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BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 11
The Duchess was lodged in the Borromini wing of the palace, and thither
Odo was conducted that evening.
To eyes accustomed to such ceremonial there was no great novelty in the
troop of powdered servants, the major-domo in his short cloak and chain,
and the florid splendour of the long suite of rooms, decorated in a
style that already appeared over-charged to the more fastidious taste of
the day. Odo's curiosity centred chiefly in the persons peopling this
scene, whose conflicting interests and passions formed, as it were, the
framework of the social structure of Pianura, so that there was not a
labourer in the mulberry-orchards or a weaver in the silk-looms but
depended for his crust of black bread and the leaking roof over his head
on the private whim of some member of that brilliant company.
The Duchess, who soon entered, received Odo with the flighty good-nature
of a roving mind; but as her deep-blue gaze met his her colour rose, her
eyes lingered on his face, and she invited him to a seat at her side.
Maria Clementina was of Austrian descent, and something in her free and
noble port and the smiling arrogance of her manner recalled the aspect
of her distant kinswoman, the young Queen of France. She plied Odo with
a hundred questions, interrupting his answers with a playful abruptness,
and to all appearances more engaged by his person than his discourse.
"Have you seen my son?" she asked. "I remember you a little boy scarce
bigger than Ferrante, whom your mother brought to kiss my hand in the
very year of my marriage. Yes--and you pinched my toy spaniel, sir, and
I was so angry with you that I got up and turned my back on the
company--do you remember? But how should you, being such a child at the
time? Ah, cousin how old you make me feel! I would to God my son looked
as you did then; but the Duke is killing him with his nostrums. The
child was healthy enough when he was born; but what with novenas and
touching of relics and animal magnetism and electrical treatment,
there's not a bone in his little body but the saints and the surgeons
are fighting over its possession. Have you read 'Emile,' cousin, by the
new French author--I forget his name? Well, I would have the child
brought up like 'Emile,' allowed to run wild in the country and grow up
sturdy and hard as a little peasant. But what heresies am I talking! The
book is on the Index, I believe, and if my director knew I had it in my
library I should be set up in the stocks in the market-place and all my
court-gowns burnt at the Church door as a warning against the danger of
importing the new fashions from France!--I hope you hunt, cousin?" she
cried suddenly. "'Tis my chief diversion and one I would have my friends
enjoy with me. His Highness has lately seen fit to cut down my stables,
so that I have scarce forty saddle-horses to my name, and the greater
part but sorry nags at that; yet I can still find a mount for any friend
that will ride with me and I hope to see you among the number if the
Duke can spare you now and then from mass and benediction. His Highness
complains that I am always surrounded by the same company; but is it my
fault if there are not twenty persons at court that can survive a day in
the saddle and a night at cards? Have you seen the Belverde, my mistress
of the robes? She follows the hunt in a litter, cousin, and tells her
beads at the death! I hope you like cards too, cousin, for I would have
all my weaknesses shared by my friends, that they may be the less
disposed to criticise them."
The impression produced on the Duchess by the cavaliere Valsecca was
closely observed by several members of the group surrounding her
Highness. One of these was Count Trescorre, who moved among the
courtiers with an air of ease that seemed to establish without
proclaiming the tie between himself and the Duchess. When Maria
Clementina sat down at play, Trescorre joined Odo and with his usual
friendliness pointed out the most conspicuous figures in the circle. The
Duchess's society, as the Duke had implied, was composed of the livelier
members of the court, chief among whom was the same Don Serafino who had
figured so vividly in the reminiscences of Mirandolina and Cantapresto.
