Little Novels of Italy Part 5

Verona rubbed its eyes as it came out yawning to its daily work. There was the open shop, ever the first in the street; there the padrone; there, by the manger of Bethlehem, were the padrona and the baby, whom they had last seen huddling from their stones. Vanna wore her colours that morning; she was rosy like the dawn, she was smiling, she had very bright eyes. But there was a happy greeting for man or wife who looked her way; and when La Testolina came peeping to behold the discomfiture of Balda.s.sare, Vanna's gay looks found her out, and "Buon' giorno, La Testolina," came more cheerfully from her than it had come from her husband on the bridge. All the little woman could do was to squat upon the threshold at her friend's feet and pretend that she was troubled with spasms.

The crowning proof remains to be told. As La Testolina (who blazed the story abroad) is reported to have said, you might have drummed the guard out with her heart-beats. Vanna, by way of weaning her baby, it seems, was tempting him with gobbets of peach from a wine-gla.s.s. She bit a corner from the peach and tendered it in her lips to the youngster on her lap. The baby (a vigorous child) made a snap at it like a trout at a fly, and a gulp so soon as he had it. The peach was hard, the morsel had many corners,--went down bristling, as it were. Cola had his first stomach-ache, was hurt, was miserable, prepared to howl. At that moment La Testolina happened to look at him: she stared, she gasped, she reeled against the door-post.

"Hey, Mother of Jesus!" she cried; "look at the baby!"

"It was a corner-piece, I'm afraid," said Vanna, with great calmness; "but the natural juices will thaw it."

"No, no, no! It is not that, woman," her friend went on feverishly--"it is not that! Look at his face, look at his face!"

Vanna looked. "Well," she asked, "what of his face?"

The _bambino_, to express his agony, was _grinning from ear to ear_.

This was the last miracle wrought by Madonna of the Peach-Tree.

IPPOLITA IN THE HILLS

I

THE GLORIOUS IPPOLITA

Almighty G.o.d, that supreme Architect, Who, alone among craftsmen, knows when to give and when to stay the rein, has chosen the Plain of Emilia to be, as it were, the garden of Italy, a garden set apart betwixt Alp and Apennine to be adorned within a garden; has filled it with every sort of fruit and herb and flowering tree; has watered it abundantly with n.o.ble rivers; neither stinted it of deep shade nor removed it too far from the timely stroke of the sun; has caused it, finally, to be graced here and enriched there with divers great and grave cities. Man, who has it not in him to be thrifty in so prodigal a midst, has here also thought it lawful to go free. Out of that lake of rustling leaves rise, like the masts of ships crowding a port, church towers, the belfries of pious convents, the domes and turrets of great buildings walled into cities. Among which, prized as they all are and honourably additioned,--Vicenza, Treviso, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara,--there is none more considerable than Padua, root of learning and grey cupolas, chosen to be the last resting-place of Antenor, King Priam's brother, and the first of t.i.tus Livy.

It is of Padua that I am now called upon to report certain matters which may seem strange to one who does not know her well: to the others, _verb.u.m satis_. Whether it is their University (too famous, perhaps, for so quiet a place) or the suspiration of their greatest citizen which has kindled their wits; whether that cauldron of brick, the _Santo_, bubbling with silver domes, is the stem or flower of their exaltation; whether their seat at the head of a sun-steeped marsh (at whose mouth is Venice) hath itself unseated them; whether Petrarch set boiling what Saint Antony could not allay; what it was, how it was, who gave them the wrench, I know not--but the fact is that the people of Padua have been as freakish a race as any in Italy; at the mercy of any head but the aggregate's, pack-mules of a notion, galley-slaves of a whim, driven hither and thither in a herd, like those restless leaves (souls once) whose nearer sight first made Dante pitiful. Not that they, for their part, asked for pity or got it. Mostly they paid their tavern bills when the last cup had been drained and the last chorus led. When Ezzelin was master of the revels they paid in blood: that tower of his by the river is dark with it yet. Petrarch from his mountain-vineyard at Arqua tipped them a brighter stave: they broke their hearts for pretty women and had every one the comfort of a swanlike end, since sonnets are a knack. With Antony they flagellated, with Carrara defended walls, with Gattemelata knocked them down. Then Venice took what Padua could never keep; the Euganeans hailed on either side the Lion of Saint Mark; the Arts flourished; Squarcione cut out small-clothes and taught anatomy none the worse; Mantegna dreamed of Julius Caesar, smouldering while he dreamed; and Ippolita, the stone-mason's daughter, from too much courting fled in breeches to the hills. She, like all the Padovani, paid her score without flinching. It may have been run up without leave asked, but it was run up in her name. The rule in Padua was so; I never heard that she repined. Maybe that she had her money's worth; but of that you will be able to judge as well as I.

