Elizabeth W. Champney

“ A haunting suggestiveness breathes from these surroundings, like the perfume exhaled when one unlocks a long-closed sandal-wood casket, once the depository of dainty feminine trifles. It needs not the name of the villa to tell us that a lady, sitting in this loggia, once duplicated Da Udine's traceries in her embroidery, gathered roses in the garden, and looked longingly toward Rome while awaiting the coming of her princely lover, and many a visitor has been piqued by the ignorance of the custodian of the villa to search history for this mysterious Madama. ”

“ I sifted the dust with my fingers, explored Ciacco's mouth, and gathered up the fragments of the melon-rind that no stray gem should escape me; but it was with sincere repentance and the gravest apprehensions that I took my way to Villa Cetinale.
Repairing to the stables, I put up my horse and climbed with my booty to my loft. Raphael was not there, and tying Ciacco to my bed-post I again examined the gems, gloating over their beauty and yet wishing with all my heart that they had never come into my possession. ”

“ I remember that his model was a pretty maid of seven years, named Margherita, the child of one of Chigi's servants, as playful and as ignorant as a little fawn. The startled look in her eyes, when spoken to by any one but Raphael, reminded me of some wild creature of the woods. But with him she was never shy,—singing and prattling the livelong day with the most charming and naïve affection. While Raphael painted, Bernardo Dovizio, who apparently regretted having wounded him, came from time to time to lend him books, much deploring that one so gifted by nature should be unread in the classics. ”

“ Never fear that Chigi will not leave Maria Dovizio alone with Margherita, or that her revelations will have any such deadly effect. Agostino is an adept in consolation, and Maria must long since have divined the truth."
My heart beat in a tumult of conflicting emotions. For an instant a wild, unreasoning hope overpowered all the rest. "Imperia," I exclaimed, "you shall not lose Agostino. I will surrender my chances with Maria to no man but Raphael. If in truth he has ceased to love her,—then, for all you think me mad in saying so, we may both, may all be happy yet." ”

“ But his face is wreathed with smiles, for he genuinely loves his two beautiful nieces, Lucrezia, Duchess of Urbino, and the gentle Leonora, who are his guests, and he loves his villa, whose beauties he is pointing out to them.
"You do not see the garden at its best," he cavils. "Wait till the roses garland the balustrades. It is too early yet to enjoy Tivoli; the frost may have left the ground but it lingers still in the pavements of this great palace. The halls are damp as vaults; we would have done well, my nieces, to have remained another month in Rome. ”

“ Without being any less Christian, Raphael's soul expanded in the sunshine of these influences, absorbing all that was joyous and beautiful in pagan ideas. Chigi lent him his favourite manuscript, the Myth of Psyche, translated from Apuleius, which he declared Raphael must one day paint for him. But of all the gods of antiquity the one which roused our young enthusiast to deepest admiration was Apollo, whose avatar was the sun, but whose spiritual significance was infinitely more, the light of the soul, the god of music, art, and poetry and all that elevates the spirit of man. ”

“ For one instant he gazed wonder-stricken at the token, and as I pressed close with the others I also recognised the famous Apollo intaglio, the gem of the collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of which for a few hours I had been the unlawful possessor.
Exclamations of wonder and admiration arose on all sides. But Dovizio, recovering his power of speech, seized Chigi by the arm, exclaiming: "We have the thief! Look you Agostino, I have had my suspicions all along. It was Raphael who played the bandit, and robbed me of my jewels. I demand that you arrest the villain." ”

“ An embarrassing silence fell upon us all, broken finally by Imperia. "A little honesty might clear the atmosphere," she said to Raphael; "besides what need is there of such secrecy when we have all guessed the truth. No, you shall not escort me to Magliana. I will be no man's second choice, not even yours, Agostino," and so saying she ungraciously departed from us.
"She is in a devil of a humour," Chigi said to me, uneasily, when Raphael had bidden us good-night. "What can have angered her? Is it possible that she suspects that her reign is over?" ”

“ Until lately she had not deemed herself worthy to mate with so exalted a personage as her lover. But since she had known Imperia she had comprehended how such a miracle might be. "For," said she, "you are just like me, and all of the Signor Chigi's wealth and glory does not crush or humiliate you, because when two people really love each other it makes them equal, and neither genius nor riches nor anything else in all the world is worthy of being compared to the love of a true woman." ”

