“She’s really so ill this morning?”
“Come on, my dear Monsieur Le Bref, you can’t intend to mock our misfortune!”
“God preserve me! But what misfortune are you talking about?”
Instead of responding directly to my question he said, in a softer tone: “The most skillful mechanicians have not yet found a means of making artificial stomachs.”
Thinking that Mrs. Little had been afflicted for some time with a serious gastritis, I did not persist.
Furthermore, I was so hungry myself that it scarcely left me the leisure to think about anything else.
When we went into the dining room there were four Germans there, a lady and three men, all four wearing spectacles on their noses and hats on their heads. They raised their spectacles when we entered, along with the noses they crowned, but not their hats—I’m referring to the men—although we saluted them very politely. Without taking any further notice of the Teutonic boors, who might have been the flower of Berlinese aristocracy, Mr. Little and I ate with all the appetite we had, no longer talking about Mrs. Little, for the subject seemed delicate to me, but about the curiosities we were going to see.
As the meal drew to its close, and I had just ordered coffee, Mr. Little said to me: “While you drink your coffee, my dear Monsieur Le Bref, I’ll go take tea in the company of my wife in her room, and I’ll come back without her shortly, in order for us to go out.”
The waiter did not take long to appear, with a heavily laden tray in his hands, from which he removed, with my intention, a small cup, a small cafetière and a little sugar-bowl containing indecently tiny sugar-lumps, as large as sheep-droppings at the most.
What remained on the tray was the tea destined for Mr. and Mrs. Little. While I was putting something like half a dozen sugar lumps in my cup, admiring once again that singular Italian fashion, with which I was familiar, Mr. Little left the dining room, followed by the waiter.
After a quarter of an hour or thereabouts he reappeared, unaccompanied by Mrs. Little.
“I’ve just put my wife decisively to bed,” he said. “Perhaps it’s better thus. Having you with me, I’ll perceive her absence much less.”
“You’re very good, and you honor me greatly.”
We went to the cathedral, and along the way, our attention as particularly attracted by the round straw hats that the proletarian women were wearing, attached around the neck, falling back more often than not over their shoulders and palpitating gracefully above their foreheads, where they formed mobile aureoles of a sort. It was also attracted by a team of long-horned Tuscan oxen the color of white coffee, drawing a very narrow basket-cart.
The sgraffiti, or engravings, carved into the stones of the cathedral are a work unique in the world, but unfortunately badly damaged by the friction of the soles of numerous generations of boots. No trace of those sgraffiti would remain today if the precaution had not finally been taken of covering them with planks.
As the sacristan lifted up the planks to show us the work in question, my eyes chanced to fall on a strange little gnome of sorts, in the flesh and bone. With his very long nose and the almost black tint of his hair, crouched on his little legs, which rose up behind him in the manner of a tail, and his little crutches in his arms, he was strongly reminiscent of a crow.
That quasi-fantastic apparition troubled me so much that it did not cease to haunt my gaze even when I fixed it on the sgraffiti, and then on the white marble pulpit supported by four lions, magnificently sculpted by Nicola Pisano, on Bernini’s Saint Jerome and the Magdalen, on the admirable frescoes of the Libreria, a highly original work by Pinturicchio in which the bits of the horses, the ornaments of the miters and the tiaras and the guards of the swords project in gilded nails, and finally, on the rich collection of old missals.
It seemed to me that the poor human crow personified the clerical spirit, as the dove does the Holy Spirit.
Next we visited the Academia delle belle arti, where one finds, among other works Caravaggio’s Hopscotch Players, Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata by Beccafumi, a Saint Paul by Rutilio Manetti and a Charles V by Holbein—after which we strolled until dinner through the city, paved, like Pisa, with large flagstones.
Mrs. Little did not come down for dinner any more than for lunch. I did not make any observation in that regard to Mr. Little, for fear of irritating him.
