The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

them to think of, we have no right to eat out our hearts for the dead. Remember what your own Shelley says: ‘The past is Death’s, the future is thine own.’ Take it, while it is still yours, and fix your mind, not on what you may have done long ago to hurt, but on what you can do now to help.”

In his earnestness he had taken her hand. He dropped it suddenly and drew back at the sound of a soft, cold, drawling voice behind him.

“Monsignor Montan-n-nelli,” murmured this languid voice, “is undoubtedly all you say, my dear doctor. In fact, he appears to be so much too good for this world that he ought to be politely escorted into the next. I am sure he would cause as great a sensation there as he has done here; there are p-p-probably many old-established ghosts who have never seen such a thing as an honest cardinal. And there is nothing that ghosts love as they do novelties⁠—”

“How do you know that?” asked Dr. Riccardo’s voice in a tone of ill-suppressed irritation.

“From Holy Writ, my dear sir. If the Gospel is to be trusted, even the most respectable of all Ghosts had a f-f-fancy for capricious alliances. Now, honesty and c-c-cardinals⁠—that seems to me a somewhat capricious alliance, and rather an uncomfortable one, like shrimps and liquorice. Ah, Signor Martini, and Signora Bolla! Lovely weather after the rain, is it not? Have you been to hear the n-new Savonarola, too?”

Martini turned round sharply. The Gadfly, with a cigar in his mouth and a hothouse flower in his buttonhole, was holding out to him a slender, carefully-gloved hand. With the sunlight reflected in his immaculate boots and glancing back from the water on to his smiling face, he looked to Martini less lame and more conceited than usual. They were shaking hands, affably on the one side and rather sulkily on the other, when Riccardo hastily exclaimed:

“I am afraid Signora Bolla is not well!”

She was so pale that her face looked almost livid under the shadow of her bonnet, and the ribbon at her throat fluttered perceptibly from the violent beating of the heart.

“I will go home,” she said faintly.

A cab was called and Martini got in with her to see her safely home. As the Gadfly bent down to arrange her cloak, which was hanging over the wheel, he raised his eyes suddenly to her face, and Martini saw that she shrank away with a look of something like terror.

“Gemma, what is the matter with you?” he asked, in English, when they had started. “What did that scoundrel say to you?”

“Nothing, Cesare; it was no fault of his. I⁠—I⁠—had a fright⁠—”

“A fright?”

“Yes; I fancied⁠—” She put one hand over her eyes, and he waited silently till she should recover her self-command. Her face was already regaining its natural colour.

“You are quite right,” she said at last, turning to him and speaking in her usual voice; “it is worse than useless to look back at a horrible past. It plays tricks with one’s nerves and makes one imagine all sorts of impossible things. We will never talk about that subject again, Cesare, or I shall see fantastic likenesses to Arthur in every face I meet. It is a kind of hallucination, like a nightmare in broad daylight. Just now, when that odious little fop came up, I fancied it was Arthur.”

V

The Gadfly certainly knew how to make personal enemies. He had arrived in Florence in August, and by the end of October three-fourths of the committee which had invited him shared Martini’s opinion. His savage attacks upon Montanelli had annoyed even his admirers; and Galli himself, who at first had been inclined to uphold everything the witty satirist said or did, began to acknowledge with an aggrieved air that Montanelli had better have been left in peace. “Decent cardinals are none so plenty. One might treat them politely when they do turn up.”

The only person who, apparently, remained quite indifferent to the storm of caricatures and pasquinades was Montanelli himself. It seemed, as Martini said, hardly worth while to expend one’s energy in ridiculing a man who took it so good-humouredly. It was said in the town that Montanelli, one day when the Archbishop of Florence was dining with him, had found in the room one of the Gadfly’s bitter personal lampoons against himself, had read it through and handed the paper to the Archbishop, remarking: “That is rather cleverly put, is it not?”

One day there appeared in the town a leaflet, headed: “The Mystery of the Annunciation.” Even had the author omitted his now familiar signature, a sketch of a gadfly with spread wings, the bitter, trenchant style would have left in the minds of most readers no doubt as to his identity. The skit was in the form of a dialogue between Tuscany as the Virgin Mary, and Montanelli as the angel who, bearing the lilies of purity and crowned with the olive branch of peace, was announcing the advent of the Jesuits. The whole thing was full of offensive personal allusions and hints of the most risky nature, and all Florence felt the satire to be both ungenerous and unfair. And yet all Florence laughed. There was something so irresistible in the Gadfly’s grave absurdities that those who most disapproved of and disliked him laughed as immoderately at all his squibs as did his warmest partisans. Repulsive in tone as the leaflet was, it left its trace upon the popular feeling of the town. Montanelli’s personal reputation stood too high for any lampoon, however witty, seriously to injure it, but for a moment the tide almost turned against him. The Gadfly had known where to sting; and, though eager crowds still collected before the Cardinal’s house to see him enter or leave his carriage, ominous cries of “Jesuit!” and “Sanfedist spy!” often mingled with the cheers and benedictions.

But Montanelli had no lack of supporters. Two days