But Ottavio’s longing to see the home of his forbears, the state over which some of them had ruled, of which he was by right of blood and birth a patrician, was not to be denied. The Sagradi were princes of Naxos, a title which in itself proclaimed their antiquity and distinction, announcing that the greatness of their house had been synchronous with the greatest days of Venice. And in Venice their name was at once famous and infamous, a name that had found place in the Golden Book, but had since been erased from it.
WHEN Flavia reminded him of this, it merely served to excite that ready laughter of his, tinged now with scorn. “I have said that I shall travel in a borrowed name; to suppose otherwise is to prove none foolish but yourself.”
Marcantonio waved a delicate hand in a cloud of lace. “To adventure life in a worthy cause is the duty of a patrician. To hazard it from inquisitiveness, as Flavia rightly says, is merely ignoble. A vulgarity.”
“If they take off your head, Ottavio, I shall not wear mourning for you,” Flavia threatened him.
“I don’t believe you, little hypocrite. You are too conscious that black becomes you.”
Marcantonio sighed. “Useless, I see, to argue. I will order masses for the repose of your soul.”
But it would have needed more than this to intimidate Ottavio. He departed in state, with a train such as became a patrician who was by right of birth a prince of Naxos. Expatriation to the Sagradi had not meant destitution. Their banished grandfather had carried with him the better part of his vast wealth when he removed himself from the Republic.
With young Ottavio — disposed in the three carriages that followed his own — travelled his chaplain, his physician, his secretary, his chamberlain, his cook and his valet. Ahead of him rode his courier, to make preparation for his reception at each halting place upon that tedious journey north.
With a lofty but perilous disregard of prudence, the young patrician brought this imposing train as far as Mestre. Here, however, his chaplain, the Abbé Daugers, who once had been his tutor and still exercised some influence over him, had a word of advice to offer. As a result Ottavio assumed the name of Malatesta, leaving it to be supposed that he was a member of that princely house of Rimini; and it was as Ottavio Malatesta that the plump, rosy-cheeked abbé presented him to a Dominican named Fra Gregorio, who was also on his way to Venice.
It was in the inn at Mestre that the chaplain had made the friar’s acquaintance and the discovery of his destination; and he had been at pains to cultivate this chance acquaintance, so that, taking advantage of the freemasonry between clerics, he might contrive that Ottavio should enter Venice, as it were, under the protection of the Dominican’s scapulary. Thus, the abbé thought, the young man’s arrival would be less likely to attract hostile attention, since he would have the appearance of being sponsored by the Church.
He represented his charge as a young gentleman upon his travels, professed — without falsehood — that he was compelled by circumstances at this point to part company with him, and added — also without falsehood — that it would sensibly soften the reluctance with which he did so if he knew that Messer Ottavio might have, at least to his destination, so worthy a companion and guide as the most venerable Fra Gregorio.
Fra Gregorio, elderly, portly, rubicund and kindly, with a constant air of being in need of shaving and a constant dust of snuff upon his upper lip, very willingly accepted the charge of a young man so obviously and so very pleasantly distinguished. He professed himself honoured by the abbé’s request, and gave assurances that he would do all in his power to attend to Messer Ottavio’s well-being upon what remained of the journey and upon his arrival in the city.
Thus accompanied, however, Messer Ottavio was constrained to travel in more modest fashion. His train was left behind at Mestre, to await there, on the mainland, his return at the end of the week to which his visit was to be delimited. Without attendants, he embarked with Fra Gregorio upon the common barge that plied along the canal from Mestre, a barge that was drawn by a horse until the lagoons were reached and oars became inevitable for the final stage of the journey.
HE was not, however, as inconspicuous as he supposed to the six or eight other occupants of the vessel. Not only was he an arresting figure in his modish black roquelaure, his black three-cornered hat with its gold lace, and his black travelling boots of finest leather, but the prodigious amount and quality of his luggage was in itself enough to proclaim him a person of consequence, and it contrasted oddly with the plain brown canvas sack in which his reverend companion carried all his belongings.
