Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V3"

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Charles Edward Stowe - "The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe"

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Books: Lothair

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Lothair




The surgeon at once requested that all should withdraw except her
devoted maid, and they waited his report without, in that deep sad
silence which will not despair, and yet dares not hope.

When the wound had been examined and probed and dressed, Theodora in a
faint voice said, "Is it desperate?"

"Not desperate," said the surgeon, "but serious. All depends upon your
perfect tranquility -- of mind as well as body."

"Well I am here and cannot move; and as for my mind, I am not only
serene, but happy."

"Then we shall get through this," said the surgeon, encouragingly.

"I do not like you to stay with me," said Theodora. "There are other
sufferers besides myself."

"My orders are not to quit you," said the surgeon, "but I can be of
great use within these walls. I shall return when the restorative has
had its effect. But remember, if I be wanted, I am always here."

Soon after this Theodora fell into a gentle slumber, and after two hours
woke refreshed. The countenance of the surgeon when he again visited
her was less troubled; it was hopeful.

The day was now beginning to decline; notwithstanding the scenes of
tumult and violence near at hand, all was here silent; and the breeze,
which had been strong during the whole day, but which blew from the sea,
and was very soft, played gratefully upon the pale countenance of the
sufferer. Suddenly she said, "What is that?"

And they answered and said, "We heard nothing."

"I hear the sound of great guns," said Theodora.

And they listened, and in a moment both the surgeon and the maid heard
the sound of distant ordnance.

"The liberator is at hand," said the maid.

"I dare say," said the surgeon.

"No," said Theodora, looking distressed. "The sounds do not come from
his direction. Go and see, Dolores; ask, and tell me what are these
sounds."

The surgeon was sitting by her side, and occasionally touching her
pulse, or wiping the slight foam from her brow, when Dolores returned
and said, "Lady, the sounds are the great guns of Civita Vecchia."

A deadly change come over the countenance of Theodora, and the surgeon
looked alarmed. He would have given her some restorative, but she
refused it. "No, kind friend," she said; "it is finished. I have just
received a wound more fatal than the shot in the field this morning.
The French are at Rome. Tell me, kind friend, how long do you think I
may live?"

The surgeon felt her pulse; his look was gloomy. "In such a case as
yours," he said, "the patient is the best judge."

"I understand," she said. "Send, then, at once for my husband."

He was at hand, for his wound had been dressed in the convent, and he
came to Theodora with his arm in a sling, but with the attempt of a
cheerful visage.

In the mean time, Lothair, after having heard the first, and by no means
hopeless, bulletin of the surgeon, had been obliged to leave the convent
to look after his men, and having seen theme in quarters and made his
report to the general, he obtained permission to return to the convent
and ascertain the condition of Theodora. Arrived there, he heard that
she had had refreshing slumber, and that her husband was now with her,
and a ray of hope lighted up the darkness of his soul. He was walking
up and down the refectory of the convent with that sickening
restlessness which attends impending and yet uncertain sorrow, when
Colonel Campian entered the apartment and beckoned to him.

There was an expression in his face which appalled Lothair, and he was
about to inquire after Theodora, when his tongue cleaved to the roof of
his mouth, and he could not speak. The Colonel shook his head, and said
in a low, hollow voice, "She wishes to see you, and alone. Come."

Theodora was sitting in the bed, propped up by cushions, when Lothair
entered, and, as her wound was internal, there was no evidence of her
sufferings. The distressful expression of her face, when she heard the
great guns of Civita Vecchia, had passed away. It was serious, but it
was serene. She bade her maid leave the chamber, and then she said to
Lothair, "It is the last time I shall speak to you, and I wish that we
should be alone. There is something much on my mind at this moment, and
you can relieve it."

"Adored being," murmured Lothair with streaming eyes, "there is no wish
of yours that I will not fulfil."

"I know your life, for you have told it me, and you are true. I know
your nature; it is gentle and brave, but perhaps too susceptible. I
wished it to be susceptible only of the great and good. Mark me -- I
have a vague but strong conviction that there will be another and a more
powerful attempt to gain you to the Church of Rome. If I have ever been
to you, as you have sometimes said, an object of kind thoughts -- if not
a fortunate, at least a faithful friend -- promise me now, at this hour
of trial, with all the solemnity that becomes the moment, that you will
never enter that communion."

