A Siren

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

And one of the results of the Italian mode of living and feeling is seen in the very common family ambition of Churchmen.

The little Violante then, as has been said, was a personage of some importance, at least in the eyes of the Cardinal and his sister; and when she was left an orphan, was at once taken to live with her great-aunt, under the auspices of her Cardinal great-uncle. Both of those remaining members of the family would have preferred that the one remaining scion of the race should have been a boy; but—when the young Contessa should be married, of course her name should be thenceforward borne as part of that of the family; into which she should marry,—as is so commonly the case in Italy, (many of the oldest and most illustrious names in the peninsula having survived to the present day solely by virtue of such arrangements); and the Marliani be thus saved from extinction.

The young Contessa Violante, when she reached the age of young-ladyhood, had not the "fatal gift of beauty." Some people think that such a deprivation is the most unfortunate from which a woman can suffer. Others maintain that the absence of beauty is, upon the whole, no real misfortune. But however philosophers may settle this question, it can hardly be doubted that no young girl devoid of beauty, was ever yet persuaded that to be unattractive in appearance, was otherwise than a very, very sore affliction and misfortune. Nature often kindly mitigates the blow by making the unlovely girl unconscious of her want of beauty. But this was not the case with the young Contessa Violante Marliani.

Violante knew that she was not beautiful, or even pretty. Probably in her own estimate of herself she exaggerated her plainness. She was one of those persons who have not the gift of self-deception. Neither was she elegant in person. And yet there was something about her bearing, which would have prevented any one from imagining that she was other than a high-born lady. There was strong evidence of intellect in her face; and it was doubtless from within that came that quiet dignity of bearing that marked her.

And it was a dignity compatible and combined with the most perfect gentleness and almost humility of manner;—a dignity arising not from the consciousness of any high position or high qualities, but from the consciousness of that sort of gentle passive strength, which knows that no external circumstance, or difficulty, or pressure will avail to make its owner step but a hair's breadth aside from the path which conscience has marked as that of right and duty.

Violante was tall and slender, but her figure was not graceful. People did not say of her that she was slender; they said she was thin. And that was incontestably true. She was very thin. But her shoulders were high and square, and there was a sort of angularity and harshness about all the lines of her person. Her head seemed somewhat too large for her body; and the upper part of it seemed too large for the lower portion. She had a large, square forehead, white enough, but strongly marked with inequalities of surface, which, however much they might have delighted a phrenologist, were not conducive to girlish comeliness. Her hair was of the very light reddish quality, which has not a single touch in it of that rich sunny auburn, which makes so many heads charming, red though they be. Her face was perfectly white, yet not clear of complexion. And the pale grey eyes beneath their all but colourless brows completed the impression of a general want of vigour and vitality.

A little before the end of that year in which the Ravenna impresario performed his memorable journey to Milan with the results that have been recorded, Violante di Marliani reached her twenty-third birthday; a few months before that day the Marchese Ludovico had reached his twenty-second. It was a difference on the wrong side, but not so great as to form any serious objection to the proposed match. But twenty-three is a rather mature age for an Italian noble lady to reach unmarried. That such should have been the case with the Signora Violante was by no means because no suitor for her hand had ever presented himself. Several such aspirants had entered the lists. For the Contessa Violante was the great-niece of her great uncle. But some of these had appeared objectionable to the Cardinal and his sister;—who also were not at all likely to forget all that was due to the prospects arising from such a relationship, and all that it implied; and all of them had been objectionable to the young Contessa herself.

Violante's expectations, indeed, in that line, or in any other of all the different ways in which happiness may come to mortals in this world, was very small. For the first nine years of her life she had lived the only companion of a very miserable mother. And all that mother's misery had apparently come from the fact of her having a husband. Those first years of the child's life had been very sad; very monotonous, very depressing. Perhaps the effect of them did but confirm the speciality of an idiosyncrasy, which would have been much the same without them. But, at all events, when the child was brought to the house of her great-aunt, it seemed as if her mind and character had been too long and too uniformly toned to accord with sadness, for happiness to have any power of taking hold of her.

The old Marchesa Lanfredi, who took the young Contessa under her roof, and under her care, was not a bad sort of woman in the main; but she was thoroughly and consistently worldly, and judged everything from a worldly point of view. The Contessa Marliani was an important little lady in her eyes; and was treated, by her with an indulgence and consideration which she would have considered out of place in the case of a child not born to such expectations and such a destiny. She was not contented with her young relative; but was more perplexed and puzzled by her than angered. And as Violante grew towards womanhood, her great-aunt understood her less and less.

In the first place, she had a much stronger tendency towards devotion than the Marchese Lanfredi thought either natural or becoming in a young woman. Of course it was right and proper to pay due attention to one's religious duties; there was no necessity to tell her, a Cardinal Archbishop's sister, that, it was to be supposed. But she had a strong objection to excess in such matters. And to her mind Violante carried her devotional practices, and yet more her devotional ideas, to excess. Of the latter, indeed, the old Marchesa Lanfredi disapproved altogether. Young people had no ideas upon the subject in her time;—and the world was certainly a better world then than it had been since.