I feel quite shaken at what has just happened; I am beginning to fear
that that old pedant was right in saying that it was bad for me to live
all alone in a strange country, that it would make me morbid. It is
ridiculous that I should be put into such a state of excitement merely
by the chance discovery of a portrait of a woman dead these three
hundred years. With the case of my uncle Ladislas, and other suspicions
of insanity in my family, I ought really to guard against such foolish
excitement.
Yet the incident was really dramatic, uncanny. I could have sworn that
I knew every picture in the palace here; and particularly every picture
of Her. Anyhow, this morning, as I was leaving the Archives, I passed
through one of the many small rooms—irregular-shaped closets—which fill
up the ins and outs of this curious palace, turreted like a French
château. I must have passed through that closet before, for the view
was so familiar out of its window; just the particular bit of round
tower in front, the cypress on the other side of the ravine, the
belfry beyond, and the piece of the line of Monte Sant’ Agata and the
Leonessa, covered with snow, against the sky. I suppose there must be
twin rooms, and that I had got into the wrong one; or rather, perhaps
some shutter had been opened or curtain withdrawn. As I was passing,
my eye was caught by a very beautiful old mirror-frame let into the
brown and yellow inlaid wall. I approached, and looking at the frame,
looked also, mechanically, into the glass. I gave a great start, and
almost shrieked, I do believe—(it’s lucky the Munich professor is safe
out of Urbania!). Behind my own image stood another, a figure close to
my shoulder, a face close to mine; and that figure, that face, hers!
Medea da Carpi’s! I turned sharp round, as white, I think, as the
ghost I expected to see. On the wall opposite the mirror, just a pace
or two behind where I had been standing, hung a portrait. And such a
portrait!—Bronzino never painted a grander one. Against a background of
harsh, dark blue, there stands out the figure of the Duchess (for it
is Medea, the real Medea, a thousand times more real, individual, and
powerful than in the other portraits), seated stiffly in a high-backed
chair, sustained, as it were, almost rigid, by the stiff brocade of
skirts and stomacher, stiffer for plaques of embroidered silver flowers
and rows of seed pearl. The dress is, with its mixture of silver and
pearl, of a strange dull red, a wicked poppy-juice color, against which
the flesh of the long, narrow hands with fringe-like fingers; of the
long slender neck, and the face with bared forehead, looks white and
hard, like alabaster. The face is the same as in the other portraits:
the same rounded forehead, with the short fleece-like, yellowish-red
curls; the same beautifully curved eyebrows, just barely marked; the
same eyelids, a little tight across the eyes; the same lips, a little
tight across the mouth; but with a purity of line, a dazzling splendor
of skin, and intensity of look immeasurably superior to all the other
portraits.
She looks out of the frame with a cold, level glance; yet the lips
smile. One hand holds a dull-red rose; the other, long, narrow,
tapering, plays with a thick rope of silk and gold and jewels hanging
from the waist; round the throat, white as marble, partially confined
in the tight dull-red bodice, hangs a gold collar, with the device on
alternate enameled medallions, “AMOUR DURE—DURE AMOUR.”
On reflection, I see that I simply could never have been in that room
or closet before; I must have mistaken the door. But, although the
explanation is so simple, I still, after several hours, feel terribly
shaken in all my being. If I grow so excitable I shall have to go to
Rome at Christmas for a holiday. I feel as if some danger pursued me
here (can it be fever?); and yet, and yet, I don’t see how I shall ever
tear myself away.
