by Ouida
“They must have been amongst his most blessed days — alone here with his pure thoughts and visions; and the precious colours waiting on his hand; and about him the solitude of the cloisters, and the country silence of the hill sides. How wise he was, — how very wise, — to put away from him the proffered mitre and the possible tiara!
“Yes; this is every inch of it haunted ground, sacred ground, though the bullocks tread it with the ploughshare and the reapers strip the vines.
“Do you ever think of those artist-monks who have strewed Italy with altar-pieces and missal miniatures till there is not any little lonely dusky town of hers that is not rich by art? Do you often think of them? I do.
“There must have been a beauty in their lives — a great beauty — though they missed of much, of more than they ever knew or dreamed of, let us hope. In visions of the Madonna they grew blind to the meaning of a woman’s smile, and illuminating the golden olive wreath above the heads of saints they lost the laughter of the children under the homely olive trees without.
“But they did a noble work in their day; and leisure for meditation is no mean treasure, though the modern world does not number it amongst its joys.
“One can understand how men born with nervous frames and spiritual fancies into the world when it was one vast battle-ground, where its thrones were won by steel and poison, and its religion enforced by torch and faggot, grew so weary of the never-ending turmoil, and of the riotous life which was always either a pageant or a slaughter-house, that it seemed beautiful to them to withdraw themselves into some peaceful place like this Badià and spend their years in study and in recommendation of their souls to God, with the green and fruitful fields before their cloister windows, and no intruders on the summer stillness as they painted their dreams of a worthier and fairer world except the blue butterflies that strayed in on a sunbeam, or the gold porsellini that hummed at the lilies in the Virgin’s chalice.”
His voice dropped in its dreamy melody down the tranquil air joining the hum of the insects, the chimes of the distant bells, and the splash in the shallow Mugnone as the fisher waded over its stones. Stones which were now so dry that a rabbit could have hopped from one to another of them without wetting its white feet; although in winter time the little mountain stream so often rages in tempest and wrecks the homesteads, and deluges stalls and byres.
He shifted his attitude a little, and his hand played amongst the anemones; the lights and the shadows changed on his face as the boughs above were blown to and fro by the fresh sea wind.
“I am not sure,” he went on, “that if I had been born then I should not have been a monkish painter myself; though I fear I should have worn a cuirass like fighting Fra Benedetto, and scaled the walls like libertine Fra Lippi. The Angel Monk would have found no fraternity, I fear, with me.
“Will he be angered, think you, that we set the Arte so near to his altar-piece? — and Savonàrola, who said to all gaieties Retro Satanas? — or Dante, who had small patience with any puppets or pleasure-seekers? He was so much here, or so they say, when he would withdraw from Guelph and Ghibelline, and be at peace a little while. One can believe he wrote better here, in the quiet of the hills and with sad Fiesole so near, than down in the street by San Martino where it was all so cramped and dark.
“Yes; — I am troubled about that; — it is irreverent to set the little lily flag of the Arte flying here. And the villagers of Marco Vecchio are lusty of lung, and will laugh loud and trouble the stillness of the old Solitudine. Yet it must have heard worse in its time: many a shriek as the Salviati steel went through a peasant’s breast for daring to breathe against seigneurial rights; many a crash and clamour of crossed arms down there in the defile as the lances of Hawkwood swept from the mountains; many a groan stifled there in the waters as the Imperial reiters clattered with devil’s joy through the curse and the smoke of the burning hill sides. Do you not see it all?
“And Dante, with his crimson lucco trailing, coming up wearily there through Marco Vecchio, and glancing at the dead horses on the bridge, and the empty casques, and the broken lance heads amongst the grass under the vines, and then going on his way into the quiet of the Badià, sick at heart?
