Lucetta

“ Lucetta, here, the ladder and the man.
What man she will not say. Cesario
Has tracked his footprint on her garden plots.
Must we say more?
Fulvia. No need. Her fingering mind Is a close cupboard turning all things rancid.
Lucio. Yea, for such wry-necks all the world's a lawn To peek and peer and pounce a sinful worm;
The fatter, the more luscious.
Regent. Lucio, This woman nought gainsays. ”

“ Then Lucetta said:
"Deacon Spear is well off, but nothing will ever make me accuse living man of crime so dreadful." And she walked away, drawing Loreen after her. In another moment she was out of the room, leaving me in a state of great excitement.
"This girl holds the secret to the whole situation," I inwardly decided. "The belief that nothing more can be learned from her is a false one. I must see Mr. Gryce. William's rodomontades are so much empty air, but Lucetta's silence has a meaning we cannot afford to ignore." ”

“ Exit Cesario.
List to me, Lucio: listen, brother dear, First playmate-child, tending whose innocence Myself learned motherhood. Shall I deny Youth to be loved and follow after love? There is a love breaks like a morning beam On the husht novice kneeling by his arms; And worse there is, whose kisses strangle love, Whose feet take hold of hell. My Lucio, Follow not that!
Lucio. Why, who—who hath maligned The Countess?
Regent Not maligned. Lucetta, here—
Lucio. Lucetta! Curse Lucetta and her tongue! Am I a child, to be nagged by waiting-maids?
Regent. No, but a man, and shall weigh evidence. ”

“ Lucetta put in, but not with the vigor I had expected.
"I like to hunt, train dogs, and enjoy other people's fruit," he laughed, with a nod at the blushing Lucetta. "I don't see any use in a man's putting himself out for things he can get for the asking. Life's too short for such folly. ”

“ Lucetta points to the stairs. He dashes off in pursuit.
Duke. All-seeing God! Where were thine eyes, or else thy justice? Dead? O, never dead!
Lucio. Ay, Duke, push God aside, As I push thee. I have the better right: I killed her—I. O never pass, sweet soul, Till thou hast drunk a shudder of this wretch, Thy brother, playmate, murderer!
Duke. Wine! bring wine—
Regent (as the wine is brought and revives her) . Flower, he will crush thee—but the bliss, the bliss! I swim in bliss. What ... Lucio? Where's my lord? ”

“ He is a young man from over the mountains, well educated, and with something of a fortune of his own. He came here to visit the Spears, I believe, and seeing Lucetta leaning one day on the gate in front of her house, he fell in love with her and began to pay her his attentions. ”

“ The reply was worthy of Virgil, and Valentine became a brigand chief.
We return now to Julia, who found Verona too dull to live in since Proteus had gone. She begged her maid Lucetta to devise a way by which she could see him. “Better wait for him to return,” said Lucetta, and she talked so sensibly that Julia saw it was idle to hope that Lucetta would bear the blame of any rash and interesting adventure. Julia therefore said that she intended to go to Milan and dressed like a page. ”

“ My brother is more sensitive than even Loreen and myself about these things, and if he should hear——"
Here a suppressed oath from way down the hall assured me that he did hear, but I gave no sign of my recognition of this fact, and Lucetta added quickly: "He would not forgive us for our carelessness in waking you. He is rough sometimes, but so good at heart, so good." ”

“ They evidently think very well of him."
"Oh!" he sneered; "girls are no judges. They don't know a good man when they see him, and they don't know a bad. You mustn't go by what they say."
I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask if he did not think Lucetta sufficiently understood herself to be trusted in what she contemplated doing that night. But this was neither in accordance with my plan, nor did it seem quite loyal to Lucetta, who, so far as I knew, had not communicated her intentions to this booby brother. ”

“ To be fantastic may become a youth
Of greater time than I shall show to be.
115
Luc. What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?
II. 7.
50 Jul. That fits as well as, ‘Tell me, good my lord,
What compass will you wear your farthingale?’
Why even what fashion thou best likest, Lucetta.
Luc. You must needs have them with a codpiece, madam.
Jul. Out, out, Lucetta! that will be ill-favour’d.
55 Luc. A round hose, madam, now’s not worth a pin,
Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on.
Jul. Lucetta, as thou lovest me, let me have
What thou think’st meet, and is most mannerly. ”

