The question fully answered at last.—Farewell, Ferrara!—Welcome
inhospitable Caucasus.—Omne solum forti patria est.
Yes! the question was beginning to get answered; beginning, not more
as yet. The process of life–discipline, which was to "save" Olympia,
to rescue the fine moral gifts and capabilities from suffocation in
an element of unrealities, dream–life and Undine–Museship, and to
develope the latent capacities of nobleness in her nature, and set her
well forward in the Godward path, which shall be, Faith hopes, pursued
hereafter,—this was beginning to make its operation appreciable.
The baptism of tears had done much. Olympia herself thought that
the question had been already answered satisfactorily and in full.
She had "got religion," as certain modern sectaries phrase it. And
though the special peculiarities of her creed, as professed by her
hierophants, are as little calculated to elevate the heart, or enlarge
the understanding, as any theory of divine world–governance can well be
imagined to be, the religion she had got was a persecuted religion, and
derived from that fact an immense saving power, not naturally its own.
But creeds are shown unmistakeably enough to have their home and
fatherland in the brain, by the constant exhibition of their
powerlessness over the heart; which persists in willing good or evil
with most illogical independence of the brain's theories. And human
beings accordingly wear their creeds with a difference. Thus these
lamentable election and predestination theories, mad and ungodly
as they may be, as intellectual beliefs, yet, by the virtue of the
persecution with which they were visited,—a virtue addressing itself
directly to the heart—served to commence the work of Olympia's rescue
from heathendom. But other influences were needed for the maturing of
the noble picture of womanhood which her completed career offers us.
And these were now ready at her need.
[Sidenote: THOUGHT BEGINS TO QUIT ITALY.]
Italy is still the home of art. The citizens of the transalpine nations
still flock to her schools of painting, sculpture, and music. But in
all else she must submit to be the scholar of her former pupils. It was
not so in the sixteenth century. In those days Germans, Englishmen, and
Frenchmen thronged the celebrated universities of Italy for instruction
in law, science, medicine, and "the humanities." Italy was still the
acknowledged leader of European civilisation, though on the very eve
of ceasing to be so. Already the orthodox prowess of Duke Hercules was
busy in bringing about the change. Human thought cannot be made to
advance straight along a path walled in on either side, however long
the vista within its narrow bounds may seem to be. Men whose occupation
is thinking, will not carry it on at all, while large fields of thought
are prohibited to them on penalties, such as those incurred by Fannio
of Faenza. So the students from the northern side of the Alps began
to find that Ferrara, celebrated as a seat of learning though it had
hitherto been, was no longer a home for them.
The learned Germans, John and Chilian Sinapi, were of this number, as
was also a young medical student, their countryman and pupil, who had
recently received from the University of Ferrara his degree of Doctor
of Medicine, named Andreas Grünthler. He was a native of Schweinfurth,
one of the Bavarian free cities on the banks of the Main; and was, we
are assured, of "honourable" birth, distinguished talents, and the
possessor of a modest patrimony. He had visited most of the cities of
Italy, and had acquired a reputation for Greek and Latin scholarship,
before he settled at Ferrara, and dedicated himself to the study of
medicine under the teaching of the brothers[83] Sinapi.
Having rehearsed these particulars, it is almost superfluous to add,
that Grünthler also was an adherent of the new theology. And for him,
too, Ferrara was no longer a safe residence. But the Protestant German
student had lost his heart to the brilliant Italian Muse;—lost it in
the time of her heathendom, and classical Grecian virginship! And
though Ferrara was deserted by his friends and countrymen, though it
was about to reek with the blood of martyrs, though it was falling more
and more from day to day under the blighting ban of the Inquisition,
how could poor Grünthler shake the dust off his feet against it, and go
forth, leaving behind him her who had become dearer to him than life,
country, or friends;—leaving her, too, now no longer in the pride and
prosperity of her Muse–ship, but in poverty, sorrow, and disgrace, and
in danger from the same causes, that made his own retreat expedient?
His friend and master Sinapi had loved, and wooed, and won an Italian
wife, who had accompanied him across the mountains to his northern
home. Why should not he do likewise?