“Yes: certainly Dante must have seen and heard worse things than Toto’s little cap and plume and the villagers’ harmless laughter before our stage to-night. And though I have spoken evil and light things to you, donzella, of players, yet I am not sure that we have not done more good if we could sum it up than half the preachers and the poets. With the poets indeed we have gone hand in hand from all time; and’ without us Shakespeare and Racine, Calderon, and Goldoni, would have been dumb to their nations; and as for the preachers, Savonarola was a good man and true, and Francesco d’Assissi was blessed of all peoples, and the name of San Bruno is great for all time; but on the whole I doubt if any of them did more to blow a health-giving breeze through the world’s lazar houses than have done in another fashion our much v slandered Pantomimè.”
Pascarèl was silent awhile; when he spoke it was with some impatience.
“The great Austrian diamond, the Lemon Stone, was picked up for two soldi in our Mercato Vecchio off a pedlar’s stall. If I chanced on such luck as that, donzella!”
He stopped abruptly; his thoughts seemed to me irrelevant and oddly strung together — Dante and the ducal diamond)
“If you did!” I echoed. “Well! — what if you did! Tell me!”
He laughed a little.
“Nay, the face of the world would be changed for me. That is all.”
“Changed! And can you want that! Are you not happy!”
“Six months — and all my life before — I was. Yes.”
My eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears that blotted out the sight of Florence. For the first time I thought him cruel.
“That means — before you found me! If I torment you, let me go! And yet sometimes you seem so glad to have me!—”
I was but a child, and I spoke as a child: but the fire that swept over me from the momentarily uplifted eyes of Pascarèl, scorched the word to silence on my trembling mouth.
He caught my hands and kissed them with eager and tremulous tenderness, as his habit often was with me.
“Do not jest about that You are the life of my life,” he murmured, holding my hands against his lips the while. Then he was silent too.
“But,” I whispered to him, wistfully, perplexed strangely, and vaguely touched to apprehension— “but, if I gave you pleasure indeed, why should you be so much less gay than when you knew me first? Then, all things contented you; you laughed, and were never troubled. And now you seem to be forever wistful for some fate you have not; you, who were used to say that you would hardly change with Boiardo or Bernardo!”
His face was turned from me as he listened, and he moved a little restlessly.
“Cara mia,” he said, endeavouring, I thought, to speak more jestingly, with but little success, for he was too frank of nature to counterfeit well the gaiety that in happy moments was so natural to him— “oh, cara mia, you have read — or I have recited to you — the Orlando Innamorato many and many a time. Do you not remember how, when Rinaldo found himself in Arden, the single garden-lily struck him to earth — all Paladin though he was — and the blows of the white and red roses left him more dead than alive, and made the sharp edge of his good sword Fusberta of no more strength or worth than a straw? Every man comes, soon or late, to that unequal flower-combat in the enchanted forest; and the armour that has been proof against the dragons, and the shield that has been undinted by the giants, are of no avail to help him, once by the Fountain of the Pine.”
My cheeks grew warm and my heart throbbed quickly in wild tumult as I heard; I said nothing; I felt a sweet dreamy happiness steal over me.
For was not the garden-lily that struck down Rinaldo the weapon of the youth who was called Love?
And was not the Fountain of the Pine the one from which Rinaldo, drinking after the wounds
of the lily, grew blind to both the worlds of truth and magic, and saw only “la dolce vista del viso sereno” of the Sister of the Lion, of the Rose of Pentecost)
If he said so much, why not yet a little more? the dim wonder of it drifted vaguely over me, but it was only vaguely, for I was happy in the knowledge that I was dear to him, and I was too young to question of what sort or of what strength this half silent and half eloquent love might be, “Let us talk of what we would do if we found another Lemon Stone in the market,” he said gaily, with a certain impatience in his voice. “Ah, you are ashamed of me for hankering after riches at the last like this? Well, I am ashamed of myself, but if I found it I doubt if I should keep it. Whatever I own in the evening is always gone before the next day’s sunset But only think how odd it must be, to go through the market poor as Job; hungry perhaps, and with the hot pavement scorching your feet through the holes in your boots; and then to see a queershaped bit of glass, and give a copper-piece for it, because you are sorry for that poor old wretch, whose only stock in trade is that stall of miserable Roba, and then to go home to your garret with it, and be struck by some strange look in it as the sun’s rays catch it so, that you take it over the way to your friend at the little pharmacy, who is a man of science in his small way, under his bunches of herbs and his glass retorts: and then all at once to know that by that shining thing no bigger than a walnut, you are become all in a minute the master of a kingdom — only think of it all; I could almost talk myself mad with the very fancy of it But in those stories of diamonds they never tell us what becomes of that first buyer of it, who has all the real sorcery and music of its history. One would like to know if he ever went back to the market-stall and shared his gains. One would hope he always did; but human nature being what it is, that is doubtful, very doubtful, I am afraid.”
