“YOU are late tonight, Raymond,” said the Lady Erminia Chalcondyles, raising her head as Raymond entered. Had a quiet, prosperous life been her portion, she might still have looked young; as it was, her dark hair was streaked with gray and her features were worn and wasted. She had been a beautiful girl, and was now a matron of noble presence, grave and stately. Gifted with great courage and strong passions, as well as with intense affections, her heart and her will had survived the shipwreck that robbed her of home, of kindred, and of friends. As the mariner clings to the floating spar, his last hope, so she clung to the child that had been left to her. In his young life she lived again; for him she was still enterprising, sanguine, ambitious; and, if all the truth must be told, for him she could even be worldly and selfish, she could plot and manage, as well as dare and suffer.
“I have had a fray with some of the Nicoloti,” said Raymond; and he eagerly poured out the whole story, making little of the hurts he had received and much of the help rendered by his schoolfellow, with a glowing panegyric upon whom he wound up the tale.
The Grecian widow was not a modem fine lady, to shudder at hearing her boy had been exchanging blows, or to shrink from seeing a crimson stain or two upon his dainty linen. She wished him bold and brave, as apt at play of sword and buckler as at grammar and rhetoric. So she only said, when he had finished, “I hold the banker Benedetto in high esteem, and have much cause to be grateful to him. I am glad you like his son. Still, I think your friendship, your intimacy, might be placed rather higher with advantage. At your academy there are the Mocenigi, the Loredani, the two Foscari, grand-nephews of the Doge―”
“Who hold the Loredani in mortal hatred,” Raymond interrupted, laughing. “A fine choice of friends you offer me, truly! But I have fully made up my mind upon that subject―no Loredani for me. I hold by the Doge and the Foscari, and hate Loredano and all his set!”
“Gently, my son. We are guests in Venice, and guests should avert their eyes from the quarrels of their hosts, and be very courteously blind and deaf to such things as in no way concern them.”
“Blindness and deafness, when they are not born with a man, but learned in the way of business, have their limits,” said Raymond sharply. “Giacopo Foscari has been treated with horrible cruelty and injustice, and I care not who hears me say it. The wretches who could torture a son in his father’s presence on the barest, idlest suspicion, and then banish him from his country unconvicted and uncondemned, would be capable of any crime. In fact, mother,” he continued, not very logically, “I am sure the low-born rascals who set upon me today were of the Loredani’s clients and workpeople; most of them are Nicoloti―at least, they favor that faction.”
“If that be so,” the lady said gravely, “my son must already have been far more outspoken than becomes either his age or his fortunes. But here is supper; I think you have need of it.”
That was true; and the mother, while she forebore questions and condolences, was careful to supply her weary boy with strengthening food and good wine. He did ample justice to the meal, but had scarcely finished when he started up, exclaiming―
“Mother, I have thought of something; a good, beautiful thing. Say I may do it?”
“I will not say you may not, if I can help it. What is it?”
“You know that book of my grandfather’s in the vellum cover with the gold clasp, lettered Beta? ― the book of medicine, translated from the Arabic? May I give it for a present to Theodore? He is to be a physician.”
“Ah, boy, it is easy to know thou wert born a prince! Are we so rich that we can give away a book worth a bag of gold bezants as if it were a melon or a bunch of grapes?”
“But I love Theodore; I want to give him a real, costly gift.”
The lady pondered. “After all, Raymond, I know not if I ought to forbid thee. But for the care and kindness of Theodore’s father we might both of us have starved. We owe him our daily bread, our comfortable dwelling here, and, what I think more of, the opportunity of educating thee. It may be well to show our gratitude by a gift to his son. I will get the book, and if you like you can take it to him tomorrow.”
“No,” said Raymond, “not tomorrow; it would be like paying him for taking me out of the hands of those scoundrels. I will wait until Ascension Day, when everybody gives gifts to celebrate the marriage of the Doge with the sea. But, mother, let me have the book in my own keeping until then.”
