A singular contrast offered the clothing and appearance of the newcomer with the almost destitute state of that house.
Daniele was a young man of tall stature, with a rather dark face, with thick hair, well trimmed and cut in a graceful mop; his eyes, which were likewise dark and melancholy, acquired an expression of sombre intelligence from the arching of his black eyebrows; he had neither mustache nor beard.
His dress was of the most refined and tasteful for those times. A Prussian riding coat in willow green; white half-leg trousers, boots with spikes, gray hat.
Daniel had left his black horse on which he had come at the door of that modest habitation. We will tell in the continuation of this story why at a young age and in a few years of practicing the profession of music teacher, Daniele was already the owner of a modest wealth.
It is not believed that Daniele preferred to come on horseback to hasten his arrival at the roadman’s house; but that he had not taken the slightest concern to rush to his dying benefactor and to the girl who ardently loved him. For two days the young man had not even dreamed of Giacomo’s infirmity, of Lucia’s love, of the repeated requests made of him by the one who for over fifteen years had fed him with his own bread and had loved him like another. his son. Daniele had not even thought about it for a moment: since a thought as dense as a nail had got into his head, and it gave him worry, unspeakable mania, hardening of heart, indifference to the evils of others.
On the day from which we began this story, Daniele at about 23 Italian hours, having provided the tour of his music lessons, to somewhat dispel the sadness that oppressed him, had gone for a ride on horseback towards the Campo di Marte. On his return, passing by the Real Albergo de ‘Poveri, he was reminded of Giacomo the roadster, who lived [13]behind this Establishment of charity, where perhaps he would have been thrown as a foundling, if that generous man had not given him shelter, sustenance, education in his own home among his other children, loving him like these. Only then did he remember that his dying benefactor had sent for him several times.
“Come on,” said he himself, giving his horse the direction of the house in Fritzheim, if what I have been told is true, the good man has not many days to see. I was beginning to get annoyed a little by his constant reproaches. It is true that I owe him a great deal, but in the end I too have done something for him for some years now; Didn’t I send him money? Haven’t I given Lucia some nice little gifts? But now that I think about it; she seems to have taken our loving childhoods seriously. What a diascine! Men it takes a little head like yours to believe true at twenty what was said at fifteen. Madness! Now more than ever this chimerical union would be impossible. Even if I didn’t have that dear image of Emma carved here in my heart, devouring me on a slow fire, I would never agree to be Lucia’s husband. What would society say about me? What would my friends say? Marry the daughter of a roadster! And I would expose myself with this marriage to make my story known to everyone, because, there is no doubt, on the morrow of my wedding it would be known in the country that Daniele de ‘Rimini is nothing but the son of misfortune or guilt, collected for charity from the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark, What would society say about me? What would my friends say? Marry the daughter of a roadster! And I would expose myself with this marriage to make my story known to everyone, because, there is no doubt, on the morrow of my wedding it would be known in the country that Daniele de ‘Rimini is nothing but the son of misfortune or guilt, collected for charity from the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark, What would society say about me? What would my friends say? Marry the daughter of a roadster! And I would expose myself with this marriage to make my story known to everyone, because, there is no doubt, on the morrow of my wedding it would be known in the country that Daniele de ‘Rimini is nothing but the son of misfortune or guilt, collected for charity from the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark, And I would expose myself with this marriage to make my story known to everyone, because, there is no doubt, on the morrow of my wedding it would be known in the country that Daniele de ‘Rimini is nothing but the son of misfortune or guilt, collected for charity from the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark, And I would expose myself with this marriage to make my story known to everyone, because, there is no doubt, on the morrow of my wedding it would be known in the country that Daniele de ‘Rimini is nothing but the son of misfortune or guilt, collected for charity from the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark, collected for charity by the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark, collected for charity by the father of the bride! Ignominy! I would like such a secret to remain a mystery to everyone. If his father Giacomo took everything with him to the grave! … Oh if Emma penetrated! … God, God, do not expose me to such a blush! … She is so proud of her birth, so rich … rich and noble! Here … here is happiness, the burning dream of my life! And I would marry Lucia, poor, dark,ignoble , daughter of a cowardroadster! No no ….. When I was not yet known, when I was not yet thrust into the world, I might have been able to marry her, because everyone would have ignored my dark origin, but now! I have done so much to rise, I have thrown sweats and tears on the piano, I have turned pale on the musical masterpieces, not only for love of this art, which I hope to abandon not so soon I will have scrapped some gold, but rather to make my way to fortune, to try to put myself at a certain level with those young friends of mine, who would not fail to mock me for this ridiculous marriage which I would contract, and which would forever destroy any hope of possessing that treasure of graces that falls in love with me, and that dowry whereby I would cease to be a mercenary creature. Oh…. what an ignoble thing is to work for a living! What a difference between Emma and Lucia! What am I saying! I’m not foolish to establish a comparison between these two women! A comparison between Emma and Lucia! It is the same as comparing elegance to awkwardness, the butterfly to the fly, wealth to misery. What an accomplished education! What a lofty language, what nobility to hear! and what a beauty! Oh those shapes of his body! that hair! those eyes!! Oh my head, my poor head! and what a beauty! Oh those shapes of his body! that hair! those eyes!! Oh my head, my poor head! and what a beauty! Oh those shapes of his body! that hair! those eyes!! Oh my head, my poor head!
