“Well, well,” said Jocunda, “who started this idea?”
“Oh, Father Francesco and she got it up between them, and nothing will do but I must go, too.”
“Well, now, after all, my dear,” said Jocunda, “do you know, I made a pilgrimage once, and it isn’t so bad. One gets a good deal by it, first and last. Everybody drops something into your hand as you go, and one gets treated as if one were somebody a little above the common; and then in Rome one has a princess or a duchess or some noble lady who washes one’s feet, and gives one a good supper, and perhaps a new suit of clothes, and all that, — and ten to one there comes a pretty little sum of money to boot, if one plays one’s cards well. A pilgrimage isn’t bad, after all; one sees a world of fine things, and something new every day.”
“But who is to look after our garden and dress our trees?”
“Ah, now, there’s Antonio, and old Meta his mother,” said Jocunda, with a knowing wink at Agnes. “I fancy there are friends there that would lend a hand to keep things together against the little one comes home. If one is going to be married, a pilgrimage brings good luck in the family. All the saints take it kindly that one comes so far to see them, and are more ready to do a good turn for one when one needs it. The blessed saints are like other folks, they like to be treated with proper attention.”
This view of pilgrimages from the material standpoint had more effect on the mind of Elsie than the most elaborate appeals of Father Francesco. She began to acquiesce, though with a reluctant air.
Jocunda, seeing her words had made some impression, pursued her advantage on the spiritual ground.
“To be sure,” she added, “I don’t know how it is with you; but I know that I have, one way and another, rolled up quite an account of sins in my life. When I was tramping up and down with my old man through the country,252 — now in this castle and then in that camp, and now and then in at the sacking of a city or village, or something of the kind, — the saints forgive us! — it does seem as if one got into things that were not of the best sort, in such times. It’s true, it’s been wiped out over and over by the priest; but then a pilgrimage is a good thing to make all sure, in case one’s good works should fall short of one’s sins at last. I can tell you, a pilgrimage is a good round weight to throw into the scale; and when it comes to heaven and hell, you know, my dear, why, one cannot be too careful.”
“Well, that may be true enough,” said Elsie, “though as to my sins, I have tried to keep them regularly squared up and balanced as I went along. I have always been regular at confession, and never failed a jot or tittle in what the holy father told me. But there may be something in what you say; one can’t be too sure; and so I’ll e’en school my old bones into taking this tramp.”
That evening, as Agnes was sitting in the garden at sunset, her grandmother bustling in and out, talking, groaning, and hurrying in her preparations for the anticipated undertaking, suddenly there was a rustling in the branches overhead, and a bouquet of rosebuds fell at her feet. Agnes picked it up, and saw a scrip of paper coiled among the flowers. In a moment, remembering the apparition of the cavalier in the church in the morning, she doubted not from whom it came. So dreadful had been the effect of the scene at the confessional, that the thought of the near presence of her lover brought only terror. She turned pale; her hands shook. She shut her eyes, and prayed that she might not be left to read the paper; and then, summoning all her resolution, she threw the bouquet with force over the wall. It dropped down, down, down the gloomy, shadowy abyss, and was lost in the damp caverns below.
The cavalier stood without the wall, waiting for some responsive signal in reply to his missive. It had never occurred to him that Agnes would not even read it, and he stood confounded when he saw it thrown back with such apparent rudeness. He remembered her pale, terrified look on seeing him in the morning. It was not indifference or dislike, but mortal fear, that had been shown in that pale face.
“These wretches are practicing on her,” he said, in wrath, “filling her head with frightful images, and torturing her sensitive conscience till she sees sin in the most natural and innocent feelings.”
He had learned from Father Antonio the intention of Agnes to go on a pilgrimage, and he longed to see and talk with her, that he might offer her his protection against dangers which he understood far better than she. It had never even occurred to him that the door for all possible communication would be thus suddenly barred in his face.