She went to a massive carved oak chest at one end of the room, unlocked it with a key that hung from her girdle, and brought out the precious volume, wrapped in a covering of purple silk. Raymond drew off the cover and examined the book with interest. “It is written by Maimonides, the court physician of Saladin,” he said.
“I know thy grandfather used to hold it in high esteem.”
“Yes; he said the books were not to be sold if we could help it; but he would not have forbidden us to give one away to valued friend.”
This allusion of Raymond’s to his grandfather gave Lady Erminia an opportunity of asking her son a question which was often in her thoughts. At the time he received it the child had faithfully repeated to his mother his grandfather’s dying charge, but since then he had never once alluded to the subject. Erminia did not wish him to forget it; she wished the thought to remain in his mind ready to awake in due time, but dormant for the present, because at his age much discretion could not be expected. If he began to dream and brood over it he might be tempted to mention it in confidence to one or other of his intimates. Therefore she said lightly, and as if it were a matter of no importance, “Dost remember what thy grandfather told thee of the buried treasure at Vaudelon?”
“Surely, mother,” the boy answered, flushing; “I never smell a rose I do not think of it!”
“And why, in the name of St. Sophia?”
“Why not, since my ancestor buried it in his lady’s rose garden? Mother, I dreamed of it on my voyage hither―such a beautiful dream As I lay in the palander, sick, weary, and frightened, I dropped asleep, and lo! it was summer evening, and I was walking in a garden of roses. Lovely ladies, with fair smiling faces, and clad in silken sheen, walked there too. They had all roses in their hands; and one, a little one, no taller than myself, but with soft dark eyes, and hair like a raven’s wing, promised to be my guide, and to drop her rose over the spot where the treasure lay. Then I woke.”
“Thou didst say nothing of it to me”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I cannot tell.” Children seldom can tell why they keep things secret, but they have very strong instincts about the matter, for all that. “Mother, where is Manuel?” he asked restlessly, for the aching of his bruises, of which he scorned to complain, together with the excitement of his day’s adventure, made him irritable and perhaps a little feverish.
“I think I hear voices in the studio, so I suppose he is talking with Giacomo” (the artist with whom they shared the house).
“Say quarreling, mother. They never talk but to quarrel. I will go and see.”
And Raymond, anticipating some amusement, ran to the studio.
It was a large disorderly room, bare of furniture, but crowded with implements and objects belonging to more arts than one. The modern principle of division of labor did not prevail at that time, and two or three different arts were usually wooed by the same votary. Architecture, painting, wood carving, and sculpture were in closest alliance; in fact the last―named art had hardly yet a separate existence, it was rather―as indeed painting and carving were also in a measure―the handmaid of architecture, that eldest-born and stateliest of all, whose masterpieces still astonish and delight the world. It was to decorate the shrine or the palace that the painter contributed his frescoes and the statuary his bas-reliefs. Moreover, there was yet another art―and really a fine art―which had at this time its headquarters in Murano.
Giacomo was a little of all things; carver’s tools, pieces of wood, and lumps of clay for modeling strewed the floor; on the rickety table lay a bunch of lilies, with their leaves, which he was essaying to copy upon glass; while in the comer, carefully veiled by a faded crimson curtain, stood an unfinished painting, which was to be his chef d’œuvre, and was already his joy and pride, sometimes also his despair. He was a gray-haired man, with a mild, thoughtful, dreamy face, and clad in a tunic of brown velvet, much frayed and worn, and stained with many a spot of paint and clay. Before him stood the Greek in his long mantle, talking rapidly and with much gesticulation.
“Away with your graven images, which are no better than idols of Mahoun, breaking the holy commandments of God and the apostolic canons,” he cried with a sweep of his gaunt arm. “You could employ yourself much better, Signor Giacomo, and in a manner more pleasing to God, if you would make a handsome frame for a real saint, a veritable holy picture, like this, which has been blessed by the Patriarch of Constantinople himself;” and he pointed to a miserable daub which lay upon the table, in staring red and blue, with a tinsel aureole round the head of the stiff, ungraceful figure.
