by Ouida
Amidst it all stood the white statues; here the quiet face of Arretino, — there the bold brows of the Uberti; here the austere sadness of Dante, — there the old man’s smile of Sant’ Antonino.
And away at the far end of the great gallery the white arches crossed each other high above against the blackness of the night; and in the gleam of the tossing lamps the drooping banners of the Lost Liberties hung, crimson as the blood of Campaldino and Custozza; and out further in the stillness beyond the stone parapet rolled the broad moon-lightened Arno water; and above all were the clear skies, breathless as in summer, the eloquent luminous purple skies of a Florence night This is how I saw the city first; this is how she will lie in my heart and in my memories for ever.
I was but a child; I was entranced by the goodly chaos of mirth and colour, by the beautiful outlines, by the zestful masking, by the gaiety and the grotesqueness that were framed in that stately setting.
I found a quiet nook under the marble shelter of the figure of old Taddeo Gaddi, and rested there and watched the whims and vagaries of the Florentines.
It had grown quite late. I heard all the chimes of the belfries striking and ringing the twelfth hour of the night Acrobats were tumbling, musicians were braying, the dancers were flying faster and faster, the swift crackers were running along the stones like stars, the buyers and sellers were raising shriller and shriller their clamour, the winners at the lottery were darting hither and thither triumphant, hugging their prizes of wines and capons and kerchiefs and sugar-loaves; and every now and then, amidst the noise and uproar, there would come a sweet, short ripple from a lute that broke in the air like sea spray; or there would pass through the crowd young, barefooted, with dreaming eyes that saw heaven afar off, and were blind to all the stir around him, some monk, with the head of Fra Angelico.
For in Italy life is all contrast, and there is no laugh and love-song without a sigh beside them; there is no velvet mask of mirth and passion without the marble mask of art and death near to it For everywhere the wild tulip burns red upon a ruined altar, and everywhere the blue borage rolls its azure waves through the silent temples of forgotten gods.
As I stood against the stone figure of old Taddeo, a man went by me swiftly, laughing, and chased by the people. He was clad in the gay and many-coloured dress of the Neapolitan Pulcinello, bound, no doubt, later on, for the Veglione.
He had a scourge of bladders and little gilded bells in his hand, and he struck his pursuers deftly, casting amongst them wild words of the shrewd Tuscan wit that is sharp and silver like the leaf of the Tuscan olive.
The people flew after him, laughing, tumbling, shouting, frolicking, and as they chased him called out, “Pascarello! Pascarèl!”
It was he who had given me the onyx. It was my Romeo of Verona, my Florindo of the scarlet plume, and unconsciously I sprang forward and tried to touch him as he flew.
Alas! it was in vain.
He passed me like the wind, and caught a girl of the Casentino about the waist, and whirled her into the maze of the waltzing. He did not notice me where I leaned in the grey shadow of old Gaddi; and I soon lost him from sight in the mass of blending hues, and the strange chiaroscuro of that shadowy ballroom, with its torch lights flaming amongst its banners and the blue night sky for its roof.
A sense of deadly chillness and of blank disappointment stole over me.
He was but a stranger, and I had seen his face but twice, and yet I was stung to a passionate grief and humiliation to think that he had passed me by and gone to fling about in the wild dancing that black-browed, red-kirtled contadina.
The beauty and the frolic of the fiera were all over for me.
CHAPTER XII.
With the Wild Crocus.
I LEFT it with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with a sickening pain; left it in the height of its revelry, the people streaming in faster and faster to join the merriment and take their chance at the lottery.’
I had no knowledge whither to go or where best to rest the night I moved across the piazza without quite well knowing where I went, and casting one look’ behind me at the Judith where she knit her dark brows in scorn against the folly of it all, I left the square by a little dusky passage way.
Some man accosted me as I turned into the gloom, but I hurried on, my hood well over my face, and he was in haste to reach the Uffizi and let me pass. In the street that is named of the vine I saw a little homely-looking hostelry called the Silver Melon. I was very tired and sad now that the excitement of my entry into the city had passed by. I asked them if I could have a bed there, and when they assented I crept up to the little chamber that they offered me, and, after a little space, cried myself to sleep with the shouts of the populace and the strains of the music in the gallery hard by keeping the air astir all night and mingling with my dreams.
When the daylight came, a certain hope and gladness came to me with it.
There was so much to see in this wondrous city, and I was so young, — and, after all, things would surely go well with me.
The people had always said that I was fair to see; and those who knew had told me that I had a fortune in my voice. After all, I was in Florence, and I had a dozen broad florins in gold, and I was a child, and I was not afraid.
When I had broken my fast, I left my little load of clothes in pledge of my return, and went.
“Where, white and wide,
Washed by the morning’s water-gold,
Florence lay out on the mountain side.”
It was past ten by the clocks and belfries, and a flood of sunlight streamed on the Valdarno. In its delicious brilliance I moved on and on and on, enthralled, entranced, in rapture of the present, in meditation of the past.
“River, and bridge, and street, and square,
Lay mine, as much at my beck and call,
Through the live translucent bath of air,
As the sights in the magic crystal ball.”
