CHAPTER VII.
Leaving Milan—La Bicocca—Francis the First—Francis Sforza—Black Bands ofGiovanni de’ Medici—Lautrec—An intrigue—Samblançay—The king prisoner—Samblançayfalsely accused—Condemned to be hanged atMontfaucon—His death deferred till dark, in expectation of the king’s relenting—His last words resembling Wolsey’s—Lodi—The Austrians—Imprecations—The serenade—Doubts as to the road—Piacenza—A thirstydouanier—The cathedral—Alberoni—A bell-ringer—TheFarnese—Pier Luigi’s murder—Statues on the piazza—Alessandro—His sonRanuccio—His danger in youth—His escape—His cruelty—His treatment of his son—Borgo St. Donnino—Maria Louisa—Castel Guelfo—Origin of names of Guelph and Gibelline—Parma—Madonna in the stable—A lamp serving two purposes—A procession seeking a criminal—Cambacérès—Ariosto—A robber’s love of poetry—Correggio—Modena—The countess Matilda—The Emperor Henry the Fourth—Canossa—Three days unsheltered in the court-yard—Rubiera—Modena.
1st October.
Having watched torrents falling till eleven they subsided to a mild rain, under which we started in weariness of San Marco; and about three leagues from Milan, passed the village ofLa Bicocca, in whose châteauProspero Colonnahad taken up his position whenLautrec, the French general, was obliged by his Swiss troops to give battle. Francis the First, who had lately lost Milan, had been obliged to negotiate with each canton separately,—to distribute bribes and promise pensions, and, to obtain their aid, to bear with their arrogance. Ten thousand Swiss passed, in consequence, the Mount St. Bernard in the year 1522, and with the French and Venetian troops encamped at about two miles from Milan. The city was ably defended, though Francis Sforza had yet been unable to re-enter his capital,—and by his chancellor’s order, an eloquent monk, to arouse the zeal of the Milanese, preached against the barbarians. The Milan army swelled its ranks with German mercenaries; that of France obtained an unexpected reinforcement in the person ofGiovanni de’ Medici,who, rendered free by the death of Leo the Tenth, arrived to profit by the higher pay and greater advantages the service of France offered him, conducting three thousand foot and two hundred horse beneath the mourning banners, adopted in memory of the deceased Pope, giving them the name of Black Bands, which their prowess made so celebrated.Lautrechad attacked and been obliged to raise the siege ofPavia. The Swiss troops, in the belief that money, destined for their pay, was arrived atArona, implored their generalto allow them to force a passage thither; butLautrec, aware that the distress of the imperial army surpassed his own, and having already received entire companies of deserters from the banner ofProspero Colonna,felt that delays would best dissipate his army; but the Swiss replied, through Albert de Stein: “To-morrow pay, or battle; or, after to-morrow, dismissal: choose between.”
Forced to allow their departure, wanting funds to satisfy them,Lautrecchose first to give battle.La Bicoccawas surrounded by deep ditches, to the right and left were canals, and behind it a stone bridge. Defended by artillery and the Spanish harquebuss men, the position was almost impregnable; yet the eight thousand Swiss insisted on attacking it in front, while the Marshal of Foix turned the left flank, andLautrecthe right of the Imperial army. The Swiss, notwithstanding their bravery, forced back with great carnage, though protected in their attack by Giovanni de’ Medici and his black bands, made their retreat in good order. There were yet no uniforms worn, and the troops were distinguished by the red cross of the Imperials, and the white cross of France; andLautrec, to penetrate more easily intoColonna’scamp, obliged his soldiers to change, for the Italian, their national colour. The Marshal of Foix,arrived at the bridge, defeated the Milanese of Francis Sforza, and, supported, might have gained the battle; but the impatient Swiss retreated in discomfiture ere yet he had time to arrive, andProspero Colonna,informed ofLautrec’sstratagem, easily recognised the spurious red crosses from those of his own soldiers, who wore, by his order, each a green branch as plume to his helmet. The Swiss infantry, still unpaid, and having lost in this unfortunate affair three thousand men, retired across the frontier.Lautrec, anxious to justify himself in the eyes of Francis the First, to tell him, with his own mouth, that to hold the Milanese territory with men-at-arms left eighteen months without pay, and unsatisfied and mutinous Swiss, was impossible, yielded the command, for a time, to the Marshal of Foix, his brother, and hastened to the royal presence, accompanied by two domestics only. The king refused him an audience; but protected by the constable of Bourbon, he obtained one ere long, and to the demand of Francis—“How can you justify my losses and your conduct?” he made the simple reply: “Sire, by the lack of sums to pay your armies.” It became evident, that of the three hundred thousand crowns promised by theSurintendant des Finances, Samblançay, none had reached him.
