The Valley of Decision

2.4.

Professor Orazio Vivaldi, after filling with distinction the chair of Philosophy at the University of Turin, had lately resigned his office that he might have leisure to complete a long-contemplated work on the Origin of Civilisation.  His house was the meeting-place of a society calling itself of the Honey-Bees and ostensibly devoted to the study of the classical poets, from whose pages the members were supposed to cull mellifluous nourishment; but under this guise the so-called literati had for some time indulged in free discussion of religious and scientific questions.  The Academy of the Honey-Bees comprised among its members all the independent thinkers of Turin:  doctors of law, of philosophy and medicine, chemists, philologists and naturalists, with one or two members of the nobility, who, like Alfieri, felt, or affected, an interest in the graver problems of life, and could be trusted not to betray the true character of the association.

These details Odo learned the next day from Alfieri; who went on to say that, owing to the increased vigilance of the government, and to the banishment of several distinguished men accused by the Church of heretical or seditious opinions, the Honey-Bees had of late been obliged to hold their meetings secretly, it being even rumoured that Vivaldi, who was their president, had resigned his professorship and withdrawn behind the shelter of literary employment in order to elude the observation of the authorities.  Men had not yet forgotten the fate of the Neapolitan historian, Pietro Giannone, who for daring to attack the censorship and the growth of the temporal power had been driven from Naples to Vienna, from Vienna back to Venice, and at length, at the prompting of the Holy See, lured across the Piedmontese frontier by Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and imprisoned for life in the citadel of Turin.  The memory of his tragic history—­most of all, perhaps, of his recantation and the “devout ending” to which solitude and persecution had forced the freest spirit of his day—­hovered like a warning on the horizon of thought and constrained political speculation to hide itself behind the study of fashionable trifles.  Alfieri had lately joined the association of the Honey-Bees, and the Professor, at his suggestion, had invited Odo, for whose discretion his friend declared himself ready to answer.  The Honey-Bees were in fact desirous of attracting young men of rank who felt an interest in scientific or economic problems; for it was hoped that in this manner the new ideas might imperceptibly permeate the class whose privileges and traditions presented the chief obstacle to reform.  In France, it was whispered, free-thinkers and political agitators were the honoured guests of the nobility, who eagerly embraced their theories and applied them to the remedy of social abuses.  Only by similar means could the ideals of the Piedmontese reformers be realised; and in those early days of universal illusion none appeared to suspect the danger of arming inexperienced hands with untried weapons.  Utopia was already in sight; and all the world was setting out for it as for some heavenly picnic ground.

Of Vivaldi himself, Alfieri spoke with extravagant admiration.  His affable exterior was said to conceal the moral courage of one of Plutarch’s heroes.  He was a man after the antique pattern, ready to lay down fortune, credit and freedom in the defence of his convictions.  “An Agamemnon,” Alfieri exclaimed, “who would not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter to obtain a favourable wind for his enterprise!”

The metaphor was perhaps scarcely to Odo’s taste; but at least it gave him the chance for which he had waited.  “And the daughter?” he asked.

“The lovely doctoress?” said Alfieri carelessly.  “Oh, she’s one of your prodigies of female learning, such as our topsy-turvy land produces:  an incipient Laura Bassi or Gaetana Agnesi, to name the most distinguished of their tribe; though I believe that hitherto her father’s good sense or her own has kept her from aspiring to academic honours.  The beautiful Fulvia is a good daughter, and devotes herself, I’m told, to helping Vivaldi in his work; a far more becoming employment for one of her age and sex than defending Latin theses before a crew of ribald students.”

