CHAPTER XV.
Gouache's wound was by no means dangerous, and when he had somewhatrecovered from the combined effects of loss of blood and excessivefatigue he did not feel much the worse for having a ball in hisshoulder. Giovanni and the doctor gave him food and a little wine inthe carriage, and long before they reached the gates of the city theZouave was well enough to have heard Sant' Ilario's explanation. Thepresence of the surgeon, however, made any intimate conversationdifficult.
"I came to find you," said Giovanni in a low voice, "because everythinghas been set right in your absence, and I was afraid you might bekilled at Mentana without receiving my apology."
Gouache looked at his companion in some surprise. He knew very wellthat Sant' Ilario was not a man to make excuses without some veryextraordinary reasons for such a step. It is a prime law of the code ofhonour, however, that an apology duly made must be duly accepted asputting an end to any quarrel, and Anastase saw at once that Giovannihad relinquished all intention of fighting.
"I am very glad that everything is explained," answered Gouache. "Iconfess that I was surprised beyond measure by the whole affair."
"I regret having entered your rooms without your permission," continuedGiovanni who intended to go to the end of what he had undertaken. "Thepin was my wife's, but the letter was written by another person with aview to influencing your conduct. I cannot explain here, but you shallknow whatever is necessary when we are alone. Of course, if you stilldesire any satisfaction, I am at your service."
"Pray do not suggest such a thing. I have no further feeling ofannoyance in the matter."
Gouache insisted on being taken to his own lodgings, though Sant'Ilario offered him the hospitality of the Palazzo Saracinesca. By fouro'clock in the morning the ball was extracted and the surgeon took hisleave, recommending sleep and quiet for his patient. Gouache, however,would not let Giovanni go without hearing the end of the story.
"The facts are very few," said the latter after a moment's hesitation."It appears that you had arranged to meet a lady on Sunday morning. Acertain person whom I will not name discovered your intention, andconceived the idea of preventing the meeting by sending you a notepurporting to come from the lady. As he could get none of hernote-paper he possessed himself of some of my wife's. He pinned thenote on your table with the pin you had chanced to find. I was foolishenough to enter your room and I recognised the pin and the paper. Youunderstand the rest."
Gouache laughed merrily.
"I understand that you did me a great service. I met the lady afterall, but if I had received the note I would not have gone, and shewould have waited for me. Do you mind telling me the name of theindividual who tried to play me the trick?"
"If you will excuse my discretion, I would rather not. He knows thathis plan failed. I should not feel justified in telling you his name,from other motives."
"As you please," said Gouache. "I daresay I shall find him out."
So the interview ended and Giovanni went home to rest at last, almostas much worn out as Gouache himself. He was surprised at the ease withwhich everything had been arranged, but he was satisfied with theresult and felt that a weight had been taken from his mind. He sleptlong and soundly and awoke the next morning to hear that Corona wasmuch better.
The events of Saturday and Sunday had to all appearances smoothed manydifficulties from the lives of those with whom my history is concerned.Corona and Giovanni were once more united, though the circumstancesthat had produced so terrible a breach between them had left a shadowon their happiness. Gouache had fought his battle and had returned witha slight wound so that as soon as he could go out he would be able torenew his visits at the Palazzo Montevarchi and see Faustina withoutresorting to any more ingenious stratagems. San Giacinto had failed toproduce the trouble he had planned, but his own prospects werebrilliant enough. His marriage with Flavia was to take place on thelast of the month and the preliminaries were being arranged as quicklyas possible. Flavia herself was delighted with the new dignity sheassumed in the family, and if she was not positively in love with SanGiacinto, was enough attracted by him to look forward with pleasureupon the prospect of becoming his wife. Old Montevarchi alone seemedpreoccupied and silent, but his melancholy mood was relieved byoccasional moments of anticipated triumph, while he made frequentvisits to the library and seemed to find solace in the conversation ofthe librarian, Arnoldo Meschini.
