Pic de la Mirandole—Castel Franco—Bologna—A bad inn left for La
Pace—Its mistress—Statue of Pope Julius the Second—St.
Petronio—Mistake of a learned man—Charles the Fifth—Here crowned
King of Lombardy—King Enzio—His peasant-love—His twenty years’
captivity—The origin of a name—The towers—Accademmia—St.
Cecilia—The cathedral—Temple dedicated to Isis—Papal troops—A
capitulation—Cholera—An Italian hospital—French soldiers—The
procession barefoot—The well-attested miracle—The
Appennines—Lojano—The Pellegrino—Filigare—Pietra Mala—Strange
properties of its fire and cold spring—Fruit—Montecarelli—St.
Antonio’s grapes—Palazzo Borghese—Hôtel du Nord—Jerome Bonaparte’s
cook—Piazza della Santa Trinità—Spot occupied by the Palazzo degl’
Uberti left vacant—Recording escutcheons—The Saviour, king of
Florence—The Loggia—Galleria de’ Medici—Piazza del Duomo—The
Baptistery—Work of Ghiberti at twenty years old—Chains of the gates
of Pisa—A funeral.
6th October.
Mirandola is not on our road although at no great distance, on the
Secchia, and forming part of the duchy of Modena; near it are two other
villages, called Concordia and Quarantola. It is said that Euridice,
grand-daughter of the Emperor Constantine, and wife of Mainfroy the
Saxon baron, in the first of the three became mother at a birth of
three noble boys, from which strange fact it was named Miranda. Growing
up in perfect harmony, the place which they inhabited was called
Concordia; and years after, when their descendants, increased in
number, in a neighbouring town mustered forty knights, it took from
them the name of Quarantola. This legend you may doubt or believe in;
but the family of Pio and Pic, sprung from Euridice, produced in 1463
the phœnix, Pic de la Mirandole, who, at ten years of age, held the
first place among the poets and orators of his day; and in 1486, at
Rome, published a list of nine hundred propositions on “all that is or
can be known,” offering to argue their truth with any such learned
personages as could be induced to meet him there, proposing to defray
the expenses of their journey and their sojourn. The envy of these
denouncing him as dangerous and a heretic, he endured persecution for a
time and fled to France, but justifying himself, returned to Florence
and died there the day that Charles the Eighth made his entry, and
having known him in France, sent his physicians, who strove vainly to
save his life. He left large legacies to his domestics, and the
remainder of his possessions to the poor, and was not thirty-two when
he died.
This is the fête of the Virgin. Before leaving Modena, the landlady
took some trouble to convince me that the barber opposite, occupied in
shaving several black faces, was a Jew, as a good catholic would on no
account so labour to-day. Outside the town, we met numbers of peasants
carrying the tall cierges intended as offerings at her altars,
ornamented with flowers and ribands. The toilette of the women, who
wore their best clothes, had an elegance about it, the lace or
embroidered handkerchief covering, in guise of mantilla, the head and
shoulders, and the clear worked muslin apron tied on over the bright
petticoat. On the chapter of beauty, however, their “glory has
departed.” Since leaving Milan, we have seen but few females not plain
to ugliness, and but seldom among the men one of those dark faces so
peculiarly handsome, notwithstanding its doubtful expression. The dirt
of the lower classes is so excessive and indescribable, that, as they
make their toilette before their cabin doors, the entire breadth of the
road seemed scarce sufficient to save from contamination.
Having passed through St. Ambrogio, and over a fine bridge which
crosses the Tanaro, we entered on the papal territory. At the barrier
we paid two pauls per horse, the same at each of the two bridges, but
on carriages the tax falls heavily; and at Castel Franco are the pope’s
custom-house and passport office. Truly the subjects of his holiness
lack conscience. One touched our baggage; “What have you here?” and to
the usual reply, “Linen; will you see it?” rejoined, “On no account,
but we will drink your health.” Then came up another to whisper “they
were not _insieme_,” and that the first was a narrow-minded man, who
shared nothing with a comrade; and thirdly, a soldier bringing the
passport murmured as he delivered it, “Le sue buone grazie.”
