_Euthanasia's Narrative._
"It is strange for one to speak, who never before has uttered the
sentiments of her heart. With my eyes I have spoken to the starry skies
and the green earth; and with smiles that could not express my emotion I
have conversed with the soft airs of summer, the murmur of streams, and
the chequered shades of our divine woods: but never before have I
awakened sympathy in a human countenance with words that unlock the
treasure of my heart.
"I have lived a solitary hermitess, and have become an enthusiast for
all beauty. Being alone, I have not feared to give the reins to my
feelings; I have lived happily within the universe of my own mind, and
have often given reality to that which others call a dream. I have had
few hopes, and few fears; but every passing sentiment has been an event;
and I have marked the birth of a new idea with the joy that others
derive from what they call change and fortune. What is the world, except
that which we feel? Love, and hope, and delight, or sorrow and tears;
these are our lives, our realities, to which we give the names of power,
possession, misfortune, and death.
"You smile at my strange words. I now feel livelier emotions arise; and,
as is my custom, I try to define and understand them. Love, when
nurtured by sympathy, is a stronger feeling, than those breathless
emotions which arise from the contemplation of what is commonly called
inanimate nature, and of the wondrous and eternal changes of the
universe; and, feeling as I do, that if I give it place in my heart, it
must bear my whole being away with it, as the tempest bears the rack
along the sky, wonder not, dear friend, that I have paused, and even
shuddered, when I thought that an unknown power was about to dwell in my
soul, which might make it blind to its former delights, and deaf to the
deep voice of that nature, whose child and nursling I call myself. But
now I doubt no more; I am yours, Castruccio; be my fortune tearful or
smiling, it shall be one that will bring with it human sympathy, and I
resign that savage liberty of which I was ere while jealous.
"You have asked me to relate the events of my life; I may say that it is
a blank, if you would not hear the history of many a strange idea, many
an exalted feeling, and reverie of wondrous change. You left me at
Florence the favourite daughter of a father I adored: I was ever near
him reading and conversing with him; and if I have put order in my day
dreams, and culled the fruit of virtue and some slight wisdom from my
meditations, it is to his lessons that I owe this good. It is he who
taught me to fathom my sensations, and discipline my mind; to understand
what my feelings were, and whether they arose from a good or evil
source. He taught me to look on my own faults fearlessly; humbly as a
weak being--yet not with mock humility, but with a modest, yet firm
courage, that led me to know what indeed I might become. He explained to
me the lessons of our divine master; which our priests corrupt to
satisfy the most groveling desires; and he taught me to seek in
self-approbation, and in a repentance, which was that of virtuous
action, and not of weeping, for the absolution of which they make a
revenue.
"Do I speak with vanity? I hope that you do not so far mistake me. I
have been a solitary being; and, conversing with my own heart, I have
been so accustomed to use the frank language of a knowledge drawn from
fixed principles, and to weigh my actions and thoughts in those scales
which my reason and my religion afforded me, that my words may sound
vain; when they are only true. I do not think then that I could speak
with vanity; for I was enumerating the benefits that I received from my
father. I read with him the literature of ancient Rome; and my whole
soul was filled with the beauty of action, and the poetic sentiment of
these writers. At first I complained that no men lived now, who bore
affinity to these far shining beacons of the earth: but my father
convinced me, that the world was shaking off her barbaric lethargy, and
that Florence, in her struggle for freedom, had awakened the noblest
energies of the human mind. Once, when we attended a court in Lombardy,
a minstrel sang some of the Cantos of Dante's _Divina Comedia_, and I
can never forget the enthusiastic joy I experienced, in finding that I
was the contemporary of its illustrious author.
"I endeavour to mark in this little history of myself the use of the
various feelings that rule all my actions; and I must date my enthusiasm
for the liberties of my country, and the political welfare of Italy,
from the repetition of these Cantos of Dante's poem. The Romans, whose
writings I adored, were free; a Greek who once visited us, had related
to us what treasures of poetry and wisdom existed in his language, and
these were the productions of freemen: the mental history of the rest of
the world who are slaves, was a blank, and thus I was irresistibly
forced to connect wisdom and liberty together; and, as I worshipped
wisdom as the pure emanation of the Deity, the divine light of the
world, so did I adore liberty as its parent, its sister, the half of its
being. Florence was free, and Dante was a Florentine; none but a freeman
could have poured forth the poetry and eloquence to which I listened:
what though he were banished from his native city, and had espoused a
party that seemed to support tyranny; the essence of freedom is that
clash and struggle which awaken the energies of our nature, and that
operation of the elements of our mind, which as it were gives us the
force and power that hinder us from degenerating, as they say all things
earthly do when not regenerated by change.
