to the preaching of St. Francis, and decided to devote her life to
works of love and mercy, that he prepared the San Damiano as a retreat
for her and other noble ladies who desired to accompany her. From the
hour when the high-born maiden, Clare Scifi, yielded to the burning
eloquence of Francis Bernardone, to the day of her death, her story
is surrounded by all the charm of mediæval romance. The door of the
Palazzo Scifi is still shown through which Clare escaped at night
and made her way to the Portiuncula, where, in the presence of her
aunt Bianca Guelfucci and several companions, she took upon herself
the vows of poverty and obedience. The picture of the beautiful girl
kneeling before the altar in the dim light of the Portiuncula, while
the golden glory of her fair hair is shorn from her head, is one
that has captivated the artist as it does the traveller. Every part
of the Convent of San Damiano is associated with the lovely young
abbess. Standing in the tiny terrace garden, with its few straggling
wallflowers, we imagined Clare taking the air in the bloom of the
lilies, surrounded by her nuns. Here is the cell where she lay ill,
when tidings reached the quiet convent that a detachment of Saracen
troops was advancing toward Assisi. The sisters gathered around the
abbess like so many frightened doves; the bold invaders were already
scaling the walls, when Clare, who was endowed with the high courage
of her race, appeared at an upper window, holding aloft the chalice
containing the Blessed Sacrament, which she was allowed to keep in a
little chapel near her cell. At the sight of the holy and beautiful
vision, so runs the legend, the soldiers upon the walls dropped to
the ground and fled across the plain. As we saw the little convent,
peaceful and bathed in the bright sunshine of May, it was difficult to
imagine the confusion and terror that reigned there seven hundred years
ago.
Still under the spell of Francis and Clare, whose story seems to be
on the lips of all Assisi, young and old, we spent the long spring
afternoon in the basilica of St. Mary of the Angels. The brother
who showed us about the church, a namesake of Assisi's saint, spoke
fairly good English, of which he was as proud as a Franciscan could
venture to be, and took pleasure in relating to us some quaint and
homely tales of the early days of the order. More especially did the
good brother delight in speaking of the love of his Father Francis for
the wild creatures of the wood, which instinctively turned to him for
protection. One day a leveret hid itself in the folds of his gown, and
upon another a timid hare sought shelter in his breast, still returning
into the father's bosom, he said, "as if it had some hidden sense of
the pitifulness of his heart."
When Angela spoke of the story that we had just been reading of Brother
Juniper and the chickens, the brother laughed heartily, and said:
"Chickens is goot; but Brother Juniper spoiled his by cooking the two
weeks' portion of chickens in one day, and with the feathers on, to
save much time for prayer; but it was not goot, and the brothers was
angry."
Do you remember the story, Allan?--how Brother Juniper set the stew
upon the table, "crying up his wares to find a customer for his
unsavory dish, when," as the chronicler quaintly added, "there was not
a pig in all the land of Rome so famished as to have eaten it."
"But he was goot," said our guide, "Brother Juniper was goot, and the
guardian forgive him, and he was goot when he cut off the pig's foot
and cooked it for to make the sick man well, and the herdsman forgive
him this time and brought the maimed pig all killed and roasted for the
brothers at St. Mary of the Little Portion to eat of it."
"This must have been the occasion," said Miss Morris, "when St. Francis
exclaimed, 'Would to God, my brothers, that I had a whole forest of
such Junipers!'"
