Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861
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Sad is my life, and lonely!
No hope for me,
Save thou, my love, my only,
I see!
Where art then, O my fairest?
Where art thou gone?
Dove of the rock, I languish
Alone!
They say thou art so saintly,
Who dare love thee?
Yet bend thine eyelids holy
On me!
Though heaven alone possess thee,
Thou dwell'st above,
Yet heaven, didst thou but know it,
Is love.
There was such an intense earnestness in these sounds, that large tears
gathered in the wide, dark eyes, and fell one after another upon the
sweet alyssum and maiden's-hair that grew in the crevices of the marble
wall. She shivered and drew away from the parapet, and thought of
stories she had heard the nuns tell of wandering spirits who sometimes
in lonesome places pour forth such entrancing music as bewilders the
brain of the unwary listener, and leads him to some fearful destruction.
"Agnes!" said the sharp voice of old Elsie, appearing at the
door,--"here! where are you?"
"Here, grandmamma."
"Who's that singing this time o' night?"
"I don't know, grandmamma."
Somehow the child felt as if that singing were strangely sacred to
her,--a _rapport_ between her and something vague and invisible, which
might yet become dear.
"Is't down in the gorge?" said the old woman, coming with her heavy,
decided step to the parapet, and looking over, her keen black eyes
gleaming like dagger-blades info the mist. "If there's anybody there,"
she said, "let them go away, and not be troubling honest women with any
of their caterwauling. Come, Agnes," she said, pulling the girl by the
sleeve, "you must be tired, my lamb! and your evening-prayers are always
so long, best be about them, girl, so that old grandmamma may put you to
bed. What ails the girl? Been crying! Your hand is cold as a stone."
"Grandmamma, what if that might be a spirit?" she said. "Sister Rosa
told me stories of singing spirits that have been in this very gorge."
"Likely enough," said Dame Elsie; "but what's that to us? Let 'em sing!
--so long as we don't listen, where's the harm done? We will sprinkle
holy water all round the parapet, and say the office of Saint Agnes, and
let them sing till they are hoarse."
Such was the triumphant view which this energetic good woman took of the
power of the means of grace which her church placed at her disposal.
Nevertheless, while Agnes was kneeling at her evening-prayers, the old
dame consoled herself with a soliloquy, as with a brush she vigorously
besprinkled the premises with holy water.
"Now, here's the plague of a girl! If she's handsome,--and nobody wants
one that isn't,--why, then, it's a purgatory to look after her. This one
is good enough,--none of your hussies, like Giulietta: but the better
they are, the more sure to have fellows after them. A murrain on that
cavalier,--king's brother, or what not!--it was he serenading, I'll be
bound. I must tell Antonio, and have the girl married, for aught I see:
and I don't want to give her to him either; he didn't bring her up.
There's no peace for us mothers. Maybe I'll tell Father Francesco about
it. That's the way poor little Isella was carried away. Singing is of
the Devil, I believe; it always bewitches girls. I'd like to have poured
some hot oil down the rocks: I'd have made him squeak in another tone, I
reckon. Well, well! I hope I shall come in for a good seat in paradise
for all the trouble I've had with her mother, and am like to have with
her,--that's all!"
In an hour more, the large, round, sober moon was shining fixedly on
the little mansion in the rocks, silvering the glossy darkness of the
orange-leaves, while the scent of the blossoms arose like clouds about
the cottage. The moonlight streamed through the unglazed casement, and
made a square of light on the little bed where Agnes was sleeping,
in which square her delicate face was framed, with its tremulous and
spiritual expression most resembling in its sweet plaintive purity some
of the Madonna faces of Fra Angelico,--those tender wild-flowers of
Italian religion and poetry.
By her side lay her grandmother, with those sharp, hard, clearly cut
features, so worn and bronzed by time, so lined with labor and care, as
to resemble one of the Fates in the picture of Michel Angelo; and even
in her sleep she held the delicate lily hand of the child in her own
hard, brown one, with a strong and determined clasp.
While they sleep, we must tell something more of the story of the little
Agnes,--of what she is, and what are the causes which have made her
such.
CHAPTER IV.
WHO AND WHAT.
Old Elsie was not born a peasant. Originally she was the wife of
a steward in one of those great families of Rome whose state and
traditions were princely. Elsie, as her figure and profile and all her
words and movements indicated, was of a strong, shrewd, ambitious, and
courageous character, and well disposed to turn to advantage every gift
with which Nature had endowed her.
