Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/269

1885.] She had been rowing about the lagunes for nearly half-an-hour, when it suddenly occurred to her that she would pay a Sunday visit to a very old friend of hers, Princess Vasarhely, a Hungarian, who lived in a garden upon the Guidecca; and she accordingly gave orders to Michael Angelo to convey her to the canal of that name.

Princess Vasarhely was probably at that moment the oldest social institution left in Venice. Others had come, had nourished, and had passed away, but she had always remained. She had lived there, it was said, right through the whole of the later Austrian occupation, and had been the centre, for years, of everything, the rallying-point for three or four contending nationalities, including even a few Italians, who, of all native-born Austrian subjects, had made a solitary exception in her favour. She was not very young even in those days, but she was very old indeed now – people said in her hundreds, but that no doubt was an exaggeration. She was a tiny, white, wizened woman, very shrewd, very autocratic, very intolerant of contradiction; wearing always a small white quilted satin cap, made like a baby's, and tied in a tight knot under her chin. She talked English, and indeed most European languages, – preferring French, – and in every language mincing her words up into the smallest possible pieces before uttering them, which she did with the very ends of her lips, out of regard presumably for her teeth. Wildly romantic tales were told of her youth. She had been marvellously beautiful; men had gone mad for love of her; and duels innumerable had been fought for the sake of her smiles. Her husband, according to one malicious report, had been the most complacent of men, and she had taken full advantage of his amiability, though never, it was admitted, derogating from her position as a grande dame and leader of her world. She looked quiet enough now at any rate! The underlying volcanoes were all smoothed and smothered decorously away under a thick superimposed layer of grey ashes. The complacent husband was dead long ago, and had given up his last breath in the arms of his adored and irresistible wife. Even that event lay already as much as twenty-five years back, and about the same time the Princess had bought for herself this garden and vineyard upon the Guidecca, close under the shadow of the beautiful Redentore, had filled it with birds, beasts, and flowers, and here she still lived with a deaf elderly companion, who was herself the successor of one who had died some ten years back of old age.

In addition to this house in the garden, the Princess possessed also a suite of rooms on the Grand Canal, but these she rarely occupied – had not indeed been off the Guidecca now for more than a year past. The little house near the Hedentore was her home, her palace, her last throne. It was cold enough there bitterly cold, in fact, in the winter time; but with stoves at every corner, and two or three quilted portièrs to every door, the Princess continued to keep her old blood warm, and to cater for the comfort of her innumerable pets. Every day in the year, whenever the weather permitted, she was taken out at three o'clock in her big-wheeled chair, and sat under the trees the whole afternoon, feeding her birds and fat spaniel with bonbons, and receiving every one who came to see her. Her visitors were not very numerous now, for she had