The quiet courtesy of his manner as he spoke, as well as the surprise of his being English, seemed to increase the youth's shame for the liberty he had taken, and he was profuse in his apologies; but Cashel soon allayed this anxiety by adroitly turning to another part of the subject, and saying, "If I look much older than I am, it is that I have travelled and lived a good deal in southern climates, not to speak of other causes, which give premature age."

A slight, a very slight touch of melancholy in the latter words gave them a deep interest to the youth, who, with a boyish frankness, far more fascinating than more finished courtesy, asked Roland if he would join their party. Had such a request been made half an hour before, or had it come in more formal fashion, Cashel would inevitably have declined it; but what between the generous candor of the youth's address, and a desire to show that he did not resent his intrusion, Cashel acceded good-naturedly, and took his seat amongst them.

As Roland listened to the joyous freshness of their boyish talk,--the high-hearted hope, the sanguine trustfulness with which they regarded life,--he remembered what but a few years back he had himself been. He saw in them the selfsame elements which had led him on to every calamity that he suffered,--the pa.s.sionate pursuit of pleasure, the inexhaustible craving for excitement that makes life the feverish paroxysm of a malady.

They sat to a late hour together; and when they separated, the chance acquaintance had ripened into intimacy. Night after night they met in the same place; and while they were charmed with the gentle seriousness of one in whom they could recognize the most manly daring, he, on his side, was fascinated by the confiding warmth and the generous frankness of their youth.

One evening, as they a.s.sembled as usual, Roland remarked a something like unusual excitement amongst them; and learned that from a letter they had received that morning, they were about to leave Naples the next day. There seemed some mystery in the reason, and a kind of reserve in even alluding to it, which made Cashel half suspect that they had been told who he was, and that a dislike to further intercourse had suggested the departure. It was the feeling that never left him by day or night, that dogged his waking and haunted his dreams,--that he was one to be shunned and avoided by his fellow-men. His pride, long dormant, arose under the supposed slight, and he was about to say a cold farewell, when the elder of the party, whose name was Sidney, said,--

"How I wish you were going with us!"

"Whither to?" said Cashel, hurriedly.

"To Venice--say, is this possible?"

"I am free to turn my steps in any direction,--too free, for I have neither course to sail nor harbor to reach."

"Come with us, then, Roland," cried they all, "and our journey will be delightful."

"But why do you start so hurriedly? What is there to draw you from this at the very brightest season of the year?"

"There is rather that which draws us to Venice," said Sidney, coloring slightly? "but this is our secret, and you shall not hear it till we are on our way."

Roland's curiosity was not exacting; he asked no more: nor was it till they had proceeded some days on their journey that Sidney confided to him the sudden cause of their journey, which he did in the few words.--

"La Ninetta is at Venice,--she is at the 'Fenice.'"

"But who is La Ninetta? You forgot that you are speaking to one who lives out of the world."

"Not know La Ninetta!" exclaimed he; "never have seen her?"

"Never even heard of her."

To the pause which the shock of the first astonishment imposed there now succeeded a burst of enthusiastic description, in which the three youths vied with each other who should be most eloquent in praise. Her beauty, her gracefulness, the witching fascination of her movements, the enchanting captivation of her smile, were themes they never wearied of.

Nor was it till he had suffered the enthusiasm to take its course that they would listen to his calm question,--

"Is she an actress?"

"She is the first _Ballarina_ of the world," cried one. "None ever did, nor ever will, dance like her."

"They say she is a _Prima Donna_ too; but how could such excellence be united in one creature?"

To their wild transports of praise Roland listened patiently, in the hope that he might glean something of her story; but they knew nothing, except that she was reputed to be a Sicilian, of a n.o.ble family, whose pa.s.sion for the stage had excited the darkest enmity of her relatives; insomuch that it was said she was tracked from city to city by hired a.s.sa.s.sins. She remained two days at Naples; she appeared but once at Rome; in Genoa, though announced, she never came to the theatre. Such were the extravagant tales, heightened by all the color of romantic adventure,--how, at one time, she had escaped from a royal palace by leaping into the sea,--how, at another, she had ridden through a squadron of the Swiss Guard, sabre in hand, and got clean away from Bologna, where a cardinal's letter had arrested her. Incidents the strangest, the least probable, were recounted of her,--the high proffers of marriage she had rejected; the alliances, even with royal blood, she had refused. There was nothing, where her name figured, that seemed impossible; hers was a destiny above all the rules that guide humbler mortals.

