Chapter 17

_Filippo._ He inquired of me whether I often thought of those I loved in Italy, and whether I could bring them before my eyes at will. To remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always could, and that one beautiful object occupied all the cells of my brain by night and day. He paused and pondered, and then said, 'Thou dost not love deeply.' I thought I had given the true signs. 'No, Lippi! we who love ardently, we, with all our wishes, all the efforts of our souls, cannot bring before us the features which, while they were present, we thought it impossible we ever could forget. Alas! when we most love the absent, when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her image back to us. The troubled heart shakes and confounds it, even as ruffled waters do with shadows. Hateful things are more hateful when they haunt our sleep: the lovely flee away, or are changed into less lovely.'

_Eugenius._ What figures now have these unbelievers?

_Filippo._ Various in their combinations as the letters or the numerals; but they all, like these, signify something. Almeida (did I not inform your Holiness?) has large hazel eyes....

_Eugenius._ Has she? thou never toldest me that. Well, well! and what else has she? Mind! be cautious! use decent terms.

_Filippo._ Somewhat pouting lips.

_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! What did they pout at?

_Filippo._ And she is rather plump than otherwise.

_Eugenius._ No harm in that.

_Filippo._ And moreover is cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine gathered before sunrise.

_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! do not remind me of nectarines. I am very fond of them; and this is not the season! Such females as thou describest are said to be among the likeliest to give reasonable cause for suspicion. I would not judge harshly, I would not think uncharitably; but, unhappily, being at so great a distance from spiritual aid, peradventure a desire, a suggestion, an inkling ... ay? If she, the lost Almeida, came before thee when her master was absent ... which I trust she never did.... But those flowers and shrubs and odours and alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold, perplex, and entangle, two incautious young persons ... ay?

_Filippo._ I confessed all I had to confess in this matter the evening I landed.

_Eugenius._ Ho! I am no candidate for a seat at the rehearsal of confessions: but perhaps my absolution might be somewhat more pleasing and unconditional. Well! well! since I am unworthy of such confidence, go about thy business ... paint! paint!

_Filippo._ Am I so unfortunate as to have offended your Beatitude?

_Eugenius._ Offend _me_, man! who offends _me_? I took an interest in thy adventures, and was concerned lest thou mightest have sinned; for by my soul! Filippo! those are the women that the devil hath set his mark on.

_Filippo._ It would do your Holiness's heart good to rub it out again, wherever he may have had the cunning to make it.

_Eugenius._ Deep! deep!

_Filippo._ Yet it may be got at; she being a Biscayan by birth, as she told me, and not only baptized, but going by sea along the coast for confirmation, when she was captured.

_Eugenius._ Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this tender young thing devoted! Poor soul!

_Filippo._ I sigh for her myself when I think of her.

_Eugenius._ Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the thought recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power to examine her myself on her condition. What thinkest thou? Speak.

_Filippo._ Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.

_Eugenius._ So lost!

_Filippo._ She declared to me she thought she should have died, from the instant she was captured until she was comforted by Abdul: but that she was quite sure she should if she were ransomed.

_Eugenius._ Has the wretch then shaken her faith?

_Filippo._ The very last thing he would think of doing. Never did I see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in the laughing, light-hearted Almeida.

_Eugenius._ Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world and in the next.

_Filippo._ What could she do? how could she help herself?

_Eugenius._ She might have torn his eyes out, and have died a martyr.

_Filippo._ Or have been bastinadoed, whipped, and given up to the cooks and scullions for it.

_Eugenius._ Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the indignities it endures.

_Filippo._ Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in our Tuscany who would jump at the crown over those sloughs and briers, rather than perish without them: she never sighs after the like.

_Eugenius._ Nevertheless, what must she witness! what abominations! what superstitions!

_Filippo._ Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superstition than ablutions.

_Eugenius._ Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture to affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the unbeliever. For the washing of the feet indeed we have the authority of the earlier Christians; and it may be done; but solemnly and sparingly. Thy residence among the Mahomedans, I am afraid, hath rendered thee more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, and thy mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.

_Filippo._ While I continued in that country, although I was well treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends in Florence, of music, of painting, of our villeggiatura at the vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino, with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together ambiguously; or amid the grey quarries, or under the majestic walls of modern Fiesole; or down in the woods of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a girth that, when a youth stands against one of them, and a maiden stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands at the time do little more than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which heaven smiles eternally, how often has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this country can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and serener stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the blessing of climate; and although I do not desire to be there again, I feel sometimes a kind of regret at leaving it. A bell warbles the more mellifluously in the air when the sound of the stroke is over, and when another swims out from underneath it, and pants upon the element that gave it birth. In like manner the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing than the actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the space between. There is in Abdul a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man, excepting a fondness for low company, and an aptitude to shy and start at every spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or before them. Abdul was solitary, but affable: he was proud, but patient and complacent. I ventured once to ask him how the master of so rich a house in the city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such cornfields, of such pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains, should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open sea, the high-road of nations. Instead of answering my question, he asked me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On my reply in the affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions in Spain much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were threatened with ruin and expulsion. 'I do not fight,' said he, 'whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the caprice of two silly, quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in perfectly good humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just when I begin to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own account; not as a hired assassin, or still baser journeyman.'

