WHEN Maria had come a little to herself, I ask’d her if she remembered a
pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat
about two years before? She said she was unsettled much at that time,
but remembered it upon two accounts:—that ill as she was, she saw the
person pitied her; and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief,
and she had beat him for the theft;—she had wash’d it, she said, in the
brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to restore it to him in case
she should ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised
her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to
let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine leaves,
tied round with a tendril;—on opening it, I saw an S. marked in one of
the corners.
She had since that, she told me, stray’d as far as Rome, and walk’d round
St. Peter’s once,—and return’d back;—that she found her way alone across
the Apennines;—had travell’d over all Lombardy, without money,—and
through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes:—how she had borne it,
and how she had got supported, she could not tell;—but _God tempers the
wind_, said Maria, _to the shorn lamb_.
Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I: and wast thou in my own land,
where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee: thou
shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup;—I would be kind to
thy Sylvio;—in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek after thee
and bring thee back;—when the sun went down I would say my prayers: and
when I had done thou shouldst play thy evening song upon thy pipe, nor
would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven
along with that of a broken heart!
Nature melted within me, as I utter’d this; and Maria observing, as I
took out my handkerchief, that it was steep’d too much already to be of
use, would needs go wash it in the stream.—And where will you dry it,
Maria? said I.—I’ll dry it in my bosom, said she:—’twill do me good.
And is your heart still so warm, Maria? said I.
I touch’d upon the string on which hung all her sorrows:—she look’d with
wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying any
thing, took her pipe and play’d her service to the Virgin.—The string I
had touched ceased to vibrate;—in a moment or two Maria returned to
herself,—let her pipe fall,—and rose up.
And where are you going, Maria? said I.—She said, to Moulines.—Let us go,
said I, together.—Maria put her arm within mine, and lengthening the
string, to let the dog follow,—in that order we enter’d Moulines.
MARIA.
MOULINES.
THOUGH I hate salutations and greetings in the market-place, yet, when we
got into the middle of this, I stopp’d to take my last look and last
farewell of Maria.
Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine
forms:—affliction had touched her looks with something that was scarce
earthly;—still she was feminine;—and so much was there about her of all
that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman, that could the
traces be ever worn out of her brain, and those of Eliza out of mine, she
should _not only eat of my bread and drink of my own cup_, but Maria
should lie in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter.
Adieu, poor luckless maiden!—Imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion
of a stranger, as he journeyeth on his way, now pours into thy
wounds;—the Being, who has twice bruised thee, can only bind them up for
ever.