George Sand

“ Princess Agatha's cold and impassive face relaxed as if involuntarily. It lighted up for an instant with a warm glow of sympathy, and I saw that treasures of kindliness were contending in that suffering heart against a painful misanthropical propensity.—'Well,' she said, with a divine smile, 'I see, at all events, that you are a good son and adore your mother. God grant that I may in truth have brought her good fortune! but I believe that God alone deserves thanks. Thank Him and worship Him, my child; He alone understands and can relieve certain sorrows, for men cannot do much for one another. ”

“ These are very profane ideas to indulge in before that holy image!"
"No, Michel," replied Mila, gravely. "There is nothing profane in my conception of her beauty. I have never understood it as I have to-day, and I fancied that no one had ever been able to create so beautiful a face as Princess Agatha's. But I see now that Raphael went farther. He gave his Madonna more strength of character, if not more tranquillity. That divine face is intensely alive; it has a great deal of will; it is sure of itself. She is the most virtuous, but, also, the most loving of women. ”

“ I understand," said Magnani; "you must set yourself free at any price. The journeyman's work is slavery; the work of an artist is the title of manhood. You are right, Michel; it is your right, consequently your duty and your destiny. But how dismal and cruel the destiny of an intelligent man is! One must cast off his family, leave his native land, act a sort of comedy to induce strangers to accept him as one of themselves, assume a mask in order to receive the laurel wreath, take up arms against the poor who condemn him and the rich who are loath to receive him! ”

“ He fell into a silent meditation, more eloquent than Michel could have desired. He feasted his bold eyes with the sight of that exquisite and fascinating woman, whom it seemed to him that he already possessed, as with a treasure which he had stolen, and which he took pleasure in gloating over, as it lay gleaming before him.
The young painter's distress was intensified by the fact that, under the mysterious influence of that all-pervading passion, which but just born was already spreading with the rapidity of a conflagration, the bandit acquired a strange power of fascination. ”

“ Ætna is the grandest spectacle that nature can offer to a painter, and we have painters, too. Morales filled our fatherland with masterpieces worthy to be compared with those of Rome and Florence!"
"Excuse me, father," said Michel, smiling, "Morales is not to be compared with Raphael, Michelangelo, or any of the masters of the Florentine school."
"What do you know about it? That is just like children. You have never seen his great works, his best pieces; you will see them in Sicily. And such a climate! such skies! such fruit! A veritable land of promise!" ”

“ He walked the whole length of the gallery, and, raising a portière embroidered with armorial bearings, pulled a bell-cord. In a few seconds a voice answered inside, and a dialogue followed, in so low a tone, that Michel could not hear a word. At last, a mysterious door was partly opened, and Pier-Angelo disappeared, leaving his son in the darkness, chill, and silence of that great empty room.
At times, however, the echoing voices of the men at work below, the sound of the saw and the hammer, snatches of song, laughter, and oaths reached his ears. ”

“ Why this special display of friendship for your father, whom she hardly knew a year ago? My father has worked for her ever since she was born, and she barely knows his name. Does she propose to cap the climax of her eccentric life by an act of downright insanity? Does she propose to atone for her father's tyranny and unpopularity by marrying a child of the people—a mere boy?"
"You are the one who is mad," said Michel, disturbed and almost angry. "Go and get a breath of fresh air, Magnani, and don't involve me in the vagaries that your excitement suggests to you. ”

“ Michelangelo Lavoratori was absorbed by the spectacle of the volcano, Magnani's eyes were fixed more frequently on the villa. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and his young friend, following the direction of his glance, saw a white figure which seemed to be floating in space. It was a woman walking slowly on the high terrace of the palace.
"She, too," cried Magnani, involuntarily, "is watching the sun rise over the mountain. She, too, is musing, and, it may be, sighing!"
"Who?" queried Michel, whose mind had hardened itself somewhat to eject its own chimera. ”

“ A more romantic and more experienced woman than Mila might have looked upon that admission as a definitive obstacle to all hope; but her ideas of life were more simple and more logical: "If he has no hope, he will recover," she thought.
"I pity you deeply," she said to Magnani, "for it is such great happiness to feel that one is loved, and it must be so ghastly to love all by oneself!"
"You will never know such a misfortune," Magnani replied; "and the man you love should be the most grateful and the proudest of men!" ”

“ AGATHA
"Yes, I am listening to you, Michel, I am listening attentively," Magnani replied, "and I am sad because I feel the force of your reasoning. You are not the first person with whom I have talked of these matters. I have known more than one young mechanic who aspired to drop his trade, to become a merchant, lawyer, priest or artist; and it is true enough that the number of these deserters increases every year. Whoever feels that he possesses intelligence instantly becomes conscious of ambition; and hitherto I have fought such tendencies vigorously in others and in myself. ”

“ I, when I choose, will paint a more perfect and less problematical divinity than the pale-cheeked Agatha."
"You, wretched boy? Never!" exclaimed Magnani, indignantly.
"I agree that she is beautiful," rejoined Michel, with a smile. "I have scrutinized her, and I have profited by that scrutiny. I have obtained from her all that I should never ask her for, the spectacle of her grace and her charms, to reproduce them and idealize them at my pleasure."
"I have always been told that artists had hearts of ice," said Magnani, staring at Michel in blank amazement. ”

