Poems (May)/Count Julio
COUNT JULIO.
Mid halls beneath whose fretted cornices Echo still babbles of a glorious past, Dwelt Julio the miser. Dwelt Julio the miser.Nobly born, Reared among palaces, and trained from youth To the gay vices of a liberal age, How came it now that year by year sped on To leave the proud count in his silent halls Hoarding the gold once lavished? Hoarding the gold once lavished?Young and fair,The haughtiest noble of the Roman court,The stateliest of the high-born throng that graced Its princely revels, he had left the feast,Bidding the bright wine that he quaffed in parting Be to him thence accursed. Never more Checked he his courser by the Tiber's banks,Nor struck the sweet chords of his lute, nor trod Glad measures with the bright-lipped Roman dames. And from the lintels of his banquet hall The spider balanced on her gossamer thread; Dust heaped the silken couches; and where swept Golden fringed curtains to the chequered floor, The rat gnawed silently, and gray moths fed On the rich produce of the Indian loom. Men shunned his threshold, and his palace doors Creaked on their rusty hinges. Prince and peasant Alike turned coldly at his coming step. The very beggar that at noontide lay Basking 'neath sunlight in the quiet street,Stretched not his hand forth as the miser passed.
He cared not for their scorn; man's breath to him Was as the wind that sweeps a blasted oak And finds no leaf to flutter. Fate had left Only two things on earth for him to love—The gold he heaped, and the fair motherless child Who, by his side, grew up to womanhood—And these he worshipped, loathing all things else. His couch was meager as a cloistered monk's; Bianca's head was pillowed upon down; His fare was scanty, and his garments coarse,But she was clad like princes, and her board Heaped with the costliest viands. From the world He shrank abhorrent, but Bianca shone Proudest and fairest in a brilliant court. Her youth had been most lonely. At his side To watch the piling of the golden heaps He told so greedily; to play alone In gardens where no hand had put aside The flowers and weeds that in one tangled woof Hung o'er the fountain's dusty bed, and crept Round the tall porticoes: perchance to sit Hour after hour all silent at his feet,Twining her small arms and her baby throat With the rare treasures that his caskets held; Rubies, and pearls, and flashing carcanets, Her costly playthings; all companionless, These were her childish pastimes. Years wore on, Till the close dawn of perfect womanhood Flushed in her cheek and brightened in her eye. And the girl learned to know how fair the face Those dingy walls had cloistered from the sun; To bear her head more proudly, and to step, If not so lightly, with a queenlier tread. Love-songs were framed for her, her midnight sleep Was broken by the sound of silver lutes,And the young gallants caracoled their steeds Grayly, at eve, beneath her balcony.
She went forth to the world, and careless lips Told her the shame that was her heritage. And scornful fingers pointed, as she passed,To the rare jewels, and the broidered robes, That decked the miser's daughter. Envious tongues Gilded anew the half-forgotten tale,And it became the marvel of all Rome. Thus till the diadem of gems and gold Burned on her white brow like a circling flame, And she went writhing home, to weep, to loathe The sordid parent who had brought this blight Upon the joyous promise of her youth. It was the still noon of a summer night,When the young countess from her father's roof Fled, with a noble of the Roman court! Morn came, and through the empty corridors, The balconies, the gardens, the wide halls,In vain they sought her. Noon passed by, and then The truth was guessed, not spoken. Silently Count Julio trod the marble staircases,And pausing by the door that once was hers,Stood a brief moment, and then, pressing on,Stepped through the quiet chamber. All was still,Bearing no traces of her recent flight. Here lay a slipper, here a silken robe,And here a lute thrown down, with a white glove Flung carelessly beside it. Still the air Breathed of the delicate perfumes she had loved!
He glanced but once around the silent room,Then from the mirrored and silk-draperied walls Cast his eye down-ward o'er his shrunken form, His meager garments. Few the words he spake, And muttered low; hut in them came a curse So blasphemous, so hideous in its depth Of impotent rage, that they who at his side Yet stood in lingering pity, with blanched lips Turned to the threshold, and crept shuddering forth.
He breathed his sorrow to no human ear, But left it charnelled in his heart, to breed Corruption there. None knew how wearily The hours passed on beneath those lonely walls; None saw him when, by midnight still a watcher, Starting and trembling as, inconstantly,The night winds swayed the curtains to and fro; Fancying the rustle of her silken robe,Her footfall on the staircase! Time sped on,To strike the dulled bloom from his cheek, and scare The soul that once had queened it on his brow: A bent and worn old man, upon whose breast Hung the neglected masses of his beard,With meager hands habitually clenched, Till the sharp nails wore furrows in the palms. Thus stole he forth at even, and, with eyes Lost in the golden future of his dreams, Sped through the busy crowd, unmarked, unheeding.
