II
In such a world Arcadia nourished; into such a world that illustrious shepherd, Carlo Innocenze Frugoni, was born. He was the younger son of a noble family of Genoa, and in youth was sent into a cloister as a genteel means of existence rather than from regard to his own wishes or fitness. He was, in fact, of a very gay and mundane temper, and escaped from his monastery as soon as ever he could, and spent his long life thereafter at the comfortable court of Parma, where he sang with great constancy the fortunes of varying dynasties and celebrated in his verse all the polite events of society. Of course, even a life so pleasant as this had its little pains and mortifications; and it is history that when, in 1731, the last duke of the Farnese family died, leaving a widow, “Frugoni predicted and maintained in twenty-five sonnets that she would yet give an heir to the duke; but in spite of the twenty-five sonnets the affair turned out otherwise, and the extinction of the house of Farnese was written.”
Frugoni, however, was taken into favor by the Spanish Bourbon who succeeded, and after he had got himself unfrocked with infinite difficulty (and only upon the intercession of divers princes and prelates), he was as happy as any man of real talent could be who devoted his gifts to the merest intellectual trifling. Not long before his death he was addressed by one that wished to write his life. He made answer that he had been a versifier and nothing more, epigrammatically recounted the chief facts of his career, and ended by saying, “of what I have written it is not worth while to speak”; and posterity has upon the whole agreed with him, though, of course, no edition of the Italian classics would be perfect without him. We know this from the classics of our own tongue, which abound in marvels of insipidity and emptiness.
But all this does not make him less interesting as a figure in that amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he “issues smug, ornate, with his well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking, his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes his way toward Casa Landi.”
I do not know Casa Landi; I have never seen it; and yet I think I can tell you of it: a gloomy-fronted pile of Romanesque architecture, the lower story remarkable for its weather-stained, vermiculated stone, and the ornamental iron gratings at the windows. The porte-cochère stands wide open and shows the leaf and blossom of a lovely garden inside, with a tinkling fountain in the midst. The marble nymphs and naiads inhabiting the shrubbery and the water are already somewhat time-worn, and have here and there a touch of envious mildew; but as yet their noses are unbroken, and they have all the legs and arms that the sculptor designed them with; and the fountain, which after disasters must choke, plays prettily enough over their nude loveliness; for it is now the first half of the eighteenth century, and Casa Landi is the uninvaded sanctuary of Illustrissimi and Illustrissime. The resplendent porter who admits our melodious Abbate Carlo, and the gay lackey who runs before his smiling face to open the door of the sala where the company is assembled, may have had nothing to speak of for breakfast, but they are full of zeal for the grandeur they serve, and would not know what the rights of man were if you told them. They, too, have their idleness and their intrigues and their life of pleasure; but, poor souls! they fade pitiably in the magnificence of that noble assembly in the sala. What coats of silk and waistcoats of satin, what trig rapiers and flowing wigs and laces and ruffles; and, ah me! what hoops and brocades, what paint and patches! Behind the chair of every lady stands her cavaliere servente, or bows before her with a cup of chocolate, or, sweet abasement! stoops to adjust the foot-stool better to her satin shoe. There is a buzz of satirical expectation, no doubt, till the abbate arrives, “and then, after the first compliments and obeisances,” says Signor Torelli, “he throws his hat upon the great arm-chair, recounts the chronicle of the gay world,” and prepares for the special entertainment of the occasion.
“'What is there new on Parnassus?' he is probably asked.
“'Nothing', he replies, 'save the bleating of a lambkin lost upon the lonely heights of the sacred hill.'
“'I'll wager,' cries one of the ladies, 'that the shepherd who has lost this lambkin is our Abbate Carlo!'
“'And what can escape the penetrating eye of Aglauro Cidonia?' retorts Frugoni, softly, with a modest air.
“'Let us hear its bleating!' cries the lady of the house.