“Very well,” he said to himself, with a darkening brow, “let them have it their own way here. She must pass through my dominions before she can reach Rome, and I will find a place where I can be heard, without priest or grandmother to let or hinder. She is mine, and I will care for her.”
But poor Agnes had the woman’s share of the misery to bear, in the fear and self-reproach and distress which every movement of this kind cost her. The involuntary thrill at seeing her lover, at hearing from him, the conscious struggle which it cost her to throw back his gift, were all noted by her accusing conscience as so many sins. The next day she sought again her confessor, and began an entrance on those darker and more chilly paths of penance, by which, according to the opinion of her times, the peculiarly elect of the Lord were supposed to be best trained. Hitherto her religion had been the cheerful and natural expression of her tender and devout nature, according to the more beautiful and engaging devotional forms of her Church. During the year when her confessor had been, unconsciously to himself, led by her instead of leading, her spiritual food had been its beautiful old hymns and prayers, which she found no weariness in often repeating. But now an unnatural conflict was begun in her mind, directed by a spiritual guide in whom every natural and normal movement of the soul had given way before a succession of morbid and unhealthful experiences. From that day Agnes wore upon her heart one of those sharp instruments of torture which in those items were supposed to be a means of inward grace, — a cross with seven steel points for the seven sorrows of Mary. She fasted with a severity which alarmed her grandmother, who in her inmost heart cursed the day that ever she had placed her in the way of saintship.
“All this will just end in spoiling her beauty, — making her as thin as a shadow,” said Elsie; “and she was good enough before.”
But it did not spoil her beauty, it only changed its character. The roundness and bloom melted away, but there came in their stead that solemn, transparent clearness of countenance, that spiritual light and radiance, which the old Florentine painters gave to their Madonnas.
It is singular how all religious exercises and appliances take the character of the nature that uses them. The pain and penance, which so many in her day bore as a cowardly expedient for averting divine wrath, seemed, as she viewed them, a humble way of becoming associated in the sufferings of her Redeemer. “Jesu dulcis memoria,” was the thought that carried a redeeming sweetness with every pain. Could she thus, by suffering with her Lord, gain power like Him to save, — a power which should save that soul so dear and so endangered! “Ah,” she thought, “I would give my life-blood, drop by drop, if only it might avail for his salvation!”
CHAPTER XX. FLORENCE AND HER PROPHET
It was drawing towards evening, as two travelers, approaching Florence from the south, checked their course on the summit of one of the circle of hills which command a view of the city, and seemed to look down upon it with admiration. One of these was our old friend Father Antonio, and the other the cavalier. The former was mounted on an ambling mule, whose easy pace suited well with his meditative habits; while the other reined in a high-mettled steed, who, though now somewhat jaded under the fatigue of a long journey, showed by a series of little lively motions of his ears and tail, and by pawing the ground impatiently, that he had the inexhaustible stock of spirits which goes with good blood.
“There she lies, my Florence,” said the monk, stretching his hands out with enthusiasm. “Is she not indeed a sheltered lily growing fair among the hollows of the m
ountains? Little she may be, sir, compared to old Rome; but every inch of her is a gem, — every inch!”
And, in truth, the scene was worthy of the artist’s enthusiasm. All the overhanging hills that encircle the city with their silvery olive-gardens and their pearl-white villas were now lighted up with evening glory. The old gray walls of the convents of San Miniato and the Monte Oliveto were touched with yellow; and even the black obelisks of the cypresses in their cemeteries had here and there streaks and dots of gold, fluttering like bright birds among their gloomy branches. The distant snow-peaks of the Apennines,256 which even in spring long wear their icy mantles, were shimmering and changing like an opal ring with tints of violet, green, blue, and rose, blended in inexpressible softness by that dreamy haze which forms the peculiar feature of Italian skies.
