Mrs. G. Gretton

Conversazione continued—Match-making—The Codini opposed to travelling—Hopes of the liberals centred in Piedmont—Volunnia's pleasantries—Story of the young noble and his pasteboard soldiers.

Meanwhile the representative of the knights-hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, and the defenders of Rhodes and of Malta, did not seem at all to regard himself as an object of commiseration, but went on talking and laughing in the highest spirits, giving a rapid summary of all the recent Carnival gossip of Rome, and then asked, in his turn, the news of Macerata in the same gay, careless strain.

“So the Marchese Ridolfi has married his gobbina daughter at last, I am told? It was no easy achievement, I should say. Who arranged the affair?”

“As for that, I do not exactly know,” answered the timid old count, brightening up as he entered on a genial topic; for having disposed of his own daughters very advantageously some years before, he assumed an air of superiority whenever the subject was introduced, conscious that he was regarded with a sort of admiring envy by fathers still burdened with the care of settling theirs. “I do not exactly know,” he repeated, rubbing his hands, “whether it was some amico di casa (family friend) or a matrimonial broker, who arranged the partito; but whoever did, it was clumsily done enough! The sposo, a Neapolitan baron, thought the dote very fair, and was tolerably satisfied with the portrait they sent him before he signed. Ridolfi, on his part, had no cause to complain of the information he received concerning the young man, his fortune, and so forth; and accordingly, near the end of Carnival, he arrived for the celebration of the marriage. Then corbezzoli! there is a pretty piece of work! The baron perceives that one of the young lady's shoulders is much higher than the other, a fact the painter had omitted in her portrait—by the by, it was only a medallion that was sent—merely the head, ha! ha!—and says, tutto schietto, just in two words, that unless a bag of three thousand additional dollars is produced, to give her form its required equipoise, he will go back to his own country as he came, and annul the contract! You should have seen the way Ridolfi was in. Nothing could bring him to reason for some time, and a lawsuit seemed inevitable. But then I and some others, who had not been consulted before, came forward, and we mediated, and we talked. Basta! there was a compromise, and the wedding took place the last Tuesday of Carnival. I was really glad, for I had it upon my heart to get that poor girl married.”

“I don't deny the sposo had some reason on his side,” said the other Nestor of the group, the Marchese Testaferrata. “But if Ridolfi had taken my advice, after what we heard of his vagabond dispositions—instead of thinking it rather a fine thing that his future son-in-law had been to Paris, and who knows where—he would have had nothing to say to the match. 'Senti, caro,' I said to him, 'I have lived a few more years than you, and I never yet saw any good from wandering about the world. Let each man stay among his own people, where his fathers lived and died. What did for our parents, is surely good enough for us.' But he thought he knew better, poveretto; he would not listen to me, so I washed my hands of the business.”

“What was he to do?” returned the other. “There was the girl to find a husband for, and he was obliged to adapt himself to what he could get. Besides, it is agreed that the sposi are to spend alternately six months with her family here, and six with his in Calabria.”

I could not help mentally pitying the young couple when I heard of this arrangement; but the next moment's reflection served to remind me that a mÉnage tÊte-À-tÊte between persons united under such circumstances could present nothing very inviting, and accordingly I withdrew my superfluous sympathy.

“And young Della Porta?” ashed Checchino, “he has got into a lawsuit about something like Ridolfi's affair—has he not?”

“No; not precisely. It appears he employed a regular sensale (broker) to negotiate his marriage with a rich heiress of Ancona; and as she was really a capital match, and several other candidates were in the field, he promised him a large percentage—I do not recollect how much—upon the total amount of her fortune, should he succeed in arranging it. Everything went on smoothly, and the marriage took place; but somehow our good friend did not find it convenient to fulfil his agreement. So the broker cites him before the Tribunal, where Della Porta justifies himself by declaring it is through other channels that success was obtained, and that the plaintiff's boasted influence alone would have been ineffectual. So they have gone regularly to law, and a fine affair they will make of it. To crown the whole, the father of the sposa is furious, for he finds the broker purposely deceived him about Della Porta's fortune; he is not half so well off as he gave him to understand. Ah, well, I can pity him, poor man: I pity all those who have daughters to marry.”

“And I am sure I pity those who have married his daughters!” cried Checchino, as the door closed upon the two old gentlemen, who always went away together at the same hour, to the evident relief of the rest of the company. “And that old Testaferrata, too, with his still more ultra-codino theories. He ought certainly to have been a Chinese. I remember when his grandson wanted to visit the Great Exhibition of London. Corpo di Bacco! he might as well have requested leave to go to the infernal regions.”

“Oh, as for that, I could tell you of scores of young men whose passports were refused them by our most enlightened Government for that dangerous expedition.”

“If I was to repeat that in England,” I said, “I should either be accused of wilful exaggeration, or of being misled by party feeling.”

“The signorina is right!” exclaimed the doctor. “It is easy to conceive that these miserable puerilities, these minutiÆ of despotism, are below the comprehension of a people who have never been denied either freedom of action or of speech.”

“This condition of things cannot last, however,” said the Conte Muzio, who, since the departure of the two codini, had become more animated; the presence of the old conte, so exulting over all those oppressed with matrimonial cares, always sensibly affecting him—so they afterwards told me—burdened as he was with five marriageable nieces, for whose sake he had long laid aside all projects for himself, devoting his little patrimony to augmenting his widowed sister's scanty resources. “No, no, it cannot last. From what my nephew writes me from Turin, of the steadiness of the ministry amidst the attacks of the two extreme parties—the Retrogrades and Republicans—and their determination to uphold the constitution to the utmost, I augur better times for ourselves. Let it be but consolidated by a few more years, that precious constitution, the only reality left of the dreams and hopes, and alas! the excesses of a period so bright in its dawning, so dark in its close—let this be, and all of us, lifting up our drooping heads, looking to Piedmont as our example and regenerator, will yet find those beautiful words, 'Italia unita,' are no delusion.”

