A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Andreas Grünthler could hear of no such position as he had hoped to find anywhere. Still he had friends who were influential, and much interested in his and his wife's fortunes. John Sinapi was now settled at Würzburg and his brother Chilian at Spire; and both were eager to assist their Ferrara friends in their projects. Hubert Thomas, of Liège, secretary to the Count Palatine, was also their firm friend. But a recommendation to George Hermann, of Augsburg, councillor to the King of the Romans, which had been obtained for Grünthler by Lavinia della Rovere from her brother–in–law Camillo Orsini, turned out the most immediately valuable. In the impossibility of finding any permanent appointment of the kind desired, this truly friendly man begged the almost despairing professor to bring his wife in the first instance to his house at Augsburg, there to wait till they should be able to see their path in some degree before them.

FAREWELL!

The proposal opened a harbour of refuge when all the trouble–tossed world seemed to refuse them a resting–place. So poor Andreas hurried back across the Alps to his pining mate, overjoyed to be able to bring her some better tidings than his previous disappointments had enabled him to write to her.

It was decided that they should start from Ferrara for the promised land of free consciences and true religion in the early summer of 1551. How constantly had Olympia been sighing during the months of her solitary life at Ferrara for the coming of this hour! Yet now that it was come, this departure was found to be a very sad business, not to be accomplished without many a wrench of affections rooted in the core of the heart. To leave a mother and three sisters, never in all human probability to be seen again on this side of the grave, was a hard task; and Olympia knew well that such was their parting. In a letter written not long afterwards to Celio Curione at Bâle, she expresses her conviction that she shall never again return to Italy, "where Antichrist is raging with such power."[90] She would rather indeed, she says, seek a refuge in the furthest and most inclement north than re–cross the Alps. Yet that first quitting Italy—bright, sunny, native Italy—and Ferrara, where she had known so much both of happiness and misery—"Ferrara my ungrateful country," as she calls it in another letter[91]—was a bitter moment. That crossing of the mountains had, in those days of little travelling and roads dangerous in all ways, something more alarming to the ideas of an Italian girl than any possible migration on earth's surface could now suggest to the most inexperienced traveller. She writes to worthy George Hermann,[92] when there was a question of some distant appointment for Grünthler, that having followed her husband across the Alps, she could have no difficulty in crossing Caucasus—"inhospitalem Caucasum," in true classic phrase—or accompany him to the uttermost ends of the earth, if it were needed. "Omni solum forti patria est!" she adds. But the greatest trial to her fortitude was the first step beyond the marshy plains around persecuting, ungrateful Ferrara.

Painful partings are always most painful to those who are left behind. The necessity of action, and the excitement of going forth to meet new scenes and new fortunes, brace the nerves and give diversion to the grief of those who are to depart; and Olympia was not leaving him who was of all the world dearest to her. But what must the parting have been to the poor mother! Her old friend and former guest, Celio Curione, writing to her several years afterwards, recurs to the sorrows of that time. "The pangs of that departure," he says, "must have been even as the pangs of death when you felt that probably in this life you would never see her again. And truly you might well feel that the separation of death was not very different from that caused by so great a distance."

THE JOURNEY.

In fact, the poor mother never did again see her Olympia. And she was soon after left in entire solitude at Ferrara, in consequence of what she was bound to consider the good fortune of each of her three remaining daughters finding honourable positions. Lavinia della Rovere took one of them with her to Rome. Another was attached to the Lady Helena Rangona de Bentivoglio; and the third to that lady's daughter, who was married at Milan. This last, as we learn from a letter from Olympia to Curione, became the wife of a young man of that city, "an only son, very well off in the world, who asked no dower with her." With them, it would seem, the mother found at last a happier home than she had known since she became a widow.

Worthy Andreas Grünthler took his young brother–in–law Emilio, then eight years old, with him and his wife into Germany.

At length the last words were said, and the little party turned their faces towards the mountains, and began their journey by the pass of the Brenner. There were more points than one in their route which might have been dangerous to them. At Trent the Council was sitting; and all travellers through a city so occupied were likely enough to be subjected to questionings that might lead known fugitives from religious persecution into trouble. At Innspruck the imperial army was quartered, which was not calculated to make the passage through it agreeable or safe to such wayfarers as our friends.