Where are the portraits of those who have perished in spite of theirvows?
One bright March day in the year 1783 the bells of Pianura began to ringat sunrise, and with their first peal the townsfolk were abroad.
The city was already dressed for a festival. A canopy of crimson velvet,surmounted by the ducal crown and by the "Humilitas" of the Valseccas,concealed the columns of the Cathedral porch and fell in royal foldsabout the featureless porphyry lions who had seen so many successiverulers ascend the steps between their outstretched paws. The frieze oframping and running animals around the ancient baptistery was concealedby heavy green garlands alternating with religious banners; and everychurch and chapel had draped its doorway with crimson and placed abovethe image of its patron saint the ducal crown of Pianura.
No less sumptuous was the adornment of the private dwellings. The greatfamilies--the Trescorri, the Belverdi, the Pievepelaghi--had outdoneeach other in the display of golden-threaded tapestries and Genoesevelvets emblazoned with armorial bearings; and even the sombre facade ofthe Boscofolto palace showed a rich drapery surmounted by thequarterings of the new Marchioness.
But it was not only the palace-fronts that had put on a holiday dress.
The contagion had spread to the poorer quarters, and in many a narrowstreet and crooked lane, where surely no part of the coming pageantmight be expected to pass, the crazy balconies and unglazed windows weredecked out with scraps of finery: a yard or two of velvet filched fromthe state hangings of some noble house, a torn and discoloured churchbanner, even a cast-off sacque of brocade or a peasant's holidaykerchief, skilfully draped about the rusty iron and held in place bypots of clove-pink and sweet basil. The half-ruined palace which hadonce housed Gamba and Momola showed a few shreds of colour on its sullenfront, and the abate Crescenti's modest house, wedged in a corner of thecity walls, was dressed like the altar of a Lady Chapel; while even thetanners' quarter by the river displayed its festoons of coloured paperand tinsel, ingeniously twisted into the semblance of a crown.
For the new Duke, who was about to enter his capital in state, wasextraordinarily popular with all classes. His popularity, as yet, wasmainly due to a general detestation of the rule he had replaced; butsuch a sentiment gives to a new sovereign an impetus which, if he knowshow to use it, will carry him a long way toward success; and among thosein the Duke's confidence it was rumoured that he was qualified not onlyto profit by the expectations he had raised but to fulfil them. The lastmonths of the late Duke's life had plunged the duchy into such politicaland financial disorder that all parties were agreed in welcoming achange. Even those that had most to lose by the accession of the newsovereign, or most to fear from the policy he was known to favour,preferred the possibility of new evils to a continuance of presentconditions. The expertest angler in troubled waters may find waters tootroubled for his sport; and under a government where power is passedfrom hand to hand like the handkerchief in a children's game, the mostadroit time-server may find himself grasping the empty air.
It would indeed have been difficult to say who had ruled during the yearpreceding the Duke's death. Prime ministers had succeeded each otherlike the clowns in a harlequinade. Just as the Church seemed to havegained the upper hand some mysterious revulsion of feeling would flingthe Duke toward Trescorre and the liberals; and when these hadattempted, by some trifling concession to popular feeling, to restorethe credit of the government, their sovereign, seized by religiousscruples, would hastily recall the clerical party. So the administrationstaggered on, reeling from one policy to another, clutching now at thissupport and now at that, while Austria and the Holy See hung on itssteps, awaiting the inevitable fall.
A cruel winter and a fresh outbreak of the silkworm disease hadaggravated the misery of the people, while the mounting extravagance ofthe Duchess had put a last strain on the exhausted treasury. Theconsequent increase of the salt-tax roused such popular fury that FatherIgnazio, who was responsible for the measure, was dismissed by thepanic-stricken Duke, and Trescorre, as usual, called in to repair hisrival's mistake. But it would have taken a greater statesman thanTrescorre to reach the root of such evils; and the new ministersucceeded neither in pacifying the people nor in reassuring hissovereign.
Meanwhile the Duke was sinking under the mysterious disease which hadhung upon him since his birth. It was hinted that his last hours weredarkened by hallucinations, and the pious pictured him as haunted byprofligate visions, while the free-thinkers maintained that he was thedupe of priestly jugglery. Toward the end there was the inevitablerumour of acqua tofana, and the populace cried out that the Jesuits wereat work again. It seems more probable, however, that his Highness, whohad assisted at the annual festival of the Madonna del Monte, and hadmingled on foot with the swarm of devotees thronging thither from allparts, had contracted a pestilent disorder from one of the pilgrims.
Certain it is that death came in a dreadful form. The Duchess, alarmedfor the health of Prince Ferrante, fled with him to the dower-house bythe Piana; and the strange nature of his Highness's distemper causedmany to follow her example. Even the Duke's servants, and the quacksthat lived on his bounty, were said to have abandoned the death-chamber;and an English traveller passing through Pianura boasted that, by thepayment of a small fee to the palace porter, he had obtained leave toenter his Highness's closet and peer through the doorway at the dyingman. However this may be, it would appear that the Duke's confessor--amonk of the Barnabite order--was not to be found when his Highnesscalled for him; and the servant sent forth in haste to fetch a priestreturned, strangely enough, with the abate Crescenti, whose suspectedorthodoxy had so long made him the object of the Duke's detestation. Heit was who alone witnessed the end of that tormented life, and knew uponwhat hopes or fears it closed.