Padua is a city set in meadows full of light; it is well s.p.a.ced, plentifully watered, arcaded, green with gardens. The streets are like cloister-walks; as in Lucca, the plane is the sacred tree, and next to that flag of green on a silver staff, the poplar shows the city blushful in the spring and thrilling all a summer with the memory. It is a place of brick and marble, painted orange, brown, yellow, and warm white, where every cornerstone and every twig is printed sharply on a sky of morning blue.

"Quivi le mura son fatte con arte, Che parlano, e rispondono a i parlanti."

A tale of Padua should have the edge of a cut gem. So let Ippolita's be told.

In her day--that day when, at sixteen years old or so, the sun briefly lit upon her golden head and showed her for the lovely girl she was--Padua was pa.s.sing through a time of peace. Novello was dead at last, poor heroic gentleman, Verona was shaken off; Venice was supreme--easy, but unquestionably mistress of the Emilia. There was time to make madrigals, to make eyes, to make love, to imagine portraits.

Mantegna was painting giants in the Eremitani and Bellini picking his brains, but not as yet a quarrel. The cla.s.sics, the ingenuous arts, lovely woman--always interwoven when times are happiest--flourished in that sunny place: it was not really wonderful that Ippolita the stone-cutter's daughter, cla.s.sically fair, indisputably a beauty, should win all seeing eyes and be the despair of all rhymers. Given the vision to the visionary (and both came in their time), she might be trusted with the rest; for she was remarkable by contrast; there were none like her. The Paduan girls are all charming, and mostly pretty. Ippolita was neither: she was beautiful, and when you came to know her face, lovely.

They are brown, she was fair; they are little, she was very tall. They have eyes like a dove's, glossed brown; hers were deeply blue, the colour of the Adriatic when a fleeting cloud spreads a curtain of hyacinth over the sheeted turquoise bed. Beautifully hued in mingled red and white, delicately shaped, pliant, supple, and shy, such as she was (an honest, good girl, Heaven knows!) she might have lived and died in her alley--sweetheart of some half dozen decent fellows, wife of the most masterful, mother of a dozen brats, unnoticed save for her qualities of cheerful drudge and brood-mare; beautiful as a spring leaf till twenty, ripe as a peach on the wall till thirty, keen-faced and wise, mother and grandmother, at forty; and so on--such she might have lived and died, and been none the worse for her reclusion, had she not leaned more than half out of her window in the _Vicolo_ one bright April morning of her sixteenth year, to exchange lively banter with a friend below, and been seen by Messer Alessandro del Dardo, who within the cuira.s.s of Sub-Prefect of Padua nourished the heart of an approved Poet; been seen of him for the miracle of young beauty she really was. Chance sparks kindle chance tinder; and so here. I am far from alleging the heart of Messer Alessandro to be dry tow; but I do repeat it, Padua was a freakish cityful, Ippolita lovely exceedingly, amorous poetry in the air.

