Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
'Thy prayers have been heard, O Giovanni,' said she.
I sprang to embrace her.
'Do not spill the water! Ah! you have spilt a part of it.'
I then observed in her hand a crystal vase. A few drops were sparkling
on the sides and running down the rim: a few were trickling from the
base and from the hand that held it.
'I must go down to the brook,' said she, 'and fill it again as it was
filled before.'
What a moment of agony was this to me! Could I be certain how long
might be her absence? She went: I was following: she made a sign for
me to turn back: I disobeyed her only an instant: yet my sense of
disobedience, increasing my feebleness and confusion, made me lose
sight of her. In the next moment she was again at my side, with the
cup quite full. I stood motionless: I feared my breath might shake the
water over. I looked her in the face for her commands ... and to see
it ... to see it so calm, so beneficent, so beautiful. I was
forgetting what I had prayed for, when she lowered her head, tasted of
the cup, and gave it me. I drank; and suddenly sprang forth before me
many groves and palaces and gardens, and their statues and their
avenues, and their labyrinths of alaternus and bay, and alcoves of
citron, and watchful loopholes in the retirements of impenetrable
pomegranate. Farther off, just below where the fountain slipped away
from its marble hall and guardian gods, arose, from their beds of moss
and drosera and darkest grass, the sisterhood of oleanders, fond of
tantalizing with their bosomed flowers and their moist and pouting
blossoms the little shy rivulet, and of covering its face with all the
colours of the dawn. My dream expanded and moved forward. I trod again
the dust of Posilipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I
emerged on Baia; I crossed her innumerable arches; I loitered in the
breezy sunshine of her mole; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her
caverns, the keepers of so many secrets; and I reposed on the buoyancy
of her tepid sea. Then Naples, and her theatres and her churches, and
grottoes and dells and forts and promontories, rushed forward in
confusion, now among soft whispers, now among sweetest sounds, and
subsided, and sank, and disappeared. Yet a memory seemed to come fresh
from every one: each had time enough for its tale, for its pleasure,
for its reflection, for its pang. As I mounted with silent steps the
narrow staircase of the old palace, how distinctly did I feel against
the palm of my hand the coldness of that smooth stone-work, and the
greater of the cramps of iron in it!
'Ah me! is this forgetting?' cried I anxiously to Fiametta.
'We must recall these scenes before us,' she replied: 'such is the
punishment of them. Let us hope and believe that the apparition, and
the compunction which must follow it, will be accepted as the full
penalty, and that both will pass away almost together.'
I feared to lose anything attendant on her presence: I feared to
approach her forehead with my lips: I feared to touch the lily on its
long wavy leaf in her hair, which filled my whole heart with
fragrance. Venerating, adoring, I bowed my head at last to kiss her
snow-white robe, and trembled at my presumption. And yet the
effulgence of her countenance vivified while it chastened me. I loved
her ... I must not say _more_ than ever ... _better_ than ever; it was
Fiametta who had inhabited the skies. As my hand opened toward her:
'Beware!' said she, faintly smiling; 'beware, Giovanni! Take only the
crystal; take it, and drink again.'
'Must all be then forgotten?' said I sorrowfully.
'Remember your prayer and mine, Giovanni. Shall both have been
granted ... oh, how much worse than in vain?'
I drank instantly; I drank largely. How cool my bosom grew; how could
it grow so cool before her! But it was not to remain in its
quiescency; its trials were not yet over. I will not, Francesco! no, I
may not commemorate the incidents she related to me, nor which of us
said, 'I blush for having loved _first_;' nor which of us replied,
'Say _least_, say _least_, and blush again.'
The charm of the words (for I felt not the encumbrance of the body nor
the acuteness of the spirit) seemed to possess me wholly. Although the
water gave me strength and comfort, and somewhat of celestial
pleasure, many tears fell around the border of the vase as she held it
up before me, exhorting me to take courage, and inviting me with more
than exhortation to accomplish my deliverance. She came nearer, more
tenderly, more earnestly; she held the dewy globe with both hands,
leaning forward, and sighed and shook her head, drooping at my
pusillanimity. It was only when a ringlet had touched the rim, and
perhaps the water (for a sunbeam on the surface could never have given
it such a golden hue), that I took courage, clasped it, and exhausted
it. Sweet as was the water, sweet as was the serenity it gave me ...
alas! that also which it moved away from me was sweet!
'This time you can trust me alone,' said she, and parted my hair, and
kissed my brow. Again she went toward the brook: again my agitation,
my weakness, my doubt, came over me: nor could I see her while she
raised the water, nor knew I whence she drew it. When she returned,
she was close to me at once: she smiled: her smile pierced me to the
bones: it seemed an angel's. She sprinkled the pure water on me; she
looked most fondly; she took my hand; she suffered me to press hers to
my bosom; but, whether by design I cannot tell, she let fall a few
drops of the chilly element between.
'And now, O my beloved!' said she, 'we have consigned to the bosom of
God our earthly joys and sorrows. The joys cannot return, let not the
sorrows. These alone would trouble my repose among the blessed.'
'Trouble thy repose! Fiametta! Give me the chalice!' cried I ... 'not
a drop will I leave in it, not a drop.'
