What is remarkable in the original text of this tale is the rudeness and crudeness of the language in which it is written, which is indeed so great that its real spirit or meaning might easily escape any one not familiar with such composition. But I believe that I have rendered it very faithfully.
There seems to be that, however, in Bellosguardo which inspires every poet. Two of the most beautiful pa.s.sages in English literature, one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and another by Hawthorne, describe the views seen from it. The castle itself is deeply impressed on my memory, for during the past nine months I have never once raised my eyes from the table where I write without beholding it in full view before me across the Arno, even as I behold it now.
I cannot help observing that the mysterious sentiment which seized on the hero of this tale when he found his virgin relic, was marvellously like that which inspired Keats when he addressed his Ode to a Grecian Urn:
"Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?"
That which I have here given is truly a leaf-fringed legend, for it is bordered with the petals of roses and embalmed with their perfume, and one which in the hands of a great master might have been made into a really beautiful poem. It came near a very gay rhymer at least in the Duke Lorenzo de" Medici, whose songs, which were a little more than free, and rather more loose than easy, were the delight and disgrace of his time. And yet I cannot help rejoicing to meet this magnificent patron of art and letters at so late a day in a purely popular tale. There are _men_ of beauty who are also a joy for ever, as well as things, and Lorenzo was one of them.
It is worth noting that just as the fairy in this tale reveals to Lorenzo that Florence is threatened by enemies, just so it happened that unto Saint Zen.o.bio, standing rapt in divine contemplation in his cavern, it was announced that the same city was about to be a.s.sailed by cruel barbarians, who, as Sigbert relates in his Chronicle of 407 A.D., were the two hundred thousand Goths led by Radagasio into Italy. But they were soon driven away by the Saint"s prayers and penitence. It would be curious if one legend had here pa.s.sed into another:
"So visions in a vision live again, And dreams in dreams are wondrously transfused; Gold turning into grey as clouds do change, And shifting hues as they a.s.sume new forms."
Apropos of Saint Zen.o.bio of Florence, I will here give something which should have been included with the legend of the Croce al Trebbio, but which I obtained too late for that purpose. It would appear from the _Iscrizioni e Memorie di Firenze_, by F. Bigazzi (1887), that the _pillar_ of the cross was really erected to commemorate a victory over heretics, but that the cross itself was added by the Saints Ambrosio and Zen.o.bio, "on account of a great mystery"-which mystery is, I believe, fully explained by the legend which I have given. The inscription when complete was as follows:
SANCTUS AMBROSIUS c.u.m SANCTO ZEn.o.bIO PROPTER GRANDE MISTERIUM HUNC CRUCEM HIC LOCAVERUNT. ET IN MCCCx.x.xVIII NOVITER DIE 10 AUGUSTI RECONSECRATA EST P. D. M. FRANCISC. FLOR.
EPISCOPUM UNA c.u.m ALIIS EPISCOPIS M.
A slightly different reading is given by Brocchi (_Vite de" Santi fiorentini_, 1742).
"Of which saint, be it observed," writes Flaxius, "that there is in England a very large and widely extended family, or _stirps_, named Sn.o.bs, who may claim that by affinity of name to Zen.o.bio they are lineally or collaterally his descendants, even as the Potts profess connection with Pozzo del Borgo. But as it is said of this family or _gens_ that they are famed for laying claim to every shadow of a shade of gentility, it may be that there is truly no Zen.o.bility about them. Truly there are a great many more people in this world who are proud of their ancestors, than there ever were ancestors who would have been proud of them. The number of whom is as the sands of the sea, or as Heine says, "more correctly speaking, as the mud on the sh.o.r.e."
""The which, more eath it were for mortall wight, To sell the sands or count the starres on hye; Or ought more hard, then thinke to reckon right . . .
Which-for my Muse herselfe now tyred has, Unto another tale I"ll overpas.""
THE UNFORTUNATE PRIEST A LEGEND OF LA VIA DELLO SCHELETRO
"Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight-Death the Skeleton, And Time the Shadow."-WORDSWORTH.
"If G.o.d were half so cruel as His priests, It would go hard, I ween, with all of us."
I have elsewhere remarked that there is-chiefly about the Duomo-a group of small streets bearing the dismal names of Death, h.e.l.l, Purgatory, Limbo, Crucifixion, Our Lady of Coughing (_delle Tosse_), The (last) Rest of Old Age, Gallows Lane (_Via della Forca_), The Tombs, The Way of the Discontented, {201} Dire Need, Small Rags, f.a.g-End or Stump, Bad Payers, and finally, the Via dello Scheletro, or Skeleton Street. To which there belongs, as is appropriate, a melancholy legend.
LA VIA DELLO SCHELETRO.
"There once dwelt in what is now called the Street of the Skeleton a priest attached to the Cathedral, who was in every respect all that a good man of his calling and a true Christian should be, as he was pious, kind-hearted, and charitable, pa.s.sing his life in seeking out the poor and teaching their children, often bringing cases of need and suffering to the knowledge of wealthier friends-which thing, were it more frequently done by all, would do more to put an end to poverty than anything else.
