by Ouida
He was all mine; — all mine; — dear God! Mine all the rich, glad, fearless freedom of his life; mine all the rapturous caressing, priceless passion of his love; — mine all! And I have lost them.
The war has left him life, but he is dead to me.
And yet I listen as he speaks to the people. I, athirst for the mere echo of his step as dying men in deserts for the fountains of lost lands.
* * * *
“You know how S. Michael made the Italian?” he is saying to them, and the clear crystal ring of the sonorous Tuscan reaches to the farthest corner of the square. “Nay? — oh, for shame! Well, then, it was in this fashion; long, long ago, when the world was but just called from chaos, the Dominiddio was tired, as you all know, and took his rest on the seventh day; and four of the saints, George and Denis and Jago and Michael, stood round him with their wings folded and their swords idle.
“So to them the good Lord said: ‘Look at those odds and ends, that are all lying about after the earth is set rolling. Gather them up, and make them into four living nations to people the globe.’ The saints obeyed and set to the work.
“S. George got a piece of pure gold and a huge lump of lead, and buried the gold in the lead, so that none ever would guess it was there, and so sent it rolling and bumping to earth, and called it the English people.
“S. Jago got a bladder filled with wind, and put in it the heart of a fox, and the fang of a wolf, and whilst it puffed and swelled like the frog that called itself a bull, it was despatched to the world as the Spaniard.
“S. Denis did better than that; he caught a sunbeam flying, and he tied it with a bright knot of ribbons, and he flashed it on earth as the people of France; only, alas! he made two mistakes, he gave it no ballast, and he dyed the ribbons bloodred.
“Now S. Michael, marking their errors, caught a sunbeam likewise, and many other things, too; a mask of velvet, a poniard of steel, the chords of a lute, the heart of a child, the sigh of a poet, the kiss of a lover, a rose out of paradise, and a silver string from an angel’s lyre.
“Then with these in his hand he went and knelt down at the throne of the Father. ‘Dear and great Lord,’ he prayed, ‘to make my work perfect, give me one thing; give me a smile of God.’ And God smiled.
“Then S. Michael sent his creation to earth, and called it the Italian.
“But — most unhappily, as chance would have it — Satanas, watching at the gates of hell, thought to himself, ‘If I spoil not his work, earth will be Eden in Italy.’ So he drew his bow in envy, and sped a poisoned arrow; and the arrow cleft the rose of paradise, and broke the silver string of the angel.
“And to this day the Italian keeps the smile that God gave in his eyes; but in his heart the devil’s arrow rankles still.
“Some call this barbed shaft Cruelty; some Superstition; some Ignorance; some Priestcraft; maybe its poison is drawn from all four; be it how it may, it is the duty of all Italians to pluck hard at the arrow of hell, so that the smile of God alone shall remain with their children’s children.
“Yonder in the plains we have done much; the rest will lie with you, the Freed Nation.”
* * * * *
A shout from the people drowns his voice and stays it for a moment, the shout of assent and of homage, of love for him and of love for the country.
For a while I hear nothing.
I weep as women must weep by the grave of some noble dead thing they have lost. All my soul goes forth to him on fire. All the passion that he taught me that night of the saints, amongst the golden vines beneath Fiesole, burns in me and consumes me with its longing and despair. Not knowing what I do, I stretch my arms to him and moan aloud; — none hearken.
For a little space I fail to see or listen; I hear only a dull sound, as a drowning thing may hear the sighing of waters that devour it; when sense comes back to me he is still speaking to the people; but far more gravely now; his eyes kindle, his face flushes, his voice has in it all the yearning of a mighty love; his words fall without thought into the cadence of the terza rima.
He speaks thus:
* * * *
“All greatest gifts that have enriched the modern world have come from Italy. Take those gifts from the world, and it would lie in darkness, a dumb, barbaric, joyless thing.
“Leave Rome alone, or question as you will whether she were the mightiest mother, or the blackest curse that ever came on earth. I do not speak of Rome, imperial or republican, I speak of Italy.
“Of Italy, after the greatness of Rome dropped as the Labarum was raised on high, and the Fisher of Galilee came to fill the desolate place of the Cæsars.
