Riverside Edition
THE WRITINGS OF
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
_WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS,
PORTRAITS, AND OTHER
ILLUSTRATIONS_
IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES
VOLUME VII
[Illustration]
The Writings of
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Riverside Edition
[Illustration]
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
AGNES OF SORRENTO
BY
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1899
Copyright, 1862 and 1890,
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Copyright, 1896,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii
I. THE OLD TOWN 1
II. THE DOVE-COT 8
III. THE GORGE 14
IV. WHO AND WHAT 19
V. IL PADRE FRANCESCO 29
VI. THE WALK TO THE CONVENT 42
VII. THE DAY AT THE CONVENT 57
VIII. THE CAVALIER 75
IX. THE ARTIST MONK 82
X. THE INTERVIEW 107
XI. THE CONFESSIONAL 125
XII. PERPLEXITIES 133
XIII. THE MONK AND THE CAVALIER 152
XIV. THE MONK'S STRUGGLE 165
XV. THE SERPENT'S EXPERIMENT 189
XVI. ELSIE PUSHES HER SCHEME 194
XVII. THE MONK'S DEPARTURE 213
XVIII. THE PENANCE 226
XIX. CLOUDS DEEPENING 238
XX. FLORENCE AND HER PROPHET 255
XXI. THE ATTACK ON SAN MARCO 264
XXII. THE CATHEDRAL 273
XXIII. THE PILGRIMAGE 290
XXIV. THE MOUNTAIN FORTRESS 301
XXV. THE CRISIS 313
XXVI. ROME 328
XXVII. THE SAINT'S REST 337
XXVIII. PALM SUNDAY 347
XXIX. THE NIGHT-RIDE 355
XXX. "LET US ALSO GO, THAT WE MAY DIE WITH HIM" 366
XXXI. MARTYRDOM 372
XXXII. CONCLUSION 375
The frontispiece ("The Cavalier stood in the moonlight before Agnes,"
page 92) and the vignette were drawn by Malcolm Fraser.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
In the summer of 1859, Mrs. Stowe made her third and last journey
to Europe. During the summer, the whole family was abroad, save the
youngest; but in the autumn Mr. Stowe and one of the daughters returned
to America, leaving Mrs. Stowe with two daughters and a son to spend
the winter in Italy. The residence there was mainly to establish the
health of the family; but Mrs. Stowe had entered into engagements
with the New York _Ledger_ and the New York _Independent_ to furnish
contributions, with a design ultimately of collecting the papers and
recasting them for a volume to be published in the spring of 1860 in
America and England, under the title of _Leaves from Foreign Books for
Home Reading_. She had indeed entered into an agreement with Sampson
Low & Co., the London publishers of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and _Dred_, for
the publication of the volume, but a sudden change of plans brought her
home before she had perfected her book, and it was never published.
Meanwhile her dramatic instinct had begun to work upon the material
thus gathered. It was impossible for her, with her strong religious
nature and her active interest in structural Christianity to avoid
subjecting the great church so constantly in evidence to those tests of
personal religion which had been familiar to her from childhood. Her
stay in Florence brought vividly before her the figure of Savonarola,
and her imagination, in seeking to recover the life of his day,
instinctively invested it with the spiritual struggles so well known
to her and her circle. There was no conscious protestantizing of the
life, as one may say, but the story which she told naturally reflected
the color of her own religious training. _Agnes of Sorrento_ was begun
in this Italian winter, and had its immediate origin, as she herself
explains in the following note, in a friendly contest of story telling.
It was not completed until some time after the return to America,
finding its first publication in _The Atlantic Monthly_ in America and
_The Cornhill Magazine_ in England. In _The Atlantic_ it was begun in
May, 1861, and finished in April, 1862.
In the party with Mrs. Stowe were Mr. and Mrs. Howard of Brooklyn, and
their children. When the tale made its final appearance in book form,
it was accompanied by the following passages from a letter to the
publishers by Mrs. Stowe. The "Annie" referred to was Miss Annie Howard.
"The author was spending some weeks with a party of choice
and very dear friends, on an excursion to southern Italy.
