Massimilla Doni

By this time, the doctor and Vendramin, Capraja, Cataneo, and Genovese had made their way to the piazzetta. It was midnight. The glittering bay, outlined by the churches of San Giorgio and San Paulo at the end of the Giudecca, and the beginning of the Grand Canal, that opens so mysteriously under the Dogana and the church of Santa Maria della Salute, lay glorious and still. The moon shone on the barques along the Riva de’ Schiavoni. The waters of Venice, where there is no tide, looked as if they were alive, dancing with a myriad spangles. Never had a singer a more splendid stage.

Genovese, with an emphatic flourish, seemed to call Heaven and Earth to witness; and then, with no accompaniment but the lapping waves, he sang Ombra adorata, Crescentini’s great air. The song, rising up between the statues of San Teodoro and San Giorgio, in the heart of sleeping Venice lighted by the moon, the words, in such strange harmony with the scene, and the melancholy passion of the singer, held the Italians and the Frenchman spellbound.

At the very first notes, Vendramin’s face was wet with tears. Capraja stood as motionless as one of the statues in the ducal palace. Cataneo seemed moved to some feeling. The Frenchman, taken by surprise, was meditative, like a man of science in the presence of a phenomenon that upsets all his fundamental axioms. These four minds, all so different, whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves or after themselves, who regarded their own existence as that of a transient and a fortuitous being, – like the little life of a plant or a beetle, – had a glimpse of Heaven. Never did music more truly merit the epithet divine. The consoling notes, as they were poured out, enveloped their souls in soft and soothing airs. On these vapors, almost visible, as it seemed to the listeners, like the marble shapes about them in the silver moonlight, angels sat whose wings, devoutly waving, expressed adoration and love. The simple, artless melody penetrated to the soul as with a beam of light. It was a holy passion!

But the singer’s vanity roused them from their emotion with a terrible shock.

“Now, am I a bad singer?” he exclaimed, as he ended.

His audience only regretted that the instrument was not a thing of Heaven. This angelic song was then no more than the outcome of a man’s offended vanity! The singer felt nothing, thought nothing, of the pious sentiments and divine images he could create in others, – no more, in fact, than Paganini’s violin knows what the player makes it utter. What they had seen in fancy was Venice lifting its shroud and singing – and it was merely the result of a tenor’s fiasco!

“Can you guess the meaning of such a phenomenon?” the Frenchman asked of Capraja, wishing to make him talk, as the Duchess had spoken of him as a profound thinker.

“What phenomenon?” said Capraja.

“Genovese – who is admirable in the absence of la Tinti, and when he sings with her is a braying ass.”

“He obeys an occult law of which one of your chemists might perhaps give you the mathematical formula, and which the next century will no doubt express in a statement full of x, a, and b, mixed up with little algebraic signs, bars, and quirks that give me the colic; for the finest conceptions of mathematics do not add much to the sum total of our enjoyment.

“When an artist is so unfortunate as to be full of the passion he wishes to express, he cannot depict it because he is the thing itself instead of its image. Art is the work of the brain, not of the heart. When you are possessed by a subject you are a slave, not a master; you are like a king besieged by his people. Too keen a feeling, at the moment when you want to represent that feeling, causes an insurrection of the senses against the governing faculty.”

“Might we not convince ourselves of this by some further experiment?” said the doctor.

“Cataneo, you might bring your tenor and the prima donna together again,” said Capraja to his friend.

“Well, gentlemen,” said the Duke, “come to sup with me. We ought to reconcile the tenor and la Clarina; otherwise the season will be ruined in Venice.”

The invitation was accepted.

“Gondoliers!” called Cataneo.

“One minute,” said Vendramin. “Memmi is waiting for me at Florian’s; I cannot leave him to himself. We must make him tipsy to-night, or he will kill himself to-morrow.”

“Corpo santo!” exclaimed the Duke. “I must keep that young fellow alive, for the happiness and future prospects of my race. I will invite him, too.”