Providence made her a present of a daughter whose beauty was wonderful,
even in a country where beauty is no uncommon accident. In addition to
her beauty, the little Isella had quick intelligence, wit, grace, and
spirit. As a child she became the pet and plaything of the Duchess whom
Elsie served. This noble lady, pressed by the _ennui_ which is always
the moth and rust on the purple and gold of rank and wealth, had,
as other noble ladies had in those days, and have now, sundry pets:
greyhounds, white and delicate, that looked as if they were made of
Sevres china; spaniels with long silky ears and fringy paws; apes and
monkeys, that made at times sad devastations in her wardrobe; and a most
charming little dwarf, that was ugly enough to frighten the very owls,
and spiteful as he was ugly. She had, moreover, peacocks, and macaws,
and parrots, and all sorts of singing-birds, and falcons of every breed,
and horses, and hounds,--in short, there is no saying what she did not
have. One day she took it into her head to add the little Isella to the
number of her acquisitions. With the easy grace of aristocracy, she
reached out her jewelled hand and took Elsie's one flower to add to her
conservatory,--and Elsie was only too proud to have it so.
Her daughter was kept constantly about the person of the Duchess, and
instructed in all the wisdom which would have been allowed her, had she
been the Duchess's own daughter, which, to speak the truth, was in
those days nothing very profound,--consisting of a little singing and
instrumentation, a little embroidery and dancing, with the power of
writing her own name and of reading a love-letter.
All the world knows that the very idea of a pet is something to be
spoiled for the amusement of the pet-owner; and Isella was spoiled in
the most particular and circumstantial manner. She had suits of apparel
for every day in the year, and jewels without end,--for the Duchess was
never weary of trying the effect of her beauty in this and that costume;
so that she sported through the great grand halls and down the long
aisles of the garden much like a bright-winged hummingbird, or a
damsel-fly all green and gold. She was a genuine child of Italy,--full
of feeling, spirit, and genius,--alive in every nerve to the
finger-tips; and under the tropical sunshine of her mistress's favor she
grew as an Italian rose-bush does, throwing its branches freakishly over
everything in a wild labyrinth of perfume, brightness, and thorns.
For a while her life was a triumph, and her mother triumphed with her at
an humble distance. The Duchess had no daughter, and was devoted to her
with the blind fatuity with which ladies of rank at times will invest
themselves in a caprice. She arrogated to herself all the praises of her
beauty and wit, allowed her to flirt and make conquests to her heart's
content, and engaged to marry her to some handsome young officer of her
train, when she had done being amused with her.
Now we must not wonder that a young head of fifteen should have been
turned by this giddy elevation, nor that an old head of fifty should
have thought all things were possible in the fortune of such a favorite.
Nor must we wonder that the young coquette, rich in the laurels of a
hundred conquests, should have turned her bright eyes on the son and
heir, when he came home from the University of Bologna. Nor is it to be
wondered at that this same son and heir, being a man as well as a duke's
son, should have done as other men did,--fallen desperately in love with
this dazzling, sparkling, piquant mixture of matter and spirit, which no
university can prepare a young man to comprehend,--which always seemed
to run from him, and yet always threw a Parthian shot behind her as she
fled. Nor is it to be wondered at, if this same duke's son, after a week
or two, did not know whether he was on his head or his heels, or whether
the sun rose in the east or the south, or where he stood, or whither he
was going.
In fact, the youthful pair very soon came into that dream-land where are
no more any points of the compass, no more division of time, no more
latitude and longitude, no more up and down, but only a general
wandering among enchanted groves and singing nightingales.
It was entirely owing to old Elsie's watchful shrewdness and address
that the lovers came into this paradise by the gate of marriage; for the
young man was ready to offer anything at the feet of his divinity, as
the old mother was not slow to perceive.
So they stood at the altar, for the time being a pair of as true lovers
as Romeo and Juliet: but then, what has true love to do with the son of
a hundred generations and heir to a Roman principality?
Of course, the rose of love, having gone through all its stages of bud
and blossom into full flower, must next begin to drop its leaves. Of
course. Who ever heard of an immortal rose?
The time of discovery came. Isella was found to be a mother; and then
the storm burst upon her and drabbled her in the dust as fearlessly as
the summer-wind sweeps down and besmirches the lily it has all summer
been wooing and flattering.
The Duchess was a very pious and moral lady, and of course threw her
favorite out into the street as a vile weed, and virtuously ground her
down under her jewelled high-heeled shoes.
She could have forgiven her any common frailty;--of course it was
natural that the girl should have been seduced by the all-conquering
charms of her son;--but aspire to _marriage_ with their house!--pretend
to be her son's _wife_! Since the time of Judas had such treachery ever
been heard of?
