Part 5

A certain Toko, attached for some time to the service of the king, had excited the jealousy of his companions in arms by his valour and his exploits. One day, during a banquet, Toko boasted that with the first flight of his arrow he would bring down from a distance an apple placed on the end of a staff. His curious companions related the circumstance to the king, adding to it remarks insulting to himself. Harold, whose wicked disposition was irritated by the discourse of his flatterers, ordered Toko to perform what he had boasted himself capable of doing, taking for a mark an apple placed on the head of his child. He added, that if he did not succeed on the first attempt, his vanity should cost him his life. The imminence of the danger strengthened the courage of Toko. After placing his child, the intrepid warrior impressed upon him the necessity of remaining motionless when he should hear the hissing of the arrow; and, having taken the measures dictated by prudence, he made him turn his head aside, lest he should be frightened at the sight of the weapon his father was aiming at him. Then Toko took three arrows, fixed one in his bow, and hit the apple at the first trial. The king asking Toko what he had intended to do with the two remaining arrows, the archer replied: “If my arm had failed me, the second arrow should have pierced thy heart, and the third, that of the first audacious man who dared to advance a step.” The king, concealing his resentment, subjected Toko to other trials, and he, cursing Harold, sought out Svend, the son of Harold, who was arming to make war against his father. One day, having surprised the king behind a bush, he revenged himself for all the outrages he had endured, by letting fly at him an arrow which inflicted a mortal wound.

Olaüs Magnus also relates this story, which is not surprising, seeing that he has sometimes copied word for word from _Saxo Grammaticus_. He confesses, moreover, that he has borrowed from his predecessor.

ADVENTURES OF EGIL.

If from Scandinavia we pass into Iceland, we there find the legend of the apple transmitted to us by the Vilkina-Saga, in the 14th century.

Once upon a time, Egil, the brother of Veland the smith, came to the court of king Nidung. Egil excelled in the art of handling the bow and the crossbow. His address excited admiration throughout the country. The king Nidung gave Egil a good reception, and put his skill more than once to the proof. After having exhausted all the resources of his imagination, he took it into his head to have an apple placed upon the head of the son of Egil. “From where thou standest,” said he to the archer, “thou must shoot down this apple.” Egil took an arrow from his quiver, tried its point, and laid it by his side. He then took a second arrow, rested it on the string of his bow, took aim, and struck the apple in such a manner that the arrow and the apple both fell to the ground. This trial of skill still lives in the memory of the people. King Nidung then asked Egil why he had taken two arrows, since he had been ordered to hit the apple at one trial. “Sire,” replied Egil, “I will tell you the truth, whatever may be the consequence. This arrow was destined for you, if I had wounded my son.” The king admired the frankness of this reply, and was not offended by it, acknowledging the cruelty of the order he had given.

All the spectators agreed that it was the speech of a worthy and brave man.

ADVENTURE OF WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLY.

The large forests of England were for many years formidable to the Normans. They were inhabited by the last remnants of the Saxon armies, who still disputing the conquest, persisted in leading a life opposed to the laws of the invader. Every where driven out, pursued, hunted like wild beasts, they here, favoured by the shelter of the forests, had been able to maintain themselves in force, under a sort of military organisation.

Among the chief outlaws, Adam Bel, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesly, were not the least celebrated. Bound together by the same destiny, they had taken an oath of fraternity, as was customary in the 12th century. Adam and Clym were not married, but William had a wife and three children, whom he had left at Carlisle. One day he resolved to visit them. He set off in spite of the counsels of his companions, and arrived at night in the city: but being recognised by an old woman, he was denounced to the magistrate, his house was surrounded, he was made prisoner, and a gallows was erected in the market-place on which to hang him. A young swine-herd informed Adam and Clym of the fate of their brother in arms. The sentence was about to be executed, when the two friends of the condemned man appeared in the market-place, and a sanguinary combat ensued, which terminated in the delivery of the prisoner. The three outlaws, however, worn out at length with their wandering life, decided upon making their submission. They arrived in London with the eldest son of William of Cloudesly, entered the king’s palace without uttering a word to any one, proceeded into the hall, and, kneeling on one knee, raised their hands and said. “Sire, deign to pardon us.” “What are your names?” demanded the king. “Adam Bel, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesly.” “Ah, you are then those brigands of whom I have heard? I swear to God, you shall all three be hung!” They were immediately arrested by the king’s order; but the queen, moved by the unhappy fate of these three men who had voluntarily surrendered themselves, interceded for them and obtained their pardon, but on condition that they should be victorious in a shooting match with the king’s archers.

