To found a Convent in my breast,
And keep a cloister in my heart.’
‘One is constantly confuting oneself,’ he replied.
‘How should it be otherwise?’ said Lamia. ‘Verse being the expression, not of the convictions, but of the emotions, poets cannot be taxed with inconsistency, though they contradict themselves a thousand times.’
‘Thank you, dear Lamia,’ he said. ‘You are the most ingenious of apologists. If ever I have to defend myself, you shall be my Portia.’
But the last day, the last night, and then the very morning of departure at length arrived, when Florence, with its gorgeous towers and cloud-capped palaces, was, for a time at least, to dissolve like the baseless fabric of a vision. Perfetta was in tears; Ippolito had a mazzetto of carnations for us all; the contadini desisted from their work to cluster in the garden in order to see us off with many gracious words and expressions of hope that next year we should return; and the entire household manifested by melancholy smiles their sorrow at our going. Pasquale, the cameriere, had come into my room early that morning with a doleful face, and, in reply to a renewed inquiry whether we could not help him to find another place, assured me that he would not care to serve anybody else; and he launched into touching eulogies of Veronica’s considerateness and universal capacity, of Lamia’s irresistible charm, of the genius of the Poet,—Il Gran Poeta, he called him, though utterly ignorant, I need scarcely say, of the very language in which that retiring person writes,—and of the thousand-and-one virtues which, finally, he ascribed to myself. If you think that he was insincere, because he in some degree exaggerated, I can assure you that you are mistaken. He believed it all.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Ringrazio tanto la sua signoria, but I could not serve any one else. Riprenderò il mio antico mestiere’ (I will return to my old calling).
‘And what may that be?’ I asked.
‘Do you not know?’ he said. ‘Io son comico’ (I am an actor).