NARRATIVE OF CASTELERMO.
It was in the church of the Holy Spirit at Naples, during vespers, that I first beheld Despina Vignola, then in the first year of her novitiate. It is said that the beauty of our Italian women soon fades; it may be so: I am no traveller and cannot judge; but all must acknowledge that their charms, while they last, are often truly dazzling. Such were Despina's. To me she seemed a personification of all that is lovely in woman: her bright brown hair was gathered up behind in many an ample braid, while a mass of glossy ringlets clustered round her high pale forehead and waved on her fair neck. A robe of white satin fell in deep broad folds around her figure, leaving her polished shoulders and taper arms uncovered from the braceleted wrist to the dimpled elbow. The graces of her person were displayed to the utmost advantage by the richness of her attire; for it was not the custom of the fashionable convent of Santo Spirito to robe the novices in the grim paraphernalia of the cloister: until the vows were taken, they always appeared at mass in full dress.
Despina was formed for love and life, not for the nun's veil and cloistered cell; to which, according to a custom too common in Italian families, she had been vowed in infancy by her parents. It was my fate to love her passionately and truly, when few others would have dared to look impurely upon the affianced bride of Heaven: one from her childhood vowed to Madonna. She was an orphan, and her guardians—an avaricious aunt, and Ser Vignola, a rascally notary of the Strada di Toledo—to procure the reversion of her little patrimony, kept before her continually the enormity of not fulfilling the vows of her parents.
In Italy, one is more prone to fall in love at church than any other place: this may perhaps account for the numerous intrigues of our female ecclesiastics. There is a mysterious influence in our religious service—a mixture of heavenly aspirations and earth-born delights, which powerfully awakens the better feelings of our nature; softening the heart and rendering it more sensitive to tender and lasting impressions. Was it not at church that Petrarch first beheld the bright-haired Laura, whose beauty shed a light on his pilgrimage through life for twenty years after? Ah, signor! our holy religion belongs to the days of poetry and romance!
None but an Italian can know what a first love is to an Italian heart; or how ardently and wildly the tender passion burns beneath these sunny skies. In those days I was a young alfiero (or ensign) in Florestan's Battalion of the Guards, and my daily attendance at the church of Spirito Santo soon became a standing jest at our mess and a topic for laughter to my gay companions; who were quite at a loss to comprehend the reason of such sudden and rigid attendance to the duties of religion. An aged aunt of mine, who departed about that time in all the glory of virginity, out of her admiration of my piety put a codicil to her will by which 50,000 ducats became mine, instead of being poured into the treasury of the Greek Padri of St. Basil, as she had first intended.
While kneeling beside the envious iron grille which separated me from Despina, and kept all profane sinners from the vicinity of the fair vestals, I felt happiness even at being so near her—to hear her soft breathing, her low responses, and the rustle of her satin dress—to watch the heaving breast, the long lashes of the downcast eye, and the beauty of those auburn ringlets, which seemed "interwoven by the fingers of love!" as Petrarch has it. O, Madonna mia! these were the pure aspirations of a young and gallant heart. But alas! how were they responded to?—how requited? I will not trouble you with much more of this; though love quickens a fertile imagination, and I could relate a thousand devices formed to gain the attention of the beautiful novice: which all proved vain. She kept her long eye lashes cast down and her bright eyes obstinately fixed on the monotonous pages of her mass book; which she affected to prefer to the gayest cavalier on the corso: for such I considered myself in those days of youth and vanity; and certainly my cap had the tallest feather, my belt the longest sword, and my uniform the smartest cut in all Naples. We all know how passion is inflamed by difficulty; and from the time she left the church after vespers, until the moment of beholding her again at matins, ages seemed to elapse: but they were ages of scheming, contrivance, and stratagem.
The abbess, who was Despina's near relative, soon suspected the object of my devotion was an earthly, and not a heavenly virgin; she was an acute Calabrian and watched me attentively: in short, the fair novice appeared at matins, mass, and vespers no more.