Nothing could have been more fabulously and dreamily bright and
beautiful than the whole time thus employed. Naples, Sorrento,
Salerno, Pæstum, Pompeii, are names of enchantment which will
never fade from the remembrance of any of that party. At
Salerno, within a day's ride of Pæstum, the whole company were
detained by a storm for a day and a night. The talents of the
whole company were called in requisition to make the gloomy
evening pass pleasantly with song and jest and story. The first
chapters of this story were there written and read, to the
accompanying dash of the Mediterranean. The plan of the whole
future history was then sketched out. Whether it ever find much
favor in the eyes of the world or not, sure it is, the story
was a child of love in its infancy, and its flowery Italian
cradle rocked it with an indulgent welcome.
"The writer and the party were fresh from strolls and rambles
about charming Sorrento; they had explored the gloomy gorge,
and carried away golden boughs of fruits and blossoms from her
orange orchards. Under the shadow of the old arched gateway
they had seen, sitting at her orange stand, a beautiful young
girl, whose name became Agnes in the story; and in the shadows
of the gorge they met that woman straight and tall, with silver
hair, Roman nose, and dark eyes, whose name became Elsie. The
whole golden scene receded centuries back, and they saw them in
a vision as they might and must have been in other days.
"The author begs to say that this story is a mere dreamland,
that it neither assumes nor will have responsibility for
historical accuracy. It merely reproduces to the reader the
visionary region that appeared to the writer; and if some
critic says this date be wrong, or that incident out of place,
let us answer, 'Who criticises perspective and distances, that
looks down into a purple lake at eventide? All dates shall give
way to the fortunes of our story, and our lovers shall have the
benefit of fairy-land; and whoso wants history will not find it
here, except to our making, and as it suits our purpose.'
"The story is dedicated to the dear friends, wherever
scattered, who first listened to it at Salerno. Alas! in
writing this, a sorrow falls upon us,--the brightest, in youth
and beauty, and in promise of happy life, who listened to that
beginning, has passed to the land of silence.
"When our merry company left Sorrento, all the younger members
adorned themselves with profuse knots of roses, which grew
there so abundantly that it would seem no plucking could
exhaust them. A beautiful girl sat opposite the writer in the
carriage and said, 'Now I will count my roses; I have just
seven knots, and in each seven roses.' And in reply, another
remarked, 'Seven is the perfect number, and seven times seven
is perfection.' 'It is no emblem,' she said gayly, 'of what a
perfect time of enjoyment we have had.' One month later, and
this rose had faded and passed away.
"There be many who will understand and tenderly feel the
meaning, when we say that this little history is dedicated to
the memory of ANNIE."
AGNES OF SORRENTO
CHAPTER I
THE OLD TOWN
The setting sunbeams slant over the antique gateway of Sorrento,
fusing into a golden bronze the brown freestone vestments of old Saint
Antonio, who with his heavy stone mitre and upraised hands has for
centuries kept watch thereupon.
A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian air, in
petrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green mosses from
year to year embroider quaint patterns on the seams of his sacerdotal
vestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the folds
of his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some
more hardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch
and chitter and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his
nose and now on the point of his mitre, while the world below goes on
its way pretty much as it did when the good saint was alive, and, in
despair of the human brotherhood, took to preaching to the birds and
the fishes.
Whoever passed beneath this old arched gateway, thus saint-guarded, in
the year of our Lord's grace ----, might have seen under its shadow,
sitting opposite to a stand of golden oranges, the little Agnes.
A very pretty picture was she, reader,--with such a face as you
sometimes see painted in those wayside shrines of sunny Italy, where
the lamp burns pale at evening, and gillyflower and cyclamen are
renewed with every morning.
She might have been fifteen or thereabouts, but was so small of stature
that she seemed yet a child. Her black hair was parted in a white
unbroken seam down to the high forehead, whose serious arch, like that
of a cathedral door, spoke of thought and prayer. Beneath the shadows
of this brow lay brown, translucent eyes, into whose thoughtful depths
one might look as pilgrims gaze into the waters of some saintly well,
cool and pure down to the unblemished sand at the bottom. The small
lips had a gentle compression, which indicated a repressed strength
of feeling; while the straight line of the nose, and the flexible,
delicate nostril, were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the
antique which the soil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from
the sepulchres of the past. The habitual pose of the head and face
had the shy uplooking grace of a violet; and yet there was a grave
tranquillity of expression, which gave a peculiar degree of character
to the whole figure.
