Arrival of Madame de Bauffremont in Venice--Catajo--The Duke of
Modena--Petrarch's Tomb at Arqua--The land of poets--Tasso--Arrival
of Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Mademoiselle Lebeschu--Count
Lucchesi-Palli--Discussion--Dinner--Bugeaud the gaoler--Madame de
Saint-Priest, M. de Saint-Priest--Madame de Podenas--Our band--I
refuse to go to Prague--I yield at a word--Padua--Tombs--Zanze's
manuscript--Unexpected news--The Governor of the Lombardo-Venetian
Kingdom--Letters from Madame to Charles X. and Henry V.--M. de
Montbel--My note to the Governor--I set out for Prague.
_Between_ VENICE and FERRARA, 16 _to_ 17 _September_ 1833.
There was an immense interval between those dreamings and the truths to
which I returned when calling at the Princesse de Bauffremont's hotel;
I had to jump from 1806, with the memories of which year I had been
occupied, to 1833, the year in which I found myself in reality: Marco
Polo[146] fell from China into Venice, after an absence of exactly
twenty-seven years.
Madame de Bauffremont displays the name of Montmorency wonderfully in
her face and manner: she might very well, like that Charlotte, the
mother of the Grand Condé and the Duchesse de Longueville, have been
loved by Henry IV. The princess told me that Madame la Duchesse de
Berry had written me a letter from Pisa which I had not received: Her
Royal Highness was arriving at Ferrara, where she hoped to see me.
It cost me a pang to leave my retreat; I needed another week to
complete my survey: I especially regretted that I was not able to carry
through the adventure of Zanze[147]; but my time belonged to the mother
of Henry V., and, whenever I am following a certain road, there comes a
jolt that flings me into another path.
I departed, leaving my luggage at the Hôtel de l'Europe, counting on
returning with Madame. I found my calash at Fusina: they took it out of
an old coach-house, like a jewel from the Crown Wardrobe. I left the
bank which perhaps takes its name from the three-pronged fork of the
King of the Sea: _Fuscina._
On arriving at Padua, I said to the postillion:
"The Ferrara Road."
This road is charming, as far as Monselice: extremely graceful hills,
orchards of fig-trees, mulberry-trees and willows festooned with vines,
gay meadows, ruined castles. I passed the Catajo, all dressed out
with soldiers: the Abbé Lenglet[148], a very learned man otherwise,
mistook that manor-house for China. The Catajo does not belong to
Angelica[149], but to the Duke of Modena[150]. I ran plump up against
His Highness, who was deigning to go on foot along the high-road. This
Duke is the scion of the Princes invented by Machiavelli[151]: he has
the spirit not to recognise Louis-Philippe.
The village of Arqua shows Petrarch's tomb, sung, together with its
site, by Lord Byron[152]:
"Che fai, che pensi? che pur dietro guardi
Nel tempo, che tornar non pote omai,
Anima sconsolata?"
[Sidenote: The poet's country.]
All this country, within a diameter of forty leagues, is the
native soil of the writers and poets: Livy[153], Virgil[154],
Catullus[155], Ariosto[156], Guarini[157], the Strozzis[158], the
three Bentivoglios[159], Bembo[160], Bartoli[161], Bojardo[162],
Pindemonte[163], Varano[164], Monti[165] and a crowd of other
celebrated men owe their birth to this land of the Muses. Tasso himself
was of Bergamasque origin[166]. Of the later Italian poets, I have seen
only one of the two Pindemontes. I have known neither Cesarotti[167]
nor Monti; I should have been happy to meet Pellico and Manzoni, the
parting rays of Italian glory.
The Euganean Hills, which I crossed, were gilded by the gold of the
setting sun with an agreeable variety of shapes and a great purity of
outline: one of those hills resembled the chief pyramid of Sakkarah,
when it imprints itself at sunset on the Libyan horizon.
I continued my journey at night through Rovigo; a sheet of mist covered
the earth. I did not see the Po, except when crossing at Lagoscuro.
The carriage stopped; the postillion summoned the ferry-boat with his
bugle. The silence was complete; only, on the other side of the river,
the baying of a dog and the distant cascades, with their treble echo,
made answer to his horn: the proscenium of Tasso's Elysian empire,
which we were about to enter.
A ripple on the water, through the mist and the darkness, announced the
coming of the ferry-boat; it glided along the towing-rope fastened to
boats at anchor. I reached Ferrara between four and five o'clock, on
the morning of the 16th; I alighted at the Three Crowns Hotel: Madame
was expected there.
_Wednesday_ 17.
As Her Royal Highness had not arrived, I visited the church of San
Paolo: I saw nothing but tombs there; for the rest, not a soul, except
those of a few dead men and mine, which is hardly living. At the back
of the choir hung a picture by Guercino[168].
The cathedral is deceptive: you see a front and sides encrusted with
bas-reliefs representing sacred and profane subjects. Over this
exterior run other ornaments usually placed in the interior of Gothic
edifices, such as rudentures, Arab corbels, nimbused soffits, galleries
with small columns, pointed arches and trefoils, disposed in the
thickness of the walls. You enter, and you stand dumbfounded at the
sight of a new church with spherical vaults, with massive pillars.
Something of that incongruity exists in France, both physically and
morally: in our old castles, they are contriving modern closets, with
plenty of pigeon--holes, alcoves and clothes-presses. Break into the
souls of a good many of those men tabarded with historic names: what do
you find there? Backstair tendencies.
I was quite abashed at the sight of that cathedral: it seemed to have
been turned, like a gown worn inside out; a burgess' wife of the time
of Louis XV. cloaked as a castellan's lady of the twelfth century[169].
[Sidenote: Ferrara.]
Ferrara, formerly so much fretted by its women, its pleasures and its
poets, is almost uninhabited: in places where the streets are wide,
they are deserted and sheep could browse there. The dilapidated houses
do not gather fresh life, as at Venice, from the architecture, the
ships, the sea and the native gaiety of the place. Standing at the gate
of the so unfortunate Romagna, Ferrara, under the yoke of an Austrian
garrison[170], has something of the face of a persecuted victim: it
seems to wear everlasting mourning for Tasso; ready to fall, it is bent
like an old woman. As the only monument of the day, rises half from
the ground a criminal court, with unfinished prisons. Whom will they
send to those cells of recent construction? Young Italy. Those new
gaols, topped with cranes and bound with scaffoldings, like the palaces
in Dido's city, touch hands with the old cell of the singer of the
_Gerusalemme._
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
If there be a life that should make one despair of happiness for men
of talent, it is Tasso's. The beautiful sky upon which his eyes looked
when they opened to the light was a deceptive sky:
"My adversities," he says, "began with my life. Cruel fortune
snatched me from my mother's arms. I remember her kisses moist with
tears, her prayers which the winds have carried away. I was not
again to press my face to her face. With an uncertain step, like
Ascanius or young Camillus, I followed my wandering and outlawed
father. I grew up in poverty and exile."
Torquato Tasso lost Bernardo Tasso[171] at Ostiglia. Torquato has
killed Bernardo as a poet; he has made him live as a father.
Drawn from obscurity by the publication of _Rinaldo_[172], Tasso was
summoned to Ferrara. He made his first appearance there amid the
festivals on the occasion of the marriage of Alphonsus II. with the
Archduchess Barbara. He there met Leonora, Alphonsus' sister: love and
misfortune ended in giving his genius all its beauty.
"I saw," says the poet, describing, in _Aminta_[173], the first
Court of Ferrara, "I saw charming goddesses and nymphs, without
veils, without clouds: I felt the inspiration of a new virtue, of a
new divinity, and I sang of war and heroes."
Tasso read the stanzas of the _Gerusalemme_, as he composed them,
to Alphonsus' two sisters, Lucrezia and Leonora. He was sent to the
Cardinal Ippolito of Este[174], who was settled at the Court of France:
he pawned his clothes and furniture to take that journey, while the
cardinal whom he was honouring with his presence made Charles IX. the
gorgeous present of one hundred Barbary horses with their Arab riders
superbly dressed. Left at first in the stables, Tasso was afterwards
presented to the Poet-King, the friend of Ronsard. In a letter which
has been preserved for us, he judges the French harshly. He wrote a few
verses of his _Gerusalemme_ in an abbey of men in France with which
Cardinal Ippolito was endowed; this was Châlis, near Ermenonville,
where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was to dream and die: Dante also had passed
obscurely through Paris.
Tasso returned to Italy in 1571 and did not witness the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew[175]. He went straight to Rome and from there came back to
Ferrara. _Aminta_ was played with great success. Although he became
the rival of Ariosto, the author of _Rinaldo_ admired the author of
_Orlando_ to such a degree that he refused the homage of that poet's
nephew:
[Sidenote: Tasso at Ferrara.]
"This laurel which you offer me," he wrote, "the judgment of wise
men, of men of the world and my own judgment have laid on the head
of the man to whom you are bound by ties of blood. Prostrate before
his image, I give him the most honourable titles that affection and
respect are able to dictate to me. I will loudly proclaim him my
father, my lord and my master."
This modesty, so little known in our time, did not disarm jealousy.
Torquato beheld the feasts given by Venice to Henry III. returning from
Poland, when a manuscript of the _Gerusalemme_ was printed by stealth:
the minute criticism of the friends whose tastes he consulted alarmed
him. Perhaps he showed himself too sensitive; but perhaps he had built
the success of his love-affairs on his hopes of fame. He imagined
himself set about by pitfalls and treasons; he was obliged to defend
his life. His stay at Belriguardo, where Goethe evokes his shade,
failed to calm him. Says the great German poet, who makes the great
Italian poet speak:
Thus like the nightingale, conceal'd in shade,
From his love-laden breast he fills the air
And neighbouring thickets with melodious plaint:
His blissful sadness and his tuneful grief
Charm every ear, enrapture every heart[176].
. . . . . . . .
And what is more deserving to survive,
And silently to work for centuries,
Than the confession of a noble love
Confided modestly to gentle song[177]?
Says Goethe again, interpreting Leonora's sentiments:
How charming is it in the mind's clear depths
One's self to mirror . . . .
. . . . . . . .
To feel his presence, and with him to near,
With airy tread, the future's hidden realm!
Thus should old age and time their influence lose.
. . . . . . . .
All that is transient in his song survives;
Still art thou young, still happy, when the round
Of changeful time shall long have borne thee on[178].
The singer of Erminia conjures Leonora (still in the lines of the poet
of Germania) to banish him to one of her loneliest villas:
Oh, send me thither! There let me be yours!
And I will tend thy trees, construct the shed
That shields thy citrons from autumnal blasts,
Fencing them round with interwoven reeds!
Flowers of the fairest hues shall strike their roots,
And ev'ry path be trimm'd with nicest care[179].
The story of Tasso's loves was lost: Goethe found it again.
The sorrows of the Muses and the scruples of religion were beginning to
impair Tasso's reason. He was subjected to a temporary confinement. He
escaped almost naked: wandering in the mountains, he borrowed the rags
of a shepherd and, thus disguised, arrived at his sister Cornelia's.
The caresses of this sister and the charms of his native country
allayed his sufferings for a moment:
"I wanted," he said, " to retire to Sorrento, as to a peaceful
harbour: _quasi in porto di quiete._"
But he could not remain where he was born. A spell drew him to Ferrara:
love is the real mother-land! Coldly received by Duke Alphonsus, he
withdrew once more; he wandered through the little Courts of Mantua,
Urbino, Turin, singing to pay for the hospitality shown him. He said to
the Metauro, Raphael's native stream:
"Weak, but glorious child of the Apennines, I, a vagrant traveller,
come to seek safety and repose upon thy banks."
Armida had passed to Raphael's cradle; she was to preside over the
enchantments of the Farnesina.