“Of Italy, when she was no more a vast dominion, ruling over half the races of the globe, from the Persian to the Pict, but a narrow slip bounded by Adriatic and Mediterranean, divided into hostile sections, racked by foreign foes, and torn by internecine feud.
“Of Italy, ravaged by the Longobardo, plundered by the French, scourged by the Popes, tortured by the Kaisers; of Italy, with her cities at war with each other, her dukedoms against her free towns, her tyrants in conflict with her municipalities; of Italy, in a word, as she has been from the days of Theodoric and Theodolinda to the days of Napoleon and Francis Joseph. It is this Italy — our Italy — which through all the centuries of bloodshed and of suffering never ceased to bear aloft and unharmed its divining rod of inspiration as S. Christopher bore the young Christ above the swell of the torrent and the rage of the tempest “All over Italy from north to south men arose in the darkness of those ages who became the guides and the torchbearers of an humanity that had gone astray in the carnage and gloom.
“The faith of Columbus of Genoa gave to mankind a new world. The insight of Galileo of Pisa revealed to it the truth of its laws of being. Guido Monacco of Arezzo bestowed on it the most spiritual of all earthly joys by finding a visible record for the fugitive creations of harmony ere then impalpable and evanescent as the passing glories of the clouds. Dante Alighieri taught to it the might of that vulgar tongue in which the child babbles at its mother’s knee, and the orator leads a breathless multitude at his will to death or triumph. Teofilo of Empoli, discovered for it the mysteries of colour that lie in the mere earths of the rocks and the shores, and the mere oils of the roots and the poppies. Amoldo of Breccia lit for it the first flame of free opinion, and Amatus of Breccia perfected for it the most delicate and exquisite of all instruments of sound, which men of Cremona, or of Bologna, had first created, Maestro Giorgio, and scores of earnest workers whose names are lost in Pesaro and in Gubbio, bestowed on it those homelier treasures of the graver’s and the potter’s labours which have carried the alphabet of art into the lowliest home. Brunelleschi of Florence left it in legacy the secret of lifting a mound of marble to the upper air as easily as a child can blow a bubble, and Giordano Bruno of Noia found for it those elements of philosophic thought, which have been perfected into the clear and prismatic crystals of the metaphysics of the Teuton and the Scot.
“From south and north, from east and west, they rose, the ministers and teachers of mankind.
“From mountain and from valley, from fortress smoking under battle, and from hamlet laughing under vines; from her great wasted cities, from her small fierce walled towns, from her lone sea-shores ravaged by the galleys of the Turks, from her villages on hill and plain that struggled into life through the invaders’ fires, and pushed their vineshoots over the tombs of kings, everywhere all over her peaceful soil, such men arose.
“Not men alone who were great in a known art, thought, or science, of these the name was legion; but men in whose brains, art, thought, or science took new forms, was born into new life, spoke with new voice, and sprang full armed a new Athene.
“Leave Rome aside, I say, and think of Italy; measure her gifts, which with the lavish waste of genius she has flung broadcast in grand and heedless sacrifice, and tell me if the face of earth would not be dark and drear as any Scythian desert without these!
“
She was the rose of the world, aye — so they bruised and trampled her, and yet the breath of heaven was ever in her.
“She was the world’s nightingale, aye — so they burned her eyes out and sheared her wings, and yet she sang.
“But she was yet more than these: she was the light of the world: a light set on a hill, a light unquenchable. A light which through the darkness of the darkest night has been a Pharos to the drowning faiths and dying hopes of man.”
* * * *
His voice rings like the call of a trumpet over the hushed and awe-touched multitude.
Then it sinks low as a summer wind that steals over a tideless sea; and falls upon the silence with a sound in its gentleness and its solemnity that moves men like a prayer.
“We are Italians,” he says, slowly. “Great as the heritage is, so great the duty likewise.”
Then he uncovers his head and stands a moment silent in the moonlight. The people are silent too, and many kneel and pray.
CHAPTER IX.
Love is enough.
HE comes down from the highest steps of the Loggia, his hands full of the lilies and the laurels. A mighty shout goes forth from all the city, such a shout as a populace can only give when a great faith beats in ten thousand breasts with the same pulses.
