Don Orsino

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Don Orsino

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Title: Don Orsino
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release Date: August 19, 2004 [EBook #13218]
Language: English
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ORSINO ***

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DON ORSINO
BY

F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "THE THREE FATES," "ZOROASTER," "DR.
CLAUDIUS," "SARACINESCA," ETC.
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
1891, MACMILLAN AND CO.
Reprinted January, April, December, 1893; June, 1894; January,
November, 1895; June, 1896, January, 1898, June, 1899; July, 1901
June, 1903; June, 1905; January, 1907.
_Fifty-sixth Thousand_
Norwood Press J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass.
U.S.A.

DON ORSINO.
CHAPTER I.
Don Orsino Saracinesca is of the younger age and lives in the younger
Rome, with his father and mother, under the roof of the vast old palace
which has sheltered so many hundreds of Saracinesca in peace and war,
but which has rarely in the course of the centuries been the home of
three generations at once during one and twenty years.
The lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day
and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way
from one flower to another. But the historian is an entomologist who
must be stirring. He must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the
net which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon his paper with
sharp pins, which are dates.
By far the greater number of old Prince Saracinesca's contemporaries
are dead, and more or less justly forgotten. Old Valdarno died long ago

in his bed, surrounded by sons and daughters. The famous dandy of
other days, the Duke of Astrardente, died at his young wife's feet some
three and twenty years before this chapter of family history opens.
Then the primeval Prince Montevarchi came to a violent end at the
hands of his librarian, leaving his English princess consolable but
unconsoled, leaving also his daughter Flavia married to that other
Giovanni Saracinesca who still bears the name of Marchese di San
Giacinto; while the younger girl, the fair, brown-eyed Faustina, loved a
poor Frenchman, half soldier and all artist. The weak, good-natured
Ascanio Bellegra reigns in his father's stead, the timidly extravagant
master of all that wealth which the miser's lean and crooked fingers had
consigned to a safe keeping. Frangipani too, whose son was to have
married Faustina, is gone these many years, and others of the older and
graver sort have learned the great secret from the lips of death.
But there have been other and greater deaths, beside which the
mortality of a whole society of noblemen sinks into insignificance. An
empire is dead and another has arisen in the din of a vast war, begotten
in bloodshed, brought forth in strife, baptized with fire. The France we
knew is gone, and the French Republic writes "Liberty, Fraternity,
Equality" in great red letters above the gate of its habitation, which
within is yet hung with mourning. Out of the nest of kings and princes
and princelings, and of all manner of rulers great and small, rises the
solitary eagle of the new German Empire and hangs on black wings
between sky and earth, not striking again, but always ready, a vision of
armed peace, a terror, a problem--perhaps a warning.
Old Rome is dead, too, never to be old Rome again. The last breath has
been breathed, the aged eyes are closed for ever, corruption has done its
work, and the grand skeleton lies bleaching upon seven hills, half
covered with the piecemeal stucco of a modern architectural body. The
result is satisfactory to those who have brought it about, if not to the
rest of the world. The sepulchre of old Rome is the new capital of
united Italy.
The three chief actors are dead also--the man of heart, the man of
action and the man of wit, the good, the brave and, the cunning, the

Pope, the King and the Cardinal--Pius the Ninth, Victor Emmanuel the
Second, Giacomo Antonelli. Rome saw them all dead.
In a poor chamber of the Vatican, upon a simple bed, beside which
burned two waxen torches in the cold morning light, lay the body of the
man whom none had loved and many had feared, clothed in the violet
robe of the