The king, surprised, summoned his minister, who acknowledged that the sums, which were in truth destined for the troops in Italy, had been demanded by, and remitted to the king’s mother, Louisa, duchess ofAngoulême.In his anger Francis reproached the duchess bitterly with the loss of Milan, but the princess replied, that the monies received fromSamblançaywere but a debt he owed her, as she had placed in his hands funds proceeding from her revenues, and the fruit of her economy. TheSurintendant’sassurances to the contrary, his known character for probity, and his habits of life, which kept him apart from all court intrigues or passions, convinced the king, who was so attached to him as to have contracted the habit of calling him “Father.” He distinguished the innocent from the guilty; he said, “While we betray ourselves, Fortune favours us in vain.”Samblançayremained in place, but his fall was decided on by his enemy, the ChancellorDuprat,and the Duchess Louisa ofAngoulême,whom either avarice or her known hatred toLautrec, or these feelings united, had moved to such base conduct.
In 1525, when Francis was about to quit France to reconquer his duchy of Milan,Samblançaywas required and dared refuse to advance the sums needful, alleging thatthree hundred thousand crowns were already due to him. He gave in his accounts, proved the truth of his assertions, and lost place and favour. Francis departed; Louisa ofAngoulême,once more regent of the kingdom, made use of her power to crushSamblançay. It was said that her receipt, signed by her hand, was abstracted by her agent from among his papers, while one of his own clerks was brought forward to accuse, of fraud and peculation, the most honest man of his time. The king, who in the interval had, in February, 1525, lost the battle ofPavia, and, conducted prisoner to Spain, been detained there prisoner till January, 1526, at the close of the latter year, with sorrow consented to his minister’s seclusion in theBastille.His vindictive mother craved that he should be brought to trial, and the ChancellorDupratpresented, for the king’s signature, a list he held ready of judges, who, chosen from the various parliaments of the kingdom, were either placed by himself or devoted to him as having shared in the profits of confiscations pronounced according to his desire. The accused was interrogated, andDuprat,aware that by delay and chicanery he could best blind the multitude, under various pretexts, so lengthened the proceedings, that they filled four years. On the 9th of August, 1527, he was condemned to be hanged atMontfaucon, and on the 12th of the same month, conducted on foot from the Bastille thither, passing through the Rue St. Denis, where, in conformity to an ancient ceremony, criminals on their way to execution were made stop at a monastery, and swallow there a glass of wine and three crusts of bread, and kiss an old wooden crucifix preserved within it.Samblançaysubmitted to this odious custom without a murmur; but, arrived at the foot of the gibbet on which he was to die, he begged that the hour of his death might be deferred, still clinging to the belief that a pardon would arrive, and that the king, who had so loved him, could not allow his suffering ignominiously in his old age.Maillard,thelieutenant criminel,deferred the execution till darkness succeeded the long summer day, and, not till all hope of the king’s pity had departed, bade his prisoner make his last prayer.Samblançaywas calm and courageous. “It seemed,” said his contemporary,Marot,“that himself was the judge andMaillardthe condemned.” He exclaimed only as he ascended the fatal ladder, “Would I had served God as I have served the king!”
The road from Milan to Lodi would be melancholy even without the recollection, that to the defeat ofLa Bicoccais bound the fate of poorSamblançay,—the long straight roadtraversing a marshy flat with a wet ditch on either side, dignified by the Milanese with the name of rivers. Approaching Lodi, the face of the country is made gay by rich pastures, for the meadows which surround it produce all the cheese called Parmesan, only because the inhabitants of Parma first made a trade of its exportation. Our passport examined again, as carefully as on leaving Milan, we rode toLa Postathrough a town cleaner and prettier than usual: the old innkeeper, at first exorbitant in his demands, accepting the less startling prices we offered, but reminding me of Shylock as he left the room, repeating, “what was in the bond,”—dinner, tea, breakfast,—and adding, “Poco, poco, pochissimo,” till we lost the sound of his step and voice in the corridor. We were hardly installed, when there arrived an Austrian officer with an orderly to take possession of the stables for an early hour to-morrow morning, as a regiment will pass through, coming fromBrescianoto join the camp.
