Vittoria, v4

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VITTORIA

By George Meredith

BOOK 4.

XX. THE OPERA OF CAMILLA
XXI. THE THIRD ACT
XXII. WILFRID COMES FORWARD
XXIII. FIRST HOURS OF THE FLIGHT
XXIV. ADVENTURES OF VITTORIA AND ANGELO
XXV. ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER XX

THE OPERA OF CAMILLA

She was dressed like a noble damsel from the hands of Titian. An Italian
audience cannot but be critical in their first glance at a prima donna,
for they are asked to do homage to a queen who is to be taken on her
merits: all that they have heard and have been taught to expect of her is
compared swiftly with the observation of her appearance and her manner.
She is crucially examined to discover defects. There is no boisterous
loyalty at the outset. And as it was now evident that Vittoria had
chosen to impersonate a significant character, her indications of method
were jealously watched for a sign of inequality, either in her, motion,
or the force of her eyes. So silent a reception might have seemed cruel
in any other case; though in all cases the candidate for laurels must, in
common with the criminal, go through the ordeal of justification. Men do
not heartily bow their heads until they have subjected the aspirant to
some personal contest, and find themselves overmatched. The senses,
ready to become so slavish in adulation and delight, are at the beginning
more exacting than the judgement, more imperious than the will. A figure
in amber and pale blue silk was seen, such as the great Venetian might
have sketched from his windows on a day when the Doge went forth to wed
the Adriatic a superb Italian head, with dark banded hair-braid, and dark
strong eyes under unabashed soft eyelids! She moved as, after long
gazing at a painting of a fair woman, we may have the vision of her
moving from the frame. It was an animated picture of ideal Italia.
The sea of heads right up to the highest walls fronted her glistening,
and she was mute as moonrise. A virgin who loosens a dove from her bosom
does it with no greater effort than Vittoria gave out her voice. The
white bird flutters rapidly; it circles and takes its flight. The voice
seemed to be as little the singer's own.

The theme was as follows:--Camilla has dreamed overnight that her lost
mother came to her bedside to bless her nuptials. Her mother was folded
in a black shroud, looking formless as death, like very death, save that
death sheds no tears. She wept, without change of voice, or mortal
shuddering, like one whose nature weeps: 'And with the forth-flowing of
her tears the knowledge of her features was revealed to me.' Behold the
Adige, the Mincio, Tiber, and the Po!--such great rivers were the tears
pouring from her eyes. She threw apart the shroud: her breasts and her
limbs were smooth and firm as those of an immortal Goddess: but breasts
and limbs showed the cruel handwriting of base men upon the body of a
martyred saint. The blood from those deep gashes sprang out at
intervals, mingling with her tears. She said:

'My child! were I a Goddess, my wounds would heal. Were I a Saint, I
should be in Paradise. I am no Goddess, and no Saint: yet I cannot die.
My wounds flow and my tears. My tears flow because of no fleshly
anguish: I pardon my enemies. My blood flows from my body, my tears from
my soul. They flow to wash out my shame. I have to expiate my soul's
shame by my body's shame. Oh! how shall I tell you what it is to walk
among my children unknown of them, though each day I bear the sun abroad
like my beating heart; each night the moon, like a heart with no blood in
it. Sun and moon they see, but not me! They know not their mother. I
cry to God. The answer of our God is this:--"Give to thy children one by
one to drink of thy mingled tears and blood:--then, if there is virtue in
them, they shall revive, thou shaft revive. If virtue is not in them,
they and thou shall continue prostrate, and the ox shall walk over you."
From heaven's high altar, O Camilla, my child, this silver sacramental
cup was reached to me. Gather my tears in it, fill it with my blood, and
drink.'

The song had been massive in monotones, almost Gregorian in its severity
up to this point.

'I took the cup. I looked my mother in the face. I filled the cup from
the flowing of her tears, the flowing of her blood; and I drank!'