When he talked about leaving the next day for Orvieto, from which we were to go to Rome, however, I asked him whether he thought that Mrs. Little was in a state to support the fatigues of the voyage—to which he replied, without my understanding the meaning of what he said very clearly, that the poor woman was apparently no longer capable of fatigue.
Was she capable of refection? In any case, it was not the tea that her husband had sent up to her room in the evening that was of a nature to lend her much sustenance.
IV
At any rate, she was on her feet the following day at the same time as us, and ready to depart.
Naturally, I thought it my duty to salute her and enquire after her health, to which she replied to me in English: “Very well…thank you.”
Immediately, however, Mr. Little said to me, still in English: “I’d be obliged to you henceforth, Monsieur Le Bref, not to address any speech to my wife, especially in public, in your interest as well as mine, for the difficulty I have in replying to you via her, as well as taking away all illusion from me, can only cause you a disagreeable sensation too.”
“Oh!” I said, somewhat surprised.
“Well, yes, you understand that very well.”
I did not understand at all, but I nevertheless replied: “Of course, of course.”
And I promised myself no longer to address any remark to Mrs. Little, but to content myself with replying to her—and she never spoke to me.
I could not, however, prevent myself from exercising in her regard the small duties of politeness from which a gallant man cannot refrain—for example, helping hr to climb aboard the train to Orvieto at Siena railway station, as I had done at Pisa station for the train to Siena; but I did so mutely, for which Mr. Little thanked me warmly by means of a firm handshake.
Scarcely had we sat down when I saw two prelates coming toward us surrounded by priests and preceded by the station-master, holding his cap in his hand. The latter opened the door of our compartment and, perceiving the three of us, he jumped backwards, and then shouted: “Gorini, Gorini!”
Gorini, who as a subaltern employee, came as commanded.
“Have you lost your head,” he cried then, “letting these passengers climb into a carriage reserved for Monsignor?”
The poor devil apologized to his chief as best he could and set about asking us to get out. But Mr. Little immediately refused, in English, while Mrs. Little, under the effect of her habitual prostration, did not seem to perceive anything.
It was the exact counterpart of the scene that the excellent couple had made in my regard at the station in Bordeaux when I had tried to climb on to the Bayonne train. While smiling at that idea, which gave me an amiable appearance, I got down rapidly from the carriage and, approaching the French bishop, I said to him: “Monseigneur, if Your Grace does not absolutely have need of all the places in the compartment, I would be infinitely grateful to you for leaving this worthy Englishman and his wife there, who are my friends. I permit myself to address this plea to Your Grace because the poor lady is not very steady on her feet, and it is not easy lift her up into a carriage or take her down from one. They are in any case, very discreet individuals incapable of inconveniencing Your Grace.”
“I’m convinced, Monsieur,” said the prelate, very amiably, “and may God preserve me from disturbing such worthy people, vouched for by you, who are my compatriot. Furthermore, we only need three places and will have plenty of room in your company.”
“For myself, Monseigneur,” I said, “I can easily go and sit elsewhere.”
“Don’t do anything of the s
ort, I beg you; I shall be only too glad to have you for a traveling companion.”
While the French prelate and I were exchanging these courtesies, watched by all the travelers, Mr. Little and the station-master were arguing, without understanding very much, in English and Italian.
The station-master raised his voice, irritated by the passivity opposed to his injunctions to descend by the worthy Mr. Little, to such an extent that the Archbishop of Siena had to intervene to calm him down.
“Piano, piano, signore…un pè piu di dolcezza.”
The French prelate then put an end to the dispute, while taking his leave of the Italian prelate with a hand-kiss, which the latter returned, and an Episcopal blessing given to the Italian priests who were accompanying their archbishop, to the station-master, to the employees and to myself; then he climbed into our compartment, where, before sitting down, he also blessed Mr. and Mrs. Little.
He was followed by the two priests forming his little court, to whom I gave way in spite of their insistences that I board before them, and it was me who climbed up last of all.
The station-master closed the door and the train did not take long to pull away.
