“Now the golden chair wherein Juno was compelled to sit, by the
artifice of Vulcan, means that the earth is the mother of riches, and
with it that part of the air which cannot leave the earth, Juno being
air.”—NATALIS COMITIS: _Mythologia_, lib. ii., 79 (1616).
“Thou wolt algates wete how we be shape!
Thou shalt hereafterward, my brother dere,
Come wher thee needeth not of me to lere,
For thou shalt by thine own experience
Conne in a chaiere rede of this sentence
Better than Virgile while he was on live
Or Dante also.”
CHAUCER: _The Frere’s Tale_.
There once lived in Rome a very great, rich, and beautiful Princess, but
she was as bad at heart as could be, and her life was of the wickedest.
However, she kept up a good appearance, and was really at last in love
with a fine young man, who returned her affections.
But Virgil, knowing all, and pitying the youth, said to him that the
woman would certainly be the cause of his ruin, as she had been of many
others, and told him so many terrible things of her, that he ceased to
visit the Princess.
And she, first suspecting and then learning what Virgil had done, fell
into bitter hatred, and swore that she would be revenged on him.
So one evening she invited the Emperor and many nobles, among them
Virgil, to a splendid supper.
And being petty and spiteful by nature, the Princess had devised a mean
trick to annoy Virgil. For she had prepared with great craft a chair,
the seat of which was of paper, but which seemed to be of solid wood. It
appeared to be a handsome seat of great honour.
But when the great man sat on it, there was a great crash, and he went
down, indeed, but with his legs high in the air. So there was a peal of
laughter, in which he joined so heartily and said so many droll things
over it, that one would have thought he had contrived the jest himself,
at which the lady was more angry than ever, since she had hoped to see
him angry and ashamed. And Virgil, taking all the blame of the accident
on himself, promised to send her in return a chair to pay for it. And he
requested leave to take the proper measure for it, so that she might be
fitly taken in.
Which she was. For, having returned to his home, Virgil went to work and
had a splendid chair made—_con molto artifizio_. With great art he made
it, with much gold inlaid with pearls, studded with gems. It was all
artificial. {72}
And having finished it, Virgil begged the Emperor to send it to the
Princess as a gift.
The Emperor did so at the proper time, but there was in it a more cunning
trick than in the one which she had devised. For there were concealed
therein several fine nets, or snares, so that whoever sat in it could not
rise.
Then the Princess, overjoyed at this magnificent gift, at once sent an
invitation to her friends to come to a supper where she could display it;
nor did she suspect any trick, having no idea that she had any enemy.
And all came to pass as Virgil planned. For the lady, having seated
herself in great state, found herself caught, and could not rise.
Then there was great laughter, and it was proposed that everyone present
should kiss her. And as one beginning leads to strange ending, the end
thereof was that they treated her _senza vergogna_, saying that when a
bird is once caught in a snare, everybody who pleases may pluck a
feather.
* * * * *
The classical scholar will find in this tale a probable reminiscence of
the chair made by Vulcan wherein to entrap Juno, in which he succeeded,
so that she was made to appear ridiculous to all the gods. It is worth
noting in this connection that such chairs are made even to the present
day, and that without invisible nets or any magic. One is mentioned in a
book entitled “The Life of Dr. Jennings the Poisoner” (Philadelphia, T.
B. Peterson, Bros.). If any person sat in it, he or she fell back, and
certain clasps closed over the victim, holding him or her down perfectly
helpless, rendering robbery or violence easy. Since writing the
foregoing, I have in a recent French novel read a description of such a
chair, with the additional information that such seats were originally
invented for and used by physicians to confine lunatic patients. A
friend of mine told me that he had seen one in a house of ill-fame in New
York.
The legend of the Lady and the Chair suggests a very curious subject of
investigation. It is very probably known to the reader that, to make a
mesmerized or hypnotized subject remain seated, whether he or she will or
not, is one of the common experiments of the modern magicians. It is
thus described by M. Debay in his work “Les Mystères du Sommeil et
Magnetisme.”
The operator asks the subject, “Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Rise from your chair.” (_He rises_.) “Tell all present that you
are not asleep.”
“No. I am wide awake.”
The operator takes the subject by the hand, leads him to different
persons present with whom he is acquainted, and asks him if he knows
them. He replies:
“Certainly I know them.”
“Name them.”
He does so.
“All right. Now sit down.” (_The subject obeys_.) “And now I
forbid you to rise. It is for you impossible—you cannot move!”
The subject makes ineffectual efforts to rise, but remains attached
to the chair as if held fast by an invisible power.
The operator then says:
“Now you may rise. I permit you to do so. Rise—I order it!”
The subject rises from the chair without an effort.
I have frequently had occasion to observe that, in all of these legends
which I have received from witches, the story, unlike the common fairy
tale or _novella_ of any kind, is only, as it were, a painted casket in
which is enclosed the jewel of some secret in sorcery, generally with an
incantation. Was not this the case with many of the old myths? Do they
not all, in fact, really set forth, so far as their makers understood
them, the mysteries of Nature, and possibly in some cases those of the
wonder-works or miracles of the priests and magicians? There was a
German—I forget his name—who wrote a book to prove that Jupiter, Juno,
and all the rest, were the elements as known to us now, and all the
wonders told of all the gods, with the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid, only a
marvellous poetic allegory of chemical combinations and changes. That
hypnotism was known to Egyptians of old is perfectly established—at least
to his own satisfaction—by Louis Figuier in his “Histoire du Merveilleux
dans les Temps Modernes,” Paris, 1861; and it is extremely possible.
Therefore it may be that Juno in the chair is but the prototype of a
Mademoiselle Adèle, or Angelique Cottin, or Marie Raynard, or some other
of the “little Foxes,” who, by the way, are alluded to in the Old
Testament.