"You do not see the garden at its best," he cavils. "Wait till the roses garland the balustrades. It is too early yet to enjoy Tivoli; the frost may have left the ground but it lingers still in the pavements of this great palace. The halls are damp as vaults; we would have done well, my nieces, to have remained another month in Rome. Not till the middle of May will society desert the city for its villeggiatura. What do you say, Leonora, shall we confess that we have made a mistake and return?"
"Dear uncle, as you say, it is only the palace which, in spite of its braziers, retains the winter chill. Here in the garden the air is balmy, and the Judas trees are all a crimson mist. See how the green is creeping, like an inundation through the russets of last year's grasses. In another fortnight all this magical change will have been wrought, and those who come later will have missed the fairy spectacle."
"Spectacle! ah! that reminds me," replied the Cardinal; "while Nature is shifting the scenes we must prepare the scenario. Confess that I have provided a worthy theatre, one which should suggest to a poet a worthy theme. There, alas! is my great lack—I have no poet. How wastefully on those who need them not are the most precious gifts bestowed! My uncle and godfather, Cardinal Ippolito—the saints rest his soul!—was a dull-brained barbarian and yet he had attached to his service that pearl of poets Ariosto, whom he had neither the intelligence to appreciate nor the justice to reward. What think you was Ariosto's meed for dedicating to his patron the Orlando Furioso? He was made governor of that nest of bandits, the mountain district of Garfagnana, and it in open insurrection against the Duke of Ferrara. A pretty post for a scholar and a poet! But to it he went, and conquered the brigands, proving himself as expert in the use of the sword as in that of the pen.
"We produce no such men now. Bernardo Tasso, to whom I gave employment when he was exiled from Naples, and who wandered freely in this garden, felt not its charm, for he was but a third-rate poet, and even he is dead. Who in our day can interpret the poetry which I feel here but cannot express? And with but so little more of endowment I might have done it, for after all is not the inner ear, the second sight, the major part of genius?
"Listen, and tell me what you hear. Only the musical plash of the fountains and the sonorous undertone of the organ, like the distant roar of surf upon the beach? Ah, me! ah, me! how materialistic you are, my children. Your old uncle hears in these myriad-voiced fountains the musical instruments which Boccaccio gave to the Satyrs; 'cymbals, pipes, and whistling reeds,' and the song of the nymphs. Did you note that startled cry? It is the Oread Arethusa flying from the river-god Alpheus. He is imprisoned in the organ, where he is mightily bellowing, and whence he will presently burst forth. But Arethusa will slip away (coquette that she is), under ground and under sea to her Sicilian home; for fable and stream sing eternally the same story, Mulier hominis confusio est.
"Tell me, my niece, have we in all Italy a poet who can voice such a theme?"
"Yes, uncle," the Duchess of Urbino interposed, "Bernardo Tasso's little son heard and understood the song of the fountains when he played here in his childhood. He told me that he believed a folletto or tricksy spirit talked with him here and promised him that if he came again he would find here both love and fame. He can interpret your songs for you, for he has grown a man, and is a greater poet than his father."
"And meantime," added Leonora, "he has absorbed all that the universities of Bologna and Padua can give him, and has written a romantic poem, the Rinaldo, on the exploits of one of our ancestors, that mythical old peer of Charlemagne, which he has dedicated to our house. It is in recognition of this tribute that our brother Luigi has made him his secretary."
"And Luigi is at the French Court intriguing with the Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici. Torquato is doubtless with him," replied the Cardinal. "I ask you of what good to tantalise me with impossible suggestions? He had the eyes of a poet, that lad, and he might have served my turn."
"He may still serve you, Uncle Ippolito, for he has quarrelled with Luigi, and is in Rome."