The Inn, Orsaro.
My dear Bob,--This must be a very brief epistle, since, amongst other
reasons, the sheet of letter-paper costs me a florin, and I shall have
to pay three more for a messenger to convey it to the post-town, a
distance of as many miles off. To explain these scarce credible facts,
I must tell you that we are at a little village called Orsaro, in
the midst of a wild mountain country, whither we have come to perform
penances, say prayers, and enact other devotions at the shrine of a
certain St. Agatha, who, some time last autumn, took to working miracles
down here, and consequently attracting all the faithful who had nothing
to do with themselves before Carnival.
My excellent mother it was who, in an access of devotion, devised the
excursion; and the governor, hearing that the locality was a barbarous
one, and the regimen a strict fast, fancied, of course, it would be a
most economical dodge, at once agreed; but, by Jove! the saving is a
delusion and a snare. Two miserable rooms, dirty and ill furnished,
cost forty francs a day; bad coffee and black bread, for breakfast,
are supplied at four francs a head; dinner--if by such a name one would
designate a starved kid stewed in garlic, or a boiled hedgehog with
chiccory sauce,--ten francs each; sour wine at the price of Chateau
Lafitte; and a seat in the sanctuary, to see the Virgin, four times as
dear as a stall at the Italian Opera. Exorbitant as all these charges
are, we are gravely assured that they will be doubled whenever the
Virgin sneezes again, that being the manifestation, as they call it, by
which she displays her satisfaction at our presence here. I do not
fancy talking irreverently of these things, Bob, but I own to you I
am ineffably shocked at the gross impositions innkeepers, postmasters,
donkey-owners, and others practise by trading on the devotional feelings
and pious aspirations of weak but worthy people. I say nothing of the
priests themselves; they may or may not believe all these miraculous
occurrences. One thing, however, is clear: they make every opportunity
of judging of them so costly that only a rich man can afford himself
the luxury, so that you and I, and a hundred others like us, may either
succumb or scoff, as we please, without any means of correcting our
convictions. One inevitable result ensues from this. There are two
camps: the Faithful, who believe everything, and are cheated by
every imaginable device of mock relics and made-up miracles; and the
Unbelieving, who actually rush into ostentatious vice, to show their
dislike to hypocrisy! Thus, this little dirty village, swarming with
priests, and resounding with the tramp of processions, is a den of every
kind of dissipation. The rattle of the dice-box mingles with the nasal
chantings of the tonsured monks, and the wild orgies of a drinking party
blend with the strains of the organ! If men be not religiously minded,
the contact with the Church seems to make demons of them. How otherwise
interpret the scoff and mockery that unceasingly go forward against
priests and priestcraft in a little community, as it were, separated for
acts of piety and devotion?
That we live in a most believing age is palpable, by the fact that this
place swarms with men distinguished in every court and camp in Europe.
Crafty ministers, artful diplomatists, keen old generals, versed in
every wile and stratagem, come here as it were to divest themselves of
all their long-practised acuteness, and give in their adhesion to the
most astounding and incoherent revelations. I cannot bring myself to
suppose these men rogues and hypocrites, and yet I have nearly as
much difficulty to believe them dupes! What have become of those sharp
perceptive powers, that clever insight into motives, and the almost
unerring judgment they could exhibit in any question of politics or
war? It cannot surely be that they who have measured themselves with
the first capacities of the world dread to enter the lists against some
half-informed and narrow-minded village curate; or is it that there
lurks in every human heart some one spot, a refuge as it were for
credulity, which even the craftiest cannot exclude? You are far better
suited than I to canvass such a question, my dear Bob. I only throw it
out for your consideration, without any pretension to solve it myself.
My father, you are well aware, is too good a Churchman to suffer a
syllable to escape his lips which might be construed into discredit of
the faith; but I can plainly see that he skulks his penances, and shifts
off any observance that does not harmonize with his comfort. At the same
time he strongly insists that the fastings and other privations enjoined
are an admirable system to counteract the effect of that voluptuous life
practised in almost every capital of Europe. As he shrewdly remarked,
"This place was like Groeffenberg,--you might not be restored by the
water-cure, but you were sure to be benefited by early hours, healthful
exercise, and a light diet." This, you may perceive, is a very modified
approval of the miracles.
