She gave a slight shudder.
“Oh, yes; is it not sad? But I was compelled to have it done. Yesterday I went past his kennel within reach of his chain, and he sprung furiously at me for no reason at all. See!” And holding up her small hand she showed me three trifling marks in the delicate flesh. “I felt that you would be so unhappy if you thought I kept a dog that was at all dangerous, so I determined to get rid of him. It is always painful to have a favorite animal killed; but really Wyvis belonged to my poor husband, and I think he has never been quite safe since his master’s death, and now Giacomo is ill—”
“I see!” I said, curtly, cutting her explanations short.
Within myself I thought how much more sweet and valuable was the dog’s life than hers. Brave Wyvis—good Wyvis! He had done his best—he had tried to tear her dainty flesh; his honest instincts had led him to attempt rough vengeance on the woman he had felt was his master’s foe. And he had met his fate, and died in the performance of duty. But I said no more on the subject. The dog’s death was not alluded to again by either Nina or myself. He lay in his mossy grave under the cypress boughs—his memory untainted by any lie, and his fidelity enshrined in my heart as a thing good and gracious, far exceeding the self-interested friendship of so-called Christian humanity.
The days passed slowly on. To the revelers who chased the flying steps of carnival with shouting and laughter, no doubt the hours were brief, being so brimful of merriment; but to me, who heard nothing save the measured ticking of my own timepiece of revenge, and who saw naught save its hands, that every second drew nearer to the last and fatal figure on the dial, the very moments seemed long and laden with weariness. I roamed the streets of the city aimlessly, feeling more like a deserted stranger than a well-known envied nobleman, whose wealth made him the cynosure of all eyes. The riotous glee, the music, the color that whirled and reeled through the great street of Toledo at this season bewildered and pained me. Though I knew and was accustomed to the wild vagaries of carnival, yet this year they seemed to be out of place, distracting, senseless, and all unfamiliar.
Sometimes I escaped from the city tumult and wandered out to the cemetery. There I would stand, dreamily looking at the freshly turned sods above Guido Ferrari’s grave. No stone marked the spot as yet, but it was close to the Romani vault—not more than a couple of yards away from the iron grating that barred the entrance to that dim and fatal charnel-house. I had a drear fascination for the place, and more than once I went to the opening of that secret passage made by the brigands to ascertain if all was safe and undisturbed. Everything was as I had left it, save that the tangle of brush-wood had become thicker, and weeds and brambles had sprung up, making it less visible than before, and probably rendering it more impassable. By a fortunate accident I had secured the key of the vault. I knew that for family burial-places of this kind there are always two keys—one left in charge of the keeper of the cemetery, the other possessed by the person or persons to whom the mausoleum belongs, and this other I managed to obtain.
On one occasion, being left for some time alone in my own library at the villa, I remembered that in an upper drawer of an old oaken escritoire that stood there, had always been a few keys belonging to the doors of cellars and rooms in the house. I looked, and found them lying there as usual; they all had labels attached to them, signifying their use, and I turned them over impatiently, not finding what I sought. I was about to give up the search, when I perceived a large rusty iron key that had slipped to the back of the drawer; I pulled it out, and to my satisfaction it was labeled “Mausoleum.” I immediately took possession of it, glad to have obtained so useful and necessary an implement; I knew that I should soon need it. The cemetery was quite deserted at this festive season—no one visited it to lay wreaths of flowers or sacred mementoes on the last resting-places of their friends. In the joys of the carnival who thinks of the dead? In my frequent walks there I was always alone; I might have opened my own vault and gone down into it without being observed, but I did not; I contented myself with occasionally trying the key in the lock, and assuring myself that it worked without difficulty.
Returning from one of these excursions late on a mild afternoon toward the end of the week preceding my marriage, I bent my steps toward the Molo, where I saw a picturesque group of sailors and girls dancing one of those fantastic, graceful dances of the country, in which impassioned movement and expressive gesticulation are everything. Their steps were guided and accompanied by the sonorous twanging of a full-toned guitar and the tinkling beat of a tambourine. Their handsome, animated faces, their flashing eyes and laughing lips, their gay, many-colored costumes, the glitter of beads on the brown necks of the maidens, the red caps jauntily perched on the thick black curls of the fishermen—all made up a picture full of light and life thrown up into strong relief against the pale gray and amber tints of the February sky and sea; while shadowing overhead frowned the stern dark walls of the Castel Nuovo.
It was such a scene as the English painter Luke Fildes might love to depict on his canvas—the one man of to-day who, though born of the land of opaque mists and rain-burdened clouds, has, notwithstanding these disadvantages, managed to partly endow his brush with the exhaustless wealth and glow of the radiant Italian color. I watched the dance with a faint sense of pleasure—it was full of so much harmony and delicacy of rhythm. The lad who thrummed the guitar broke out now and then into song—a song in dialect that fitted into the music of the dance as accurately as a rosebud into its calyx. I could not distinguish all the words he sung, but the refrain was always the same, and he gave it in every possible inflection and variety of tone, from grave to gay, from pleading to pathetic.
“Che bella cosa è de morire acciso,
Nnanze a la porta de la nnamorata!”[[5]]