In the future of each of these persons there was an element ofuncertainty which most of them disregarded. As Corona recovered,Giovanni began to think that she would really forget as well as forgiveall he had made her suffer. Gouache on his part entertained the mostsanguine hopes of marrying Faustina. Montevarchi looked forward withassurance to the success of his plot against the Saracinesca. SanGiacinto and Flavia were engaged, indeed, but were not yet married. Andyet the issue of none of these events was absolutely sure.
The first matter with which we are concerned is the forgery of theclauses in the documents, which Meschini had undertaken to accomplishand actually finished in less than three weeks. It was indeed an easytask for a man so highly skilled in the manufacture of chirograhicantiquities, but he had found himself unexpectedly balked at theoutset, and the ingenuity he displayed in overcoming the difficultieshe met with is worth recording.
It was necessary in the first place to ascertain whether there was acopy of the principal deed at the Chancery. He had no trouble infinding that such a copy existed, and was indeed fully prepared for thecontingency. But when the parchment was produced, his face fell. It wasa smaller sheet than the first and the writing was a little wider, sothat the space at the foot of the first page was considerably less thanin the original. He saw at once that it would be impossible to make theinsertion, even if he could get possession of the document for a timelong enough to execute the work. Moreover, though he was not actuallywatched while he read it, he could see that it would be almostimpracticable to use writing materials in the office of the Chancerywithout being observed. He was able, however, to take out the originalwhich he carried with him and to compare it with the copy. Both were byone hand, and the copy was only distinguished by the seal of thegovernment office. It was kept, like all such documents, in a dustycase upon which were written the number and letter of the alphabet bywhich it was classified.
Meschini hesitated only a moment, and then decided to substitute theoriginal for the copy. Should the keeper of the archives chance to lookat the parchment and discover the absence of the seal, Meschini couldeasily excuse himself by saying that he had mistaken the two, andindeed with that one exception they were very much alike. The keeper,however, noticed nothing and Arnoldo had the satisfaction of seeing himunsuspiciously return the cardboard case to its place on the shelves.He went back to his room and set to work.
The longer he looked at the sheet the more clearly he saw that it wouldbe impossible to make the insertion. There was nothing to be done butto forge a new document with the added words. He did not like the idea,though he believed himself fully able to carry it out. There was arisk, he thought, which he had not meant to undertake; but on the otherhand the reward was great. He put forth all his skill to produce theimitation and completed it in ten days to his entire satisfaction. Heunderstood the preparation of seals as well as the rest of his art, andhad no difficulty in making a die which corresponded precisely with thewax. In the first place he took off the impression carefully withkneaded bread. From this with a little plaster of Paris he reproducedthe seal, which he very carefully retouched with a fine steelinstrument until it was quite perfect. Over this again he poured meltedlead, thus making a hard die with which he could stamp the wax withoutdanger of breaking the instrument. Once more he retouched the lead witha graving tool, using a lens for the work and ultimately turning out anabsolutely accurate copy of the seal used in the Chancery office. Hemade experiments as he proceeded, and when he was at last satisfied heturned to the actual forgery, which was a longer matter and requiredgreater skill and patience. Noth
ing was omitted which could make thefraud complete. The parchment assumed the exact shade under hismarvellous manipulation. The smallest roughness was copied withfaultless precision, and then by many hours of handling and the use ofa little dust collected among the books in the library, he imparted tothe whole the appearance of age which was indispensable. When he hadfinished he showed his work to old Montevarchi, but by an inherent loveof duplicity did not tell him that the whole document was forged,merely pointing to the inserted clause as a masterpiece of imitation.First, however, he pretended that the copy had actually contained theinserted words, and the prince found it hard to believe that this wasnot the case. Meschini was triumphant.
