Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James

is some great man’s funeral, my child. Let us say a Pax eterna,’ and he fumbled for his beads as he spoke.

      ‘Let us follow them,’ said the boy; ‘they are bearing the catafalque into that small church – how grand and solemn it all is!’ and now, attaching himself to the long line of acolytes, the boy walked step for step with the procession, mingling his clear and liquid notes in the litany they were chanting. While he sang with all the force of intense expression, it was strange to mark how freely his gaze wandered over all the details of the scene – his keen eyes scrutinised everything – the costumes, the looks, the gestures of all; the half tawdry splendour below – the dim and solemn grandeur of the Gothic roof overhead. If there was nothing of levity, as little was there anything of reverence in his features. The sad scene, with all its trappings of woe, was a spectacle, and no more, to him; and, as he turned away to leave the spot, his face betrayed the desire he felt for some new object of interest. Nor had he long to search for such; for, just as they entered the Piazza di Spagna, they found a dense crowd gathered around a group of those humble musicians from Calabria – the Pifferari, they call them – stunted in form, and miserably clad: these poor creatures, whose rude figures recall old pictures of the ancient Pan, have a wonderful attraction for the populace. They were singing some wild, rude air of their native mountains, accompanying the refrain with a sort of dance, while their uncouth gestures shook the crowd with laughter.

      ‘Oh! I love these fellows, but I never have a chance of seeing them,’ cried the boy; so bursting away, he dashed into the thick of the assembled throng. It was not without a heartfelt sense of shame that the poor friar found himself obliged to follow his charge, whom he now began to fear might be lost to him.

      ‘Per Bacco! cried one of the crowd, ‘here’s a Frate can’t resist the charms of profane melody, and is elbowing his way, like any sinner, among us.’

      ‘It’s the cachuca he wants to see,’ exclaimed another; ‘come, Marietta, here’s a connoisseur worth showing your pretty ankles to.’

      ‘By the holy rosary!’ cried a third, ‘she is determined on the conquest.’

      This outburst was caused by the sudden appearance of a young girl, who, though scarcely more than a child, bore in her assured look and flashing eyes all the appearances of more advanced years. She was a deep brunette in complexion, to which the scarlet cloth that hung from her black hair gave additional brilliancy. Her jupe, of the same colour, recrossed and interlaced with tawdry gold tinsel, came only to the knee, below which appeared limbs that many a Roman statuary had modelled, so perfect were they in every detail of symmetry and beauty. Her whole air was redolent of that beauté du diable, as the French happily express it, which seems never to appeal in vain to the sympathies of the populace. It was girlhood, almost childlike girlhood, but dashed with a conscious effrontery that had braved many a libertine stare – many a look significant in coarseness.

      With one wild spring she bounded into the open space, and there she stood now on tiptoe, her arms extended straight above her head, while with clasped hands she remained motionless, so that every line and lineament of her faultless figure might be surveyed in unbroken symmetry.

      ‘Ah carina – che bellezza! come e graziosa!’ broke from those who, corrupt, debased, and degraded in a hundred ways as they were, yet inherited that ancient love of symmetry in form which the games and the statues of antique Rome had fostered. With a graceful ease no ballarina of the grand opera could have surpassed, she glided into those slow and sliding movements which precede the dance – movements meant to display the graces of form, without the intervention of action. Gradually, however, the time of the music grew quicker, and now her heightened colour and more flashing eye bespoke how her mind lent itself to the measure. The dance was intended to represent the coy retirings of a rustic beauty from the advances of an imaginary lover; and, though she was alone, so perfectly did she convey the storied interest of the scene, that the enraptured audience could trace every sentiment of the action. At one moment her gestures depicted the proudest insolence and disdain; at the next a half-yielding tenderness – now, it was passion to the very verge of madness – now, it was a soul-subduing softness, that thrilled through every heart around her. Incapable, as it seemed, of longer resisting the solicitations of love, her wearied steps grew heavier, her languid head drooped, and a look of voluptuous waywardness appeared to steal over her. Wherever her eye turned a murmured sigh acknowledged how thoroughly the captivation held enthralled every bosom around, when suddenly, with a gesture that seemed like a cry – so full of piercing agony it seemed – she dashed her hands across her forehead and stared with aching eye-balls into vacancy, – it was jealousy: the terrible pang had shot through her heart, and she was wild. The horrible transitions from doubt to doubt, until full conviction forced itself upon her, were given with extraordinary power. Over her features, in turn, passed every expression of passion. The heartrending tenderness of love – the clinging to a lost affection – the straining effort to recall him who had deserted her – the black bitterness of despair – and then, with a wild spring, like the bound of a tiger, she counterfeited a leap over a precipice to death!

      She fell upon the ground, and as the mingled sobs and cries rose through the troubled crowd, a boy tore his way through the dense mass, and fighting with all the energy of infuriated strength, gained the open space where she lay. Dropping on his knees, he bent over, and clasping her hand kissed it wildly over and over, crying out in a voice of broken agony, ‘Oh! Marietta, Marietta mia, come back to us – come back, we will love you and cherish you.’

      A great roar of laughter – the revulsion to that intensity of feeling so lately diffused among them – now shook the mob. Revenging, as it were, the illusion that had so enthralled themselves, they now turned all their ridicule upon the poor boy.

      ‘Santissima Virginia! if he isn’t a scholar of the Holy Order!’ shouted one.

      ‘Ecco! a real Jesuit!’ said another; ‘had he been a little older, though, he ‘d have done it more secretly.’

      ‘The little priest is offering the consolation of his order,’ cried a third; and there rained upon him, from every side, words of mockery and sarcasm.

      ‘Don’t you see that he is a mere boy – have you no shame that you can mock a simple-hearted child like this?’ said the burly Fra, as he pushed the crowd right and left, and forced a passage through the mob. ‘Come along, Gerald, come along. They are a cowardly pack, and if they were not fifty to one, they ‘d think twice ere they ‘d insult us.’ This speech he delivered in Italian, with a daring emphasis of look and gesture that made the craven listeners tremble. They opened a little path for the friar and his charge to retire; nor was it until they had nearly gained the corner of the Piazza that they dared to yell forth a cry of insult and derision.

      The boy grasped the Fra’s hand as he heard it, and looked up in his face with an expression there was no mistaking, so full was it of wild and daring courage.

      ‘No, no, Gerald,’ said he, ‘there are too many of them, and what should we get by it after all? See, too, how they have torn your soutane all to pieces. I almost suspect we ought to go back again to the college, my boy. I scarcely like to present you in such a state as this.’

      Well indeed might the Fra have come to this doubtful issue, for the youth’s gown hung in ribbons around him, and his cap was flattened to his head.

      ‘I wish I knew what was best to be done, Gerald,’ said he, wiping the sweat from his brawny face. ‘What do you advise yourself?’

      ‘I’d say, go on,’ cried the youth. ‘Will a great signor think whether my poor and threadbare frock be torn or whole? – he ‘ll not know if I be in rags or in purple. Tell him, if you like, that we met with rough usage in the streets. Tell him, that in passing through the crowd they left me thus. Say nothing about Marietta, Fra; you need not speak of her.’

      The boy’s voice, as he uttered the last words, became little louder than a mere whisper.

      ‘Come along then; and, with the help of the saints, we ‘ll go through with what we ‘ve begun.’

      And with this vigorous resolve the stout friar strode along down the Corso.

      CHAPTER