Arrived at Bologna as the sun set, passing on the right hand the long
brick arcade, which, three miles in length, is carried up the hill to
the church containing the Virgin’s most precious picture, painted by
St. Luke; and riding beneath an archway which bears an inscription in
Napoleon’s honour, whitewashed for the sake of effacing it, but
restored by the late heavy rains. We went, as recommended, to the
Pellegrino, but it was full and has no stables, and to the Aquila,
which had accommodation for our horses, but none for ourselves, a
circumstance it did not think proper to communicate till the latter
were on the road to their quarters.
A voice in the crowd said “La Pace,” but it was overruled by another
answering, “San Marco;” and as the latter was nearest, we went thither,
and found it full also. The inn opposite, a branch of this, as
belonging to the same master, and called the Tre Mori, had still a
disposable room, so said the innkeeper, and, weary of wandering, we
agreed to take it if possible. He retreated with a bow within his own
premises, and we were consigned to the care of his _direttore_, the
great man’s great man at the Tre Mori. The room, which was small and
stifling, and exactly opposite a hall in which domestics were noisily
dining, had been occupied, I think, by servants also, and left
unarranged at their departure. The only answer to the bell was
“Patienza,” a virtue I should have summoned to mine aid till morning,
despite the inn’s dirt and incivility, but that D—— came in dismay to
say that our poor comrades were lodged in a crowded stable, without
space to lie down, and next kicking horses, one of whom had lamed his
neighbour the night before. To run the risk of a like accident to ours
was not to be thought of—the warlike Fanny, with open mouth and ears
laid back, and Grizzle, with her heels, were prepared to resent any
insult from the tall carriage horses, or even to take the initiative if
necessary; and Italy being a place where even bribes are vain to induce
an attendant to practise care, D—— remained standing beside the surly
groom, while I sallied forth on a voyage of discovery, having changed
my dress, and summoned to conduct me a poor facchino, who had carried
our baggage into the inn—a dwarfish wretched being we noticed for his
civility, and who had since remained leaning against the wall in the
hope of further employment. I desired him to be my guide to La Pace,
and we threaded the winding and porticoed streets at a rapid step, as I
feared it might grow dark ere our return, and San Marco being at one
end of the town, La Pace is at the other, in a broader street, and
better air, near the gate we shall pass through going to Florence.
Arrived at the hotel, I found with satisfaction that its mistress was a
Frenchwoman; and seeing that not only our horses could have a private
stable, but that the house in accommodation, as well as in civility,
wholly differed from the Tre Mori, we hurried back; the little guide
telling his history, and how he had been left an orphan, and with three
sisters, he “povero ragazzo” (for the ragazzo is, like the Irish boy,
named for life) and they had struggled, and nearly starved for a time,
and then established a good character, and got on in the world, till
now (in his Sunday attire) he was another man.
We asked for our bill of an hour, and, though explaining the motive of
our departure, endured insolence in return, paying with Christian
meekness the moor’s exactions, which, for our horses and ourselves,
charged such items as might have been fair the next morning. As we
walked out, we passed an English gentleman, who stood on the inn steps
holding a bill of interminable length, the innkeeper of San Marco and
the direttore of the Tre Mori, one on each side, like Scylla and
Charybdis, and the Englishman, foaming with the powerless fury of the
sea in like situation, for the worthies were uncivil and positive.
Escaped from their fangs, our horses led by the ragazzo, we arrived at
La Pace at dusk, crossing on our way the fine Piazza Maggiore, most
striking in that imperfect light, with the Palazzo Pubblico, and the
Palazzo del Podestà, and the unfinished façade of San Petronio,
occupying three of its sides, and the giant’s fountain, with its statue
of Neptune by John of Bologna, built, not in the centre of the square,
but in its angle, or rather on a “place” of its own, a kind of
supplement to the Piazza Maggiore, facing the buildings of the Palazzo
Pubblico, where they extend beyond it.