[Sidenote: FIRST LOVE.]
But in the glowing Grecian–virgin days of court prosperity, the gulf
that seemed to separate the grave German student from the brilliant
creature who had witched his heart was too great, and the contrast
between her summer–day existence and the pale life which he could offer
to her to share, too strongly marked for him to hope that such an offer
would be listened to. It appears, indeed, that the offer had been made
and rejected; in terms, too, that would effectually have prevented
its repetition by a less devoted and self–forgetting lover. That such
was the fact may be gathered from a curious passage in the first
letter from Olympia to her husband, which, for some incomprehensible
motive, her recent French biographer, who gives a translation of the
letter in question,[84] has omitted, without giving any typographical
or other intimation, that any part of the sense of the original is
absent. After pouring forth her love in the usual delightful fashion
of honeymoon letters, she adds, "Were my feelings different I would
not conceal them from you, as formerly I plainly told you that I had
conceived an aversion to you;"—"_ut ante aperte me tui odium cepisse
significabam_."[85] It was necessary, it should seem, that that Undine
nature should be first exorcised by the touch of sorrow, before the
mightier wizard, love, could be allowed to enter, and complete the task
of purifying, humanising, and elevating it.
But the dark days came; sorrow did its appointed ministry; and then
love spoke, and was listened to. In that time of tribulation and trial,
when all the world had suddenly changed its welcoming smile to a frown,
when none of those she had once thought her friends dared to manifest
any interest for the disgraced favourite, then Andreas Grünthler dared
to woo, and succeeded in inspiring as devoted a love as ever woman's
heart felt. Olympia was deeply touched by the noble disinterestedness
of her lover's suit. "Neither the resentment of the Duke," she writes,
long afterwards, to her earliest friend, Celio Curione, "nor all the
miserable circumstances which surrounded me, could induce him to
abandon his desire to make me his wife. So great and true a love has
never been surpassed."
In Olympia, the unselfish affection of a noble heart evoked, as the
sequel of her story shows, a sentiment of equally ennobling devotion.
And thus, whatever issue from the predestination maze the puzzled brain
may have fancied it had found for itself, the purified heart furnished
the completion of the answer to the great salvation question.
The marriage was celebrated in 1550, probably in the last months of
that year. A "marriage prayer," in eight Greek verses by Olympia,
has been preserved among her works. Her latest biographer[86] says
of these lines, that they are a "chant of Pindar repeated by an echo
of the Christian revival at Ferrara"—a performance, one would think,
nearly equivalent to that of the well–known Irish echo that answered
"How do you do?" by "Pretty well, I thank you." The lines in question
touch, in very irreproachable Greek, on the analogy between marriage
and the mystic union of Christ with the souls of the faithful, and are
remarkable only as indicating how complete was the change in the tone
of the poet's mind, since she classicalised on death in the manner we
have seen in a former chapter.
[Sidenote: PARTING WITH HER HUSBAND.]
Deep–felt and complete as we may suppose the happiness Olympia and her
husband felt at their union, the marriage must have partaken more of a
solemn than of a festive character. There were many difficulties and
uncertainties yet before them. To remain in Ferrara, heretics as they
were, whose heresy was every day becoming dearer to them, and the open
profession of it a craving desire; when Fannio was daily expecting to
be brought out of his dungeon to a martyr's death; when the Inquisition
was craving for fresh victims; and when the marriage itself was deemed
an offence by the Duke, was out of the question. Yet it was hard to
leave a mother and sisters; and that rough northern land across the
mountains, where freedom of conscience might indeed be hoped for,
nevertheless was not itself by any means in a condition to offer her a
secure and quiet home.
So far was this from being the case, that Grünthler deemed it necessary
to submit to a separation from his wife almost immediately after his
marriage, that he might, before taking her to Germany, go thither
alone to fix on, and prepare, a home for her. His hope was to obtain
a professorial chair in some of the medical schools of Bavaria or the
Palatinate, and to be able to return to Olympia in the spring of 1551.
In the meantime, he had the great consolation of leaving her under
the protection of Lavinia della Rovere; whose considerable influence,
though it seems to have been exercised in vain to obtain Olympia's
restoration to the good graces of the ducal family, yet probably
sufficed to prevent any measures of active persecution against her.