Lothair would have spoken, but his voice was choked, and he could only
press her hand and bow his head.

"But promise me," said Theodora.

"I promise," said Lothair.

"And now," she said, "embrace me, for I wish that your spirit should be
upon me as mine departs."



CHAPTER 60


It was a November day in Rome, and the sky was as gloomy as the heaven
of London. The wind moaned through the silent streets, deserted except
by soldiers. The shops were shut, not a civilian or a priest could be
seen. The Corso was occupied by the Swiss Guard and Zouaves, with
artillery ready to sweep it at a moment's notice. Six of the city gates
were shut and barricaded with barrels full of earth. Troops and
artillery were also posted in several of the principal piazzas, and on
some commanding heights, and St. Peter's itself was garrisoned.

And yet these were the arrangements rather of panic than precaution.
The utmost dismay pervaded the council-chamber of the Vatican. Since
the news had arrived of the disembarkation of the French troops at
Marseilles, all hope of interference had expired. It was clear that
Berwick had been ultimately foiled, and his daring spirit and teeming
device were the last hope, as they were the ablest representation, of
Roman audacity and stratagem. The Revolutionary Committee, whose
abiding-place or agents never could be traced or discovered, had posted
every part of the city, during the night, with their manifesto,
announcing that the hour had arrived; an attempt, partially successful,
had been made to blow up the barracks of the Zouaves; and the cardinal
secretary was in possession of information that an insurrection was
immediate, and that the city won fired in four different quarters.

The pope had escaped from the Vatican to the Castle of St. Angelo, where
he was secure, and where his courage could be sustained by the presence
of the Noble Guard, with their swords always drawn. The six-score of
monsignori, who in their different offices form what is styled the court
of Rome, had either accompanied his holiness, or prudently secreted
themselves in the strongest palaces and convents at their command.
Later in the day news arrived of the escape of Garibaldi from Caprera;
he was said to be marching on the city, and only five-and-twenty miles
distant. There appeared another proclamation from the Revolutionary
Committee, mysteriously posted under the very noses of the guards and
police, postponing the insurrection till the arrival of the liberator.

The papal cause seemed hopeless. There was a general feeling throughout
the city and all classes, that this time it was to be an affair of
Alaric or Genseric, or the Constable of Bourbon; no negotiations, no
compromises, no conventions, but slaughter, havoc, a great judicial
devastation, that was to extirpate all signs and memories of Mediaeval
and Semitic Rome, and restore and renovate the inheritance of the true
offspring of the she-wolf. The very aspect of the place itself was
sinister. Whether it were the dulness of the dark sky, or the frown of
Madre Natura herself, but the old Seven Hills seemed to look askance.
The haughty capitol, impatient of its chapels, sighed once more for
triumphs; and the proud Palatine, remembering the Caesars, glanced with
imperial contempt on the palaces of the papal princelings that, in the
course of ignominious ages, had been constructed out of the exhaustless
womb of its still sovereign ruin. The Jews in their quarter spoke
nothing, but exchanged a curious glance, as if to say, "Has it come at
last? And will they indeed serve her as they served Sion?"

This dreadful day at last passed, followed by as dreadful a night, and
then another day equally gloomy, equally silent, equally panic-stricken.
Even insurrection would have been a relief amid the horrible and wearing
suspense. On the third day the government made some wild arrests of the
wrong persons, and then came out a fresh proclamation from the
Revolutionary Committee, directing the Romans to make no move until the
advanced guard of Garibaldi had appeared upon Monte Mario. About this
time the routed troops of the pope arrived in confusion from Viterbo,
and of course extenuated their discomfiture by exaggerating the strength
of their opponents. According to them, they had encountered not less
than ten thousand men, who now; having joined the still greater force of
Garibaldi, were in full march on the city.

The members of the papal party who showed the greatest spirit and the
highest courage at this trying conjuncture were the Roman ladies and
their foreign friends. They scraped lint for the troops as incessantly
as they offered prayers to the Virgin. Some of them were trained
nurses, and they were training others to tend the sick and wounded.
They organized a hospital service, and when the wounded arrived from
Viterbo, notwithstanding the rumors of incendiarism and massacre, they
came forth from their homes, and proceeded in companies, with no male
attendants but armed men, to the discharge of their self-appointed
public duties. There: were many foreigners in the papal ranks, and the
sympathies and services of the female visitors to Rome were engaged for
their countrymen. Princesses of France and Flanders might be seen by
the tressel-beds of many a suffering soldier of Dauphin and Brabant;
but there were numerous subjects of Queen Victoria in the papal ranks --
some Englishmen, several Scotchmen, and many Irish. For them the
English ladies had organized a special service. Lady St. Jerome, with
unflagging zeal, presided over this department; and the superior of the
sisterhood of mercy, that shrank from no toil and feared no danger in
the fulfilment of those sacred duties of pious patriots, was Miss
Arundel.