"Yes, yes," said the brother, "roast pig is goot," leading us, as
he talked, from the modern pictures that adorn the many chapels of
this large church to the most interesting object within its walls,
the Portiuncula. Here, surrounded by much that is too modern to be in
harmony with the old, is the simple little Portiuncula, within whose
walls many pilgrims, Protestant and Catholic, kneel feeling that
this is a holy spot, for here were born the high purposes and noble
aspirations that led to a great movement for purer religion in the
Christian world. Near the Portiuncula, under the same roof, is the
rude hut in which St. Francis spent his last days, and here, opening
out from the cloisters, is the little rose-garden which witnessed
his earlier struggles with the powers of darkness. The rose-bushes
are still free from thorns, a miracle, the good brother tells us, and
spotted with blood. The green leaves _are_ covered with brown spots,
the stems are thornless. We look at them as we listen to the earnest
words of our guide; the spell is still upon us, we offer no word of
dissent; for whether the thornless rose-tree is natural or miraculous,
whether the spots on the leaves are from blood or rust, the truth
remains that this little garden witnessed the struggle of a human
soul, and from its soil there arose something more wonderful than the
greatest miracle over material forces ever recorded--a soul born from
clouds and darkness into life and light eternal.
An overwhelming sense of Italy, of what it means to be in this old
hill town, with its remains of Etruscan occupation and pagan Roman and
Christian Roman life, has possessed my mind to-day. You will never
quite understand what Mr. Emerson means by the oversoul until you
stroll through Italian highways and by-ways, knowing that what you
tread upon is only common earth and stone, well worn by many feet, and
yet among the many feet there were some whose footsteps seem to have
turned the common earth ways into paths that lead to the stars. But why
should I try to explain that which is unexplainable, and to you, who
have read more books about Italy than I shall ever read, and yet, here
I triumph over you, no books, no, nor even letters of mine, can make
you understand the compelling charm of this
"Woman-country, wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male lands."
Some day you must come here, Allan, and see and feel it all, while I,
off in some prosaic spot, will envy you the penetrating joy of first
impressions, the grace of a day that can never quite come back again.
The long twilight had deepened, the shadows of the hills had lengthened
upon the wide-spread plain, when we turned from the church and the
little town to retrace our steps along the hillside road. Upon the
stillness of the evening air, seldom disturbed except by the ringing
of church-bells, there broke forth a sound like a fog-horn, and a large
red object suddenly appeared upon the crest of the hill. There followed
a whizz and a whirr, a rush through the air, and a flutter of blue
and white veils, as a great automobile sped past us along the white
windings of the road.
"Is there any spot too sacred for the intrusion of an automobile?"
asked Zelphine.
"No," exclaimed Miss Horner, "not even the tomb of St. Francis!"
"And yet," said Angela, her eyes wistfully following the brilliant
auto car and its gay company, "I should like to be in it, this moment,
speeding along these perfect roads."
"Of course," said Miss Morris, "everything depends upon the point
of view, and the only one from which an automobile is entirely
unobjectionable is when you are in it, with all its machinery in
perfect order."
HOTEL GIOTTO, ASSISI, May 4th.
You will be surprised to learn that we are still in Assisi. Yesterday
afternoon, on our way to the station with our adopted companions, we
spent an hour at St. Mary of the Angels to take a last look at the
Portiuncula, the rose-garden, and Della Robbia's fine terra-cotta, and
then repaired to a little tea-house near by for a parting love-feast,
as we were all about to start for different places. Miss Morris was on
her way to Perugia, Miss Horner was bound for Florence, and we three
for Siena. In the midst of an exchange of cards, addresses, and quite
sincere hopes of meeting again, Bertha Linn and Mrs. Robins surprised
us by walking in, having driven over from Perugia.
You will laugh at me, I am sure, when I tell you that those two women
persuaded us, three in number, with our luggage at the station, to go
back with them to Assisi and stay over another day. In justice to our
steadfastness of purpose I must tell you that we only yielded when we
learned, what the _padrone_ had not been clever enough to tell us, that
on the following day the feast of the Holy Cross was to be celebrated,
and the great basilica lighted with scores of wax candles.
We are truly glad that we yielded to Bertha's persuasions. Consistency
in adhering to a schedule is not always a jewel in one's crown,
especially when one is rewarded by such a view of the frescoes in San
Francesco as can only be had by the light of many long candles and
tapers.
It is just such incidents by the way, such turning back and retracing
of steps at one's pleasure, that make for the happiness of the
freeborn American traveller who carries her luggage with her and is
not dominated by trunks--I say _her_ instead of _him_, because most
of the travellers we meet are women; and, as if to give weight to my
reasoning, Bertha adds, "In a land where one reckons time by hundreds
of years, what difference does one day more or less make?"
