LETTER FROM CURIONE.
"Leave groaning," he says, "to those who have no hope save in this world. Your treasure is in heaven, where thieves cannot steal it, nor flames destroy it. Do you not, like the sage of old, carry all your goods with you,—your learning, your piety, your honour, your virtue, and your attainments? What are material misfortunes and ruin to such an one? 'Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinæ.'"
Curione, from Bâle, writes; "I send you, my dear Olympia, the Homer you ask for, together with some publications of my own. The book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah you will receive from Frankfurt; and you will all the more profitably study it, in the time of your mourning for your husband's native city. It is for you now to return to the studies which have been interrupted, to produce something worthy of Sophocles, and to obtain the laurel which has so long been your due."
All such brave talk must have been received by Olympia with a sad smile. For she felt surely enough, that her laurel–seeking days were over, and knew well that the night, "when no man can work" was coming very quickly. And, indeed, one can hardly help smiling now at honest Curione's expectation that "something worthy of Sophocles" should be generated by meditations on the Lamentations of Jeremiah!
But the misfortunes which had fallen on the learned physician and his celebrated wife at Schweinfurth, had attracted, it would seem, such attention, that others besides their own private friends were anxious to contribute towards replacing what had been lost. For we find Olympia charging Curione with her thanks to the eminent publishers, Oporinus, Hervagius, and Frobenius, for the valuable presents of books they had sent her. The incident is a pleasing trait of the feeling existing among the members of the guild of learning in those old German days, despite the volleys of sesquipedalian billingsgate, more or less ciceronian, with which they assailed each other on most occasions. And it is a proof of the high estimation in which Olympia was held, and of the extended reputation her name had attained.
Yet it was an uphill task, this recomposing a home in a strange city; and Olympia, weak and suffering as she was, had to busy herself with far other cares and labours than such as had rivalling Sophocles for their object.
One of her earliest letters from Heidelberg was to her old master John Sinapi. "My husband," she writes, "is preparing for his public lectures. I have been excessively busy all day in buying household gear, that we may be able to get into our new house." Emilio too was fully occupied "in domesticis negotiis," assisting his sister in her preparations for recommencing housekeeping, or he would write to his friend Theodora.
Then, from this and other letters of the same time, we find her much troubled on the subject of serving–maids. Ladies suffering from the same vexations in the nineteenth century, may extend their sympathy across the chasm of three hundred years, from poor dear Mrs. Blank in the next street, to poor dear Mrs. Grünthler in her home at Heidelberg. They may, perhaps, find materials for consolation in their torments, from the discovery, that "the pitch to which things have come now–a–days," had been arrived at three centuries ago, by this monotonously trundling world.
TROUBLES ABOUT SERVANTS.
"The weakness of my health," she writes to John Sinapi, "has within the last few days compelled me to engage the only woman I have been able to meet with. She asks a golden florin a month, reserving too the right to employ a portion of her time for her own profit. Under the pressure of necessity I have been obliged to submit. But all the wealth of Persia should not induce me to keep her any longer. I throw myself, therefore, on your charity for assistance. Do try, if you can send me a servant of some sort, young or old. I can give her five florins a year."