I have heard Bologna criticized for its unending arcades, which give it
in my opinion a claim to admiration; a studious and solemn character,
making it resemble some mighty cathedral and its cloisters. La Pace
retains the name it bore when a resting-place for pilgrims on their way
to Rome; the large vaulted kitchen was then the refectory, and the
upper stories of the building have still the same distribution as in
those days. Our hostess has known some of life’s vicissitudes. Her
father had a place in, I think, the financial department, whose
revenues sufficed for the comforts of his family, but, wishing to
retire, he exerted what interest he possessed to get a friend, who
promised compensation, named in his stead. Having succeeded, this man
not only refused to fulfill his part of the agreement, but having
borrowed and given no security for all the ready money the old man
possessed, he finally turned into the streets, from the shelter which
had been their own, the father and young daughter. The latter wandered
over Paris during the day, vainly seeking employment, which, owing to
her youth and disbelief in her story, was everywhere refused her. At
last, night coming on, and those who passed examining the forlorn girl
with curiosity or contempt, in despair, and ashamed to beg, as she
crossed the Pont Royal on her way back to the spot where she had left
her father, she suddenly resolved on suicide, and was about to throw
herself into the river, when her arm was caught by an old officer, who
forcibly held her back, gravely remonstrated with her, and passed on.
Softened, and her purpose changed, she knocked meekly at several doors,
and at last found shelter with a poor portress, who received herself
and her father for charity. She next took service with a lady resident
in the hotel, and accompanied her to Italy. There, after some years,
she married the head-waiter of the inn of San Marco, and they embarked
their savings in La Pace. Her father followed when she quitted France,
but he had grown childish from misfortune, and died shortly after the
change in his daughter’s prospects. He used to wander miles away from
the inn, saying he would go back to France. The fat black terrier, who
sits so petted and caressed on a chair in the kitchen, was his follower
and guardian. One day, after a vain search for the old man, he was
found sleeping on a mattress in a peasant’s cabin, with the dog sitting
at his head: he had walked farther, thinking to pass the frontier, and
fatigued, and unable to speak the language, he sank down at last before
the cottage which gave him its hospitality. I think she said it was his
last excursion.
The Neptune of John of Bologna holds a place once occupied by a statue,
by Raphael, of Pope Julius the Second, and raised by his command
shortly after his first conquest of Bologna, in 1406, but the pope was
represented with so haughty an aspect, and in so menacing an attitude,
that the original of the statue had hardly quitted them, when the
indignant Bolognese struck it down. The church of St. Petronio, though
unfinished, and likely to remain so, has an imposing aspect, and is of
ancient date, as commenced in 1590. It possesses its patron saint’s
entire body, the head, which only was wanting, having been bestowed by
Pope Benoit the Fourteenth. The presence of this relic caused a strange
mistake on the part of the learned German Meibomius, who, believing all
the works of the satirical writer Petronius preserved at Bologna, made
a long journey thither to behold his manuscripts, and was greatly
disappointed when led to the shrine.
In this church was Charles the Fifth, the emperor, crowned king of
Lombardy by Clement the Seventh;—kissing the same papal foot he had
before held captive, and creating, after the ceremony, two hundred
knights, in the list of whom are included the names of several noble
families still existing in Bologna.
The palace of King Enzio opposite still bears the same name as when the
prison of the unfortunate young man, illegitimate son of the Emperor
Frederic the Second, and dethroned king of Sardinia. The Bolognese took
him captive, and would never restore his freedom more, for he pined
within these walls twenty years, and died in the year 1262. There is a
legend which would make the family of Bentivoglio of royal origin: it
recites that there was a fair young peasant enamoured of Enzio, and
who, by bribes or stratagem, found means to see him in his confinement.
She loved, and was faithful to him, and brought forth a son, who, by
favour likewise was sometimes allowed to be carried to his father’s
arms. The sad prisoner was wont to hold him on his knee, and murmur to
the boy while he caressed him, “Ben ti voglio, O ben ti voglio.”
When he died, he left him all his disposable property, and the youth
adopted as a family name the words he had so often heard repeated by
his father.
The towers of Asinelli and Garisenda, which serve us for landmarks in
our perambulations, are at the gate of Ravignana, and at no great
distance from the Piazza Maggiore. They are remarkable for their
bending position: the first, towards the west, is but five feet out of
the perpendicular; it was built in 1109, and is three hundred and seven
feet high. The last is in height but one hundred and forty-four feet
from the ground, but its inclination towards the east is far more
considerable. It was built about a hundred years later, and its
threatening and most awful position has remained unchanged since the
sinking of the foundation first caused it.
