“And they had fixed the wedding day,
The morning that must wed them both,
For Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And with this other maid to church
Unthinking Stephen went—
Poor Martha, on that woeful day,
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent.”
WORDSWORTH: _Poems of the Imagination_: _The Thorn_.
There was once in Florence a wealthy widow lady of noble family, who had
a son who was all that a parent could have wished, had he not been
somewhat reckless and dissipated, and selfish withal, which he showed by
winning the love of girls and then leaving them; which thing became such
a scandal that it caused great grief to the mother, who was a truly good
woman. And so the youth, who was really a devoted son, seeing this,
reformed his ways for a long time.
But as the proverb says, he who has once drunk at this fountain will ever
remember the taste, and probably drink again. So it came to pass that in
time the young gentleman fell again into temptation, and then began to
tempt, albeit with greater care and caution—’tis so that all timid
sinners go, resolving the next step shall be the last—till finally, under
solemn promise of marriage, he led astray into the very forest of despair
a very poor and friendless maid, who was, however, of exquisite beauty,
and known as “the girl of golden locks,” from her hair. It might be that
the young man might have kept his word, but at an evil time he was
tempted by the charms of a young lady of great wealth and greater family,
who met him more than half-way, giving him to understand that her hand
was to be had for asking; whereupon he, who never lost a chance or left a
fruit unplucked, asked at once and was accepted, the wedding-day being at
once determined on.
Then the girl with the golden hair, finding herself abandoned, became
well-nigh desperate. Ere long, too, she gave birth to a child, which was
a boy. And it was some months after this, indeed, ere the wedding of the
youth to the heiress was to take place, when one day, as the young
unmarried mother was passing along the Arno, she met the great poet and
sorcerer Virgil, who saw in her face the signs of such deep suffering,
and of such a refined and noble nature, that he paused and asked her if
she had any cause of affliction. So with little trouble he induced her
to confide in him, saying that she had no hope, because her betrayer
would soon be wedded to another.
“Perhaps not,” replied Virgil. “Many a tree destined to be felled has
escaped the axe and lived till God blew it down. On the day appointed we
three will all go to the wedding.”
And truly when the time came all Florence was much amazed to see the
great Virgil going into the Church of Santa Maria with the beautiful girl
with the golden hair and bearing her babe in his arms. So the building
was speedily filled with people waiting eagerly to witness some strange
sight.
And they were not disappointed. For when the bride in all her beauty and
the bridegroom in all his glory came to the altar and paused, ere the
priest spoke Virgil stepped forward, and presenting the girl with golden
locks, said:
“This is she whom thou art to wed, having sworn to make her thy wife, and
this is thy child.”
Then the infant, who had never before in his life uttered a word,
exclaimed, in loud, sweet tones:
“Thou’rt my father, I’m thy son;
Other father I have none.”
Then there was a great scene, the bride being as one mad, and all the
people crying, “_Evviva_, Virgilio! If the Signore Cosino {114} does not
wed the girl with golden hair, he shall not escape us!” Which he did
indeed, and that not so unwillingly, for the sight of the girl and the
authority of Virgil, the cries of the people, his own conscience, and the
marvellous occurrence of the babe’s speaking, all reconciled him to it.
So the wedding was carried out forthwith, and every soul in Florence who
could make music went with his instrument that night and serenaded the
newly-married pair.
And the mother was not a little astonished when she saw her son, who had
gone forth with one bride, return with another. However, she was soon
persuaded by Virgil that it was all for the best, and found in time that
she had a perfect daughter-in-law.
* * * * *
I had rejected this story as not worth translating, since it presents so
few traditional features, when it occurred to me that it indeed very
clearly and rather curiously sets forth Virgil as a benevolent man and a
sympathizer with suffering without regard to rank or class. This
Christian kindness was associated with his name all through the Middle
Ages in literature, and it is wonderful how the form of it has been
preserved unto these our times among the people.
There is a tale told by one Surius, “In Vita S. Anselmi,” cited by
Kornmann in his work “De Miraculis Vivorum” in 1614, which bears on this
which I have told. A certain dame in Rome not only had a child, _ex
incestu_, but magnified her sin by swearing the child on the Pope,
Sergius. The question being referred to Saint Anselm, he asked the babe,
which had never spoken, whether his papa was the Pope. To which the
infant answered, “Certainly not,” adding that Sergius “_nihil cum Venere
commercium habere_”—Anselmus, as is evident, being resolved to make a
clean sweep of the whole affair and whitewash the Holy Father to the
utmost while he was about it. Salverté would, like a sinner, have said
that Anselm was perhaps a ventriloquist—_es kann sein_!
But let us not discuss it, and pass on, just mentioning that since I
wrote the above I found another legend of an Abbot Daniel, of whom
Gregory of Tours and Sophronius relate that he, having prayed that a
certain lady might become a mother, and the request being complied with,
some of Daniel’s enemies suggested that other means as well as prayer,
and much more efficacious, had been resorted to by the saint to obtain
the desired result. But Daniel, inquiring of the babe when it was
twenty-five days of age, was, _coram omnibus_, fully acquitted, the
_bambino_ pointing to his true father, and saying, with a nod, “_Verbis
et mitibus_”—_That’s_ the man! And the same happened to a Bishop
Britius. But Saint Augustine beats the record by declaring that, “It
hath sometimes happened that infants as yet unborn have cried out _ex
utero matris_—which is indeed a marvellous thing!” (“De Civitate Dei,”
III., c. 31).
And yet it seems to me that Justinus, Procopius, and several others, have
done as well, if not better; for it is related by them that a number of
orthodox believers who had their tongues cut out by Socinians, or
Unitarians (whom the zealous Dean Hole declares are all so many little
ungodly antichrists, or words to that effect), went on praying and
preaching more volubly than ever. The same is told by Evagrius of some
pious women, but I do not offer this as a miracle, there being in it
nothing improbable or remarkable.
That the Arians, or Unitarians, or Socinians have set tongues to
wagging—especially the tongues of flame which play round the pyres of
martyrdom—is matter of history—and breviary. But that they have been the
cause of making dead and tongueless Trinitarians talk, seems doubtful.
However, as the Canadian said of the ox: “There is no knowing what the
subtlest form of Antichrist _may_ do.” _Passons_!