Then one of the priests took three breviaries out of a small bag he was crying, one bound in violet shagreen with Monseigneur’s coat-of-arms, and the others in black shagreen, and each of them began to read his own, after making the sign of the cross.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Little still remained absorbed in her corner. Mr. Little and I consulted our guide-books, his in English and mine in French, without daring to speak for fear of troubling the pious meditation of Monseigneur and his followers.
Eventually, Monseigneur, having finished reading as much as he wanted in his breviary, drew closer to us—he was at the other extremity of the seat on which I was sitting—and, with a very good grace, he broke the silence.
“Is Madame suffering greatly?” she said, looking at Mrs. Little—without being able to see her profoundly-veiled face, naturally.
“Ho yes, milord,” said Mr. Little, partly in good English and partly in bad French, “my poor wife had an unpardonable indisposition, she experienced...how do you say it?...a great chagrin to pearl.”
“Monsieur means, Your Grace,” I said, “that Madame is gravely indisposed and that she has difficulty speaking.”
“Ho yes,” said Mr. Little, “it was zagly that.”
“And,” said the archbishop, “you think that a voyage to Italy is doing Madame good?”
“Ho no, but it was me that this voyage did good, and my wife she accompanied me.”
“Mr. Little, whom I have the honor of introducing to Your Grace,” I said, “is never separated from his wife. It is the most united household that one can encounter.”
“That does honor to both spouses,” said the prelate, with a broad smile on his lips, inclining particularly toward Mrs. Little. Nor obtaining a word from her, or any sign of response, he turned to the two priests accompanying him, and remarked to then on the beauties of the countryside through which we were traversing.
The bishop had a god enough head, with colored cheeks, graying black hair, lively eyes peering through tortoiseshell spectacles, and fine fleshy lips. He appeared to be aged between fifty and fifty-five.
What diocese did he direct? I would have liked to know, and perhaps I would have asked one of the priests quietly if he had been my neighbor, but I dared not ask the question of him, and we arrived at Orvieto without my being able to enquire. I suspected, however, that it must be a diocese in the Midi, the two priests having pronounced southern accents.
The Monseigneur and I had still had an opportunity to chat, and he it was who drew my attention, at the station of Torrito, to a very gracious tableau, that of a young peasant woman with big dark eyes walking with a divine stride in the midst of green and bushy wheat-fields.
Orvieto station is some distance from the city. While the French bishop climbed into the Bishop of Orvieto’s carriage with his two priests, Mr. Little and I installed Mrs. Little in an omnibus and when the fine carriage of the prince of the Church drew away at the rapid trot of its two spirited horses, we set off in quest of our luggage. While searching for it, we perceived the Monseigneur’s, which were to be transported by the omnibus. A card pinned to two or three trunks informed us that they belonged to Monseigneur d’Agen, and thus my curiosity was satisfied by chance.29
As we arrived in the city, along the main street followed by our omnibus, we went past an entire band of guttersnipes, among whom were five or six adults of both sexes, who were bating cooking-pots, saucepans, buckets and watering-cans in the most incoherent fashion, and singing thirty-six interspersed songs at the same time as uttering shrill cries. It was a charivari...but who the devil was it for?
“I don’t think that can be for the Bishop of Agen,” I said to Mr. Little, laughing, “and much less for us.”
“Doubtless much less for us,” replied Mr. Little. And he added, palpating his wife’s hand: “Isn’t that so, Betty?”
“Ho yes, Tom.”
Next to me in the omnibus were two Italians, who were laughing. They could have been from Orvieto. It transpired, in fact, that they were. I obtained an explanation for the charivari from them, which I gave to Mr. Little. The victims were a man and a woman who had married that very morning, although they were over sixty.
In that regard, Mr. Little made a reflection that appeared to me very humane. “The children,” he said, “are excusable. They only judge that senile marriage by appearances, which might seems somewhat grotesque, but it’s an abomination that the men and women, who ought to know life, far from lending their shameful collaboration to the brats, are not dispersing them. They ought to comprehend that marriage is much more the satisfaction of a mental need than a physical need, and that, if there is an age when communal life is imposed as a necessity on a man and a woman, it is when they begin to grow old.”