We went to San Ignace, which was formerly the convent of the Jesuits’
Noviciate, now the Accademmia delle Belli Arti, and I saw in its
handsome salles many fine pictures, the most celebrated being Raphael’s
St. Cecilia, and in which, though beautiful, I was disappointed. I
believe it suffered repair when it came to Paris, then was repainted
the sky, which now starts from the canvass, before the heads of which
it is the back ground. You would have smiled to see the man who came
when we rang for admittance, these halls being open to the public
except on festivals. We asked if entrance were possible to view the St.
Cecilia. “Possibile, si!” he answered; “ma sa ella che questa sia
festa?” and held the door close, fearing we should pass him without
agreement made; but I said, “Capisco.” And he then threw it wide, and
when he came out again, stood bowing with hands outspread.
We had been employed in making a few purchases: for, notwithstanding
that in every town, Milan included, I have visited and questioned the
speditori, of our baggage we have heard nothing since the day it
quitted Vevay to precede us in Italy. Whether it has crossed the
Simplon, or is domiciliated in its torrents, remains unknown to me, and
the linen contained in our valises at present constitutes our wardrobe.
We made the tour of most of the churches, the cathedral among the rest,
which is modern and glaring, but owns the last fresco of Louis
Carracci. The church of the Dominicans contains the tomb of King Enzio,
or Hensius; and the old church of San Stefano, the only antiquity whose
existence is certain in Bologna, and thought to have been a temple
dedicated to Isis. Though this is the 7th of October, the heat
continues excessive, and the arcades, which exclude the sun by day,
also prevent the free circulation of air at night. The stifling and
ill-scented streets make bad promenades; and the dirt of the population
of Bologna passes description. We walked into San Petronio this
evening: it was decorated for the festival, and the altar, a blaze of
wax-lights, contrasted with the gloom of the spacious aisles. The
priests, in their rich robes, moving before, and the multitude kneeling
on the pavement, had a fine and solemn effect; but the infected
atmosphere made it impossible to stay more than a few moments within
the curtain which falls before the entrance. On our return to La Pace,
and as I walked along the broad and dimly-lighted corridor on which the
apartments open, I saw it was occupied by a party, and forth from it
issued our poor dwarf facchinoo in the best coat of which he had
spoken, and a new capacity: for he said this was his own band, and its
music, he being one of the performers, was certainly delightful.
We expected letters to-day, but were disappointed, and the kind-hearted
landlady, fancying my anxiety proceeded from some mistake in the
forwarding of our funds, begged very earnestly that her bill might
remain unpaid till our return from Florence. She regrets her own
country, though she has stayed here long enough to lose its accent. Her
Italian rivals strive to ruin her, a laudable purpose in which they
generally succeed, against the French interloper who comes within their
circle with civility and better accommodation.
They are a strange compound of ferocity and cowardice, these papal
vassals. They bring to my mind an anecdote told me of their brethren at
Ancona, by our friend Capt. de V——l, whose conduct at Lyons I
mentioned to you, and I write it here, as a story of the pope’s troops
will not be misplaced at Bologna. I give it you in almost his own
words, as he was present there at the time:—
The Conte P——i commanded a battalion of infantry quartered in the
lazzeretto of Ancona, which is a building of considerable size, and
easy to defend, as the sea surrounds it. When the 66th took during the
night possession of the town, the lazzeretto, the pontifical battalion,
and the quiet commandant, were all three forgotten. In the morning,
enraged at the neglect, he angrily inquired whether the French general
was aware of the presence of a battalion in the lazzeretto. “Very
probably,” was the reply. “Allora,” said the Conte P——, “si vuole una
capitulazione; perchè nella circostanza è cosa necessaria e _militare_!
Sono comandante; la capitulazione la voglio, vado dunque a visitare il
general Francese e la capitulazione si farà.”
Such being the Conte P——’s warlike views, he was escorted to the
presence of Colonel Combes, who then commanded the 66th, and laughing
heartily, willingly satisfied the military scruple of the gallant
officer.
An anecdote of a different time, but of the papal troops also, animated
by the same spirit, I must mention here:—After the revolution of —22
or —23, the Neapolitans, failing to prove their allegiance to their
new government, yielded difficult passes it would have been easy to
defend, retreating before the Austrian army, and continually defeated
till their king was replaced on his throne. Asked why they had allowed
themselves to be so easily conquered, they replied that their cannon
had been taken. “Più non abbiamo canoni; e senza canoni che si può
fare?”
