Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875

Dr. Grey was too wise to insist. Love had quickened his intuitions. He would have liked to take her in his arms and chase this threatening horror from her mind: he was eager to plead his cause, to assure her of his devotion, but without a word he resumed his seat and obeyed.

The generosity shown in thus preferring her wishes to his own touched Fay more than any pleading could have done. She was convinced of his unselfishness, and her confidence in him remained unshaken. For some time after the scene in the boat she was very shy; but seeing he avoided the forbidden subject, and unconsciously growing each day fonder of his society, she allowed herself to drift into that closer intimacy which can have but one reason for its charm. Maurice saw and rejoiced. If he had won her heart he felt sure of surmounting the imaginary objection to his suit, and he resolved on a bold stroke.

One evening after a long walk they were seated on a huge table-rock jutting from the shore into the water, nothing but the lake before them, the sky above, the forest behind. "Is it not a matter of surprise that you should still be living, Miss Lafitte? he asked, concealing his trepidation under the appearance of raillery.

"Why?"

"Because you have been in love with me for several weeks."

Struck with the truth rather than the audacity of his assertion, she looked down, pondering intently a little space; then, not considering what the admission involved, she said in a choked voice, "You are right."

"And it has not hurt you," he went on eagerly. "I cannot hurt you. Won't you believe me?"

Another longer pause, and the words came trembling forth: "If it could be so!"

"It is so. It has been already proved." He took her hand gently: she permitted it to lie in his, and silence, the language of full hearts, ministered between them.

She broke it finally by the whispered question, "You are quite, quite sure that these warnings are not peculiar—that science can account for them?"

"On my honor, yes."

"I want to believe—I do believe you. I will risk my life for you: I—I—I love you, Maurice."

"My darling!"

She was very quiet, even sad, that evening. Conversation seemed an effort, and after some vain attempts to shake off her depression she hastily retired. After a long search Grey found her walking in one of the alleys of the garden, and could perceive by her tones that she had been weeping.

"In a very few days you will laugh at these pet superstitions. Do not indulge this mood: come and walk," he said persuasively.

"You are cruel."

"Indeed it is for your good."

"Maurice, do you think we are justified in thus tempting Fate?"

He smiled at her as if she were a child: "I have no doubts."

Her eyes shone solemnly as she replied, "Then lead me, even to death."

"To life—to a happy life, dear Fay." He put her unresisting hand on his arm and led her to the door of her room: "Sleep, my darling, and to-morrow you will feel more tranquil."

The next day the young man congratulated himself: Fay was as bright as if evil could never touch her. On passing him at the breakfast-table she whispered, "I defy Fate."

But the struggle was not yet over: the old fear and the new love fought a hard battle. A fortnight of these alternate lights and shadows passed. In his presence the poor girl tried to put on a brave face, but what she endured when alone could be seen in her loss of flesh and color. Sometimes the doctor almost repented having brought this misery upon her, but he comforted himself by looking forward to the calm which must surely follow this storm.

One morning, Miss Lafitte not appearing at her usual time, Maurice became alarmed. Fearing she might be ill, he went to her parlor to inquire: his knock was responded to by Jane, who gave him a note evidently written in expectation of his coming. It ran thus: "Meet me this evening at seven on the rock that you know." Of course he knew the place: it was where she had acknowledged her love.

As may be supposed, the young man was not late at the rendezvous, but he found Fay already there, walking restlessly up and down the contracted space.

"Sit down," she began in the peremptory tone of extreme emotion; then clasping her hands as she stood before him, she said, "I wanted to see you—"

"Not more than I wanted to see you," he interrupted lightly.

Without noticing his remark, she continued hurriedly, "I wish to say that all between us is broken off."

"It is not: I won't submit." He made a motion to rise.

"Do not come near me," she cried with growing agitation. "You have brought me my death. Oh, Maurice!"—here her voice sank pathetically—"why did you make me love you? I shall die—nothing can persuade me to believe otherwise—and it will be soon, soon, soon."

"How very unreasonable, dear Fay! You have long acknowledged your love, yet nothing has happened."

"It is about to happen."

"Come and sit by me," he begged.

"Never again: it must be ended. All day this miserable feeling has oppressed me. I have tried to shake it off, but cannot. It is a warning—it is horrible. Death is near, close, close. I must cease loving you or pay the penalty."