Meanwhile it appeared that the Duchess's precautions were not unfounded;for Prince Ferrante presently sickened of the same malady which had cutoff his father, and when the Regent, travelling post-haste, arrived inPianura, he had barely time to pass from the Duke's obsequies to thedeath-bed of the heir.
Etiquette required that a year of mourning should elapse between theaccession of the new sovereign and his state entry into his capital; sothat if Duke Odo's character and intentions were still matter ofconjecture to his subjects, his appearance was already familiar to them.
His youth, his good looks, his open mien, his known affability ofmanner, were so many arguments in his favour with an impressionable andimpulsive people; and it was perhaps natural that he should interpret asa tribute to his principles the sympathy which his person aroused.
It is certain that he fancied himself, at that time, as well-acquaintedwith his subjects as they believed themselves to be with him; and theunderstanding supposed to exist was productive of equal satisfaction toboth sides. The new Duke had thrown himself with extraordinary zeal intothe task of loving and understanding his people. It had been his refugefrom a hundred doubts and uncertainties, the one clearly-defined objectin an obscure and troubled fate. And their response had, almostimmediately, turned his task into a pleasure. It was so easy to rule ifone's subjects loved one! And so easy to be loved if only one lovedenough in return! If he did not, like the Pope, describe himself to hispeople as the servant of the servants of God, he at least longed to makethem feel that this new gospel of service was the base on which allsovereignty must henceforth repose.
It was not that his first year of power had been without moments ofdisillusionment. He had had more than one embittering experience ofintrigue and perfidy, more than one glimpse of the pitfalls besettinghis course; but his confidence in his own powers and his faith in hispeople remained unshaken, and with two such beliefs to sustain him itseemed as though no difficulties would prove insurmountable.
Such at least was the mood in which, on the morning of his entry intoPianura, he prepared to face his subjects. Strangely enough, the stateentry began at Ponte di Po, the very spot where, on a stormy midnightsome seven years earlier, the new Duke had landed, a fugitive from hisfuture realm. Here, according to an ancient custom, the sovereignawaited the arrival of his ministers and court; and then, taking seat inhis state barge, proceeded by water to Pianura, followed by an escort ofgalleys.
A great tent hung with tapestries had been set up on the river-bank; andhere Odo awaited the approach of the barge. As it touched at thelanding-stage he stepped out, and his prime minister, Count Trescorre,advanced toward him, accompanied by the dignitaries of the court.
Trescorre had aged in the intervening years. His delicate features hadwithered like a woman's, and the fine irony of his smile had taken anedge of cruelty. His face suggested a worn engraving, the lines of whichhave been deepened by a too-incisive instrument.
The functionaries attending him were, with few exceptions, the same whohad figured in a like capacity at the late sovereign's court. With thepassing of the years they had grown heavier or thinner, more ponderousor stiffer in their movements, and as they advanced, in their splendidbut unwieldy court dress, they seemed to Odo like superannuatedmarionettes whose springs and wires have rusted from disuse.
The barge was a magnificent gilded Bucentaur, presented to the lateDuke's father by the Doge of Venice, and carved by his Serenity's mostfamous sculptors in wood. Tritons and sea-goddesses encircled the prowand throned above the stern, and the interior of the deck-house wasadorned with delicate rilievi and painted by Tiepolo with scenes fromthe myth of Amphitrite. Here the new Duke seated himself, surrounded byhis household, and presently the heavy craft, rowed by sixtygalley-slaves, was moving slowly up the river toward Pianura.
In the clear spring light the old walled city, with its domes andtowers, rose pleasantly among budding orchards and fields. Close at handwere the crenellations of Bracciaforte's keep, and just beyond, theornate cupola of the royal chapel, symbolising in their proximity thesuccessive ambitions of the ducal race; while the round-arched campanileof the Cathedral and the square tower of the mediaeval town-hall sprangup side by side, marking the centre of the free city which the Valseccashad subjugated. It seemed to the new Duke, who was given to suchreflections, that he could read his race's history in that brokenskyline; but he was soon snatched from its perusal by the cheers of thecrowd who thronged the river-bank to greet his approach.
As the Bucentaur touched at the landing-stage and Odo stepped out on thered carpet strewn with flowers, while cannon thundered from the wallsand the bells burst into renewed jubilation, he felt himself for thefirst time face to face with his people. The very ceremonial which inother cases kept them apart was now a means of closer communication; forit was to show himself to them that he was making a public entry intohis capital, and it was to see him that the city had poured forth hershouting throngs. The shouts rose and widened as he advanced, envelopinghim in a mounting tide of welcome, in which cannon, bells andvoices--the decreed and the spontaneous acclamations--wereindistinguishably merged. In like manner, approbation of his person wasmingled with a simple enjoyment of the show of which he formed a part;and it must have taken a more experienced head than Odo's to distinguishbetween the two currents of enthusiasm on which he felt himself sweptforward.
The pageant was indeed brilliant enough to justify the populartransport; and the fact that the new Duke formed a worthy centre to somuch magnificence was not lost on his splendour-loving subjects. Thelate sovereign had so ............