Something was said of the propriety of walling up the culprit alive,--a
mode of disposing of small family-matters somewhat _a la mode_ in those
times. But the Duchess acknowledged herself foolishly tender, and unable
quite to allow this very obvious propriety in the case.
She contented herself with turning mother and daughter into the streets
with every mark of ignominy, which was reduplicated by every one of her
servants, lackeys, and court-companions, who, of course, had always
known just how the thing must end.
As to the young Duke, he acted as a well-instructed young nobleman
should, who understands the great difference there is between the tears
of a duchess and those of low-born women. No sooner did he behold his
conduct in the light of his mother's countenance than he turned his
back on his low marriage with edifying penitence. He did not think it
necessary to convince his mother of the real existence of a union whose
very supposition made her so unhappy, and occasioned such an uncommonly
disagreeable and tempestuous state of things in the well-bred circle
where his birth called him to move. Being, however, a religious youth,
he opened his mind to his family-confessor, by whose advice he sent a
messenger with a large sum of money to Elsie, piously commending her and
her daughter to the Divine protection. He also gave orders for an entire
new suit of raiment for the Virgin Mary in the family-chapel, including
a splendid set of diamonds, and promised unlimited candles to the altar
of a neighboring convent. If all this could not atone for a youthful
error, it was a pity. So he thought, as he drew on his riding-gloves
and went off on a hunting-party, like a gallant and religious young
nobleman.
Elsie, meanwhile, with her forlorn and disgraced daughter, found a
temporary asylum in a neighboring mountain-village, where the poor,
bedrabbled, broken-winged song-bird soon panted and fluttered her little
life away.
When the once beautiful and gay Isella had been hidden in the grave,
cold and lonely, there remained a little wailing infant, which Elsie
gathered to her bosom.
Grim, dauntless, and resolute, she resolved, for the sake of this
hapless one, to look life in the face once more, and try the battle
under other skies.
Taking the infant in her arms, she travelled with her far from the scene
of her birth, and set all her energies at work to make for her a better
destiny than that which had fallen to the lot of her unfortunate mother.
She set about to create her nature and order her fortunes with that sort
of downright energy with which resolute people always attack the problem
of a new human existence. This child _should be happy_; the rocks on
which her mother was wrecked she should never strike upon,--they were
all marked on Elsie's chart. Love had been the root of all poor Isella's
troubles,--and Agnes never should know love, till taught it safely by a
husband of Elsie's own choosing.
The first step of security was in naming her for the chaste Saint Agnes,
and placing her girlhood under her special protection. Secondly, which
was quite as much to the point, she brought her up laboriously in habits
of incessant industry,--never suffering her to be out of her sight, or
to have any connection or friendship, except such as could be carried on
under the immediate supervision of her piercing black eyes. Every night
she put her to bed as if she had been an infant, and, wakening her again
in the morning, took her with her in all her daily toils,--of which, to
do her justice, she performed all the hardest portion, leaving to the
girl just enough to keep her hands employed and her head steady.
The peculiar circumstance which had led her to choose the old town
of Sorrento for her residence, in preference to any of the beautiful
villages which impearl that fertile plain, was the existence there of
a flourishing convent dedicated to Saint Agnes, under whose protecting
shadow her young charge might more securely spend the earlier years of
her life.
With this view, having hired the domicile we have already described,
she lost no time in making the favorable acquaintance of the
sisterhood,--never coming to them empty-handed. The finest oranges of
her garden, the whitest flax of her spinning, were always reserved as
offerings at the shrine of the patroness whom she sought to propitiate
for her grandchild.
In her earliest childhood the little Agnes was led toddling to the
shrine by her zealous relative; and at the sight of her fair, sweet,
awe-struck face, with its viny mantle of encircling curls, the torpid
bosoms of the sisterhood throbbed with a strange, new pleasure, which
they humbly hoped was not sinful,--as agreeable things, they found,
generally were. They loved the echoes of her little feet down the damp,
silent aisles of their chapel, and her small, sweet, slender voice, as
she asked strange baby-questions, which, as usual with baby-questions,
hit all the insoluble points of philosophy and theology exactly on the
head.
The child became a special favorite with the Abbess, Sister Theresa, a
tall, thin, bloodless, sad-eyed woman, who looked as if she might have
been cut out of one of the glaciers of Monte Rosa, but in whose heart
the little fair one had made herself a niche, pushing her way up
through, as you may have seen a lovely blue-fringed gentian standing in
a snow-drift of the Alps with its little ring of melted snow around it.
