22nd.
To Parma; oppressively warm. Bought some grapes of a boy, who, when we had paid him what he asked, four times their value, demanded buona mano. Suffered much from the heat, though we started early: for, having given orders that our horses should not, according to custom, be driven to drink in the cold yard at daybreak, the hostler disobeyed, and Fanny informed us of their delinquency by screaming her shrill neigh till she woke us, and D—— proceeded to restore her to her stall, and I to prepare for our journey. Passed again the dark old fortress of Rubiera, and fed our horses before reaching Reggio. We would gladly have found refreshment for ourselves, but it was out of the question, the stable being the cleanest part of the premises. Bad as was La Paone at Parma, we returned there on account of our horses; but Parma being intricate in its wanderings, we were puzzled to find it. Fanny’s sagacity did not fail even here; she led the way to the alley in which it stands, and walked straight into the inn yard.
We went out this beautiful evening to buy whips at the shop of the most civil of all saddlers, nearly opposite the Posta, now the best inn. As I passed a bookseller’s shop, I saw in the window a pamphlet, containing the lives of the five saints canonized in the month of May of this year, 1839, and the ceremonies which took place at Rome. As they were often the subject of conversation during our stay at Florence, I stopped and bought it, and spent an hour in its study, in this most desolate of all uncurtained chambers.
The five saints were named—
Sant’ Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori,
Francesco di Gironimo Giovanni,
Giuseppe della Croce,
Pacifico da San Severino, and
Veronica Giuliani Cappucina.
Alfonso Maria was born in 1696, presented by his mother to San Francesco di Girolamo, who predicted that her son deserved more than common care, being destined to become a bishop, to perform for the good of the church great and marvellous things, and to live to the age of ninety years. It seems he was a wondrous child; and when he grew to man’s estate, considering studies and fatigues, and maladies, to which he was subject, insufficient to mortify the flesh, he added thereto flagellation, wounds, chains, and hunger: “So that,” the pamphlet says, “the Lord God, being pleased with this self-devoted victim, who offered himself up an incessant sacrifice to divine glory, chose to render him illustrious by gratuitous gifts of prophecy, of insight into the human heart, of being present in two places at a time, and of the working of frequent miracles.”