In this Odo was of one mind with him; for though Italy was used to the spectacle of the Improvisatrice and the female doctor of philosophy, it is doubtful if the character was one in which any admirer cared to see his divinity figure.  Odo, at any rate, felt a distinct satisfaction in learning that Fulvia Vivaldi had thus far made no public display of her learning.  How much pleasanter to picture her as her father’s aid, perhaps a sharer in his dreams:  a vestal cherishing the flame of Liberty in the secret sanctuary of the goddess!  He scarce knew as yet of what his feeling for the girl was compounded.  The sentiment she had roused was one for which his experience had no name:  an emotion in which awe mingled with an almost boyish sense of fellowship, sex as yet lurking out of sight as in some hidden ambush.  It was perhaps her association with a world so unfamiliar and alluring that lent her for the moment her greatest charm.  Odo’s imagination had been profoundly stirred by what he had heard and seen at the meeting of the Honey-Bees.  That impatience with the vanity of his own pursuits and with the injustice of existing conditions, which hovered like a phantom at the feast of life, had at last found form and utterance.  Parini’s satires and the bitter mockery of the “Frusta Letteraria” were but instruments of demolition; but the arguments of the Professor’s friends had that constructive quality so appealing to the urgent temper of youth.  Was the world in ruins?  Then here was a plan to rebuild it.  Was humanity in chains?  Behold the angel on the threshold of the prison!

Odo, too impatient to await the next reunion of the Honey-Bees, sought out and frequented those among the members whose conversation had chiefly attracted him.  They were grave men, of studious and retiring habit, leading the frugal life of the Italian middle-class, a life in dignified contrast to the wasteful and aimless existence of the nobility.  Odo’s sensitiveness to outward impressions made him peculiarly alive to this contrast.  None was more open than he to the seducements of luxurious living, the polish of manners, the tacit exclusion of all that is ugly or distressing; but it seemed to him that fine living should be but the flower of fine feeling, and that such external graces, when they adorned a dull and vapid society, were as incongruous as the royal purple on a clown.  Among certain of his new friends he found a clumsiness of manner somewhat absurdly allied with an attempt at Roman austerity; but he was fair-minded enough to see that the middle-class doctor or lawyer who tries to play the Cicero is, after all, a more respectable figure than the Marquess who apes Caligula or Commodus.  Still, his lurking dilettantism made him doubly alive to the elegance of the Palazzo Tournanches when he went thither from a coarse meal in the stuffy dining-parlour of one of his new acquaintances; as he never relished the discourse of the latter more than after an afternoon in the society of the Countess’s parasites.

Alfieri’s allusions to the learned ladies for whom Italy was noted made Odo curious to meet the wives and daughters of his new friends; for he knew it was only in their class that women received something more than the ordinary conventual education; and he felt a secret desire to compare Fulvia Vivaldi with other young girls of her kind.  Learned ladies he met, indeed; for though the women-folk of some of the philosophers were content to cook and darn for them (and perhaps secretly burn a candle in their behalf to Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Dominick, refuters of heresy), there were others who aspired to all the honours of scholarship, and would order about their servant-girls in Tuscan, and scold their babies in Ciceronian Latin.  Among these fair grammarians, however, he met none that wore her learning lightly.  They were forever tripping in the folds of their doctors’ gowns, and delivering their most trivial views ex cathedra; and too often the poor philosophers, their lords and fathers, cowered under their harangues like frightened boys under the tongue of a schoolmaster.

It was in fact only in the household of Orazio Vivaldi that Odo found the simplicity and grace of living for which he longed.  Alfieri had warned him not to visit the Professor too often, since the latter, being under observation, might be compromised by the assiduity of his friends.  Odo therefore waited for some days before presenting himself, and when he did so it was at the angelus, when the streets were crowded and a man’s comings and goings the less likely to be marked.  He found Vivaldi reading with his daughter in the long library where the Honey-Bees held their meetings; but Fulvia at once withdrew, nor did she show herself again during Odo’s visit.  It was clear that, proud of her as Vivaldi was, he had no wish to parade her attainments, and that in her daily life she maintained the Italian habit of seclusion; but to Odo she was everywhere present in the quiet room with its well-ordered books and curiosities, and the scent of flowers rising through the shuttered windows.  He was sensible of an influence permeating even the inanimate objects about him, so that they seemed to reflect the spirit of those who dwelt there.  No room had given him this sense of companionship since he had spent his boyish holidays in the old Count Benedetto’s apartments; but it was of another, intangible world that his present surroundings spoke.  Vivaldi received him kindly and asked him to repeat his visit; and Odo returned as often as he thought prudent.

