FROM THE ITALIAN OF EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
The G—— family were at their villa, a few miles out of Florence, when the Italian army was preparing to march on Rome. The enterprise was not favorably regarded by them. The father, the mother and the two grown-up daughters, ardent Catholics and mild patriots, desired "moral measures." "We do not understand politics," said Madame G—— to her friends, "and I least of all; and if I had to tell you quite clearly and distinctly why I think as I do, I should be puzzled. But what can I do? I have a presentiment; I hear a voice within me; I feel a thrill—something which tells me they must not go, they ought not to go, they cannot go, to Rome in such a manner. I remember '48; I remember '59; I remember '60. Well, in those days I had no fear; I never felt at heart the anxiety that I have now: I always thought things would come right. But this time, my friends, there is no use in talking, I see trouble in the air, and a great deal of it. You smile. Pray to Heaven that some day or other you may not have cause to weep. That day does not seem to me far off."
The only one of the whole family who did not think thus was the son, a young man of twenty, who was just now reading Roman history, and was in a state of ferment. The mere mention of Rome in his presence was the signal for a battle: there had already been one of the liveliest kind, and it was agreed never to broach the subject again.
One evening early in September they received an official journal in which the news was authoritatively announced that the Italian soldiers had passed the frontier. The young man leapt for joy. The father read the article, remained thoughtful for some time, and then, shaking his head, muttered, "No!" and again, "No!" and a third time, "No, no, no!"
"But excuse me, papa," exclaimed the son, firing up.
"There! there!" interrupted the mother tenderly.
And during the rest of the evening no more was said about it. But serious trouble occurred the following evening, when, shortly before going to bed, the young man frankly and without preamble, as if he were doing the most natural thing in the world, announced his intention of going to Rome with the army.
There was a general cry of surprise and indignation, followed by a tempest of reproaches and threats. "It was not a thing one could honorably desire to see; already part of the guilt attached to each of them as an Italian, without having to add the responsibility of being an eye-witness; and this, that and the other; and, in fine, that anything might be conceded or pardoned in a well-born young man except the madness of going to see" (these were the mother's words) "a poor old man bombarded. A fine war! Fine glory, indeed!"
When she had finished the young man gnashed his teeth, tore the journal to pieces, jumped up from his seat, lighted a lamp and went to shut himself up in his room, stamping his feet like an Italian actor playing the part of a furious king.
But in half an hour softly, softly, on tiptoe, he returned to the dining-room. There was no one there but the father and mother, silent and sad. He asked pardon of his father, who growled, but suffered him to press his hand, and then returned to his room, followed by his mother. "Now we shall have no more of such ideas, shall we?" she said to him tenderly, laying her hands on his shoulders.
The son answered with a kiss.
The next day he crossed the frontier of the Pontifical States.
As soon as they became aware of it at home there were tears, outbursts, invectives, suggestions of never receiving him again, of not even rising from their seats when he returned, of allowing a month to pass without addressing a word to him, of striking out the item "pocket-money" from the family budget, and a hundred other things. On the mother's part these were words, but on the father's serious intentions. He was not a man to waver; he was good, but stern, and at times, when he was angry, even terrible: his son knew this, and feared him. How he had ever been able, therefore, to offer him such an outrage was inexplicable. The accounts of the 20th of September only served to embitter the parents more. "He shall feel it," said they between their teeth. "Let him come!" Their words, their gestures, their plan of action, had all been thought over and prepared. It would be a severe lesson.
On the morning of the 22d they were all seated at table when suddenly a loud knock was heard at the door, and immediately after the son appeared, red in the face, out of breath, bronzed by the sun, standing erect and motionless on the threshold. No one moved.
"What!" exclaimed the young man, folding his arms with an air of astonishment, "you do not know the news?"
No one answered.
"Have you been told nothing? Has no one been here from Florence? Are you still in the dark about everything?"
No one breathed.
"The taking of Rome," one of the girls ventured to say presently, after having consulted her papa with a glance—"we know of it."
"What! Nothing else?"
"Nothing else."
"But what a taking of Rome!" burst out the young man with a cry that made them all tremble—"what a taking of Rome! Then I bring you the account of it."
They all rose and gathered around him.
"But how is it possible," he went on crying, waving his hands—"how is it possible that you know nothing of it? Has not the news spread through the country? Have not the country-people assembled? What is the city government doing? Listen, then—listen; seat yourselves around me; I will relate all to you. My heart beats so that I can hardly speak."
"But what has happened?"
"Nothing: I will tell you nothing. I wish to relate everything in order: give me breathing-time. I wish you to hear the facts one by one as I saw them."
"Oh, you mean the Roman feasts?"
"The plébiscite?"
"The arrival of the king?"
"No, indeed, no: something quite different."
"Well, tell us."
"But sit down."
"Oh, how is it that we have heard nothing about it here?"
"How can I tell? All I know is, that to be the first who brings you this news is the greatest pleasure I have experienced in my whole life. I arrived this morning at Florence: they knew all about it. I left immediately. Who knows? thought I, perhaps the news has not yet reached home. I am out of breath."
"Tell us! tell quickly!"
They all seated themselves around him.
