Barbarossa, and Other Tales

by Paul Heyse

When the little man had got so far, he stretched himself back in his arm-chair, and closed his eyes with a deep sigh. After some minutes so spent he sprang up, walked several times to and fro in his dark shop, and seemed to make a strong effort to recover his self-control. At length he stood still beside me, laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, "What after all is human life, amico mio! A fleeting nothing! grass that is green in the field to-day, and to-morrow dry and withered. Hay, that the insatiable monster death crams his maw with! Basta! There is no waking the dead! She was a wonder of the world while she lived, she was wondrous still when her fair silent form was no longer warmed by a drop of life-blood, and her soul no more susceptible of joy or of sorrow. There she lay in the room yonder, and until she was buried I never left her night or day. When sleep overcame me, I still held a corner of her dress in my hand, and thought myself highly favoured in that at least in death I was nearer to her than any other. But by the second night another came. The door opened, and the captain stole in on tip-toe, as though he might still run a risk of disturbing her sleep. We did not exchange a word, only I began to weep like a child when he so mutely, and with such a look of despair in his eyes, approached the bier. Then he sat down beside her and gazed steadily upon her face. I went out, I could not endure his presence any more than if I myself had been her murderer.

"The next day when the funeral took place and the whole village was gathered in the church-yard, even before the priest had blessed the coffin, there rose a murmur and a stir among the dense crowd. And the captain, whom no one knew to be in the place, was seen striding through the people with a look on his face that terrified them all. He took his station close beside the grave, and threw two handsfull of earth on the coffin. Then he knelt down, and every one else was on his homeward way while he remained prostrate on the newly-made grave, as though he would force himself through the earth, and make his bed there. I was obliged to drag him away into my house, where for some days he remained as though in a trance, and I could hardly get him to take a spoonful of soup or a drop of wine. Four days passed before he seemed to come to himself at all, but even then he continued silent, and it was only in bidding me farewell, before he went off again in my little conveyance, that he begged me to oblige him by buying for him the house with the vineyard that he had once before looked at. In eight days he said he should return, and then make his home with us for life.

"I did not dare to remonstrate, although I could not approve the plan--partly because, of Domenico, of whom it was known that he had fled to the mountains, and joined a party of banditti, and partly because I had always been fond of the Swede; and could have wished that he should not by living near this grave keep the wound in his heart for ever bleeding. But, however, I knew well that he must have his own way, let Heaven or Hell oppose him, and so I laid myself out to render him any service that I could, for her sake who had been dear to me too, and to whom even beyond the grave I could still prove my good-will by befriending her beloved.

"And in a week's time he actually came and took possession of the house which stood about a mile from the village in a tolerably large vineyard, not far from the ravine where the chestnuts are; a lovely, solitary spot for a man at least who had no fear, good weapons at hand, and a faithful dog for companion. But the latter was not the only living creature that joined him. Erminia's sister Maddalena insisted on doing so, that she might wash and cook for him, and keep his house while he was on his rambles. Nothing could have suited him better, though people in general shunned her. But he knew that her dead sister had bequeathed her own love and fidelity towards him to this poor creature. And so the singular pair lived on in their solitude, and never seemed to concern themselves about the rest of the world.

"I went to see him a few days after his arrival. The house had once belonged to a Roman noble, and was still in tolerable condition, though the old furniture was covered with dust and cobwebs which Maddalena never disturbed. She had been used to worse in her mother's ruinous hovel under the roof of the fig-tree. But in the neglected garden she had somewhat bestirred herself, and planted a few beds with vegetables, and the locks of all the doors had been repaired and new bolts added. 'She insisted upon it,' said the captain; 'she is continually dreaming of an attack upon us.' 'Dreams are not always mere moonshine,' returned I, but he paid no attention. He went before me up the stone steps, and opened the door of the familiar salon, the balcony of which looked on the garden. This was the only room that he inhabited; he had made a bed out of an old divan, and cleaned the rubbish out of the corners singlehanded, but he could not stop up the countless holes in the walls through which bats and squirrels went in and out. My first glance fell on a stand against the wall, from which his beautiful fire-arms shone out, and as I was always fond of them I fell to examining these master-pieces one by one. 'Just turn round Angelo,' he said; 'there is something in the room that will interest you more.' It was a life-size picture of Erminia, and so strikingly like, that it gave me, as it were, a blow on the heart. During their early days in Rome, a first-rate painter and friend of his had begun this wondrous picture, and finished it with the exception of one hand and part of the dress. The head, which looked over the shoulder with an indescribable expression of proud bliss--actually beaming with love and beauty--was highly finished, and as I said, one fancied one saw the exquisite creature breathe. I could not speak a word, but I stood a full half-hour motionless before it, from time to time wiping away the tears which obscured the picture. It was then he told me for the first time, that on the very day when she left him he had received a letter from an old uncle, his only remaining relative, on whose consent to his marriage he had laid great stress. Then he tried to tell me something about those happy weeks in Rome, but his voice suddenly gave way, and he went into the next room. I could not venture to follow him, and as he did not return I concluded I was not wished for any longer, and quietly crept down the steps accompanied only by the great dog, who looked into my face as much as to say that he knew all about his master's grief.

"I now resolved to wait until he should seek me out, but I might have waited long! However, I sometimes saw Maddalena in the market or one of the shops, and twice I spoke to her, asked for Signor Gustavo, and heard that he was well, and if not out shooting was always reading books, and allowed no one to enter, not even the priest, who had felt it his duty to enquire for the mourner. In our village, where everyone had been so enraged against him, the tide turned gradually in his favour. People remembered the merry evenings over the wine-barrel, and his courteous and sociable ways, and in time the women who had been the most violent were quite conquered by his solitary sorrow. Many a one, I suspect, would not have required much pressing to lend him her company in that lonely villa, if he had only held up a finger. But month after month passed by, and all went on in the old way.

