Che difesa miglior ch’ usbergo e scudo,
E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
“Ger. Lib.,” c. viii. xli.
(Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
to the naked breast.)
And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the same
coffin. That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese
race--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must
thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades!
Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps with
thee in the coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate from
the instrument, ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter’s pious
ears when the heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense
of hearing that the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe
soft and frequent to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
And now Viola is alone in the world,--alone in the home where loneliness
had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at
first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye
mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma,
shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved
one has made the hearth desolate,--have you not felt as if the gloom of
the altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?--you would leave it,
though a palace, even for a cabin. And yet,--sad to say,--when you obey
the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in the strange place in
which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to you of the lost, have ye
not felt again a yearning for that very food to memory which was just
before but bitterness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profane
to abandon that dear hearth to strangers? And the desertion of the home
where your parents dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as
if you had sold their tombs.
Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become the
household gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from the
desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable anguish,
gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and family of a kindly
neighbour, much attached to her father, and who was one of the orchestra
that Pisani shall perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But the
company of the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger,
how it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
father, mother, child,--as if death came alone to you,--to see elsewhere
the calm regularity of those lives united in love and order, keeping
account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as if
nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the hands
motionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us of
our loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back to
thy solitude, young orphan,--go back to thy home: the sorrow that meets
thee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the
smile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and
there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as
thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way
to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the
verdure and bloom of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart!
Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun
shine in vain for man and for the tree.
Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples will
not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world ever
plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola’s
voice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is in
nought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill the
scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.
When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn,
and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it held the ashes
of his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered upon the young actress;
but she still kept to her simple mode of life, to her lowly home, to
the one servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was too
inexperienced to perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her when
first born in her father’s arms! She was surrounded by every snare,
wooed by every solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and
her dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied through
them all. It is true that she had been taught by lips now mute the
maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And all love that spoke
not of the altar only shocked and repelled her. But besides that, as
grief and solitude ripened her heart, and made her tremble at times
to think how deeply it could feel, her vague and early visions shaped
themselves into an ideal of love. And till the ideal is found, how
the shadow that it throws before it chills us to the actual! With
that ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe and
shrinking, came the shape and voice of the warning stranger. Nearly two
years had passed since he had appeared at Naples. Nothing had been heard
of him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months after his
departure, to sail for Leghorn. By the gossips of Naples, his existence,
supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh forgotten; but the heart of
Viola was more faithful. Often he glided through her dreams, and
when the wind sighed through that fantastic tree, associated with his
remembrance, she started with a tremor and a blush, as if she had heard
him speak.
But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened
more gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke in
her mother’s native tongue; partly because in his diffidence there was
little to alarm and displease; partly because his rank, nearer to
her own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his admiration from
appearing insult; partly because he himself, eloquent and a dreamer,
often uttered thoughts that were kindred to those buried deepest in her
mind. She began to like, perhaps to love him, but as a sister loves;
a sort of privileged familiarity sprung up between them. If in the
Englishman’s breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet
expressed them. Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is the
danger greater in thy unfound ideal?
And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closes
this opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared.
I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchanted
Isle, remote from the homes of men,--
“Ove alcun legno Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,”--“Ger.Lib.,”
cant. xiv. 69.
(Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse or
Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers thee no
unhallowed sail,--
“Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
Disabitata, e d’ ombre oscura e bruna;
E par incanto a lei nevose rende
Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago.”
(There, she a mountain’s lofty peak ascends, Unpeopled,
shady, shagg’d with forests brown, Whose sides, by power of
magic, half-way down She heaps with slippery ice and frost
and snow, But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown With
orange-woods and myrtles,--speaks, and lo! Rich from the
bordering lake a palace rises slow. Wiffin’s “Translation.”)