Dark days.—The great question begins to be answered.
In 1548 Peregrino Morato fell ill. The master's chair was empty; the scholar's desks,—those school–like looking desks, which we may still see sculptured on the monumental stones of old sixteenth century professors in academic Bologna—were vacant; the last new edition issued by Aldus, beautiful with the delicately–cut types of Francesco de Bologna, and damp from the press of neighbouring Venice, remained half–cut; and the wearied scholar, old, we are told,[72] and broken down before his time, lay on his poor pallet.
Olympia hurried from the court to her father's bedside. It was the first call to her of painful duty, a great epoch in every life! Suddenly from the midst of her bright–hued dream–life, her "Muses' haunts," and gay poetical imaginings, she was called to face some of the sternest realities, that post themselves like sentinels inevitable in the smoothest path of mortal existence. Suffering to be ended only by dissolution,—the mysterious departure of the loved one for that dim uncertain cloudland, the existence and nature of which have hardly hitherto been realised, but which henceforward will be invested with all the interest attaching to the home of those who have been our home–mates,—the newness of that solitude that first teaches the startled heart the meaning of those dreary words, never! never more!—these are the divining rods that first reveal the hidden wealth dormant beneath the flower–decked surface of many a gifted nature.
MORATA'S DEATH.
Olympia's loving watch by the bedside of her father was considerably prolonged, as he sank gradually to his rest; and finally closed his eyes tranquil in the assurance that the position which his Olympia's rare talents and acquirements had attained for her, would enable her to be the stay and protectress of her three young sisters and younger brother.
But while this scene was passing in the humble home of the worn–out scholar, events of a very different sort were in progress in the palace home she had so recently left.
Anne D'Este, Olympia's friend and companion, though five years her junior, was now seventeen. And her father, the Duke, who had in the earlier part of this year been to Turin for the purpose of meeting there Henry II. of France, the nephew of the Duchess Renée, had then arranged with the King a marriage between her and Francis of Lorraine, afterwards well known to history as the Duc de Guise. On the return of Duke Hercules to Ferrara the marriage was solemnised on the 29th of July, 1548, Louis of Bourbon standing proxy for the bridegroom. "The citizens of Ferrara," we are told,[73] "were not altogether well pleased with this marriage; but they constrained themselves to put on an air of festivity." There was but little of this, we may be sure, or we should have had the usual accounts of feastings and processions, with the details of the dishes and the dresses, and the cost thereof. The marriage seems to have been done with business–like simplicity; and the young Princess, regretted by a whole city, "who," says Muratori,[74] "loved and reverenced her beyond all belief," was sent off, to find shortly enough,—she too, as well as her old playmate,—that life had other things in store for her than classical philosophy and dilettante poetry. The Duke, her father, accompanied her as far as the frontier of his states, her mother and two sisters as far as Mantua, and certain ladies of the court as far as Grenoble; and there, the links of the chain that bound her to her home having been thus gradually severed, she was launched into the strange life before her.
Thus, when Olympia had paid the last duties to her father, and returned to the palace, her friend was no longer there, and she found herself dismissed under circumstances that showed her to have fallen under the displeasure of the Duke. This blow followed the other so closely that Olympia admits herself to have been beaten down to the ground by them. And in truth the burden suddenly laid on those young shoulders, which had never yet learned that life had any burdens which could gall the bearer, was a heavy one. A sick mother, three young sisters, and an infant brother in that poverty–stricken mourning home, all looking up to Olympia, the pride of the family, the admired, successful Olympia, the inmate of the palace, whose friends and intimate companions were the great ones of the land, and she driven forth into the cold shade of disgrace, just at the moment when there was so much need that some gleams from the brilliant sunshine of her prosperity should have cheered the cold home of the widow and orphaned sisters;—the burden was a heavy one for that young heart, making her first acquaintanceship with sorrow.
FIRST SORROWS.
But Olympia struggled bravely with her difficulties.[75] "Haunts of the Muses," and brilliant heathen Undine–life were all left far behind; and that salvation question began to be answered.