And of my magic crystal I was never tired.
All the town was astir, eager to make the uttermost of the last days of Carnival. The bells were ringing madly, in as much tumult and confusion of metal tongues as ever called the Trades together in the old days for a raid upon Oltrarno. The long, covered gallery of the Medician tyranny hung in the air like a black cloud. I thought of the day when to build it they had pierced through the cobbler’s dwelling, and had laid bare to the tyrant’s eyes the beauty of Camilla Martelli. One seems to see her sitting there in the little, dusky den, with the smell of the leather and the tic-tac of the shoemaker’s hammer, her only companionship all through the weary hours, until the crash of the axes and mallets broke down the wall of the chamber, and, with the flood of the daylight, let in so wondrous a blaze of changed fortune. Beneath it, on the old bridge, the penthouses of the jewellers and of the workers in gold and silver sparkled with colour and glistened with treasure, whilst the men and the mules pushed by, and to right and left through the arches shone the sunny stretch of the river, the trireme-like group of the boats cutting sharply and darkly against the gold. I thought of that awful morning when over that bridge there had ridden the gay young bridegroom of Buondelmonte, with the white garland on his golden locks, whilst at the feet of the statue of Mars the avengers had waited with naked blades and souls set hard on the slaughter. One seemed to hear the shiver of the steel against the marriage jewels, and to watch the Easter lilies fall, trampled on the blood-red stones Everywhere the people were about, they had danced till daydawn at the Veglione and the Fiera, what of that? — they tossed down a little red wine, and fastened new signal ribbons to their shoulders, and swept out in troops into the sunshine, ready again for the masquing and motley. There were bursts of music; notes of mandolines; ripples of laughter; chattering at all street corners; great clusters of scented roses torn from castello walls beyond the gates; sweet clusters of rosy cyclamen blushing faintly like sea-shells; baskets of yellow muscat grapes and great black figs, and the red hearts of cut pomegranates. A
nd above all the warmth, and stir, and glare, and mirth, and tumult, there rose the spiritual beauty of towers and spires, such as sculptors see in cities of their dreams, and on the high standards there flashed the scarlet cross of Florence that once had burned triumphant above even the walls of Rome herself.
It was past noon as I came out on to the river’s side, and saw to right and left of me, far as the eye could strain, the lovely reaches of the sun-burnished water, the near hills silver with olive, dark with ilex and cypress, and, far, far away, the green plains, the lines of Lombard poplars, the golden sea of light, the purple shadows of the mountains, sown with their countless villages and villas as a lake with the whiteness of its summer lilies.
So near they looked, so ethereal, so worthy to be some mystic border land of Paradise, those soft Apennine and Carrara ranges, lying fold on fold in their loveliness, that my steps were irresistibly drawn towards them until I had passed out through one of the city gates, and was in a wooded place upon the river, with deep ilex shadows above my head, and near me thickets of acacia, with their budding branches quivering in the light; and in the distance always those soft, dreamy hues of the Carrara marble flashing in the noonday sun.
Then, being tired and warm, I sat down upon a stone bench where the trees grew very thickly and bordered a meadow sown at every step with crocuses, until the grass was pale and purple with them.
I did not think what was likely to become of me, nor of how little probable it was that I should find trace of my father and of Florio. I was only dreamily happy, half-stupidly conscious of the charm of the soft southern air and the spell of the stretching mountains.
All was quite still: a rabbit scudded swiftly amongst the crocuses, nibbling here and there: a hawk flew by: beyond the canes that grew thick by the water there were some sweet bells ringing away there where the grey shadows of Monte Murello sloped upwards against the sun.
After a while an old creature, with a basket full of Roman lilies and Parma violets, came across the place where I sat She cast some lilies into my lap, and called me her dear signorina, and begged of me a coin for the love of God.
“What bells are those?” I asked her, lifting the lilies, with their long green leaves, doubtfully, for I was too poor to buy them.
“Perretola, dear signorina,” she said, sadly. “I was born there eighty years ago. It is hard to live eighty years only to sell flowers for a bit of bread. It is a little place. Step out, and you can see it across the vines. Yes, the bells are fine. They rang when I was married. I thought marriage a fine thing. He was a worker in stone. He got into trouble in the old Duke’s time when the French were about the place; and was in prison, and what not; as if married men should do aught but find charcoal to boil the soup-pot — but it was the way of them all at that time. And now he is dead; dead a matter of twenty-five year, and we are no nearer all the fine free things he used to be mad to talk of, at least so they prate; and I sell lilies for a bit of bread. It was better in the old Duke’s time — better in the old Duke’s time — so I say.”
Poor soul! It was “better in the old Duke’s time” to her. To her, nothing the liberties of Italy, the rise of the People, the expulsion of the Gaul, the rebound from bondage into aspiration and free-drawn breath. It was “better in the Duke’s time” — when she had had youth and health, and love and dreams, away there where the bells were ringing in the white village just across the vines.
I felt sorry for her, she was so old, so old: and to stand in the sun when one was as old as that, and hear the very bells that once rung in one’s bridal hour and find no music in them, but only desire to mumble a crust in one’s toothless jaws — it seemed horrible to me, very horrible.
