Valperga (15 page)

"I have lived a solitary hermitess, and have become an
enthusiast for all beauty. Being alone, I have not feared to give
the reins to my feelings; I have lived happily within the universe
of my own mind, and have often given reality to that which others
call a dream. I have had few hopes, and few fears; but every
passing sentiment has been an event; and I have marked the birth of
a new idea with the joy that others derive from what they call
change and fortune. What is the world, except that which we feel?
Love, and hope, and delight, or sorrow and tears; these are our
lives, our realities, to which we give the names of power,
possession, misfortune, and death.

"You smile at my strange words. I now feel livelier
emotions arise; and, as is my custom, I try to define and
understand them. Love, when nurtured by sympathy, is a stronger
feeling, than those breathless emotions which arise from the
contemplation of what is commonly called inanimate nature, and of
the wondrous and eternal changes of the universe; and, feeling as I
do, that if I give it place in my heart, it must bear my whole
being away with it, as the tempest bears the rack along the sky,
wonder not, dear friend, that I have paused, and even shuddered,
when I thought that an unknown power was about to dwell in my soul,
which might make it blind to its former delights, and deaf to the
deep voice of that nature, whose child and nursling I call myself.
But now I doubt no more; I am yours, Castruccio; be my fortune
tearful or smiling, it shall be one that will bring with it human
sympathy, and I resign that savage liberty of which I was ere while
jealous.

"You have asked me to relate the events of my life; I may
say that it is a blank, if you would not hear the history of many a
strange idea, many an exalted feeling, and reverie of wondrous
change. You left me at Florence the favourite daughter of a father
I adored: I was ever near him reading and conversing with him; and
if I have put order in my day dreams, and culled the fruit of
virtue and some slight wisdom from my meditations, it is to his
lessons that I owe this good. It is he who taught me to fathom my
sensations, and discipline my mind; to understand what my feelings
were, and whether they arose from a good or evil source. He taught
me to look on my own faults fearlessly; humbly as a weak being--yet
not with mock humility, but with a modest, yet firm courage, that
led me to know what indeed I might become. He explained to me the
lessons of our divine master; which our priests corrupt to satisfy
the most grovelling desires; and he taught me to seek in
self-approbation, and in a repentance, which was that of virtuous
action, and not of weeping, for the absolution of which they make a
revenue.

"Do I speak with vanity? I hope that you do not so far
mistake me. I have been a solitary being; and, conversing with my
own heart, I have been so accustomed to use the frank language of a
knowledge drawn from fixed principles, and to weigh my actions and
thoughts in those scales which my reason and my religion afforded
me, that my words may sound vain, when they are only true. I do not
think then that I could speak with vanity; for I was enumerating
the benefits that I received from my father. I read with him the
literature of ancient Rome; and my whole soul was filled with the
beauty of action, and the poetic sentiment of these writers. At
first I complained that no men lived now, who bore affinity to
these far shining beacons of the earth: but my father convinced me,
that the world was shaking off her barbaric lethargy, and that
Florence, in her struggle for freedom, had awakened the noblest
energies of the human mind. Once, when we attended a court in
Lombardy, a minstrel sang some of the Cantos of Dante's Divina
Comedia, and I can never forget the enthusiastic joy I experienced,
in finding that I was the contemporary of its illustrious
author.

"I endeavour to mark in this little history of myself the
use of the various feelings that rule all my actions; and I must
date my enthusiasm for the liberties of my country, and the
political welfare of Italy, from the repetition of these Cantos of
Dante's poem. The Romans, whose writings I adored, were free; a
Greek who once visited us, had related to us what treasures of
poetry and wisdom existed in his language, and these were the
productions of freemen: the mental history of the rest of the world
who are slaves, was a blank, and thus I was irresistibly forced to
connect wisdom and liberty together; and, as I worshipped wisdom as
the pure emanation of the Deity, the divine light of the world, so
did I adore liberty as its parent, its sister, the half of its
being. Florence was free, and Dante was a Florentine; none but a
freeman could have poured forth the poetry and eloquence to which I
listened: what though he were banished from his native city, and
had espoused a party that seemed to support tyranny; the essence of
freedom is that clash and struggle which awaken the energies of our
nature, and that operation of the elements of our mind, which as it
were gives us the force and power that hinder us from degenerating,
as they say all things earthly do when not regenerated by
change.