Vittoria sent this last phrase ringing out forcefully. From the
inveterate contralto of the interview, she rose to pure soprano in
describing her own action. 'And I drank,' was given on a descent of the
voice: the last note was in the minor key--it held the ear as if more
must follow: like a wail after a triumph of resolve. It was a
masterpiece of audacious dramatic musical genius addressed with sagacious
cunning and courage to the sympathizing audience present. The supposed
incompleteness kept them listening; the intentness sent that last falling
(as it were, broken) note travelling awakeningly through their minds.
It is the effect of the minor key to stir the hearts of men with this
particular suggestiveness. The house rose, Italians--and Germans
together. Genius, music, and enthusiasm break the line of nationalities.
A rain of nosegays fell about Vittoria; evvivas, bravas, shouts--all the
outcries of delirious men surrounded her. Men and women, even among the
hardened chorus, shook together and sobbed. 'Agostino!' and 'Rocco!'
were called; 'Vittoria!' 'Vittoria!' above all, with increasing thunder,
like a storm rushing down a valley, striking in broad volume from rock to
rock, humming remote, and bursting up again in the face of the vale. Her
name was sung over and over--'Vittoria! Vittoria!' as if the mouths were
enamoured of it.

'Evviva la Vittoria a d' Italia!' was sung out from the body of the
house.

An echo replied--

'"Italia a il premio della VITTORIA!"' a well-known saying gloriously
adapted, gloriously rescued from disgrace.

But the object and source of the tremendous frenzy stood like one frozen
by the revelation of the magic the secret of which she has studiously
mastered. A nosegay, the last of the tributary shower, discharged from a
distance, fell at her feet. She gave it unconsciously preference over
the rest, and picked it up. A little paper was fixed in the centre. She
opened it with a mechanical hand, thinking there might be patriotic
orders enclosed for her. It was a cheque for one thousand guineas, drawn
upon an English banker by the hand of Antonio-Pericles Agriolopoulos;
freshly drawn; the ink was only half dried, showing signs of the dictates
of a furious impulse. This dash of solid prose, and its convincing proof
that her Art had been successful, restored Vittoria's composure, though
not her early statuesque simplicity. Rocco gave an inquiring look to see
if she would repeat the song. She shook her head resolutely. Her
opening of the paper in the bouquet had quieted the general ebullition,
and the expression of her wish being seen, the chorus was permitted to
usurp her place. Agostino paced up and down the lobby, fearful that he
had been guilty of leading her to anticlimax.

He met Antonio-Pericles, and told him so; adding (for now the mask had
been seen through, and was useless any further) that he had not had the
heart to put back that vision of Camilla's mother to a later scene, lest
an interruption should come which would altogether preclude its being
heard. Pericles affected disdain of any success which Vittoria had yet
achieved. 'Wait for Act the Third,' he said; but his irritable
anxiousness to hold intercourse with every one, patriot or critic,
German, English, or Italian, betrayed what agitation of exultation
coursed in his veins. 'Aha!' was his commencement of a greeting; 'was
Antonio-Pericles wrong when he told you that he had a prima donna for you
to amaze all Christendom, and whose notes were safe and firm as the
footing of the angels up and down Jacob's ladder, my friends? Aha!'

'Do you see that your uncle is signalling to you?' Countess Lena said to
Wilfrid. He answered like a man in a mist, and looked neither at her nor
at the General, who, in default of his obedience to gestures, came good-
humouredly to the box, bringing Captain Weisspriess with him.

'We 're assisting at a pretty show,' he said.

'I am in love with her voice,' said Countess Anna.

'Ay; if it were only a matter of voices, countess.'

'I think that these good people require a trouncing,' said Captain
Weisspriess.

'Lieutenant Pierson is not of your opinion,' Countess Anna remarked.
Hearing his own name, Wilfrid turned to them with a weariness well acted,
but insufficiently to a jealous observation, for his eyes were quick
under the carelessly-dropped eyelids, and ranged keenly over the stage
while they were affecting to assist his fluent tongue.

Countess Lena levelled her opera-glass at Carlo Ammiani, and then placed
the glass in her sister's hand. Wilfrid drank deep of bitterness. 'That
is Vittoria's lover,' he thought; 'the lover of the Emilia who once loved
me!'

General Pierson may have noticed this by-play: he said to his nephew in
the brief military tone: 'Go out; see that the whole regiment is handy
about the house; station a dozen men, with a serjeant, at each of the
backdoors, and remain below. I very much mistake, or we shall have to
make a capture of this little woman to-night.'

'How on earth,' he resumed, while Wilfrid rose savagely and went out with
his stiffest bow, 'this opera was permitted to appear, I can't guess! A
child could see through it. The stupidity of our civil authorities
passes my understanding--it's a miracle! We have stringent orders not to
take any initiative, or I would stop the Fraulein Camilla from uttering
another note.'

'If you did that, I should be angry with you, General,' said Countess
Anna.

'And I also think the Government cannot do wrong,' Countess Lena joined
in.

The General contented himself by saying: 'Well, we shall see.'

