Chapter 16

Possibly my shaken nerves were affected by the hideous memories clinging to these unhallowed ruins; possibly also by the oppressive heat of the day.

Sea and sky, indeed, looked in harmony with unnatural sensations; as though some dread burst of passion were gathering intensity under their apparently sluggish calm.

Though the sky overhead was of a sultry blue, yet above the coast-line of Naples, standing out with preternatural distinctness, uncouth, livid clouds straggled chaotically to the upper sky, here and there reaching lank, shadowy films, like gigantic arms, far into the zenith. Flocks of sea-birds were uneasily flying landward; screaming, they wheeled round the sphinx-like rocks, and disappeared by degrees in their red clefts and fissures.

All at once I was startled in my fitful, half-mechanical playing by a piercing scream; this was almost immediately followed by a confused noise of sobs and cries, and a running of people to and fro, which seemed, however, to be approaching nearer. I was just going to hurry to the spot whence the noise proceeded, when some dozen of girls came rushing towards me.

But before I had time to inquire into the cause of their excitement, or to observe them more closely, a gray-haired woman, with a pale, terror-stricken face, seized hold of my hand, crying:

"The Madonna be praised, he has a violin! Hasten, hasten! Follow us or she will die!"

And then the girls, beckoning and gesticulating, laid hold of my arm, my coat, my hand, some pulling, some pushing me along, all jabbering and crying together, and repeating more and more urgently the only words that I could make out--"Musica! Musica!"

But while I stared at them in blank amazement, thinking they must all have lost their wits together, I was unconsciously being dragged and pulled along till we came to a kind of ruined marble staircase, down which they hurried me into something still resembling a spacious chamber; for though the wild fig-tree and cactus pushed their fantastic branches through gaps in the walls, these stood partly upright as yet, discovering in places the dull red glow of weather-stained wall-paintings.

The floor, too, was better preserved than any I had seen; though cracked and in part overrun by ivy, it showed portions of the original white and black tessellated work.

On this floor, with her head pillowed on a shattered capital, lay a prostrate figure without life or motion, and with limbs rigidly extended as in death.

The old woman, throwing herself on her knees before this lifeless figure, loosened the handkerchief round her neck, and then, as though to feel whether life yet lingered, she put her hand on the heart of the unconscious girl, when, suddenly jumping up again, she ran to me, panting:--

"O sir, good sir, play, play for the love of the Madonna!" And the others all echoed as with one voice, "Musica! Musica!"

"Is this a time to make music?" cried I, in angry bewilderment. "The girl seems dying or dead. Run quick for a doctor--or stay, if you will tell me where he lives I will go myself and bring him hither with all speed."

For all answer the gray-haired woman, who was evidently the girl's mother, fell at my feet, and clasping my knees, cried in a voice broken by sobs, "O good sir, kind sir, my girl has been bitten by the tarantula! Nothing in the world can save her but you, if with your playing you can make her rise up and dance!"

Then darting back once more to the girl, who lay as motionless as before, she screamed in shrill despair, "She's getting as cold as ice; the death-damps will be on her if you will not play for my darling."

And all the girls, pointing as with one accord to my violin, chimed in once again, crying more peremptorily than before, "Musica! Musica!"

There was no arguing with these terror-stricken, imploring creatures, so I took the instrument that had been doomed to destruction, to call the seemingly dead to life with it.

What possessed me then I know not: but never before or since did the music thus waken within the strings of its own demoniacal will and leap responsive to my fingers.

Perhaps the charm lay in the devout belief which the listeners had in the efficacy of my playing. They say your fool would cease to be one if nobody believed in his folly.

Well, I played, beginning with an _andante_, at the very first notes of which the seemingly lifeless girl rose to her feet as if by enchantment, and stood there, taller by the head than the ordinary Capri girls her companions, who were breathlessly watching her. So still she stood, that with her shut eyes and face of unearthly pallor she might have been taken for a statue; till, as I slightly quickened the _tempo_, a convulsive tremor passed through her rigid, exquisitely molded limbs, and then with measured gestures of inexpressible grace she began slowly swaying herself to and fro. Softly her eyes unclosed now, and mistily as yet their gaze dwelt upon me. There was intoxication in their fixed stare, and almost involuntarily I struck into an impassioned _allegro_.

No sooner had the _tempo_ changed than a spirit of new life seemingly entered the girl's frame. A smile, transforming her features, wavered over her countenance, kindling fitful lightnings of returning consciousness in her dark, mysterious eyes. Looking about her with an expression of wide-eyed surprise, she eagerly drank in the sounds of the violin; her graceful movements became more and more violent, till she whirled in ever-widening circles round about the roofless palace chamber, athwart which flurried bats swirled noiselessly through the gathering twilight. Hither and thither she glided, no sooner completing the circle in one direction than, snapping her fingers with a passionate cry, she wheeled round in an opposite course, sometimes clapping her hands together and catching up snatches of my own melody, sometimes waving aloft or pressing to her bosom the red kerchief or _mucadore_ she had worn knotted in her hair, which, now unloosened, twined about her ivory-like neck and shoulders in a serpentine coil.