"What is man without wisdom? And what would not this world
become, if every man might learn from its institutions the true
principles of life, and become as the few which have as yet shone
as stars amidst the night of ages? If time had not shaken the light
of poetry and of genius from his wings, all the past would be dark
and trackless: now we have a track--the glorious foot-marks of the
children of liberty; let us imitate them, and like them we may
serve as marks in the desert, to attract future passengers to the
fountains of life. Already we have begun to do so; and Dante is the
pledge of a glorious race, which tells us that, in clinging to the
freedom which gave birth to his genius, we may awake the fallen
hopes of the world. These sentiments, nurtured and directed by my
father, have caused the growth of an enthusiasm in my soul, which
can only die when I die.

"I was at this time but sixteen; and at that age, unless I
had been guided by the lessons of my father, my meditations would
have been sufficiently fruitless. But he, whether he taught me to
consider the world and the community of man, or to study the little
universe of my own mind, was wisdom's self, pouring out accents
that commanded attention and obedience. At first I believed, that
my heart was good, and that by following its dictates I should not
do wrong; I was proud, and loved not to constrain my will, though I
myself were the mistress; but he told me, that either my judgement
or passions must rule me, and that my future happiness and
usefulness depended on the choice I made between these two laws. I
learned from him to look upon events as being of consequence only
through the feelings which they excited, and to believe that
content of mind, love, and benevolent feeling ought to be the
elements of our existence; while those accidents of fortune or
fame, which to the majority make up the sum of their existence,
were as the dust of the balance.

"Well; these were the lessons of my father, a honey of
wisdom on which I fed until I attained my eighteenth year; and then
he died. What I felt, my grief and despair, I will not relate; few
sorrows surpass that of a child, who loses a beloved parent before
she has formed new ties which have weakened the first and the most
religious.

"Do you remember my mother? She was a lady with a kind
heart, and a humanity and equanimity of temper few could surpass.
She was a Guelph, a violent partizan, and, heart and soul, was
taken up with treaties of peace, acquisitions in war, the conduct
of allies, and the fortune of her enemies: while she talked to you,
you would have thought that the whole globe of the earth was merely
an appendage to the county of Valperga. She was acquainted with all
the magistrates of Florence, the probabilities of elections, the
state of the troops, the receipt of imposts, and every circumstance
of the republic. She was interested in the most lively manner in
the fall of Corso Donati, the war with Pistoia, the taking of that
town, and the deaths and elections of the various Popes. She was
present at every court held by the Guelph lords of Lombardy; and
her poor subjects were sometimes rather hardly taxed, that we might
appear with suitable dignity on these occasions. The marriage of
her children was her next care; but she could never come to a
decisive resolve as to which alliance would be the most
advantageous to her family, and at the same time most promote the
cause of the Guelphs in Italy.

"When my father died, she sent for my eldest brother from
Naples; and for several months her mind was occupied by his
accession, and the dignity that the houses of Adimari and Valperga
would acquire by having a young warrior at their head, instead of a
woman and a blind philosopher. My brother was a soldier, a brave
man, full of ambition and party spirit; and a new field was opened
to my mother's politics by him, when he detailed the intrigues
of the Neapolitan court; she was for ever occupied in sending
messengers, receiving dispatches, calculating imposts, and all the
pygmy acts of a petty state.

"When I was nineteen years of age, we heard that my younger
brother had fallen ill at Rome, and desired to see some one of his
family. My uncle, the abbot of St. Maurice, was on the point of
going to Rome; and I obtained my mother's leave to accompany
him. Oh, what long draughts of joy I drank in on that journey! I
did not think that my brother's illness was dangerous, and
indeed considered that circumstance more as the pretext, than the
object of my journey; so I fearlessly gave myself up to the
enthusiasm that deluged my soul. Expression lags, as then my own
spirit flagged, beneath the influence of these thoughts: it was to
Rome I journeyed, to see the vestiges of the mistress of the world,
within whose walls all I could conceive of great, and good, and
wise, had breathed and acted: I should draw in the sacred air which
had vivified the heroes of Rome; their shades would surround me;
and the very stones that I should tread were marked by their
footsteps. Can you conceive what I felt? You have not studied the
histories of ancient times, and perhaps know not the life that
breathes in them; a soul of beauty and wisdom which had penetrated
my heart of hearts. When I descended the hills of the Abruzzi, and
first saw the Tiber rolling its tranquil waters glistening under
the morning sun; I wept;--why did not Cato live?--why was I not
going to see her consuls, her heroes, and her poets? Alas! I was
about to approach the shadow of Rome, the inanimate corse, the
broken image of what was once great beyond all power of speech to
express. My enthusiasm again changed; and I felt a kind of sacred
horror run through my veins. Thou, oh! Tiber, ever rollest, ever
and for ever the same! yet are not thy waters those which flowed
here when the Scipios and the Fabii lived on thy shores; the grass
and the herbage which adorn thy banks have many thousand times been
renewed since it was pressed on by their feet; all is changed, even
thou art not the same!

"It was night when we entered Rome; I dared hardly breathe;
the stars shone bright in the deep azure of heaven, and with their
twinkling beams illuminated the dark towers which were black and
silent, seeming like animated beings asleep. A procession of monks
passed by chaunting in a sweet and solemn tone, in that language
which once awoke the pauses of this Roman air with words of fire.
Methought they sang their city's requiem; methought I was
following to their last narrow home all that had existed of great
and good in this god-inhabited city.

"I remained in Rome three months; when I arrived, my
brother was considerably better, and we entertained every hope of
his recovery. I spent my life among the ruins of Rome; and I felt,
as I was told that I appeared to be, rather a wandering shade of
the ancient times, than a modern Italian. In my wild enthusiasm I
called on the shadows of the departed to converse with me, and to
prophesy the fortunes of awakening Italy. I can never forget one
evening that I visited the Pantheon by moonlight: the soft beams of
the planet streamed through its open roof, and its tall pillars
glimmered around. It seemed as if the spirit of beauty descended on
my soul, as I sat there in mute ecstasy; never had I before so felt
the universal graspings of my own mind, or the sure tokens of other
spiritual existences, as at that moment. Oh! could I even now pour
forth in words the sentiments of love, and virtue, and divinest
wisdom, that then burst in upon my soul, in a rich torrent--such as
was the light of the moon to the dark temple in which I stood--the
whole world would stand and listen: but fainter than the moon-beams
and more evanescent are those deep thoughts; my eyes glisten, my
cheeks glow, but words are denied me. I feel as it were my own soul
at work within me, and surely, if I could disclose its secret
operations, and lay bare the vitals of my being, in that moment,
which would be one of overwhelming ecstasy--in that moment I should
die.

"Well; to return to the events that sealed my residence in
Rome, and by shedding the softness of affectionate sorrow over my
feelings, added to their deep holiness. The last month of my
residence there, I was a constant attendant on the sick bed of my
dying brother: he did not suffer pain; his illness was lethargic;
and I watched with breathless anxiety the change from life to
death. Sometimes, when the Ave Maria had sounded, and the heats of
the day had subsided, I stole out into the air to refresh my
wearied spirits. There is no sky so blue as that of Rome; it is
deep, penetrating, and dazzling: but at this hour it had faded, and
its soft airs, that made wild and thrilling music among the
solitudes of its hills and ruins, cooled my fevered cheeks, and
soothed me in spite of sorrow. I then enjoyed grief; I may now say
so, although I then felt anguish alone; truly I wept, and bitterly
over the illness of my brother: but, when the soul is active, it
brings a certain consolation along with it: I was never so much
alive as then, when my wanderings, which seldom exceeded one or at
most two hours, seemed to be lengthened into days and weeks. I
loved to wander by the banks of the Tiber, which were solitary,
and, if the scirocco blew, to mark the clouds as they sped over St.
Peter's and the many towers of Rome: sometimes I walked on the
Quirinal or Pincian mounts which overlook the city, and gazed,
until my soul was elevated by poetic transport. Beautiful city, thy
towers were illuminated by the orange tints of the fast-departing
sunset, and the ghosts of lovely memories floated with the night
breeze, among thy ruins; I became calm; amidst a dead race, and an
extinguished empire, what individual sorrow would dare raise its
voice? subdued, trembling, and overcome, I crept back to the sick
bed of my brother.