Again he returned to the Chancery and substituted what he had writtenfor the first original upon which he had now to make the insertion.There was no difficulty here, and yet he hesitated before beginning. Itseemed to him safer after all to forge the whole of the second as hehad done the first. A slip of the pen, an unlucky drop of ink might marthe work and excite suspicion, whereas if he made a mistake upon afresh sheet of parchment he could always begin again. There was onlyone danger. The Saracinesca might have made some private mark upon theoriginal which should elude even his microscopic examination. He spentnearly a day in examining the sheet with a lens but could discovernothing. Being satisfied of the safety of the proceeding he executedthe forgery with the same care he had bestowed upon the first, andshowed it to his employer. The latter could scarcely believe his eyes,and was very far from imagining that the two originals were intact andcarefully locked up in Meschini's room. The prince took the documentand studied its contents again during many hours before he finallydecided to return it to old Saracinesca.
It was a moment of intense excitement. He hesitated whether he shouldtake the manuscripts back himself or send them by a messenger. Had hebeen sure of controlling himself, he would have gone in person, but heknew that if Saracinesca should chance to look over the writing whenthey were together, it would be almost impossible to conceal emotionunder such a trial of nerve. What he really hoped was that the princewould think no more of the matter, and put away the parcel withoutexamining the contents.
Montevarchi pondered long over the course he should pursue, his eyesgleaming now and then with a wild triumph, and then growing dull andglassy at the horrible thought of discovery. Then again theconsciousness that he was committing a great crime overcame him, and hetwisted his fingers nervously. He had embarked upon the undertaking,however, and he fully believed that it would be impossible to draw backeven had he wished to do so. The insertions were made and could not beerased. It is possible that at one moment, had Montevarchi known thetruth, he would have drawn back; but it is equally sure that if he haddone so he would sooner or later have regretted it, and would have doneall in his power to recover lost ground and to perpetrate the fraud.The dominant passion for money, when it is on the point of beingsatisfied, is one of the strongest incentives to evil deeds, and in thepresent case the stake was enormous. He would not let it slip throughhis fingers. He rejoiced that the thing was done and that the millionsof the Saracinesca were already foredoomed to be his.
It is doubtful whether he was able to form a clear conception of whatwould take place after the trial was over and the property awarded tohis son-in-law. It was perhaps enough for his ambition that hisdaughter should be Princess Saracinesca, and he did not doubt his powerto control some part of the fortune. San Giacinto, who was whollyinnocent in the matter, would, he thought, be deeply grateful forhaving been told of his position, and would show his gratitude in abefitting manner. Moreover, Montevarchi's avarice was on a grand scale,and it was not so much the possession of more money for himself that hecoveted, as the aggrandisement of his children and grandchildren. Thepatriarchal system often produces this result. He would scarcely haveknown what to do with a greater fortune than he possessed, but helooked forward with a wild delight to seeing his descendants masters ofso much wealth. The fact that he could not hope to enjoy hissatisfaction very long did not detract from its reality or magnitude.The miser is generally long-lived, and does not begin to anticipatedeath until the catastrophe is near at hand. Even then it is acompensation to him to feel that the heirs of his body are to be madeglorious by what he has accumulated, and his only fear is that theywill squander what he has spent his strength in amassing. He educateshis children to be thrifty and rejoices when they spend no money,readily believing them to be as careful as himself, and seldomreflecting that, if he furnished them with the means, their truedisposition might turn out to be very different. It is so intenselypainful to him to think of wealth being wasted that he cultivates thebelief in the thriftiness of those who must profit by his death. If hehas been born to worldly state as well as to a great inheritance, heextends the desire of accumulation to the fortunes of his relations anddescendants, and shows a laudable anxiety that they should possess allthat he can get for them, provided it is quite impossible that heshould get it for himself. The powers of the world have been to a greatextent built up on this principle, and it is a maxim in many a greatfamily that there is no economy like enriching one's relatives to thethird and fourth generation.
