Antonio knew not whether to scold or laugh; however he constrained himself to be calm, and to let the old woman have her chatter; for owing, as it seemed, to her former acquaintance with his family, she possest a strange power over him. But how did he start with amazement when she suddenly cried out: "Crescentia!"

"For Heaven's sake!" he said, almost breathlessly: "do you know her?

can you see her? can you tell me anything about her?"

"What's the matter with you?" howled the old woman: "how can I help knowing her, seeing she is my own daughter? Only look yourself how the lazy s.l.u.t has fallen asleep in her chair there, and lets the fire go out and the soup get cold."

She took up the lamp and went to the chimney; but what were the youth's feelings, when again for the second time on that day he beheld his beloved, almost the same as in the evening? Her pale head lay dropt back; her eyes were closed; every feature, even the dark tresses, were those of his bride; just so were her little hands folded, and just so did she too clasp a crucifix between them. Her white dress helpt to increase the illusion; the flowers alone were wanting; but the dusk wove something like wreaths of dark heavy foliage around her hair.

"She is dead!" sighed Antonio gazing fixedly upon her.

"Sluggish is she, the lazy jade," said the old woman, and shook the fair slumberer awake: "she can do nothing but pray and sleep, the useless baggage."

Crescentia roused herself, and her confusion still hightened her beauty. Antonio felt on the brink of madness at thus again seeing before him one whom he had yet lost for ever.

"Old witch!" he cried out vehemently: "where am I? and what forms art thou bringing before my wandering senses? Speak, who is this lovely being? Crescentia, art thou alive again? Dost thou still acknowledge me as thine own! How camest thou hither?"

"Holla! my young prince," screamed the old woman; "you are gabbling away there, as though you had quite lost your little bit of an understanding. Is the storm beating about inside of your pate? has the lightning perchance singed your brains? She is my daughter, and always has been so."

"I do not know you," said the pale Crescentia, blushing sweetly: "I was never in the city."

"Sit down," the old woman interposed; "and eat and drink what I have to give you."

The soup was placed on the table, along with some fruit; and the old woman going to a small cupboard took out a flask of excellent Florentine wine.

Antonio could eat but little; his eye was spellbound upon Crescentia; and his disturbed and shattered imagination was evermore persuading him anew that this was his lost bride. Then again he often fancied he was lying enchained by a heavy dream, or had been seized by a trance of madness which was transforming every object around him, so that he was perhaps still in Padua, or at his own home, and saw nothing but phantasmal forms, and could not recognize or understand any of the friends who might be round about consoling him or mourning over him.

The storm had raved itself out, and the stars were shining in the pacified dark sky. The old woman ate greedily, and drank still more plenteously of the sweet wine.

"Now at length, young Antonio," she began after some time, "tell us, prithee, what brought you to Padua, and what has driven you hither?"

Antonio started as from sleep. "You may well," he replied, "demand some account of your guest, since, beside that reason, you knew my father, and it may be my mother too."

"To be sure I knew her," said the old woman sn.i.g.g.e.ring; "n.o.body so well as I. Yes, yes, she died just six months before your father celebrated his second marriage with the Marchesa Manfredi."

"So you know that too?"

"Why, it seems to me," she continued, "as though I could see the dainty trim doll at this very moment before me. Well, is your beautiful stepmother still living? When they drove me out of the country she was just in her prime full bloom."

"I cannot again go through," said Antonio with a sigh, "what I suffered from that alien mother. She held my father as under enchantment; and he was readier to wrong all his old friends, readier to wrong his own son, than in anywise to offend her. At last however their behaviour to each other altered; but my heart almost broke at the sight of their hatred, while before it had only bled at the insults I had to endure."

"So there was plenty of bitter malice," askt the old hag with a nauseous grin, "throughout the whole family?"

Antonio eyed her with a sharp look, and said confusedly: "I know not how I have come to be talking here about my own and my parents misery."

The old woman swallowed a b.u.mper of red wine, which stood like blood in the gla.s.s. Then with a loud laugh she said: "Faith, I know no such glorious pleasure, nothing, I mean, so like what one may call perfect rapture and bliss, as when such a wedded couple, who in earlier days were once a pair of fond lovers, fall out in this way, and snarl and snap at each other, like cat and dog, or two tiger-beasts, and scold and curse each other, and would each give up heart and soul to Satan, only to hurt and pain or to get rid of the other. This, my young lad, is the true glory of mortal life: but more especially, if the two yoke-fellows have of yore gone stark mad with love, if they have done everything, even what is a little bit out of the way, for each other, if they have waded through much of what certain good pious folks would call crimes and sins, merely for the sake of getting at one another, merely for the sake of at last tying the knot, which they now so cordially abhor. Trust me, this is a grand feast for Satan and all his comrades, and it makes those below keep jubilee and sing psalms. And here now even ... but I'll hold my tongue; I might easily say too much."

Crescentia lookt mournfully at the astonisht youth. "Forgive her," she whispered: "you see she has drunk too much; pity her."

But in Antonio's soul there now rose up with fresh power the image of former times and all their dark scenes. The sorrowful day came back upon him, when he saw his stepmother on her deathbed, when his father was in despair and curst himself and the hour of his birth, and called upon the spirit of his first wife and prayed for forgiveness.