“ Duke. (after a moment, releasing her a little) . What's here? Ottilia!
Lucetta. My mistress swoons!
A Courtier. 'Tis happiness—
Duke. Fetch water!
Lucio. Nay this blood— Came of no scratch!
Lucetta. Loosen her bodice—
Duke. Blood? Why blood? Where's blood?
(Stares as the mantle is imclasped and falls open) . Ah, my God!
Lucetta. Murder! murder! The Countess Fulvia—
Cesario. Speak!
Lucetta. There—while she knelt— Stabbed her, and fled.
Cesario. Which way? ”

“ It is too wonderful to be true, Lucetta! But it must be true. My grandfather's cousin's name was Lorinda, and I can remember seeing an oil portrait of her, a horrible thing done by some local artist, hanging in the old farmhouse at Batavia. ”

“ Lucetta met me at the door just as I had expected her to. Giving me a short look, she spoke eagerly but with a latent anxiety, for which I was more or less prepared.
"I am glad to see you looking so bright this morning," she declared. "We are all feeling better now that the incubus of secrecy is removed. But"—here she hesitated—"I would not like to think you told Mr. Trohm what happened to us yesterday."
"Lucetta," said I, "there may be women of my age who delight in gossiping about family affairs with comparative strangers, but I am not that kind of woman. Mr. ”

“ More and more as you linger in Lucca it is his work you seek out, caught by its sweetness, its delicate and melancholy joy, its strangeness too, as though he had desired to express some long thought-out, recondite beauty, and, half afraid to express himself after all, had let his thoughts pass over the marble as the wind passes over the sand between the Pineta and the sea. ”

“ In the midst of this half-real world, so languidly joyful, in which the sky counts for so much, it is always with surprise you come upon the tremendous perfect walls of this city—walls planted all round with plane-trees, so that Lucca herself is hidden by her crown—a crown that changes as the year changes, mourning all the winter long, but in spring is set with living emeralds, a thousand and a thousand points of green fire that burst into summer's own coronet of flame-like leaves, that fades at last into the dead and sumptuous gold of autumn. ”

“ For, go where one will, even into the farthest recesses of the hills, one cannot get away from the civilization of art; there nature, however solitary, is never wild. The mountain tops seem to have been shaped to a purpose, the little gray-brown villages are set so exactly right between the deep green of the chestnut forest and the liquid sky. Their simple forms are interesting and grow ever finer and richer as one descends into the Lucchese plain, reaching a real beauty at Barga and picturesque Ghivezzano of the towers, and culminating in classic Lucca. ”

“ And here is an exact picture of what it is like to-day.
"We have taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place—the highest house of the highest of the three villages which are called Bagni di Lucca, and which lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicale is all the noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage-wheels cannot vex us, God be thanked for it. The silence is full of joy and consolation. ...
"The air of the place seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs alone; it draws you, raises you, excites you. ”

“ They never go up to quiet, grey, old Lucca, a town with walls and gates the same to-day as when Dante wandered there, untouched by the hand of the vandal, unspoilt by modern progress, undisturbed by tourist invaders. Its narrow, old-world streets of decaying palaces, its leafy piazzas, its Lily theatre, its proud, handsome people, all are charming to one who, like myself, loves Italy and the gay-hearted Tuscan.
Little time was there for reflection, however, for on alighting at Pisa I was compelled to conceal myself until the arrival of the express on its way from Rome to Paris. ”

“ To go back a little, however, our first stopping-place was the city of Lucca, about fifteen miles from the baths; a little, clean, beautiful gem of a town, with a wall three miles round only, and on the top of it a broad carriage road, giving you on every side views of the best cultivated and loveliest country in Italy. The traveller finds nothing so rural and quiet, nothing so happy-looking, in the whole land. The radius to the horizon is nowhere more than five or six miles ”