She was leaning over the bed of one who had been cut down in the
olive-wood by a sabre of Campian's force, when a peal of artillery was
heard. She thought that her hour had arrived, and the assault had
commenced.

"Most holy Mary!" she exclaimed, "sustain me."

There was another peal, and it was repeated, and again and again at
regular intervals.

"That is not a battle, it is a salute," murmured the wounded soldier.

And he was right; it was the voice of the great guns telling that the
French had arrived.

The consternation of the Revolutionary Committee, no longer sustained by
Colonna, absent in France, was complete. Had the advanced guard of
Garibaldi been in sight, it might still have been the wisest course to
rise; but Monte Mario was not yet peopled by them, and an insurrection
against the papal troops, reanimated by the reported arrival of the
French, and increased in numbers by the fugitives from Viterbo, would
have been certainly a rash and probably a hopeless effort. And so, in
the midst of confused and hesitating councils, the first division of the
French force arrived at the gates of Rome, and marched into the gloomy
and silent city.

Since the interference of St. Peter and St. Paul against Alaric, the
papacy had never experienced a more miraculous interposition in its
favor. Shortly after this the wind changed, and the sky became serene;
a sunbeam played on the flashing cross of St. Peter's; the Pope left the
Castle of Angelo, and returned to the Quirinal; the Noble Guard sheathed
their puissant blades; the six-score of monsignori reappeared in all
their busy haunts and stately offices; and the court of Rome, no longer
despairing of the republic, and with a spirit worthy of the Senate after
Cannae, ordered the whole of its forces into the field to combat its
invaders, with the prudent addition, in order to insure a triumph, of a
brigade of French infantry armed with chassepots.

Garibaldi, who was really at hand, hearing of these events, fell back on
Monte Rotondo, about fifteen miles from the city, and took up a strong
position. He was soon attacked by his opponents, and defeated with
considerable slaughter, and forced to fly. The papal troops returned to
Rome in triumph, but with many wounded. The Roman ladies and their
friends resumed their noble duties with enthusiasm. The ambulances were
apportioned to the different hospitals, and the services of all were
required. Our own countrymen had suffered severely, but the skill and
energy and gentle care of Clare Arundel and her companions only
increased with the greater calls upon their beautiful and sublime
virtue.

A woman came to Miss Arundel and told her that, in one of the
ambulances, was a young man whom they could not make out. He was
severely wounded, and had now swooned; but they had reason to believe he
was an Englishman. Would she see him and speak to him? And she went.

The person who had summoned her was a woman of much beauty, not an
uncommon quality in Rome, and of some majesty of mien, as little rare,
in that city. She was said, at the time when some inquiry was made, to
be Maria Serafina de Angelis, the wife of a tailor in the Ripetta.

The ambulance was in the court-yard of the hospital of the Santissima
Trinita di Pellegrini. The woman pointed to it, and then went away.
There was only one person in the ambulance; the rest had been taken to
the hospital, but he had been left because he was in a swoon, and they
were trying to restore him. Those around the ambulance made room for
Miss Arundel as she approached, and she beheld a young man, covered with
the stains of battle, and severely wounded; but his countenance was
uninjured though insensible. His eyes were closed, and his auburn hair
fell in clusters on his white forehead. The sister of mercy touched the
pulse to ascertain whether there yet was life, but, in the very act, her
own frame became agitated, and the color left her cheek as she
recognized -- Lothair.'



CHAPTER 61


When Lothair in some degree regained consciousness, he found himself in
bed. The chamber was lofty and dim, and had once been splendid.
Thoughtfulness had invested it with an air of comfort rare under Italian
roofs. The fagots sparkled on the hearth, the light from the windows
was veiled with hangings, and the draughts from the tall doors guarded
against by screens. And by his bedside there were beautiful flowers,
and a crucifix, and a silver bell.