"Have you nothing else to tell?" askt the old woman, and thereby awakened him from his dreamy amaze.

"What shall I tell?" said Antonio, with the deepest anguish: "do not you seem to know everything, or else to have learnt it by soothsay?

Need I tell you that an old servant, Roberto, poisoned her, having been persecuted by her hatred and thus spurred on to revenge himself?

that this accursed villain attempted to throw the crime upon my father? He escapes from prison, scales the garden-wall, and in the grotto thrusts his dagger into my father's breast."

"What old Roberto! Roberto!" cried the old woman almost with a shout of triumph: "hey, only see how strangely some people will turn out!

Ay, ay, the sneak in his younger days was such a straitlaced hypocrite, such a holy-seeming dog; afterward however he grew a fine spirited fellow, as they tell me. It was in the grotto then? How cunningly things fit together, and sh.e.l.l off till one gets at the kernel! In that grotto your father in earlier days sat time after time with his first wife; there at their betrothal he first swore eternal love to her. In those times Roberto doubtless already wore that dagger; but he knew not what an odd use he was to make of it some twenty years after. In that grotto too the second spouse would often slumber beside the cool fountain; and again the husband would lie there at her feet. Well, Antonio, child, is not life a right merry, right silly, right absurd, and right horrible hodgepodge? No man can say: 'that's a thing I never will do'. The pangs and the feelings, the stings and the ravings, which the black crew forge in h.e.l.l's smithy, all these keep coming on and coming on, slowly, wonderously, nearer and ever nearer: on a sudden Horrour is in the house, and the frantic victim sits with it in the corner, and gnaws at it as a dog gnaws a bone. Drink, drink, my darling; this grape-juice sets all things to rights when its spirits once get into the soul.... Now, and you? do tell me a little more."

"I swore to revenge my father," said Antonio.

"That's just right;" returned the old woman: "look you, my child, when such a firebrand has been once hurled into a house, it must never never go out again. From generation to generation down to grandchild and cousin the poison is entailed; the children rave already; the wound is always bleeding afresh; a new vein must be opened to save the disaster and set it upon its legs again, when but for that it might be in danger of breathing its last. O revenge, revenge is a goodly word!"

"But Roberto," said Antonio, "had escaped, and was nowhere to be found."

"A pity, a pity!" exclaimed the old woman. "Now of course thy revenge drives thee over the world?"

"Yes in truth; I wandered through Italy, searcht in every town, but could find no trace of the murderer. At last the fame of Pietro of Abano fixt me at Padua. I wisht to learn wisdom from him; but when I came into the house of the Podesta...."

"Well! speak out, child!"

"What shall I say? I know not whether I am raving or dreaming. There I saw his daughter, the sweet, the lovely Crescentia. And I here see her again before me ... yes it is herself ... that funeral procession was a wicked, unseemly jest ... and this disguise, this flight hither into the desert, is again a most unseemly piece of mummery. Acknowledge thyself to me at length, at length, beloved, beautiful Crescentia.

Thou knowest it well, my heart only lives within thy bosom. To what end these agonizing trials? Are thy parents perchance in the next room there, and listening to all we are saying? Let them come in now at last, at last; let us have done with this cruel probation, which will soon drive me mad."

The pale Crescentia lookt at him with such an unutterable expression, such a weight of sadness over her face, that the tears gusht from his eyes.

"Faith, he is drunk already!" howled the old woman. "Speak, tell me, is the Podesta's daughter dead then? Dead is she? and when?"

"This evening," said the weeper, "I met her corpse."

"So she too!" continued the old woman merrily, as she filled her gla.s.s again. "Well, now will the family of Marconi in Venice be right glad."

"Why so?"

"Because they are now the only heirs to their rich kinsman. This is what the long-sighted knaves have always wisht, but could never hope for."

"Woman!" exclaimed Antonio with new horrour; "why thou knowest everything!"

"Not everything," replied she, "but some little. And then a good deal more may perhaps be guessed at. And I will not deny it, a little witchcraft now and then helps on the game. Only don't be too much frightened at it. Nor in truth was it altogether for nothing that their Florentine worships would have built me a throne of f.a.ggots: some petty trifling bits of reasons for this wish they might fairly enough have brought forward.... Look me in the face, boy! stroak away the curls from thy forehead: good! now give me thy left hand: the right: heyday! strange and marvellous! That's it; some near misfortune is hanging over thee; but if thou outlivest it, thou wilt see thy beloved again."

"In the next world!" sighed Antonio.

"The next world? what is the next world?" cried the old hag in her drunkenness: "no, in this world, here, on what we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of their fabling, he is free on the strength of this, and can do what his heart l.u.s.teth after."

Antonio eyed her wrathfully, and was about to make an indignant reply; but the pale Crescentia interposed such a humble beseeching look for her mother that his anger was disarmed.

The old woman yawned and rubbed her eyes, and it was not long before, stupefied as she was by the repeated draughts of strong wine, she fell fast asleep.

The fire on the hearth was gone out, and the lamp now only cast a faint glimmer. Antonio sank into a deep study, and Crescentia sat by the window on a low stool.