“Give me something — some little something, dear signorina,” she murmured, holding out her withered hands. “The lilies die so soon in the sun, and I have walked in from Perretola without bit or drop!”
Wisely or unwisely, my heart was won. I slid my hand into the little leathern pouch bound round my waist by a thong, in which all my little worldly store was kept Oh Dio! the horror of that moment. The purse was empty!
In lieu of touching coin either of gold or of copper, my fingers slid down the bag, meeting nothing in their way. I sprang to my feet with a scream; I tore the pouch off my girdle; I pulled it inside out with the horrible vehemence of a deadly terror; not so much as a brazen scudo fell upon the ground. In the chamois leather there was a straight slit, as though cut through by a knife: the pouch was empty. No doubt I had been robbed the previous night in the press of the Carnival Fair.
I did not cry out; I stood like a frozen thing, in cold, gazing at my empty hands. The sunshiny country reeled before me; the white road seemed to heave to and fro like a sea. Everything was sickly, and blinding, and unreal.
I knew the meaning of poverty too well not to measure in one moment the whole extent of the ruin that befell me. The old contadina stood still and looked at me, appalled, no doubt, by the despair of my face and of my attitude.
“The signorina has nothing?” she stammered, thinking, doubtless, poor wretch, of her own empty hearth and her own aching hunger. The words broke the spell of the terror that kept me motionless and silent.
“Nothing!” I echoed, and I know I laughed aloud — laughed wildly, in riotous hilarity, in my unutterable horror. “Nothing — nothing — nothing in all the whole world. My God!”
Then I threw myself down prostrate at the foot of the marble bench, whilst the old peasant, aghast and bewildered, stood and looked on, silent and appalled I could not speak nor weep; I felt as though some huge stone had been flung on me and had stretched me half dead beneath its weight With my little store of golden florins, I had felt myself strong enough and hopeful enough to meet all accidents of life and vanquish them, but penniless, I was nerveless, hopeless, homeless. The extremity of my dire despair stifled me, as though some suffocating hand were at my throat Alone, without a coin in the world to get me bread! I thought how much more mercy the robber of my little all would surely have shown to me if only he had drawn his knife across my throat I do not know how long I lay there, crushed and stunned, down on the beautiful crocus-filled grass of the pasture.
The old woman stooped and touched me gently. “Have you, indeed, nothing, signorina? Is it stolen, or what? Do not lie like that — you frighten me.”
I raised my head, and looked at her. A mist swam before my eyes. The whole green expanse of the meadow eddied giddily about me like a whirlpool. But in the midst of my misery a vague remembrance of how bitterly I must have disappointed her arose to me: she was not poorer than I was now; but then she was so old.
“I am sorry,” I murmured, brokenly, “sorry for you; but they have robbed me — I have nothing in the world.”
The poor old creature sighed; to her also the blow was heavy. She had argued from my face and my youth some liberal gift. But the generous and tender heart of her country beat in her withered breast.
“Never mind, dear signorina,” she said, softly, “you wished to give; Our Lady will remember it to you just the same — just the same. And you love the lilies.”
She laid another cluster of the flowers on my lap as she turned away. Poor soul! I hope that act has been remembered to her likewise.
How Italian it was! the little simple sunny kindness done in all the darkness of poverty and age and pain.
I could not speak to her again; vacantly I watched her figure, brown and crooked, pass across the blossoming meadow in the full blaze of the shadowless light. No doubt she went to sell her lilies at the gates.
On the road, which ran through trees beyond the field with all the vast panorama of the Apennines unrolled along its length, I saw a bullock-waggon creeping towards me, and farther yet a little cloud of people, bright against the sun as gold-winged demoizelle.
Instinctively, to avoid sight or sound, I rose and wandered into the wood which bordered the meadow; it was of ilex and pine, dusky even at noon. I plunged into its shadow, holding
the lilies to my aching heart.
I moved on and on through the trees, unconscious of what I did, until I struck my breast against the trunk of a tall fir with a shock that brought me to sharp consciousness of where I was. I sat down beneath its shade, wounded by the momentary pain.
I was all alone. I looked around me with a curious sense at once of apathy and desperation. I knew not what I feared; but I feared everything — I in whose daring eyes, a moment earlier, all heaven and earth had seemed to smile in the smile of Florence.
I dropped my head upon my hands, and crouched there at the foot of the pine. I sobbed as though my very heart would break.
As I sat thus there came the little white scudding figure of a scampering dog; he ran before a little troop of people: they all stopped at some distance from me at the end of one of the aisles of pine.
They were talking and laughing gaily. I could hear the indistinct bubble of their mirthful chatter; they had three dogs with them and a monkey; they threw themselves on the grass, and took some food and wine from a basket, and one of them built up a fire with dry sticks; all the while the dogs frisked, the men laughed, the woman sang little fresh passages of song; they were all so glad and so gay, it seemed to make my misery unendurable.
The sun came down on them where they were stretched upon the turf; I sat alone in the shadow. I saw them; they seemed not to see me.
They had no doubt come out to breakfast in the Cascine woods, as Florentines will do on spring and summer days.