Read Ebook: A Golden Book of Venice by Turnbull Lawrence Mrs

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Ebook has 1477 lines and 103477 words, and 30 pages

But the boy was satisfied; the presence of his stern and learned mentor sufficed to restore his composure; he did not even see his mother's face so near him, piteous in its appeal for a single glance to confess his need of her.

"Nay, have no fear," Don Ambrogio counseled, his face glowing with pride; "the boy is a wonder."

The good Fra Giulio, turning back from the pulpit stairs, saw the faces of the two whose hearts were hanging on the words of the child; he went directly to them and sat down beside Donna Isabella, for he had a tender heart and he guessed her trouble. "I also," he said, leaning over her and speaking low, "I also love the boy, and while I live will I care for him. He shall lack for nothing."

It was a promise of great comfort; for Pierino--she could not call him by the new name--would need such loving care; already the mother's pulse beat more tranquilly, and she almost smiled her gratitude in the large-hearted friar's face.

Then Fra Gianmaria, his mentor, seeing that the boy had gained courage, came also to a seat beside Donna Isabella, with a look of radiant congratulation; for he had been the boy's teacher ever since the little lad had passed beyond the limits of Don Ambrogio's modest attainments. Although she had resented the power of Fra Gianmaria over Pierino, she was proud of the confidence of the learned friar in her child; already she began to teach herself to accept pride in the place of the lowlier, happier, daily love she must learn to do without. Her face grew colder and more composed; Don Ambrogio gave her a nod of approval.

But the little fellow in robe and cowl had neither eyes nor thoughts for his vast audience when he once gathered courage to begin--no memory for the pride of his teachers, no perception of his mother's yearning; shrinking and timid as he was, the first voicing of his own thought, in his childish treble voice, put him in presence of a problem and banished all other consciousness. It was merely a question to be met and answered, and his wonderful reasoning faculty stilled every other emotion. His voice grew positive as his thought asserted itself; his learning was a mystery, but argument after argument was met and conquered with the quoted wisdom of unanswerable names.

One after another the great men left the choir and came down into the area before the pulpits, that they might lose nothing.

One after another the Frari chose out champions to confute the child-philosopher, but he was armed on every side; and the childish face, the boyish manner and voice lent a wonderful charm to the words he uttered, which were not eloquent, but absolutely dispassionate and reasonable, and the fewest by which he might prove his claim.

Again and again his audience forgot themselves in murmurs of applause, rising beyond decorum, and once into a storm of approbation; then his timidity returned, he became self-conscious, fumbling with the white cowl that hung partly over his face, forgetting that it was not a hat, and gravely taking it off in salute.

The next day it was proclaimed on the Piazza, as a bit of news for the people of Venice--for which, indeed, those who had not witnessed the contest in the church of the Frari cared little and understood nothing--that "in the Philosophical Contest which had taken place between the Friars of the Frari and the Friars of the Servi, the victory had been won by Fra Paolo Sarpi, of the Servi, who had honorably triumphed through his vast understanding of the wisdom of the Fathers of the Church."

This was also published in the black frame beside the great door of the Frari and posted upon the entrance to the church of the Servi, while in the refectories of the respective convents it formed a theme of absorbing interest.

The Frari discussed the possibilities of childish mouthpieces for learned doctors, miraculously concealed--but low, for fear of scandal. The Servi said it out, for all to hear, "that it was a modern wonder of a Child in the Temple!"

But Fra Gianmaria hushed them, and was afraid; for often while he taught he came upon some new surprise, for he perceived that the boy's mind held some hidden spring of knowledge which was to him unfathomable.

"It is most wonderful," he said one evening to Fra Giulio, as they talked together in the cloister after vespers; "I solemnly declare that it hath happened to me to ask him a question of which I, verily, knew not the answer; and he, keeping in quiet thought for some moments, hath so lucidly responded that his words have carried with them the conviction that he had made a discovery which I knew not."

"It is some lesson which Don Ambrogio hath taught him."

"Not so--for Don Ambrogio hath little learning; but Paolo will cover us with honor. In learning he is never weary, yet hath he an understanding greater than mine own, and in docility he hath no equal. In his duty in the convent and in the church he is even more punctilious."

"Is it strange--or is it well," asked Fra Giulio with hesitation, "that in this year he hath spent with us he asks not for his mother, nor the little maid his sister, nor seemeth to grieve for them? For the boy is young."

"Nay," answered Fra Gianmaria, sternly; "it is no lack, but a grace that hath been granted him."

"Knowledge is a wonderful mystery," Fra Giulio answered; but softly to himself, as he crossed the cloister, he added, "but love is sweet, and the boy is very young."

The boy was kneeling placidly before the crucifix in his cell when Fra Giulio went to give him his nightly benediction; but the good friar's heart was troubled with tenderness because of a vision, that would not leave him, of a hungering mother's face.

Many years later one of the great artists of Venice, wandering about at sunset with an elusive vision of some wonderful picture stirring impatience within his soul, found a maiden sitting under the vine-covered pergola of the Traghetto San Maurizio, where she was waiting for her brother-in-law, who would presently touch at this ferry on his homeward way to Murano. A little child lay asleep in her arms, his blond head, which pitying Nature had kept beautiful, resting against her breast; the meagre body was hidden beneath the folds of her mantle, which, in the graceful fashion of those days, passed over her head and fell below the knees; her face, very beautiful and tender, was bent over the little sufferer, who had forgotten his pain in the weariness it had brought him as a boon.