The Professor’s conversation engaged him deeply.  Vivaldi’s familiarity with French speculative literature, and with its sources in the experiential philosophy of the English school, gave Odo his first clear conception of the origin and tendency of the new movement.  This coordination of scattered ideas was aided by his readings in the Encyclopaedia, which, though placed on the Index in Piedmont, was to be found behind the concealed panels of more than one private library.  From his talks with Alfieri, and from the pages of Plutarch, he had gained a certain insight into the Stoical view of reason as the measure of conduct, and of the inherent sufficiency of virtue as its own end.  He now learned that all about him men were endeavouring to restore the human spirit to that lost conception of its dignity; and he longed to join the band of new crusaders who had set out to recover the tomb of truth from the forces of superstition.  The distinguishing mark of eighteenth-century philosophy was its eagerness to convert its acquisitions in every branch of knowledge into instruments of practical beneficence; and this quality appealed peculiarly to Odo, who had ever been moved by abstract theories only as they explained or modified the destiny of man.  Vivaldi, pleased by his new pupil’s eagerness to learn, took pains to set before him this aspect of the struggle.

“You will now see,” he said, after one of their long talks about the Encyclopaedists, “why we who have at heart the mental and social regeneration of our countrymen are so desirous of making a concerted effort against the established system.  It is only by united action that we can prevail.  The bravest mob of independent fighters has little chance against a handful of disciplined soldiers, and the Church is perfectly logical in seeing her chief danger in the Encyclopaedia’s systematised marshalling of scattered truths.  As long as the attacks on her authority were isolated, and as it were sporadic, she had little to fear even from the assaults of genius; but the most ordinary intellect may find a use and become a power in the ranks of an organised opposition.  Seneca tells us the slaves in ancient Rome were at one time so numerous that the government prohibited their wearing a distinctive dress lest they should learn their strength and discover that the city was in their power; and the Church knows that when the countless spirits she has enslaved without subduing have once learned their number and efficiency they will hold her doctrines at their mercy.—­The Church again,” he continued, “has proved her astuteness in making faith the gift of grace and not the result of reason.  By so doing she placed herself in a position which was well-nigh impregnable till the school of Newton substituted observation for intuition and his followers showed with increasing clearness the inability of the human mind to apprehend anything outside the range of experience.  The ultimate claim of the Church rests on the hypothesis of an intuitive faculty in man.  Disprove the existence of this faculty, and reason must remain the supreme test of truth.  Against reason the fabric of theological doctrine cannot long hold out, and the Church’s doctrinal authority once shaken, men will no longer fear to test by ordinary rules the practical results of her teaching.  We have not joined the great army of truth to waste our time in vain disputations over metaphysical subtleties.  Our aim is, by freeing the mind of man from superstition to relieve him from the practical abuses it entails.  As it is impossible to examine any fiscal or industrial problem without discovering that the chief obstacle to improvement lies in the Church’s countless privileges and exemptions, so in every department of human activity we find some inveterate wrong taking shelter under the claim of a divinely-revealed authority.  This claim demolished, the stagnant current of human progress will soon burst its barriers and set with a mighty rush toward the wide ocean of truth and freedom…”

That general belief in the perfectibility of man which cheered the eighteenth-century thinkers in their struggle for intellectual liberty coloured with a delightful brightness this vision of a renewed humanity.  It threw its beams on every branch of research, and shone like an aureole round those who laid down fortune and advancement to purchase the new redemption of mankind.  Foremost among these, as Odo now learned, were many of his own countrymen.  In his talks with Vivaldi he first explored the course of Italian thought and heard the names of the great jurists, Vico and Gravina, and of his own contemporaries, Filangieri, Verri and Beccaria.  Vivaldi lent him Beccaria’s famous volume and several numbers of the “Caffe,” the brilliant gazette which Verri and his associates were then publishing in Milan, and in which all the questions of the day, theological, economic and literary, were discussed with a freedom possible only under the lenient Austrian rule.

“Ah,” Vivaldi cried, “Milan is indeed the home of the free spirit, and were I not persuaded that a man’s first duty is to improve the condition of his own city and state, I should long ago have left this unhappy kingdom; indeed I sometimes fancy I may yet serve my own people better by proclaiming the truth openly at a distance than by whispering it in their midst.”

