Now it chanced that the latter, in the month of July, 1381, was courting a beautiful daughter of the family of Nogarola, whose dwelling stands in the street of “the two Moors,” not far from the palace of the Scaligeri. Bartolomeo, though, was not her only suitor, for he had a rival in the person of a cadet of the house of Malaspina. And Antonio, seeing how the thing was, resolved to make use of this situation to rid himself of Bartolomeo and to reign alone in Verona. Accordingly, on the evening of July 12, 1381, he hired a number of “bravi,” or professional assassins, and concealed them in Bartolomeo’s apartments in the Palazzo Scaligeri. Later on, Bartolomeo, who had been hunting, came home attended by a friend called Galvani, and they supped together, after which the two lay down and fell asleep; thereupon the murderers came out from their hiding-place and killed the sleepers with many blows of their knives, Bartolomeo receiving as many as twenty-six stabs, all in front. Then the “bravi,” having draped the bodies in black mantles with hoods that they pulled over the faces of them, carried them noiselessly down out of the palace and through the deserted streets to the “piazzetta” of Santa Cecilia, where they left them at the door of Palazzo Nogarola—so that all might believe the murder to have been the work of that family. And there the dead Bartolomeo and his friend were found in the morning by the indignant citizens of Verona, who had loved Bartolomeo more than they loved his younger brother.
But when they came to Antonio with the dreadful news, he feigned great sorrow and anger, and declared it to be his belief that the Lord Nogarola, together with young Malaspina, had committed the crime in order to be revenged upon Bartolomeo della Scala for having dishonoured the girl to whom, as was well known, he had been paying court.
And then, that all men might accept his story for the truth, Antonio had Nogarola arrested, with Malaspina and the girl herself, and condemned them to be tortured in order to make them admit the truth of his villainous accusation. But without success; for not one of the three would consent to confirm the lie in spite of their torments, and it is recorded that the girl even expired on the rack sooner than satisfy the demands of her torturers. The fortitude of the victims now began to have its influence upon public opinion, which came round ultimately to the conviction that Antonio himself had caused his brother to be assassinated for his own private ends, a conviction that was soon voiced aloud wherever men met together in Verona; so that Nogarola and Malaspina had to be released and declared innocent, greatly to Antonio’s rage and confusion and to the joy of all good men. Shortly afterwards, Antonio found an opportunity of turning away the thoughts of his subjects from these events, so unfavourable to himself and his popularity, by ordering a series of feastings and entertainments on the occasion of his marriage to one of the most beautiful and the most foolish women of that or any other age—Samaritana de Polenta, the daughter of the neighbouring despot of Ravenna. Of Samaritana it is recorded, as an instance of her folly, that she would not put on even a pair of stockings unless they were decorated with jewels.
The festivities were held in the great Arena and were a complete success, so far as Antonio’s design of averting the popular reprobation from himself was concerned. Nevertheless, they were destined—together with the coming of Samaritana—to usher in a period altogether disastrous to Antonio’s fortunes, by reason of the fatal extravagance that now seized upon the administration and court of Verona, and the consequent increase in the taxation of the people. Soon, Antonio found himself compelled to engage in war with his neighbours of Padua, much as did Napoleon III in 1870 and with almost exactly the same result. For the Veronese troops, softened by disuse and led by incompetent generals, suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of their opponents under such experts as “Aucúa” (Sir John Hawkwood) and Giovanni d’Azzo; until at length Antonio, deserted by all who had once fawned upon him, fled from his capital under cover of a night of November, 1387. On the next day the town declared for the Visconti, the lords of Milan. In the meanwhile Antonio della Scala was making his way to Venice with Samaritana and their one small son; and there he died in August of the following year, leaving his wife and son to be cared for by the Venetian Republic, which settled a small annual pension upon them, and so ended the reign of the Scaligeri over Verona.
The Arena of Verona, above mentioned, is a very ancient and very perfectly preserved amphitheatre in the centre of the town; so old is it, indeed, that no man may say with certainty when it was first erected, although there seems little doubt but that the Romans were the builders of it. The Arena has been the theatre of every imaginable kind of spectacle, savage and solemn and pathetic, from the martyrdoms of early Christians and the gladiatorial combats of Trajan’s day, down through the ages to the bull-fights of Napoleonic times and the last scene of the Austrian domination in Venetia, when the Italian soldiers captured during the battle of Custozza were brought into Verona in the course of the afternoon of June 24, 1866, to be confined in the old amphitheatre.
In the month of July, 1805, Napoleon, who was then returning to Paris after his coronation as King of Italy at Milan, arrived at Verona and expressed his wish to witness a bull-fight. Such a spectacle was accordingly organised for his pleasure, and the great man came to preside over the entertainment in the Arena on the afternoon of the 16th of the month—at the very moment when he was straining every nerve, politically speaking, to prepare for an universal European war, and while his fertile brain was completing the details of his projected attack upon the English coast from Boulogne.
The account of this bull-fight says that a fine, courageous bull was loosened, and overcame, one after another, the dogs that were set on to it, until Napoleon, carried away by excitement, ordered that two, and then three, dogs should be set on to the bull at once; this number proving insufficient, moreover, the Emperor commanded that all the dogs kept there for purposes of bull-baiting should be let in to attack the bull simultaneously. Needless to add that the unlucky bull was eventually overpowered by its numerous adversaries and that it succumbed beneath their combined attack. It was at this point that one of Napoleon’s general aides-de-camp turned to him, with the laughing suggestion of a warning to be gathered from what had just passed beneath their eyes: namely, the danger of a general hostile alliance of the European Powers, the which it might well be possible for Napoleon to defeat one by one, or even by two or three at a time, but which must as certainly succeed in overcoming him when united by the bond of their common danger. We are not told what answer Napoleon returned to this; but it certainly did not influence him, seeing that he at once set himself to defeating the most formidable of his opponents, Austria, England, and Russia—an undertaking in which the disaster of Trafalgar was well balanced for him by the triumphs of Ulm and Austerlitz.
It is recorded, too, that he returned to Verona for a repetition of the detestable entertainment in the Arena in the month of November, 1807; but that on this occasion the bull-fight was spoiled for him by the early on-drawing of the night—which is not surprising when we read that the spectacle did not begin until half-past four in the afternoon! The last of these loathsome affairs took place, it is grievous to think, under good Archduke John of Austria, in the autumn after Waterloo, on the occasion of his assuming the functions of Governor of Venetia—the solitary instance of his sanctioning anything approaching cruelty. It was in the Arena of Verona that my dear old Adelaide Ristori made her first bow to the public of Northern Italy, although she was already well known to that of Rome. I cannot say at this moment precisely when she first acted in Verona; but I fancy it was at some time in the forties of the last century, the “roaring forties,” when Venetia was making ready for the eruption of ’48. Verona was the special darling of “Father” Radetzky, of whose beloved Quadrilateral it formed the chief fortress, and it was he who fortified it so well and lovingly as to make it well-nigh impregnable. It was to Verona, moreover, that he fell back with his small but well-disciplined army during those dark days of May, 1848, when, as the poet Grillparzer wrote in a poem addressed to the fearless old hero:
“We others are but scattered ruins,
And in thy camp alone is Austria.”