Massimilla Doni | Page 4

high ever to touch her. A year hence,
perhaps, he might not be a victim to this noble error which attacks none
but very young or very old men. But as the archer who shoots beyond
the mark is as far from it as he whose arrow falls short of it, the
Duchess found herself between a husband who knew he was so far
from reaching the target, that he had ceased to try for it, and a lover
who was carried so much past it on the white wings of an angel, that he
could not get back to it. Massimilla could be happy with desire, not
imagining its issue; but her lover, distressful in his happiness, would
sometimes obtain from his beloved a promise that led her to the edge of
what many women call "the gulf," and thus found himself obliged to be
satisfied with plucking the flowers at the edge, incapable of daring
more than to pull off their petals, and smother his torture in his heart.
They had wandered out together that morning, repeating such a hymn
of love as the birds warbled in the branches. On their return, the youth,
whose situation can only be described by comparing him to the cherubs
represented by painters as having only a head and wings, had been so
impassioned as to venture to hint a doubt as to the Duchess' entire
devotion, so as to bring her to the point of saying: "What proof do you
need?"
The question had been asked with a royal air, and Memmi had ardently

kissed the beautiful and guileless hand. Then he suddenly started up in
a rage with himself, and left the Duchess. Massimilla remained in her
indolent attitude on the sofa; but she wept, wondering how, young and
handsome as she was, she could fail to please Emilio. Memmi, on the
other hand, knocked his head against the tree-trunks like a hooded
crow.
But at this moment a servant came in pursuit of the young Venetian to
deliver a letter brought by express messenger.
Marco Vendramini,--a name also pronounced Vendramin, in the
Venetian dialect, which drops many final letters,--his only friend, wrote
to tell him that Facino Cane, Prince of Varese, had died in a hospital in
Paris. Proofs of his death had come to hand, and the Cane-Memmi were
Princes of Varese. In the eyes of the two young men a title without
wealth being worthless, Vendramin also informed Emilio, as a far more
important fact, of the engagement at the Fenice of the famous tenor
Genovese, and the no less famous Signora Tinti.
Without waiting to finish the letter, which he crumpled up and put in
his pocket, Emilio ran to communicate this great news to the Duchess,
forgetting his heraldic honors.
The Duchess knew nothing of the strange story which made la Tinti an
object of curiosity in Italy, and Emilio briefly repeated it.
This illustrious singer had been a mere inn-servant, whose wonderful
voice had captivated a great Sicilian nobleman on his travels. The girl's
beauty--she was then twelve years old--being worthy of her voice, the
gentleman had had the moderation to have brought her up, as Louis XV.
had Mademoiselle de Romans educated. He had waited patiently till
Clara's voice had been fully trained by a famous professor, and till she
was sixteen, before taking toll of the treasure so carefully cultivated.
La Tinti had made her debut the year before, and had enchanted the
three most fastidious capitals of Italy.
"I am perfectly certain that her great nobleman is not my husband," said
the Duchess.
The horses were ordered, and the Duchess set out at once for Venice, to
be present at the opening of the winter season.
So one fine evening in November, the new Prince of Varese was
crossing the lagoon from Mestre to Venice, between the lines of stakes
painted with Austrian colors, which mark out the channel for gondolas

as conceded by the custom-house. As he watched Massimilla's gondola,
navigated by men in livery, and cutting through the water a few yards
in front, poor Emilio, with only an old gondolier who had been his
father's servant in the days when Venice was still a living city, could
not repress the bitter reflections suggested to him by the assumption of
his title.
"What a mockery of fortune! A prince--with fifteen hundred francs a
year! Master of one of the finest palaces in the world, and unable to sell
the statues, stairs, paintings, sculpture, which an Austrian decree had
made inalienable! To live on a foundation of piles of campeachy wood
worth nearly a million of francs, and have no furniture! To own
sumptuous galleries, and live in an attic above the topmost arabesque
cornice constructed of marble brought from the Morea