I was amused by the expression of hatred to the Germans in the faces of their subjects, and the contrast between the fair, quiet, but determined-looking officer issuing his peremptory command, and the supple Italian, with his dark eyes and ferocious features, who received it, and the moment his back wasturned, raised his clenched hand to invoke imprecations on theTedeschi. “Accidenti in fiume, accidenti per viaggio, accidenti ad ogni cavallo che stia in questa scuderia,”till his master came out to soothe his ire by threatening to turn him away, and then he gave it vent by beating a poor white goat, the pet of the sick child.
As we had left behind rain and fog, we walked during the lovely evening to the Pont de Lodi over the Adda, here broad and rapid. The same wooden bridge exists which the Austrians (repulsed and driven back by Bonaparte) crossed to Lodi, whither the latter followed in haste to prevent its being broken by their pioneers.
Our guide mentioned with satisfaction the number ofTedeschidrowned in the Adda. It flows between flat shores, and derived beauty when we saw it only from a cloudless sunset, and the trees which fringe its banks, and were reflected in its clear water. At night, sleeping with windows open, as the heat was extreme, we were wakened by the first serenade which had greeted us in Italy; the performers had splendid voices, and sang in parts. The words of each stanza I could not distinguish, but the burthen of each was—
“Son venuti, son venuti, cavalcando, cavalcando;”
and, whether the compliment was in burlesque or earnest, I have never heard street music which so pleased me before. An hour or two after, the two Austrian officers, who had preceded their comrades, and occupied a room near ours, were serenaded also by a fine military band, so that our rest was disturbed by sweet sounds almost through the whole night, and we set off early to make room for theTedeschi.
2nd October. Lodi to Piacenza.
A prettier and more shaded road through a country, almost entirely pasture-land, and resembling the mildest parts of England. The little wine they produce is much valued, but the chief supply comes from Piedmont. We passed atCasal Pusterlengothe route which turns off to Cremona, but, unfortunately, no one being in sight just then, we were uncertain as to whether our instincts led right or wrong, and the distance to the frontier seeming longer than it had been described, we began to fear the necessity of turning back, beneath a sun whose heat was intense to painfulness. A few carters passed us with their horses, but I have learned to ask questions with discrimination, for the brutal incivility of the common Italians I have never seen equalled. They shout their disapprobation of our mode of travelling, theirenergy seeming to expend itself in “sound and fury, signifying nothing;” drive on us their cart-horses or oxen, or at least act like a waggoner we came up with yesterday, and whom I requested to allow me room to pass on the side where Fanny, who, to his amusement, was starting violently, would be in no danger of arriving with me at the bottom of a twenty feet deep ditch. He told me to manage as well as I could, as he did not intend to move an inch. At last, fearing we might ride to Cremona, we stopped at a cabin door in one of the dirty villages on our way. My question was not very politely answered, and the whole family exclaimed in chorus that we were wrong, and must turn back; perhaps in ignorance, though I think in mischief, and, as I thought so then, we hesitated, and a post-boy coming up with his horses, (a person always civil to strangers, who may employ him,) desired us to ride on, as a few minutes would bring us to the frontier.
This proving true, our passport was examined at theCà Rossa,and we were on the territory of the Archduchess Maria Louisa. The heat was intense, and they detained us some time under the sun; the oxen, dragging their waggon-loads of grapes, passed us by; and before the village doors the men with their soiled and sunburned feet were treading thewine-press as we had seen them doing in the fields also. At last, Piacenza was in sight; the dark red city rising on the broad plain beyond the broad Pô, with the one stone arch, the relic of a Roman bridge, standing in its centre, on the deposit of sand and stones; and the two bridges of boats which we were to cross, and which should be a relic also, being extremely unsafe, the boats small, and the decaying planks they sustain a succession of hill and dale, over which our horses feared to advance. The toll is five sous per steed, which, considering its state, is sufficient.
Having ridden in safety, but some dread, across this uneven and trembling bridge, we left our passport at the gate, and thedouanierscame smilingly forward. “What is in this valise?” “Linen.” “And in this?” “Linen also; will you look at it?”
Thedouaniersmiled, and shook his head, but made an almost imperceptible sign of thirst, and D—— gave a silver coin to satisfy it. There is a frankness about this conduct which is exceedingly agreeable. One is sure of giving in the right place, and without offence, and also of saving trouble at small cost, for it happened that the only change we possessed was an Austrian lira, which, translated, means seventeen sous, three centimes; and though we were almost ashamed tooffer it, it seemed to content the custom-house officer perfectly.