"You shall hear, mamma—things to make one wild! Come nearer: so! You know all about the morning of the 21st, do you not? The other regiments entered: crowds, noise, music, as on the previous day, until twelve o'clock. At twelve o'clock, as if by common consent, the confusion ceased—first in the Corso, then in the other main streets, and gradually everywhere. The crowds of citizens stood still, formed groups and chatted in an undertone; then they dispersed in all directions, nodding to each other like people who expect to meet soon again. It seemed as if the order had circulated to prepare for some great event. People meeting in the street spoke to each other hastily, and then each one went his own way. From one end to the other of the Corso there was a general bustle, some going home, others going out; some calling from the street, others answering from the windows; the soldiers rushing to and fro as if they had heard a call; officers on horseback trotting by; men and boys passing with bundles of flags on their shoulders and in their arms; all active and hurrying as if they were being pursued. I, who knew nothing and no one, looked now at this face, now at that, to try and discover something. They all seemed happy, but did not exhibit their former boisterous, unrestrained joy: all betrayed a disturbing thought, a misgiving, almost an uneasiness: one could see that they were people concocting something. I turned into one of the smaller streets; went farther on; stopped at two or three crossways: everywhere was the same sight—great crowds, a great stir, great haste and an indescribable manner of speaking and gesticulating, which I had already remarked in the Corso, as if the whole mass of people wished to conceal something from some one, although it was visible to every one. Knots of people passed by me, troops, hundreds of men and women together, and not a cry was to be heard. All were going in the same direction, as if to a place of rendezvous."
"Where were they going?" asked the mother and father.
"Wait. I returned to the Corso. The nearer I approached, the more distinctly I heard a dull, continuous roar, like that of an immense crowd. I reached it: the Corso was full of people, who had all stopped and turned toward the Campidoglio, as if they were waiting for something from that quarter. From the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Venezia there was such a press that it was impossible to move. There was a whispering here and there, 'They will be here in a little while;' 'They are coming yonder,'—'Who are coming yonder?'—'The main column.'—'The main column is coming.'—'Here it is!'—'No.'—'Yes.'—All at once the crowd began to move turbulently. Everybody cried on all sides, 'There they are!' And in less time than I can say it the street was cleared in the middle, as if to make way for a procession. All heads were uncovered. I, who had remained behind, elbowed my way across the street and looked. I seem to feel now a thrill that ran through me from head to foot. First advanced generals in full uniform and noblemen in black coats with tri-colored scarfs: in the midst of the nobles and generals came men, women and children with tattered, unbuttoned shirts; behind, work-people, country-people, women with babies on their backs, soldiers of all arms, grand ladies, students, whole families holding each other by the hands so as not to get lost; all crowded and pressed, so that it seemed strange they were able to walk; and yet only a monotonous murmur like a buzz was to be heard—not a sound on either side of the street, not a sound from the windows. It was a solemn sight: what with surprise and awe I was in a trance."
"But where were they going?" asked the father, mother and sisters eagerly.
"Let me finish," resumed the young man. "I was turned off in the mean while, and with me gradually all those who were leaning against the wall right and left were turned off also. Fancy what a tight squeeze! The crowd was just like a torrent, filling both pavements, pouring people like rushing waves into the shops, to the gates, wherever an inch of room could be found. As the procession advanced more swarms of people streamed into the Corso from the side streets, which were also thronged from end to end; and the procession continued to ascend from the Campidoglio, and the rumor spread that thousands more were coming from Campo Vaccino. Numbers of people arrived from the Piazza di Spagna, from the Via del Babbuino, from the Piazza del Popolo. All had something in their hands—some garlands of flowers, some olive and laurel branches, some banners, some rags tied on the top of sticks; some carried in both hands sacred images over their heads—inscriptions, emblems, portraits of the pope, of the king, of the princes and of Garibaldi. It was a mixture, a medley, a confusion of persons and things, such as I believe has never been seen under the sun; and always and everywhere that subdued murmur, that slow pace, that repose, that dignity, so singular and astonishing in such a multitude that I thought I must be dreaming."
The whole family pressed closer round the young man without speaking a word.
"At a certain point I perceived that the crowd had turned to the left: all fell back. Slowly, slowly, with great difficulty, trampled upon, crushed, jostled on all sides, unable to move their arms, panting for breath, they pressed on from street to street to the piazza in front of the bridge of St. Angelo. The bridge was overflowing with people: the crowd disappeared across the river in the direction of St. Peter's. The whole right bank was swarming. The passage of the bridge was a serious matter: it took more than a quarter of an hour. The unfortunate creatures who were at the sides, pressed by those in the middle, clung desperately to the railings for fear of being thrown over, and uttered cries of terror. It was said that some accidents occurred. By degrees all passed over. All the streets leading to the square filled up. When the crowd reached the entrance of one of the streets which lead directly to the Basilica, suddenly a low, hollow sound was heard, like a sea in a storm, now far off, now near, and coming toward us in waves. It was the multitude assembled in the Piazza di San Pietro. The crowd pressed forward more eagerly, one on top of another, carried forward, overturned—on, on, until it reached the piazza. Almighty God! if you had seen it! What an astounding spectacle!—all this immense square tightly packed, black, and all in motion: it was no longer a square—it was a sea. On all sides—between the four rows of columns, on the church-steps, under the portico, on the great terrace in front, in the galleries of the cupola, on the capitals of the pillars, on the pillars themselves; and behind—at the windows of the houses, on the balconies, on the roofs, above, below, right and left, wherever a human creature could plant his foot or clutch hold or hang on; everywhere heads, arms and legs dangling, banners, gestures, voices! All Rome was there!"
"Heavens! But the Vatican?" they all cried in great agitation.
