Chapter 1.XI. Nina di Raselli.
"I tell you, Lucia, I do not love those stuffs; they do not become me. Saw
you ever so poor a dye? - this purple, indeed! that crimson! Why did you
let the man leave them? Let him take them elsewhere tomorrow. They may
suit the signoras on the other side the Tiber, who imagine everything
Venetian must be perfect; but I, Lucia, I see with my own eyes, and judge
from my own mind."
"Ah, dear lady," said the serving-maid, "if you were, as you doubtless will
be, some time or other, a grand signora, how worthily you would wear the
honours! Santa Cecilia! No other dame in Rome would be looked at while
the Lady Nina were by!"
"Would we not teach them what pomp was?" answered Nina. "Oh! what
festivals would we hold! Saw you not from the gallery the revels given
last week by the Lady Giulia Savelli?"
"Ay, signora; and when you walked up the hall in your silver and pearl
tissue, there ran such a murmur through the gallery; every one cried, 'The
Savelli have entertained an angel!'"
"Pish! Lucia; no flattery, girl."
"It is naked truth, lady. But that was a revel, was it not? There was
grandeur! - fifty servitors in scarlet and gold! and the music playing all
the while. The minstrels were sent for from Bergamo. Did not that
festival please you? Ah, I warrant many were the fine speeches made to you
that day!"
"Heigho! - no, there was one voice wanting, and all the music was marred.
But, girl, were I the Lady Giulia, I would not have been contented with so
poor a revel."
"How, poor! Why all the nobles say it outdid the proudest marriage-feast
of the Colonna. Nay, a Neapolitan who sat next me, and who had served
under the young Queen Joanna, at her marriage, says, that even Naples was
outshone."
"That may be. I know nought of Naples; but I know what my court should
have been, were I what - what I am not, and may never be! The banquet
vessels should have been of gold; the cups jewelled to the brim; not an
inch of the rude pavement should have been visible; all should have glowed
with cloth of gold. The fountain in the court should have showered up the
perfumes of the East; my pages should not have been rough youths, blushing
at their own uncouthness, but fair boys, who had not told their twelfth
year, culled from the daintiest palaces of Rome; and, as for the music, oh,
Lucia! - each musician should have worn a chaplet, and deserved it; and he
who played best should have had a reward, to inspire all the rest - a rose
from me. Saw you, too, the Lady Giulia's robe? What colours! they might
have put out the sun at noonday! - yellow, and blue, and orange, and
scarlet! Oh, sweet Saints! - but my eyes ached all the next day!"
"Doubtless, the Lady Giulia lacks your skill in the mixture of colours,"
said the complaisant waiting-woman.
"And then, too, what a mien! - no royalty in it! She moved along the hall,
so that her train well nigh tripped her every moment; and then she said,
with a foolish laugh, 'These holyday robes are but troublesome luxuries.'
Troth, for the great there should be no holyday robes; 'tis for myself, not
for others, that I would attire! Every day should have its new robe, more
gorgeous than the last; - every day should be a holyday!"
"Methought," said Lucia, "that the Lord Giovanni Orsini seemed very devoted
to my Lady."
"He! the bear!"
"Bear, he may be! but he has a costly skin. His riches are untold."
"And the fool knows not how to spend them."
"Was not that the young Lord Adrian who spoke to you just by the columns,
where the music played?"
"It might be, - I forget."
"Yet, I hear that few ladies forget when Lord Adrian di Castello woos
them."
"There was but one man whose company seemed to me worth the recollection,"
answered Nina, unheeding the insinuation of the artful handmaid.
"And who was he?" asked Lucia.
"The old scholar from Avignon!"
"What! he with the gray beard? Oh, Signora!"
"Yes," said Nina, with a grave and sad voice; "when he spoke, the whole
scene vanished from my eyes, - for he spoke to me of HIM!"
As she said this, the Signora sighed deeply, and the tears gathered to her
eyes.
The waiting-woman raised her lips in disdain, and her looks in wonder; but
she did not dare to venture a reply.
"Open the lattice," said Nina, after a pause, "and give me yon paper. Not
that, girl - but the verses sent me yesterday. What! art thou Italian, and
dost thou not know, by instinct, that I spoke of the rhyme of Petrarch?"
Seated by the open casement, through which the moonlight stole soft and
sheen, with one lamp beside her, from which she seemed to shade her eyes,
though in reality she sought to hide her countenance from Lucia, the young
Signora appeared absorbed in one of those tender sonnets which then turned
the brains and inflamed the hearts of Italy. (Although it is true that the
love sonnets of Petrarch were not then, as now, the most esteemed of his
works, yet it has been a great, though a common error, to represent them as
little known and coldly admired. Their effect was, in reality, prodigious
and universal. Every ballad-singer sung them in the streets, and (says
Filippo Villani), "Gravissimi nesciebant abstinere" - "Even the gravest
could not abstain from them.")