Two branches of a hazel tree were fixed in the ground in a field at a distance of twenty times twenty paces. None of the king’s men at arms could hit this mark. “I will try,” said William, and he bent his bow and took so true an aim that the arrow split the branch. “Thou art the best archer that I have seen in the whole course of my life,” said the astonished king. “To please my sovereign lord,” said William, “I would do something still more surprising. I have a son of the age of seven years: I love this son with an extreme tenderness: I will attach him to a post in the presence of every one, I will place an apple upon his head, and at the distance of a hundred and twenty paces I will pierce the apple without wounding the child.” “I take thee at thy word,” said the king; “but if thou failest, thou shalt be hung.” “What I have promised,” said William, “I will perform.” He fixed a stake in the ground, fastened his son to it, and, having made him turn away his head, placed the apple upon it. After taking these precautions, William went to a distance of a hundred and twenty paces, bent his bow, besought all present to keep strict silence, and let fly the arrow, which pierced the apple without touching the child. “God preserve me from ever serving as an aim to thee!” exclaimed the king. The skilful archer, his brethren in arms, and his wife and children, were conducted to the court, where the king and queen loaded them with favours.

This trial of skill of William of Cloudesly still dwells in the memory of the people. Several English poets make mention of the fact, and the old English ballad has furnished Sir Walter Scott with many particulars of the scene of the archery meeting in Ivanhoe.

Let us here conclude, only making the remark, that at the end of the _Recherches critiques sur l’histoire de Guillaume Tell_, by J. J. Hisely, this author has quoted the documents, so called authentic, which the supporters of this story have published; and he has also made mention of the chapel built on the Lake of Lucerne, to the memory it is said, of William Tell.

Hisely also shows that none of these alleged proofs stand the test of strict examination, and that some of the documents are even forgeries.

PETRARCH AND LAURA.

A. D. 1325.

Petrarch was born at Arezzo in 1304. His father Petracco sent his son at an early age to study law at Bologna, but an irresistible passion for poetry, which soon shewed itself, led him to neglect more profitable studies for the works of the poets and philosophers of antiquity. At 22 years of age Francesco di Petracco (for such was his name) had lost both father and mother, and was left without the means of subsistence. He took up his abode with his brother Gherardo at Avignon, the last residence of his father, and instead of striving to increase their very small income by entering upon some lucrative profession, Francesco spent his whole time in reading Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and _tutti quanti_.

One morning early, as Petrarca (the name he had now adopted, probably out of vanity) entered the church of the nuns of Santa Clara, he was struck, say his biographers, by the dazzling beauty of a young girl, by the sweet expression of her face, the grace of her form, and the tastefulness of her costume.

Her eyes were blue, say some; they were black, say others; and the reader will see presently that this is not the only point on which opinions differed. This beauty was Laura, or Loretta de Noves, or de Sade, or Desbaux; for there is great uncertainty even regarding her name. Petrarca, we are told, took her for his ideal. He may really have been in love with her, or he may only have conformed to the fashion of those days, when poets were in the habit of selecting some imaginary object for their devotion and adoring it in a poetical sense. Thus was it with Cavalcanti, Montemagno and Cino da Pistoja, whose Mandetta, Lauretta, and Selvaggia were only poetical fictions and so was it in fact with Dante himself, whose Beatrice was a child who died at nine years of age. Thomas Keightley, in his _Tales and Popular Fictions_, and other English authors, adopt the latter sceptical opinion. “I confess,” says Keightley, “that I am not indisposed to regard the Beatrice of Dante, the Laura of Petrarca, the Fiammetta of Boccacio, and all those ladies with significant names, who were all first seen in passion week, and whose lovers all survived them, as being more the creatures of air and of romance than of real flesh and blood.”

Petrarca, at the time we speak of, was twenty-three years of age; and, after composing a great number of sonnets to his lady-love, he left Avignon, went to Paris, and travelled through France, Flanders, Brabant and Germany. It has been remarked as a strange coincidence, that during his absence he wrote only four letters to Avignon, and but one to Laura. Ginguené, in his _Literary History of Italy_, has collected from the works of Petrarca a few stray sentences on his mistress, but the poet gives no particulars of her life, and, neither in his Italian nor in his Latin compositions, does he speak of the family of his beloved, although she is almost the sole subject of his songs.

It is not then to be wondered at if his later biographers are left in the dark about Laura, notwithstanding that contemporary authors must have been acquainted both with the lover and with his mistress.

Baldelli, a very partial commentator on Petrarca, is obliged to confess that the poet was by no means faithful to his divinity; but that another, whom he loved after a less ideal fashion, presented him with a daughter, who afterwards became the consolation of his old age. “_Francesco nei passati falli ricadde, e dal suo commercio con femina impura ebbe una figlia appellata Francesca che fu poscia tenera compagna e fedel sostegno di sua vecchiezza. La madre fu rapita da morte dopo la nascita di Francesca, con grand dolore di Petrarca._”

The Abbé de Sade, in his learned researches upon Laura, shows, that besides this daughter, the poet had a son named Giovanno. This young man was legitimatised by Pope Clement VI. in 1348; and in the papal brief he is mentioned as the son of unmarried parents: _De soluto et solutâ_.