"Closed. You know that one wing of the Vatican opens on the square, and in that is the pope's apartment. All the windows belonging to it were closed: it seemed like a deserted palace. At that moment it had the appearance of a cold, stern, impassive person looking down with fixed, wide-open eyes. The multitude looked up with a murmuring noise. On one side, toward the terrace, could be seen a great body of officers and noblemen, who appeared to give orders which were repeated from mouth to mouth. The agitation continued to increase. All heads were uncovered—white heads of old men, dark heads of soldiers, blond heads of children. A bright sun was shining; a thousand movements, a thousand noises, a thousand colors, were waving and mingling on this immense surface. Banners and rags fluttered, tossed back here and there as if they were floating on the water. The seething was such it seemed as if fire were burning under the earth. Suddenly, from all sides was heard and spread a cry, 'The boys! the children! Bring forward the children!' It was evidently a concerted plan. In a moment on all parts of the square people were seen holding up the children above their heads, and the men and women who were carrying them broke through the mass, all going in the direction of the Vatican: the bigger boys forced their own way, holding hands, rushing between the people's legs, ten and twenty at a time. In a few minutes hundreds of children—a whole population of creatures concealed until now—some by means of their own legs, some pushed, some carried, were crowded into one corner of the square, and in the mean while arose a deafening cry from the women, 'Take care! Slowly! My child!' Soon after another louder and more imperative call, 'The women! the women!' Another disturbance, another breaking through the crowd in all directions. Then a third and more formidable cry, 'The army! the soldiers! Forward!' And once more an indescribable upheaving, but simultaneous, resolute, rapid. There were none of the difficulties and delays usually seen in similar cases: all worked and helped to accomplish the end. There was an impetuosity, a fervor, and yet an astonishing accord: this innumerable crowd seemed ruled and controlled. By degrees the bustle ceased, all cries were hushed, arms were dropped, everybody looked around, and it seemed as if by enchantment the children, the women and the soldiers had disappeared. They all stood on the right side of the square, divided into three great masses, from the door of St. Peter's to the middle of the Colonnade, facing the Vatican, dense and compact. The multitude burst forth into boisterous applause."
"But the Vatican?" asked the family for the third time, all in the same breath.
"Still closed and quiet as a convent."
"Oh! great Heavens!" they exclaimed, confounded.
"Wait! All at once the applause ceased, and all heads were seen turning around slowly and whispering, 'Silence! silence!' The murmur ran from the beginning to the end of the two streets which open into the square. The whisper soon died away entirely, and there was such a stillness, such silence, as I should never have believed possible among so many people. It was something super-human. In the midst of this silence I seemed suddenly to hear a faint voice that I could not understand, a vague sound coming from a distance. Gradually, insensibly, it increased—first an uplifting of voices, now far, now near, uncertain and discordant; soon more distinct, more decided, finally blending as if by magic, till a single voice, tremulous, silvery, suave, rose to heaven, echoing like the voice of a legion of angels. It was that of thousands of children singing the hymn to Pius IX. of 1847."
"Oh!" exclaimed the mother and daughters, clasping their hands.
"That song re-echoed in every one's heart; it ascended in such a way as to touch the most tender chords of the soul; a thrill seemed to pass through the crowd; there was a great moving of arms and hands, as if they wished to speak and could not. Nothing but a confused murmur was heard. 'Holy Father'—this is what they wished to say—'look! listen! These are our children; they are your sons who seek you, who invoke you, who implore your benediction; they are innocent souls. Hear their prayer; bless them; grant that their country and their religion shall be united in their hearts. Holy Father, one word from you, one sign, one glance from you declaring pardon and peace, and we are with you, for you—all of us, now, always, for ever! They are our children, your sons.' Thousands of banners waved in the air. The song ceased: a profound silence ensued."
"Well?" they all asked eagerly.
"No response. Then arose the women's song. There was a deep tremor in that immense voice: you could hear a something which only issues from the hearts of mothers; it seemed more like a cry than a song; it was sweet and solemn. The people, from the first note, remained motionless: suddenly, after a while, they became agitated as if moved by an irresistible ardor; the exclamations almost overpowered the song. 'These are our mothers,' they said, 'our wives, our sisters. Holy Father, hear them. They have never cherished hatred or anger in their breasts; they have always loved and hoped; they believe and pray; they implore the privilege of teaching their children your name together with that of Italy. Holy Father, one word from you will save them many mournful doubts and many bitter tears. Bless our families, Holy Father.'"
The listeners questioned with their eyes and gestures.
"Nothing! Then burst forth a tumultuous, rapid song, followed by a more violent agitation: it was the soldiers. 'These are our soldiers,' all said together—'they will be yours: they are the sons of the field and the shops. Holy Father, they will guard your gates and escort your steps: they, born on your soil, they who heard as children your sublime cry of liberty, will fight against the foreign enemy with your name and that of the king on their lips and in their hearts. Bless them. You will see them congregated around your throne in your hour of need, ready to die: one word, Holy Father, and these swords, these breasts, this blood, are yours. They implore your blessing upon the country. Remember, Holy Father, your sublime cry.'—A window of the Vatican opened."
All seized the young man by the arm without saying a word.
"The song ceased, the cries were hushed: there was silence. There was not a living soul at the window. During a few moments the very breath of the multitude seemed suspended. Something like a shadow moved past the window, but inside, far back, and then disappeared. There seemed to be people passing to and fro, and a confusion within. All faces, all eyes, were fixed motionless on the spot. Suddenly the whole multitude, as if inspired at the same moment, pointed to the palace; thousands of women held up the children; the soldiers swung their caps on their bayonets; all banners were waved; a hundred thousand voices burst forth in one tremendous shout: 'Viva! viva! viva!' At the window of the Vatican something was seen fluttering, moving, shining, all at once floating in the air.—Great Heavens!" exclaimed the young man, throwing himself on his mother's neck, "it was the Italian flag!"
It would be impossible to describe the delight, the joy, the enthusiasm of those worthy people. The young man had spoken with so much fervor, he had become so enamored of his own deception, that by degrees he had finally ceased to be aware of the fact that he was inventing, and truly his eyes were moist and his voice trembled. However, not the shadow of a suspicion had crossed the minds of his parents and sisters. They embraced each other, laughed and wept. From how many scruples, how many grievous conflicts between Italian hearts and Catholic consciences, did they find themselves released! The reconciliation between Church and State! The dream of so many years! What peace of mind henceforward! What a beautiful life of love and concord! What free, secure repose!
