Zanoni

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Zanoni


Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy in
her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways and
thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the musician
than the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate was
reserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that can
see, and hearts that can feel, glides ever along WITH the actual life,
stream by stream, to the Dark Ocean.

And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of
virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss
or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the
atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets
that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of
the old Cimmerians,--and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge
those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render
palpable and defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is
the heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold
over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless
sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her
castles in the air. Who doth not do the same,--not in youth alone, but
with the dimmed hopes of age! It is man's prerogative to dream, the
common royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were
more habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us indulge.
They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets while phantasma.



CHAPTER 1.II.

Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. ii. xxi.

("Desire it was, 't was wonder, 't was delight."
Wiffen's Translation.)

Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly sixteen.
The Cardinal declares that the time is come when the new name must be
inscribed in the Libro d'Oro,--the Golden Book set apart to the children
of Art and Song. Yes, but in what character?--to whose genius is she
to give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad
that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his
"Nel cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce some
new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that
her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another
"Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there is a check in the
diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He
has said publicly,--and the words are portentous,--"The silly girl is
as mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!" Conference follows
conference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in
his closet,--all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity and
conjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullen
and pouting: she will not act,--she has renounced the engagement.

Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the stage,
had been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his name would add
celebrity to his art. The girl's perverseness displeased him. However,
he said nothing,--he never scolded in words, but he took up the faithful
barbiton. Oh, faithful barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! It
screeched, it gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola's eyes filled
with tears, for she understood that language. She stole to her mother,
and whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his employment,
lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a
wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew
again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a
fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to
soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted
bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal,
at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not
mortal laughter. It was one of his most successful airs from his beloved
opera,--the Siren in the act of charming the waves and the winds to
sleep. Heaven knows what next would have come, but his arm was arrested.
Viola had thrown herself on his breast, and kissed him, with happy
eyes that smiled through her sunny hair. At that very moment the door
opened,--a message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at
once. Her mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola
had her way, and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North,
with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx and
the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples was
occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whose
the opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back one
night from the theatre, evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears
hadst thou heard the barbiton that night! They had suspended him from
his office,--they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of
his daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And his
variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a night, made
a hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on the
very night that his child, whose melody was but an emanation of his own,
was to perform,--set aside for some new rival: it was too much for a
musician's flesh and blood. For the first time he spoke in words upon
the subject, and gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent
as it was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
what the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to the
Cardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared with
the violin; and presently they heard the Familiar from the house-top
(whither, when thoroughly out of humour, the musician sometimes fled),
whining and sighing as if its heart were broken.

The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He was not
one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playing
round their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that
domestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and
the heart the substantial form and body of existence. Persons
much cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematicians
proverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated French
philosopher, shrieking, "The house is on fire, sir!" "Go and tell my
wife then, fool!" said the wise man, settling back to his problems;
"do _I_ ever meddle with domestic affairs?" But what are mathematics to
music--music, that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?
Do you know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
long it would take to learn to play on the violin? Hear, and despair, ye
who would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a plaything, "Twelve
hours a day for twenty years together!" Can a man, then, who plays the
barbiton be always playing also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often,
with the keen susceptibility of childhood, poor Viola had stolen from
the room to weep at the thought that thou didst not love her. And yet,
underneath this outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness
flowed all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the
dreamer. And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be forbidden to
hail even his daughter's fame!--and that daughter herself to be in
the conspiracy against him! Sharper than the serpent's tooth was the
ingratitude, and sharper than the serpent's tooth was the wail of the
pitying barbiton!

The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre,--her mother
with her. The indignant musician remains at home. Gionetta bursts into
the room: my Lord Cardinal's carriage is at the door,--the Padrone is
sent for. He must lay aside his violin; he must put on his brocade coat
and his lace ruffles. Here they are,--quick, quick! And quick rolls the
gilded coach, and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the
steeds. Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrives
at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and
round, and looks about him and about: he misses something,--where is the
violin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of self, is left behind! It
is but an automaton that the lackeys conduct up the stairs, through the
tier, into the Cardinal's box. But then, what bursts upon him! Does he
dream? The first act is over (they did not send for him till success
seemed no longer doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THAT
by the electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with
a vast audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of that
multitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal. He
sees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,--he hears
her voice thrilling through the single heart of the thousands! But the
scene, the part, the music! It is his other child,--his immortal child;
the spirit-infant of his soul; his darling of many years of patient
obscurity and pining genius; his masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!

This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,--this the cause of
the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be proclaimed till
the success was won, and the daughter had united her father's triumph
with her own! And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,--fairer
than the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long and
sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that which
is known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern into
light and fame!

He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed, breathless, the
tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to time his hands still
wandered about,--mechanically they sought for the faithful instrument,
why was it not there to share his triumph?

At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of applause!
Up rose the audience as one man, as with one voice that dear name was
shouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in the whole crowd saw but
her father's face. The audience followed those moistened eyes; they
recognised with a thrill the daughter's impulse and her meaning. The
good old Cardinal drew him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughter
has given thee back more than the life thou gavest!

"My poor violin!" said he, wiping his eyes, "they will never hiss thee
again now!"



CHAPTER 1.III.

Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
L'ingannatrice Donna--
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. xciv.

(Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)

Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera, there
had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE the
arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful. It was in a
chorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer. And when the
Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through
every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised the
hand of Pisani. A title had been given to the opera which had hitherto
prevented all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening,
in which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience
to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello. Long
accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisani
as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated into
the applause with which they had hailed the overture and the commencing
scenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the house: the singers,
the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to the impression of the
audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in the
energy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness of
the music.

There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new
performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambush
the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success. A
hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of
all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure
would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending
avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for
the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the
lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the
audience,--which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the
first arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the
glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that recent hiss,
which had reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and
suspended her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into which
she ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into
the trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of
those countless eyes.