I have dwelt so long on this theme that I have only left myself what
Mary Anne calls the selvage of my paper, for anything else. Nor is
it pleasant to me, Bob, to tell you that I am low-spirited and
down-hearted. A month ago, life was opening before me with every
prospect of happiness and enjoyment. A lovely creature, gifted and
graceful, of the very highest rank and fortune, was to have been mine.
She was actually domesticated with us, and only waiting for the day
which should unite our destinies forever, when one night--I can scarcely
go on--I know not how either to convey to you what is _half_ shrouded in
mystery, and should be perhaps _all_ concealed in shame; but somehow
my father contrived to talk so of our family affairs--our debts, our
difficulties, and what not--that Josephine overheard everything, and
shocked possibly more at our duplicity than at our narrow fortune, she
hurried away at midnight, leaving a few cold lines of farewell behind
her, and has never been seen or heard of since.
I set out after her to Milan; thence to Bologna, where I thought I had
traces of her. From that I went to Rimini, and on a false scent down to
Ancona. I got into a slight row there with the police, and was obliged
to retrace my steps, and arrived at Parma, after three weeks' incessant
travelling, heart-broken and defeated.
That I shall ever rally,--that I shall ever take any real interest
in life again, is totally out of the question. Such an opportunity of
fortune as this rarely occurs to any one once in life; none are lucky
enough to meet it a second time. The governor, too, instead of feeling,
as he ought, that he has been the cause of my ruin, continues to pester
me about the indolent way I spend my life, and inveighs against even the
little dissipations that I endeavor to drown my sorrows by indulging in.
It 's all very well to talk about active employment, useful pursuits,
and so forth; but a man ought to have his mind at ease, and his heart
free from care, for all these, as I told the governor yesterday. When a
fellow has got such a "stunner" as I have had lately, London porter and
a weed are his only solace. Even Tiverton's society is distasteful, he
has such a confoundedly flippant way of treating one.
I 'm thinking seriously of emigrating, and wish you could give me any
useful hints on the subject. Tiverton knows a fellow out there, who
was in the same regiment with himself,--a baronet, I believe,--and he's
doing a capital stroke of work with a light four-in-hand team that he
drives, I think, between San Francisco and Geelong, but don't trust me
too far in the geography; he takes the diggers at eight pounds a head,
and extra for the "swag." Now that is precisely the thing to suit me;
I can tool a coach as well as most fellows: and as long as one keeps on
the box they don't feel it like coming down in the world!
I half suspect Tiverton would come out too. At least, he seems very sick
of England, as everybody must be that has n't ten thousand a year and a
good house in Belgravia.
I don't know whither we go from this, and, except in the hope of hearing
from you, I could almost add, care as little. The governor has got so
much better from the good air and the regimen, that he is now anxious
to be off; while my mother, attributing his recovery to the saint's
interference, wants another "Novena." Mary Anne likes the place too; and
Cary, who sketches all day long, seems to enjoy it.
How the decision is to come is therefore not easy to foresee. Meanwhile,
whether _here_ or _there_,
Believe me your attached friend,
James Dodd.
[Illustration: 210]
I open this to say that we are "booked" for another fortnight here.
My mother went to consult the Virgin about going away last night, and
she--that is, the saint--gave such a sneeze that my mother fainted,
and was carried home insensible. The worst of all this is that Father
Giacomo--our guide in spirituals--insists on my mother's publishing a
little tract on her experiences; and the women are now hard at work with
pen and ink at a small volume to be called "St. Agatha of Orsaro,"
by Jemima D------. They have offered half a florin apiece for good
miracles, but they are pouring in so fast they 'll have to reduce the
tariff. Tiverton recommends them to ask thirteen to the dozen.
The governor is furious at this authorship, which will cost some
five-and-twenty pounds at the least!