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Fenshawe until the latter gave up an undertaking to land on Italian territory without permission. That he had decided to release the Englishman unconditionally was a further tribute to his good judgment. Having caged the hawk there was no harm in freeing the pigeon. But Alfieri's passionate and ill-advised, attempt to abduct Mrs. Haxton had changed the whole aspect of affairs.
When he moved Alfieri's body is order to examine his clothing, he saw that the man's coat was torn at the breast, the cloth having caught a jagged rock as its wearer fell from the saddle. Through this rent a pocketbook and some papers had slipped out. They were resting on a little sand drift at the base of the rock that had caused the damage. The pocketbook was open.
She spoke Italian fluently, and her smooth, clear accents seemed to stir strange memories in Alfieri's soul. But, thinking to annoy her, he forced a spiteful grin to his thin lips. "Allowing for the lapse of years, Rita," he said, "and bearing in mind your natural distress at to-day's occurrences, you are looking remarkably well."
Yet the real strength of Venice was almost spent, and nothing remained but outward insolence and prestige. Everything was gay about Goldoni in his earliest childhood. Puppet-shows were built to amuse him by his grandfather. 'My mother, he says, 'took charge of my education, and my father of my amusements. Let us turn to the opening scene in Alfieri's life, and mark the difference.
It is estimated that although the Italian troops amply proved the truth of Alfieri's maxim, that 'the plant man is more vigorous in Italy than elsewhere, by bearing the hardships and resisting the cold in Russia better than the soldiers of any other nationality, nevertheless 26,000 Italians were lost in the retreat from Moscow. That happened a year ago.
But, for all her worldly philosophy, did she never feel a vague craving, a void, as she sat in that big empty house reading her books while Alfieri was studying his Greek, a vague desire to have what consoles other women for coldness or infidelity, a son or a daughter, a normal object of devotion, something besides Alfieri, and which she could love whether deserving or not; something besides Alfieri's glory, in which she could take an interest whether other people did or did not agree?
But during that illness the offended husband, who, we must remember, had offered a reward for Alfieri's murder, poured out to his brother, moved and reconciled to him by the recent fear of his death, all his grievances against the Tuscan Court, against his wife, and against her lover.
The clerical friends and advisers of Cardinal York, who had hitherto assured the foolish prince of the Church that he was acting for the honour of his brother and his brother's wife in leaving a young woman of thirty-one to the sole care of a young poet of thirty-four, each being well known to be over head and ears in love with the other; these prudent ecclesiastics, little by little, began to change their minds, and the success of Alfieri's plays, the general interest in him and his lady which that success produced, suggested to them that there really might be some impropriety in the familiarity between the wife of Charles Edward and the author of Antigone.
A man accustomed to wield a rapier rather than a cudgel would not have made that initial error. Alfieri's presence changed the whole situation, and Mrs. Haxton, in whom the stage had lost a great actress, instantly bent her wits to deal with the new set of circumstances thus created. "You speak Italian, signora? Ah, capital! Pray be seated," said the Governor affably.
But of the meanness, the narrowness of nature, the want of resonance of fibre, the insufficiency of moral vitality in so many things; of Alfieri's vanity, intolerance, injustice, indifference, hardness; of all these peculiarities which make the real man repulsive, the ideal man unattractive, to us, I have said more than enough, and when we have said all this, Alfieri still remains, for all his vanity, selfishness, meanness, narrow-mindedness, a man of grander proportions, of finer materials, nay, even of nobler moral shape, than the vast majority of men superior to him in all these points.
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