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Use force if necessary, but try and avoid any shooting. I shall join you there before sunset." "Ay, ay, sir," said Chaytor. He named three men, and the four hurried to their post. Bidding the other two sailors help him, Royson turned to carry out a disagreeable task. Von Kerber, Alfieri, and the rest must be buried while there was yet light.
The fact was, I believe, that the Countess of Albany had much more mind than personality, and that she was therefore mere wax in the hands of a man who had become so exclusively and violently intellectual as Alfieri: she had seen too much of the coarse realities of life, of the brutal giving way to sensual impulse: the heroic, the ideal, nay the deliberately made up, the artificial, had a charm for her.
Scholars and the higher classes can talk eloquently of Corneille and Racine; the beaux and spirituelle women of the day can repeat and enjoy the last hit of Scribe, or the new bon-mot of the theatre: but contrast these results with the national love and appreciation of Shakspeare, with the permanent reflection of Spanish life in Lope de Vega, the patriotic aspirations which the young Italian broods over in the tragedies of Alfieri.
Here was Alfieri, passionately desirous to redeem his own existence by intellectual efforts, and confident of a vague mission to awaken his countrymen to his own nobler feelings: to the contempt of sensual pleasures and worldly vanities, the hatred of political and religious servitude, the love of truth and justice, the love of Italy.
"Count Alfieri, sir," he said, "has doubtless explained to you the necessity that obliges me to be so private in receiving my friends; and now perhaps you will join these gentlemen in examining some rare fossil fish newly sent me from the Monte Bolca." Odo murmured a civil rejoinder; but the wonder into which the sight of the young girl had thrown him was fast verging on stupefaction.
Alfieri worked harder and harder at his Latin and Italian lessons, sketched out the plan of several plays: and, then, in the early summer of 1776, got together his horses, procured a permission to travel from the King of Sardinia, and set out for Tuscany in order to learn the language in which he was to achieve that great literary glory to which he had dedicated his life.
Here was this Alfieri, at the very outset of his new career, solemnly confiding to his kindest and wisest friend the scruples, the fears, which restrained him from seeking the company of a woman whom he was beginning to love, and who was beginning to love him, a young woman married by mere worldly convention to a sickly, brutal, and brutish drunkard, old enough to be her father.
He would willingly have drunk chocolate and played at dominoes or picquet all his life on the Piazza di San Marco, when Alfieri was crossing the sierras on his Andalusian horse, and devouring a frugal meal of rice in solitude.
Alfieri and the Countess were happy, happier, perhaps, than at any other time of their lives; but this happiness had to be paid for.
The day came: Alfieri had to take leave of Mme. d'Albany; and, as he expresses it, had to return to much worse gloom than before, being separated from his lady without having the consolation of seeing Gori once more.
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