It was assumed that he was some young gentleman of family travelling with a clerical tutor, and his fellow passengers held themselves respectfully aloof as from a being of a superior race.
His first glimpse of the Campanile of St. Mark’s, thrusting upward like a mammoth spear into the cobalt sky, so thrilled his poetical nature as to drive him to the very brink of tears. And when at last he had a clear view of Venice, looking in the afternoon sunlight like a city of ivory and gold, magically afloat upon the silver mirror of the sea, his emotions crossed that brink, and the tears, brimming over, trickled down his cheeks.
The friar’s kindly eyes considered him with surprise.
“You are in some affliction, my son—” he was beginning. But Ottavio interrupted him with an unsteady laugh:
“Not in affliction, sir, but joy. Joy to behold this miracle of a city, worn like a glittering jewel upon the bosom of the earth.”
The friar raised his eyebrows at the phrase. Then his eyes grew keener, and a smile, half benign, half caustic, broke upon his lips, to yield again to gravity. “Does the sight of beauty move you, then, so deeply?” He sighed. “You should beware, my son—”
But again he was interrupted. “Ah, but here is more than beauty to my eyes. There is—” He checked. Almost he had betrayed himself in his intoxication. Betimes he remembered that his life might pay for the incautious words that were bubbling to his lips; and so he choked them down and fell abruptly silent. But the friar pressing him, he took refuge in an evasion that was yet no falsehood:
“There is — oh, what do I know? There is here something unearthly, a loveliness as of celestial regions, a beauty that is holy.”
“Yet all is but the work of man. Beware these enthusiasms, my son. Beware the snares of the senses, which in a nature such as I perceive yours to be will constantly be spread to entangle you.” And he proceeded to a little homily which had for object to persuade Ottavio to find an outlet for his æstheticism in the contemplation of divine and incorruptible, rather than of human and corruptible, beauty.
Because of what he thought that he perceived, and so as to preserve his young charge as far as possible from the temptations which in this city of pleasure must beset a temperament so obviously romantic and susceptible, Fra Gregorio offered to find accommodation for him in the Monastery of San Domenico, whither the friar was, himself, bound.
So persuasive was he that Ottavio began to wonder had his emotion betrayed him and did his companion desire to keep him under observation. He declined courteously but firmly. When, however, Fra Gregorio proposed as an alternative to find him a lodging with a pious family of his acquaintance, occupying part of a palace on the Rio of San Barnaba, Messer Ottavio did not dare to decline. Nor, really, did he wish to do so, for he perceived at once how preferable this must be to an inn and how much safer. At an inn he might be the subject of inquiries which would never arise in private lodgings.
THE barge brought up toward sunset alongside of the Piazzetta. The exile stepping at last upon that forbidden land, remained staring at the graceful columns surmounted by the Lion of St. Mark, between which his brother had predicted that he would leave his head. He shivered a little as the eyes of his imagination sought the spot of execution, there, amid all that beauty.
Thence, still in Fra Gregorio’s care, he was conveyed in a gondola across the Basin of St. Mark, past the marble glory of Santa Maria della Salute, and
up the Grand Canal with its painted palaces, which seemed all afloat, to the narrow channel between tall buildings that was known as the Rio of San Barnaba. A little way along this and the boat brought up at the steps of a house with a pink-washed façade upon which was frescoed a colossal figure of St. Michael with uplifted flaming sword, trampling the Dragon of Evil underfoot.
The piety which this decoration argued in the householders was confirmed by the reverently rapturous welcome accorded to Fra Gregorio by the grave, elderly Antonelli, who was the inquiline of two stories of the palace, and by his comely and buxom dark-skinned wife. This rapture increased when the friar disclosed that in the illustrious, and, from his baggage and equipment, opulent young companion, he brought a lodger to their house.
THE discerning eyes of Messer Ottavio had already perceived that the glories of this Casa San Michele, or at least of that part of it tenanted by the Antonelli, were of a faded order, and he concluded that it was to befriend the host rather than himself that he had been brought there. But not on this account did he demur. The priest’s introduction, by a sort of sponsorship, avoided for him all awkward questions such as must be asked elsewhere.