As he passes me, I catch his hand and touch it with my lips.
I worship the greatness in him; I know it all too late; when he was mine, I had cast him from me, now that I am nothing, less than nothing, I cannot even lift my eyes to his. I cannot claim a memory; — that would be charity.
So many touch him as he goes, he does not note my kiss from any other’s; a dark veiled figure crouching at his feet; how should he see me in the blaze and stir, and tumult and triumph of this festal night in Florence?
Ginevra was happier than I.
He passes by, not knowing; ah, dear heaven! — can one be so near to any man one hour, and then so utterly a stranger, and more alien to him than the stray dog that brushes by him in the street?
He passes by me; and the crowds seize him, weeping and laughing, and lift him up on their shoulders, and bear him across the great piazza, shouting, with the white cross flags tossing above their heads and women raining roses in the moonlight He has his art; his eloquence; his power of the tongue and sword; and all his city’s love and loyalty. How natural it is he should forget! — most natural.
But I! —
I crouch down where I first dropped to rest, on the lowest step of the Loggia. The bright bold Perseus keeps watch above, and the black brows of the Judith frown against the stars.
The square is left quiet. The people have flocked elsewhere. The sounds of music and of mirth are still loud over all the town, and the coloured fires flame against the sky. There is a sweet odour heavy on the air; the stones are strewn with flowers, and they lie dying underneath the moon.
I am half conscious of it all; and yet it all seems far away, so very very far.
I am so young, and yet my life is dead.
The deep chimes toll the hour more than once; it is near midnight; Florence is still light as at noontide. Still the noise and the mirth of the people are at their height. It is only the flowers that fade; the flowers that are trodden on the stones.
I sit with my head on my hands, crushed, and broken, and bruised, like one of the trampled lilies.
I do not think of my fate or my future. All I hear is the echo of his voice; all I see is the life lost forever. If I had been patient, if I had been true, if I had been faithful! — but I thirsted for greatness, and it has failed and fooled me. And I have touched his hand, I have looked on his face, I have been close to him, as the dust beneath his feet; and yet I can never claim a look or word again from him. Never, — whilst our lives shall last For what would any love of mine seem now save like the prayer for alms of any homeless beggar?
The night flies on; the square is almost empty; the flowers are dying fast. I sit there, stupid with my wretchedness; the laurels lie scattered on the steps above.
A footfall comes near.
I shiver and look up; I see him in the moonlight, as so many times I saw him in that glad summer time coming through the silent streets of old forsaken cities, or the poppy-sown breadths of the cornlands.
But now his head is drooped; his face is pale and dark: and, as he goes, instead of the notes of the mandoline there is the clash of his sword on the stones.
He comes across the piazza; he is all alone. As he passes me he pauses and looks; it is his nature to be pitiful to all things. He only sees a human thing bowed down and solitary, mourning where all others feast He stops before me, deeming me a stranger.
“What ails you,” he asks, “that you sit so while all the town rejoices?”
I cannot answer him. I would rise and flee from him, but my feet feel chained to the marble.
He touches me with gentle compassion.
“Are you a woman and young? — you sorrow for some dead soldier?”
With a great cry I clasp his knees, and lean my head against him.
I sorrow for the dead indeed.
By some instinct or thought of the truth he tears the veil from me, and lifts my face to the light of the moon.
Then — ah, then! — I hunger no more for the sweet hillside on the night of the saints under white Fiesole.
* * * * *
“BUT I am nothing — nothing — nothing?” I murmur to him, an hour afterwards, as his embrace enfolds me, when all my tale is told.
He answers me with a smile.
“And I have nothing! So we arc equal, my treasure! Ah, donzella mia! you have learned then to think with me that these are the fairest things, after all, that the world can give us, — a little laughter and a little love?”
I wind my arms about him where we stand, and lean my cheek on his:
“Say rather only, a little laughter — and a great love.”
This is enough indeed: enough, here and hereafter. A love greater than death, great as eternity itself; a love that shall leave earth with us when our souls leave our bodies, and reach its uttermost perfection in other lives, in other worlds; a love that time cannot chill, nor any woe appal, nor God himself unsever.
