Thus the divorced wife, who was yet hardly more than a girl, found herself left alone in Rome. She shut herself off entirely from the world, never venturing into society lest people should whisper to one another as she passed,—"la condannata!" She received no one but her father confessor, who came to her once a week. The sins which she had to confess to him were,—the doubting of providence, rebellion against human justice, forbidden dreams in waking hours, envy of others' happiness, aversion to prayer, and hatred of life—all sins for which she had to do penance.
Meanwhile quite a different sort of life was being led in the other wing of the palace. She could not but hear, from time to time, sounds of mirth and gaiety in the adjoining garden, or even through the solid partition-wall of the house. Voices that she knew only too well, and some that she hated, penetrated to her ears and drove her from one room to another.
In due time, however, the malarial fever of the Italian summer came to her as another distraction. It was an intermittent fever, and for six weeks she was subject to its periodical attacks, which returned every third day with the constancy of a devoted lover. When at length she began to mend, her physician prescribed a change of air. Knowing that his patient could not absent herself from Rome and its vicinity, he did not send her to Switzerland, but to Tivoli and Monte Mario; and even before venturing on these brief excursions she was obliged to ask permission at the Vatican. The convalescent was allowed to spend her days on Monte Mario, but required to return to Rome at nightfall. Good morals and good laws demanded this.
Nevertheless, even this slight change—the drives to and from Monte Mario, and the mountain air during the fine autumn days—did the princess good, and eventually restored her health.
Meanwhile there was more than one momentous change in the political world, but Blanka heeded them not. What signified to her the watchword of the period,—"Liberty?" What liberty had she? Even were all the world beside free, she was not free to love.
CHAPTER XII.
A GHOSTLY VISITANT.
It was the irony of fate that the mansion which had been assigned as a permanent dwelling-place to the woman condemned to a life of asceticism, had been originally fitted up as a fairy love-palace for a beautiful creature, possessed of an unquenchable thirst for the fleeting joys of this earthly existence. Over the richly carved mantelpiece in Blanka's sleeping-room was what looked like a splendid bas-relief in marble. It was in reality no bas-relief at all, but a wonderfully skilful bit of painting, so cleverly imitating the sculptor's chisel that even a closer inspection failed to detect the deception. It represented a recumbent Sappho playing on a nine-stringed lyre. The opening in the sounding-board of the instrument appeared to be a veritable hole over which real strings were stretched.