"Heaven be praised!" exclaimed the mother, dropping into a low chair, exhausted by excitement.
And then again they all rushed around the young man, one seizing his hand, another pulling him by the coat: "Is it really true?"—"Is it not a dream?"—"Speak!"—"Go on: tell us about everything—the pope—the crowd—what happened."
"What followed?" resumed the young man in a fatigued voice. "To tell you the truth, I don't know myself: I don't remember. There was such a shouting, an upheaving, a frenzy, a delirium, that the very thought of it even now makes my head whirl. I no longer saw anything around me but upraised arms and banners, which concealed everything. An elbow-knock that I received in my breast in a terrible commotion of the crowd almost took my breath away. After a few moments I seemed to have a little more space, and I escaped into one of the streets leading to the bridge, determined to get out of the confusion. From all the streets of the Borgo Pio the people dashed with loud cries toward the square. It was said afterward that the crowd rushed to the doors of the Vatican to force an entrance: the soldiers had to keep them back, first with their breasts, then with their hands, finally with their weapons. I heard of people suffocated in the press. It is not known what happened in the interior of the Vatican: they said that the pope had given his blessing from the window. I did not see him. Weary, exhausted, I arrived at the bridge, and crossed it. People were still running from all sides, attracted by the news of the great event, which had spread like wildfire. Large troops of cavalry coursed by at full speed. Guides, aides-de-camp, carbiniers, sent to carry orders hither and thither, ran through the streets screaming. The people answered from the windows: decrepit old men, invalids, women with children in their arms, stood on the terraces, came down into the deserted streets, asked questions, wondered and kissed each other. I reached the Corso. Suddenly a terrific explosion was heard from the direction of the Pincio, then another from the Porta Pia, then a third from the Porta San Pancrazio: it was all the batteries of artillery belonging to the Italian army greeting the Pontiff with a tumultuous salute. Presently the chiming of the bell of the Campidoglio resounded: then gradually the bells of hundreds of churches blending into one magnificent concert. The crowd from the Borgo Pio rushed back impetuously to the left bank of the Tiber, invading in a very short time the streets, the squares and the houses; displayed the papal coat-of-arms, which had remained covered; carried in triumph busts of Pius IX., portraits and banners; thousands of people assembled in front of the palaces of the nobles most noted for their devotion to the pope and burst into applause, and these nobles appeared on their balconies and hung out the national colors. One moment: let me take breath."
As soon as he had breathed they immediately beset him with more questions: "And after that? and the Vatican? and the pope?"
"I don't know. I cannot tell you how beautiful, how grand, how wonderful, Rome was that evening. The night was transcendent, and there was an illumination such as never was seen or imagined since the creation of the world: the Corso appeared to be on fire. The churches were full of people, and priests preaching; in the streets were music, singing, dancing, citizens speaking to the people in the cafés and theatres. I wished to see the Piazza di San Pietro once more. The rumor had spread that His Holiness needed rest: Borgo Pio was as quiet as on the quietest nights; the square was lit up by the moon; a silent crowd was collected around the two fountains and on the steps: some were seated on the ground, some lying down; a great many of them, those most overcome by the fatigue and excitement of the day, were asleep—women, soldiers and children promiscuously; hundreds of people kneeling, and here and there sentinels of every corps with little flags and crosses tied to the barrels of their guns. The ground was strewn with banners, with leaves and flowers, and hats that had been lost in the tumult. The windows of the Vatican were illuminated; not a voice was to be heard; all these people seemed to be holding their breath. I left there excited, exalted, thinking over everything I had seen—of the effect that the news would produce on Italy, on the world, on all of you—more particularly on you, papa. I found myself at the station almost before I was aware: there was a confusion, a deafening noise. I stepped into a train, started off, and here I am. The news had arrived last evening in Florence: they told me it created a furore; the king had left; the news is already spread over the whole world."
At this point he sank into a low chair and stopped short, as if he had no more breath in his body.
The newspapers, which should have arrived at the villa by noon, did not come, so that the family retained their pleasant illusion until evening. The dinner was animated, the young man continued to jumble detail on detail, and the mother and family rapture on rapture, blessing on blessing, when suddenly they heard a hasty foot on the steps, and then a noisy ring at the bell. Presently the door opened, and a tall, dried-up priest, with a livid face and crooked mouth, appeared on the threshold. It was a priest whom the family had known only a short time, and of whom they were not particularly fond, but whom they received and welcomed at their house—more, however, out of respect for his garb than for his person. All except the young man grouped around him, crying out, "Well! have you heard the news? It is all over, thank Heaven! Tell us! speak!"
"But what news?" asked the priest, looking in the face of each one in turn with a pair of rolling eyes.
They all told him at once, hastily and eagerly, of the festival, the pardon, the reconciliation.
The priest looked at all of them with the air of a man who fears that he has fallen into the midst of a set of lunatics: then flashing a fiery glance upon the young man, he exclaimed with a sinister smile, "There is not a shadow of truth in it, fortunately."
"Oh!" they all exclaimed, turning toward the son.
The latter, without seeming disconcerted, looked fixedly at the priest, and said to him, in a half-sorrowful, half-contemptuous voice, "Only, reverend father, do not say 'fortunately.' You are an Italian: say, 'What a pity that it is not so!'"
And all the others flew once more at the priest, and, as is generally the case, more incensed against the one who had destroyed the illusion than against him who had created it, they repeated almost involuntarily, "Decidedly! Say rather, 'What a pity!'"
"I?" answered the priest, turning toward his breast a long knotty finger: then, in a bitter vibrant voice, "Never!"