In saying this, Daniel, whose character our readers will be able to know in part from this brief soliloquy, had come to the residence of James, under whose roof he had rested for many years.
[14]
When Daniele entered the room of the sick person, Lucia had continually got up from her father’s bed, had made to run to meet the young man, but in the middle of the room she felt her knees weaken, and those tears that until her arrival of Daniele had remained pressed into the chest, there forced by the bitterness of a double spasm, they all flowed in a moment to the girl’s eyelashes for a return of tenderness and Lucia wept for a few minutes with that irrepressible impetus, which usually happens to yes long compression.
Oh how much that cry said!
Daniele had remained a little on the threshold of that room, a cold spectator of the scene of sadness that was offered to him; afterwards, without addressing a single word to Lucia, he went towards Giacomo’s bed, bowing his head slightly on the side where Father Ambrogio was sitting. Maria, Giuseppe and Andrea had greeted him with affection, if they were placed around him; a ray of joy shone on those childish faces; Daniel’s presence was a good omen for them; and they had all recast on this young man that expansion of affection and esteem which Uccello’s idioticism had in a certain way rejected and deflected.
When Daniele came, Uccello went to his cats and ran to party at the Contino .
This was the name that the boy had given in the family Daniele, alluding to his reserved and disgusting manners no less than to the great hatred from which from the earliest age he was taken for the envy that excited the better dressed children or that strolled in a carriage or were the owners of more beautiful jugglers.
– Look, Lucia, said Uccello to his sister, lifting the flaps of Daniele’s overcoat with his fingertips, see what a beautiful suit the Contino has, make sure he doesn’t get dirty next to us!
These words, which the idiot had said in all the naive vulgarity of his speech, made all colors appear on Daniele’s face, who with a half smile replied by tapping lightly on the idiot’s head with his whip:
– Do not be afraid, Bird, we will not let anyone ugly us; and then there is no fear, you watch my back.
Thus made celie exchanged between Daniele and Uccello near the bed of the dying man saddened Father Ambrogio and Lucia.
There was a moment of frozen silence … Giacomo had his eyes closed, and Daniel’s voice had not yet struck his ear.
Father Ambrogio hastened to let the sick person know the arrival of his so anxiously awaited godson; wherefore, raising her voice a little, and coming closer to his ear, she said to him:
– Mr. Giacomo, your Daniel is here.
The cadaverous face of the old man suddenly became animated, his eyes opened in which a ray of lively joy shone, and those pupils went in search of Daniel, and relied on him. Giacomo stretched out his right hand to the young man, who without torsos his gloves, took it to his lips and let a cold kiss fall on them, barely touching the skin of that hand, as if afraid that the old man’s disease had taken hold of him, and it is disgusting to kiss the hand of an honest tax collector.
[15]
It had been many years since Daniel had not kissed his benefactor’s hand.
In the motionless gaze of the old man, in that spark of fire that, through the mists of death, darted from the glassy eyes of Giacomo, fixed on Daniel, was a lacerating reproach, a bitter but resigned pain, a living, ardent hope, an affectionate prayer , a command.
Father Ambrogio read these different passions in that gaze, this mixed language of so many affections, of so many emotions; and he endeavored to recall the thoughts of the sick man to that calmness which men who are about to rise above all human affections and passions must keep. Daniele was distracted, worried, he was as if he had been in a foreign house, indifferent.
– Signor Giacomo, said Father Ambrose, had also told you that this dear young man would have hurried to come and kiss your hand and run to your wishes: he is here, pity him because today only he has known how to aggravate your illness.
The good priest had placed his voice on the words today only to make them well known to Daniel, who cast a furtive glance at him and also said:
– Yes, sir, only today was I told that you were sick.
Daniele had not said father Giacomo , as he was calling his benefactor back in the day. This word sir had put the ice of death in Lucia’s heart.
