MY HAPPY DAYS; THEIR UNHAPPY END
I lived in Pistoja for a month or more, very happily, without money in
my pocket or a house to my name, to the benefit of my health and spirits
and with no injury to my heart's treasure. I mean by that expression
that I by no means, in the interests of my new surroundings, forgot
Donna Aurelia; on the contrary, I assured Virginia every day that
expiation was extremely necessary for me, and Aurelia's restoration to
her husband a vital part of it. Virginia, without professing to
understand me, fell in with my convictions; but she replied to them that
my Aurelia must either have gone to Siena, or be about to go. If the
latter, we should be in the way to meet her by staying in Pistoja; if
she was already at home with her mother, the more time we left for the
soreness to subside the better it would be for all of us. I fell in with
this line of argument, which seemed to me unanswerable, because I was
not then aware that the shorter way to Siena from Padua was by Arezzo.
I was now to learn that it was very possible, in a country where all
classes save one were poor, to do away with the standard which obtains
all over the civilised world, and to measure men, not by what they have,
but by what they are. For a man to be without money where others have
much is to be without foothold--the goal for any fribble's shot of
contempt. It is as if he stood naked in a well-dressed assembly. But
where all are naked alike, no man need to be ashamed; and where all
pockets are empty, it is not singular to be without them; your wit
becomes your stock in the funds, and your right hand your ready money.
So, I say, I found it to be; but I believe that wit and ready hand were
alike Virginia's. I may have caught at the theory--hers was the
practice. Virginia's opinion was that work for hire was either done by
habit or on compulsion. An ox, said she, draws the plough, because his
race have always drawn it; a peasant works afield, because he is part of
the soil's economy. He comes from it, he manures it, tills it, feeds off
it, returns to it again. It is his cradle, his meat, his shroud, his
grave. But in cities the case is altered. Here man is predatory,
solitary, prowling, not gregarious. Here, for a man of wits, his fellows
are the field which he tills. He is the best husbandman who can tickle
the soil to his easiest profit, who can grow the finest crop at the
least pains, and get for little what is worth much. What, she would say,
do we need which the city will not give us for the reaching out of a
hand? Shelter? A hundred houses stand empty week by week. Take any one
of them; they are there to be chosen. Clothing? "Do you know, Don
Francesco, how small a part of the person the laws of morality compel
you to cover? There is not a dust-box in Pistoja but will give you a new
suit to that measure every day." Food? "Have you ever asked yourself,"
she would exclaim, "how many pounds of bread we throw to the dogs in the
week? Enough to feed fifty packs of hounds." Drink? "It streams at every
street corner." "Thus," she would conclude, "are our necessities
supplied. For luxuries we have the sun in sheltered cloisters, the rain
to cleanse the ways in which we walk, the splendours of the church to
feast our eyes, the chances and changes of the streets and taverns to
keep our minds alert. No, no, Don Francis," quoth she, "let them sweat
and grow thin who must. We are free."
I could not admit all the conclusions of this philosophy, though I was
not concerned to dispute them. But Virginia's theories of life
interested me extremely and her ability to apply them was extraordinary.
Perhaps I was by predestination a vagabond, and no doubt she was. All I
can say is that if I myself became strong and healthy on those terms,
Virginia bloomed like a wild rose and seemed to grow in grace under my
eyes. She devoted herself to me and kept me in excellent order; washed
my shirt and stockings at the fountain, kept my clothes neatly mended,
buttons on my vest; brushed my cloak, clouted my shoes. She was not
inattentive to her own person either. She put her hair up into a coil
and pinned it with a silver comb, kept herself clean, and wore shoes and
stockings. A pair of stays became her well, and a loose white kerchief
for her bare neck. She showed to be a beautiful girl. Her eyes lost
their sombre regard, her colour cleared, her cheeks took rounder curves.
Where she got her clothes, where the food which made her sleek, where
the happy light in her eyes, were mysteries to me. She seldom left me,
she showed no signs of having been at work; so far as I knew she had no
friends in Pistoja and asked no extraordinary charities. I believed that
she shared in the distribution of alms at the gates of certain
monasteries; I fancied once or twice that a look of recognition passed
between her and various persons as they met in the streets, but as she
said nothing to me on the subject I made no inquiries. There was no
doubt of her devotion to myself; she never left me or met me again
without kissing my hand; she always spoke of me by a title of respect--
as Don Francis, or your honour, or sir--and yet was entirely
unceremonious in what else she said to me, criticised my actions, and
quarrelled with me hotly upon many subjects. She took a plain view of my
feelings towards Aurelia, as the reader will have seen, and a very plain
view of Aurelia's towards me. But when she found that to have expressed
them would really have hurt me, she withheld the expression, but did not
change her view. One thing she never did: she betrayed not the slightest
symptom of love for me. I might have been her sister, or she my brother,
for any false shame she had--or for any sign of passion towards me. She
concealed nothing, she spared nothing, but she asked nothing that I was
not ready to give her--and this, as I then thought, was not because she
was determined to fulfil her bargain towards me, but because there was
nothing more that she wanted. She liked me, I suppose, very much; she
respected me--perhaps she might have been a little afraid of me. She
knew that I was a signore who could end my absurdities--so she freely
considered my conduct--whenever I chose; she thought me a little mad.