“ Friday, September 16th.—My impatience to hear Pacchierotti called me up with the sun. I blessed a day which was to give me the greatest of musical pleasures, and travelled gaily towards Lucca, along a fertile plain, bounded by rocky hills, and scattered over with towns and villages. We passed Pistoia in haste, and about three in the afternoon entered the Lucchese territory, by a clean, paved road, which runs through some of the pleasantest copses imaginable, bordered with a variety of heaths and broom in blossom. ”

“ Such is, or such at least appears to me this lovely territory of Lucca: where cheap living, free government, and genteel society, may be enjoyed with a tranquillity unknown to larger states: where there are delicious and salutary baths a few miles out of town, for the nobility to make villeggiatura at; and where, if those nobility were at all disposed to cultivate and communicate learning, every opportunity for study is afforded.
Some drawbacks will however always be found from human felicity. ”

“ This city seems really under admirable regulations; here are fewer beggars than even at Florence, where however one for fifty in the states of Genoa or Venice do not meet your eyes: And either the word liberty has bewitched me, or I see an air of plenty without insolence, and business without noise, that greatly delight me. Here is much cheerfulness too, and gay good-humour; but this is the season of devotion at Lucca, and in these countries the ideas of devotion and diversion are so blended, that all religious worship seems connected with, and to me now regularly implies, a festive show. ”

“ More pleasing scenery can with difficulty be imagined: I was quite charmed with beholding it, as I knew very well that the opera would keep me a long while chained down in its neighbourhood.
Happy for me that the environs of Lucca were so beautiful; since I defy almost any city to contain more ugliness within its walls. Narrow streets and dismal alleys; wide gutters and cracked pavements; everybody in black, according with the gloom of their habitations, which however are large and lofty enough of conscience ”

“ I must leave Lucca. Enrica cannot, after what has passed, remain here. Thanks to her, I, in the solitude of my own palace, am become the common town-talk. Cesare, I shall leave Lucca to-morrow for my villa of Corellia. Good-night."
The cavaliere again kissed her hand and departed.
"If that weathercock of a thousand colors, that idiot, Marescotti," muttered the cavaliere, as he descended the stairs, "could only be got to give up his impious mission, and marry the dear child, all might yet be right. He has an eye and a tongue that would charm a woman into anything. Alas! alas! ”

“ The inhabitants of these hills, and indeed those of the duchy generally, have throughout Italy the reputation of being morally about the best population in the peninsula. Servants from the Lucchese, and especially from the district I am here speaking of, were, and are still, I believe, much prized. Lucca, as many readers will remember, enjoys among all the descriptive epithets popularly given to the different cities of Italy, that of Lucca la industriosa. ”

“ At last I found myself in Lucca. Here, if anywhere, I thought, might a bruised and tormented spirit find gradual peace. I determined to move out of my hotel into some permanent lodging. Not for felicity, not for any complete restoration of self-respect, was I hoping; only for peace. A “mezzano” conducted me to a noble and ancient house, of which, he told me, the owner was anxious to let the first floor. It was in much disrepair, but even so seemed to me very cheap. According to the simple Luccan standard, I am rich. ”

“ Their only solace is their lover or amoroso, as they term him; and when they enter into the service of any family, they always stipulate for one day in the week on which they must have liberty to visit their amoroso, or the amoroso must be allowed to come to the house to visit them. This is an ancient custom among them and has no pernicious consequences, nor does it interfere with their other good qualities. At the back of Lucca is an immense mountain which stands between it and Pisa, and intercepts the reciprocal view of the two cities which are only ten miles distant from each other. ”

“ The next morning, Sir Miles took the priest's arm and walked with him into the gardens.
"Mr. Fielden," he said, with the air of a man who has chosen his course, and deprecates all attempt to make him swerve from it, "if I followed my own selfish wishes, I should take home this poor child. Stay, sir, and hear me,—I am no hypocrite, and I speak honestly. I like young faces; I have no family of my own. I love Lucretia, and I am proud of her; but a girl brought up in adversity might be a better nurse and a more docile companion,—let that pass. ”