ISCHIA.
Giulia was recruiting her health, meantime, at Vittoria's charming
island-home of Ischia,
"Where nothing met the eye but sights of bliss."
--where a graceful simplicity, indeed, reigned, but under the regulation
of the purest taste,--where duties, softened into pleasures, filled up
every hour; and where leisure, never degenerating into laziness, was
alternately dedicated to poetry, music, and painting, to the enjoyment
of the most exquisite beauties of nature, to the cultivation of the
mind, and to offices of charity and devotion. Among the poets and
eminent men who here "invoked the muses and improved their vein," and
who helped to make this remote rock famous, were Musefilo, Filocalo,
Giovio, Bernardo Tasso, and many others. Bernardo Tasso thus sang the
praises of this charmed islet--
"Superbo scoglio, altero e bel ricetto
Di tanti chiari eroi, d'imperadori,
Onde raggi di gloria escono fuori,
Ch' ogni altro lume fan scuro e negletto,
Se per vera virtute al ben perfetto
Salir si puote ed agli eterni onori
Queste più d'altre degne alme e migliori
V'andran che chiudi nel petroso petto.
Il lume è in te dell' armi; in te s'asconde
Casta beltà, valore e cortesia,
Quanta mai vide il tempo, o diede il cielo.
Ti sian secondi i fati, e il vento e l'onde
Rendanti onore, e l'aria tua natia
Abbia sempre temprato il caldo e il gelo!"
Nor did younger and gayer poets want younger and gayer beauties to
inspire them than the two noble widows; for Vittoria's household
comprised six or eight nobly-born girls who were being trained under her
eye, and whom her conscientiousness prevented from turning over to the
sole superintendence of the Mother of the maids.
"You might take more interest than you do, Giulia," said she, "in the
education of your damsels. It would do them good, and you, too."
"Ah, nothing could be more tiresome to me," said Giulia. "I am most
happy to leave them to Donna Caterina!"
"I doubt, however," said Vittoria, "whether we have even the right to
keep fellow-creatures about us, of like affections and passions with
ourselves, without providing some legitimate outlet for them, or
supplying them with sufficient motives for their restraint."
"My girls seldom go into passions," said Giulia; "and I should think it
impertinent to inquire into their affections."
"Why now, you incorrigible Giulia, did not you tell me of your fits of
suppressed laughter while you were overhearing (actually
eaves-dropping) that love dialogue between Tebaldo and Isaura? and of
your laughing at her to her face, afterwards, in the presence of the
other girls?"
"I gave her a pearl necklace," said the Duchess.
"Not till she married, months afterwards."
"Well, I own I let myself down on that occasion."
"As to letting yourself down, it is your keeping yourself up that I
complain of--"
"O, what a beautiful butterfly!--"
"My dear Giulia, _don't_ run after it and put yourself in a fever. You
are not quite a child now!"
"No, but I was a child once; and when I was a child-Duchess of thirteen,
I thought that if I did not keep my maids at a distance, they would not
respect me. And my mother's word had always been, 'Never associate,
child, with servants.'"
"Servants and slaves, that may apply to very well," said Vittoria, who
had not surmounted class-prejudices, "but your maids-of-honour are
well-born, and though for a time they occupy subordinate positions,
eventually they will marry respectably, it is to be hoped."
"And that hope is enough to enliven them, I suppose," said Giulia. "My
dear Duke said to me, very soon after our marriage: 'Pargoletta!'--you
know he loved to call me 'pargoletta,' or 'animetta,' or 'dolce alma
mia,'--he said, 'Pargoletta, don't have much to say to your maids; they
are light and frivolous, and will do you no good.' And I loved to obey
him; and I love to obey him still, for he was a wise man."
"They might do you no good, but you might do them great good now," said
Vittoria.
"O, my dear, that set have long married off, and had their portions--so
many ducats, a bed, bedding, and ewer and basin."
"The new set, then--"
"Here's a strawberry, I declare," said Giulia, diving into the leaves on
the bank upon which they were sitting. "Do have it!"
"No, thank you. The--"
"I could no more preach and pray with my maids as you do, Vittoria, than
I could fly!"
"Why not?"
"I should die of shame."
"Nonsense," said the Marchioness, laughing.
"I really should. It would be so ridiculous."
"Quite otherwise, I think, if you undertook it in the right spirit."
"But I never could. It is not in me. They would all begin to laugh--"
"They must be under very poor control, then," said Vittoria.
"Besides, it would be so uncalled for--it would take their thoughts off
their proper work."
"What is their proper work?"
"To do vast quantities of embroidery and fine needlework."
"Well, I think _your_ proper work is to care for their souls."
"That's Fra Silvano's office."
"Does he fulfil it?"
"Not very well, I'm afraid. He chatters and laughs with them too much."
"I should like to see him chatter and laugh with _my_ maids," said
Vittoria, kindling. "He should not do so twice."
"Ah," said Giulia, after a pause--"I wish I were as good as you,
Vittoria--"
"My dear soul, I am not good."
"You are a great deal better than I am. Such as I am, I am and ever
shall be."
"Hush, we can none of us say that!"
"At any rate, there is no good thing in me, to impart to others. And the
girls do very well as they are--they stick to their needles."
"What do they think of the while?"
"Of their needles, I suppose."