Where was he? He looked up at the velvet canopy above, and then at the
pictures that covered the walls, but there was no familiar aspect. He
remembered nothing since he was shot down in the field of Mentana, and
even that incoherently.

And there had been another battle before that, followed by a catastrophe
still more dreadful. When had all this happened, and where? He tried
to move his bandaged form, but he had no strength, and his mind seemed
weaker than his frame. But he was soon sensible that he was not alone.
A veiled figure gently lifted him, and another one refreshed his
pillows. He spoke, or tried to speak, but one of them pressed her
finger to her shrouded lips, and he willingly relapsed into the silence
which he had hardly strength enough to break.

And sometimes these veiled and gliding ministers brought him sustenance
and sometimes remedies, and he complied with all their suggestions, but
with absolute listlessness; and sometimes a coarser hand interposed, and
sometimes he caught a countenance that was not concealed, but was ever
strange. He had a vague impression that they examined and dressed his
wounds, and arranged his bandages; but whether he really had wounds, and
whether he were or were not bandaged, he hardly knew, and did not care
to know. He was not capable of thought, and memory was an effort under
which he always broke down. Day after day he remained silent and almost
motionless alike in mind and body. He had a vague feeling that, after
some great sorrows, and some great trials, he was in stillness and in
safety; and he had an indefinite mysterious sentiment of gratitude to
some unknown power, that had cherished him in his dark calamities, and
poured balm and oil into his wounds.

It was in this mood of apathy that, one evening, there broke upon his
ear low but beautiful voices performing the evening service of the
Church. His eye glistened, his heart was touched by the vesper spell.
He listened with rapt attention to the sweet and sacred strains, and
when they died away he felt depressed. Would they ever sound again?

Sooner than he could have hoped, for, when he woke in the morning from
his slumbers, which, strange to say, were always disturbed, for the mind
and the memory seemed to work at night though in fearful and exhausting
chaos, the same divine melodies that had soothed him in the eve, now
sounded in the glad and grateful worship of matin praise.

"I have heard the voice of angels," he murmured to his veiled attendant.

The vesper and the matin hours became at once the epochs of his day. He
was ever thinking of them, and soon was thinking of the feelings which
their beautiful services celebrate and express. His mind seemed no
longer altogether a blank, and the religious sentiment was the first
that returned to his exhausted heart.

"There will be a requiem to-day," whispered one of his veiled
attendants.

A requiem! a service for the dead; a prayer for their peace and rest!
And who was dead? The bright, the matchless one, the spell and
fascination of his life! Was it possible? Could she be dead, who
seemed vitality in its consummate form? Was there ever such a being as
Theodora? And if there were no Theodora on earth, why should one think
of any thing but heaven?

The sounds came floating down the chamber till they seemed to cluster
round his brain; sometimes solemn, sometimes thrilling, sometimes the
divine pathos melting the human heart with celestial sympathy and
heavenly solace. The tears fell fast from his agitated vision, and he
sank back exhausted, almost insensible, on his pillow.

"The Church has a heart for all our joys and all our sorrows, and for
all our hopes, and all our fears," whispered a veiled attendant, as she
bathed his temples with fragrant waters.

Though the condition of Lothair had at first seemed desperate, his
youthful and vigorous frame had enabled him to rally, and, with time and
the infinite solicitude which he received, his case was not without
hope. But, though his physical cure was somewhat advanced, the
prostration of his mind seemed susceptible of no relief. The services
of the Church accorded with his depressed condition; they were the only
events of his life, and he cherished them. His attendants now permitted
and even encouraged him to speak; but he seemed entirely incurious and
indifferent. Sometimes they read to him, and he listened, but he never
made remarks. The works which they selected had a religious or
ecclesiastical bias, even while they were imaginative; and it seemed
difficult not to be interested by the ingenious fancy by which it was
worked out, that every thing that was true and sacred in heaven had its
symbol and significance in the qualities and accidents of earth.

After a month passed in this manner, the surgeons having announced that
Lothair might now prepare to rise from his bed, a veiled attendant said
to him one day, "There is a gentleman here who is a friend of yours, and
who would like to see you. And perhaps you would like to see him also
for other reasons, for you must have much to say to God after all that
you have suffered. And he is a most holy man."

"I have no wish to see any one. Are you sure he is not a stranger?"
asked Lothair.