Her wan face presented such a picture of grief, her, voice expressed such an excess of suffering, that Maurice felt his eyes grow dim. Scarcely less moved than herself, he replied, "You cannot cease loving me, dear, dear Fay, nor can I bear to lose you. Let us end this struggle by an immediate marriage. You will then be calm—you will be happy. I will go to your father at once and make the arrangements: he will consent when I explain. There is a clergyman at the house, and a midnight train for New York. Oh, my darling, do not hesitate: this suspense is killing you. Can't you trust me, Fay?"

She listened eagerly: his voice seemed to soothe her. Seeing this, he rose, and, still speaking words of love, approached her. Controlled by, yet fearing, his influence, she slowly retreated as he advanced. Suddenly he cried as if in agony, "Fay, come to me!"

She was standing on the brink of the rock with her back to the danger. A moment she wavered: then Maurice could restrain himself no longer, but, extending his arm, he rushed toward her.

A little step backward, a shy movement to yet delay the consent that was already on her lips, a fall, a splash, and the waters of the lake closed over the body of Fay Lafitte.

To save her or lose himself was the resolution of the doctor as he leapt to the rescue. He was a good swimmer, and soon came to the surface after the plunge, but the shadow of the rock retarded his search. At last he found her, and then a new difficulty, that of landing, presented itself. The shore was covered with a fringe of impenetrable brushwood, which gave him the scantiest support, and it was impossible to mount the face of the rock. Almost in despair, he looked across the water, where he saw in the moonlight a fisherman's boat. Slowly the little craft obeyed his repeated calls for help. Sturdy arms relieved him of his insensible burden, while he, scarcely taking time to climb beside her, hoarsely bade the men row for their lives.

It is needless to describe the scene of confusion which followed on their arrival at the hotel. The only practical man there was Dr. Grey, who gave orders and applied remedies with desperate energy. His persistence was rewarded: the veined lids opened, the white lips parted, intelligence returned: she spoke, and Maurice threw himself on his knees and bent over her that he might catch the words. "My warning was true," she whispered slowly, "but—I—am—willing—to—die—for—loving—you." Then perception faded from those gentle eyes, breathing ceased, the muscles relaxed. Fay was dead.

And the doctor?

He afterward married his cousin: she was so kind to him at the time of his sad affliction.

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

A SCENE IN THE CAMPAGNA

You remember the Piazza della Bocca della Verità at Rome? No? Perhaps it is too far away from the Piazza di Spagna and the stairs of the Monte di Trinità, which may be taken to be the central points of English or American Rome. Yet you must have passed by the Bocca della Verità on your way to your drive on the Via Appia and the tomb of Caecilia Metella. Do you not remember a large, shambling, unkempt-looking open space, a sort of cross in appearance between the piazza of a city and a farmyard, a little after passing the remains of the Teatro di Marcello, the grand old arches of which are now, in the whirligig of Time's revenges, turned into blacksmiths' shops? The piazza in question is nearly open on one side to the Tiber, on the immediate bank of which stands that elegant little round temple, with its colonnade of charming fluted pillars, which has from time out of mind been known as the Temple of Vesta, though the designation, as modern archaeologists tell us, is probably erroneous. All the world, whether of those who have been at Rome or not, knows the Temple of Vesta, for it is the prettiest, if not the grandest, of the legacies to us of old pagan Rome, and it has been reproduced in little drawing-room models by the thousand in every conceivable material. Close to it, at one corner of the piazza, is the ancient and half-ruinous house which is pointed out as the habitation of Cola di Rienzi. It is altogether a strange-looking spot, that Piazza della Bocca della Verità, standing as it does on the confines of what may be called the inhabited part of Rome and that portion of the huge space within the walls which still remains sacred to the past and its memories and remains. But not the least strange thing about it is its name—the Piazza of the Mouth of Truth! There is a story of some one of the great doctors of the early ages of Christianity having taught in the very ancient church which stands on the side of the piazza farthest from the Tiber. Ay, to be sure, the name must come very evidently thence. The "mouth of truth" was the mouth of that seraphic or angelic or golden-tongued or other "doctor gentium," and the old church and the piazza still preserve the memory of his eloquence. Not a bit of it! Under the venerable-looking portico of this church there is a huge colossal marble mask, with a gaping mouth in the middle of it. There it lies, totally unconnected in any way with the various other relics of the past around it—tombs and frescoes and mosaics—and the stranger wonders what it is, and how it came there. To the last question there is no reply. But in answer to the former, tradition says that the Roman populace when affirming anything on oath were wont to place their hands in the mouth of this mask as a form of swearing, and hence the stone was called the "Bocca della Verità," and has given its name to the piazza.