Countess Lena talked to Captain Weisspriess in an undertone, referring to
what she called his dispute with Carlo Ammiani. The captain was
extremely playful in rejoinders.

'You iron man!' she exclaimed.

'Man of steel would be the better phrase,' her sister whispered.

'It will be an assassination, if it happens.'

'No officer can bear with an open insult, Lena.'

'I shall not sit and see harm done to my old playmate, Anna.'

'Beware of betraying yourself for one who detests you.'

A grand duo between Montini and Vittoria silenced all converse. Camilla
tells Camillo of her dream. He pledges his oath to discover her mother,
if alive; if dead, to avenge her. Camilla says she believes her mother
is in the dungeons of Count Orso's castle. The duo tasked Vittoria's
execution of florid passages; it gave evidence of her sound artistic
powers.

'I was a fool,' thought Antonio-Pericles; 'I flung my bouquet with the
herd. I was a fool! I lost my head!'

He tapped angrily at the little ink-flask in his coat-pocket. The first
act, after scenes between false Camillo and Michiella, ends with the
marriage of Camillo and Camilla;--a quatuor composed of Montini,
Vittoria, Irma, and Lebruno. Michiella is in despair; Count Orso is
profoundly sonorous with paternity and devotion to the law. He has
restored to Camilla a portion of her mother's sequestrated estates.
A portion of the remainder will be handed over to her when he has had
experience of her husband's good behaviour. The rest he considers
legally his own by right of (Treaties), and by right of possession and
documents his sword. Yonder castle he must keep. It is the key of all
his other territories. Without it, his position will be insecure.
(Allusion to the Austrian argument that the plains of Lombardy are the
strategic defensive lines of the Alps.)

Agostino, pursued by his terror of anticlimax, ran from the sight of
Vittoria when she was called, after the fall of the curtain. He made his
way to Rocco Ricci (who had given his bow to the public from his perch),
and found the maestro drinking Asti to counteract his natural excitement.
Rocco told Agostino, that up to the last moment, neither he nor any soul
behind the scenes knew Vittoria would be able to appear, except that she
had sent a note to him with a pledge to be in readiness for the call.
Irma had come flying in late, enraged, and in disorder, praying to take
Camilla's part; but Montini refused to act with the seconda donna as
prima donna. They had commenced the opera in uncertainty whether it
could go on beyond the situation where Camilla presents herself. 'I was
prepared to throw up my baton,' said Rocco, 'and publicly to charge the
Government with the rape of our prima donna. Irma I was ready to
replace. I could have filled that gap.' He spoke of Vittoria's triumph.
Agostino's face darkened. 'Ha!' said he, 'provided we don't fall flat,
like your Asti with the cork out. I should have preferred an enthusiasm
a trifle more progressive. The notion of travelling backwards is upon me
forcibly, after that tempest of acclamation.'

'Or do you think that you have put your best poetry in the first Act?'
Rocco suggested with malice.

'Not a bit of it!' Agostino repudiated the idea very angrily, and puffed
and puffed. Yet he said, 'I should not be lamenting if the opera were
stopped at once.'

'No!' cried Rocco; 'let us have our one night. I bargain for that.
Medole has played us false, but we go on. We are victims already, my
Agostino.'

'But I do stipulate,' said Agostino, 'that my jewel is not to melt
herself in the cup to-night. I must see her. As it is, she is
inevitably down in the list for a week's or a month's incarceration.'

Antonio-Pericles had this, in his case, singular piece of delicacy, that
he refrained from the attempt to see Vittoria immediately after he had
flung his magnificent bouquet of treasure at her feet. In his
intoxication with the success which he had foreseen and cradled to its
apogee, he was now reckless of any consequences. He felt ready to take
patriotic Italy in his arms, provided that it would succeed as Vittoria
had done, and on the spot. Her singing of the severe phrases of the
opening chant, or hymn, had turned the man, and for a time had put a new
heart in him. The consolation was his also, that he had rewarded it the
most splendidly--as it were, in golden italics of praise; so that her
forgiveness of his disinterested endeavour to transplant her was certain,
and perhaps her future implicit obedience or allegiance bought. Meeting
General Pierson, the latter rallied him.

'Why, my fine Pericles, your scheme to get this girl out of the way was
capitally concerted. My only fear is that on another occasion the
Government will take another view of it and you.'

Pericles shrugged. 'The Gods, my dear General, decree. I did my best to
lay a case before them; that is all.'

