A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories | Page 2

know," he said, with the weak persistence of a
man willing that his wife should persuade him against his convictions;
"I wish that I felt certain of it."
"You are too sick to go to the war; nobody expected you to go."
"I know that, and I can't say that I like it. As for being too sick, perhaps
it's the part of a man to go if he dies on the way to the field. It would
encourage the others," he added, smiling faintly.
She ignored the tint from Voltaire in replying: "Nonsense! It would do
no good at all. At any rate, it's too late now."
"Yes, it's too late now."
The sea-sickness which shortly followed formed a diversion from his
accusing thoughts. Each day of the voyage removed them further, and
with the preoccupations of his first days in Europe, his travel to Italy,
and his preparations for a long sojourn in Venice, they had softened to
a pensive sense of self-sacrifice, which took a warmer or a cooler tinge
according as the news from home was good or bad.
II.
He lost no time in going to work in the Marcian Library, and he early
applied to the Austrian authorities for leave to have transcripts made in

the archives. The permission was negotiated by the American consul
(then a young painter of the name of Ferris), who reported a mechanical
facility on the part of the authorities,--as if, he said, they were used to
obliging American historians of Venice. The foreign tyranny which
cast a pathetic glamour over the romantic city had certainly not
appeared to grudge such publicity as Elmore wished to give her heroic
memories, though it was then at its most repressive period, and formed
a check upon the whole life of the place. The tears were hardly yet dry
in the despairing eyes that had seen the French fleet sail away from the
Lido, after Solferino, without firing a shot in behalf of Venice; but
Lombardy, the Duchies, the Sicilies, had all passed to Sardinia, and the
Pope alone represented the old order of native despotism in Italy. At
Venice the Germans seemed tranquilly awaiting the change which
should destroy their system with the rest; and in the meantime there had
occurred one of those impressive pauses, as notable in the lives of
nations as of men, when, after the occurrence of great events, the forces
of action and endurance seem to be gathering themselves against the
stress of the future. The quiet was almost consciously a truce and not a
peace; and this local calm had drawn into it certain elements that
picturesquely and sentimentally heightened the charm of the place. It
was a refuge for many exiled potentates and pretenders; the gondolier
pointed out on the Grand Canal the palaces of the Count of Chambord,
the Duchess of Parma, and the Infante of Spain; and one met these
fallen princes in the squares and streets, bowing with distinct courtesy
to any that chose to salute them. Every evening the Piazza San Marco
was filled with the white coats of the Austrian officers, promenading to
the exquisite military music which has ceased there forever; the patrol
clanked through the footways at all hours of the night, and the lagoon
heard the cry of the sentinel from fort to fort, and from gunboat to
gunboat. Through all this the demonstration of the patriots went on,
silent, ceaseless, implacable, annulling every alien effort at gayety,
depopulating the theatres, and desolating the ancient holidays.
There was something very fine in this, as a spectacle, Elmore said to
his young wife, and he had to admire the austere self-denial of a people
who would not suffer their tyrants to see them happy; but they secretly
owned to each other that it was fatiguing. Soon after coming to Venice

they had made some acquaintance among the Italians through Mr.
Ferris, and had early learned that the condition of knowing Venetians
was not to know Austrians. It was easy and natural for them to submit,
theoretically. As Americans, they must respond to any impulse for
freedom, and certainly they could have no sympathy with such a
system as that of Austria. By whatever was sacred in our own war upon
slavery, they were bound to abhor oppression in every form. But it was
hard to make the application of their hatred to the amiable-looking
people whom they saw everywhere around them in the quality of
tyrants, especially when their Venetian friends confessed that
personally they liked the Austrians. Besides, if the whole truth must be
told, they found that their friendship with the Italians was not always of
the most penetrating sort, though it had a superficial intensity that for a
while gave the effect of lasting cordiality. The