by Mary Shelley
He returned home, that he might inform Gegia of his journey. This was a painful task, but he could not leave her in doubt. He ascended his narrow stairs with trepidation. At the head of them a lamp twinkled before a picture of the Virgin. Evening after evening it burnt there, guarding through its influence his little household from all earthly or supernatural dangers. The sight of it inspired him with courage; he said an Ave Maria before it; and then looking around him to assure himself that no spy stood on the narrow landing place, he drew the packet from his bosom and examined the seal. All Italians in those days were conversant in heraldry, since from ensigns of the shields of the knights they learned, better than from their faces or persons, to what family and party they belonged. But it required no great knowledge for Cincolo to decypher these arms; he had known them from his childhood; they were those of the Elisei, the family to whom he had been attached as a partisan during all these civil contests. Arrigo dei Elisei had been his patron, and his wife had nursed his only daughter, in those happy days when there was neither Guelph nor Ghibelline. The sight of these arms reawakened all his anxiety. Could this youth belong to that house? The seal shewed that he really did; and this discovery confirmed his determination of making every exertion to save him, and inspired him with sufficient courage to encounter the remonstrances and fears of Monna Gegia.
He unlocked his door; the old dame was asleep in her chair, but awoke as he entered. She had slept only to refresh her curiosity, and she asked a thousand questions in a breath, to which Cincolo did not reply: he stood with his arms folded looking at the fire, irresolute how to break the subject of his departure. Monna Gegia continued to talk: “After you went, we held a consultation concerning this hot-brained youth of this morning; I, Buzeccha, Beppe de’ Bosticchi who returned, and Monna Lisa from the Mercato Nuovo. We all agreed that he must be one of two persons; and be it one or the other, if he have not quitted Florence, the Stinchi will be his habitation by sun-rise. Eh! Cincolo, man! you do not speak; where did you part with your Prince?”—”Prince, Gegia! Are you mad? — what Prince?”
“Nay, he is either a Prince or a baker; either Corradino himself, or Ricciardo the son of Messer Tommaso de’ Manelli; he that lived o’th’ Arno, and baked for all that Sesto, when Count Guido de’ Giudi was Vicario. By this token, that Messer Tommaso went to Milan with Ubaldo de’ Gargalandi, and Ricciardo, who went with his father, must now be sixteen. He had the fame of kneading with as light a hand as his father, but he liked better to follow arms with the Gargalandi: he was a fair, likely youth, they said; and so, to say the truth, was our youngster of this morning. But Monna Lisa will have it that it must be Corradino himself—”
Cincolo listened as if the gossip of two old women could unravel his riddle. He even began to doubt whether the last conjecture, extravagant as it was, had not hit the truth. Every circumstance forbade such an idea; but he thought of the youth and exceeding beauty of the stranger, and he began to doubt. There was none among the Elisei who answered to his appearance. The flower of their youth had fallen at Monte Aperto; the eldest of the new generation was but ten; the other males of that house were of a mature age. Gegia continued to talk of the anger that Beppe de’ Bosticchi evinced at being accused of the murder of Arrigo dei Elisei. “If he had done that deed,” she cried, “never more should he have stood on my hearth; but he swore his innocence; and truly, poor man, it would be a sin not to believe him.” Why, if the stranger were not an Elisei, should he have shewn such horror on viewing the supposed murderer of the head of that family? — Cincolo turned from the fire; he examined whether his knife hung safely in his girdle, and he exchanged his sandal-like shoes for stronger boots of common undressed fur. This last act attracted the attention of Gegia. “What are you about, good man?” she cried. “This is no hour to change your dress, but to come to bed. To-night you will not speak; but to-morrow I hope to get it all out from you. What are you about?”
“I am about to leave you, my dear Gegia; and heaven bless and take care of you! I am going to Pisa.” Gegia uttered a shriek, and was about to remonstrate with great volubility, while the tears rolled down her aged cheeks. Tears also filled the eyes of Cincolo, as he said, “I do not go for the cause you suspect. I do not go into the army of Corradino, though my heart will be with it. I go but to carry a letter, and will return without delay.”