Excellence, of whatever kind it be, has always this attraction,--that it forms a standard by which men measure with each other their capacities of enjoyment and their powers of appreciation. Roland's curiosity was stimulated, therefore, to behold with his own eyes the wonder which had excited these youthful heroics. He had long since ceased to be sanguine on any subject; and he felt that he could sustain disappointment on graver matters than this.

When they reached Venice, they found that city in a state of enthusiastic excitement fully equal to their own. All the excesses into which admiration for art can carry a people insensible to other emotions than those which minister to the senses, had been committed to welcome "La Regina de la Balla." Her _entree_ had been like a triumph; garlands of flowers, bouquets, rich tapestries floating from balconies, gondolas with bands of music; the civic authorities even, in robes of state, met her as she entered; strangers flocked in crowds from the other cities of the north, and even from parts beyond the Alps. The hotels were crammed with visitors all eager to see one of whom every tongue was telling. A guard of honor stood before the palace in which she resided,--as much a measure of necessity to repel the pressure of the anxious crowd as it was a mark of distinction.

The epidemic character of enthusiasm is well known. It is a fervor to which none can remain insensible. Cashel was soon to experience this.

How could he preserve a cold indifference to the emotions which swayed thousands around him? How maintain his calm amid that host, which surged and fretted like the sea in a storm? La Ninetta was the one word repeated on every side; even to have seen her once was a distinction, and they who had already felt her fascinations were listened to as oracles.

She was to give but three representations at Venice, and ere Cashel's party had arrived all the tickets were already disposed of. By unceasing efforts, and considerable bribery, they contrived at last to obtain places for the first night, and early in the forenoon were admitted among a privileged number to take their seats. They who were thus, at a heavy cost, permitted to antic.i.p.ate the general public, seemed--at least to Cashel's eyes--to fill the house; and so, in the dim indistinctness, they appeared. Wherever the eye turned, from the dark parterre below, to the highest boxes above, seemed filled with people. There was something almost solemn in that vast concourse, who sat subdued and silent in the misty half light of the theatre. The intense anxiety of expectation, the dreary gloom of the scene, contributed to spread a kind of awestruck influence around, and brought up to Roland's memory a very different place and occasion--when, himself the observed of all observers, he stood in the felons' dock. Lost in the gloomy revery these sad thoughts suggested, he took no note of time, nor marked the lagging hours which stole heavily past.

Suddenly the full glare of light burst forth, and displayed the great theatre crowded in every part. That glittering spectacle, into which beauty, splendor of dress, jewels, and rich uniforms enter, broke upon the sight, while a kind of magnetic sense of expectancy seemed to pervade all, and make conversation a mere murmur. The opera--a well-known one of a favorite composer, aud admirably sustained--attracted little attention. The thrilling cadences, the brilliant pa.s.sages, all fell upon senses that had no relish for their excellence; and even the conventional good-breeding of the spectators was not proof against the signs of impatience that every now and then were manifested.

The third act at last began, and the scene represented a Spanish village of the New World, which, had it been even less correct and true to nature, had yet possessed no common attraction for Roland,--recalling by a hundred little traits a long unvisited but well-remembered land. The usual troops of villagers paraded about in all that mock grace which characterizes the peasant of the ballet. There were the same active mountaineers, the same venerable fathers, the comely matrons with little baskets of nothing carefully covered by snowy napkins, and the young maidens, who want only beauty to make them what they affect to be.

Roland gazed at all this with the indifference a stupid prelude ever excites, and would rapidly have been wearied, when a sudden pause in the music ensued, and then a deathlike stillness reigned through the house.

The orchestra again opened, and with a melody which thrilled through every fibre of Roland's heart. It was a favorite Mexican air; one to which, in happier times, he had often danced. What myriads of old memories came flocking to his mind as he listened! What fancies came thronging around him! Every bar of the measure beat responsively with some a.s.sociation of the past. He leaned his head downwards, and, covering his face with his hands, all thought of the present was lost, and in imagination he was back again on the greensward before the "Villa de las Noches;" the mocking-bird and the nightingale were filling the air with their warblings; the sounds of gay voices, the plash of fountains, the meteor-like flashes of the fireflies, were all before him. He knew not that a thousand voices were shouting around him in wildest enthusiasm,--that bouquets of rarest flowers strewed the stage,--that every form adulation can take was a.s.sumed towards one on whom every eye save his own was bent; and that before her rank, beauty, riches--all that the world makes its idols--were now bending in deepest homage. He knew nothing of all this, as he sat with bent-down head, lost in his own bright dreamings. At length he looked up, but, instead of his fancy being dissipated by reality, it now a.s.sumed form and substance.

