Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part one, chapter 15

Throughout the morning Blasco had avoided meeting Gabriella. Returning to his room with a heart full of joy, after that first kiss revealing a passion, which suddenly broke out by its own virtue, he had thrown himself on the bed, abandoning himself to the sweetest ghosts, and building the most insane and adventurous drawings. He fell asleep in those ravings, which had filled him with joyful dreams.

But at dawn, when he woke up, he began to reckon the day before, and to rethink his adventure. Interrogating himself, he felt that he deeply loved Gabriella, that he loved her with all the strength of his heart; and he seemed to have loved her for a long time, that he had always lived of that love, finding almost natural that passionate kiss that the shade of the carriage had surrounded with mystery and joy. What would he have done that morning? What would they have said, seeing each other again? How would they be revised? When? These thoughts led him to consider his position in that house, and gradually filled his soul with a certain disturbance, and almost remorse.

Donna Gabriella was the wife of another; and this other was - as it appeared in his eyes - a generous man who had welcomed him into his home like a son, blessed him, promised him protection, threw him into the world, entrusted him with his home, his honor... Well, he was vague about violating that hospitality, betray that trust, vile that honor, reciprocate generosity and benefit with perfidy.

All this seemed to him so despicable, so dishonorable, that he had disgust and horror at what had also filled him with happiness. He felt in the depths of his honest conscience, that he could not drink all the cup of happiness without committing a crime; and although the examples of an unscrupulous society in the matter of love, cynically suggested excuses and excuses to him, and encouraged him, he also rebelled against the idea of committing an infamy. If he hadn't had any relationship with Don Raimondo, if he hadn't been his guest, oh! then he would have kidnapped Gabriella woman, without even thinking about it; and it wouldn't have seemed a bad deed, indeed the danger that he would have run, it would have been the most flavorful seasoning of his adventure of love. But under those conditions he saw nothing but a life of infiction and subterfuge, hypocrisy and falsehood, which were the most repugnant to his open disposition and loyalty. He had until that day kept his soul unleashed from every infamy; would he now stained the whiteness of his sign?

He was ashamed to think so. But in the meantime he loved: and on his lips he still felt the warmth and the fragrance of those lips that had opened to him the heaven of divine joys. She felt the image of a woman Gabriella thick in her brain, penetrated into her heart, become one with blood; she felt her life bound, rather fused with that woman worshipped, and a lively and acute pain began to sting him; for the first time she felt her soul fighting between opposite feelings; she saw herself against herself; she saw her hands moving to tear the rosy veil that they also had hastened to collect; that veil was wrapped around his eyes.

What to do? Which way to go?

He understood that by now he only had to take a step to grasp the rose and that this would be inevitable and fatal; and there was only one way to avoid it: to abandon that house. Abandon her? And how would he live away from woman Gabriella? How else would he justify his departure?

At the usual time, he asked to go and greet Gabriella, and he wanted to avoid her all day long, pretending to be sick; but then what? We had to take a resolution and face it bravely. For a moment he flashed the thought of confessing to his father Bonaventura, but immediately he drove him out, not seemingly correct to make the name of a lady, in such a delicate and compromising matter.

He was in this perplexity, walking through the room and looking now yes now no out of the window, when a lackey came to call him.

"His Excellency Mrs. Duchess asked if Mr. Knight is at home."

"Tell her I'll hurry to come and take her orders."

Donna Gabriella had finished getting dressed and threw one last look on the mirror; she seemed a little nervous and impatient, and the waiters had had some essay. She had assumed that Blasco would try to see her earlier that morning, and had waited for him with no less desire than she imagined in the young man. After that kiss, the fever of desires had kindled her blood; her drowsy senses, aroused by the breath of love, shook in the imagination and expectation of other joys, to which she now tended her life with all the impetus of her twenty years. Why wasn't Blasco coming? Why were you lingering? How could he resist and restrain desires? That day he had taken better care of his clothing, guided by that secret instinct of graceful civetteria, which suggested to the woman the choice of colors and shapes best suited to make the natural beauty stand out and to correct the slight defects; and truly it was wonderfully beautiful and its beauty acquired a new charm for that sweet pallor that spread on her face shaded by the long black eyelashes, and the blue shades of the orbits.

On entering, Blasco was forced to stop to look at her, ecstatic and moved. She was so beautiful! and yet he was determined to get away from her.