The old man, thus suddenly wounded and so rudely deprived of the delightful emotion which had agitated him, lost his wits as usual, and stretching out his arm toward the door framed with his lips the word "Begone!"
The priest disappeared, slamming the door behind him. The son threw his arms around his father's neck: the latter, looking toward the door, muttered in a feeble voice, "Heartless man!"
A VENETIAN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
A strange figure, a man almost wholly forgotten, but one to whom Goethe, Schiller, Tieck and Schlegel owed not a little, is yet to be known by whoever cares to rub the dust from old memoirs and turn the pages of some rare and racy volumes. And in knowing this Venetian much may be learned of the decadence of Venice, which had come to produce, not the great and reverent and serious men who laid her stones and covered her walls with sweet and splendid works expressive of the endurance and piety of great souls, but such men as Casanova the gambler, Goldoni the play-writer, Longhi and Canaletto the painters; and then, as the best among them all, the honest Venetian whom we now meet, sometimes called the Shakespeare of Venice, but in fact only a play-writer, a Venetian nobleman, who depicted in a dispassionate temper the trivialities of his age, and lacked both the milieu and the material to produce a great work.
Venice had long reached and passed the culmination of her brilliant power, and had become the very palpitating centre of unchecked dissipation and of an extravagant luxury of living. All Europe came to it to be amused. It is impossible to frame with sober English words the bas-reliefs of those licentious times as they are found to-day in the popular songs of the Lagoons. At this epoch there was a young Venetian, Count Carlo Gozzi, who wrote for the Venetian theatre, and may be considered as having first invested with the dignity of literary expression the typical figures of Italian comedy—Pantaleone, Harlequin, Tartaglia, etc. He came from a literary family, and his brother, Count Gaspard Gozzi, was an honored man of letters who gave several volumes to Venetian literature, and whose vivacious face in marble may be seen in the gallery of the ducal palace with the busts of doges, prelates and painters of the great state of Venice. But he whom we think the more interesting man, as well as the most representative, has not been honored with bust or portrait, and we must look to his memoirs to find out what manner of man he was.
Carlo Gozzi was the seventh son of one of those opulent noble Venetian families which a century of indolent leisure and mad enjoyment of gayety had reduced to a state bordering upon beggary. The family was disorganized, and for the completion of its bad fortune the eldest son fell in love with and married a foolish literary young woman, who to an unchecked ambition of distinguishing herself either as a poetess, a writer of plays, or as the fashionable directress of some accademia, added an uncontrollable spirit of domination. She mismanaged the household, rendering it intolerable to every one but herself. Gozzi's good sense very soon convinced him that there was nothing to hope from such a condition of affairs, and he sought guidance and protection from his uncle, Almore Cesare Tiepolo, the venerated senator, who recommended him to Girolamo Quirini, governor-general of Dalmatia. It was to go there and to meet a new fate that Gozzi, then a lad of sixteen, left Venice on board of a ship of war, having for his whole fortune his youth, his guitar and a few books.
It was only after he had become an old man that he wrote the story of his life, and that he so piquantly portrayed the physiognomy of the Venetian people in his famous Memorie inutile, which, as he quaintly says, he published "from humility." The Memorie inutile in which Gozzi has depicted himself with such lifelike realism are sincere and vivacious, and rival Diderot and Rousseau for directness, luminousness and interest. Gozzi's nature is as free from conceit as it is from that reserve which is sometimes mistaken for the enviable result of hereditary culture, when it often is but the makeshift of vanity to cover mental penury. The serenity of his soul never fails him even under the most disheartening circumstances. His unalterable gayety, his playfulness and his genial humor, just a little bit satirical, made him the best of fellows and the most capital companion. None of the changes or chances of an adventurous life seem to have either abated or checked the flow of his animal spirits. He took hold of things and of the people he met by their laughable side. Hence the remarkable elasticity and the buoyancy of his writings. How far he stands from the reactionary romantic movement of a later literature we may know if we notice that there is no morbid self-retrospection and no shadow of melancholy in any one page he ever wrote. When domestic difficulties and the complications attending the dismemberment of the family after the death of his paralytic father—whom he worshipped—absorbed his whole mind, and he had to call upon his reserved strength of character to endure sorrow, Gozzi kept up a brave heart. He believed in his vocation as a writer of plays, and he fed his talent by an indulgent and sympathetic comprehension of human nature.
He says: "It is an endless amusement for me to see the world, such as it is in my century, and to contemplate the big caldron in which all our follies are kept boiling. Is it not an immense farce? and am I not right to make it the plaything of my reflections, and to laugh as I keep counting the somersaults of humanity?" These "somersaults" are precisely what Gozzi has so successfully reproduced upon the scene.
It was while he lived in wild Dalmatia that Gozzi had first revealed to him his own dramatic genius. His protector there was a man of letters, who lent him books and encouraged him to exercise his literary taste and talent in scribbling sketches of character, poetical essays and such things as usually serve as the magnetic conductor between a youth and the people around him, whom he hardly knows. The dramatic troupe in Zara was composed of young Venetian officers only. To amuse the governor and his suite they distributed among themselves the different rôles of men and women, and upon some given theme they improvised those comedies which are so much to the taste of Italians. What a chance there was for individual talent to reveal itself! Gozzi created spontaneously his own rôle—it was that of an Illyrian chambermaid—and in it he used the Dalmatian patois with such dexterity, he railed at feminine foibles with so much finesse, and, using recent social scandals, he touched the whole with such apt satire, that he had an immense success. The rôle of the fictitious chambermaid won universal admiration. Ladies of rank inquired who was that inimitable young man, and expressed the wish to have presented to them the amateur actor. Their disappointment was unconcealed upon finding him reserved in manner, simple, and almost timid and taciturn. We appreciate his surprise when he tells us, "I wondered that my love of study, my chaste tastes, some literary aptitude, and some serious views of life above those of my age did not produce as favorable an impression upon the sex as did my fancy dress of a Dalmatian chambermaid and my skill in gymnastic performances. But, then, had I yet gone down into the inextricable depths of the feminine mind? and was I already acquainted with the laws that rule the magnetic attractions of the most bizarre of brains?"