"He is in the next room," said the attendant. "He has been here
throughout your illness, conducting our services; often by your bedside
when you were asleep, and always praying for you."

The veiled attendant drew back and waved her hand, and some one glided
forward, and said in a low, soft voice, "You have not forgotten me?"

And Lothair beheld Monsignore Catesby.

"It is a long time since we met," said Lothair, looking at him with some
scrutiny, and then all interest died away, and he turned away his vague
and wandering eyes.

"But you know me?"

"I know not where I am, and I but faintly comprehend what has happened,"
murmured Lothair.

"You are among friends," said the monsignore, in tones of sympathy.
"What has happened," he added, with an air of mystery, not unmixed with
a certain expression of ecstasy in his glance, "must be reserved for
other times, when you are stronger, and can grapple with such high
themes."

"How long have I been here?" inquired Lothair, dreamily.

"It is a month since the Annunciation."

"What Annunciation?"

"Hush!" said the monsignore, and he raised his finger to his lip. "We
must not talk of these things -- at least at present. No doubt, the
game blessed person that saved you from the jaws of death is at this
moment guarding over your recovery and guiding it; but we do not
deserve, nor does the Church expect, perpetual miracles. We must avail
ourselves, under Divine sanction, of the beneficent tendencies of
Nature; and in your case her operations must not be disturbed at this
moment by any excitement, except, indeed, the glow of gratitude for
celestial aid, and the inward joy which must permeate the being of any
one who feels that he is among the most favored of men."

From this time Monsignore Catesby scarcely ever quitted Lothair. He
hailed Lothair in the morn, and parted from him at night with a
blessing; and in the interval Catesby devoted his whole life, and the
inexhaustible resources of his fine and skilled intelligence, to
alleviate or amuse the existence of his companion. Sometimes he
conversed with Lothair, adroitly taking the chief burden of the talk;
and yet, whether it were bright narrative or lively dissertation, never
seeming to lecture or hold forth, but relieving the monologue, when
expedient, by an interesting inquiry, which he was always ready in due
time to answer himself, or softening the instruction by the playfulness
of his mind and manner. Sometimes he read to Lothair, and attuned the
mind of his charge to the true spiritual note by melting passages from
Kempis or Chrysostom. Then be would bring a portfolio of wondrous
drawings by the mediaeval masters, of saints and seraphs, and accustom
the eye and thought of Lothair to the forms and fancies of the court of
heaven.

One day, Lothair, having risen from his bed for the first time, and
lying on a sofa in an adjoining chamber to that in which he had been so
long confined, the monsignore seated himself by the side of Lothair,
and, opening a portfolio, took out a drawing and held it before Lothair,
observing his countenance with a glance of peculiar scrutiny.

"Well!" said Catesby, after some little pause, as if awaiting a remark
from his companion.

"'Tis beautiful!" said Lothair. "Is it by Raffaelle?"

"No; by Fra Bartolomeo. But the countenance, do you remember ever
having met such a one?"

Lothair shook his head. Catesby took out another drawing, the same
subject, the Blessed Virgin. "By Giulio," said the monsignore, and he
watched the face of Lothair, but it was listless.

Then he showed Lothair another, and another, and another. At last he
held before him one which was really by Raffaelle, and by which Lothair
was evidently much moved. His eye lit up, a blush suffused his pale
cheek, he took the drawing himself, and held it before his gaze with a
trembling hand.

"Yes I remember this," he murmured, for it was one of those faces of
Greek beauty which the great painter not infrequently caught up at Rome.
The monsignore looked gently round and waved his hand, and immediately
arose the hymn to the Virgin in subdued strains of exquisite melody.

On the next morning, when Lothair woke, he found on the table, by his
side, the drawing of the Virgin in a sliding frame.

About this time the monsignore began to accustom Lothair to leave his
apartment, and, as he was not yet permitted to walk, Catesby introduced
what he called an English chair, in which Lothair was enabled to survey
a little the place which had been to him a refuge and a home. It seemed
a building of vast size, raised round an inner court with arcades and
windows, and, in the higher story where he resided, an apparently
endless number of chambers and galleries. One morning, in their
perambulations, the monsignore unlocked the door of a covered way which
had no light but from a lamp which guided their passage. The opposite
door at the end of this covered way opened into a church, but one of a
character different from any which Lothair had yet entered.