Donna Gabriella was lying in sweet abandonment, over one of those little sofas, of which Louis XIV had introduced fashion. The movement of the restless little foot betrayed the impatience of waiting; but at the young man's appearance the foot stopped, like fog at the dawn of the sun. He stretched out his hand, with the usual gesture, but trembling, and with his eyes humid and smiling.

Blasco took her tenderly and kissed her; but her kiss was not as flavorless as the conventional ones, and gave her a thrill.

They felt embarrassed, and found no way to begin, and yet the words gurgled in their hearts, and they knew what they would say. Blasco had no heart to manifest his purposes: before a woman Gabriella felt enveloped by a network of charms, who extinguished his cold will: passion pervaded him.

"I waited for you" said blushing woman Gabriella.

Blasco gathered himself, made an effort on himself, and with a trembling voice from before and more firm by hand as he spoke, he replied: "If I had listened to the voice of desire, I would have asked you for the grace to sleep even behind the door of your room, to hear, if nothing else, your breath, but..."

"Well?..."

"I don't know, Gabriella, how to start... I love you from the first day I met you, without knowing who you were... And as a holy, intangible thing... to which one must not approach only with pure hands..."

She smiled at those words, which had a sweet and tender sound of kisses; her heart swelled with joy.

Nobody's ever talked to her like that before.

He continued: "Now it would seem to me to be despicable in your eyes and in my eyes, if I defiled this love of mine, with a treacherous and double course... I feel that I could not live an hour more under this roof, nor sit at your table, before the man who has right from God over you, without blushing..."

Donna Gabriella paled, seeming to guess; a deep dismay invaded her soul, she asked earnestly, "What do you mean?"

Blasco, no less pale, and with the intimate visible anguish, replied: "I say, Gabriella, that I must love you, because I cannot but love you, from afar..."

"Do you want to leave?"

"It's necessary..."

"Leave me?..."

"It's a duty... Do you want the duke to have the right to call me a traitor?..."

She bowed her head painfully. That idea wasn't in her brain yet. Abandoning himself to victorious love, any other feeling that was not his love, seemed abolished in his conscience. Now those words called her to reality: she was not free; a heavy yoke weighed on her neck and could not get rid of it.

The dreams bloomed because of the virtue of her first kiss of love, faded away to the appearance of that cold and hateful mask: the life that had opened now for the first time, with its divine charm, was suddenly obscured. She saw nothing but shadows and sorrows around her. He sobbed and put his beautiful face between his hands.

The silence of that instant had something tragic.

Blasco fought within himself a terrible battle, almost won by that hiccup and by that burst of significant pain.

"Gabriella!..." murmured with an irreproachable accent, in which love, tenderness and anguish merged together.

She made a desperate gesture.

"Go!..." he said with a thread of voice; "you are right... Go!..."

And suddenly, as he answered a thought, he went: "But why... why... then!..."

He got up with a wild rush that made his face more beautiful, and took Blasco by his hands, he told him vehemently: "Ah!... do you want to leave? Do you want to step away?... Well, I'm gonna leave, too... I'm gonna run away from this hateful house... Guilty? Are you afraid of appearing guilty in the eyes of a man I don't love, who I never loved, who imprisoned my heart, my will, my future? But you're guilty already, so am I... Since last night, we've been guilty, and we're bound by the same guilt... And I always will be... Do you want to leave? But I want to leave too... I can't live here anymore... Oh, God! Here he is, after having opened heaven to me, after having revealed to me that beyond this cold, monotonous, lying life there is a true life, he drives me back to hell!"

Blasco begged her: "Gabriella! Gabriella!" Those words fell into the depths of his soul like sparks of fire. "Don't say that!... don't say that, I beg you..."

But she continued, convulsed, with her eyes wet with tears, her chest piercing.

"I am twenty years old... and I had not loved anyone yet; I had believed that love consisted in marriage or in those silly phrases that I have always heard repeat; but here, in here, I had never felt anything... Now yes, now I know what love is; I know it since yesterday... I know it from this terrible pain that you give me; I know it from you, my first and only and wicked love!... I know it from the spasms, dreams, despair. Oh, what a horrible awakening!... what a horrible awakening!..."

She let herself fall over the sofa, in a burst of hiccups. Blasco felt himself dying; he knelt before her, took her beautiful cold and convulsive hands, kissing them tenderly.

"Gabriella! Gabriella... don't beat me up like that!... I love you, too, as I never loved... If I didn't love you with all my soul, if I didn't worship you, I wouldn't impose a greater sacrifice on my strength... Not to you alone I have opened the doors of happiness... I have opened them to me... I feel like leaving you, it's dying for me! Be strong... for me too!..."

