In Maremma/Volume 3/Chapter 42
CHAPTER XLII.
WAY in Mantua the weather was still chill and cheerless, the waters were still yellow with the snows of winter that melted into mud, the sun that warmed the green Maremma land and set a nest under every tussock of grass, and covered with blossoms every inch of the rich red soil, did not as yet shine on the melancholy city in the midst of the northern plains. White fogs drifted up over the surface of the lakes, and keen winds came over the Venetian Alps and sighed down the deserted arcades and through the lonely palaces.
At evening time a man would walk, the same way always, out westward by the Argine del Mulino, and would watch the sun go down in the west where Maremma lay far away beside the sea, and would say to himself as he looked, 'What does the sun see in that green land?'
The people of Mantua only knew him as a stranger, one of the many travelling painters who were lured there by the sad charm of the pale waters reflecting the domes and towers and walls, and the arches of the bridges, and the tall belfries whose metal tongues called but to mass, and never more to war. He was silent, reserved; they thought him poor; he passed his days drawing the austere palaces, the ruined fortresses, the many stories told in stone; sometimes he took a boat and passed long hours out on the lagoons still grey and windblown with the lingering winter's breath. No one noticed him; he was but a painter like so many; out in the world he might be famous, but here in Mantua he was unknown and disregarded.
Mantua slept like a magician enchanted by his own spells, whilst the grass grew long on the roofs and the battlements, and the works of gorgeous Giulio faded and dropped to dust in the palaces above the waters or down beneath the blue acacia shadow.
The stranger attracted no notice as he came and went amongst the market people and the fishermen; they did not observe that he was constantly watching the dark figure of Don Piero di Albano as it emerged from the vast arched ways of the palace on the Lago di Mezzo, or returned from the law courts in the mist of the frost-touched evenings. Don Piero had raised a mound of fair marble to his wife, and paid daily for masses for her soul, said in the noble church of S. Andrea, and went about amongst his fellow-citizens still in the garb of woe and with a long face, mourning for his young spouse.
But Sanctis never saw his shadow lengthen on the moss-grown stones but what he said to himself, 'this is the assassin.'
How to prove it? That was the problem which perplexed him and baffled him, and which he turned over and over in his thoughts every evening time that he walked out by the mills of the Twelve Apostles, and looked across the water to the sombre front of the great iron-bound Gothic palace, where in the summers that were gone Donna Aloysia had leaned from her casement to watch her lover's boat glide towards her in the moonlight.
'Do you still believe in Romeo?' said with a smile the Abbate he had spoken to on the evening after the trial, recognising him once as they paced side by side over the drawbridge.
'I believe him to have been guiltless of that crime,' Sanctis answered gravely.
'Mantua condemned him, and Mantua knew him,' said the Abbate; 'you did not.'
Sanctis was silent.
'And the husband?' he said abruptly. 'What has Mantua to say of him?'
'A pious man,' said the priest, 'and a forgiving one. Donna Aloysia was notoriously unfaithful, yet he has built her a fair tomb all of marble, and with a silver ever-burning lamp above it; and every day—every day, mark you!—masses are said for her soul at his cost in S. Andrea.'
'No doubt a most holy man,' said his hearer assenting; and leaned over the parapet and looked at the sun setting in crimson glory beyond the leagues of bulrushes and the grey placid waters.
'Why should I try to do him this good?' he thought. 'Mantua knew him and Mantua condemned him; and if ever I should be able to prove his innocence, how will he use his liberty? Will he be faithful to her once he ceases to need her? Will he justify her before the world when the world is once more open to him? I doubt; I doubt. Perhaps I shall be able to force him to it; but of what value is extorted honour, is compelled love? I doubt; I doubt. He has no real love for her. He is a wayward, weary child, and she is the only plaything that lies near his hand, the only blossom to be plucked within his reach. That is all; and she—she gives life and eternity, body and soul; she only breathes through his breath, she only sees through his eyes, she only lives by him. That is love. Nothing else is. And if I should set him free tomorrow, what would he do? Forget? I think so. Here his dead love was slain, his passion was closed in death; and he has forgotten that. Once free he will forget this too. He will leave Maremma behind him and remember it no more than he will remember the marsh-lilies that bloomed there last year.'
That he knew; but he had promised to give his life to Este's service. He could not draw back once having piedged his honour to the task.
He watched the sun sink away over the pale leafless Lombard plains, and sink out of sight amidst the golden mists of the coming night. The rays from the set sun were still red in the heavens and, falling on the many casements of the dark palace where Donna Aloysia's beauty had once been like a gorgeous flower blooming in a dungeon, turned all the glass behind the iron bars to flame-like radiance, and made the melancholy waters washing the walls glow for the moment like a stream of opals and rubies.
'I will keep faith with him,' Sanctis said to himself, as he leaned and watched the sombre pile. 'Maybe he will feel his debt to me, and so keep faith with her.'
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