I listened to him in some wonder; Pascarèl, the man of all the world to whom riches were most indifferent and who had resisted all manner of temptations and refused to turn his genius into gold — to dream thus of the treasures locked in a cube of carbon! I struck him on the lips with a scourge of seeding grasses, and scolded him for his new-born avarice.
“Dear donzella,” he made answer in his caressing voice, and with more warmth on the darkness of his face than the sun brought there, “you must have read a thousand and one eastern tales in your time. Did never you read of the shepherd who was quite happy guarding his flocks in the wide Persian plains, and roaming at will with no thought but where to find a fresh watercourse when his beasts were athirst, or a cool grove of palm and date wherein to lay him down when the stars arose — quite happy all his years, until one day the king’s daughter rode by and her shadow fell betwixt him and the sun? And he was never again content; never, never again. Have you not read of him?”
“But I am not a king’s daughter!” I cried, and then was silent; there on the hillside that was sown with cyclamen, close above the Badià.
He laughed a little; a low, soft, sad laugh that had more tenderness in it than tears have: — doubtless at the unconscious ingenuousness with which I took to myself the Persian tale.
He drew me down close to him where he leaned at my feet amongst the grass.
“You come of great people, I suppose; people who would scarcely care to see you on a strolling player’s booth. And you have a higher kingdom than any; the kingdom of innocence; — wherein I have no right to trespass.”
He was silent a long while, whilst the chimes rung slowly from above, where Fiesole was calling her scattered flock to the fold:
“You have heard of Alaran,” he said, abruptly. “Alaran, of Acqui, who bore off the daughter of Emperor Otho, and having nothing in the world but two horses, kept one to convey her away with, and sold the other to buy a hut in the forest, where he turned charcoal-burner. Legend says that the imperial Alaxia was happy as the birds in the woods in this humble estate, and that one day great Otho going hunting in all his pomp, after he was summoned to the Roman crown, called for a cup of water to a peasant-girl, and looking down on the face of the woman who brought it, saw the face of Alaxia gladder, and not a whit less proud than it had been in his own palace. What do you say to the story? do you wonder that the princess was content with the hut in the oak glades?”
His eyes sought mine with eager wistfulness. I laughed a little happily, and thought I knew why she had been so glad there in the charcoal-burner’s cabin.
“No; I do not wonder,” I said, softly, more to myself than him. “Once I should have wondered, but now — I understand.”
He did not ask me why, but his hand closed fast and warm on mine.
“Ah! my donzella,” he said softly and very sadly, after a little time. “So you think — so you think, being a child. But you might repent See here, — I am content with my life — it is good enough in its way, though nameless and fruitless also perhaps. But I cannot disguise from myself that it is not a fit life for you.
“You are truly a ‘donzella’; you have the hands, and the feet, and the voice and the ways, and all the pretty imperious graces that belong to those gentle born.
“You were reared hardly? Yes, I know.
“But you have the instincts of a baby princess for all that “Could you be content always to go a-foot in all weathers, to sleep in little humble places, to eat homely fare as we do, to live with the people — the Italian people, it is true, but still the people only?
“And that is why I wish for the Lemon Stone.