'Ah, well! I am of opinion you will not lay many other cases before the
Gods who rule in Milan.'

'I have helped them to a good opera.'

'Are you aware that this opera consists entirely of political allusions?'

General Pierson spoke offensively, as the urbane Austrian military
permitted themselves to do upon occasion when addressing the conquered or
civilians.

'To me,' returned Pericles, 'an opera--it is music. I know no more.'

'You are responsible for it,' said the General, harshly. 'It was taken
upon trust from you.'

'Brutal Austrians!' Pericles murmured. 'And you do not think much of her
voice, General?'

'Pretty fair, sir.'

'What wonder she does not care to open her throat to these swine!'
thought the changed Greek.

Vittoria's door was shut to Agostino. No voice within gave answer. He
tried the lock of the door, and departed. She sat in a stupor. It was
harder for her to make a second appearance than it was to make the first,
when the shameful suspicion cruelly attached to her had helped to balance
her steps with rebellious pride; and more, the great collected wave of
her ambitious years of girlhood had cast her forward to the spot, as in a
last effort for consummation. Now that she had won the public voice
(love, her heart called it) her eyes looked inward; she meditated upon
what she had to do, and coughed nervously. She frightened herself with
her coughing, and shivered at the prospect of again going forward in the
great nakedness of stagelights and thirsting eyes. And, moreover, she
was not strengthened by the character of the music and the poetry of the
second Act:--a knowledge of its somewhat inferior quality may possibly
have been at the root of Agostino's dread of an anticlimax. The seconda
donna had the chief part in it--notably an aria (Rocco had given it to
her in compassion) that suited Irma's pure shrieks and the tragic
skeleton she could be. Vittoria knew how low she was sinking when she
found her soul in the shallows of a sort of jealousy of Irma. For a
little space she lost all intimacy with herself; she looked at her face
in the glass and swallowed water, thinking that she had strained a dream
and confused her brain with it. The silence of her solitary room coming
upon the blaze of light the colour and clamour of the house, and the
strange remembrance of the recent impersonation of an ideal character,
smote her with the sense of her having fallen from a mighty eminence,
and that she lay in the dust. All those incense-breathing flowers heaped
on her table seemed poisonous, and reproached her as a delusion. She sat
crouching alone till her tirewomen called; horrible talkative things!
her own familiar maid Giacinta being the worst to bear with.

Now, Michiella, by making love to Leonardo, Camillo's associate,
discovers that Camillo is conspiring against her father. She utters to
Leonardo very pleasant promises indeed, if he will betray his friend.
Leonardo, a wavering baritono, complains that love should ask for any
return save in the coin of the empire of love. He is seduced, and
invokes a malediction upon his head should he accomplish what he has
sworn to perform. Camilla reposes perfect confidence in this wretch, and
brings her more doubtful husband to be of her mind.

Camillo and Camilla agree to wear the mask of a dissipated couple.
They throw their mansion open; dicing, betting, intriguing, revellings,
maskings, commence. Michiella is courted ardently by Camillo; Camilla
trifles with Leonardo and with Count Orso alternately. Jealous again
of Camilla, Michiella warns and threatens Leonardo; but she becomes
Camillo's dupe, partly from returning love, partly from desire for
vengeance on her rival. Camilla persuades Orso to discard Michiella.
The infatuated count waxes as the personification of portentous
burlesque; he is having everything his own way. The acting throughout--
owing to the real gravity of the vast basso Lebruno's burlesque, and
Vittoria's archness--was that of high comedy with a lurid background.
Vittoria showed an enchanting spirit of humour. She sang one bewitching
barcarole that set the house in rocking motion. There was such
melancholy in her heart that she cast herself into all the flippancy with
abandonment. The Act was weak in too distinctly revealing the finger of
the poetic political squib at a point here and there. The temptation to
do it of an Agostino, who had no other outlet, had been irresistible, and
he sat moaning over his artistic depravity, now that it stared him in the
face. Applause scarcely consoled him, and it was with humiliation of
mind that he acknowledged his debt to the music and the singers, and how
little they owed to him.

Now Camillo is pleased to receive the ardent passion of his wife, and the
masking suits his taste, but it is the vice of his character that he
cannot act to any degree subordinately in concert; he insists upon
positive headship!--(allusion to an Italian weakness for sovereignties;
it passed unobserved, and chuckled bitterly over his excess of subtlety).
Camillo cannot leave the scheming to her. He pursues Michiella to subdue
her with blandishments. Reproaches cease upon her part. There is a duo
between them. They exchange the silver keys, which express absolute
intimacy, and give mutual freedom of access. Camillo can now secrete his
followers in the castle; Michiella can enter Camilla's blue-room, and
ravage her caskets for treasonable correspondence. Artfully she bids him
reflect on what she is forfeiting for him; and so helps him to put aside
the thought of that which he also may be imperilling.

