XVI.
Fresh discoveries regarding the condition of our family.—Vain hopes and wasted will to be of use.—I abandon myself to my old literary studies.
Our country-house had been originally constructed on an old-fashioned, roomy, and convenient scale, with numbers of out-buildings. It was now reduced to one of those dilapidated farms, which I have described in my burlesque poem La Marfisa Bizzarra, canto xii., stanza 126.[129] Two-thirds of the edifice had been demolished, and the materials sold. The remaining fragments were inhabited, but bore written on their front: "Here once was Troy."
Prepared as I was by the misery of our town-house for the desolation of this rural mansion, I hardly cared to cast a glance upon it. What I noticed on arriving was a certain air of jollity and gladness, breathing health, betokening contentment, which all the faces of the village people wore. Amid the jubilations of relatives, guests, serving-folk and lads about the farm, not omitting a pack of barking dogs, I descended from the calèche with my brother. A whole crowd of people, whom I did not know and could not number, fell upon my neck to bid me welcome. Something of a military carriage, which I had picked up abroad, but which had no relation to my real self, made our farm-folk stare upon me like a comet.
Then I raised my eyes, and saw my poor father at a window in the upper storey, with trembling limbs, dragging himself forward on his stick to catch a glimpse of me. All the blood turned suddenly and galloped through my veins. I rushed up the stairs, burst into the room where he was standing, seized one of his hands, and kissed it in a transport of filial affection. He fell upon my shoulder, more paralytic than he had been when I last embraced him, and, in his inability to speak, broke into a piteous fit of weeping. The effort I made to restrain my own tears, lest they should add to his unhappiness, made me feel as though my lungs would burst. Leaning on my arm, he slowly tottered after me, and little by little we reached another room which he frequented. October was nearly over, and the cold in that Friulian climate was very sensible. A good fire burned on the hearth, near which stood the arm-chair of my father, who for seven years had dragged his life out in this wretched state. All the resources of medical science had been tried in vain. Physicians sometimes agreed and sometimes differed about his treatment. But their concord and their discord were equally impotent to effect a cure; and he had not yet reached the age of fifty-five.
I found my mother in the same apartment. She uttered sentiments which were not inappropriate to her maternal character, but in a frigid tone and with an air of stately self-control. I always loved and respected her, not merely from a sense of duty, but with a true filial instinct. She, on her side, used frequently to protest when there was no need for protestation, that she loved all her nine children with exactly the same amount of affection. She often repeated the following words with gravity, raising her eyebrows as she spoke: "Cut off one of my fingers and I suffer pain; cut off a second and I suffer;" and so on through nine fingers, amputated by the same figure of speech, with equal agony in each case. Notwithstanding this, I believe that the loss of eight fingers would not have given her the same pain as that of the first-born finger, in other words, of my brother Gasparo. He is still alive, a man of honour, and a sage if ever sage existed; and I feel sure that he would admit the truth of this statement, if called on to confirm it.
In my long and anxious study of human nature, I have seen so many mothers with the weakness of my own, that I never dreamed of blaming her. It seemed right to me that my brother's mental gifts and noble qualities should earn for him more of her love than she bestowed on all her other eight children. Mothers, however, who are so devoted to a son generally spoil him, notably by extolling what is good in his character, but also by defending his natural frailties. Acting thus, my mother favoured Gasparo's marriage, which subjected her beloved son to a real martyrdom. Her lifelong devotion to him, and the prejudice displayed in his favour by her will, only served to increase the unhappiness of a man whom I always loved, loved still, and shall love as friend and brother till the end of my days on earth. This digression was rendered necessary by what will follow in my Memoirs.
The room was soon full of relatives and intimate friends, all curious about me. My father strove to ply me with questions, but his tongue refused its office, and he relapsed into weeping. Sad at heart as I was for him, I contrived to relate the most amusing anecdotes I could remember concerning my life in Dalmatia and my travels. In this way I kept him laughing, together with the whole company, through the rest of that day.
The perfect country air; a table abundantly served with rural dainties, though somewhat deficient in elegance; the joviality, wit, and pleasant sallies which never failed in our domestic circle,—all this prevented me from attending to the defects of our establishment. Next day I began to discover that the real cause of trouble was not in the building, but in the minds of its inhabitants. I could not have explained why, but I seemed to be a person of importance in the eyes of everybody. My three sisters confided to me in secret that my brother Gasparo's wife, in close alliance with my mother, who doted on her as the consort of her favoured first-born, ruled all the affairs of the family, which were rapidly going from bad to worse. My father's authority as head of the house had ceased to be more than a mere instrument for carrying out what my sister-in-law advised and my mother sanctioned. Unless I managed to stem the tide of extravagance, we should all be plunged into an abyss of ruin. One of my sisters, Girolama, a girl devoted to reading, writing, and translating from the French—for she too was bitten with our family cacoethes—spoke like a sibyl, gravely and eloquently, on these painful topics. At the same time, my brother's wife contrived secret interviews, in which she explained to me that her husband was indolent, torpid, drowned in fruitless studies, devoted to the company of a certain clever person, and wholly averse from thoughts or cares about domestic matters. She had done everything in her power—God knew she had. She would go on doing her best—God should see she would. Then she described her plans and projects, which, to tell the truth, were pure poetical stupidities. She vowed that she was not in any sense the mistress of the establishment, the administrator of the estate, or the disposer of its revenues; she merely gave advice, made suggestions, and exerted herself for the common benefit and to supply the needs of the family in general. She exhorted me to speak seriously to her husband; I was to make him abandon his unprofitable studies, make him, above all things, give up those visits of taste and soul, which did so much harm; in fine, I was to force him to sustain his wife in her stupendous labours, and to concentrate his thoughts upon his children, who were five in number.
When I came to analyse the curious compound of truths, lies, and fancies which issued from the fevered brains of this poor lady—always hard at work, always embarrassed in a labyrinth of business—I seemed to perceive that what moved her most was the fear of being made herself responsible for our financial failure. It was also clear that her original ambition of acting the part of prime minister in a realm which only existed in her own imagination, kept her always on the stretch; while a certain little devil of feminine jealousy against her husband added to her disquietude. He, good fellow, had forgotten the long collection of Petrarchan poems written by him for her honour in the past, and which she had repaid with the gift of five children. Not the least little sonnet issued from his pen to celebrate her now. His lyrics were addressed to another idol of the moment.
Meanwhile she set great store upon her personal importance. Every member of our family, who wanted a ducat, a pair of shoes, or something of the sort, came to her with humble supplications, imploring her good offices at head-quarters—and Heaven knew where head-quarters were. This honour and glory made up to her for all her heroic labours in the little realm, which she administered with real authority, though her right to do so was contested, and her schemes were pindarically unpractical.