Eisingarde, a man of consummate craft and acuteness, and who, by a timely loan to a person of influence in the court of the Duchess, obtained certain mining privileges of immense value. This took place in 1829; six years after that he died, leaving behind him a widow and two sons, the elder called Carlo, after himself, the second Francesco, it was said after the Emperor. They were boys of only eight and ten years of age at the time, but they were very soon made conscious that they were heirs to a large fortune. This fact, very strongly impressed upon natures not remarkable for any peculiar generosity, did not render them more amiable; nor was their popularity with the town’s-folk increased by the character of their mother, who was a German-Swiss, and possessed a large share of the cold and selfish reserve so remarkable in that race. In a larger sphere of life, in a wider circle, the traits of this family would doubtless not have attracted the same notice. They would have been submerged in the conflicting waves of daily interest, and if remarked at all, only passingly, and with out anything of importance attached to the notice: but Gariglano was small, and small things were great ones in its eyes, and so these Eisingarde boys were watched, and scrutinised, and speculated on, as in a more distinguished sphere are the princes of a royal house. The time when these brothers were emerging into boyhood was a most eventful moment for Italy. It was just at that time the first movements of secret societies began to be felt, and the institution of the “Carbonari” showed the Cabinet of Vienna what dangerous troubles might come of a smouldering but inextinguishable nationality. This club had its agents throughout the entire Peninsula, from the Alps to the last cape of Calabria. They were in every city, in every town, almost in every village; men of the highest rank, of ancient lineage, and large fortune were members of the league, along with broken-down adventurers and outcasts. So artfully constructed was it, that there was a place and a sphere of action for each without any risk that the indiscretion of one should seriously compromise the others; indeed, its very objects were known only in a graduated form to the members, and, while some saw merely the prospect of certain legislative changes in favour of liberty, others knew that the great cause was the entire reconstruction of all government, and the downfall of every dynasty in Europe.
Small and insignificant as was Gariglano, it had its “Carbonari lodge,” which included persons of every age, from the patriarchs of the village to young lads, scarcely entering on manhood.
Whether suggested by a deeper policy, or merely the offshoot of mischievous pleasantry, some of the leading members resolved if possible to entice the young Eisingardes into its ranks. The scheme was easy of accomplishment. The boys—who partly from an unruly disposition, and partly from the importance derived from their known fortune, assumed an unusual degree of liberty, going about how, and when, and where they liked—were easily entrapped into the league, which gratified their pride by at once classing them with grown-up men. The eldest was fifteen, and Francesco only thirteen when they took the oaths to uphold doctrines they had never heard of, and at the price of life itself be true to a bond of whose meaning they had not the vaguest conception. It is not unlikely that their initiation was accompanied with every circumstance that could render it imposing and impressive to their young minds, and certainly one result soon made itself sufficiently evident. They assumed a contempt for their mother’s authority, and very plainly intimated to her that they had adopted other guidance than hers.
By their father’s will they were to come of age at nineteen, and Carlo scarcely suffered a day to pass without intimating how he was counting the hours to that “bourne,” and hinting at what changes would ensue upon his accession to independence. They did not even stop here, but in a variety of ways offended the feelings and prejudices which arose from her birth and education. They scoffed at Austria, ridiculed Germany, and even derided its national courage. The bust of the Emperor over the fire-place—that Franz after whom the second boy was called—they decorated with a fool’s cap and bells.
A portrait of Sand was hung up in a place of honour, and the old jingling harpsichord, which in their father’s day had so often vibrated to the sounds of “God preserve the Emperor,” now rattled with the vulgar chords of the French “Ça ira,” and all the other revolutionary strains which used to cheer the mobs around the guillotine.
None ever crossed the Eisingarde threshold. It was a house that admitted neither guest nor acquaintance; but many, as they passed in the street, could overhear the violent words of anger and altercation between the mother and her sons, terrible predictions of an evil retribution mingled with insolent mockings of senile impotence: screams and cries for help had been heard: but as these quarrels were daily events, they ceased to attract even a passing notice, and when the young fellows swaggered out, boasting that they had given the old woman “her matins,” the villagers only laughed, for all hated her, and any sympathies they had were with her rebellious aud unnatural children.
A man in all the vices and dissipations of manhood before he was eighteen, Carlo had contracted heavy debts. Even village life has its share of corrupting influences, and there was a little café which had its billiard-table, and a bowling-green which had its swindlers, just as effective in their way as their higher brethren of the turf and Newmarket. No need to say how Carlo Eisingarde was welcomed at such haunts, nor what flatteries and seductions were thrown around him. His imperious temper grew every day more insolent and overbearing, for there was none to contradict or gainsay him. The hungry crowd who followed him from place to place observed all his humours, and echoed all his opinions, till he became at last that most contemptible of all things, the petty tyrant of a petty locality. It was just when his ascendancy seemed to have reached its summit that there came to the village a distant relative of the Count of Gariglano, a certain Sebastian Spada. Though not yet much