"What is man without wisdom? And what would not this world become, if
every man might learn from its institutions the true principles of life,
and become as the few which have as yet shone as stars amidst the night
of ages? If time had not shaken the light of poetry and of genius from
his wings, all the past would be dark and trackless: now we have a
track--the glorious foot-marks of the children of liberty; let us
imitate them, and like them we may serve as marks in the desart, to
attract future passengers to the fountains of life. Already we have
begun to do so; and Dante is the pledge of a glorious race, which tells
us that, in clinging to the freedom which gave birth to his genius, we
may awake the fallen hopes of the world. These sentiments, nurtured and
directed by my father, have caused the growth of an enthusiasm in my
soul, which can only die when I die.
"I was at this time but sixteen; and at that age, unless I had been
guided by the lessons of my father, my meditations would have been
sufficiently fruitless. But he, whether he taught me to consider the
world and the community of man, or to study the little universe of my
own mind, was wisdom's self, pouring out accents that commanded
attention and obedience. At first I believed, that my heart was good,
and that by following its dictates I should not do wrong; I was proud,
and loved not to constrain my will, though I myself were the mistress;
but he told me, that either my judgement or passions must rule me, and
that my future happiness and usefulness depended on the choice I made
between these two laws. I learned from him to look upon events as being
of consequence only through the feelings which they excited, and to
believe that content of mind, love, and benevolent feeling ought to be
the elements of our existence; while those accidents of fortune or fame,
which to the majority make up the sum of their existence, were as the
dust of the balance.
"Well; these were the lessons of my father, a honey of wisdom on which I
fed until I attained my eighteenth year; and then he died. What I felt,
my grief and despair, I will not relate; few sorrows surpass that of a
child, who loses a beloved parent before she has formed new ties which
have weakened the first and the most religious.
"Do you remember my mother? She was a lady with a kind heart, and a
humanity and equanimity of temper few could surpass. She was a Guelph, a
violent partizan, and, heart and soul, was taken up with treaties of
peace, acquisitions in war, the conduct of allies, and the fortune of
her enemies: while she talked to you, you would have thought that the
whole globe of the earth was merely an appendage to the county of
Valperga. She was acquainted with all the magistrates of Florence, the
probabilities of elections, the state of the troops, the receipt of
imposts, and every circumstance of the republic. She was interested in
the most lively manner in the fall of Corso Donati[4], the war with
Pistoia, the taking of that town, and the deaths and elections of the
various Popes. She was present at every court held by the Guelph lords
of Lombardy; and her poor subjects were sometimes rather hardly taxed,
that we might appear with suitable dignity on these occasions. The
marriage of her children was her next care; but she could never come to
a decisive resolve as to which alliance would be the most advantageous
to her family, and at the same time most promote the cause of the
Guelphs in Italy.
"When my father died, she sent for my eldest brother from Naples; and
for several months her mind was occupied by his accession, and the
dignity that the houses of Adimari and Valperga would acquire by having
a young warrior at their head, instead of a woman and a blind
philosopher. My brother was a soldier, a brave man, full of ambition and
party spirit; and a new field was opened to my mother's politics by him,
when he detailed the intrigues of the Neapolitan court; she was for ever
occupied in sending messengers, receiving dispatches, calculating
imposts, and all the pygmy acts of a petty state.
"When I was nineteen years of age, we heard that my younger brother had
fallen ill at Rome, and desired to see some one of his family. My uncle,
the abbot of St. Maurice, was on the point of going to Rome; and I
obtained my mother's leave to accompany him. Oh, what long draughts of
joy I drank in on that journey! I did not think that my brother's
illness was dangerous, and indeed considered that circumstance more as
the pretext, than the object of my journey; so I fearlessly gave myself
up to the enthusiasm that deluged my soul. Expression lags, as then my
own spirit flagged, beneath the influence of these thoughts: it was to
Rome I journied, to see the vestiges of the mistress of the world,
within whose walls all I could conceive of great, and good, and wise,
had breathed and acted: I should draw in the sacred air which had
vivified the heroes of Rome; their shades would surround me; and the
very stones that I should tread were marked by their footsteps. Can you
conceive what I felt? You have not studied the histories of ancient
times, and perhaps know not the life that breathes in them; a soul of
beauty and wisdom which had penetrated my heart of hearts. When I
descended the hills of the Abruzzi, and first saw the Tiber rolling its
tranquil waters glistening under the morning sun; I wept;--why did not
Cato live?--why was I not going to see her consuls, her heroes, and her
poets? Alas! I was about to approach the shadow of Rome, the inanimate
corse, the broken image of what was once great beyond all power of
speech to express. My enthusiasm again changed; and I felt a kind of
sacred horror run through my veins. Thou, oh! Tiber, ever rollest, ever
and for ever the same! yet are not thy waters those which flowed here
when the Scipios and the Fabii lived on thy shores; the grass and the
herbage which adorn thy banks have many thousand times been renewed
since it was pressed on by their feet; all is changed, even thou art not
the same!
