It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight (and we
know angels are born in this loving world), and while
the moon, as if shining only for artists' eyes, drew the
outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret and serenaded
belvidere, with her silver pencil on the street,
two grave seniors, guardians in their own veins of the
blood of two lofty names known long to Roman story,
leaned together over a balcony of fretted stone, jutting
out upon the Corso, and affianced a fair and noble
maid of seventeen summers to a gentleman whose
character you shall learn, if we come safe to the sequel.

“The cardinal has offered me a thousand scudi for
my Giorgione, said the old count Malaspina, at last,
changing his attitude and the subject at the same
time.

“Anima di porco!” exclaimed the other, “what stirs
the curtain? The wind is changing, Malaspina. Let
us in! So, he offers but a thousand! I shall feel my
rheumatism to-morrow with this change. But a thousand!—
ha! ha! Let us in, let us in!”

“Let us out, say I!” murmured two lips that were
never made of cherries, though a bird would have
pecked at them; and stealing from behind the curtain,
whose agitation had persuaded her father that the wind
was rising, Violanta Cesarini, countess in her own right,
and beautiful by Heaven's rare grace, stepped forth
into the moonlight.

She drew a long breath as she looked down into the
Corso. The carriages were creeping up and down at
a foot-pace, and the luxurious dames, thrown back on
their soft cushions, nodded to the passers-by, as they
recognised friends and acquaintances where the moonlight
broke through; crowds of slow promenaders loitered
indolently on, now turning to look at the berrybrown
back of a contadini, with her stride like a tragedy-queen,
and her eyes like wells of jet, and now
leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering harp-girl
sung better for a baiocco than noble ladies for the
praise of a cardinal; at one corner stood an artist with
his tablet, catching some chance effect perhaps in the
drapery of a marble saint, perhaps in the softer drapery
of a sinner; the cafés, far up and dawn, looked
like festas out of doors, with their groups of gayly-dressed
idlers, eating sherbets and buying flowers; a
gray friar passed now with his low-toned benedicite;
and again a black cowl with a face that reddened the
very moonbeam that peeped under; hunchbacks contended
testily for the wall, and tall fellows (by their
long hair and fine symmetry, professed models for
sculptors and painters) yielded to them with a gibe.
And this is Rome when the moon shines well, and on
this care-cheating scene looked down the countess
Violanta, with her heart as full of perplexity as her
silk boddice-lace would bear without breaking.

I dare say you did not observe, if you were in Rome
that night, and strolling, as you would have been in
the Corso (this was three years ago last May, and if
you were in the habit of reading the Diario di Roma,
the story will not be new to you); you did not observe,
I am sure, that a thread ran across from the balcony I
speak of, in the Palazzo Cesarim, to a high window
in an old palace opposite, inhabited, as are many
palaces in Rome, by a decayed family and several artists.
On the two sides of this thread, pressed, while
she mused, the slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini;
and, as if it descended from the stars at every pull
which the light May-breeze gave it in passing, she
turned her soft blue eyes upward, and her face grew
radiant with hope—not such as is fed with star-gazing!

Like a white dove shooting with slant wings downward
a folded slip of paper flew across on this invisible
thread, and, by heaven's unflickering lamp, Violanta
read some characters traced with a rough crayon, but
in most sweet Italian. A look upward, and a nod, as
if she were answering the stars that peeped over her,
and the fair form had gone with its snowy robes from
the balcony, and across the high window from which
the messenger had come, dropped the thick and impenetrable
folds of the gray curtain of an artist.

