Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/82

76 peculiar to a Northerner. In the same manner that reflection in an Italian does not extinguish naïveté or sink into melancholy, so humour does not degenerate into horse-play or exaggeration. The nature of Farina's humour is subtle and delicate. He can be ironical, too, but his irony is never scathing. The background of 'Tesoro di Donnina' is certainly somewhat sombre, for the scene of action is a lunatic asylum, and it is here the hero and heroine meet and seal their loves. The style is still a little stiff; there are crudities of expression, and too many minor incidents to be artistically complete.

But in 'Amore Bendato' the finished artist steps forth. It is a charming story, reflecting all the author's deepest qualities – a very masterpiece of heart-analysis. It treats of a young couple that cannot find the right domestic groove. Leonardo has married because it is the proper thing for a wealthy man, and he likes his little wife well enough, but he cannot for her sake renounce all his easy bachelor ways, his clubs, his meetings with male friends. Ernesta, who has a deeper nature, longs to be more to him than a toy, and fails to find contentment in her empty luxurious house. They separate: he travels, she stays at home, and a would-be comforter soon turns up in the form of the family doctor, Leonardo's friend. Here would be the moment for the ordinary French or Italian novelist to introduce an incident after the vulgar hackneyed type. Not so with Farina. Ernesta listens with indifferent curiosity to Agenore's materialistic and easy-going views of existence; and though he has laid a careful plan of battle to entrap the love-thirsting woman, she in no wise plays into his hands, though there is danger that, from sheer désœuvrement, she may yield. Things are at this point when Leonardo, whose eyesight has suffered from the beginning, suddenly returns home stone-blind. Ernesta at once remembers her duties; she tends him with wifely devotion; and during his long illness and ultimate recovery of sight, love, nearly extinct in her breast, scarcely awakened in his, comes to full bloom and blossom. With regained vision, Leonardo takes a new view of life and its duties; and we know that henceforth they will be a happy couple. Very delicately is the history of this revival of love unrolled before our eyes: her mere submission to duty in the first instance, then her gradual discovery that existence has now a purpose – she must be his eyes, his support, his world then the joy that the discovery gives her, – all this before an operation has restored the hope of renewed vision. On his part, there is a timidity towards his fair young wife, a sense of undeservedness of her favours, a fear lest his new sense of leaning upon her, his desire to have her about him, be merely an expression of his egotism that now needs such a devoted nurse. Subtly and skilfully Agenore is made to act the part of Cupid's agent both on husband and wife; and with delicious irony he is happily released out of the crooked position into which he has put himself, by a betrothal, thanks to Ernesta's feminine wiles, to one of her cousins who has long sighed after the doctor as a spouse. Ernesta chooses to pretend that all his wooing of her has been vicarious, and so the whole concludes merrily and without an inharmonious note. The book is delicate in idea and treatment, and is a gem of the first water. It was fol-