Historical fiction; Italy -- History -- Revolution of 1848 -- Fiction; War stories
One night she surprised Count Paul Lenkenstein at Clelia's window.
Rinaldo was in the garden below. He moved to the shadow of a cypress,
and was seen moving by the old nurse. The lover took the single kiss he
had come for, was led through the chamber, and passed unchallenged into
the street. Clelia sat between locked doors and darkened windows,
feeling colder to the brothers she had been reared with than to all other
men upon the earth. They sent for her after a lapse of hours. Her old
nurse was kneeling at their feet. Rinaldo asked for the name of her
lover. She answered with it. Angelo said, "It will be better for you to
die: but if you cannot do so easy a thing as that, prepare widow's
garments." They forced her to write three words to Count Paul, calling
him to her window at midnight. Rinaldo fetched a priest: Angelo laid out
two swords. An hour before the midnight, Clelia's old nurse raised the
house with her cries. Clelia was stretched dead in her chamber. The
brothers kissed her in turn, and sat, one at her head, one at her feet.
At midnight her lover stood among them. He was gravely saluted, and
bidden to look upon the dead body. Angelo said to him, "Had she lived
you should have wedded her hand. She is gone of her own free choice, and
one of us follows her." With the sweat of anguish on his forehead, Count
Paul drew sword. The window was barred; six male domestics of the
household held high lights in the chamber; the priest knelt beside one
corpse, awaiting the other.
Vittoria's imagination could not go beyond that scene, but she looked out
on the brother of the slain youth with great pity, and with a strange
curiosity. The example given by Clelia of the possible love of an
Italian girl for the white uniform, set her thinking whether so monstrous
a fact could ever be doubled in this world. "Could it happen to me?"
she asked herself, and smiled, as she half-fashioned the words on her
lips, "It is a pretty uniform."
Her reverie was broken by a hiss of "Traitress!" from the woman opposite.
She coloured guiltily, tried to speak, and sat trembling. A divination
of intense hatred had perhaps read the thought within her breast: or it
was a mere outburst of hate. The woman's face was like the wearing away
of smoke from a spot whence shot has issued. Vittoria walked for the
remainder of the day. That fearful companion oppressed her. She felt
that one who followed armies should be cast in such a frame, and now
desired with all her heart to render full obedience to Carlo, and abide
in Brescia, or even in Milan--a city she thought of shyly.
The march was hurried to the slopes of the Vicentino, for enemies were
thick in this district. Pericles refused to quit the soldiers, though
Count Karl used persuasion. The young nobleman said to Vittoria, "Be on
your guard when you meet my sister Anna. I tell you, we can be as
revengeful as any of you: but you will exonerate me. I do my duty; I
seek to do no more."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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