It was shortly after the arrival of the French at Ancona, and in
November, 1836, that the cholera broke out there, and believing it
infectious as well as epidemic, the Italians had the barbarity to wall
up the doors of the houses in which the first sufferers lay,
introducing through the windows, and at the extremity of a pole, the
food or medicine thought necessary. Our friend’s lodgings looked on the
hospital, wherein, when the panic had in some measure subsided, the
sick were admitted—to die—either from the virulence of the malady, or
the measures adopted for its cure: for abstinence was so strictly
practised, that many perished from starvation. Monsieur de V——l
certifies, what would otherwise seem incredible, that of all carried
within its walls one only issued forth alive. This was a strong,
powerful man, who attacked with cholera, but to a slight degree, was
borne to the hospital, and, laid in one of the beds, fell asleep,—and
waking in the morning, refreshed and hungry, asked for food.
“Come!” said the Italian nurse; “quì non si mangià; sarebbe darsi la
morte!”
Feeling the weakness of convalescence, the patient, though he insisted,
lay quiet and soon slept again, and through almost the entire day and
night which followed; but the second morning his hunger was no longer
to be borne with. He implored food, and received the former answer: “No
food is given in the hospital.”
Watching his time, therefore, the unfortunate man slipped from his bed,
seized the first garments within his reach, rushed through doors
happily for him unfastened, and into the street and Grande Place, where
he saw a friend standing, and flung himself into his arms, demanding
bread, as he was starving. He was fed and cured,—a solitary exception;
yet the cruel and ignorant populace incurred more danger by an hour of
fanaticism than they could have done in a month of charity. The French
soldiers had soon constituted themselves nurses, performing frictions
and other offices the Italians feared, and saving many. So great was
the cowardice, that a consecrated wafer was presented to a dying man by
his priest at the extremity of a pair of pincers. The only active means
they adopted was the ordering a procession in honour of Our Lady of
Ancona, attired for the occasion in a white robe, spangled with golden
stars. Capt. de V——l and his company formed part of the procession,
it always happening, he assured me, that he was on duty as the
Madonna’s guard whenever she came forth. This Madonna is the same of
whom Napoleon, when playing his part on this stage, asked an interview,
and who, after a conference of some length, was observed to drop a
tear!! Though it was the month of November, and the operation a
dangerous one in times of cholera, by the clerical command all
constituting the procession, saving our friend and his men, marched
barefoot. Arrived at the Grande Place, on a kind of scaffolding raised
there, appeared a priest to address the multitude; who vociferated with
the whole power of his lungs, commanding that they should prostrate
themselves on the cold pavement, and telling them that this scourge had
come upon them because they observed fasts less strictly, and because
their faith and confidence in their clergy had declined.
“Each of you,” he exclaimed in conclusion, “ask pardon of heaven with
meekness and penitence; say frankly, I am a sinner, a thief, an
assassin; therefore pardon me.” It would seem he knew his congregation.
Of the poor wretches who assembled that day, swarms had perished ere
the close of the next; but there is, not far from Ancona, a small town
or village, whose name I forget, which escaped the pestilence by reason
of a miracle performed by its patron saint, the details of which Capt.
de V——l saw on a printed affiche. When disposed to avert evil from
his native place, the saint pushes up the lid of his heavy tomb, and
agitates above it his hands streaming with blood. The adjutant of the
66th, talking with a man of this town, asked if any one really believed
it had happened.
“Giacchè,” answered the Italian, “le dico che ho veduto, veduto cogli
occhi miei.”
We are to start to-morrow, and I sent on a bandbox, and a man who came
the length of the street to fetch it, grumbling when I had paid him
well, I took from the table, which was in a corner of the half-lighted
room, what I thought a few more baiocchi, and among them bestowed, most
unworthily, a Napoleon.
9th October.