But the ingenuity of Monsignore Cupid, is fully a match for all the cold precautions of guardians and enemies. Daily and nightly I came with my friend Santugo (then a joyous student, fresh from the University of Naples) to survey the lofty walls, the iron portal, and grated loopholes of the convent with the faint hope of beholding her; but, corpo di Baccho! we might as well have looked down the crater of Vesuvius, the flames from whose summit often lighted up our nightly patrols. In short, signor, with a key of gold I gained over the portress, who conveyed to Despina a most elaborately written letter: a ring, bearing her initials, D.V., was my only answer. Croce di Malta! Even at this distant hour, the recollection of the joyous moment when I first received it, stirs up a tumult within me! After that we used to meet in the convent garden every night, but only for a few moments.
Dupe that I was to believe this creature loved me! But ah! the happiness of those brief visits will never pass away from my memory. I found Despina as attractive in mind and manners as she was charming in person; she was a joyous donzella, who knew better the poems of Alfieri and Gorilla than the doggrel hymns of the Padri; and while we enjoyed our tête-à-tête in an arbour, Santugo kept watch, perched on the summit of the garden-wall. Often we cursed the villain notary who lent all his influence to crush the blossoms of so fair a flower: but at last my passion took a more noisy turn.
By Santugo's advice, I engaged all the improvisatori in the city to celebrate Despina. I mustered twenty with mandolins, twenty choristers, as many bell-ringers and scrapers on the viol, with all our regimental drums and cymbals. O, what a jovial company! Every other night we entertained the sisterhood with a grand serenade, making all Naples echo with bursts of joyous music; until the abbess, deeming her "commandery" disgraced by our clatter and chorussing, procured a guard of sbirri from the Bishop of Cosenza (whose palace unluckily stood in the adjoining street), and on the first night after this reinforcement we were greeted by a volley of blunderbuss-shot, which was within a hair's-breadth of sending us all to the banks of the Styx. Three choristers were killed, and several wounded. Santugo escaped unhurt, but I was peppered with slugs so severely, that for the next two months I was confined to my apartments; and in the interval Despina took the veil! She either supposed I was dead of my wounds, or deemed me inconstant. Perhaps it was dire necessity, as the last day of her novitiate had expired; and, after a short residence at the house of the notary, to take a last view of the world (as the custom is), she returned to offer up her vows. All the bells of Naples were tolling on the occasion: several novices were to take the veil that day, and the fashionables flocked to the church of the Holy Spirit, as to some great festival of joy.
"O, Madonna!" exclaimed poor Marco, beating his breast with true Italian energy, "will the bitter recollections of that infernal morning never pass away? The Princess of Squillaci, a damsel old in years, wickedness, and fashionable dissipation, was also to take the vows; and all the foolish city, from Portici on the east to Misenum on the west, held it as a day of universal joy.
While all this was going on, you cannot imagine the agony of mind I endured: weaker than a child, I was prostrated upon a sickbed by a long and wasting illness. My brain was dizzy. I wondered how the sun could shine so joyously on the bay and the city, which lies so magnificently along its spacious margin: to me it was a day of gloomy horror! The bells seemed to toll for the funeral of Despina. My mind was a chaos, and I would have hailed an eruption of Vesuvius, an earthquake, or any horrible convulsion which would have overwhelmed the whole city: but neither came to pass, and I lay stretched on my fever-bed, helpless, forgotten, and miserable. I drank cup after cup of wine; but there seemed a fire within me, which all the waters of the bay would not quench. The pain of my wounds, the wine I drank so rashly, and the fever of mind and body, soon made me delirious, and Santugo alone restrained me from sallying, sword in hand, into the crowded streets, to search for some imaginary foe.
That night, while yet the fever raged within me, and my brain whirled with the champagne I had drank, I arose, dressed, and armed myself, and issuing forth soon found my way to the closed gates of the convent. The streets were silent and dark; my thoughts were strange: even while my head swam and my knees tottered I imagined that I had the strength of a Hercules. Aware that I was mad with fever and wine, my pranks had some of the caution of sanity in them, and I shrank beneath the deep shadow of the cloisters when a passenger approached, or the moon streamed its light between the fleecy clouds which the south-west wind piled in gleaming masses over Naples.
At times I laughed bitterly; anon I wrung my hands, and cried aloud, "Despina—Despina! Anima mia!" and chanted some of our merry madrigals, till the hollow cloisters and the long vista of the empty street, gave back the ravings of folly and despair.