James had concentrated all the forces of his life in this supreme moment, in which he wanted to ensure the peace and happiness of his daughter. The hand of the old man had sought that of Daniel and would not leave it: the fist of the sick man had acquired an extraordinary strength of which the state of prostration into which the disease had thrown him seemed to render him incapable. This pressure indicated enough the old man’s ardent desire to see Daniel again and the fear that Daniel would go away.
Daniele seemed to carry that look and that imprisonment of his hand with impatience.
A few minutes passed.
Giacomo raised his head and made a sign that they had placed him on some pillow in order to be able to stand at a certain height from the bed: extreme excitement had given him an appearance of health and strength.
– A sip of cider, the old man asked in a distinct voice.
This was the usual drink, which he used in the state of health, and which gave him satisfaction, hilarity, clarity of mind; hence there was almost never a lack of bowls in the family, however poor.
Lucia ran, with her heart throbbing with hope, to open an old cupboard, where a leftover carafe of English cider was placed, she poured three fingers into a glass, and brought it to her father, bringing it close to his dry and discolored lips.
Giacomo drank anxiously; but swallowing proceeded with difficulty, so that it was impossible for the poor old man to drink the coveted [16]refreshment that remained on his tongue; especially since that drink is not as fluid and drinkable as water.
Giacomo let out a deep sigh, slightly removed the glass and the hand that held it out from his mouth, and turned his eyes to heaven making a silent offering to God of his sufferings: Lucia’s heart was pierced: he hid his head behind that of his father. and the miserella cried, but devouring in her heart the bitter tears that the state of her parent tore from her.
Giacomo had not come out of his slaughter for two continuous days; few and indistinct words he had uttered in this time, few signs he had given of life and foresight. But now a thought, a resolution seemed to give him a fictitious energy. As he lacked the refreshment he hoped to get from cider, he almost necessarily gathered around his heart the life that escaped him. Oh fatherly love! Who can say how far this omnipotent affection of the soul can dominate the transient, clay? Who can mark the limits of his strength? Paternal love moves and still stirs the heart of a corpse a few moments after death has blown its icy breath: paternal love is a ray of the immortal soul that still remains attached to the family, when the body of the father it is part of the clay that he produced.
Giacomo beckoned to Daniele to get closer to him, since he could only speak with difficulty and in a very weak voice.
Daniele, Lucia and Father Ambrogio huddled to the sick man’s bed to hear his words. Marietta and the other two children surrounded those three: and all hung with omitted anxiety from the lips of the head of the family.
– Daniele, said the old man, do you remember what you were and what you are now?
– I remember, replied the latter, somewhat disturbed by this question.
– Do you remember that night when I gathered you dead of hunger and cold on a fern in the thickets of the Sila in Calabria? … Think, my son, that you would inevitably perish there; your almost naked limbs were numb with the cold from which all those desert woods and valleys were covered; your eyes were closed, and as soon as a faint moan came out of your chest that was lost in the long screams of the wind among the skeletons of the vegetation. It was Providence that guided my steps in that dreary wood: I had lost my way, or to put it better, God wanted me to have strayed for a little while from the regular road to lead me to give life to an innocent creature. In this supreme moment of my dying life,
A tear fell from the old man’s eyes and remained cold and leaded to his cheek.
At those words, only a universal cry was heard. Daniele was moved.
[17]
After a few moments of silence, Giacomo resumed:
– I had to recall this remembrance, my dear Daniele, not to boast titles to your gratitude, of which I have never doubted, and of which you have given me unequivocal proofs; but to obtain from you all the affection of a child at this moment which is so solemn for me. If you love me to sleep in peace the sleep of the grave, if you want me to close my eyes blessing that moment when your infantile moans hit my ears for the first time, remove from my soul any doubt about your righteous intentions about this miserable girl who loves you so much …
This last part was rather guessed by the bystanders rather than proffered by the old man, so great was the amazement that oppressed his chest. Daniele turned pale and lowered his eyes, entirely shaded by the thick eyebrows, which became two very black arches; Lucia felt her chest burst; her heart throbbed with such violence that a lividor of death whitened her half-open lips; the girl’s eyes did not venture to look at Daniel, and it was for her sake that if that adorable creature had cast a glance on her beloved, she would have read on his face the clearest denial of her father’s words.
