The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

His pure and unrivalled love for Margaret had been his polar star. It was quenched, and he drifted on the gloomy sea of no hope.

Nor was he a prey to despair alone, but to exasperation at all his self-denial, fortitude, perils, virtue, wasted and worse than wasted; for it kept burning and stinging him, that, had he stayed lazily, selfishly at home, he should have saved his Margaret's life.

These two poisons, raging together in his young blood, maddened and demoralized him. He rushed fiercely into pleasure. And in those days, even more than now, pleasure was vice. Wine, women, gambling, whatever could procure him an hour's excitement and a moment's oblivion. He plunged into these things, as men tired of life have rushed among the enemy's bullets.

The large sums he had put by for Margaret gave him ample means for debauchery, and he was soon the leader of those loose companions he had hitherto kept at a distance.

His heart deteriorated along with his morals.

He sulked with his old landlady for thrusting gentle advice and warning on him; and finally removed to another part of the town, to be clear of remonstrance and reminiscences. When he had carried this game on some time, his hand became less steady, and he could no longer write to satisfy himself. Moreover, his patience declined as the habits of pleasure grew on him. So he gave up that art, and took likenesses in colours.

But this he neglected whenever the idle rakes, his companions, came for him.

And so he dived in foul waters, seeking that sorry oyster-shell, Oblivion.

It is not my business to paint at full length the scenes of coarse vice in which this unhappy young man now played a part. But it is my business to impress the broad truth, that he was a rake, a debauchee, and a drunkard, and one of the wildest, loosest, and wickedest young men in Rome.

They are no lovers of truth, nor of mankind, who conceal or slur the wickedness of the good, and so by their want of candour rob despondent sinners of hope.

Enough, the man was not born to do things by halves. And he was not vicious by halves.

His humble female friends often gossiped about him. His old landlady told Teresa he was going to the bad, and prayed her to try and find out where he was.

Teresa told her husband Lodovico his sad story, and bade him look about and see if he could discover the young man's present abode. “Shouldst remember his face, Lodovico mio?”

“Teresa, a man in my way of life never forgets a face, least of all a benefactor's. But thou knowest I seldom go abroad by daylight.”

Teresa sighed. “And how long is it to be so, Lodovico?”

“Till some cavalier passes his sword through me. They will not let a poor fellow like me take to any honest trade.”

Pietro Vanucci was one of those who bear prosperity worse than adversity.

Having been ignominiously ejected for late hours by their old landlady, and meeting Gerard in the street, he greeted him warmly, and soon after took up his quarters in the same house.

He brought with him a lad called Andrea, who ground his colours, and was his pupil, and also his model, being a youth of rare beauty, and as sharp as a needle.

Pietro had not quite forgotten old times, and professed a warm friendship for Gerard.

Gerard, in whom all warmth of sentiment seemed extinct, submitted coldly to the other's friendship.

And a fine acquaintance it was. This Pietro was not only a libertine, but half a misanthrope, and an open infidel.

And so they ran in couples, with mighty little in common. O, rare phenomenon!

One day, when Gerard had undermined his health, and taken the bloom off his beauty, and run through most of his money, Vanucci got up a gay party to mount the Tiber in a boat drawn by buffaloes. Lorenzo de' Medici had imported these creatures into Florence about three years before. But they were new in Rome, and nothing would content this beggar on horseback, Vanucci, but being drawn by the brutes up the Tiber.

Each libertine was to bring a lady and she must be handsome, or he be fined. But the one that should contribute the loveliest was to be crowned with laurel, and voted a public benefactor. Such was their reading of “Vir bonus est quis?” They got a splendid galley, and twelve buffaloes. And all the libertines and their female accomplices assembled by degrees at the place of embarkation. But no Gerard.

They waited for him some time, at first patiently, then impatiently.

Vanucci excused him. “I heard him say he had forgotten to provide himself with a fardingale. Comrades, the good lad is hunting for a beauty fit to take rank among these peerless dames. Consider the difficulty, ladies, and be patient!”

At last Gerard was seen at some distance with a female in his hand.

“She is long enough,” said one of her sex, criticising her from afar.

“Gemini! what steps she takes,” said another. “Oh! it is wise to hurry into good company,” was Pietro's excuse.

But when the pair came up, satire was choked.

Gerard's companion was a peerless beauty; she extinguished the boat-load, as stars the rising sun. Tall, but not too tall; and straight as a dart, yet supple as a young panther. Her face a perfect oval, her forehead white, her cheeks a rich olive with the eloquent blood mantling below and her glorious eyes fringed with long thick silken eyelashes, that seemed made to sweep up sensitive hearts by the half dozen. Saucy red lips, and teeth of the whitest ivory.

The women were visibly depressed by this wretched sight; the men in ecstasies; they received her with loud shouts and waving of caps, and one enthusiast even went down on his knees upon the boat's gunwale, and hailed her of origin divine. But his chere amie pulling his hair for it—and the goddess giving him a little kick—cotemporaneously, he lay supine; and the peerless creature frisked over his body without deigning him a look, and took her seat at the prow. Pietro Vanucci sat in a sort of collapse, glaring at her, and gaping with his mouth open like a dying cod-fish.

The drover spoke to the buffaloes, the ropes tightened, and they moved up stream.

“What think ye of this new beef, mesdames?”

“We ne'er saw monsters so viley ill-favoured; with their nasty horns that make one afeard, and, their foul nostrils cast up into the air. Holes be they; not nostrils.”