Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

When day broke racking pains tortured him in every limb, and his head felt as though splitting with every throb of its arteries. A dreadful thirst, almost maddening in its craving, was on him, and though a rivulet rippled close by, he could not crawl to it; and now the hot sun beamed down upon him, and the piercing rays darted into his brain, penetrating it in all directions – sending wild fancies, horrible and ghastly visions, through his mind. And combats with wild beasts, and wounds, and suffering, and long days of agony and suspense, all came pouring in upon him, as vial after vial of misery bathed his poor, distracted intellect.

Three days of this half-conscious state – like so many long years of suffering they were – and then he sank into the low torpor that forms the last stage of the fever. It was thus, insensible and dying, a traveller found him, as the third evening was falling. The stranger stooped down to examine the almost lifeless figure, and it was long before he could convince himself that vitality yet lingered there: from the dried and livid lips no breath seemed to issue; the limbs fell heavily to either side as they were moved; and it was only after a most careful examination that he could detect a faint fluttering motion of the heart.

Whether it was that the case presented so little of hope, or that he was one not much given to movements of charity, but the traveller, after all these investigations, turned again to pursue his path. He had not gone far, however, when, gaining the rise of a hill, he cast his eyes back over the dreary landscape, and again they fell upon that small mound of human clay beside the lake. Moved by an impulse that, even to himself, was unaccountable, he returned to the spot and stood for some minutes contemplating Gerald. It might be that in the growing shades of the evening the gloomy desolation spoke more touchingly to his heart; it might be that a feeling of compassionate pity stirred him; as likely as either was it a mere caprice, as, stooping down, he raised the wasted form, and threw it loosely over one shoulder, and then strode out upon his way once more.

The stranger was a man of great size and personal strength, and though heavily framed, possessed considerable activity. His burden seemed little to impede his movements, and almost as little to engage his thoughts, and as he breasted the wild mountain, or waded the many streams that crossed his path, he went along without appearing to think more of him he was rescuing. It was a long road, too, and it was deep into the night ere he reached a solitary house, in a little slip of land between two lakes, and over whose door a withered bough denoted a cabaret.

‘What, in the name of all the saints, have you brought us here?’ said an old man who quickly responded to his knock at the door.

‘I found him as you see beside the Lagoscuro,’ said the other, laying down his burden. ‘How he came there I can’t tell you, and I don’t suspect you’ll ever get the report from himself.’

‘He’s not a contadino,’ said the old man, as he examined the boy’s features, and then gazed upon the palms of his hands.

‘No; nor is he a Roman, I take it: he’s of German or English blood. That fair skin and blonde hair came from the north.’

‘One of the Cavalrista, belike!’

‘Just as likely one of the circus people; but why they should leave him there to die seems strange, except that strangers deem this Maremma fever a sort of plague, and, perhaps, when he was struck down they only thought of saving themselves from the contagion.’

‘That wouldn’t be human, Master Gabriel – ’

‘Wouldn’t it, though!’ cried Gerald’s rescuer, with a bitter laugh. ‘That’s exactly the name for it, caro Pippo. It is the beasts of prey – the tiger and lion – that defend their young; it is the mild rabbit and the tender woman that destroy theirs.’ The innkeeper shook his head, as though the controversy were too subtle for him, and, bending down to examine the boy more closely, ‘What’s this, Master Gabriel,’ said he, taking a peculiar medal that hung suspended round his neck.

‘He was a colleger of some sort certainly,’ cried Gabriel. ‘It’s clear, therefore, he wasn’t, as we suspected, one of the Cavalrista. I’ll tell you, Pippo; I have it: this lad has made his escape from some of the seminaries at Rome, and in his wanderings has been struck down by the fever. The worthy Frati have, ere this, told his parents that he died in all the hopes of the church, and is an angel already – ’

‘There, there,’ interposed Pippo rebukingly; ‘no luck ever came of mocking a priest. Let’s try if we can do anything for the lad. Tina will be up presently, and look to him’; and with this he spread out some leaves beside the wall, and covering them with a cloak, laid the sick boy gently on them.

