indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted, else never
would calamity have befallen her.
_Cornelia._ I wish you had not seen the accident.
_Tasso._ I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where I am.
The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death!
_Cornelia._ Be calm, be composed, my brother!
_Tasso._ You would not require me to be composed or calm if you
comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings.
_Cornelia._ Peace! peace! we know them all.
_Tasso._ Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment, derision, madness.
_Cornelia._ Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these existed, they are
past.
_Tasso._ You do think they are sufferings? ay?
_Cornelia._ Too surely.
_Tasso._ No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They would
have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as I am! did I
complain of them? and while she was left me?
_Cornelia._ My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister's love?
Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think, O my brother, how
many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than
you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among
them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his
gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to be beloved?
_Tasso._ Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained wood a
little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite beautifies! Wet your
forefinger with your spittle; stick a broken gold-leaf on the
sinciput; clip off a beggar's beard to make it tresses; kiss it; fall
down before it; worship it. Are you not irradiated by the light of its
countenance? Princes! princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters
that costly carrion? Who thinks about it? [_After a pause._] She is
dead! She is dead!
_Cornelia._ We have not heard it here.
_Tasso._ At Sorrento you hear nothing but the light surges of the sea,
and the sweet sprinkles of the guitar.
_Cornelia._ Suppose the worst to be true.
_Tasso._ Always, always.
_Cornelia._ If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, to love and to
lament you, think gratefully, contentedly, devoutly, that her arms had
clasped your neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in that
long sleep which you have rendered placid, and from which your
harmonious voice shall once more awaken her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom
had throbbed to yours, often and often, before the organ peal shook
the fringes round the catafalque. Is not this much, from one so high,
so beautiful?
_Tasso._ Much? yes; for abject me. But I did so love her! so love her!
_Cornelia._ Ah! let the tears flow: she sends you that balm from
heaven.
_Tasso._ So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had indeed
been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as
great as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed on me as much
as the German had conferred or could confer on his vassal. No part of
my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea
cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick to my shroud.
_Cornelia._ Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who
has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora was unblameable.
Never think ill of her for what you have suffered.
_Tasso._ Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for
everything; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me
none; it was where she was not that pain was.
_Cornelia._ Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship,
there is no reason why the last comer of the two should supersede the
first.
_Tasso._ Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I am easily
persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown before me. With these
you have made my temples throb again. Just heaven! dost thou grant us
fairer fields, and wider, for the whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou
build us up habitations above the street, above the palace, above the
citadel, for the plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid
its dues, paid its penalties? Cannot our griefs come first, while we
have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks it a
misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young man! look at the
violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah! but thou must awake!
_Cornelia._ O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a man's heart
is sensitive in proportion to its greatness.
_Tasso._ And a woman's?
_Cornelia._ Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other. Comfort
thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato!
_Tasso._ Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds me of
her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave.
_Cornelia._ Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you, saying to
you, as the priests around have been saying to _her_, Blessed soul!
rest in peace?
_Tasso._ I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A thousand
times has she repeated it, laying her head on my heart to quiet it,
simple girl! She told it to rest in peace ... and she went from me!
Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, never self-destroyer! the world,
with all its weight of miseries, cannot crush thee, cannot keep thee
down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings of certain springs,
only harden and petrify what they fall on; but mine sank deep into a
tender heart, and were its very blood. Never will I believe she has
left me utterly. Oftentimes, and long before her departure, I fancied
we were in heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the
gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it in the broad
daylight, when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me
that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter.
Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes in the
intermediate state, in that serenity which breathes about the
transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span below the
feet of the Immortal.
_Cornelia._ She has not left you; do not disturb her peace by these
repinings.
_Tasso._ She will bear with them. Thou knowest not what she was,
Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In
my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice
bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how
pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches!
what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the
metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season
preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me!
Unchanged must ever be the blessed one who has leaned in fond security
on the unchangeable. The purifying flame shoots upward, and is the
glory that encircles their brows when they meet above.
_Cornelia._ Indulge in these delightful thoughts, my Torquato! and
believe that your love is and ought to be imperishable as your glory.
Generations of men move forward in endless procession to consecrate
and commemorate both. Colour-grinders and gilders, year after year,
are bargained with to refresh the crumbling monuments and tarnished
decorations of rude, unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that
cramp the crown upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my
Torquato there will always be one leaf above man's reach, above time's
wrath and injury, inscribed with the name of Leonora.
_Tasso._ O Jerusalem! I have not then sung in vain the Holy Sepulchre.
_Cornelia._ After such devotion of your genius, you have undergone too
many misfortunes.
_Tasso._ Congratulate the man who has had many, and may have more. I
have had, I have, I can have, one only.