He, then, pa.s.sing by, saw her stoop flushed and sparkling from above him; the sun caught her shining hair; a loose white smock revealed so much of her neck as to picture him the snowy rest. Snow and rosebuds--O ye little G.o.ds! As he stood in ecstasy she saw him at the end of the lane, and blushing drew back with a finger in her mouth, to thrill and giggle at ease. She saw a great gentleman stare; he saw a rosy G.o.ddess stoop and laugh, then blush and hide. _Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe!_ Away he went, his heart leaping like a wood-fire, to report to Meleagro de' Martiri and Stazio Orsini, to Donna Euforbia, Donna Clarice, and Donna Simpatica--friends and poets alike--that he had had a most rare vision.

"To me it seems," he said, "that that fair-haired daughter of the Greeks, Madonna Elena, the slim, the rosy-fingered disturber of the repose of cities, hath appeared to distract this our city of Padua. Me at least she hath distraught. Fair friends, sister and brother poets, you shall understand that henceforth I devote myself to this lady and her praise. More, I vow a vow, and call upon you to register it in the Golden Book of the Amorous Gests of Padua, that I will never cut my nails again until I have enthroned her sovereign lady of me, and of you all, and of this our humane Commonwealth. By golden Venus and her son, by Mars armipotent powerless in such toils, and by Vulcan in chains too cunning for his pincers; by Saints Ovid and Sappho, the Chian, the Mantuan, and the Veronese, I swear this oath."

"It is well done, Alessandro," a.s.sented the listening company.

That evening in his fellowship, Meleagro and Stazio, cloaked and lurking under the arcades, saw Ippolita walk down the Via Pozzo Depinto arm in arm with two shawled friends, transparently in the ranks of the _popol ba.s.so_, but as obviously not of them. Her golden head was bare; also by a head she sailed above them. They followed her by the Via Zitelle, over the Ponte della Morte, further yet, between garden walls topped with lilac, into the Prato della Valle. There the three unconscious girls mingled with the concourse of those who took the air under the still trees. Ippolita, that slim, tall marvel, seemed not to be remarked by any; Alessandro, swooning on his friend's arms, could scarcely believe it.

"Edge up, Alessandro, edge up--accost, accost!" said Meleagro; but--

"Do you think I would profane the _aura_ of her by my abhorred presence?" cried the lover. "Ah, G.o.d of Love, I would die sooner! I feel, indeed, my Daemon at work. Let me sit upon this bench--my tablets, ha!" He sat. Finely disordered verse, _rime sciolte_, resulted; but Ippolita was so far unperturbed.

Gradually, however, it came to her notice that she was watched. There was singing under her windows at night; the day brought parties of n.o.ble youths into the _Vicolo_ scarlet-capped, feathered, slashed, and booted youths; ladies were with them as often as not; garlanded ladies with square-cut bodices showing half their bosoms; flowers came, verses, platters of Urbino, Gubbio, Faenza. She was saluted in the street, followed to the church door, waited for at the coming out from ma.s.s. It came, more or less, to this, that whenever she went abroad by ways where the honourable might pa.s.s, her going resembled that of the processional Host rather than of a respectable young woman. Her friends were no protection: the girls thought it fun, courted it, found stuff in it for giggling and peering with the eyes into dark corners; the lads of her station shrugged at it, then sulked, and at last fairly fought shy of such a conspicuous mate.

Ippolita herself tried to laugh it off, but failed absurdly. She became plaintive.

"What do these signori mean by their my-ladying?" she cried to Annina, her bosom friend. "Why do they send me these things? Platters! What use are platters to the likes of us, who as often as not have nothing to put on them?"

Annina looked demurely. "It is easy to see what they want of thee, dearest. What does a gentleman always want of a poor girl that takes his fancy?"

Ippolita tossed her high head.

"Eh!" she snapped. "They may fill the house with crockery at that rate.

I'm not rubbish!"

She was not; but she wronged her adorers, who neither thought it nor hoped it of her. Messer Alessandro was not growing his nails for that sort of ware; nor could he have treated the Pope with more respect. He had never ventured to speak, though he had never failed to salute her.

What he wrote was chiefly in verse, and as Ippolita could not read, it really did not much matter what his letters contained. Meleagro had opened his mouth to pay her a compliment: he won a frightened look out of her blue eyes, a fine blush, and lived upon them for a week. The ladies were bolder. Some of them had walked with her once in the Prato.