Baldelli believes that both children were by the same mother. Francesco Petrarca, who is characterised by Voltaire as a genius eminent for his constant repetition of the same thing, died in 1374, aged seventy.

Nearly a century after his death, in 1471, an anonymous author, in a _Vita di Francesco Petrarca_, pretended that Pope Urbanus V., with whom the poet was an especial favourite, wished to give him Laura in marriage, but that Petrarca declined, saying that the fountain from which he drew his amorous inspiration for the composition of his sonnets, would fail him entirely were he to be united to the object of this love: “_E quantunque gli_ _volse essere data per donna, ad instanza di Papa Urbano quinto, il quale lui singularmente amava, concedendogli di tener colla donna i beneficii insieme, nol volse mai consentire, dicendo che il frutto che prendea dell’ amore, a scrivere, di poi che la cosa amata consequito avesse, tutto si perderia._”

Notwithstanding the improbability of this confession, seeing that Pope Urbanus did not mount the pontifical throne until after the death of Laura, we may still infer from it that in the first years of the 15th century a very exalted opinion was not entertained of the sincerity of Petrarca’s passion. The mention of all these circumstances, no doubt instigated Tomasini, who was the most devoted of Petrarch’s biographers, and who looked upon the poet almost as a saint, to adduce a reason for his remaining unmarried to the end of his life. “He believed,” says he, “that marriage would extinguish his love.” “_Censebat nempè isto nexu amoris puritatem obfuscatam iri, neque cultum animi ita fore constantem, juxta illud Tibulli: Semper in absentes felicior æstus amantis._”

In 1539 Squarciafico and Nicolò Franco attacked with much humour the morals and the life of Laura’s adorer. Ercole Giannini followed in the same vein; and the circumstances we have already mentioned tend to prove, that although Petrarca may have been a great poet, a great politician, a savant, and a prolific writer, there is more than one reason for believing that he was not altogether the Platonic lover some have represented him to be.

With regard to Laura all is doubt, obscurity, and hypothesis. The traces left of her were so faint, even in the century in which she lived, that Baldelli says that doubts were even entertained of her existence. “_Tanto s’oscurò la sua memoria, che nei due secoli in cui l’Italia negli enti allegorici e di ragione, andava smarrita, alcuni dubitarono della esistenza di lui._” (See _Petrarca e sue opere_.)

The Abbé de Sade, in his memoirs on the life of this poet, says also, that in Italy the beautiful Laura was supposed to be an allegorical personage.

The endeavours made by Alexandre Vellutello and others to establish her existence, led to no positive results; for in the certificated of birth from the years 1307 to 1324, the name of Laura, although frequently met with, can never in any one instance be applied to Petrarca’s mistress.

Vellutello tries to make her out the daughter of Henri Chiabau, a seigneur of Cabrières, Monsieur de Bimard in his _Mémoires_, pretends that her father was Raybau de Raimond; the Abbé Castaing, of Avignon, published in 1819 a new view, and maintained that Petrarca’s divinity was a certain Laura Des Beaux, and that his devotion to her was purely Platonic. The Abbé de Sade tries to prove that she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves.

Some assert that Laura never married, and died a virgin: according to others she was married at fourteen years of age to Hugues de Sade, a nobleman hard to please and given to jealousy, and that she bore him eleven children, nine of whom survived their mother.

If, on the one hand, Laura has been considered a myth, many writers, on the other hand, say that she was far from insensible to the passion of Petrarca. Her reputation is lightly treated in a manuscript written by Luigi Peruzsi, of which Mr. Bruce-Whyte has made use in his _Histoire des Langues Romanes_. This view of her character gave rise to a very interesting article in a newspaper of Vaucluse entitled: “_L’Écho de Vaucluse_,” of the 11th September 1842. We can nowhere find any authentic testimony nor any decisive evidence wherewith to dissipate doubts or to confirm assertions on this subject.

There are three portraits of Laura extant all of which differ materially in features and in costume. In 1339, Simon of Sienna, who was employed to decorate the episcopal palace at Avignon, is said to have painted Laura’s portrait, and to have presented it to Petrarca, with whom he was intimate.

Richard de Sade brought another portrait from Avignon to Rome, and gave it to Cardinal Barberini. It has no resemblance whatever to the first. The third is in a manuscript at Florence.

