It was only this one day, however, that happiness and the sun shone
upon me. On the morrow pains in my right leg, in which there was a vein
swollen, made me feel very unwell. So ignorant was the doctor that he
declared this to be of no importance, and gave me a little ointment
with which to rub my leg. But I grew worse from day to day, and after a
very short time my leg was like a lump of lead. I was stretched once
more for some months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since
very heroic measures were used in the treatment of the complaint, a
violent attack of phlebitis. The leg was rubbed every day from the sole
of the foot to the hip with mercury ointment, which could not be
without its effect on my general health.
Still, I kept up my spirits finely. Among the Scandinavians who showed
me kindness at this time I gratefully remember the Danish painters
Rosenstand and Mackeprang, who visited me regularly and patiently, and
my friend Walter Runeberg, the Finnish sculptor, whose cheerfulness did
me good.
Other Scandinavians with whom I was less well acquainted came to see me
now and again, but they had one very annoying habit. It was customary
at that time for all letters to be addressed, for greater security, to
the Danish consulate, which served the purpose of a general
Scandinavian consulate. Anyone who thought of coming to see me would
fetch what letters had arrived for me that day and put them in his
pocket to bring me. The letters I ought to have had at ten o'clock in
the morning I generally received at seven in the evening. But these
gentlemen often forgot to pay their visit at all, or did not get time,
and then it would happen that after having gone about with the letters
in their pockets for a few days, they took them back to the consulate,
whence they were sent to me, once, three days late. As my whole life on
my sick-bed was one constant, painful longing for letters from home,
the more so as my mother, all the time I was in bed, was lying
dangerously ill, I felt vexed at the thoughtless behaviour of my
compatriots.
However, I had not travelled so far to meet Northmen, and I learnt far
more from the one Italian who sat by my bedside day after day, Giuseppe
Saredo. It was amusing to note the difference between his ways and the
Northmen's. He did not come in; he exploded. At six o'clock in the
evening, he would rush in without knocking at the door, shouting at one
and the same time Italian to the people of the house, and French to me.
He talked at a furious rate, and so loudly that people who did not know
might have fancied we were quarrelling, and he changed his seat once a
minute, jumped up from the easy chair and seated himself half in the
window, began a sentence there and finished it sitting on my bed. And
every second or third day he either himself brought books to entertain
me or sent large parcels by a messenger.
He had risen to be professor at the University of the the capital,
without ever having been either student or graduate. His family were
too poor for him to study. For many years, when a lad, he had never
eaten dinner. His occupation, when at last he began to get on, was that
of proof-reader in a printing establishment, but he tried to add to his
income by writing melodramas for the boulevard theatres in Turin.
He thought he had written over fifty. He told me: "The manager
generally came to me on a Sunday, when we were at liberty, and said:
'We must have a new play for next Sunday.' On Monday the first act was
finished, on Tuesday the second, etc.; and every act was delivered as
it was written, and the parts allotted. Sometimes the last act was only
finished on Saturday morning, which, however, would not prevent the
piece being played on Sunday evening." In a number of the _Revue des
deux Mondes_ for 1857 we found Saredo mentioned among the
melodramatists of Italy. This must have been ferreted out privately,
since he always wrote these melodramas anonymously, he having
determined, with naïve conceit, "not to stain his future reputation."
When he was twenty-one, he tried to raise himself from this rank to
that of a journalist, and succeeded; he sent all sorts of articles to
three newspapers. From his twenty-first to his twenty-fourth year he
wrote for the daily papers, and wrote gay accounts of the volatile
lives of young Italian journalists with the ladies of the theatres.
Then he fell in love with the lady who later became his wife (known as
a novelist under the pseudonym of Ludovico de Rosa), and from that time
forth never looked at another woman. All his life he cherished a great
admiration for his wife and gratitude towards her.
When he had commenced his legal work, he strained every nerve to the
utmost, and obtained his professorships in the various towns through
competition, without having followed the usual University path. "I have
always had the most unshaken faith in my star," he said one day, "even
when, from hunger or despair, thoughts of suicide occurred to me. When
I broke my black bread, I said to myself: 'The day will come when I
shall eat white.'"
Like all Italians at that time, Saredo detested and despised modern
France. As far as reconquered Rome was concerned, he regarded her with
sorrowful eyes. "There are only nobility, ecclesiastics, and workmen
here," he said; "no middle classes, no industry and no trade. Absurd
tariff laws have up till now shut off the Papal States from the
surrounding world. And what a government! A doctor, who after his
second visit did not make his patient confess to a priest, lost his
official post, if he happened to hold one, and was in any case sent to
prison for five months. A doctor who did not go to Mass a certain
number of times during the week was prohibited practising. The huge
number of tied-up estates made buying and selling very difficult. The
new government has struck the nobility a fatal blow by abolishing
entailed property and lands. The calling in of the ecclesiastical
property by the State is giving the towns a chance to breathe."
Whenever I revisited Italy, I saw Saredo. His heroism during the
inquiries into the irregularities in Naples in 1900-1901 made his name
beloved and himself admired in his native country. He died in 1902, the
highest life official in Italy; since 1897 he had been President of the
Council.