"de Musset, Alfred - Tizianello" - читать интересную книгу автора (Musset Alfred De)

Tizianello, by Alfred de Musset

The Naked Word electronic edition of...
Tizianello
by Alfred de Musset
Done into English by M. Raoul Pellissier, 1905



CHAPTER I
IN the month of February, in the year 1580, a young man was crossing, at break
of day, the Piazzetta, in Venice. His clothes were in disorder: his hat, on
which was a fine scarlet plume waving in the breeze, was pushed down over his
forehead. He was walking rapidly toward the Riva degli Schiavoni, his sword and
mantle dragging in the dust, while, with a disdainful air, he cautiously stepped
over the forms of the fishermen scattered on the ground. Having reached the
Ponte della Paglia, he stopped and looked about him. The moon was setting behind
the Giudecca, and the aurora of the morning was gilding the Ducal Palace. A
thick smoke and a brilliant light from time to time escaped from a neighboring
palace. Beams, stones, enormous blocks of marble, and other debris encumbered
the Canal of Prisons. In the midst of the waters a fire had just destroyed a
patrician's home. Flying sparks rose upward every moment, and by this brilliant
light an armed soldier was to be seen mounting guard over the ruins.
But our young man seemed struck neither by this spectacle of destruction nor by
the beauty of a sky tinged with the most delicate colors. For a time he looked
in the distance, as if to distract his dazzled eyes. But the light of day seemed
to have a disagreeable influence on him, for he folded his mantle round him and
hastened on his way. He soon came to a stop at the door of a palace, on which he
knocked. A valet, holding a candle in his hand, opened immediately. At the
moment of entering he turned, and, casting a look at the sky, cried:
"By Bacchus, my carnival is costing me dearly!" This young man was named
Pomponio Filippo Vecellio. He was Titian's second son, a child full of spirits
and imagination, whose father cherished fond hopes for him, but whose passion
for play led him continually into riotous ways. It was scarce four years since
the great painter and his eldest son Orazio had died, almost at the same time,
and young Pippo, in four years, had already squandered the greater part of the
immense fortune that this double inheritance had brought him. Instead of
cultivating his natural abilities and sustaining the glory of his name, he spent
his days in sleeping and his nights in playing at the house of a certain
Comtesse, or at least so-called Comtesse, Orsini, who made the ruination of the
young Venetians her business. There assembled at her house every night a
numerous company of nobles and courtiers. There they supped and played, and as
their supper cost them nothing, it goes without saying, that the dice took care
to indemnify the mistress of the house. While the sequins were piling up in
heaps, Cyprus wine was flowing, and the victims were ogling their hostess and,
doubly dazed, left behind them both their money and their reason.
It was from this dangerous spot that we have just seen emerge the hero of this
tale, and he had suffered that night more than one loss. Besides having emptied
his pockets at dice, the only picture he had ever completed, a picture that the
connoisseurs voted excellent, had just been destroyed in the fire at the Dolfino