The struggle in Montevarchi's mind was so insignificant and lasted soshort a time, that it might be disregarded altogether, were it notalmost universally true that the human mind hesitates at the moment ofcommitting a crime. That moment of hesitation has prevented millions offrightful deeds, and has betrayed thousands of carefully plottedconspiracies whose success seemed assured, and it is amazing to thinkwhat an influence has been exerted upon the destinies of the human raceby the instinctive fear of crossing the narrow boundary between rightand wrong. The time occupied in such reflection is often onlyinfinitesimal. It has been called the psychological moment, and if thedefinition means that it is the instant during which the soul suggests,it is a true one. It is then that our natural repulsion for evilasserts itself; it is then that the consequences of what we are aboutto do rise clearly before us as in a mirror; it is then that ourcourage is suddenly strengthened to do the right, or deserts us andleaves us mere instruments for the accomplishment of the wrong. Ifhumanity had not an element of good in it, there would be no hesitationin the perpetration of crime, any more than a wild beast pauses beforedestroying a weaker creature. Perhaps there is no clearer proof of theexistence of a divine soul in man, than his intuitive reluctance to dowhat in the lower animals would be most natural. Circumstances,education, the accidents of life, all tend to make this psychologicmoment habitually shorter or longer. The suspense created in theconscience, during which the intelligence is uncertain how to act, maylast a week or a second, a year or a quarter of an hour; but it is astage through which all must pass, both the professional criminal andthe just man who is perhaps tempted to commit a crime but once duringhis life.
Old Lotario Montevarchi had never been guilty of any misdeed subject tothe provisions of the penal code; but he had done most things in hislove of money which were not criminal only because the law had notforeseen the tortuous peculiarities of his mind. Even now he persuadedhimself that the end was a righteous one, and that his course wasmorally justifiable. He had that power of deceiving himself whichcharacterises the accomplished hypocrite, and he easily built up forSan Giacinto a whole edifice of sympathy which seemed in his own viewvery real and moral. He reflected with satisfaction upon the probablefeelings of the old Leone Saracinesca, when, after relinquishing hisbirthright, he found himself married and the father of a son. How thepoor man must have cursed his folly and longed for some means ofundoing the deed! It was but common justice after all--it was butcommon justice, and it was a mere accident of fate that Leone'sgreat-grandson, who was now to be reinstated in all the glories of hisprincely possessions, was also to marry Flavia Montevarchi.
The prospect was too alluring and the suspense lasted but a moment,though he believed that he spent much time in considering thesituation. The thoughts that really occupied him were not of a natureto hinder the accomplishment of
his plan, and he was not at allsurprised with himself when he finally tied up the packet and rang fora messenger. Detection was impossible, for by Meschini's skilfulmanagement, the original and the official copy corresponded exactly andwere such marvellous forgeries as to defy discovery. When it isconsidered that the greatest scientists and specialists in Europe haverecently disagreed concerning documents which are undoubtedly of modernmanufacture, and which were produced by just such men as ArnoldoMeschini, it need not appear surprising that the latter shouldsuccessfully impose upon a court of law. The circumstances of theSaracinesca family history, too, lent an air of probability to thealleged facts. The poverty and temporary disappearance of Leone'sdescendants explained why they had not attempted to recover theirrights. Nay, more, since Leone had died when his son was an infant, andsince there was no copy of the document among his papers, it was morethan probable that the child on growing up had never known the natureof the deed, and would not have been likely to suspect what was now putforward as the truth, unless his attention were called to it by someperson possessed of the necessary knowledge.
The papers were returned to Prince Saracinesca in the afternoon with apolite note of thanks. It will be remembered that the prince had notread the documents, as he had meant to do, in consequence of thetrouble between Giovanni and Corona which had made him forget hisintention. He had not looked over them since he had been a young manand the recollection of their contents was far from clear. Havingalways supposed the collateral branch of his family to be extinct, itwas only natural that he should have bestowed very little thought uponthe ancient deeds which he believed to have been drawn up in due formand made perfectly legal.
When he came home towards evening, he found the sealed packet upon histable, and having opened it, was about to return the papers to theirplace in the archives. It chanced that he had a letter to write,however, and he pushed the documents aside before taking them to thelibrary. While he was writing, Giovanni entered the room.
