Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  In truth thou art

  An apt and ready squire, and thou hast held

  My stirrup firmly. Take, then, O my son,

  The kiss of peace, for thou hast well fulfilled

  All of thy duties.

  But Frederick, crying aloud, and fixing the sense of the multitude upon him, answers:

  Nay, not all, O Father! —

  Princes and soldiers, hear! I have done homage

  To Peter, not to him.

  The Church and the Empire being now reconciled, Frederick receives the ambassadors of the Roman republic with scorn; he outrages all their pretensions to restore Rome to her old freedom and renown; insults their prayer that he will make her his capital, and heaps contempt upon the weakness and vileness of the people they represent. Giordano replies for them:

  When will you dream,

  You Germans, in your thousand stolid dreams, —

  The fume of drunkenness, — a future greater

  Than our Rome’s memories? Never be her banner

  Usurped by you! In prison and in darkness

  Was born your eagle, that did but descend

  Upon the helpless prey of Roman dead,

  But never dared to try the ways of heaven,

  With its weak vision wounded by the sun.

  Ye prate of Germany. The whole world conspired,

  And even more in vain, to work us harm,

  Before that day when, the world being conquered,

  Rome slew herself.

  ... Of man’s great brotherhood

  Unworthy still, ye change not with the skies.

  In Italy the German’s fate was ever

  To grow luxurious and continue cruel.

  The soldiers of Barbarossa press upon Giordano to kill him, and Frederick saves the ambassadors with difficulty, and hurries them away.

  In the first part of the fifth act, Niccolini deals again with the r�le which woman has played in the tragedy of Italian history, the hopes she has defeated, and the plans she has marred through those religious instincts which should have blest her country, but which through their perversion by priestcraft have been one of its greatest curses. Adrian is in the Vatican, after his triumphant return to Rome, when Adelasia, the wife of that Ostasio, Count of the Campagna, in whose castle Arnaldo is concealed, and who shares his excommunication, is ushered into the Pope’s presence. She is half mad with terror at the penalties under which her husband has fallen, in days when the excommunicated were shunned like lepers, and to shelter them, or to eat and drink with them, even to salute them, was to incur privation of the sacraments; when a bier was placed at their door, and their houses were stoned; when King Robert of France, who fell under the anathema, was abandoned by all his courtiers and servants, and the beggars refused the meat that was left from his table — and she comes into Adrian’s presence accusing herself as the greatest of sinners. The Pope asks:

  Hast thou betrayed

  Thy husband, or from some yet greater crime

  Cometh the terror that oppresses thee?

  Hast slain him?

  Adelasia. Haply I ought to slay him.

  Adrian. What?

  Adelasia. I fain would hate him and I cannot.

  Adrian. What

  Hath his fault been?

  Ad. Oh, the most horrible

  Of all.

  Adr. And yet is he dear unto thee?

  Ad. I love him, yes, I love him, though he’s changed

  From that he was. Some gloomy cloud involves

  That face one day so fair, and ‘neath the feet,

  Now grown deformed, the flowers wither away.

  I know not if I sleep or if I wake,

  If what I see be a vision or a dream.

  But all is dreadful, and I cannot tell

  The falsehood from the truth; for if I reason,

  I fear to sin. I fly the happy bed

  Where I became a mother, but return

  In midnight’s horror, where my husband lies

  Wrapt in a sleep so deep it frightens me,

  And question with my trembling hand his heart,

  The fountain of his life, if it still beat.

  Then a cold kiss I give him, then embrace him

  With shuddering joy, and then I fly again, —

  For I do fear his love, — and to the place

  Where sleep my little ones I hurl myself,

  And wake them with my moans, and drag them forth

  Before an old miraculous shrine of her,

  The Queen of Heaven, to whom I’ve consecrated,

  With never-ceasing vigils, burning lamps.

  There naked, stretched upon the hard earth, weep

  My pretty babes, and each of them repeats

  The name of Mary whom I call upon;

  And I would swear that she looks down and weeps.

  Then I cry out, “Have pity on my children!

  Thou wast a mother, and the good obtain

  Forgiveness for the guilty.”

