We must now introduce our readers to a splendid apartment in the Arestino Palace.
This room was tastefully decorated and elegantly furnished. The tapestry was of pale blue; and the ottomans, ranged round the walls in Oriental style, were of rich crimson satin embroidered with gold. In the middle stood a table covered with ornaments and rich trinkets lately arrived from Paris—for France already began to exercise the influence of its superior civilization and refinement over the south of Europe.
The ceiling of that room was a master-piece of the united arts of sculpture and painting. First, the hand of the sculptor had carved it into numerous medallions, on which the pencil of the painter had then delineated the most remarkable scenes in early Florentine history. Round the sides, or cornices, were beautifully sculptured in marble the heads of the principal ancestors of the Count of Arestino.
It was within half an hour of midnight, and the beautiful Giulia Arestino was sitting restlessly upon an ottoman, now holding her breath to listen if a step were approaching the private door behind the tapestry—then glancing anxiously toward a clepsydra on the mantel.
“What can detain him thus? will he deceive me?” she murmured to herself. “Oh! how foolish—worse than foolish—mad—to confide in the promise of a professed bandit! The jewels are worth a thousand times the reward I have pledged myself to give him! wretched being that I am!”
And with her fair hand she drew back the dark masses of her hair that had fallen too much over her polished brow: and on this polished brow she pressed that fair hand, for her head ached with the intensity of mingled suspense and alarm.
Her position was indeed a dangerous one as the reader is already aware. In the infatuation of her strong, unconquerable, but not less guilty love for the handsome spendthrift Orsini, she had pledged her diamonds to Isaachar ben Solomon for an enormous sum of money, every ducat of which had passed without an hour’s delay into the possession of the young marquis.
Those diamonds were the bridal gift of her fond and attached, but, alas! deceived husband, who, being many years older than herself, studied constantly how to afford pleasure to the wife of whom he was so proud. He was himself an extraordinary judge of the nature, purity and value of precious stones; and, being immensely rich, he had collected a perfect museum of curiosities in that particular department. In fact, it was his amateur study, or, as we should say in these times, his peculiar hobby; and hence the impossibility of imposing on him by the substitution of a hired or a false set of diamonds for those which he had presented to his wife.
It was, therefore, absolutely necessary to get these diamonds back from Isaachar, by fair means or foul. The fair means were to redeem them by the payment of the loan advanced upon them; but the sum was so large that the countess dared not make such a demand upon her husband’s purse, because the extravagances of her lover had lately compelled her to apply so very, very frequently to the count for a replenishment of her funds. The foul means were therefore resorted to—an old woman, who had been the nurse of the countess in her infancy, and to whom in her distress she applied for advice, having procured for the patrician lady the services of Stephano Verrina, the bandit-captain.
It is not to be wondered at, then, if the Countess of Arestino were a prey to the most poignant anxiety, as each successive quarter of an hour passed without bringing either Stephano or any tidings from him. Even if she feigned illness, so as to escape the ceremony of the following day, relief would only be temporary, for the moment she should recover, or affect to recover, her husband would again require her to accompany him to the receptions of the prince.