Here is the letter above mentioned in its entirety. Perhaps some reader
may like to see, that a young wife's honeymoon letter was in 1550
pretty much the same thing, word for word, as a similar effusion in
1850 might be. Of no letter on any other topic, three hundred years
old, could the same be said.
"Your departure," writes the lovely wife, "was a great grief to me, and
the long absence following it the greatest misfortune that could have
befallen me. For when I have you by my side, I am not tormented by the
anxieties that now beset me. I am always imagining that you have had
a fall, or broken your limbs, or been frozen by the extreme cold. And
perhaps I have not imagined anything worse than the reality! You know
the poet's saying—
"Res est soliciti plena timoris amor."
"Love is a thing compact of jealous fears."
Now, if you would alleviate this haunting anxiety, which I cannot shake
off, you will, if possible, contrive to let me know what you are doing,
and how you are. For, I swear to you, that my whole heart is yours, as
you know full well. Did I feel differently, I would not hide it from
you; even as I formerly owned to you that I had conceived an aversion
to you. Would that I were with you, my husband, if only the better to
tell you the immensity of my love. You would not believe how I pine in
your absence. There is nothing so difficult or so disagreeable that I
would not do to please you, my husband. But can you wonder that this
delay is hateful to me; for true love abominates and will not endure
delay. Any other trial to which I could be put would be better for
me than this. I beg and beseech you, therefore, to leave no stone
unturned to bring about our meeting this summer as you promised. I
know well that your affection is equal to mine; so I will not weary you
by urging this point further. Nor have I said thus much in any wise to
blame you, but only to remind you of your promise, though I know that
you are fully occupied with all these cares."
[Sidenote: LETTER TO HER HUSBAND.]
Thus much may be found in "the complete letter writer," under the
heading, "A young wife's first letter to an absent husband." What
follows is of more interest.
"As to my dresses, I do not think that it would be becoming to make
application for them to the court. The Duchess sent me word by one
of her women, that it was not true that the wife of the most noble
Camillo (Orsini) had said any thing to her about sending greetings to
her daughter. (Her daughter–in–law, Lavinia della Rovere, wife of her
son Paolo Orsini, seems to be intended.) She said, however, that she
would permit it to be done, since her daughter (that is the Duchess's
daughter, Leonora, apparently) wished it; but that she (Lavinia) had
begged one dress for me, which she (the Duchess) would not give me
before her (Lavinia's) return. I think that she answered thus: that I
might see that she did nothing for my sake, but for that of Lavinia;
and that she might gratify Lysippa, who was, I believe, with her at
the time. But it is better to be silent respecting a matter which is
plain to everybody. In any case, I scarcely think that I shall get the
dresses. Adieu."[87]
It is difficult to understand what the connection can have been between
the salutations sent or not sent by the wife of Camillo Orsini, and
the restoration of Olympia's dresses. Thus much, at all events, seems
clear however, that when Olympia fell into disgrace at the court, her
sovereigns stooped to, what to our notions would appear, the utterly
incredible meanness of retaining the dresses belonging to her that
happened to be under their roof! We may suppose that these dresses
had been probably enough supplied by the Duchess. It may be also
remembered, that such things were of very much greater value, both
absolutely and relatively to other property, than they are now. Yet, if
originally furnished by the Duchess, they had been given to Olympia as
a part of the remuneration for her services; she evidently considers
them as her own property. And this forcible detention of a dismissed
servant's wearing apparel cannot but be felt to indicate on the part
of these princes, in the midst of their ostentatious magnificence, a
degree of insensibility to any of the feelings that we compendiously
term gentleman–like, that makes the circumstance a very curious trait
of the manners of the period.
It would seem clear, also, that the Duchess Renée was actively hostile
to her former favourite. And if the phrase, in connection with Lysippa,
to the effect that it was better to say nothing of so notorious a
matter, is to be supposed to allude to some court intrigue in which she
was concerned, it would seem that Jerome Bolsec was not altogether the
contriver of her disgrace. It is remarkable that her old friend Curio,
in a letter written from Bâle to a friend of his, who had asked him
about Olympia, in giving a little sketch of her career, suppresses all
mention of this court disgrace,[88] merely saying that she had been
called to the court to share the studies of the Princess Anne, and
that she had after that married Andreas Grünthler.