It was a large upper room, such as is found in the
vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of
its two windows one was roughly boarded up to exclude
the light, while a coarse gray cloth did nearly
the same service at the other, shutting out all but an
artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough plaster
were covered with grotesque drawings, done apparently
with bits of coal, varied here and there with scraps of
unframed canvass, nailed carelessly up, and covered
with the study of some head, by a famous master. A
large table on one side of the room was burdened with
a confused heap of brushes, paint-bags, and discolored
cloths, surmounted with a clean palette; and not far
off stood an easel, covered with thumb-marks of all

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dyes, and supporting a new canvass, on which was
outlined the figure of a nymph, with the head finished
in a style that would have stirred the warm blood of
Raphael himself with emulous admiration. A low
flock bed, and a chair without a bottom, but with a
large cloak hung over its back, a pair of foils and a
rapier, completed so much of the furniture of the
room as belonged to a gay student of Corregio's art,
who wrote himself Biondo Amieri.

By the light of the same antique lamp, hung on a
rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very good
effect on the face of an unfinished group in marble,
of which the model, in plaster, stood a little behind,
representing a youth with a dagger at his heart, arrested
in the act of self-murder by a female whose
softened resemblance to him proclaimed her at the first
glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and other implements
used in sculpture, lay on the rough base of
the unfinished group, and half-disclosed, half-concealed,
by a screen covered with prints by some curious
female hand, stood a bed with white curtains, and
an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting a
clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of worked
satin had figured one day in more luxurious neighborhood,
a table covered with a few books and several
drawings from the antique, and a carefully-locked
escritoire, served, with other appearances, to distinguish
this side of the room as belonging to a separate
occupant, of gentler taste or nurture.

While the adventurous Violanta is preparing herself
to take advantage of the information received by
her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear reader,
to put you up to a little of the family history of the
Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding
of the story, than to the heroine's character for discretion.
On the latter point, I would suggest to you,
you may as well suspend your opinion.

It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that,
for four successive generations, the marquises of
Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the pope for
marrying beautiful peasant-girls from the neighborhood
of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable
sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the holy
see to such an unprecedented introduction of vulgar
blood into the veins of the nobility, and the remarkable
female beauty of the race (heightened by the addition
of nature's aristocracy to its own), contributed to maintain
good will at a court, devoted above all others to
the cultivation of the fine arts, of which woman is the
Eidolon and the soul. The last marquis, educated
like his fathers, in their wild domain among the mountains,
selected, like them, the fairest wild-flower that
sprung at his feet, and after the birth of one son, applied
for the tardy dispensation. From some unknown
cause (possibly a diminished bribe, as the marquis
was less lavish in his disposition than his predecessors),
the pope sanctioned the marriage, but refused
to legitimatize the son, unless the next born
should be a daughter. The marchioness soon after
retired (from mortification it is supposed) to her home
in the mountains, and after two years of close seclusion,
returned to Rome, bringing with her an infant
daughter, then three months of age, destined to be the
heroine of our story. No other child appearing, the
young Cesarini was legitimatized, and with his infant
sister passed most of his youth at Rome. Some three
or four years before the time when our tale commences,
this youth, who had betrayed always, a coarse
and brutal temper, administered his stiletto to a gentleman
on the Corso, and flying from Rome, became
a brigand in the Abruzzi His violence and atrocity
in this congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of
pardon, and on his outlawry by the pope, Violanta became
the heiress of the estates of Cesarini.

The marchioness had died when Violanta was between
seven and eight years of age, leaving her, by a
death-bed injunction, in the charge of her own constant
attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno, supposed
to be distant kinswoman to her mistress. With
this tried dependant, the young countess was permitted
to go where she pleased, at all hours when not attended
by her masters, and seeing her tractable and
lovely, the old marquis, whose pride in the beauty of
his family was the passion next to love of money in
his heart, gave himself little trouble, and thought himself
consoled for the loss of his son in the growing attractions
and filial virtues of his daughter.