Two lofty rooms of the mezzanine were placed at his disposal, each with a stone balcony above the water. To these rooms his baggage was carried by the waterman and Antonelli’s servant.
Curiosity, he thought, rather than a sincere desire to assist him, kept Antonelli and his wife, the Signora Laura, lingering in his room with Fra Gregorio for the unpacking. Partly to thwart this vulgarity, partly because Messer Ottavio was not in the habit of discharging such duties for himself, he was reminded now of the need to hire a servant. Fra Gregorio announced his instant ability to provide. He had the very man at San Domenico, a good, willing God-fearing lad, who had served a gentleman aforetime, was a skilful hairdresser, and for whose industry and honesty Fra Gregorio could answer. He gave Messer Ottavio no time in which to reply, but in a fever of solicitude bustled out at once to supply this want.
WITHIN an hour of the friar’s departure the servant sent by him arrived at the Casa San Michele. He proved a slight, pallid, lantern-jawed lad, sly of manner and with dark shifty eyes. On a first inspection, Ottavio did not find him prepossessing. Still less was he prepossessed when better acquaintance with the lad, whose name was Zanetto, established the fact that of all the qualities Fra Gregorio had boasted in him, the only one to be discovered in him was piety, and this so abnormally developed that the only position in life he seemed fit to grace was that of a lay brother.
Sighing over the clumsiness with which the fellow went about the business of unpacking, Messer Ottavio concluded, however, that since he would require him for only seven days, it was hardly worth while to go to the trouble of replacing him.
Therefore he lent a hand in the disposal of his wardrobe, and himself removed and unpacked a case of books without which Ottavio, who was of a studious, bookish disposition, never moved from home.
It was a little collection of some eight volumes, and comprised among other works a copy of Suetonius, a copy of Petrarch’s sonnets, a volume of the Divina Commedia labelled Inferno, and three works on astronomy and mathematics, studies to which this versatile young man was oddly addicted. These included a volume on the Copernican system and a copy of Euclid.
WITH that passion for elegance in all his appointments, which distinguished their owner, the volumes composing this little library were richly bound in fine leather, handsomely tooled, and lettered with a profusion of gold and in accordance with his own fancy. The Copernicus, for instance, bound in red, bore on its cover a seven-pointed star set in a belt that carried the signs of the Zodiac; and on the cover of the Dante above the word “Inferno” brooded the horned head of the Lord of Malebolge.
Betimes on the morrow he set about becoming more closely acquainted with this city of which his house was native and which he regarded as his natural home. Fra Gregorio, he assumed, could be of as little social assistance to him as the impoverished Antonelli. Commanding no other acquaintances, and not daring to seek any, he must depend upon himself. Therefore he set out alone upon his exploration, and the more deeply he inhaled the breath of this wonderful city the more he sighed to realize that he was laying up for his future a store of nostalgia, which, at least in the past, he had been spared.
Although alone throughout the ensuing week and without companionship in all his wanderings, yet in the course of those days he penetrated every place accessible to a stranger; and by paying his way he was able to investigate almost every aspect of life in this Sybaris of Europe.
Thus he spent seven ecstatic days among the wonders of this far-sung Venice, each day of which proved more exhilarating than the last. Yet each day added something to the exile’s heartache, akin to the bitterness tempering a lover’s delight in the mistress from whom he knows that stern necessity must presently separate him.
If the days sped all too swiftly, at least they sped in such a manner as entirely to falsify Marcantonio’s fears that there was danger in this excursion. In all that week the only disturbance was provided on the morning of Sunday by the piety of Zanetto. Ottavio had been at the Ridotto until near the hour of dawn. As a result he was peacefully asleep when Zanetto came to rouse him with the information, almost angrily delivered, that unless he instantly arose and made haste to dress he would be too late for the morning’s last Mass.
Irritated by that rude awakening and by the lack of deference in his servant’s manner, also perhaps because his head was aching, Ottavio answered in anger.
“To the devil with you and your Mass!”