“Then he is as enthusiastic as ever with his adopted country, your nephew, ehi?” inquired Checchino. “He is quite a Piedmontese.”

“He is Italian, I hope,” said Muzio, quietly. “I look for the day when that will be the only designation of all born within the length and breadth of the fairest country in Europe.”

“You are an optimist, caro, as well as the king of uncles. I hope we shall see him a general some day. Do you know, signorina,” turning to me, “that this unparalleled Conte Muzio, to gratify his nephew's martial genius, took him to Turin, and has placed him in the military academy, where——But who have we here at last? Signora Volunnia, I congratulate myself on seeing you so well. It appeared to me a thousand years till I saw you again!”

Volunnia received her cousin's greeting with great friendliness, reciprocating his compliments on the pleasure of meeting, but assured him her health was far from good, and announced that she purposed taking some cream of tartar the next morning as a rinfrescante, and would stay all day in bed. These particulars having elicited great sympathy from the assembled friends, she next playfully tapped the knight of Malta on the lower part of his waistcoat, remarking: “Ah, Checchino mio, comminci a metterti un po' di pancia,” which, delicately translated, signifies, “You are growing rather corpulent;” a proceeding I could not help looking upon as singular, especially after her strictures on English propriety.

Checchino, who evidently piqued himself upon his figure, bore the laugh this sally elicited with tolerably good grace, but revenged himself by telling Volunnia of the marriages of two or three young ladies in Rome whose mothers, he well knew, had been her contemporaries; and asked with tender interest after her sisters and their children, which last topic always irritated her extremely.

Then, when he thought her sufficiently punished, with the tact that is almost instinctive to an Italian, he brought back the conversation to the Conte Muzio's nephew, on whom the good uncle's hopes and affection were evidently centered.

“So he passed his examinations well on entering? That must have been a great consolation to you, after all the sacrifices you made, and the difficulties you had to overcome beforehand. Ah, it is a fine service, no doubt: the Piedmontese are soldiers!”

“My friend,” said Muzio, “they are also sailors and engineers, and manufacturers and politicians—in a word, they are MEN. I would sooner my nephew had chosen another than the military profession: to some honourable employment I had always destined him; for I resolved at any cost to emancipate him from the life of caffÈs and theatres, which foreigners say is the sole aim of an Italian's existence, but that, more truly speaking, he is driven to by the peculiarities of his social position; and it would have suited better with our limited fortune had the boy made a different selection. But the bias was too strong: it would have been cruel to resist it.”

“If he had not had you for his uncle,” cried the marchesa, “he would have turned out a second Paolo Pagano with his toy-soldiers.”

“Who is he?” I asked. “Is not Pagano the name of the old gentleman who went away with the Marchese Testaferrata?”

“Per appunto,” she answered, “he is his father; but you do not hear so much of poor Paolo, though he is more than thirty years old, as of the blessing of having disposed of all his daughters. He wanted to be a soldier too, but it was not to be thought of; so his military tendencies, denied their natural vent, have displayed themselves in a ludicrous form. For years he has been employed in the construction of thousands of little pasteboard figures, which he paints and equips with the utmost care, according to the uniform of different nations. To place these in line of battle, to repeat manoeuvres he sees the Austrians practise while out exercising, to go through the routine of drill, parade, and bivouac, constitutes the occupation and enjoyment of his life.”

“But you should see the order in which he keeps them,” said Checchino: “the last time I was here, I got a sight of the army, all equipped for the winter campaign. You must know, it is believed that, being perplexed as to the means of providing for so large a body, he once appropriated the ample cloak of his uncle, a canon, and cut it up into wrappings for his soldiers!”

“We laugh at this,” broke out the young doctor, rather fiercely; “but we have more need to weep at the reflections it calls up on the condition of our country, where it is impossible to gratify the yearning for military life so common to young men, unless by following the example of Conte Muzio, and, in addition to great personal sacrifice, incurring the suspicion and resentment of the Government—which there are few ready, like him, to brave. Here, in our States, to be a soldier is synonymous with disgrace! No career, except the church, is open to the patrician youth. And yet it is in presence of these abuses, this palsying idleness, that you find men of good faith, like Testaferrata and Pagano, whimpering after the good old times, which means, if possible, a greater state of slavery than the present, and anathematizing every prospect of reform!”

“Carissimo dottore,” said Checchino, taking up his hat, “one must be just after all. Trees of liberty bearing bullets and poniards, do not tend to enlarge the understanding, or give a taste for another season of such fruits and foliage. We laugh at Testaferrata, and those who think like him; but, upon my conscience, if you or I had been stabbed and shot at in the open daylight, as both he and Pagano were in Ancona in 1849, simply because it was known we did not coincide with the party which had got the uppermost (it was during the Pope's absence at Gaeta, and the short-lived republic at Rome, signorina), I don't imagine we should ever entertain very amiable sentiments towards the system whose advocates indulged in such questionable pleasantries.”

“Those were exceptions, not the rule,” cried the marchesa. “Who can be answerable for the excesses of a faction? It is not fair to bring up the assassinations of Ancona to the signorina.”

“I am just—I am just,” he answered, laughing; “it is but right to show the reverse of the medal. You were having it all your own way, if I had not put in a word on the other side. You have enough left to make out a very good case, my friends: console yourselves with that. As for me, I do not expect to see better times, whatever our excellent Muzio may say to the contrary; so I do not kill myself with care, and endeavour to make the best of what we have, laugh and amuse myself, and keep out of politics.—Signori miei, good night.”