They all went back to Florian’s, where the assembled crowd were holding an eager and stormy discussion to which the tenor’s arrival put an end. In one corner, near a window looking out on the colonnade, gloomy, with a fixed gaze and rigid attitude, Emilio was a dismal image of despair.

“That crazy fellow,” said the physician, in French, to Vendramin, “does not know what he wants. Here is a man who can make of a Massimilla Doni a being apart from the rest of creation, possessing her in heaven, amid ideal splendor such as no power on earth can make real. He can behold his mistress for ever sublime and pure, can always hear within him what we have just heard on the seashore; can always live in the light of a pair of eyes which create for him the warm and golden glow that surrounds the Virgin in Titian’s Assumption, – after Raphael had invented it or had it revealed to him for the Transfiguration, – and this man only longs to smirch the poem.

“By my advice he must needs combine his sensual joys and his heavenly adoration in one woman. In short, like all the rest of us, he will have a mistress. He had a divinity, and the wretched creature insists on her being a female! I assure you, monsieur, he is resigning heaven. I will not answer for it that he may not ultimately die of despair.

“O ye women’s faces, delicately outlined in a pure and radiant oval, reminding us of those creations of art where it has most successfully competed with nature! Divine feet that cannot walk, slender forms that an earthly breeze would break, shapes too frail ever to conceive, virgins that we dreamed of as we grew out of childhood, admired in secret, and adored without hope, veiled in the beams of some unwearying desire, – maids whom we may never see again, but whose smile remains supreme in our life, what hog of Epicurus could insist on dragging you down to the mire of this earth!

“The sun, monsieur, gives light and heat to the world, only because it is at a distance of thirty-three millions of leagues. Get nearer to it, and science warns you that it is not really hot or luminous, – for science is of some use,” he added, looking at Capraja.

“Not so bad for a Frenchman and a doctor,” said Capraja, patting the foreigner on the shoulder. “You have in those words explained the thing which Europeans least understand in all Dante: his Beatrice. Yes, Beatrice, that ideal figure, the queen of the poet’s fancies, chosen above all the elect, consecrated with tears, deified by memory, and for ever young in the presence of ineffectual desire!”

“Prince,” said the Duke to Emilio, “come and sup with me. You cannot refuse the poor Neapolitan whom you have robbed both of his wife and of his mistress.”

This broad Neapolitan jest, spoken with an aristocratic good manner, made Emilio smile; he allowed the Duke to take his arm and lead him away.

Cataneo had already sent a messenger to his house from the cafe.

As the Palazzo Memmi was on the Grand Canal, not far from Santa Maria della Salute, the way thither on foot was round by the Rialto, or it could be reached in a gondola. The four guests would not separate and preferred to walk; the Duke’s infirmities obliged him to get into his gondola.

At about two in the morning anybody passing the Memmi palace would have seen light pouring out of every window across the Grand Canal, and have heard the delightful overture to Semiramide performed at the foot of the steps by the orchestra of the Fenice, as a serenade to la Tinti.

The company were at supper in the second floor gallery. From the balcony la Tinti in return sang Almavida’s Buona sera from Il Barbiere, while the Duke’s steward distributed payment from his master to the poor artists and bid them to dinner the next day, such civilities as are expected of grand signors who protect singers, and of fine ladies who protect tenors and basses. In these cases there is nothing for it but to marry all the corps de theatre.

Cataneo did things handsomely; he was the manager’s banker, and this season was costing him two thousand crowns.

He had had all the palace furnished, had imported a French cook, and wines of all lands. So the supper was a regal entertainment.

The Prince, seated next la Tinti, was keenly alive, all through the meal, to what poets in every language call the darts of love. The transcendental vision of Massimilla was eclipsed, just as the idea of God is sometimes hidden by clouds of doubt in the consciousness of solitary thinkers. Clarina thought herself the happiest woman in the world as she perceived Emilio was in love with her. Confident of retaining him, her joy was reflected in her features, her beauty was so dazzling that the men, as they lifted their glasses, could not resist bowing to her with instinctive admiration.