It was a surprise to Odo to learn that the new ideas had already taken such hold in Italy, and that some of the foremost thinkers on scientific and economic subjects were among his own countrymen.  Like all eighteenth-century Italians of his class he had been taught to look to France as the source of all culture, intellectual and social; and he was amazed to find that in jurisprudence, and in some of the natural sciences, Italy led the learning of Europe.

Once or twice Fulvia showed herself for a moment; but her manner was retiring and almost constrained, and her father always contrived an excuse for dismissing her.  This was the more noticeable as she continued to appear at the meetings of the Honey-Bees, where she joined freely in the conversation, and sometimes diverted the guests by playing on the harpsichord or by recitations from the poets; all with such art and grace, and withal so much simplicity, that it was clear she was accustomed to the part.  Odo was thus driven to the not unflattering conclusion that she had been instructed to avoid his company; and after the first disappointment he was too honest to regret it.  He was deeply drawn to the girl; but what part could she play in the life of a man of his rank?  The cadet of an impoverished house, it was unlikely that he would marry; and should he do so, custom forbade even the thought of taking a wife outside of his class.  Had he been admitted to free intercourse with Fulvia, love might have routed such prudent counsels; but in the society of her father’s associates, where she moved, as in a halo of learning, amid the respectful admiration of middle-aged philosophers and jurists, she seemed as inaccessible as a young Minerva.

Odo, at first, had been careful not to visit Vivaldi too often; but the Professor’s conversation was so instructive, and his library so inviting, that inclination got the better of prudence, and the young man fell into the habit of turning almost daily down the lane behind the Corpus Domini.  Vivaldi, too proud to betray any concern for his personal safety, showed no sign of resenting the frequency of these visits; indeed, he received Odo with an increasing cordiality that, to an older observer, might have betokened an effort to hide his apprehension.

One afternoon, escaping later than usual from the Valentino, Odo had again bent toward the quiet quarter behind the palace.  He was afoot, with a cloak over his laced coat, and the day being Easter Monday the streets were filled with a throng of pleasure-seekers amid whom it seemed easy enough for a man to pass unnoticed.  Odo, as he crossed the Piazza Castello, thought it had never presented a gayer scene.  Booths with brightly-striped awnings had been set up under the arcades, which were thronged with idlers of all classes; court-coaches dashed across the square or rolled in and out of the palace-gates; and the Palazzo Madama, lifting against the sunset its ivory-tinted columns and statues, seemed rather some pictured fabric of Claude’s or Bibbiena’s than an actual building of brick and marble.  The turn of a corner carried him from this spectacle into the solitude of a by-street where his own tread was the only sound.  He walked on carelessly; but suddenly he heard what seemed an echo of his step.  He stopped and faced about.  No one was in sight but a blind beggar crouching at the side-door of the Corpus Domini.  Odo walked on, listening, and again he heard the step, and again turned to find himself alone.  He tried to fancy that his ear had tricked him; but he knew too much of the subtle methods of Italian espionage not to feel a secret uneasiness.  His better judgment warned him back; but the desire to spend a pleasant hour prevailed.  He took a turn through the neighbouring streets, in the hope of diverting suspicion, and ten minutes later was at the Professor’s gate.

It opened at once, and to his amazement Fulvia stood before him.  She had thrown a black mantle over her head, and her face looked pale and vivid in the fading light.  Surprise for a moment silenced Odo, and before he could speak the girl, without pausing to close the gate, had drawn him toward her and flung her arms about his neck.  In the first disorder of his senses he was conscious only of seeking her lips; but an instant later he knew it was no kiss of love that met his own, and he felt her tremble violently in his arms.  He saw in a flash that he was on unknown ground; but his one thought was that Fulvia was in trouble and looked to him for aid.  He gently freed himself from her hold and tried to shape a soothing question; but she caught his arm and, laying a hand over his mouth, drew him across the garden and into the house.  The lower floor stood dark and empty.  He followed Fulvia up the stairs and into the library, which was also empty.  The shutters stood wide, admitting the evening freshness and a drowsy scent of jasmine from the garden.

Odo could not control a thrill of strange anticipation as he found himself alone in this silent room with the girl whose heart had so lately beat against his own.  She had sunk into a chair, with her face hidden, and for a moment or two he stood before her without speaking.  Then he knelt at her side and took her hands with a murmur of endearment.

