In the evening we sat talking at the Caffè Pedrocchi with an abbate,
an acquaintance of ours, who was a Professor in the University of
Padua. Pedrocchi's is the great caffè of Padua, a granite edifice
of Egyptian architecture, which is the mausoleum of the proprietor's
fortune. The pecuniary skeleton at the feast, however, does not much
trouble the guests. They begin early in the evening to gather into the
elegant saloons of the caffè,--somewhat too large for so small a city
as Padua,--and they sit there late in the night over their cheerful
cups and their ices, with their newspapers and their talk. Not so many
ladies are to be seen as at the caffè in Venice, for it is only in the
greater cities that they go much to these public places. There are few
students at Pedrocchi's, for they frequent the cheaper caffè; but you
may nearly always find there some Professor of the University, and
on the evening of which I speak there were two present besides our
abbate. Our friend's great passion was the English language, which
he understood too well to venture to speak a great deal. He had been
translating from that tongue into Italian certain American poems, and
our talk was of these at first. Then we began to talk of distinguished
American writers, of whom intelligent Italians always know at least
four, in this succession,--Cooper, Mrs. Stowe, Longfellow, and Irving.
Mrs. Stowe's _Capanna di Zio Tom_ is, of course universally read; and
my friend had also read _Il Fiore di Maggio_,--"The May-flower."
Of Longfellow, the "Evangeline" is familiar to Italians, through a
translation of the poem; but our abbate knew all the poet's works,
and one of the other professors present that evening had made such
faithful study of them as to have produced some translations rendering
the original with remarkable fidelity and spirit. I have before
me here his _brochure_, printed last year at Padua, and containing
versions of "Enceladus," "Excelsior," "A Psalm of Life," "The
Old Clock on the Stairs," "Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass,"
"Twilight," "Daybreak," "The Quadroon Girl," and "Torquemada,"--pieces
which give the Italians a fair notion of our poet's lyrical range, and
which bear witness to Professor Messadaglia's sympathetic and
familiar knowledge of his works. A young and gifted lady of Parma,
now unhappily no more, lately published a translation of "The Golden
Legend;" and Professor Messadaglia, in his Preface, mentions a version
of another of our poet's longer works on which the translator of the
"Evangeline" is now engaged.
At last, turning from literature, we spoke with the gentle abbate of
our day's adventures, and eagerly related that of the Ecelino prisons.
To have seen them was the most terrific pleasure of our lives.
"Eh!" said our friend, "I believe you."
"We mean those under the Villa P----."
"Exactly."
There was a tone of politely suppressed amusement in the abbate's
voice; and after a moment's pause, in which we felt our awful
experience slipping and sliding away from us, we ventured to say, "You
don't mean that those are _not_ the veritable Ecelino prisons?"
"Certainly they are nothing of the kind. The Ecelino prisons were
destroyed when the Crusaders took Padua, with the exception of the
tower, which the Venetian Republic converted into an observatory."
"But at least these prisons are on the site of Ecelino's castle?"
"Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case would have been outside
of the old city walls."
"And those tortures and the prisons are all"--
"Things got up for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many
worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P---- cannot conceive.
But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he
can do to realize them he has done in his prisons."
"But the custodian--how could he lie so?"
Our friend shrugged his shoulders. "Eh! easily. And perhaps he even
believed what he said."
The world began to assume an aspect of bewildering ungenuineness,
and there seemed to be a treacherous quality of fiction in the ground
under our feet. Even the play at the pretty little Teatro Sociale
where we went to pass the rest of the evening appeared hollow and
improbable. We thought the hero something of a bore, with his patience
and goodness; and as for the heroine, pursued by the attentions of the
rich profligate, we doubted if she were any better than she should be.