“You will never return,” cried the old woman: “the Commune will never let you enter the gates of this town again, if you set foot in that traitorous Pisa. But you shall not go; I will raise the neighbours; I will declare you mad—”—”Gegia, no more of this! Here is all the money I have: before I go, I will send your cousin Nunziata to you. I must go. It is not the Ghibelline cause, or Corradino, that obliges me to risk your ease and comforts; but the life of one of the Elisei is at stake; and if I can save him, would you have me rest here, and afterwards curse you and the hour when I was born?”
“What! is he — ? But no; there is none among the Elisei so young as he; and none so lovely, except her whom these arms carried when an infant — but she is a female. No, no; this is a tale trumped up to deceive me and gain my consent; but you shall never have it. Mind that! you will never have it; and I prophecy that if you do go, your journey will be the death of both of us.” She wept bitterly. Cincolo kissed her aged cheek, and mingled his tears with hers; and then recommending her to the care of the Virgin and the saints, he quitted her, while grief choaked her utterance, and the name of the Elisei had deprived her of all energy to resist his purpose.
It was four in the morning before the gates of Florence were opened and Cincolo could leave the city. At first he availed himself of the carts of the contadini to advance on his journey; but as he drew near Pisa, all modes of conveyance ceased, and he was obliged to take by-roads, and act cautiously, not to fall into the hands of the Florentine out-posts, or of some fierce Ghibelline, who might suspect him, and have him carried before the Podesta of a village; for if once suspected and searched, the packet addressed to Corradino would convict him, and he would pay for his temerity with his life. Having arrived at Vico Pisano, he found a troop of Pisan horse there on guard: he was known to many of the soldiers, and he obtained a conveyance for Pisa; but it was night before he arrived. He gave the Ghibelline watch-word, and was admitted within the gates. He asked for Prince Corradino: he was in the city, at the palace of the Lanfranchi. He crossed the Arno, and was admitted into the palace by the soldiers who guarded the door. Corradino had just returned from a successful skirmish in the Lucchese states, and was reposing; but when Count Gherardo Doneratico, his principal attendant, saw the seal of the packet, he immediately ushered the bearer into a small room, where the Prince lay on a fox’s skin thrown upon the pavement. The mind of Cincolo had been so bewildered by the rapidity of the events of the preceding night, by fatigue and want of sleep, that he had over-wrought himself to believe that the stranger youth was indeed Corradino; and when he had heard that that Prince was in Pisa, by a strange disorder of ideas, he still imagined that he and Ricciardo were the same; that the black litter was a phantom, and his fears ungrounded. The first sight of Corradino, his fair hair and round Saxon features, destroyed this idea: it was replaced by a feeling of deep anguish, when Count Gherardo, announcing him, said, “One who brings a letter from Madonna Despina dei Elisei, waits upon your Highness.”
The old man sprang forward, uncontrolled by the respect he would otherwise have felt for one of so high lineage as Corradino. “From Despina! Did you say from her? Oh! unsay your words! Not from my beloved, lost, foster-child.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks. Corradino, a youth of fascinating gentleness, but, as Despina had said, “young, even to childishness,” attempted to reassure him. “Oh! my gracious Lord,” cried Cincolo, “open that packet, and see if it be from my blessed child — if in the disguise of Ricciardo I led her to destruction.” He wrung his hands. Corradino, pale as death with fear for the destiny of his lovely and adventurous friend, broke the seal. The
packet contained an inner envelope without any direction, and a letter, which Corradino read, while horror convulsed every feature. He gave it to Gherardo. “It is indeed from her. She says, that the bearer can relate all that the world will probably know of her fate. And you, old man, who weep so bitterly, you to whom my best and lovely friend refers me, tell me what you know of her.” Cincolo told his story in broken accents. “May these eyes be for ever blinded!” he cried, when he had concluded, “that knew not Despina in those soft looks and heavenly smiles. Dotard that I am! When my wife railed at your family and princely self, and the sainted Manfred, why did I not read her secret in her forbearance? Would she have forgiven those words in any but her who had nursed her infancy, and been a mother to her when Madonna Pia died? And when she taxed Bosticchi with her father’s death, I, blind fool, did not see the spirit of the Elisei in her eyes. My Lord, I have but one favour to ask you. Let me hear her letter, that I may judge from that what hopes remain: — but there are none: — none.”
