Читать книгу Giannella - Hugh Mrs. Fraser - Страница 6

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The Principessa di Santafede was a lady of gravely gracious manners, iron prejudices and active piety, and she entertained a profound belief in the necessity of her own class to the well-being of the world. So far as she was concerned secular history contained but one record worthy of study and imitation, the record of the noble houses of Rome. Each tradition and regulation connected with these was not only a rubric but a dogma. To believe and act thereupon was to find social salvation; all who rejected these articles of faith perish from her consciousness; their names were erased from her "libro d'oro," and they ceased to be. No taint of novelty had cast its shadow over her education. Except that the history books were thicker and the spelling modernized, the teaching she received in the convent along with all the other noble damsels in Rome was the same as that which had been bestowed on her ancestresses for generations past. It had proved entirely sufficient for those eminent ladies, and neither parents nor instructors could see any reason for changing a detail of it. There would be Roman nobles so long as the world lasted; their vast establishments would move ponderously and surely as they had always moved; and a girl brought from her convent to be placed at the head of such an establishment had but to leave its conduct to the responsible persons, the major-domos, and stewards, and housekeepers, descended from many generations of officials who had served the same "Eccellentissima Casa" in the same capacities. She had but to watch and copy her seniors in order to fulfill her obligations in society, in matrimony, in maternity, to the complete satisfaction of all concerned. Life was quite simple if only people did their duty.

Political crises would occur, of course; the riots and revolutions of 1848, for instance, had been most disturbing. But they had only strengthened the beliefs of right-thinking persons, for, behold, they had passed by like a wave of the sea breaking against the rocks, leaving everything as it was before and as it would be "in sæcula sæculorum" so far as Rome was concerned—and Rome was the world.

Prince Santafede had died when their only son was quite a child, and the responsibilities thus devolving on her sufficiently accounted for his widow's grave outlook on life. It was, however, a peaceful and happy life, clouded by few real anxieties, since Onorato had now reached the age of eighteen without giving any serious trouble. He was a cheerful, warm-hearted boy, with no more fixed aversion to study than the remainder of his contemporaries. Accompanied by his tutor, a learned ecclesiastic, he had attended the proper lectures at the university, and, though his education included only the classics and humanities, it had given him all that was then required of a gentleman, fluent and elegant Latin, a working acquaintance with his own and foreign literatures, charming manners, and a fitting sense of what was due to himself and others. If there was one cloud in his mother's large sky, it was caused by the fact that he did not take her views on the sacredness of family traditions in one or two minor directions, notably that of the expenditure on the stables. Onorato had no other extravagances, but he insisted on riding and driving magnificent imported horses, declaring that it was a public duty to set a higher standard than the prevailing one in such matters. The Princess and Onorato's lamented father had been perfectly contented with their six pairs of coal-black horses, bred on their own lands with hundreds of others destined to be sold all over Italy and Austria. The animals had been driven and cared for by coachmen and grooms also born on the estates; and the Princess could not imagine anything more splendid and appropriate than the high calèche on C. springs in which she took her daily airing; the deep, hearse-like berline swung on leather bands, which carried her to parties, seemed the perfection of comfort and safety; and she felt something like reverence for the yellow stage coach, with blazoned panels and glass sides, with gold-fringed hammercloth and tasseled straps to which the three dazzlingly arrayed footmen hung behind. It was only brought out on grand occasions, for audiences with the Pope or Ambassadors' receptions, and the Princess felt as if her skies were falling when her son, a "Principe del Solio" (supporter of the throne), climbing into it in all his magnificence of doublet and ruff, gold chain and sword, to go and attend the Holy Father on Easter morning, called it a "lumbering old pumpkin," and declared that if he had his way he would make a bonfire of it in the courtyard. His revolutionary ideas had not only demonstrated themselves by importing foreign horses, but by filling the coachhouses with French carriages and the stables with English grooms, barbarians who, while fulfilling their other duties faithfully enough, grumbled at having to go to church, and thus deeply scandalized the rest of the well-drilled household.