_Cornelia._ Life runs not smoothly at all seasons, even with the
happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the views widen,
and it flows on more equably at the end.
_Tasso._ Have the stars smooth surfaces? No, no; but how they shine!
_Cornelia._ Capable of thoughts so exalted, so far above the earth we
dwell on, why suffer any to depress and anguish you?
_Tasso._ Cornelia, Cornelia! the mind has within its temples and
porticoes and palaces and towers: the mind has under it, ready for the
course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger than the storm; and
beside them stand winged chariots, more in number than the Psalmist
hath attributed to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again, hath its
hundred gates, compared whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and
all those hundred gates can genius throw open. But there are some that
groan heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God alone can close
them.
_Cornelia._ Torquato has thrown open those of His holy temple;
Torquato hath stood, another angel, at His tomb; and am I the sister
of Torquato? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears run only from my
pride and joy! Princes have bestowed knighthood on the worthy and
unworthy; thou hast called forth those princes from their ranks,
pushing back the arrogant and presumptuous of them like intrusive
varlets, and conferring on the bettermost crowns and robes,
imperishable and unfading.
_Tasso._ I seem to live back into those days. I feel the helmet on my
head; I wave the standard over it: brave men smile upon me; beautiful
maidens pull them gently back by the scarf, and will not let them
break my slumber, nor undraw the curtain. Corneliolina!...
_Cornelia._ Well, my dear brother! why do you stop so suddenly in the
midst of them? They are the pleasantest and best company, and they
make you look quite happy and joyous.
_Tasso._ Corneliolina, dost thou remember Bergamo? What city was ever
so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for
beautiful girls! There is but one class of those: Beauty is above all
ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness and bestower of felicity, the
queen of heaven.
_Cornelia._ Hush, Torquato, hush! talk not so.
_Tasso._ What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling, are the Brembo and
the Serio! What a country the Valtellina! I went back to our father's
house, thinking to find thee again, my little sister; thinking to kick
away thy ball of yellow silk as thou wast stooping for it, to make
thee run after me and beat me. I woke early in the morning; thou wert
grown up and gone. Away to Sorrento: I knew the road: a few strides
brought me back: here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will walk
together, as we used to do, into the cool and quiet caves on the
shore; and we will catch the little breezes as they come in and go out
again on the backs of the jocund waves.
_Cornelia._ We will indeed to-morrow; but before we set out we must
take a few hours' rest, that we may enjoy our ramble the better.
_Tasso._ Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich and avaricious. They
have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have built high walls to
prohibit the wayfarer from their vineyards.
_Cornelia._ I have a basket of grapes for you in the book-room that
overlooks our garden.
_Tasso._ Does the old twisted sage-tree grow still against the window?
_Cornelia._ It harboured too many insects at last, and there was
always a nest of scorpions in the crevice.
_Tasso._ Oh! what a prince of a sage-tree! And the well, too, with its
bucket of shining metal, large enough for the largest cocomero to cool
in it for dinner.
_Cornelia._ The well, I assure you, is as cool as ever.
_Tasso._ Delicious! delicious! And the stone-work round it, bearing no
other marks of waste than my pruning-hook and dagger left behind?
_Cornelia._ None whatever.
_Tasso._ White in that place no longer; there has been time enough for
it to become all of one colour: grey, mossy, half-decayed.
_Cornelia._ No, no; not even the rope has wanted repair.
_Tasso._ Who sings yonder?
_Cornelia._ Enchanter! No sooner did you say the word cocomero than
here comes a boy carrying one upon his head.
_Tasso._ Listen! listen! I have read in some book or other those
verses long ago. They are not unlike my _Aminta_. The very words!
_Cornelia._ Purifier of love, and humanizer of ferocity, how many, my
Torquato, will your gentle thoughts make happy!
_Tasso._ At this moment I almost think I am one among them.[10]
_Cornelia._ Be quite persuaded of it. Come, brother, come with me. You
shall bathe your heated brow and weary limbs in the chamber of your
childhood. It is there we are always the most certain of repose. The
boy shall sing to you those sweet verses; and we will reward him with
a slice of his own fruit.
_Tasso._ He deserves it; cut it thick.
_Cornelia._ Come then, my truant! Come along, my sweet smiling
Torquato!
_Tasso._ The passage is darker than ever. Is this the way to the
little court? Surely those are not the steps that lead down toward the
bath? Oh yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms. Beware of the
old wilding that bears them; it may catch your veil; it may scratch
your fingers! Pray, take care: it has many thorns about it. And now,
Leonora! you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward
me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway, else others
may hear them too. Ah! you press my hand once more. Drop it, drop it!
or the verses will sink into my breast again, and lie there silent!
Good girl!
Many, well I know, there are
Ready in your joys to share,
And (I never blame it) you
Are almost as ready too.
