The Bravo, James Fenimore Cooper [best book reader .txt] 📗

was so gay in her squares, the rest of the town was silent as the grave. A city in which the hoof of horse or the rolling of wheels is never heard, necessarily possesses a character of its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay. There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their display--nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared to imbibe the character of their sombre city.

Such was the state of most of the town, while the scene described in the previous chapter was exhibited in the lively piazza of San Marco. The moon had risen so high that its light fell between the range of walls, here and there touching the surface of the water, to which it imparted a quivering brightness, while the domes and towers rested beneath its light in a solemn but grand repose. Occasionally the front of a palace received the rays on its heavy cornices and labored columns, the gloomy stillness of the interior of the edifice furnishing, in every such instance, a striking contrast to the richness and architectural beauty without. Our narrative now leads us to one of these patrician abodes of the first class.

A heavy magnificence pervaded the style of the dwelling. The vestibule was vast, vaulted, and massive. The stairs, rich in marbles, heavy and grand. The apartments were imposing in their gildings and sculpture, while the walls sustained countless works on which the highest geniuses of Italy had lavishly diffused their power. Among these relics of an age more happy in this respect than that of which we write, the connoisseur would readily have known the pencils of Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto--the three great names in which the subjects of St. Mark so justly prided themselves. Among these works of the higher masters were mingled others by the pencils of Bellino, and Montegna, and Palma Vecchio--artists who were secondary only to the more renowned colorists of the Venetian school. Vast sheets of mirrors lined the walls, wherever the still more precious paintings had no place; while the ordinary hangings of velvet and silk became objects of secondary admiration, in a scene of nearly royal magnificence. The cool and beautiful floors, made of a composition in which all the prized marbles of Italy and of the East polished to the last degree of art, were curiously embedded, formed a suitable finish to a style so gorgeous, and in which luxury and taste were blended in equal profusion.

The building, which, on two of its sides, literally rose from out the water, was, as usual, erected around a dark court. Following its different faces, the eye might penetrate, by many a door, open at that hour for the passage of the air from off the sea, through long suites of rooms, furnished and fitted in the manner described, all lighted by shaded lamps that spread a soft and gentle glow around. Passing without notice ranges of reception and sleeping rooms--the latter of a magnificence to mock the ordinary wants of the body--we shall at once introduce the reader into the part of the palace where the business of the tale conducts us.

At the angle of the dwelling on the side of the smaller of the two canals, and most remote from the principal water-avenue of the city on which the edifice fronted, there was a suite of apartments, which, while it exhibited the same style of luxury and magnificence as those first mentioned in its general character, discovered greater attention in its details to the wants of ordinary life. The hangings were of the richest velvets or of glossy silks, the mirrors were large and of exquisite truth, the floors of the same gay and pleasing colors, and the walls were adorned with their appropriate works of art. But the whole was softened down to a picture of domestic comfort. The tapestries and curtains hung in careless folds, the beds admitted of sleep, and the pictures were delicate copies by the pencil of some youthful amateur, whose leisure had been exercised in this gentle and feminine employment.

The fair being herself, whose early instruction had given birth to so many skilful imitations of the divine expression of Raphael, or to the vivid tints of Titian, was at that hour in her privacy, discoursing with her ghostly adviser, and one of her own sex, who had long discharged the joint trusts of instructor and parent. The years of the lady of the palace were so tender that, in a more northern region, she would scarcely have been deemed past the period of childhood, though in her native land, the justness and maturity of her form, and the expression of a dark, eloquent eye, indicated both the growth and the intelligence of womanhood.

"For this good counsel I thank you, my father, and my excellent Donna Florinda will thank you still more, for your opinions are so like her own, that I sometimes admire the secret means by which experience enables the wise and the good to think so much alike, on a matter of so little personal interest."

A slight but furtive smile struggled around the mortified mouth of the Carmelite, as he listened to the naive observation of his ingenuous pupil.

"Thou wilt learn, my child," he answered, "as time heaps wisdom on thy head, that it is in concerns which touch our passions and interests least, we are most apt to decide with discretion and impartiality. Though Donna Florinda is not yet past the age when the heart is finally subdued, and there is still so much to bind her to the world, she will assure thee of this truth, or I greatly mistake the excellence of that mind, which hath hitherto led her so far blameless, in this erring pilgrimage to which we are all doomed."