Born of an impoverished house, which, though boasting its descent from a
consular race of Rome, scarcely at that day maintained a rank amongst the
inferior order of nobility, Nina di Raselli was the spoiled child - the
idol and the tyrant - of her parents. The energetic and self-willed
character of her mind made her rule where she should have obeyed; and as in
all ages dispositions can conquer custom, she had, though in a clime and
land where the young and unmarried of her sex are usually chained and
fettered, assumed, and by assuming won, the prerogative of independence.
She possessed, it is true, more learning and more genius than generally
fell to the share of women in that day; and enough of both to be deemed a
miracle by her parents; - she had, also, what they valued more, a
surpassing beauty; and, what they feared more, an indomitable haughtiness;
- a haughtiness mixed with a thousand soft and endearing qualities where
she loved; and which, indeed, where she loved, seemed to vanish. At once
vain yet high-minded, resolute yet impassioned, there was a gorgeous
magnificence in her very vanity and splendour, - an ideality in her
waywardness: her defects made a part of her brilliancy; without them she
would have seemed less woman; and, knowing her, you would have compared all
women by her standard. Softer qualities beside her seemed not more
charming, but more insipid. She had no vulgar ambition, for she had
obstinately refused many alliances which the daughter of Raselli could
scarcely have hoped to form. The untutored minds and savage power of the
Roman nobles seemed to her imagination, which was full of the poetry of
rank, its luxury and its graces, as something barbarous and revolting, at
once to be dreaded and despised. She had, therefore, passed her twentieth
year unmarried, but not without love. The faults, themselves, of her
character, elevated that ideal of love which she had formed. She required
some being round whom all her vainer qualities could rally; she felt that
where she loved she must adore; she demanded no common idol before which to
humble so strong and imperious a mind. Unlike women of a gentler mould,
who desire, for a short period, to exercise the caprices of sweet empire, -
when she loved she must cease to command; and pride, at once, be humbled to
devotion. So rare were the qualities that could attract her; so
imperiously did her haughtiness require that those qualities should be
above her own, yet of the same order; that her love elevated its object
like a god. Accustomed to despise, she felt all the luxury it is to
venerate! And if it were her lot to be united with one thus loved, her
nature was that which might become elevated by the nature that it gazed on.
For her beauty - Reader, shouldst thou ever go to Rome, thou wilt see in
the Capitol the picture of the Cumaean Sibyl, which, often copied, no copy
can even faintly represent. I beseech thee, mistake not this sibyl for
another, for the Roman galleries abound in sibyls. (The sibyl referred to
is the well-known one by Domenichino. As a mere work of art, that by
Guercino, called the Persian sibyl, in the same collection, is perhaps
superior; but in beauty, in character, there is no comparison.) The sibyl
I speak of is dark, and the face has an Eastern cast; the robe and turban,
gorgeous though they be, grow dim before the rich, but transparent roses of
the cheek; the hair would be black, save for that golden glow which mellows
it to a hue and lustre never seen but in the south, and even in the south
most rare; the features, not Grecian, are yet faultless; the mouth, the
brow, the ripe and exquisite contour, all are human and voluptuous; the
expression, the aspect, is something more; the form is, perhaps, too full
for the perfection of loveliness, for the proportions of sculpture, for the
delicacy of Athenian models; but the luxuriant fault has a majesty. Gaze
long upon that picture: it charms, yet commands, the eye. While you gaze,
you call back five centuries. You see before you the breathing image of
Nina di Raselli!
But it was not those ingenious and elaborate conceits in which Petrarch,
great Poet though he be, has so often mistaken pedantry for passion, that
absorbed at that moment the attention of the beautiful Nina. Her eyes
rested not on the page, but on the garden that stretched below the
casement. Over the old fruit-trees and hanging vines fell the moonshine;
and in the centre of the green, but half-neglected sward, the waters of a
small and circular fountain, whose perfect proportions spoke of days long
past, played and sparkled in the starlight. The scene was still and
beautiful; but neither of its stillness nor its beauty thought Nina:
towards one, the gloomiest and most rugged, spot in the whole garden,
turned her gaze; there, the trees stood densely massed together, and shut
from view the low but heavy wall which encircled the mansion of Raselli.
The boughs on those trees stirred gently, but Nina saw them wave; and now
from the copse emerged, slowly and cautiously, a solitary figure, whose
shadow threw itself, long and dark, over the sward. It approached the
window, and a low voice breathed Nina's name.
"Quick, Lucia!" cried she, breathlessly, turning to her handmaid: "quick!
the rope-ladder! it is he! he is come! How slow you are! haste, girl, - he
may be discovered! There, - O joy, - O joy! - My lover! my hero! my
Rienzi!"
"It is you!" said Rienzi, as, now entering the chamber, he wound his arms
around her half-averted form, "and what is night to others is day to me!"
The first sweet moments of welcome were over; and Rienzi was seated at the
feet of his mistress: his head rested on her knees - his face looking up
to hers - their hands clasped each in each.
"And for me thou bravest these dangers!" said the lover; "the shame of
discovery, the wrath of thy parents!"
"But what are my perils to thine? Oh, Heaven! if my father found thee here
thou wouldst die!"