The stories Gozzi tells us of life in Dalmatia have a fresh, primitive flavor. No one ever told them before him. Their bloom is untouched, and much of the pleasure one has in reading them comes from that. Some of his pictures of manners are as crisp and as vivid as a fine etching.
At the time of his residence there that little, out-of-the-way corner of Europe had not yet been awakened from the stupor of its feudal sleep, nor had the faintest breath of modern ideas so much as rippled over the sullen surface of hereditary slavery to traditional customs. From time immemorial the habits of the people were the same, and singularly uninfluenced by the presence of the gay gallants of Venice who were stationed there. It is not difficult to imagine the distaste with which they left all the enervating delights of their resplendent island of marble, with its mantling of sunlight and the tranquil beauty of its dreamy days, for tedious exile among an inhospitable and untamed population, the severe silence and sombre forests or the monotony of barren rocks. "If you have read your Virgil or Homer," Gozzi tells us, "you have seen Illyrians. These people are quite as pagan in their rites of marriage and the burying of their dead as any people of pagan antiquity. One of their favorite national games consists in lifting a tremendous disk cut out of marble and hurling it to a great distance. Is not this Diomedes and Turnus?
"Contempt weighs down upon every family who has not had several of its men killed, or has not executed cruel vengeance on the right and on the left, or has not been itself the object of outrageous retaliation. It was not long before I had the opportunity to ascertain the truth of what the old priest had told me as we walked together under the walls of the city.
"A woman about fifty years old came one day and threw herself at the feet of the governor. From her shoulder hung down a cumbrous gamebag, and out of it she pulled a mass of hair clinging to a dried-up skull: then, placing the hideous object before the governor, she struck her head against the ground, crying, 'Justice! justice!' I inquired what could possibly be the motive of so extraordinary an exhibition, and I learnt that the skull was that of the woman's mother, who was assassinated thirty years before—that the murderers had been executed, but that the greed for vengeance not being yet appeased in that wild daughter of Dalmatia, she had never failed to repeat the same ceremony at the installation of each successive governor, always exhibiting the same thirst for avenging herself upon the family of her enemies, the same gamebag and the same skull!"
"It was impossible to have introduced into Dalmatia any such agricultural reform or innovation as would have ameliorated the cultivation of its fertile plains. The Dalmatian peasants were wedded to the unintelligent routine of their forefathers, and in their ideas or apprehension of things no landmark was ever removed. But, then, is the mere industry which clears the soil of any good if courage and intelligence do not second and direct material labor? Why do we so little care for the improvement of men? Machines and inventions are not a sufficient development: it is the heart and the mind which should be worked upon, changed, electrified into new activity. Will men never comprehend that civilization can never begin except at the soul, and that whatever is purely material must ever be overruled by what is intellectual?" This was written nearly a century and a half ago.
The series of little pictures which Gozzi has left us of those days, when upon his return from Dalmatia he realized the abasement into which the family had finally fallen, are most vivid, and remind us of the honest realism of the Dutch painters. And the charm of Gozzi's writings lies precisely in that sense of genuineness which more than anything else inspires us with trust in a writer. You feel sure that whatever he relates is the thing he has himself observed or felt, just as it happened. All the puerile inconsistency of an age not fecundated by any belief, in which a strong religious sense is replaced by childish superstition and bold materialism, is admirably rendered in the episode of the death of the old senator Almore Cesare Tiepolo. He was a man of great benevolence, and he distinguished himself from his peers by a rare courtesy of manner toward his servants and the people of that class. It happened one day that as he was stepping out of his gondola his foot caught in the folds of his senatorial robe, and he fell down. In trying to hold him up his gondolier let go the oar, which struck Tiepolo's arm and broke it. He, however, showed no sign of pain and no irritation toward his man, but quietly walked home and sent for the surgeon. Forty days he was kept motionless in bed, and during all that time the same unalterable regard for the feelings of others made him gentle and uncomplaining and grateful for the care he received. But the old Venetian loved a good table; so every morning he had his gondolier come to his bedside and tell him what fish was in the market, how it looked, how much it cost; and, giving himself up to his culinary enthusiasm with the appreciative appetite of a connoisseur, he established the relative merit of the different fish and discussed their flavor, till one day, while he was engaged in his favorite morning occupation, the end of things came for him, and Almore Cesare Tiepolo turned his face toward the wall, like the prophet of old, and, surrendering himself to acts of fervid contrition with the aid of his confessor, he obtained a last parting benediction and died.
Two writers, two rival would-be poets, and critics one of the other, held then the literary sway over Venice. One was the licentious and unscrupulous Abbé Chiari, who imitated with a certain success the artificial manner of the brilliant French writers of the day: the other was Goldoni, then at the height of his fame. It is difficult for us, placed as we are so far from that tinselly age, to form an idea of the fever and furore of admiration which raged in Venice for these two men. A deluge of adulatory literary expression poured on every side in the shape of comedies, tragedies, plays, sonnets, poems, songs and apologies, all of them inflating with a fervid enthusiasm the inflammable youth of the most mobile of populations. The comedies of Goldoni were the fashion. They were found in everybody's hands, in ladies' rooms, on shop counters and on the benches of workmen. The plain literal copy of Nature, the unblushing sans-gêne of a sportive cynicism, pleased the indolent imagination of the blasé and immoral Venetians. And the infatuation was carried so far that a certain abbé, the fashionable preacher of the day, boasted that he preached his Lent sermons only after he had read a comedy of Goldoni!