Sister Theresa offered to take care of the child at any time when the
grandmother wished to be about her labors; and so, during her early
years, the little one was often domesticated for days together at the
Convent. A perfect mythology of wonderful stories encircled her, which
the good sisters were never tired of repeating to each other. They
were the simplest sayings and doings of childhood,--handfuls of such
wild-flowers as bespread the green turf of nursery-life everywhere, but
miraculous blossoms in the eyes of these good women, whom Saint Agnes
had unwittingly deprived of any power of making comparisons or ever
having Christ's sweetest parable of the heavenly kingdom enacted in
homes of their own.
Old Jocunda, the porteress, never failed to make a sensation with her
one stock-story of how she found the child standing on her head and
crying,--having been put into this reversed position in consequence of
climbing up on a high stool to get her little fat hand into the vase of
holy water, failing in which Christian attempt, her heels went up and
her head down, greatly to her dismay.
"Nevertheless," said old Jocunda, gravely, "it showed an edifying turn
in the child; and when I lifted the little thing up, it stopped crying
the minute its little fingers touched the water, and it made a cross on
its forehead as sensible as the oldest among us. Ah, sisters! there's
grace there, or I'm mistaken."
All the signs of an incipient saint were, indeed, manifested in the
little one. She never played the wild and noisy plays of common
children, but busied herself in making altars and shrines, which she
adorned with the prettiest flowers of the gardens, and at which she
worked hour after hour in the quietest and happiest earnestness. Her
dreams were a constant source of wonder and edification in the Convent,
for they were all of angels and saints; and many a time, after hearing
one, the sisterhood crossed themselves, and the Abbess said, _"Ex oribus
parvulorum."_ Always sweet, dutiful, submissive, cradling herself every
night with a lulling of sweet hymns and infant murmur of prayers, and
found sleeping in her little white bed with her crucifix clasped to her
bosom, it was no wonder that the Abbess thought her the special favorite
of her divine patroness, and, like her, the subject of an early vocation
to be the celestial bride of One fairer than the children of men, who
should snatch her away from all earthly things, to be united to Him in a
celestial paradise.
As the child grew older, she often sat at evening, with wide, wondering
eyes, listening over and over again to the story of the fair Saint
Agnes:--How she was a princess, living in her father's palace, of such
exceeding beauty and grace that none saw her but to love her, yet of
such sweetness and humility as passed all comparison; and how, when a
heathen prince would have espoused her to his son, she said, "Away from
me, tempter! for I am betrothed to a lover who is greater and fairer
than any earthly suitor,--he is so fair that the sun and moon are
ravished by his beauty, so mighty that the angels of heaven are his
servants"; how she bore meekly with persecutions and threatenings and
death for the sake of this unearthly love; and when she had poured out
her blood, how she came to her mourning friends in ecstatic vision, all
white and glistening, with a fair lamb by her side, and bade them weep
not for her, because she was reigning with Him whom on earth she had
preferred to all other lovers. There was also the legend of the fair
Cecilia, the lovely musician whom angels had rapt away to their choirs;
the story of that queenly saint, Catharine, who passed through the
courts of heaven, and saw the angels crowned with roses and lilies, and
the Virgin on her throne, who gave her the wedding-ring that espoused
her to be the bride of the King Eternal.
Fed with such legends, it could not be but that a child with a
sensitive, nervous organization and vivid imagination should have grown
up with an unworldly and spiritual character, and that a poetic mist
should have enveloped all her outward perceptions similar to that
palpitating veil of blue and lilac vapor that enshrouds the Italian
landscape.
Nor is it to be marvelled at, if the results of this system of education
went far beyond what the good old grandmother intended. For, though a
stanch good Christian, after the manner of those times, yet she had not
the slightest mind to see her grand-daughter a nun; on the contrary,
she was working day and night to add to her dowry, and had in her eye
a reputable middle-aged blacksmith, who was a man of substance and
prudence, to be the husband and keeper of her precious treasure. In a
home thus established she hoped to enthrone herself, and provide for the
rearing of a generation of stout-limbed girls and boys who should grow
up to make a flourishing household in the land. This subject she had
not yet broached to her grand-daughter, though daily preparing to do
so,--deferring it, it must be told, from a sort of jealous, yearning
craving to have wholly to herself the child for whom she had lived so
many years.