Fear, love, anguish, and pleasure seemed alternately to possess her mobile countenance. Her face indicated violent transitions of passion; her hands appeared as if struggling after articulate expression of their own; her limbs were contorted with emotion: in short, every nerve and fibre in her body seemed to translate the music into movement.

As I looked on, a demon seemed to enter my brain and fingers, hurrying me into a Bacchanalian frenzy of sound; and the faster I played, the more furiously her dizzily gliding feet flashed hither and thither in a bewildering, still-renewing maze, so that from her to me and me to her an electric impulse of rhythmical movement perpetually vibrated to and fro.

Ever and anon the semicircle of eagerly watching girls, sympathetically thrilled by the spectacle, clapped their hands, shouting for joy; and balancing themselves on tiptoe, joined in the headlong dance. And as they glided to and fro, the wild roses and ivy and long tendrils of the vine, flaunting it on the crumbling walls, seemed to wave in unison and dance round the dancing girls.

As I went on playing the never-ending, still-beginning tune, night overtook us, and we should have been in profound obscurity but for continuous brilliant flashes of lightning shooting up from the horizon, like the gleaming lances hurled as from the vanguard of an army of Titans.

In the absorbing interest, however, with which we watched the deliriously whirling figure, unconscious of aught but the music, we took but little note of the lightning. Sometimes, when from some black turreted thunder-cloud, a triple-pronged dart came hissing and crackling to the earth as though launched by the very hand of Jove, I saw thirteen hands suddenly lifted, thirteen fingers instinctively flying from brow to breast making the sign of the cross, and heard thirteen voices mutter as one, "Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio, e dello Spirito Santo."

But the ecstatic dancer paused not nor rested in her incredible exertions; the excited girls alternately told their beads and then joined in the dance again, while the gray-haired mother, kneeling on the marble pediment of what might have been the fragment of a temple of Bacchus, lifted her hands in prayer to a little shrine of the Madonna, placed there, strangely enough, amidst the relics of paganism.

All of a sudden, however, a horrific blaze, emitted from a huge focus of intolerable light, set the whole heavens aflame. As from a fresh-created baleful sun, blue and livid and golden-colored lightnings were shivered from it on all sides; dull, however, in comparison to the central ball, which, bursting instantaneously, bathed the sky, earth, and air in one insufferable glare of phosphorescent light. The deadly blue flame lit up everything with a livid brightness unknown to day.

Walls and faded wall-paintings, limbs of decapitated goddesses gleaming white through the grass and rioting weeds, tottering columns, arches, and vaults, and deserted galleries receding in endless perspective, leaped out lifelike on a background of night and storm.

With piercing shrieks the horrified maidens scattered and fled to the remotest corner of the ruin, where they fell prone on their faces, quivering in a heap. In a voice strangled by fear, the kneeling mother called for protection on the Virgin and all the saints! The violin dropped from my nerveless grasp, and at the self-same moment the beautiful dancer, like one struck by a bullet, tottered and dropped to the ground, where she lay without sense or motion.

At that instant a clap of thunder so awful, so heaven-rending, rattled overhead, so roared and banged and clattered among the clouds, that I thought the shadowy ruin, tottering and rocking with the shock, would come crashing about us and bury us under its remains.

But as the thunder rolled on farther and farther, seemingly rebounding from cloud to cloud, I recovered my self-possession, and in mortal fear rushed to the side of the prostrate girl. I was trembling all over like a coward as I bent down to examine her. Had the lightning struck her when she fell so abruptly to the ground? Had life forever forsaken that magnificent form, those divinest limbs? Would those heavy eyelashes never again be raised from those dazzling eyes? Breathlessly I moved aside the dusky hair covering her like a pall. Breathlessly I placed my hand on her heart; a strange shiver and spark quivered through it to my heart. Yet she was chill as ice and motionless as a stone. "She is dead, she is dead!" I moaned; and the pang for one I had never known exceeded everything I had felt in my life.

"You mistake, signor," some one said close beside me; and on looking up I saw the mother intently gazing down on her senseless child. "My Tolla is not hurt," she cried: "she only fell when you left off playing the tarantella; she will arise as soon as you go on."

Pointing to the lightning still flickering and darting overhead, I cried, "But you are risking your lives for some fantastic whim, some wild superstition of yours. You are mad to brave such a storm! You expose your child to undoubted peril that you may ward off some illusory evil. Let me bear her to the inn, and follow me thither." And I was going to lift the senseless form in my arms when the woman sternly prevented me.