Without knowing it, he surrounded her life with one arm, drawing it to himself, as if to infuse it with his words that strength that He was missing, and their faces were near, they almost touched each other; their warmth was felt. Donna Gabriella looked at him with her eyes full of tears, long, intensely, with an anguish passion, then, suddenly, she took his face in her hands and with desperate ardour kissed him in the mouth. He vanished, he said: "Gabriella! Gabriella!..."

But he didn't break off, he didn't get up; his arms tightened to himself the body that vibrated with passion and pain, and his lips fell to desire.

She murmured, almost triumphing: "Let me go, now... why don't you leave me?..."

But he did not answer: he could not leave her. His heroism had stopped dismayed before those tears, had vacillated at the first kiss; finally, he had fled, pursued, dispersed by victorious passion.

"Oh, Gabriella," he said, "how can I ever live away from you?" She flooded him with her sweetest words. Why did he want to get away? So did he not see that fate had led them into each other's arms? That something, stronger than them, over them, guided them? That it was vain to oppose? He shook his head, obstinating in words, but recognizing in his heart what a woman Gabriella was saying. Of course, he would always love her, with all his strength, but he refused to live under that same roof, the host of that man who could not love. He wanted to be free.

"I feel that here I could not love you as I want to love you; here I would be forced to a life of infancy, and also you, Gabriella, should also hide, mask... No, no; that sounds like a desecration to me. Let me resume my independence so that I can love you freely, openly, with all my fervor!..."

Ah, if he and the duke hadn't had those relationships!

He almost got drunk out of the rooms of woman Gabriella, happy, but sad; in the evening at dinner he expressed his desire to enter the king's guards: he was now, more than ever, pressing him to have a state and to live his own.

Don Raimondo was afraid to leave him; the next day he told him that the king had manifested the idea of setting up two regiments of Sicilian infantry, and a company of bodyguards, chosen from among the gentlemen of the island; but that he reserved to provide for it after his crowning. We had to wait. But Blasco understood that time would still pass: the crowning was set for December 24, Christmas Eve, and the new militias, as a result, would not be established before the new year.

He took a heroic resolution. He went to see Don Raimondo in his study, and firmly told him that, although he was grateful for the benefit, he could neither abuse any more, and that he would return to his inn, always ready, in every case, to serve his noble and generous protector.

It was a blow to the duke, and the pain expressed by his face that time was sincere.

"Did you miss anything? Are you displeased with the bondage?" he asked; "Do you want anything? Say, your resolution makes me doubt..."

"No, Mr. Duke; I cannot feel sorry for anyone; anything else. I'm just displeased with myself. I don't approve; and when I don't approve, Your Excellency, no one will be able to persuade me otherwise. This idle life is not for me. I need to act, to do something, and until I get into the guards, I want, I have to do something else..."

Don Raimondo did not immediately answer: he seemed to think, and after a moment he said: "It is right: you think as a true gentleman... I don't hold you back, because it would be a violation of your feelings... But you abandon me at a time when I need affectionate and faithful friends..."

"Not abandonment, Your Excellency; I give up only his hospitality: but I will always be, I told you, a friend and a devoted servant..."

"Of the dark dangers," continued Fr Raimondo, "they threaten my home, my life, perhaps the life of the Duchess."

Blasco cheated.

"Oh, sir," he said with an accent of deep dedication, "tell me where I am, and I will be happy to offer my life to rid you of it..."

"I don't know! The enemy is mysterious and terrible, and no one could ever find out..."

He was silent: his face had resumed the cold pale and impenetrable mask.

"But I hold you back," he added, "too much abuse of you..."

Blasco did not understand; he asked himself who could attack the life of the Duchess and why. Where were these occult enemies, of whom he was surrounded and feared the blows? Would he have deserted a fighting post on the spot, perhaps, to engage in battle? Would he have left Gabriella helpless? So that man, powerful by rank, by adherence, did not have weapons to fight this hidden and mysterious enemy? And did his words mean a cry for help? That power felt so weak that it called for protection? The noble duke, who would not lack servants and good men, resorted to him? So here is the opportunity to pay his debt.

"Excellency" he said to him; "I have placed my life at his service; I will wait for his orders before putting into effect my resolution: meanwhile, since I am not yet a guard over the body of his Majesty, I appoint myself to myself a guard over the body of his house."

And gave him a reverence, he came out of it.

Don Raimondo smiled finely behind him, and he didn't know what that smile cost him.