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Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 3. The Freedom Without Law - Chapter 3.3. The Conversation Between The Roman And The Provencal... |
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_ Book III. The Freedom Without Law#Chapter 3.3. The Conversation Between The Roman And The Provencal--Adeline's History--The Moonlit Sea--The Lute And The Song
The young Colonna was much struck by her beauty, and more by her gentle and highborn grace. Like her lord she appeared younger than she was; time seemed to spare a bloom which an experienced eye might have told was destined to an early grave; and there was something almost girlish in the lightness of her form--the braided luxuriance of her rich auburn hair, and the colour that went and came, not only with every moment, but almost with every word. The contrast between her and Montreal became them both--it was the contrast of devoted reliance and protecting strength: each looked fairer in the presence of the other: and as Adrian sate down to the well-laden board, he thought he had never seen a pair more formed for the poetic legends of their native Troubadours. Montreal conversed gaily upon a thousand matters--pressed the wine flasks--and selected for his guest the most delicate portions of the delicious spicola of the neighbouring sea, and the rich flesh of the wild boar of the Pontine Marshes. "Tell me," said Montreal, as their hunger was now appeased--"tell me, noble Adrian, how fares your kinsman, Signor Stephen? A brave old man for his years." "He bears him as the youngest of us," answered Adrian. "Late events must have shocked him a little," said Montreal, with an arch smile. "Ah, you look grave--yet commend my foresight;--I was the first who prophesied to thy kinsman the rise of Cola di Rienzi; he seems a great man--never more great than in conciliating the Colonna and the Orsini." "The Tribune," returned Adrian, evasively, "is certainly a man of extraordinary genius. And now, seeing him command, my only wonder is how he ever brooked to obey--majesty seems a very part of him." "Men who win power, easily put on its harness, dignity," answered Montreal; "and if I hear aright--(pledge me to your lady's health)--the Tribune, if not himself nobly born will soon be nobly connected." "He is already married to a Raselli, an old Roman house," replied Adrian. "You evade my pursuit,--Le doulx soupir! le doulx soupir! as the old Cabestan has it"--said Montreal, laughing. "Well, you have pledged me one cup to your lady, pledge another to the fair Irene, the Tribune's sister--always provided they two are not one.--You smile and shake your head." "I do not disguise from you, Sir Knight," answered Adrian, "that when my present embassy is over, I trust the alliance between the Tribune and a Colonna will go far towards the benefit of both." "I have heard rightly, then," said Montreal, in a grave and thoughtful tone. "Rienzi's power must, indeed, be great." "Of that my mission is a proof. Are you aware, Signor de Montreal, that Louis, King of Hungary--" "How! what of him?" "Has referred the decision of the feud between himself and Joanna of Naples, respecting the death of her royal spouse, his brother, to the fiat of the Tribune? This is the first time, methinks, since the death of Constantine, that so great a confidence and so high a charge were ever intrusted to a Roman!" "By all the saints in the calendar," cried Montreal, crossing himself, "this news is indeed amazing! The fierce Louis of Hungary waive the right of the sword, and choose other umpire than the field of battle!" "And this," continued Adrian, in a significant tone, "this it was which induced me to obey your courteous summons. I know, brave Montreal, that you hold intercourse with Louis. Louis has given to the Tribune the best pledge of his amity and alliance; will you do wisely if you--" "Wage war with the Hungarian's ally," interrupted Montreal. "This you were about to add; the same thought crossed myself. My Lord, pardon me--Italians sometimes invent what they wish. On the honour of a knight of the Empire, these tidings are the naked truth?" "By my honour, and on the Cross," answered Adrian, drawing himself up; "and in proof thereof, I am now bound to Naples to settle with the Queen the preliminaries of the appointed trial." "Two crowned heads before the tribunal of a plebeian, and one a defendant against the charge of murther!" muttered Montreal; "the news might well amaze me!" He remained musing and silent a little while, till looking up, he caught Adeline's tender gaze fixed upon him with that deep solicitude with which she watched the outward effect of schemes and projects she was too soft to desire to know, and too innocent to share. "Lady mine," said the Provencal, fondly, "how sayest thou? must we abandon our mountain castle, and these wild woodland scenes, for the dull walls of a city? I fear me so.