"Especially," said Angela, "if you are not hampered by a hard and
fast schedule, or a conscience about disappointing our landlady at the
Pension Riccoli in Florence."
"She will not be disappointed," said Mrs. Robins, oracularly, and Mrs.
Robins, having travelled much, knows the ways of Italian landladies.
XIV
THE CITY OF FLOWERS
LUNG' ARNO DELLE GRAZIE,
FLORENCE, May 6th.
Do you realize that your letter in answer to mine of March 18th from
Rome was not quite within the pact? I found it awaiting me at Siena,
with a number of others. I thought my explanation quite clear and
eminently sane, but you seem to have strangely perverted my meaning;
then you revert to an earlier letter from La Cava, and are pleased to
imagine that we are taking risks all the time and leading a reckless
life generally. I shall really hesitate to tell you again of any of our
adventures such as that drive home from Pæstum, which I merely related
as an amusing incident. There is no danger of brigands in these days
and we did not "need a protector," especially as kind Providence looked
after us. That drunken driver would not have surrendered his reins to
you or to any one except the _padrone_; and then "all's well that ends
well," and we returned from our excursion with nothing worse than a
grievance.
I was so vexed with you for two whole days that I wrote you not one
line from Siena or Pisa. Now your indiscretion is partially atoned
for by a letter which has just reached me here, and I am trying to
forgive you and "be friends again," as we used to say when we were
children. But the charms of Siena are already so eclipsed by those of
Florence that it is quite impossible for me to give you an atmospheric
description of its streets and churches, above all of the shining
cathedral, rich from dome to pavement with colored marbles, frescoes,
and mosaics. This may be no loss to you, who are doubtless well tired
of my Italian rhapsodies; but your respite is only temporary, as I
quite missed writing you that letter. I wanted to tell you that the
campanile at Pisa leans quite as much as the little Parian model
on your desk, and about the famous Campo Santo with its interesting
paintings, and many other things. The habit of relieving my mind of the
burden of surplus impressions, or of what I might call my "oversoul,"
has become second nature. Do you remember, Allan, the man in Frank
Stockton's story who, on his return from abroad, found his friends and
acquaintances so much interested in their own affairs that he engaged
a young man at twenty-five cents an hour to listen to his traveller's
tales? You seem to be all unwittingly playing the rôle of that youth,
less the twenty-five cents, and I, alas! shall never know whether you
prove yourself more worthy than that faithless one, who fell asleep in
the midst of the most thrilling adventures.
[Illustration: A Street in Florence]
I must explain to you for your benefit, when you travel this way, that
we did what is discouraged by Baedeker and most of the guide-books;
we changed cars at Empoli and took a train to Pisa, where we spent a
night and day. The usual plan is to go directly from Siena to Florence,
and make a separate day-trip to the city of the Leaning Tower. One of
Zelphine's pet economies is to save the retracing of steps or railway
journeys by doing all that we can _en route_. In this case I think her
plan was a good one, as we shall never be willing to spend one whole
beautiful day in any other city, no matter how long we may tarry in
Florence. I overheard Zelphine, this morning, telling Katharine Clarke
that she intended to stay here indefinitely and stifle the promptings
of conscience with regard to Venice and all the rest of Italy, adding,
in her earnest way, "After all, Katharine, the true pleasure of
travelling is to settle down in one place and let its charms sink into
your mind."
Katharine was so much amused at Zelphine's novel definition of the
joys of travel that she repeated it to an English acquaintance, who
exclaimed, "Really!" with a delicious rising inflection, "would not
that be rather unpractical?" Refreshingly English, was it not? The
truth is, we are all well tired of short journeys, and look forward
with pleasure to a whole month of Zelphine's kind of travelling, living
in Florence and making half-day trips to Fiesole, La Certosa, and some
of the lovely villas on the hillsides near by.