Though the cowl was over the head of the speaker, who was evidently preparing to depart, and his deeply-seated eye never varied from its friendly look at the fair face of her he instructed, the blood stole into the pale cheeks of the maternal companion, and her whole countenance betrayed some such reflection of feeling at his praise, as a wintry sky exhibits at a sudden gleam from the setting sun.

"I trust that Violetta does not now hear this for the first time," observed Donna Florinda, in a voice so meek and tremulous as to be observed.

"Little that can be profitably told one of my inexperience has been left untaught," quickly answered the pupil, unconscious herself that she reached her hand towards that of her constant monitor, though too intent on her object to change her look from the features of the Carmelite. "But why this desire in the Senate to dispose of a girl who would be satisfied to live for ever, as she is now, happy in her youth, and contented with the privacy which becomes her sex?"

"The relentless years will not stay their advance, that even one innocent as thou may never know the unhappiness and trials of a more mature age. This life is one of imperious and, oftentimes, of tyrannical duties. Thou art not ignorant of the policy that rules a state which hath made its name so illustrious by high deeds in arms, its riches, and its widely-spread influence. There is a law in Venice which commandeth that none claiming an interest in its affairs shall so bind himself to the stranger as to endanger the devotion all owe to the Republic. Thus may not the patrician of St. Mark be a lord in other lands, nor may the heiress of a name, great and valued as thine, be given in marriage to any of note, in a foreign state, without counsel and consent from those who are appointed to watch over the interests of all."

"Had Providence cast my lot in an humbler class, this would not have been. Methinks it ill comports with the happiness of woman to be the especial care of the Council of Ten!"

"There is indiscretion, and I lament to say, impiety in thy words. Our duty bids us submit to earthly laws, and more than duty, reverence teaches us not to repine at the will of Providence. But I do not see the weight of this grievance against which thou murmurest, daughter. Thou art youthful, wealthy beyond the indulgence of all healthful desires, of a lineage to excite an unwholesome worldly pride, and fair enough to render thee the most dangerous of thine own enemies--and thou repinest at a lot to which all of thy sex and station are, of necessity, subject!"

"For the offence against Providence I am already a penitent," returned the Donna Violetta. "But surely it would be less embarrassing to a girl of sixteen, were the fathers of the state so much occupied with more weighty affairs as to forget her birth and years, and haply her wealth?"

"There would be little merit in being content with a world fashioned after our own caprices, though it may be questioned if we should be happier by having all things as we desire than by being compelled to submit to them as they are. The interest taken by the Republic in thy particular welfare, daughter, is the price thou payest for the ease and magnificence with which thou art encircled. One more obscure, and less endowed by fortune, might have greater freedom of will, but it would be accompanied by none of the pomp which adorns the dwelling of thy fathers."

"I would there were less of luxury and more of liberty within its walls."

"Time will enable thee to see differently. At thy age all is viewed in colors of gold, or life is rendered bootless, because we are thwarted in our ill-digested wishes. I deny not, however, that thy fortune is tempered by some peculiar passages. Venice is ruled by a policy that is often calculating, and haply some deem it remorseless." Though the voice of the Carmelite had fallen, he paused and glanced an uneasy look from beneath his cowl ere he continued. "The caution of the senate teaches it to preclude, as far as in it lies, the union of interests that may not only oppose each other, but which may endanger those of the state. Thus, as I have said, none of senatorial rank may hold lands without the limits of the Republic, nor may any of account connect themselves, by the ties of marriage, with strangers of dangerous influence, without the consent and supervision of the Republic. The latter is thy situation, for of the several foreign lords who seek thy hand the council see none to whom the favor may be extended without the apprehension of creating an influence here, in the centre of the canals, which ought not to be given to a stranger. Don Camillo Monforte, the cavalier to whom thou art indebted for thy life, and of whom thou hast so lately spoken with gratitude, has far more cause to complain of these hard decrees, than thou mayest have, in any reason."

"'Twould make my griefs still heavier, did I know that one who has shown so much courage in my behalf, has equal reason to feel their justice," returned Violetta, quickly. "What is the affair that, so fortunately for me, hath brought the Lord of Sant' Agata to Venice, if a grateful girl may, without indiscretion, inquire?"

"Thy interest in his behalf is both natural and commendable," answered the Carmelite, with a simplicity which did more credit to his