It seems that Anarky went quietly enough to the magistrate, who gave her the choice between going to jail and depositing five dollars as security for her appearance next morning for examination. Not having five dollars to deposit, she was allowed an hour in which to seek some one who would go bail for her. At the end of that time she returned to the office panting, exhausted, wiping the perspiration from her face with her blue cotton apron.
"Who is going bail for you?" she was asked.
Calmly turning down the sleeves that had been rolled above her shining black elbows, she replied with contempt, "I ain't been arter no bail: I dun been home an' finish beatin' de lites outen dat yaller houn'. Dat all de bail I wants! Which ef ennybody's lookin' fur him, dey kin fin' his pigtail, an' maybe a piece uv his head a-stickin' to it, hin' de chick'n-coop at Mas' Jim's. Now kyar me to jail an' lemme res'. I boun' he don't spit on no mo' cloze I got ter han'le!"
Jennie Woodville.
THE IDYL OF THE VAUCLUSE.
A dusky opening in a range of purpling hills; a vision of a cluster of small white human homes; a shining, murmuring little river spanned by a wooden bridge; a towering background of bald, steep rock, cleft at its base into a shadowy cavern,—such is the first of my memories of the Vaucluse. At the entrance of the little town stands a low white-walled building, over the door of which is a tablet inscribed thus: "On the site of this café Petrarch established his study. Here he wrote the lines—
O soave contrada, O puro fiume,
Che bagni 'l suo bel viso e gli occhi chiari."
On the banks of the classic Sorgue I was offered the photographs of Petrarch and Laura. I took them, and there, with the sweet May sunlight flooding all the sod, with the fresh spring grass and buds bursting into life beneath my feet, with the murmur of the glad young river in my ears, I stood and gazed upon the faces of those lovers of five hundred years ago, whose love was as a spring-time idyl. For they met in the spring, they parted in the spring, their intercourse was like the mingling of young winds with woodland violets; and, dust and ashes though they have been for centuries, they still prefigure to our hearts the eternal spring-time of the world.
And yet, could the picture that I held in my hand be a faithful reproduction of the famous portrait of Laura which was painted at the request of Petrarch by Simon Menimi and charmed him into verse with its loveliness? It represented simply the head and bust. The face was elongated, the cheeks hollow, the hair smoothed down below the ears. The long, oval, half-shut eyes wore a horrible leer, as though the owner were making a painful effort to close them. On the head was a stiff, ungainly jewelled helmet, which terminated low on the forehead in a triangular ornament. The long, slender throat was encircled by three rows of pearls. The dress was cut squarely across the neck, and was checkered off like a draught-board, while over one shoulder was thrown a small lace scarf. The whole expression of the figure was that of serious, earnest sobriety and saintliness, as understood by a mediæval painter and treated according to his conception of his art, which recognized no difference between a man's earthly love and his spiritual patron, and made them equally crude, righteous, quaint and angular.
But I felt that these harsh distorted outlines had naught in common with Petrarch's Laura. For she had golden hair that floated loose in the breeze and was the prison of enchained and captive Love, and she had roses, red and white, upon her face, and a throat of snowy purity, and a smile of such rare gentleness that when she passed them by men said, "Sure this is an angel come from heaven!" That is the Laura who for centuries has beamed upon humanity—a sweet, benign, refreshing presence—from within her lover's sonnets. That is the Laura in whose reality I believe, but the Laura who lies imprisoned and disguised behind the grotesque mask of mediæval art I cannot, will not, recognize. In Petrarch's utterance I find Laura, a pure spiritual shape in mind and body and soul; but in her portrait I see only Laura clogged and choked and bound about with the trammels of early art and the weight of crude, untruthful detail. Thus, I believe that art at its best is but a dull, material, mechanical means for the translation or reproduction of thought and Nature, and that for the swift, living, electric flame of truth we must refer in all ages and climes to speech pure and simple—the speech of the poet.