Almighty God, that supreme Architect, Who, alone among craftsmen, knows
when to give and when to stay the rein, has chosen the Plain of Emilia
to be, as it were, the garden of Italy, a garden set apart betwixt Alp
and Apennine to be adorned within a garden; has filled it with every
sort of fruit and herb and flowering tree; has watered it abundantly
with noble rivers; neither stinted it of deep shade nor removed it too
far from the timely stroke of the sun; has caused it, finally, to be
graced here and enriched there with divers great and grave cities. Man,
who has it not in him to be thrifty in so prodigal a midst, has here
also thought it lawful to go free. Out of that lake of rustling leaves
rise, like the masts of ships crowding a port, church towers, the
belfries of pious convents, the domes and turrets of great buildings
walled into cities. Among which, prized as they all are and honourably
additioned,--Vicenza, Treviso, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara,--there is none
more considerable than Padua, root of learning and grey cupolas, chosen
to be the last resting-place of Antenor, King Priam's brother, and the
first of Titus Livy.
It is of Padua that I am now called upon to report certain matters which
may seem strange to one who does not know her well: to the others,
_verbum satis_. Whether it is their University (too famous, perhaps, for
so quiet a place) or the suspiration of their greatest citizen which has
kindled their wits; whether that cauldron of brick, the _Santo_,
bubbling with silver domes, is the stem or flower of their exaltation;
whether their seat at the head of a sun-steeped marsh (at whose mouth is
Venice) hath itself unseated them; whether Petrarch set boiling what
Saint Antony could not allay; what it was, how it was, who gave them the
wrench, I know not--but the fact is that the people of Padua have been
as freakish a race as any in Italy; at the mercy of any head but the
aggregate's, pack-mules of a notion, galley-slaves of a whim, driven
hither and thither in a herd, like those restless leaves (souls once)
whose nearer sight first made Dante pitiful. Not that they, for their
part, asked for pity or got it. Mostly they paid their tavern bills when
the last cup had been drained and the last chorus led. When Ezzelin was
master of the revels they paid in blood: that tower of his by the river
is dark with it yet. Petrarch from his mountain-vineyard at Arquà tipped
them a brighter stave: they broke their hearts for pretty women and had
every one the comfort of a swanlike end, since sonnets are a knack. With
Antony they flagellated, with Carrara defended walls, with Gattemelata
knocked them down. Then Venice took what Padua could never keep; the
Euganeans hailed on either side the Lion of Saint Mark; the Arts
flourished; Squarcione cut out small-clothes and taught anatomy none the
worse; Mantegna dreamed of Julius Cæsar, smouldering while he dreamed;
and Ippolita, the stone-mason's daughter, from too much courting fled in
breeches to the hills. She, like all the Padovani, paid her score
without flinching. It may have been run up without leave asked, but it
was run up in her name. The rule in Padua was so; I never heard that she
repined. Maybe that she had her money's worth; but of that you will be
able to judge as well as I.
Padua is a city set in meadows full of light; it is well spaced,
plentifully watered, arcaded, green with gardens. The streets are like
cloister-walks; as in Lucca, the plane is the sacred tree, and next to
that flag of green on a silver staff, the poplar shows the city blushful
in the spring and thrilling all a summer with the memory. It is a place
of brick and marble, painted orange, brown, yellow, and warm white,
where every cornerstone and every twig is printed sharply on a sky of
morning blue.
"Quivi le mura son fatte con arte,
Che parlano, e rispondono a i parlanti."
A tale of Padua should have the edge of a cut gem. So let Ippolita's be
told.
In her day--that day when, at sixteen years old or so, the sun briefly
lit upon her golden head and showed her for the lovely girl she
was--Padua was passing through a time of peace. Novello was dead at
last, poor heroic gentleman, Verona was shaken off; Venice was
supreme--easy, but unquestionably mistress of the Emilia. There was time
to make madrigals, to make eyes, to make love, to imagine portraits.
