THE VILLA MEDICI
What never to be forgotten times they were for youthful artists, when we
shared our enthusiasms for all we saw in these pleasantly picturesque
villages--a picturesqueness which has certainly gone by now.
Our lodgings were in the most primitive inns. I remember that one night
I was greatly disturbed by the feeling that my neighbor in the garret
had set the miserable hovel on fire. Falguiere had the same idea too. It
was only imagination. It was the bright starlight shining through the
dilapidated ceiling.
As we passed through the woods of Subiacco, a shepherd's _zampogna_ (a
sort of rustic bagpipe) sounded a burst of melody which I presently
noted down on a bit of paper loaned me by a Benedictine monk in a
neighboring monastery. These measures became the first notes of
_Marie-Magdeleine_, the sacred drama which I was already planning for my
first venture.
I still have the sketch Chaplain made of me at the moment.
As was the custom in the olden times of the pensionnaires of the Villa
Medici, we lodged in Naples at the Casa Combi, an old house overlooking
the Quay Santa Lucia. The fifth floor was reserved for us. It was an old
ruin with a pink rough-cast front and windows framed in mouldings shaped
in small figures and cleverly painted, like those one sees all over
Italy as soon as one crosses the Var.
A vast room held our three beds. As for the dressing room and the rest,
they were on the balcony, where, according to the local custom, we hung
our clothes to dry.
In order to travel as comfortably as possible, we had rigged ourselves
out at Rome with three suits of white flannel with blue stripes.
_Risum teneatis_, as that delightful poet Horace would have said. First,
listen to this.
[Illustration: Massenet at Egreville]
From the moment of our arrival at the station in Naples we were watched
with surprising perseverance by the gendarmes. In addition, the
passersby observed us with the utmost astonishment. We were intensely
curious and wondered what the reason was for all this. We did not
have long to wait. Our landlady, Marietta, told us that the Neapolitan
convicts wore almost exactly the same costume. The laughter which
greeted this revelation led us to complete the resemblance. So we went
to the Cafe Royal in the Piazza S. Ferdinando, the three of us dragging
our right legs as if they were fastened to a ball and chain as the
convicts were.
We almost lived in the galleries of the Borbonico Museum during our
first days in Naples. The most wonderful of the discoveries in the ruins
of Herculanum, Pompeii, and their neighbor Stabies had been placed
there. We were astonished at it all, enraptured, charmed by endless and
ever new discoveries.
In passing I must recall our dutiful ascent of Vesuvius, whose plume of
smoke we could see in the distance. We came back carrying our burned
shoes in our hands and with our feet wrapped in flannel which we had
bought at Torre del Greco.
We took our meals at Naples on the seashore on the Quay Santa Lucia,
almost opposite our house. For twelve grani, about eight sous, we had an
exquisite soup of shellfish, fish fried in an oil which had been used
for that purpose for two or three years at least, and a glass of Capri
wine.
Then, there were walks to Castellamare at the end of the Gulf of Naples,
where we enjoyed a wonderful view; and to Sorrento so rich in orange
trees that the arms of the city are interwoven in the form of a crown of
orange leaves. At Sorrento we saw where Tasso was born--the famous
Italian poet, the immortal author of "Jerusalem Delivered."
A simple terra cotta bust decorates the front of this half ruined house!
Thence to Amalfi, once almost the rival of Venice in the size of its
commerce.
If Napoleon got the itch through handling the gun sponge of a dirty
artilleryman, we owe it to the truth to state that the morning after we
passed the night in the place all three of us were covered with lice. We
had to have our heads shaved, which added to our resemblance to
convicts.
We were somewhat consoled for this adventure by sailing to Capri. We
left Amalfi at four o'clock in the morning, but we did not reach Capri
until ten at night. The island is delightful and the views bewitching.
The top of Mount Solaro is 1800 feet above the sea and about nine and a
half miles around. The view is one of the most beautiful and extensive
in all Italy.
We were overtaken by a frightful storm on our way to Capri. The boat was
loaded with a large quantity of oranges and the wild waves swept over
everything to the great despair of the sailors who outshouted each other
in calling on St. Joseph, the patron saint of Naples.
There is a pretty legend that St. Joseph, grieved by the departure of
Jesus and the Virgin Mary for Heaven, ordered his Son to come back to
him. Jesus obeyed and came back with all the saints in Paradise. The
Virgin came back, too, to the conjugal roof escorted by eleven thousand
virgins. When the Lord saw Paradise depopulated in this way and not
wanting to put St. Joseph in the wrong, he declared that the latter was
the stronger and so Heaven was repopulated by his permission. The
veneration of the Neapolitans for St. Joseph is surprising, as the
following detail illustrates.
