The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

He knocked familiarly at the door, and called his name in at it time after time. At last he heard the old woman rousing herself with difficulty from sleep. She came, dragging along her slippers, to the window, scolding violently at the scoundrel who was disturbing her in the middle of the night--her house not being an inn, &c. Then it took a deal of up and down talking ere she recognised her former lodger by his voice; and on Salvator's complaining that he had been obliged to flee from Naples and could find no roof to cover him in Rome, she cried out, "Ah! Christ and all the saints! Is it you, Signor Salvator? Your room upstairs, looking upon the courtyard, is empty still, and the old fig-tree has stretched its leaves and branches right into the window, so that you can sit and work as if you were in a beautiful cool arbour. Ah! how delighted my girls will be that you are here again, Signor Salvator. But I must tell you Margerita has grown a big girl, and a very pretty girl--it won't do to take her on your knee now! Your cat, only fancy, died three months ago--a fish bone stuck in its throat. Aye, aye, poor thing! the grave is the common lot. And what do you think? Our fat neighbour woman--she whom you so often laughed at and drew the funny caricatures of--she has gone and got married to that young lad, Signor Luigi. Well, well! Nozze e magistrati sono da dio destinati! Marriages are made in heaven, they say."

"But, Signora Caterina," interrupted Salvator, "I implore you by all the saints let me in to begin with, and then tell all about your fig-tree, your daughters, the kitten, and the fat woman. I am dying of cold and weariness."

"Now, just see how impatient he is!" cried the old woman. "Chi va piano va sano; chi va presto muore lesto. The more haste the less speed, is what I always say. But you're tired, you're shivering; so quick with the key, quick with the key."

Before getting hold of the key, however, she had to awaken her daughters, and then slowly, slowly strike a light. Ultimately she opened the door to the exhausted Salvator; but as soon as he crossed the threshold he fell down like a dead man, overcome by exhaustion and illness. Fortunately the widow's son, who lived at Tivoli, happened to have just come home, and he was at once turned out of his bed, which he willingly gave up to this sick family friend.

The old lady had a great fondness for Salvator, rated him, as regarded his art, above all the painters in the world, and had the utmost delight in everything he did. Therefore she was much distressed at his deplorable condition, and wanted to run off at once to the neighbouring monastery and bring her own Father Confessor, that he might do battle with the powers of evil at once, with consecrated tapers, or some powerful amulet or other. But the son thought it would be better almost to send for a good doctor, and he set off on the instant to the Piazza di Spagna, where he knew the celebrated doctor, Splendiano Accoramboni, lived. As soon as he heard that the great painter Salvator Rosa was lying sick in Strada Vergognona, he prepared to pay him a professional visit. Salvator was lying unconscious in the most violent fever. The old woman had hung up one or two images of saints over his bed, and was praying fervently. The daughters, bathed in tears, were trying to get him now and then to swallow a few drops of the cooling lemonade which they had made, whilst the son, who had taken his station at the bed-head, wiped the cold perspiration from his brow. In these circumstances the morning had come, when the door opened with much noise, and the celebrated doctor, Signor Splendiano Accoramboni, entered.

If it had not been for the great heart-sorrow over Salvator's mortal sickness, the two girls, petulant and merry as they were, would have laughed loud and long at the doctor's marvellous appearance. As it was, they drew away into corners, frightened and shy. It is worth while to describe the aspect of this extraordinary little fellow as he came into Dame Caterina's in the grey of the morning. Although he had, apparently, given early promise of reaching a most distinguished stature, Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni had not managed to get beyond the altitude of four feet. At the same time he had, in his early years, been of most delicate formation as regarded his members--and, before the head (which had always been somewhat shapeless) had acquired too much increment of matter in the shape of his fat cheeks and his stately double chin--ere the nose had assumed too much of a lateral development, in consequence of being stuffed with Spanish snuff--ere the stomach had assumed too great a rotundity by dint of maccaroni fodder--the dress of an Abbate, which he had worn in those early days, became him very well. He had a right to be styled a nice little fellow, and the Roman ladies accordingly did speak of him as their caro puppazetto.

But now those days were over, and a German painter, who saw him crossing the Piazza di Spagna, said of him, not without reason, that he looked as if some stalwart fellow of six feet high had run away from his own head and it had fallen on to the shoulders of a little marionette Pulcinello, who had now to go about with it as his own. This strange little figure had thrust itself into a great mass of Venetian damask, all over great flowers, made into a dressing-gown, and girt itself about, right under the breast, with a broad leather girdle, in which was stuck a rapier three ells long; and above his snow-white periwig there clung a high-peaked head-dress, not much unlike the obelisk in the Piazza San Pietro. As the periwig went meandering like a tangled web, thick and broad, over his back and shoulders, it might well have been taken for the cocoon out of which the beautiful insect had issued.

The worthy Splendiano Accoramboni glared through his spectacles, first at the sick Salvator, and then on Dame Caterina, whom he drew to one side. "There," he said, in a scarce audible whisper, "lies the great painter Salvator Rosa sick unto death in your house, Dame Caterina, and nothing but my skill can save him! Tell me, though, how long it is since he came to you? Has he plenty of grand, beautiful pictures with him?"

"Ah! dear Signor Dottore," answered the old woman, "this dear boy of mine only came to-night, and, as concerns the pictures, I know nothing about them as yet. But there's a large box downstairs, which he told me, before he got to be unconscious as he is now, to take the greatest care of. I should suppose there is a grand picture in it which he has painted in Naples."

Now this was a fib which Dame Caterina told; but we shall soon see what good reason she had for telling it to the doctor.