* * * * *
THE town is white against the shadows of the night The river breaks with sea-like sound against the piles of the old grey bridges. The red cross banners slowly swing their white folds on the wind; the populace has grown quieter.
The shields of the old republic brighten their blazonries in the moonbeams. The lions, white amidst a green wealth of forest laurel, guard the place of the public liberties.
The roses and the lilies lie on the stones as on a palace-floor. By the water the people are singing, untired with joy and with triumph.
Is it not ever with such things that one thinks of Florence?
A cloud of blossoms, the notes of a lute, the ripple of a little laugh; the deeper joys of sighs that die in a caress; the far-off echo of a gay glad nation’s mirth; a sea of yellow moonlight, broad and cool; the stone faces of fauns and griffins coiled about with acanthus foliage; the sculptured shapes of saints and prophets reigning over a frolic of masquers; the fragrance of sea and mountain blown on fresh winds through shadowy marble ways; and in the sacred stillness of the night, in gardens where the fountains fall, or casements where the lùcciole are gleaming, the soft fast throbs of quickened pulses, the touches of lovers’ lips in the silence — these things are its breath and its life, the City of Lilies, the Amorous City; built in a field of flowers, on a midsummer night, by the Slayer of the Lion, for the mother of Eros; Florence, the daughter of gods and the queen of the freedom of men; Florence, the poetess and paradise of
LOVE.
Two Little Wooden Shoes
OR, BÉBÉE
This shorter novel was published in 1874 by Chapman and Hall in Britain and by Lippincott and Co. in America, when Ouida’s popularity was at its zenith and she was earning in excess of £5,000 per year – several hundred th
ousand pounds in modern currency. Her sales were boosted by her inclusion in the stocks of private circulating libraries, although later in the century, public libraries were more reluctant, citing the amoral antics of some of her characters as a reason for exclusion – as many as a third refused to stock any of her work. A silent movie was made of this novel in Britain in 1920, starring Joan Morgan and Langhorn Burton. Ouida had already explored the central theme of this book – a peasant heroine that becomes ensnared in the machinations of high society – in a previous novel, Folle-Farine (1871), and returned to it in this story to great popular acclaim.
The story opens on Bebee’s sixteenth birthday; she is a foundling, raised in an idyllic rural setting by a poor but content couple, Antoine Mäes and his wife. She is their only child, found in the reeds at the age of one year and central to their life ever since. By the time Bebee reaches fourteen years old, both her adoptive parents have died and against the advice of her neighbours, she decides to live alone and independently. She toils in the garden, continuing to grow the flowers that old Antoine had sold at market to scrape a living and eventually her neighbours accept her desire for freedom; on her sixteenth birthday they give her gifts, the finest of which are a set of silver belt clasps and a pair of red shoes – her first shoes in her lifetime, having always worn the peasant’s footwear – sabot (clogs). Bebee has grown into a delightful young woman, pretty and with a delicate build and blonde hair; she is also one of life’s innocents, content with her simple existence and her peasant friends.
When she goes into town to work at her market stall, selling flowers, she attracts the interest of Flamen, a local artist; his rather cynical worldliness is in stark contrast to her pretty innocence, yet she steadfastly refuses his gifts and attentions. Despite being resolutely independent, she is drawn to his company and he in turn is aware that if he interferes in her simple life, he could disrupt her future irrevocably. Flamen is “idle and vain and amorous and cold and had been spoiled by the world in which he had passed his days”; thus he is capable of viewing this child-woman with academic detachment as he ponders the question: “To leave the peach-flower to come to maturity and be plucked by a peasant, or to pull down the pear-blossom and rifle the buds?” That is the choice facing him. Bebee’s peasant admirer, Jeannot, is jealous and questions her about the upmarket man she is associating with, virtually accusing her of selling herself to the artist, along with her roses. It is in vain, as the artist’s choice is to persist with the captivated Bebee and his first move is to offer her books to educate herself. As Bebee becomes more and more reliant on his influence – however disinterestedly it is being offered – her quiet life and peace of mind become increasingly disturbed and the gossips begin to circulate lowbrow stories about her…