In vain I argued, pleaded, reasoned with her. She only shook her head and cried piteously, "Give her music, for the love of the dear Madonna!" And the girls, who by this time had plucked up courage and gathered round us, echoed as with one voice, "Musica! Musica!"

What was I to do? I could not drag them away by force, and certainly, for aught I knew, she might have been in equal danger from the poison or the storm, wherever we were. As for peril to myself, I cared not. I was in a devil of a mood, and all the pent-up bitter passion of my soul seemed to find a vent and safety-valve in that stupendous commotion of the elements.

So I searched for my instrument on the ground, and now noticed, to my astonishment, that although the storm had swept away from us, the whole ruin was nevertheless brightly illuminated. On looking up I saw the topmost branches of a solitary stone-pine one dazzle of flames. Rising straight on high from a gap in the wall which its roots had shattered, it looked a colossal chandelier on which the lightning had kindled a thousand tapers. There was not a breath of air, not a drop of rain, so that the flames burned clear and steady as under cover of a mighty dome.

By this brilliant light, by which every object, from a human form to a marble acanthus leaf, cast sharp-edged shadows, I soon discovered my violin on a tangle of flowering clematis, and began tuning its strings.

No sooner had I struck into the same lively tune, than the strange being rose again as by magic, and, slowly opening her intoxicating eyes, began swaying herself to and fro with the same graceful gestures and movements that I had already observed.

Thus I played all through the night, long after the rear-guard of the thunder-storm had disappeared below the opposite horizon whence it first arose--played indefatigably on and on like a man possessed, and still, by the torch of the burning pine, I saw the beautiful mænad-like figure whirling to and fro with miraculous endurance. Now and then, through the deep silence, I heard a scarred pine-bough come crackling to the earth; now and then I heard the lowing of the stabled cattle in some distant part of the ruin; once and again, smiting like a cry, I heard one string snapping after another under my pitiless hands.

Still I played on, though a misty quiver of sparks was dancing about my eyes, till the fallow-tinted dawn gleamed faintly in the east.

At last, at last, a change stole over the form and features of the indefatigable dancer. Her companions, overcome with fatigue, had long ago sunk to the ground, where, with their little ruffled heads resting on any bit of marble, they lay sleeping calmly like little children. Only the mother still watched and prayed for her child, the unnatural tension of whose nerves and muscles now seemed visibly to relax; for the mad light of exaltation in her eyes veiled itself in softness, her feet moved more and more slowly, and her arms, which had heretofore been in constant motion, dropped languidly to her side. I too relaxed in my _tempo_, and the thrilling, vivacious tune melted away in a dying strain.

At the expiring notes, when I had but one string left, her tired eyes closed as in gentlest sleep, a smile hovered about her lips, her head sank heavily forward on her bosom, and she would have fallen had not her mother received the swooning form into her outstretched arms.

At the same moment my last string snapped, a swarming darkness clouded my sight, the violin fell from my wet, burning hands, and I reeled back, faint and dizzy, when I felt soft arms embracing me, and somebody sobbed and laughed, "You have saved her, Maestro; praise be to God and all His saints in heaven! May the Madonna bless you forever and ever--" I heard no more, but fell into a death-like swoon.

"O MOON, LARGE GOLDEN SUMMER MOON!"

O MOON, large golden summer moon, Hanging between the linden trees, Which in the intermittent breeze Beat with the rhythmic pulse of June!

O night-air, scented through and through With honey-colored flower of lime, Sweet now as in that other time When all my heart was sweet as you!

The sorcery of this breathing bloom Works like enchantment in my brain, Till, shuddering back to life again, My dead self rises from its tomb.

And lovely with the love of yore, Its white ghost haunts the moon-white ways; But when it meets me face to face, Flies trembling to the grave once more.

GREEN LEAVES AND SERE

Three tall poplars beside the pool Shiver and moan in the gusty blast; The carded clouds are blown like wool, And the yellowing leaves fly thick and fast.

The leaves, now driven before the blast, Now flung by fits on the curdling pool, Are tossed heaven-high and dropped at last As if at the whim of a jabbering fool.