This gentleman, a notorious loose-liver and gamester, with some remains
of good looks and a gay boisterous manner, played the leader of revels
to her Highness's following; and at his heels came the flock of pretty
women and dashing spendthrifts who compose the train of a young and
pleasure-loving princess. On such occasions as the present, however, all
the members of the court were obliged to pay their duty to her Highness;
and conspicuous among these less frequent visitors was the Duke's
director, the suave and handsome Dominican whom Odo had seen leaving his
Highness's closet that afternoon. This ecclesiastic was engaged in
conversation with the Prime Minister, Count Pievepelago, a small feeble
mannikin covered with gold lace and orders. The deference with which the
latter followed the Dominican's discourse excited Odo's attention; but
it was soon diverted by the approach of a lady who joined herself to the
group with an air of discreet familiarity. Though no longer young, she
was still slender and graceful, and her languid eye and vapourish manner
seemed to Odo to veil an uncommon alertness of perception. The rich
sobriety of her dress, the jewelled rosary about her wrist, and most of
all, perhaps, the murderous sweetness of the smile with which the
Duchess addressed her, told him that here was the Countess Belverde; an
inference which Trescorre confirmed.
"The Countess," said he, "or I should rather say the Marchioness of
Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that
name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless
remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler
one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad
to seize both opportunities in one."
The Countess greeted Odo with a flattering deference and at once drew
him into conversation with Pievepelago and the Dominican.
"We are discussing," said she, "the details of Prince Ferrante's
approaching visit to the shrine of our Lady of the Mountain. This shrine
lies about half an hour's ride beyond my villa of Boscofolto, where I
hope to have the honour of receiving their Highnesses on their return
from the pilgrimage. The Madonna del Monte, as you doubtless know, has
often preserved the ducal house in seasons of peril, notably during the
great plague of 1630 and during the famine in the Duchess Polixena's
time, when her Highness, of blessed memory, met our Lady in the streets
distributing bread, in the dress of a peasant-woman from the hills, but
with a necklace made of blood-drops instead of garnets. Father Ignazio
has lately counselled the little prince's visiting in state the
protectress of his line, and his Highness's physician, Count
Heiligenstern, does not disapprove the plan. In fact," she added, "I
understand that he thinks all special acts of piety beneficial, as
symbolising the inward act by which the soul incessantly strives to
reunite itself to the One."
The Dominican glanced at Odo with a smile. "The Count's dialectics,"
said he, "might be dangerous were they a little clearer; but we must
hope he distinguishes more accurately between his drugs than his
dogmas."
"But I am told," the Prime Minister here interposed in a creaking rusty
voice, "that her Highness is set against the pilgrimage and will put
every obstacle in the way of its being performed."
The Countess sighed and cast down her eyes, the Dominican remained
silent, and Trescorre said quietly to Odo, "Her Highness would be
pleased to have you join her in a game at basset." As they crossed the
room he added in a low tone: "The Duchess, in spite of her remarkable
strength of character, is still of an age to be readily open to new
influences. I observed she was much taken by your conversation, and you
would be doing her a service by engaging her not to oppose this
pilgrimage to Boscofolto. We have Heiligenstern's word that it cannot
harm the prince, it will produce a good impression on the people, and it
is of vital importance to her Highness not to side against the Duke in
such matters." And he withdrew with a smile as Odo approached the
card-table.
Odo left the Duchess's circle with an increased desire to penetrate more
deeply into the organisation of the little world about him, to trace the
operation of its various parts, and to put his hand on the mainspring
about which they revolved; and he wondered whether Gamba, whose
connection with the ducal library must give him some insight into the
affairs of the court, might not prove as instructive a guide through
this labyrinth as through the mazes of the ducal garden.
The Duke's library filled a series of rooms designed in the classical
style of the cinque-cento. On the very threshold Odo was conscious of
leaving behind the trivial activities of the palace, with the fantastic
architecture which seemed their natural setting. Here all was based on a
noble permanence of taste, a convergence of accumulated effort toward a
chosen end; and the door was fittingly surmounted by Seneca's definition
of the wise man's state: "Omnia illi secula ut deo serviunt."