"One night towards the end of August I had a headache, having drunk more wine than usual, and the mosquitoes were more unconscionable than ever: so that I sat up in bed, and began to think whether I had not better strike a light and write some verses. All of a sudden through the stillness of night I heard two shots, then again others, and from the direction in which they came I judged that they must be somewhere near the captain's villa. 'Corpo della Madonna!' thought I, 'what can he be about! Is he shooting bats or owls?' But they did not sound like the English rifle of Signor Gustavo, and they succeeded each other too rapidly and irregularly to be fired by any one man, and all at once I jumped horrified out of bed, for I no longer had any doubt about it,--what I had long silently feared had happened: Il Rosso and his banditti had fallen upon the lonely man, and they were fighting there in the vineyard for life and death. I got on my clothes, snatched a pair of old pistols from the wall, wakened up my apprentice, and told him to run through the streets, and call out 'help! murder!' as loud as ever he could. I myself knocked up a couple of neighbours, and encouraged all who were already roused to follow me. When we came down from the village we were a party of ten or twelve, each armed with rifle or pistol. And to be sure the firing did come from the vineyard, and we to whom the moon fortunately served instead of lanterns, scrambled over hedge and ditch towards the house, where we saw firing going on from the windows. That comforted me somewhat. He had withdrawn then into his fortress, and those rascals had to content themselves with firing into the room at him at random. I was just about to explain my plan of operations to our party,--how we were to form four divisions, surround the enemy, and attack him in the rear; but some out-post must have observed us, for there was a shrill whistle, and at the same moment the attack came to an end, and here and there where the moon shone on the open space between the rocks and the wood, we saw the band scatter, some of them so lame that we might have captured them if that had been our aim--over and above defending the captain--to take Il Rosso, our own fellow-citizen, prisoner. But we wished to spare his father the pain of that, and thanked God that we had come just in time, for at our loud call we saw Signor Gustavo step out on the balcony into the bright moonlight, and wave a white handkerchief to us. But when we saw the handkerchief nearer, it proved by no means pure white, but had large spots of blood, from a bullet having grazed his temple. It was nothing of any consequence, and did not prevent the captain sitting out of doors with me the next morning when all the rest had gone to their homes. Only Maddalena in her passionate way, besotted with the man in spite of her sister's story, could not be tranquillised, and went on searching for one healing herb after the other, and he had to apply them all to prevent her becoming quite frantic. The good creature, whose sleep was like a cat's, was aware of footsteps creeping about the house even before the dog heard them; and she ran up to wake her master. On the first bandit who placed a ladder against the balcony, she bestowed such a blow on the head with the barrel of a gun, that he fell backwards, and the ladder with him. And so there she was at hand to load one rifle after the other, and indeed every now and then she herself took a shot through the window, and swore with might and main that she had sent a ball through the coat of the murderous villain Il Rosso himself, and that he gave a great start but went on firing. As for the room, it had a ruinous aspect, not a pane was whole, the plaster had fallen in great sheets from the ceiling, and Erminia's picture had been struck in two places, but fortunately only the dress and the frame were injured. When the day began to break, the Captain and the dog too did get a few hours sleep, but Maddalena would not hear of it, although for the present the cut-throats had been scared away.

"I spent the next day at the villa, and kept imploring my friend to leave the district. Indeed all the reasonable people from the village who came to see the battle-field gave the same advice. He most obstinately refused to do so. It was only on the following day when the Roman Prefect of Police came over to keep up appearances, and draw up a protocol, by way of doing something, that he let himself be turned from his foolhardy resolve. 'I most earnestly advise you,' said the official, a monsignore N----, 'as soon as possible to leave the mountains, and indeed the country itself. A youth who witnessed the attack of the bandits--if indeed he were not one of them--has told me that more than one bullet has been cast for you; that Il Rosso has sworn upon the host that he will pay you off. Were I to remain here I could only protect you so long as you kept by my side. But if you took again to your lonely wanderings through the ravines you might expect out of every bush a shot that would consign you to another world.'

"And so at last he made up his mind to leave, and that at once, in the carriage of the Prefect of Police. When I pressed his hand at parting, 'Now then, Signor Gustavo,' said I, 'this will certainly be the last time we two ever meet on earth.' 'Who knows?' he replied. 'After all I am half a countryman of yours, and have no other home.' Then he gave me some directions with regard to Maddalena. She was not to leave the villa, nor did the captain think of selling it. If he failed to return within a certain number of years, she was to consider the house and garden her own property, and meanwhile to appropriate their profits. To the priest he gave in token of gratitude for the assistance rendered him by the villagers, a considerable sum for the poor. On me he bestowed a small picture of Lord Byron, which he had always carried about with him. The portrait of Erminia he had rolled up in a tin cylinder, and that and his fire-arms were all that he took away with him. So we parted, and as I believed, never to meet again, and Maddalena, who insisted upon going with him, and clung like a wild cat to the carriage, had to be forcibly dragged off and locked into the house till it had rolled far away.

"However that very night, so soon as they left off watching her, she vanished, and for days ran up and down the streets of Rome like a maniac, looking in vain for her master. At last she returned, and hobbled about the villa alone, but she let everything go to waste; the grapes might rot on the vines, and the fruit on the trees, rather than she take the trouble of gathering them and carrying them to market. She had always been idle, indeed, as a toad--a creature she resembled in appearance too--and it was only when it concerned the captain that she could work and bestir herself like three people in one.