Surprised by a storm in the neighbourhood of Vercelli, Tasso celebrated
the night which he had passed in a noble-man's house in the beautiful
dialogue known as the _Padre di famiglia._ At Turin, he was refused
admission at the gates, so wretched was his condition. Hearing that
Alphonsus[180] was about to contract a new marriage, he again took the
road for Ferrara. A divine spirit attached itself to the steps of this
god hidden under the garb of the shepherds of Admetus; he thought that
he saw and heard that spirit; one day, seated by the fire and seeing
the sun-light on the window:
"_Ecco ramico spirito_," he said, "_che cortesemente è venuto a
favellarmi._"
[Sidenote: Tasso in prison.]
And Torquato conversed with a sun-beam. He re-entered the fatal city
even as the bird flings itself into the jaws of the serpent that
fascinates it. Disowned and spurned by the courtiers, taunted by the
servants, he launched out into complaints, and Alphonsus ordered him to
be locked up in a mad-house in the Hospital of Sant' Anna.
Then the poet wrote to one of his friends:
"Bowed down under the weight of my misfortunes, I have renounced
all thoughts of glory; I should think myself lucky if I could
only quench the thirst with which I am devoured....The idea of
an unlimited captivity and my indignation at the ill-treatment to
which I am subjected increase my despair. The filthiness of my
beard, hair and clothes renders me an object of disgust to myself."
The prisoner implored the whole earth and even his pitiless persecutor;
he drew from his lyre accents which ought to have made the walls to
fall with which his wretchedness was girt about:
Piango il morir; non piango il morir solo,
Ma il modo . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Mi saria di conforto, aver la tomba,
Ch' altra mole innalzar credea co' carmi.
Lord Byron wrote a poem called the _Lament of Tasso_; but he cannot get
away from himself and substitutes himself everywhere for the persons
whom he sets before us; even as his genius lacks tenderness, his
"lament" is no more than an imprecation.
Tasso addressed the following petition to the Council of the Ancients
of Bergamo:
"Torquato Tasso, a Bergamasque not merely by origin, but by
affection, having first lost his father's inheritance and his
mother's dowry.... and (after the bondage of many years and the
fatigues of a very long period) having not yet lost, in the midst
of so much misery, the faith which he has in this city, ventures
to ask its assistance. Let it conjure the Duke of Ferrara, once
my benefactor and protector, to restore me to my country, my
family and myself. The unfortunate Tasso therefore beseeches Your
Lordships to send Monsignore Licino or some other to treat for my
deliverance. The memory of their kindness will not end until after
my life.
_"Di VV. SS. affezionatissimo servidore_,
"TORQUATO TASSO.
"PRIGIONE E INFERMO NEL OSPEDAL DI SANT' ANNA IN FERRERA."
Tasso was refused ink, pens, or paper. He had sung the "magnanimous
Alphonsus," and the magnanimous Alphonsus thrust into a madman's
cell him who had shed imperishable lustre on his ungrateful head.
In a most graceful sonnet, the prisoner beseeches a cat to lend him
the brightness of its eyes to replace the light of which he has been
deprived; a harmless raillery which proves the poet's gentleness and
the excess of his distress:
Fatemi luce a scriver queste carmi.
At night, Tasso imagined that he heard strange noises, the tolling of
funeral knells. Ghosts tormented him:
"I am worn out," he cried, "I succumb!"
Attacked by a serious illness, he thought that he saw the Virgin save
him by a miracle:
Egrio io languiva, e d'alto, sonno avvinto.
. . . . . . . .
Giacea con guancia di pallor dipinta,
Quando di luce incoronata . . .
Maria, pronta scendesti al mio dolore.
Montaigne visited Tasso reduced to this excess of adversity and showed
him no compassion. At the same time, Camoens was ending his life in an
alms-house in Lisbon: what consoled him, as he lay dying on a pallet?
The verses of the prisoner of Ferrara. The captive author of the
_Gerusalemme_, admiring the mendicant author of the _Lusiadas_, said to
Vasco de Gama:
Tant' oltre stende il glorioso volo
Che i tuoi spalmate legni andar men lungo.
Thus did the voice from the Eridanus resound on the banks of the Tagus;
thus did two illustrious sufferers of a like genius and a like destiny
congratulate each other across the seas, from hospital to hospital,
putting mankind to shame.
How many kings, great men and fools, drowned to-day in oblivion, but
believing themselves, towards the close of the sixteenth century,
persons worthy of remembrance, were ignorant of the very names of
Tasso and Camoens! In 1754, for the first time, was read "the name
of Washington, in the account of an obscure combat delivered in the
back-woods between a troop of French, English and savages[181]: which
clerk at Versailles, which purveyor to the Parc-aux-Cerfs, which man,
above all, of the Court or the Academy would have cared, at that time,
to change names with that American planter[182]?"
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
Envy hastened to spread its poison over open wounds. The Accademia
della Crusca declared that "the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ was a cold and
heavy compilation, obscure and unequal in style, full of ridiculous
lines and barbarous words, with no single beauty to redeem its
innumerable defects."
A fanatical love for Ariosto dictated that verdict. But the shout of
popular admiration drowned the academic blasphemies: it was no longer
possible for Duke Alphonsus to prolong the captivity of a man who
was guilty only of singing that captivity. The Pope[183] claimed the
deliverance from the honour of Italy.
[Sidenote: Tasso's release.]
Tasso was released from prison[184], but none the happier for it
Leonora was dead. He dragged himself from town to town with his
sorrows. At Loretto, ready to die with hunger, he was on the point,
says one of his biographers, "of taking up the hand that had built
Armida's palace."
In Naples, he experienced some of the sweet sentiment of country:
E donde
Partii fanciullo, or dopo tanti lustri
Torno . . . . . .
Canuto ed egro alle native sponde.
He preferred to sumptuous abodes a cell at the Convent of Montoliveto.
During a journey which he took to Rome, fever having laid hold of him,
a hospital was once more his refuge.
Returning from Rome and Florence to Naples, laying the blame of his
ills on his immortal poem, he rewrote it and spoilt it. He commenced
his cantos, _Delle sette Giornato del Monde Creato_, a subject treated
by Du Bartas[185]. Tasso makes Eve issue from Adam's bosom, while God:
. . . irrigò di placida quiete
Tutte le membra al sonnachioso ...
The poet weakens the biblical image, and, in the gentle creations of
his lyre, woman becomes no more than man's first dream. The sorrow of
leaving uncompleted a pious work which he regarded as an expiatory hymn
decided Tasso to condemn his profane songs to destruction.
Less respected by society than by the robbers, the poet received from
Marco Sciarra[186], the famous leader of _condottieri_, the offer of an
escort to take him to Rome[187]. He was presented at the Vatican, and
the Pope addressed him in these words:
"Torquato, you do honour to the crown that honoured those who wore it
before you."
Posterity has confirmed this eulogy. Tasso replied to the praises by
quoting this line from Seneca:
Magnifica verba mors prope admota excutit.
Attacked by an evil which he foresaw was to cure all the others, he
retired to the Convent of Sant' Onofrio, on the 1st of April 1595. He
climbed up to his last refuge during a tempest of wind and rain. The
monks received him at the gate where Domenichino's frescoes are fading
away to-day. He greeted the fathers:
"I come to die among you."
O hospitable cloisters, deserts of religion and poetry, you have lent
your solitude to outlawed Dante and to dying Tasso!
[Sidenote: Tasso's death.]
All succour was unavailing. On the seventh morning of the fever, the
Pope's[188] doctor declared to the patient that he had very little
hope. Tasso kissed him and thanked him for announcing such good news to
him. Next he looked up to the sky and, with an abundant outpouring of
the heart, gave thanks to God for His mercies.
His weakness increased; he wished to receive the Eucharist in the
church of the monastery: he dragged himself there leaning on the monks
and returned carried in their arms. When he was stretched once more
upon his couch, the prior asked him as to his last wishes.
"I have troubled very little about fortune's gifts during my life; I
care still less for them at my death. I have no will to make."
"Where will you have your burying-place?"
"In your church, if you will deign to do my remains so great an honour."
"Will you dictate your epitaph yourself?"
Thereupon, turning towards his confessor:
"Father, write: I return my soul to God, who gave it me, and my body
to the earth, whence it came. I bequeath to this monastery the sacred
image of my Redeemer."
He took in his hands a crucifix which the Pope had given him, and
pressed it to his lips.
Seven more days passed by. The tried Christian having solicited the
favour of the Holy Oils, Cardinal Cintio arrived, bringing the blessing
of the Sovereign Pontiff. The dying man displayed great joy at this:
"Here," said he, "is the crown which I came to Rome to seek; I hope to
triumph to-morrow with its aid."
Virgil sent to beg Augustus to fling the _Æneid_ into the fire;
Tasso entreated Cintio to burn the _Gerusalemme._ Thereafter, he
desired to be left alone with his crucifix.
The cardinal had not reached the door when his tears, till then
violently restrained, burst forth: the bell was tolled, and the monks,
chanting the prayers for the dead, wept and lamented in the cloisters.
At this sound, Torquato said to the charitable recluses, whom he seemed
to see wander around him like shadows:
"Friends, you think you are leaving me; I am only going before you."
Thenceforth, he held no converse except with his confessors and a few
fathers great in doctrine. When he was on the point of breathing his
last, they gathered this stanza from his lips, the fruit of his life's
experience:
"If death were not, there would be nothing upon earth more miserable
than man."
On the 25th of April 1595, about the middle of the day, the poet cried:
"_In manus tuas, Domine...._[189]"
The remainder of the verse was scarcely audible, as though it had been
uttered by a departing traveller.
The author of the _Henriade_ expires at the Hôtel de Villette, on a
quay of the Seine[190], and rejects the aid of the Church; the bard of
the _Gerusalemme_ dies a Christian at Sant' Onofrio: compare and see
what beauty faith lends to death.
All that is related of Tasso's posthumous triumph appears to me to be
open to suspicion. His ill-fortune was even more persistent than has
been supposed. He did not die at the hour indicated for his triumph: he
survived that projected triumph by twenty-five days. He did not lie to
his destiny: he was never crowned, not even after death; his remains
were not exposed at the Capitol in senator's robes amid the throng
and the tears of the people: he was buried, as he had ordered, in the
Church of Sant' Onofrio. The stone with which they covered him, again
according to his wish, bore neither date nor name; ten years later,
Manso, Marchese Della Villa[191], Tasso's last friend and Milton's host
composed the admirable epitaph:
HIC JACET TORQUATUS TASSUS
[Sidenote: Tasso's tomb.]
Manso succeeded only with difficulty in having it carved; for the
monks, who religiously observed testamentary wishes, objected to any
inscription: and yet, without the _Hic jacet_ or the words, _Torquati
Tassi ossa_, Tasso's ashes would have been lost in the hermitage on the
Janiculum, as Poussin's have been at San Lorenzo in Lucina.
Cardinal Cintio formed the plan of erecting a mausoleum to the singer
of the Holy Sepulchre; the plan was abortive. Cardinal Bevilacqua drew
up a pompous epitaph destined for the slab of another future mausoleum,
and the thing went no further. Two centuries later, the brother of
Napoleon thought about a monument at Sorrento: Joseph soon bartered
Tasso's cradle for the Cid's tomb.
Lastly, in our own days, a grand funeral decoration has been begun in
honour of the Italian Homer, once poor and wandering like the Greek
Homer: will the work be completed? As for me, I prefer to any marble
tumulus the little stone in the chapel of which I spoke as follows in
the _Itinéraire_:
"I looked[192] in a deserted church for the tomb of this last
painter[193], and I had some trouble in finding it: the same thing had
happened to me in Rome[194] with the tomb of Tasso. After all, the
ashes of a religious and unfortunate poet are not too ill-placed in a
hermitage. The singer of the _Gerusalemme_ seems to have taken refuge
in this unknown burying-place, as though to escape men's persecutions;
he fills the world with his fame and himself lies unrecognised under
the orange-tree[195] of Sant' Onofrio."