  Adrian has little trouble to draw from the distracted woman the fact that her husband is a heretic — that heretic, indeed, in whose castle Arnaldo is concealed. On his promise that he will save her husband, she tells him the name of the castle. He summons Frederick, who claims Ostasio as his vassal, and declares that he shall die, and his children shall be carried to Germany. Adrian, after coldly asking the Emperor to spare him, feigns himself helpless, and Adelasia too late awakens to a knowledge of his perfidy. She falls at his feet:

  I clasp thy knees once more, and I do hope

  Thou hast not cheated me!... Ah, now I see

  Thy wicked arts! Because thou knewest well

  My husband was a vassal of the empire,

  That pardon which it was not thine to give

  Thou didst pretend to promise me. O priest,

  Is this thy pity? Sorrow gives me back

  My wandering reason, and I waken on

  The brink of an abyss; and from this wretch

  The mask that did so hide his face drops down

  And shows it in its naked hideousness

  Unto the light of truth.

  Frederick sends his soldiers to secure Arnaldo, but as to Ostasio and his children he relents somewhat, being touched by the anguish of Adelasia. Adrian rebukes his weakness, saying that he learned in the cloister to subdue these compassionate impulses. In the next scene, which is on the Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate resolves to defend the city against the Germans to the last, and then we have Arnaldo a prisoner in a cell of the Castle of St. Angelo. The Prefect of Rome vainly entreats him to recant his heresy, and then leaves him with the announcement that he is to die before the following day. As to the soliloquy which follows, Niccolini says: “I have feigned in Arnaldo in the solemn hour of death these doubts, and I believe them exceedingly probable in a disciple of Abelard. This struggle between reason and faith is found more or less in the intellect of every one, and constitutes a sublime torment in the life of those who, like the Brescian monk, have devoted themselves from an early age to the study of philosophy and religion. None of the ideas which I attribute to Arnaldo were unknown to him, and, according to M�ller, he believed that God was all, and that the whole creation was but one of his thoughts. His other conceptions in regard to divinity are found in one of his contemporaries.” The soliloquy is as follows:

  Aforetime thou hast said, O King of heaven,

  That in the world thou wilt not power or riches.

  And can he be divided from the Church

  Who keeps his faith in thine immortal word,

  The light of souls? To remain in the truth

  It only needs that I confess to thee

  All sins of mine. O thou eternal priest,

  Thou read’st my heart, and that which I can scarce

  Express thou seest. A great mystery

  Is man unto himself, conscience a deep

  Which only thou canst sound. What storm is there

  Of guilty thoughts! Oh, pardon my re
bellion!

  Evil springs up within the mind of man,

  As in its native soil, since that day Adam

  Abused thy great gift, and created guilt.

  And if each thought of ours became a deed,

  Who would be innocent? I did once defend

  The cause of Abelard, and at the decree

  Imposing silence on him I, too, ceased.

  What fault in me? Bernard in vain inspired

  The potentates of Europe to defend

  The sepulcher of God. Mankind, his temple,

  I sought to liberate, and upon the earth

  Desired the triumph of the love divine,

  And life, and liberty, and progress. This,

  This was my doctrine, and God only knows

  How reason struggles with the faith in me

  For the supremacy of my spirit. Oh,

  Forgive me, Lord. These in their war are like

  The rivers twain of heaven, till they return

  To their eternal origin, and the truth

  Is seen in thee, and God denies not God.

  I ought to pray. Thinking on thee, I pray.

  Yet how thy substance by three persons shared,

  Each equal with the other, one remains,

  I cannot comprehend, nor give in thee

  Bounds to the infinite and human names.

  Father of the world, that which thou here revealest

  Perchance is but a thought of thine; or this

  Movable veil that covers here below

  All thy creation is eternal illusion

  That hides God from us. Where to rest itself

  The mind hath not. It palpitates uncertain

  In infinite darkness, and denies more wisely

  Than it affirms. O God omnipotent!

  I know not what thou art, or, if I know,

  How can I utter thee? The tongue has not

  Words for thee, and it falters with my thought

  That wrongs thee by its effort. Soon I go

  Out of the last doubt unto the first truth.

  What did I say? The intellect is soothed

  To faith in Christ, and therein it reposes

  As in the bosom of a tender mother

  Her son. Arnaldo, that which thou art seeking

  With sterile torment, thy great teacher sought

  Long time in vain, and at the cross’s foot

  His weary reason cast itself at last.