“ Thus ended our adventures at the villa of Cetinale for Raphael also presently left us for Urbino and Florence and all things seemed as they had been before our meeting together. But I knew that the day would surely come when he would claim his beloved, and that in the spinning of their fates so slight a thing as the pranking of a fool had twisted itself into the very fibre of their lives, never to be unravelled until the shears of Atropos should cut the cords asunder. ”

“ Word was brought back to Rome that this was the fate both of the Emperor and of Ottavio Farnese, and though this proved but an unfounded rumour, the heart of the gentle Margaret was filled with remorse as well as grief, for having driven so chivalrous a youth and one who loved her so devotedly to his death.
She mourned him most sincerely, wearing widow's weeds in his honour as though she had in reality been his bride. Such is the strange contrariety of a woman's heart that he who living had been the object of her scorn, was now loved with the most vehement passion. ”

“ I have deliberately fallen into the trap against which Malespini warned me. I have lingered too long in this fool's paradise. Love and its penalty have stricken me in the same instant. Thank Heaven! no thought of this madness of mine can have entered the pure mind of my lady. Until this night I have breathed no word that could have betrayed it, and even now she doubtless thinks my ravings those of a poet. I will leave the villa to-morrow, lest my further presence here should bring trouble upon her. ”

“ There was in Maria Dovizio such dewy freshness and sweetness, such absolute simplicity and purity as could not fail to appeal to any man with eyes to see; but Chigi was blind, being enamoured of another woman and she of a very different type, the improvisatrice Imperia, accounted the most talented singer in all Italy.
While the Dovizios lingered in this unavailing quest, of which the gentle Maria was in utter ignorance, Raphael returned to the villa, and Love, who is always sharpening his arrows for the unwary, was not idle. ”

“ Hitherto Brandilancia had hidden a sensitive heart craving the sympathy that no woman had ever given him, under a gay and sportive exterior which made him a prince of good fellows, a man's man, and a loyal lover of his comrades, though they were far from appreciating his genius and his aims. But every serious conversation held with his young hostess confirmed him in his delusion that he had found a friend capable of understanding him. That she did not as yet wholly do so was the fault of his cursed disguise, which confused her perceptions of his real character with preconceived ideas of Essex. ”

“ The sun climbed the heavens and beat unmercifully upon his unprotected head, but just as his thirst became intolerable and he groaned in agony, a low, chuckling laugh replied from a window in the tower near his cage, and turning his head he saw the malicious face of the dwarf Leonora Dosi. Repugnant as she was to him he greeted her appearance now, for it flashed through his mind that she might have brought him some message from Marie de' Medici.
"It is good of you, Signorina," he said, "to think of me in my trouble; or is it perchance your mistress who has sent you?" ”

“ He completed his portrait of his ideal heroine Portia, the noblest that he ever depicted, and found to his surprise that quite another type of woman was forming itself in his mind. Powerful outside influences mingled their impressions with the long-stifled hunger in his heart. He was not in love with his hostess, but he was starving for love, and each book that he read, every object of art that he looked upon, and nature itself was steeped with the charm and passion of Italy. ”

“ The imagination is intoxicated as by some heady wine as one gazes outward upon the dazzling panorama which originally determined the site of the loggia; and when, fatigued by the flashing sunlight, our eyes turn to the interior they are soothed by the subtler beauties of the half-effaced frescoes, the floral arabesques which Giovanni da Udine lavished upon the spandrils, the pouting putti in Giulio Romano's frieze of cherub faces, carrying out a scheme of decoration which could have been designed by no other than Raphael. ”

“ How could he brutally tell so adorable a creature that the burning words, which he had spoken on the night before his flight from the Villa Medici, were but a poetic rhapsody, inspired by a frenzy which had passed with the glamour that evoked it? He strove instead to recall her to a sense of her own position, and he urged every consideration of honour and of interest, apparently with some success; for she became calmer, and promised to do whatever he desired, if he would but remain and sustain her through the ordeal of her betrothal. ”