Left Bologna a little after sunrise, our good-natured hostess having
got up early to prepare our coffee, à la Française, with her own hands;
the horses pleased as ourselves to escape from their hot captivity. We
rode for some distance still over the plain along the brink of the
torrent Savena, but from Pianoro, the first post, the route ascends
undulating in a succession of steep rises and falls, far more wearisome
to horses than the broad way which, sweeping across the Alps, forced
aside or pierced through every obstacle. The hills, some bare as those
of Burgundy, clothed with chestnut, as we advanced, not having the bold
character of the Alps’ mighty and lonely masses, but swelling like wave
beyond wave, and in their details losing grandeur. On the whole, though
admiring and enjoying the pure mountain air, and passing some spots of
romantic beauty, (particularly one where the road was carried under a
wall formed by the high cliff, while before us, on a tall crag, stood a
lone church, and on the right hand far below, lay the valley, with its
green hills close crowded and dotted with pleasant habitations,) our
first day’s journey over the Appennine almost disappointed me in its
tranquil beauty, as compared with the wild and grand Swiss passes. The
heavy oxen toiling on their way, as they preceded the post-horses of
travelling carriages, or the mules of waggons, added to the picturesque
aspect of the country. Its breed of cattle is peculiarly beautiful,
having the dun hide and black legs of the deer. We were to sleep at
Lojano, a village under a hill with a fine gorge stretching below. I
recommend the Pellegrino, the new inn on the Bologna side, clean and
comfortable and having civil masters, and not the Posta, known to me
only as bearing a bad character, and being immured in the dirty town.
Our horses had a separate and good stable, enjoying the thick bed of
fern, here substituted for that of Indian corn leaves, which made so
bad a one at Bologna.
10th.
A lovely morning, and beauteous ride from Lojano through chestnut
woods, which cover these hills, laden with the fruit now ripe and
dropping, which, as it forms the chief food of the poor, the pretty
peasant girls were busily employed collecting in their baskets. Those
we saw were mostly fair and light-haired, and if they wanted the bold
dark eyes of the Bolognese dames, their more delicate features would
have served the sculptor for model. The heat became excessive as we
approached Scaricalasino; the view thence is superb, we could
distinguish the chain of the Alps and the plains of Lombardy, but not,
as I hear is sometimes possible, the Adriatic. Past the town the road
grew wilder and the ascents more rapid, and we shortly arrived at
Filigare, the frontier, where the grand duke has built a new and
handsome edifice for police station and custom-house. Pietra Mala is at
no great distance, with its dirty town and church on a crag, and inn to
which is linked a robber story. About half a mile to the right, a
peasant pointed out the place occupied by the flame, which is so
brilliant at night, as to light the neighbouring mountain. It covers a
space of fourteen feet square, on a stony but fertile soil, as the
vegetation almost touches the fire, which emits blue and red flames,
and the earth beneath has neither crack nor hollow; it is believed by
some naturalists to be the forerunner of a fearful volcano. At a short
distance from Pietra Mala there is also a cold spring called by the
natives “Acqua Buja,” which takes fire when approached by a lighted
torch.
The day was oppressively warm, but we came up with a poor man driving
his mule laden with pears and figs, the most delicious, and dismounted
to rest under the shade of some of the bare crags which hereabouts
rise, divested of plant or tree, broken into seeming pinnacles and
towers, till we found we excited attention, and thought it unwise to do
so any longer, as the Appennines have been of late in their loneliest
parts scarcely safe for travellers. Hereabouts there is an inn, good
apparently, but which I should hardly choose from its utter solitude,
and we soon arrived at the summit of this mountain, the highest on our
route; formerly dangerous, as the wind, which rushes down the gorge in
sudden gusts, often swept off carriages. It is now, at the places of
peril, protected by high walls, of the necessity of which we were
aware, even to-day, as it blew freshly there, though the temperature
below was burning and breathless. A long winding descent, commanding
lovely views into wooded defiles, succeeded, and we passed the spot
where the old road crosses ours; it was abandoned because impossible to
protect it in the snow season.
