The Well of Saint Clare Part 23

Then, leaning against the wall, hands and arms held up to veil her eyes, she stood waiting.

The other never left off crying:

"_Puttaccia! Puttaccia!_" (Wh.o.r.e! Wh.o.r.e!)

Then, forasmuch as he did yet tarry, and slew her not, she was afraid.

He saw that she was afraid, and said gleefully:

"You are afraid!"

But pointing her finger at the dead body of the Duke d'Andria, she made answer:

"Fool! what think you I can have to fear now?"

And, to make a seeming of being no more terrified, she sought to recall a song-tune she had sung many a time as a girl, and began humming the same, or rather hissing it, betwixt her teeth.

The Prince, furious to see how she defied him, did now p.r.i.c.k her with his point in the belly, crying out:

"_Ah! Sporca-puttaccia!_" (Fie! Filthy trull!) Exultant, she stayed her singing, and said:

"Sir, 'tis two years sithence I have been to confession."

At this word the Prince of Venosa bethought him how that, an if she died and were d.a.m.ned, she might return by night and drag him down to h.e.l.l along with her. He asked her:

"Will you not have a Confessor?"

She did ponder an instant, then shaking her head:

"'Tis useless. I cannot save my soul. I repent me not. I cannot, and I will not, repent. I love him! I love him! Let me die in his arms."

With a quick movement, she did thrust the sword aside, threw her on the bleeding corse of the Duke d'Andria, and lay clipping her dead lover in her arms.

Seeing her so, the Prince of Venosa did lose what patience he had kept till then, to the end he might not kill her ere he had made her suffer.

He drave his blade through her body. She cried, "Jesu!" rolled over, sprang to her feet, and after a little shudder that shook her every limb, fell to the floor dead.

He struck her several blows more in the belly and bosom; then said to his varlets:

"Go throw these two pieces of carrion at the foot of the Great Staircase, and open wide the Palace doors, that men may note my vengeance at the same time as the insult done mine honour."

He bade strip the lover's corse bare like the other.

The men did as they were bidden. And all the day the bodies of the Duke d'Andria and Dona Maria lay naked at the bottom of the steps. The pa.s.sers-by drew near to see them. And the news of the b.l.o.o.d.y deed being spread about the city, a great press of curious onlookers came crowding before the Palace. Some said, "Lo! a good deed well done!" Others, and these the more part, at sight of so lamentable a spectacle, were filled with ruth. Yet durst they not openly commiserate the Prince's victims, for fear of evil handling by his armed dependents, which were set to guard the bodies. Young men gazed at the Princess's corse, for to discover the traces of that beauty which had been her undoing, while the little children would be expounding one to the other the meaning of that they saw.

Dona Maria lay stretched on her back. The lips were drawn back, displaying the teeth in a ghastly smile. Her eyes stood wide open, the whites only showing. Six wounds were upon her, three in the belly, which was greatly swollen, two in the bosom, one in the neck. The last had bled profusely, and the dogs kept fawning up to lick it.

Towards nightfall, the Prince bade set torches of resin, like as on days of festival, in the bronze rings fixed in the Palace walls, and eke kindle great fires in the Courtyard, to the end all men might see the criminals plain. At midnight, a pious widow brought coverings and spread the same over the dead bodies. But, by the Prince's commandment, these were incontinent torn away again.

The Amba.s.sador of Spain informed of the unseemly treatment meted to a lady of the Spanish house of Avalos, came in person urgently to entreat the Prince of Venosa to stay these outrages, which did insult the n.o.ble memory of the Duke de Pescara, uncle to Dona Maria, and offend in their tomb so many great Captains of whose blood the said lady was descended.

But he withdrew after profiting naught by his intercession; and writ a letter thereanent to his Catholic Majesty. The poor bodies were left shamefully exposed as before. Toward the latter end of the night, the curious having ceased to come any more, the guards were withdrawn.

Then a Dominican monk, which had all the day lurked about the great doors, did slip within the vestibule by the smoky light of the dying torches, crept to the steps where Dona Maria lay, and threw himself on her corse.

