Massimilla Doni | Page 7

cook and butler will have
provided for him."
At this juncture, a waiting-woman came in, lightly humming an air
from the Barbiere. She tossed a woman's dress on a chair, a whole
outfit for the night, and said as she did so:
"Here they come!"
And in fact a few minutes later a young lady came in, dressed in the
latest French style, who might have sat for some English fancy portrait
engraved for a _Forget-me-not_, a Belle Assemblee, or a Book of
Beauty.
The Prince shivered with delight and with fear, for, as you know, he
was in love with Massimilla. But, in spite of this faith in love which
fired his blood, and which of old inspired the painters of Spain, which
gave Italy her Madonnas, created Michael Angelo's statues and
Ghilberti's doors of the Baptistery,--desire had him in its toils, and
agitated him without infusing into his heart that warm, ethereal glow
which he felt at a look or a word from the Duchess. His soul, his heart,
his reason, every impulse of his will, revolted at the thought of an
infidelity; and yet that brutal, unreasoning infidelity domineered over
his spirit. But the woman was not alone.
The Prince saw one of those figures in which nobody believes when
they are transferred from real life, where we wonder at them, to the
imaginary existence of a more or less literary description. The dress of
this stranger, like that of all Neapolitans, displayed five colors, if the
black of his hat may count for a color; his trousers were olive-brown,
his red waistcoat shone with gilt buttons, his coat was greenish, and his
linen was more yellow than white. This personage seemed to have
made it his business to verify the Neapolitan as represented by
Gerolamo on the stage of his puppet show. His eyes looked like glass
beads. His nose, like the ace of clubs, was horribly long and bulbous; in
fact, it did its best to conceal an opening which it would be an insult to
the human countenance to call a mouth; within, three or four tusks were

visible, endowed, as it seemed, with a proper motion and fitting into
each other. His fleshy ears drooped by their own weight, giving the
creature a whimsical resemblance to a dog.
His complexion, tainted, no doubt, by various metallic infusions as
prescribed by some Hippocrates, verged on black. A pointed skull,
scarcely covered by a few straight hairs like spun glass, crowned this
forbidding face with red spots. Finally, though the man was very thin
and of medium height, he had long arms and broad shoulders.
In spite of these hideous details, and though he looked fully seventy, he
did not lack a certain cyclopean dignity; he had aristocratic manners
and the confident demeanor of a rich man.
Any one who could have found courage enough to study him, would
have seen his history written by base passions on this noble clay
degraded to mud. Here was the man of high birth, who, rich from his
earliest youth, had given up his body to debauchery for the sake of
extravagant enjoyment. And debauchery had destroyed the human
being and made another after its own image. Thousands of bottles of
wine had disappeared under the purple archway of that preposterous
nose, and left their dregs on his lips. Long and slow digestion had
destroyed his teeth. His eyes had grown dim under the lamps of the
gaming table. The blood tainted with impurities had vitiated the
nervous system. The expenditure of force in the task of digestion had
undermined his intellect. Finally, amours had thinned his hair. Each
vice, like a greedy heir, had stamped possession on some part of the
living body.
Those who watch nature detect her in jests of the shrewdest irony. For
instance, she places toads in the neighborhood of flowers, as she had
placed this man by the side of this rose of love.
"Will you play the violin this evening, my dear Duke?" asked the
woman, as she unhooked a cord to let a handsome curtain fall over the
door.
"Play the violin!" thought Prince Emilio. "What can have happened to
my palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman's bed, and she
certainly thinks herself at home--she has taken off her cloak! Have I,
like Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those
dreams in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?"
The unknown fair one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with

wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness.
"Ring for Giulia," said she; "I want to get my dress off."
At that instant, the Duke noticed that the supper had been disturbed; he
looked round the