We reached Florence last night so late that the long twilight had quite
faded, and darkness veiled the charms of this most beautiful city.
As we drove along the Lung' Arno, its lights revealed glimpses here
and there of the shining river and picturesque bridges, with a line
of dark mountains rising beyond and above them. There is something
fascinating and stimulating to the imagination in such a first view
of a strange city, especially when, as in this instance, she discovers
fresh beauties when she lifts her veil to the morning light.
We were not able to get into the delightful pension that Katharine
Clarke told us of. Madame had not received my note from Assisi advising
her that we would be two days later than our appointment, and had
promptly rented our rooms, believing, like all Italian landladies, in
the proverbial "bird in the hand." "Never mind," said Zelphine, as we
turned sadly away, "what is any pension, even the Pension Riccoli,
whose feasts are said to rival those of Lucullus, compared with
that incomparable last day in Assisi with St. Francis or that other
red-letter day in the cathedral at Siena?"
"And then," said Angela, "the Pension Riccoli is a paradise reached by
many purgatorial stairs."
Being both tired and hungry by this time, we consulted our note-books,
and directed our _vetturino_ to the nearest pension. An indifferent
hostel it proved to be, with the one charm of being directly on the
Arno. Our windows opened on the river, and we were lulled to sleep
by the music of its rushing waters. These rivers, fed by springs from
neighboring hills, are widely different from the sluggish streams of
the plain; the spirits of Undine and her kind seem to inhabit them
and sing their lullabies in storm and calm. Zelphine evidently had the
same thought, as she told me that she had been dreaming all night of
Undine and Sir Huldebrand, and that it would not have surprised her
to have the lovely sprite appear at her window and dash water in her
face. Instead she awoke to find Angela standing by our window, in the
freshest of pink and white morning-gowns, the warm sun lighting up
every thread of her blonde hair to pure gold. She begged us to come to
the window and look out. The Florence of the left side of the Arno,
the Florence of "Romola" and Mrs. Browning, lay before us, with its
churches and palaces, connected with the Lung' Arno delle Grazie by the
oldest bridge in the city, the Ponte alle Grazie. Off to the south are
the heights of San Miniato, and still further the commanding Fortezza
di Belvedere, and beyond, hill upon hill of blue velvet spanned to-day
by a sapphire sky. Behind us are the Duomo, Santa Croce, San Marco, and
a whole world of architectural wonder and entrancing interest, the old
streets through which Dante, Michael Angelo, and Raphael walked and the
churches that resounded to the voice of Savonarola.
PENSION C., VIA SOLFERINO,
Saturday Evening.
Among surroundings of so much interest it seemed almost a desecration
to devote an hour to a search for a pension, and yet even this
practical business was illuminated by glimpses of beauty by the way.
We passed through the Loggia dei Lanzi, with its many statues, where
Cosimo's German lancers were once quartered, across the Piazza della
Signoria and by the Strozzi Palace. This middle-age castle, with its
rough-hewn stone walls unbroken by windows except on the upper floors,
must have proved an impregnable fortress in days when war was the
chief occupation of the Florentines and a man's house was primarily
and emphatically his stronghold. Although the Palazzo Strozzi was built
by a merchant, its exterior is decorated by the handsome iron _fanali_
which were used only by the most distinguished citizens, and here are
the rings to which the party standards were once attached. We passed
the Palazzo Strozzi on our wandering way to Thomas Cook's office, which
is on the same street, the Via Tornabuoni, with its alluring cafés,
confectioners', modistes', and bric-à-brac shops. The massive walls
and huge bulk of the old palace form a picturesque background for
the bright, varied modern life and tourists' life of the Florence of
to-day.
Katharine told us of an excellent pension on the Via Solferino near
the Cascine, which she feared would be full, like every other place
that we had looked at, as all America seems to have come up here
from the Eastertide in Rome to spend May in Florence. We meet more
acquaintances on the Via Tornabuoni and under the arcades of the
Piazza Vittorio Emanuele than on Fifth Avenue, and almost as many as
on Rittenhouse Square. Zelphine says that it would be pleasant to meet
some Florentines once in a while, "or even some Romans," suggested
Angela.
