But in those days, we were not at war, nor were we likely to be. The republic was merely a meaningless word, its might a mere shadow, and its enervated patricians had no elements of grandeur except their names. It was the more difficult to rise to their level in their opinion, because it was so easy to surpass them in reality. Therefore to enter into a contest with their prejudices and their contempt was unworthy of a true man, and the plebeians were fully justified in despising those among themselves who thought that they exalted themselves by seeking admission to fashionable society and aping the absurdities of the nobles.

These reflections passed through my mind confusedly at first; then they became more distinct, and I found that I could think, as I had found one fine morning that I could sing. I began to understand the repugnance I felt at the thought of leaving my proper station in life to make a spectacle of myself in society as a vain and ambitious fellow; and I determined to bury my love-affair with Bianca in the most profound mystery.

Absorbed by these reflections, I walked along the gallery, glancing proudly at that haughty race whose succession was disdained by a child of the people, a boatman from Chioggia. I felt very happy; I thought of my old father, and as I remembered the old house, long forgotten and neglected, my eyes filled with tears. I found myself at the end of the gallery, face to face with Messer Torquato, and for the first time I scrutinized him boldly from head to foot. He was the very incarnation of hereditary nobility. His glance seemed to drive one back like the point of a sword, and his hand looked as if it had never opened except to impose a command on his inferiors. I took pleasure in flouting him. "Well!" I said to him mentally, "whatever you might have done, I would never have been your servant. Your domineering air would not have frightened me, and I would have looked you in the face as I look at this canvas. You would never have obtained any hold on me, because my heart is prouder than yours ever was, because I despise this gold before which you bowed, because I am a greater man than you in the eyes of the woman you possessed. In spite of all your pride of birth, you bent the knee to her to obtain her wealth; and when you were rich through her, you crushed and humbled her. That is the conduct of a dastard, and mine is worthy of a genuine noble, for I want none of Bianca's wealth except her heart, of which you were not worthy. And I refuse what you implored, so that I may possess that which is precious above all things in my eyes, Bianca's esteem. And I shall obtain it, for she will understand the vast superiority of my heart to a debt-ridden patrician's. I have no patrimony to redeem, you see! There is no mortgage on my father's fishing-boat; and the clothes I wear are my own, because I earned them by my toil. Very good! I shall be the benefactor, not the debtor, because I shall restore happiness and life to that heart which you broke, because I, servant and lover, shall succeed in winning blessings and honor, while you, nobleman and husband, were cursed and despised."