Odo would gladly have lingered among the books which filled the rooms
with an incense-like aroma of old leather. His imagination caressed in
passing the yellowish vellum backs, the worn tooling of Aldine folios,
the heavy silver clasps of ancient chronicles and psalters; but his
first object was to find Gamba and renew the conversation of the
previous day. In this he was disappointed. The only occupant of the
library was the hunchback's friend and protector, the abate Crescenti, a
tall white-haired priest with the roseate gravity and benevolent air of
a donator in some Flemish triptych. The abate, courteously welcoming
Odo, explained that he had despatched his assistant to the Benedictine
monastery to copy certain ancient records of transactions between that
order and the Lords of Valsecca, and added that Gamba, on his return,
should at once be apprised of the cavaliere's wish to see him.
The abate himself had been engaged, when his visitor entered, in
collating manuscripts, but on Odo's begging him to return to his work,
he said with a smile: "I do not suffer from an excess of interruptions,
for the library is the least visited portion of the palace, and I am
glad to welcome any who are disposed to inspect its treasures. I know
not, cavaliere," he added, "if the report of my humble labours has ever
reached you;" and on Odo's affirmative gesture he went on, with the
eagerness of a shy man who gathers assurance from the intelligence of
his listener: "Such researches into the rude and uncivilised past seem
to me as essential to the comprehension of the present as the mastering
of the major premiss to the understanding of a syllogism; and to those
who reproach me for wasting my life over the chronicles of barbarian
invasions and the records of monkish litigations, instead of
contemplating the illustrious deeds of Greek sages and Roman heroes, I
confidently reply that it is more useful to a man to know his own
father's character than that of a remote ancestor. Even in this quiet
retreat," he went on, "I hear much talk of abuses and of the need for
reform; and I often think that if they who rail so loudly against
existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their
source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with
its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring
it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find,
if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and
remedying the abuses they discover."
This view of history was one so new in the abate Crescenti's day that it
surprised Odo with the revelation of unsuspected possibilities. How was
it that among the philosophers whose works he had studied, none had
thought of tracing in the social and political tendencies of the race
the germ of wrongs so confidently ascribed to the cunning of priests and
the rapacity of princes? Odo listened with growing interest while
Crescenti, encouraged by his questions, pointed out how the abuses of
feudalism had arisen from the small land-owner's need of protection
against the northern invader, as the concentration of royal prerogative
had been the outcome of the king's intervention between his great
vassals and the communes. The discouragement which had obscured Odo's
outlook since his visit to Pontesordo was cleared away by the discovery
that in a sympathetic study of the past might lie the secret of dealing
with present evils. His imagination, taking the intervening obstacles at
a bound, arrived at once at the general axiom to which such inductions
pointed; and if he afterward learned that human development follows no
such direct line of advance, but must painfully stumble across the
wastes of error, prejudice and ignorance, while the theoriser traverses
the same distance with a stroke of his speculative pinions; yet the
influence of these teachings tempered his judgments with charity and
dignified his very failures by a tragic sense of their inevitableness.
Crescenti suggested that Gamba should wait on Odo that evening; but the
latter, being uncertain how far he might dispose of his time, enquired
where the hunchback lodged, with a view of sending for him at a
convenient moment. Having dined at the Duchess's table, and soon
wearying of the vapid company of her associates, he yielded to the
desire for contrast that so often guided his course, and set out toward
sunset in search of Gamba's lodging.