In speaking thus, Mr. Little could not help tears shining in the corners of his eyes, but, having wiped them way rapidly with his fingertips, he asked: “Isn’t that so, Betty?”
Then, as he pressed his wife’s hand, the latter replied, as was her habit: “Ho yes, Tom.”
We stayed at the Locanda delle Belle Arti, which is, I believe, the only tolerate inn in Orvieto, which has been established in an incomplete palace,30 of which there are so many in Italy. One might have inscribed above the door: Grandeur and Destitution.
The staircase was monumental, the corridors of unusual length and breadth, the rooms immense, but with nothing but stone floors, all the walls whitewashed, and planks closing unused porticoes here and there.
At Orvieto, as in Siena, Mrs. Little remained in her room while we had lunch, and after lunch, Mr. Little went up to take tea with her; then they both came down and we went in company to visit the cathedral, the façade of which, thanks to its foundations of black and white stone, is reminiscent of that of Siena cathedral.
When we went inside the priests of the chapter were singing vespers in the midst of complete solitude.
What it is necessary to see in Orvieto is the cathedral, and there, it is, above all, the interpretation of two great artists, one made with the chisel and the other with the brush, of the same scene: the Resurrection, Paradise and the Inferno. I am referring to the sculptor Giovanni Pisano and the painter Luca Signorelli.
There is also the Christ and the Prophets of Fra Angelico, the Gothic Virgin with her cortege of angels of Lippo Memmi, the two great bas-reliefs of the two Moses, the one by the father representing the adoration of the Magi and the one by the son depicting the Visitation.
The work of Signorelli is particularly admirable. That alone is worth the journey to Orvieto. It is composed of four large angels and a ceiling, ornamenting an entire chapel. The four panels translate, in striking scenes that denote in Signorelli a profound thinker as well as a powerful artist, Paradise, the Inferno, the Advent of the Antichrist and the Resurrection.
As for th
e ceiling, it is the Last Judgment. Jesus appears there in the midst of his court of apostles, prophets, doctors, holy omen, patriarchs and martyrs, and, as is written in the scriptures, to his right are the just, extending their confident hands toward him, ad to is left he culpable, griped by fear.
On the former, a rain of stars is falling, and on the latter, a rain of fire.
Beneath the fresco of Paradise one sees the medallions of Dante and Virgil, and beneath the fresco of the Inferno, those of Horace and Ovid.
In the fresco of the Advent of the Antichrist, Signorelli has painted himself alongside Fra Angelico, but every other figure in that fresco is eclipsed by that of the Antichrist. The physiognomy that Signorelli has given him is the idea of a man of genius. He has succeeded in importing a Satanic expression into the classic features of Jesus.
I pointed out that Antichrist to Mr. Little, who pointed it out to Mrs. Little, who replied to him with her “Ho yes, Tom,” but without raising her veil, or even the head beneath the veil.
There is a whole poem—and what a poem!—in the fresco of the Resurrection.
“You see that fresco of the Resurrection Mr. Little?” I said to my friend the cheese-merchant. “Can you guess why Signorelli has represented some of the dead for us in a skeletal state, while the majority are clad in their flesh?”
“It’s probably,” the worthy man replied, “to distinguish the recently-dead from the ancient dead.”
“It’s not that, Mr. Little.” I said, “and for two reasons. Firstly, if your explanation were true, the skeletons would be more numerous than the fleshy bodies, and it’s exactly the contrary; secondly, it has been prophesied for us that on the day of the Resurrection, the most ancient dead, even those whose bones are dust, will immediately resume their flesh.”
“One can admit, however,” said Mr. Little, “that there are successive degrees in reincarnation, and that, in consequence, at the appeal of the divine trumpet, some individuals will be reincarnated more rapidly than others.”
Singular Amours Page 23