‘There, see; his lips are moving – he has swallowed some of the water – he’ll get about – I’ll swear to it!’ cried the other. ‘A fellow that begins life in that fashion has always his mission for after years. At all events, Pippo, don’t disturb me for the next twelve hours, for I mean to sleep so long; and let me tell you, too, I have taken my last journey to Bon Convento. The letters may lie in the post-office till doomsday, ere I go in seach of them.’

‘Well, well, have your sleep out, and then – ’

‘And then?’ cried Gabriel, turning suddenly round, as he was about to quit the room. ‘I wish to Heaven you could tell me, what then!’

Old Pippo shook his head mournfully, heaved a heavy sigh, and turned away.

Tina, a peasant girl, pale and sickly, but with that energy of soul that belongs to the Roman race, soon made her appearance, and at once addressed herself to nurse the sick boy. ‘I ought to know this Maremma fever well,’ said she, with a faint sigh; ‘it struck me down when a child, and has never left my blood since.’ Making a polenta with some strong red wine, she gave him a spoonful from time to time, and by covering him up warmly induced perspiration, the first crisis of the disease. ‘There,’ cried she, after some hours of assiduous care; ‘there, he is safe; and God knows if he ‘ll bless me for this night’s work after all! It is a sad, dreary life, even to the luckiest!’

While Gerald lay thus – and it was his fate in this fashion to pass some six long weeks, ere he had strength to sit up or move about the house – let us say a few words of those to whose kindness he owed his life. Old Pippo Baldi had kept the little inn of Borghetto all his life. It was his father’s and grandfather’s before him. Situated in this dreary, unwholesome tract, with a mere mountain bridle-path – not a road – leading to it, there seemed no reason why a house of entertainment – even the humblest – could be wanted in such a spot; and, indeed, the lack of all comfort and accommodation bespoke how little trade it drove. The ‘Tana,’ however, as it was called, had a brisk business in the long dark nights of winter, since it was here that the smugglers from the Tuscan frontier resorted, to dispose of their wares to the up-country dealers; and bargains for many a thousand scudi went on in that dreary old kitchen, while bands of armed contrabandieri scoured the country. To keep off the Pope’s carbineers – in case that redoubtable corps could persuade themselves to adventure so far – the Maremma fever, a malady that few ever eradicated from their constitution, was the best protection the smugglers possessed; and the Tana was thus a sanctuary as safe as the rocky islands that lay off St. Stephano. A disputed question of boundary also added to the safety of the spot, and continual litigation went on between the courts of Florence and Rome as to which the territory belonged – contests the scandal-mongering world implied might long since have been terminated, had not the cardinal-secretary Manini been suspected of being in secret league with the smugglers. The Tana was, therefore, a sort of refuge; and more than one, gravely compromised by crime, had sought out that humble hostel, as his last place of security. To the refugee from the north of Italy it was easily available, lying only a few miles beyond the Tuscan frontier, while it was no less open to those who gained any port of the shore near St. Stephano.

In a wild and melancholy waste, with two dark and motionless lakes girt in by low mountains, the Tana stood, the very ideal of desolation. The strip of land on which it was built was little wider than a mere bridge, between the lakes, and had evidently been selected as a position capable of defence against the assault of a strong force, and two rude breastworks of stone yet bore witness that a military eye had scanned the place, and improved its advantages. Within, a stray loop-hole for musketry still showed that defence had occupied the spirits of those who held it, while a low, flat-bottomed boat, moored at a stake before the door, provided for escape in the last extremity. The great curiosity of the place, however, was a kind of large hall or chamber, where the smugglers transacted business with their customers, and the walls of which had been decorated with huge frescoes, in charcoal, by no less a hand than Franzoni himself, whose fate it had once been to pass months here. Taking for his subjects the lives of the various refugees who had sojourned in the Tana, he had illustrated them in a series of bold and vigorous sketches, and assuredly every breach of the Decalogue had here its portraiture, with some accompanying legend beneath to show in whose honour the picture had been painted. Pippo, who had supplied from memory all the incidents thus communicated, regarded these as perfect treasures, and was wont to show them with all the pride of a connoisseur. ‘The maestro ‘ – so he ever called Franzoni – ‘the maestro,’ said he, ‘never saw Cimballi, who strangled the Countess of Soissons, and yet, just from my description, he has made a likeness his brother would swear to. And there, look at that fellow asking alms of the Cardinal Frescobaldi – that ‘s Fornari. He ‘s merely there to see the cardinal, and he’s sure he can recognise him; for he is engaged to stab him on his way to the Quirinal, the day of his election for Pope. The little fellow yonder with the hump is the Piombino, who poisoned his mother. He was drowned in the lake out there. I don’t think it was quite fair of the maestro to paint him in that fashion’; and here he would point to a little humped-backed creature rowing in a boat, with the devil steering, the flashing eyes of the fiend seeming to feast on the tortures of fear depicted in the other’s face.