“The Duchess is not to compare with la Tinti,” said the Frenchman, forgetting his theory under the fire of the Sicilian’s eyes.

The tenor ate and drank languidly; he seemed to care only to identify himself with the prima donna’s life, and had lost the hearty sense of enjoyment which is characteristic of Italian men singers.

“Come, signorina,” said the Duke, with an imploring glance at Clarina, “and you, caro prima uomo,” he added to Genovese, “unite your voices in one perfect sound. Let us have the C of Qual portento, when light appears in the oratorio we have just heard, to convince my old friend Capraja of the superiority of unison to any embellishment.”

“I will carry her off from that Prince she is in love with; for she adores him – it stares me in the face!” said Genovese to himself.

What was the amazement of the guests who had heard Genovese out of doors, when he began to bray, to coo, mew, squeal, gargle, bellow, thunder, bark, shriek, even produce sounds which could only be described as a hoarse rattle, – in short, go through an incomprehensible farce, while his face was transfigured with rapturous expression like that of a martyr, as painted by Zurbaran or Murillo, Titian or Raphael. The general shout of laughter changed to almost tragical gravity when they saw that Genovese was in utter earnest. La Tinti understood that her companion was in love with her, and had spoken the truth on the stage, the land of falsehood.

“Poverino!” she murmured, stroking the Prince’s hand under the table.

“By all that is holy!” cried Capraja, “will you tell me what score you are reading at this moment – murdering Rossini? Pray inform us what you are thinking about, what demon is struggling in your throat.”

“A demon!” cried Genovese, “say rather the god of music. My eyes, like those of Saint-Cecilia, can see angels, who, pointing with their fingers, guide me along the lines of the score which is written in notes of fire, and I am trying to keep up with them. PER DIO! do you not understand? The feeling that inspires me has passed into my being; it fills my heart and my lungs; my soul and throat have but one life.

“Have you never, in a dream, listened to the most glorious strains, the ideas of unknown composers who have made use of pure sound as nature has hidden it in all things, – sound which we call forth, more or less perfectly, by the instruments we employ to produce masses of various color; but which in those dream-concerts are heard free from the imperfections of the performers who cannot be all feeling, all soul? And I, I give you that perfection, and you abuse me!

“You are as mad at the pit of the Fenice, who hissed me! I scorned the vulgar crowd for not being able to mount with me to the heights whence we reign over art, and I appeal to men of mark, to a Frenchman – Why, he is gone!”

“Half an hour ago,” said Vendramin.

“That is a pity. He, perhaps, would have understood me, since Italians, lovers of art, do not – ”

“On you go!” said Capraja, with a smile, and tapping lightly on the tenor’s head. “Ride off on the divine Ariosto’s hippogriff; hunt down your radiant chimera, musical visionary as you are!”

In point of fact, all the others, believing that Genovese was drunk, let him talk without listening to him. Capraja alone had understood the case put by the French physician.

While the wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin. Massimilla appeared in her night wrapper, so much had she been alarmed by the tone of the Prince’s farewell, and so startled by the hopes held out by the letter.

“Madame,” said the Frenchman, as he placed her in a seat and desired the gondoliers to start, “at this moment Prince Emilio’s life is in danger, and you alone can save him.”

“What is to be done?” she asked.

“Ah! Can you resign yourself to play a degrading part – in spite of the noblest face to be seen in Italy? Can you drop from the blue sky where you dwell, into the bed of a courtesan? In short, can you, an angel of refinement, of pure and spotless beauty, condescend to imagine what the love must be of a Tinti – in her room, and so effectually as to deceive the ardor of Emilio, who is indeed too drunk to be very clear-sighted?”

“Is that all?” said she, with a smile that betrayed to the Frenchman a side he had not as yet perceived of the delightful nature of an Italian woman in love. “I will out-do la Tinti, if need be, to save my friend’s life.”

“And you will thus fuse into one two kinds of love, which he sees as distinct – divided by a mountain of poetic fancy, that will melt away like the snow on a glacier under the beams of the midsummer sun.”