--The Lady Adeline," he continued, turning to Adrian, "is of a singular bias; she hates the gay crowds of streets and thoroughfares, and esteems no palace like the solitary outlaw's hold. Yet, methinks, she might outshine all the faces of Italy,--thy mistress, Lord Adrian, of course, excepted." "It is an exception which only a lover, and that too a betrothed lover, would dare to make," replied Adrian, gallantly. "Nay," said Adeline, in a voice singularly sweet and clear, "nay, I know well at what price to value my lord's flattery, and Signor di Castello's courtesy. But you are bound, Sir Knight, to a court, that, if fame speak true, boasts in its Queen the very miracle and mould of beauty." "It is some years since I saw the Queen of Naples," answered Adrian; "and I little dreamed then, when I gazed upon that angel face, that I should live to hear her accused of the foulest murther that ever stained even Italian royalty." "And, as if resolved to prove her guilt," said Montreal, "ere long be sure she will marry the very man who did the deed. Of this I have certain proof." Thus conversing, the Knights wore away the daylight, and beheld from the open tent the sun cast his setting glow over the purple sea. Adeline had long retired from the board, and they now saw her seated with her handmaids on a mound by the beach; while the sound of her lute faintly reached their ears. As Montreal caught the air, he turned from the converse, and sighing, half shaded his face with his hand. Somehow or other the two Knights had worn away all the little jealousy or pique which they had conceived against each other at Rome. Both imbued with the soldier-like spirit of the age, their contest in the morning had served to inspire them with that strange kind of respect, and even cordiality, which one brave man even still (how much more at that day!) feels for another, whose courage he has proved while vindicating his own. It is like the discovery of a congenial sentiment hitherto latent; and, in a life of camps, often establishes sudden and lasting friendship in the very lap of enmity. This feeling had been ripened by their subsequent familiar intercourse, and was increased on Adrian's side by the feeling, that in convincing Montreal of the policy of withdrawing from the Roman territories, he had obtained an advantage that well repaid whatever danger and delay he had undergone. The sigh, and the altered manner of Montreal, did not escape Adrian, and he naturally connected it with something relating to her whose music had been its evident cause. "Yon lovely dame," said he, gently, "touches the lute with an exquisite and fairy hand, and that plaintive air seems to my ear as of the minstrelsy of Provence." "It is the air I taught her," said Montreal, sadly, "married as it is to indifferent words, with which I first wooed a heart that should never have given itself to me! Ay, young Colonna, many a night has my boat been moored beneath the starlit Sorgia that washes her proud father's halls, and my voice awaked the stillness of the waving sedges with a soldier's serenade. Sweet memories! bitter fruit!" "Why bitter? ye love each other still."
"Your lady, as all would guess, is then nobly born?" "She is," answered Montreal, with a deep and evident feeling which, save in love, rarely, if ever, crossed his hardy breast. "She is! our tale is a brief one:--we loved each other as children: Her family was wealthier than mine: We were separated. I was given to understand that she abandoned me. I despaired, and in despair I took the cross of St. John. Chance threw us again together. I learned that her love was undecayed. Poor child!--she was even then, sir, but a child! I, wild,--reckless--and not unskilled, perhaps, in the arts that woo and win. She could not resist my suit or her own affection!--We fled. In those words you see the thread of my after history. My sword and my Adeline were all my fortune. Society frowned on us. The Church threatened my soul. The Grand Master my life. I became a knight of fortune. Fate and my right hand favoured me. I have made those who scorned me tremble at my name. That name shall yet blaze, a star or a meteor, in the front of troubled nations, and I may yet win by force from the Pontiff the dispensation refused to my prayers. On the same day, I may offer Adeline the diadem and the ring.--Eno' of this;--you marked Adeline's cheek!--Seems it not delicate? I like not that changeful flush,--and she moves languidly,--her step that was so blithe!" "Change of scene and the mild south will soon restore her health," said Adrian; "and in your peculiar life she is so little brought in contact with others, especially of her own sex, that I trust she is but seldom made aware of whatever is painful in her situation. And woman's love, Montreal, as we both have learned, is a robe that wraps her from many a storm!" "You speak kindly," returned the Knight; "but you know not all our cause of grief. Adeline's father, a proud sieur, died,--they said of a broken heart,--but old men die of many another disease than that! The mother, a dame who boasted her descent from princes, bore the matter more sternly than the sire; clamoured for revenge,--which was odd, for she is as religious as a Dominican, and revenge is not Christian in a woman, though it is knightly in a man!--Well, my Lord, we had one boy, our only child; he was Adeline's solace in my absence,--his pretty ways were worth the world to her! She loved him so, that, but he had her eyes and looked like her when he slept, I should have been jealous! He grew up in our wild life, strong and comely; the young rogue, he would have been a brave knight! My evil stars led me to Milan, where I had business with the Visconti. One bright morning in June, our boy was stolen; verily that June was like a December to us!" "Stolen!