“That a real saint!” the Italian exclaimed “with no more shape in his body than an ell-wand, and no more expression in his face than a dead brick wall! That St. Nicholas of Myra! And you say he―he―was a doughty champion of the orthodox faith, and gave the heretic Arius a box on the ear at the Council of Nicæa? If that is at all like him he could have had neither power in his arm, nor speculation in his eye, nor fire in his heart.”
“At least he had the true faith in his soul, Signor Giacomo; and he would have laid down his life rather than deface the image of God by shaving off the beard his Maker gave him.”
“And making himself look like a priest of St. Mark’s,” said Raymond, who had entered unobserved, the door being opera.
Manuel stopped in some confusion. To the grief and shame of his heart his beloved lady had apostatized from the orthodox faith, and had obliged her son (decidedly against his will) to be confirmed according to the rites of the Latin Church. Manuel’s loyalty to her sealed his lips in Raymond’s presence, yet this silence seemed almost a treason to his faith. Pitying his embarrassment, of which he fully understood the cause, Giacomo said, Ché, Ché! I will make your saint a handsome frame, Manuel; and,” he could not help adding maliciously, “I will put in each comer the sweetest little child-angel you ever saw—just ready to carry the holy man to heaven.”
“You will do nothing of the kind, Signor Giacomo; my prayers are poor things enough as it is, without making them worse by saying them before graven imagen, accursed of God and the holy orthodox Church.”
“Well, my friend,” the painter answered, “we will not quarrel; that, perchance, would do more to hinder both thy prayers and mine than a carved picture frame. And how is my young lord tonight?”
“Well, thank you, Master Giacomo,” said Raymond, courteously. “Come to remind you of your promise to show me your picture.”
Manuel, to whom the Italian style of painting was as abhorrent as was that of his own picture to the artist soul of Giacomo, suddenly remembered that he had pressing business. “I must go,” he said, “and attend to my lady’s accounts. By care and diligence I contrive that she shall not pay for anything more than twice its value, otherwise your Venetians, who are born for buying and selling, and nothing else in the world, would soon leave the fullest purse as empty as you left the shrine of St. Mark, at Alexandria, when you stole the saint’s body and hid it in a basket of port.”
This parting shaft did not tell upon Giacomo, who said quietly, “I was not born in Venice.” When Manuel was gone, he continued, half to Raymond and half to himself, “I was not born in Venice, but Venice suits me. I should like to know in what other city of Christendom could yonder honest fellow have his bearded priest and his leavened wafer to his liking; and the Jew his synagogue; and the Armenian his dark little closet of a church? God cave the Council of Ten, say I! They do not like meddlers and busybodies, and they make criticizing the government a very dangerous game.―True, but then they mind their own business, and secure all other honest folk freedom to mind theirs.”
Raymond, meanwhile, was investigating the contents of the studio, to which he was a frequent and privileged visitor. “May I have this lump of clay, Master Giacomo?” he asked. “I saw today such a pretty little fruit seller fast asleep on the step of a palazzo. I should like to try his figure.”
“You are welcome to the clay, signor. But I hope you will use it better than the last, of which you made me a horse all legs and no body.”
“How should I know? One never sees a horse here; I was but trying if I could recollect what the creature looks like.”
“Go and study the horses of St. Mark! Boy, those divine creatures are from the hands of our fathers, who were greater than we― ‘There were giants in the earth in those days.’”
“From the hands of my fathers, master painter,” said the young Greek, with a glow of pride. “Can I look at those horses without sorrow―a proud sorrow, indeed―when I think how they were torn from my native city by the ruthless Crusaders? We are alike exiles and stringers, they and I.―But your picture, Master Giacomo, your picture!”
“You shall see it as it is, my young lord. But it is not finished―not yet.” He sighed, then paused for a moment, almost reverently, before he withdrew the faded curtain.
