Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Then they believed, and they went out quietly, murmuring to one another: “The poor old creature is mad—who ever heard of voluntary poverty?” But they molested her no more. And she recovered from the effect of their blows, and soon after left Rome, taking her dear Principia with her, and they went to a far country, where they served God according to the counsels of perfection, and, when their time came, died in peace.

One other picture from those memorable days stands out—not sadly, but in an almost humorous light. Alaric, with all his Arian fierceness, had a great veneration for the Shrine of St. Peter and for the other great Churches; any one who took sanctuary in them was to be safe, and he forbade his men to touch any of the vessels pertaining to sacred worship. Now, St. Peter’s was surrounded by a number of convents and other buildings connected with its service, and one morning a big Goth, unaware that he was treading on forbidden ground, walked into one of these buildings to see what he could find. He was immediately confronted by a very old nun, who boldly asked him what he was doing there? He replied that he was in search of gold and silver, that he was certain she had treasures concealed in the house, and that she must produce them at once.

“Yes,” she replied meekly, “I have much silver and gold. I will show it to you.” And, to the Goth’s huge delight, she brought out of various hiding-places such an array of precious objects as he had never yet beheld. Silently she spread them all before him—chalices and patens of pure gold, lamps and candlesticks of bronze and silver—till he could scarcely believe his eyes and began to wonder how he could carry them all away.

Then the nun spoke. “This is all,” she said. “Behold these great treasures! There is no one in the house but myself, and I am an old woman, too feeble to guard them. But—they belong to St. Peter, and, if you lay so much as a finger on one of them, the wrath of Heaven will strike you dead!”

That was enough. The terrified warrior fled, and, rushing to Alaric, told him what he had seen. “St. Peter’s treasures?” cried the chief. “They shall indeed be taken care of!” And he commanded one of his officers to lead a great body of men to the deserted house and see that the old nun and the holy vessels were deposited inside the Basilica. So that quarter of the city showed a strange sight to its inhabitants—a hundred or so of sturdy Goths, tricked out in stolen silks and gems, each carrying a bit of St. Peter’s property in devout fear, as if expecting that it would blow him up; and in their midst, blinking at the sunlight, a shabby old nun, who directed their steps and issued her orders as to where everything should be placed when the frightened procession finally defiled into the great, dark Church, and halted as far as possible from the High Altar and the Tomb of the Apostle.

But St. Peter did not save Alaric. Doom was waiting for him and to doom he marched unknowingly, though I believe he would not have swerved from the path had he seen with his eyes its unsheathed sword. He had taken Rome—but Rome, devastated, famine-stricken, plague-scourged, as she was then, would have been a mere empty flare of glory in his crown, without Rome’s storehouse and granary, Africa. Like England to-day, she had long outgrown any possibility of dependence on her own supplies and she had to be fed from abroad. When the African grain ships were delayed on their way, Rome and many of her provinces went hungry; so Alaric’s next move was towards Africa. He went down through the “Regno,” pausing not except at Nola, the place destined long centuries after to be glorified by St. Alphonsus’ pastorate. Thence he hurried, past all the riches and beauty of that teeming garden country, towards Reggio in Calabria, meaning apparently to take ship from Sicily for the opposite coast.

But he never reached Reggio; death was waiting for him at Cosenza. All we know is that it was quick, if not sudden. And then came that funeral which the world can never forget. Where two rivers meet, the greater one, the Busento, was dammed up and turned aside into its sister stream, the Crati, and in the bed thus laid bare Alaric’s last bed was made. There they buried him who was born on an island at the mouth of the Danube, so that the music of rushing waters might soothe his last sleep as it had soothed his first. Great treasure they laid with him in his deep grave, and horses and weapons, that he might ride in state to meet his peers in Valhalla—for Valhalla was still Paradise for them. And they sang their great old war songs for his farewell, sounding his triumphs in his ears to the end, while the captives who had raised the dam dug it down, each man with the sweat of death on his brow, for the war songs were to be their requiem, too. When the Busento roared back to its bed and took its own old way to the sea, it carried their corpses with it, and the warriors turned away satisfied, because none could point out and none could disturb Alaric’s last resting-place.

CHAPTER XIII THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY

The Battleground of Europe—The Riddle of “The Man in the Iron Mask”—Its True Story—Louis XIV’s Ambition in Italy—Plot to Secure Casale—Character of Charles, Duke of Mantua—Count Mattioli, His Favourite—Terms of the Transfer—Mission of the Count to Paris—Conclusion of the Treaty—Mattioli’s Double Dealing—Ominous Delays—The Storm Breaks.

It is a far cry, geographically speaking, from Rome to the vast, alluvial plain of Lombardo-Venezia, that most bloodstained, perhaps, of all the districts of the earth; for, if Flanders has been called the cock-pit of Europe, the immense lowlands of upper Italy may with equal justice lay claim to the title of the battlefield of the old world.