O leaves, once rustling green and cool! Two met here where one moans aghast With wild heart heaving towards the past: Three tall poplars beside the pool.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

(1313-1375)

BY W. J. STILLMAN

It has been justly observed, and confirmed by all that we know of the early history of literature, that the first forms of it were in verse. This is in accordance with a principle which is stated by Herbert Spencer on a different but related theme, that "Ornament was before dress," the artistic instincts underlying and preceding the utilitarian preoccupations. History indeed was first poetry, as we had Homer before Thucydides, and as in all countries the traditions of the past take the form of metrical, and generally musical, recitation. An excellent and polished school of prose writers is the product of a tendency in national life of later origin than that which calls out the bards and ballad-singers, and is proof of a more advanced culture. The Renaissance in Italy was but the resumption of a life long suspended, and the succession of the phenomena in which was therefore far more rapid than was possible in a nation which had to trace the path without any survivals of a prior awakening; and while centuries necessarily intervened between Homer and the "Father of History," a generation sufficed between Dante and Boccaccio, for Italian literature had only to throw off the leaden garb of Latin form to find its new dress in the vernacular. Dante certainly wrote Italian prose, but he was more at ease in verse; and while the latter provoked in him an abundance of those happy phrases which seem to have been born with the thought they express, and which pass into the familiar stock of imagery of all later time, the prose of the 'Convito' and the 'Vita Nuova' hardly ever recalls itself in common speech by any parallel of felicity.

And Boccaccio too wrote poetry of no ignoble type, but probably because he was part of an age when verse had become the habitual form of culture, and all who could write caught the habit of versification,--a habit easier to fall into in Italian than in any other language. But while the consecration of time has been given to the 'Commedia,' and the 'Convito' passes into the shadow and perspective of lesser things, so the many verses of Boccaccio are overlooked, and his greatest prose work, the 'Decameron,' is that with which his fame is mostly bound up.

Born in 1313, at seven years of age he showed signs of a literary facility, and his father, a merchant of Florence, put him to school with a reputable grammarian; but afterward, deciding to devote him to merchandise, sent him to study arithmetic,--restive and profitless in which, he was sent to study canon law, and finding his level no better there, went back to traffic and to Naples in his father's business when he was about twenty. The story runs that the sight of the tomb of Virgil turned his thoughts to poetry; but this confusion of the _post hoc_ with the _propter hoc_ is too common in remote and romantic legend to value much. The presence of Petrarch in the court of Robert, King of Naples, is far more likely to have been the kindling of his genius to its subsequent activity: and the passion he acquired while there for the illegitimate daughter of the King, Maria,--the Fiammetta of his later life,--furnished the fuel for its burning; his first work, the 'Filocopo,' being written as an offering to her. It is a prose love story, mixed with mythological allusions,--after the fashion of the day, which thought more of the classics than of nature; and like all his earlier works, prolix and pedantic.

The 'Theseide,' a purely classic theme, the war of Theseus with the Amazons, is in verse; and was followed by the 'Ameto,' or 'Florentine Nymphs,' a story of the loves of Ameto, a rustic swain, with one of the nymphs of the valley of the Affrico, a stream which flows into the Arno not far from where the poet was born, or where at least he passed his youth; and to which valley he seems always greatly attached, putting there the scene of most of his work, including the 'Decameron.' 'Ameto' is a mythological fiction, in which the characters mingle recitations of verse with the prose narration, and in which the gods of Greece and Rome masque in the familiar scenes. Following these came the 'Amorosa Visione,' and 'Filostrato,' in verse; 'Fiammetta' in prose, being the imaginary complaint of his beloved at their separation; 'Nimfale Fiesolano,' in verse, the scene also laid on the Affrico; and then the 'Decameron,' begun in 1348 and finished in 1353, after which he seems to have gradually acquired a disgust for the world he had lived in as he had known it, and turned to more serious studies. He wrote a life of Dante, 'II Corbaccio,' a piece of satirical savagery, the 'Genealogy of the Gods,' and various minor works; and spent much of his time in intercourse with Petrarch, whose conversation and influence were of a different character from that of his earlier life.

Boccaccio died at Certaldo in the Val d'Elsa, December 2d, 1375. Of the numerous works he left, that by which his fame as a writer is established is beyond any question the 'Decameron,' or Ten Days' Entertainment; in which a merry company of gentlemen and ladies, appalled by the plague raging in their Florence, take refuge in the villas near the city, and pass their time in story-telling and rambles in the beautiful country around, only returning when the plague has to a great extent abated. The superiority of the 'Decameron' is not only in the polish and grace of its style, the first complete departure from the stilted classicism of contemporary narrative, the happy naturalness of good story-telling,--but in the conception of the work as a whole, and the marvelous imagination of the filling-in between the framework of the story of the plague by the hundred tales from all lands and times, with the fine thread of the narrative of the day-by-day doings of the merry and gracious company, their wanderings, the exquisite painting of the Tuscan landscape (in which one recognizes the Val d'Arno even to-day), and the delicate drawing of their various characters. It is only when all these elements have been taken into consideration, and the unity wrought through such a maze of interest and mass of material without ever becoming dull or being driven to repetition, that we understand the power of Boccaccio as an artist.