Antonio, the blacksmith to whom this honor was destined, was one of
those broad-backed, full-chested, long-limbed fellows one shall often
see around Sorrento, with great, kind, black eyes like those of an ox,
and all the attributes of a healthy, kindly, animal nature. Contentedly
he hammered away at his business; and certainly, had not Dame Elsie
of her own providence elected him to be the husband of her fair
grand-daughter, he would never have thought of the matter himself; but,
opening the black eyes aforenamed upon the girl, he perceived that she
was fair, and also received an inner light through Dame Elsie as to the
amount of her dowry; and, putting these matters together, conceived a
kindness for the maiden, and awaited with tranquillity the time when he
should be allowed to commence his wooing.
REST AND MOTION.
Motion and Rest are the two feet upon which existence goes. All action
and all definite power result from the intimacy and consent of these
opposite principles. If, therefore, one would construct any serviceable
mechanism, he must incorporate into it, and commonly in a manifold way,
a somewhat passive, a somewhat contrary, and, as it were, inimical to
action, though action be the sole aim and use of his contrivance. Thus,
the human body is penetrated by the passive and powerless skeleton,
which is a mere weight upon the muscles, a part of the burden that,
nevertheless, it enables them to bear. The lever of Archimedes would
push the planet aside, provided only it were supplied with its
indispensable complement, a fulcrum, or fixity: without this it will not
push a pin. The block of the pulley must have its permanent attachment;
the wheel of the locomotive engine requires beneath it the fixed rail;
the foot of the pedestrian, solid earth; the wing of the bird rests upon
the relatively stable air to support his body, and upon his body to gain
power over the air. Nor is it alone of operations mechanical that the
law holds good: it is universal; and its application to pure mental
action may be shown without difficulty. A single act of the mind is
represented by the formation of a simple sentence. The process consists,
first, in the mind's _fixing upon and resting in_ an object, which
thereby becomes the subject of the sentence; and, secondly, in
predication, which is movement, represented by the verb. The reader will
easily supply himself with instances and illustrations of this, and need
not, therefore, be detained.
In the economy of animal and vegetable existence, as in all that Nature
makes, we observe the same inevitable association. Here is perpetual
fixity of form, perpetual flux of constituent,--the ideas of Nature
never changing, the material realization of them never ceasing to
change. A horse is a horse through all the ages; yet the horse of to-day
is changed from the horse of yesterday.
If one of these principles seem to get the start, and to separate
itself, the other quickly follows. No sooner, for example, does any
person perform an initial deed, proceeding purely (let us suppose) from
free will, than Nature in him begins to repose therein, and consequently
inclines to its repetition for the mere reason that it has been once
done. This is Habit, which makes action passive, and is the greatest of
labor-saving inventions. Custom is the habit of society, holding the
same relation to progressive genius. It is the sleeping partner in the
great social firm; it is thought and force laid up and become
fixed capital. Annihilate this,--as in the French Revolution was
attempted,--and society is at once reduced to its bare immediate force,
and must scratch the soil with its fingers.
Sometimes these principles seem to be strictly hostile to each other and
in no respect reciprocal, as where habit in the individual and custom in
society oppose themselves bitterly to free will and advancing thought:
yet even here the special warfare is but the material of a broader and
more subtile alliance. An obstinate fixity in one's bosom often serves
as a rock on which to break the shell of some hard inclosed faculty.
Upon stepping-stones of our _slain_ selves we mount to new altitudes. So
do the antagonisms of these principles in the broader field of society
equally conceal a fundamental reciprocation. By the opposition to
his thought of inert and defiant custom, the thinker is compelled to
interrogate his consciousness more deeply and sacredly; and being
cut off from that sympathy which has its foundation in similarity of
temperaments and traditions, he must fall back with simpler abandonment
upon the pure idea, and must seek responses from that absolute nature of
man which the men of his time are not human enough to afford him. This
absolute nature, this divine identity in man, underrunning times,
temperaments, individualities, is that which poet and prophet must
address: yet to speak _to_ it, they must speak _from_ it; to be heard
by the universal heart, they must use a universal language. But
this marvellous vernacular can be known to him alone whose heart is
universal, in whom even self-love is no longer selfish, but is a pure
respect to his own being as it is Being. Well it is, therefore, that
here and there one man should be so denied all petty and provincial
claim to attention, that only by speaking to Man as Man, and in the
sincerest vernacular of the human soul, he can find audience; for thus
it shall become his need, for the sake of joy no less than of duty, to
know himself purely as man, and to yield himself wholly to his immortal
humanity. Thus does fixed custom force back the most moving souls, until
they touch the springs of inspiration, and are indued with power: then,
at once potent and pure, they gush into history, to be influences, to
make epochs, and to prevail over that through whose agency they first
obtained strength.
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