Arrived at Montecarelli, a lone inn in a pretty situation; the village
itself is some hundred yards farther. I cannot say that we dined or
rested well, though the beds were clean and the people civil, and
certainly honest, for neither here nor at Lojano could door or window
be fastened or even closed. We were kept waking by carts and roulage
waggons arriving late and starting early, aided by the poor patient
oxen, labouring on with their meek heads bound to the yoke, and the
lantern tied between them. As they took their short snatches of rest in
the stable which held our travellers, and accidents were not
impossible, and the pump beneath our bedroom was all night in motion,
we gladly went on at dawn to escape the heat, at least in part. Our
last day’s journey was the most interesting. Montecarelli left behind,
we wound through groves of old oak up and down abrupt hills, catching
glimpses through the trees into valleys on either side; to the west the
sky was blue and pure, but eastward, as the sun rose, it shone on the
surface of the mist which lay like a broad lake in the hollow, the
green tops of the hills surmounting it like its islands. The clouds are
more agreeable as well as picturesque far than near; for, riding
through them, the country was completely veiled, and the chill
unpleasant and penetrating. About four miles from Montecarelli, we
passed Le Maschere, which appears a good inn; and near it the charming
villa of some Florentine, its garden walls covered with roses,
adjoining a ruined arch and grey tower, whence, following the slope of
the hill, descends a noble cypress avenue. The views, as we issued from
fog and into a burning atmosphere, grew at each step more Italian in
their character, with villas on the wooded eminences, and here and
there the umbrella pine rising above its fellow trees. Having left
behind Cafaggiolo, where on the right hand there is a turreted castle,
which belongs to the duke and resembles a fortress, our road descended
to a valley, skirting a bright and narrow river, enclosed between hills
where we journeyed beneath a sun it was difficult to believe that of
October.
Here again by the road-side we found vineyards and their refreshment,
and figures or pictures of saint and Virgin perched on poles among the
vines to protect them from blight or storm; those I ate had been under
the care of St. Antonio, and he had proved a good husbandman. Our
horses suffered again from the small fly, and we were glad to ascend
the mountain and exchange their presence and the extreme heat for its
fresher air. Climbing slowly, as the way was steep, suddenly from
behind a cabin at the angle issued forth to meet us an ill-dressed
suspicious looking party; the eight or ten foremost carrying guns, the
stragglers who followed, thick sticks; and as one must needs be
imaginative in the Appennines, we began to think that robbers we had
heard of were indeed abroad, and (having no arms) to speculate on the
speed of our horses, and the necessity of galloping through the group,
as we had no intention of riding back again. Having mustered courage to
run away, we were prevented making any undue exertion by the banditti
turning peaceably down a bye-path; we asked a little girl, who stood at
the lone cabin door, who they were, and she said _Cacciatori_,
_sportsmen_.
At last the steep succession of sunny hills ascended, refreshed by no
shade, and riding under heat such as I never yet felt, we saw Florence
below with her domes and towers rising out of the mist the heat made,
backed by mountain above mountain, broken and numerous as the billows
of a troubled ocean. On either side, as we rode down this last hill,
the country was covered with vine and olive, sounding prettier in
description than they look in reality; and the terraced gardens of the
villas we passed were gay with a profusion of summer flowers, and the
laurier-rose with its double and beautiful blossom, growing in the open
ground and shooting up against the blue sky. In compensation, the heat
was scarcely to be borne; the horses devoured with flies, ourselves
blinded with sunshine, and (having left two miles from the city the
Campo Santo with its cluster of sombre pines on the right hand, and
entered, one after the other, several villages) persecuted by beggars
and by a succession of vile odours, which all the winds of the
Appennines cannot waft away.
On the left hand, before entering Florence, to which it is the nearest
villa of importance, the avenue, whose grass grown road is lined with
broken statues, leads to the deserted Palazzo Borghese. Riding beneath
the triumphal arch, raised in 1739 (in honour of the Emperor Francis
the First when he came hither, yet only grand duke of Tuscany, and in
imitation of the Arch of Constantine), we passed through the ancient
Porta San Gallo, whose date is 1284, and into the city. A boy guided us
over the flat and dangerous pavement to the Palazzo Bertolini, now the
hôtel du Nord, and opened about a week since by the ci-devant cook of
Jerome Bonaparte, having moderate terms and fine apartments, only too
comfortable, as this weather we would gladly dispense with their thick
carpets. Our dresses changed and dinner ended, and the horses, for
which there was no room here, lodged at Huband’s livery stables, I was
too impatient to remain enclosed in the hôtel till morning, and,
notwithstanding fatigue and the unusual heat which keeps Italians
within doors, went out to receive my first impression of Florence; and
though to me, as it does to many, it brought disappointment, with its
streets crooked and narrow, its quays so inferior to those of Paris,
and its Arno now shrunk in its bed to little better than a ditch, its
ancient buildings and irregular squares have historical interest and
picturesque combination, which make full atonement.