The Italian committee entrusted with the necrolithic[196] labours asked
me to collect for them in France and to distribute the indulgences of
the Muses to every faithful donor of a few mites towards the poet's
monument. July 1830 came: my fortune and credit began to look like
the fate of Tasso's ashes. Those ashes seem to possess a virtue that
rejects any display of opulence, repels any lustre, shrinks from any
honours: little men want big tombs, big men little ones.
The god who laughs at all my dreams, after hurling me from the
Janiculum with the old Conscript Fathers, has brought me back to Tasso
in another way. Here I am able to form a still better opinion of the
poet whose three daughters were born at Ferrara: Armida, Erminia and
Clorinda.
Where is the House of Este to-day? Who thinks of the Obizzos[197],
the Nicholases[198], the Hercules[199]? Whose name lingers in those
palaces? Leonora's. What do we look for at Ferrara? Alphonsus'
dwelling-house? No; Tasso's prison. Whither do men go in procession
from century to century? To the sepulchre of the persecutor? No; to the
cell of the persecuted.
Tasso, in these parts, obtains an even more memorable victory: he makes
us forget Ariosto; the stranger leaves the bones of the singer of
Orlando at the Museum and hastens in search of the cell of the singer
of Rinaldo at Sant' Anna. Seriousness befits the tomb: one abandons
the man who laughed for the man who cried. During life, happiness may
have its merit; after death, it loses its value: in the eyes of the
future, only unhappy existences are beautiful. To those martyrs of
intelligence, pitilessly immolated upon earth, their adversities are
reckoned to the increase of their glory; they sleep in the grave with
their immortal sufferings, like kings with their crowns. We vulgar
unfortunates are of too little account that our troubles should, among
posterity, become the ornament of our lives. Stripped though I be of
everything as I complete my course, my tomb will not be a temple,
but a cool place; Tasso's fate will not be mine; I shall deceive the
affectionate and harmonious predictions of friendship:
Le Tasse, errant de ville en ville,
Un jour, accablé de ses maux,
S'assit près du laurier fertile
Oui, sur la tombe de Virgile,
Étend toujours ses verts rameaux, etc.[200]
[Sidenote: A visit to Tasso's tomb.]
I lost no time in carrying my homage to that son of the Muses, so
nobly consoled by his brothers: as a rich ambassador, I had subscribed
towards his mausoleum in Rome; as a poor pilgrim in exile's train, I
went to kneel in his prison at Ferrara. I know that fairly well-founded
doubts are raised as to the identity of the spots; but, like all true
believers, I set history at defiance: that crypt, whatever men may
say, is the very place in which the _pazzo per amore_ lived for seven
whole years; one had necessarily to pass through those cloisters; one
came to that gaol where the daylight stole in through the iron bars of
an air-hole, where the low-hanging vault that freezes your head drips
saltpetrous water on a damp soil that petrifies your feet.
On the walls, outside the prison and all around the grating, one
reads the names of the worshippers of the god: the statue of Memnon,
quivering with harmony under the touch of dawn, was covered with the
declarations of the several witnesses of the prodigy. I did not daub my
_ex-voto_; I hid myself in the crowd, whose secret prayers must, by
reason of their very humility, be more acceptable to Heaven.
The buildings in which Tasso's prison is enclosed to-day belong to
a hospital open to every infirmity; they have been placed under the
protection of the Saints: _Sancto Torquato sacrum._ At some distance
from the blest cell is a dilapidated yard; in the middle of that
yard, the porter cultivates a garden-plot surrounded by a hedge of
mallows: the pale-green palissade was loaded with large and beautiful
flowers. I gathered one of those roses, the colour of royal mourning,
that seemed to me to be growing at the foot of a Calvary. Genius is a
Christ: denied, persecuted, scourged, crowned with thorns, crucified by
men and for men, it dies leaving them the light and rises again to be
worshipped.
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
I went out on the morning of the 18th and, on returning to the Three
Crowns, found the street blocked with people; the neighbours were
gaping at the windows. An escort of one hundred men of the Austrian and
Papal troops occupied the inn. The corps of officers of the garrison,
the magistrates of the town, the generals, the Pro-legate were awaiting
Madame, whose coming had been announced by a courier wearing the French
arms. The stair-case and drawing-rooms were decorated with flowers.
Never was finer reception arranged for an exile.
When the carriages came in sight, the drums beat a salute, the music
of the regiments burst forth, the soldiers presented arms. Madame, in
the midst of the throng, was put to it to descend from her calash, when
it drew up in front of the hotel; I had hastened up; she recognised me
among the crowd. She held out her hand to me across the established
authorities and the beggars who flung themselves upon her, and said:
"'My son is your King;' do help me to pass through."
I did not find her very much changed, though she was thinner; she had
something of a sprightly, little girl.
I walked in front of her; she gave her arm to M. de Lucchesi; Madame
de Podenas[201] followed her. We climbed the stairs and entered the
apartments between two rows of grenadiers, amid the clatter of arms,
the sound of trumpets, the cheers of the spectators. They took me for
the majordomo, they applied to me to be presented to the mother of
Henry V. My name was linked to those names in the minds of the crowd.
[Illustration: The Duchesse of Berry.]
[Sidenote: Arrival of Madame.]
You must know that Madame was received with the same tokens of respect
from Palermo to Ferrara, notwithstanding the Notes of Louis-Philippe's
envoys. M. de Broglie had had the audacity to ask the Pope to send away
the outlaw; Cardinal Bernetti replied:
"Rome has always been the asylum of fallen grandeurs. If the family
of Bonaparte, in its later days, found a refuge beside the Father
of the Faithful, with still greater reason must hospitality be
shown to the family of the Most Christian Kings."
I am no great believer in this dispatch, but I was keenly struck by one
contrast: in France, the Government lavishes insults upon a woman of
whom it is afraid; in Italy, they remember only the name, the courage
and the misfortunes of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
I was obliged to accept my improvised role of First Lord of the
Bed-chamber. The Princess was very funny: she wore a gown of greyish
cloth, fitting close to her figure; on her head, a sort of little
widow's cap or the biggin of a child or naughty school-girl. She
ran here, there and everywhere, like a giddy goose; rushed about
heedlessly, in the midst of the curious throng, with an air of
assurance, just as she had sped through the woods of the Vendée.
She looked at no one, recognised no one; I was obliged to catch her
disrespectfully by her dress, or to bar her road, saying:
"Madame, there is the Austrian Commandant, that officer. in white;
Madame, there is the commandant of the pontifical troops, that officer
in blue; Madame, there is the Pro-legate, that tall young priest in
black."
She stopped, spoke a few words in Italian or French, not too
appropriate, but roundly, frankly, prettily, so that their very
unpleasantness was not displeasing. It was a sort of manner resembling
nothing that one had ever known before. It made me feel almost ill at
ease, and yet I had no anxiety as to the effect produced by the little
woman who had escaped from the flames and gaol.
A comical piece of confusion followed. I must say one thing with
all modest reserve: the vain noise of my life grows in volume as
the real silence of that life increases. I am unable nowadays to
alight at an inn, either in France or abroad, without being at once
besieged. For old Italy, I am the defender of religion; for young
Italy, the defender of liberty; for the authorities I have the honour
of being _Sua Eccellenza_ GIA _Ambasciadore di Francia_ at Verona
and in Rome. Ladies, all doubtless of rare beauty, have lent the
language of Angelica and Aquilante il Nero to the Floridan Atala and
the Moor Aben-Hamet. I therefore see scholars arrive, old priests
with wide skull-caps, women, whom I thank for their translations and
their favours; next, _mendicanti_, too well-bred to believe that an
ex-ambassador is as poor a beggar as their lordships.
Now, my admirers had hurried to the Hôtel des Trois-Couronnes, together
with the crowd attracted by Madame la Duchesse de Berry: they got me
up into a corner of a window and began to address me in an harangue
the end of which they went off to recite to Marie-Caroline. In their
mental confusion, the two troops sometimes mixed up the patron and the
patroness: I was greeted as "Your Royal Highness," and Madame told me
that she had been complimented on the _Génie du Christianisme_; we
exchanged our mutual fames. The Princess was charmed at having written
a work in four volumes, and I was proud to have been taken for the
daughter of kings.
Suddenly, the Princess disappeared: she went off on foot, with Count
Lucchesi, to see Tasso's cell; she was a judge of prisons. The mother
of the banished orphan, of the child-heir of St. Louis, Marie-Caroline
leaving the Fortress of Blaye and seeking in the town of Renée of
France[202] only a poet's prison-cell is an unique thing in the history
of fortune and human glory. The venerables of Prague would have passed
through Ferrara a hundred times without taking such an idea into their
heads; but Madame de Berry is a Neapolitan and a country-woman of
Tasso, who said:
"_Ho desiderio di Napoli, come l'anime ben disposte del paradiso._"
It was when I was in opposition and disgrace; the Ordinances were
secretly simmering at the Palace and still joyously lying at the bottom
of men's hearts. One day, the Duchesse de Berry saw an engraving
representing the singer of the _Gerusalemme_ at the bars of his cell:
"I hope," she said, "that we shall soon see Chateaubriand like that."
Words of prosperity, of which we must take no more notice than of a
rash word spoken in drunkenness. I was to join Madame in Tasso's very
dungeon, after suffering in the prisons of the police on her behalf.
What loftiness of sentiment it showed in the noble Princess, how great
a mark of esteem she gave me, when she applied to me in the hour of her
misfortune, after the desire that she had expressed! If her first wish
appraised my talents too highly, her confidence was less mistaken as to
my character.
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
M. de Saint-Priest[203], Madame de Saint-Priest and M. A. Sala[204]
arrived. The latter had been an officer in the Royal Guards; he has
been substituted in my publishing arrangements for M. Delloye[205], a
major in the same guards.
Two hours after Madame's arrival, I saw Mademoiselle Lebeschu[206],
my fellow-Breton; she hastened to tell me of the hopes that they were
good enough to place in me. Mademoiselle Lebeschu figures in the
_Carlo-Alberto_ trial.
On returning from her poetic visit, the Duchesse de Berry sent for me:
I found her waiting for me with M. le Comte de Lucchesi and Madame de
Podenas.
Count Lucchesi-Palli is tall and dark: Madame calls him a Tancred on
the distaff side. His manners towards the Princess his wife are a
master-piece of propriety: neither humble nor arrogant; a respectful
mixture of the authority of the husband and the submission of the
subject.
Madame at once talked business with me; she thanked me for coming in
reply to her invitation; she told me that she was going to Prague, not
only to join her family, but to obtain her son's deed of majority: she
next declared that she was going to take me with her.
This declaration, for which I was not prepared, struck me with
consternation: to return to Prague! I put forward the objections that
suggested themselves to my mind.
If I went to Prague with Madame and she obtained her wish, the honours
of the victory would not belong wholly to the mother of Henry V., and
that would be a bad thing; if Charles X. persisted in refusing to grant
the deed of majority, I being present (and I was persuaded that he
would so persist), I should lose my credit. It seemed to me better,
therefore, that I should be kept as a sort of reserve force, in case
Madame should fail in her negociation.
[Sidenote: Her Liveliness.]
Her Royal Highness opposed these arguments: she maintained that
she would be able to put forth no strength in Prague, if I did not
accompany her; that I frightened her great relations; that she
consented to leave to me the glory of the victory and the honour of
linking my name with her son's accession.
M. and Madame de Saint-Priest entered in the middle of this discussion
and laid great stress on the Princess's view of the matter. I persisted
in my refusal. Dinner was announced.
