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Marie Antoinette Romances, Vol 1: Balsamo, The Magician

<h2>CHAPTER XXXI. THE MAGICIAN'S WIFE.</h2> All the rumbling of the coaches, the booming of the bells swinging to the full extent, the rolling of the drums, all the majesty of the society the Princess Louise had discarded in order to live in the nunnery, glided over her soul and died away at the base of her cell wall, like the useless tide. She had refused to return to the court, and while her sisterhood were still agitated by the royal visit, she alone did not quiver when the heavy door banged and shut out the world from her solitude. She summoned her treasurer to her. "During these two days of frivolous uproar," she inquired, "have the poor been visited, the sick attended, and those soldiers on guard given bread and wine!" "Nobody has wanted in this house." Suddenly the kick of a horse was heard against the woodwork of the stables. "What is that? Has any courtier remained?" "Only his eminence the Cardinal de Rohan; that is the horse of the Italian lady who came here yesterday to crave hospitality of your highness." "True; I remember. Where is she?" "In her room, or in the church. She refuses all food save bread, and prayed in the chapel all through the night." "Some very guilty person, no doubt," said the lady superior, frowning. "I know not, for she speaks to no one." "What is she like?" "Handsome, but proud, along with tenderness." "How did she act during the royal ceremony?" "She peeped out of her window, hiding in the curtains, and examined everybody as though she feared to see an enemy." "Some member of the class which I have reigned over. What is her name?" "Lorenza Feliciani." "I know of no person of that name, but show her in." Princess Louise sat in an ancient oak chair, carved in the reign of Henri II. and used by nine Carmelite abbesses. Before this seat of justice many poor novices had quailed between spiritual and temporal power. A moment following the treasurer returned, ushering in the foreigner whom we know; she wore a long veil. With the piercing eye of her race, Princess Louise studied Lorenza on her entering the closet; but her hostile feelings became sisterly and benevolent on seeing so much grace and humility in the visitor, so much sublime beauty, and, in short, so much innocence in the large black eyes wet with tears. The princess prevented her dropping on her knees. "Draw near and speak," said she. "Are you called Lorenza Feliciani?" "Yes, lady." "You want to confide a secret to me?" "I am dying with the desire." "But why do you not go to the penitential chamber? I have no power but to console; a priest can comfort and forgive." She spoke the last word hesitatingly. "I need comfort alone; and to a woman alone can I entrust my confession. Will you listen patiently to my most strange story, to be told to you alone, for you are mighty, and I require the hand of heaven to defend me." "Defend? Are you pursued and attacked?" "Yes, indeed, my lady," said the fugitive, with unutterable fright. "Reflect, madame, that this is a nunnery and not a castle," said the princess; "what agitates mankind enters here but to be extinguished; weapons to use against man are not here; it is the abode of God, not of might, repression and justice." "The very thing I seek," answered Lorenza; "in the abode of God alone can I find a life of rest." "But not of vengeance. If you want reprisal on your foes, apply to the magistrates." "They can do nothing against the man whom I dread." "Who can he be?" asked the lady superior, with secret and involuntary fright. "Who?" said the Italian, approaching the princess-abbess under the sway of mysterious exaltation. "I am certain that he is one of those devils who war against mankind, endowed by their Prince Satan with superhuman power." "What are you telling me?" said the other, regarding the woman to make sure that she was not mad. "What a wretch am I to have fallen across the path of this demon," groaned Lorenza, writhing her lovely arms, seemingly reft from a flawless ancient statue. "I am possessed of a fiend," she gasped, going up to the lady and speaking in a low voice, as if afraid to hear her own tones. "Possessed! Speak out, if you are in your senses." "I am not mad, though I may become so, if you drive me away." "But allow me to say that I see you like a creature favored by heaven; you seem rich and are beauteous; you express yourself correctly, and your face does not wear traces of the terrible and mysterious complaint called demoniac possession." "In my life, madame, and its adventures resides the sinister secret which I wish I could keep from myself. Lady, I am a Roman, where my father came of the old patricians, but like most Roman nobles, he is poor. I have also a mother and elder brother. In France, when an aristocratic family has a son and a daughter, she is put into a nunnery that the money which should have been her marriage portion shall buy the son a military commission. Among us, the daughter is sacrificed to help the son rise in holy orders. I was given no education, while my brother was trained to be a cardinal, as my mother simply said. I was destined to take the veil among the Subiaco Carmelites. Such a future had been held out to me from youth as a necessity. I had no will or strength in the matter. I was not consulted but ordered, and had to obey. We Roman girls love society without knowing anything about it, as the suffering souls in paradise love heaven. I was surrounded by examples which would have doomed me, had the idea of resistance come to me, but none such came. But my mother fondled me a