Gozzi fell in the very midst of that literary ebullition, and watched curiously its ephemeral duration; for, like a brilliant soap-bubble blown by merry children, it soon vanished into nothing. Even Goldoni could not retain his hold on minds which, if they knew it not, needed a more satisfying nourishment than the uninspiring, material rendering of characters overcharged with vices or virtues inharmoniously collocated.
Gozzi, persecuted by extreme poverty, stepped on the scene with the determination and the power to substitute for works full of defects and cynical in their influence his own conceptions of life. It was throwing the glove in the face of popular favor, and it opened literary skirmishes which lasted from 1757 to 1761, and determined his vocation as a a writer of plays and a theatrical manager. If we remember how minds had lost all nice critical perception, and had become too confused to distinguish between a good and a bad literary style, having accustomed themselves to admire at large whatever served for amusement, we shall better understand what was the task that Gozzi took upon himself, and appreciate the way he fulfilled it. His work was the creation of a national theatre. He used his vivid imagination and the ingenious turn of his fancy to personify the pet vices and the fatal frivolity of the Venetians. He created fantastic beings, brilliant caricatures and grotesque characters. They made a hit and became popular favorites.
His plays, written especially for the dramatic troupe which he had taken under his paternal protection, and which he loved, cared for, watched over during twenty-five years of his life, are a strong and spicy satire upon the follies of the eighteenth century—a subtle and sagacious criticism of its universal immorality. Our humorist was greatly aided in the prosecution of his work by the sustained rectitude of his own life. With the naïve confidence of a child he relates to us some of his strange experiences of men and of women—mostly of women—and we feel sorry when he is so cruelly and so unnecessarily deceived, and he must lose his implicit trust in that young prima donna in whose purity of soul he so unreservedly believed. How many years he had seen her, day after day, first as a mere girl, then as a young wife and a young mother, and always surrounding her with the homage of his admiration and of his respect! She appears like one of those enshrined figures one is surprised to find in out-of-the-way places, and which, after all, have to be left to other eyes. Gozzi came very near losing the dignity of his mental quietude—and that in spite of his mature age, for he was then nearly fifty—in a Don Quixotism well worthy of a man who had so deeply immersed his fancy in the fount of the Spanish drama, and whose head was filled with romantic adventures. A strange, an almost unaccountable, devotion bound him during five years to the erratic destiny of Ricci. Yet his affection for her did not go beyond a sustained solicitude for her welfare and an active interest in the development of her talent. For a long time he blindly believed in her moral capacities, and he went to work with the hope of winning her permanently to a pure and an elevated life. It is touching to watch him centring his whole interest and placing his paternal pride in that delusive will-o'-the-wisp glimmer of goodness which must inevitably lead hope astray. Gozzi broke off his friendship for her the day he found out she was less than he expected her to be. But this time he did not laugh, though he tells his readers that they may well laugh at him for his credulity, his childish, untaught experience, his romantic effort to believe in and to create an impossible ideal.
What makes Gozzi's memoirs so interesting is, above all, their vitality. A fresh, bounding current of life runs through them, and while watching it you take no notice of those débris of character which an austere moralist would surely count up and remember. In the midst of extreme licentiousness, Gozzi endeavored to awaken in the Venetians a sense of the dignity of existence by placing before their eyes tangible ideas of virtue. The public is a materialist by right of usage, and therefore prefers the reality of the theatre to all other forms of teaching or of amusement. Rouge and tinsel have the gift of persuasion. Gozzi felt that instinctively, and few play-writers have been more successful as an influence than he was. At the avenue of every new sensation, and gifted with a quick-catching sense of gayety, he lost nothing of the play which men and women enacted before him. He observed, he listened carefully: nothing escaped the grasp of his constructive and fanciful mind. His daily walks through the most populous streets; his habitual lingering around the fashionable shops where pretty modistes attracted the idle admiration of idlers; his morning visit to the Rialto, and his never-failing appearance on the Piazza when everybody was assembled there in the afternoon,—these were the varied sources of his study of his contemporaries and also of his dramatic inspiration. Though at that time there were several playhouses in Venice, and going to the theatre was then, as it is now, the favorite way of spending the evening, no theatre was so well patronized and so crowded as that of San Samuele, where Venetian nobles and high-born women dazzled the eye of the people with their splendor, while an unbounded admiration welcomed some new play from the well-known, the genial and much-loved Count Carlo Gozzi. And yet, reading these same plays, may we not somewhat wonder at the extravagant praise that was showered upon them in those far-off days? They are sketchy, sparkling, interesting by their movement and color. Like a piece of faceted glass they catch and radiate light. But they are not distinguished by any originality of thought nor by a profound and far-reaching philosophy. They are society-studies, an exact portraying of what was considered le beau monde. Gozzi had too much common sense and too much honesty of nature not to be very much shocked by the avowed cynicism which it was the fashion then to parade. He takes pains to aim against it the full and spicy expression of his disfavor, considering it as a fatal outgrowth of French infidelity. Therefore he deserves to be considered a moral writer. The freedom of his language is only the seal of realism affixed to his writings, such as we find it in Shakespeare. Nothing could be more unlike and dissimilar in the after-taste which they leave on the mental palate than these very plays which we are considering and any French play of our own time. In Gozzi the moralist lines the writer, and that, perhaps more than anything else, establishes the different character of his literary influence from that of Goldoni. He says that he wrote his plays for his own pleasure first, and with a wish to illustrate for his fellow-citizens a joyous and wholesome moral.