Several there were of a humorous kind. Here, a group of murderous ruffians were kneeling to receive a pontifical blessing. There, a party of Papal carbineers were in full flight from the pursuit of a single horseman armed with a bottle; while, in an excess of profanity that Pippo shuddered to contemplate, there was a portrait of himself, as a saint, offering the safeguard of the Tana to all persecuted sinners; and what an ill-favoured assemblage were they who thus congregated at his shrine!

Poor Gerald had lain for days gazing on the singular groupings and strange scenes these walls presented. At first, to his disordered intellect, they were but shapes of horror, wild and incongruous. The savage faces that scowled on him in paint sat, in his dreams, beside his pillow. The terrible countenances and frantic gestures were carried into his sleeping thoughts, and often did he awake, with a cry of agony, at some fearful scene of crime thus suggested. As his mind acquired strength, however, they became a source of endless amusement. Innumerable stories grew out of them: romances, whose adventures embraced every land and sea; and his excited imagination revelled in inventing trials and miseries for some, while for others he sought out every possible escape from disaster. His solitude had no need of either companionship or books; his mind, stimulated by these sketches, could invent unweariedly, so that, at last, he really lived in an ideal world, peopled with daring adventurers, and abounding in accidents by flood and field.

One day, as Gerald lay musing on his bed of chestnut-leaves, the door of his room was opened quietly, and a large, powerfully-built man entered. He walked with noiseless steps forward, placed a chair in front of Gerald, and sat down. The boy gazed steadfastly at him, and so they remained a considerable time, each staring fixedly at the other. To one who, like Gerald, had passed weeks in weaving histories from the looks and expressions of the faces around him, the features on which he now gazed might well excite interest. Never was there, perhaps, a face in which adverse and conflicting passions were more palpably depicted. A noble and massive head, covered with a profusion of black hair, rose from temples of exquisite symmetry, greatly indented at either side, and forming the walls of two orbits of singular depth. His eyes were large, dark, and lustrous, the expression usually sad. Here, however, ended all that indicated good in the face. The nose was short, with wide expanded nostrils, and the mouth large, coarse, and sensual; but the lower jaw, which was of enormous breadth, and projected forward, gave a character of actual ferocity that recalled the image of a wild boar. The whole meaning of the face was power – power and indomitable will. Whatever he meditated of good or evil, you could easily predict that nothing could divert him from attempting; and there was in the carriage of his head, all his gestures, and his air, the calm self-possession of one that seemed to say to the world, ‘I defy you.’

As Gerald gazed in a sort of fascination at these strange features, he was almost startled by the tone of a voice so utterly unlike what he was prepared for. The stranger spoke in a low, deep strain of exquisite modulation, and with that peculiar mellowness of accent that seems to leave its echo in the heart after it. He had merely asked him how he felt, and then, seeing the difficulty with which the boy replied, he went on to tell how he himself had discovered him on the side of the Lagoscuro at nightfall, and carried him all the way to the Tana. ‘The luck was,’ said he, ‘that you happened to be light, and I strong.’

‘Say, rather, that you were kind-hearted and I in trouble,’ muttered the boy, as his eyes filled up.

‘And who knows, boy, but you may be right!’ cried he, as though a sudden thought had crossed him; ‘your judgment has just as much grounds as that of the great world!’ As he spoke, his voice rose out of its tone of former gentleness and swelled into a roll of deep, sonorous meaning; then changing again, he asked – ‘By what accident was it that you came there?’

Gerald drew a long sigh, as though recalling a sorrowful dream; and then, with many a faltering word, and many an effort to recall events as they occurred, told all that he remembered of his own history.