little more than usual when the fatal day dawned. "My father gathered five hundred Roman crowns to pay my entrance fee into the convent, and we set out for Subiaco. It is some nine leagues from Rome; but the mountain roads were so bad that we were five hours getting over three of them. But the journey pleased me, though it might be fatiguing. I smiled on it as my last pleasure, and along the road bade farewell to the trees, bushes, stones and the dried grass itself. I feared that in the nunnery would be not even grass and flowers. "Suddenly, amid my dreams, and as we were passing between a grove and a pile of rocks, the carriage stopped. I heard my mother scream, and my father jumped to get his pistols. My eyes and mind dropped from the skies to the earth, for we were stopped by highwaymen." "Poor girl!" exclaimed Princess Louise, interested in the tale. "I was not frightened, for the brigands waylaid us for money, and what they took was to pay my way into the nunnery; hence there would be a delay until it was made up again, and I knew that it would take time and trouble. But when, after sharing this plunder, the bandits, instead of letting us go our way, sprang upon me, and I saw my father's efforts to defend me and my mother's tears in entreaty, then I comprehended that a great though unknown misfortune threatened me, and I began to call for mercy. It was natural, though I knew that it was useless calling and that nobody would hear in this wild spot. Hence, without heeding my father's struggles, my mother's weeping, or my appeals, the banditti tied my hands behind my back, and began throwing dice on one of their handkerchiefs spread on the ground, while burning me with hideous glances, which I understood from terror giving me clearness of sight. "What most frightened me was not to see any stake on the board. I shuddered as the dice cup passed from hand to hand, at the thought that I was the stake. "All of a sudden, one of them, with a yell of triumph, jumped up, while the others ground their teeth and swore. He ran up to me, took me in his arms and pressed his lips to mine. The contact of redhot iron could not have drawn a more heartrending scream from me. "'Rather death, O God!' I shrieked. "My mother writhed on the ground where my father lay, in a dead swoon. My only hope was that one of the losing villains would kill me out of spite with the dagger he held in his clenched fist. I waited for this stroke—longed, prayed for it. "Suddenly a horseman rode up the path. He spoke to one of the sentinels, who let him pass, exchanging a sign with him. He was of medium stature, imposing in mien and resolute in gaze. He came on at the walking pace of his horse, calm and tranquil. He stopped in front of me. The bandit who had clutched me turned round sharply at the first blow of the whistle which the stranger carried in the handle of his riding whip. He let me drop to the ground. "'Come here,' said the horseman, and as the bandit hesitated, he formed a triangle with his arms, crossing his forefingers upon his breast. "As though this were the token of a mighty master, the robber went up to the stranger, who stooped down to his ear, and said: "'Mak.' "I am sure he uttered but this single word, for I looked at him as one looks at the knife about to slay oneself, and listened as one does for the sentence of life or death. "'Benak,' answered the highwayman. "Subdued like a lion, with growling, he returned to me, untied the rope round my wrists, and did the same release for my parents. As the coin had been shared, every man went and put his portion on a flat rock. Not a piece was missing. Meanwhile I felt myself coming to life again in the hands of my father and mother. "'Be off,' said the deliverer to the robbers, who obeyed and dived into the wood to the last man. "'Lorenza Feliciani,' said the stranger, covering me with a superhuman gaze, 'you are free to go your way.' "My father and mother thanked the stranger who knew me and yet was unknown to us. They stepped into the carriage where I followed them with regret, for some unknown power irresistibly attracted me toward my savior. He remained unstirring in the same spot, as if to continue between us and harm. I looked at him as long as I could and the oppression on my bosom did not go off until he was lost to view. In a couple of hours we reached Subiaco." "But who was this extraordinary man?" cried Princess Louise, moved by the simplicity of the story. "Kindly let me finish. Alas! this is not the whole of it. "On the road, we three did nothing but talk about the singular liberator who had come mysteriously and powerfully like an agent of heaven. Less credulous than me, my father suspected him to be one of those heads of the robber leagues infesting the suburbs of Rome, who have absolute authority to reward, punish and share. Though I could not argue against my father's experience, I obeyed instinct and the effect of my gratitude, and did not believe him a robber. In my prayers to the Madonna, I set aside a special one for her to bless my savior. "That same day I entered the convent. As the money was ready, nothing prevented my reception. I was sad but more resigned than ever. A superstitious Italian, I believed that heaven had protected me from the devils to hand me over pure to the religious haven. So I yielded with eagerness to the wishes of my parents and the lady superior. A petition to be made a nun without having to go through the novitiate in the white veil was placed before me, and I signed it. My father had written it in such fervent strains that the pope must have thought the request was the ardent aspiration of a soul