CHAPTER LXXXVII

AS HE was naturally very absent, Porpora, on kissing the forehead of his adopted daughter, did not even remark Keller, who had possession of her hair, and began to search in his music for the written fragment of the air which was running through his brain. On seeing his papers, usually scattered upon the harpsichord in indescribable disorder, ranged in symmetrical piles, he roused himself from his reverie and exclaimed:

"Wretch that he is! He has had the impertinence to touch my manuscripts! These valets are all alike! They think they arrange when they heap up! I had great need, by my faith, to take a valet. This is the commencement of my punishment."

"Forgive him, master," replied Consuelo; "your music was in a perfect chaos——"

"I knew my way in that chaos! I could get up at night and find any passage in my opera by feeling in the dark; now I know nothing about it; I am lost, it will cost me a month's hard work to put it to rights again."

"No, master, you will find your way at once. Besides, it was I who committed the fault, and although the pages were not numbered, I believe I have put every sheet in its place. Look! I am sure you will be able to read more easily in the book I have made, than in all those loose sheets which a gust of wind might carry out of the window."

"A gust of wind! Do you take my chamber for the lagunes of Fusina?"

"If not a gust of wind, at least a stroke of the duster, or a sweep of the broom."

"But what need was there to sweep and dust my chamber? I have now lived here a fortnight and have never let any one enter it."

"That was plain enough, indeed," thought Joseph.

"Well, master, you must allow me to change that habit. It is unhealthy to sleep in a chamber which is not aired and cleaned every day. I will undertake myself to arrange your papers every day in the exact order in which they were before Beppo commenced to sweep."

"Beppo? Beppo? who is Beppo? I know no Beppo."

"There is Beppo," said Consuelo, pointing to Joseph. "He has a name so difficult to pronounce that you would have been shocked by it every instant. I have given him the first Venetian name I thought of. Beppo is a good name; it is short, and can be sung."

"As you will!" replied Porpora, who began to soften on turning over the leaves of his opera and finding it arranged with exactness, and stitched in a single book.

"Confess, master," said Consuelo, seeing him smile, "that it is more convenient so."

"Ah! you wish to be always in the right," returned the maestro. "You will be obstinate all your days."

"But, master, have you breakfasted?" resumed Consuelo, whom Keller had now restored to liberty.

"Have you breakfasted yourself?" replied Porpora, with a mixture of impatience and solicitude.

"Oh! yes. And you, master?"

"And this boy, this—Beppo, has he eaten any thing!"

"He has breakfasted. And you, master?"

"Then you found something here? I did not remember that I had any provisions."

"We have breakfasted very well. And you, master?"

"And you, master! And you, master! Go to the devil with your questions. What is it to you?"

"You have not breakfasted, my dear master," replied Consuelo, who sometimes permitted herself to treat Porpora with Venetian familiarity.

"Ah! I see plainly that some wicked spirit has entered my house. She will not let me be quiet! Come here now, and sing this air for me. Attention, I beseech you."

Consuelo seated herself at the harpsichord and sung the air, while Keller, who was a decided dilettante, remained at the other end of the chamber, with comb in hand and mouth half open. The maestro, who was not satisfied with his air, made her repeat it thirty times in succession, sometimes making her lay the emphasis upon certain notes, sometimes upon certain others, seeking for the shade he dreamed of, with an obstinacy that could only be equaled by Consuelo's patience and docility.

In the meanwhile, Joseph, upon a signal from the latter, had gone to get the chocolate which she herself had prepared during Keller's absence. He brought it, and guessing the intentions of his friend, placed it softly upon the music-desk without attracting the notice of the master, who, an instant afterward, took it mechanically, poured it into the cup, and swallowed it with great appetite. A second cup was brought and swallowed in the same manner with a supply of bread and butter; and Consuelo, who was a little mischievous, said to him, on seeing him eat with pleasure:

"I knew, master, that you had not breakfasted."

"It is true," replied he, without evincing any anger; "I think I must have forgotten it. That often happens to me when I am composing, and I do not recollect it till later in the day, when I have gnawings at my stomach and spasms."