Madame was very lively. She described to me, in the most amusing
fashion, her contests with General Bugeaud[207] at Blaye. Bugeaud used
to attack her on politics and lose his temper; Madame lost her temper
even more than he did his: they screamed like a pair of eagles and she
ended by turning him out of the room. Her Royal Highness kept back
certain details which she would perhaps have communicated to me if I
had remained with her. She gave Bugeaud no rest; she pulled him to
pieces finely:
"You know," she said, "that I asked for you four times? Bugeaud passed
on my demands to d'Argout[208]. D'Argout sent back word to Bugeaud that
he was a fool, that he ought to have refused your admission at once
and on the face of it: he has such good taste, that M. d'Argout."
Madame laid stress on the rhyme of those two words[209], with her
Italian accent.
Meanwhile the rumour of my refusal had spread among our faithful
friends and was beginning to alarm them. Mademoiselle Lebeschu came,
after dinner, to read me a lecture in my room; M. de Saint-Priest,
an intelligent and sensible man, first sent M. Sala to me, and then
replaced him and urged me in his turn: "they had sent M. de La
Ferronnays on to Hradschin, in order to remove the first difficulties.
M. de Montbel had arrived; he had been told to go to Rome to obtain a
copy of the marriage-contract, which was drawn up in due and proper
form and which was in Cardinal Zurla's keeping[210].
"Supposing," continued M. de Saint-Priest, "that Charles X. should
refuse his consent to the deed of majority, would it not be well if
Madame were to obtain a declaration from her son? What should be the
nature of that declaration?"
"A very short Note," I replied, "in which Henry would protest against
Philip's usurpation."
M. de Saint-Priest conveyed my words to Madame. My resistance
continued to occupy the minds of the Princess's environment Madame de
Saint-Priest, with her nobility of sentiment, appeared to entertain
the keenest regret. Madame de Podenas had not lost the habit of that
serene smile which shows her beautiful teeth: her calm was the more
perceptible in the midst of our agitation.
We were not unlike a strolling company of French actors playing at
Ferrara, by permission of the worshipful magistrates of the town,
in the _Fugitive Princess_ or the _Persecuted Mother._ The scene
represented, on the right, Tasso's prison; on the left, Ariosto's
house; at the back, the castle in which the feasts of Leonora and
Alphonsus took place. This royalty without a kingdom; those anxieties
of a Court contained in two wandering carriages and having the Hôtel
des Trois-Couronnes for its palace at night; those State councils held
in a room at an inn: all that completed the variety of the scenes of
my fortune. I put off my knight's helm in the wings and resumed my
straw hat; I travelled with the _de jure_ monarchy rolled up in my
portmanteau, while the _de facto_ monarchy flaunted its baubles at
the Tuileries. Voltaire calls upon all the royalties to spend their
carnival in Venice with Achmet III.[211]: Ivan[212] Emperor of All
the Russias, Charles Edward King of England, the two Kings of the
Polacks[213], Theodore[214] King of Corsica and four Serene Highnesses.
"'Sire, Your Majesty's post-chaise is at Padua, and the bark is
ready.'
"'Sire, Your Majesty may set off when you please.'
"'Troth, Sire, they will trust Your Majesty no longer, nor myself
neither; and we may both of us chance to be sent to gaol this very
night.'"
For myself, I will say with Candid[215]:
"Gentlemen, how came you all to be kings? I must confess that neither
my friend Martin here nor myself have any such titles."
It was eleven o'clock in the evening; I was hoping that I had won my
case and obtained my _exeat_ from Madame. I was very far out in my
reckoning! Madame does not so soon relinquish a wish; she had not
questioned me about France, because, preoccupied as she was with my
resistance to her plan, she was making that her business of the moment.
M. de Saint-Priest entered my room and brought me the rough draft of a
letter which Her Royal Highness proposed to write to Charles X.:
[Sidenote: Her persistency.]
"What!" I exclaimed, "Madame persists in her resolve? She wants me to
take that letter? But it would be impossible for me, even materially,
to cross Germany: my passport is only for Switzerland and Italy!"
"You will accompany us as far as the Austrian frontier," replied M. de
Saint-Priest; "Madame will take you in her carriage; after crossing
the frontier, you will return to your calash and you will arrive
thirty-six hours before us."
I hastened to the Princess; I renewed my insistence; the mother of
Henry V. said to me:
"Do not desert me."
This word put an end to the struggle; I yielded; Madame appeared
over-joyed[216]. Poor woman, she had wept so much! How could I have
held out against courage, adversity, fallen grandeur reduced to hide
themselves beneath my "protection!" Another Princess, Madame la
Dauphine, also had thanked me for my useless services: Carlsbad and
Ferrara were two places of banishment, under different suns, where I
had gathered the noblest honours of my life.
Madame set out pretty early in the morning, on the 19th, for Padua,
where she arranged to meet me; she was to stop at the Catajo, at the
Duke of Modena's. I had a hundred things to see at Ferrara: palaces,
pictures, manuscripts; I had to be content with Tasso's prison. I
started a few hours after Her Royal Highness. I arrived at Padua at
night. I sent Hyacinthe to Venice to fetch my luggage, as scanty as a
German student's, and I went to bed sadly at the Golden Star, which has
never been mine.
PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
On Friday 20 September, I spent a part of the morning in writing to
tell my friends of my change of destination. The persons of Madame's
suite arrived in succession.
Having nothing left to do, I went out with a _cicerone._ We visited the
two churches of Santa Giustina and San Antonio di Padova. The first,
the work of Jerome of Brescia, is most majestic: from below, in the
nave, you do not see a single one of the windows, which are pierced
very high above, so that the church is lighted without your knowing
whence the light comes. This church contains many good pictures by Paul
Veronese, Liberi[217], Palma[218] and others.
[Sidenote: Padua.]
San Antonio di Padova, known as _Il Santo_, presents a Grecianized
Gothic monument, a style peculiar to the old churches of Venetia. The
Cappella del Santo is by Giacomo Sansovino[219] and Francesco[220] his
son: one perceives it at once; the ornaments and the form are in the
same manner as the _loggetta_ in the steeple of St. Mark.
A _signora_, in a green gown and a straw hat covered with a veil, was
praying before the Cappella del Santo; a servant in livery was also
praying, behind her: I presumed that she was offering up her prayers
for the relief of some moral or physical ailment; I was not mistaken. I
saw her again in the street: she was a woman of about forty, pale and
thin, walking stiffly and with a look of suffering; I had guessed her
love or her paralysis. She had left the church with hope: during the
space of time while she was sending up her fervent orisons to Heaven,
did she not forget her pain, was she not really cured?
Il Santo abounds in mausoleums, among which Bembo's is famous. In the
cloisters stands the tomb of young d'Orbesan, who died in 1595:
Gallus eram, putavi, morior, opes una parentum!
D'Orbesan's French epitaph ends with a line which a great poet would
like to have written:
Car il n'est si beau jour qui n'amène sa nuit[221].
Charles Gui Patin[222] is buried in the cathedral: his wag of a
father[223] was no longer there to save him, he who had "treated a
gentleman of seven years old, who was bled thirteen times and cured in
a fortnight, as though by a miracle."
The ancients excelled in funeral inscriptions:
"Here lies Epictetus[224]," said his monumental pillar, "who was a
slave, disfigured, poor as Irus, yet a favourite of the gods."
Camoens, among the moderns, composed the most magnificent of epitaphs,
that of John III. of Portugal[225]:
"Who lies in this great sepulchre? What is he whom the illustrious
arms on this massive scutcheon indicate? Nothing! For that is what
all things come to.... May the earth lie as light on him now as he,
formerly, lay heavy on the Moor."
My Paduan _cicerone_ was a chatterbox, very different from my Antonio
of Venice: he spoke to me at every turn of "that great tyrant
Angelo[226];" in the streets, he told me the name of every shop and
every café; at Il Santo, he would absolutely show me the well-preserved
tongue of the preacher of the Adriatic[227]. Might not the tradition
of those sermons come from the songs which, in the middle-ages, the
fishermen, following the example of the Ancient Greeks, used to sing to
the fishes to charm them? A few of these pelagic ballads still remain
to us, in Anglo-Saxon.
Of Livy, no news; were he alive, I would gladly, like the inhabitant
of Gades, make the journey to Rome expressly to see him; I would
gladly, like Panormita[228], have sold my field to buy a few fragments
of the History of Rome, or, like Henry IV., promised a province for a
"Decade[229]." A mercer of Saumur did not go so far: having purchased a
manuscript of Livy's, by way of old papers, from the apothecary of the
convent of the Abbey of Fontevrault, he used it quite simply to make
drums for battledores.
[Sidenote: Pellico's "Zanze."]
When I returned to the Stella d'Oro, Hyacinthe was back from Venice.
I had charged him to call on Zanze to make my excuses for having gone
away without seeing her. He found the mother and daughter in a great
state of anger; she had just been reading _Mie Prigioni._ The mother
said that Silvio was a "villain:" he had allowed himself to write
that Brollo had pulled him, Pellico, by his leg when he, Pellico, had
climbed up on a table. The daughter exclaimed:
"Pellico is a slanderer, and an ungrateful one to boot. After the
services which I have done him, he now tries to dishonour me."
She threatened to have the work seized and to sue the author in the
law-courts; she had begun to write a refutation of the book: Zanze is
not only an artist, but a woman of letters.
Hyacinthe asked her to give me the unfinished refutation; she hesitated
and then handed him the manuscript: she was pale and tired from her
labours. The old gaoler's wife still claimed to sell her daughter's
embroidery and mosaic work. If ever I go back to Venice, I will
discharge my debt better to Madame Brollo than I did to Abou Gosch, the
chief of the Arabs in the mountains of Jerusalem: I had promised him a
bale of rice from Damietta and I never sent it.
Here is Zanze's commentary:
"La Veneziana maravigliandosi che contro di essa vi sieno
persona che abbia avutto ardire di scrivere pezze di un romanzo
formatto ed empitto di impie falsità, si lagna fortemente contro
l'auttore mentre potteva servirsi di altra persona onde dar sfogo
al suo talento, ma non prendersi spasso di una giovine onesta di
educazione e religione, e questa stimatta ed amatta e conosciutta a
fondo da tutti.
"Comme Silvio può dire che nella età ma di 13 anni (che talli
erano, alorguando lui dice di avermi conosciuta), comme può
dire che io fossi giornarieramente statta a visitarlo nella sua
abitazione? se io giuro di essere statta se non pochissime volte,
e sempre accompagnata o dal padre, o madre, o fratello? Comme può
egli dire che io le abba confidatto un amore, che io era sempre
alle mie scuolle, e che appena cominciavo a conoscere, anzi non
ancor poteva ne conosceva mondo, ma solo dedicatta alli doveri
di religione, a quelli di doverosa figlia, e sempre occupatta a
miei lavori, che questi erano il mio sollo piacere? Io giuro che
non ho mai parlatto con lui, ne di amore, ne di altra qualsiasi
cosa. Sollo se qualche volte io lo vedeva, lo quardava con ochio
di pietà, poichè il mio cuore era per ogni mio simille, pieno di
compazione; anzi io odiava il luogo che per sola combinazione mio
padre si ritrovava: perchè altro impiego lo aveva sempre occupatto;
ma dopo essere stato un bravo soldato, avendo bene servito la
repubblica e poi il suo sovrano, fù statto ammesso contro sua
volontà, non che di quella di sua famiglia, in quell' impiego.
Falsissimo è che io abbia mai preso una mano del sopradetto
Silvio, ne comme padre, ne comme frattello; prima, perchè abenchè
giovinetta e priva di esperienza, avevo abastanza avutta educazione
onde conoscere il mio dovere. Comme può egli dire di esser statto
de me abbraciatto, che io no avrei fatto questo con un fratello
nemeno; talli erano li scrupoli che aveva il mio cuore, stante
l'educazione avutta nelli conventi, ove il mio padre mi aveva
sempre mantenuta.