[Sidenote: OTHER LETTERS.]
Her husband's absence was a sore trial to Olympia, which demanded all,
or somewhat more than all, her fortitude.
Her first letter to her husband was soon followed by a second,
imploring him to hasten his return. "The uncertainty of the time
fixed for your return, and for our departure from Ferrara, causes me
incessant torment." She beseeches him not to conceal from her any bad
news respecting their prospects. "Should you be called on to meet any
danger, which God forbid, I insist on sharing it with you. But above
all, my well–beloved, in these so difficult circumstances, be sure
that God is our most powerful protector." She exhorts him to remember
that God granted the prayer of Elias, so that no rain fell for three
years and six months, and to confide in him for support. "My days,"
she concludes, "are passed in tears; and I find no alleviation for my
sorrows but in invoking the Author of all mercies. May He be also your
refuge and your asylum. Write to me very soon, to let me know when I
shall see you, and do not set out on your journey without sure guides.
Adieu."
She writes five letters, following rapidly one after the other, to John
Sinapi, who was now established at Würzburg, urging him to accelerate
her husband's return. "I again and again implore you," she says in one
of these, "not to detain him, who is dearer to me than life, longer
than one month at the furthest. Send him back to me quickly, if you
would not have me, miserable as I am, pine to death of grief."
She reminds him more than once of a volume of her poems, which she had
sent to be presented to the King (Ferdinand, King of the Romans), and
to the great Augsburg merchant, Raymond Fugger, in hopes of interesting
them in her husband's favour.
The lady Lavinia had also promised to induce her husband and
father–in–law to interest themselves in Grünthler's favour; and there
is a letter from her, received by Olympia at this time, in which she
tells her friend, that she had after some difficulty succeeded in
accomplishing this. She was herself not happy. "As for me," she writes,
"understand that my affairs become more and more hopeless from day to
day." She concludes her letter by saying that she should have written
it in Italian, were it not that she knew that Olympia liked better to
read Latin.
Lavinia, however, was at Ferrara during the greater part of Grünthler's
absence; and her society was Olympia's greatest comfort. There is a
dialogue preserved in the volume of her works between the two friends,
which probably embodies the substance of conversations that really
passed between them.
"Will you always live then in the midst of your books," Lavinia begins,
"and never take any repose, Olympia? Rest awhile, and you will return
with renewed vigour to your favourite studies."
"Would to Heaven, my friend," says Olympia, after some few words on
her devotion to her study,—"Would to Heaven that I had not been so
long plunged in oblivion of the only truths worthy of occupying our
thoughts. I fancied myself learned, because I read the books of worldly
philosophers, and intoxicated myself with the poison of their writings.
But just when I was most puffed up with the praises of men, I made
the discovery of my profound ignorance. I had wandered so far from
the truth, as to imagine the universe to be the production of chance,
without governance and without God."...
[Sidenote: DIALOGUE WITH LAVINIA.]
"But Italy," rejoins Lavinia, "had before this rung with the fame of
your piety and your virtues."
"It is true;" answers her friend; "and perhaps this fame may have
reached you—
"'Audieras et fama fuit;'
but if men only knew how to estimate at their just worth the flattery
addressed to princes and those around them, they would have judged me
less favourably. You at least, my friend, must know how far I then was
from having any sentiments of true piety."
Lavinia answers, that even so she cannot help admiring the constancy
with which Olympia had devoted to the acquisition of learning those
long hours which others employ "in adorning themselves, in arranging
their hair, and in running after vain pleasures. What especially
surprises me is, that you could remain faithful to those studies in the
years of your youth, in spite of the raillery of the men and girls, who
were always dinning into your ears that life had something else to do,
and that husbands would look more after what you possessed than what
you knew."
"It is the Lord who willed it so!" returns Olympia; and at this point
the dialogue, which it must be admitted has been composed by our Muse
in a rather egotistic tone, passes off into a kind of rhapsody, in
which the writer sets forth the vanity of earthly things, and the
inestimable price of heavenly wisdom.