"And then you drink brandy, master?"

"Who told you so, you little fool?"

"I found the bottle."

"Well! what is that to you? You are not going to forbid me brandy?"

"Yes, I shall. You were temperate at Venice and you always enjoyed good health."

"That is the truth," said Porpora, sadly. "It seemed to me that every thing went badly there, and that here it would be better. Nevertheless every thing goes on from bad to worse with me. Fortune, health, ideas—every thing!" And he dropped his head on his hands.

"Shall I tell you why you find a difficulty in working here?" returned Consuelo, who wished to distract his thoughts, by matters of detail, from the desponding humors that weighed him down. "It is because you have not your good Venetian coffee, which gives so much strength and spirits. You excite yourself after the manner of the Germans with beer and liquors; that does not agree with you."

"Ah! that is also the truth. My good Venetian coffee! It was an inexhaustible source of witty phrases and great ideas. It was genius, it was wit, which flowed through my veins with gentle warmth. Every thing that I drink here makes me sad or crazy."

"Well, master, return to your coffee!"

"Coffee? here? I won't have it. It gives too much trouble. You need a fire, a maid-servant, a coffee-pot which has to be washed and moved about, and gets broken, making a most discordant noise in the midst of a harmonious combination! No, no! My bottle on the floor, between my legs; that is more convenient and sooner done."

"That is sometimes broken too. I broke it this morning, when I was going to put it into the wardrobe."

"You have broken my bottle! I don't know what hinders me, you little fright, from breaking my cane over your shoulders."

"Pshaw! you've been saying that to me for fifteen years, and yet you have never given me a single slap. I am not at all afraid."

"Chatterbox! will you sing? will you get me out of this cursed air? I would wager you do not know it yet, you are so absent this morning,"

"You shall see," said Consuelo, quickly shutting the book. And she sang the air as she conceived it, that is to say, differently from Porpora. Knowing his temper, although she had seen plainly from the first attempt that he had become confused in his ideas, and that he had consequently given it a labored and unnatural turn, she had not permitted herself to give him any advice. He would have rejected it from the spirit of contradiction, but by singing the air in her own manner, while pretending all the while to make a mistake of memory, she was very sure he would be struck by it. Hardly had he heard it, than he bounded from his chair, clapping his hands and exclaiming:

"That is it! that is it! that is what I wanted, and what I could not find. How the deuce did it come to you?"

"Is it not what you have written? or can I by chance——But no, that is certainly your phrase."

"No, it is yours, you cheat!" cried Porpora, who was candor itself, and who, notwithstanding his diseased and immoderate love of glory, would never have appropriated anything from vanity; "it was you who found it! Repeat it to me. It is good and I will profit by it."

Consuelo recommenced several times, and Porpora wrote from her dictation; then he pressed his pupil to his heart, saying, "You are a fairy! I always thought you were a fairy!"

"A good fairy, believe me, master," replied Consuelo, smiling.

Porpora, delighted at having found out what he wanted, after a whole morning of fruitless disturbance and musical torment, sought mechanically on the floor beside him for the neck of the bottle, but not finding it, he felt about upon the desk and swallowed what he happened to find there. It was delicious coffee which Consuelo had skillfully and patiently prepared at the same time as the chocolate, and which Joseph had just brought in piping hot, at a fresh signal from his friend.

"Oh! nectar of the gods!—Oh! tutelary genius of musicians!" exclaimed Porpora as he sipped it; "what angel, what fairy brought thee from Venice under his wing?"

"It was some sprite," replied Consuelo.

"Thou art at once angel and fairy, my child," said Porpora, mildly, returning to his desk. "I see that you love me, care for me, and would make me happy. Even this poor youth feels an interest in me," he added as he perceived Joseph standing at the threshold of the outer chamber, and looking at him with moistened eyes. "Ah! poor children, you wish to cheer my unhappy life! Foolish creatures, you know not what you do. I am fated to be solitary and miserable, and a few brief days' sympathy and happiness will only make me feel more sensibly my wretched fate when they are fled."