As has been seen, the prince had been very angry with his son forhaving allowed himself to doubt Corona, and though several days hadelapsed since the matter had been explained, the old man's wrath hadnot wholly subsided. He still felt considerable resentment againstGiovanni, and his intercourse with the latter had not yet regained itsformer cordiality. As Sant' Ilario entered the room, Saracinesca lookedup with an expression which showed clearly that the interruption wasunwelcome.
"Do I disturb you?" asked Giovanni, noticing the look.
"Do you want anything?"
"No--nothing especial."
Saracinesca's eye fell upon the pile of manuscripts that lay on thetable. It struck him that Giovanni might occupy himself by looking themover, while he himself finished the letter he had begun.
"There are those deeds relating to San Giacinto," he said, "you mightlook through them before they are put away. Montevarchi borrowed themfor a day or two and has just sent them back."
Giovanni took the bundle and established himself in a comfortable chairbeside a low stand, where the light of a lamp fell upon the pages as heturned them. He made no remark, but began to examine the documents, oneby one, running his eye rapidly along the lines, as he read onmechanically, not half comprehending the sense of the words. He waspreoccupied by thoughts of Corona and of what had lately happened, sothat he found it hard to fix his attention. The prince's pen scratchedand spattered on the paper, and irritated Giovanni, for the oldgentleman wrote a heavy, nervous handwriting, and lost his tempertwenty times in five minutes, mentally cursing the ink, the paper andthe pen, and wishing he could write like a shopman or a clerk.
Giovanni's attention was arrested by the parchment on which theprincipal deed was executed, and he began to read the agreement withmore care than he had bestowed upon the other papers. He understoodLatin well enough, but the crabbed characters puzzled him from time totime. He read the last words on the first page without thinking verymuch of what they meant.
".... Eo tamen pacto, quod si praedicto Domino Leoni ex legitimomatrimonio heres nasceretur, instrumentum hoc nullum, vanum atque planeinvalidum fiat."
Giovanni smiled at the quaint law Latin, and then read the sentenceover again. His face grew grave as he realised the tremendous import ofthose few words. Again and again he translated the phrase, trying toextract from it some other meaning than that which was so unpleasantlyclear. No other construction, however, could be put upon what waswritten, and for some minutes Giovanni sat staring at the fire,bewildered and almost terrified by his discovery.
"Have you ever read those papers?" he asked at last, in a voice thatmade his father drop his pen and look up.
"Not for thirty years."
"Then you had better read them at once. San Giacinto is PrinceSaracinesca and you and I are nobody."
Saracinesca uttered a fierce oath and sprang from his chair.
"What do you mean?" he asked, seizing Giovanni's arm violently with onehand and taking the parchment with the other.
"Read for yourself. There--at the foot of the page, from 'eo tamenpacto.' It is plain enough. It says, 'On the understanding that if anheir be born to the aforesaid Don Leone, in lawful wedlock, the presentinstrument shall be wholly null, void and inefficacious.' An heir wasborn, and San Giacinto is that heir's grandson. You may tear up thedocument. It is not worth the parchment it is written upon, nor are weeither."
"You are mad, Giovannino!" exclaimed the prince, hoarsely, "that is notthe meaning of the words. You have forgotten your Latin."
"I will get you a dictionary--or a lawyer--whichever you prefer."
"You are not in earnest, my boy. Look here--eo tamen pacto--that means'by this agreement'--does it not? I am not so rusty as you seem tothink."
"It means 'on this understanding, however.' Go on. Quod si, thatif--praedicto Domino Leoni, to the aforesaid Don Leone--ex legitimomatrimonio, from a lawful marriage--heres nasceretur, an heir should beborn--hoc instrumentum, this deed--shall be null, worthless andinvalid. You cannot get any other sense out of it. I have tried for aquarter of an hour. You and I are beggars. Saracinesca, Torleone,Barda, and all the rest belong to San Giacinto, the direct descendantof your great-grandfather's elder brother. You are simple Don Leone,and I am plain Don Giovanni. That is what it means."
