Picciola

by X.-B. Saintine

This stormy commencement of a life which had seemed predestined to peace and tranquillity, exercised a powerful influence over the fortunes of Giacomo Girardi. In his old age, he was fated to pay a severe penalty for the follies of his boyhood, for, upon his arrest on the groundless charge of having attempted the life of the First Consul, his accusers did not fail to recur to his early disorders, as an evidence of his dangerous tendency as a disturber of the public peace. But from the moment of quitting Turin, and during the whole period of his exile, Giacomo, indifferent to the love of equality instilled into him by his father, resigned himself to the influence of the religious principles derived from his mother. He even carried them to excess; and his relative, the worthy priest, whose faith was sincere, but whose capacity narrow and uncultivated, instead of checking the exalted fervour of the young enthusiast, excited it to the utmost, in the hope that the loveliness of Christian humility would impose a check upon the impetuosity of his character. But in the sequel, the worthy vicar repented the rashness of his calculations: for Giacomo would hear of nothing now but embracing the sacerdotal profession. The wild, hot-headed young man insisted on becoming a priest of the altar.

In the hope of arresting a measure which would deprive them of their only son, his father and mother got him recalled home; and by the utmost eloquence of parental tenderness, prevailed upon him to resign his projects, and acquiesce in their own. In a few months, Giacomo Girardi was married to a beautiful girl, selected for him by his family. But, to the great astonishment of his friends, the young fanatic not only persisted in regarding his lovely bride as an adopted sister, but exercised over her mind so strong an influence as to persuade her to retire into a convent, while he returned to his pious calling in the neighbourhood of Bielle.

At a short distance from his favourite village, rose the last branch of the Pennine Alps—a vast and towering chain of mountains; the highest peak of which, Monte Mucrone, overshadowed a gloomy little valley—shaggy with overhanging rocks, obscured by mists, bordered by awful precipices, and appearing at a distance to imbody all the horrors with which Dante and Virgil have invested the entrance to the infernal regions. But on drawing nearer to the defile, the impending rocks were found to be clefted with verdure; the precipices to be relieved by gentle slopes, where flowering shrubs afforded a beautiful ladder of vegetation, interspersed with natural bowers and thickets; while the mists, varying in hue according to the reflections of the sun, after becoming white, pink, or violet, evaporated altogether under the influence of the noontide radiance. It was then that, deep in the lovely valley, a lake of about five hundred feet in length became apparent, alimented by crystal springs, and giving rise to the little river called the Oroppa, which at some distance farther encircled and formed into an island one of the verdant hillocks of the valley, on which the piety of the inhabitants has erected, at great cost, and consecrated to the Holy Virgin, one of the most remarkable churches in the country. If the legend is to be believed, St. Eusebius himself, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, deposited there a wooden statue of the Virgin, carved by a hand no less holy than that of St. Luke the Evangelist, which he was desirous of securing from the profanations of the Arians.

In this sequestered vale, on the banks of this lonely lake, surrounded by the shrubby rocks and gentle precipices—in this church, and at the foot of the miraculous statue, did Giacomo Girardi dream away five years of his young existence—rejecting the adoration of his lovely bride for that of the wooden lady of Oroppa!

Incapable of distinguishing between credulity and faith, unaware that superstition may degenerate into idolatry, that all extremes are unacceptable to God, he little suspected that it was not the Mary of Scripture—the mother of the Redeemer—to whom he dedicated his prayers; but a divinity of his own—the tutelary genius of the place. Before the miraculous image, he passed his nights and days, in prayers and tears, praying for a higher spiritualization, and weeping over imaginary faults. His heart was that of a child—his mind that of a fanatic. In vain did the vicar, his worthy relative, labour to repress this unnatural fervour, and bring him back to reason. In vain, to distract his thoughts from one fixed and dangerous idea, did he suggest a pilgrimage to other spots of peculiar sanctity, dedicated to the worship of the Virgin. Giacomo would not hear of our Lady of Loretto, or the Saint Mary of Bologna or of Milan. He was infatuated by the pretended virtue of a material image, a piece of black and worm-eaten wood; and renounced all homage to its celestial prototype.

The sentiments of the enthusiast, if they eventually lost in depth, gained only in extent. The Virgin of Oroppa was surrounded by a whole court of saints and saintesses—and to each of these, the infatuated Giacomo assigned some peculiar duty of intercession. From one, he implored the dispersion of the clouds charged with hail-showers, which from the heights of Monte Mucrone, sometimes rattled down upon his beloved valley. To another, he assigned the task of comforting his mother for his absence, and sustaining the spiritual weakness of his young wife. A third, he implored to watch over him in sleep—a fourth, to defend him against the temptations of Satan. His devotion, by this means, degenerated into an impure polytheism, and Mount Oroppa into a new Olympus, where every divinity but the one Almighty God was honoured with a shrine.

Subjecting himself to the severest discipline, the most painful privations, he continued to macerate himself, to fast, to remain whole days without nourishment; and the exhaustion that ensued was qualified with the name of divine ecstasy! He saw visions, he heard revelations. After the delusions of the Quietists, he fancied that by subjugating his physical nature, he could develop and render visible his soul. But, while resigning himself to this chimera, and holding imaginary discourse with his immaterial nature, Girardi’s health gave way, and his reason became disordered.

One day, a voice seemed to address him from on high, commanding him to go and convert the heretic Waldenses, remnants of which persecuted sect still exist in the Valais. He accordingly set off, traversed the country adjoining the river Sesia, attained the summit of the Alps, near Monte Rosa, and there, suddenly arrested in his course by the snow of an early winter, found himself under the necessity of passing several months in a châlet.