At the moment at which we have called your attention, the fair head is
bent, the long eyelashes lie softly down on the pale, smooth cheek; for
the Ave Maria bell is sounding from the Cathedral of Sorrento, and the
child is busy with her beads.
By her side sits a woman of some threescore years, tall, stately, and
squarely formed, with ample breadth of back and size of chest, like the
robust dames of Sorrento. Her strong Roman nose, the firm, determined
outline of her mouth, and a certain energy in every motion, speak the
woman of will and purpose. There is a degree of vigor in the decision
with which she lays down her spindle and bows her head, as a good
Christian of those days would, at the swinging of the evening bell.
But while the soul of the child in its morning freshness, free from
pressure or conscience of earthly care, rose like an illuminated mist
to heaven, the words the white-haired woman repeated were twined with
threads of worldly prudence,--thoughts of how many oranges she had
sold, with a rough guess at the probable amount for the day,--and
her fingers wandered from her beads a moment to see if the last coin
had been swept from the stand into her capacious pocket, and her
eyes wandering after them suddenly made her aware of the fact that
a handsome cavalier was standing in the gate, regarding her pretty
grandchild with looks of undisguised admiration.
"Let him look!" she said to herself, with a grim clasp on her rosary;
"a fair face draws buyers, and our oranges must be turned into money;
but he who does more than look has an affair with me; so gaze away, my
master, and take it out in buying oranges!--_Ave Maria! ora pro nobis,
nunc et_," etc., etc.
A few moments, and the wave of prayer which had flowed down the quaint
old shadowy street, bowing all heads as the wind bowed the scarlet
tassels of neighboring clover-fields, was passed, and all the world
resumed the work of earth just where they left off when the bell began.
"Good even to you, pretty maiden!" said the cavalier, approaching the
stall of the orange-woman with the easy, confident air of one secure
of a ready welcome, and bending down on the yet prayerful maiden the
glances of a pair of piercing hazel eyes that looked out on each side
of his aquiline nose with the keenness of a falcon's.
"Good even to you, pretty one! We shall take you for a saint, and
worship you in right earnest, if you raise not those eyelashes soon."
"Sir! my lord!" said the girl,--a bright color flushing into her smooth
brown cheeks, and her large dreamy eyes suddenly upraised with a
flutter, as of a bird about to take flight.
"Agnes, bethink yourself!" said the white-haired dame; "the gentleman
asks the price of your oranges; be alive, child!"
"Ah, my lord," said the young girl, "here are a dozen fine ones."
"Well, you shall give them me, pretty one," said the young man,
throwing a gold piece down on the stand with a careless ring.
"Here, Agnes, run to the stall of Raphael the poulterer for change,"
said the adroit dame, picking up the gold.
"Nay, good mother, by your leave," said the unabashed cavalier; "I make
my change with youth and beauty thus!" And with the word he stooped
down and kissed the fair forehead between the eyes.
"For shame, sir!" said the elderly woman, raising her distaff,--her
great glittering eyes flashing beneath her silver hair like tongues of
lightning from a white cloud. "Have a care!--this child is named for
blessed Saint Agnes, and is under her protection."
"The saints must pray for us, when their beauty makes us forget
ourselves," said the young cavalier, with a smile. "Look me in the
face, little one," he added; "say, wilt thou pray for me?"
The maiden raised her large serious eyes, and surveyed the haughty,
handsome face with that look of sober inquiry which one sometimes sees
in young children, and the blush slowly faded from her cheek, as a
cloud fades after sunset.
"Yes, my lord," she answered, with a grave simplicity, "I will pray for
you."