– My term is approaching, my children … I thank Providence who grants me the strength to speak and to address my extreme words to you. Daniel, Lucia, God did not allow me to witness your happiness … I was right, my dear son, to urge you to hasten this longed-for union … Innocence and virtue first gave birth to your love ; brotherly affection turned in your hearts into a sweeter sentiment, which grew with growing age. God blessed your love, as I have blessed it too. Daniel, miserable son of misfortune or guilt, unhappy creature robbed of the dearest of human heritage, paternal love, heaven has filled such a void; you are idolized by this little angel. A brilliant career opens up before you; so young you have achieved what few or no one at your age can achieve: reputation and fortune, and you well deserve them for your skill in the art of music, for which you appaliated so much genius since your childhood. May the sky make your labors prosperous more and more, to alleviate them, you will have this dear creature at your side …. The mysterious hand that today provides for your needs or your pleasures may one day withdraw from you, without you have to painfully feel such a loss.
Giacomo had to pause for a few moments … The bystanders, and especially Daniele and Lucia, were differently agitated and moved.
– Daniel, resumed the old man, time is running out and I cannot abuse these precious moments that God grants me. I do not doubt the loyalty of your intentions, tel I repeat; Your heart is well known to me, and I know that my work was not sown in ungrateful soil … But I need, in leaving you, my children, to be fully sure of my Lucia’s future … I ask an oath from you, Daniele.
– An oath! exclaimed the latter, who was far from such an idea.
[18]
– Yes, my son, a solemn oath that you will make on that Crucifix, this Father Ambrose and my other children: you will swear to marry the beloved Lucia as soon as possible … Such an oath can cost you nothing; it only serves to make my soul satisfied and satisfied. I will go to join my beloved companion, your mother, my children, and from up there our blessings will accompany you always and everywhere. Now go, don’t waste any more time. I have been waiting for you for two days, Daniel, and he believed that God would not grant me the pleasure of seeing you, in order to dispel all doubts from my poor heart.
An ivory Crucifix was on top of the bed, at the height of James’ hand, who, taking it off the wall, handed it to Father Ambrose and said to him:
– Father, take Daniel’s oath, and implore heavenly blessings on the heads of my children.
Father Ambrogio stood up. His face was grave and solemn; with his right hand he held the Crucifix, with his left he touched Daniel’s shoulder, giving him a stern look, but full of goodness.
– Daniel, God listens to you and judges you; get on your knees, my son, and swear with me the solemn oath that your father, your benefactor, asks of you, to calmly abandon every thought of the earth and turn all his soul to the heavenly homeland.
Lucia knelt down and with her all the other brothers … At the back of the room the old maid could also be seen kneeling, mumbling preci and letting big tears fall on her aggravated cheeks.
Daniel had a moment of hesitation …. He had remained standing, while the whole family … was kneeling. A pallor of death had covered his brown face … This hesitation lasted only moments.
Daniele bent his straight knee to the ground and bowed his head so as not to let his disturbance be seen.
Father Ambrogio spread his hand on the young man’s head.
– Daniel, do you swear in the name of the Eternal God and on this sign of the Human Redemption to marry Lucia Fritzheim, daughter of James, as soon as possible in legitimate marriage?
A few moments of silence followed this question. Father Ambrogio continued:
– Think, Daniele, before swearing … Now you are free again; a moment later, your life is eternally tied to that of this girl.
Daniele did not answer. Old Giacomo, Lucia, all trembled. These minute seconds were bitter thorns for that unfortunate family.
God’s minister replied the oath formula:
– Daniel, do you swear in the name of the Eternal God and on this sign of the Human Redemption to marry Lucia Fritzheim, daughter of James, as soon as possible in legitimate marriage?
– I swear, Daniele replied in a distinct but hoarse and deep voice.
– God bless you! exclaimed the priest.
Everyone got up … Giacomo wept with tenderness, with consolation: [19]the old sick man’s heart swelled; life and health seemed to return to him; his face cleared; his eyes still shone under the vapors of death.
– Come close to me, my son, Daniele, here … here on my heart, let me embrace you; that I kiss your hair, your forehead. Oh forgive, forgive me, my son … I had almost doubted you; tel confess … I thought that I no longer loved my Lucia … What would become of this unhappy one who loves you so much? … Come near too, Lucia, here, here I hold you both on my chest … Oh … now I am dying happy! … Thank you, thank you, my God, that you have made me worthy of so much happiness! … Ah! .. my sight is darkening … Support me, my children. .. my dear fi …
Giacomo fell exhausted and unconscious on his pillows …
Lucia remained in the arms of her father, in whose bosom she had hidden her head.
Daniele had moved away from the old man’s bed. No tear had wet his eyes … He coldly reached and smoothed back on the right side of his forehead the hair which, being he in his father’s arms, had lost their studied straightness.