There was the very scenery of that far-off land; the music was the national air of Mexico; the dance was the haughty manolo; and, oh! was it that his brain was wandering,--had reason, shaken by many a rude shock, given way at last? The dancer--she on whose witching graces every glance was bent--was Maritana! There she stood, more beautiful than he had ever seen her before; her dark hair encircled with brilliants, her black eyes flashing in all the animation of triumph, and her fairly rounded limbs the perfection of symmetry.

Oh, no! this was some mind-drawn picture; this was the shadowy image that failing intellect creates ere all is lost in chaos and confusion!

Such was the conflict in his brain as, with staring eyeb.a.l.l.s, he tracked her as she moved, and followed each graceful bend, each proud commanding att.i.tude. Nor was it till the loud thunder-roll of applause had drawn her to the front of the stage, to acknowledge the favor by a deep reverence, that he became a.s.sured beyond all question. Then, when he saw the long dark lashes fall upon the rounded cheek, when he beheld the crossed arm upon her bosom, and marked the taper fingers he had so often held within his own, in a transport of feeling where pride and joy and shame and sorrow had each their share. He cried aloud,--

"Oh, Maritana! Maritana! Shame! shame!" Scarcely had the wild cry re-echoed through the house than, with a scream, whose terror pierced every heart, the girl started from her studied att.i.tude, and rushed forward towards the footlights, her frighted looks and pale cheeks seeming ghastly with emotion.

"Where?--where?" cried she. "Speak again--I know the voice!" But already a scene of uproar and confusion had arisen in the parterre around Cashel, whose interruption of the piece called down universal reprobation; and cries of "Out with him!" "Away with him!" rose on every side.

Struggling madly and fiercely against his a.s.sailants, Cashel for a brief s.p.a.ce seemed likely to find his way to the stage; but overcome by numbers, he was subdued at last, and consigned to the hands of the guard. His last look, still turned to the "scene," showed him Maritana, as she was carried away senseless and fainting.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV. THE FATE OF KEANE--HIS DEPOSITION.

The laughing Seine, whose midnight flood Shrouds many a deed of crime and blood!

Warren.

They alone who have pa.s.sed much of their lives on the Continent of Europe can estimate the amount of excitement caused by such an incident as that we have just related. So much of life is centred in the theatre, so many interests revolve around it, engrossing, as it does, so much of the pa.s.sions and the prejudices of those whose existence seldom rises above the pursuit of pleasure, that anything which might interrupt "the scene," which should disturb its progress, or mar its effect, is sure to evoke the loudest evidence of public indignation. Where a high cultivation of the arts is employed to gloss over the corruptions of a vicious system, it may be easily conceived how men would be judged more leniently for crimes than for those minor offences which rebel against the usages of good society.

The "Ballet interrupted in its most interesting moment," "La Ninetta carried away fainting at the very commencement of her most attractive movement," insulted--so it was rumored--"by some offensive epithet of a Spaniard," were enough to carry indignation to the highest pitch, and it needed the protection of the guard to screen him from the popular vengeance.

After a night of feverish anxiety, where hopes and fears warred and conflicted with each other, Cashel was early on the following morning conducted before the chief commissary of the police. His pa.s.sport represented him as a Spaniard, and he adhered to the pretended nationality to avoid the dreaded notoriety of his name.

While he answered the usual questions as to age, religion, and profession, an officer deposited a sealed paper in the hands of the prefetto; who, opening it, appeared to study the contents with much care.

"You have called yourself Il Senor Roland da Castel, sir?" said the official, staring fixedly upon him. "Have you always gone by this name?"

"In Mexico and the New World I was ever known as such. In England men called me Roland Cashel."

"Which is your more fitting appellation--is it not?"

"Yes."

"You are then an English, and not a Spanish subject?"

He nodded a.s.sent.

"You were, however, in a South American service?" said the prefetto, reading from his paper.