Stradella

Stradella, by F. Marion
Crawford

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stradella, by F. Marion Crawford
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Stradella
Author: Francis Marion Crawford
Release Date: November 3, 2007 [EBook #23299]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
STRADELLA ***

Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Barbara Kosker, Jeannie Howse and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

STRADELLA
[Illustration: 'But Ortensia did not even hear him, and sat quite still in
her chair' (See p. 271.)]

STRADELLA

BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "FAIR
MARGARET," ETC., ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909
All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1909. BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909.

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood,
Mass., U.S.A.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
'But Ortensia did not even hear him, and sat quite still in her chair'
Frontispiece

FACING PAGE
'"This is the celebrated Maestro Alessandro Stradella of Naples"' 11
'The footman came back at last with a white face' 87
'The two Bravi faced the watch side by side' 243
'"The profession has two branches. We take lives, you take purses"' 282
'He began to look about for lodgings' 307
'Trombin advanced upon him slowly, looking more like an avenging
demon than a man' 373
'She sat up in his arms and framed his face in her hands' 406
CHAPTER I
The Senator Michele Pignaver, being a childless widower of several
years' standing and a personage of wealth and worth in Venice, made
up his mind one day that he would marry his niece Ortensia, as soon as
her education was completed. For he was a man of culture and of
refined tastes, fond of music, much given to writing sonnets and to
reading the works of the elegant Politian, as well as to composing
sentimental airs for the voice and lute. He patronised arts and letters
with vast credit and secret economy; for he never gave anything more
than a supper and a recommendation to the poets, musicians, and artists
who paid their court to him and dedicated to him their choicest
productions. The supper was generally a frugal affair, but his reputation
in æsthetic matters was so great that a word from him to a leader of
fashion, or a letter of introduction to a Venetian Ambassador abroad,
often proved to be worth more than the gold he abstained from giving.
He spoke Latin, he could read Greek, and his taste in poetry was so
highly cultivated that he called Dante's verse rough, uncouth, and
vulgar--precisely as Horace Walpole, seventy or eighty years later,
could not conceive how any one could prefer Shakespeare's rude lines
to the elegant verses of Mr. Pope. For the Senator lived in the age when

Louis XIV. was young, and Charles II. had been restored to the throne
only a few years before the beginning of this story.
Pignaver was about fifty years old. There is no good reason why a
widower of that age, robust and temperate, and hardly grey, should not
take a wife; perhaps there is really no reason, either, why he should not
marry a girl of eighteen, if she will have him, and where neither usage
nor ecclesiastical ordinances are opposed to it, the young lady may
even be his niece. Besides, in the present case, the Senator would
appear to his peers and associates to be conferring a favour on the
object of his elderly affections, and to be crowning the series of favours
he had already conferred. For Ortensia was the penniless child of his
brother-in-law, a scapegrace who had come to a bad end in Crete. The
Senator's wife had taken the child to her heart, having none of her own,
and had brought her up lovingly and wisely, little dreaming that she
was educating her own successor. If she had known it, she might have
behaved differently, for her lord had never succeeded in winning her
affections, and she regarded him to the end with mingled distrust and
dislike, while he looked upon her as an affliction and a thorn in his side.
Yet they were both very good people in their way. She died
comparatively young, and he deemed it only just that after enduring the
thorn so long, he should enjoy the rose for the rest of his life.
When Ortensia was seventeen and a half her uncle announced his
matrimonial intentions to her,