The sombre streets of this saddest of towns led us to San Marco, an inn neither good nor bad, though certainly better than its Milan namesake, and having fine rooms and broad staircase, which common cleanliness would make objects of admiration. Our sleeping chamber with its dome is of such elegant form that I should like to transport it afar, but spoiled with gaudy frescoes on wall and ceiling, by dirty floor, and ragged furniture. The eating room, a noble hall, with a range of pillars down its centre, and hung round with paintings for sale—some few good, several curious; luxury and poverty, dirt and elegance, everywhere blended—even in the yard, which is an abomination, yet where a coved trellis-work forms a roof which a splendid vine covers with its thick leaves, making the loveliest of ceilings.
We walked to the cathedral—a dark red heavy building, built almost entirely of brick, with one high tower; an open gallery surmounting its façade, which exhibits, one above the other, three ranges of porticoes, the pillars of the lowest and central one springing from the loins of guardian lions. Within, above the principal entrance, is some curious carving. The church is large without being handsome;two thirds of the roof, glaring with fresh whitewash, contrast with the dark grey columns. The choir has its frescoes still; and there is a subterranean church which we admired—sombre and solemn, its arched roof sustained by numerous pillars, as light and elegant as those above are massive. We were driven from the cathedral by two or three guides, who, next to beggars, persecute strangers in Italy, following with a pertinacity which defies repulse, forcing on you a new version of history, and concluding each sentence by saying, with extended hand, “Le sue buone grazie.”
In the cathedral, the famous Cardinal Alberoni (born at the village ofFirenzuola,which we shall pass through on our way, and a gardener’s son) was clerk and bell-ringer. An open piazza surrounds the square, which we left in search of the citadel, once the palace and stronghold ofPier Luigi Farnese, who, invested with the duchy in the year 1545, by his father Pope Paul the Third, built for his defence what proved his tomb. Notwithstanding Paul’s affection for him, he was a man stained with all vices, and capable of all crimes. The nobility of his new states, who under the ecclesiastical sway had enjoyed great independence, were bowed to the rank of vassals; and, making his laws retrospective in their severity, (while he deprived them ofarms, limited their privileges, and forced them to reside within his city and power,) he commanded a strict investigation of their past conduct, and punished its derelictions with heavy fines or confiscation of property, exercising the same tyranny of which he had given proof when five years before he had been sent by the pope to subdue his revolted province ofPerugino,the birthplace of Raphael’s master; for having reduced it to obedience, he devastated its territory, and put its chief citizens to the most cruel deaths. The nobles of Placentia, roused to desperation, at last conspired against him, demanding and obtaining the aid of Ferdinand ofGonzagua,who detestedFarnesealso. It is said that a man celebrated for divination of the future presented himself beforePier Luigito warn him of his fate, desiring him to examine one of his own coins struck at Parma, as thereupon, and contained in the same word, he would find the initials of the conspirators’ names and the destined place of his assassination. The prophecy was little attended to at the time, but it was afterwards observed, that as Plac—— signified Placentia, it also contained the initials ofPallavicini, Landi, Anguissola,andConfalonieri.On the 10th of September, 1547, between thirty and forty conspirators, in peaceful garb, but with concealed arms, arrived at the palace as if topay their court toFarnese, who, an old man before his time, lay in his sick chamber, incapable of defence or exertion. While they guarded the approaches, and prevented succour,Anguissolasought it and stabbed him. Apprized of his death by the firing of two cannon, agreed on as a signal, Ferdinand ofGonzaguadespatched to Placentia a reinforcement of troops, and followed himself to take possession in the emperor’s name.
It is said that they flung the corpse from the balcony into the piazza, and guide-books aver the balcony is still shown; but of the windows of the still unfinished exterior, which bears the ciphers ofPier Luigiand his successor, and look on the square, not one opens on a balcony. The inner courts are invisible to strangers, the citadel being converted to a barrack, and the other side of the edifice looks on gardens. A washerwoman, whose door stood open, allowed me to obtain a view of it by entering her dirty territory, after we had made a long and vain tour, for the purpose, among hot stone walls and ill-scented alleys.
The old municipal palace, built in the thirteenth century, with its quaint architecture, dark and imposing, forms one side of the place which contains the two equestrian statues in bronze, and of colossal size, ofAlessandroandRanuccio Farnese.