--how?--by whom?" "The first question is answered easily,--the boy was with his nurse in the courtyard, the idle wench left him for but a minute or two--so she avers--fetch him some childish toy; when she returned he was gone; not a trace left, save his pretty cap with the plume in it! Poor Adeline, many a time have I found her kissing that relic till it was wet with tears!" "A strange fortune, in truth. But what interest could--" "I will tell you," interrupted Montreal, "the only conjecture I could form;--Adeline's mother, on learning we had a son, sent to Adeline a letter, that well nigh broke her heart, reproaching her for her love to me, and so forth, as if that had made her the vilest of the sex. She bade her take compassion on her child, and not bring him up to a robber's life,--so was she pleased to style the bold career of Walter de Montreal. She offered to rear the child in her own dull halls, and fit him, no doubt, for a shaven pate and a monk's cowl. She chafed much that a mother would not part with her treasure! She alone, partly in revenge, partly in silly compassion for Adeline's child, partly, it may be, from some pious fanaticism, could, it so seemed to me, have robbed us of our boy. On inquiry, I learned from the nurse--who, but that she was of the same sex as Adeline, should have tasted my dagger,--that in their walks, a woman of advanced years, but seemingly of humble rank, (that might be disguise!) had often stopped, and caressed and admired the child. I repaired at once to France, sought the old Castle of De Courval;--it had passed to the next heir, and the old widow was go on, none knew whither, but, it was conjectured, to take the veil in some remote convent." "And you never saw her since?" "Yes, at Rome," answered Montreal, turning pale; "when last there I chanced suddenly upon her; and then at length I learned my boy's fate, and the truth of my own surmise; she confessed to the theft--and my child was dead! I have not dared to tell Adeline of this; it seems to me as if it would be like plucking the shaft from the wounded side--and she would die at once, bereft of the uncertainty that rankles within her. She has still a hope--it comforts her; though my heart bleeds when I think on its vanity. Let this pass, my Colonna." And Montreal started to his feet as if he strove, by a strong effort, to shake off the weakness that had crept over him in his narration. "Think no more of it. Life is short--its thorns are many--let us not neglect any of its flowers. This is piety and wisdom too; Nature that meant me to struggle and to toil, gave me, happily, the sanguine heart and the elastic soul of France; and I have lived long enough to own that to die young is not an evil. Come, Lord Adrian, let us join my lady ere you part, if part you must; the moon will be up soon, and Fondi is but a short journey hence. You know that though I admire not your Petrarch, you with more courtesy laud our Provencal ballads, and you must hear Adeline sing one that you may prize them the more. The race of the Troubadours is dead, but the minstrelsy survives the minstrel!" Adrian, who scarce knew what comfort to administer to the affliction of his companion, was somewhat relieved by the change in his mood, though his more grave and sensitive nature was a little startled at its suddenness. But, as we have before seen, Montreal's spirit (and this made perhaps its fascination) was as a varying and changeful sky; the gayest sunshine, and the fiercest storm swept over it in rapid alternation; and elements of singular might and grandeur, which, properly directed and concentrated, would have made him the blessing and glory of his time, were wielded with a boyish levity, roused into war and desolation, or lulled into repose and smoothness, with all the suddenness of chance, and all the fickleness of caprice. Sauntering down to the beach, the music of Adeline's lute sounded more distinctly in their ears, and involuntarily they hushed their steps upon the rich and odorous turf, as in a voice, though not powerful, marvellously sweet and clear, and well adapted to the simple fashion of the words and melody, she sang the following stanzas:-- 1. Ah, why art thou sad, my heart? Why 2. As a bird, though the sky be clear, 3. As this twilight o'er the skies,
"No sound ever went to the heart," said Adrian, "whose arrow was not feathered by sadness. True sentiment, Montreal, is twin with melancholy, though not with gloom." The lady looked softly and approvingly up at Adrian's face; she was pleased with its expression; she was pleased yet more with words of which women rather than men would acknowledge the truth. Adrian returned the look with one of deep and eloquent sympathy and respect; in fact, the short story he had heard from Montreal had interested him deeply in her; and never to the brilliant queen, to whose court he was bound, did his manner wear so chivalric and earnest a homage as it did to that lone and ill-fated lady on the twilight shores of Terracina. Adeline blushed slightly and sighed; and then, to break the awkwardness of a pause which had stolen over them, as Montreal, unheeding the last remark