At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her,
as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the still multitude, she
perceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, and
like magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysed
nor forgotten. It was one that awakened an indistinct, haunting
reminiscence, as if she had seen it in those day-dreams she had been so
wont from infancy to indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from that
face, and as she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her,
vanished like a mist from before the sun.

In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was indeed
so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionate
admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and nerved,--that any
one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the effect that a single
earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won,
will produce upon his mind, may readily account for the sudden and
inspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercised
on the debutante.

And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the
courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave
the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause.
For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival
at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And
then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter,
like a spirit from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its
entrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard,
the whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed
that the stranger's presence only served still more to heighten that
delusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of his
art, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired
her with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a language
to express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that
presence itself whispered to her the melody and the song.

Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did
this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and
filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back
involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and half-melancholy smile sank
into her heart,--to live there, to be recalled with confused memories,
half of pleasure, and half of pain.

Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished
at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on
a subject of taste,--still more astonished at finding himself and all
Naples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of
admiration which buzzed in the singer's ear, as once more, in her modest
veil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked
up every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted
Chiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to note the tears and
ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother,--see them returned;
see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own
house.); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he
rouses the barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened
to the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother's merry, low, English
laugh. Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaning
on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space? Up, rouse thee! Every
dimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night. ("Ridete quidquid est
domi cachinnorum." Catull. "ad Sirm. Penin.")

And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullus
might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, and
the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima a
present from the good Cardinal. The barbiton, placed on a chair--a tall,
high-backed chair--beside the musician, seemed to take a part in the
festive meal. Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp;
and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its
master, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affectionately, and
could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on the
artist's temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fond
anticipation; and Viola, on the other side her brother, the barbiton,
rearranged the chaplet, and, smoothing back her father's hair,
whispered, "Caro Padre, you will not let HIM scold me again!"

Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited both by
the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive
and grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank the most. You give
me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee and myself. But he and I,
poor fellow, have been so often unhappy together!"

Viola's sleep was broken,--that was natural. The intoxication of vanity
and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all this was
better than sleep. But still from all this, again and again her thoughts
flew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the memory
of the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united. Her feelings, like
her own character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of a
girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighs
its natural and native language of first love. It was not so much
admiration, though the face that reflected itself on every wave of her
restless fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor a
pleased and enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger had
bequeathed: it was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed
with something more mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seen
before those features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts had
sought to shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts
to vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill
foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self. It was a
something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless
yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when
youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student,
long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer
dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again.
She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting,
shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy
cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her
father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from
his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.

"And why," she asked, when she descended to the room below,--"why, my
father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of last night?"

"I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an air in honour of
thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he would have it so."



CHAPTER 1.IV.

E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
Sprona.
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. lxxxviii.

(And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)

It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his profession
made special demand on his time, to devote a certain portion of the
mid-day to sleep,--a habit not so much a luxury as a necessity to a man
who slept very little during the night. In fact, whether to compose
or to practice, the hours of noon were precisely those in which Pisani
could not have been active if he would. His genius resembled those
fountains full at dawn and evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly
dry at the meridian. During this time, consecrated by her husband to
repose, the signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessary
for the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a little
relaxation in gossip with some of her own sex. And the day following
this brilliant triumph, how many congratulations would she have to
receive!

At these times it was Viola's habit to seat herself without the door
of the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun without
obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book on her knee,
on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time, you may behold
her, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching trellis over the
door behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats skimming along the sea that
stretched before.

As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming from the
direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast eyes, passed close
by the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly, started in a kind of
terror as she recognised the stranger. She uttered an involuntary
exclamation, and the cavalier turning, saw, and paused.

He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean, contemplating
in a silence too serious and gentle for the boldness of gallantry, the
blushing face and the young slight form before him; at length he spoke.

"Are you happy, my child," he said, in almost a paternal tone, "at the
career that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the music in the
breath of applause is sweeter than all the music your voice can utter!"

"I know not," replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the liquid
softness of the accents that addressed her,--"I know not whether I am
happy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too, Excellency, that I
have you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce know why!"

"You deceive yourself," said the cavalier, with a smile. "I am aware
that I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who scarce know
how. The WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your heart a nobler
ambition than that of the woman's vanity; it was the daughter that
interested me. Perhaps you would rather I should have admired the
singer?"

"No; oh, no!"

"Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will pause to
counsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will have at your feet
all the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant! the flame that dazzles
the eye can scorch the wing. Remember that the only homage that does not
sully must be that which these gallants will not give thee. And whatever
thy dreams of the future,--and I see, while I speak to thee, how
wandering they are, and wild,--may only those be fulfilled which centre
round the hearth of home."

He paused, as Viola's breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a burst
of natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending, though an
Italian, the grave nature of his advice, she exclaimed,--

"Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is already.
And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without him!"

A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the cavalier. He
looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turned
again to the vivid, animated face of the young actress.

"It is well," said he. "A simple heart may be its own best guide, and
so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer."

"Adieu, Excellency; but," and something she could not resist--an
anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
question, "I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?"

"Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day."

"Indeed!" and Viola's heart sank within her; the poetry of the stage was
gone.

"And," said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on
hers,--"and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known the
first sharp griefs of human life,--known how little what fame can gain,
repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not,--not even to
what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour's
garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered
the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life has
been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that life the
necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;
how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem
and branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it
through each disfavour of birth and circumstances,--why are its leaves
as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all
its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very
instinct that impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light
won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every
adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive for
the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness
to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to
those quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and see
the sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellow
of their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive
through darkness to the light!"