On a bright morning in early spring, six years before
the date of our tale, the young countess and her attendant
were gathering wild flowers near the fountain
of Egeria (of all spots of earth, that on which the wild
flowers are most profuse and sweetest), when a deformed
youth, who seemed to be no stranger to Donna
Bettina, addressed Violanta in a tone of voice so musical,
and with a look so kindly and winning, that the
frank child took his hand, and led him off in search of
cardinals and blue-bells, with the familiarity of an established
playfellow. After this day, the little countess
never came home pleased from a morning drive and
ramble in which she had not seen her friend Signor
Giulio; and the romantic baths of Caracalla, and the
many delicious haunts among the ruins about Rome,
had borne witness to the growth of a friendship, all
fondness and impulse on the part of Violanta, all tenderness
and delicacy on that of the deformed youth.
By what wonderful instinct they happened always to
meet, the delighted child never found time or thought
to inquire.

Two or three years passed on thus, and the old
marquis had grown to listen with amused familiarity
to his daughter's prattle about the deformed youth,
and no incident had varied the pleasant tenor of their
lives and rambles, except that, Giulio once falling ill,
Bettina had taken the young countess to his home,
where she discovered that, young as he was, he made
some progress in moulding in clay, and was destined for
a sculptor. This visit to the apartment of an obscure
youth, however, the marquis had seen fit to object to;
and though, at his daughter's request, he sent the
young sculptor an order for his first statue, he peremptorily
forbade all further intercourse between him
and Violanta. In the paroxysm of her grief at the
first disgrace she had ever fallen into with her master,
Bettina disclosed to her young mistress, by way of
justification, a secret she had been bound by the
most solemn oaths to conceal, and of which she now
was the sole living depository—that this deformed
youth was born in the castle of the Cesarini, in Romagna,
of no less obscure parentage than the castle's
lord and lady, and being the first child after the dispensation
of marriage, and a son, he was consequently
the rightful heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesarini;
and the elder son, by the terms of that dispensation,
was illegitimate.

This was astounding intelligence to Violanti, who,
nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in the
yearnings of her heart to Giulio; but it was with no
little pains and difficulty on Bettina's part, that she was
persuaded to preserve the secret from her father. The
Romagnese knew her master's weakness; and as the
birth of the child had occurred during his long absence
from the castle, and the marchioness, proud of
her eldest-born, had determined from the first that he
alone should enjoy the name and honors of his father,
it was not very probable that upon the simple word of
a domestic, he would believe a deformed hunchback
to be his son and heir.

The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew
little about, simply informing her mistress, that disgusted
with his deformity, the unnatural mother had
sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna, and
that the interest of a small sum which the marquis

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supposed had been expended on masses for the souls
of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster-parents for
his use.

From the time of this disclosure, Violanta's life had
been but too happy. Feeling justified in contriving
secret interviews with her brother; and possessing the
efficient connivance of Bettina, who grew, like herself,
almost to worship the pure-minded and the gentle
Giulio, her heart and her time were blissfully crowded
with interest. So far, the love that had welled from
her heart had been all joyous and untroubled.

It was during the absence of the marquis and his
daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season,
that Giulio, always delicate in health and liable to excessive
fits of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary
room, and, but for the friendly care of a young artist
whom he had long known, must have died of want
and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted the
offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with him a lodging
in the more elevated air of the Corso, and, the more
readily, that this room chanced to overlook the palace
of Cesarina. Here Violanta found him on her return,
and though displeased that he was no longer alone,
she still continued, when Amieri was absent, to see
him sometimes in his room, and their old haunts
without the walls were frequented as often as his
health and strength would permit. A chance meeting
of Violanta and Amieri in his own studio, however,
made it necessary that he should be admitted to their
secret, and the consequence of that interview, and
others which Violanta found it impossible to avoid,
was a passion in the heart of the enthusiastic painter,
which consumed, as it well might, every faculty of
his soul.

We are thus brought to an evening of balmy May,
when Giulio found himself alone. Biondo had been
painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring
in vain to give it any other features than those of the
lady of his intense worship, and having gone out to
ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso.
Giulio thought he might venture to throw across his
ball of thread and send a missive to his sister, promising
her an uninterrupted hour of his society.

With these preliminaries, our story will now run
smoothly on.