"Good God!" cried the old man in extreme horror. "If you should beright--"
"I am right," replied Giovanni, very pale.
With wild eyes and trembling hands the prince spread the document uponthe table and read it over again. He turned it and went on to the end,his excitement bringing back in the moment such scholarship as he hadonce possessed and making every sentence as clear as the day.
"Not even San Giacinto--not even a title!" he exclaimed desperately. Hefell back in his chair, crushed by the tremendous blow that had fallenso unexpectedly upon him in his old age.
"Not even San Giacinto," repeated Giovanni, stupidly. His presence ofmind began to forsake him, too, and he sank down, burying his face inhis hands. As in a dream he saw his cousin installed in the very chairwhere his father now sat, master of the house in which he, Giovanni,had been born, like his father before him, master of the fortresses andcastles, the fair villas and the broad lands, the palaces and themillions to which Giovanni had thought himself heir, lord over thewealth and inheritances of his race, dignified by countless titles andby all the consideration that falls to the lot of the great in thisworld.
For a long time neither spoke, for both were equally overwhelmed by themagnitude of the disaster that hung over their heads. They lookedfurtively at each other, and each saw that his companion was white tothe lips. The old man was the first to break the silence.
"At all events, San Giacinto does not know how the deed stands," hesaid.
"It will make it all the harder to tell him," replied Giovanni.
"To tell him? You would not be so mad--"
"Do you think it would be honourable," asked the younger man, "for usto remain in possession of what clearly does not belong to us? I wil
lnot do it."
"We have been in possession for more than a century."
"That is no reason why we should continue to steal another man'smoney," said Giovanni. "We are men. Let us act like men. It is bitter.It is horrible. But we have no other course. After all, Corona hasAstrardente. She will give you a home. She is rich."
"Me? Why do you say me? Us both."
"I will work for my living," said Giovanni, quietly. "I am young. Iwill not live on my wife."
"It is absurd!" exclaimed the prince. "It is Quixotic. San Giacinto hasplenty of money without ruining us. Even if he finds it out I willfight the case to the end. I am master here, as my father and myfather's father were before me, and I will not give up what is minewithout a struggle. Besides, who assures us that he is really what herepresents himself to be? What proves that he is really the descendantof that same Leone?"
"For that matter," answered Giovanni, "he will have to produce verypositive proofs, valid in law, to show that he is really the man. Iwill give up everything to the lawful heir, but I will certainly notturn beggar to please an adventurer. But I say that, if San Giacintorepresents the elder branch of our house, we have no right here. If Iwere sure of it I would not sleep another night under this roof."
The old man could not withhold his admiration. There was somethingsupremely noble and generous about Giovanni's readiness to sacrificeeverything for justice which made his old heart beat with a strangepride. If he was reluctant to renounce his rights it was after all moreon Giovanni's account, and for the sake of Corona and little Orsino. Hehimself was an old man and had lived most of his life out already.
"You have your mother's heart, Giovannino," he said simply, but therewas a slight moisture in his eyes, which few emotions had ever had thepower to bring there.
"It is not a question of heart," replied Giovanni. "We cannot keep whatdoes not belong to us."
"We will let the law decide what we can keep. Do you realise what itwould be like, what a position we should occupy if we were suddenlydeclared beggars? We should be absolute paupers. We do not own a footof land, a handful of money that does not come under the provisions ofthat accursed clause."
"Wait a minute," exclaimed Giovanni, suddenly recollecting that hepossessed something of his own, a fact he had wholly forgotten in theexcitement of his discovery. "We shall not be wholly without resources.It does not follow from this deed that we must give to San Giacinto anyof the property our branch of the family has acquired by marriage, fromyour great grandfather's time to this. It must be very considerable. Tobegin with me, my fortune came from my mother. Then there was yourmother, and your father's mother, and so on. San Giacinto has no claimto anything not originally the property of the old Leone who made thisdeed."