A new fit seized me; I became gloomy, and fled from the city to wander among the ruins of Queen Joanna's palace: a place rendered terrible to the superstitious fishermen by the tales of horror connected with it. From thence I wandered as far as that dreaded valley the Forum Vulcani; a spot filled with fabled terrors from time immemorial, and shunned by the vulgar of Naples. The superstition is that it is haunted by fiends and spirits, who toil and shriek through caverns of fire, watching that hidden gold, which (by day) the wretched lazzaroni have sought for centuries. At times the ground is covered with burning sulphur, and rent with chasms belching forth pitchy smoke, flames, or boiling water; which the fabled giants who are buried there vomit up from hell. Petrius Damianus supposes that purgatory lies beneath it, and tells of frightful noises, groans, and shrieks, issuing from clefts in the rocks; whereon sat monstrous shapes of birds and men, who, on the croaking of a gigantic raven, plunged headlong into the chasms, and appeared no more, at least not for many days.
At night, when viewed by the light of a setting moon or the flame of Vesuvius, the Forum Vulcani, with only its natural terrors, is gloomy enough: hemmed in by rocks of basalt, from the clefts of which the burning bitumen flashes forth at times, or white steam curls on the breeze—the ground thick with sulphur, and trembling with the throes of the mighty volcano in the distance, it has horrors enough for ordinary men; but that night it had none for me, and I startled the echoes of its rocks with my cries of "Despina!"
I again found myself beneath the convent walls of Spirito Santo, just as the city clocks were telling midnight; I was alone, and a strange thought occurred to me. I tore down a lamp, and demolishing a wooden railing, poured oil on the painted pales, and piling them against the door, set them on fire, laughing, and shouting "Despina!" as I fanned the flames with my hat; and when the blaze increased apace, I folded my arms within my mantle, and watched its rapid progress with the most intense satisfaction. Aim or object I had none: I was mad!—and yet I can remember the whole like some wild dream. The forked tongues of flame shot upward, and licked the wooden balconies and projecting eaves of the old convent, which was likely to be soon enveloped in fire. Its magnificent oratory, with columns of jasper and dome of marble—its shrines, tombs, and relics—the miraculous crucifix which spoke to Thomas Aquinas, the true cross, the Virgin's petticoat, and Heaven knows what more—now stood in greater peril than ever they did during the outrages of the mad fisherman of Amalfi.
The lazzaroni came yelling in thousands from every point; the whole Strada di Toledo was red with the blaze, and the Piazza di Mercato, and the façade of the Royal Palace, were all gleaming in light: even the starry vault above was sheeted with sparkling fire. Basta! how I laughed at the roaring flames and the clanking engines, from which the hissing water poured in streams—at the shrieking nuns, the shouting mob, and all the mingled dismay and uproar I had so suddenly caused. But, being soon discovered to be the author of the mischief, I was carried off by the Neapolitan guard, and lodged in prison; where three months' close confinement, with no other fare than hard crusts and cold water, cooled my blood so completely, that I came forth an altered man, and so heartily ashamed of my late extravaganza, that I resigned to the Duca di Florestan my commission in his battalion of the guards, and left the service.
With liberty, all my love for Despina returned; and circumstances which followed soon after raised my passion to its former height and ardour. One morning, on awaking, I found a little coloured billet laid on my pillow; tearing it open with hurried and trembling hands, I found it to be an invitation—from whom?—the Signora Abadessa of Spirito Santo, to visit her at my earliest convenience. How the little pink note came there, no one knew; and I was too much fluttered to inquire. There was an air of mystery in the affair that pleased me; and love and hope sprang up again. But aware that I had the treachery and revenge of a Calabrian woman to dread, together with the wrath of her gossip and well-known admirer the famous Bishop of Cosenza, I went well armed, taking a matchless poniard of Bastia steel in addition to my concealed pistols. Happily, however, such precautions were needless. I found the gay abbess an agreeable little woman; she gave me her hand to kiss, and welcomed me with a pleasant talkative manner which quite won me to her purpose. After rebuking me gently for my sacrilegious attempt to fire her convent, she bade me kneel to receive her blessing. I listened to her rebuke and received her benison in silence and distrust, wondering the whole time how so unusual an interview was to end. I thought of the bishop's sbirri, and the dungeons of the convent below us, and kept one hand in my bosom grasping my poniard.