One hundred years ago one of the most famous comedies of Gozzi was given to the Venetian public. Le Droghe d'Amore ("Love's Potion") caused so much perturbation in its author, and so much excitement and importance in the Venetian people, so much manœuvring and intriguing was set to work for and against it, and so much more was said and felt and suffered about it, that for its adventurous entrée into the world, if for nothing else, it deserves a special notice. What was, then, the cause of all this stirring-up of passions and of prejudices? And how could it happen that an inoffensive dramatic representation of character should have proved the spark which suddenly set on fire a perfect powder-house of human interests? It occurred in this manner: On the night of the first representation the Venetian public recognized in the character of Don Adone the well-known and fashionable figure of Pietro Gratarol, secretary of the august Senate of Venice, and, in spite of such a charge, one of the most unscrupulous profligates and successful roués of the time. Young as he was, and handsome, he had acquired the marked reputation of an exquisite in the salons of Venice, where he was a leader and used the prestige of his influence to introduce foreign customs. No man was more universally known in every grade of society than he was, and his bonnes fortunes as a gambler and as a man of pleasure formed an important subject of the daily conversation of the men and women who dispensed public favor. He was therefore a conspicuous person, and whatever happened to him became an object of general interest to people as frivolous as he. It was of course impossible for him to remain indifferent to the spectacle of his own ridicule placed before the laughter of the public. His indignation was immense, and with the help of such of his admirers as he could rally around him he formed a clique bent upon destroying Gozzi as a writer. They employed every means of calumny to effect it, but failed. The piece, which for a time had been withdrawn by superior order, was again given, and was received with triumphant applause. It was something gained to have in a manner brought the censorship to terms and forced it to change its verdict. The star of Gratarol set for ever. He was no longer admired, but he was pitilessly laughed at or patronized with crushing compassion wherever he appeared; and wounded self-love, wounded vanity, everything, combined to excite a desire for revenge. But honest Gozzi had not intended any personal allusion in the writing of his play, and was hardly responsible for the characterization of a quick-witted public. Parties, however, became so envenomed about the whole affair that Gratarol was finally banished from Venice, on the ground of having slanderously attacked the reputation of Gozzi in a pamphlet which was suppressed; and he withdrew to Stockholm, where he died.
But for that episode of his picturesque life Gozzi would never have given us his memoirs. He wrote them not from a motive of vanity, but only to let the world have a fair chance of judging his character correctly. Surely, a man as conspicuous as he was in his day had the right to get a hearing before his contemporaries, and to leave unblurred by prejudices or false impressions the mirror of public memory in which his figure was to reflect itself.
When Aristophanes amused the Athenians with his satirical or comical allusions to those great men of the republic who were his contemporaries—Euripides, Plato, Socrates or Cleon—was he not mostly prompted by his indomitable conservatism, which made him the avowed enemy of all innovation in ideas and customs? It is that resemblance between the Greek poet and the Venetian writer which has made some critics call Gozzi the Aristophanes of the eighteenth century. He hated the bold and sacrilegious hands of modern philosophy, because it pulled down and trampled under foot the traditions and the usages which the cherishing care of centuries had consecrated as the guiding-star of honor in the heart of the people. He hated the inroad of foreign ideas and of foreign independence in the conduct of life. He believed in the sacredness of custom and authority, and he preached it con amore in all his writings.
Gozzi lived an isolated and studious life. He seldom left his old ruined palace, where at night "dances of rats" alone disturbed his quiet, except on his way to rehearsals or to the evening representations. No man in Venice was more loved; and well might he be, for he gave bread and support to the whole of that little dramatic world of which he was the centre and the inspiration. As he never consented to sell his work, he remained very poor. His habits were simple, and with his own inimitable naïveté he confesses that the whole of his worldly care consists in having the largest of silver buckles on his shoes and keeping his wig in the fashion.
Venice during the eighty years of Gozzi's life was the Venice of unprincipled, corrupt men and women. It had become a masked ball, a mad pleasure-place, where intrigue and adventure gave the chief interest to each day. In art, in letters and in the conduct of life the most frivolous or trivial or fleeting occupations engaged the attention and absorbed the time. The old men forgot the dignity of their age in a puerile leisure, and the young men were dissipated and purposeless. People had nothing to do but to laugh at each other and to play with the passing moment; and the loss of all sense of moral responsibility left them adrift in the midst of the most glorious of national memories. One has to wonder at the strange indifference which settled over those descendants of the illustrious men whose names are built into the magnificent palaces on both sides of the Grand Canal; and there is perhaps no greater lesson than that which may be learnt from studying the private history of the noble patrician families of Venice of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—men whose hearts were opened to all great emotions—and by looking at the marionette life of the men and women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as it is portrayed in the pictures of Longhi, where the Chamber of Sighs never empties itself of the opulent gamblers who patronized the Ridotto night and day.
When Gozzi was a young man his first initiation into life had been a repeated experience of the playful capriciousness of the sex, and he never forgot it. What a commentary on the fair Venetians is his remark, "I do not admit the possibility for a woman to know love"! In his eyes she remains a being incapable of any grand and sustained sacrifice of her instincts to the ennobling mastery of moral responsibility. In all his dramas, plays and comedies there is but one character of a woman which is at all magnetic or lovable—that of Angela, the heroine of the play of the Deer Ring. It is a pleasure to meet at last that gentle and guileless feminine personality after you have wearied of the tinsel flimsiness, the bubbling frivolity, the sparkling emptiness of the society-women who so turned the head of the age in which they lived, and have so scandalously immortalized it.
Goldoni and Gozzi have both given us plays which show us that scandal and intrigue were the favorite seasoning of the stale stuff of Venetian life after it had lost its religion and its patriotic ideal. Triviality for triviality, we prefer Gozzi.
As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage: mirth and folly were the crop.
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
H. M. Benson.