There was very little to say, except that they loved her and thought her like a G.o.ddess. Ippolita was rather scared, laughed nervously, and said, "Chi lo sa?" Donna Euforbia then told her the story of the original Ippolita, the Scythian queen; of King Theseus, and the child born to them in sea-washed Acharnae. The Paduan Ippolita said "Gia!" several times, and asked if her namesake was a good Catholic. Finding she was not, she took no further interest in her fortunes than to suppose her deep in h.e.l.l for her pains. The ladies asked her to come and be their queen; she said she couldn't leave her father. They offered her jewels for her hair, neck, fingers, wrists, ankles; she laughed, and said that they were not for the likes of her. They spoke of Alessandro, the Poet.

She asked if he were any relation to the Signor Sotto-Prefetto. He was that same, said they.

"Dio buono!" cried Ippolita. "Is he the gentleman who wants to undo me?"

They were shocked. "He asks no more than to sit at your feet, Ippolita, and read the secrets of your beautiful eyes. It is your soul he loves; he asks nothing of your body." "They never do, Madonna," said Ippolita; "but I am a poor girl, so please you, who have to look every way at once, as the saying is. Domeneddio is the only Signore I ever heard tell of who could get on with people's souls. Men want more of us than that."

Protests were wasted, and Alessandro, watchful of his nails, went mad in numbers. This it was to be tall out of common, this to lift up in dark-browed Padua a brave golden head; this to carry the bosom of an Oread beneath the smock of a girl in her teens; this, merciful Heaven, to be a vortex when poets are swirling down the stream of Time.

II

MESSER ALESSANDRO THINKS TO CUT HIS NAILS

Not to weary you, it is clear that Ippolita was the fashion. The poets, the courtiers, the painters, of whom in that age of peace Padua was full, were wild about this glowing girl, this sumptuous nymph of the Via Agnus Dei; they were melodiously, caperingly, symphonically wild, according to their bents. She saw herself on plates of faience, where the involutions of a ribbon revealed "Ippolita Bella" to the patient eye; she found herself (or they found her) an inordinate tri-syllable for a canzone, saw her colours of necessity reproduced on her lover's legs and shoulders as colours of election. One by one she could appraise her own possessions, and those they fabled of her. Her hair was Demeter's crown of ripe corn--she knew nothing of the lady, but hoped for the best. Her eyes were dark blue lakes in a field of snow--this she thought very fine. Her lips were the amorous petals of a rose that needs must kiss each other; kissing, they made a folded flower--ah!

"La virtu della bocca, Che sana ci che tocca,"

sighed the poets. But, bless her good innocence! that sweet mouth had touched nothing more mannish than her father's forehead or the feet of the Crucified. Her cheeks, said they, were apple-blossoms budded, her neck the stem of a chalice, her breast--but I spare your blushes, though they never spared hers. There is a book, "Gli Ornamenti delle Donne,"

which will tell you what that bastion of a fair girl should be; and what it should be those Paduan lyrists will more than a.s.sure you Ippolita's was. Thus pa.s.sionately they fingered every part, dwelling here, touching there, with no word that was not a caress. What she had not, too, they gave her--the attributes she sowed in them. She was "vagha," since they longed; "lontana," since she kept them at a distance; "nascosa," since they drove her to it; cold, since she dared not be warm.

The painters, not to be behind, expressed what the others hinted. She saw herself, first, as _Daphne_ behind a laurel-bush--the artist, kneeling in the open, offered his heart smoking upon a dish; second, as _Luna_, standing in shrouded white on a crescent moon--the artist, as _Endymion_, asleep in a rocky landscape, waiting to be kissed; third, as _Leda_, naked in reeds beside her pair of eggs--the plumed artist near by, ruffling and flapping his wings. Luckily, their allusiveness escaped her; she knew nothing of the diversions of the ancient G.o.ds.