“ But when they had quitted the ravine, and had left the Destatore's Cross behind them, the Piccinino began to hum, in a voice as sweet and pure as the breath of the night, a ballad in the Sicilian dialect, of which the refrain was:
"Wine makes madness, love makes folly; my nectar is the blood of cowards, my mistress is my rifle."
After this outburst of bravado, addressed to himself as well as to the ears of any Neapolitan police who might happen to be within hearing, the Piccinino began to talk with Michel in a remarkably self-possessed and tranquil strain. ”

“ Magnani understood him, excused him and talked sensibly to him.
"You are not wrong in my eyes, Michel," he said; "inequality of rank is the law of society; everyone wishes to rise, no one wishes to descend. If it were otherwise the people would remain in the brute stage. But the people aspire to grow, thank God! and they do grow, whatever may be done to prevent them. I myself strive to succeed, to possess something, to reach a point where I shall not always have to obey, in a word, to be free! ”

“ At the bare idea Michel felt faint and sick; he fancied that he saw the princess leaning on the arm of the fortunate mortal for whose sake she pretended to entertain no thought of marriage. They were glancing absently at the young painter's work, and smiling as they looked into each other's eyes, as if to say:
"What does it matter to us? nothing is beautiful, nothing exists for us, except ourselves." ”

“ I have loved madly for five years a woman whose rank in society places her as far above me as heaven is above the earth. Having always considered it impossible that she should ever bestow so much as a compassionate glance upon me, I cultivated a sort of gloomy satisfaction in my suffering, my poverty, my forced nullity among my fellowmen. With a bitter feeling at my heart, I determined not to imitate those who are determined to succeed and who expose themselves to the risk of being scoffed at from above and from below. ”

“ But as soon as I opened my mouth to reveal the mystery of my passion, I should undoubtedly be spurned, laughed at, trampled under foot; I prefer to remain lost in the dust of my trade, and never to carry my insane presumption so far as her feet. I prefer that she should continue to believe it impossible that I could ever dream of aspiring to her. At all events, while I wear the livery of the mechanic, she will respect the suffering of which she knows nothing; she will not intensify it by discovering it, by blushing because she inspired it, by deeming it necessary to protect herself from it. ”

“ The Piccinino turned slowly toward Michel, and stared at him as if he had not previously seen him; then, taking from his belt a richly-mounted stiletto, he presented it to him with an almost imperceptible smile of irony and contempt, as if to say: "You are old enough and strong enough to defend yourself."
Michel, annoyed at being placed in such a position, was about to make a sharp retort, when Fra Angelo cut him short, placing his iron hand on his shoulder. ”

“ I forgot myself in sounding the praises of Catania, and I do not want you to go there with me now. I know that your loving heart and your anxiety for us urge you to it; but I know also that your real inclination does not lie that way. I want the desire to come to you naturally, when the hour of your destiny has struck, and when you will kiss the soil of your fatherland with love, instead of treading it, as you would do to-day, with disdain. ”

“ An impulsive outburst of gratitude and tenderness brought Magnani to his knees at the girl's feet.
"Mila," he said, "I know that Princess Agatha is a saint, and I do not know whether my heart is worthy to receive a relic from her. But I do know that there is but a single other heart in the world to which I would be willing to entrust it; so never fear; no woman, except you, will ever seem to me pure enough to wear this ring. Put it on your finger now, in order to give it back to the princess or to keep it for me." ”

“ Have I any business even to consider the question whether his strange manner caused the princess pleasurable or painful emotion? What have she and I in common? What am I to her? Pier-Angelo's son! And he, this bold-faced adventurer, is her mainstay and her savior. He will soon have a claim upon her gratitude—perhaps upon her esteem and affection; for it rests only with him to acquire them. He loves her, and if he is not mad he will find some way or other to make her love him. ”

“ Why, it is horrible! it is enough to disgust one with glory! In God's name, what is glory that one should purchase it at that price?"
"Glory, as it is commonly understood, is nothing at all, I agree," replied Michel, warmly, "if it is nothing more than the trifling noise a man may make in the world. Shame to him who denies his blood and sacrifices his affections to gratify his vanity! ”

“ Magnani had been living for five years under a self-imposed law of absolute chastity. It was as if he had taken an oath to imitate Agatha's exceptionally austere mode of life, and, engrossed by a fixed idea, had determined to waste away by slow degrees, knowing naught of love or marriage. He had never kissed a woman, not even his sisters, since he had carried in his heart that chimera of a hopeless passion. ”

“ I talked to him during the ball, on the main staircase, and the Marquis della Serra, who was escorting me, complimented him, as I did myself, upon his paintings. From that moment down to this very evening Michel had never seen me; ask himself! You are not a man whom one can deceive, captain; use your perspicacity, and I will trust it."
The Piccinino quivered with pleasure at this concise declaration, made with the assurance which truth alone can give, and he pressed Agatha's hand against his breast with such force that she detected his sentiments at last. ”

“ The Piccinino had never seen a beautiful woman without being disturbed and restless until he had examined her carefully, in order that he might cease to think of her if her beauty was imperfect, or cast his net over her if her style of beauty succeeded in inflaming his disdainful heart, a strange compound of love and indolence, energy and torpor. Few men of twenty-five have lived so chaste and self-restrained a life as the bandit of Ætna ”