The castle of the Dukes of Ferrara, about which cluster so many sad
and splendid memories, stands in the heart of the city. I think
that the moonlight which, on the night of our arrival, showed me its
massive walls rising from the shadowy moat that surrounds them, and
its four great towers, heavily buttressed, and expanding at the top
into bulging cornices of cavernous brickwork, could have fallen on
nothing else in all Italy so picturesque, and so full of the proper
dread charm of feudal times, as this pile of gloomy and majestic
strength. The daylight took nothing of this charm from it; for the
castle stands isolated in the midst of the city, as its founder meant
that it should [The castle of Ferrara was begun in 1385 by Niccolò
d'Este to defend himself against the repetition of scenes of tumult,
in which his princely rights were invaded. One of his tax-gatherers,
Tommaso da Tortona, had, a short time before, made himself so
obnoxious to the people by his insolence and severity, that they rose
against him and demanded his life. He took refuge in the palace of
his master, which was immediately assailed. The prince's own life was
threatened, and he was forced to surrender the fugitive to the people,
who tore Tortona limb from limb, and then, after parading the city
with the mutilated remains, quietly returned to their allegiance.
Niccolò, therefore, caused this castle to be built, which he
strengthened with massive walls and towers commanding the whole city,
and rendered inaccessible by surrounding it with a deep and wide canal
from the river Reno.], and modern civilization has not crossed the
castle moat, to undignify its exterior with any visible touch of the
present. To be sure, when you enter it, the magnificent life is gone
out of the old edifice; it is no stately halberdier who stands on
guard at the gate of the drawbridge, but a stumpy Italian soldier in
baggy trousers. The castle is full of public offices, and one sees in
its courts and on its stairways, not brilliant men-at-arms, nor gay
squires and pages, but whistling messengers going from one office to
another with docketed papers, and slipshod serving-men carrying the
clerks their coffee in very dirty little pots. Dreary-looking suitors,
slowly grinding through the mills of law, or passing in the routine of
the offices, are the guests encountered in the corridors; and all that
bright-colored throng of the old days, ladies and lords, is passed
from the scene. The melodrama is over, friends, and now we have a play
of real life, founded on fact and inculcating a moral.
Of course the custodians were slow to admit any change of this kind.
If you could have believed them,--and the poor people told as many
lies as they could to make you,--you would believe that nothing had
ever happened of a commonplace nature in this castle. The taking-off
of Hugo and Parisina they think the great merit of the castle; and one
of them, seeing us, made haste to light his taper and conduct us down
to the dungeons where those unhappy lovers were imprisoned. It is the
misfortune of memorable dungeons to acquire, when put upon show, just
the reverse of those properties which should raise horror and distress
in the mind of the beholder. It was impossible to deny that the
cells of Parisina and of Hugo were both singularly warm, dry, and
comfortable; and we, who had never been imprisoned in them, found
it hard to command, for our sensation, the terror and agony of the
miserable ones who suffered there. We, happy and secure in these
dungeons, could not think of the guilty and wretched pair bowing
themselves to the headsman's stroke in the gloomy chamber under the
Hall of Aurora; nor of the Marquis, in his night-long walk, breaking
at last into frantic remorse and tears to know that his will had been
accomplished. Nay, there upon its very scene, the whole tragedy faded
from us; and, seeing our wonder so cold, the custodian tried to kindle
it by saying that in the time of the event these cells were much
dreadfuller than now, which was no doubt true. The floors of the
dungeons are both below the level of the moat, and the narrow windows,
or rather crevices to admit the light, were cut in the prodigiously
thick wall just above the water, and were defended with four
successive iron gratings. The dungeons are some distance apart: that
of Hugo was separated from the outer wall of the castle by a narrow
passage-way, while Parisina's window opened directly upon the moat.
When we ascended again to the court of the castle, the custodian,
abetted by his wife, would have interested us in two memorable wells
there, between which, he said, Hugo was beheaded; and unabashed by the
small success of this fable, he pointed out two windows in converging
angles overhead, from one of which the Marquis, looking into the
other, discovered the guilt of the lovers. The windows are now walled
up, but are neatly represented to the credulous eye by a fresco of
lattices.
Valery mentions another claim upon the interest of the tourist which
this castle may make, in the fact that it once sheltered John Calvin,
who was protected by the Marchioness Renée, wife of Hercules II.; and
my _Servitore di Piazza_ (the one who knows how to read and write)
gives the following account of the matter, in speaking of the domestic
chapel which Renée had built in the castle: "This lady was learned in
belles-lettres and in the schismatic doctrines which at that time were
insinuating themselves throughout France and Germany, and with
which Calvin, Luther, and other proselytes, agitated the people,
and threatened war to the Catholic religion. Nationally fond of
innovation, and averse to the court of Rome on account of the
dissensions between her father and Pope Julius II., Renée began
to receive the teachings of Calvin, with whom she maintained
correspondence. Indeed, Calvin himself, under the name of Huppeville,
visited her in Ferrara, in 1536, and ended by corrupting her mind and
seducing her into his own errors, which produced discord between
her and her religious husband, and resulted in his placing her in
temporary seclusion, in order to attempt her conversion. Hence, the
chapel is faced with marble, paneled in relief, and studied to avoid
giving place to saints or images, which were disapproved by the almost
Anabaptist doctrines of Calvin, then fatally imbibed by the princess."
We would willingly, as Protestants, have visited this wicked chapel;
but we were prevented from seeing it, as well as the famous frescoes
of Dosso Dossi in the Hall of Aurora, by the fact that the prefect was
giving a little dinner (_pranzetto_) in that part of the castle. We
were not so greatly disappointed in reality as we made believe; but
our _servitore di piazza_ (the unlettered one) was almost moved to
_lesa maestà_ with vexation. He had been full of scorching patriotism
the whole morning; but now electing the unhappy and apologetic
custodian representative of Piedmontese tyranny, he bitterly assailed
the government of the king. In the times of His Holiness the Legates
had made it their pleasure and duty to show the whole castle to
strangers. But now strangers must be sent away without seeing its
chief beauties, because, forsooth, the prefect was giving a little
dinner. Presence of the Devil!