of Adrian, was tuning the strings of the lute, she said--"Of course the Signor di Castello shares the universal enthusiasm for Petrarch?" "Ay," cried Montreal; "my lady is Petrarch mad, like the rest of them: but all I know is, that never did belted knight and honest lover woo in such fantastic and tortured strains." "In Italy," answered Adrian, "common language is exaggeration;--but even your own Troubadour poetry might tell you that love, ever seeking a new language of its own, cannot but often run into what to all but lovers seems distortion and conceit." "Come, dear Signor," said Montreal, placing the lute in Adrian's hands, "let Adeline be the umpire between us, which music--yours or mine--can woo the more blandly." "Ah," said Adrian, laughing; "I fear me, Sir Knight, you have already bribed the umpire." Montreal's eyes and Adeline's met; and in that gaze Adeline forgot all her sorrows. With a practised and skilful hand, Adrian touched the strings; and selecting a song which was less elaborate than those mostly in vogue amongst his countrymen, though still conceived in the Italian spirit, and in accordance with the sentiment he had previously expressed to Adeline, he sang as follows:-- Love's Excuse for Sadness. Chide not, beloved, if oft with thee I feel not rapture wholly; For aye the heart that's fill'd with love, Runs o'er in melancholy. To streams that glide in noon, the shade From summer skies is given; So, if my breast reflects the cloud, 'Tis but the cloud of heaven! Thine image glass'd within my soul So well the mirror keepeth; That, chide me not, if with the light The shadow also sleepeth. "And now," said Adrian, as he concluded, "the lute is to you: I but preclude your prize." The Provencal laughed, and shook his head.--"With any other umpire, I had had my lute broken on my own head, for my conceit in provoking such a rival; but I must not shrink from a contest I have myself provoked, even though in one day twice defeated." And with that, in a deep and exquisitely melodious voice, which wanted only more scientific culture to have challenged any competition, the Knight of St. John poured forth: 1. Gentle river, the moonbeam is hush'd on thy tide, 2. Wilt thou fly from the world? It hath wealth for the vain; 3. The rich and the great woo thee dearest; and poor, 4. The maiden she blush'd, and the maiden she sighed,
Adrian, reluctantly reminded of his journey, rose to depart. "I fear," said he to Adeline, "that I have already detained you too late in the night air: but selfishness is little considerate." "Nay, you see we are prudent," said Adeline, pointing to Montreal's mantle, which his provident hand had long since drawn around her form; "but if you must part, farewell, and success attend you!" "We may meet again, I trust," said Adrian. Adeline sighed gently; and the Colonna, gazing on her face by the moonlight, to which it was slightly raised, was painfully struck by its almost transparent delicacy. Moved by his compassion, ere he mounted his steed, he drew Montreal aside,--"Forgive me if I seem presumptuous," said he; "but to one so noble this wild life is scarce a fitting career. I know that, in our time, War consecrates all his children; but surely a settled rank in the court of the Emperor, or an honourable reconciliation with your knightly brethren, were better--" "Than a Tartar camp, and a brigand's castle," interrupted Montreal, with some impatience. "This you were about to say--you are mistaken. Society thrust me from her bosom; let society take the fruit it hath sown. 'A fixed rank,' say you? some subaltern office, to fight at other men's command! You know me not: Walter de Montreal was not formed to obey. War when I will, and rest when I list, is the motto of my escutcheon. Ambition proffers me rewards you wot not of; and I am of the mould as of the race of those whose swords have conquered thrones. For the rest, your news of the alliance of Louis of Hungary with your Tribune makes it necessary for the friend of Louis to withdraw from all feud with Rome. Ere the week expire, the owl and the bat may seek refuge in yon grey turrets." "But your lady?" "Is inured to change.--God help her, and temper the rough wind to the lamb!" "Enough, Sir Knight: but should you desire a sure refuge at Rome for one so gentle and so highborn, by the right hand of a knight, I promise a safe roof and an honoured home to the Lady Adeline." Montreal pressed the offered hand to his heart; then plucking his own hastily away, drew it across his eyes, and joined Adeline, in a silence that showed he dared not trust himself to speak. In a few moments Adrian and his train were on the march; but still the young Colonna turned back, to gaze once more on his wild host and that lovely lady, as they themselves lingered on the moonlit sward, while the sea rippled mournfully on their ears. It was not many months after that date, that the name of Fra Monreale scattered terror and dismay throughout the fair Campania. The right hand of the Hungarian king, in his invasion of Naples, he was chosen afterwards vicar (or vice-gerent) of Louis in Aversa; and fame and fate seemed to lead him triumphantly along that ambitious career which he had elected, whether bounded by the scaffold or the throne. _ |
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