Barbarossa, and Other Tales

by Paul Heyse

"But about a week later, I stood before my shop-door in the twilight deciphering a letter I had just received, in which a friend in Rome told me he had read aloud my sonnets at a meeting of a poetical society--the 'Arcadia'--and that amidst general approval I had been elected honorary member, which so surprised and pleased me, that for the moment I was not aware of what was going on about me, till I heard Il Rosso's voice so loud and threatening that it woke me out of all my cogitations. Looking up I saw him standing by the fountain not ten yards from my door, pale as a corpse, and quite unlike the smart fellow he used to be, and not far from where he was,--the pitcher that she had intended to fill left standing on the edge of the fountain, and her left hand pressing her side,--stood Erminia, and as it happened no one else was in sight. I wondered what both could be about, as they had avoided each other for months past. But Il Rosso did not keep me long in suspense. 'Hear me, Erminia,' he said, as though he were reading out a sentence of death to some convicted criminal in the hearing of all the world: 'It is lucky that we have met here. True we have no longer any dealings with each other, but as I once loved you, even though you trampled my love under your feet, I would still warn you. Take heed to yourself, Erminia, and be careful what you do. I know one who has sworn your death if any stranger ever carries off what you have refused to your own people; and if we are not good enough to make you an honourable wife, we are at least men enough to help a lost girl out of the world; and so tell your fine gentleman to look out against accidents, for the bullets we cast hereabouts can hit as well as those of Swedish lead; and so God be with you, Erminia. I have nothing further to say.'

"He pressed his hat on his brows, threw a glance around, and went off with a quick step. The girl said not a word, and as for me I was so bewildered by his passionate outburst, that not till she had lifted her pitcher to her head, and was preparing to leave, did I regain the power of speech. 'Erminia,' I said, going close up to her, 'who does he mean by the stranger?' 'He is a fool,' she replied without looking at me, but blushing deeply. 'I hope so indeed,' said I, 'for if there were any meaning in his words I should be sorry for you, Erminia.' 'I want no one's pity,' was her curt reply; and then she went off without so much as good night, and from the defiance of her manner I first discovered that she was really implicated. And being sincerely her well-wisher I hurried after her, so as to walk on by her side. 'You know me to be your friend,' said I, 'if you will not believe Domenico, believe me Erminia, it will be your ruin if you have anything to do with the captain. He is a fine fellow, but he will not marry you, Erminia, for all that; indeed, he cannot, for he is a Lutheran, but, in addition, he would not wish it. Therefore, even if Il Rosso did not make good his threat, nothing but mischief could come of the affair,' and so on, according as my friendship for the girl inspired me. She, meanwhile, walked straight on in silence without once raising her eyes. So at length I left her with a faint hope of having made some impression on her mind. The great dog came to meet me at the door of my house, which told me that his master was returned from shooting. I went up to his room at once, and found him with his English rifle in his hand, having taken it to pieces to clean, and a couple of dead birds before him. 'You have lost something, Sor Gustavo,' said I, 'there on the market place your secrets have been discussed so loudly, that all the gossips in the village are acquainted with them.' And I went on to tell him of Redbeard's threats, adding that he did not know our people if he supposed they were not in earnest, and that if he really had triumphed and won Erminia's coy heart, he ought for both their sakes to be on his guard and break it off, and get out of the scrape the best way he could. And being once fairly started I could not refrain from taking Domenico's part, and declaring that all friendship would be at an end between us if he made Erminia unhappy. There were plenty of others who would be no great loss. But to see the Pearl of the whole Sabina trampled in the mire was what I could not endure, and so I told him to his face that if I discovered him going after Erminia, I could no longer be his host, and that he might look out for some other quarters. To all this he answered nothing further than what Erminia had once told me, 'You are not over wise, Fra Angelico,' and continued polishing up the locks and barrel of his rifle, and puffing the blue smoke of his cigar through his fair moustachios. At last I left him even more disgusted with his cunning cold-bloodedness than with the affair itself, and I did not see him till the noon of the next day, when he entered my room with a letter in his hand which he told me necessitated his immediate departure, and as it was too late for the mail, he requested me to lend him my little vehicle. There was nothing I was more glad to do, not indeed that I laid much stress upon the letter, but rather believed that it was my own eloquence that had induced him to leave us, and to break off that luckless love-affair in good time. And so I let him have my apprentice, as I myself had no time to drive him to Rome, and we parted the best of friends.

"It was his intention, he told me, to travel to Greece in order to visit Lord Byron's grave, and he promised to write to me as soon as he got there. The rogue! He thought as little of Greece as I of a journey to the moon. But what would you have? A mighty spell was on him, and held him down with a hundred meshes in the Evil One's net, so that he could look me, his best friend, in the face and tell me so confounded a lie as this!

"That evening I went to bed with the consciousness of having done my duty, and saved two human lives. Nay I was even planning a lyric on the subject, which would have been by no means one of my worst, though a convincing proof that poets are no prophets. For would you believe it, on the following afternoon my lad returned home with the vehicle, and the first thing he did after taking the horse to the stable and feeding him, was to ask me if Signor Gustavo had told me they were to take a stranger with them, for that about two miles from the village, where the evergreen oak stands near the old tomb, this stranger had beckoned to them, and then jumped so quickly into the conveyance, that he, Carlino, never got a good look at his features. But in spite of that alacrity, and of the manly attire,--which by the way belonged to Signor Gustavo's wardrobe,--he was ready to take his oath that this stranger was no other than Erminia.