The Princess's brother, Cardinal Cestaldini, Professor Bianchi's learned patron and friend, tried to console his sister for her son's equine irregularities by pointing out that they were not so extravagant as they appeared, since Onorato was bent on improving the Roman breed and thus adding considerable value to the Santafede horse farms; also that a young man might spend his money on worse things than horses. This was at all events an innocent taste, and, seeing that Onorato had no inclination for deeply serious pursuits, and was too young to get married—well, his mother must be patient and not estrange him by any undue severity. Paolo Cestaldini's own happy lot inspired him with much indulgence for those less blessed. He felt that few were as fortunate as himself, delivered from worldly distractions at the start by what he considered the undeserved grace of a religious vocation, and then provided with the most elevating and beneficent occupation for his leisure. In the delights of Art and Archæology, subjects which he could discuss with the most learned, he found an inexhaustible source of interest and recreation. Incapable of an ungenerous or insincere thought, he was merciful and gentle in his judgment of others. Religion, which had built up round his sister a wall of defense against the temptations which assault those in the world, had turned the other side of its golden shield to him, and mellowed and enriched the man's ascetic nature and broadened his mind while it refined his appreciations. To the married woman it was a fortress, to the lonely prelate, a garden.

The Princess listened rather despondently to her brother's encouraging exhortations. They did not alter her conviction that Onorato was on the wrong road, and she resolved to pray more earnestly (good soul, that would hardly have been possible) and to apply herself with more fervor to her many works of charity in order to obtain his reformation. Full of these thoughts, she stopped at the church of San Severino on her way home, dismissed her carriage, since the Palazzo Santafede was only a few hundred yards away, and found a good deal of comfort in saying her prayers in the silent, dusky church.

Emerging half-an-hour later, she saw just before her in the street, a servant woman leading a little girl by the hand. The airy poise of the little figure, the light step and quick turn of the small head, took the Princess's fancy. Above all, the shining golden braids hanging down to the child's waist aroused her admiration, for to be fair is to be loved, in dark Romagna. Mariuccia and Giannella, unconscious that their unapproachably illustrious landlady was following them, passed up the street, turned into the piazza, and disappeared under the arched entrance of the palace. By the time the Princess reached it, they were lost to view round the turn of the colonnade. She paused to ask the porter, who was grounding his tasseled staff and sweeping the pavement with his hat, if he could tell her who the child was. Did she belong to anyone in the palazzo?

The Excellency was informed that the woman conducting her was Professor Bianchi's servant, and that the little girl had been brought by a contadina from the country a few days before. Nothing more was known. The "donna" rarely spoke to anyone. Did the Excellency wish inquiries to be made?

Certainly not, the Princess replied, Professor Bianchi's family was his private affair. She discouraged all gossip about her tenants. Ferretti, the mæstro di casa, was responsible for them and she never interfered with his wise and careful management. Still, he had told her, when letting the rooms, that the Professor was a bachelor; and Bianchi was sufficiently distinguished in his own learned circle for his rather crabbed characteristics to have become more or less known to the public. The Princess, as she mounted the broad marble stairs to her own apartment, wondered whether the child were some relation of his, and felt a certain pity for the bright little thing if she were really condemned to live with the parsimonious man of science and his grim-looking servant.

She was soon to know more about Giannella. Mariuccia was just now terribly puzzled by a new responsibility which immediately faced her. At seven years of age children must begin to go to school, and how was this to be managed for Giannella? There were free schools all over the city, kept by the nuns for the children of the poor. The little ones were collected from their homes in the morning by trusty persons who called for them and brought them back in the evening, receiving a tiny monthly sum from the parents for the service. That was all very well, and the nuns took fine care of the small people during the day; but Mariuccia was obstinately set on one point, and she meant to fight for her convictions; la Giannella was a lady. Providence above seemed to have overlooked the fact and had steadily refused to furnish the wherewithal to keep it before the eyes of the world; but the self-constituted representative of Providence on earth would take no denial on the subject, and nothing would have induced her to let Giannella be herded with the children of the city plebeians, to learn their rough ways, their common speech, to remember when she grew up that she had been as one of them. It was one thing to be a paying nursling in the clean, rich country, cared for and cherished by pious, respectable people like Stefano and Candida, who kept their boys and girls in the fear of God and would have punished a bad word, an act of disobedience or even a disrespectful glance, with a sound beating; it was quite another to mix with low-born children of the city, whose parents, coming from no one knew where, owned no feudal master, no foot of land, and had not been obliged to live up to the stern standard of morals and manners required in the proud "castelli." Giannella had learned her catechism and many pretty hymns from the parish priest, and the first elements of reading from some Franciscan nuns at Castel Gandolfo. Who was to take up the good work and endow her with all the mysterious instruction which it seemed a lady should possess by the time her hair went up and her skirts came down?