At his touch she started up.  “And it was I,” she cried, “who persuaded my father that he might trust you!” And she sank back sobbing.

Odo rose and moved away, waiting for her overwrought emotion to subside.  At length he gently asked, “Do you wish me to leave you?”

She raised her head.  “No,” she said firmly, though her lip still trembled; “you must first hear an explanation of my conduct; though it is scarce possible,” she added, flushing to the brow, “that you have not already guessed the purpose of this lamentable comedy.”

“I guess nothing,” he replied, “save that perhaps I may in some way serve you.”

“Serve me?” she cried, with a flash of anger through her tears.  “It is a late hour to speak of service, after what you have brought on this house!”

Odo turned pale.  “Here indeed, madam,” said he, “are words that need an explanation.”

“Oh,” she broke forth, “and you shall have it; though I think to any other it must be writ large upon my countenance.”  She rose and paced the floor impetuously.  “Is it possible,” she began again, “you do not yet perceive the sense of that execrable scene?  Or do you think, by feigning ignorance, to prolong my humiliation?  Oh,” she said, pausing before him, her breast in a tumult, her eyes alight, “it was I who persuaded my father of your discretion and prudence, it was through my influence that he opened himself to you so freely; and is this the return you make?  Alas, why did you leave your fashionable friends and a world in which you are so fitted to shine, to bring unhappiness on an obscure household that never dreamed of courting your notice?”

As she stood before him in her radiant anger, it went hard with Odo not to silence with a kiss a resentment that he guessed to be mainly directed against herself; but he controlled himself and said quietly:  “Madam, I were a dolt not to perceive that I have had the misfortune to offend; but when or how, I swear to heaven I know not; and till you enlighten me I can neither excuse nor defend myself.”

She turned pale, but instantly recovered her composure.  “You are right,” she said; “I rave like a foolish girl; but indeed I scarce know if I am in my waking senses”—­She paused, as if to check a fresh rush of emotion.  “Oh, sir,” she cried, “can you not guess what has happened?  You were warned, I believe, not to frequent this house too openly; but of late you have been an almost daily visitor, and you never come here but you are followed.  My father’s doctrines have long been under suspicion, and to be accused of perverting a man of your rank must be his ruin.  He was too proud to tell you this, and profiting today by his absence, and knowing that if you came the spies would be at your heels, I resolved to meet you at the gate, and welcome you in such a way that our enemies should be deceived as to the true cause of your visits.”

Her voice wavered on the last words, but she faced him proudly, and it was Odo whose gaze fell.  Never perhaps had he been conscious of cutting a meaner figure; yet shame was so blent in him with admiration for the girl’s nobility and courage, that compunction was swept away in the impulse that flung him at her feet.

“Ah,” he cried, “I have been blind indeed, and what you say abases me to earth.  Yes, I was warned that my visits might compromise your father; nor had I any pretext for returning so often but my own selfish pleasure in his discourse; or so at least,” he added in a lower voice, “I chose to fancy—­but when we met just now at the gate, if you acted a comedy, believe me, I did not; and if I have come day after day to this house, it is because, unknowingly, I came for you.”

The words had escaped him unawares, and he was too sensible of their untimeliness not to be prepared for the gesture with which she cut him short.

“Oh,” said she, in a tone of the liveliest reproach, “spare me this last affront if you wish me to think the harm you have already done was done unknowingly!”

Odo rose to his feet, tingling under the rebuke.  “If respect and admiration be an affront, madam,” he said, “I cannot remain in your presence without offending, and nothing is left me but to withdraw; but before going I would at least ask if there is no way of repairing the harm that my over-assiduity has caused.”

She flushed high at the question.  “Why, that,” she said, “is in part, I trust, already accomplished; indeed,” she went on with an effort, “it was when I learned the authorities suspected you of coming here on a gallant adventure that I devised the idea of meeting you at the gate; and for the rest, sir, the best reparation you can make is one that will naturally suggest itself to a gentleman whose time must already be so fully engaged.”

And with that she made him a deep reverence, and withdrew to the inner room.