His return was no sooner made known in the city than numerous friends and relations and the greater number of the nobility crowded to his house, to bid him welcome and congratulate him upon the successful termination of his travels. His presentation to the pope took place a few days afterward, when Urban VIII. was so charmed with his conversation and manners, that, without application or intrigue on the part of the traveller, he was appointed his holiness’s honorary chamberlain,—a compliment regarded at Rome as highly flattering. In order to induce the pope to send out missionaries to Georgia, Pietro now presented him with a short account of that country, which he had formerly written; and the affair being seriously taken into consideration, it was determined by the society De Propaganda Fide that the proposed measure should be carried into effect, and that Pietro should be regularly consulted respecting the business of the Levant missions in general.
Early in the spring of 1627, he caused the funeral obsequies of his wife to be celebrated with extraordinary magnificence in the church of Aracœli at Rome. The funeral oration he himself pronounced; and when, after describing the various circumstances of her life, and the happiness of their union, he came to expatiate upon her beauty, his emotions became so violent that tears and sobs choked his utterance, and he failed to proceed. His auditors, according to some accounts, were likewise affected even unto tears; while others relate that they burst into a fit of laughter. If they did, the fault was in their own hearts; for, however extravagant the manner of Della Valle may have been, death is a solemn thing, and can never fail properly to affect all well-constituted minds.
However, though his love for Maani’s memory seems never to have abated, the vanity of keeping up the illustrious name of Della Valle, and the consequent wish of leaving a legitimate offspring behind him, reconciled a second marriage to his mind, and Marian Tinatin, the Georgian girl whom he had brought with him from the East, appears to have been the person selected for his second wife. M. Eyriès asserts, but I know not upon what authority, that it was a relation of Maani whom he married; but this seems to be extremely improbable, since, so far as can be discovered from his travels, no relation of hers ever accompanied him, excepting the brother and sister who spent some time with him in Persia.
Though he had exhausted a large portion of his patrimony in his numerous and long-continued journeys, sufficient seems to have remained to enable him to spend the remainder of his life in splendour and affluence. He had established himself in the mansion of his ancestors at Rome, and the locomotive propensity having entirely deserted him, would probably never have quitted the city, but that one day, while the pope was pronouncing his solemn benediction in St. Peter’s, he had the misfortune to fall into a violent passion, during which he killed his coachman in the area before the church. This obliged him once more to fly to Naples; but murder not being regarded as a very heinous offence at Rome, and the pope, moreover, entertaining a warm friendship for Pietro, he was soon recalled. After this nothing remarkable occurred to him until his death, which took place on the 20th of April, 1652. Soon after his death, his widow retired to Urbino; and his children, exhibiting a fierce and turbulent character, were banished the city.
As a traveller, Della Valle possessed very distinguished qualities. He was enthusiastic, romantic, enterprising. He had read, if not studied, the histories of the various countries through which he afterward travelled; and there were few dangers which he was not ready cheerfully to encounter for the gratification of his curiosity. Gibbon complains of his insupportable vanity and prolixity. With his vanity I should never quarrel, as it only tends to render him the more agreeable: but his prolixity is sometimes exceedingly tedious, particularly in those rhetorical exordiums to his long letters, containing the praises of his friend Schipano, and lamentations over the delays of the Asiatic post-office. Nevertheless, it is impossible to peruse his works without great instruction and delight; for his active, and vigorous, and observant mind continually gives birth to sagacious and profound remarks; and his adventures, though undoubtedly true, are full of interest and the spirit of romance.
JEAN BAPTISTE TAVERNIER.
Born 1602.—Died 1685 or 1686.
The father of Tavernier was a map and chart maker of Antwerp in Brabant, who removed with his family into France while our traveller was still in his childhood. Though born of Protestant parents, some of his biographers have imagined that Tavernier must have been a Catholic, at least in the early part of his life, before his intercourse with the English and Dutch had sapped the foundations of his faith, and left him without any! But the truth appears to be, that although educated in the dominions of a Catholic king, surrounded by priests, and within the hearing of the mass-bells, he, as well as the rest of the family, one graceless nephew excepted, always remained faithful to the Protestant cause. However this may be, Tavernier, who was constantly surrounded by the maps of foreign lands, and by persons who conversed of little else, very early conceived the design of “seeing the world,” and being furnished with the necessary funds by his parents or friends, commenced his long wanderings by a visit to England, from whence he passed over into Flanders, in order to behold his native city.
The rumour of the wars then about to burst forth in Germany kindled the martial spirit in the mind of our youthful traveller, who, moving through Frankfort and Augsburg towards Nuremburg, fell in with Hans Brenner, a colonel of cavalry, son to the governor of Vienna, and was easily prevailed upon to join his corps, then marching into Bohemia. His adventures in these wars he himself considered unworthy of being recorded. It is simply insinuated that he was present at the battle of Prague, some time after which he became a page to the governor of Raab, then viceroy of Hungary. In this situation he had remained four years and a half, when the young Prince of Mantua arrived at Raab on his way to Vienna, and with the consent of the viceroy took Tavernier along with him in quality of interpreter.