“Read it to him, my dear Count,” said the Prince; “I will not fear as he fears. I dare not fear that one so lovely and beloved is sacrificed for my worthless cause.” Gherardo read the letter.
“Cincolo de’ Becari, my foster-father, will deliver this letter into your hands, my respected and dear Corradino. The Countess Elizabeth has urged me to my present undertaking; I hope nothing from it — except to labour for your cause, and perhaps through its event to quit somewhat earlier a life which is but a grievous trial to my weak mind. I go to endeavour to arouse the feelings of fidelity and generosity in the soul of the traitor Lostendardo: I go to place myself in his hands, and I do not hope to escape from them again. Corradino, my last prayer will be for your success. Mourn not for one who goes home after a long and weary exile. Burn the enclosed packet, without opening it. The Mother of God protect thee! — Despina.”
Corradino had wept as this epistle was reading, but then starting up, he said—”To revenge or death! we may yet save her!” —
A blight had fallen on the house of Swabia, and all their enterprizes were blasted. Beloved by their subjects, noble, and with every advantage of right on their side, except those the church bestowed, they were defeated in every attempt to defend themselves against a foreigner and a tyrant, who ruled by force of arms, and those in the hands of a few only, over an extensive and warlike territory. The young and daring Corradino was also fated to perish in this contest. Having overcome the troops of his adversary in Tuscany, he advanced towards his kingdom with the highest hopes. His arch enemy, Pope Clement IV, had shut himself up in Viterbo, and was guarded by a numerous garrison. Corradino passed in triumph and hope before the town, and proudly drew out his troops before it, to display to the Holy Father his forces, and humiliate him by this show of success. The Cardinals, who beheld the lengthened line and good order of the army, hastened to the Papal palace. Clement was in his oratory, praying; the frightened monks, with pale looks, related how the excommunicated heretic dared to menace the town where the Holy Father himself resided; adding, that if the insult were carried to the pitch of an assault, it might prove dangerous warfare. The Pope smiled contemptuously. “Do not fear,” he said; “the projects of these men will dissipate in smoke.” He then went on the ramparts, and saw Corradino and Frederic of Austria, who defiled the line of knights in the plain below. He watched them for a time; then turning to his Cardinals, he said, “They are victims, who permit themselves to be led to sacrifice.”
His words were a prophecy. Notwithstanding the first successes of Corradino, and the superior numbers of his army, he was defeated by the artifice of Charles in a pitched battle. He escaped from the field, and, with a few friends, arrived at a tower called Astura, which belonged to the family of Frangipani, of Rome. Here he hired a vessel, embarked, and put out to sea, directing his course for Sicily, which, having rebelled against Charles, would, he hoped, receive him with joy. They were already under weigh, when one of the family of the Frangipani seeing a vessel filled with Germans making all sail from shore, suspected that they were fugitives from the battle of Tagliacozzo, he followed them in other vessels, and took them all prisoners. The person of Corradino was a rich prey for him; he delivered him into the hands of his rival, and was rewarded by the donation of a fief near Benevento.
The dastardly spirit of Charles instigated him to the basest revenge; and the same tragedy was acted on those shores which has been renewed in our days. A daring and illustrious Prince was sacrificed with the mock forms of justice, at the sanguinary altar of tyranny and hypocrisy. Corradino was tried. One of his Judges alone, a Provençal, dared condemn him, and he paid with his life the forfeit of his baseness. For scarcely had he, solitary among his fellows, pronounced the sentence of death against this Prince, than Robert of Flanders, the brother-in-law of Charles himself, struck him on the breast with a staff, crying, “It behoves not thee, wretch, to condemn to death so noble and worthy a knight.” The judge fell dead in the presence of the king, who dared not avenge his creature.