"I will not detain you by describing the effect this discovery had on me. I bound the youth down most solemnly to hold his peace about it. But what could that avail! The very next day there was not an old woman who entered my shop for a penny-worth of anything who did not inform me that Erminia had gone off to Rome with the captain, and had sent a message to her mother to the effect that she should not indeed return, but would never forget that she was her daughter. And, moreover, she had left behind for her sister Maddalena whom she must have taken into her confidence, all her clothes and other effects, and a bag of money--probably from the Captain--so that their mother might want for nothing.

"That this news should work upon the young village-folk like valerian upon cats, you, my friend, will easily believe. Had we been in the old times of Greeks and Trojans, Domenico would easily have assembled an army to pursue and recover his lost Helen. But in spite of all that was said and shrieked, spite of fury and curses, nothing came of it, and soon it seemed as though these braggadocios were ashamed of even uttering the name of the girl who had refused them all to go off at last with a heretic and barbarian. There were only two who could not forget her. I was one, and it was in vain I sought consolation from the muses. The other was Domenico Il Rosso, in whose eyes anybody with an insight into human nature might easily have read that he was brooding over desperate deeds.

"And too surely before a month had elapsed since Erminia's flight all my fears were realised. I remember the day as tho' it were yesterday: it was on a Thursday--and the heat was such that the flies on the wall were giddy, and at noon no Christian soul ventured out. I had closed my shop-door, and all the shutters, and lay between sleeping and waking in this very chair where I now sit. There was nothing to be heard but the sleepy drip-drop of the fountain, and the rustling of dry herbs on the counter, over which my tame canary-bird was hopping to-and-fro. Suddenly I fancied I heard some one knock at the shop-door, and call my name, and annoyed at being disturbed, I rubbed my eyes awake, and prepared to see whether any one had really been taken suddenly ill. The knocking was repeated, louder and quicker, as if in urgent haste, and I had my hand on the door-handle when I heard a dreadful scream, 'Jesus, Maria, have mercy on me!' I tore open the door, and saw a woman sink on the threshold, from whose breast there gushed such a stream of blood, that while I stooped to raise her I was reddened from top to toe. Three steps off with a face like ashes stood Domenico, with eyes wide-opened as though his crime had killed him too. 'Domenico,' I cried, 'what hast thou done? Cursed be thy hand which has wrought this horrible deed.' 'Amen,' he replied, 'it was her fate. Now let him come.' And so saying he turned round--for some horror-stricken faces began to appear at the windows--and slowly traversed the sun-lit piazza till he reached the gateway, where he disappeared like a spectre.

"Meanwhile I held the poor gasping frame in my arms, almost swooning myself from grief and terror. I called to my maid-servant, the neighbours rushed out, and so we carried her in, and laid her on a bed. But I saw too plainly that there was nothing to be done, and so I sent the lad off as fast as he could go to fetch a priest. I scarcely hoped though that she would live long enough to see him, so bending down I asked her if she had anything to communicate. She husbanded her last breath to ask me how her mother was. 'Just the same as for a month past,' I replied. Then her dying breast heaved a deep sigh, and she gasped out: 'Then he deceived me!' 'Who?' said I. She felt for her pocket, and drew out a letter, the tenor of which was that if she wished to find her mother still alive she must set out without delay, for that the illness was a mortal one. This letter bore the priest's signature, but was not in his handwriting. I made out from the few words that she with difficulty whispered, that a youth from our village had secretly delivered it to her the evening before. How he had found out her lodging in Rome she had no idea, for she was living most privately, and not in the same house as her lover, who had been to see her as usual in the evening, and on reading the letter had forbidden her to go home, saying that it was only a plot to allure her to destruction, and she herself had taken that view of it, and promised him not to go. But in the morning when she was alone, a fear came over her that it might after all turn out to be true, and if so, her mother would die and would curse her own child on her death-bed. So she took a carriage, and promised the driver a double fare if he would take her in half the usual time. She got out, however, at the foot of the hill, wishing to reach her mother's house alone and unobserved. But as soon as she neared the first houses she had a sense of some one following her, and for protection she ran rather than walked towards my door, when suddenly Domenico appeared behind her, and called out, without however looking at her: 'What, Erminia, do we see you here again? That is well, it was time you should come to your senses!' 'What have you to do with my senses?' she replied; 'you have no hold upon me for good or bad.' 'Indeed!' said he, drawing closer and closer, 'all the same one does not like the disgrace to attach to our village of having no young man worthy of such a jewel. Probably you have now found out that your foreigner was but a poor make-believe, like the rest, and that you would do better to remain at home.' And she. 'What I think of him is my affair. Why do you always come after me? You knew long ago what I think of you.' Then seizing her arm he said in a hoarse voice, 'For the last time, Erminia, I give you warning. Renounce him, or both you and he will have to rue it. I cannot prevent your loving him, but that he should rob you of honour and happiness, that as sure as GOD lives I will prevent and that shortly. Do you understand me?' Then she stood still, looked him full in the face, and said, 'You and no one else wrote that letter.' And he, without answering, went on as before. 'Will you give him up and remain here?' Then when she continued silent, and shook her head resolutely, he three times repeated the same question. 'Will you, Erminia, give him up and remain here?' And when she pretended not even to be aware that any one was speaking to her, but quickened her steps fearing that he might do her some violence in the deserted piazza, she suddenly felt his hand grasp her arm as in a vice, heard the words, 'To hell, then, with your Lutheran,' and in the same moment fell down mortally wounded close to my door.

"And now she had no wish, she said, but that her lover should forgive her for leaving him against his will; she expiated it dearly enough. He had meant to make her his wife, and take her to his own home. Instead of that she must go down into the grave, and who could say whether the Virgin Mary would intercede for her; and whether she should ever pass out of the pains of purgatory into the Heavenly Paradise!

"That was the last sentence that crossed her lips, then her head sank back, and she was dead!"