It happened in this case, as often happens in many other circumstances, that a word, a look, or the tone of a voice impresses, persuades, and influences, and yet (perhaps for the happiness of the human race) does not reveal the inner secrets of the soul.
My engagement was announced the next day, and the last of May appointed for the marriage. There was a month before the time—a month the remembrance of which still stands out in my life like a season of enchantment. The restored confidence of my father, joined to the thought of our approaching separation, had revived all the fondness of his former affection. Lorenzo had succeeded in making him regret the excess of his severity towards me. Indebted to him, therefore, for the return of my father's love as well as the gift of his own, he seemed like some beneficent genie who had dispersed every cloud, and restored to my youth the warm, golden light of the sun. I thanked him for this without any circumlocution, and sometimes in so warm a manner that he must have been the most unpresuming of men to suppose me indifferent to the sentiments he so often expressed, though not so ardently as to disturb me. He respected the request I made the first day. He suffered me to remain the child I still was, in spite of having experienced such varied emotions. Perhaps the strong contrast he thus found in me formed a study not devoid of interest to a man blasé by all he had seen and encountered in the world.
The preparations for so brilliant a marriage completely filled up the time of the busy Ottavia, who was charged by my father to omit nothing in the way of dress requisite for the fiancée of the Duca di Valenzano. Mario, prouder than he was willing to acknowledge of an alliance that reflected lustre on the whole family, showed himself friendly and satisfied. Besides, the transformation that had taken place in my whole appearance within a few months, as well as in my way of life, had softened his manner towards me; and the more because he attributed the merit of it to himself, and often repeated that, had it not been for him, my father would not have had the courage to persevere in a severity that had had so salutary a result. He loved me, however, as I have had occasion in the course of my life to know; but as there are people in the world who are kind, and yet are not sympathetic, so there are also many who on certain occasions manifest some feeling, and yet are not kind. Mario was of the latter class. At certain times, on great occasions, he seemed to have a heart capable of affection and devotedness; but, as a general thing, it was rather evil than good he discovered in [pg 462] everything and everybody, without excepting even those with whom he was most intimately connected, and perhaps in them above all.
Livia alone, after the first few days, seemed to have a shade of thoughtfulness and anxiety mingled with her joy, and Mario, who observed it, unhesitatingly declared it was caused by the prospect of remaining an old maid, doubly vexatious now her younger sister was about to ascend before her very eyes to the pinnacle of rank and fortune. But I knew Livia better than he, and, though unable to read all that was passing in her soul at that time, I was sure that no comparison of that kind, or any dissatisfied consideration of herself, had ever crossed her mind.
But I did not suspect that her pure, transparent nature, as well as the instinct of clear-sighted affection, enabled her to see some threatening signs in the heavens above me that seemed to every one else so brilliant with its sun and cloudless azure. But the die was cast, and it would have been useless to warn as well as dangerous to disturb me. She therefore confined herself to reminding me of all my mother's pious counsels. She made me promise never to forget them, and she, too, promised to pray for me. But when I told her she must continue to aid me with her advice, and remain true to her rôle of my guardian angel, she shook her head, and remained silent.
One day, when I spoke in this way, she replied: “Do not be under any illusion, Ginevra. Marriage is like death. One may prepare for it, one may be aided by the counsels, the prayers, and the encouragement of friends till the last moment; but once the line is crossed, as the soul after death finds itself alone in the presence of its God, its heavenly bridegroom, to be eternally blessed by his love or cursed by its privation, so the wife finds herself alone in the world with her husband. There is no happiness for her but in their mutual affection. If this exists, she possesses the greatest happiness this world can afford. If deprived of it, she lacks everything. The world will be only a void, and she may still consider herself fortunate, if this void is filled by sorrow, and not by sin!...”
“What you say is frightful.”
“Yes, it is frightful; therefore I have never been able to covet so terrible a bondage. O my dear Gina! may God watch over you....”
“You terrify me, Livia. I assure you I should never have regarded marriage under so serious an aspect, from the way in which people around us enter into it.”
Livia blushed, and her eyes, generally so soft, assumed an expression of thoughtfulness and severity.