Meanwhile the representative of the knights-hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, and the defenders of Rhodes and of Malta, did not seem at all to regard himself as an object of commiseration, but went on talking and laughing in the highest spirits, giving a rapid summary of all the recent Carnival gossip of Rome, and then asked, in his turn, the news of Macerata in the same gay, careless strain.
“So the Marchese Ridolfi has married his gobbina daughter at last, I am told? It was no easy achievement, I should say. Who arranged the affair?”
“As for that, I do not exactly know,” answered the timid old count, brightening up as he entered on a genial topic; for having disposed of his own daughters very advantageously some years before, he assumed an air of superiority whenever the subject was introduced, conscious that he was regarded with a sort of admiring envy by fathers still burdened with the care of settling theirs. “I do not exactly know,” he repeated, rubbing his hands, “whether it was some amico di casa (family friend) or a matrimonial broker, who arranged the partito; but whoever did, it was clumsily done enough! The sposo, a Neapolitan baron, thought the dote very fair, and was tolerably satisfied with the portrait they sent him before he signed. Ridolfi, on his part, had no cause to complain of the information he received concerning the young man, his fortune, and so forth; and accordingly, near the end of Carnival, he arrived for the celebration of the marriage. Then corbezzoli! there is a pretty piece of work! The baron perceives that one of the young lady's shoulders is much higher than the other, a fact the painter had omitted in her portrait—by the by, it was only a medallion that was sent—merely the head, ha! ha!—and says, tutto schietto, just in two words, that unless a bag of three thousand additional dollars is produced, to give her form its required equipoise, he will go back to his own country as he came, and annul the contract! You should have seen the way Ridolfi was in. Nothing could bring him to reason for some time, and a lawsuit seemed inevitable. But then I and some others, who had not been consulted before, came forward, and we mediated, and we talked. Basta! there was a compromise, and the wedding took place the last Tuesday of Carnival. I was really glad, for I had it upon my heart to get that poor girl married.”
“I don't deny the sposo had some reason on his side,” said the other Nestor of the group, the Marchese Testaferrata. “But if Ridolfi had taken my advice, after what we heard of his vagabond dispositions—instead of thinking it rather a fine thing that his future son-in-law had been to Paris, and who knows where—he would have had nothing to say to the match. 'Senti, caro,' I said to him, 'I have lived a few more years than you, and I never yet saw any good from wandering about the world. Let each man stay among his own people, where his fathers lived and died. What did for our parents, is surely good enough for us.' But he thought he knew better, poveretto; he would not listen to me, so I washed my hands of the business.”
“What was he to do?” returned the other. “There was the girl to find a husband for, and he was obliged to adapt himself to what he could get. Besides, it is agreed that the sposi are to spend alternately six months with her family here, and six with his in Calabria.”
I could not help mentally pitying the young couple when I heard of this arrangement; but the next moment's reflection served to remind me that a ménage tête-à-tête between persons united under such circumstances could present nothing very inviting, and accordingly I withdrew my superfluous sympathy.
“And young Della Porta?” ashed Checchino, “he has got into a lawsuit about something like Ridolfi's affair—has he not?”
“No; not precisely. It appears he employed a regular sensale (broker) to negotiate his marriage with a rich heiress of Ancona; and as she was really a capital match, and several other candidates were in the field, he promised him a large percentage—I do not recollect how much—upon the total amount of her fortune, should he succeed in arranging it. Everything went on smoothly, and the marriage took place; but somehow our good friend did not find it convenient to fulfil his agreement. So the broker cites him before the Tribunal, where Della Porta justifies himself by declaring it is through other channels that success was obtained, and that the plaintiff's boasted influence alone would have been ineffectual. So they have gone regularly to law, and a fine affair they will make of it. To crown the whole, the father of the sposa is furious, for he finds the broker purposely deceived him about Della Porta's fortune; he is not half so well off as he gave him to understand. Ah, well, I can pity him, poor man: I pity all those who have daughters to marry.”
“And I am sure I pity those who have married his daughters!” cried Checchino, as the door closed upon the two old gentlemen, who always went away together at the same hour, to the evident relief of the rest of the company. “And that old Testaferrata, too, with his still more ultra-codino theories. He ought certainly to have been a Chinese. I remember when his grandson wanted to visit the Great Exhibition of London. Corpo di Bacco! he might as well have requested leave to go to the infernal regions.”
“Oh, as for that, I could tell you of scores of young men whose passports were refused them by our most enlightened Government for that dangerous expedition.”