“I shall be eternally your debtor,” said the Duchess, gravely.

When the French doctor returned to the gallery, where the orgy had by this time assumed the stamp of Venetian frenzy, he had a look of satisfaction which the Prince, absorbed by la Tinti, failed to observe; he was promising himself a repetition of the intoxicating delights he had known. La Tinti, a true Sicilian, was floating on the tide of a fantastic passion on the point of being gratified.

The doctor whispered a few words to Vendramin, and la Tinti was uneasy.

“What are you plotting?” she inquired of the Prince’s friend.

“Are you kind-hearted?” said the doctor in her ear, with the sternness of an operator.

The words pierced to her comprehension like a dagger-thrust to her heart.

“It is to save Emilio’s life,” added Vendramin.

“Come here,” said the doctor to Clarina.

The hapless singer rose and went to the other end of the table where, between Vendramin and the Frenchman, she looked like a criminal between the confessor and the executioner.

She struggled for a long time, but yielded at last for love of Emilio.

The doctor’s last words were:

“And you must cure Genovese!”

She spoke a word to the tenor as she went round the table. She returned to the Prince, put her arm round his neck and kissed his hair with an expression of despair which struck Vendramin and the Frenchman, the only two who had their wits about them, then she vanished into her room. Emilio, seeing Genovese leave the table, while Cataneo and Capraja were absorbed in a long musical discussion, stole to the door of the bedroom, lifted the curtain, and slipped in, like an eel into the mud.

“But you see, Cataneo,” said Capraja, “you have exacted the last drop of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the string is pulled of a perfect unison.”

“And you, Capraja, who have squeezed ideas dry, are not you in the same predicament? Do you not live riding the hobby of a cadenza?”

“I? I possess the whole world!” cried Capraja, with a sovereign gesture of his hand.

“And I have devoured it!” replied the Duke.

They observed that the physician and Vendramin were gone, and that they were alone.

Next morning, after a night of perfect happiness, the Prince’s sleep was disturbed by a dream. He felt on his heart the trickle of pearls, dropped there by an angel; he woke, and found himself bathed in the tears of Massimilla Doni. He was lying in her arms, and she gazed at him as he slept.

That evening, at the Fenice, – though la Tinti had not allowed him to rise till two in the afternoon, which is said to be very bad for a tenor voice, – Genovese sang divinely in his part in Semiramide. He was recalled with la Tinti, fresh crowns were given, the pit was wild with delight; the tenor no longer attempted to charm the prima donna by angelic methods.

Vendramin was the only person whom the doctor could not cure. Love for a country that has ceased to be is a love beyond curing. The young Venetian, by dint of living in his thirteenth century republic, and in the arms of that pernicious courtesan called opium, when he found himself in the work-a-day world to which reaction brought him, succumbed, pitied and regretted by his friends.

No, how shall the end of this adventure be told – for it is too disastrously domestic. A word will be enough for the worshipers of the ideal.

The Duchess was expecting an infant.

The Peris, the naiads, the fairies, the sylphs of ancient legend, the Muses of Greece, the Marble Virgins of the Certosa at Pavia, the Day and Night of Michael Angelo, the little Angels which Bellini was the first to put at the foot of his Church pictures, and which Raphael painted so divinely in his Virgin with the Donor, and the Madonna who shivers at Dresden, the lovely Maidens by Orcagna in the Church of San-Michele, at Florence, the celestial choir round the tomb in Saint-Sebaldus, at Nuremberg, the Virgins of the Duomo, at Milan, the whole population of a hundred Gothic Cathedrals, all the race of beings who burst their mould to visit you, great imaginative artists – all these angelic and disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla’s bed, and wept!

PARIS, May 25th, 1839.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy

Cane, Marco-Facino

Facino Cane

Tinti, Clarina

Albert Savarus

Varese, Emilio Memmi, Prince of

Gambara

Varese, Princess of

Gambara

Vendramini, Marco

Facino Cane

Victorine

Lost Illusions

Letters of Two Brides

Gaudissart II