"If they do, they are better than I am," said Vittoria, almost with a
groan. "Oh, Giulia, don't believe it!"
"Well, I suppose nonsense of some sort may pass through their heads,"
said Giulia, rather uneasily. "How am I to keep it out?"
"By putting something better in. Not merely by preaching and praying,
but by supplying proper, innocent food for their imaginations and
fancies. You know I read my girls pleasant tales and dialogues
sometimes, and lend them books of poetry and history."
"Well, your girls are certainly better conducted than mine," said
Giulia. "They giggle less."
"A canister with very little in it always rattles," said Vittoria. "I
hate giggling."
"So do I; and, do you know, my dear Vittoria, that is one reason why I
have so little to say to my maids."
"It is the very reason why you should say the more. You should fill the
canisters."
"I will try then," said the ingenuous Giulia, "when I return to Fondi."
She returned there very soon: and Vittoria Colonna went to Lucca; "in an
unostentatious manner," says the old chronicler, "attended by only six
gentlewomen."
Why she went to Lucca, except that it was just then rife with the
Reformed opinions, and ready to throw off the yoke of Rome, the
chronicler sayeth not. From Lucca she proceeded by easy stages to
Ferrara, mounted on her black and white jennet, with housings of crimson
velvet fringed with gold, and attended by six grooms on foot, in cloaks
and jerkins of blue and yellow satin. She herself wore a robe of
brocaded crimson velvet, with a girdle of beaten gold; and on her head a
travelling-cap of crimson satin, well becoming her "trecce d'oro," and
large, mild blue eyes.
Arrived at Ferrara, she was delightedly welcomed by Duke Ercole and
Duchess Renée. Here was a house divided against itself. The poor
Duchess--highly intelligent and a little crooked--now in her
twenty-ninth year, had been harshly dealt with by her husband, only a
twelvemonth back, for harbouring and comforting those arch-heretics
Calvin and Clement Marot; and was now kept very much in check by the
terrors of the Church, though in heart as much a Reformer as ever.
To grace "the divine Vittoria," whose poetical fame was known all over
Italy, and whose eulogist, Bernardo Tasso, was secretary to the Duchess
of Ferrara, Duke Ercole invited the most distinguished literati of
Venice and Lombardy to meet her. Oh, what a feast of reason and flow of
soul! What reciprocations of compliments and couplets! What ransacking
of heathen mythologies for metaphors and allusions! And then, in the
retirement of the Duchess's closet, poor Renée could, with a full heart,
ask Vittoria how things were going at Naples, whether Fra Bernardino
were really as moving a preacher as was reported, and whether Juan di
Valdés were sound on the doctrine of justification.
And perhaps they had a snatch of serious reading together, and Vittoria
might recite to her a few of her sacred sonnets, copies of which were
coveted even by cardinals; and if the Duke came in and constrained them
to change the subject, there was the clever little Princess Anne to
exhibit, who was being educated, for the sake of emulation, with Olympia
Morata. Certes, Vittoria was made much of! But the air of Ferrara did
not agree with her health, and she was soon obliged to move southwards.
Among the dreams and schemes of the hour, which were never to be
realised, was a projected visit to the Holy Land. She would so like to
see the holy places!
"The wildest scheme!" young Del Vasto pronounced it, when a rumour of it
reached him at Rome. He lost no time in hastening to his beloved friend,
to dissuade her from what she had perhaps never seriously contemplated,
and to induce her to be content with the Eternal City. And when she
reached it, she was received with almost public honours--so proud was
Italy of its "divine Vittoria Colonna!"
Here she found a circle of the most eminent men in Italy, hopefully
awaiting the issue of Cardinal Contarini's conciliatory mission to the
German Reformers; and it was trusted that, by wise concessions on the
part of Rome, a fearful schism might be avoided. But when did Rome ever
make wise concessions?
It was at this time that the friendship commenced between Vittoria and
Michael Angelo, which was equally honourable to both; and we have his
own word for it, that through her he was made a devout Christian. It was
the crowning beauty of her life.
Meanwhile Giulia was the prey of intense melancholy at Fondi. It
expressed itself in joyless looks, in mournful tones, in neglected
dress, in small austerities, in rising at out-of-the-way hours to tell
her rosary, &c.
Her ladies united in declaring that she must be ill, and that the marsh
miasma was answerable for it. So then Bar Hhasdai was sent for; and he
advised change of air and _quantum sufficit_ of generous red wine well
spiced. She acquiesced in both prescriptions; and then indulged in a
little doctors' gossip, that most healing balm. They talked over the
Cardinal's death, and Bar Hhasdai said that, even if he had been sooner
sent for, he did not believe he could have saved him.
"One cardinal the less, one saint the more," said Giulia.
Bar Hhasdai looked sceptical. "Was he of the stuff that saints are made
of?" said he.
"He was very generally liked," said Giulia.
"And so long as thou doest good unto thyself, men will speak well of
thee," said the Jew, equivocally.
So she returned to her old quarters at Naples, where she had the
satisfaction of hearing from Valdés, who immediately waited on her, that
Ochino was again preaching with great acceptance. She had tried ascetic
mortifications, on a small scale, without any beneficial result; and she
now, with a heart aching for a better life, and sick of the world's
pleasures, which, after all, she had never much indulged in, resolved to
prove whether enduring comfort might not be derived from the cross of
Christ.