“Do you understand now?”
I half laughed and half cried as I heard him, with the glad golden morning all around, and my hand folded close in his.
It was only a sceptre of peacock’s plumes that we had.
I knew that; but it seemed to me better than the winged sceptre of gold and ivory that symbolled the empire of the world.
I tossed a shower of anemone cups above our heads as I cried to him, —
“I do not understand! I do not want to understand! I shall be content anyhow, anywhere, any time — always — with you!”
He let go my hands — for him almost roughly — and rose quickly to his feet, and paced to and fro quickly under the trees silently, with the broad flap of his hat drawn down over his eyes. He brushed and trampled the anemones ruthlessly as he went; I could not tell what moved him, whether anger or pain.
I loved him well — indeed, — loved him with all the ardour and simplicity of a child who had never before had any great affection for any living thing; but I missed that subtle sympathy, that perfect passion and patience which alone enable one heart to feel each pang or each joy that makes another beat.
His moods were as changeful as the winds, and at times there was a restless impatience and depression on him which was far beyond my understanding.
I did not comprehend now what I had said amiss; the idea had occurred to me that he was growing tired of me, and it made me sad; in the early days he had never been capricious thus. I did not go to him therefore, but sat still amongst the grasses and the fruitless boughs of the vines.
Ah, Dio mìo! if I had gone to him and asked him why he was so grave, he might have spoken — who knows? — and the face of the world would have been changed for us. For what would I not have pardoned had he asked me?
After a little while, he mastered whatever emotion had moved him, and came to me again. He spoke in his old gentle, caressing way, a little colder, perhaps, if anything, and less gay.
“Dear donzella, you are very good to care to wander with me,” he said softly. “But I fear it is but a sorry mode of existence for you; and I fear your horoscope contained something better for your future than a strolling player’s homeless career. The clear planet that presided over your birth cannot have been the tinsel star on the painted foreheads of the Pantomimi. But, altro! we have had enough, and too much, of such serious chatter. Some day we must talk seriously indeed, and I must — but never mind now. It is All Saints Day, and, perhaps the last day of summer. There was frost at sunrise. Let us be
happy while we can, carina. Such a morning as this,” he said, after a pause, laughing himself back into that gaiety of soul which lived side by side in his nature with a certain passionate and poetic sadness: “and all this red gold of autumn ours, and a whole long sunny day in which to wander as we like, it is infamous to be melancholy, or to be athirst for lemon stones, or for anything more than the good that we have got. Lean backward to be in the shade of that tree; and let your hand lie quiet in mine — so; and now I will tell you a story.”
I loved his stories; I had the insatiable delight in them of a young mind to which romances were unknown; and his skill in telling them was marvellous.
The heroical absurdities of the Morgante Maggiore, and the Furioso, the grotesque fairyland, and miraculous adventures of Basile; the feuds and love-tales of the populace, as Cortese sang them fresh from the marketplace of Masaniello; the narratives of Boccaccio; the jests of Berni; the comedies of Goldoni — all these and their like were stripped of all coarseness and harmfulness which they might possess, and served to me decorated by all the grace and playfulness of his own fancy added to them.
I was readily consoled: when he was gay and good to me, no shadows had power to rest on me.
No lemon stone could have added anything to my perfect peace and gladness as I lay there under the golden-fruited pear-tree amongst the cyclamens, with my hand in his, listening to the sweet, sonorous cadence of his voice, while the Lily of Florence floated on the flag of the wooden theatre, and the robins chirped amongst the many-coloured autumn blossoms, and the sun was high, and the radiance was cloudless above the Solitudine.
I was a child; I needed nothing more than the joy of the moment; and whatever darkness he might see in the future it was all light to me; for did it not lie in the sweet sunshine of his smile?
It was All Saints Day; we could hear the bells ringing in the city all the morning long; we leaned there on the hillside, and took no thought for the morrow — the morrow that was the Feast of the Dead.