Opposite is thePalazzo del Governo,where, forming part of an effaced inscription, I could distinguish the wordNapoleone.Beneath the arcades of the first fortress-looking palace, and around the pedestals of the duke’s statues, were grouped the market-women, with their heaps of fruit and baskets of flowers, as if they were offerings to propitiate the stern warriors who frown above on their battle-steeds. Engraved on each pedestal is an inscription, equally flattering, though deserved differently.
Alessandro, brought up at the court of Philip the Second of Spain, soon distinguished by his brilliant courage and military talent, became, after the decease of Duke John of Austria, governor of the Netherlands, and profiting by the religious dissensions there, won over to Spain almost all the resident catholics. The United Provinces had called to defend them the Duke ofAnjou,brother of Henry the Third of France. Alessandro, whose triumphs had continued almost uninterruptedly, receiving news of the loss of his father Octavio, and become by this event Duke of Parma and Placentia, solicited of the Spanish court permission to return and take possession of his sovereignty. Philip refusing the leave he asked, he prosecuted, with unabated success, the war in Flanders, till that in France came to create a diversion. At thesieges of Paris andRouenthe prince of Parma was opposed to Henry the Fourth, and returning from the latter, he was wounded in the arm beforeCaudebec,and died at Arras of the consequences of this neglected injury, having never seen again the province of which he had become master.
His sonRanucciowas his lieutenant in Flanders when he expired: though he had shown courage in battle, he inherited none of his father’s heroic qualities. In his early youth in Rome his life had been in danger of closing violently. PopeSixtusthe Fifth, informed, that, despite his severe order against concealed arms, youngRanucciosecretly carried pistols, commanded his arrest, and it took place as he entered the halls of the pontifical palace to seek an audience. TheCardinal Farnese, his uncle, craved his liberation on the instant, but in vain. Returning at nightfall to the presence of his holiness, he renewed his solicitations even more earnestly. At ten o’clock the inflexible pope sent to the castle of St. Angelo his mandate for the young man’s execution. Unacquainted with the subject of the message, the cardinal continued to implore, and at eleven obtained from the hand ofSixtusa second order,—bearing that, on its receipt,Ranuccio Farneseshould be set free. Provided with this last, the cardinal arrivedbreathless at the castle of St. Angelo, where, to his astonishment and terror, he found his young relative kneeling before his confessor, and heard that the execution had been deferred only on his instant prayer for more time to reconcile himself with God. Whether the pope had intended merely to terrify his prisoner to future obedience, or whether he thought, in the hour which had elapsed, his first command must have been fulfilled, the cardinal did not wait to inquire, and the governor yielding upRanuccioin the belief thatSixtushad been softened, he forced him to depart from the papal states without delay. Reigning as duke in Parma,Ranucciostrove to inspire his subjects with fear of him, and aroused, instead, their hatred. When apprised of the discontent of the nobles, he feigned belief in a wide-spreading conspiracy, seized on the representatives of the first families of his duchy, and rid himself of their future opposition by secret trials and the block, while he dragged to the gibbet their adherents and vassals.
An even darker trait inRanuccio’slife is his capricious cruelty towards an illegitimate son, named Octavio, whose noble and brilliant qualities had won for him the love of all ranks in his father’s duchy. The duke of Parma had espoused the niece of Pope Clement the Eighth, MargaretAldobrandini.Hisunfounded hatred to a wife who, on her side, could not love one whose severe and sombre exterior fitly accompanied a distrustful and avaricious disposition, long kept them separated, andRanuccioduring this time named Octavio his heir. As the youth grew up, he became daily and deservedly more popular, changing his father’s favour to fear and hatred, till, having heirs by his wife Margaret, he pretended a fear that the disappointed prince might interfere to put his brothers aside; seized on his person, and commanded that he should be immured in the fearful prison ofLa Rochettaat Parma, where he dragged through a few wretched years, and died mysteriously. His father, unjust and ferocious as he was, yet came to a peaceful end, leaving the dukedom to the second of Margaret’s sons, as the eldest proved deaf and dumb.
On our return from thePalazzo Pubblico,we passed the church of San Pietro, with its monastery attached to itself, and its convent on the opposite side of the street; the blank wall of the first facing the latter’s windows, barred, grated, and wired, like a prison or a mad-house, with precaution which seems excessive where the entrance is voluntary. On the whole, though we made the tour of all the other churches we found open, and wandered till we were weary among the desolate streets,the day we passed at Placentia seemed a long one. When night closed in, the silent town awoke, and parties walked up and down, singing with most enchanting voices: it is a pleasure peculiar to Italy.