"That is true," replied the prince, more hopefully. "It is not so badas it looked. You must be right about that point."
"Unless the courts decide that San Giacinto is entitled to compensationand interest, because four generations have been kept out of theproperty."
Both men looked grave. The suggestion was unpleasant. Such judgmentshad been given before and might be given again.
"We had better send for our lawyer," said the prince, at last. "Thesooner we know the real value of that bit of parchment the better itwill be for us. I cannot bear the suspense of waiting a day to know thetruth. Imagine that the very chair I am sitting upon may belong to SanGiacinto. I never liked the fellow, from the day when I first found himin his inn at Aquila."
"It is not his fault," answered Giovanni, quietly. "This is a perfectlysimple matter. We did not know what these papers were. Even if we hadknown, we should have laughed at them until we discovered that we had acousin. After all we shall not starve, and what is a title? The Popewill give you another when he knows what has happened. I would as soonbe plain Don Giovanni as Prince of Sant' Ilario."
"For that matter, you can call yourself Astrardente."
"I would rather not," said Giovanni, with something like a laugh. "ButI must tell Corona this news."
"Wait till she is herself again. It might disturb her too much."
"You do not know her!" Giovanni laughed heartily this time. "If youthink she cares for such things, you are very much mistaken in hercharacter. She will bear the misfortune better than any of us. Courage,padre mio! Things are never so black as they look at first."
"I hope not, my boy, I hope not! Go and tell your wife, if you think itbest. I would rather be alone."
Giovanni left the room, and Saracinesca was alone. He sank back oncemore in his chair and folded his strong brown hands together upon theedge of the table before him. In spite of all Giovanni could say, theold man felt keenly the horror of his position. Only those who, havingbeen brought up in immense wealth and accustomed from childhood to thepomp and circumstance of a very great position, are suddenly deprivedof everything, can understand what he felt.
He was neither avaricious nor given to vanity. He had not wasted hisfortune, though he had spent magnificently a princely income. He hadnot that small affection for greatness which, strange to say, is oftenfound in the very great. But his position was part of himself, so thathe could no more imagine himself plain Don Leone Saracinesca, than hecould conceive himself boasting of his ancient titles. And yet it wasquite plain to him that he must either cease to be a prince altogether,or accept a new title as a charity from his sovereign. As for hisfortune, it was only too plain that the greater part of it had neverbeen his.
To a man of his temperament the sensation of finding himself a mereimpostor was intolerable. His first impulse had of course been to fightthe case, and had the attack upon his position come from San Giacinto,he would probably have done so. But his own son had discovered thetruth and had put the matter clearly before him, in such a light as tomake an appeal to his honour. He had no choice but to submit. He couldnot allow himself to be outdone in common honesty by the boy he loved,nor could he have been guilty of deliberate injustice, for his ownadvantage, after he had been convinced that he had no right to hispossessions. He belonged to a race of men who had frequently committedgreat crimes and done atrocious deeds, notorious in history, frommotives of personal ambition, for the love of women or out of hatredfor men, but who had never had the reputation of loving money or ofstooping to dishonour for its sake. As soon as he was persuaded thateverything belonged to San Giacinto, he felt that he must resign all infavour of the latter.
One doubt alone remained to be solved. It was not absolutely certainthat San Giacinto was the man he represented himself to be. It wasquite possible that he should have gained possession of the papers heheld, by some means known only to himself; such things are often soldas curiosities, and as the last of the older branch of whom there wasany record preserved in Rome had died in obscurity, it was conceivablethat the ex-innkeeper might have found or bought the documents he hadleft, in order to call himself Marchese di San Giacinto. Saracinescadid not go so far as to believe that the latter had any knowledgewhatsoever of the main deed which was about to cause so much trouble,unless he had seen it in the hands of Montevarchi, in which case hecould not be blamed if he brought a suit for the recovery of so muchwealth.