_Dec. 10th_.—
I have made an effort, and accepted the Vice-Prefect’s son’s invitation
to see the oil-making at a villa of theirs near the coast. The villa,
or farm, is an old fortified, towered place, standing on a hillside
among olive-trees and little osier-bushes, which look like a bright
orange flame. The olives are squeezed in a tremendous black cellar,
like a prison: you see, by the faint white daylight, and the smoky
yellow flare of resin burning in pans, great white bullocks moving
round a huge millstone; vague figures working at pulleys and handles:
it looks, to my fancy, like some scene of the Inquisition. The
Cavaliere regaled me with his best wine and rusks. I took some long
walks by the seaside; I had left Urbania wrapped in snow-clouds; down
on the coast there was a bright sun; the sunshine, the sea, the bustle
of the little port on the Adriatic seemed to do me good. I came back
to Urbania another man. Sor Asdrubale, my landlord, poking about in
slippers among the gilded chests, the Empire sofas, the old cups and
saucers and pictures which no one will buy, congratulated me upon the
improvement in my looks. “You work too much,” he says; “youth requires
amusement, theatres, promenades, _amori_—it is time enough to be
serious when one is bald”—and he took off his greasy red cap. Yes, I am
better! and, as a result, I take to my work with delight again. I will
cut them out still, those wiseacres at Berlin!
_Dec. 14th_.—
I don’t think I have ever felt so happy about my work. I see it all
so well—that crafty, cowardly Duke Robert; that melancholy Duchess
Maddalena; that weak, showy, would-be chivalrous Duke Guidalfonso;
and above all, the splendid figure of Medea. I feel as if I were the
greatest historian of the age; and, at the same time, as if I were a
boy of twelve. It snowed yesterday for the first time in the city,
for two good hours. When it had done, I actually went into the square
and taught the ragamuffins to make a snowman; no, a snow-woman; and I
had the fancy to call her Medea. “La pessima Medea!” cried one of the
boys—“the one who used to ride through the air on a goat?” “No, no,”
I said; “she was a beautiful lady, the Duchess of Urbania, the most
beautiful woman that ever lived.” I made her a crown of tinsel, and
taught the boys to cry “Evviva, Medea!” But one of them said, “She is
a witch! She must be burnt!” At which they all rushed to fetch burning
faggots and tow; in a minute the yelling demons had melted her down.
_Dec. 15th_.—
What a goose I am, and to think I am twenty-four, and known in
literature! In my long walks I have composed to a tune (I don’t know
what it is) which all the people are singing and whistling in the
street at present, a poem in frightful Italian, beginning “Medea, mia
dea,” calling on her in the name of her various lovers. I go about
humming between my teeth, “Why am I not Marcantonio? or Prinzivalle?
or he of Narni? or the good Duke Alfonso? that I might be beloved by
thee, Medea, mia dea,” &c. &c. Awful rubbish! My landlord, I think,
suspects that Medea must be some lady I met while I was staying by the
seaside. I am sure Sora Serafina, Sora Lodovica, and Sora Adalgisa—the
three Parcae or _Norns_, as I call them—have some such notion. This
afternoon, at dusk, while tidying my room, Sora Lodovica said to me,
“How beautifully the Signorino has taken to singing!” I was scarcely
aware that I had been vociferating, “Vieni, Medea, mia dea,” while the
old lady bobbed about making up my fire. I stopped; a nice reputation
I shall get! I thought, and all this will somehow get to Rome, and
thence to Berlin. Sora Lodovica was leaning out of the window, pulling
in the iron hook of the shrine-lamp which marks Sor Asdrubale’s house.
As she was trimming the lamp previous to swinging it out again, she
said in her odd, prudish little way, “You are wrong to stop singing, my
son” (she varies between calling me Signor Professore and such terms
of affection as “Nino,” “Viscere mie,” &c.); “you are wrong to stop
singing, for there is a young lady there in the street who has actually
stopped to listen to you.”
I ran to the window. A woman, wrapped in a black shawl, was standing in
an archway, looking up to the window.
“Eh, eh! the Signor Professore has admirers,” said Sora Lodovica.
“Medea, mia dea!” I burst out as loud as I could, with a boy’s pleasure
in disconcerting the inquisitive passer-by. She turned suddenly round
to go away, waving her hand at me; at that moment Sora Lodovica swung
the shrine-lamp back into its place. A stream of light fell across the
street. I felt myself grow quite cold; the face of the woman outside
was that of Medea da Carpi!
What a fool I am, to be sure!