Rome was at that time a French town, the capital of the Department of the Tiber. The Pope was repining a prisoner at Fontainebleau, in the palace of Francis I.
Fouché was on a special mission in Italy and commanded in the city of the Cæsars, even as the chief of the black eunuchs commands in Athens: he merely passed through; M. de Norvins[400] was installed in the quality of Minister of Police: the movement was bearing upon a different point in Europe.
Conquered without having seen its second Alaric, the Eternal City lay silent, plunged in its ruins. Artists dwelt alone on that heap of centuries. Canova received Madame Récamier as though she were a Greek statue which France was returning to the Vatican Museum: the pontiff of the arts, he inaugurated her into the honours of the Capitol in deserted Rome.
Antonio Canova.
Canova had a house at Albano; he offered it to Madame Récamier; she passed the summer there. The balconied window of her bed-room was one of those large painter's casements which frame the landscape. It opened upon the ruins of Pompey's Villa; in the distance, over olive trees, one saw the sun set in the sea. Canova returned at that hour; stirred by that beautiful sight, he loved to sing, with a Venetian accent and a pleasant voice, the barcarolle, O pescator dell'onda; Madame Récamier accompanied him on the piano. The sculptor of Psyche and the Magdalen revelled in this harmony, and sought in Juliet's features the type of the Beatrix which he was dreaming of one day making. Rome had of old seen Raphael and Michael Angelo crown their models in poetic orgies, too freely related by Cellini[401]: how much superior to them was this pure and decent little scene between an exiled woman and that simple and gentle Canova!
More solitary than ever, Rome at that moment wore widow's weeds: she no longer saw pass, blessing her as they did so, the peaceful sovereigns who rejuvenated her old days with all the wonders of the arts. The noise of the world had once again withdrawn from her; St. Peter's was deserted like the Coliseum.
I have read the eloquent letters which the most illustrious woman of our past days wrote to her friend; read the same feelings of tenderness, expressed with the most charming artlessness, in the language of Petrarch[402], by the first sculptor of modern times. I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of trying to translate them:
"Domenico, mattina.
"Dio eterno? siamo vivi, o siamo morti? lo voglio esser vivo, almeno per scriveri; si, lo vuole il mio cuore, anzi mi comanda assolutamente di farlo. Oh! se'l conoscete bene a fondo questo povero cuor mio, quanto, quanto mai ve ne persuadereste! Ma per disgrazia mia pare ch'egli sia alquanto all'oscuro per voi. Pazienza! Ditemi almeno come state di saluto, se di più non volete dire; benchè mi abbiate promesso di scrivere a di scrivermi dolce. Io davvero che avrei voluto vedervi personalmente in questi giorni, ma non vi poteva essere alcuna via di poterlo fare; anzi su di questo vi dirò a voce delle cose curiose. Convenie dunque che mi contenti, a forza, di vidervi in spirito. In questo modo sempre mi siete presente, sempre vi veggo, sempre vi parlo, vi dico tante, tante cose, ma tutte, tutte al vento, tutte! Pazienza anche di questo! gran fatto che la cosa abbia d'andare sempre in questo modo! voglio intanto però che siate certa, certissima che l'anima mia vi ama molto più assai di quello che mai possiate credere ed imaginare."
*
Madame Récamier had succoured the Spanish prisoners in Lyons; another victim of the power which struck her enabled her to exercise her compassionate humour at Albano: a fisherman, accused of holding intelligence with the subjects of the Pope, had been tried and sentenced to death. The inhabitants of Albano entreated the stranger who had taken refuge with them to intercede for the unfortunate man. She was taken to the gaol; she saw the prisoner; struck by the man's despair, she melted into tears. The unhappy man begged her to come to his assistance, to intercede for him, to save him; his prayer was the more harrowing in that it was impossible to snatch him from the punishment. It was already night, and he was to be shot at sunrise.