"I shall never leave you—I will be always your daughter and servant," said Consuelo, throwing her arms round his neck. Porpora bent his aged head over the paper before him, and burst into tears. Consuelo and Joseph wept also; and Keller, whose passion for music had kept him spell-bound, and who, to give a color to his delay, had busied herself in arranging the master's periwig, seeing, through the half-open door, this affecting picture of grief, Consuelo's filial piety, and Joseph's enthusiasm, let fall his comb, and in his agitation mistaking Porpora's wig for a handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it in a distracted manner.

Consuelo was confined to the house for some days by a cold. During her long and adventurous journey she had braved every vicissitude of weather, and all the changes of the autumn—sometimes burning, sometimes wet and cold, according to the regions which she traversed. Lightly clothed, a straw hat upon her head, and having neither cloak nor coat to change when her garments were wet, she had never sustained the least injury; but hardly was she shut up in Porpora's dark, damp, and badly aired abode, than she felt cold, and indisposition paralyzed her energy and her voice. Porpora was out of sorts at this untimely occurrence. He knew that to obtain an engagement for his pupil at the theater, he must lose no time, for Tesi, who had wished to go to Dresden, afterward hesitated, owing to the intreaties of Caffariello, and the brilliant promises of Holzbaüer, who were desirous to secure so celebrated a singer for themselves. On the other hand, Corilla, still confined to bed, was intriguing with the directors through such of her friends as she found at Vienna, and declared she would be able to appear in eight days should they require her services. Porpora devoutly wished that Consuelo should be engaged, as well for her own sake, as for that of his forthcoming opera.

Consuelo on her part did not know what to resolve. To accept an engagement was to protract the possibility of her union with Albert, was to carry terror and consternation into the family of the Rudolstadts, who certainly did not expect she would resume the career of the stage; it would be to renounce the honor of the connection, and make known to the young count that she preferred glory and liberty to him. On the other hand, by refusing this engagement she would destroy the last hopes of Porpora, and evince in her turn the ingratitude which had been the despair and misery of his life: it would be a dagger-stroke to his happiness. Consuelo, terrified at this dilemma, and seeing that whatever part she took she would inflict a mortal blow, fell into a deep melancholy. Her vigorous constitution preserved her indeed from serious illness; but during this fit of anguish and terror, preyed on by alternate chill and fever, crouching over a miserable fire, or dragging herself from chamber to chamber, to attend to domestic duties, she secretly wished and hoped that some serious malady might free her for a time from the duties and difficulties of her situation.

Porpora's temper, which had been softened for a moment, became once more gloomy, querulous, and inquiet when he saw Consuelo, his hope and stay, become sorrow-stricken and irresolute; instead of supporting and animating her with enthusiasm and tenderness, he manifested a morbid impatience which completed her dismay. Alternately weak and violent, the tender and irritable old man, devoured with that spleen which was in a short time to inflict a fatal blow on Jean Jacques Rousseau, saw on all sides enemies, persecutors, and ingrates, without being aware that his suspicions, his anger, and his false accusations furnished a pretext for the evil intentions and misconduct which he ascribed to them. The first impulse of those whom he thus mortified was to look upon him as mad; the second to believe him ill-natured and malicious; the third to have nothing to say to him, or to study revenge. Between cowardly submission and savage misanthropy there is a happy medium which Porpora never dreamed of, and which he certainly never realized.

Consuelo, after making several vain efforts, seeing that he was less disposed than ever to hear of love or marriage, resolved no longer to provoke explanations which merely served to sour her unfortunate master more and more. She never mentioned Albert's name, and held herself ready to sign any engagement that might be proposed by Porpora. It was only when she was alone with Joseph that she experienced some solace in opening her heart to him.