"Bensi vero sarà che lui a fondo mi conoscha più di quello che io
possa conoscer lui, mentre mi sentiva giornarieramente in compagnia
di miei fratelli, in una stanza a lui vicina; che questa era il
luogo ove dormiva e studiava li miei sopradetti fratelli, e comme
mi era lecitto di stare con loro? comme può egli dire che io
ciarlassi con lui degli affari di mia famiglia, che sfogava il mio
cuore contro il riguore di mia madre e benevolenza del padre, che
io non aveva motivo alcuno di lagnarmi di essa, ma fù da me sempre
ammatta?
"E comme può egli dire di avermi sgridatta avendogli portato un
cativo caffè? Che io non so se alcuna persona posia dire di aver
avutto ardire di sgridarmi: anzi di avermi per solla sua bontà
tutti stimata.
[Sidenote: Zanze's manuscript.]
"Mi formo mille maraviglie che un uomo di spirito e di tallenti
abbia ardire di vantarsi di simile cose ingiuste contro una giovine
onesta, onde farle perdere quella stima que tutti proffessa per
essa, non che l'amore di un rispetoso consorte, la sua pace e
tranquilità in mezzo il bracio di sua famiglia e figlia.
"Io mi trovo oltremodo sdegnatta contro questo auttore, per avermi
esposta in questo modo in un publico libro, di più di tanta
prendersi spaso del nominare ogni momento il mio nome.
"Ha pure avutto riguardo nel mettere il nome di Tremerello in
cambio di quello di Mandricardo; che tale era il nome del servo che
cosi bene le portava ambaciatte. E questo io potrei farle certo,
perchè sapeva quanto infedelle lui era ad interessato: che pur per
mangiare e bevere avrebe sacrificatto qualunque persona; lui era
un perfido contro tutti coloro che per sua disgrazia capitavano
poverie e non poteva mangiarlo quanto voleva; trattava questi
infelici pegio di bestie. Ma quando io vedeva, lo sgridava e lo
diceva a mio padre, non potendo il mio cuore vedere simili tratti
verso il suo simile. Lui ero buono sollamente con chi le donava
una buona mancia a bene le dava a mangiare: il ciclo le perdoni!
Ma avrà da render conto delle suo cattive opere verso suoi simili,
e per l'odio cho a me professava e per le coressioni che io le
faceva. Per tale cativo sogetto Silvio a avutto riguardo, e per
me che non meritava di essere esposta, non ha avutto il minimo
riguarde.
"Ma io ben saprò ricorere, ove mi verane fatta una vera giustizia,
mentre non intendo ne voglio esser, ne per bene ne malle, nominatta
in publico.
"Io sono felice in braccio a un marito che tanto mi amo, e eh'
è veramente e virtuosamente coriposto, ben cognoscendo il mio
sentimento, non che vedendo il mio operare: e dovrò a cagione di un
uomo che si è presso un punto sopra di me, onde dar forza alli suoi
mal fondati scritti, essendo questi posti in falso!
"Silvio perdonerà il mio furore; ma doveva lui bene aspetarselo
quando al chiaro is era dal suo operatto.
"Questa è la ricompensa di quanto ha fatto la mia famiglia,
avendolo trattato con quella umanità, che merita ogni creatura
cadutta in talli disgrazie, e non trattata come era li ordini!
"Io intanto faccio qualunque giuramento, che tutto quello che fù
detto a mio riguardo, dà falso. Forse Silvio sarà statto malie
informato di me; ma non può egli dire con verità talli cose non
essendo vere, ma sollo per avere un più forte motivo onde fondare
il suo romanzo.
"Vorei dire di più; ma le occupazioni di mia famiglia non mi
permette di perdere di più tempo. Sollo ringraziarò intanto il
Signor Silvio col suo operare e di avermi senza colpa veruna posto
in seno una continua inquietudine e forse una perpetua infelicità."
TRANSLATION
"The Venetian girl is astonished that some one should have had
the courage to write against her two scenes of a novel built up
and filled with impious falsehoods. She complains bitterly of the
author, who might have made use of another person to give scope
to his talent and not made a plaything of an honest young woman
of education and religion, known to all and universally loved and
esteemed.
"How can Silvio say that, at my age of 13 years (which was my
age at the time when he says that he knew me), how can he say
that I used to go daily to see him in his abode, when I swear
that I went there only a very few times and always accompanied
by my father, mother, or brother? How can he say that I confided
a love to him, when I was always at my classes, and when I had
hardly begun to know anything, and could know nothing of love or
the world, being devoted only to the duties of religion, to those
of a dutiful daughter, and occupied with my studies, which were
my only pleasures? I swear that I never spoke to him of love,
nor of anything else whatsoever. Only, if sometimes I saw him, I
looked upon him with eyes of pity, because my heart was full of
compassion for my fellow-creatures, and I hated the place in which
my father by ill-chance found himself: he had always occupied
another position; but, after being a brave soldier and well serving
the Republic and, afterwards, his Sovereign, he was given this
employment against his will and that of his family.
"It is most false (_falsissimo_) to say that I ever took the hand
of the aforesaid Silvio, either as a father's or a brother's;
first, because, although very young and without experience, I
had had enough education to know my duties. How can he say that
I kissed him, I who would not have done that even to a brother:
so great were the scruples imprinted in my heart by the education
which I had received in the convents, where my father had always
kept me?
[Sidenote: The manuscript translated.]
"Truly he must have known me more thoroughly than I could know him!
I remained daily in the company of my brothers in a room next to
his own, which was the place where my aforesaid brothers slept and
studied: now, since I was free to remain with them, how can he say
that I talked to him of the affairs of my family, that I relieved
my heart about my mother's severity and my father's kindness, when
I had no motive whatever to complain of the former, but always
loved her?
"And how can he say that he shouted at me for bringing him bad
coffee? I know of no one who can say that he dared to shout at me,
all having shown their esteem for me by their kindness alone.
"It is a thousand wonders to me that a man of spirit and talent
should have dared unjustly to boast of such things against an
honest girl, which might make her lose the esteem which all profess
for her, not to say the love of a respectable husband and her peace
and tranquillity in the arms of her family and her daughter.
"I am immeasurably indignant with this author for exposing me in
this way in a public book and for taking so great a liberty as to
mention my name every moment.
"And yet he took care to put the name of Tremerello in place of
that of Mandricardo, which is the name of him who so well carried
his messages. And this one I could have made known to him for
certain, because I knew how unfaithful he was to him and how much
interested: for the sake of eating and drinking, he would have
sacrificed any-body; he was perfidious towards all those who,
to their misfortune, came to him poor and were unable to make
him eat as much as he liked: he treated those unfortunates worse
than beasts. But, when I saw him, I reproached him and told my
father, my heart not being able to endure such treatment of my
fellow-creatures. He was good only to those who gave him _una
buona mancia_[230] and gave him plenty to eat: Heaven forgive
him! But he will have to account for his evil actions towards his
fellow-creatures and for the hatred which he bore me because of the
remonstrances which I made him. For so wicked a man Silvio showed
a regard, and for me, who did not deserve to be exposed, he did
not show the slightest regard.
"But I shall surely know where to go to find real justice, for I
will not, nor do I intend to be mentioned in public.
"I am happy in the arms of a husband who loves me so well and who
is truly and virtuously repaid, well-knowing not only my conduct
but my sentiments: and then, because of a man who thinks fit to
exploit me in the interest of his ill-founded writings, which are
full of falsehoods...!
"Silvio will forgive my anger: but he must surely have expected it
when I came clearly to realize his conduct towards me.
"This is the reward for all that my family has done, having treated
him with the humanity which every creature deserves that has fallen
into such misfortune, and not having treated him according to
orders.
"I however take oath that all that has been said in respect of me
is false. Perhaps Silvio was misinformed about me; but he cannot
say such things, which are untrue, in order to tell the truth, but
only to have a stronger motive on which to base his novel.
"I should like to say more; but the occupations of my family do
not permit me to waste more time. Only I thank Signor Silvio for
his work and for having punished me, who am innocent of guilt, by
filling my breast with constant disquiet and perhaps with perpetual
unhappiness."
This literal translation is far from rendering the feminine animation,
the foreign grace, the spirited simplicity of the text; the dialect
which Zanze employs exhales a raciness of the soil which it is
impossible to transfuse into another language. The _apologia_, with its
incorrect, nebulous, unfinished phrases, like the vague extremities of
a group by Albani[231]; the manuscript, with its defective or Venetian
spelling, is like a Greek woman's monument, but of those women of the
time when the Bishops of Thessaly[232] sang the loves of Theagenes and
Chariclea. I prefer the two pages of the little gaoler's daughter to
all the dialogues of the great Isotta[233], although she pleaded for
Eve against Adam as Zanze pleads for herself against Pellico. My fair
Provençal country-women of other days still more recall the daughter of
Venice by the idiom of those intermediary generations, among which the
language of the vanquished is not yet entirely dead and the language of
the victor not yet entirely formed.
[Sidenote: Zanze _v._ Pellico.]
Which is in the right: Pellico or Zanze? What is the matter in dispute?
A simple confidence, a doubtful kiss, which, in effect, was perhaps not
meant for him who received it. The angry bride refuses to recognise
herself in the delicious growing child pictured by the captive; but she
contests the fact with so much charm that she proves it while denying
it. The portrait of Zanze in the plaintiffs memorial is so like that
we find it again in the defendant's rejoinder: the same sentiment of
religion and humanity, the same reserve, the same note of mystery, the
same soft and tender unconstraint.
Zanze is full of power when she avers, with passionate candour, that
she would not have dared to kiss her own brother, much less M. Pellico.
Zanze's filial piety is extremely touching, when it transforms Brollo
into an old soldier of the Republic, reduced to the gaoler's state _per
sola combinazione._
Zanze is quite admirable when she makes this observation: Pellico
concealed the name of an unprincipled man and was not afraid to reveal
that of an innocent creature who showed compassion for the sufferings
of the prisoners.
Zanze is not enticed by the idea of being immortal in an immortal work;
that idea does not even occur to her mind: she is struck only by a
man's indiscretion; that man, if we are to believe the person offended,
sacrifices a woman's reputation to the sports of his talent without
giving a care to the harm that he may cause, thinking only of writing
a novel to benefit his reputation. A visible dread governs Zanze: will
not a prisoner's revelations rouse a husband's jealousy?
The outburst that ends the _apologia_ is pathetic and eloquent:
"I thank Signor Silvio for his work and for having punished me, who
am innocent of guilt, by filling my breast with constant disquiet
and perhaps with perpetual unhappiness: _una continua inquietudine
e forse una perpetua infelicità._"
On these last lines, written with a tired hand, the trace of a few
tears is visible. I, no party to the trial, wish to lose nothing. I
therefore hold that the Zanze of _Mie Prigioni_ is the Zanze according
to the Muses and that the Zanze of the _apologia_ is the Zanze
according to history. I wipe out the little defect of figure which
I thought that I had seen in the daughter of the old soldier of the
Republic; I was mistaken: the Angelica of Silvio's prison is shaped
like the stem of a rush, like the trunk of a palm-tree. I declare
to her that no person in my Memoirs pleases me so much as she, not
excepting my sylph. Between Pellico and Zanze herself, with the aid of
the manuscript of which I am the depositary, it will be a great wonder
if the _Veneziana_ does not go down to posterity! Yes, Zanze, you will
take your place among the shades of women that spring up around the
poet, when he dreams to the sound of his lyre. Those delicate shades,
orphans of an expired harmony and a vanished dream, remain alive
between earth and Heaven and inhabit at one time their two-fold country:
"Fair Paradise would not have its complete charms, if thou wert not
there," said a troubadour to his mistress absent through death.
PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
History has again come to strangle romance. I had hardly finished
reading Zanze's defense at the Stella d'Oro, when M. de Saint-Priest
entered my room, saying:
"Here's something new."
A letter from Her Royal Highness informed us that the Governor of the
Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom had presented himself at the Catajo and
announced to the Princess his inability to allow her to continue her
journey. Madame desired my immediate departure.
At that moment, an aide-de-camp of the Governor's knocked at my door
and asked me if it was convenient for me to receive his general. I
replied by at once repairing to the apartments of His Excellency, who
had alighted, like myself, at the Stella d'Oro.
[Sidenote: The Austrian Governor.]
The Governor was an excellent man:
"Imagine, monsieur le vicomte," he said, "that my orders against Madame
la Duchesse de Berry were dated 28 August. Her Royal Highness had
sent word to me that she had passports of a later date and a letter
from my Emperor[234]. And see, on the 17th of this month of September,
I receive an express in the middle of the night: a dispatch, dated
the 15th, from Vienna, charges me to carry out my first orders of the
28th of August and not to allow Madame la Duchesse de Berry to advance
beyond Udine or Trieste. See, my dear and illustrious viscount, what
a misfortune for me! To arrest a Princess whom I admire and respect,
if she refuses to comply with my Sovereign's wishes! For the Princess
did not give me a good reception: she told me that she would do what
she pleased. My dear viscount, if you could only prevail on Her Royal
Highness to remain in Venice, or at Trieste, pending new instructions
from my Court! I will endorse your passport for Prague; you can go
there at once, without meeting with the slightest obstacle, and arrange
all this; for certainly my Court has done nothing but yield to demands.
I beg of you to do me this service."
I was touched by the noble officer's candour. On comparing the date
of the 15th of September with that of my departure from Paris, on the
3rd of the same month, I was struck with an idea: my interview with
Madame and the coincidence of Henry V.'s majority might have alarmed
Philip's Government. A dispatch from M. le Duc de Broglie, handed in a
note from M. le Comte de Sainte-Aulaire[235], had perhaps decided the
Vienna chancery to renew the prohibition of the 28th of August. I may
be making a false conjecture and the fact which I suspect may not have
taken place; but two "men of quality," both peers of France of Louis
XVIII.'s creation, both violators of their oaths, were, after all,
quite worthy of being the instruments of so generous a policy against a
woman, the mother of their lawful King. Need we be astonished if France
to-day is more and more confirmed in the high opinion that she has of
the people of the Court of former times?
I was careful not to betray the depth of my thoughts. This persecution
had altered my frame of mind on the subject of the journey to Prague; I
was as desirous now of taking it alone in the interests of my Sovereign
as I had been opposed to doing so with her when the roads were open to
her. I dissimulated my real feelings and, wishing to keep the Governor
to his good intentions of giving me a passport, I increased his loyal
anxiety; I replied:
"Monsieur le gouverneur, you are suggesting a difficult thing to me.
You know Madame la Duchesse de Berry; she is not a woman to be led as
one pleases: if she has made up her mind, nothing will make her change
it. Who knows? Perhaps it suits her to be arrested by the Emperor of
Austria, her uncle[236], even as she was put in gaol by Louis-Philippe,
her uncle! The legitimate kings and the illegitimate kings will be
acting alike; Louis-Philippe will have dethroned the son of Henry IV.,
Francis II. will prevent the meeting of mother and son; M. le Prince de
Metternich will relieve M. le Général Bugeaud at his post: that will be
perfect!"
The Governor was beside himself:
"Ah, viscount, how right you are! That propaganda, why, it's
everywhere! That youth no longer pays any attention to us! Not even so
much in the Venetian States as in Lombardy and Piedmont!"
"And the Papal States!" I exclaimed. "And Naples! And Sicily! And the
banks of the Rhine! And the whole world!"
"Ah, ah, ah!" cried the Governor. "We can't remain like this, always
sword in hand, with an army under arms, without fighting. France
and England an example to our peoples! A Young Italy now, after the
_Carbonari!_ Young Italy! Who ever heard of such a thing?"
"Monsieur," I said, "I will make every effort to persuade Madame to
give you a few days; you must be so good as to grant me a passport:
that concession alone can prevent Her Royal Highness from following her
first resolve."
[Sidenote: The Deputy of Padua.]
"I will take it upon myself," said the reassured Governor, "to allow
Madame to pass through Venice on her way to Trieste; if she loiters a
little along the roads, she will reach the latter town at just the same
time as the orders which you are going to fetch, and we shall be saved.
The Deputy of Padua will give you your _visa_ for Prague, in exchange
for which you will leave a letter declaring Her Royal Highness' resolve
not to go beyond Trieste. What a time! What a time! I congratulate
myself upon being an old man, my dear and illustrious viscount, so
that I cannot see what is going to happen."
While insisting on the passport, I inwardly reproached myself for
perhaps somewhat abusing the Governor's perfect straightforwardness;
for he might be held more guilty for allowing me to go to Bohemia
than he would have been had he yielded to the Duchesse de Berry. My
sole dread was lest some sly-boots of the Italian Police should put
obstacles in the way of the _visa._ When the Deputy of Padua came
to me, I found that he had a secretarial mien, a clerkly bearing, a
prefect's air, like a man brought up in the French civil service.
This bureaucratic capacity made me tremble. As soon as he had assured
me that he had been a commissary in the Army of the Allies in the
Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône, my hope revived: I attacked my
enemy by taking straight aim at his self-respect I declared that the
discipline of the troops stationed in Provence had been remarked upon.
I knew nothing about it, but the Deputy, replying with an overflow of
admiration, hastened to finish my business: I had no sooner obtained my
_visa_ than I ceased to care.
PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
The Duchesse de Berry returned from the Catajo at nine o'clock in the
evening: she appeared very much excited; as for me, the more peaceful I
had been before, the more eager I now was for the fray: we were being
attacked, we must needs defend ourselves. I proposed to H.R.H., half in
jest, to take her in disguise to Prague and, between the "two of us,"
carry off Henry V. It was a question only of knowing where we should
deposit our plunder. Italy would not do, because of the weakness of her
Princes; the great absolute monarchies must be discarded for a thousand
reasons. There remained Holland and England: I preferred the former
because she had not only a constitutional government, but a clever King.
We postponed these extreme measures; we decided on the most reasonable,
which laid the burden of the affair on my shoulders. I was to set out
alone with a letter from Madame: I was to ask for the declaration of
majority; on receiving the reply of the great kinsmen, I was to send
a messenger to H.R.H., who would await my dispatch at Trieste. Madame
added to her letter for the old King a note for Henry: I was to give it
to the young Prince only according to circumstances. The superscription
of the note was by itself a protest against the mental reservations of
Prague. Here are the letter and the note:
"FERRARA, 19 _September_ 1833.
"MY DEAR FATHER,
"At a moment so decisive as the present for Henry's future, allow
me to address you with all confidence. I have not relied upon my
own judgment in so important a matter; I wished, on the contrary,
in this grave circumstance, to consult the men who had shown me the
most attachment and devotion. M. de Chateaubriand was naturally at
the head of these.
"He has confirmed what I had already heard, namely, that all the
Royalists in France look upon a deed setting forth Henry's rights
and majority as indispensable for the 29th of September. If loyal
M. ---- is with you at present, I draw for his evidence, which I
know to agree with what I am stating.
"M. de Chateaubriand will lay before the King his ideas on the
subject of this deed. He says rightly, so it seems to me, that
it should simply declare Henry's majority and not put forward a
manifesto: I think that you will approve of this view. In short,
my dear Father, I leave it to him to draw your attention and bring
about a decision on this essential point. I am much more occupied
with it, I assure you, than with what concerns myself, and my
Henry's interest, which is that of France, goes before my own. I
have proved to him, I think, that I was able to expose myself to
dangers for his sake and that I drew back before no sacrifice; he
will find me always the same.
"M. de Montbel handed me your letter on his arrival; I read it with
lively gratitude: to see you again, to set eyes once more on my
children will always be my fondest prayer. M. de Montbel will have
written to you that I had done all that you asked; I hope that you
have been satisfied with my eagerness to please you and to prove to
you my respect and my love. I now have only one longing, to be in
Prague for the 29th of September, and, although my health is very
much impaired, I hope to arrive. In any case, M. de Chateaubriand
will go before me. I beg the King to receive him with kindness and
to hear all that he will say to him from me.
"Believe, my dear Father, in all the sentiments, etc.
"_P.S._ PADUA, 20 _September. _ My letter was written, when I was
shown the order not to continue my journey: my surprise equals
my sorrow. I cannot believe that an order of this kind can have
emanated from the heart of the King; only my enemies can have
dictated it. What will France say? And how Philip will triumph! I
can but hasten the Vicomte de Chateaubriand's departure and charge
him to tell the King that which it would be too painful for me to
write to him at this moment."
(_Addressed_) "TO HIS MAJESTY HENRY V., MY DEAREST SON, PRAGUE
"PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
"I was about to arrive in Prague and embrace you, my dear Henry,
when an unexpected obstacle stopped me on the road.
"I am sending M. de Chateaubriand in my place to discuss your
business and mine. Have confidence, dear, in what he will tell you
from me and be sure to believe in my fond affection.
"I embrace you and your sister and I am
"Your affectionate mother and friend,
"CAROLINE."
[Sidenote: The Comte of Montbel.]
M. de Montbel fell from Rome upon Padua in the midst of our pother. The
little Court of Padua was cool with him; it blamed M. de Blacas for the
orders from Vienna M. de Montbel, a very moderate man, had no other
resource than to seek refuge with me, although he feared me; when I saw
that colleague of M. de Polignac's, I explained to myself how he had
written the History of the Duc de Reichstadt and admired the Archdukes,
all, without his perceiving it, at sixty leagues from Prague, the Duc
de Bordeaux's place of exile; if he, M. de Montbel[237], was suited to
throw the Monarchy of St. Louis and the monarchies of this base world
out of window, it was a little accident of which he had not thought.
I behaved graciously to the Comte de Montbel; I talked to him of the
Coliseum. He was returning to Vienna to place himself at the disposal
of the Prince de Metternich and to serve as an intermediary for the
correspondence of M. de Blacas.
At eleven o'clock, I wrote the Governor the letter agreed upon; I
respected Madame's dignity, made no engagements on her behalf and
reserved her power of action:
"PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
"MONSIEUR LE GOUVERNEUR,
"H.R.H. Madame la Duchesse de Berry is quite _willing, for the
moment_, to comply with the orders that have been sent you. Her
intention is to go to Venice and thence to Trieste; there she will
act on the information which I shall have the honour to address to
her and will take a final resolve.
"Pray accept my sincerest thanks and the assurance of the high
regard with which I am,
"Monsieur le gouverneur,
"Your most humble and most obedient servant,
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
The Deputy, when he read this letter, was very much pleased with it.
Once Madame had left Venetian Lombardy, he and the Governor ceased to
be responsible; the Duchesse de Berry's doings at Trieste concerned
only the authorities of Istria or Friuli; each vied with the other to
rid himself of misfortune, as, in a certain game, every player hastens
to pass a little piece of paper on to his neighbour.
At ten o'clock, I took leave of the Princess. She placed her fate and
that of her son in my hands. She made me King of France after her
fashion. In a Belgian village, I once received four votes to raise me
to the throne occupied by Philip's son-in-law[238]. I said to Madame:
"I submit to Your Royal Highness' wishes, but I fear that I shall
deceive your hopes. I shall do no good in Prague."
She pushed me towards the door:
"Go, go, you can do everything."