4th October.
Left Placentia forBorgo San Donnino,issuing by the old gate and ruined fortifications. Piacenza received her name, in days of yore, from her pleasant environs,—now so changed that she requires new baptism: for the country, rich and flat, through which our broad, straight road passes, is interesting only where the vintagers are employed, and would be bare of trees but for those planted to receive the vines. Here and there we found shade from the sun under a pollarded oak, growing by the road-side, with the fruit and the festoons of light green hanging among its dark branches; far away we could distinguish the Apennines, but too distant to give boldness or beauty. At the entrance ofBorgo St. Donninois its quaint old church, guarded without by a strange assemblage of saints, beasts, and nondescript figures; and before arriving at the Angelo, which is at the extremity of the little town, we passed two fine establishments for mendicity, male and female, once a jesuits’ monastery. The Angelo is the cleanest inn, and kept by the most honest people we havehad the fortune to find since crossing the frontier, the good woman, who lost her husband a year since, and the head waiter, who has lost an eye, vying with each other in civility, and proud of their beds and cookery: still as it rained pitilessly from our coming till night, we were reminded that travelling is a melancholy pleasure as we looked round the large desert rooms, examined over and over their vile frescoes, and were glad to talk to the waiter, and to hear his comments on Maria Louisa, and how with the higher classes of her subjects she is no longer popular since the movement which followed 1830, rousing their desire to be French rather than Austrians; but adored by the poor, to whom she is the kindest of sovereigns, and who feel her charity. The hospitals, good roads, and fine bridges of her small states, give proof of her care, and, saving three months spent yearly at Vienna, her whole time is passed in her duchy.
The violence of the rain prevented our visiting the ancient church and its curious tomb of the town’s patron, SaintDonnino,who was an officer of the Emperor Maximilian, and, having offended his lord by becoming Christian, fled hither, and was here beheaded in the year 304.
Alberoni’s first step to fortune was the place of chaplain to the bishop of St.Donnino.
The rain ceased, and we left the quiet inn, taking the long, straight, muddy road to Parma, passing, ere reaching the latter, the fine old castle ofGuelfo, a part of which is a complete ruin, and the remainder with its ivied walls and square battlemented towers half concealed among old trees, though close to the road, forms a fine residence for thegrand chambellanof Maria Louisa, whose family resides there throughout the year. You know that it was built by theGuelfofaction, in opposition toCastel Gibello,which lies between Parma and Placentia, though not on the road we have travelled. These fatal rallying words were first employed in 1140, at the battle ofWinsburg,between Conrad the Third, the emperor, and Guelph the Sixth of Bavaria. A castle, which had been the nursery of the dukes of Swabia, was called Gibellin, and the Christian name of Guelph had long been one of predilection in the house of Bavaria. The latter sought the pope’s alliance. Even when the political animosity between them had died away, old affections and old hatreds continued to spring up in gratitude or in vengeance for benefits and injuries received by either’s ancestors. From Guelph the First, of Bavaria, sprang the house which gave monarchs to England.
BeyondCastel Guelfo, we crossed the finebridge, which seems of endless length, commenced by Napoleon, and finished by Maria Louisa, across the desolate and desolating Taro, which, now shrunken and still, winds through its winter-bed, like a rivulet in a desert, and, shortly after, arrived at Parma, built on the river of the same name, which we traversed two or three times as we rode to thePaone,whither we had been recommended, and which, though a bad inn, we bear with patiently, as its owners are civil, and stabling excellent: for, under present circumstances, our own lodging is not that held first in importance. A portrait of the Santa Madonna hangs against the wall at the lower end of the stable,—the lamp, which burns before it, serving the double purpose of doing her honour and lighting the mangers.
The rain returned in torrents, not to be braved; and the windows of our dirty rooms command a view of only a small portion of the square. As I leaned out, looking at a dirty café just opposite, and in our own alley, and a yawning Italian woman, with her dark neck bare, as usual, enjoying, with her two elbows on a cushion, the “dolce far niente,” which so chafed ourselves, there passed beneath a long procession, headed by a few priests, and composed of men, who wore, over their usual dress, a species of friar’s cloak and cape ofoilskin, with a silver badge, resembling a coffin plate, hung to the left side. They went silently along under the pouring rain, a bareheadedCapucinwalking beside the last, and a crowd following. I asked a servant who they might be. They belonged, he said, some being clerical, some laymen, to the brotherhood ofLa Buona Morte,and were on their way to visit a criminal condemned the next morning to die. He was guilty, the waiter said, of a “brutto delitto,” and the story was, indeed, one exhibiting the unrestrained passions which are the heritage and curse of Italy.
