Picciola

by X.-B. Saintine

This place of general refuge, designated, in the language of the country, las strablas, or the stables, consisted in a vast shed, five hundred feet square, open towards the south, but carefully closed in all other directions, by strong pine logs, filled in with moss and lichens, cemented into a mass by resinous gums. Here, in inclement weather, men, women, children, flocks, and herds, united together, as in a common habitation, under the control of the oldest member of the tribe. A large hearth, constantly supplied with fuel, sparkled in the centre of the dwelling; over which was suspended an enormous boiler, in which, alternately or together, the food of the community was prepared—consisting of dried vegetables, pork, mutton, quarters of chamois, or cutlets of the flesh of the marmot; eaten afterwards at a general meal, with bread made of chestnut-meal, and a fermented liquor made from cranberries and whortleberries.

Occupations were not wanting in the châlet. The children and flocks were to be attended to; the winter cheeses to be made; the spinning, which was incessantly at work; and instruments of husbandry, in progress of manufacture, to force into cultivation, during the short summer season, the shallow soil of the adjacent rocks. Garments of sheep-skin were also manufactured; baskets of the bark of trees; and a variety of elegant trifles, carved in sycamore, or larchwood, for sale in the nearest towns. The population of the châlet, cheerful and laborious, suffered not an hour to pass unimproved; and songs and laughter intermingled with the strokes of the axe, and busy murmur of the wheel. Labour scarcely appeared a task; and study and prayer were accounted the duty and recreation of the day. Harmonious and well-practised voices united in chorus for the daily execution of pious canticles: the elder shepherds instructed the young in reading and arithmetic—nay, even in music, and a smattering of Latin; for the civilization of the Higher Alps, like its vegetation, seems to be preserved under the snow; and it is no uncommon thing to see, at the return of spring, school-masters and minstrels descend from the châlets, to diffuse knowledge and hilarity among the agricultural villages of the plain.

The worthy hosts of Giacomo proved to be Waldenses. The opportunity was an auspicious one for the young apostle; but, scarcely had he let fall a word of the purport of his mission, when the octogenarian chief of the community, high in the renown, secured, among these humble peasants, by a life of industry and virtue, cut short his expectations.

“Our fathers,” said he to the young man, “endured exile, persecutions, death—rather than subscribe to the image-worship practised among your people. Hope not, therefore, that your feeble powers will effect what centuries of persecution failed to accomplish. Stranger! you have found shelter under our roof, and therein, for your own safety, must abide. Pray, therefore, to God, according to the dictation of your own conscience, as we do according to ours; but be advised by the experience of a gray-beard, and take part in the labours proceeding around you; or, in this solitude, remote from the rumours and excitements of social life, want of occupation will destroy you. Be our companion, our brother, so long as the winter snows weigh upon your existence and our own; and, at the return of spring, leave us, unquestioned, as you came; without so much as bestowing your benediction on our hearth—nay, without even turning back upon your path, to salute, by a farewell gesture, those by whose fire you have been warmed, and at whose frugal board, nourished. For, having shared their industry, you will owe them nothing. The fruit of your own labour will have maintained you; and, should any debt be still owing, the God of mercy will repay us a thousand-fold for our hospitality to the son of the stranger.”

Forced to submit to a proposition so reasonable, Giacomo remained five months an inmate of the châlet, and an eye-witness of the virtuous career of its inhabitants. Night and morning, he heard their prayers and thanksgivings offered up to the throne of grace—to the throne of the one omnipresent God; and his mind, no longer excited by the objects which had wrought its exaltation, became gradually composed to a reasonable frame. When the prison of ice, constructed for him by nature, ceased to hold him captive, and the sun, shining out with the return of spring, developed before his eyes all the beauty and majesty of the mountain-scenery by which he was surrounded, the idea of the Almighty Lord of the universe seemed to manifest itself powerfully to his mind, and resume its fitting influence on his heart.

The geniality of the weather, reviving all nature around him, with her swarming myriads of birds and bees hovering over the new-born flowers, starting anew to life from beneath their winter mantle of snow, awoke in his bosom correspondent transports of love and joy. It were vain to dilate on the expansion of human feeling which gradually enlarged his perceptions. The good old chief had begun to entertain an affection for him; and, though unlearned in pedantic lore, had stored up, in the course of his long existence, an infinity of facts and observations, which, joined to those inherited from the lessons of his fathers, inspired him with knowledge of the Creator through the wisdom of his works. In a word, the presumptuous youth, who had entered that humble asylum for the purpose of converting its people to his opinions, eventually quitted it, himself converted to their own!—nay, the industrious habits he had acquired, and the examples of domestic happiness he had witnessed, had brought him to a due sense of his error in neglecting the happiness and duties with which Providence had endowed his existence.

Giacomo’s first visit after quitting Monte Rosa, was to the convent in which his wife was immured. A whole romance might be developed in the history of his wooing, and the difficulties with which his courtship was beset. Suffice it, that after many months devoted to the obliteration of the lessons he had himself inculcated, Girardi, aided by the influence of his parents, succeeded in removing his wife from the cloistral seclusion to which he had devoted her; and became, in the sequel, the happiest of husbands and of fathers.

The errors of his youth were now redeemed by years of wisdom and of virtue. Established in his native city of Turin, in the enjoyment of a handsome fortune, the thriving speculations in which he was engaged might have rendered it colossal, but for the systematic benevolence which rendered the opulence of Girardi a second providence to the poor. To do good was the occupation of his life; his favourite recreation was the study of animated nature. Girardi became a proficient in natural history; and as God is greatest in the least of his works, entomology chiefly engaged his attention. It was this interest in the organization and habits of insects, which had obtained for him from Ludovico, in the earlier stages of his imprisonment, the appellation of “The Fly-catcher.”