"And hang this upon the shrine of Saint Agnes for my sake," he added,
drawing from his finger a diamond ring, which he dropped into her
hand; and before mother or daughter could add another word or recover
from their surprise, he had thrown the corner of his mantle over his
shoulder and was off down the narrow street, humming the refrain of a
gay song.
"You have struck a pretty dove with that bolt," said another cavalier,
who appeared to have been observing the proceeding, and now, stepping
forward, joined him.
"Like enough," said the first, carelessly.
"The old woman keeps her mewed up like a singing-bird," said the
second; "and if a fellow wants speech of her, it's as much as his crown
is worth; for Dame Elsie has a strong arm, and her distaff is known to
be heavy."
"Upon my word," said the first cavalier, stopping and throwing a glance
backward, "where do they keep her?"
"Oh, in a sort of pigeon's nest up above the Gorge; but one never sees
her, except under the fire of her grandmother's eyes. The little one
is brought up for a saint, they say, and goes nowhere but to mass,
confession, and the sacrament."
"Humph!" said the other, "she looks like some choice old picture of Our
Lady,--not a drop of human blood in her. When I kissed her forehead,
she looked into my face as grave and innocent as a babe. One is tempted
to try what one can do in such a case."
"Beware the grandmother's distaff!" said the other, laughing.
"I've seen old women before," said the cavalier, as they turned down
the street and were lost to view.
Meanwhile the grandmother and grand-daughter were roused from the
mute astonishment in which they were gazing after the young cavalier
by a tittering behind them; and a pair of bright eyes looked out upon
them from beneath a bundle of long, crimson-headed clover, whose rich
carmine tints were touched to brighter life by setting sunbeams.
There stood Giulietta, the head coquette of the Sorrento girls, with
her broad shoulders, full chest, and great black eyes, rich and
heavy as those of the silver-haired ox for whose benefit she had been
cutting clover. Her bronzed cheek was smooth as that of any statue,
and showed a color like that of an open pomegranate; and the opulent,
lazy abundance of her ample form, with her leisurely movements, spoke
an easy and comfortable nature,--that is to say, when Giulietta was
pleased; for it is to be remarked that there lurked certain sparkles
deep down in her great eyes, which might, on occasion, blaze out into
sheet-lightning, like her own beautiful skies, which, lovely as they
are, can thunder and sulk with terrible earnestness when the fit takes
them. At present, however, her face was running over with mischievous
merriment, as she slyly pinched little Agnes by the ear.
"So you know not yon gay cavalier, little sister?" she said, looking
askance at her from under her long lashes.
"No, indeed! What has an honest girl to do with knowing gay cavaliers?"
said Dame Elsie, bestirring herself with packing the remaining oranges
into a basket, which she covered trimly with a heavy linen towel of her
own weaving. "Girls never come to good who let their eyes go walking
through the earth, and have the names of all the wild gallants on
their tongues. Agnes knows no such nonsense,--blessed be her gracious
patroness, with Our Lady and Saint Michael!"
"I hope there is no harm in knowing what is right before one's eyes,"
said Giulietta. "Anybody must be blind and deaf not to know the Lord
Adrian. All the girls in Sorrento know him. They say he is even greater
than he appears,--that he is brother to the King himself; at any rate,
a handsomer and more gallant gentleman never wore spurs."
"Let him keep to his own kind," said Elsie. "Eagles make bad work in
dove-cots. No good comes of such gallants for us."
"Nor any harm, that I ever heard of," said Giulietta. "But let me see,
pretty one,--what did he give you? Holy Mother! what a handsome ring!"
"It is to hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes," said the younger girl,
looking up with simplicity.
A loud laugh was the first answer to this communication. The scarlet
clover-tops shook and quivered with the merriment.
"To hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes!" Giulietta repeated. "That is a
little too good!"
"Go, go, you baggage!" said Elsie, wrathfully brandishing her spindle.
"If ever you get a husband, I hope he'll give you a good beating! You
need it, I warrant! Always stopping on the bridge there, to have cracks
with the young men! Little enough you know of saints, I dare say! So
keep away from _my_ child! Come, Agnes," she said, as she lifted the
orange-basket on to her head; and, straightening her tall form, she
seized the girl by the hand to lead her away.