"What a strange destiny is mine!" she said to him frequently. "Heaven has gifted me with talents, a soul for art, a love of liberty, and of a proud and lofty independence; but, at the same time, instead of that fierce selfishness which imparts the necessary firmness to meet the unavoidable difficulties and seductions of life, the same celestial power has implanted in my breast a tender and sensitive heart, which beats only with affectionate emotion. Thus divided between two opposing impulses, my existence is annihilated, and my prospects destroyed. If I am born for devotion, may the Almighty blot out from my soul that love for art, for poetry, and that desire for liberty, which is an agony and a torment; but if I am born for art and for liberty, let Him then take away that pity, that devotion, that anxiety, and fear of giving offense, which will ever poison my triumphs and embarrass my career."

"If I had any advice to give you, my poor Consuelo," said Haydn, "it would be to listen to the voice of genius, and to stifle the impulses of your heart; but now I know your position, and I know that you are unable to act thus."

"No, Joseph, I am not able; it seems to me that I never shall be able. But see my misfortune! consider my strange and unhappy lot! My heart is torn in opposite directions, and I cannot go whither it would impel me, without, on the right hand or the left, breaking a heart that leans upon me for support. If I give myself up to the one, I abandon and destroy the other. I am betrothed to one whose wife I cannot be without killing my adopted father; and if I fulfill my duties as a daughter I abandon those of a wife. The wife, it has been written, shall leave father and mother to cleave to her husband; but in reality, I am neither wife nor daughter. The law has not pronounced its authoritive dictum. Society has not concerned itself with my lot. To my heart must be left the choice. I am not influenced by human passion, and in the dilemma in which I stand, duty and devotion throw no light upon my path. Albert and Porpora are equally unfortunate, equally threatened with the loss of reason or of life. I am necessary to them both, yet I must sacrifice one or other."

"And wherefore? If you were to marry the count, would not Porpora go and reside with you? You would thus rescue him from poverty; you would revive him by your care and solicitude, and thus accomplish your twofold aim."

"Ah! were it thus, Joseph, I swear to you I should renounce both art and freedom. But you do not know Porpora: it is glory, not happiness, which he desires. He is destitute, and yet he does not know it; he suffers, without knowing whence arises his pain; besides, ever dreaming of triumph and admiration, he knows not how to stoop to accept pity. Be assured that his distress is mainly the result of his carelessness and his pride. Were he but to say the word, he has friends who would hasten to his assistance; but besides that he never looks whether his pocket be full or empty, and you are aware that he is little better informed as to his stomach; he would rather die of hunger in his solitary chamber than seek a dinner from his best friend. It would be to degrade music in his estimation were any one to suspect that Porpora needed aught but his genius, his harpsichord, and his pen. Thus the ambassador and his lady, who cherish and respect him, never suspect his destitution. Were they to see him in a confined and mean abode, they would ascribe it to his habits of seclusion and carelessness. Does he not say himself he could not compose otherwise? I, who know better, have seen him clamber upon the roofs of Venice, to drink in inspiration from the music of the waves, and the stars of heaven. And when they receive them in his soiled attire, his rusty wig, and tattered shoes, do they not think they are gratifying his whim? He likes to be dirty and ragged, they say; it is the failing of artists and old men; he could not walk in new shoes. He also says so; but I remember the time when he was neat, clean, shaven, perfumed, with his lace ruffles sweeping the keys of the organ or pianoforte, just because he could be so without being obliged to any one. Never would Porpora consent to live an indolent and obscure life, in the recesses of Bohemia, and at the expense of his friends. He would not be there three months without abusing every one, and asserting that all around him had conspired with his enemies to prevent the production and publication of his works. Some fine morning, therefore, he would shake the dust from off his feet, and return to his garret, his rat-gnawed harpsichord, his fatal bottle, and darling manuscripts."

"And do you not think it possible to bring your count to Vienna, Dresden, Prague, or some other musical town? With your resources you could establish yourselves anywhere, cultivate art, surround yourselves with musicians, and give a free course to Porpora's ambition, without ceasing to watch over him."

