Venice

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

It was at the most favored season when Caterina made the journey to Asolo. She was met by olive-crowned peasants, who came to welcome their lady, bearing garlands and flowers in their hands. They held a gorgeous canopy above her, as they led her to the Piazza, where an orator showered compliments, apostrophies, and hyperbole upon her in this fashion:—

"Oh, happy land of Asolo! and oh, most happy flock that now hast found so just and sweet a shepherdess! Oh, ship thrice fortunate, whose tiller lies in such a skilful hand! Ye then, ye laurel boughs, the victor's meed, endure the sharp tooth of our knife that carves on you the name of Caterina. Sing, birds, unwonted strains to grace the name, the glorious name, Cornelia!"

One can scarcely imagine a more charming spot than the site of the castle of Asolo. Encircled by the Alps, the plains of the Brenta and the Piave spread out before it. The group of Euganean Hills rises proudly in the distance. Under a clear moon the silver threads of the rivers may be followed to the sea; and in the rich, distant, level country Vicenza and Padua lift their towers, while far away to the sun-rising lies Venice, its many spires clear cut against the blue sky and the blue Adriatic; and to the north the snow-capped Rhœtian Alps stand forth as if to guard all the land they overlook.

In contrast to all this expanse and grandeur is the little town of Asolo, just beneath the castle at the foot of the hill on which it stands. It is a walled town, with genuine mediæval turrets and some quaint house-façades, and in Caterina's day was inhabited by a people glad to be protected with gentleness and ruled by one who cared for their gratitude and love. To them Caterina gave good laws. She brought grain from Cyprus, and gave it to them. She appointed a judge to hear their causes, and established a pawnbroker's bank for those who needed it. Her little court included but twelve maids of honor. She had eighty serving-men besides her dwarf jester, and a favorite negress who cared for her parrots. She had her hounds, apes, and peacocks, and, we are glad to know, she had a generous income.

Here she lived during twenty years, and we doubt not that her title of Lady of Asolo came to be very sweet to her. Certainly she bore it with more peace than ever she had known as a queen. Here the outside pleasures were rambles in gardens and woods, the harvest festa, and the May Day gayety with her people; and within her castle she had the lutes and songs at eventide, and at all hours the never-ending speculations on platonic love and other sleep-begetting subjects.

Pietro Bembo, when twenty-eight years old, as full of life and keen of intellect as handsome in person, came one fine September day to Asolo. He had been at the court of Lucrezia Borgia, at Ferrara. Imagine the contrast between these two beautiful women, and their lives. It was the wedding of Floriano di Floriano da Montagnana with one of Caterina's ladies that drew Bembo away from the golden-haired Lucrezia, and many other guests had come from Venice, and from all the neighboring land, glad to escape from the plains to the heights of Asolo.

Bembo describes a day, beginning with the breakfast at noon, in a large hall with a loggia on either side, breezy and cool in spite of the heat without. Between the pillars of the loggia the spires of the cypress come up from the gardens below, and by their deep, dark green remind one of coolness and shadow as contrasted with the sunny lawns outside. The meal is done; but Caterina gives no signal for rising, and two of her maids move down the hall, and courtesy low before her. One of them strikes her lute and sings a song decrying love; the second answers in the opposite strain; and a third, the favorite of Caterina, to the accompaniment of her viol, sums up the argument on both sides.

Then Caterina and most of her guests retire, to be seen no more until evening, when supper will call them together, and be followed by music and dancing until dawn. But three Venetian couples go to the gardens, the pride of Asolo, the young men in short black cloaks and close-fitting hose of many-colored silks, the ladies in velvet and brocades, with masses of golden hair rolled tightly around cushions. How sorry we are that on this warm day they had no more comfortable apparel! Bembo gives a minute description of the walks, the stream from the living rock that flowed into a basin of stone, and similar objects, and ends by saying that they talked of platonic love through all the afternoon.

The wedding proves that all love was not platonic here, and every fortnight there came the lord of Rimini, Pandolfo Malatesta, a man not well inclined to platonism. Whether he paid his suit to Caterina or to her maid Fiammeta, we know not, but in either case it gave a spice of something human and real to both their lives. Then Caterina's family were always coming and going. They thought to shine by the reflected light of her position, and she was called upon to arrange a marriage for her niece with a prince of Naples. All this was displeasing to Venice. The Cornari had a knight and a cardinal in their family, which seemed quite sufficient to the Senate, and Caterina was warned to make no attempts to confer greater benefits. It was also surmised that she did not forget Cyprus, and she was curtly advised to be content with Asolo, and send not her thoughts over sea.