""But he who is in everything most human May highest rise and yet the lowest fall; And when a brave kind heart meets with _the_ woman, Our greatest duties seem extremely small, And those which were the first became the least: Even so it happened to this gentle priest.
""In the old dwelling where he had his home, Which otherwise had been most drear and dull At morn or eve did oft before him come A girl as sweet as she was beautiful; Full soon they learned that both in head and heart Each was to each the very counterpart.
""There is in every soul of finer grain A soul which is in self a soul apart, Which to itself doth oft deep hid remain, But leaps to life when Love awakes the heart.
Then as a vapour rises with the sun, And blends with it, two souls pa.s.s into one.
""And so it came that he would sometimes kiss Her lovely face, nor seemed it much to prove That they in anything had done amiss.
Until, one night, there came the kiss of Love, {202} Disguised in friendly seeming like the rest- Alas! he drove an arrow to her breast.
""Then came the glow of pa.s.sion-new to both- The honeymoon of utter recklessness, When the most righteous casts away his oath, And all is lost in sweet forgetfulness, And life is steeped in joy, without, within, And rapture seems the sweeter for the sin.
""Then came in its due course the sad awaking To life and its grim claims, and all around They found, in cold grim truth, without mistaking, These claims for them did terribly abound; And the poor priest was brought into despair To find at every turn a foe was there.
""To know our love is pure though pa.s.sionate, And have it judged as if both foul and base, Doth seem to us the bitterness of fate; Yet in the world it is the usual case.
By it all priests are judged-yea, every one- Never as Jesus would Himself have done.
""Because the n.o.blest love with pa.s.sion rings, Therefore men cry "tis _all_ mere s.e.xual sense, As if the rose and the dirt from which it springs Were one because of the same elements: Therefore "tis true that, of all sins accurst, Is Gossip, for it always tells the worst.
""So Gossip did its worst for these poor souls.
The bishop made the priest appear before him, And, as a power who destiny controls, Informed him clearly he had h.e.l.l before him, And if he would preserve the priestly stole, {203a} Must leave his woman-or else lose his soul!
""Now had this man had money, or if he, Like many of his calling, had been bold With worldly air, then all this misery Might have been "scaped as one escapes the cold By putting on a sheepskin, warm and fine; But then hypocrisy was not his line.
""His love was now a mother, and the truth Woke in him such a deep and earnest love, That he would not have left her though in sooth He had been summoned by the Power above; And so the interdict was soon applied, But on that day both child and mother died.
""She, poor weak thing, could not endure the strain, So flickered out, and all within a day; And then the priest, without apparent pain, Began mysteriously to waste away, And, shadow-like and silent as a mouse, Men saw him steal into, or from, the house.
""And thinner still and paler yet he grew, With every day some life from him seemed gone, And all aghast, though living, men still knew He had become a literal skeleton; And so he died-in some world less severe Than this to join the one he held so dear. {203b}
""Yet no one knew when "twas he pa.s.sed away Out of that shadowy form and "scaped life"s power, For still "twas seen beneath the moon"s pale ray, Or gliding through the court at twilight hour.
But there it still is seen-and so it came The Via del Scheletro got its name.""
There is not a word of all this which is "Protestant invention," for though I have poetised or written up a very rude text, the narrative is strictly as I received it. There is one point in it worth noticing, that it is a matter of very general conviction in Italy that in such matters of Church discipline as are involved in this story, it is the small flies who are caught in the web, while the great ones burst buzzing through it without harm, or that the weak and poor (who are very often those with the best hearts and principles) are most cruelly punished, where a bold, sensual, vulgar _frate_ makes light of and easily escapes all accusations.
There is something sadly and strangely affecting in the conception of a simply good and loving nature borne down by the crush of the world and misapplied morality-or clerical celibacy-into total wretchedness-a diamond dissolved to air. One in reading this seems to hear the sad words of one who thought his own name was written in water:
"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling Alone. I chant alone the holy ma.s.s, While little signs of life are round me kneeling, And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pa.s.s, And many a chapel bell the hour is telling, Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me, And thou art distant in Humanity!"
THE MYSTERIOUS FIG-TREE A LEGEND OF THE VIA DEL FICO
"In every plant lie marvellous mysteries, In every flower there is a dream divine; The fig-tree bears the measure of a life, And, as it leaves or fruits, our lives do pa.s.s, And all things in each other subtly blend."
"Ha chiappato il fico-_fic.u.m capit_."-_Old Proverbs_.
"Quidam itidem medium digitum ostendunt, idque in Hispania adhuc dicitur fieri, et FICA appellator, hic illudendi actus, de quo Eryc.
Putea.n.u.s, _loc. cit._, p. 70."-_Curiosus Amuletorum Spectator_, D.
Wolf, 1692.
The following tale is, for reasons which I will subsequently explain, one of the most remarkable which I have collected: