The Roman Tales. Susan Ashe
flattered to win. Well received everywhere, he had only had trifling love affairs until Elena returned from the convent.
Shortly afterwards, Cechino moved from Rome to the Palazzo Campireali to teach literature to the young girl. Giulio, who knew the great poet, wrote him a poem in Latin on how fortunate he was in his old age to see such beautiful eyes fixed on his and to behold a soul so pure.
The jealousy and spite of the young girls Giulio had courted before Elena’s return soon made it useless for him to try to hide his growing passion, and so this love between a young man of twenty-two and a girl of seventeen took a path that cannot be called cautious. Not three months went by before Signor de’ Campireali noticed that Giulio Branciforte passed too often beneath the windows of his palazzo.
Outspokenness and bluntness, which always follow the freedom republics allow and the free rein given to passions as yet unsuppressed by the manners of a monarchy, could be seen in Campireali’s first step. On the very day he was upset by young Branciforte’s too frequent appearances he spoke to him.
‘How dare you keep traipsing past my house and gazing up impertinently at my daughter’s window’, he said, ‘when you barely have a decent garment to cover yourself? If I were not afraid my neighbours would misconstrue it, I’d give you a couple of gold coins and send you to Rome to buy a better tunic. At least my eyes and my daughter’s would be less affronted by the sight of your rags.’
Elena’s father was exaggerating. Young Branciforte’s clothes were not rags but were made of homespun. Although clean and cared for, they were somewhat threadbare. Giulio was so deeply wounded by Campireali’s insults that he never again passed the house in daylight.
Two arches – remnants of an ancient aqueduct – served as the main walls of the house built and left to Giulio by his father. The place was only five or six hundred yards from Albano. To descend from here to the new town, Giulio had to pass the Palazzo Campireali. Elena soon noted the absence of this strange man who had, so his friends claimed, given up all other ties to devote himself wholly to the happiness he seemed to find in gazing at her.
One summer evening towards midnight Elena was at her open window enjoying the air which reaches Albano from the sea three leagues away. The night was dark, the silence deep. You could have heard a leaf drop. Leaning on her windowsill, Elena was perhaps thinking of Giulio, when an object like the silent wing of a night bird brushed against her window.
She drew back in alarm. The window was on the second storey, more than fifty feet above the ground. All at once, the girl thought she saw a posy moving back and forth in the deep silence. Her heart beat wildly. The posy seemed to be tied to the end of two or three long canes attached to each other. The pliancy of the rods and the breeze made it difficult for Giulio to keep his bouquet in front of the window where he guessed Elena might be. The night was so dark that from the road nothing could be seen at such a height.
Standing at her window, Elena was deeply troubled. Would taking the posy mean giving her consent? She felt none of the emotions her situation would have aroused in a well-brought-up young girl of today. Her father and brother Fabio were in the house. Elena’s first thought was that the slightest sound would be followed by a weapon fired at Giulio. She pitied the young man for the risk he was taking. Her next thought was that although she hardly knew him he was nevertheless the person whom, after her family, she loved best in the world. After several seconds’ hesitation, she took the posy and, touching the flowers in the inky blackness, she felt a piece of paper tied to the stem of one bloom. She ran to the great staircase to read the note by the glimmer of the lamp glowing before a portrait of the Madonna.
‘Rash boy,’ she said, when the first lines made her blush with pleasure. ‘If anyone sees me I’m lost, and my family will persecute this poor young man for ever.’
She returned to her room and lit a lamp. It was a thrilling moment for Giulio, who, ashamed of what he was doing and as if to hide even in the dark, was clinging to the huge trunk of one of the curiously shaped green oaks which still grow in front of the Palazzo Campireali.
In the letter, Giulio described straightforwardly the mortifying reprimand he’d had from Elena’s father.
I am poor, it’s true, and it would be hard for you to understand just how poor. I have only my house, which you may have noticed under the ruined aqueduct of Alba. There’s a garden round it, which I cultivate myself and whose plants nourish me. I also have a vineyard that brings me thirty scudi a year. I really don’t know why I love you. Obviously I can’t invite you to share my poverty. But at the same time, if you don’t care for me at all my life is worth nothing. It’s useless to say that I would give it a thousand times for you. Before you came back from the convent, my life was not miserable. On the contrary, it was filled with the most exciting plans. Now this glimpse of happiness has made me wretched. No one else would have dared utter the insults your father lashed me with. My dagger would have given me instant justice. My courage and my dagger made me the equal of anyone in the world. I lacked nothing. Now everything has changed. I know fear. Perhaps I go on too long. Perhaps you despise me. If, however, you have some pity for me in spite of the humble clothes I wear, every evening when midnight sounds at the Capuchin monastery on the top of the hill you will see that I am hiding under the great oak opposite the balcony I watch endlessly because I believe it to be your bedroom window. If you do not despise me as your father does, throw me one of the flowers from the posy, but take care it does not catch on the corner of the balcony below.
Elena read the letter several times, her eyes slowly filling with tears. She was moved by the beautiful bouquet, which was tied with a strong silken thread. She tried to pluck out a flower but did not succeed. Suddenly she was filled with remorse. To Roman girls, plucking a flower from a posy given as a love token or destroying it in any way risks killing off that love. Fearing Giulio’s impatience, she dashed to the window. Once there, she thought she could be seen too easily. The lamp filled the room with light. Elena did not know what signal she could allow herself. There seemed nothing that would not say too much.
Timid, she hurried back into her room. But time passed. Then a thought filled her with anxiety. Giulio would think that she too despised him for his poverty. A small piece of precious marble lay on a table. Knotting it in her handkerchief, she threw it to the foot of the oak opposite her window. Then she signed to him to go away. She heard Giulio obey. As he left he did not trouble to conceal the sound of his footsteps. When he reached the top of the ring of rocks that separates the lake from Albano, she heard him break into a love song. Less timid now, she waved to him, then went back to reread her letter.
The next day and the following days there were similar letters and assignations. But as nothing goes unnoticed in an Italian village, and Elena’s family was by far the richest in the region, Signor de’ Campireali was informed that every evening after midnight a light could be seen in his daughter’s room. And, stranger still, the window was open and Elena stood there as if she had no fear of irksome busybodies. Signor de’ Campireali got out his arquebus and his son’s. That evening, as a quarter to midnight struck, he called Fabio, and, making as little noise as possible, the two slipped out onto a large stone balcony immediately below Elena’s window. The thick columns of the stone balustrade protected them below the waist from gunshots that might be fired on them from without. Midnight struck; father and son could clearly hear rustling sounds from the trees that bordered the road opposite the palazzo, but to their surprise no light appeared in Elena’s window.
Falling in love had changed this girl from a simple carefree child. She knew that the slightest reckless action could spell death to her lover. Should someone as important as her father kill a poor man like Giulio Branciforte, he would have to disappear to Naples for three months. Meanwhile his Roman friends would make arrangements, and all would be settled by the gift of a silver lamp worth several hundred scudi to the altar of whichever Madonna was then in fashion.
That morning, at breakfast, Elena noted from her father’s expression that he was extremely angry, and, by the way he watched her when he thought she was not looking, she realized she was the source of his anger. Quickly she sprinkled a layer of dust on the stocks of the five magnificent arquebuses her father kept hanging by his bed. She also scattered a thin coat of dust over his daggers