It was his first opportunity of inspecting the town at leisure, and for
a while he let his curiosity lead him as it would. The streets near the
palace were full of noble residences, recording, in their sculptured
doorways, in the wrought-iron work of torch-holders and window-grilles,
and in every architectural detail, the gradual change of taste that had
transformed the machicolations of the mediaeval fighter into the open
cortiles and airy balconies of his descendant. Here and there, amid
these inveterate records of dominion, rose the monuments of a mightier
and more ancient power. Of these churches and monasteries the greater
number, dating only from the ascendancy of the Valseccas, showed an
ordered and sumptuous architecture; but one or two buildings surviving
from the period of the free city stood out among them with the austerity
of desert saints in a throng of court ecclesiastics. The columns of the
Cathedral porch were still supported on featureless porphyry lions worn
smooth by generations of loungers; and above the octagonal baptistery
ran a fantastic basrelief wherein the spirals of the vine framed an
allegory of men and monsters symbolising, in their mysterious conflicts,
the ever-recurring Manicheism of the middle ages. Fresh from his talk
with Crescenti, Odo lingered curiously on these sculptures, which but
the day before he might have passed by as the efforts of ignorant
workmen, but which now seemed full of the significance that belongs to
any incomplete expression of human thought or feeling. Of their relation
to the growth of art he had as yet no clear notion; but as evidence of
sensations that his forefathers had struggled to record, they touched
him like the inarticulate stammerings in which childhood strives to
convey its meaning.
He found Gamba's lodging on the upper floor of a decayed palace in one
of the by-lanes near the Cathedral. The pointed arcades of this ancient
building enclosed the remains of floriated mouldings, and the walls of
the court showed traces of fresco-painting; but clothes-lines now hung
between the arches, and about the well-head in the centre of the court
sat a group of tattered women with half-naked children playing in the
dirt at their feet. One of these women directed Odo to the staircase
which ascended between damp stone walls to Gamba's door. This was opened
by the hunchback himself, who, with an astonished exclamation, admitted
his visitor to a scantily furnished room littered with books and papers.
A child sprawled on the floor, and a young woman, who had been sewing in
the fading light of the attic window, snatched him up as Odo entered.
Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful
outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of
the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering
in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with
Filomena's call--"Where are you then, child of iniquity?"
"Momola--don't you know me?" he exclaimed.
She hung back trembling, as though the sound of his voice roused an echo
of fear; but Gamba, reddening slightly, took her hand and led her
forward.
"It is, indeed," said he, "your excellency's old playmate, the Momola of
Pontesordo, who consents to share my poverty and who makes me forget it
by the tenderness of her devotion."
But Momola, at this, found voice. "Oh, sir," she cried, "it is he who
took me in when I was half-dead and starving, who many a time went
hungry to feed me, and who cares for the child as if it were his own!"
As she stood there, in her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed
a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another
"child of iniquity" as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to
Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to
haunt the dreams of its oppressors.
Gamba shrugged his shoulders. "Why," said he, "a child of my own is a
luxury I am never likely to possess as long as I have wit to remember
the fundamental axiom of philosophy: entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitatum; so it is natural enough fate should single me out
to repair the negligence of those who have failed to observe that
admirable principle. And now," he added, turning gently to Momola, "it
is time to put the boy to bed."
When the door had closed on her Odo turned to Gamba. "I could learn
nothing at Pontesordo," he said. "They seemed unwilling to speak of her.
What is her story and where did you first know her?"
Gamba's face darkened. "You will remember, cavaliere," he said, "that
some time after your departure from Pianura I passed into the service of
the Marquess of Cerveno, then a youth of about twenty, who combined with
graceful manners and a fair exterior a nature so corrupt and cowardly
that he seemed like some such noble edifice as this, designed to house
great hopes and high ambitions, but fallen to base uses and become the
shelter of thieves and prostitutes. Prince Ferrante being sickly from
his birth, the Marquess was always looked on as the Duke's successor,
and to Trescorre, who even then, as Master of the Horse, cherished the
ambitions he has since realised, no prospect could have been more
distasteful. My noble brother, to do him justice, has always hated the
Jesuits, who, as you doubtless know, were all-powerful here before the
recent suppression of the Order. The Marquess of Cerveno was as
completely under their control as the Duke is under that of the
Dominicans, and Trescorre knew that with the Marquess's accession his
own rule must end. He did his best to gain an influence over his future
ruler, but failing in this resolved to ruin him.
