The recollection of Mascalbruni had been almost effaced from his mind; but, had he met him face to face, it is not unlikely that he would have remembered the villain who had destroyed the hopes of his family, and marred their happiness for ever.
For some time he never went out at night unaccompanied by his wife, and always in a carriage. But a day came when he happened to dine without her in the Rue St. Honoré. The weather being fine, and the party a late one, he sent away his cabriolet, and after midnight proceeded to walk home. Paris was at that time very badly lighted; the reverberées at a vast distance apart, suspended between the houses, giving a very dim and feeble ray. Few persons—there being then no trottoirs—were walking at that hour; and it so happened that not a soul was stirring the whole length of the street. But, within a few yards of his own door, the figure I have described rushed from under the shadow of a porte cochère, and plunged a dagger in his heart. He fell without a groan, and lay there till the patrol passed, when he was conveyed, cold and lifeless, to the arms of his bride, who was anxiously awaiting his return. Her agony I shall not make the attempt to depict: there are some sorrows that defy description.
Notwithstanding the boasted excellence of the Parisian police, the author of this crime, who I need not say was Mascalbruni, remained undiscovered.
Strange as it may appear, I am enabled to connect two more links in the chain of this ruffian's history, and thus, as it were, to become his biographer. Having been in town at the period when he was in the zenith of his glory, and being slightly acquainted with the family whom, like a pestilence, it was his lot to destroy and blight, I was well acquainted with his person, and he with mine; indeed, once seen, it was not easy to mistake his.
After two winters at Naples, I travelled, by the way of Ravenna and Rimini, to Venice. The carnival was drawing to a close, and, on quitting a soirée at Madame Benzon's, I repaired to the Ridotta. The place was crowded to excess with that mercurial population, who during this saturnalia, particularly its last nights, mingle in one orgie, and seem to endeavour, by a kind of intoxication of the senses, and general licentiousness, to drown the memory of the destitution and wretchedness to which the iron despotism of the Austrian has reduced them. The scene had a sort of magnetic attraction in it.
I had neither mask nor domino, but it is considered rather distingué for men to appear without them; and, as I had no love-affair to carry on, it was no bad means of obtaining one, had I been so inclined.
Among the other groups, I observed two persons who went intriguing round the salle, appearing to know the secrets of many of their acquaintances, whom it seemed their delight to torment and persecute, and whom, notwithstanding their masks, they had detected by the voice, which, however attempted to be disguised, betrays more than the eyes, or even the mouth, though it is the great seat of expression. The pair wore fancy dresses. The domino of the man was of Persian or Turkish manufacture, a rich silk with a purple ground, in which were inwoven palm-leaves of gold, The costume of the lady, who seemed of a portly figure, not the most symmetrical, was a rich Venetian brocade, such as we see in the gorgeous pictures of Paul Veronese, and much in use during the dogal times of the republic. As they passed me, I heard the lady say, looking at me, "That is a foreigner." "Si signora, è Inglese," was the reply; "lo conosco." Who this could be who knew me,—me, almost a stranger at Venice, I was curious to discover. By the slow and drawling accent peculiar to the Romans, I felt satisfied he was one, and fancied that I had heard that voice before,—that it was not altogether unfamiliar to me.
I was desirous of unravelling the secret, for such it was, as the man did not address me; and I remained at the Ridotta much later than I should otherwise have done, in order to find out my unknown acquaintance. I therefore kept my eye on the couple, hoping that accident might favour my wish.
On the last nights of the carnival it is common to sup at the Ridotta, and I at length watched the incognito into a box with his inamorata, where he took off his mask, and whom should I discover under it but the identical hero of romance, the villain Mascalbruni.
He was an acquaintance who might well shun my recognition, and I was not anxious he should see I had attracted his observation. As I was returning to my hotel on the Grand Canal, I asked the gondolier if he knew one Signor Mascalbruni. These boatmen are a kind of Figaros, and, like the agents of the Austrian police, are acquainted with the names and address of almost every resident in Venice, especially of those who frequent the public places. The man, however, did not know my friend by that name,—perhaps he had changed it. But when I described his costume, he said that the signor was the cavalier servente of a Russian princess, who had taken for a year one of the largest palaces in Venice. "Il signor," he added, "canta come un angelo."