But when comes the darker day,
And those friends have dropt away,
Which is there among them all
You should, if you could, recall?
One who wisely loves and well
Hears and shares the griefs you tell;
Him you ever call apart
When the springs o'erflow the heart;
For you know that he alone
Wishes they were _but_ his own.
Give, while these he may divide,
Smiles to all the world beside.
_Cornelia._ We are now in the full light of the chamber; cannot you
remember it, having looked so intently all around?
_Tasso._ O sister! I could have slept another hour. You thought I
wanted rest: why did you waken me so early? I could have slept another
hour or longer. What a dream! But I am calm and happy.
_Cornelia._ May you never more be otherwise! Indeed, he cannot be
whose last verses are such as those.
_Tasso._ Have you written any since that morning?
_Cornelia._ What morning?
_Tasso._ When you caught the swallow in my curtains, and trod upon my
knees in catching it, luckily with naked feet. The little girl of
thirteen laughed at the outcry of her brother Torquatino, and sang
without a blush her earliest lay.
_Cornelia._ I do not recollect it.
_Tasso._ I do.
Rondinello! rondinello!
Tu sei nero, ma sei bello.
Cosa fà se tu sei nero?
Rondinello! sei il primiero
De' volanti, palpitanti,
(E vi sono quanti quanti!)
Mai tenuto a questo petto,
E perciò sei il mio diletto.[11]
_Cornelia._ Here is the cocomero; it cannot be more insipid. Try it.
_Tasso._ Where is the boy who brought it? where is the boy who sang my
_Aminta_? Serve him first; give him largely. Cut deeper; the knife is
too short: deeper; mia brava Corneliolina! quite through all the red,
and into the middle of the seeds. Well done!
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagination and the
heart. In the metropolis of the Christian world, with many admirers
and many patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left destitute,
and almost famished. These are his own words: '_Appena_ in questo
stato ho comprato _due meloni_: e benchè io sia stato _quasi sempre
infermo_, molte volte mi sono contentato del manzo: e la ministra di
latte o di zucca, _quando ho potuto averne_, mi è stata in vece di
delizie.' In another part he says that he was unable to pay the
carriage of a parcel. No wonder; if he had not wherewithal to buy
enough of zucca for a meal. Even had he been in health and appetite,
he might have satisfied his hunger with it for about five farthings,
and have left half for supper. And now a word on his insanity. Having
been so imprudent not only as to make it too evident in his poetry
that he was the lover of Leonora, but also to signify (not very
obscurely) that his love was returned, he much perplexed the Duke of
Ferrara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the necessity of
feigning madness. The lady's honour required it from a brother; and a
true lover, to convince the world, would embrace the project with
alacrity. But there was no reason why the seclusion should be in a
dungeon, or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty,
and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora's compassion, may well be
imagined to have produced at last the malady he had feigned. But did
Leonora love Tasso as a man would be loved? If we wish to do her
honour, let us hope it: for what greater glory can there be, than to
have estimated at the full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate
and so generous a heart!
[11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it
easy to write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below:
they only do for a girl of thirteen:
'Swallow! swallow! though so jetty
Are your pinions, you are pretty:
And what matter were it though
You were blacker than a crow?
Of the many birds that fly
(And how many pass me by!)
You 're the first I ever prest,
Of the many, to my breast:
Therefore it is very right
You should be my own delight.'
LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT
_La Fontaine._ I am truly sensible of the honour I receive, M. de la
Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so distinguished by his
birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition, if I confess to you that
I have long and ardently wished for the good fortune, which I never
could promise myself, of knowing you personally.
_Rochefoucault._ My dear M. de la Fontaine!
_La Fontaine._ Not '_de_ la', not '_de_ la'. I am _La_ Fontaine,
purely and simply.
_Rochefoucault._ The whole; not derivative. You appear, in the midst
of your purity, to have been educated at court, in the lap of the
ladies. What was the last day (pardon!) I had the misfortune to miss
you there?
_La Fontaine._ I never go to court. They say one cannot go without
silk stockings; and I have only thread: plenty of them indeed, thank
God! Yet, would you believe it? Nanon, in putting a _solette_ to the
bottom of one, last week, sewed it so carelessly, she made a kind of
cord across: and I verily believe it will lame me for life; for I
walked the whole morning upon it.
_Rochefoucault._ She ought to be whipped.
_La Fontaine._ I thought so too, and grew the warmer at being unable
to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely
had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old
friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they
both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was
fain to let her rise up and go. I never saw men look down on the
erring and afflicted more compassionately. The bishop was quite
concerned for me also. But the other, although he professed to feel
even more, and said that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to
me, took a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his
ruffles, and seemed rather more indifferent.