The delicate purple bells of the vine upon the trellis stirred in the evening breeze, making a shimmer of perfume and color about her, like a suggestion of an aureole; and in the arbor, as in one of those homely shrines which everywhere make part of the Venetian life, she seemed aloof as some ideal of an earlier Christian age from the restless, voluble group upon the tiny quay.

And under the trellis, as if far removed, the sleeping child and Marina of Murano bending over him a face glorified with its story of love and compassion, are like a living Rafaello!

She was more beautiful still when she smiled and the anxiety died out of her girlish face for a moment, in gratitude for the sympathy. "Eccellenza, thanks," she answered simply; "he has a beautiful face. Sometimes when he has flowers in his little hand he smiles and is quite still."

She was busy with the child, putting him gently on the ground as a gondola approached; he, with his thought in intense realization, fixing the peculiar beauty of these sunset clouds in his artist memory as sole color-scheme of his picture; for this grave, sweet face, with its pale, fair tones and profusion of soft brown hair, would not bear the vivid draperies that the Veronese was wont to fashion--the mantle must be a gray cloud, pink flushed, with delicate sunset borderings where it swept away to shroud the child; the beauty of his creation should be in that smile of exquisite compassion, and this wonderful sunset in which it should glow forever!

It was a rare moment with the Veronese, in which he seemed lifted above himself; the revelation of the face had seized him, translating him into the poetic atmosphere which he rarely attained; the harmonies of the vision were so perfect that they sufficed for the over-sumptuousness of color and detail which were usually features of his conceptions.

Some one called impatiently from the gondola in rude, quick tones, and the artist woke from his reverie. The maiden lingered on the step for a word of adieu to this stranger who wished to give the little one pleasure, but she dared not disturb him, for he was some great signor--so she interpreted his dress and bearing--and she was only a maiden of Murano.

He was still under the spell of his great moment, and he was in the presence of one who should help him to make it immortal; he uncovered his head with a motion of courtly deference he did not often assume as he started forward over the rough planks of the traghetto. "Signora, where shall I bring the flowers to make the little one smile?"

"To Murano, near the Stabilimento Magagnati, Eccellenza," she answered without hesitation, lifting the baby in her arms to escape the rough help of the gondolier, who reached forward to hasten his stumbling movements.

And so they floated off from the traghetto--the Madonna that was to be, into the deepening twilight, while the Veronese, a splendid and incongruous figure amid these lowly surroundings, leaned against the paltry column that supported the shrine, wrapped in a delicious reverie of creation; for he was unused to failure and he had no doubts, though he had not yet proffered his request.

"To-morrow," he said, "I will paint that face!"

"Not me, Piero; it was the child. He wished to give him flowers. I knew he must be great to care thus for our 'bimbo.' It was really he--the Veronese?"

"The child! Santa Maria! He is not too much like a cherub that the great painter should notice him!"

The baby threw out his little clenched fist, striking against the protecting arms that held him closer, his face drawn with sudden pain; for a moment he fought against Marina, and then, the spasm over, settled wearily to sleep in her arms.

"Poverino!" said the gondolier softly, while Marina crooned over him an Ave Maria, and the gondola glided noiselessly to its cadence.

She did not answer, and they floated on in silence.

"To-morrow," said Piero at length, "there is festa in San Pietro di Castello."

She moved uneasily, and her beautiful face lost its softness.

"It is nothing to me," she answered shortly.

"It would be better for the bambino," he persisted sullenly, as she did not answer him. His voice was not the pleasanter now that its positive tone was changed to a coaxing one.

"One is enough, Piero," she said. "And for the festa of San Pietro in Castello--never, never name it to me!"

He stood, tall, handsome, well-made, swaying lightly with the motion of the gondola, which seemed to float as in a dream to the ripple and lap of the water; the blue of his shirt had changed to gray in the twilight, the black cap and sash of the "Nicolotti" accentuated the lines of the strong, lithe figure as he sprang forward on the sloping foot-rest of his gondola with that perfect grace and ease which proved him master of a craft whose every motion is a harmony. If he were proud of belonging to the Nicolotti, that most powerful faction of the populace, he knew that they were regarded by the government as the aristocrats of the people.

Marina arranged the child's covering in silence, and stooped her face wistfully to touch his cheek, but she did not turn her head to look at the man behind her.

"L'amor z? fato per chi lo sa fare,"

he sang in the low, slow chant of the familiar folk-song, the rhythm blending perfectly with the movement of the boat in which these two were faring. His voice was pleasanter in singing, and song is almost a needful expression of the content of motion in Venice--the necessary complement of life to the gondolier, a song might mean nothing more. But Piero sang more slowly than his wont, charging the words with meaning, yet it did not soften her.

"Love is for him who knows how to win!"

He could not see how she flushed and paled with anger as he sang, for it was growing dark over the water and her face was turned from him; but she straightened herself uncompromisingly, and he was watching with subtle comprehension.

Piero finished his song, and there was a little pause. They were nearing the long, low line of Murano.

"It is not easy," he said, "when women are in the way, 'to touch the sky with one's finger.'"

She turned with a sudden passionate motion as if she would answer him, and then, struggling for control, turned back without a word, drawing the child closer and caressing him until she was calm again. When she raised her head she spoke in a resolute, restrained voice.

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