The reverend lady began by a long preamble on the risk she ran in the disclosure she was about to make regarding the sister Brigida, as she named Despina; and then, making a long pause, she kept me on thorns of expectation, while observing with a keen glance the expression of my care-worn visage. I could not love Despina (the abbess continued) more than I was beloved in return; and taking pity upon me, she had consented to quit the convent, and become my bride, the moment I procured her a dispensation from those vows which bound her to the church—vows offered up on the expiry of her novitiate, and in an agony of sorrow for my supposed death. Blessed words! But they were my ruin! My brain whirled and my heart leaped with delight; throwing myself at the feet of the abbess, and pressing both her hands to my lips, I declared her my best friend—my good angel, and bestowed on her a thousand of those titles which flow so smoothly from an Italian's tongue, when his heart is overflowing with gratitude.
She rang a hand-bell, and the light form of Despina appeared at the iron grating of the parlour. I sprang towards her, but she averted her face: at first it was very pale, and seemed more lovely beneath the dark hood which shaded it; but a mantling blush overspread her cheek as she gave me her hand through the grating to kiss.
"Ah, Despina! had you trusted more to Providence, how much sorrow might have been spared us both!"
"True, dear one," said she, wafting me a kiss through the grate.
The superior hurried me away, and I left the convent giddy with delight at the sudden turn fortune had taken in my favour. Within the hour, I wrote to my uncle, the great Cardinal Ruffo, to intercede with his Holiness, and procure a dispensation for Despina; and I spent nearly my whole inheritance in bribing the greedy officials at the Papal court to hasten it, trusting; to God and mv own hands for the means of maintenance when Despina became mine. Meanwhile, I visited the convent daily, and though my interviews with her were very short, I became more than ever enchanted with her beauty and vivacity; which seemed to increase as the time flew past, and the day of her freedom and our happiness drew nearer.
Often have I whiled away the hours of a starry night in the Toledo, watching the taper which flickered in her dormitory; and I retired happy if I did but obtain even a glance of her figure passing the lattice. One night, while watching thus, a tall dark shadow fell on the muslin curtains of the window: it was not that of Despina. I paused—horrible suspicions floated before me, and I felt my blood run cold. The light vanished, the chamber became dark, and immediately a tall fellow dropped from the window into the street. My heart, which had ceased to beat for a time, was now on fire: the blood shot through my veins like lightning; my poniard gleamed in my hand.
"Olà, signor cavaliere!" cried I, crossing his path; "who are you that leaves the convent thus, and under the shadow of night?"
"One who will not brook questioning by you, whoever you are, per Baccho!" replied the other, drawing his hat over his eyes, and standing on his guard, with a poniard also. "Let me pass, cursed lazzarone! or it may be the worse for you."
Jealousy, anguish, and hatred, burned fiercely within me, and I rushed upon him with frantic vehemence. Parrying his blow with my mantle, I, with truer aim, slashed up his face from cheek to chin. My antagonist fled, uttering a terrible malediction.
"Basta!" said I, while wiping my weapon, "he is only some craven robber after all! Thank heaven! my suspicions were vain. But her window!—I must have mistaken it—and yet the shadow—." A tumult of sad thoughts overwhelmed me, and I slept none that night, but wandered about the Toledo like a houseless dog. Sunrise found me at the parlour grate of the convent.
Despina appeared as usual, her eyes beaming with smiles expressive of equal pleasure and surprise on beholding me so early. The fair recluse, who had just arisen from her pure and peaceful couch, seemed so blooming—so fragrant—with beauty, youth, and innocence, that I cursed my vile suspicions, and concluded the strange visitor of the convent to have been a robber.
Three days afterwards, my uncle, the Cardinal Ruffo, sent a dispensation for Despina to the convent. I heard of its arrival, and with a heart brimming with exultation, I flew to embrace my inamorata. On hearing my well-known ring at the bell of the porch, Despina was not, as usual, at the grate, nor did the superior appear; but a letter from her lay on the table for me. I tore it open, and read the fatal confirmation of my suspicions: I found that I was the dupe of two of the most artful and inexplicable women in Italy. Despina had eloped! The moment her dispensation had arrived, she quitted the convent in a calesso, accompanied by a masked cavalier, and was gone no one knew whither. The letter concluded by a request that I would visit the convent no more, as the abbess was too much incensed at Despina Vignola to make welcome any one who had ever loved or been connected with her.