In this loving embrace of mountains lay the city, divided by the Arno as by a line of rosy crystal barred by the graceful arches of its bridges. Amid the crowd of palaces and spires and towers rose central and conspicuous the great Duomo, just crowned with that magnificent dome which was then considered a novelty and a marvel in architecture, and which Michel Angelo looked longingly back upon when he was going to Rome to build that more wondrous orb of Saint Peter’s. White and stately by its side shot up the airy shaft of the Campanile; and the violet vapor swathing the whole city in a tender indistinctness, these two striking objects, rising by their magnitude far above it, seemed to stand alone in a sort of airy grandeur.
And now the bells of the churches were sounding the Ave Maria, filling the air with sweet and solemn vibrations, as if angels were passing to and fro overhead, harping as they went; and ever and anon the great bell of the Campanile came pulsing in with a throb of sound of a quality so different that one hushed one’s breath to hear. It might be fancied to be the voice of one of those kingly archangels that one sees drawn by the old Florentine religious artists, — a voice grave and unearthly, and with a plaintive undertone of divine mystery.
The monk and the cavalier bent low in their saddles, and seemed to join devoutly in the worship of the hour.
One need not wonder at the enthusiasm of the returning pilgrim of those days for the city of his love, who feels the charm that lingers around that beautiful place even in modern times. Never was there a spot to which the heart could insensibly grow with a more home-like affection, — 257never one more thoroughly consecrated in every stone by the sacred touch of genius.
A republic, in the midst of contending elements, the history of Florence, in the Middle Ages, was a history of what shoots and blossoms the Italian nature might send forth, when rooted in the rich soil of liberty. It was a city of poets and artists. Its statesmen, its merchants, its common artisans, and the very monks in its convents, were all pervaded by one spirit. The men of Florence in its best days were men of a large, grave, earnest mould. What the Puritans of New England wrought out with severest earnestness in their reasonings and their lives, these early Puritans of Italy embodied in poetry, sculpture, and painting. They built their Cathedral and their Campanile, as the Jews of old built their Temple, with awe and religious fear, that they might thus express by costly and imperishable monuments their sense of God’s majesty and beauty. The modern traveler who visits the churches and convents of Florence, or the museums where are preserved the fading remains of its early religious Art, if he be a person of any sensibility, cannot fail to be affected with the intense gravity and earnestness which pervade them. They seem less to be paintings for the embellishment of life than eloquent picture-writing by which burning religious souls sought to preach the truths of the invisible world to the eye of the multitude. Through all the deficiencies of perspective, coloring, and outline incident to the childhood and early youth of Art, one feels the passionate purpose of some lofty soul to express ideas of patience, self-sacrifice, adoration, and aspiration far transcending the limits of mortal capability.
The angels and celestial beings of these grave old painters are as different from the fat little pink Cupids or lovely laughing children of Titian and Correggio as are the sermons of President Edwards from the love-songs of Tom Moore. These old seers of the pencil give you grave, radiant beings, strong as man, fine as woman, sweeping downward in lines of floating undulation, and seeming by the ease with which they remain poised in the air to feel none of that earthly attraction which draws material bodies earthward. Whether they wear the morning star on their forehead or bear the lily or the sword in their hand, there is still that suggestion of mystery and power about them, that air of dignity and repose, that speak the children of a nobler race than ours. One could well believe such a being might pass in his serene poised majesty of motion through the walls of a gross material dwelling without deranging one graceful fold of his swaying robe or unclasping the hands folded quietly on his bosom. Well has a modern master of art and style said of these old artists, “Many pictures are ostentatious exhibitions of the artist’s power of speech, the clear and vigorous elocution of useless and senseless words; while the earlier efforts of Giotto and Cimabue are the burning messages of prophecy delivered by the stammering lips of infants.”
But at the time of which we write, Florence had passed through her ages of primitive religious and republican simplicity, and was fast hastening to her downfall. The genius, energy, and prophetic enthusiasm of Savonarola had made, it is true, a desperate rally on the verge of the precipice; but no one man has ever power to turn back the downward slide of a whole generation.