_Rochefoucault._ Providentially, in such moving scenes, the worst is
soon over. But Godeau's friend was not too sensitive.
_La Fontaine._ Sensitive! no more than if he had been educated at the
butcher's or the Sorbonne.
_Rochefoucault._ I am afraid there are as many hard hearts under satin
waistcoats as there are ugly visages under the same material in
miniature cases.
_La Fontaine._ My lord, I could show you a miniature case which
contains your humble servant, in which the painter has done what no
tailor in his senses would do; he has given me credit for a coat of
violet silk, with silver frogs as large as tortoises. But I am loath
to get up for it while the generous heart of this dog (if I mentioned
his name he would jump up) places such confidence on my knee.
_Rochefoucault._ Pray do not move on any account; above all, lest you
should disturb that amiable grey cat, fast asleep in his innocence on
your shoulder.
_La Fontaine._ Ah, rogue! art thou there? Why! thou hast not licked my
face this half-hour.
_Rochefoucault._ And more, too, I should imagine. I do not judge from
his somnolency, which, if he were President of the Parliament, could
not be graver, but from his natural sagacity. Cats weigh
practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he?
_La Fontaine._ He has the roughest tongue and the tenderest heart of
any cat in Paris. If you observe the colour of his coat, it is rather
blue than grey; a certain indication of goodness in these
contemplative creatures.
_Rochefoucault._ We were talking of his tongue alone; by which cats,
like men, are flatterers.
_La Fontaine._ Ah! you gentlemen of the court are much mistaken in
thinking that vices have so extensive a range. There are some of our
vices, like some of our diseases, from which the quadrupeds are
exempt; and those, both diseases and vices, are the most
discreditable.
_Rochefoucault._ I do not bear patiently any evil spoken of the court:
for it must be acknowledged, by the most malicious, that the court is
the purifier of the whole nation.
_La Fontaine._ I know little of the court, and less of the whole
nation; but how can this be?
_Rochefoucault._ It collects all ramblers and gamblers; all the
market-men and market-women who deal in articles which God has thrown
into their baskets, without any trouble on their part; all the
seducers and all who wish to be seduced; all the duellists who erase
their crimes with their swords, and sweat out their cowardice with
daily practice; all the nobles whose patents of nobility lie in gold
snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles, or are deposited within the
archives of knee-deep waistcoats; all stock-jobbers and
church-jobbers, the black-legged and the red-legged game, the flower
of the _justaucorps_, the _robe_, and the _soutane_. If these were
spread over the surface of France, instead of close compressure in the
court or cabinet, they would corrupt the whole country in two years.
As matters now stand, it will require a quarter of a century to effect
it.
_La Fontaine._ Am I not right then in preferring my beasts to yours?
But if yours were loose, mine (as you prove to me) would be the last
to suffer by it, poor dear creatures! Speaking of cats, I would have
avoided all personality that might be offensive to them: I would not
exactly have said, in so many words, that, by their tongues, they are
flatterers, like men. Language may take a turn advantageously in
favour of our friends. True, we resemble all animals in something. I
am quite ashamed and mortified that your lordship, or anybody, should
have had the start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters with
his tongue he is not insincere: you may safely take it for a real
kindness. He is loyal, M. de la Rochefoucault! my word for him, he is
loyal. Observe too, if you please, no cat ever licks you when he wants
anything from you; so that there is nothing of baseness in such an act
of adulation, if we must call it so. For my part, I am slow to
designate by so foul a name, that (be it what it may) which is
subsequent to a kindness. Cats ask plainly for what they want.
_Rochefoucault._ And, if they cannot get it by protocols they get it
by invasion and assault.
_La Fontaine._ No! no! usually they go elsewhere, and fondle those
from whom they obtain it. In this I see no resemblance to invaders and
conquerors. I draw no parallels: I would excite no heart-burnings
between us and them. Let all have their due.
I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would waken him, else
I could find out, by some subsequent action, the reason why he has not
been on the alert to lick my cheek for so long a time.
_Rochefoucault._ Cats are wary and provident. He would not enter into
any contest with you, however friendly. He only licks your face, I
presume, while your beard is but a match for his tongue.
_La Fontaine._ Ha! you remind me. Indeed I did begin to think my beard
was rather of the roughest; for yesterday Madame de Rambouillet sent
me a plate of strawberries, the first of the season, and raised (would
you believe it?) under glass. One of these strawberries was dropping
from my lips, and I attempted to stop it. When I thought it had fallen
to the ground, 'Look for it, Nanon; pick it up and eat it,' said I.
'Master!' cried the wench, 'your beard has skewered and spitted it.'
'Honest girl,' I answered, 'come, cull it from the bed of its
adoption.'
I had resolved to shave myself this morning: but our wisest and best
resolutions too often come to nothing, poor mortals!