"Cerveno, like all your house, was passionately addicted to the chase,
and spent much time hunting in the forest of Pontesordo. One day the
stag was brought to bay in the farm-yard of the old manor, and there
Cerveno saw Momola, then a girl of sixteen, of a singular wild beauty
which sickness and trouble have since effaced. The young Marquess was
instantly taken; and though hitherto indifferent to women, yielded so
completely to his infatuation that Trescorre, ever on the alert, saw in
it an unexpected means to his end. He instantly married Momola to
Giannozzo, whom she feared and hated; he schooled Giannozzo in the part
of the jealous and vindictive husband, and by the liberal use of money
contrived that Momola, while suffered to encourage the Marquess's
addresses, should be kept so close that Cerveno could not see her save
by coming to Pontesordo. This was the first step in the plan; the next
was to arrange that Momola should lure her lover to the hunting-lodge on
the edge of the chase. This lodge, as your excellency may remember, lies
level with the marsh, and so open to noxious exhalations that a night's
sojourn there may be fatal. The infernal scheme was carried out with the
connivance of the scoundrels at the farm, who had no scruples about
selling the girl for a few ducats; and as to Momola, can you wonder that
her loathing of Giannozzo and of her wretched life at Pontesordo threw
her defenceless into Trescorre's toils? All was cunningly planned to
exasperate Cerveno's passion and Momola's longing to escape; and at
length, pressed by his entreaties and innocently carrying out the
designs of his foe, the poor girl promised to meet him after night-fall
at the hunting-lodge. The secrecy of the adventure, and the peril to
which it exposed him (for Trescorre had taken care to paint Giannozzo
and his father in the darkest colours) were fuel to Cerveno's passion,
and he went night after night to Pontesordo. The time was August, when
the marsh breathes death, and the Duke, apprised of his favourite's
imprudence, forbade his returning to the chase.
"Nothing could better have served Trescorre; for opposition spurred the
Marquess's languid temper, and he had now the incredible folly to take
up his residence in the lodge. Within three weeks the fever held him. He
was at once taken to Pianura, and on recovering from his seizure was
sent to take the mountain air at the baths of Lucca. But the poison was
in his blood. He never regained more than a semblance of health, and his
madness having run its course, his passion for Momola turned to hate of
the poor girl to whom he ascribed his destruction. Giannozzo, meanwhile,
terrified by the report that the Duke had winded the intrigue, and
fearing to be charged with connivance, thought to prove his innocence by
casting off his wife and disowning her child.
"What part I played in this grim business I leave your excellency to
conceive. As the Marquess's creature I was forced to assist at the
spectacle without power to stay its consequences; but when the child was
born I carried the news to my master and begged him to come to the
mother's aid. For answer, he had me beaten by his lacqueys and flung out
of his house. I stomached the beating and addressed myself to Trescorre.
My noble brother, whose insight is seldom at fault, saw that I knew
enough to imperil him. The Marquess was dying and his enemy could afford
to be generous. He gave me a little money and the following year
obtained from the Duke my appointment as assistant librarian. In this
way I was able to give Momola a home, and to save her child from the
Innocenti. She and I, cavaliere, are the misshapen offspring of that
cruel foster-parent, who rears more than half the malefactors in the
state; but please heaven the boy shall have a better start in life, and
perhaps grow up to destroy some of the evils on which that cursed
charity thrives."
This narrative, and the sight of Momola and her child, followed so
strangely on the spectacle of sordid misery he had witnessed at
Pontesordo, that an inarticulate pity held Odo by the throat. Gamba's
anger against the people at the farm seemed as senseless as their own
cruelty to their animals. What were they all--Momola, her child, and her
persecutors--but a sickly growth of the decaying social order? He felt
an almost physical longing for fresh air, light, the rush of a purifying
wind through the atmosphere of moral darkness that surrounded him.
Content of BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 11 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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