Well, it was while traversing this piazza a few days since with a stranger friend, whom I was taking to visit the curious old church above mentioned, that I received and returned the salutation of an acquaintance whose appearance induced my companion to ask with some little surprise who my friend was. The individual whose courteous salutation had provoked the question was a horseman mounted on a remarkably fine black mare. Whether, in consequence of some little touch with the spur, or whether merely from high condition and high spirits, the animal was curvetting and rearing and dancing about a little as she crossed the piazza, and the perfect ease—and one may say, indeed, elegance—of the rider's seat, and his consummate mastery of the animal he bestrode, must have attracted the attention and excited the admiration of any lover of horses and horsemanship. It was abundantly evident that he was neither one of the "gentlemen riders" who figure in the somewhat mild Roman steeple-chase races, nor of those Nimrods from beyond the Alps who, mounted on such steeds as Jarrett or Rannucci can supply them with, attend the "meets" of the Roman hunt. The man in question was very unlike any of these; his horse was quite as unlike any that such persons are wont to ride; and his seat upon his horse and his mode of riding were yet more unlike theirs. It was not the seat of a man accustomed to "go across the country" and ride to hounds; and still less was it the seat of a cavalry-man, the result of teaching in a military riding-school. It was more like the seat (if the expression be permissible) of a centaur. The rider and his steed seemed to be one organization and governed by one and the same will.

But I must endeavor to give the reader an idea of the outward appearance of my acquaintance. He wore a long horse-man's cloak of dark-brown cloth, with a deep fur collar, which hung loosely from his shoulders, and being entirely open in front displayed a scarlet waistcoat ornamented with silver buttons beneath it, and thighs clad in black velveteen breeches. His lower legs were cased in gaiters of a very peculiar make. They were of light-brown colored leather, so made as to present an altogether creaseless surface, and yet fitted to the leg by numerous straps and buckles so closely that they exhibited the handsome and well-formed limb beneath them almost as perfectly as a silk stocking could have done. Below the ankle they closely clasped a boot which was armed with a very severe spur. The rider wore a high conical black felt hat—such a hat as is called, significently enough, "un cappello de brigante," a brigand's hat. It had, moreover, a scarlet ribbon around it, which added much to the brigand-like picturesqueness of the figure. Yet my friend was by no means a brigand, for all that. But the portion of his accoutrement which was perhaps the most remarkable has not been mentioned yet. While managing his reins, snaffle and curb, with excellent ease in his left hand, his right held—not a whip or stick of any sort, but—a lance like a rod, some seven or eight feet long, and armed at the end with a short iron spike. This spike rested on the toe of his boot as he rode—an attitude which, resembling that of a cavalier entering the tournament lists, gave to the rod in question all the appearance of a knightly lance. Yet there is in the recollection or the imagination of most people another figure whom on the whole the rider in the Piazza della Bocca della Verità would have been more likely to recall to their minds—the mounted Arab of the desert. I hardly know why it should be so. But there was a something about the general outline of the figure draped in its cloak, and in the way in which the long slight lance was held, that had an unmistakably Eastern look about it. There was a certain air of dignity too about my friend which contributed to his Arab-like appearance. Yet it was not exactly the dignity of the grave and impassible Eastern man. It was a mixture of dignity and jauntiness. There was a certain air of self-consciousness about the man in the cloak and brigand's hat that told you clearly enough that he knew he was riding remarkably well, and expected you to mark it too. He would have been exceedingly unwilling that the glories of the scarlet waistcoat with its silver buttons should have been eclipsed, and he would have unmistakably fallen in his own esteem had the broad scarlet ribbon been taken from his hat. The pose and turn of his well-shaped head on his shoulders provocatively challenged admiration, and would have had a dash of insolence in them if the expression had not been corrected by a pleasant smile, which showed a range of bright white teeth beneath a jet-black moustache, and the good-humor of the glance that tempered the frank roving boldness of the well-opened eye. When it has been added that he was in the very prime of manhood, a man of some thirty-five or thereabouts, I think that the reader will be able to form a tolerably correct picture to himself of my acquaintance, Nanni Silvani.