He was a peasant thirty years of age, married to a wife of five and twenty, to whom he had been long attached, and father of an infant but a few weeks old. In the course of this summer he unhappily became acquainted with another and a depraved woman, but whom he determined to marry, and his resolution irrevocably formed, he returned home and from her presence one evening, deliberately sawed his wife’s head from her body with a pruning-knife; took measures for her burial which he believed would prevent discovery, and went from her corpse to her old father to mourn with him for her early death.
We shall leave at daybreak, and probably make no stay at Modena, as we return by thesame road, when I will satisfy my own curiosity, and any you may feel likewise.
You know the anecdote ofCambacérès, told byMontgaillard.“On the 11th of April, 1814, he put down his liveries and imperial representation, and in a spirit of legitimacy, justice and humility, which cannot be sufficiently praised, signed a deed of renunciation to the title of Prince of Parma in presence of a notary! and remitted this deed to the Austrian cabinet, so that the Empress Maria Louisa and the court of Vienna will, on this head, have nothing to fear!!”
At the village of St. Ilario, at which we arrived after crossing a long narrow bridge over the Enza, is the frontier. We were detained some time, but the duke’sdoganieriare the first and only who have a touch of modesty about them, for they do not stretch forth the hand for coin. Fed our horses at dirtyReggio,Ariosto’s birthplace; the poor noble, the unsuccessful lawyer; the great but ill-recompensed poet, to whoseOrlando Furiosothe CardinalIppolito d’Estesaid, “MasterLouis,whence gathered you together such fooleries?” but better appreciated by the wild robber chiefPacchione,when Ariosto (sent by Duke Alfonso to purge the mountainous district ofGarfagnanaof thelawless bands who infested it, and having so legislated as to succeed, and in a brief space of time to bow or soothe the turbulent to submission) was passing on horseback, and with six or seven domestics only, along a narrow pass, when at a sudden turn, and grouped in the shadow, he perceived a number of men of suspicious appearance, and hurried by, knowing his party’s inability to cope with theirs. The chief of the band, however, who watched him go past, arrested his last follower by the bridle, and inquired the name of the nobleman. The domestic replying “Ariosto,” armed as he was, he joined the charger at a bound, and the poet checked him suddenly, uncertain as to the motive of his haste and the action which might follow.
The robber doffed his cap and bowed respectfully, asking pardon for having failed to salute him on his passage as being then unacquainted with the person of one whose fame was familiar to him, and having made him the most polite offers, took his leave.
It was Ariosto, who, endowed with genius, not with fortune, engraved over his small house the inscription:—
SMALL DWELLING SUITED TO ME, OBNOXIOUS TO NONE, INNO RESPECT MEAN, RAISED AT MINE OWN COST.
SMALL DWELLING SUITED TO ME, OBNOXIOUS TO NONE, INNO RESPECT MEAN, RAISED AT MINE OWN COST.
SMALL DWELLING SUITED TO ME, OBNOXIOUS TO NONE, IN
NO RESPECT MEAN, RAISED AT MINE OWN COST.
and who replied to the question, why he who, in his Orlando, could so well describe splendidpalaces with porticoed courts and marble halls, had built a dwelling so humble? “It is easier to gather together words than stones.”
On our left hand (the road conducting thither following the course of the torrentCrossolo,which washes one side of the town) is the village ofCorreggio,the birthplace and the home of Allegri, to whom it has given a name which is not to die—the man who it is said had no master: who studied nature in her grandeur and her grace; of whom a modern writer has observed that his love of childhood, his study of its anger, its joys and tears, so exact that he was wont to stop to sketch in his walks the groups he met at play, gave him in its representation such purity of conception, such brilliancy and delicacy of touch, that he seemed to paint with the breath, while over his female forms there is diffused a divinity, a celestial grace, belonging to beings of a higher order, as if he had painted in prophecy. Never rich, ill paid for his mighty works, having received but about £20 and his food during the six months his labour lasted for thechef d’œuvreof his life, the St. Jeronimo, he proceeded one day of 1534 to Parma to solicit that the remainder of a sum due for the frescoes of the cupola of the cathedral might be paid him, and received there £8 in copper money. Impatient to bearit to his family atCorreggio,he started on foot to carry it thither, arrived heated and exhausted by the enormous weight, was seized with acute fever and died at forty.