Mantegna was painting giants in the Eremitani and Bellini picking his
brains, but not as yet a quarrel. The classics, the ingenuous arts,
lovely woman--always interwoven when times are happiest--flourished in
that sunny place: it was not really wonderful that Ippolita the
stone-cutter's daughter, classically fair, indisputably a beauty, should
win all seeing eyes and be the despair of all rhymers. Given the vision
to the visionary (and both came in their time), she might be trusted
with the rest; for she was remarkable by contrast; there were none like
her. The Paduan girls are all charming, and mostly pretty. Ippolita was
neither: she was beautiful, and when you came to know her face, lovely.
They are brown, she was fair; they are little, she was very tall. They
have eyes like a dove's, glossed brown; hers were deeply blue, the
colour of the Adriatic when a fleeting cloud spreads a curtain of
hyacinth over the sheeted turquoise bed. Beautifully hued in mingled red
and white, delicately shaped, pliant, supple, and shy, such as she was
(an honest, good girl, Heaven knows!) she might have lived and died in
her alley--sweetheart of some half dozen decent fellows, wife of the
most masterful, mother of a dozen brats, unnoticed save for her
qualities of cheerful drudge and brood-mare; beautiful as a spring leaf
till twenty, ripe as a peach on the wall till thirty, keen-faced and
wise, mother and grandmother, at forty; and so on--such she might have
lived and died, and been none the worse for her reclusion, had she not
leaned more than half out of her window in the _Vicolo_ one bright April
morning of her sixteenth year, to exchange lively banter with a friend
below, and been seen by Messer Alessandro del Dardo, who within the
cuirass of Sub-Prefect of Padua nourished the heart of an approved Poet;
been seen of him for the miracle of young beauty she really was. Chance
sparks kindle chance tinder; and so here. I am far from alleging the
heart of Messer Alessandro to be dry tow; but I do repeat it, Padua was
a freakish cityful, Ippolita lovely exceedingly, amorous poetry in the
air.
He, then, passing by, saw her stoop flushed and sparkling from above
him; the sun caught her shining hair; a loose white smock revealed so
much of her neck as to picture him the snowy rest. Snow and rosebuds--O
ye little gods! As he stood in ecstasy she saw him at the end of the
lane, and blushing drew back with a finger in her mouth, to thrill and
giggle at ease. She saw a great gentleman stare; he saw a rosy goddess
stoop and laugh, then blush and hide. _Vitas hinnuleo me similis,
Chloe!_ Away he went, his heart leaping like a wood-fire, to report to
Meleagro de' Martiri and Stazio Orsini, to Donna Euforbia, Donna
Clarice, and Donna Simpatica--friends and poets alike--that he had had a
most rare vision.
"To me it seems," he said, "that that fair-haired daughter of the
Greeks, Madonna Elena, the slim, the rosy-fingered disturber of the
repose of cities, hath appeared to distract this our city of Padua. Me
at least she hath distraught. Fair friends, sister and brother poets,
you shall understand that henceforth I devote myself to this lady and
her praise. More, I vow a vow, and call upon you to register it in the
Golden Book of the Amorous Gests of Padua, that I will never cut my
nails again until I have enthroned her sovereign lady of me, and of you
all, and of this our humane Commonwealth. By golden Venus and her son,
by Mars armipotent powerless in such toils, and by Vulcan in chains too
cunning for his pincers; by Saints Ovid and Sappho, the Chian, the
Mantuan, and the Veronese, I swear this oath."
"It is well done, Alessandro," assented the listening company.
That evening in his fellowship, Meleagro and Stazio, cloaked and lurking
under the arcades, saw Ippolita walk down the Via Pozzo Depinto arm in
arm with two shawled friends, transparently in the ranks of the _popol
basso_, but as obviously not of them. Her golden head was bare; also by
a head she sailed above them. They followed her by the Via Zitelle, over
the Ponte della Morte, further yet, between garden walls topped with
lilac, into the Prato della Valle. There the three unconscious girls
mingled with the concourse of those who took the air under the still
trees. Ippolita, that slim, tall marvel, seemed not to be remarked by
any; Alessandro, swooning on his friend's arms, could scarcely believe
it.