"It was night when we entered Rome; I dared hardly breathe; the stars
shone bright in the deep azure of heaven; and with their twinkling beams
illuminated the dark towers which were black and silent, seeming like
animated beings asleep. A procession of monks passed by chaunting in a
sweet and solemn tone, in that language which once awoke the pauses of
this Roman air with words of fire. Methought they sang their city's
_requiem;_ methought I was following to their last narrow home all that
had existed of great and good in this god-inhabited city.
"I remained in Rome three months; when I arrived, my brother was
considerably better, and we entertained every hope of his recovery. I
spent my life among the ruins of Rome; and I felt, as I was told that I
appeared to be, rather a wandering shade of the ancient times, than a
modern Italian. In my wild enthusiasm I called on the shadows of the
departed to converse with me, and to prophesy the fortunes of awakening
Italy. I can never forget one evening that I visited the Pantheon by
moonlight: the soft beams of the planet streamed through its open roof,
and its tall pillars glimmered around. It seemed as if the spirit of
beauty descended on my soul, as I sat there in mute extacy; never had I
before so felt the universal graspings of my own mind, or the sure
tokens of other spiritual existences, as at that moment. Oh! could I
even now pour forth in words the sentiments of love, and virtue, and
divinest wisdom, that then burst in upon my soul, in a rich
torrent----such as was the light of the moon to the dark temple in which
I stood--the whole world would stand and listen: but fainter than the
moon-beams and more evanescent are those deep thoughts; my eyes glisten,
my cheeks glow, but words are denied me. I feel as it were my own soul
at work within me, and surely, if I could disclose its secret
operations, and lay bare the vitals of my being, in that moment, which
would be one of overwhelming extacy--in that moment I should die.
"Well; to return to the events that sealed my residence in Rome, and by
shedding the softness of affectionate sorrow over my feelings, added to
their deep holiness. The last month of my residence there, I was a
constant attendant on the sick bed of my dying brother: he did not
suffer pain; his illness was lethargic; and I watched with breathless
anxiety the change from life to death. Sometimes, when the _Ave Maria_
had sounded, and the heats of the day had subsided, I stole out into the
air to refresh my wearied spirits. There is no sky so blue as that of
Rome; it is deep, penetrating, and dazzling: but at this hour it had
faded, and its soft airs, that made wild and thrilling music among the
solitudes of its hills and ruins, cooled my fevered cheeks, and soothed
me in spite of sorrow. I then enjoyed grief; I may now say so, although
I then felt anguish alone; truly I wept, and bitterly over the illness
of my brother: but, when the soul is active, it brings a certain
consolation along with it: I was never so much alive as then, when my
wanderings, which seldom exceeded one or at most two hours, seemed to be
lengthened into days and weeks. I loved to wander by the banks of the
Tiber, which were solitary, and, if the scirocco blew, to mark the
clouds as they sped over St. Peter's and the many towers of Rome:
sometimes I walked on the Quirinal or Pincian mounts which overlook the
city, and gazed, until my soul was elevated by poetic transport.
Beautiful city, thy towers were illuminated by the orange tints of the
fast-departing sunset, and the ghosts of lovely memories floated with
the night breeze, among thy ruins; I became calm; amidst a dead race,
and an extinguished empire, what individual sorrow would dare raise its
voice? subdued, trembling, and overcome, I crept back to the sick bed of
my brother.
"He died; and I left this city of my soul. I know not whether I shall
ever again breathe its air; but its memory is a burning cloud of sunset
in the deep azure of the sky: it is that passage in my life since my
father's death, on which my intellectual eye rests with emotion,
pleasurable now, although I then endured poignant sorrow.
"The passenger that carried the intelligence of my younger brother's
death to my mother, was crossed on the road by one who came to inform me
that the eldest also was no more. He was killed in an assault on
Pistoia. Thus death quickly mowed down the ranks of our family; and at
last I have become a solitary scion of the stock.
"I returned home by very slow journies, and in my way was detained a
fortnight at Perugia. When I arrived, I was met by my mother at our
palace in Florence; she burst into tears as she folded me in her arms,
and wept for some time, lamenting with bitter grief her sad losses. I
mingled my tears with hers, and alas! I soon shed them alone; doubly an
orphan through her death, I mourned over the last of my family. So many
losses, following swift one upon the other, astounded me; and I passed
many months, as one who had wandered from the true path, and had no
guide to set her right. I retreated to my castle, and the solitude
frightened me; I returned to Florence; but the gaieties of that city
only told me more plainly that I was alone, since I sympathized with
none there. But time has healed these wounds, leaving only a tinge of
melancholy in my character which had not belonged to it till now."
[Footnote 4: Dante: _Purgatorio_, Canto XXIV.]