The next thing I remembered, was finding myself in the sunny Toledo, and hearing the jarring of the convent's iron doors as they were closed and locked behind me. I tore the letter to fragments, which I scattered on the wind, and rushed through the streets to order forth horses and servants in pursuit—servant, I should say, for my retinue was then curtailed to one. I thought only of revenge. O signor! little can you imagine the agony of rage and shame I endured; not, perhaps, so much from unrequited love as from wounded vanity and pride. Next morning all gossiping Naples rang with the story, and everybody enjoyed a laugh at the famous jilt of the Cavaliere di Castelermo, by a perfidious little nun—per Baccho!
A letter, which I received next day from Cardinal Ruffo, containing abundance of good advice and his blessing on our nuptials, in no way tended to soothe my exasperation. Basta! months elapsed before the shock of this event passed away, and I could listen with calmness to Santugo, who related to me the story of Despina, so far as he had been able to pick it up in the public places of the city.
I had been most cruelly and strangely duped. Anxious to be free from those religious trammels which her parents' bigotry and her guardian's avarice had cast around her, the artful girl—who had never loved me—was willing that I should employ all my interest (which was great) and my money (which, alas! was little) to procure her a dispensation, that she might espouse the brother of that diavolessa the superior. He was a ruined cavalier of the Calabrias, who had lost his last ducat at the hells, and to whom the reversion of her entry-money from the convent-treasury would be very acceptable: though the beauty of the girl was temptation enough.
"Basta!" said I, "Santugo, 'tis enough!" I inquired after her and her choice no more; but strove to banish the affair from my mind, when the first burst of my fury had passed away. Luckily, I had been taught philosophy, and bequeathing to the devil my share in the sex, found that I had not much more to bestow: I had not a quattrino, save what I raised by the sale of the remnant of my patrimony—the tower of St. Ermo in the upper province. Santugo would have shared his last ducat with me; but I was too proud to be dependent on any man. My legacy, the reward of my devotion, had all melted away, too, during my joyous life in the Guards: it was spent in procuring a wife for another man! I wish him joy of his spouse: if she proved as virtuous after marriage as she was before it, she must be a crown—but not of glory—to her husband. Basta!
Finding myself without one beggarly bajoccho to clink upon another, I became a soldier again, and served the Knights of Malta as a musketeer against the corsairs of Barbary. On the return of our frigate to Malta, after a most successful cruise, in which we obtained abundance of plunder, slaves, and glory, I was admitted into the Italian Langue; on proving before a chapter of the order that my blood had been noble for two hundred years (easy enough for one who comes of a senatorial family), and that in my coat armorial there were the blazons of four patrician houses. A little prize-money picked up in Algeria furnished me with two hundred and sixty golden crowns, to pay my fees of diploma on passing from esquire to the rank of spurred and belted knight. In this capacity, when in command of a frigate, I defeated Osmin Carara, the celebrated corsair who so long infested these seas; and for that exploit I was made bailiff of the commandery at St. Eufemio, then consisting of sixty knights, the noblest in Italy.
So, signor, you now behold me a brother of the most reverend and illustrious order of St. John of Jerusalem, once of Rhodes, and latterly of Malta. After the reduction by Buonaparte of that barren rock (the last stronghold of the order), I retired with his most eminent highness the grand master, and the poor remnant of our forces, to Genoa; where our solemn chapters are yet held. On the breaking out of the Italian war, when the French crossed our frontier to plant their banner of blood and anarchy on the ramparts of Rome—to assail God's vicegerent in his own eternal city, drive the Bourbon king from Naples, hoist their red cap above the winged horse, and establish a republic of injustice and tyranny—then I once more girded on the sword, and have ever since been fighting; at one time under the chiefs of the Masse, at another under the British: but, alas! oftener under Francatripa and other bold bandits of Naples; who seem to be the only men truly staunch to Italy in these days of war and peril. Malediction on the hour when a wearer of this blessed badge has to stoop to a companionship so unworthy! But the end sanctifies the means. * * *
There is the Villa Belcastro! If my story has beguiled a part of the way through this wild and mountainous country, I shall consider myself amply repaid in having pleased you: but I fear, Signor Claude, you have found it dry enough; though the tale is a sad one to me—the most dismal chapter of my history indeed.