"Edge up, Alessandro, edge up--accost, accost!" said Meleagro; but--
"Do you think I would profane the _aura_ of her by my abhorred
presence?" cried the lover. "Ah, God of Love, I would die sooner! I
feel, indeed, my Dæmon at work. Let me sit upon this bench--my tablets,
ha!" He sat. Finely disordered verse, _rime sciolte_, resulted; but
Ippolita was so far unperturbed.
Gradually, however, it came to her notice that she was watched. There
was singing under her windows at night; the day brought parties of noble
youths into the _Vicolo_ scarlet-capped, feathered, slashed, and booted
youths; ladies were with them as often as not; garlanded ladies with
square-cut bodices showing half their bosoms; flowers came, verses,
platters of Urbino, Gubbio, Faenza. She was saluted in the street,
followed to the church door, waited for at the coming out from mass. It
came, more or less, to this, that whenever she went abroad by ways where
the honourable might pass, her going resembled that of the processional
Host rather than of a respectable young woman. Her friends were no
protection: the girls thought it fun, courted it, found stuff in it for
giggling and peering with the eyes into dark corners; the lads of her
station shrugged at it, then sulked, and at last fairly fought shy of
such a conspicuous mate.
Ippolita herself tried to laugh it off, but failed absurdly. She became
plaintive.
"What do these signori mean by their my-ladying?" she cried to Annina,
her bosom friend. "Why do they send me these things? Platters! What use
are platters to the likes of us, who as often as not have nothing to put
on them?"
Annina looked demurely. "It is easy to see what they want of thee,
dearest. What does a gentleman always want of a poor girl that takes his
fancy?"
Ippolita tossed her high head.
"Eh!" she snapped. "They may fill the house with crockery at that rate.
I'm not rubbish!"
She was not; but she wronged her adorers, who neither thought it nor
hoped it of her. Messer Alessandro was not growing his nails for that
sort of ware; nor could he have treated the Pope with more respect. He
had never ventured to speak, though he had never failed to salute her.
What he wrote was chiefly in verse, and as Ippolita could not read, it
really did not much matter what his letters contained. Meleagro had
opened his mouth to pay her a compliment: he won a frightened look out
of her blue eyes, a fine blush, and lived upon them for a week. The
ladies were bolder. Some of them had walked with her once in the Prato.
There was very little to say, except that they loved her and thought her
like a goddess. Ippolita was rather scared, laughed nervously, and said,
"Chi lo sa?" Donna Euforbia then told her the story of the original
Ippolita, the Scythian queen; of King Theseus, and the child born to
them in sea-washed Acharnæ. The Paduan Ippolita said "Già!" several
times, and asked if her namesake was a good Catholic. Finding she was
not, she took no further interest in her fortunes than to suppose her
deep in hell for her pains. The ladies asked her to come and be their
queen; she said she couldn't leave her father. They offered her jewels
for her hair, neck, fingers, wrists, ankles; she laughed, and said that
they were not for the likes of her. They spoke of Alessandro, the Poet.
She asked if he were any relation to the Signor Sotto-Prefetto. He was
that same, said they.
"Dio buono!" cried Ippolita. "Is he the gentleman who wants to undo me?"
They were shocked. "He asks no more than to sit at your feet, Ippolita,
and read the secrets of your beautiful eyes. It is your soul he loves;
he asks nothing of your body." "They never do, Madonna," said Ippolita;
"but I am a poor girl, so please you, who have to look every way at
once, as the saying is. Domeneddio is the only Signore I ever heard tell
of who could get on with people's souls. Men want more of us than that."
Protests were wasted, and Alessandro, watchful of his nails, went mad in
numbers. This it was to be tall out of common, this to lift up in
dark-browed Padua a brave golden head; this to carry the bosom of an
Oread beneath the smock of a girl in her teens; this, merciful Heaven,
to be a vortex when poets are swirling down the stream of Time.