When Father Antonio left Sorrento in company with the cavalier, it was the intention of the latter to go with him only so far as their respective routes should lie together. The band under the command of Agostino was posted in a ruined fortress in one of those airily perched old mountain-towns which form so picturesque and characteristic a feature of the Italian landscape. But before they reached this spot, the simple, poetic, guileless monk, with his fresh artistic nature, had so won upon his traveling companion that a most enthusiastic friendship had sprung up between them, and Agostino could not find it in his heart at once to separate from him. Tempest-tossed and homeless, burning with a sense of wrong, alienated from the faith of his fathers through his intellect and moral sense, yet clinging to it with his memory and imagination, he found in the tender devotional fervor of the artist monk a reconciling and healing power. He shared, too, in no small degree, the feelings which now possessed the breast of his companion for the great reformer whose purpose seemed to meditate nothing less than the restoration of the Church of Italy to the primitive apostolic simplicity. He longed to see him, — to listen to the eloquence of which he had heard so much. Then, too, he had thoughts that but vaguely shaped themselves in his mind. This noble man, so brave and courageous, menaced by the forces of a cruel tyranny, might he not need the protection of a good sword? He recollected, too, that he had an uncle high in the favor of the King of France, to whom he had written a full account of his own situation. Might he not be of use in urging this uncle to induce the French King to throw before Savonarola the shield of his protection? At all events, he entered Florence this evening with the burning zeal of a young neophyte who hopes to effect something himself for a glorious and sacred cause embodied in a leader who commands his deepest veneration.
“My son,” said Father Antonio, as they raised their heads after the evening prayer, “I am at this time like a man who, having long been away from his home, fears, on returning, that he shall hear some evil tidings of those he hath left. I long, yet dread, to go to my dear Father Girolamo and the beloved brothers in our house. There is a presage that lies heavy on my heart, so that I cannot shake it off. Look at our glorious old Duomo; — doth she not sit there among the houses and palaces as a queen-mother among nations, — worthy, in her greatness and beauty, to represent the Church of the New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lord? Ah, I have seen it thronged and pressed with the multitude who came to crave the bread of life from our master!”
“Courage, my friend!” said Agostino; “it
cannot be that Florence will suffer her pride and glory to be trodden down. Let us hasten on, for the shades of evening are coming fast, and there is a keen wind sweeping down from your snowy mountains.” And the two soon found themselves plunging into the shadows of the streets, threading their devious way to the convent.
At length they drew up before a dark wall, where the Father Antonio rung a bell.
A door was immediately opened, a cowled head appeared, and a cautious voice asked, —
“Who is there?”
“Ah, is that you, good Brother Angelo?” said Father Antonio, cheerily.
“And is it you, dear Brother Antonio? Come in! come in!” was the cordial response, as the two passed into the court; “truly, it will make all our hearts leap to see you.”
“And, Brother Angelo, how is our dear father? I have been so anxious about him!”
“Oh, fear not! — he sustains himself in God, and is full of sweetness to us all.”
“But do the people stand by him, Angelo, and the Signoria?”
“He has strong friends as yet, but his enemies are like ravening wolves. The Pope hath set on the Franciscans, and they hunt him as dogs do a good stag. But whom have you here with you?” added the monk, raising his torch and regarding the knight.
“Fear him not; he is a brave knight and good Christian,261 who comes to offer his sword to our father and seek his counsels.”
“He shall be welcome,” said the porter, cheerfully. “We will have you into the refectory forthwith, for you must be hungry.”
The young cavalier, following the flickering torch of his conductor, had only a dim notion of long cloistered corridors, out of which now and then, as the light flared by, came a golden gleam from some quaint old painting, where the pure angel forms of Angelico stood in the gravity of an immortal youth, or the Madonna, like a bending lily, awaited the message of Heaven; but when they entered the refectory, a cheerful voice addressed them, and Father Antonio was clasped in the embrace of the father so much beloved.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 188