disgusted with the world and turning to solitude. The plea was granted and I only had to be a novice for one month. The news caused me neither joy nor displeasure. I seemed already to be dead to the world, and a corpse with simply the impassible spirit outliving it. "They kept me immured a fortnight for fear the worldly craving would seize me, and on the fifteenth morning ordered me to go down into the chapel with the other sisters. "In Italy, the convent chapels are public churches, the pope not believing that priests should make a private house of any place set aside for the worshippers of the Divine. "I went into the choir and took my place. Between the green screens supposed to veil the choir in was a space through which the nave could be viewed. By this peep-crack out on the world I saw a man standing by himself among the kneeling crowd. The previous feeling of uneasiness came over me once more—the superhuman attraction to my soul to draw it forth, as I have seen my brother move iron filings on a sheet of paper by waving a magnet underneath it. "Alas! vanquished and subjugated, with no power to withstand this attraction, I bent toward him, clasping my hands as in worship, and with lips and heart I sent him my thanks. My sisters stared at me with surprise, for they had not comprehended my words nor my movement. To follow the direction of my gesture and glance, they rose on tiptoe to peer over into the nave, and I trembled; but the stranger had disappeared. They questioned me, but I only blushed and faltered, as next I turned pale. "From that time, madame," said Lorenza, in despair, "I have lived in the control of the devil!" "I cannot say I see anything supernatural in this," observed the princess, with a smile. "Pray be calm, and proceed." "You do not know what I feel. The demon possesses me entirely—body and soul. Love would not make me suffer so much; would not shake me like a tree by the storm, and would not give me the wicked thoughts coming to me. I ought to confess these to the priest, and the demon bids me not to think of such a thing. "One day a pious friend, a neighbor and a Roman lady, came to see me. She passed most of the time praying before the image of the Virgin. That night in undressing I found a note in the lining of my robe. It contained these lines: <blockquote> "'It is death here in Rome for a nun to love a man. But will you not risk death for him who saved your life?' </blockquote> "That made his possession of me complete, lady; for I should lie if I said that I thought about anybody more than I do about that man." Frightened at her own words, Lorenza stopped to study the abbess' sweet and intelligent countenance. "This is not demoniac possession," said Louise of France with firmness. "It is but an unfortunate passion, and unless in the state of regret, human passions have no business here." "Regret? you see me in tears, on my knees, entreating you to deliver me from the power of this infernal wretch, and you talk of my regret? More than that, I feel remorse! "My misery could not escape my companions' eyes. The superior was notified, and she acquainted my mother. Only three days after I had taken the vows, I saw the three persons enter my cell who were my only kin—my mother, father and brother. They came to embrace me for the last time, they said, but I saw that they had another aim. Left alone with me, my mother questioned me. The influence of the demon was plain once more, for I was stubbornly silent. "The day when I was to take the black veil came amid a terrible struggle with myself, for I feared that then the fiend would work his worst. Yet I trusted that heaven would save me as it had when the robbers seized me, forgetting that heaven had sent that man to rescue me. "The hour of the ceremonial arrived. Pale, uneasy, but not apparently more agitated than usual, I went down into the church. I hurriedly assented to everything, for was I not in the holy edifice and was I not my own mistress while that demon was out of the way? All at once I felt that his step was on the sill; irresistible attraction as before caused me to turn my eyes away from the altar, whatever my efforts. "All my strength fled me, even while the scissors were thrust forward to cut my hair off—my soul seemed to leap out of my throat to go and meet him, and I fell prostrate on the stone slabs. Not like a woman swooning but like one in a trance. I only heard a murmur, when the ceremony was interrupted by a dreadful tumult." The princess clasped her hands in compassion. "Was not this a dreadful event," said the Roman, "in which it was easy to recognize the intervention of the enemy of mankind?" "Poor woman!" said the abbess, with tender pity; "take care! I am afraid that you are apt to attribute to the wonderful what was but natural weakness. I suppose you saw this man, and you fainted away. There was nothing more. Continue." "Madame, when I came to my senses," said Lorenza, "it was night. I expected to find myself in the chapel or in my cell. But I saw rocks and trees around me; clouds; I was in a grotto and beside me was a man, that persecutor! I touched myself to make sure if I were alive and not dreaming. I screamed, for I was clad in bridal white. On my brow was a wreath or white roses—such as the bride of man—or in religion—wears." The princess uttered an exclamation. "Next day," resumed the Italian, sobbing, and hiding her head in her hands, "I reckoned the time which had elapsed, I had been three days in the trance, ignorant of what transpired." <hr style="width:65%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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