A great poet has observed that it is the artist’s impulse to find expression for his deepest and dearest thought, not in his own art, but in some other. When his soul is moved to the uttermost, the poet would fain paint a picture, the painter write a poem. Probably this is because experience has already taught him the insufficiency of the form of utterance he can best use, and he vainly dreams that another might answer his need more adequately. It has been said that Giacomo was a man of many arts. It was his daily work to fashion elaborate friezes or delicate woodcarvings for the stately church which was then rising to be the glory of Murano. But he was also connected with both the things which made the little island famous, its school of painting and its glass works. On the one hand, he was the intimate friend of the celebrated Gentili brothers, whose genius rendered the school illustrious; on the other, he often painted dainty and delicate designs on the pure white lattimo, a rare glass resembling porcelain, which was one of the specialties of the place. Yet neither to marble, nor to wood, nor to precious tinted crystal would he trust what he tried to tell the canvas upon which Raymond now stood gazing.
The picture was fully sketched, and partly painted. It had. much of the richness, depth, and purity of coloring said to be the grand characteristic of the Venetian school, then in its infancy. The arrangement was stiff, and the grouping of the figures conventional; but the bright hues of the dresses―the sky—the grass―the trees―were put in with a loving appreciativeness, and graduated with an exquisite skill, which showed that, for the artist, the mystic chords of color vibrated with thrilling harmony, and yielded, in and for themselves, that joy with which a stranger cannot intermeddle.
Raymond saw how beautiful it was, and gazed on it for some time with real delight. “But what does it mean?” he asked at last.
In the background were houses, indicating a city or town. A company of men―in number about a dozen―seemed to be coming from it into the country, which was merely a green place with trees. Three or four were depicted with much care, and near the spectator; Raymond knew by the dress of one of them, and the symbols he carried, that he was intended for St. Mark, the patron of Venice, though his introduction there was an anachronism. Two figures formed the foreground; one, fully finished, was pathetic in its air of helplessness and trust. It was that of a blind man, the sightless face―sad, wistful, full of pain and longing―turned hopefully to Him who was leading him. One hand was stretched out, as if from the habit of feeling his way, but the fingers, which were bent inwards, told that he checked himself in the act, knowing he might safely leave all to his guide.
That guide held his other hand in his, and into those two clasped hands, the one holding, the other clinging, the painter had thrown all the expression of which he was master. Not death itself, it seemed, could unloose that clasp. The figure of the guide was majestic, even the very folds of his robe had a calm and massy grandeur. But the face was only sketched.
“What does it mean?” Raymond asked again.
“Do you not know? Our blessed Lord about to heal a blind man. The Gospel words are, ‘He took him by the hand, and led him out of the city.’”
“Why have you left His face to the last, Giacomo? I would have begun with it.”
“Because I cannot render it as I wish. Again and again I have tried, and failed.” The old man’s own face grew sorrowful. “It may be I am not worthy,” he said in a lower voice, speaking to himself, not to Raymond.
“Oh, nonsense! I know you can do it. Try again tomorrow. You have only to make a grand face, stern and majestic, such as will suit the Judge of quick and dead―an awful face.”
Giacomo shook his head. “No, my young lord. You are wise and learned beyond your years, yet this is a matter of which you know not anything. The Face those opened eyes first looked upon was not stern, nor awful.”
“Then what was it like?”
“I cannot tell. I cannot see it. Long and often have I sought for it. I sometimes fear―” He stopped abruptly, remembering the youth of his listener, and turning away, began to busy himself in finding Raymond a suitable bit of clay. He gave him a few directions as to its use; but Raymond’s energies were now beginning to flag, and his fatigue was making itself felt more sensibly. So he thanked the painter, bade him a laughing goodnight, and took his departure.
Left alone, Giacomo stood gazing sadly and wistfully on his unfinished picture. At last he murmured, “Shall I ever see that Face? Oh, that I knew where I might find Him! One look―only one―were worth dying for. Nay, I think I should die, brokenhearted with the joy of that one look. But I cannot see Him—I am blind. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me!” Then after a pause, “But He took the blind man by the hand, and led him. That was before his eyes were opened. Has He my hand in His? Is He leading me? Then somehow, somewhere, sometime, I shall see His Face.”