I stepped into my carriage at eleven o'clock: it was a rainy night. It
seemed to me as though I were going back to Venice, for I followed the
Mestre Road: I felt more inclined to see Zanze again than Charles X.
[145] This book was written at Ferrara, between 16 and 18 September
1833, and at Padua, on the 20th of September.--T.
[146] Marco Polo (1254-1324) joined his father, Niccolo Polo, and his
uncle, Maffeo Polo, at Acre, in 1269. They set out for China in 1271
and, after a protracted stay, left for home, in 1292, and reached
Venice in 1295.--T.
[147] _Vide_ Zanze's manuscript, _infra._--T.
[148] Abbé Nicolas Lenglet-Dufresnoy (1674-1755), a man of very great
learning but no critical taste. He was several times sent to the
Bastille, under Louis XV., for the boldness of his writings, and died,
at last, of an accident, having fallen into the fire before which he
was reading. His chief works are _De l'usage des romans, avec une
bibliothèque des romans_ (1734), his _Histoire justifiée contre les
romans_ (1735), un _Histoire de la philosophie hermétique_ (1742) and a
_Traité sur des apparitions_ (1751). His _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_ was
published in 1753, two years before his death.--T.
[149] A character in Bojardo's _Orlando Innamorato_ and Ariosto's
_Orlando Furioso_, and daughter of Galaphron King of Cathay (Catajo,
not Marco Polo's Cathay, as the Abbé Lenglet seems to have thought).--T.
[150] Francis IV. Duke of Modena (1799-1847) was the grandson of the
Empress Maria Theresa and nephew of Marie-Antoinette. The Congress of
Vienna, in 1815, reinstated him in his Duchy, of which his grandfather,
Hercules III., had been dispossessed by the French in 1797. He married
Mary Beatrice, daughter of King Victor Emanuel I. of Sardinia and
Heiress in Line of the Stuarts, who is known to Legitimists as Mary
III. Queen of England (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 251, n. 1). Francis IV.
was almost the only European potentate who refused to recognise the
sovereignty of Louis-Philippe. On the 14th of November 1846, his
daughter, Maria Theresa, married the Comte de Chambord (King Henry V.
of France).--T.
[151] Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), author of the _Principe_ and
other works of state-craft.--T.
[152] _Cf._ BYRON: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV., Stanzas
XXX-XXXIV.--T.
[153] Titus Livius (59 B.C.--17 A.C.), the historian, was born at
Padua,--T.
[154] Publius Virgilius Maro (70 B.C.--19 B.C.) was born at Urbino.--T.
[155] Caius Valerius Catullus (_circa_ 87 B.C.--_circa_ 54 B.C.) was
born at Verona.--T.
[156] Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) was born at Reggio di Modena.--T.
[157] Giovanni Battista Guarini (1 537-1612), the noted diplomatist and
poet, author of the _Pastor fido_, was born at Ferrara.--T.
[158] Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (1422-1501) and his son, Ercole Strozzi
(1471-1508), the Latin poets, were both born at Ferrara.--T.
[159] Ercole Bentivoglio (_circa_ 1512-1573), the poet and diplomatist,
was born at Bologna; Guido Cardinal Bentivoglio (1579-1644), Nuncio
to Flanders (1607) and France (1617) and author of _Della Guerra di
Flandra_ (1633-1639), Letters (1631) and Memoirs (1648), was born at
Ferrara, as was Cornelio Cardinal Bentivoglio, Archbishop of Carthage
(1668-1732), Nuncio to France and the author of some sonnets and a
translation of Statius' _Thebais._--T.
[160] Pietro Cardinal Bembo (1470-1547), born in Venice, created a
cardinal in 1539 and Keeper of the Library of St. Mark. He was the
author of poems, letters, a History of Venice in Latin, and the
_Asolani_, a series of dialogues on the nature of love.--T.
[161] Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685), born at Ferrara, Rector of the
College of Jesuits in Rome, and author of an important _Istoria della
Compagnia di Gesù_ (1653-1675) and various physical treatises.--T.
[162] Matteo Maria Bojardo, Conte di Scandiano (_circa_ 1434-1494),
born at Reggio di Modena, author of _Orlando Innamorato_ (1495), of
which Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_ is the continuation.--T.
[163] Ippolyto Pindemonte (1753-1828), the poet, and Giovanni
Pindemonte (1751-1812), his brother, the dramatist, were both born at
Verona.--T.
[164] Alfonso Marchese di Varano (1705-1788), the poet, was born at
Ferrara.--T.
[165] Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828), born at Fusignano, near Ravenna,
author of the _Bassevilliana_(1793), directed against the French
Revolution, and a number of other poems, tragedies and translations.
Monti was Historiographer to the Court of Italy under Napoleon and a
member of the Italian Institute.--T.
[166] Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was a native of Sorrento, but his
father, Bernardo Tasso, was a North Italian, having been born in Venice
in 1493.--T.
[167] Melchiore Cesarotti (1730-1808), born at Padua, a poet and
miscellaneous writer. His translation of Ossian (1763) is his finest
work, but he is also known for his _Saggio sulla Filosofia delle
Lingue_ (1785) and a number of prose and metrical translations besides
that mentioned.--T.
[168] Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), known as Guercino, or
the Squintling, from an accident which distorted his right eye in
babyhood: a well-known painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.
[169] Ferrara Cathedral was consecrated in 1136; the interior was
spoilt in the seventeenth century.--T.
[170] Ferrara was handed back to the Papal States in 1814, but the
Austrians retained the right to keep a garrison there.--T.
[171] Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569), Torquato Tasso's father, author of
the _Amadigi di Francia_ (Amadis of Gaul, 1560) and a quantity of other
poems, died at Ostiglia on the 14th of September 1569.--T.
[172] _Rinaldo_ was published in 1562, while Tasso was a youth of
eighteen studying law at Padua.--T.
[173] Produced at Ferrara in 1573.--T.
[174] Ippolito of Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, Archbishop of Milan, Lyons
and Narbonne (1509-1572), uncle of Alphonsus II. and a favourite of the
Court of France of that time.--T.
[175] 24 August 1572.--T.
[176] Anna Swanwick's GOETHE: _Torquato Tasso_, Act I. Sc. i.--T.
[177] _Ibid._, Act II. Sc. i.--T.
[178] _Ibid._, Act III. Sc. iii.--T.
[179] Anna Swanwick's GOETHE: _Torquato Tasso_, Act V. Sc. iv.--T.
[180] Alphonsus II. married three times: first, Lucrezia de' Medici;
secondly, Barbara of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I.;
thirdly, Margherita di Gonzaga, daughter of William Duke of Mantua.--T.
[181] George Washington, in command of the English and native troops,
defeated the French in the Battle of Great Meadows on the 28th of May
1754. He was subsequently besieged at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania
and, on the 4th of July 1754, surrendered to the French, who allowed
him and all his troops to march back to Virginia.--T.
[182] My _Études Historiques.--Author's Note._
[183] Sixtus V.--T.
[184] In July 1586, after a confinement of more than seven years.--T.
[185] Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544-1590), author of, among
other poems, the _Semaine, ou La Création en sept journées_, which was
published in 1579 and passed through thirty editions in a few years.
Writing of Du Bartas, Professor Saintsbury, in his _Short History of
French Literature and French Lyrics_, says:
"All that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first
rank was some faculty of self-criticism; of natural verve and
imagination as well as of erudition he had no lack, but in critical
faculty he seems to have been totally deficient. His beauties, rare
in kind and not small in amount, are alloyed with vast quantities
of dull absurdity."
Du Bartas' fellow-countrymen entertain a similar view, and Bouillet,
in his _Dictionnaire universel d'histoire et de géographie_, expresses
himself in almost the same words when he writes that "_ce poète avait
de la verve et de l'imagination, mais manquait de goût._"--T.
[186] Marco Sciarra (_fl._ 1592), a celebrated bandit chief, long
devastated the Papal States. Neither Sixtus V. nor Clement VIII. was
able to subdue him and his band; but he was so hotly pursued by the
latter Pope that he left the country and entered the service of the
Venetians, who employed him against the Uskoks, the piratical refugees
from the north-western provinces of Turkey. The Venetian Government
eventually caused Sciarra to be assassinated, upon the repeated demands
of Clement VIII. for his extradition.--T.
[187] Samuel Rogers introduces this incident into his description of
the "wild life, fearful and full of change," of the "mountain-robber:"
Time was, the trade was nobler, if not honest;
When they that robb'd were men of better faith
Than kings or pontiffs; where such reverence
The poet drew among the woods and wilds,
A voice was heard, that never bade to spare,
Crying aloud, "Hence to the distant hills!
Tasso approaches; he, whose song beguiles
The day of half its hours; whose sorcery
Dazzles the sense, turning our forest glades
To lists that blaze with gorgeous armoury,
Our mountain-caves to regal palaces:
Hence, nor descend till he and his are gone.
Let him fear nothing!"
(ROGERS, _Italy: Banditti_, 5-17).--T.
[188] Ippolito Aldobrandini, Pope Clement VIII. (1536-1605), elected
Pope in 1592.--T.
[189] LUKE, XXIII., 46.--T.
[190] Now the Quai Voltaire.--T.
[191] Giovanni Battista Manso, Marchese Della Villa (1561-1645). Milton
was ambitious of his acquaintance, as the friend of Tasso, and was
introduced to him in Naples in 1638. To him Milton addressed his Latin
epistle, _Ad Mansum_; Tasso had addressed his dialogue on Friendship
to him and complimented him in the twentieth canto of the _Gerusalemme
Conquistata_, as the introduction to _Ad Mansum_ shows:
"Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marchio Villensi, vir ingenii laude, turn
literarum studio necnon et bellica virtute, apud Italos clarus in
primus est; ad quern Torquati Tassi Dialogus extat di Amicitia
scriptus; erat enim Tassi amicissimus; ab quo etiam inter Campanile
principes celebratur, in ilio poemate cui titulus 'Gerusalemme
Conquistata,' lib. 20.
Fra cavalier magnanimi, è cortesi
Risplende il Manso.
"Is auctorem Neapoli commorantem summa benevolentia prosecutus est,
multaque ei detulit humanitalis officia: ad hunc itaque hospes
ille, antequam ab ea urbe discederet, ut ne ingratum se ostenderet
hoc carmen misit."--T.
[192] In Venice, in 1806.--_Author's Note._
[193] Titian.--_Author's Note._
[194] In 1803.--_Author's Note._
[195] I was right in saying the orange-tree: it is an orange-tree
that stands in the convent-yard of Sant' Onofrio.--_Author's Note_
(Paris, 1840).
[196] This is one of several cases in which the author coins a
word: his expression, _nécrolithe_, is not known in the French
dictionaries.--T.
[197] Obizzo I. first Marquis of Este (_fl._ 1180); Obizzo II.
Marquis of Este and Lord of Ferrara and Verona (_d._ 1293) added
Modena and Reggio to his dominions.--T.
[198] Nicholas III. Marquis of Este (_d._ 1471) was the father of.
[199] Hercules I. first Duke of Ferrara (_d._ 1505), the father of
Alphonsus I.--T.
[200] FONTANES (_Cf._ Vol III., p. 10):
"Tasso, wandering from town to town,
One day, by his evils overcome,
Sat down by the sumptuous laurel-trees
Which spread out for ever to the breeze
Their green branches over Virgil's tomb," etc.--T.
[201] The Marquise de Podenas, _née_ de Nadaillac, was
lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Berry.--T.
[202] Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara (1510-1575), second
daughter of Louis XII., married, in 1528, Hercules II. Duke of
Ferrara, protected letters, science, art and Lutheranism, sheltered
Calvin, and had Clemont Marot as her secretary. She returned to
France in 1560, after the Duke's death, and settled at Montargis,
ostentatiously proclaiming her Protestantism.--T.