BONAPARTE AT SAN MINIATO

TO ARMAND GENEST

BONAPARTE AT SAN MINIATO

_Quand, simple citoyen, soldat d'un peuple libre, Aux bords de l'eridan, de l'Adige et du Tibre, Foudroyant tour a tour quelques tyrans pervers, Des nations en pleurs, sa main brisait les fers...._

(Marie-Joseph Chenier, _La Promenade_.)[1]

_Napoleon, apres son expedition de Livourne, se rendant a Florence, coucha a San Miniato chez un vieil abbe Buonaparte...._

(_Memorial de Saint-Helene_, par le comte de Las Cases, reimpression de 1823, 1824, t. I'er, p. 149.)[2]

"_Je fus sur le soir a San Miniato. J'y avais un vieux chanoine de parent...._"

(_Memoires du docteur F. Antommarchi, sur les derniers moments de Napoleon_ 1825, t. I'er p. 155.)[3]

[Footnote 1: "When, a plain citizen, soldier of a free people, by the banks of the Erida.n.u.s, the Adige and the Tiber, blasting with his lightnings one after another recalcitrant tyrants, his hand brake the fetters of the nations that wept...."]

[Footnote 2: "Napoleon, visiting Florence after his Leghorn expedition, lay one night at San Miniato at the house of an old Abbe Buonaparte...."

(_Memorial of St. Helena_, by the Count de Las Cases--reprint of 1823, 1824, Vol. I, p. 149.)]

[Footnote 3: "I stayed for the night at San Miniato. I had a relative living there, an old Canon...." (_Memoirs of Dr. F. Antommarchi on the Last Moments of Napoleon_, 1825, vol. I, p. 155.)]

After occupying Leghorn and closing that port against the English men-of-war, General Bonaparte proceeded to Florence to visit the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand, who alone of all the princes of Europe had honestly and honourably fulfilled his engagements with the French Republic. In token of esteem and confidence, he went there without escort, accompanied only by the officers of his Staff. Amongst other sights he was shown the arms of the Buonapartes carved over the gateway of an old house. He was already aware that a branch of his family had been fruitful and multiplied at Florence in days of yore, and that a last descendant of this the ancient race was still alive. This was a certain Canon of San Miniato, now eighty years of age. In spite of all the pressing affairs he had to attend to, he made a point of paying him a visit. Napoleon Bonaparte was always strongly moved by feelings of natural affection.

On the eve of his departure from Florence, he made his way with some of his officers to the hill of San Miniato, which crowned with its walls and towers, rises from the plain at half a league's distance from the city.

Old Canon Buonaparte welcomed with agreeable and dignified politeness his young kinsman and the French officers who accompanied him--Berthier, Junot, Orderly Officer in Chief Chauvet and Lieutenant Thezard. He regaled them with a supper _a l'italienne_, which lacked neither the cranes of Peretola nor the little sucking-pig scented with aromatic herbs, nor the best vintages of Tuscany, Naples and Sicily.

Uncompromising Republicans as Brutus himself, they drank to France and Freedom. Their host acknowledged the toast; then turning to the General whom he had seated on his right hand;

"Nephew!" said he, "are you not curious to examine the genealogical tree painted on the wall yonder? You will be gratified to see from it that we are descended from the Lombard Cadolingians, who from the tenth to the twelfth centuries covered themselves with glory by their fidelity to the German Emperors, and from whom sprung, prior to the year 1100, the Buonapartes of Treviso and the Buonapartes of Florence, the latter stock proving by far the more ill.u.s.trious."

At this the officers began to whisper together and laugh. Orderly Officer Chauvet asked Berthier behind his hand if the Republican General felt flattered to possess amongst his ancestors a lot of slaves serving the Two-headed Eagle, while Lieutenant Thezard was ready to take his oath the General owed his birth to good _sans-culottes_ and n.o.body else.

Meanwhile the Canon went on with a long string of boasts concerning the n.o.bility of his house and lineage.

"Know this, nephew," he finished by saying, "our Florentine ancestors well deserved their name. They were ever of the _bon parti_, and steadfast defenders of Mother Church."

At these words, which the old fellow had uttered in a high, clear voice, the General, who so far had been scarcely listening, gathered his wandering wits together, and raising his pale, thin face, with its cla.s.sically moulded features, threw a piercing look at his interlocutor, which closed his lips instantly.