"After what I have told you of Albert's character and state of health, how can you ask me such a question? He who could not bear a strange face, how could he face the crowd of evil-minded and foolish wretches which we call the world? And what ridicule, what aversion, what contempt, would not the world shower upon a man so rigidly pious, who would understand nothing of its laws, its customs, or its manners! All that were as hazardous to attempt with Albert, as what I now try in order to make him forget me."

"Be assured, nevertheless, that all these evils would seem lighter than your absence. If he truly love he will bear every thing; and if he does not love you sufficiently to put up with every thing, he will forget you."

"Therefore I pause, and decide upon nothing. Inspire me with courage, Beppo, and stay beside me, that I may at least have one heart unto which I can pour my sorrows, and from which I can seek a common hope."

"Oh, my sister, trust in me!" exclaimed Joseph; "if I am so happy as to afford you this slight consolation, I shall cheerfully put up with Porpora's tirades. Were he even to beat me, I would bear it, if that would turn him aside from tormenting and afflicting you."

In planning thus with Joseph, Consuelo labored incessantly in preparing their common repast, or mending Porpora's worn-out garments. She introduced by degrees into the sitting apartment some necessary articles of furniture. A large, easy arm-chair, well stuffed, replaced the straw one in which he was wont to rest his old limbs, weakened by age. And after having enjoyed a comfortable nap in it, he was surprised, and asked with beetling brows where this good seat had come from.

"The mistress of the house sent it up," replied Consuelo; "it was in her way, and I allowed it a corner till she should ask for it again."

Porpora's mattress was changed, and he made no other remark on the goodness of his bed, save that for some nights past he had slept better. Consuelo replied, "that he might attribute this improvement to his coffee, and to his refraining from brandy." One morning, Porpora having put on an excellent dressing-gown, asked, with an anxious air, where it had been found. Joseph, who had received his lesson, replied that in settling an old trunk he had found it stuffed in a corner of it.

"I did not think I had brought it with me here," said Porpora. "It is, nevertheless, the one I had at Venice; at least it is the same color."

"And what other could it be?" replied Consuelo, who had taken care to match the worn-out garment carefully.

"Why, the fact is, I thought it was more worn," said the maestro, looking at his elbows.

"You are right," she replied, "I put in new sleeves."

"And with what?"

"With a part of the lining."

"Ah, you women are wonderful creatures, for making every thing of use."

And when the new coat had been worn a couple of days, although it was the same color as the old one, he was surprised to see it so fresh, and the buttons especially, which were very pretty, set him thinking:

"This coat is not mine," said he, in a grumbling tone.

"I desired Beppo to get it scoured," replied Consuelo, "as it was much soiled. They have refreshed it, that is all."

"I tell you it is not mine," said the maestro, enraged; "they have changed it. Your Beppo is a fool."

"That could not be, for I marked it."

"And these buttons? Do you think to make me swallow them?"

"I changed the trimming, and sewed them on myself; the old were entirely worn out."

"You are pleased to say so; but it was still very decent. How stupid! am I a Celadon, to deck myself out in this fashion, and pay twelve sequins at least for a trimming?"

"It does not cost twelve florins," replied Consuelo, "it was picked up by chance."

His garments were gradually renewed with the help of such dexterous fibs, which gave Consuelo and Joseph many a hearty laugh. Some things passed unobserved, thanks to Porpora's absence of mind, the lace and linen found their way by degrees into his drawers, and when he looked attentively at them Consuelo took credit to herself for having renovated them so well. To give a semblance of truth to what she said, she mended some of his things before his eyes, and placed them with the rest.

"That will do," said Porpora, one day tearing a ruffle out of her hands; "what nonsense! an artist must not be a drudge, and I will not have you bent double all day with a needle in your fingers. Put it past, or I shall throw it into the fire; nor will I suffer you to go on cooking, and swallowing the fumes of charcoal. Do you wish to lose your voice? Would you be a scullion? Would you make me miserable?"

"Far from it," replied Consuelo; "your things are now in good order, and my voice is quite recovered."

"Good!" exclaimed the maestro, "in that case you shall sing tomorrow at the palace of the Countess Hoditz, dowager Margravine of Bareith."