[203] Emmanuel Louis Marie Guignard, Vicomte de Saint-Priest,
Duque de Almazan (1789-1881), was taken to St. Petersburg by his
family during the Emigration and, in 1805, entered the Russian
Army, where he served until the fall of Napoleon. He was made a
colonel in 1814 and was taken prisoner; Napoleon's orders to have
him shot were intercepted by the Cossacks. Saint-Priest escaped,
served the cause of the Kings Government with ardour, endeavoured
to raise the populations of the South during the Hundred Days,
took ship eventually at Marseilles, was captured by a Tunisian
corsair and, after a few weeks' captivity, succeeded in reaching
Spain and returning to France at the Second Restoration. He
was then appointed a brigadier-general, a lord-in-waiting to
the Duc d'Angoulême and an inspector of infantry. In 1823, he
took part in the Spanish Expedition and earned his promotion to
lieutenant-general. He became Ambassador to Berlin in 1825 and to
Madrid in 1827. In August 1830, he sent in his resignation, and
Ferdinand VII. created him a grandee of Spain and Duque de Almazan.
Saint-Priest became one of the Duchesse de Berry's advisers, was
one of the principal organizers of the royalist attempt of 1822 and
sailed with the Princess in the _Carlo-Alberto._ He was arrested at
the moment of landing and indicted at the assizes at Montbrison.
Together with his co-accused, he was acquitted, on the 15th of
March 1833, and at once joined the Duchesse de Berry in Italy.
Under the Second Empire, Saint-Priest was one of the most zealous
and intelligent servants of the Comte de Chambord, who, in 1867,
wrote him a letter on the political situation that made a great
noise at the time.--B.
[204] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 101, n. 2.--T.
[205] Major H. D. Delloye had been dismissed the service in 1830
and had turned publisher. He very rightly published only royalist
works. In 1836, when Chateaubriand was in the greatest difficulties
for money, he was able to arrange a combination of a satisfactory
character for the interests and intentions of the illustrious
writer. The company formed by M. Delloye guaranteed M. and Madame
de Chateaubriand a respectable annuity, supplied them with the sums
required for their immediate necessities, and postponed to a remote
date the publication of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, the _Congrès
de Vérone_ and other works to which the author might be disposed to
devote his leisure.
On the 30th of June 1836, Chateaubriand addressed the following
letter to his honourable publisher:
"To Monsieur H. D. Delloye, retired lieutenant-colonel, Knight of
the Royal Order of St. Louis and of the Legion of Honour.
"PARIS, 30 _June_ 1836.
"And so, monsieur, our business is fairly started: so soon as I
had finished the _Milton_, I resumed work on the Memoirs and I
have begun to have that portion copied which I am to deliver to
you in the early months of the coming year. I congratulate myself,
monsieur, on having met a gallant and loyal officer of the Royal
Guard who has brought to a conclusion a piece of business which,
but for him, might never have been finished. It is, therefore, to
you, monsieur, that I shall owe the repose of my life and, what is
more important to me, that of Madame de Chateaubriand. With God's
help, the rest will go of itself and I hope that neither you nor,
when the time comes, the Shareholders, will have reason to regret
becoming the owners of my Memoirs.
"Believe, monsieur, I beg, in my sincere devotion and accept the
assurance of my most distinguished consideration.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."--B.
[206] Mademoiselle Mathilde Lebeschu, a former woman of the
Bed-chamber to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, had accompanied the
Princess into exile and sailed with her, in the _Carlo-Alberto_, on
the 21st of April 1832. She was tried, together with the Vicomte de
Saint-Priest and M. Sala, and, with them, acquitted, at Montbrison,
on the 15th of March 1833.--B.
[207] Thomas Robert Bugeaud de La Piconnerie, Maréchal Duc d'Isly
(1784-1849) fought throughout the campaigns of the Empire, winning
his promotion from private to colonel on the battle-field. He
retired at the Restoration. He was recalled to active employment
in 1830, suppressed the Paris insurrections in 1832 and 1834 and,
in 1832, as Commandant of Blaye, was charged with the safe keeping
of the Duchesse de Berry. His behaviour on this occasion provoked
a challenge to a duel, in which he killed his adversary, a deputy
named Dulong, on the 27th of January 1834. In 1836, he was sent
to Algeria and defeated Abd-el-Kader, but made terms with him and
was severely criticized in consequence; he became Governor-general
in 1840 and, on the 14th of August 1844, defeated the troops of
Morocco at Isly, by which title he was forthwith created a duke,
having received his marshal's baton in the previous year. In 1847,
he resigned, but was placed in command of the troops in Paris
in 1848 and exerted himself, but without success, to suppress
the Revolution of February. The Prince-President Louis Napoleon
made him Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Alps, but he died
of cholera, on the 10th of June 1849, soon after taking up his
appointment.--T.
[208] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. III., n. 2.--T.
[209] "_Il est de bon_ goût, _ce M. d'Argout._"--T.
[210] _Cf._ Appendix I.: _The Morganatic Marriage of the Duchesse
de Berry._--T.
[211] Achmet III. Sultan of Turkey (1673-1736) succeeded on the
deposition of his brother Mustapha II. in 1703. He was deposed by
the janissaries in 1730 and assassinated, by poison, in 1736.--T.
[212] Ivan VI. Emperor of All the Russias(1740-1764) succeeded
his aunt, the Empress Anne, as an infant of three months, but was
deposed in the course of the following year by Elizabeth, the
laughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I. He was murdered in
prison at the age of twenty-three, under the reign of Catherine
II.--T.
[213] Frederic Augustus I. Elector of Saxony, later Augustus II.
King of Poland (1670-1733), surnamed the Strong, elected King
of Poland in 1697, deposed in 1704, and reinstated in 1709; and
Stanislaus I. Leczinski (1677-1766), elected King of Poland in
1704, crowned in 1705, obliged to leave Poland in 1709: he was
again a candidate in 1733, on the death of Augustus II., and
formally abdicated in 1735.--T.
[214] Theodore King of Corsica (_circa_ 1686-1756) was a German
adventurer, Theodor Baron von Neuhof. He aided the Corsicans
against the Republic of Genoa in 1735 to 1736; was proclaimed and
crowned King of Corsica in 1736; and was driven out by the Genoese
in 1738. An attempt made to recapture his power in 1743 failed.
Theodore withdrew to London, where his person was seized by his
creditors, and he was kept in prison for debt for seven years.--T.
[215] VOLTAIRE: _Candide, ou L'Optimisme_, Part I., Chap. XXVI.:
_Candid and Martin sup with six Strangers; and who they were._--T.
[216] Chateaubriand wrote the next day to Madame Récamier:
"_Thursday_ 19 _September_ 1833.
"All is changed. _They_ absolutely want me to go to the end of the
journey, where _they_ dare not arrive without me. All my resistance
was unavailing; I had to resign myself. So I am leaving. This will
prolong my absence another month. I am going to send Hyacinthe to
Paris; he will bring you a long letter and details. Nothing in my
life ever cost me a greater pang than this last sacrifice, unless
it be that attached to my resignation of Rome.--B.
]
[217] Pietro Liberi (1605-1687), born and died at Padua, a
religious and historical painter of the Venetian School.--T.
[218] Jacopo Palma the Younger (_circa_ 1544-1628), a painter
of the Venetian School, distinguished for the freshness of his
colouring.--T.
[219] Giacomo Tatti (1479-1570), known as Sansovino, a noted
Florentine sculptor and architect, held by some to be second, as
a sculptor, to Michael Angelo alone. Sansovino is the architect
of the Mint, the Library of St. Mark and the Palazzo Cornaro in
Venice.--T.
[220] Francesco Sansovino (1521-1586), son of the above, is better
known as a man of letters and grammarian than as an artist.--T.
[221] "For there's no day so fair but its night follows after."--T.
[222] Charles Patin (1633-1693) was a physician, like his father,
but was distinguished especially for his antiquarian knowledge.
He was sentenced to the galleys for distributing some copies of
a lewd libel which he had been charged to suppress and fled from
France. Eventually he settled in the Venetian States and, in 1677,
was appointed Professor of Medicine at Padua. Charles Patin left
several important numismatical works.--T.
[223] Gui Patin (1601-1672), the famous doctor and wit, earned
an extraordinary reputation by his caustic sallies and eccentric
habits. He was the author of a treatise on the _Conservation de la
santé_(1632) and of Letters published nearly fifty years after his
death. A collection of his _bons mots_ was published, under the
title of Patiniana, in 1703.--T.
[224] Epictetus (_fl._ 1st Century), of Hierapolis, the Stoic
philosopher, was born a slave. When his master, Epaphroditus, who
subsequently freed him, broke his leg for him, he was content to
observe:
"I told you you would break it"
Epictetus was driven from Rome, with the other philosophers, by
the Emperor Domitian; he returned later and won the esteem of the
Emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.--T.
[225] John III. King of Portugal (1502-1557) succeeded his father,
Emanuel I., in 1521. He established the Inquisition in 1526.--T.
[226] Angelo Malipieri, Podesta of Padua. Two years after the above
was written, Victor Hugo produced his tragedy of _Angelo_, of which
Malipieri is the hero, at the Théâtre-Français (28 April 1835).--B.
[227] St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), monk of the Order of
St. Francis and a native of Lisbon. He was wrecked on the coast
of Italy when on his way to Africa to convert the infidels. St.
Anthony is said one day to have preached to a school of fishes and
to have been heard with attention.--T.
[228] Antonio Beccadelli Panormita (1394-1471), of Palermo, a
distinguished man of letters of his day.--T.
[229] Livy, who was born and died at Padua, divided his History of
Rome into 425 books, of which only 35 have been preserved. These
books were contained in "Decades," or groups of ten books each. The
late Benjamin Jowett used to long for the recovery of the missing
books of Livy more than for that of any other lost specimens of
literature.--T.
[230] Good drink-money or "tips."--T.
[231] Francesco Albani (1578-1660), surnamed the "Painter of the
Graces" and the "Anacreon of Painting," the great painter of the
Bologna School.--T.
[232] Heliodonis Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly (_fl._ 4th Century),
was the author of the earliest Greek romance, the _Æthiopica,_
which relates the loves and adventures of Theagines and
Chariclea.--T.
[233] Isotta Nogarola (_d._ 1466), a great and learned lady of
Verona, famous for her beauty, her knowledge and her poetic talent.
She was the author of the _Dialogus quo utrum Adam vel Eva magis
peccaverit, quæstio satis nota, sed non adeo explicata, continetur_
(Florence: 1563).--T.
[234] Francis I. Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia, the
Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, etc. (1768-1835).--T.
[235] The Comte de Sainte-Aulaire (_cf._ Vol. V., p. 161, n. 2)
had been appointed Ambassador to Vienna earlier in that same year
1833.--T.
[236] The Duchesse de Berry's mother was Clementina Queen of the
Two Sicilies, daughter of Leopold II. Emperor of Germany, and
sister of Francis I. Emperor of Austria.--T.
[237] _Cf._ Vol., V., p. 81, n. 5. The Comte de Montbel's _Notice
sur le Duc de Reichstadt_ had appeared in that year 1833. The Duke
had died at Schonbrünn, three miles from Vienna, the residence of
the Austrian Archdukes, on the 22nd of July; the distance is about
180 miles from Vienna to Prague, where Charles X. and his little
Court took up their residence.--T.
[238] Leopold I. King of the Belgians (1790-1865) was the youngest
son of Francis Duke of Saxe Saalfeld-Coburg when he was elected
to the Belgian Throne in 1831. He was married first, in 1816,
to Charlotte Princess Royal of England, who died in 1817. In
1832, Leopold married Louise Princesse d'Orléans, daughter of
Louis-Philippe.--T.