Meanwhile Grünthler had been but very partially successful in the
objects of his journey. Germany was in no condition to offer, in any
part of it, a desirable home to a peaceful student and his wife. True,
that in many of its cities the profession of the reformed faith was a
recommendation instead of a sure title to the honours of martyrdom.
True, that the new theology had there acquired a respectability
of standing, that enabled it to enjoy a share occasionally of the
ecclesiastical luxury of persecuting its opponents. But the country was
distracted by war or rumours of war on all sides;—war of a different
kind, and productive of very different national results from the
miserable mercenary contests, which ruined Italy, and only prepared
the way for the slavery and degradation of the nation. For the gist
of the German fighting, however confused, barbarous, and devastating,
was to be found in the determination of men to resist authority and
oppression, to have souls of their own, and to say they were their own.
Though the division of the country into two camps by their religious
differences enabled princes to play off one part of the people against
another in the interests of their own rivalries and ambitions, yet the
contests were mostly made to wear the appearance of struggles for the
securing of spiritual or civil freedom. And all the misery brought
about by them was not therefore unfruitful of good. Though the points
in dispute between the rival creeds were often nugatory, though the
better sense was not invariably on the side of the reformers, and
though good men lamented that Church reform had quitted its proper
sphere and duties, when it allied itself with worldly policy and
descended from the pulpit into the camp and the battle field, yet even
so, and even then, the Reformation was preparing the great career which
it has run, and that still before it, from which no man can ever more
turn it back.
[Sidenote: THE INTERIM.]
Charles the Fifth was just then busy in imposing his "Interim" on the
German cities. The great council at Trent, which was to "heal the
wounds of Christendom," made but small progress in that business;
manifested, indeed, a fertility of resource in the discovery of
means how not to do any thing of the sort, perfectly marvellous. And
Charles, who was perfectly earnest in wishing that these wounds should
be healed, or at all events closed up in some sort, for reasons of
his own, very much of the nature of those which make a coachman wish
that his team may be coupled up, so as to draw well together, became
impatient. It struck his royal mind, that the thing must be easy enough
if one only went about it in a simple straightforward manner. So he
ordered three divines,—Julius Pflug and Helding, on the Catholic side,
and one Agricola, a "practical" man, inclined, when he got his cue,
to make things pleasant, on the Protestant side,—to draw up a scheme
of a good working religion, such as all men might accept without
objection,—or despite objection, if it came to that; and to be quick
about it. On the 15th of May, 1548, his Majesty was gracious enough
to lay the scheme so drawn before the diet; whereupon the Elector of
Mentz declared it to be as good a religion as any man need wish for;
and being an Archbishop, it was clear that he must know. And this was
the celebrated Interim; so named because it professed only to be a
provisional faith, for men to live and die—and pay their taxes—by, till
such time as what they really were definitively to believe could be got
settled for them in a more regular and formal manner.
The indignation and disgust felt at Rome by the regular practitioners
at such quack–Pope practice as this, may be easily imagined. The
regular–bred Pope examined his rivals' prescription, and found, as we
hear without surprise, "seven or eight heresies in it,"[89] all clear
and evident like so many false quantities in a school–boy's verse task.
Evidently a most unworkmanlike production!
As to the Protestant cities of Germany, they found the Interim religion
to be flat Popery. And the royal quack–Pope had to adopt the orthodox
practice in administering it. Augsburg, Ulm, Strasburg, Bremen, Lubeck,
Hamburg, Magdeburg, Constance, and many other towns would have none
of it. And Spanish soldiers had to be employed, with more or less
success in different places, in recommending it to their favourable
consideration. At Augsburg, Charles placed bodies of these troops at
the different gates, and in other commanding positions of the town,
then called the members of the municipal government to the town–hall,
dismissed them all from their functions, abolished "motu proprio" the
entire form of municipal government, and nominated a few creatures of
his own to govern the city, each man of whom had sworn to receive and
observe the Interim. Ulm he converted much in the same manner, sending
off in chains the Protestant preachers. The stout Magdeburgers shut
their gates, manned their walls, and stood a siege against the imperial
troops and the Interim. For a lay Pope's essay at persecution this was
zealous and energetic enough, though falling far short of the true
ecclesiastical practice of Inquisition, stake, and faggot.