"And who and what is Nanni Silvani?" asked my companion when I had categorically answered his question by stating the name of the rider whose salutation I had returned.

"Nanni—or, more correctly, Signor Giovanni—Silvani is a buttero of the Roman Campagna," said I.

"And, pray, what may a 'buttero' be?" rejoined my Johnny Newcome, looking back after the receding figure of the horseman with no little curiosity.

"A buttero," I answered, "is one of the most peculiar and characteristic products of that very peculiar region, the Agro Romano."

The conditions under which the district around Rome is cultivated—or rather possessed and left uncultivated—are entirely sui generis—quite unlike anything else in the world. The vast undulating plain called the Campagna is divided among very few proprietors in comparison to its extent, who hold immense estates, which are more profitable than the appearance of the country, smitten to all seeming with a curse of desolation, would lead a stranger to suppose. These huge properties are held mainly by the great Roman papal families and by monastic corporations whose monasteries are within the city. In either case the property is practically inalienable, and has been passed from father to son for generations, or held by an undying religious corporation in unchanging sameness for many generations. Cultivation in the proper sense of the word is out of the question in this region: the prevalence of the deadly malaria renders it impossible. But the vast extent of the plain is wandered over by large herds of half-wild cattle, in great part buffaloes, the produce of which is turned to profit in large dairy and cheese-making establishments, and by large droves of horses, from which a very useful breed of animals is raised. The superintendence and care of these is the work of the buttero. Large flocks of sheep and goats also are fed upon the herbage of the Campagna. But the shepherds who tend them are quite a different race of men from the buttero, and are deemed, especially by himself, to hold a far inferior position in the social scale. And, as is ever the case, social prejudice justifies itself by producing the phenomenon it has declared to exist. The shepherd of the Campagna, having long been deemed the very lowest of the low, has become such in reality. Clad in the dried but untanned skin of one of his flock, he has almost the appearance of a savage, and, unless common fame belies him, he is the savage he looks. The buttero looks down upon him from a very pinnacle of social elevation in the eyes of every inhabitant of the towns and villages around Rome, especially in those of the youthful female population. While the poor shepherd, shaggy as his sheep, wild-looking as his goats, and savage as his dogs, squalid, fever-stricken and yellow, spending long weeks and even months in solitude amid the desolation of the Campagna, saunters after his sauntering flock, crawling afoot, the gallant buttero, in the saddle from morning to night, represents that aristocracy which among all uncivilized races and in all uncivilized times is the attribute of the mounted as distinguished from the unmounted portion of mankind. And if this fact is recognized by the generality of the world in which he lives, it is very specially assumed to be undeniable by the buttero himself. There is always a smack of the dandy about him. He is proud of his appearance, of his horse and of his mastery over him. He knows that he is a picturesque and striking figure, and the consciousness of the fact imparts a something to his bearing that is calculated to make the most of it. His manners and ways of life, too, are really more tinctured by civilization than those of the rest of the rural population among whom he lives. And this arises mainly from the fact that his occupations bring him more and more frequently into contact with his superiors in the social scale. The agricultural system prevailing in the district around Rome differs markedly and essentially from that in use generally in Tuscany. There the system of rent is almost unknown. The present tiller of the soil occupies it on condition of rendering to the landowner the half of the produce of it, and this arrangement is conducted under the superintendence of a fattore. But the widespreading possessions of a Roman landowner are for the most part let to a speculator, who is termed a "mercante di campagna." The commercial operations engaged in by these "merchants of the country" are often very extensive, and many of them become very wealthy men. It is hardly necessary to say that neither they nor their families live on, or indeed in most cases near, the land from which they draw their wealth. They are absentees, with a paramount excuse for being so. For the vast plains over which their herds and flocks and droves wander are for the most part scourged by the malaria to such an extent that human life, or at all events human health, is incompatible with a residence on them. The wealthy mercante di campagna lives in Rome therefore, and his wife and family take the lead in the rich, but not in the aristocratic, circles of the society of the capital. One of these men may be seen perhaps at a "meet" of the Roman hunt, mounted on the best and most showy horse in the field, attended probably by a smart groom leading a second (very needless) horse for his master's use, or holding in readiness an elegant equipage for him to drive himself back to the city at the termination of the day's sport. His wife and daughters meanwhile are probably exhibiting themselves in the Villa Borghese or on the Pincian Hill in the handsomest carriage and with the most splendid horses in all the gay throng, and displaying toilettes which throw into the shade the more sober style of those of the duchesses, princesses and countesses whom they would so gladly, but may not, salute as they pass them in their less brilliant equipages. The balls, too, given in the Carnival by these men and their wives will probably be the most splendid of the season, in so far as the expenditure of money can ensure splendor, but they will not be adorned by the diamonds of the old patrician families, nor will it be possible for the givers of them to obtain access to the sighed-for elysium of the halls of the historical palaces where those diamonds are native. Between the two classes there is a great gulf fixed, or perhaps it would be more accurately correct to say that there was such a great gulf fixed a year or two ago. The great gulf exists still, but it is beginning gradually to be a little bridged over. No doubt another twenty years will see it vanish altogether. But enough has been said to indicate the social position of the mercante di campagna as it was, and for the most part still is. But, fine gentleman as he is, the wealthy speculator, if he would remain such, is not always at the hunt or lounging in the Corso. He is often at the tenuta (or estate) from which his wealth is gathered, and on such occasions spends long hours on horseback riding over wide extents of country, and attended by the all-important buttero, sure to be mounted on as good a horse as that which carries his employer, or perhaps a better. Perhaps two or three of these functionaries are in attendance upon him. And such excursions necessarily produce a degree of companionship which would not result from attendance in any other form. As riders the two men are on an equality for the nonce. The tone of communication between the men is insensibly modified by the circumstances of a colloquy between two persons on horseback. It cannot be the same as that between a master sitting in his chair and a servant standing hat in hand before him. And then how proudly does the gallant buttero ride past the pariah shepherds tending their shaggy flocks and seeming barely raised above them in intelligence!