Meantime, as I was uniformly kind to her, she had never been so happy in
her life. On my part, I spent my time in the writing of great quantities
of poetry--which I read to Virginia in the evenings and which she
thought very fine--and in teaching her to read and write. She proved an
apt and willing pupil, quick to learn and with a retentive memory; but
she could never spell. I think it may be said that, on the whole, I gave
her as much as I got, for not only did she become happier and healthier,
but I was able to soften the harsh angles of her mind, to humanise,
reclaim her from savagery. I could not, however, make her religious
after my own fashion. She went to Mass with me, and once, when I
insisted upon it, confessed and took the communion. But she hated the
priests, though she would never tell me the reason, and could hardly
ever be drawn to confession again.
After trying various shelters from the weather and being driven from
each by unforeseen circumstances--a cloister or two, a church (where the
sacristan surprised us asleep one morning and turned us out into the
rain), an old family sepulchre, an empty palace, and a baker's oven
which had fallen to be let (and had been occupied by cockroaches)--we
finally discovered and took possession of a ruined tower near the church
of Sant' Andrea, which suited us excellently well. It had been the
fortress of a great old family in the Middle Ages, that of the
Vergiolesi, from whom sprang the beautiful Selvaggia, beloved by Cino of
Pistoja. The lower floor being choked with rubbish and fallen masonry,
the only access to our retreat was by a broken beam projecting from the
original doorway. You jumped for this, caught it if you were expert
enough, and must swing yourself up to straddle it. You could then gain
the string-course of brick which encircled the tower, and, edging along
that, reach the lower sill of a window. That window was our front door.
The interior was perfectly dry, rainproof and (from all quarters but
one) windproof. Enchanting occupancy to me! fit household for a poet
without pence; and to Virginia, who had never known a dry lodging, a
very palace. Here by the light of candle ends, got for the asking from
the churches, I made her acquainted with letters; I held her fingers at
the charcoal until they could move alone. I pointed my own along the
page until her eye could run true. The greater part of the walls of our
chamber was covered with her sprawled lettering: and, for all I know to
the contrary, may reveal to this day the names of Francis Strelley, of
Aurelia Gualandi and of Virginia Strozzi. It is a fine proof of her
loyalty to our bargain that the first name which Virginia essayed to
write was mine, but the second, Aurelia's. She took her own in hand
last. The verb chosen for these easy essays was as usual amare: but its
application to the walls was again the pupil's device. I allowed her
willingly to write "Don Francesco ama Donna Aurelia," but forbade her to
reverse the names. One day when I was out she put "Virginia Strozzi ama
Don Francesco." I did not know it till long afterwards.
I gave her the rudiments of literature also: I grounded her in letters
as well as in lettering. Amongst my few possessions were still my
"Aminta" and my "Fioretti": and I knew much of Dante's comedy by heart.
Virginia had a retentive memory and great aptitude for learning.
Whenever she did well I called her a good child, and she was so
dreadfully afraid lest I might withhold the praise that she toiled at
her ciphering and pothooks long after I was asleep. There is no doubt
that this was a happy time for both adventurers--full of interest for
me, and of extreme comfort for the girl whom I was able to befriend.
It is not to be pretended that we kept good company. We were outcasts,
and were thrown of necessity amongst those who had been cast out. But
the standards of life vary with those who live, and I never could see
that a man was less of a thief because he thieved from a throne, or less
a profligate because he debauched a princess. I was, no doubt, in
advance of my time; these are the ideas of Monsieur Voltaire. I believe
that I saw a great deal of iniquity, for the taverns and gaming-dens to
which I sometimes resorted for shelter or entertainment were filled with
desperadoes of all sorts--deserters from the army, thieves, coin-
clippers in hiding, assassins elect, women of the town, and even worse.