The appearance of the little city of Modena is most prepossessing, regularly built and clean, with wide streets and handsome buildings, a pleasant impression increased by the magnificent rooms and extreme civility of our inn San Marco.
With Modena is connected much historical interest. The famous Countess Matilda, the church’s most pious benefactress, and the pope’s most attached adherent, was its sovereign in 1054, and in her strong castle of Canossa nearReggio,she received Pope Gregory the Seventh, yielding to him her powerful protection on the news that Henry the Fourth of Germany, the excommunicated emperor, was on his way to seek a personal interview with the pontiff, preferring so to do to awaiting the decision of his holiness the following year at the diet-general of the empire to be invoked atAugsburgfor the purpose of his ban or absolution. There exists a village of the same name, where the impregnable fortress of Matilda arose at that time. The princes of the empire had obliged the unfortunate Henry to consent to abjure the marks of his rank as well as its power; toenter into no church, which, as a man condemned by the church, his presence might sully; and to travel without suite or dignity till such time as his fate should be decided.
Feeling that in the assembly ofAugsburgthat decision would be fatal, notwithstanding the danger of traversing the Alps at that season (Christmas), Henry the Fourth departed for Italy, accompanied by his empress, and by Prince Conrad, then a boy, and who, in after days, was to raise the standard of revolt against the father, whom Henry, his second and best beloved son, was also, when most trusted, to betray, usurp his empire, and imprison his person, and finally refuse to it the rites of burial. The emperor arrived at Canossa, and presented himself at the first gate, for the fortress was surrounded by a triple wall, and the ground then covered with snow. He was allowed to wait a long time and alone; the few who attended him being forbidden to approach; and the gate being at last opened to him, he was wholly at the mercy of his enemies, a consideration which did not subdue his courage or change his purpose, for it is said of him, that in the sixty-six battles he had fought, he had always, save when betrayed, come off victorious. Admitted within the second court-yard of Canossa, he was bidden to put off his shoes and the royal robes whichhe wore, assuming in their stead a plain woollen tunic; and the monarch having obeyed, he was allowed to remain in this court three days, though in the month of January and in the Appennines, exposed to the severity of the weather, and receiving food only late at night, as if forgotten by the proud pontiff. The fourth morning Matilda interceded, and Gregory the Seventh allowed himself to be softened, admitted the emperor to kiss his holy foot, and gave him absolution on such humiliating terms, that they were shortly after broken through, and Henry excommunicated once more.
Nicholas of Este, duke of Modena and Ferrara about 1400, was the injured husband who beheaded Parisina; and Alfonso of Este, whose reign commenced in 1505, was married to Lucretia Borgia, of infamous memory. It was his brother the Cardinal Ippolito who was Ariosto’s unworthy patron. Rival in a love-affair of his natural brotherDon Giulio,Ippolito heard its object, who was a lady of Ferrara, praise the beauty ofDon Giulio’seyes, having preferred him for her lover. As his brother returned from a hunting party, he was surrounded by assassins guided to meet him by this unnatural relative, and the eyes, whose lustre the fair lady of Ferrara had praised, torn from their sockets in his presence.
Before arriving at Modena, and on the riverSecchia,we rode through the wretched town, and beneath the strong stern towers of the fortress of Rubiera, within whose walls diedOttobon Terzi,who, from acondottiere,striving to rise to be an independent sovereign, seized successively on Parma,Reggio,and Modena, pillaged Placentia, beheaded sixty-five citizens of Parma, but at last, desirous of peace, as the Marquis of Este opposed to him the braveAttendolo Sforza,consented to a conference at Rubiera. The chief and the noble arrived, each followed by a few chosen knights, and among those of the latter wasAttendolo.Excited by sudden passion, or perhaps obeying a command unworthy of him, in the midst of the peaceful discourse Sforza sprang forward and stabbedOttobon Terzi.Those who accompanied him fled, and the corpse (transported thither and mutilated by the people’s fury) was dragged through the streets of Modena.
So much for the striking traits of her history, we shall know her features better on our return; for here, as at Parma, it has rained the livelong day, and we leave early to-morrow. It is the first time since I arrived on Italian ground, that the comfort of an inn has made me wish to stop for repose.