All this tends, as may be supposed, to civilize the buttero to a degree that he would not attain without it. He is, as has been intimated, generally eminently self-conscious of his own advantages and proud of his position. To the other elements which go to produce this feeling may be added the pride of caste. Our buttero is probably the son and the father of a race which follows the same occupation. The knowledge and skill which are absolutely necessary to his profession, and which are acquired no otherwise than traditionally, have a tendency to produce this result. He grew up to be a buttero, with a consummate knowledge of horses and horned cattle, and a sure eye for the condition of the pastures from one to another district of which the animals are constantly moving, under the eye of his father, who put him on a half-broken colt almost as soon as he could walk. And he is giving his son the same education. For a young buttero to marry with a daughter of the despised shepherd class would be a mésalliance not to be thought of. Nor would a marriage with the daughter of a small artisan of the towns be deemed a very acceptable one. The chances are that the young centaur marries a girl of his own centaur breed, and all the prejudice and barriers of caste are thus propagated and intensified. It must not be supposed that the buttero or his family lives on the malaria-stricken plains which his occupation requires him to be constantly riding over. The wretched shepherd is constrained to do so, and sleeps in the vicinity of his flock, finding, if he can, the shelter of a ruined tomb or of the broken arch of an aqueduct, or even of a cave from which pozzolana has been dug, and strives to exorcise the malaria fiend by kindling a big fire and sleeping with his head in the thick smoke of it. But the buttero, well mounted, to whom it is a small matter to ride eight or ten miles to his home every night, lives with his family either in Rome or in one of the small towns on the slopes of the hills which enclose the Campagna. And it is thus that these strikingly picturesque figures may often be seen traversing the streets and piazze of Rome, and especially of those parts of it which lie on the far side of the Tiber or to the southward of the Quirinal Hill and the Piazza di Venezia. They are almost always handsome fellows, well grown, and striking specimens of robust and manly vigor, probably by virtue of the lives they lead, and of the similar lives the race from which they spring have led before them; partly also, no doubt, from the fact that should any son be born to a buttero who should not be thus happily endowed, he could not think of following the ancestral occupation, but would have to be weeded out from the race and seek his place in the towns, where he would not become the father of degenerate butteri.