Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
ventured once to ask him how the master of so rich a house in the
city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such
cornfields, of such pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains,
should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open
sea, the high-road of nations. Instead of answering my question, he
asked me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine
who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared
to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On my reply in the
affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions
in Spain much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could
ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were
threatened with ruin and expulsion. 'I do not fight,' said he,
'whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the
caprice of two silly, quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in
perfectly good humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just
when I begin to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own account; not
as a hired assassin, or still baser journeyman.'
_Eugenius._ It appears then really that the Infidels have some
semblances of magnanimity and generosity?
_Filippo._ I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine
linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom
of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.
_Eugenius._ Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things, I would
fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite
many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo,
that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia,
daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.
_Filippo._ I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.
_Eugenius._ Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.
_Filippo._ Alas! 'tis undeniable.
_Eugenius._ I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by _motu
proprio_ and rescript to consistory and chancery....
_Filippo._ Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a
word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope
for salvation, I have but forty left, and thirty-nine would not serve
them.
_Eugenius._ Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have
promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be
demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint
Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.
_Filippo._ Man and wife!
_Eugenius._ Moderate thy transport.
_Filippo._ O Holy Father! may I speak?
_Eugenius._ Surely she is not the wife of another?
_Filippo._ No, indeed.
_Eugenius._ Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?
_Filippo._ No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory and chancery
are nothing to this fulmination.
_Eugenius._ How so?
_Filippo._ It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man
ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and
the decimal is the unit.
_Eugenius._ What, then, can I do for thee?
_Filippo._ I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me. I can
make her at any time what she is not; I could never make her again
what she is.
_Eugenius._ The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget
that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must
hear it first.
_Filippo._ In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its
idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and looking
over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward to Pistoja,
there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited by the sisters
to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own
sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her
blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by
the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.
_Eugenius._ Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.
_Filippo._ But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking
with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful
delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? 'Twere a
pity! There was enough for me; there is never enough for the Madonna.
Resolving on a sudden that the object of my love should be the object
of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across
the maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl
screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.
_Eugenius._ In the chapel?
_Filippo._ I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.
_Eugenius._ If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a
brush against a Madonna's mouth is worse than a beard against her
votary's.
_Filippo._ I thought so too, Holy Father!
_Eugenius._ Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try in due
season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure
forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray God my son Filippo, to have
thee alway in His holy keeping.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called _abbati_.
TASSO AND CORNELIA
_Tasso._ She is dead, Cornelia! she is dead!
_Cornelia._ Torquato! my Torquato! after so many years of separation
do I bend once more your beloved head to my embrace?
_Tasso._ She is dead!
_Cornelia._ Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most
unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven, so bewilders you?
_Tasso._ Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her.
_Cornelia._ Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out of
spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this season of
the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent.
_Tasso._ How! What is this?
_Cornelia._ The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of the
car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves to one
of the oxen. And did you happen to be there at the moment?
_Tasso._ So then the little too can suffer! the ignorant, the
indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted, else never
would calamity have befallen her.
_Cornelia._ I wish you had not seen the accident.
_Tasso._ I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where I am.
The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death!
_Cornelia._ Be calm, be composed, my brother!
_Tasso._ You would not require me to be composed or calm if you
comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings.
_Cornelia._ Peace! peace! we know them all.
_Tasso._ Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment, derision, madness.
_Cornelia._ Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these existed, they are
past.
_Tasso._ You do think they are sufferings? ay?
_Cornelia._ Too surely.
_Tasso._ No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They would
have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as I am! did I
complain of them? and while she was left me?
_Cornelia._ My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister's love?
Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think, O my brother, how
many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than
you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among
them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his
gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to be beloved?
_Tasso._ Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained wood a
little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite beautifies! Wet your
forefinger with your spittle; stick a broken gold-leaf on the
sinciput; clip off a beggar's beard to make it tresses; kiss it; fall
down before it; worship it. Are you not irradiated by the light of its
countenance? Princes! princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters
that costly carrion? Who thinks about it? [_After a pause._] She is
dead! She is dead!
_Cornelia._ We have not heard it here.
_Tasso._ At Sorrento you hear nothing but the light surges of the sea,
and the sweet sprinkles of the guitar.
_Cornelia._ Suppose the worst to be true.
_Tasso._ Always, always.
_Cornelia._ If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, to love and to
lament you, think gratefully, contentedly, devoutly, that her arms had
clasped your neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in that
long sleep which you have rendered placid, and from which your
harmonious voice shall once more awaken her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom
had throbbed to yours, often and often, before the organ peal shook
the fringes round the catafalque. Is not this much, from one so high,
so beautiful?
_Tasso._ Much? yes; for abject me. But I did so love her! so love her!
_Cornelia._ Ah! let the tears flow: she sends you that balm from
heaven.
_Tasso._ So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had indeed
been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as
great as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed on me as much
as the German had conferred or could confer on his vassal. No part of
my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea
cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick to my shroud.
_Cornelia._ Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who
has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora was unblameable.
Never think ill of her for what you have suffered.
_Tasso._ Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for
everything; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me
none; it was where she was not that pain was.
_Cornelia._ Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship,
there is no reason why the last comer of the two should supersede the
first.
_Tasso._ Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I am easily
persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown before me. With these
you have made my temples throb again. Just heaven! dost thou grant us
fairer fields, and wider, for the whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou
build us up habitations above the street, above the palace, above the
citadel, for the plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid
its dues, paid its penalties? Cannot our griefs come first, while we
have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks it a
misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young man! look at the
violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah! but thou must awake!
_Cornelia._ O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a man's heart
is sensitive in proportion to its greatness.
_Tasso._ And a woman's?
_Cornelia._ Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other. Comfort
thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato!
_Tasso._ Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds me of
her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave.
_Cornelia._ Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you, saying to
you, as the priests around have been saying to _her_, Blessed soul!
rest in peace?
_Tasso._ I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A thousand
times has she repeated it, laying her head on my heart to quiet it,
simple girl! She told it to rest in peace ... and she went from me!
Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, never self-destroyer! the world,
with all its weight of miseries, cannot crush thee, cannot keep thee
down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings of certain springs,
only harden and petrify what they fall on; but mine sank deep into a
tender heart, and were its very blood. Never will I believe she has
left me utterly. Oftentimes, and long before her departure, I fancied
we were in heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the
gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it in the broad
daylight, when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me
that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter.
Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes in the