‘A scholar of the Jesuit college; without father or mother; befriended by a great man, whose name he has never heard,’ muttered the other to himself. ‘No bad start in life for such a world as we have now before us. And your name?’

‘Gerald Fitzgerald. I am Irish by birth.’

The stranger seemed to ponder long over these words, and then said: ‘The Irish have a nationality of their own – a race – a language – traditions. Why have they suffered themselves to be ruled by England?’

‘I suppose they couldn’t help it,’ said Gerald, half smiling.

‘Which of us can say that? who has ever divined where the strength lay till the day of struggle called it forth? Chance, chance – she is the great goddess!’

‘I’d be sorry to think so,’ said Gerald resolutely.

‘Indeed, boy!’ cried the other, turning his large, full eyes upon the youth, and staring steadfastly at him; then passing his hand over his brow, he added, in a tone of much feeling: ‘And yet it is as I have said. Look at the portraits around us on these walls. There they are, great or infamous, as accident has made them. That fellow yonder, with that noble forehead and generous look, he stabbed the confessor who gave the last rites to his father, just because the priest had heard some tales to his disadvantage; a scrupulous sense of delicacy moved him – there was a woman’s name in it – and he preferred a murder to a scandal! There, too, there’s Marocchi, who poisoned his mother the day of her second marriage. Ask old Pippo if he ever saw a gentler-hearted creature: he lived here two years, and died of the Maremma fever, that he caught from a peasant whom he was nursing. And there again, that wild-looking fellow with the scarlet cap – he it was who stole the Medici jewels out of the Pitti to give his mistress, and killed himself afterwards when she deserted him. Weigh the good and evil of these men’s hearts, boy, and you have subtle weights if you can strike the balance for or against them. We are all but what good or evil fortune makes us, just as a landscape catches its tone from light; and what is glorious in sunshine is bleak and desolate and dreary beneath a leaden sky and lowering atmosphere!’

‘I’ll not believe it,’ said the boy boldly. ‘I have read of fellows that never showed the great stuff they were made of until adversity had called it forth. They were truly great!’

‘Truly great!’ repeated the other, with an intense mockery. ‘The truly great we never hear of. They die in workhouses or garrets – poor, dreary optimists, working out of their finespun fancies hopeful destinies for those who sneer at them.

The idols men call great are but the types of Force – mere Force. One day it is courage; another, it is money; another day, political craft is the object of worship. Come, boy,’ said he, in a lighter vein, ‘what have these worthy Jesuits taught you?’

‘Very different lessons from yours,’ said the youth stoutly. ‘They taught me to honour and reverence those set in authority over me.’

‘Good; and then – ’

‘They taught me the principles of my faith; the creed of the Church.’

‘What Church?’

‘What but the one Church – the Catholic!’

‘Why, there are fifty, child, and each with five hundred controversies within it. Popes denying Councils; Councils rejecting Popes; Synods against Bishops; Bishops against Presbyters. What a mockery is it all!’ cried he passionately. ‘We who, in our imperfect forms of language, have not even names for separate odours, but say, “this smells like the violet,” and “that like the rose,” presume to talk of eternity and that vast universe around us, as though our paltry vocabulary could compass such themes! But to come back: were you happy there?’

‘No; I could not bear the life, nor did I wish to be a priest.’

‘What would you be, then?’

‘I wish I knew,’ said the boy fervently.

‘I’m a bad counsellor,’ said the other, with a bitter smile; ‘I have tried several things, and failed in all.’

‘I never could have thought that you could fail,’ said Gerald slowly, as in calm composure he gazed on the massive features before him.

‘I have done with failure now,’ said the other; ‘I mean to achieve success next. It is something to have learned a great truth, and this is one, boy – our world is a huge hunting-ground, and it is better to play wolf than lamb. Don’t turn your eyes to those walls, as if the fellows depicted there could gainsay me – they were but sorry scoundrels, the bad ones; the best were but weakly good.’

‘You do but pain me when you speak thus,’ said Gerald; ‘you make me think that you are one who, having done some great crime, waits to avenge the penalty he has suffered on the world that inflicted it.’

‘What if you were partly right, boy! Not but I would protest against the word crime, or even fault, as applied to me; still you are near enough to make your guess a good one. I have a debt to pay, and I mean to pay it.’