Once had he looked upon Bianca's face—Once had she knelt before him, with her child Gasping upon her breast, and prayed for succour. The unwept victim of a drunken brawl Her lord had fallen, and the palace halls That owned her mistress, were deserted now. She had braved fear and hunger, till her child Wailed dying on her bosom; and so urged, Pride, shame, forgotten in a mother's love,Clung to his knees for pardon. But in vain. He cursed her as she knelt, bade her go forth,And 'mid the loathsome suppliants that unveil Disease and suffering to the eye of wealth,Bare, too, her anguish to the glance of pity. Then as she lingered, spurned her from his feet With words that chilled her agony to dread, And drove her thence in horror. And drove her thence in horror.From that day From that day His very blood seemed, charged with bitterness. Miser and usurer both, upon the 'wrecks Of others' happiness he built his own. His name became accursed in the land, And with his withering soul his body grew Scarce human in its ghastly hideousness.
The bulb enshrouds the lily, and within The most unsightly form may folded lie The white wings of an angel. But in him Seemed all the sweet humanities of life Coldly encharnelled, and no hand divine Rolled from his breast the weary weight of sin,To bid them go forth unto suffering man Like gracious ministers. Like gracious ministers.And she, alas! Whom he had madly driven forth to ruin? Earth hath no words to tell how dark the change That clothed her fallen spirit. O'er the waste Of want and ruin that engulfed her fortunes, She had sent forth the white dove, purity, And it returned no more. The Roman dames Took not her name upon their scornful lips. Her form became a model for the artist, And her rare face went down to future ages Limned on his canvass. Ye may mark it yet In the long galleries of the Vatican, Varied, yet still the same. Now robed in pride, As monarchs in their garb of Tyrian purple; Now with a Magdalen's blue mantle drawn Over the bending forehead. As the marble Sleeps in unsullied whiteness on the tomb,Taking no taint from the foul thing it covers,Her beauty bore no blight from guilt, but lived A monument that made her name immortal.
Night had uprisen, clothed with storms and gloom.No taper lit the solitary hall, But to and fro with feeble steps its lord Paced through the darkness. Midnight came, and then Pausing beside the groaning door that weighed Its rusty hinge. Count Julio, crouching, peered Into the gloom without; for stealthy feet Whose echo struck upon his wary ear, Had crossed the lower hall, and slowly now Trod the great staircase.
Trod the great staircase.'Twas no robber's step,Faint, slow, and halting ever and anon As though in weariness. His sharpened sense Caught, 'mid the fitful pauses of the wind, The headlong dashing of the driven rain, A sound of painful breathing, nay, of sobs, Bursting, and then as suddenly suppressed.
Shuddering he stood, and, as the storm's red bolt Leapt through the windows, lighting, as it passed, A dusky shape that cowered at the flash, He shrank within the chamber, and again Listened in silence. Listened in silence.Nearer came the sound,—A tall form crossed the threshold, and threw back What seemed a heavy mantle. Then again Glanced the pale lightning, and Count Julio knew,By the long hair that swept her garments' hem, Bianca!
They who through that night of fear Kept watch with storm and terror till the morn, Bore its dark memories even to the tomb. For shrieks and cries seemed mingled with the wind, And voices, as of warring fiends, prevailedO'er its low mutterings! O'er its low mutterings!Morn awoke at last,And with its earliest gleam Count Julio crept Forth through his palace gardens. Swollen drops Hung on the curved roofs of the porticoes; His footsteps dashed them from the earth-bowed leaves, And the long tangles of the matted grass. But, over head, the day broke gloriously.
Where once a fountain to the sunlight leapt, A marble Naiad by its weedy bed Stood on her pedestal. With hand outstretched She grasped a hollowed shell, now brimming o'er, While a green vine that round her arm had crept, Rose, serpent-like, and in the chalice dipt Its curling tendrils. Thither turned his eye,Just as the red uprising of the sun Smote the pale statue, and crept brightening down Even to its mossy base. Mantled and prone, A heap that scarcely seemed a human form Crouched in the shadow, and with tottering feet The old mail hurried onward. Motionless, It stirred not at his coming. Nearer still He marked a white face upward turned, clenched hands Locked in the hair that swept its ghastly brow. Shading his weak eyes from the blinding sun,Cowering in trembling horror to the earth,Still on he crept, then, bending softly down,Spake in a smothered voice, "Hist, hist, Bianca!"
Oh, mockery! the ear that he had filled With curses, woke not to the tones of love! The breast that he had spurned from him, heaved not At his wild anguish. Death had done its work. The tempest had been merciless as the parent Who drove her forth to meet it, and the flash Of its red eye more withering than his scorn. •Shunned both in penitence and guilt, forsaken By those who only prized her for the beauty Time, and perchance remorse, had touched with blight, Drenched by the rain, all breathless with the storm, Homeless and hopeless, she had crept to him Once more a suppliant, and, spurned rudely forth, Here had lain down despairing, and so perished.