"He would think it then so great a humiliation, that thou, beautiful Nina,
who mightst match with the haughtiest names of Rome, shouldst waste thy
love on a plebeian - even though the grandson of an emperor!"
The proud heart of Nina could sympathize well with the wounded pride of her
lover: she detected the soreness which lurked beneath his answer,
carelessly as it was uttered.
"Hast thou not told me," she said, "of that great Marius, who was no noble,
but from whom the loftiest Colonna would rejoice to claim his descent? and
do I not know in thee one who shall yet eclipse the power of Marius,
unsullied by his vices?"
"Delicious flattery! sweet prophet!" said Rienzi, with a melancholy smile;
"never were thy supporting promises of the future more welcome to me than
now; for to thee I will say what I would utter to none else - my soul half
sinks beneath the mighty burthen I have heaped upon it. I want new courage
as the dread hour approaches; and from thy words and looks I drink it."
"Oh!" answered Nina, blushing as she spoke, "glorious is indeed the lot
which I have bought by my love for thee: glorious to share thy schemes, to
cheer thee in doubt, to whisper hope to thee in danger."
"And give grace to me in triumph!" added Rienzi, passionately. "Ah! should
the future ever place upon these brows the laurel-wreath due to one who has
saved his country, what joy, what recompence, to lay it at thy feet!
Perhaps, in those long and solitary hours of languor and exhaustion which
fill up the interstices of time, - the dull space for sober thought between
the epochs of exciting action, - perhaps I should have failed and flagged,
and renounced even my dreams for Rome, had they not been linked also with
my dreams for thee! - had I not pictured to myself the hour when my fate
should elevate me beyond my birth; when thy sire would deem it no disgrace
to give thee to my arms; when thou, too, shouldst stand amidst the dames of
Rome, more honoured, as more beautiful, than all; and when I should see
that pomp, which my own soul disdains, ("Quem semper abhorrui sicut cenum"
is the expression used by Rienzi, in his letter to his friend at Avignon,
and which was probably sincere. Men rarely act according to the bias of
their own tastes.) made dear and grateful to me because associated with
thee! Yes, it is these thoughts that have inspired me, when sterner ones
have shrunk back appalled from the spectres that surround their goal. And
oh! my Nina, sacred, strong, enduring must be, indeed, the love which lives
in the same pure and elevated air as that which sustains my hopes of
liberty and fame!"
This was the language which, more even than the vows of fidelity and the
dear adulation which springs from the heart's exuberance, had bound the
proud and vain soul of Nina to the chains that it so willingly wore.
Perhaps, indeed, in the absence of Rienzi, her weaker nature pictured to
herself the triumph of humbling the highborn signoras, and eclipsing the
barbarous magnificence of the chiefs of Rome; but in his presence, and
listening to his more elevated and generous ambition, as yet all unsullied
by one private feeling save the hope of her, her higher sympathies were
enlisted with his schemes, her mind aspired to raise itself to the height
of his, and she thought less of her own rise than of his glory. It was
sweet to her pride to be the sole confidante of his most secret thoughts,
as of his most hardy undertakings; to see bared before her that intricate
and plotting spirit; to be admitted even to the knowledge of its doubts and
weakness, as of its heroism and power.
Nothing could be more contrasted than the loves of Rienzi and Nina, and
those of Adrian and Irene: in the latter, all were the dreams, the
phantasies, the extravagance, of youth; they never talked of the future;
they mingled no other aspirations with those of love. Ambition, glory, the
world's high objects, were nothing to them when together; their love had
swallowed up the world, and left nothing visible beneath the sun, save
itself. But the passion of Nina and her lover was that of more complicated
natures and more mature years: it was made up of a thousand feelings, each
naturally severed from each, but compelled into one focus by the mighty
concentration of love; their talk was of the world; it was from the world
that they drew the aliment which sustained it; it was of the future they
spoke and thought; of its dreams and imagined glories they made themselves
a home and altar; their love had in it more of the Intellectual than that
of Adrian and Irene; it was more fitted for this hard earth; it had in it,
also, more of the leaven of the later and iron days, and less of poetry and
the first golden age.
"And must thou leave me now?" said Nina, her cheek no more averted from his
lips, nor her form from his parting embrace. "The moon is high yet; it is
but a little hour thou hast given me."
"An hour! Alas!" said Rienzi, "it is near upon midnight - our friends
await me."
"Go, then, my soul's best half! Go; Nina shall not detain thee one moment
from those higher objects which make thee so dear to Nina. When - when
shall we meet again!"
"Not," said Rienzi, proudly, and with all his soul upon his brow, "not
thus, by stealth! no! nor as I thus have met thee, the obscure and
contemned bondsman! When next thou seest me, it shall be at the head of
the sons of Rome! her champion! her restorer! or - " said he, sinking his
voice -
"There is no or!" interrupted Nina, weaving her arms round him, and
catching his enthusiasm; "thou hast uttered thine own destiny!"
"One kiss more! - farewell! - the tenth day from the morrow shines upon the
restoration of Rome!"