On the 26th of October, Corradino and his friends were led out to die in the Market-place of Naples, by the sea-side. Charles was present with all his court, and an immense multitude surrounded the triumphant king, and his more royal adversary, about to suffer an ignominious death. The funereal procession approached its destination. Corradino, agitated, but controlling his agitation, was drawn in an open car. After him came a close litter, hung with black, with no sign to tell who was within. The Duke of Austria and several other illustrious victims followed. The guard that conducted them to the scaffold was headed by Lostendardo; a malicious triumph laughed in his eyes, and he rode near the litter, looking from time to time, first at it and then at Corradino, with the dark look of a tormenting fiend. The procession stopped at the foot of the scaffold, and Corradino looked at the flashing light which every now and then arose from Vesuvius, and threw its reflection on the sea. The sun had not yet risen, but the halo if its approach illuminated the bay of Naples, its mountains, and its islands. The summits of the distant hills of Baiæ gleamed with its first beams. Corradino thought, “By the time those rays arrive here, and shadows are cast from the persons of these men, — princes and peasants, around me, my living spirit will be shadowless.” Then he turned his eyes on the companions of his fate, and for the first time he saw the silent and dark litter that accompanied them. At first he thought, “It is my coffin.” But then he recollected the disappearance of Despina, and would have sprung towards it: his guards stopped him; he looked up, and his glance met that of Lostendardo, who smiled — a smile of dread: but the feeling of religion which had before calmed him again descended on him; he thought that her sufferings, as well as his, would soon be over.
They were already over. And the silence of the grave is upon those events which had occurred since Cincolo beheld her carried out of Florence, until now that she was led by her fierce enemy to behold the death of the nephew of Manfred. She must have endured much; for when, as Corradino advanced to the front of the scaffold, the litter being placed opposite to it, Lostendardo ordered the curtains to be withdrawn, the white hand that hung inanimate from the side was thin as a winter leaf, and her fair face, pillowed by the thick knots of her dark hair, was sunken and ashy pale, while you could see the deep blue of her eyes struggle through the closed eyelids. She was still in the attire in which she had presented herself at the house of Cincolo: perhaps her tormentor thought that her appearance as a youth would attract less compassion than if a lovely woman were thus dragged to so unnatural a scene.
Corradino was kneeling and praying when her form was thus exposed. He saw her, and saw that she was dead! About to die himself; about, pure and innocent, to die ignominiously, while his base conqueror, in pomp and glory, was spectator of his death, he did not pity those who were at peace; his compassion belonged to the living alone, and as he rose from his prayer he exclaimed, “My beloved mother, what profound sorrow will the news thou art about to hear cause thee!” He looked
upon the living multitude around him, and saw that the hard-visaged partisans of the usurper wept; he heard the sobs of his oppressed and conquered subjects; so he drew his glove from his hand and threw it among the crowd, in token that he still held his cause good, and submitted his head to the axe.
During many years after those events, Lostendardo enjoyed wealth, rank, and honour. When suddenly, while at the summit of glory and prosperity, he withdrew from the world, took the vows of a severe order in a convent, in one of the desolate and unhealthy plains by the sea-shore in Calabria; and after having gained the character of a saint, through a life of self-inflicted torture, he died murmuring the names of Corradino, Manfred, and Despina.
RECOLLECTIONS OF ITALY
After three weeks of incessant rain, at Midsummer, the sun shone on the town of Henley upon Thames. At first the roads were deep with mud, the grass wet, and the trees dripping; but after two unclouded days, on the second afternoon, pastoral weather commenced; that is to say, weather when it is possible to sit under a tree or lie upon the grass, and feel neither cold nor wet. Such days are too rare not to be seized upon with avidity. We English often feel like a sick man escaping into the open air after a three months’ confinement within the four walls of his chamber; and if “an ounce of sweet be worth a pound of sour,” we are infinitely more fortunate than the children of the south, who bask a long summer life in his rays, and rarely feel the bliss of sitting by a brook’s side under the rich foliage of some well-watered tree, after having been shut up week after week in our carpeted rooms, beneath our white ceilings.