  Follow his great example, and with tears

  Wash out thy sins.

  We leave Arnaldo in his prison, and it is supposed that he is put to death during the combat that follows between the Germans and Romans immediately after the coronation of Frederick. As the forces stand opposed to each other, two beautiful choruses are introduced — one of Romans and one of Germans. And, just before the onset, Adelasia appears and confesses that she has betrayed Arnaldo, and that he is now in the power of the papacy. At the same time the clergy are heard chanting Frederick’s coronation hymn, and then the battle begins. The Romans are beaten by the number and discipline of their enemies, and their leaders are driven out. The Germans appear before Frederic and Adrian with two hundred prisoners, and ask mercy for them. Adrian delivers them to his prefect, and it is implied that they are put to death. Then turning to Frederick, Adrian says:

  Art thou content? for I have given to thee

  More than the crown. My words have consecrated

  Thy power. So let the Church and Empire be

  Now at last reconciled. The mystery

  That holds three persons in one substance, nor

  Confounds them, may it make us here on earth

  To reign forever, image of itself,

  In unity which is like to that of God.

  V

  So ends the tragedy, and so was accomplished the union which rested so heavily ever after upon the hearts and hopes, not only of Italians, but of all Christian men. So was confirmed that temporal power of the popes, whose destruction will be known in history as infinitely the greatest event of our greatly eventful time, and will free from the doubt and dread of many one of the most powerful agencies for good in the world; namely, the Catholic Church.

  I have tried to give an idea of the magnificence and scope of this mighty tragedy of Niccolini’s, and I do not know that I can now add anything which will make this clearer. If we think of the grandeur of its plan, and how it employs for its effect the evil and the perverted good of the time in which the scene was laid, how it accords perfect sincerity to all the great actors, — to the Pope as well as to Arnaldo, to the Emperor as well as to the leaders of the people, — we must perceive that its conception is that of a very great artist. It seems to me that the execution is no less admirable. We cannot judge it by the narrow rule which the tragedies of the stage must obey; we must look at it with the generosity and the liberal imagination with which we can alone enjoy a great fiction. Then the patience, the subtlety, the strength, with which each character, individual and typical, is evolved; the picturesqueness with which every event is presented; the lyrical sweetness and beauty with which so many passages are enriched, will all be apparent to us, and we shall feel the esthetic sublimity of the work as well as its moral force and its political significance.

  GIACOMO LEOPARDI

  I

  In the year 1798, at Recanati, a little mountain town of Tuscany, was born, noble and miserable, the poet Giacomo Leopardi, who began even in childhood to suffer the malice of that strange conspiracy of ills which consumed him. His constitution was very fragile, and it early felt the effect of the passionate ardor with which the sickly boy dedicated his life to literature. From the first he seems to have had little or no direction in his own studies, and hardly any instruction. He literally lived among his books, rarely leaving his own room except to pass into his father’s library; his research and erudition were marvelous, and at the age of sixteen he presented his father a Latin translation and comment on Plotinus, of which Sainte-Beuve said that “one who had studied Plotinus his whole life could find something useful in this work of a boy.” At that age Leopardi already knew all Greek and Latin literature; he knew French, Spanish, and English; he knew Hebrew, and disputed in that tongue with the rabbis of Ancona.

  The poet’s father was Count Monaldo Leopardi, who had written little books of a religious and political character; the religion very bigoted, the politics very reactionary. His library was the largest anywhere in that region, but he seems not to have learned wisdom in it; and, though otherwise a blameless man, he used his son, who grew to manhood differing from him in all his opinions, with a rigor that was scarcely less than cruel. He was bitterly opposed to what was called progress, to religious and civil liberty; he was devoted to what was called order, which meant merely the existing order of things, the divinely appointed prince, the infallible priest. He had a mediaeval taste, and he made his palace at Recanati as much like a feudal castle as he could, with all sorts of baronial bric-�-brac. An armed vassal at his gate was out of the question, but at the door of his own chamber stood an effigy in rusty armor, bearing a tarnished halberd. He abhorred the fashions of our century, and wore those of an earlier epoch; his wife, who shared his prejudices and opinions, fantastically appareled herself to look like the portrait of some gentlewoman of as remote a date. Halls hung in damask, vast mirrors in carven frames, and stately furniture of antique form attested throughout the palace “the splendor of a race which, if its fortunes had somewhat declined, still knew how to maintain its ancient state.”