_Eugenius._ It appears then really that the Infidels have some semblances of magnanimity and generosity?

_Filippo._ I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.

_Eugenius._ Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things, I would fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo, that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.

_Filippo._ I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.

_Eugenius._ Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.

_Filippo._ Alas! 'tis undeniable.

_Eugenius._ I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by _motu proprio_ and rescript to consistory and chancery....

_Filippo._ Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope for salvation, I have but forty left, and thirty-nine would not serve them.

_Eugenius._ Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.

_Filippo._ Man and wife!

_Eugenius._ Moderate thy transport.

_Filippo._ O Holy Father! may I speak?

_Eugenius._ Surely she is not the wife of another?

_Filippo._ No, indeed.

_Eugenius._ Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?

_Filippo._ No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory and chancery are nothing to this fulmination.

_Eugenius._ How so?

_Filippo._ It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and the decimal is the unit.

_Eugenius._ What, then, can I do for thee?

_Filippo._ I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me. I can make her at any time what she is not; I could never make her again what she is.

_Eugenius._ The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must hear it first.

_Filippo._ In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and looking over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward to Pistoja, there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited by the sisters to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.

_Eugenius._ Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.

_Filippo._ But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? 'Twere a pity! There was enough for me; there is never enough for the Madonna. Resolving on a sudden that the object of my love should be the object of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across the maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.

_Eugenius._ In the chapel?

_Filippo._ I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.

_Eugenius._ If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a brush against a Madonna's mouth is worse than a beard against her votary's.

_Filippo._ I thought so too, Holy Father!

_Eugenius._ Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try in due season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray God my son Filippo, to have thee alway in His holy keeping.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called _abbati_.

TASSO AND CORNELIA

_Tasso._ She is dead, Cornelia! she is dead!

_Cornelia._ Torquato! my Torquato! after so many years of separation do I bend once more your beloved head to my embrace?

_Tasso._ She is dead!

_Cornelia._ Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven, so bewilders you?

_Tasso._ Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her.

_Cornelia._ Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out of spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this season of the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent.

_Tasso._ How! What is this?

_Cornelia._ The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of the car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves to one of the oxen. And did you happen to be there at the moment?

_Tasso._ So then the little too can suffer! the ignorant, the indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted, else never would calamity have befallen her.

_Cornelia._ I wish you had not seen the accident.

_Tasso._ I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where I am. The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death!

_Cornelia._ Be calm, be composed, my brother!

_Tasso._ You would not require me to be composed or calm if you comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings.

_Cornelia._ Peace! peace! we know them all.

_Tasso._ Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment, derision, madness.

_Cornelia._ Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these existed, they are past.

_Tasso._ You do think they are sufferings? ay?

_Cornelia._ Too surely.

_Tasso._ No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They would have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as I am! did I complain of them? and while she was left me?

_Cornelia._ My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister's love? Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think, O my brother, how many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to be beloved?

_Tasso._ Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained wood a little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite beautifies! Wet your forefinger with your spittle; stick a broken gold-leaf on the sinciput; clip off a beggar's beard to make it tresses; kiss it; fall down before it; worship it. Are you not irradiated by the light of its countenance? Princes! princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters that costly carrion? Who thinks about it? [_After a pause._] She is dead! She is dead!

_Cornelia._ We have not heard it here.

_Tasso._ At Sorrento you hear nothing but the light surges of the sea, and the sweet sprinkles of the guitar.

_Cornelia._ Suppose the worst to be true.

_Tasso._ Always, always.

_Cornelia._ If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, to love and to lament you, think gratefully, contentedly, devoutly, that her arms had clasped your neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in that long sleep which you have rendered placid, and from which your harmonious voice shall once more awaken her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom had throbbed to yours, often and often, before the organ peal shook the fringes round the catafalque. Is not this much, from one so high, so beautiful?

_Tasso._ Much? yes; for abject me. But I did so love her! so love her!

_Cornelia._ Ah! let the tears flow: she sends you that balm from heaven.

_Tasso._ So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had indeed been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as great as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed on me as much as the German had conferred or could confer on his vassal. No part of my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick to my shroud.

_Cornelia._ Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora was unblameable. Never think ill of her for what you have suffered.

_Tasso._ Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for everything; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me none; it was where she was not that pain was.

_Cornelia._ Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship, there is no reason why the last comer of the two should supersede the first.