"Romans never travel," replied Zelphine, in her most encyclopædic tone;
"like Parisians, their own surroundings satisfy them entirely."
"Never travel! How strange, how dull!" exclaimed Angela, shaking her
head, incredulously. Was she thinking of Ludovico or of the Marquis
de B., I wondered, this apparently frank but absolutely inscrutable
Angela? She had a letter handed her at Cook's office this morning, with
a Roman postmark, which she put in her pocket without a word or a sign
of interest. It was not in Ludovico's handwriting, I know; whose then?
Do I seem to be watching straws to find out which way the wind blows?
You must remember, Allan, that I am the appointed chaperon of this
party, and that Angela's father, like the "Father of his Country," has
a great objection to entangling foreign alliances. Indeed, my task is
no light one, as there are times when Zelphine needs a chaperon quite
as much as Angela; her _beaux yeux_ draw many admiring glances in our
direction. But pray do not whisper this above your breath, as Zelphine
is absolutely unconscious of the admiration that she excites, and would
accuse me of gross exaggeration, and then a certain widower of our
acquaintance might become alarmed and feel it his duty to join us "as a
protector," which would certainly interfere with Angela's pleasure and
mine, however it might affect Zelphine's happiness.
To return to our quest, we found the Pension C. crowded, as Katharine
had feared, but Madame assured us that she would have rooms for us in a
few days, if we would only be content with lodgings in the dépendance
for the present. The rooms shown us were altogether captivating, with
their long windows and balconies overlooking a garden full of roses.
When Zelphine learned that in addition to their other attractions
these rooms were presided over by a maid named Assunta, wild horses,
buffaloes, or even the more probable menace of mice would not have
drawn her from the Pension C. "Think of it, Margaret!" she exclaimed,
"to sit on a balcony overhanging a rose-garden, and have our coffee
and rolls brought to us by Assunta! And then," added Zelphine, in her
most persuasive tone, "she seems to understand my French, although
she speaks nothing but Italian!" Although Katharine laughed heartily
at Zelphine's argument, and said that it reminded her of a sign in
one of the shops on the Via Tornabuoni, "French spoken and English
understood," I felt this to be an important consideration and one that
would affect our comfort even more materially than the balcony, the
rose-garden, or the pleasing name of our _femme de chambre_, and after
some conversation with Madame we concluded to await her pleasure. We
are now lodged in the dépendance, a dismal apartment-house on the Via
Montebello, connected with the pension by a tunnel-like gallery. Here
we and our belongings hang between heaven and earth until our promised
rooms in the main house are vacant--to-morrow, or the next day, or
the next; nothing is quite certain here, and dates do not seem to be
reckoned with or upon.
After our first dinner at the Pension C. Angela showed her satisfaction
with her new surroundings by exclaiming, "I am glad that you two
romantic creatures have decided upon a place where the food is so good,
as we cannot be expected to live on antiquities for many days." Angela
is quite right: we are fed upon strawberries, sugar, and cream, while
succulent asparagus, and peas as sweet as those from your garden at
Woodford, have replaced the artichokes and fennel, of which we had
grown a bit tired. I saw Angela tremble this evening when the dish of
green peas was offered to her right-hand neighbor first, according
to the undeviating blindfold justice of table d'hôte rules; for
although Madame provides most liberally for her guests, this woman
would create famine in a land of plenty. Our youngest made a grimace
over the small portion left for her on the platter, and then with
resolute cheerfulness essayed to open a conversation with her neighbor,
remarking that we had spent a delightful morning at the Annunziata, to
which the lady, whose thoughts evidently never rise above her plate,
asked, naïvely, "Why, what's going on there?"
In view of all that has "gone on" at the Annunziata, especially in art,
the masterpieces of Andrea del Sarto and Ghirlandajo and the lovely
Della Robbias, we were all reduced to silence.