[Sidenote: ROYAL VIEWS OF HUMAN NATURE.]
It might be supposed that Charles would have been too sagacious a man
to have imagined that any successful issue could have come of this
Interim scheme of his. It seems hardly a thing to have been hoped,
that Germany had gone through all the sufferings and sorrows, spiritual
and temporal, incidental to a national change of religion, and kicked
off the authority of a real Pope, venerable with the prestige of
fifteen centuries, to submit quietly to a new quack Pope, whose whole
theological apparatus consisted of men–at–arms and gunpowder. If men
were to submit to an imposed creed, it was better to take one without
seven or eight heresies in it. No very profound knowledge of the human
heart, one would think, were needed to enable a sagacious ruler of men
to anticipate failure for such a plan; and Charles has the reputation
of having been such. But it strikes one, in considering this and a
hundred other similar mistakes by the Louis XIVths. and other great
masters of kingcraft, as doubtful how far it is practicable for such
personages to attain to any knowledge of the plebeian human heart.
Of the hearts of princes, ministers of state, popes, cardinals,
diplomatists, ambassadors, and such,—though hearts are not generally
supposed to be worn on embroidered sleeves,—a royal craftsman practised
in the business may know a thing or two; may, perhaps, if acute, obtain
some uncertain notion of the hearts of gentlemen–ushers, ladies of
honour, grand chamberlains, and other such samples of mankind: but it
would seem as if such knowledge were rather calculated to lead a royal
philosopher astray in dealing with humanity outside the palace gates.
The mistake into which the sagacious Charles was thus led in the matter
of the Interim, was causing throughout Germany the uncomfortable state
of confusion that has been described when poor Andreas Grünthler,
flying from persecution in Italy, came to seek for a home and the
means of supporting a wife in his native land.
The search, as we have seen, became prolonged, to Olympia's great
distress, far beyond what the young couple had calculated on.
Grünthler's profession, indeed, was one which the misrule of monarchs
has no tendency to render superfluous. On the contrary, he had
soon occasion to find that it provided him with work in more than
abundance. But then, as still, in Germany, the professional chairs
in the Universities afforded the most reliable prospect of bread,
with some small modicum of butter, to a studious and married man.
Grünthler's education and talents well fitted him to teach, and that
was his ambition. But town councillors turned violently out of their
offices, or in daily dread of being so, and burghers in distress,
consternation, and hot debate, between temporal and spiritual ruin,
had scant attention to give to such matter. Besides, the lecture–rooms
were empty, the students dispersed to their own homes, as the most
necessary place for a man in critical and perilous times, or joining in
resistance against the oppression that weighed on the country.
Andreas Grünthler could hear of no such position as he had hoped to
find anywhere. Still he had friends who were influential, and much
interested in his and his wife's fortunes. John Sinapi was now settled
at Würzburg and his brother Chilian at Spire; and both were eager to
assist their Ferrara friends in their projects. Hubert Thomas, of
Liège, secretary to the Count Palatine, was also their firm friend. But
a recommendation to George Hermann, of Augsburg, councillor to the King
of the Romans, which had been obtained for Grünthler by Lavinia della
Rovere from her brother–in–law Camillo Orsini, turned out the most
immediately valuable. In the impossibility of finding any permanent
appointment of the kind desired, this truly friendly man begged the
almost despairing professor to bring his wife in the first instance to
his house at Augsburg, there to wait till they should be able to see
their path in some degree before them.
[Sidenote: FAREWELL!]
The proposal opened a harbour of refuge when all the trouble–tossed
world seemed to refuse them a resting–place. So poor Andreas hurried
back across the Alps to his pining mate, overjoyed to be able to bring
her some better tidings than his previous disappointments had enabled
him to write to her.
