"Nor did he only crave for fleeting love, he strove to possess me from the first. He told the wounded intruder that I was his betrothed, and asserted his right of active defence. I had not given him the right until now, but I did not show over-much resistance when he claimed it. Once when I refused to listen to him, we were standing upon the platform of the companile, he threatened to throw himself down, and I appeased him with hasty consent, because I believed that he would fulfil his threat.
"One thing I must say for him--and that was my misfortune--he believed in my talent, my future. While others thought my performances pretty and taking, he was convinced that, with my voice, my appearance, after a little progress in singing, I should become great on the Italian stage. In imagination he foresaw my pecuniary, my brilliant successes, therefore he strove to possess me. I was an object of his calculations, and they had not deceived him. That he also found me personally desirable I will readily believe, for the world, the public, the newspapers, and above all, my mirror told me that I was beautiful.
"Baluzzi's passionate courtship, which inspired me with fear and dread--as he intimidated me with menaces if I should not do his will--I could no longer resist. I had sung my first more important part at the Pergola and been very successful; his calculations now gained a firmer basis, more resolutely he went at his object. At that time, it is true, I only perceived the expression of unlimited passion in all that he said or did, which at last intoxicated me, for nothing is more infectious than the soul's warmth. I gave my consent to the marriage; that it should be a secret one at first, we both agreed. Nothing is more fatal to young actresses than the title of Signora, it sets a barrier to those undecided wishes which spontaneously, like a superfluous element of nature, mingle with the admiration of beauty and artistic revelations; in such unexpressed emotions often lies the secret of success. A grand career lay before me, it must remain free and open to me. Baluzzi also desired this. We were married in the remote little church in the middle of the Orta lake. For the stage I continued to be Signora Bollini; but the heavy, fatal error of my life had been committed, it was no youthful folly whose consequences could be brushed away with a light hand. Marriage is indissoluble according to the laws of the Church, indissoluble according to those of the country. The priest's words had converted me into a slave for evermore. I did not feel it then, I was happy. This confession does not disgrace me, because felicity lies in our feelings, and delusion can call it forth as well as truth. Youth has its own rapture, its own bliss, and love is not so powerless as not to procure full enjoyment for all who are filled with it. Those were glorious days which I spent by the banks of the Orta lake. Baluzzi then seemed like a demi-god to me, but that bliss was of short duration.
"Returned to Florence, I soon remarked that he displayed several rougher sides of his nature, at first surprising, then alarming me. I perceived that he gave himself up to a wild life, which, merely to win and deceive me, he had interrupted for some time. He laid an embargo upon my cash-box, I was almost reduced to poverty; he was a gambler, a drunkard, and spent his nights with wild companions.
"The rapture of love, however, had given unthought-of wings to my talent; from part to part I attained greater success, and after the lapse of a year was engaged at the Pergola with a considerable salary, but, with the salary, increased Baluzzi's claims; often he demanded money for his journeys to Monaco, where he indulged his mania for play, whence he always returned a bankrupt. All my expostulations were vain, he met them with bitter scorn and the defiant manner of a lord and master.
"He gambled at Monaco, he engaged in equivocal business, and did I not send him sufficient money at any time, he pursued me like a spy, like a shadow. He read of my successes in the papers, he kept a book of them, he calculated my receipts. In Milan, not long after, began the era of my triumphs, the most distinguished circles were opened to me. I became intimate with Princess Dolgia, and she invited we to her villa at Stresa.
"It was then that I saw you for the first time, when my heart burned for you with glowing passion, when I experienced all the charms of love and life, and felt the shame of my chains doubly heavy; then, too, he spied upon me by the lake shore, he had been dissatisfied with the last remittance; he demanded more. At the same time his heart was inflamed with savage jealousy, or was it rather an emotion of hatred--he saw that we loved one another. I feared for your life, only a great price could assuage his wrath. But, carried away with delight that knew no bounds, as if to raise me in blissful dreams above the unworthiness with which my life was filled, I would not curb my glowing love, and greater than the sin of loving was the wicked doubt, whether the welfare of my soul was more imperilled by your love than by the mad passion of a brutal criminal.
"Since then my only thought has been for you and your love; he followed me upon my career of triumph which I commenced through Europe. I would fly from you, only entwine your love like a transient dream in my life--and ever again it urged me to seek you; therefore I came here and stayed so long on the shores of the northern lakes. It drew me to your native land, to your own home. I visited your Castle while you were absent; then I tore myself away from the glowing dreams of my longing--for almost two years I lingered in Russia. Owing to no fault of mine, Baluzzi had lost all traces of me for a considerable time; he had been guilty of some breach of the laws in Russia, and was, I know not why, banished to Siberia, but he discovered me again, and, like a leech, he clung to my heels.
"My increasing fame gave me the entrée to good society, I gained the friendship of princes and princesses. Intercourse with Baluzzi could only injure my name. Little as he fulfilled his duties as a chorus singer in Florence, he was known as one of those musical assistants who stood upon a subordinate step of the ladder of art, in those circles I had risen far above his horizon. I often let him feel it, and he rebelled with double defiance against my 'impudent overbearing.' Yet he saw that, for his own sake, he must not disturb my career; he agreed only to see and speak to me secretly, and before the world to assume the semblance of friendship; he often came after dissipated entertainments and asserted his rights, rousing my anger.
"Another fearful surprise awaited me. A falling scene had struck his shoulder; he persistently rejected all assistance from the surgeon, and from me. I went to see him, he lay in feverish sleep. I wanted to see the wound, that appeared to me as serious as his resistance was suspicious. I drew back the bandage and saw--even now the recollection fills me with horror--upon his shoulder the branded mark of a galley-slave! It was to a desperate criminal that I had given hand and heart!