Marsand in a special dissertation on these portraits, rejects the two first and only admits the latter, engraved by the celebrated Morghen. Here again we are met by doubt and obscurity.

In the French Imperial Library, there are two manuscripts of the 15th century containing a Latin treatise by Petrarca: _De contemptu Mundi_, which apparently affirms that Laura was the mother of several children, as above stated. In this treatise we read that she gradually approaches her end, and that her lovely form has suffered much from her frequent confinements: “_Morbis ac crebris partubus exhaustum, multum pristini vigoris amisit corpus illud egregium._”

In the work of Olivier Vitalis, published in Paris in 1842, which contains researches into almost every opinion concerning Laura and Petrarca, that of her marriage is rejected: “_Des couches fréquentes_,” says the author, “_des chagrins domestiques peuvent convenir et s’appliquer à la Laure de De Sade, mais non à la Laure célébrée par Pétrarque, qui mourut dans le célibat_.”

Several Italian authors declare on the other hand that the objection against Laura’s celibacy is made by Petrarch himself, who, in his Latin Dialogue with St. Augustin, frequently makes use of the word _mulier_, in speaking of her. The dictionary of Vanieri, and others, tell us that: “_Fæmina propriè sexum significat, mulier quæ virgo non est._”

Unfortunately, our poet, in all matters appertaining to his mistress, has intentionally, or by chance, only very vaguely mentioned, by allusions, or by figures of speech, dates or circumstances bearing reference to her. Besides the striking difference that exists on many points in the manuscripts which have served as foundations for the various editions of Petrarca, it must be confessed that nowhere have primary and incontrovertible facts been produced on which to ground a true and faithful biography of Laura.

It is stated that an allusion to Laura’s death, and burial at Avignon, is to be found in a manuscript Virgil which belonged to Petrarca, and which is preserved in the _Bibliotheca Ambrosiana_ at Milan; but learned critics, among whom we may name Alexander Tassoni, one of the most reliable authors of Italy, A. Vellutello, and others, consider this note as very apocryphal, and even as a forgery: for the writing has never been proved to be that of the poet, and moreover this memorandum is in open contradiction with the sonnets of Petrarca written on the spot where the lovers first met.

It was not until towards the beginning of the 16th century that the desire sprang up among the Italians to know who the Laura really was, that had been the theme of song for twenty years. Alexander Vellutello made two journeys to Avignon for the express purpose of collecting information regarding her, and from that time innumerable discussions arose from all quarters. Tomasini, Maria Suarez, G. Ferrari, F. Orsino, Muratori, &c., on the one side, and Vellutello, Gesualdo, Tassoni, le Bastie, &c. on the other. But they were all staggered by a remark made by Giacomo Colonna, Bishop of Lombez, with whom Petrarca lived for some time, and who consequently must have known him intimately. The bishop writes: “Your Laura is only a phantom of your imagination on whom you exercise your muse. _Un nome imaginario di Laura per avere un oggetto di cui ragionare._”

Amid such a multiplicity of conflicting opinions where can reliance be placed!

In 1529, one hundred and eighty years after the death of Laura, a pretended discovery of her tomb was made at Avignon; but Olivier Vitalis[31] proves the utter fallacy of this discovery, and shows the absurdity of the explanation given in support of it. This tomb is almost universally acknowledged to have been devoid, both inside and out, of any trace of the name of the defunct, or any date of her decease. The tomb itself was destroyed in the French revolution, and at the present day no vestige of it remains.

We see then that this enigmatical Laura has made far more noise in the world during the last four or five centuries, than she ever did in her own time. Perhaps contemporary writers were well aware, as some have asserted, that Petrarch’s sonnets were mere poetical fictions as far as Laura was concerned. Had it been otherwise, more would surely have transpired about her during her lifetime. But on the contrary, her existence is even now thought to be so problematical, that the author of the article on _Laura_, in Didot’s _Biographie Générale_, refrains from giving an opinion on the question.

EXECUTION OF JEANNE D’ARC.

A. D. 1431.

History relates that Jeanne d’Arc was led to the stake the last day but one of May 1431, and burnt alive by a slow fire, and her bones and ashes thrown into the Seine.

When, in the 15th and 16th centuries, the memory of Jeanne d’Arc revived in the minds of historians, the subject invariably served as a theme for controversy and discussion. It is well known that Charles VII., to reward the bravery of this exalted heroine, bestowed letters of nobility upon her brothers and their descendants. Documents discovered by the learned Père Vignier have led to the supposition that Jeanne d’Arc subsequently married, and was not therefore burnt at Rouen, as is commonly believed, but that some other poor unknown creature was sacrificed in her stead. This opinion, which sounds paradoxical, is nevertheless supported by weighty evidence.