It was decided that they should start from Ferrara for the promised
land of free consciences and true religion in the early summer of
1551. How constantly had Olympia been sighing during the months of
her solitary life at Ferrara for the coming of this hour! Yet now
that it was come, this departure was found to be a very sad business,
not to be accomplished without many a wrench of affections rooted in
the core of the heart. To leave a mother and three sisters, never in
all human probability to be seen again on this side of the grave, was
a hard task; and Olympia knew well that such was their parting. In
a letter written not long afterwards to Celio Curione at Bâle, she
expresses her conviction that she shall never again return to Italy,
"where Antichrist is raging with such power."[90] She would rather
indeed, she says, seek a refuge in the furthest and most inclement
north than re–cross the Alps. Yet that first quitting Italy—bright,
sunny, native Italy—and Ferrara, where she had known so much both of
happiness and misery—"Ferrara my ungrateful country," as she calls
it in another letter[91]—was a bitter moment. That crossing of the
mountains had, in those days of little travelling and roads dangerous
in all ways, something more alarming to the ideas of an Italian girl
than any possible migration on earth's surface could now suggest to the
most inexperienced traveller. She writes to worthy George Hermann,[92]
when there was a question of some distant appointment for Grünthler,
that having followed her husband across the Alps, she could have no
difficulty in crossing Caucasus—"inhospitalem Caucasum," in true
classic phrase—or accompany him to the uttermost ends of the earth,
if it were needed. "Omni solum forti patria est!" she adds. But the
greatest trial to her fortitude was the first step beyond the marshy
plains around persecuting, ungrateful Ferrara.
Painful partings are always most painful to those who are left behind.
The necessity of action, and the excitement of going forth to meet
new scenes and new fortunes, brace the nerves and give diversion to
the grief of those who are to depart; and Olympia was not leaving him
who was of all the world dearest to her. But what must the parting
have been to the poor mother! Her old friend and former guest, Celio
Curione, writing to her several years afterwards, recurs to the sorrows
of that time. "The pangs of that departure," he says, "must have been
even as the pangs of death when you felt that probably in this life
you would never see her again. And truly you might well feel that the
separation of death was not very different from that caused by so great
a distance."
[Sidenote: THE JOURNEY.]
In fact, the poor mother never did again see her Olympia. And she
was soon after left in entire solitude at Ferrara, in consequence of
what she was bound to consider the good fortune of each of her three
remaining daughters finding honourable positions. Lavinia della Rovere
took one of them with her to Rome. Another was attached to the Lady
Helena Rangona de Bentivoglio; and the third to that lady's daughter,
who was married at Milan. This last, as we learn from a letter from
Olympia to Curione, became the wife of a young man of that city, "an
only son, very well off in the world, who asked no dower with her."
With them, it would seem, the mother found at last a happier home than
she had known since she became a widow.
Worthy Andreas Grünthler took his young brother–in–law Emilio, then
eight years old, with him and his wife into Germany.
At length the last words were said, and the little party turned their
faces towards the mountains, and began their journey by the pass of
the Brenner. There were more points than one in their route which
might have been dangerous to them. At Trent the Council was sitting;
and all travellers through a city so occupied were likely enough to
be subjected to questionings that might lead known fugitives from
religious persecution into trouble. At Innspruck the imperial army was
quartered, which was not calculated to make the passage through it
agreeable or safe to such wayfarers as our friends.
"The beauty of the season, and the magnificence of the scenery that
discovered itself at each step to the eyes of the travellers," says
Olympia's French[93] biographer, "without doubt distracted them from
the sad thoughts that assailed them on their way to exile."
But it is to be feared that this is an anachronism. The snow–capped
mountains, the pine–clad valleys, the precipices, the tumbling waters,
and the craggy peaks, were all there then as picturesque–hunting
tourists find them now. But men, Italians especially, did not admire
such things in the fifteenth century. They only saw "inhospitalem
Caucasum" in such scenes. And to our little party it was Caucasus
infested with ravening bishops and their officials, with men–at–arms
and camp–followers. Under which circumstances it is to be feared that
they took small comfort from any appreciation of the picturesque.
But the mountains and all their dangers were happily passed, and the
hospitable roof of warm–hearted George Hermann in the good city of
Augsburg safely reached by the three travellers about the middle of the
year 1551.