_Tasso._ Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I am easily persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown before me. With these you have made my temples throb again. Just heaven! dost thou grant us fairer fields, and wider, for the whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou build us up habitations above the street, above the palace, above the citadel, for the plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid its dues, paid its penalties? Cannot our griefs come first, while we have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks it a misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young man! look at the violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah! but thou must awake!

_Cornelia._ O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a man's heart is sensitive in proportion to its greatness.

_Tasso._ And a woman's?

_Cornelia._ Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other. Comfort thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato!

_Tasso._ Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds me of her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave.

_Cornelia._ Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you, saying to you, as the priests around have been saying to _her_, Blessed soul! rest in peace?

_Tasso._ I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A thousand times has she repeated it, laying her head on my heart to quiet it, simple girl! She told it to rest in peace ... and she went from me! Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, never self-destroyer! the world, with all its weight of miseries, cannot crush thee, cannot keep thee down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings of certain springs, only harden and petrify what they fall on; but mine sank deep into a tender heart, and were its very blood. Never will I believe she has left me utterly. Oftentimes, and long before her departure, I fancied we were in heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it in the broad daylight, when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter. Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes in the intermediate state, in that serenity which breathes about the transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span below the feet of the Immortal.

_Cornelia._ She has not left you; do not disturb her peace by these repinings.

_Tasso._ She will bear with them. Thou knowest not what she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me! Unchanged must ever be the blessed one who has leaned in fond security on the unchangeable. The purifying flame shoots upward, and is the glory that encircles their brows when they meet above.

_Cornelia._ Indulge in these delightful thoughts, my Torquato! and believe that your love is and ought to be imperishable as your glory. Generations of men move forward in endless procession to consecrate and commemorate both. Colour-grinders and gilders, year after year, are bargained with to refresh the crumbling monuments and tarnished decorations of rude, unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that cramp the crown upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my Torquato there will always be one leaf above man's reach, above time's wrath and injury, inscribed with the name of Leonora.

_Tasso._ O Jerusalem! I have not then sung in vain the Holy Sepulchre.

_Cornelia._ After such devotion of your genius, you have undergone too many misfortunes.

_Tasso._ Congratulate the man who has had many, and may have more. I have had, I have, I can have, one only.

_Cornelia._ Life runs not smoothly at all seasons, even with the happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the views widen, and it flows on more equably at the end.

_Tasso._ Have the stars smooth surfaces? No, no; but how they shine!

_Cornelia._ Capable of thoughts so exalted, so far above the earth we dwell on, why suffer any to depress and anguish you?

_Tasso._ Cornelia, Cornelia! the mind has within its temples and porticoes and palaces and towers: the mind has under it, ready for the course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger than the storm; and beside them stand winged chariots, more in number than the Psalmist hath attributed to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again, hath its hundred gates, compared whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and all those hundred gates can genius throw open. But there are some that groan heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God alone can close them.

_Cornelia._ Torquato has thrown open those of His holy temple; Torquato hath stood, another angel, at His tomb; and am I the sister of Torquato? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears run only from my pride and joy! Princes have bestowed knighthood on the worthy and unworthy; thou hast called forth those princes from their ranks, pushing back the arrogant and presumptuous of them like intrusive varlets, and conferring on the bettermost crowns and robes, imperishable and unfading.

_Tasso._ I seem to live back into those days. I feel the helmet on my head; I wave the standard over it: brave men smile upon me; beautiful maidens pull them gently back by the scarf, and will not let them break my slumber, nor undraw the curtain. Corneliolina!...

_Cornelia._ Well, my dear brother! why do you stop so suddenly in the midst of them? They are the pleasantest and best company, and they make you look quite happy and joyous.

_Tasso._ Corneliolina, dost thou remember Bergamo? What city was ever so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for beautiful girls! There is but one class of those: Beauty is above all ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness and bestower of felicity, the queen of heaven.

_Cornelia._ Hush, Torquato, hush! talk not so.

_Tasso._ What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling, are the Brembo and the Serio! What a country the Valtellina! I went back to our father's house, thinking to find thee again, my little sister; thinking to kick away thy ball of yellow silk as thou wast stooping for it, to make thee run after me and beat me. I woke early in the morning; thou wert grown up and gone. Away to Sorrento: I knew the road: a few strides brought me back: here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will walk together, as we used to do, into the cool and quiet caves on the shore; and we will catch the little breezes as they come in and go out again on the backs of the jocund waves.

_Cornelia._ We will indeed to-morrow; but before we set out we must take a few hours' rest, that we may enjoy our ramble the better.

_Tasso._ Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich and avaricious. They have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have built high walls to prohibit the wayfarer from their vineyards.

_Cornelia._ I have a basket of grapes for you in the book-room that overlooks our garden.