'Take it!' said that soft voice. 'O now most dear Giovanni! I know
thou hast strength enough; and there is but little ... at the bottom
lies our first kiss.'
'Mine! didst thou say, beloved one? and is that left thee still?'
'_Mine_,' said she, pensively; and as she abased her head, the broad
leaf of the lily hid her brow and her eyes; the light of heaven shone
through the flower.
'O Fiametta! Fiametta!' cried I in agony, 'God is the God of mercy,
God is the God of love ... can I, can I ever?' I struck the chalice
against my head, unmindful that I held it; the water covered my face
and my feet. I started up, not yet awake, and I heard the name of
Fiametta in the curtains.
_Petrarca._ Love, O Giovanni, and life itself, are but dreams at best.
I do think
Never so gloriously was Sleep attended
As with the pageant of that heavenly maid.
But to dwell on such subjects is sinful. The recollection of them,
with all their vanities, brings tears into my eyes.
_Boccaccio._ And into mine too ... they were so very charming.
_Petrarca._ Alas, alas! the time always comes when we must regret the
enjoyments of our youth.
_Boccaccio._ If we have let them pass us.
_Petrarca._ I mean our indulgence in them.
_Boccaccio._ Francesco! I think you must remember Raffaellino degli
Alfani.
_Petrarca._ Was it Raffaellino who lived near San Michele in Orto?
_Boccaccio._ The same. He was an innocent soul, and fond of fish. But
whenever his friend Sabbatelli sent him a trout from Pratolino, he
always kept it until next day or the day after, just long enough to
render it unpalatable. He then turned it over in the platter, smelt at
it closer, although the news of its condition came undeniably from a
distance, touched it with his forefinger, solicited a testimony from
the gills which the eyes had contradicted, sighed over it, and sent it
for a present to somebody else. Were I a lover of trout as Raffaellino
was, I think I should have taken an opportunity of enjoying it while
the pink and crimson were glittering on it.
_Petrarca._ Trout, yes.
_Boccaccio._ And all other fish I could encompass.
_Petrarca._ O thou grave mocker! I did not suspect such slyness in
thee: proof enough I had almost forgotten thee.
_Boccaccio._ Listen! listen! I fancied I caught a footstep in the
passage. Come nearer; bend your head lower, that I may whisper a word
in your ear. Never let Assunta hear you sigh. She is mischievous: she
may have been standing at the door: not that I believe she would be
guilty of any such impropriety: but who knows what girls are capable
of! She has no malice, only in laughing; and a sigh sets her windmill
at work, van over van, incessantly.
_Petrarca._ I should soon check her. I have no notion....
_Boccaccio._ After all, she is a good girl ... a trifle of the wilful.
She must have it that many things are hurtful to me ... reading in
particular ... it makes people so odd. Tina is a small matter of the
madcap ... in her own particular way ... but exceedingly discreet, I
do assure you, if they will only leave her alone.
I find I was mistaken, there was nobody.
_Petrarca._ A cat, perhaps.
_Boccaccio._ No such thing. I order him over to Certaldo while the
birds are laying and sitting: and he knows by experience, favourite as
he is, that it is of no use to come back before he is sent for. Since
the first impetuosities of youth, he has rarely been refractory or
disobliging. We have lived together now these five years, unless I
miscalculate; and he seems to have learnt something of my manners,
wherein violence and enterprise by no means predominate. I have
watched him looking at a large green lizard; and, their eyes being
opposite and near, he has doubted whether it might be pleasing to me
if he began the attack; and their tails on a sudden have touched one
another at the decision.
_Petrarca._ Seldom have adverse parties felt the same desire of peace
at the same moment, and none ever carried it more simultaneously and
promptly into execution.
_Boccaccio._ He enjoys his _otium cum dignitate_ at Certaldo: there he
is my castellan, and his chase is unlimited in those domains. After
the doom of relegation is expired, he comes hither at midsummer. And
then if you could see his joy! His eyes are as deep as a well, and as
clear as a fountain: he jerks his tail into the air like a royal
sceptre, and waves it like the wand of a magician. You would fancy
that, as Horace with his head, he was about to smite the stars with
it. There is ne'er such another cat in the parish; and he knows it, a
rogue! We have rare repasts together in the bean-and-bacon time,
although in regard to the bean he sides with the philosopher of Samos;
but after due examination. In cleanliness he is a very nun; albeit in
that quality which lies between cleanliness and godliness, there is a
smack of Fra Biagio about him. What is that book in your hand?
_Petrarca._ My breviary.
_Boccaccio._ Well, give me mine too ... there, on the little table in
the corner, under the glass of primroses. We can do nothing better.
_Petrarca._ What prayer were you looking for? let me find it.
_Boccaccio._ I don't know how it is: I am scarcely at present in a
frame of mind for it. We are of one faith: the prayers of the one will
do for the other: and I am sure, if you omitted my name, you would say
them all over afresh. I wish you could recollect in any book as dreamy
a thing to entertain me as I have been just repeating. We have had
enough of Dante: I believe few of his beauties have escaped us: and
small faults, which we readily pass by, are fitter for small folks, as
grubs are the proper bait for gudgeons.
_Petrarca._ I have had as many dreams as most men. We are all made up
of them, as the webs of the spider are particles of her own vitality.
But how infinitely less do we profit by them! I will relate to you,