But while I expect my reader to believe that I never sinned with them, I
shall find him harder to convince that I was never invited to sin. Such,
however, is the fact, and of course it is open to the retort that you do
not invite a drunkard to be drunk. Be that as it may, I met these
unfortunates upon the common ground of civility, conversed with them as
equals, and was not only respected by them for what I was, but came
myself to respect them in spite of what they were. Virginia taught me
much here. With her it never was, "Such-and-such is a woman of infamous
life," but rather, "Such-and-such has a fine ear for music, or can make
a complicated risotto." I learned, with astonishment, that with the most
deplorable degradation of life there could consist an ability to share
the interests of the most refined persons. These associates of ours made
no secret of their avocations (except to the police), nor were they
abashed or confounded if I happened to meet them in the exercise of
them; but, business done, they were to be treated like Mr. Councillor or
My Lady. Nor was this an arbitrary exaction or a curious foppery on
their part; not at all, but as they expected to be taken, so they
behaved themselves. There was not, I am bound to say, one of those women
who did not hear Mass three times a week, recite the daily rosary,
confess herself, take the sacrament. Nor do I remember a single man of
those whom I met in various houses of call or thieves-kitchens in the
town who was without his mental activity of some honest kind, who had
not a shrewd interest in politics, a passion for this or that science--
as botany, mineralogy, or optics, or an appreciation keenly critical of
the fine arts. Philosophers, too, some of them were, acute reasoners,
sophists, casuists. We had no doubts, fears or suspicions of them, and
they thought no evil of us. Some of them we invited to a reading in our
tower; and once we enacted the "Aminta" with great applause: Beltramo, a
very engaging boy (afterwards hanged for highway robbery and prison-
breaking), Violante, an unfrocked priest called Il Corvo, Virginia and I
took parts. Beltramo I never saw again but once, and that against my
will. I saw him hanged at Genoa in 1742. A curious life indeed, which,
to one so addicted to research into the ways of men as I always was,
would have needed violence for its termination. Violence, indeed, did
end it, and with humiliating detail.
One day I sold my cloak to buy a book. That was a vellum-bound copy of
the Sonnets of Cino of Pistoja, which, with my autograph, "Fr.
Strelleius--Pistoriae--IV Kal. Aug. MDCCXXII," I still possess in my
present retreat at Lucca. Cino had been a famous poet in his day, the
lover of the beautifully named Selvaggia Vergiolesi, who had, in fact,
lived in our romantic tower. I thought that the opportunity of becoming
acquainted, on the very spot, with the mind of a man who must so often
have sighed and sung upon it was well worth an unnecessary garment. The
volume mine, and a few pence besides, I purchased bread, wine and
sausage, and made Virginia a feast. We banqueted first on sausage, next
on poetry, and revelled so late in the latter that we exhausted our
stock of candle, and had none left for the exigencies or possibilities
of the night. Tired out and in the dark we sought our proper ends of the
long room. I, who lay below the window, immediately fell into a deep
sleep.
I was awakened by a dream of suffocation, imprisonment and loss, to find
that of such pains I was literally a sufferer. A thick woollen was over
my mouth and nose, the knees of some monstrous heavy man were on my
chest, cords were being circled and knotted about my hands and arms. My
feet were already bound so fast that the slightest movement of them was
an agony. Dumb, blind, bound, what could I do but lie where I was? The
work was done swiftly, in the pitchy dark, and in silence so profound
that I could hear Virginia's even breathing, separated as she was from
me by the length of a long floor. There was but one effort I could make
with my tied ankles, and that was to raise both legs together and bring
the heels down with a thud upon the boards. The cords cut me to the
bone--the effect upon Virginia was precisely nothing.
When I was reduced to a mere chrysalis, having cords wound all over my
body which glued my arms to my flanks, I was lifted like a bundle and
lowered by a rope through the window to the ground. The descent--for I
spun round and round with horrible velocity--made me extremely giddy;
probably I lost my senses for a time. My next discovery was of being
carried swiftly over the ground by one who ran rather than walked; of my
captor mounting what I supposed to be the city wall, with me on his
back, dropping lightly on the other side and running again, on and on.
The river was crossed, for I heard the pounding and splashing, the bank
was mounted; I was now crossing furrowed ground, Heaven knew whither! I
was a long time; the thief climbed a hill; I heard him labouring his
breath, and felt the heat come up from his body like the sun in the dog-
days from a paved courtyard. I was too uncomfortable, too perturbed, too
much enraged over the fact to spend much thought on what the fact might
mean. Was I taken for a soldier? Then why such a mystery about it? I had
seen men crimped in the open piazza, out of wine-shops, from the steps
of churches. What then was my fate? I was soon to learn.
After what I think to have been an hour and a half's journey, my captor,
puffing for breath, stopped and put me down on grass.
"Porca Madonna!" cried a strident voice, "I'm not so young as I was, or
you have grown fat in Pistoja. The fatter the better for me."
Then I knew that I had been kidnapped by Fra Palamone.