The blank horror on Zanetto’s face as he now shrank away before his master, crossing himself, made Ottavio aware of the blasphemy he had uttered. But he was too deeply annoyed to think of correcting it.
“To arouse me thus! By the Host, if I were not the most patient man in the world I should be breaking the bones of your body. Out of my room, and out of my sight until I summon you.”
Zanetto, ever with that face of horror, repeated the sign of the cross, and then fled shuddering upon perceiving that his impious master was reaching for something to heave at him.
Knowing as he did that there is no rancour in the world like the rancour that has its source in piety, and aware of how deeply he had provoked it, Ottavio almost expected to find his servant gone when eventually he came to summon him.
But Zanetto was there, a silent, tight-lipped Zanetto who went about his duties with undisguised condemnation glaring from his shifty little eyes.
II
MESSER OTTAVIO had timed his visit so that his seventh and last day in Venice should fall upon Ascension Thursday, with its great annual carnival and the ceremony of the doge’s annual casting of the wedding ring into the Adriatic, symbol of the great Republic’s marriage with the sea and in token of dominion over it.
This day with its sumptuous celebrations, whose significance lay in the glorious past of the Most Serene Republic, was to provide a climax, a final ecstasy upon which to close his sojourn. Little did Ottavio dream as he dressed himself that morning in his bravest that the adventure, which he imagined to be ending, was, in fact, only just about to begin.
Had he suspected what was yet to come, his pulses might have throbbed even faster than they did when his gondola bore him into the Grand Canal, to join the throng of craft, the peotas, galleys, barges, skiffs, feluccas and gondolas, all swathed in bunting, some of them trailing rich brocades through the water, all moving to the strains of music, gilded oars aflash in the brilliant May sunshine, gayety and laughter everywhere.
Towering above all came the great galley of the doge, the mighty bucentaur, plated in gold and manned by oarsmen in red velvet and gold lace, the lion standard of St. Mark floating aloft.
By skilful pilotage his gondola was insinuated through the press of boats until it was almost alongside of the princely galley, and then that happened to Ottavio which was completely to change his destiny. For it was then that
he beheld her.
She was tall and nobly moulded; finely featured and dark of head and eye: and like a veil over all her loveliness there was an austerity, an aloofness, a calm assurance of her splendid worth before which trivial gallantry must be dumb. Desirable she was; but her beauty was not of the quality that invites pursuit. It imposed respect, demanded worship.
Thus, at least, did she appear to Messer Ottavio when looking up from his gondola he first beheld her at the doge’s side, amid the splendid company in the prow of the great bucentaur.
The vision of her robbed him of his breath, and very nearly of his senses. It set a paralysis upon his faculties akin to that which the Medusa was fabled to dispense by different means. And just as they took their chance of death who gazed on the Medusa, so, as the sequel shows did he now take his chance of death in gazing upon her. For from the moment of beholding her, all notion of departing tomorrow from this city was abandoned and all notion of the peril of abiding was forgotten.
AN HOUR ago, when he had been dressing in his gayest for this festival, he had smiled into his mirror as he told himself how easily and safely he had accomplished his desire and spent his lovely audacious week in defiance of the ban, and how he would laugh tomorrow at those who awaited him at Mestre, and, anon, at Marcantonio and Flavia for their fears.
Now all notion of departure was occluded. He did not know what he was to achieve by remaining. He had not yet come to consider this, or indeed anything beyond the fact that to go, to leave a city that contained this lovely lady, was utterly impossible. At need, even he would remain until they discovered him and put him to death. It would be rather sweet and glorious, he thought in the exaltation of that moment, to suffer martyrdom in such a cause.
Having beheld her, he beheld nothing else that day of all the marvels spread before his eyes. And when presently the bucentaur under the drive of her forty oars — with four men to the oar — swept on toward the Port of Lido and the open sea, it was as if the sunlight had departed with it. The show had lost all interest for Messer Ottavio, and if it had not been for the thought that he might again rejoice his eyes with the sight of her when the bucentaur returned, he would have ordered his gondolier to bear him home.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 550