Irma's shrill crescendos and octave-leaps, assisted by her peculiar
attitudes of strangulation, came out well in this scene. The murmurs
concerning the sour privileges to be granted by a Lazzeruola were
inaudible. But there has been a witness to the stipulation. The ever-
shifting baritono, from behind a pillar, has joined in with an aside
phrase here and there. Leonardo discovers that his fealty to Camilla is
reviving. He determines to watch over her. Camillo now tosses a
perfumed handkerchief under his nose, and inhales the coxcombical incense
of the idea that he will do all without Camilla's aid, to surprise her;
thereby teaching her to know him to be somewhat a hero. She has played
her part so thoroughly that he can choose to fancy her a giddy person;
he remarks upon the frequent instances of girls who in their girlhood
were wild dreamers becoming after marriage wild wives. His followers
assemble, that he may take advantage of the exchanged key of silver.
He is moved to seek one embrace of Camilla before the conflict:--she is
beautiful! There was never such beauty as hers! He goes to her in the
fittest preparation for the pangs of jealousy. But he has not been
foremost in practising the uses of silver keys. Michiella, having first
arranged with her father to be before Camillo's doors at a certain hour
with men-at-arms, is in Camilla's private chamber, with her hand upon a
pregnant box of ebony wood, when she is startled by a noise, and slips
into concealment. Leonardo bursts through the casement window. Camilla
then appears. Leonardo stretches the tips of his fingers out to her; on
his knees confesses his guilt and warns her. Camillo comes in.
Thrusting herself before him, Michiella points to the stricken couple
'See! it is to show you this that I am here.' Behold occasion for a
grand quatuor!

While confessing his guilt to Camilla, Leonardo has excused it by an
emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in
fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning,
for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor
bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great
patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian intrigue) has any love, it is for
such a tool. She cannot afford to lose him. She pleads for him; and, as
Camilla is silent on his account, the cynical magnanimity of Camillo is
predisposed to spare a fangless snake. Michiella withdraws him from the
naked sword to the back of the stage. The terrible repudiation scene
ensues, in which Camillo casts off his wife. If it was a puzzle to one
Italian half of the audience, the other comprehended it perfectly, and
with rapture. It was thus that YOUNG ITALY had too often been treated by
the compromising, merely discontented, dallying aristocracy. Camilla
cries to him, 'Have faith in me! have faith in me! have faith in me!'
That is the sole answer to his accusations, his threats of eternal
loathing, and generally blustering sublimities. She cannot defend
herself; she only knows her innocence. He is inexorable, being the
guilty one of the two. Turning from him with crossed arms, Camilla
sings:

'Mother! it is my fate that I should know
Thy miseries, and in thy footprints go.
Grief treads the starry places of the earth:
In thy long track I feel who gave me birth.
I am alone; a wife without a lord;
My home is with the stranger--home abhorr'd!--
But that I trust to meet thy spirit there.
Mother of Sorrows! joy thou canst not share:
So let me wander in among the tombs,
Among the cypresses and the withered blooms.
Thy soul is with dead suns: there let me be;
A silent thing that shares thy veil with thee.'

The wonderful viol-like trembling of the contralto tones thrilled through
the house. It was the highest homage to Vittoria that no longer any
shouts arose nothing but a prolonged murmur, as when one tells another a
tale of deep emotion, and all exclamations, all ulterior thoughts, all
gathered tenderness of sensibility, are reserved for the close, are seen
heaping for the close, like waters above a dam. The flattery of
beholding a great assembly of human creatures bound glittering in wizard
subservience to the voice of one soul, belongs to the artist, and is the
cantatrice's glory, pre-eminent over whatever poor glory this world
gives. She felt it, but she felt it as something apart. Within her was
the struggle of Italy calling to Italy: Italy's shame, her sadness, her
tortures, her quenchless hope, and the view of Freedom. It sent her
blood about her body in rebellious volumes. Once it completely strangled
her notes. She dropped the ball of her chin in her throat; paused
without ceremony; and recovered herself. Vittoria had too severe an
artistic instinct to court reality; and as much as she could she from
that moment corrected the underlinings of Agostino's libretto.

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