Volume VI Part 43 (2/2)
”My dear sir, I really have no particular office to give you”
”Then, count, I wish you a pleasant sail; I a me, for without me you will never pass the Dardanelles”
”Is that a prophecy?”
”It's an oracle”
”We will test its veracity, ue I had with the worthy count, who, as a matter of fact, did not pass the Dardanelles Whether he would have succeeded if I had been on board is more than I can say
Next day I delivered lish banker
The squadron had sailed in the early
The day after I went to Pisa, and spent a pleasant week in the company of Father Stratico, as made a bishop two or three years after by ht have ruined him He delivered a funeral oration over Father Ricci, the last general of the Jesuits The Pope, Ganganelli, had the choice of punishi+ng the writer and increasing the odiu hin pontiff followed the latter course I saw the bishop some years later, and he told me in confidence that he had only written the oration because he felt certain, froe of the hureat reward
This clever monk initiated anized a little choir of ladies of rank, reht theuitar He had had them instructed by the famous Gorilla, as crowned poetess-laureate at the capitol by night, six years later She was crohere our great Italian poets were crowned; and though her reat, it was, nevertheless, old, and not of that order to place her on a par with Petrarch or Tasso
She was satirised most bitterly after she had received the bays; and the satirists were eventhan the profaners of the capitol, for all the paainst her laid stress on the circumstance that chastity, at all events, was not one of her merits All poetesses, from the days of Homer to our own, have sacrificed on the altar of Venus No one would have heard of Gorilla if she had not had the sense to choose her lovers from the ranks of literary men; and she would never have been crowned at Roa Solferino, who hter of the Roman consul, whom I knew at Marseilles, and of whom I have already spoken
This coronation of Gorilla is a blot on the pontificate of the present Pope, for henceforth no enuine uarded by the giants of human intellect
Two days after the coronation Gorilla and her admirers left Rome, ashamed of what they had done The Abbe Pizzi, who had been the chief promoter of her apotheosis, was so inundated with pamphlets and satires that for soression, and I will now return to Father Stratico, who h he was not a handsome man, he possessed the art of persuasion to perfection; and he succeeded in inducing ave i, and also one for the Abbe Chiaccheri; and as I had nothing better to do I went to Sienna by the shortest way, not caring to visit Florence
The Abbe Chiaccheri gave me a elcome, and promised to do all he could to amuse me; and he kept his word He introduced i, who took me by storm as soon as she had read the letter of the Abbe Stratico, her dear abbe, as she called hi
The un to wane; but with her the sweetness, the grace, and the ease of manner supplied the lack of youth She kne to htest expression, and was totally devoid of any affection of superiority
”Sit down,” she began ”So you are going to stay a week, I see, from the dear abbe's letter That's a short ti for you I hope the abbe has not painted us in too rosy colours”
”He only told me that I was to spend a week here, and that I should find with you all the charms of intellect and sensibility”
”Stratico should have condemned you to a month without mercy”
”Whytired to death, or of leaving soht happen in a week, but I auardedon you, and fro on e My heart will go forth from Sienna as free as it came, for I have no hope of victory, and defeat would st the despairing?”