  In this home passed the youth and early manhood of a poet who no sooner began to think for himself than he began to think things most discordant with his father’s principles and ideas. He believed in neither the religion nor the politics of his race; he cherished with the desire of literary achievement that vague faith in humanity, in freedom, in the future, against which the Count Monaldo had so sternly set his face; he chafed under the restraints of his father’s authority, and longed for som
e escape into the world. The Italians sometimes write of Leopardi’s unhappiness with passionate condemnation of his father; but neither was Count Monaldo’s part an enviable one, and it was certainly not at this period that he had all the wrong in his differences with his son. Nevertheless, it is pathetic to read how the heartsick, frail, ambitious boy, when he found some article in a newspaper that greatly pleased him, would write to the author and ask his friendship. When these journalists, who were possibly not always the wisest publicists of their time, so far responded to the young scholar’s advances as to give him their personal acquaintance as well as their friendship, the old count received them with a courteous tolerance, which had no kindness in it for their progressive ideas. He lived in dread of his son’s becoming involved in some of the many plots then hatching against order and religion, and he repressed with all his strength Leopardi’s revolutionary tendencies, which must always have been mere matters of sentiment, and not deserving of great rigor.

  He seems not so much to have loved Italy as to have hated Recanati. It is a small village high up in the Apennines, between Loreto and Macerata, and is chiefly accessible in ox-carts. Small towns everywhere are dull, and perhaps are not more deadly so in Italy than they are elsewhere, but there they have a peculiarly obscure, narrow life indoors. Outdoors there is a little lounging about the caff�, a little stir on holidays among the lower classes and the neighboring peasants, a great deal of gossip at all times, and hardly anything more. The local nobleman, perhaps, cultivates literature as Leopardi’s father did; there is always some abbate mousing about in the local archives and writing pamphlets on disputed points of the local history; and there is the parish priest, to help form the polite society of the place. As if this social barrenness were not enough, Recanati was physically hurtful to Leopardi: the climate was very fickle; the harsh, damp air was cruel to his nerves. He says it seems to him a den where no good or beautiful thing ever comes; he bewails the common ignorance; in Recanati there is no love for letters, for the humanizing arts; nobody frequents his father’s great library, nobody buys books, nobody reads the newspapers. Yet this forlorn and detestable little town has one good thing. It has a pre�minently good Italian accent, better even, he thinks, than the Roman, — which would be a greater consolation to an Italian than we can well understand. Nevertheless it was not society, and it did not make his fellow-townsmen endurable to him. He recoiled from them more and more, and the solitude in which he lived among his books filled him with a black melancholy, which he describes as a poison, corroding the life of body and soul alike. To a friend who tries to reconcile him to Recanati, he writes: “It is very well to tell me that Plutarch and Alfieri loved Chaeronea and Asti; they loved them, but they left them; and so shall I love my native place when I am away from it. Now I say I hate it because I am in it. To recall the spot where one’s childhood days were passed is dear and sweet; it is a fine saying, ‘Here you were born, and here Providence wills you to stay.’ All very fine! Say to the sick man striving to be well that he is flying in the face of Providence; tell the poor man struggling to advance himself that he is defying heaven; bid the Turk beware of baptism, for God has made him a Turk!” So Leopardi wrote when he was in comparative health and able to continue his studies. But there were long periods when his ailments denied him his sole consolation of work. Then he rose late, and walked listlessly about without opening his lips or looking at a book the whole day. As soon as he might, he returned to his studies; when he must, he abandoned them again. At such a time he once wrote to a friend who understood and loved him: “I have not energy enough to conceive a single desire, not even for death; not because I fear death, but because I cannot see any difference between that and my present life. For the first time ennui not merely oppresses and wearies me, but it also agonizes and lacerates me, like a cruel pain. I am overwhelmed with a sense of the vanity of all things and the condition of men. My passions are dead, my very despair seems nonentity. As to my studies, which you urge me to continue, for the last eight months I have not known what study means; the nerves of my eyes and of my whole head are so weakened and disordered that I cannot read or listen to reading, nor can I fix my mind upon any subject.”