‘I wish I had never quitted the college.’ said the boy, and the tears rolled heavily down his cheeks.

‘It is not too late to retrace your steps. The cell and the scourge – the fathers know the use of both – will soon condone your offence; and when they have sapped the last drop of manhood out of your nature, you will be all the fitter for your calling.’

With these harsh words, uttered in tones as cruel, the stranger left the room; while Gerald, covering his face with both hands, sobbed as though his heart were breaking.

‘Ah! Gabriel has been talking to him. I knew how it would be,’ muttered old Pippo, as he cast a glance within the room. ‘Poor child! better for him had he left him to die in the Maremma.’

CHAPTER IX. THE ‘COUR’ OF THE ALTIERI

A LONG autumn day was drawing to its close in Rome, and gradually here and there might be seen a few figures stealing listlessly along, or seated in melancholy mood before the shop-doors, trying to catch a momentary breath of air ere the hour of sunset should fall. All the great and noble of the capital had left a month before for the sea-side, or for Albano, or the shady valleys above Lucca. You might walk for days and never meet a carriage. It was a city in complete desolation. The grass sprang up between the stones, and troops of seared leaves, carried from the gardens, littered the empty streets. The palaces were barred up and fastened, the massive doors looking as if they had not opened for centuries. In one alone, throughout the entire city, did any signs of habitation linger, and here a single lamp threw its faint light over a wide courtyard, giving a ghost-like air to the vaulted corridors and dim distances around. All was still and silent within the walls; not a light gleamed from a window, not a sound issued. A solitary figure walked with weary footsteps up and down, stopping at times to listen, as if he heard the noise of one approaching, and then resuming his dreary round again.

As night closed in, a second stranger made his appearance, and timidly halting at the porter’s lodge, asked leave to enter; but the porter had gone to refresh himself at a neighbouring café, and the visitor passed in of his own accord. He was in a friar’s robe, and by his dusty dress and tired look showed that he had had a long journey; indeed, so overcome was he with fatigue that he sat down at once on a stone bench, depositing his heavy bag beside him. The oppressive heat, the fatigue, the silence of the lonesome spot, all combined, composed him to sleep; and poor Fra Luke, for it was he, crossed his arms before him, and snored away manfully.

Astonished by the deep-drawn breathing, the other stranger drew nigh, and, as well as the imperfect light permitted, examined him. He himself was a man of immense stature, and, though bowed and doubled by age, showed the remnant of a powerful frame: his dress was worn and shabby, but in its cut and in the fashion he wore it, bespoke the gentleman. He gazed long and attentively at the sleeping friar, and then approaching, he took up the bag that lay on the bench. It was weighty, and contained money – a considerable sum, too, as the stranger remarked, while he replaced it. The heavy bang of a door at this moment, and the sound of feet, however, recalled him from this contemplation, and at the same time a low whistle was heard, and a voice, in a subdued tone, called out, ‘O’Sullivan!’

‘Here!’ cried the stranger, who was quickly joined by another.

‘I am sorry to have kept you so long, chief,’ said the latter; ‘but he detained me, watching me so closely, too, that I feared to leave the room.’

‘And how is he – better?’

‘Far from it; he seems to be sinking every hour. His irritability is intense; eternally asking who have called to inquire after him – if Boyer had been to ask, if the Cardinal Caraffa had come. In fact, so eagerly set is his mind on these things, I have been obliged to make the coachman drive repeatedly into the courtyard, and by a loud uproar without convey the notion of a press of visitors.’

‘Has he asked after Barra or myself?’ said the chieftain, after a pause.

‘Yes; he said twice, “We must have our old followers up here – to-morrow or the next day.” But his mind is scarcely settled, for he talked of Florence and the duchess, and then went off about the insult of that arrest in France, which preys upon him incessantly.’

‘And why should it not, Kelly? Was there ever such baseness as that of Louis? Take my word for it, there’s a heavy day of reckoning to come to that house yet for this iniquity. It’s a sore trouble to me to think it will not be in my time, but it is not far off.’

‘Everything is possible now,’ said Kelly. ‘Heaven knows what’s in store for any of us! Men are talking in a way I never heard before. Boyer told me, two days ago, that the garrison of Paris was to be doubled, and Vincennes placed in a perfect state of defence.’