In the Eighteenth Century the streets of Naples were hardly safe, and it
was dangerous to pass through them at night. The king had lanterns
placed at the worst corners to light the passersby, but the _birbanti_
broke them as they found they interfered with their nocturnal deeds.
Whereupon some one was struck with the idea of placing an image of St.
Joseph beside each lantern, and thereafter they were respected to the
great joy of the people.
To be in and live in Capri is the most ideal existence that one can
dream of. I brought back from there page after page of the works which I
intended to write later.
Autumn saw us back in Rome.
At that time I wrote my beloved master Ambroise Thomas as follows:
"Last Sunday Bourgault got up an entertainment to which he invited
twenty Transteverins and Transteverines--plus six musicians, also from
the Transtervere. All in costume!
"The weather was fine and the scene was simply wonderful when we were in
the 'Bosco,' my sacred grove. The setting sun lighted up the old walls
of ancient Rome. The entertainment ended in Falguiere's studio, lighted
_a giorno_, our doing. There the dance became so captivating and
intoxicating that we finished vis-a-vis to the Transteverines in the
final _salturrele_. They all smoked, ate, and drank--the women
especially liked our punch."
One of the greatest and most thrilling periods of my life was now at
hand. It was Christmas Eve. We arranged an outing so that we might
follow the midnight masses in the churches. The night ceremonies at
Sainte Marie Majeure and at Saint Jean de Latran impressed me most.
Shepherds with their flocks, cows, goats, sheep and pigs were in the
public square, as if to receive the benediction of the Savior, recalling
in this way His birth in a manger. The touching simplicity of these
beliefs really affected me and I entered Sainte Marie Majeure
accompanied by a lovely goat which I embraced and which did not want to
leave me. This in no way astonished any of the crowd of men and women
packed in that church, kneeling on those beautiful Mosaic pavements,
between a double row of columns--relics taken from the ancient temples.
The next day--a day to be marked with a cross--on the staircase with its
three hundred steps which leads to the church of Ara Coeli, I passed two
women, obviously fashionable foreigners. I was especially charmed by the
appearance of the younger. Several days later I was at Liszt's who was
preparing for his ordination, and I recognized among the famous
master's visitors the two women whom I had seen at Ara Coeli.
I learned almost at once that the younger had come to Rome with her
family on a sightseeing trip and that she had been recommended to Liszt
so that he might select for her a musician capable of directing her
studies. She did not want to interrupt them while she was away from
Paris. Liszt at once proposed me. I was a pensionnaire at the Academie
de France and was supposed to work there, so that I did not want to
devote my time to lessons. The young girl's charm, however, overcame my
reluctance.
You may have already guessed that this beautiful girl was the one who
was to become my wife two years later, the ever-attentive, often-worried
companion of my life, the witness of my weaknesses as well as of my
bursts of energy, of my sorrows and my joys. With her I have gone up the
steps of life, already long, but not so steep as those which led to Ara
Coeli, that altar of the skies which recalls to Rome the pure and
cloudless celestial abodes, which have led me along a way sometimes
difficult and where the roses have been gathered in the midst of
thorns. But is not life always so?
In the following spring came the pensionnaires' annual entertainment,
which took place as was customary at Castel Fusano on the Roman
Campagna, a couple of miles from Ostia in a magnificent pine forest
divided by an avenue of beautiful evergreen oaks. I brought away with me
such an agreeable remembrance of the day that I advised my fiancee and
her family to make the acquaintance of this incomparable spot.
In that splendid avenue paved with old marble slabs I recalled Gaston
Boissier's story, in his "Promenades Archelogiques," of Nisus and
Euraylus, those unfortunate young men who were sent to their downfall by
Volscens, as he came from Laurentium, to bring part of his troops to
Turnus.
The thought that in December my two years' stay would be up and that I
would have to leave the Villa Medici and return to France made me
extremely sad. I wanted to see Venice again. I stayed there two months
and during the time I jotted down the rough sketch of my first _Suite
d'Orchestra_.
I noted the strange and beautiful notes of the Austrian trumpets which
sounded every evening as they closed the gates for the night. And I used
them twenty-five years later in the fourth act of _Le Cid_.
My comrades bade me good-by on December seventeenth, not only at the
last sad dinner at our large table, but also at the station in the
evening. I had given over the day to packing, gazing meditatively the
while at the bed in which I should never sleep again.
All the souvenirs of my two years in Rome--palms from Palm Sunday, a
drum from the Transtevere, my mandolin, a wooden Virgin, a few sprays
and branches from the Villa's garden, all my souvenirs of a past which
would be with me always, went into my trunk with my clothes. The French
Embassy paid the carriage.
I was unwilling to leave my window until the setting sun had disappeared
behind St. Peter's. It seemed as if Rome in its turn took refuge in
shadow--a shadow which bade me farewell.