The Piazza della Santa Trinità, on which our inn is situated, is near
the Palazzo Vecchio and far famed Duomo. On our way to the last, we
crossed the Place, at an angle of which the former stands, not in the
centre, as a decree ordained that the spot once covered by the razed
palace of the Uberti should remain vacant for ever, in memory of the
traitor’s infamy. Built in the year 1298, it frowns unshaken by time, a
square fortress with embattled walls of jutting stones, surmounted by
one high tower, and the nine escutcheons which bear the coats of arms
of the city’s various possessors ranged below the battlement. Crouching
on the steps is the lion of Florence, holding its place in the city’s
armorial bearings, from as early a period as the lily which blooms on
the two first of these recording escutcheons. The arms of Napoleon and
the grand dukes are last in order, and among those which mark the
factions of Guelph and Gibelline, those of Charles of Anjou and King
Robert of Naples; of the wool-carders and the Medici, the merchant
monarchs. There is one bearing the monogram of the Saviour, for
Nicholas Capponi, in the year 1527, and at a period of excitement when
no temporal sovereign seemed strong enough to sway the disobedient
Florentines, proclaimed Jesus Christ their _king_, in a grand council
composed of a thousand voters, of whom twenty, opposing the election,
formed a minority!! The colossal statues which guard the entrance, the
fine fountain with its Neptune and marine horses, beside its steps to
the left, and beyond on the Place the royal statue of Cosmo mounted on
his war-horse, to the right, as we stood opposite the citadel, the
Loggia d’Orgagna with its three arches, light and yet solid, which once
served for tribune to the orators of the republic, and now shelters the
beautiful Sabine group of John of Bologna—the Judith beheading
Holophernes, and the proud Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, with the stern
palace and the ancient prison tower, which rises above the roofs of the
irregular houses opposite—and the two parallel lines of colonnaded
buildings, which extend from the Palazzo and the Loggia to the quay,
and contain in their attics the Galleria de’ Medici, make this the most
striking portion of Florence. We saw it to advantage beneath the bluest
of skies, and a sun which shone red and intense on the burning
pavement, as if it had been August, calling up, alas! the succession of
ill scents which betray an Italian town.
Passing the post-office, and turning down the Via de’ Calzajoli, we
arrived shortly on the Piazza del Duomo. The cathedral and its elegant
bell-tower, beside it, but detached, and St. John the Baptistery,
opposite the unfinished façade of the cathedral, which has been painted
in fresco, now washed away by rain, occupy the centre of a fine open
space, which shows to advantage their beauties or peculiarities. Is it
sacrilege to think that its monstrous dome seems to weigh down the
remainder of the building; that its mass of black and white marble
wants relief, or what the French call _mouvement_, to give it light and
shadow; that the octagon temple, with its pointed roof, once pagan,
cased in marble, and become that of St. John, is heavy and ungraceful?
St. John possesses the bronze doors, so beautiful in their workmanship:
that facing St. Maria del Fiore executed, when but twenty years old, by
Ghiberti, whose model was preferred to those of Donatelli and
Brunelleschi, and of which Michael Angelo said, that it was worthy to
be the portal of paradise. On either side of this door hang, as a
trophy, chains once belonging to the gates of Pisa, and suspended here
in memorial of the victory gained over Pisa by the Florentines in the
year 1362.
Entering this square from the Piazza del Gran Duca, there is on the
left hand a small church, its exterior not distinguished from the
houses which adjoin it. It was growing dusk, and at the door stood
attendants with torches, I fancied for some festival within, but, while
we lingered, there issued thence a funereal procession, the most solemn
I have seen; the mourners in their long sable robes, and hoods forming
masks, with openings for the eyes only, two and two, bearing torches in
their hands, following the priests, carrying banners, and the coffin,
with its velvet draperies, and followed in turn by the clerical
attendants, in white robes and crimson capes, slowly sweeping round the
Duomo on their way to the Campo Santo; all burials being performed at
night and without the town.